If you have your Bible turned to Romans 15, 7 through 13, we are continuing with our study in the Book of Romans, before we turn to that text, let's go before the throne. Father, we are glad that we belong not only to you but to your family. We look at our heritage, we look at our brothers and sisters around the world, and we are overwhelmed. Father, we are glad for the time to be with your family because that's the one place where people don't laugh at us, that laugh with us, because we understand. Father, as we begin a new week, we know that you have all kinds of things planned for our lives, and from past experience, we're not going to like some of them. But Father, remind us that we're not home yet, remind us that we don't escape a fallen world, remind us that pain is something that was demonstrated by your own son. Father this week, whatever we have to go through, if it's bad, give us patience, give us gentleness, give us perseverance, and Father, when it's good, give us praise and thanksgiving, and enable us to laugh the laughter of the redeemed. Father, where your property you bought and paid for us, and so whatever you desire, whatever pleases you, is okay by us. But Father, don't take your presence from us, and enable us to know that you're there. And enable us, no matter what happens this week, to hear the soft sound of sandal feet. Father, we're not good, but we're yours, and so we ask forgiveness for our sins. We're not together, but we're yours, and we ask that you would meet us at the point of our need. Father, we praise you, and we worship you, and we pray as always for the one who teaches that you would forgive him his sins, for they are many. We would see Jesus and him only, and we pray in Jesus' name, I'm in. All right, this week we're continuing with our study in the book of Romans, and if you have your Bible, you're in a place where you can get a Bible without everybody telling you you're a fanatic. You might want to turn to the 15th chapter of Romans, verses 7 through 13. Now, while you're finding that, let's take a moment to review what we saw last week in our study of Romans. Texts then was Romans 15, 1 through 6. Now, if you were listening, you know that we discussed 5 side observations, the importance of the Bible, verse 4, the importance of unity, all of chapter 14 and 15. We noted Paul's reference to God's methodology of salvation, verse 3. We noted Paul's use of the word neighbor as opposed to the word brother, verse 2, and we noted the nature of God, verse 5, and then we saw how we're responsible for one another, but especially as that is acted out in our response to weakness in the church. We saw the fact of weakness, verse 1, our reaction to weakness, verse 1, our place before weakness, verse 1, the response to our weakness, verse 3, and the result of our dealing with weakness in verse 6. Now, we're ready to turn to Romans 15, 7 through 13, where Paul writes, therefore, with mercy, one another. Just as Christ also received us to the glory of God. Now I say that Jesus Christ has become a servant to the circumcision for the truth of God to confirm the promises made to the fathers, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy as it is written for this reason I will confess you among the Gentiles, and sing to your name. And again He says, rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people, and again praise the Lord, O New Gentiles, Lord Him, O New peoples. And again Isaiah says, there shall be a root of Jesse, and he who shall rise to reign over the Gentiles, and Him the Gentiles shall hope. Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace and believing that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Now this week, most of the time, we're going to talk about beloved outsiders, but before we do that I want to go down, I don't know how many, but a couple of side observations. Side observation number one, note if you will, that believing is a gift of God, Romans 15, 13. Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing. We have a great problem with our concept of believing. Many Christians think that believing is working hard to accept something you know for sure could not be true, so what do you do? You try and you try, and you try, and you try. One of the problems with many unanswered prayers is that we really believe that we didn't believe enough, therefore it is our fault that we didn't have enough faith. To this, that faith and believing is a gift of God. It's not something you can hustle up. You hear about a little boy who suddenly turns spiritual, went to his room to pray, and his father came to the room and said, son, I'm impressed with you're coming here to pray. What are you praying about? And the boy said, I had a test today, and I'm praying that Sacramento is the capital of Texas, because that's what I put on my paper, and that kind of prayer probably isn't going to work, no matter how hard you believe. Besides that belief is a gift of God, so when