In the sermon 'Strengthened by the Gospel,' Scott Brown explores the concluding chapters of the Book of Romans, emphasizing the centrality of the Gospel in the life of believers. Brown asserts that the Gospel is not only the foundation of salvation but also the continuous source of spiritual nourishment and strength for Christians. He highlights the necessity of preaching the Gospel to oneself daily and underscores its role in establishing believers in their faith. The sermon delves into the themes of grace, unity, and obedience, emphasizing that the Gospel is a revealed mystery now made known to all nations. Brown discusses the importance of fostering unity and love within the church community while warning against divisiveness. He concludes by stating that the ultimate purpose of life and all creation is to glorify God, achieved through the power of the Gospel.

Let's read God's Word together by turning to Romans Chapter 16, starting on verse 21. Timothy, my fellow worker, and Lucius, Jason, and Sosipator, my countrymen, greet you. I, Tertius, who wrote this epistle, greet you in the Lord. Gaius, my host, and the host of the whole church, greet you. Erastus, the treasurer of the city, greet you, and Quartus, a brother.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. 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 kept secret since the world began, but now made manifest, and by the prophetic scriptures made known to all nations according to the commandment of the everlasting God, for obedience to the faith, to God alone wise, be glory through Jesus Christ forever. Amen. Let's give thanks for God's word and for the whole book of Romans as we near its end.

Lord we are grateful for your word. Lord we know you put this word in front of us to change us, to correct us. Lord, as we have studied this book of Romans, thank you for what you have revealed to us. And Lord, due to Your endless, infinitesimal ability for everything You have not revealed us, and Lord we just pray that as we move on in our lives that You would reveal additional things to us. Lord, have mercy on us.

We praise your name. And as David once said in praising you, give unto the Lord, oh you mighty ones, give unto the Lord glory and strength. Give unto the Lord the glory, do his name. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. The voice of the Lord is over the waters.

The God of glory thunders, the Lord is over many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful, the voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars. Yes, the Lord splinters the cedars of Lebanon. He makes them also skip like a calf.

Lebanon and Sirion like a young wild ox, the voice of the Lord divides the flames of fire. The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness. The Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth and strips the forest bare. And in His temple everyone says, Glory!

The Lord sat enthroned at the flood, and the Lord sits as king forever. The Lord will give strength to his people, and the Lord will bless his people with peace. Lord I pray that today's word that Scott brings toward us will be embraced. Lord I pray you fill him with the Holy Spirit and Lord I pray that we would bow to you and do your will. In Jesus name, Amen.

Thank you, Aaron. Well the book of Romans has made it so plain that there never was a better father, there never was a better Savior, there never was a better Comforter, there never was a better craftsman, there was never a greater farmer, and there never was a greater gospel than what is presented here. And so as we come to the end of the book of Romans, we find ourselves at the place where we began, a declaration of the beauty and the glory of the Gospel. And it comes out in this beautiful prayer, this doxology that reads, Now to him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ. And so here we meet the principle again that we've met so many times, we've met this friend, the gospel.

The centrality of the gospel is the key message that secures everything for all eternity, all the way down to each individual here in this room. And so that's why the Apostle begins the book of Romans with, for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also for the Greek. What do we make of all, what do we make of this central focus of every single page of the book of Romans? Well here's one thing that we must make of it and I pray that we as a church would get this with all that we have and we would never lose it. And that is that we would never grow beyond being nourished by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We should always be preaching the gospel, not only to the lost, but to ourselves every day, all day long, to trust in the great work that He's accomplished for us. One never grows beyond the Gospel. And this is so plain in the Book of Romans. This book written to a church has its central message, the Gospel, so that they would feed on it over and over and over and over again all all the days of their lives that its sweetness would find its way into their mouth, and then it would be returned back to those other creatures in the world who would be blessed by it and who would know it. And here we find, you know, Romans ending with a total focus on God Himself.

If you get anything out of these last few verses, particularly the prayer, get this, that its overwhelming focus is God and the great things that he has done. You know there are many benedictions in Scripture. This is one of them, but you can go into many of the books of the Bible and find these benedictions, you find similar ones in the epistles. The Psalms is composed of five books. At the end of each book, there's a great benediction, and then I'm sure you're familiar with Psalm 150, which ends the final benediction.

Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, praise the Lord. It's like this benediction as well. And so this doxology brings praise to the gospel, which is our only comfort in life. It's our only hope for stability in this life. You know, everyone wants to be established.

Everyone wants to be stable. Everyone wants the beauty and the power that the gospel can bring. This week when I was studying, I saw on my shelf a book, The Heidelberg Catechism, and I pulled it out. And the first question in the Heidelberg Catechism grasps the power, the beauty, the goodness of the Gospel that we read about here in the book of Romans. The question is this, what is my only comfort in life and death?

Now listen to this. Answer, that I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, But belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ who with his precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins and delivered me from all the power of the devil and so preserves me, that without the will of my heavenly Father not even a hair can fall from my head, yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation. And therefore, by His Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life and makes me sincerely willing and ready henceforth to live for Him." What a beautiful expression of the gospel that seems to draw up so many things in this text this morning and so many things in the book of Romans. Well, it was exactly one year ago this week that we began our study in the book of Romans. We've moved very quickly through the letter.

If you compare yourself with John Piper who spent eight years here, my friend Annie Davis more than that, or Martin Lloyd-Jones 13 years. So now exactly one year later we've delivered over 40 sermons on this text. Next week we'll read aloud Romans 1 through 11 and give about a 30-minute instruction on it and then the following week we'll read 12 through 16 and do the same. That's how we'll summarize the book. And then after that we'll preach our way backwards through the book for the next three years.

After this one year introduction, we've really only had one year as an introduction, wouldn't you think, compared to some of the others who moved this book, that a year would be an adequate introduction book. We'll move back, we'll preach backwards to the book and then back up and then we'll come back and wrap it up and we'll end up where Lloyd Jones did it 13 years. No, that's not actually true. Fortunately, unfortunately this church is guided by a plurality of elders who seem to have their mind on this matter. And so they have it.

They have it. And we are unified in it that we will finish the book of Romans in two weeks and then move to the book of Deuteronomy. So now before we go into these few verses that we'll be focusing in on today. Let's backtrack a little bit to get our wits about us about chapter 16. So I want us to see chapter 16 and all of where it moves.

First, there are greetings to those who have labored for the church. This is the first subsection. There are four subsections in chapter 16. And in this section, Paul greets people who have been a blessing to the church. They've labored.

You have these glorious stories of a husband and wife, Priscilla and Aquila, a mother and her son, two twin sisters, Tryphene and Tryphosa. There you have different ways that families and individuals come and they bring blessing to the Church of Jesus Christ. What a wonder it is that the whole family, all their life long, is investing blessing into the Church. And then the second subsection happens to be warnings about dividers in verses 17 through 20. We covered this last week.

Paul is soaring with joy about these blessed people who have been such a help and a source of mercy to the church. And then it's almost as if he thinks, oh everyone's not that way. There are people who would divide brethren and what do you do about that? And he gives very specific ways to handle situations like that. Matthew Henry says, even a church with a full complement of servants and lovers of the fellowship can be vulnerable to the attacks of smooth-talking dividers.

So that's the second subsection. And then the third subsection, Paul brings, he brings greetings from others to the Roman church. So it's a different kind of greeting when in the first subsection Paul was greeting directly. Now he is taking the mercy and the loving kindness, the heartfelt attitudes of these other people and cast them on as a blessing to those who are in Rome. And then finally, the fourth subsection, the last, the end of the book, is a prayer.

It's this doxology. Paul ends the letter with a beautiful prayer. It's a very tender, it's a very instructive, and not only do you notice Paul's heartfelt desires toward these people, but you can also see that he praises God and he acknowledges that it's only God who can establish them. Do you desire to be established? Well we learned much about this establishment.

He is in many ways I think you know fulfilling a picture of what we see that Solomon wrote, that a cord of three strands cannot easily be broken. He's binding people together in love, in this final prayer. Well, he brings these greetings from others. That's the first thing that we'll deal with here this morning. Verses 21 to 23.

