Sermon Tone Analysis

I Am Not Ashamed of the Gospel

                                                (Romans 1:8-17)

Introduction:

            The title of our lesson this morning is . . .

and this title is taken from the next to last verse we will read this morning, verse 16.

And it does seem to me as if many in the church today are ashamed of the Gospel, aren’t they?

Many of the high profile so-called evangelical leaders are getting shy about proclaiming the whole counsel of God!

Some years ago, in what has since become even more true of the church, John MacArthur wrote a book entitled /Ashamed of the Gospel, When the Church Becomes Like the World/.

In that book, he gave an example of a well-known pastor writing in a Christian magazine.

He wrote right before New Year’s Eve and he was resolving to do better in the coming year.

“That means,” he wrote, “wasting less time listening to long sermons and spending much more time preparing short ones.

People, I’ve discovered, will forgive even poor theology as long as they get out before noon.”

Bad doctrine is tolerable; a long sermon most certainly is not.

Sometimes a long sermon is the result of a preacher’s inflated ego, but whenever our first consideration is that we get out of church before noon, then you can bank on our churches being weak and ineffective in their witness, can’t you?

And you can also bank on most individual Christians being weak and ineffective in their witness too.

As the pulpit goes, the old saying tells us, so goes the church!

And that is a truth some of these pastors who have decided to preach a feel-good Gospel need to take to heart.

Listen, any preacher that has decided to empty the Gospel of its reason for being had better be sure they are right, because if they are not, then I sure wouldn’t want to be them when it comes time to explain themselves to the righteous Judge.

And what is the reason for the Gospel?

Why is the Gospel such good news?

Let me tell you it ain’t good news because God wants to bless us, although He most certainly does, but the Gospel is good news because, for Christ’s sake, God will not pour His wrath out on us for our sin!

And the church had better get back to the basics if it wants revival in America, because revival will never come if all we have are a bunch of self-satisfied, self-centered, unregenerate sinners sitting in our pews.

What the church must have for revival is a bunch of repentant sinners on their knees at the altar!

And guys, we won’t get that by patting folks on the head and telling them they are OK!

That God loves no matter what!

God does love us, guys, but God hates sin!

And we are not going to have revival through church growth programs either.

Revival comes through the prayer and repentance of God’s people.

The Apostle Paul spends the better part of three chapters in this wonderful letter to the Roman churches telling them that they are sinners, that the whole world is lost in its sin.

He doesn’t tell them they all they need to do is think positive thoughts, he tells them they must take an honest look into their soul, realizing the depth of their sin.

Paul didn’t preach a message of self-worth, he preached one of our depravity, and of the matchless worth of Christ.

The good news ain’t good unless we know the bad news first, is it?

And we will spend a couple of weeks on our passage this morning, taking our time, as we attempt to come to grips with, not only the thought of the great Apostle Paul, but really we must come to grips with the deep thought of the Holy Spirit.

God is speaking through Paul in the book of Romans in a profound way.

And among the many things we will see in this passage are Paul’s motivations for ministry, the many different reasons Paul wanted to come to Rome to see these Roman Christians.

I. Paul’s Thanksgiving and Prayer (Rom.

1:8-10)

    1.

Gratitude (1:8)

            (1 One of the very first things we see here is Paul’s thanksgiving for the Roman believers.

Paul lived and breathed gratitude to God for all things, didn’t he? Paul is saying in verse 8, before I go on to other matters, let me tell how grateful I am for you!

That is wonderful enouragement, isn’t it?

We have to always consider the times that the early church found herself in, especially here in the capital city of the mightiest empire the world had ever known up to that time.

Everywhere believers lived, they were a minority, weren’t they?

Often a persecuted minority.

So, for someone of the stature of the Apostle Paul to write and tell these Roman Christians how his heart was filled with thanksgiving because of them would have been a great encouragement.

Look at your Bibles verse 8.

            (2 In all of Paul’s epistles, except for Galatians, he wrote how thankful he was for the churches there.

