working through Paul's official to the Romans. We've actually been in it for 33 months. We've only been in it about 60% of the time. We've had 85. This will be the 85th message that has been at least for me, probably not so much for you, but certainly for me it's been a wonderful journey through this magnum opus, this major work, great work of the Apostle Paul, his most definitive official. He's been talking to us in the very last section of this official beginning in chapter 12 about being saved to serve. That's been his theme in chapters 12 through 16 that we have been transformed by this gospel, this power of God to save us. We've been taken out of the life of self-centeredness and selfishness to life of service for Christ. We've had been saved to serve. That's been his theme. He's talked about how God has to change our minds to think that way about life, about our spiritual service of worship in this world. How he gives a spiritual gift and how we're to serve one another in love and how we're to serve the government and how we're to serve the weaker brother. All of these are the reoccurring themes of this last section and so he comes to chapter 16 and he appears to just have a regular time of saying say hello to so and so and hello to so and so and by the way, God's blessings be upon you. But it's really more than that. This last chapter in 16 in many ways is one of the richest chapters in all of this great gospel of God. It appears to be a summary of just his thoughts in terms of personal greetings and warnings to the church and commendation, but it's more than that. Paul lived in an age much more like ours than we really realize. In fact, I've said it before and I'll say it again as we go deeper and deeper into the abyss of this postmodern times, these new dark ages, where our world is more and more like the world of the Apostle Paul in the first century than the world of Martin Luther and John Calvin and the other reformers of the 16th century. And Paul realized that he lived in an age of great spiritual pessimism, that there are all kinds of religions in the Roman Empire and they were all according to the Roman citizens' fake. They were all false and they were not willing to hear just another philosopher, another preacher, another messianic herald. They wanted to see religion worked out in people's lives and so I think Paul especially in the cynical culture and in the city of Rome, as he writes the letter, he writes them a letter, giving them the actual names of people in that city and of other places around the Mediterranean world, people who really have been Jew and Gentile alike, transformed by this gospel into servants of Jesus Christ. Remember that's his theme. His theme is, I am not ashamed of the gospel of God, for it is the power of God to save. Everyone who believed, the Jew first, but also the Gentile, also the Greek and the Roman, the non-Jews. And now he talks about these people in this chapter and there's much, much gold to be found in it. One of the early church fathers, perhaps the greatest preacher the church has ever had, a man named John of Antioch, we know him is St. John Chrysostom. Chrysostom means golden mouth. He was a man who lived from 347 to 407 AD, lived right before the time of St. Augustine. And he was ordained to the ministry in 381 and then in 386 he was appointed to be the chief preacher, the lecturer they call them, of the leading church in Antioch of Syria. In just a few years, in fact in 11 years, he was appointed to be the archbishop of Constantinople, a position that was equal to the bishop of Rome and its influence on the early church. It became the mother church of the Orthodox churches as Rome became the mother church of the Western churches. He was a fearless preacher. In fact, he preached so fearlessly that he fell into this favor with Queen Eudoxia, the Eastern Roman Empire queen, who took offense at his preaching about sins and particular sum of her own. She exiled him to the boondocks of Syria. And as the people in the city of Constantinople rose up and literally in riots to demand their pastor back, she sent him further into exile where he died in 407 AD, simply worn out from preaching the gospel under nourished and persecuted by his own Queen. He preached the homilies of Romans, they were called, 32 famous sermons on the gospel of Roman. And when he came to the chapter 16, this is what John Chrysostom said. I think that many, even those who have the appearance of being extremely good men, hasten over this part of the epistle as superfluous and having no great weight in it. And I think that the same befalls them in regard to the genealogies that are in the gospel. For because it is a catalog of names, they think they cannot get any great good from it. Yet those who found their gold are careful even about the little fragments while these pass over even such great cakes of gold. We however will endeavor then, this day also, to mine in that same place, for it is possible, even from bare names, to find a great spiritual treasure. And that is true. Paul is writing to people here in this last chapter, giving more or less a church directory of the three or four household churches that made up the church of Rome. And he's talking about how these people really were living examples that the power of the gospel changes life. And