We'll begin by reading the first 16 verses and then we'll read the rest of the parts as we go along.
And these are all really verses you want to memorize with all these names in here. But this is a very interesting passage of Scripture because it's talking about people who long ago lived for Jesus Christ and they were beloved of the Lord. They were committed workers of Jesus Christ and they are an example to us. As Paul points this out to us how to be servants of the Lord Jesus.
Chapter 16 verse 1, I commend to you our sister Phoebe who is a servant of the church which is in Caesarea that you receive her in the Lord in a manner worthy of the saints and that you help her in whatever matters she may have need of you for she herself has also been a helper of many and of myself as well. Greet Priscia and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ, who for my life risk their necks to whom not only do I give thanks but also all the churches of the Gentiles. Also greet the church that is in their house. Greet Epictenatus, my beloved, who is the first convert to Christ from Asia. Greet Mary, who has worked hard for you. Greet Andronicus and Junius, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners, who are outstanding among the apostles and who also were in Christ before me. Greet Ampelitis, my beloved in the Lord. Greet Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ, and Stasis, my beloved. Greet Apellus, the approved in Christ. Greet those who are in the household of Aristobulus.
Greet Herodion, my kinsmen. Greet those of the household of Narcissus, who are in the Lord. Greet Tryphania and Tryphosa, workers in the Lord. Greet Paresis, to be the beloved who has worked hard in the Lord. Greet Rufus, a joyous man in the Lord, also his mother and mine. Greet Eccentricus, Phalagon, Hermes, Petrobus, Hermes, and the brethren within. Greet Philogus and Julia, Eurus, and her sister, and Olympus, and all the saints who are with them.
Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you. Let us pray.
You may be seated. Let us pray. Father, we thank you for this great passage of scripture that gives us an insight into the way your people have lived and worked and how you use these servants of yours to expand the gospel. Father, we thank you for these texts, and we thank you for their witness. And Father, we pray that you would take their testimonies and apply them to our hearts as examples for us and help us understand what it means to be your servants. Father, we need your grace.
We need your insight to even live up to a little bit of what these men and women did. We praise you, Father, for the work that you had planned for them to do long ago as you advanced your church. And we praise you for the work that you have each of us to do now to advance your kingdom.
We praise you now. Speak to us. Speak to our hearts for our own personal needs and for your glory. We ask in Jesus' name, amen.
I want to tell you what my proposition is. And that is, basically, this text of scripture commends us, by example, to make loving and serving Jesus Christ our first love. That's always in the scriptures. But it's truly exemplified by these people in this particular church in Rome that Paul is writing to. And this demonstrates how Christians are serving and how they're serving among each other as well.
And I'm sitting there saying, whoa, these people really were close in many different situations here. And this text gives us insights into how the church actually grew, what was going on on the ground, so to speak, at that time. So these are interpersonal relationships in the gospel. And it's highlighted by how they're serving Christ.
And therefore, it is an instruction for us in our own righteousness and our walk with Christ. So what was church life like in the first century or right after the ascension? And how was the church growing and spreading throughout the Roman Empire?
Well, the church grew and Christians matured because they were a family of faithful servants, servants to Jesus Christ. We can observe this in all the first 16 verses, all of these people, what they did. And the context here is very important. The context is the many interpersonal relationships shared in serving Jesus Christ and promoting the gospel together.
They were working together so that others could know about the Lord. So this is very important to pay attention to the context. We need to remember the examples of these faithful people.
And I'm going to go a couple of times. I'm going to go take an aside here on how to interpret scripture. And this is one of those points. How do we interpret scripture? How do we look at this text of scripture?
Well, I've heard another person in Sunday school say this recently. And they're correct, I think. We must identify the context in which it is. And so there are three rules. Look at the context, look at the context, and look at the context.
You get that? So this is very important because verses 1 and 2, for example, zeroes in on Phoebe as one particular believer. And we see Paul is very grateful for this elect lady in the Lord. And he's grateful for her servanthood to the Lord Jesus Christ. And first thing he says, she's my sister. Obviously, he's not a real sister, a biological sister.