you pray for something, ask for two things, first pray for the specific concern, and secondly pray for faith, both come from God. That is far more gracious than most of us think. We believe that everything depends on us, and the truth is that nothing depends on us. Do you hear about the small child who was offered a reward from a large man for a chore of the child who had done it? You may have a handful, the man said, as he placed a box of cherries before the little boy. The man sensing the shyness of the little boy picked up a handful and said here, and then the child extended his two hands and received two hands full of cherries. You say, what's the point? When you need something from the father, don't grasp it. Ask him to give it to you, because the father's hand can give more than the child's hand can receive. So go to him, tell him what you need, and then say, Father, I don't believe I'm going to get this much, and I know that I need to have faith, and I don't know how to turn it on and off like a faucet. So I ask for the gift of faith to, how do you believe you ask God to give you the gift of believing? Then, side observation number two, note if you will, that believing a gift from God is the soil in which joy, peace, and hope, and power grow. Romans 15 13, now may the God of hope, till you with all joy and peace and believing that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, not only is believing in faith a gift from God, I want you to know that in the believing one will find joy and peace and hope and power. So one doesn't ask God to give the gift of believing her faith just to get stuff. One asks for faith so that one might have joy, peace, hope, and power to live. Why is that? Because believing and faith mean leaning on God. Jackie Gleason used to tell a story of a man who wrote his little blue blight bicycle through a customs checkpoint every day, at the same time he wrote up, every time his bicycle basket held three jars, one filled with sand, one filled with water, and one filled with nuts and bolts, and the custom agents were suspicious that this man was smuggling something, and so they kept looking at the jars. But the sand was just sand, and the water was just water, and the nuts and bolts were just nuts and bolts. Sometimes they would frisk the man, and on a few occasions they even took the bicycle apart. No contraband was ever found, yet since this man came through their checkpoint every single day and no one ever saw him riding back, they just knew he had been smuggling something. Several years later, one of the customs agents stopped the man on the little blue bicycle and said, today is my last day, and I'm going to retire. I have no desire to catch you or send you to jail or charge you with anything, but for the sake of my peace of mind, could you please, for heaven's sake, tell me what you've been smuggling all these years, the man replied, I've been smuggling little blue bicycles, what's the point? Sometimes we miss the obvious, let me give you a principle, almost always, when we like peace, joy, power, and hope we attribute the lack to everything but the real reason. We say it's my wife. If my wife were different, I'd be different. It's my job. If I had a better job, I'd be happier, it's what I ate, it makes me miserable. It's my background. From a dysfunctional family, it's my husband, he's a monster, listen, almost always, those aren't the real reasons. And when we get those things fixed, we find to our surprise that the problems are still there. We're still miserable, we're still hopeless, we're still without power, and we're still anxiety written. Listen, look at the obvious, go to him and lean on him, at that point he will give you the belief and the faith, the gift of leaning on him, and out of that you will find the gifts you want. So Jesus meant, when he said, seek first, the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all the rest will be yours. Listen, every bit of growth I've experienced in the Christian life has come when I eliminated everything but Jesus. Now I'm not against theology books, or books on religion, or sermons, or church, or things like that. But see, I was depending on those things, and so I got on my knees and said, Jesus, you are all I've got, and you're all I'm going to seek, you give me the belief that I need to lean on you, and at that point something good began to happen. Every failure in my Christian life came when I added other things to my growth in Christ, except Jesus. Do you hear about the young woman who was out in her carriage when the horse ran away with the carriage, and the hero came out of the mountains, rolled to the carriage and rescued the maid, and she said, I trusted God until the reins broke. Oh, you didn't trust God, she trusted the reins. And that's true with us too. Perhaps God is taking away your security structure now, that's bad, no, that's good, because when that happens, you will go to the throne knowing that you had no