the greatest change of all, I believe, is that it overcomes our self-centered selfishness, our ego-tism and our desire to be the center of our universe and transforms us into people who live and breathe the fact that we have been saved in order to serve God by serving others. And that is what Paul talks about is the end of this modern amorphous, this great work of his called Romans. He begins in this final chapter by giving a commendation to a gospel servant for nameless Phoebe. And here's what he says about it, the beginning in chapter 1 verse 1 of chapter 16. I commend to you our sister Phoebe, who is a servant of the church, which is at Sincrea, 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. I think it's interesting that when Paul ends his major work, perhaps the most important book of all the Bible, he only gives one commendation, he only commends one person, not another apostle, not another preacher or pastor, not some officer of the church or some public official. He commends a woman that we don't know anything about except these two verses who was a servant of the church and his patron. He calls her those two things. He says, I commend you our sister Phoebe, who is a servant of the church, which is at Sincrea, that you may receive her in the Lord. For she herself has also been a helper of many and of myself as well. He calls her a helper. He uses the word, the word that really means benefactor or sponsor or perhaps one who is a patron. In the ancient world, when a speaker like Paul would come to a new city, there were no bishops or institutional agencies of the church to credential them. They didn't have a degree from a seminary. They didn't have a license to preach or something. So they had to have patrons or benefactors they were called, sponsors we would call them today. These were wealthy influential people who used their political and social and perhaps religious connections and their wealth to commend the speaker to a new crowd and give credence and credentials to what he said. Phoebe was one of those people. She is a prosthetic, a benefactor or sponsor. We believe that he probably stayed in her home that she financially supported him, that she wrote letters that he would take to places so that people say, well, who are you? He would say, we'll read these letters from Mistress Phoebe. And because of her influence there in Sincrea in that seaport town that was the gateway to Europe, she was able to influence many churches perhaps in Macedonia and Ekea and even now in Rome to give Paul a hearing. He also calls her a deakanas but we sometimes translate as the word deacon in scripture. In fact, if you have a certain version, you'll notice that it reads this way, I commend you, our sister Phoebe, who is a deaconess of the church. They've read their theology, their interpretation of that word into the text. That is a great debate and it causes people to doubt the stand of the Presbyterian church in America and other churches that say only men can be officers. Here's a person who could be a deaconess, a deacon of the church. In fact, John Calvin believed that she did have some official function as one of the widows like in 1 Timothy 5 who was on the payroll of the church who were to visit other widows in orphans in the sixth and the prisoner and the homeless and the stranger, not an ordained officer of the church but a paid deaconess. We don't know, quite frankly. We don't know if she was. We do know these three things. We do know that in Acts chapter 6, when the office of deacon was devised by the Apostle, they told the people in church to choose men from among themselves to the officers and they chose seven men and no women. We also know that from every historical record that is available to us at the present, that we have no record of the early church ordaining any women to some office of oversight or deaconal position in the church. We also know that this is not what Paul is talking about in Romans chapter 16. Paul is not talking about an office or an authority or rank in the church. He's talking about Christian service. He's commending Phoebe to us because she is a glowing example of someone who has lost her self-centered life in the service of the gospel by serving others for Christ's sake. In fact, the explanation of her deaconess, her deaconal service, is her prostatus, her benefactress or patronage work. She served the church by being a sponsor or benefit or patron of apostles and ministers and traveling missionaries. I think it says something rather subtle and something condemnatory about our age that when Paul wants to talk about the gift of being a servant, we want to argue about her authority and rank in the church. We're not the only ones who feel like that. There was once a time even among the twelve apostles before they were filled with the Holy Spirit that they were arguing one time in the presence of Jesus or at least within his ears to shock of who was going to be the greatest in rank in the kingdom of God and listen to what Jesus said. He called them together in regarding the greatness of the kingdom. He said this, the kings of the Gentiles lord it over them and those who have authority over them are called, listen, benefactor. Same thing that Phoebe was called. But it is not to be so with you. Let him who is the greatest among you become as