But she is a sister in the faith. And so Phoebe is from the seaport town of Sensoria, which is the port city that was connected to Corinth. So everything came to that place. And then it was shipped on down the road into Corinth.
So this was a major seaport there in Macedonia, now Greece. So Paul is writing this letter. And he's urging the people back in Rome, where he's never been before, he's writing this letter to the people in Rome and say, our sister's coming. She's a saint. She's a holy one. She's a holy child of God. She's coming to you.
You need to take care of her needs. And of course, his main thing, I think, was hospitality. When she got there, she needed some people to look after her. And the other thing that people think about her is they believe that she was probably the one who was going to carry the letter of Romans to the church in Rome. So she had a very significant role. So Phoebe, in that port city of Sensoria, she helped a lot of people. And Paul declares she really helped him personally. She was a helper. She was a servant of others. Now, some believe that Phoebe used her resources to help widows and others in need, sort of in line with 1 Timothy chapter 5, where it talks about how you help others who are vulnerable in the church. However, also, this verse is famous because people are discussing it.
They read this. They said they see the word Phoebe. And some translate she's a servant. Some translate that she's a deaconess.
And so this is where the context is very important. We know she was a faithful servant. But she had no particular office in the church. The ambiguity of the text is that they use the word diakonos. Well, diakonos can be masculine or feminine, whatever.
So you really can't tell by that. It just simply means she's a servant. But if you look at the context, you realize that the word servant has been used before. If you go back to chapter 15 in verses 25 and verse 31, Paul uses the word servant to refer to himself as doing the work of a diakonos. Well, we know Paul was not a deacon. We know he was an apostle.
He was not ordained as a deacon. So the context of this is that the word is used in a very general sense, of which we usually use the word servant. So I have an aside to that, and that is if you look at the book of Acts and you read there about the first deacons that God appointed, you realize that they were just simply following what they had seen before, because Jesus even said he was a servant of us. He's a suffering servant.
So he refers to himself that way. But throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament, we find that God has a heart for those that are vulnerable. When I was doing international student work, I looked at that quite often, because God had in the Old Testament, the people he was concerned about the poor, he was about the oppressed, the widow, the alien, the orphan, those that were vulnerable to a new society or they were in a very difficult place. So that's the heart of God for those folks. And so the people in the church that need spiritual or physical assistance sometimes are the widows of the church. You have to realize that in that day and age, if your husband was gone, you had no son of age to do able to work and support you or no family resources.
There was no social net, absolutely none. So you would be a desperate lady in great need. So the love of God just comes out in the way he does things. What does he do? He has apostles, he has elders, and then he comes up with the first real hit the road men's ministry in the church and its deacons who are serving whom? He's serving the ladies in the church who are vulnerable and who have no one to help them out in their daily life. That is the heart of God establishing an entire ministry, the beginning, just for these ladies.
So we need to keep that in mind. That's the background of why the deacons were there. Then as we look through verses 3 to 16, we see servanthood demonstrated by all types of believers or of various people. And these are just people who are following the lifestyle that Jesus was teaching.
They're just following him. Jesus said in Matthew 20, just as the Son of Man did not come to serve, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. That word serve there is diakoneo, same word for servant.
So what is the attitude that a servant should have or those who should be in our servanthood? And Paul lists his gratitude for a number of different people, what they've done, and what they continue to do. And so in verses 3 to 5, we come to two people that you've probably heard of before if you've read much of the book of Acts.
And this is a very astute couple, which is Priscilla and Aquila. And they were indeed servants of the Lord. In fact, they were in Corinth. And they had been in Rome itself and had come back from Rome because they were of Jewish descent.
And the government of Rome was persecuting the Jews. And they had to leave. So here they are in Corinth. And Paul meets them again. And Dr. Luke records that in the book of Acts, chapter 18. Now, the brief report that we get here is that they have risked their lives for the Apostle Paul. Now, we don't know whether they were giving testimony and expose themselves to being Christians or what.