other place to go, and when you do that, he'll give you the gift of trust, and out of the trust you will discover the only source of joy, peace, power, and hope. Let me give you a couple of more side observations before we get to the main thrust. What if you will, and this is the third side observation, the way Paul bases much of what he says on the Old Testament? Romans 159 is from Psalm 1849 and 2 Samuel 2250. Romans 1510 is Deuteronomy 3243. Romans 1511 is Psalm 111. Romans 1512 is Isaiah 111 and verse 10. You say, man, you're so smart. No, I looked it up and it's written down here. If you only have a New Testament, and you call that the Bible, you only have half the book. Richard Brad, the Old Testament professor of Reform Seminary, where I teach, did a chapel a while ago, and he used a New Testament text, and when he announced his text, he said, open your Bibles to the supplement, the New Testament. Now, he was joking, and the joke was the overstatement. However, it's important to note that Jesus Bible and Paul's Bible and Peter's Bible was the Old Testament. Did I tell you about the time that I lost a novel? I was in the airport in Miami, and they announced the plane was going to be delayed by an hour, and everybody was upset except me, because I'm spiritual, and you're to praise God in all things. Besides, I had a very good novel. Then they came after an hour and said it's going to be delayed another hour, and then the other people were really upset, but I wasn't, because I'm spiritual, and I know that the Bible says that you're to rejoice in the Lord always besides. I had a good novel, and then finally, after three hours and three announcements, we got on the plane and got to Dallas, and then they announced in Dallas that they had a change of point. We're trying to get into Denver and it was snowing, and I was spiritual and kind and stuff like that, but there's also limit. The little clerk behind the counter who runs the airline, what I thought, and they finally got me on the plane, and then that's when I sat down and realized that I had lost that novel. I'd left it in the airport in Dallas. I want you to know that I'll give you the double price if you find it. It's a book. It has a picture of a man looking over a page, and this man woke up in the morning, looked into a mirror, and found out he wasn't him. In other words, the same body was there, but he was somebody else. It was a different person he was seeing in the mirror. Now, I have no idea how that ended. It drives me crazy. And I'd love to find that novel someplace. If you find it, you let me know, and I can promise you on the authority of myself as a spiritual deep Bible teacher that God will give you three free sins. At any rate, that's the way some of us are about the Bible. We only have a half of it. We don't have the plot development. We don't have the characters. We don't understand if we only have a new testament. Did you know that there's nothing in the new testament that doesn't find clear teaching in its base in the older testament? Paul says that when you came to Christ, you didn't just become a part of something that was new. You became a part of something that started with Abraham. When God said, you will be my people, and I will be your God. Paul says in Ephesians that the dividing wall was destroyed. Peter said, you were once no people, and now your God's people read the book. But make sure that it's the whole book. Now, I haven't made the decision absolutely, but I think when we finish the study of Romans, we're going to study the book of Isaiah. He's a very old and dear friend of mine. I got a letter from a listener recently who asked why we never studied the older testament. Well, we're going to, I think, after we've finished Romans in about what, 30 weeks? No, it's about six, seven, eight weeks. No, I'm not going to teach a revelation. Are you crazy? Last time I did that, I spent most of my time answering letters from people who were sure I'd become a heretic, and were angry. In fact, for those of you who have been with us a long time, you will remember that my Kellogg and I spent two programs just answering questions about eschatology. In fact, right now, I'll tell you what the book of Revelation says, it says Jesus wins. In the end, Jesus wins. Now, I don't have to teach it. So I think I'm going to teach Isaiah. But anyway, the point I'm making after going down that rabbit trail is this, the Old Testament is God's book, and you ought to be familiar with it. The same guy who talked about love in John 3.16 talks about love in Hosea 11. Same guy who talks about the future in Revelation talks about the future in Daniel. I think that I'll scream the next time somebody says something silly like the Old Testament teaches about a God of wrath. While the New Testament teaches about a God of love, Baldur Dash, nonsense, that's drivel. Some of the deepest and most wonderful teaching on God's love comes from the Old Testament. And the greatest example