the youngest and the leader as the servant. For who is greater? The one who reclines at the table or the one who serves the table. Is it not the one who reclines at the table and yet I stand among you as one who serves? Jesus Christ commands service. He elevates it to the greatest position which is rather antithetical to our way of thinking today. And so does the apostle Paul. Again, I think it is significant that he does not commend Timothy. He doesn't commend Peter or the other apostle or Linus, one of the early pastors in Rome, perhaps. He commends a lady who simply who were financial, support and her hospitality and her friendships. She served the purpose of the gospel by being a sponsor and a benefactor, a supporter, a traveling missionary like Paul and his band of servants. He commends her to them and he says, you should be like her. Don't worry about your rank. Who's got the authority? Who's that ordained to this? Worry about your service. For like Jesus says, I stand among you as one who serves. I am a great apostle, but I am your servant in the gospel. We all have been saved to serve. That is our calling in this life. He goes on then and he sends greetings to many who we would call gospel servants in that city. He has a list of them. In fact, there are 26 of them and 24 of them. He greets by name. Beginning in verse 3, he says this, greet Priska and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus. Who for my sake risk their own next 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 epinatus, 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. Who are also in Christ before me. Greet Ampleatus, my beloved in the Lord. Greet Arbonus, our fellow worker in Christ and Stakeys, my beloved. Greet Appelus, their proved in Christ. Greet those who are the household of Aristobulus. Greet Herodian, my kinsmen. Greet those of the household of Narcissus who are in the Lord. Greet Trifema and Trifoso, workers in the Lord. Greet Perseus, the beloved, who has worked hard in the Lord. Greet Rufus, a choice man in the Lord. Also, his mother in mind. Greet Asin Tritus, Pregon, Hermes, Patrobus, Hermas, and the brethren with them. Greet Valalagus and Julia, Nerous and his sister, and the Lymphus, and all the saints who are with them. Greet one another with a holy kiss, all the churches of Christ greet you. It's a wonderful passage. This is where I think Saint John Christusum said in these little pieces of information great spiritual treasure can be found. Paul realizes that what he has said is absolutely unbelievable. That's simply the story about Jesus Christ. Simply this message of the cross and believing in it, trusting Christ alone for your salvation will totally transform it, saving you from the worst of all bondages, the bondage to self, and make you a servant of God. And people would say it's a good idea, Paul. The Paul you got to realize you're a unique fellow. You have an extremely type A personality. You're very goal-oriented. You were born into a fanatical, rabbinical home. There's not many people that are as religious as you are. And the few of us have had someone knock us off of our feet on the way to Damascus. Look us in the faith and say, get up. You're going to serve me for the rest of your life. And that person happened to be God. Paul says that's true. But I commend you to people that I'm greeting who live beside you every single day, to do the same thing I do. They live to serve Jesus Christ because Christ died and saved them. And here they are. And He names them. He gives a wonderful picture of the social and the sexual and the ethnic diversity in that early church. Beginning with Jews and Gentiles, remember that's his theme. I'm not ashamed of this gospel. It's the power of God to save anyone who believes to the Jew first, but also to the Greek. Now look at the names that he mentions. He mentions Jews first. He mentions his friends Priscilla or Priska here, the Romanized version of Priscilla. Priscilla and Aquila. They were Paul's long life lifetime friends. They were tent makers along with Paul. Paul met them along his second or third missionary journey. They lived in Corinth and he stayed with them. And later on, as we find out, as we put the pieces together, we find this about Priscilla and Aquila. They were actually probably people who originally lived in Rome, but you remember in 49 AD about the time that Paul went on his first missionary journey. The emperor Claudius expelled all the Jews from the city of Rome. They found their way to Corinth, where Paul met them on his second missionary journey. Then they went with him to Ephesus where they stayed with him and there he says they risked their next for me when there was that great riot and the whole city was wanting to put us to death. And 54 AD Claudius died and many of those Jews made their way back to Rome. That's obviously what Aquila and Priscilla did because now they are in Rome and Paul is sending them greetings in the Lord. They were people who had the church, one of the churches in their house, he said, and they are my dear Kinsman in the Lord. He also mentions Herodian as a Kinsman as a fellow to, and Mary, the most popular name of little Jewish girls in that day. He mentions Andronicus and Junius, he calls them my Kinsman. It should probably be Andronicus and Junia, a man and a wife