But they risked their lives in some way to save Paul's life. And we know that Paul had met them because he was a tent maker. And Aquila was a tent maker. And I guess Priscilla helped in that.
But that was his main business. And so they shared in that work together. And they were committed believers. And even at times, they had led worship services in their house. So this is a significant couple that he mentions who are committed to serving Jesus Christ. Then when we get to verse 5, we hit Epiteneus.
And why? Well, why is he important? Well, if you were trying to share the gospel with someplace, an untold new place where no one knew Jesus, and then you have a convert, you'd probably remember who that person was. And so he was the first one that Paul remembered in Asia, or Asia Minor, which is in Turkey. And he talks about him being faithful. And he's still faithful. But where is he now? He's in Rome.
He's writing this letter to him mentioning him. He's traveled to Rome. And he's worshipping with the church there. In verse 6, we have in 12, there are several ladies that are mentioned here that are brought out. Mary, who is among those believing ladies, and she was noted for her servanthood. And she apparently did quite a bit of work as a Christian witness. And then there are two sisters, Triphina and Triphosa. They're committed as gospel workers. And then there's Paresis, a beloved sister. Paul calls her. She says she really did hard work.
I don't know whether she was in a hard spot or what, but she was really laboring for the Lord. And so throughout this chapter, Paul is describing those believers who are in Rome, that he knows them, and he's never been there. But yet he describes them in a particular way all through here. He uses familial terms. He says they're family.
So that's why he begins by calling Phoebe, our sister. Then he talks about Andronicus and Junius. He calls them their kinsmen. And he says the same thing of Herodian.
As well as the kinsmen. Now, this probably refers to them being of Jewish descent, like Paul was Jewish. But then in verses 10 and 11, Paul refers to two household, Aristobulus and Narcissus.
So he's talking about family settings here. And then again, in verse 13, Paul talks about Rufus's mother, his mother and mine. Well, that wasn't Paul's mother, not his biological mother.
But it was a spiritual mother, an older lady in the faith. So he's using all these terms, these general terms of servanthood, of familial language to describe the who is whom. And that is the context of this chapter. Now, Paul is declaring and living out the attitude that he wrote to Timothy about. He's telling Timothy, this is the attitude you should have in your church. And 1 Timothy 5, verses 1 and 2 says this. Do not sharply rebuke an older man, but rather appeal to him as a father, to the younger men as brothers, to the older women as mothers, and the younger women as sisters in all purity.
So you see how he's describing our relationships, how we should view each other as believers in Jesus Christ. Now, there were some legal problems that are mentioned in this text and prison issues that came up. Paul shared the prison experiences with some of the people in this list. And we know when the gospel is opposed, when there is oppression or suppression, that's going to happen to the gospel.
Happens now all around the world. And so we remember that Priscilla and Aquila, though they were two, they had risked their lives to save Paul. Then we have in verse 7, we have Andronicus and Junius. They faced some prison time itself. They were actually in prison. And we don't know why, whether they were in prison with Paul, or at the same time, or in a different place. But yet they had that same shared experience with him. Because of the gospel, they had gone to jail. And we know people that may be praying on the sidewalk, and they get jerked into saying, you can't do that here.
Put you in jail for an overnight or something. But that was what was happening here. There was constantly a spiritual battle taking place, and they're very well aware of it. But they were promoting the gospel. Now, another thing is some consider Andronicus and Junius to be apostles, like the apostle Paul was apostle. But there's a problem with that, because the apostles were those who had actually been taught directly by Christ and actually visibly seen Christ after his resurrection. Well, we know Paul did that on the road to Damascus, and we know he was taught in Arabia. And he talks about the gospel that he received, my gospel, because he received it directly from the Lord.
That's why he says my gospel. But they were highly regarded. And some people say, well, they were apostles. Others say, no, they were regarded highly by the apostles. Well, it's a general term, and the word apostle means sent one, someone who's sent. So we would refer to a missionary today or an evangelist as an apostle.