of God's wrath ever given is found in the New Testament, where God boards out all of His wrath on a totally innocent man Jesus. Enough. Make sure that you read the whole book. Let me give you another side observation. Note if you will, the confirmation of the promises of God, Romans 58. Now I say that Jesus Christ has become a servant to the circumcision for the truth of God to confirm the promises made to the fathers. Let me read you a great passage. It's from Joshua 24, 29, through 33. Listen to this. Now you're not going to find it for I read it unless you're a Baptist. If you're a Presbyterian, it's in the Older Testament. Now I've came to pass after these things that Joshua the Son of Man, the servant of the Lord died, being 110 years old, and they buried him within the border of his inheritance at Timnath, Sarah, which is in the mountains of Ephraim, on the north side of Mount Gash. Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had known all the works of the Lord which he had done for Israel. The bones here comes of Joseph, which the children of Israel had brought up out of Egypt, they buried a checkum, and the plot of ground which Jacob had brought from the sons of Hamor, the father of Jacob for one hundred pieces of silver, and which had become an inheritance of the children of Joseph. Now notice, if you will, that the burial of Joseph in the Promised Land was a memorial to the faithfulness of God, and there is no more fitting memorial, God always fulfills his promises. He's always faithful. Now in the case of Joseph, God was 350 years slow, but he was on time. Peter put it this way. Peter 3, 8 through 9, but do not ignore this one thing, beloved. With the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is one day. Lord is not slow about his promises, some count slowness, but is for bearing toward you not wishing that any should perish. God may seem slow, but he's always on time, one more time. God may seem slow, but he's always on time. Romans 158 Paul says that God confirmed the promises made to Israel, and he confirmed those promises. In Jesus Christ you can trust God to honor every promise he's ever made. In the Joshua Pass, Joseph bones were buried in the promise. It was a promise made 350 years before. Can you imagine carrying around a pile of bones for 350 years? I'd like to have been there for that burial service. Tears screamed down the faces of those who were in attendance. God had stamped on his promise full-foo. Hebrews 11, 13, and 16, these all died in faith. Not having received what was promised, therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He had prepared for them a city. They could put on the grave stone, Joseph, the man to whom God was faithful, fulfilling the promise made 350 years before his burial. Do you know one of my favorite pastimes? This will give you an idea of how exciting my life is. I'd like to walk through great yards and read tombstones. Let me give you some actual tombstones that I've either read or read about. In Lee, Massachusetts, Miss Out of White weighed 309 pounds. Open wide, do you heavenly gait that lead to the heavenly shore? Our father suffered in passing through the mother wastes a lot more. Then Thomas Mulvaney, 1724, 1795, Middlefield, Massachusetts, old Thomas Mulvaney lies here, his mouth ran from here to here, read or tread lightly on this wonder, for if he yons, you're gone to thunder. Then Richard Lawton buried in Plymouth, Massachusetts, here lies the bones of Richard Lawton, whose death alas was strangely brought on. Trying his corn's one day to mow off his razor-slip and cut his toe off, his toe are rather what it grew to, and inflammation quickly flew to, which too alas to mortifying, and was the cause of Richard's dying. And in Betsy Fitzhugh, 1776 to 1831, this is in Brookville, Connecticut, my wife lies here, and I'm glad of it. And then one more in Sargentville, Maine, in memory of a Lysha Philbrook and his wife Sayra, beneath these stones do lie, back to back my wife, and I. When the last trumpet, the airs, you know, Phil, and she gets up, I'll just lie still. Enough, the point is that on the tombstone of Joseph, they would have one thing paid in full. Genesis 12.7 God promised to give Canaan to Abraham's seed, Peyton Fool. Genesis 13.16 God promised that despite her years, Sayra would make Abraham's seed prolific, Peyton Fool. Exodus 6.56 God promised to be eternally present with Israel, Peyton Fool. Exodus 6.1 God promised to destroy the oppressor, Peyton Fool. In his 1237 God promised to preserve the nation of Israel wherever they went, to this day Peyton Fool. And Isaiah, God promised to Messiah, and gave the details of the coming Messiah, paid in full. Listen, someday the same thing will be said about you and the promises of God. The promises he has given, there will be a stamp, and it will say, paid in full. I know. I know. Sometimes right now that doesn't seem like it's going to be possible. All the things you thought were going