Do you see that in the text? So in the previous section, Paul was greeting people directly. Now he brings greetings from others. You know Paul is a community builder, he builds bonds of love, he connects people with bonds of love. Notice this comes right after the section where people are dividing people through bonds of serving their own belly.

Now he actually seems to be demonstrating how you do the opposite by binding one another together. You bring a good report from one brother to another. You connect people. You help people to love one another. That's what Paul's doing here.

He's assisting the people in this church to be lovingly connected to the other people that he is bringing their greetings. He is bringing people together. This is the glory of God in a family, in a church, in a company, that we would be instruments like this in which we would be bringing people together instead of dividing one another. It's so easy to speak negatively about this person over there and what they think and what they've said. No, that's not what Paul does.

He's bringing people together in this by commending people to one another. And he first addresses Timothy, my fellow worker. He takes this connection with Timothy, the joys of this son of the faith, this fellow worker, and attaching his love to these people in Rome. And then he speaks of Lucius and Jason and Socipitor. There are more people here that Paul is bringing love from, and there's some just dramatic, wonderful stories about these individuals that we see in the book of Acts.

We see that Jason was at Thessalonica and he suffered for entertaining Paul in Acts chapter 17. And we see also, the Suscipitor of Berea, and the tender feelings that he has toward the church in Rome. And then he speaks of Tertius. This is interesting. We learn something about the book of Romans that we don't know about any other book and that is that it was written by an Immanuensis.

In other words, someone else copied the book down. Tertius was the one. Tertius was probably a slave. Romans often named their slaves by numbers. Number one, number two, number three, Tertius.

Number three. And so Tertius perhaps was a slave implied by his name, but He sends his greetings in the Lord, this Roman slave perhaps. And then, Gaius, my host. Look at verse 23. This is very fascinating.

Gaius, my host, and the host of the whole church greets you. So here this this person, Gaius, we don't know exactly, there are three Gaius as mentioned in the New Testament. It was probably Gaius of Corinth, because that's where that's where this was this letter was being written. And Gaius was Paul's host, but he was also the host of the whole church. Because as we know, as we've seen so many times, the church, the early church, prospered through house churches.

There are no buildings until the third century. And then Erastus, the treasurer of the city, greets you. This is a dramatic picture of salvation that took place. Quartus, a brother. And these are just the last greetings in the book of Romans.

So what do we make of these greetings? And at least we can make this. That Paul is showing an example for how we can refrain from becoming dividers of the brethren and instead to be connectors of the brethren. And he carries his love from one person back to another. And he not only speaks for himself, but He transports the affections of these other people to the members of the body of Christ, for their blessing, for their assurance, for their comfort.

Paul is a very blessed brother. You know, there are two kinds of people in this world. There are people, there's those who drive people apart, and there are those who bring people together in love and appreciation, knowing that God will someday be the judge. And so instead of speaking evil of a brother and judging a brother, obviously these are not perfect people, how well do you think he knew Timothy? Do you think Timothy was a perfect brother and had absolutely everything going right for him every day of the week?

I don't think so. But instead of this, he speaks well of a brother and fulfills the law of love in the church. And so then we move into this next section where Paul breaks out into a prayer in verse 24. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Now This prayer, the whole of it, which begins in verse 24, I think, you tell me, I think it sums up the whole book of Romans.

He brings together the major themes of the book of Romans in this prayer. And it's the power of God to establish us in the gospel. And that would give us the content of chapters 1 through 11, which is the gospel. And then the power of applying the gospel through obedience. And he prays for both of these things.

And so this is the last prayer, and he pulls many of the themes together. And these two themes, the glory in the gospel and the application of the gospel, really do sum up the book of Romans. So there are several things that we learn about the power of the gospel. I'm going to give you eight that I've drawn from these verses here. And the first, the first thing that we learn about the power of the gospel in our journey in this world is that the power of the gospel is seen in the presence of the grace of Christ in the church.

Verse 24. He says, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. And so Paul uses a phrase that he's used in many other books that he's written. In 2nd Corinthians, in Thessalonians, in Colossians, he uses the same phrase. He's also just used it even recently in this book.

So He's not against repeating himself in the book of Romans nor from his other writings. But this is one of Paul's favorite phrases that he designs for the blessing of the Church. The arrangement of the words here is really very beautiful. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Christian life is all of grace.