who he says were well known, who were famous among the apostles. He also mentions Roman type names like Herbanaus and Rufus. And many Greek names, Narcissus and Stakeys, Apelus and Hermas, Patrobus and others who were named after the God. And so in this church, there is a living, breathing day-to-day example that the power of the gospel does say Jews and Gentiles and brings them together in one great world. Repeatedly Paul will say in his pasties that I just read, they worked hard for the Lord, they were workers for the Lord, they served the Lord again and again he defines him that way. He also mentions that there's a great social strata that is cut through by the gospel. We believe that Paul was writing to people who were slaves and people who were close to the royal family, the empires family in the church of Rome. We find in ancient inscriptions in Rome and in Greece that popular names for slaves were names mentioned in this passage, Ampliatus, Herbanaus, Hermes, Vallagus and Julia. In Paul's day, there were certain names that more or less belonged to certain classes of people. And people who were not slaves were not going to give their children a slave's name except with some exception. He also mentions the fact that along with these slaves names, there is a man named Aristobulus who has a household. He says greet the members of the household of Aristobulus. Aristobulus was the grandson of Herod the Great who was a close friend of emperor Titus and Claudius. And this emperor's friend, Aristobulus had a household and some people in his household were Christian. He says, say hello to those who are the household of Narcissus. We know from ancient inscriptions that Narcissus was a personal friend who lived and traveled with the emperor Claudius. It's not saying that Aristobulus and Narcissus were believers that members of these noble families were Christian. He mentions a man named Rufus, who was the son of Simon the Syrene, a wealthy businessman from the island who carried the cross of Jesus Christ. J.V. Lightfoot, one of the outstanding scholars of the early church said this, we seem to have established a fair presumption that among the salutations and the epistle to the Romans, some members at least of the imperial household are included. Paul was writing to a church that had slaves and gladiators, wealthy businessmen and businesswomen, social patrons and benefactors and members of noble families close to the emperor himself. But perhaps the most obvious diversity is that of the gender mix of the church, of the names mentioned, of the 26 people he references into 24 or 25 names, 8 or 9 of them we know to be women. Priska or Priscilla? Mary, it appears to be twin sisters, Trifema and Trifosa, Pursus, Julia, a woman referenced as the mother of Rufus, another man as the cemper of a sister of Nehruz and one named Olympus. We also believe that a lady named Junia, who was labeled here as Junius, was also one of the people in that church. He says an amazing thing about these women. He says they copiate or they literally broke a sweat for the Lord. They did the most unfeminant thing. They worked until they lathered. They swept until they dropped for Jesus Christ. They worked hard for the Lord. It's a word only used of the manual labor or a labor that can lead unto death, either through stress or through danger. These women risked their lives along with the men of the church, and Paul commends them and greets them. Listen to what John Scott said. I want you ladies to listen in particular. The prominent place occupied by the women in Paul's entourage shows that he was not at all the male chauvinists of popular modern fantasy. Paul was not a hater of women. He loved them deeply. He called them my mother, my sisters, my co-workers, those who risked their life for my sake, those who worked hard for Jesus Christ, even as I did. What a diverse group of people. He mentions the first convert from Asia, a veteran missionary couple. He mentions a host or hostesses of house churches. He mentions a couple he calls outstanding among the Apostles. It appears that perhaps even a woman named Junia could have been one of the earlier Apostles. Now this is not Apostles as an Apostles of Christ like Peter and James and John. It's Apostle used in the sense of Timothy or Titus or Barnabas. What we would call a missionary couple, one who was sent out or Apostles of the church with a small A, but they are listed there among people who were church planners and missionaries in the early church. He mentions twin sisters, members of royal household slaves and brothers and single girls, older women and men who worked hard for the Lord. The picture here is that these people had given their lives, though, as a regular dimension of Christian life of working until they draw for Jesus Christ. I think it would be interesting to get those house churches and bring them here to have fellowship with us in the fellowship hall month Sunday and just talk to them. Inevitably, someone would go up to them from our age and say something like this. Well, have you ever considered full-time Christian service? Andronicists, did you ever think of going to seminary? Have you ever gone through M.T.W. did it prove to be a missionary? Have you ever thought of being in the ministry? And if I could speak English? I think they would look