In the sermon titled 'Slave of Jesus Christ', the speaker, Scott Brown, introduces the Book of Romans, emphasizing its significance in understanding true Christianity. Romans is described as a didactic text that clearly explains the core of Christian faith, primarily justification by faith alone. The sermon highlights Apostle Paul's transformation from a persecutor of Christians to a devoted bondservant of Jesus, illustrating the transformative power of the gospel. Brown outlines the centrality of Christ in the gospel, the importance of the resurrection as proof of Jesus's divine identity, and the role of grace in salvation. The sermon also touches on key doctrines such as the Trinity, election, and the authority of the Scriptures. Romans is portrayed as a comprehensive guide to Christian doctrine, offering profound insights into the nature of salvation, the continuity of God's promise from the Old Testament, and the call for believers to be set apart for God. The sermon concludes with a call to recognize the grace and peace offered through the gospel to all nations.

Please open your Bibles to Romans chapter 1 and we will be beginning in verse 1. Romans 1, 1. This is the the inerrant, all-sufficient, sweeter-than-honey word of God. Romans 1.1. Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God, which he promised before through the prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning his son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness.

By the resurrection from the dead, through Him we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for his name among whom you are you also are the called of Jesus Christ to all who are in Rome beloved of God called to be saints grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, thank you for giving us such a beautiful gospel, such good news, such rescue, such kindness, such practicality and so I pray Lord that you would take all these words that were just read and bless this congregation. Pray that you would equip the saints. Pray that you would put the devil to flight.

Amen. Okay, please be seated. So today we begin our journey through the book of Romans. I've really looked forward to this day. We've concluded our studies in Revelation, which really presents quite a shift from the prophetic language, the apocalyptic literature, the figurative language that you find in the book of Revelation.

Now, in Romans, it's quite different. Now we turn to what's called didactic language. And in the Bible, it's very important that we understand what we're reading because there are different ways of understanding the various genres of literature that you have in the Bible. Of course we've just exited this great prophetic book. The prophetic books need to be read a little bit differently.

You have narratives in the Bible, those are read differently than didactic scripture. You have poetry, you have parables, you have history, and now we've come to this great didactic section in the book of Romans. And what's it all about? Romans is really about what Christianity is all about. There's a lot of misunderstanding regarding what Christianity is.

People watch television. They have different impressions from people that they meet. But here in Romans we learn what Christianity is all about. And you know, you can know people who've claimed to be Christians or seen different kinds of media offerings where Christianity is possibly presented. But what's really helpful about the book of Romans is it helps you to see through the fake versions of Christianity to what real Christianity is.

The heart of this book is justification by faith alone. The apostle Paul later on, after this long testimony, personal testimony of the gospel, in verse 16, he says, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it's the power of God unto salvation. And so this is about justification by faith. And Christianity is, as we'll find here, it's a fulfillment of the promise of a Messiah. The Messiah who would justify sinners.

You know, God punishes sin and sinners. For the redeemed, he punishes sin and sinners upon his son. He lays the judgment that we deserve upon his son. And Romans speaks of this so clearly. And it's so important also that we understand the gospel.

If you don't understand the true gospel you cannot be saved. If you're ashamed of the gospel then you have something to deal with God. But here we are in Romans And it's just such a remarkable book. It's been called the Mount Everest of the Bible. It's been called the Constitution of Christianity.

It's been called the Christian Manifesto. It's been called the Cathedral of the Christian faith. And so it is J.I. Packer says this, all roads in the Bible lead to Romans and all views afforded by the Bible are seen most clearly from Romans. And when the message of Romans gets into a person's heart, there's no telling what might happen, J.I.

Packard. John Calvin said it like this, when anyone gains a knowledge of this epistle, he has entrance opened to him to all the most hidden treasures of scripture. Martin Luther said this in the preface to his commentary on Romans, that the epistle is, quote, the very purest gospel, and is worthy not only that every Christian should know it word for word by heart, but occupy himself with it every day as the daily bread of the soul. It can never be read or pondered too much. And the more it is dealt with, the more precious it becomes, and the better it tastes.

So in the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul reveals the great secret of the Christian life. It's the secret of the grace of God, working in the soul of the believer for those who have been justified by faith. And It's proved over the years to be a life-changing message. It transforms lives. And I know if history repeats itself, people in our church, their lives will be transformed by this book that happens every time we preach through a book and it's such a joy to see that.