Everything comes from God. You know, in 2 Corinthians, we read, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Paul is just full of these words of beauty that exemplify the goodness of the grace of God. And so he's bringing in this grace, he's connecting his comments with the grace that he's just given from these people to another. Again he's applying it, I believe here.

And, you know, so we find this, we find these very tender terms to explain the life that we have in Christ. You know, We read much of the mercy of Christ. If mercy is the oil of Christ in the Church, then grace is the water that refreshes and cools the system. And this grace comes from Jesus Christ. It comes from walking in the light of His countenance.

It comes from beholding His face and being transformed from glory to glory by beholding the face of Jesus Christ. This grace comes directly from Him. If there's no grace in the church, then it means that something else is wrong. And that is that there's no beholding of Jesus Christ. The gospel of Christ is not central in a church when you find a church without grace, because the Lord Jesus Christ is full, is full of grace and truth.

This last week Our family had the privilege of reading Psalm 89, which says, Blessed are the people who know the joyful sound. They walk, O Lord, in the light of your countenance. In your name they rejoice all day long, and in your righteousness they are exalted, for you are the glory of their strength." Here you find a picture of people shining in the light of the countenance of Jesus Christ. It always brings forth the grace. It always brings forth this element of the glory of God.

God glorifies himself in many different ways. And one way is through his grace. And so grace should be the hallmark of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. I was reading a sermon by Spurgeon on this one verse. That's all he did.

And this sermon was so beautiful. He titled it the pastor's parting blessing sermon. And of course, Paul was writing, who knows, perhaps for the last time, and he was giving a parting blessing to his people as if he would never communicate with them again. And this was the blessing that he brought to them. And Spurgeon talks about how the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ causes us to love one another more in the church.

The result will follow toward our families and into our neighborhoods and even our unconverted children. How holy sorrow will mingle with the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ for the unconverted, to our employers and everywhere. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is the evidence of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so he begins with this statement, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. If there ever was grace anywhere in the world, It all has been derived from one single source, the Lord Jesus Christ.

So the first thing that he does here is he makes it clear that the power of the gospel is seen in the presence of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then secondly, the power of the gospel is God himself. He launches into this second part of this prayer, now to Him who is able to establish you. There never was a kinder Father than one who would come and establish his children. God Himself does it.

This is a blessing of the Gospel that we would be established. If anyone would come to Christ, they would be found established. I was telling my family last night, I would hate to think of what would be like today if the Gospel had not come to me when I was early in my teens, I just, I terror to think of it. But the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ does establish you. I know that, I know that for sure from many years of seeing how God does that.

And that's what he says here. Now to him who is able to establish you. Now to him. Now, I was tempted to spend the whole time on these three words. Now to him.

Now to him who is able. This phrase is also another beautiful favorite phrase of the Apostle. He says in Ephesians 3, 14 and that other great prayer, there are many prayers of Paul, Learn them, you know, commit them to memory. I recommend it. He says in Ephesians 3, Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all we ask or think according to the power that works within us.

Again, now to him. Whenever you come across these three words, now to him, get ready. Something very powerful is getting ready to come. Something that you can sink your teeth in and live by and be helped by. And Jude uses the same term that we know this benediction very well in Jude 24.

Now to him who is able to keep you from falling or stumbling and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy to God our Savior who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power both now and forever. Amen. So this term, now to him, should trip us over into just a contemplation of the goodness of God toward His children. There never was a kinder father than one who would come and he and personally Establish you The focus here is that is that God is doing it So when you hear these words now to him wake up, you know When my son hears the word David, Edward, you know something is coming. But when you hear the words, now to Him, you know there's something out there that is so helpful to your soul.

Think of God, turn your heart toward Him, feed upon His great help toward you. He desires it, He desires to pour it out toward you and He desires that we be like children looking up to Him for help. Not that we'd be wise in our own eyes, but that no, we would be saying, oh now, now to Him who is able. That God would be the focus of all of our thinking. And notice there's a division of labor here.

Now to Him who is able. He's doing it. Do you think you can go make your life all yourself? No, you cannot. This says you cannot.