at us rather puzzled and then say, listen, every Christian of missionaries. Aren't we all in the ministry? Why do I need to go to school to tell other people about Jesus Christ and bring them to my church? Why do I need a degree or some certification from an agency to lose myself for the sake of Christ and serve others with the gospel? And I think they would shame us into the paradigmatic shift we fallen into where we think that only guys who go and get an R.E.V. in front of their name and a few letters after are really the ministers of the church. Paul says these people don't think that way. They've done everything I have done, risked their necks for Christ, planted the church, preached the Word, built up the saints. And now I've given the most important book of the whole Bible into the hands of one little woman and I said take this to the church of Rome. The whole future of Christendom depends upon the diligence of your ministry. Can you imagine what would happen? If Phoebe lost this letter, she gave it to the wrong people or read it and decided to say, I got to make some changes on this thing. These people were important. These nobody's from nowhere. Paul greets them as if they were as partners in ministry because that's exactly what they are. Now they were different than our age but I'll say one thing they had in common with our age. There were people in their church and in their time who wanted to do rail the church from the scoffs for ministry just as sure as I'm standing before you today. And Paul does a third thing here. He warns these gospel servants about that danger. Look at verse 17. Now our urge you, brethren, keep your eyes on those who cause dissentions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you learned and turn away from them. For such men are slaves, not of our Lord Christ, but of their own appetite. 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. And the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you. Paul warns these servants of Christ, these servants of the gospel that within their own ranks there were those who would derail the church from her prime mission. He tells us how the spot them. It gives us four things that are characteristic of them. Here's the first one. They are people who love to cause dissension in the church. He uses a word to cost the sea that is only used two times in the New Testament. Here an in Galatians chapter 5 verse 20 where it used of one of the deeds of the flesh. It means literally to make a separation or to cut so to divide into different parts. Hence Paul says, I urge you brethren to keep your eye on those who cause dissension. They like to divide the church. They like to ruin the harmony and the unity of the single mindedness of the church. Usually through their debate and their arguments and their own theology. These people always want to narrow down the definition of what a Christian is. There are people who say, well being a Christian is not just trusting in Christ and living from it involves such and such. Like the people who Paul had to write against when he wrote relations, the twin letter to Rome. These people wanted to add something to the Christian gospel. Add something to the Christian church. Add something to the Christian life initiative. They are just not satisfied with people being converted and living to worship and serve and witness for the world. There's always got to be something more. And it's usually out of their own minds that there's something coming. Their problem is not what they take away from the gospel but they add to it. James voice says that there are not so much heretics although they could be, but they're people who want to divide the church into factions, some of which are loyal to them. And they're always saying things like, well you know you can't really be a Christian unless you believe in Christ and there it is. The thing that causes the dissension. Now Paul's written for 16 chapters to say that the one thing that brings us together is our personal commitment to Jesus Christ and our life to serve Him. That's it. But these people will say that's not true. It's something more. Paul says something more is usually some legalism or some anti-nominated that causes dissension in the church. That's the second thing he tells us about it. They like to put off the hindrance as he calls them in the place of the sincere believer. This word hindrance is really standalone where we get the word scanned that we've looked at that word before concerning the weaker and stronger brother. They like to put hindrances in the way of people either through their anti-nominism where they practice their freedoms to such an extent that they cause others to stumble into sin or through their legalism where they add some list of rules and obligations to the simple faith and pride in order to be righteous and right with God. But either way they cause a stumbling that Paul says is contrary to the teaching which you learned, contrary to what these possible thoughts, contrary to Paul, lean, reform, covenantal, biblically sovereign, grace teaching, contrary that these are the people who never like confessions and praise and categorism. They've always got some new theology that's some recycled heresy of all. And they love to preach these things. And they love to cause dissension. Paul tells us