Romans Chapter 16:11-15

Every person in here has done something they shouldn't have done. You've said something you shouldn't have said, and you have to forget that. Let it go. Don't dwell on that.

Why? Because if you dwell on it, you go, I'd love to do something for God, but after all, I've done this, and I've done that. Paul, who's writing this book, had beaten, imprisoned, and possibly taken part in the execution of Christians. He had to forget all that.

He had to let it go. In other words, we know we've made mistakes in the past, but because of Christ, we can forget our past and move on to a brighter future. David McGee continues with this truth in Romans 16 with his teaching, A Changed Life.

Here's Pastor David. He was either a descendant of Herod or had named himself after Herod, and so, and we're reminded that we're called from Antioch, we're called Christians, little Christ, followers of Christ, imitators of Christ, and, you know, we talked about what that word means and how watered down it's become, and I remembered this story of Alexander the Great, who was a young man in Greece, like 300 BC or so, and he conquered most of the known world in a very short time. And the story is that in one of these battles that they found somebody that was running away from the battle. They took him before Alexander.

The penalty for desertion, of course, was death. They brought him before Alexander and threw him down on the ground. Alexander took out a sword, put it at the guy's throat, and he said, before I execute you, tell me your name. And the young man said, my name is Alexander.

And Alexander the Great said, from this point forward, you would either change your behavior or you would change your name. And she, the sword, were Christians, followers of Jesus, highest calling there is, and all of us are called to that, and as we follow him, we should imitate him, we should be acting, talking, loving, more and more like Jesus. And this chapter here talks about relationships, and we spoke about that, and again, we're not talking about being a social club. This church will never be just a social club, but there is the aspect of that we should fellowship with each other, we should hang out with each other, we should break bread with one another, because the Bible indicates that we're supposed to do these things. Acts chapter 2, verse 42 says, and they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in prayers. So they were encouraged to hang out in the early church, I'm encouraging you guys to hang out, we've got the real life groups, I'm encouraging you to get involved with those, those things that help you to fellowship and with one another, and that's an important thing.

We're also told to do something interesting. When you go to somebody's house that's a believer, and this is kind of an interesting thing, Luke chapter 10, verse 5, it says, and whatever house you enter, first say, peace to this house, peace to this house. Now we know that the New Testament, as we read it today, mine's in English up here, I've got the Greek in the study, but you know, it's in English, but Jesus would have been speaking in Hebrew, and he would have said, shalom, when you go to a house, say shalom. Now what is shalom? Is it just peace?

That's more than that. Shalom is peace, health, wholeness, prosperity, blessing, all these things, and so you're speaking a blessing over somebody's house as you enter it. It's an important thing. Another place, John 20, 21 says, Jesus said to them again, peace to you, as the Father has sent me, I also send you.

So we've got a couple things there. He says, shalom. That's a great greeting, shalom.

You don't have to be Jewish to say shalom. You can greet somebody and say shalom. And again, fellowship, blessing one another, greeting one another, being the called out ones, being separated, speaking peace to one another, encouraging one another.

And how hard is that? To just encourage one another. To say to somebody, hey, good to see you, man. Glad you're here. I'm glad you're here.

It's so easy, but so valuable. Gang, if you ever walk in here and you're depressed or anxious or fearful or there's something going on, let me encourage you. Immediately start turning to other people and greeting them and encouraging them.

Because you know what's going to happen? You come in and you're all bummed out. You go, hey, man, it's good to see you.

You're going to go, oh, man. Hey, hey, hey, I've been praying for you. Hey, it's great to see you. Glad you're here. And you cannot keep feeling bad when you're encouraging other people. Just lift your spirits.

And God wired us that way. Let's read verse 12. It says, greet Trophino and Trophosa who have labored in the Lord. Greet the beloved persistent who labored much in the Lord. Now he's writing this and he's naming these people and these people who labored a lot and he's remembering all that they've done in the Lord.

And that's awesome that it's written down. And I think of all the people who are laboring much in the Lord here. There's a place called Meteora.

It's an interesting place. There's these rock formations that are like chimney rock formations and they go straight up from the ground. They're like 100 feet, 200 feet, somewhere like 300 feet. And they look like a big chimney or a smokestack. And what these guys did is they decided they wanted to get closer to the Lord by getting away from everybody else. And so what they did is one of them would climb all the way up one of these with a basket, send the basket down. Somebody at the bottom would put a couple of boards. They would haul it up and take a couple of boards and put it back down, get a couple of boards. They built whole churches up there and lived their lives up there.