This says that only God can. You may spin and turn about and wrangle and languish and try to be somebody you were never meant to be, but only God, only God can establish you and a man can receive nothing unless it's given him from heaven. And that's the principle that is here. Established. God is with us on our heavenly journey.

He is able. He is committed to strengthen us. You know, we read earlier, God is able to make you stand. What a blessing that is. I hope you trust that word completely, that this drives away all of your fears.

Do you have any fears today? Do you have any threats against your life? Do you have any fire-breathing dragons chasing you around the block? Well, notice this here, now to him who is able? He's able.

Those fire-breathing dragons are nothing in the sight of God. Those threats against your life are zero. One of my favorite stories from the days of the Apostle Paul in the Book of Acts is the story of the 40 assassins. 40 men made a pact they would not eat until they had murdered the Apostle Paul. And so they skulked around with their little daggers.

How long they skulked around, we don't know. They got very, very hungry. We never hear of them again. And Paul sails on to his destination. God is able, even if there are 40 assassins with daggers dancing around you, God is able.

This is the blessing of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We sing a song, He set my feet upon a rock, He put a new song in my heart. That's Psalm 40. That's what God does. God is able to do these things.

Now, the third thing we learn about the power of the gospel, not only is it that God who does it, God Almighty himself secures our establishment. Don't worry about it. Does anyone, anybody walk in here with fears about, oh if you could only get this part of your life fixed or that, could I just commend you to God and the Word of His grace who's able to sanctify you? He is, He really is able. Is it possible that there would be a whole church just full of contented and happy people?

Because they know that God is able. And when they gather they say, now to Him who is able to establish you. So that's the power of the gospel in God. God is the gospel, by the way, you can we can spend time proving that, but just know it's true. The God Himself is the gospel.

And so the third thing about the power of the gospel is that it has the power to establish us. Establish. This is a very powerful word that's being used here. And We learn here that God uses the gospel to establish us. We don't move on from the gospel.

We don't believe in the gospel and then move on to other things that would make us better, no? It's God. And we do not have the resources in ourselves, but God does and he does it through the gospel and he says that that we are established he says by my gospel now what does he mean by that he doesn't mean that this is a unique it doesn't mean that it's his personal gospel that he figured out and everybody has their own gospel. That's not what he means by that. He's just personalizing and saying this is my gospel.

This is the objective gospel of God that saved me and I love it and it's mine I am his and he is mine and I love the God of the gospel who saved me so he's saying this is not just good news this is my good news and I love this news What a blessing it is to own the gospel of Jesus Christ. So what is the gospel? What is this gospel that he's talking about? Well, read the book of Romans. Okay, in fact, maybe we should spend the next period of time going back through the Romans to review the gospel of the grace of God.

Well, here's the gospel. The gospel, the Good news actually begins with bad news. And it's the bad news that humanity is sin sick. It is sick to the core with original sin. Our forefathers, specifically Adam and Eve, sinned.

And they poisoned the well. Every time a baby is born in this church, there is another poison pill in the world. Only, only made well by the gospel of Jesus Christ. And we are not born good. We come into the world as sin-sick humanity.

And then we take that sickness and we turn it into open rebellion against God. And we exchange the glory of God for a lie and then we are aware that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness because that's the bad news we are constantly suppressing the truth in unrighteousness We want to hold it down but God is shouting out His glory from the heavens and through His mouthpieces that are in the world and through the conscience and through the work of the Holy Spirit and maybe even the angels. God is working overtime here all the time in order to proclaim the goodness of His grace to all humanity. And What does God do with these sinners? What does He do with sin-sick humanity?

He does all these things, but He sends His Son. And that's the good news of the Gospel. He sends a sacrifice who dies and takes the punishment for our sins. We deserve to be punished. We deserve hell.

And the Gospel is this, at least part of it is this, that Christ died for sinners. And that is the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And these sinners don't stop being sinners after they're saved. And that's why they need to continue to feed on the gospel. That's why they need to continue to preach the gospel to themselves, lest they either be puffed up or destroyed through despondency at their own sins.