But the words of Romans have transformed some of the greatest saints in the history of the church And so I expect it will change our lives too, my life included. I was telling the kids in our church earlier in the week the story of the conversion of Augustine. Augustine was living a rebellious life, an immoral life, and he found himself depressed, and he was with his friend, Olympius, and he heard a little child singing, saying, take it up and read, take it up and read, take it up and read. And he looked down and there was a Bible. And he picked up the Bible and he opened it up and he opened it up to the book of Romans.

And these are the words he read. Let us walk properly as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill its lusts." So he reads that and he writes later on, I wanted to read no further nor did I need to, for instantly as the sentence ended, there was infused in my heart something like the light of full certainty and all the gloom of doubt vanished away. And he was converted, Praise the Lord. Martin Luther was actually an unbeliever, actually teaching through the book of Romans in the university. And he's teaching along and he comes to chapter 1 verse 16.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God unto salvation For everyone who believes to the Jew first and also the Greek but then verse 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, the just shall live by faith. And he had always hated the righteousness of God. He hated the idea that God was holy and man was not holy and God would come and judge unholy mankind. He hated that word righteousness, but all of a sudden a light went on and he was saved. Here's what he writes, here I felt I was born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates.

The entire scripture showed itself to me. I had hated before the word righteousness of God." And then now he understands that the righteousness of God is what comes to save sinners. And he understood that salvation was by faith alone, that it was not his righteousness that could save him, but the righteousness of Jesus Christ. So this has been a very powerful book and I trust it'll be very powerful in our lives as well. I'm gonna give you eight details about this letter.

Are you ready? Eight, I'll go really quick. First, how it was composed. He dictated the letter to a scribe, an immanuensis by the name of Tursish. The apostle spoke and it was written down by the scribe.

Secondly, he wasn't not in Rome and he had the letter delivered to Rome through Phoebe, through a woman. Very interesting. She traveled a long distance. Who knows what that was like, but this godly woman he trusted to take this letter to Rome. Second thing, these seven verses that we're gonna study today, they set the stage for the entire book.

There are 16 chapters in Romans. It takes about an hour to read Romans. There are 433 verses in Romans. And this, these first seven verses, they are one single sentence in Greek. One single sentence.

It's one thought all wrapped around the heart of the gospel. And you'll see in your outline I have seven points here. But in almost every line of these first verses you find God acting to save sinners. It's such a wonderful thing. And these seven verses actually, they synthesize the whole message of Romans.

We will encounter many of these words all the way through the book, and they're just so wonderful. Third, the centrality of Christ is upheld in almost every verse, in five out of the seven verses that are in our text here. And yet it is the gospel of God. It's the salvation that's in Christ, but it's the gospel of God, the Father, and it is also through the Spirit of holiness, the Holy Spirit. So you have the doctrine of the Trinity communicated here.

The Bible never says here's the doctrine of the Trinity, but it portrays it over and over again. You see it, here you see the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and they are separate persons. And So it's the Apostles desire to put the doctrine of the Trinity And and actually the centrality of Jesus Christ in salvation in the forefront. And of course, this has a lot to do with who we are as a church and what we do. What are we doing?

We are always setting God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit through the church. That's the best thing we can ever do. That's why when we gather together, we read a lot of scripture, we sing a lot of songs about scripture, we take the Lord's Supper in fulfillment of obedience to scripture, and we preach the word of God according to the scriptures because because God reveals himself as Father Son and Holy Spirit Here's the fourth What kind of letter is it? Well, it's a missionary letter First of all, I think they're probably three Purposes, It's a pastoral letter. It's also an apologetic letter it is it's a defense of Salvation by Jesus Christ alone, but It's a missionary letter.

It's actually a fundraising letter. We learned this in chapter 15, verse 22 to 29. And Paul had been planting churches in the East, in Turkey. We're familiar with many of those churches in Turkey that the apostle Paul had a hand in planting. And now he's headed West.

He's headed toward Rome. And then after Rome, he's headed to Spain. And many believe that he ended up in the United Kingdom as well And he he seems to want to establish a beachhead in Rome of support He wants the support of the Roman church. He's also raising money for the tragedies going on in the Jerusalem church as well. So he's raising, this is a fundraising letter.

And in it He explains everything that he's doing and what he's thinking about the gospel. Number five, he's loading the details of the gospel in these first seven verses. He's explaining justification by faith. Number six, number six thing I want to tell you about this book, this is Paul's personal experience. I don't know if you noticed just how personal this is.