to happen, I've broken those promises seen, but God is faithful. And just because he doesn't balance the books every Friday, it doesn't mean he doesn't balance his books. He always does. Just remember, these all died in faith not having received what was promised, therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. Now, let me introduce what we're going to be talking about the rest of the week. Now turn to the main thrust of the text. The text deals with Gentiles, and their presence in the church at room. There was a mix between Jews of the diaspora and the Gentiles who were coming and rose to the throne of grace. That by the way was a hard thing for Jews to accept. Why is that? Well, first, because Gentiles had always been the Eden. The Orthodox Jewish man, thank God every morning, that he had not been born a woman or a Gentile. And secondly, the Jews were having trouble with Gentiles because the Jews considered themselves God's only alike people. God in the desert called this group of nobodies and said, I will be your God and you will be my people. In other words, it was sort of like the older brother or sister who gets a sibling in the family. But God, I thought you, I thought I was yours. I didn't know they were yours too. You see, they had the exclusive, they thought, attention of the Father. And now they were finding out that there were others, God loved to, Jesus said, I have a bunch of others, sheep, that are not in this school. Then thirdly, the Jews had trouble with Gentiles because Israel had been God's repository of truth for 1500 years. And now there were others who knew the truth too, so small, small speaks about those who had been strangers. Now he says, they are in your family and you've got to receive them. Peter was making the same point, but from another end of the situation, he was saying this, speaking to Gentiles, who were coming into the covenant of God. And this is what he said. It's first Peter 2.9 through 10. But you are chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people. That you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, who once were not a people, but are now the people of God who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy. Israel makes the same point in Ephesians. Listen to what he says, Ephesians 2.11 through 16, therefore remember that you once Gentiles in the flesh, who were called uncircumcision, that's not Jewish, by what is called the circumcision, by Jews, made in the flesh by hands, that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenant of promise, having no hope and without God in the world, but now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off, have been brought near by the blood of Christ. Now this week I want to translate, extrapolate, if you will, the us, Israel and Romans, the Jews, to the Christian church, and the them, the Gentiles, and this text of those outside the church. And by so doing, I want to draw some principles that will help us think biblically about those who are at this time outside the body of Christ, outside the church, outside the truth, what about them, what about the outsiders? You know we're here for them, that's what the whole thing is all about. We hear from them, and I move the previous question, what about them? Well, first, as we think about them, note if you will, the importance of illustration, Romans 15, 7 through 8B, therefore, receive one another, and here comes just as Christ. Also, receive us to the glory of God, now I say that Jesus Christ has become a servant. I have a friend who went to a department store to fill out a credit application, my friends had an attorney, and he said that the forms were quite complicated and he had trouble with them. There was a clerk who asked the questions, and she was moving through the forms at breakneck speed. He watched her and thought, she couldn't be much out of high school, and she's doing this so fast. I'm an attorney, and I would have problems with those forms. Then he noticed she was looking at a sample on the wall, and he said, Steve, I learned an important lesson from that, and illustration is far better than instruction. That's true. God knew that, and that's why he sent Jesus to outsiders like you. God knew that, that's why he sent Jesus to outsiders like me, and then God says, weird to treat those who are now outsiders, the way Jesus treated us when we were outsiders. You know what I hate? I hate being at dinner without my wife Anna. I don't know which work to use, to be honest with you, which side to pass the food are. Whether I dip my fingers into the finger bowl or drink from it, and as there I watch her, whatever she does, I just do it, and I know it will be proper, because everything Anna does is proper. One I know how to treat strangers, look at how God treated you when you were a stranger, and then what you do will be proper. One I know how to react to outsiders and pagans, look at Jesus and how he reacted to you when you were an