Those are the two horse sides of the horse that we might fall off at any given time when we consider our lives. And then, so he deals with sinners through his death and resurrection and he calls his sinners to repent. And he brings them to faith, and they repent of their sins. He was resurrected, and he rose from the dead to live eternally triumphant so that we also would be eternally triumphant. He is seated at the right hand of God.

And he elects those whom he would save. And the result is that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for those who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ has made me free from the law of sin and death." That's the gospel of Jesus Christ. That God takes sinners. What do you do about all these sinners all over the world?

Well, God has made provision for sinners in the world. And so, Here Paul says that it's the gospel that establishes you. And there's no other way by which men can be saved except by repenting of their sins and believing in the Gospel and trusting in the blood of Christ and saying, Yes, Lord, you have provided for me. I do so desire to be your son and He makes you His Son. And so, you know, there are so many ways that the Gospel strengthens the soul of a human being.

Maybe when we get to our time of continued discussion about it, we can spin out one way after another of how the gospel strengthens us. But there are many ways. It makes you strong. The gospel gives you a strength that you do not have on your own. Now to Him who is able.

All your life long you thought you could make your way through life by pulling yourself up and shining your character up a little bit and fixing this little character flaw and that little character flaw which gets you absolutely nowhere with God. But God comes alongside and He gives us what we cannot give to Him on our own. He becomes our strength. He becomes our righteousness. He is the righteousness of God and in His sacrifice we are incorporated into that righteousness.

Another way that the gospel strengthens us is this. And I know you rejoice in this every day. You have the feeling of this every day. And that is that it relieves you. It relieves you of the crushing guilt that you deserve to have.

Think of the many failures. Think of the stray thoughts. Think of the issues that are in your life. If you did not have the grace of Jesus Christ, you could not hold your head up. You could not go out into the day without knowing that a Savior has taken the penalty.

Because you do not live under wrath anymore. He has taken away the wrath that you deserve. It's absolutely remarkable that one deserving wrath would have it actually taken from him and removed. Since I was saved, I've had a smile on my face since then, but it's because of this. It's because the wrath of God has been removed from me and my trials and tribulations are lighter and my incapability is easier to bear because of His grace.

And it makes you strong, it establishes you, it makes you able to go out into the day with all of the confidence of not yourself but of Jesus Christ. The gospel is all hope and no hopelessness. That's another way that the gospel establishes you. You have no reason to fear anything in this world. Nothing.

Because God has secured your salvation. He has established all of eternity for you. There's no reason for a believer to fear. You know, there's so many commands in the Bible, fear not. Why?

Why do they keep repeating that? Well, because we keep falling into this silly thought that it's legitimate for us to be fearful. But it isn't really. So we need these reminders. But the gospel is the greatest reminder of all, that God has taken care of all of your long-term liabilities.

And this is how we are established in this life by the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If anyone has any fears, let him preach the Gospel to himself. You know, David said, I sought the Lord and He heard me and He delivered me from all of my fears. David understood the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Bible says that the gospel was preached to Abraham and so it was the gospel that also strengthened Abraham and David and all the prophets and now we hear God's children sitting in His church, we can be strengthened as well by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Then there's no fear of death. Should we go on? How far do we go on in itemizing how the gospel strengthens a person. We could speak of it. How about the way in which the gospel gives us a perspective of other people.

If you understand the gospel, you know that only God is able to sanctify, and you can be at peace with your brother, because you are not his sanctifier, but God is. And you can be at peace, you can walk in happiness with your brother, because you know that God is faithful and He will complete the work that He began. So there's so many ways, there's just so many ways that we can speak of how specifically that the gospel strengthens each one of us. There are many ways to spoil the gospel in a church. J.C.

Ryle has given us a number of ways that you can spoil the work of the gospel in a church. He says this, you may spoil the gospel by substitution. You have only to withdraw from the eyes of the sinner the grand object which the Bible proposes to faith, Jesus Christ, and to substitute another object in his place and the mischief is done. In other words, make the grand object of the church something other than Jesus Christ Himself. Replace Him and His Word with something interesting, and you'll spoil the Gospel.