Paul was so angry over the false teaching that the Galatian churches had embraced that he allowed his anger to seep into the letter he wrote them.

But were these praises he handed out obligatory compliments, or were they sincere, straight from the great Apostle’s heart?

Sometimes we compliment people, or tell them how much of a blessing they are to us, to kind of steer the conversation away from substantive language into pretty meaningless bromides, or cliches.

We don’t really mean what we are saying, right?

But I would say that what Paul is expressing here are sincerely felt emotions that he had for this fimly established Christian presence in the mostly pagan city of Rome.

He was grateful for them.

They blessed him.

(3 And so notice also that Paul wrote that their faith was known throughout the whole world.

Now, does that mean the Chinese had heard of this church at Rome? Or the folks down in Ethiopia?

Well, the Chinese might not have, but the I’m going to say the Ethiopian eunuch that Phillip led to the Lord out there on the desert started a revival when he got home, and so some of the news from other churches got down there, too.

Sometimes we get this false idea that everything that happened in the ancient world happened in isolation from everyone else, that news didn’t travel long distances.

History, of course, tells us just the opposite, doesn’t it?

News in NT times didn’t travel nearly as quickly as it does in our rapid-fire information age, but news did get from one place to another, even traveling for great distances.

This was true for much of the ancient world even before Rome, but was especially true after the Roman armies had enforced the Roman peace, and built the vaunted Roman roads.

People traveled, and when people travel, news travels, right?

You see, NT times occurred right at the height of the Roman Empire.

God placed the Gospel message during a time when news would have the greatest chance of traveling quickly.

And along with the good news of the Gospel, news of the churches was spread about as well.

(4 And so Paul is saying, I believe, that much of the Roman world was abuzz about the faith of the church at Rome.

I wonder if that can be said of the faith of the church in America.

You know, sometimes I feel that I might come down too hard on certain practices of the church in our country; that maybe I’m stepping out of line.

After all, I only have a couple of years of Bible college; I didn’t graduate from seminary; I really only graduated from high school.

But I am not stupid, and I can read.

I read a lot!

And listen, I have read the Bible from, /In the beginning, to even so come, Lord Jesus/, many times in the nine years I have been saved.

I have taught through over half of the NT verse by verse, and some of the OT as well.

I have never gone off on my own when I prepare a Bible study, I systematically consult far more learned men than myself, allowing their insights to inform the insights that I believe the Holy Spirit has given me.

(5 So, what I am trying to get at, even though I fully realize my shortcomings, it is nearly incomprehensible to me how an alleged preacher of the Gospel can stand up in his pulpit time after time and not ever mention the word sin! Listen, nobody wants to talk about sin; I don’t!

I wish sin didn’t exist, I wish we all did the right things all the time!

But we don’t, do we?

I don’t!

You don’t!

No one does!

That is why Jesus came to die, isn’t it?

Hear me now, you cannot, you cannot, preach the Gospel and never mention sin!

You might be preaching something, but it ain’t the Gospel.

The good news, as I said, is not even sensible until we know why we so desperately need it.

You say Jesus died on the cross?

Why?

To make us feel better about ourselves?

To give us a bigger home, a better car, so we can send our kids to the best schools?

So that we might have a relationship with God?

So that we might be more able to meet the needs of others?

So that we might be successful?

All those might be true, but they are not the reasons Jesus came into the world to die, are they?

Guys, Jesus died on the cross of Calvary for God’s glory, and so that we might avoid the /wrath/ of a holy God poured out on us for our SIN!

Look over at 1:18.

You see, if we truly believe that God hates sin, and is truly angry over our sin, then at that point the Gospel becomes very good news, doesn’t it?

Otherwise, you know what?

It is really stupid and meaningless.

And Paul says in verse 8 that he is really thankful to God, through the Lord Jesus Christ, for the steadfast faith of the Roman believers.

2.

Prayer (1:9-10)

            (1 And then he goes on in our next two verses and tells his readers how much he has prayed for them, lifting them up to the Lord.

Look at your Bibles, verses 9-10.