It's almost a personal testimony. He seems to slip in and out of personal testimony and words to this church in Rome. He just can't talk one way. It's pulling out of his heart. He loves the gospel, and yet he speaks it to those who he is with.

And so you find this confluence of personal testimony and the truth of the gospel. And that's why as we move through this section, you get to verse 16 and he can't contain himself. He says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. It's the power of God to salvation. And he just can't get over how good this good news is for him.

And this was in many places an explanation of his personal experience. You know, this being Mother's Day today, I was thinking about the personal experience of Sarah Edwards, who is the wife of one of the greatest theologians that ever lived in America. She had 11 children. She started having children when she was 18 years old. She had one about every other year after her wedding.

But this woman was a, she had the experience of a happy mother. And when she was even 16, she wrote that she was led to prize the nearness of Christ as the creature's greatest happiness. And I thought, this sounds so much like the Apostle Paul. Her husband, Jonathan, died, and she writes to her daughter, Esther, these words, but my God lives and he has my heart. That's experiencing Jesus Christ.

It's like the apostle Paul, she continues, she said this, he has made me adore his goodness that we had him, her husband, so long. And then later on, or earlier on before he died, her husband writes that she had an extraordinary sense of the awful majesty, greatness, and holiness of God and a deep mourning over sin as committed against so holy and good God, she had an overwhelming sense of the glory of the work of redemption. Her experience was so much like the experience of the Apostle Paul. And I praise the Lord for others who have that experience. But we find it here in the book of Romans.

Seventh, the seventh thing about this book, major doctrines are in these verses that are developed throughout the book. The doctrine of Christ, doctrine of salvation, doctrine of election, doctrine of scripture, the position and the value of the Old testament, the deity of Jesus Christ. These doctrines are jammed up right in these first seven verses and the apostle Paul is going to elaborate on them. Interesting, we encounter the resurrection here And what most of us know is that if anyone wants to discredit the gospel, the first thing they must do is discredit the resurrection. And the apostle comes right out with it in these first seven verses.

Number eight, it's a very practical book, very practical book. I'm just gonna quote John MacArthur. He says, it speaks morally about adultery, fornication, homosexuality, hating, murder, lying, and civil disobedience. It speaks intellectually, telling us that the natural man is confused because he has a reprobate mind. It speaks socially, telling us how we ought to relate to one another.

It speaks psychologically, telling us where true freedom comes to deliver men from the burden of guilt. It speaks nationally telling us about our responsibility to human government. It speaks internationally telling us the ultimate destiny of the earth and especially of the restoration of Israel. It speaks spiritually answering man's despair by offering hope for the future. It speaks theologically teaching us the relationship between the flesh and the spirit, between law and grace, between works and faith, but most of all, it profoundly brings God himself to us.

So those are eight things about this book that I think will be helpful. Well, let's get into the text. Are you ready? Verse one, Romans run. Now you can see my outline in front of you.

I've listed what I'm calling seven powers of the gospel of Jesus Christ that the apostle Paul reveals. And the first power of the gospel is that it's a transforming power. Paul, a bond servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God. So God saves sinners like the apostle Paul. If you're familiar with this story, he was a persecutor of the church.

He hated the people of God and God changed his life. The persecutor became the servant of the church. This is a marvelous picture of conversion. When a person is converted, their lives change. They think differently, they act differently, they dress differently, they talk differently, they use their time differently, they use their money differently.

The converted person is transformed. It's because the power of sin has been broken. That's what the what happened to the Apostle Paul. It's interesting, you know, here in Romans he the author calls himself Paul. Now you would think he would call himself Saul, but he doesn't do that.

He called himself Paul after his conversion. And Paul was his Roman name. Saul was his Hebrew name. And his Roman name, Paul, meant little one. So he sees himself differently.

This is the power of the gospel. And then he speaks of those who are called to be saints, called to be called out, to be called out of the world. And this is God, God who did it. It's God who calls. He calls you by name and you come to him.

And in Romans 8.28, we are the called according to his purpose. This phrase, the called, appears in Romans 828 just like it does here. He is the called. We are the called. Called to what?

Called to be saints. Called to be holy, distinct, set apart for God. You know, what God does is he makes people holy and he transforms their lives and this is why You find this word three times in these verses. You have saints, that's holy. You have the holy scriptures.

You have the spirit of holiness. And then even in verse seven, you've got called to be saints. This is the power of the gospel. It transforms your life. And it's so transforming that you become a bond servant, a bond servant of Jesus Christ.