He says then, He says, you may spoil the Gospel by addition. You have only to add to Christ a grand object of faith, some other objects as equally worthy of honor, and the mischief is done. He says you may also spoil the gospel by disproportion. You have only to attach an exaggerated importance to the secondary things of Christianity and a diminished importance of the first things and the mischief is done. And then lastly, He says, but not least, you may completely spoil the gospel by a confused and contradictory direction regarding the church.

Confused and disorderly statements about Christianity are almost as bad as no statement at all. And so there are ways that we can diminish the power and the glory of the gospel among us. Just a strange thing isn't it that God would God would be sovereign in all things and yet he does work with us as creatures and he does appeal to us to embrace every good thing that he has. Well the gospel is to be the center of the Church of Jesus Christ. And the Gospel is kind of falling on hard times in many churches today and we must make the Gospel the center of all that we are and all that we do.

We know that Satan blinds the eyes of the perishing to the gospel. We know that there are different gospels. We know that the gospel can be submerged through misrepresenting it, And there are many passages of scripture that give us great warnings about how we subvert the work of the gospel in our lives. That's why Paul said to the Galatians, oh Galatians, who has bewitched you? Because they had set aside the Gospel for an image.

And then we see that, fifthly, that the Gospel is a revealed mystery, That the gospel is a revealed mystery. Verse 26. It's a mystery that's kept secret. Now this isn't the same kind of mystery that you think about when you think about a mystery novel. It's not like that mystery at all.

This is a mystery kept secret by God. Things only God knows. God reveals these things according to his own will and his own timing throughout history. Deuteronomy 29 says the secret things belong to God. And there are many mysteries in the Bible.

There's the mystery of the kingdom of God in Matthew 4. There's the mystery of our change at death, you know, in 1 Corinthians 15. There's the mystery of his will in Ephesians 1, there's the mystery of Christ in Ephesians 3, there's the fellowship of the mystery, there's the mystery of marriage in Ephesians 5, There is the riches of the glory of the mystery of Christ in you. There's so many different mysteries that are just beyond us. And God reveals a portion of them in his own timing.

And there's the mystery of godliness. There's the mystery of a pure conscience. Who could understand a pure conscience? That's why there's something that only God understands about how anyone could have a pure conscience. It's a mystery that we could have it, but it is a reality.

And God was faithful to speak of this mystery. It says, you know, It's not that there was absolute silence about Christ in the Old Testament. That's not what he's saying. It's obviously not what he's saying. Christ is on every page of the Old Testament.

So He wasn't saying that Christ was completely mysterious, but in relative terms, it was a mystery. It was a mystery kept secret, but not perfectly kept secret, for we see Christ all over the Old Testament. And this mystery was through the Messiah made manifest, that's a marker of time, when he came on this earth, His holy and His sinless life, His substitutionary death on the cross, His bringing Jew and Gentile together, removing the distinctions. His incarnation established something that wasn't perfectly clear to the Jews before that. And not only was it made manifest by His coming, but it was by the prophetic scriptures made known.

Do you see these two things? It was made known by Christ's coming, but also in the scriptures. It was made known to the whole nations, to all the nations. There was a revelation of Jesus Christ in the prophetic scriptures through the prophets. So this mystery is made known and the gospel is revealed.

Then we come to the next thing that we learn about the gospel. Sixthly, that the power of the gospel brings about a result, and that is obedience to the faith. To believe the gospel is to obey God. Faith without works is dead. That obedience is a natural result of true faith.

It glorifies God for us to obey. You know, Why would I say that it glorifies God for us to obey? Because whenever we obey, whenever we're faithful to what He has said, what happens is that the beauty, The goodness, the kindness of God is declared every time we do it. It makes God look good to the world. God doesn't need anybody to make him look good, but he does desire that we obey so that we would glorify him and bring out His great presence.

Whenever a child obeys his father and mother, God is glorified. Whenever a husband loves his wife, as Christ loved the church, God is glorified. When this tenderness of the Lord Jesus Christ is found in a marriage. It does glorify God. It pictures Jesus Christ's own love for the church.

Whenever a wife submits to her husband, it brings about the beautiful aroma of a gentle and quiet spirit and the grace that God brings into the world through a woman to remind all the rest of humanity that there is a God to obey and what a blessing it is that we would be a submissive people. It glorifies God to obey. We are not to continue in sin that grace may abound. No, that's not what we do. We glorify God through our obedience.