why because he tells us a third thing about him. These people have incredibly cute but extremely unstable egos. He says, for such men are slaves, not of our Lord Christ, but of their own aperture. And he doesn't mean that they're blah blah blah. They're given over the carnal living although they usually are according to second Peter and Jude. What he's using there is that they are slaves to their own aptites is really an idiom, a popular statement in Greek, in Greek that really should be translated, their God is their belly. It means that they are hung up with being the center of things. CEV Caranfield who's written a wonderful commentary that's very strong in explaining these Greek idioms says this. To serve one's own belly is used in the sense of serving oneself of being the willing slave of one's own egotism, of that walking according to the flesh and having one's life determined by the flesh, frankly, of being the center of it all. These people don't want to go to a church and be lost in some big group where Jesus Christ gets primed doing an all of the limelight. Oh no, they want their own faction where they are the center of things. So they love to have their own class. They refer to this as their pulpit or their church. They want people to be devoted to them first and foremost of all. They oftentimes come from other churches bringing some of their entourage of disaffected, dissatisfied people. As they've caused the divisions in one place after another, always leaving right before their discipline or excommunicated, they go from one place to another to stir up the church, always taking away people with them. That leads to the fourth thing about them. Paul says they pray upon the naeem, the unsuspecting, the trouble, the weak in conscience and faith, the gullible in the immature. He says this, by their smooth and flattering speech, they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting. The Revised English Bible says they seduce the minds of simple people with their smooth and spacious talk. They like the people that Paul warned Timothy about and second Timothy. He said they enter into homes and captivate weak women, weighed down with various sins, led on by impulses. They were always studying and learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Avoid such men as these. Paul warned the church of deficits about them. He said, be on guard yourselves and for all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd this church of God which you purchased with his own blood. I know that after my departure, savage rules will come in among you and not sparing the flock and from among your own cells, men will rise up speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be on the alert. Paul says they're there in Rome like they're everywhere and he gives us the warning. Let me tell you something that to then give away. They never want to put as the primary trust of their teaching, the seeking and the saving of that which is lost. They never really get down to the primary mission, the gospel of God. They're always off on some secondary or tertiary or some neutral issue that they make an essential of the faith. But when it comes to preaching to the unconverted witnessing to your friends, committing your time and your money in your lives to missionary service, they're not really interested in that. Oh, that's not the important thing they say. They've always got some other reason for which Jesus came to make us worshipers, to make us recapture a culture for Christ, to make us this way or that way. They never seem to get down to the basic thing that Christ came to seek and to save that which was lost. And so I warn you, brethren, that any teacher or preacher whose first priority is anything other than seeking the loss for Christ is a very dangerous person and potentially a divisive teacher. And I tell you what Paul tells you in these verses, turn away from them. In the Greek, give them your back. Give it to them. Don't even give them a hearing. Now he turns around and he says, but I want to greet you in the name of eight men who are true teachers and whose heart is the same of Jesus Christ. And he lists them there in verse 21, Timothy, my fellow worker, greet you. And so delucius, that's the Greek form of Luke. So does Luke and Jason and sociopath are my kinsmen. I tell you who write this letter, greet you in the Lord. Gaia's host to me and to the whole church, greet you. Arastus, the city treasurer, greet you and portus the brother, the grace of all Lord Jesus Christ, to be with you all. Amen. mentions eight men who traveled with him. His son in the faith, Timothy, his right hand man, Lucius who could be Lucius the sireen who was one of the elders at Antioch, but more than likely is just the Roman form of Luke, the physician who traveled with Paul and wrote part of the New Testament. Jason whom Paul stayed with when he was staying at the church that was hosted by Jason in the house in his house in Thessalonica, the sociator, sometimes called sopator elsewhere, who was a delegate from the church of Berea who traveled with Paul to take these missionary offerings back to the church of Rome. There was also Tertzius, the one who says, I wrote this letter, that doesn't mean that this was not a Pauling letter. Tertzius is what we call an amanyuensis or a scribe or a