Paul saw himself as not a king, but as a bond servant. And he saw himself as someone who had been bought off the slave market and put into service and brought into the household of God where he had such a good master. He was in bondage to sin. Now, he's a willing bond servant of Jesus Christ. It's very interesting, this word bond servant is the word slave.

If it's translated consistently across the Bible, it's slave. He is the slave of God. Translators use this term bond servant, I think, because of the Hebrew idea of slavery, which carried within it a volunteer nature. You wanted to stay with your master. There are various kinds of bond servanthood in the Old Testament.

And in contrast to the Greek model of slavery, which was brutal, which was horrific, which nobody could enjoy. But not this kind of bond-servant-hood. This kind of bond-servant-hood is voluntary. And that's why you find in the scriptures The people are called slaves the slaves of God. It's this kind of slave It's the kind of slave who wants a master like this In Acts 2 18 the Lord promises he says I will pour out my spirit even among my slaves, both men and women.

In Acts 429, we find Peter and the disciples saying, Lord, enable your slaves to speak your word with boldness. In Acts chapter 16 verse 17, there's a female slave and she's crying out, she says, these men are slaves of the most high God. In Revelation chapter one verse one, we learn that the letter was meant to reveal truth To the slaves of Jesus Christ This is the revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him to show his slaves which must soon take place. And then in Revelation 22, those who are in heaven are called the slaves of God. Some kind of slavery, how about that, in heaven.

This is the kind of slavery that God has for his people. Revelation 22, three, and there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the lamb shall be in it, and his slaves shall serve him. So the idea of slavery that the Apostle Paul is talking about is the kind of having the best master that you could ever have. And so the Apostle Paul in Romans 1.1 calls himself a slave of Jesus Christ And it's such a wonderful thing to be able to find ourselves with such a good master, such a kind shepherd, such a good father. So we shouldn't feel sorry for the Apostle Paul because he wasn't under a cruel slave.

He was not under compulsion. He was under voluntary servitude, not stinting allegiance, but happy allegiance to God. I mean Jesus, he says, come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden for I am gentle and humble in heart. That's the kind of master that he is. He's full of grace and truth.

So Nobody ever got sold short by coming under servitude to Jesus Christ. So Paul is a bond servant. And this really speaks of the transforming power of the gospel. Who would want to come under servitude? Only the power of the gospel can make you want to serve the Lord.

So the second power of the gospel is that he's called. Called to be an apostle. All believers are called. The apostle Paul was called. Paul did not call himself.

The call originated from God. You who know the Lord have experienced this. He moved your heart. He was calling you. And you couldn't live the old way anymore.

But he you you didn't hear an audible voice but in your soul you were called and that's what happened to the Apostle Paul except for he he he was converted on the road of Damascus with a with a with an auditory call but the life of God doesn't come from looking within it comes from looking without and hearing that call outside of yourself. And he is called an apostle. You know my understanding of this, there are no more apostles today, none meet the qualifications. There were three criteria for the apostle to be an apostle, you had to walk with Jesus, second, you had to be eyewitnesses of the resurrection, and third, you had to be commissioned by Jesus. Now, the apostle Paul actually fails the first two of these tests, but he was commissioned personally by Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus.

Paul was a bold man on his way to Damascus to persecute the church, and God interrupted his life there. A called to be saints, called to be saints. All believers are called to be holy. That's what it means to be a saint. People who are working for their sainthood are on a fool's errand because only God makes people saints, but not the kind of, not the Roman Catholic kind.

A saint is a person who's been cleansed by the Lord. And then the third power of the gospel, it's the separation to the gospel, separated to the gospel of God. This language here indicates that when a person believes in the gospel, they are separated to the gospel. It means to mark off, it means to sever, sever bonds for a new purpose. You know, the apostle Paul, he uses the same language in Galatians chapter one, verse five.

He talks about being separated from his mother's womb and called. In Acts chapter 13, Paul and Barnabas were separated. They were sent out. They were allocated for a new life. And this is what it means to be separated to the gospel of God.

It's a gospel that comes from God, comes out of God. It's the gospel. It's good news. It is a good message, actually, literally. It's good for the well-being of your soul.

But the gospel always sets you apart. And it separates from the world. And you become a servant of the gospel of God. And, you know, of course, what is the gospel? Well, this entire letter explains what is the gospel.

But of course, the gospel is, It starts out with good news that God is holy, and then it moves to bad news that man is not holy. And then there is the question of what can man do being unholy, being born in sin. All you have to do to prove this is look around in the world and look at the sin in the world. It begins with the littlest child. So what do you do with sinful humanity?