It's interesting, if the gospel has fallen on hard times, obedience has also fallen on hard times today in the church. Depending on what statistician you read, you might find some variation of this. But, you know, 40 or 40, you know, 50% of the people in America say they're born again. But when you ask them about their lifestyle only maybe five or seven percent of them even have anything close to a Christian lifestyle obedience is falling on hard times obedience is good It's something that we should pursue and not to say, well, you know, God cares nothing about the way that I live. No, he does care.

He desires obedience. And this result of the power of the gospel is obedience and you know instead of instead of holiness instead of obedience the church has replaced it with desiring wholeness more than anything else just make me happy give me give me a cool sermon you know yeah get me connected some way no God desires something far greater than your own personal wholeness. He desires a set-apartness, a holiness, being set-apart for God and being willing to be despised through your obedience. And it's spoken of right here. So we learn that the power of the Gospel brings about a result.

And that is obedience. And then seventh, the power of the Gospel is that it is far above the other Gospels. For God alone is wise. Verse 27. We come to the end now, we're just in the last few words here of this beautiful letter.

Couldn't we linger longer, maybe for a few more weeks with it? But he says here now, God to God alone Wise. Only God is wise. The world is not wise. You've perhaps heard say, well, even wicked people can have good ideas.

I would just like you to show me what they might be. People have said, well, Rousseau and Darwin and Dewey were wise about how to educate children. No, they were not. Only God is wise. And God has told us how to educate our children.

No, only, only God is wise. Man never was wise and never will be wise. And so we should not exchange the glory of God for a lie. Because only, Only God is wise. When will we as a church around this world understand that only God is wise?

When will we stop drinking at the well of pagans and saying it's wise? When will we say, well I turned out okay anyway, didn't I? That's just proof that we did not turn out okay. That we could even say that. But we are so content to drink at the well of foolishness in the church.

It's not a well for us. Only God is wise. You know, so many nourish themselves on things, lack of wisdom, and they walk into church and they say, well, why can't I worship God? Well, it's because you drank things that were contrary to wisdom the night before and the day before and the day before. That's why only God is wise.

We have this glory in earthen vessels that we can be filled up from glory to glory with the glory of God. Let's not drink of the well of those foolish of this world. Only God, only God is wise. And then finally, in these last words now, we come to the eighth illustration of the power of the Gospel. And it is that the gospel reveals the purpose of all things.

And of course, we all know what that is. It's the glory of God. The purpose of everything is the glory of God. The purpose of this life is not my comfort. The purpose of this life is not that I would have wealth or dozens of children.

The purpose of this life is not that I would have wealth or dozens of children. The purpose of this life is that I would glorify God in the midst of all of my sufferings, in the midst of every reversal, in the midst of every joy, in the midst of every relationship, every opportunity, and every dime, and every piece of furniture that I have been put in my hands, that I would glorify God. God desires to be glorified in all things. And that's why he ends up with this. To God alone wise, be glory through Jesus Christ forever.

Amen. And so this brings us to this great, the great subject of the glory of God. And how is God glorified? He's glorified in many ways, but He's glorified in the establishment of His people, the strengthening of His people. And how are they strengthened?

How would they possibly be strengthened? They would be strengthened by God Himself. For now to Him, now He is able. And He does it through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And He now lets us know that this establishment is not only for His glory, but it's for all eternity.

And that is the beauty of the Gospel, is that God has sent His Son into a sinful world to take the punishment for all sinners. And He died and He rose again. And now He sits at the right hand of God and He is in the process of bringing all of His sons to glory and He does it through this one thing, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Now the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. 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 kept secret since the world began, but now made known And by the prophetic scriptures made known to all the nations, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, for obedience to faith, to God alone wise, be glory through Jesus Christ forever." And now Lord, we have come to the last words of this beautiful letter you've written to your people.

I thank you for it. I am so grateful for this last year of considering it each week and then walking one verse at a time. These are very blessed words, Lord. They are perfect and so helpful. I pray, Lord, that you would burn them deeply within our souls.

In Jesus' name, Amen.