And then they had to pull each other up and down in the basket. And while I was admiring all the hard work that went into it, I was thinking, you guys really missed the point because we're supposed to be hanging out with each other and telling each other about the love of God. And they're up there going, good, we're safe from all the healing. That's the wrong attitude. God left us here to interact with people, to communicate the love of God and the good news of God and how they can be forgiven.

And it's not to go running hot on some chimney rock formation. Now, these people are serving the Lord. He's writing to these people at Rome. Rome was an incredibly pagan city. I'm not going into details. It was beyond Vegas, OK?

I mean, it was way beyond Vegas. It was the pagan capital city of the world. And these people that are named in this list, you better believe they were part of that pagan capital before they came to know Jesus. Every one of them had a past. I'm going to speak right to some of you because some of you are struggling and you're thinking, why do I do the things I do and why am I prone to this and why am I prone to that? And some of you have thought either through psychotherapy or psychiatry or psychology, well, what I need to do is I need to go back to my past. And when I look into my past, then I'm going to find the answers for my behaviors in the present. Friend, if you're wondering why life is hard and life is messed up sometimes, this is the human race. This is not heaven.

OK, so that's the first point. The second thing is don't be digging around in the trash of your past to figure out the answers. Because once you figure out what went wrong, you know why life is hard now? It's because we're sinners. We live in a fallen place. This is not heaven. Bad stuff is going to happen. Don't be looking in your past.

Don't be digging for answers there. You know what the Bible says in regards to your past? Philippians 3, 13 says, Brethren, I count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead. Or the New Living Translation says, No, dear brothers and sisters, I am still not all I should be, but I'm focusing all my energies on this one thing, forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead.

Do you know what you have to do in order to step out and serve God? You have to forget about your past. Every person in here has done something they shouldn't have done. You've said something you shouldn't have said.

Every one of us. And you have to forget that. Let it go. Don't dwell on that. Why? Because if you dwell on it, you go, I'd love to do something for God, but after all, I've done this and I've done that.

Paul, who's writing this book, had beaten, imprisoned and possibly taken part in the execution of Christians. He had to forget all that. He had to let it go.

First life lesson here. Forget your past. Let it go. Sometimes I'll say, Hey, how are you doing? And they start telling me.

Sometimes they start telling me stuff I have like five years ago. And I'm simply, I'm sympathetic, I'm compassionate, but I'm like, man, you at some point, you got to let that go. Quit holding on to it. Quit caring.

Because every time you retell, you relive. Be careful of that, friends. I mean, let me give you, I'll give you a word. It's kind of a bunch of words, but it's really kind of one word when it comes to your past and trying to find the answers there with a kind of a northern brogue. Let me tell you, forget about it. Okay, forget about your past. Forget about it. Don't go, well, my past. We all have a past. Forget about it.

Let it go. What's my past? Your past was last week. It's gone.

Your past was this morning. It's gone. Let it go. Don't don't cling to it. And guys, you know, what's weird is it's some of you go, no, no, no, we need to cling to some good things.

You know what? Historically, the church has missed a lot of opportunities because it said, well, we always have done it like this. I was so shocked.

I wasn't surprised. But, you know, when when the Web started happening and Internet started, you know, really playing a part in some people, I don't think the church should have anything to do with the Internet. Well, there's there's a good solution. We do a lot of stuff on Facebook. You should be on Facebook. There's people on Facebook. In the discussion that, you know, if there's people on Internet, we're going to be on it. Why?

Because we want to reach people. Amen. Two phrases that are the kiss of death in any church is we've always done it like this and we've never done it like that. Now, there's some stuff that doesn't change. God doesn't change. The gospel doesn't change. The method of telling the gospel has changed drastically over the last 20 years. I want to embrace the technology right now. There's people all over the world watching the live stream from this church, watching the teaching right now.

How cool is that? How could we begin to do? Well, I'm not sure we should be doing that. If you're not sure we should be doing that. I love you, but you might be in the wrong church because we're about reaching people. So the past, the bad stuff.

Forget about it. The good stuff. Don't camp out there because you may miss what the new thing that God is doing. Thank you for listening to Cross the Bridge. We'll return to David's teaching in just a moment.

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The whole book for the whole world. Now let's return to David McGee's verse by verse teaching in the book of Romans. Let's go to verse 13. Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord and his mother and mine. First of all, I'm going to look at this phrase, chosen in the Lord. Some of these phrases in this chapter are just so awesome. The loved, the chosen, the elected, the beloved.

I love these phrases. You're here. You're the chosen.

You're the loved. You're the elected. Maybe you weren't chosen in certain sports teams. Maybe you didn't make the cut. Maybe you didn't make a band you tried out or whatever. But God says he's chosen you.