stenographer. In fact, he was probably a man who Paul hired to write things. There were people who couldn't, a lot of people couldn't read and write and didn't have the materials, so you would go down to a amanyuensis to one who was a stenographer and you would dictate the formal letters and documents and he would write them either in wax or on leather parchment or on reed papyrite. And he would put a seal on it so that it was an official letter from the official stenographer Paul sends this letter in that form. He mentions Erastus, who was one of the oikonomus of the city of Corinth, one of the city managers. There's an ancient inscription in Latin that says that this Erastus, which the magistrate in charge of all the public works of the city of Corinth in the time that Paul would have traveled through there. There's Gaia, the host of the church in Corinth, who was Paul's first baptized convert in that city. There was courtous whom we know nothing about, but obviously the church of Rome as we was, someone significant in this ministry ban. Paul says these men are doctor, a stenographer, a city treasure, a local politician, a pastor, and others. These men traveled with me. They have a love for Jesus Christ, a personal faith in this gospel. Their life is given over a passion for this this evangelism, this building up with the churches their life commitment. They have a theology, the same as mine, that we are saved to serve and that's the glory of it all. And he commends them to these men, and he sends greetings from these men to them. He comes finally to his ending. He was great doxology. Paul usually ends his epistles with some great benediction or blessing of the people or some doxological praise to God. And here he chooses a doxology that goes like this. Now to him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and to the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept secret for long ages past, but now is manifested in by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandments 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 the glory forever, amen. Paul says in this final act of praise that this power of the gospel is the power to establish the church. Look what he says. Now to him who is able to establish you according to my gospel. What a tender praise. My gospel. It doesn't mean the Paul invented it. It means that which I've given my life to. My most precious possession is not my wife. I have none. I'm not my children. We know that Paul had. Not my possession or my degree or my career. It is my gospel, this gospel of God. And it has the power not only to convert and to transform but to establish the word. It's a rather technical apostolic term that means to ground the church into a position where they can grow in grace. Paul says this this gospel not only converts people and changes them. It grounds them in God. Peter uses the same verb when he says and after you have suffered for a little while the God of all grace who called you by his eternal glory and Christ will himself perfect you, confirm you strengthen and establish you. The bedrock upon which we stand is Christian. The only hope we have of growing of becoming all of us supposed to be individually and in families and corporately as a church is rooted in this gospel. Something not to be preached just to get people saved but to help them to grow. The gospel is something we never lose sight of. It is the first and it is the permeating truth of all of this karma we call it. This message is preached of the Apollo. Paul describes the how we got it. He says it came by the preaching of Jesus Christ. That's the hallmark of a true preacher. To preach Christ did everything. As Luther said the Bible is nothing more than the swaddling close of Jesus Christ. The preacher's job is to unravel every page and find God in the flesh. That's what Paul said. I did not come to you. He said that the Corinthians was supportive speech, superiority of speech or wisdom for claiming to you these great mysteries of God, for I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I was with you in all this weakness and fear and trembling. If your faith would not rest upon my smooth word but on the power of God, bound in the body of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. He says it's according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept secret for long ages past but now it's been made manifest. These things he says a feeder did later on, things in which angels long to look, I now make open and clear to you. This message that's been from the very beginning but now fully manifested in the apostolic times, that's what this gospel is. It was in the Old Testament. He says it was according to the scriptures of the prophets. They had an inkling of it. The God preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham and Moses and David and the rest, but now he's fully manifested it to you in the Apostle. And this gospel is according to the commandment or the decree of the eternal God and has been made known to all the nations. Notice that the cosmic flow of this truth, this gospel was the decree in God's mind that he would say people not by being good but by his sons good, not by their works but by his grace, not by their efforts but by his power, this dunamis of the Holy Spirit. It was in his brain. He