outsider. One I know the proper care and feeding of unbelievers, look at how Jesus did it with us. The truth is that Jesus demonstrated what we are to live. When we treat pagans as if they were ugly and their mother dressed them funny, we're doing it wrong because Jesus simply wouldn't do that. He was a friend of centers of prostitutes and thieves and tax collectors. You know what? Droving up the wall? The religious folks who didn't realize that they were there for the outsiders. How do you react to people who run abortion clinics? Now I'm meddling to atheists, to cult members. Burn a cultist for Christ? That isn't the way. Go stand on Calvary and remember. If you forget sometimes, go do it again. Remember where you were when he found you and where you would be if he had treated you the way you treat them. And I want you to know, when I say that, I'm not just preaching at you, I'm saying I've got to remember where I would be if he had treated me the way I deserved and the way I treated other people. Then secondly, as we think about them, note not only the importance of illustration, note also the surprise of hospitality, Romans 157, therefore receive one another, just as Christ also received us to the glory of God. You know the best witness you can ever give to someone, give them the four spiritual laws, that's good, but it's not best. The best witness you can ever give to a pagan is to invite a pagan to dinner. Have a bring a pagan evening or something like that. Our homes are evangelistic power stations, a lot more than our churches. We need to practice vacuum evangelism. My friend Fred Smith taught me the principle. He refers to Pascal's statement that there's a God-shaped vacuum hole in the heart of everyone and nothing fits in that hole except God. Fred suggests that if there is a vacuum, all we have to do is to get next to their vacuum and it will suck in our reality, assuming that we're real. Now, if you're going to be religious, don't bother, that'll turn them off. If you're going to use Christian theological words, don't even bother, man your food isn't that good. I mean, if you're going to look down your air and get nose with your peacock feathers flying in the breeze and say, I'm going to tell you how you can know God and be pure the way I am. Don't bother. But if you're real, you get next to a pagan and that vacuum will draw in your reality. You ever think how hard it is to be a pagan? You have to be careful about what you read. You might have to think. You've got to be careful about the movies you see. You have to be careful about funerals. You can't ever look at the corpse. I'm going to need to look at the corpse. You're going to start thinking about something really bad, but mostly you have to stay away from real Christians. Nah, the funny ones are okay. If you're a pagan, you want to stay that way. Get next to some phony ones and you can stay a pagan. They're just religious. They'll say nice things and be nice and smile all the time, but if you're a pagan and you want to stay that way, don't get next to a real thing. You won't be able to handle that. Same with Shoemaker used to say that it was possible to get the dead germs of Christianity and then become immune to the real thing. That's true. So make sure that pagans see the real thing. Be vulnerable around pagans. Don't show too much. Be human. Don't hide your failures and then invite them to dinner and see how Christians live their lives. You say, man, Steve, I don't know if I'm going to do that. Well, what if I should slip? I don't want pagans to say that. I can fake it outside the home, but not there. Listen, don't fake it anymore. You don't witness to your goodness or your intellectualism. You just point people to Jesus. If you witness to your goodness and your intellectualism, pagans are going to think that the Christian faith is only for good people and knowledgeable people and you will have lied about the most important reality of your life. I have started a Bible study for couples recently here in Orlando. I loved it. You know why? This is what they said. Let's meet together and be honest with them on another. Let's care about one another. Let's learn about loving one another and then let's invite unbelievers so they can get warm by our fire. Isn't that good? That's what we do. We allow unbelievers to get warm with our fire. Be with them. Give them your hospitality. You don't have to say much. They're already cold. Just let them get warm. They will like it. And it will make it different. How many pagans do you know? Do they think you're very spiritual? Well, if they do, they missed it. As some of you know, I'm working on a book on prayer. I've written some of the introduction. Let me give you a preview. This is from the introduction. Unbelievers don't pray because they're afraid that God might be there. Believers don't pray because they're afraid that He might not be. I've been in both places and understand. I don't claim any special revelation. Mary