You are the chosen. That was an interesting thing, this name Rufus. And this is conjecture. But it's pretty strong conjecture. I'm pretty 90% certain who this guy is.

It's kind of interesting. Because there's a verse and remember I believe there's no filler in here. We're always told something for a reason in a verse. Mark chapter 15 verse 21 says, Then they compelled a certain man, Simon the Cyrenian, the father of Alexander and Rufus, as he was coming out of the country and passing by to bear his cross.

I think it's the same Rufus. He went to Jerusalem. And this dead Simon must have been a big guy. And Jesus was carrying his cross. And Jesus was carrying his cross after he had been beaten. Now I've seen modern versions, you know, where they have a little whip with leather straps.

That's not it. What they used in a Roman scourging was leather straps that had been embedded with metal, nails, rock, glass, stone. And they would take the whip and they would beat the person and these things would sink into their back.

And then they would jerk it back and as they jerked it back it would peel the flesh off of their back. That's what Jesus did for you. That's what he endured for you. After the loss of blood and all this stuff, he was falling under the weight of the cross. And a Roman soldier looked at Simon and said, I want you to carry this cross. Something happened in Simon that day.

No doubt in my mind. He carried this cross following this beaten, bloodied man. Something changed in Simon and I believe something changed in his kids as well.

Why? Because when you come in contact with the cross, something changes in you, man. When you realize what Jesus did for you, I mean you really understand, everything's different. And when your kids see that in your life, they change. Let me speak to you, if you're a parent in here or going to be a parent, and let me first say spend time with your kids. Let me preface this with spend time with your kids. Because what happens is when they're little, they chase you around for a short season wanting to spend time with you. And after that short season is, you start chasing them.

And that's going to be the way it is for the rest of your life. So when they're little and they're chasing you, spend time with them. But you need to understand because sometimes parents go, well, you know, the primary thing I need to do is spend time with my kids. And when they say spend time with them, they sit there and watch America's Funniest Videos for three hours with them.

That's really not quality time, but that's not really my point. The main thing they need to see in your life is a life sacrificed and poured out for God. That is the number one thing they need to see. Because, gang, here's what I've seen. I've seen Christians who put their family first above God and serving Him, and it's a train wreck.

And you know what's further? That's idolatry. I love my family.

I would die for them. But they're not the highest priority. The highest priority is the one who died for me and saved my soul. He is the highest priority.

He comes first. And my family needs to see my life poured out for God. To see me willing to step out in ministry, what is ministry?

One definition is being willing to be inconvenienced for the sake of others. That's what they need to see. They need to see that in my life. Here is the life lesson.

The cross of Jesus will change your life, kind of a double one. Leave a spiritual heritage to your children. Our kids, you know, they grew up on the road.

They were ten and a half months out of the year. They were riding around in the motor home all over the country telling people about Jesus. They called it telling about Jesus. Now you're going to go tell them about Jesus? And I said, yeah, I'm going to go tell them about Jesus. And that's what they did.

And they saw it. To them, you know, church is not just playing church. It's not just going to the church. It's being the church. It's being the church. Let me encourage you strongly in that. Leave that spiritual legacy to your kids by letting them see the real deal. Verse 14.

So we have these, you know, these names here. And let me remind you the whole New Testament, real quick overview. First four books are the gospels. It's the story of Jesus Christ told by Matthew was an eyewitness. John was an eyewitness. Mark's is probably what Peter relayed to him. Luke's is probably what Paul in part relayed to him. It's a little more complicated than that. But when people say the gospels weren't written by eyewitnesses, they're wrong.

They either hadn't looked at it or they're lying. The next Acts, history of the church, written by Luke. Book of Revelation, singular, not revelations. If you use it plural, that's not the title of the book. It's the revelation of Jesus Christ.

It's singular. All the stuff in between, we call them epistles. Epistles is just a complicated word for letters.

Okay, so what we're reading today was a letter to the Roman church. And he's ending with these salutations to these people that he knew and enjoyed. And there's one name in here. There's interesting names. A lot of them are Greek, obviously, but Philologus is a really cool name. Not that you would name your kid that, but what it means is Philo means love.

Logos means the word. Philologus means lover of the word. That's a cool name.

That is a cool name. You understand that people refer to the Jewish people as the people of the book? I want that.

I want that title. I want Christians to be known as the people of the book. And, of course, here, you know, we want to be lovers of the word.

We want to be digging in the word and studying the word and applying the word. And look at this, though. And all the saints who are with them, the saints. So these are all like saints.

They got, like, halos and the whole deal. Let me explain something. If I say the word saints and you get this weird, I don't know what picture you get, a European cathedral or something, wrong picture.