God would not leave us lost. And so he sent his son to pay the penalty for our sin. He sent his son to receive the punishment that we deserved by his death on the cross. And that is the good news, that God calls people to repentance and faith by this good news. The fourth power of the gospel is this really, the continuity of the everlasting gospel in verses two and three, which he promised before through his prophets in the holy scriptures concerning his son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh.

Now there are many things that are being communicated here and I'll just first mention, it really speaks to the authority of the scriptures, of the Old Testament scripture. The gospel is communicated in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. In Revelation 14, six, it's called the everlasting gospel, which was really communicated first of all in Genesis 3.16. But the gospel is an unchanging message. And what we'll find, particularly when we get to Romans chapter four, is that the Old Testament saints were saved in the same way that New Testament saints are saved, they're saved by faith.

And the apostle makes that very, very clear. And here he calls the Old Testament scriptures holy. Later on, the apostle Paul is gonna speak of the law of God as holy, just, and good. So these are the holy scriptures. They are distinct, they are set apart.

You know, people today, you might hear them say in their confusion, I'm a New Testament Christian. And that, you know, could likely bear witness to a misunderstanding of the everlasting gospel and how people have been saved. The Old Testament scriptures were regarded as holy, setting them apart from oral tradition and various other means. And these writings were passed down in writing having been inspired. And So that's why they are called the holy scriptures that were promised through his prophets.

So the prophecies were fulfilled in Jesus Christ. And there are many, many prophecies of Christ that were given hundreds of years before he came That he was born in Bethlehem that he was born of a virgin Born in the line of Abraham from the tribe of Judah that children would be massacred when he would be born, that he would be buried with the rich, that he would pray for his enemies. There are just dozens and dozens of prophecies of Christ that were fulfilled. And people have commented over the years of the statistical probability of the prophecies, you know, coming to pass. One of my favorite ones is if you covered the state of Texas with silver dollars two feet deep and you marked one of them as the one that you need to find and you put a blind man to find it the first one he would pick up would be the right one it's that kind of probability well I don't I I obviously would not could not run the numbers on something like that, but there are all kinds of mathematical models that people come up with to try to really demonstrate how remarkable it is that Jesus Christ would fulfill all these prophecies, that they would all come to be in one person at one period of time.

But these prophecies were given by the prophets and fulfilled by Jesus Christ. One of the commentators, Robert Haldane, explaining the Old Testament, he says that Christ was prefigured, predicted, and fulfilled. And then he goes on, born of the seed of David, making the connection with the line of the Messiah from David, and that's a long discussion which we'll have later on in this book. The fifth power of the gospel. This is the centrality of Jesus Christ in the gospel.

Concerning his son, Jesus Christ our Lord. I just read seven words. Every single one of these words is significant. Jesus means Savior. Christ is not Jesus's last name.

Christ means he is Messiah, the anointed one. Lord, he's the sovereign ruler. And all of these are attributed to Jesus Christ. And this also bears witness to the manhood of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was the Word made flesh.

He was God made man. He was a man. He was one person with two natures. He is, he revealed God to man. That's why in the Gospel of John, we read these words, and we beheld his glory.

Glory as of the only begotten Son of God. He is the Son of God. He is the God-man and he was, he was of course the only sinless man who ever lived. So he came and pitched His tent among us and lived among us and was punished for us. So that's the significance of His being the Son of God.

The sixth power of the gospel is really the power of the resurrection. Verse four, and declared to be the son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness, how? By the resurrection from the dead. Now you find this same theme in every letter that the Apostle Paul writes, the power of the resurrection. In the book of Acts we see that the the resurrection was figured in as the central theme of the launching of the New Testament church.

Romans is no different. He was declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. And with this language of the Son of God being declared with power, What Paul is doing is he's really pulling forward the line of the Messiah, the Son of God. You had Adam was the first son, Abraham, then David, and now the fulfillment of the coming son the son of God Jesus Christ himself and the resurrection is the proof that he is the son of God and it is according to the Spirit of holiness. So it's the power of the resurrection that demonstrated that Jesus Christ was the promised Messiah.

He was the Word made flesh. He is the Son of God. That he existed in relationship with his Father from eternity past and was prophesied that he would come at a particular moment in history and that he would suffer and that he would die as a substitute, fulfilling all the substitutionary death in the Old Covenant sacrifices. So, the Lord Jesus Christ was demonstrated to be the Savior through the power of the resurrection. And then the seventh power of the gospel is in verses five through seven.