then gave it to the Old Testament prophets who began slowly but surely to plod through it only to make it manifest and clear in Paul and Peter and the rest of the people who knew Jesus Christ and the flesh and saw the kingdom of God fulfilled in him. And he said, here's the bottom line. Leading to the obedience of faith through all the nations. If you think that Paul's whole idea of the gospel is just a lot of people getting saved so they can all go to heaven individually. You're wrong. Paul expects this gospel to subdued, disciple, transform, conquer the nation. And God will not be satisfied till every nation on the face of the earth is inundated, reshaped, controlled, and addicted to Jesus Christ. That's it. It's not just people getting saved. It's whole nations and people so that what is foretold in the book of Revelation, Paul promises here, the veil porn, that there will be people from every kindred nation tongue and tribe and all the kings of the earth will bow down to Jesus Christ. They'll all be under its way. He'll be king again of that which belongs to men. For now the kingdoms of the world have become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ and he will reign forever and ever and ever. What do you say to that? You say what Paul says. If you're Baptist, you say, amen. If you're Paul, you say into the only wise God through Jesus Christ, be glory forever and ever. Amen. To the only wise God who else but our Father in heaven could think of this wonderful plan to condemn his son in order to exonerate us, to kill his little boy to save your children's soul, to sacrifice his own life, to make your life eternal. Who else could satisfy his law? Sue this anger, cover the sins of men and relieve them of guilt and shame, all at the same time and be both the just and the just fire, those who have faith in Jesus Christ. And who else could you do it through except through Jesus Christ? This one John Gerstner rightly says is the hero of it all. This champion of our soul is captain from heaven. This one who takes it upon himself to come into this world and get every single one of the elect of God so that none are missing and none are lost. To subdue these nations and then with all of his people and all of the people brought under the sway of the gospel, turn around and lay them at the feet of his Father when he's conquered, the very last enemy of all, death. Who else could do this? But the one mediator between God and man, the man, the God man, the champion of all Jesus Christ. Into what further goal, what greater good could it be than the glory of God forever? That brethren may be the most difficult thing for you and for me to accept. That this great gospel is not just so we get saved. Now it is that, but there's a higher goal, the glory of God, so that someday in heaven, people beyond our ability to count and more people than we think, more people than we ever imagined, for more different kinds of races and tribes and tongues for more places than we ever knew about, will forever and ever and ever give glory to God, for what he has done through Jesus Christ, that is man's sheep and is it not, to glorify God and to be happy and enjoy him forever through this Jesus Christ, took a 85 sermon to get you. Longer than you at home, I'm sure, but not as long as it could have been. It's been a good journey, but it's only the beginning. It's not the end of the gospel. It's just the beginning. The gospel is growing and the church is conquering more than even we can imagine, and even though it's not doing that in America, in the way we expected to, that's only because we need a great revival and a new reformation, not because there's anything wrong with God and His Son and this great, great hour called salvation by the gospel. I don't know about you, brethren, but I would hope this would be true all of us, that if we had one last thing, I mean, if I gathered your loved ones around you today and I said, you know, you've got one hour and then you're going to stand before God, you've got one hour, say what you want to say to all your friends and loved ones and neighbors and co-workers, everybody who was significant in your life, I would hope that the very last hour you would spend on nothing more than Jesus Christ and His saving work. And I hope that before this squeaky voice and this shriveled up old body retires from its last sermon, I hope that the last thing I get to talk about is the glory of being saved. Today it is fashionable in many circles to say that if a man only is concerned about preaching the gospel, he's not a very profound preacher. What a foolish thing to say because there is nothing more important to your good and God's glory into this whole world than the gospel. And there's nothing that we should, I mean, we can lose sight of everything else, but if we ever lose sight of the fact that we have been glorious redeemed what a treasure we have lost, redeemed how I love to proclaim, redeemed by the blood of the land. We ought to sing that for the rest of our days, we will sing it forever in heaven. I beg you on behalf of Christ, don't ever lose this message that God's glory is reflected in you when you are saved and sanctified deserve the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's sing that in my discrepancy. Let's turn it on him, those to him, number 520.