Wrong picture. The Catholic Church says that they have the authority to make saints, name saints. And there's certain criteria. They have to do certain things, certain miracles, blah, blah, blah. And then they say, okay, well, this person is now a saint. It's almost comical when you look at history because you look at somebody like Patrick, who was not only not a saint when he was alive, but he was viewed by them as a, really, a heretic that was going around evangelizing people sharing the good news. And they said, he's a heretic.

We're not sure of him. And he evangelized most of Ireland. He was talking to the Druids. And when he was talking to him, he was trying to explain the Trinity. So he picked a clover with the three leaves, which we call the shamrock. And he said, look, the Trinity is like this. It's like three in one.

And they got it. That's why on St. Patrick's Day, the little clover, that's why it's part of the thing. It's an explanation of the Trinity. St. Patrick's Day had nothing to do with green beer and leprechauns.

We just mess up everything we get a hold of. But hundreds of years after he was dead and gone, the Catholic Church said, oh, you were a saint. Now you're St. Patrick. If that's your notion of saint, let me shelve that. That's not the biblical notion of a saint. Now, talk about us being sinners and we have a sinful nature, a fallen nature.

We still make mistakes, you and I. Yet, if you've asked Jesus to forgive you of your sins, positionally, theologically, what God sees when he looks at you, not a sinner, not a sinner. The book of Isaiah says that even though your sins were like scarlet, they can be as white as snow. In other words, you can now be wrapped in the robe of righteousness of Jesus. And when God looks at you, he sees the righteousness of his son and he calls you a saint, a saint. How cool is that? I don't know what you've been called this week.

I don't know what your friends refer to you as. But the Bible here says if you've asked Jesus to forgive you of your sins, you're a saint. That's kind of cool, ain't it? St. David.

Got a ring to it. Got St. Chris over here. Got St. Richard over here.

I mean, say saint and your name. Do it right now. Do it, do it.

No, I mean really, do it. Isn't that cool? Isn't that cool? God says you're a saint. Do you still mess up? Well, I'm sure. If you don't think so, ask your spouse. But God positionally, theologically says you're washed in the robe of righteousness.

Man, awesome stuff. So what do you do when you mess up? Come back to the Lord. We get this notion in our head that we should rededicate ourselves every couple of years or something. You know, to be honest, that's weird for me.

I rededicate myself all the time, and I hope that doesn't freak you out or scare you. I mean all the time. I mean, when I was attending a church, man, pretty much every Sunday I was at the altar. And because of my past and what God was doing, I was up there blubbering, man.

God was doing something. It's not that I just knew where to go when I messed up. When we were kids, we used to do this, you know, kick the can game. And, you know, when somebody kicked the can, everybody was kind of in danger, and you could be out or it or whatever you would refer to. But there was always this one place, safe place, the base, the home where you could run to, and you would be safe, and you would be okay.

God is that place. Some of you are running today. Some of you, I can see it in your eyes, you're running. Some of you are hurting. Run to the safe place.

Run to the Lord. He knows you've messed up. He died to forgive you of your mistakes. It's not like He doesn't know or He's not aware.

You're hiding them from Him. He's waiting for you to come to Him. The story of the prodigal son, God was displaying his heart.

We get so caught up in what the boys are doing. That whole thing is mostly about the heart of the Father, that when the son came from a long ways off, the Father saw him. You know why the Father was looking and waiting? The Father's looking and He's waiting on you, perhaps, today. Run to that safe place. Friend, do you know for sure that your sins have been forgiven?

You can know right now. I want to lead you in a short, simple prayer, simply telling God you're sorry and asking Him to help you to live for Him. Please pray this prayer with me, out loud, right now. Dear Jesus, I believe you died for me, that I could be forgiven. And I believe you were raised from the dead, that I could have a new life. And I've done wrong things. I have sinned.

And I'm sorry. Please forgive me of all those things. Please give me the power to live for you all of my days. In Jesus' name.

Amen. Friend, if you prayed that prayer, according to the Bible, you've been forgiven. You've been born again. So congratulations, friend.

You just made the greatest decision that you will ever make. God bless you. If you prayed that prayer with David for the first time, we would love to hear from you. You can call us toll-free at 877-458-5508 to receive our First Steps package with helpful resources to help you begin your walk with Christ. When you call, ask about this month's special offer featuring David's devotional book, Cross the Bridge Every Day. This inspirational book offers 365 daily devotions as well as a detailed topical index to help you grow deeper in your relationship with the Lord. Cross the Bridge Every Day is available now for your gift of any amount. Again, the number to call is 877-458-5508. Or you can go online to crossthebridge.com. Thank you for listening. We pray that you will join us next time as we continue to cross the bridge.