You could in a general sense, but not in a technical sense. So here's the next principle of interpretation. That is, the unclear is not to cancel out the clear text. You have a clear explicit statement in scripture. You don't go find something, well, it's not too clear over here, so that cancels out that one. No, you don't do that. So that's why we think that they were not really apostles like Paul was.
They were sent out. Let me give you an example. OK, I made this one up. But you can see it happening. It happens a lot of times.
Maybe you've experienced it. But anyway, the child comes up to his dad and says, Dad, I want to go with my friends, and no, we're just going to be gone for a day. No adults are going, but can I go with my friends? And the dad says, absolutely not. Not with those friends. You're not going with them. But the child is persistent and goes over and says, well, Mom, can I go with my friends? And she says, well, maybe. Let me think about it. So the next day, the child goes with the friends.
Why? He used the unclear, ambiguous, to interpret and cancel out his dad's statement. Well, that's what we do sometimes with scripture. We find, oh, it says explicitly here. But over here, it's not so clear. So they'll cancel out what is clear.
That is not a good idea. So that is not the way we treat true scripture. So the unclear should not be used to cancel out the clear passage and statements. So Paul, throughout these 16 verses, is using these family titles and these roles and these general statements about serving the Lord Jesus Christ all through this. And he ends, verse 16, by reminding us of the unity that we have in the gospel. And he says, it's with all the churches in Greece and Asia Minor, down to Jerusalem, so all the way from way up in the Northeast, from the Illicarium, all the way down to the Southeast in Jerusalem, these churches that Paul has visited, and some of these started, some he's ministered in, these churches, we're all praying for you in Rome. We're all supporting you in Rome. And therefore, we see this unified effort to spread the gospel and to encourage other believers to do so. And so Christ is blessing the growth and the spread of the church throughout the Roman Empire.
And he does the same thing today. He sends his servants out in some way, some form, and they reach beyond now, far beyond the Roman Empire. Now, the sixth section is he kind of takes an aside, but he's complimented the Christians in Rome for being faithful Christians. He's complimented them on that. And they are an example to the rest of the Roman Empire, to the rest of the church in the Roman Empire.
And he's never been there. But yet, God has raised up this church. But he gives them a warning not to get sides right. Don't forget whose servant you are. And that's in verse 17.
I'm going to read that. Now, I urge you, brethren, keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you have learned, and turn away from them. For such men are slaves, not of our Lord Jesus Christ, but of their own appetites. And by their smooth and flattering speech, they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting. For the report of your obedience has reached to all.
Therefore, I am rejoicing over you. But I want you to be wise in what is good and innocent and what is evil. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. So here is that warning he's giving to the church there. And he's concerned that there are people who are teaching certain things and causing some of the Christians to stumble, causing some divisions and separation. He says, avoid this. Don't listen to these teachers that are traveling around.
I don't think it's in the church in Rome, but they're exposed to some of the false teaching. And he says, how do you deal with it? He said, avoid those teachers.
Don't sit under their instruction. And what kind of teaching is he talking about? Well, we know there are several things that the church was facing at that time. We know, first of all, there were Judaizers who thought that you had to become a Jew and keep all the ceremonial laws in order before you can be a Christian or be a faithful Christian. You had to do Judaism and Christianity.
And he said, no. They decided that at the Council of Jerusalem. In Acts 15, no, you don't have to do that. You don't have to be circumcised to be a Christian. You follow Christ. He is your King.
He is your Lord. Also, another false teaching was antinomianism, which is basically, you're saved by grace. So you can do whatever you want. That's sort of like some of the Greek thinking in that time as well. But your sins have been forgiven, so forget the Ten Commandments. Just live.
They're all covered. Well, that was a false teaching for sure. And of course, other teachings were legalism. You have to do this, this, this, add on to the gospel.
And then you can really be sure that you're saved. Following man-made rules is always a danger. And it's never the route of salvation or assurance of salvation. So Paul summarizes the root of the problem of these false teachers in verse 18. He described them as people who are slaves to their appetites.