hasn't spoken to me. I'm not particularly religious good or spiritual and I'm not a mystic. You're probably wondering why then. I would be writing a book on prayer. It's simple. I've checked. And I've got to tell someone what I've found. The most important thing I found was that prayer is not just for experts, it's for people like you and me. It's for people who mess it up, who have doubts and who wonder. It's for those who cry out in the pain and who search for a resource that will get them through it. It's for the powerless, the weak and the lonely. It's for those who are pretending that they have it together and are afraid that others will discover the lie. It's for people who wince when they see the bumper sticker that says life is hard and then you die. Prayer is for people who sometimes feel like eagles and chicken-coops and who dream about flying. It's for those who in the hazy time between waking and sleeping think that there has got to be more to life than getting up the next morning to make enough money to pay the mortgage. On a house so they'll have a place to sleep to get up in the morning to make enough to pay the mortgage. For those of you who don't believe, wouldn't it be nice if there was a God who liked you, who cared about you, and who was interested in you and your dreams? I know, I know you don't believe that, but wouldn't it be nice? For those of you who do believe, wouldn't it be great to lean on God without being afraid that you would fall on your face as you passed through the air you thought was God? I know, I know. You of course would never have that fear, but wouldn't it be nice to trust in if you did? What's the point? Christian hospitality is simply building a fire. It's letting outsiders get worn by that fire. It's not being phony, it's being real about who you are and the problems that you have, and even the times when you fail, and then not pointing to your goodness and your knowledge and your ability but pointing to Jesus and saying, I know a rabbi. A strange rabbi, and he will go to him, he will love you the way he loved me. Thirdly, as we think about them, note not only the importance of illustration and the surprise of hospitality, note also the powered servant who had Romans 15-8. Now I say that Jesus Christ has become a servant to the circumcision that gives for the truth of God to confirm the promises made to the Father. I told you about Will Campbell. He was working with the National Council of Churches during the Civil Rights Movement. When he got in the South and he was a southern boy, he said, you know, I'm coming on very elite. I can't do this. He's the ginger of my people. So he resigned. And he became an agent of reconciliation between blacks and whites, between African Americans and honkies, and there's something I guess about the suffering that African Americans have gone through, that they can sense reality when they see it, and Will Campbell certainly had that. So they accepted him, and they said, well, what are you going to do with those white people? They're never going to understand. You think you're going to go to the Ku Klux Klan? You think you're going to go to the white citizen council? Then I'm going to listen to you. They're going to hang you. And this is what Will Campbell said, and it's profound. He said, I'm going over there and empty the bedbans of their sick. In other words, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go over there and I'm going to be a servant. You know guys, can we talk? We got a quit being so arrogant about what we have been given by grace. We got quit being so stick our nose in the air kind of stuff. Listen, we got to become servants to pagans. We got to be the ones that help with the AIDS patients, the ones who care, the ones who love, the ones who stand up for those that have been given injustice. We need to be servants and then they'll listen. Fourthly, as we think about them, note not only the importance of illustration, the surprise of hospitality, the power of servanthood, note also the deprivation of hope. Romans 15-12, and again Isaiah says, there shall be a root out of Jesse. And he who shall rise to reign over the Gentiles, in him the Gentile shall hope. Now continuing with our extrapolation from this text, we have a lot of myths about those outside the Christian faith. For instance, we believe that they are thoughtful, and if we present the gospel to them, they'll eat our lunch. Not true, baloney. We believe that they are bad people, and we don't want to be with bad people, not true. I mean, they're bad, but you are too. We made a horrible mistake with young people going off to college. We said that pagan professors were monsters, and we warned our kids about them, and when they met them, they found out they weren't monsters. And the kids figured if we were wrong about the way they were, we could be wrong about what they taught do. We said that they were bad people doing bad things, and we lied to our kids, and we hurt