I am calling this the grace of the gospel. It is the gospel of grace. It's not a gospel of works. No person can be good enough. One of the most interesting things about talking to people in the United States is most of them feel like they're good enough.

If you ask them if they're Christians, they really believe that they're good enough to be a believer. And of course, what they do is they compare themselves to others. Well, I'm not as bad as so-and-so. I'm just not that bad of a person, which really is to misunderstand God's message to mankind, that he's lost in his sins. And he can never earn his righteousness.

He can never be good enough. No person was ever good enough to be saved. So verse 5, through him We have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for his name, among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ." So the Apostle Paul is saying so much here in these verses. He's reporting that he lives by the grace of God for obedience and to fulfill his mission to carry the gospel throughout the world. He received grace and he was given a role as an apostle to spread the gospel to the Gentiles.

And it was a work of grace. It wasn't something that he chose, it was something that God caused him to do, which is the truth for all of us. We do what God gives us the energy to do. The Apostle Paul said in another place, let him who serves, serve in the strength that God supplies. That's true of all of us.

All of us aren't apostles. I say none of us are apostles. But all of us have been given strength to serve the gospel in some way. And that's the truth that he's talking about. That's why John the Baptist said, a man can receive nothing unless it's given him from heaven.

We're dependent upon God's power for us to do anything. And also he speaks of those who are called, the called of Jesus Christ. This is the word election called. This word called gives us the doctrine of election, that we are chosen, chosen by God. And then Paul explains the purpose of it, for obedience to the faith among all nations for his name.

Our salvation is for a purpose, and that is for our obedience to God so that we would perform the function that we were designed to perform in the world. But it's the grace of God that accomplishes all of that. And then we learn in verse seven who this is written to, to all who are in Rome, all who are in Rome. Now there are many who believe that there were several small churches in Rome. So that's why he writes to all who are in Rome, all the little churches in Rome.

It's hard to know. But this letter is being carried to Rome. But one of the things that's so compelling and beautiful about this, and about the way the Apostle Paul felt about the church, how he thought about them. He calls them beloved of God, the beloved of God. When the people of God gather together, they are the beloved of God.

They are the ones who are dressed in white. They are the ones who have received an everlasting gospel. They are the ones who are precious in his sight. That's an astonishing thought, isn't it? And it really should shape the way that we think about each other, the beloved of God.

You know, I was so struck by a message that Jeff Johnson gave at the conference last week on the church. And he said something that was so true, so profound, so connected to what Paul is saying right here. He said something like, the weakest person in the church is beloved of God. And we should be very careful about how we think about one another. Because the church is composed of the beloved of God.

Here's one thing we don't wanna do. We don't wanna be unloving to the beloved of God. Even the weakest person in the church should have our compassion. Beloved of God. You know, God loves his people And there's really nothing in us to draw God's love because it's a gift of God.

It's a gift of the grace of God. And that's why he ends this section in verse 7 with these words, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. You who are here at the end of Revelation know that the book of Revelation ends with this same kind of language, grace to you, grace to you. And now we find these great blessings, grace and peace. You know, there's there's such truth here, like, for example, grace.

Grace is. A Greek word that the Greeks would understand. Peace is Hebrew, shalom. The Apostle Paul, I think, is making it very clear that the gospel is for all people. It's for the Jews, it's for the Greeks, it's for the Hebrews, it's for the Greek speaking world, it's for the whole world.

God save sinners everywhere in the world. And so he's really implying this missionary effort that he's involved in, this fundraising letter, so that the gospel might be preached, so that grace and peace would be known all over the world. So seven powers of the gospel, the transforming power of the gospel, the call of the gospel, the separation to the gospel, the continuity of the everlasting gospel, the centrality of Jesus Christ in salvation, the power of the resurrection and the grace of the gospel. So that's what Christianity is all about. It's about the grace of God.

If you're without grace, you are without Christ. But if you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that you have faith, that he is a substitute for your sin. You are the beloved of God. Praise the Lord for such a wonderful gospel. Let's pray.

Lord, thank you for this this beautiful, helpful book telling us the story of our lives, the story of the world, how we ought to live, how we ought to think about you, Lord, how we ought to think about your son and the prophets, the Old Testament, across all these things that we have questions about. And Lord, I pray that your holy gospel would be the central thrilling thing in our church, in my heart, and all of us together. Amen.