Actually, the word means belly. They have their own symbolic of different appetites. That's what they were trying to follow. They said it was flattery used in their speech and smooth rhetoric. And they were trying to attract crowds to themselves or themselves, but not as servants of Christ. So in a sense, they were slaves to sin, not slaves to the Master, the Lord Jesus.
So that's how he describes them. These people who were preaching so effectively and deceiving others, they were into self-aggrandizement, make themselves large. So how do you overcome such deceit in any day? Well, you first love Jesus. You serve him first.
And tell myself that I serve Jesus first. Because why? What does he do? Does he flatter you? No, he does not. He corrects you. He comforts you. And then he conforms you to his image.
Different picture from what the flatterer or the smooth talker does. So simply avoid these teachers. And he said in verse 19, he says, I want you to be wise in what is good and innocent in what is evil.
Very good advice there. So then this promise is made to those. This promise is made that he's going to make a promise to those people who are in submission to Jesus Christ. And the promise is, in verse 20, the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. That means that God will keep you from the deceit of Adam and Eve.
Adam and Eve were sort of like the young kid I told you about. And the serpent came up and said, oh, you will not die. No, no, no, you won't die.
Just do this. You'll be smart and great. Yeah, doubt and deceit will destroy you. So anyway, Paul warns about that. Keep your eyes on Christ. Follow him.
Be his servant. And then we come to the next section. After that, he's talking about the people who are still in Corinth, the people that are there in that church. He's writing to all these other people and calling out their names and saying, you are servants. We're interested in you. We're writing to you.
But now let's look at this. In verse 21, it says, 20 and 21, to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Timothy, my fellow worker, greets you.
And so do Lucius and Jason and Sosapater, my kinsmen. I, Tiritus, who write this letter, greet you in the Lord. Gaius, host to me and to the whole church, greets you.
Erastus, the city treasurer, greets you. And Quartus, the brother. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. So here again, Paul is listing people that he appreciates. And his focus is on interpersonal relationships here between these believers. And these are all believers who are faithful in the gospel, serving the Lord Jesus Christ. And they are bound together because they are all in submission to the Lord Jesus.
That's whom they're serving. Paul takes note of several of these. He talks about Gaius, who is apparently hosting Apostle Paul and hosting Tiritus and other people in this city, a faithful man.
And then he mentions the whole church, that the church there that meets in Gaius's house also greets those in Rome. Then in verse 22, Tiritus is a scribe. He's Paul's scribe. He's the one who's writing this letter as Paul dictates it.
And now the Tiritus and then Quartus later on, those two names, some have mentioned that those two names were very common among slaves. So these men may be free in Christ, but they may be literally free from both types of sin and from Roman rule. But anyway, but Tiritus is the scribe here. In verse 23, we have the mention in Quart that Erastus, who is the city treasurer, he's an accountant.
So obviously, he had a pretty significant role and very influential Christian in that part of the world, handling the accounts of a city like Corinth. Then verse 24, Paul gives a prayer. And he's praying for these people in Rome and is praying for the sisters and brothers. And he says, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
That is his prayer. And you see this sentiment that Paul has here. Now, in the last few part of it, where I'm not going to really preach on the last part, it's so rich. I think you have to come back and do the doxology later on. But the doxology is verse 25 to the end through 27.
But let's read that right now. Now to him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept secret from long ages past, but now is manifested. And by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the eternal God, has been made known to all the nations leading to the obedience of faith. To the only wise God through Jesus Christ, be glory forever and ever.
Amen. And that's more than you can summarize in a few verses. That is a sermon in and of itself. But I want us to think about some of the lessons that we can look at in this passage of scripture that looking at a lot of things that happen in the book of Acts but just in the life of the early church.
This doxology tells us that we know that God has revealed himself in the last days to the Gentiles. And of course, the gospel is for the whole world. And it's all by God's grace, all by God's doing.