them by so doing. We should have told our young people, listen, there are some nice people saying some really stupid things. Let me tell you about the stupid things, so you won't be confused by their niceness. I remember one time, I was on a shock talk radio program in Miami. Guy there, he was an atheist, and he didn't like Christians, and so on, and I thought I'd go on, and I was out for bear, and then I met him. You know someone I saw about him? I found out he was gay, and that he was frightened the way I'm frightened, and that he wasn't good looking, and he better than I was good looking, that he was insecure the way I'm secure. In short, he was just like me when I found out I didn't like this like him as much as I did before. Listen, unbelievers don't have any hope, and they know it. And believe me, it bothers him. Try to remember that the next time you talk to a pagan. We do know service to unbelievers when we demonize them. We're doing too much of that of late. We write books talking about how horrible they are, and we preach sermons on it. I think before anybody ever writes a book critical of other Christians are pagans, they ought to spend the first three chapters confessing their own sins. For instance, we demonize the present of the United States, and I'm a Republican, so conservative that I think the Christian right is too liberal. But if I should say anything positive about President Clinton, I'd get letters you wouldn't believe. You gotta stop that. The unbeliever you fear is just like you, he or she is without hope, he or she knows it, and it bothers them so speak to the hope. I told you maybe a number of times about Michael Green who was a pastor at one time at St. Old Dates in Oxford. We invite, we visited, I love Oxford, I could live in Oxford, England. He invited the theological faculty at Oxford for a wine and cheese tasting party at the church. They do things different over there. And one of the professors at the theological college got a little tipsy and leaning over to Michael said, you know, I don't believe any of this stuff, Michael Lindoverne said, but don't you wish it were true, and he said the tears welled up in her eyes. Look, your pagan neighbors looking for some hope, you've got it, and you can get it unless you make them into monsters who are different than you are. So in Christ, the Gentiles hope, in Christ, there can be hope for those who are on the outside. And finally, as we think about them, beloved outsiders, note not only the importance of illustrations, the surprise, the hospitality, the power of servanthood, the deprivation of hope, note the purpose of praise, Romans 157, therefore receive one another. Just as Christ also received us, here it comes to the glory of God, Romans 159-11, and that the Gentiles might glorify God in His mercy, as it is written for this reason I will confess you among the Gentiles in seem to your name, and again, He says, rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people, and again praise the Lord, O you Gentiles, laud Him, O you peoples. Listen guys, the reason we're here for them isn't so we can get another scalp on our belt. Another pagan falling in battle, and the reason we reach out to them is so we can increase those singing God's praise. That's why we're here for them, that God might be praised, full of war in the former governor of Florida, got quite popular as an after dinner speaker once he was no longer the governor. And a woman from a lady's group came to him once and said, Governor Warren, we would love to have you speak for our organization, but we're a small group and we don't have much money. You must have a high minimum of people in order to speak, and he replied, Madam, I'm willing to come for a maximum of two, and I'm willing to be one of them. Well, I sort of feel like that, but can we talk, I'd rather do it with more than that. In fact, the more people the better I feel at the risk of being presumptuous, I believe God feels that way too. I know. I know if you as a Christian were the only person on the face of the earth, Jesus still would have come and died for you, but I also believe that the more people, the better God feels about it. I spend a considerable portion of my prayer time in praise. That's the rule, acts, adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication, but let me tell you something. I love praising God with other people. You know why? Because the Bible says that God inhabits the praises of His people. That's why when a church is into worship and praise, the usher could count one more because God is there. You know what I'm looking forward to? I'm looking forward to being in the choir in heaven, Revelation 7.9. After these things I looked and behold a great multitude, which no one could number of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. Now sportsman's that's going to be some kind of choir. We're here for them, in other words, we're here to increase the choir. You think about that? I'm in.