No glory to man whatsoever. And so it closes there with that praise to God the Father and the Lord Jesus. But then there's some other things that we learn. And that is, as you look at these people in these different churches, you realize that the church in the early church was a connectional church. It wasn't a solo independent church. It was a body of believers that loved each other in this congregation and that congregation. So maybe there's somebody we know in First Church Stanley.
Maybe there's somebody we know over on Prosperity Church Road. That we are a body of believers that have connections to other churches because they are preaching the gospel in their area. And we pray for that.
And we want that to be true. So we see the large heart of God reflected in Paul's love for all of these churches. Paul prayed for and encouraged the growth of the local churches. He started some. He served some. He visited some. I don't understand how in the world he did that.
I mean, it's just overwhelming. He has all these people on his heart because God has so changed the apostle Paul that he is a pastor of pastors and a pastor of elders and a pastor of deacons and pastors of church members, remembering people in detail that he served with and to serve himself. So what does he want for these churches? He wants each of these individual churches to grow. He wants them to grow in obedience to the faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so that is his desire. So we see that connectional relationship between all the believers in this church and that church.
And he wants us to be faithful to the Lord. And then the term, the teams that were sent out for church planting, there's something we learned from that. When the church planting was done, it was done by people who were sent out by church leaders.
You catch that? They were sent out by church leaders. You know, the apostle Paul, he was told at his conversion and several times after that by God's Christ direct revelation, you're going to be an apostle to the Gentiles. So did Paul get up and said, OK, I'm going to go. Did he go to the Gentiles?
No. Where was he? He was in a church in Antioch serving with Barnabas and others teaching the word in a body of believers. And in Acts chapter 15, well, chapter 13, we know that they prayed and they fasted. And the Holy Spirit led the leaders of that church to say, let's send out Paul and Barnabas to do the ministry of reaching these other parts of the world. And then again, after Paul and Barnabas decided they had a disagreement, they sent Barnabas and John Mark to Crete and they sent Paul and Silas back to some of the same churches and to plant new churches. And so in Acts 15, verse 40, it talks about how the brethren there in Antioch committed Paul and Silas and Barnabas to the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
They commissioned them again. They sent them on their way. These were not solo, long-ranger church guys. They were sent by the body of Christ. It's very important that you realize that because their gifts and talents were tested within the church, Christ led them, Christ led Paul to be in submission to the brothers as well. Now, the apostle Paul had set the practice for all the churches.
His witness and practice was directional. And his goal was one thing, to build up each church. He wanted to see the Christians in all of these churches grow.
And how did they do that? Well, they needed to be faithful to the apostles' teaching. And they were obedient to the faith.
And they were servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. And you think about it, there's a freedom in that. There's a freedom in the fact that, wait a minute, I may be working for this boss or serving this person, but my real service, your real service, is to Jesus Christ and to Jesus Christ alone. He is your head. He is your master. You are his servant if you're his child. What freedom that gives you.
You don't have to listen to the noise of the world. Follow the Lord Jesus Christ. The spread of the church and the growth of the local church depend on one factor and one sense. We can say it is submission to the Lord Jesus Christ and the whole of scripture. It also involves the leaderships of the local church, the apostles' teaching.
So how do we summarize this? First, we commit ourselves to be in submission to the person of Jesus Christ. That's very simple, but it's so profound. And it's a matter of our hearts bowing to him and not to other things in the world. Not to be distracted, not to follow the flattery of the world, but to follow Christ. And secondly, we commit ourselves to encouraging others to come to Christ and to grow in Christ. I don't care what denominations or who your relatives are.
My relatives over here, my relatives over here. Can you build them up in Christ? Can you point them to Christ? That will either have them leave that church or leave that fellowship, or certainly it will center them on what their life is supposed to be about.
Grow in the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is our calling is to be servants of our Lord Jesus. Let us pray. Father in heaven, we pray that you would take this text and these words and these examples, multiple examples of your servants long ago and servants now. We pray that you would help us to be faithful to you. Grip our hearts and control our lives that we might serve you as we should. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.
