Preached in Markham Baptist Church, May 9, 2004.

Romans 1:8-17

SHARING OUR FAITH:
Part 3 - AROUND THE WORLD

Our God is a missionary God. He is constantly sending His people to share the reality of His presence and love to those who do not know Him. He sent Abraham from his country and family to the great unknown promising to bless him and bless the world through him. God sent Joseph into Egypt, overcoming his brother’s cruelty, in order to preserve a remnant on earth. God sent Moses to an oppressed people in Egypt with the good news of liberation.

God sent a continuous stream of prophets with words of warning and promise.

Then at last when the time had fully come God sent His Son and later, on the day of Pentecost He sent the Spirit.

Our God is a missionary God. And when He comes and when we place our faith in Him He comes and lives in us and brings His missionary spirit with Him. Now the Son sends us as He Himself was sent. Jesus tells His disciples in Matthew 28: “Go” and in John 20:21 He says, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And in Mark’s gospel: “go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.” (Mark 16:16)

But there are times when we dampen that missionary spirit. There are times when we choose to ignore His call to worldwide missions. There are times when we fail to care about the lost in our own community let alone in the wilds of Borneo. We allow other projects, other ideas to take our attention. People say we have to look after our own, that may be true, but as we saw last week, even that is for evangelism.

And so it is with a desire to get the focus right that we have these mission times. It is the desire to get that focus again to pray that the Spirit would awaken us out of our complacency and restore to us a passion for the lost, to deepen that commitment for the lost.

So how is that awakened? How do we gain this passion for the lost? There are many ways, I have suggested some in the past, to realize the eternal destiny of those who live without Christ. That is a motivator. The love of Christ is a great motivator. To allow the Holy Spirit to have the whole of our life is also a way, since the Holy Spirit is a missionary spirit.

These are all good, but I want to add to these this morning, as our text comes to us from Romans 1:8-17 . And here we are able to sit at the feet of a great missionary, Paul, and he teaches us what it means to have a passion for the lost and how to gain that passion.

You see it, don’t you? Paul had a mighty desire for those who did not know Christ. This is what he tells the Roman Christians in verse 13. He longs to come to Rome. Yes, he longs to come to build up the church, yes to be built up and encouraged himself after all their faith is being reported all over the world. But the primary reason he wants to go to Rome is verse 13, that he might reap a harvest. You look at that verb in verse 11 – He says, “I long to see you” That’s the cry of a mother for a child, it’s the cry of a pastor for a lost soul. It’s the cry of an evangelist for a lost world. Paul has a mighty desire for those who do not know Christ as Saviour and Lord and he wants to reap a harvest in Rome.

Now understand that that doesn’t mean he wants to drive a John Deer combine through a field of wheat. No, he’s using picture language to describe his desire to see lives in Rome effected by the good news of Jesus Christ. He wants people to give their lives to Christ. He is looking to harvest lives for Christ.

And it is this thought that carries us into verses 14 through 17. He states in verses 11-13 “I long to see you …. That I might have a harvest among you …” and then in between verses 13 and 14 it’s as if he says, “You know why don’t you ? You do know why I am eager to share the gospel? And he gives two reasons and it is these two reasons that help us gain a passion for the lost.

To gain a passion for the lost, we need to understand that we are obligated to whose without Christ in their lives. Do you know that you are obligated to share your faith? The proper translation is that we are in debt. Did you know we are in debt? And we say yes we are in debt to Christ. We understand that, after all he gave his life for us, we are in his debt for saving us. But that’s not what Paul says here. He says we are in debt to the Greeks and non Greeks, the wise and the foolish. He is in debt to everyone who is without Christ. How can that be?

Think of it for a moment. There are two ways to be in debt. Does anyone have a 20 dollar bill? If I borrow this 20 dollars from Dave, I am in debt to Dave, correct? Correct. But there is another way to be in debt. Let’s say that Dave heard that Bill was in need of 20 dollars. Dave wants to give Bill the money. But Dave has to go away on a trip and can’t get Bill the 20 dollars. I happen to bump into Dave and he tells me his desire to help Bill. I say, “I’ll see Bill on Sunday, give me the 20 dollars and I’ll give it to Bill.”

Now, who do I owe money to? I owe money to Bill. I am in debt now to Bill. I am obligated to Bill.

This is what we must understand. We are debtors, we have been given a treasure, the treasure of the good news of Jesus Christ and we have been given it by Jesus Christ and he has told us plainly to share it with others.

When you received Christ you became a debtor to all who don’t know Christ. We have been entrusted not with a 20 dollar bill, but with all the glorious riches of Jesus Christ and are told, go, share it with all people everywhere (Matthew 28)

Has your passion for the lost been dampened? Has your enthusiasm for world missions softened? Understand that we are under obligation, we are debtors to those without Christ.

My friends we need to take that fact in here (the head) and we need to let it penetrate here. This passion for those without Christ must penetrate our hearts. We witness Paul’s heart passion later in the book of Romans in chapter 9 where he says,

“I speak the truth in Christ I am not lying my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit. I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ, damned and sent to hell, for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel.

But Paul, Paul, these men and women are seeking your death, these are men and women who would stone you and he says, “yes in spite of that I’d go to hell if I knew that by going to hell I knew that they would be saved.” You see that’s the passion that is to consume the people of God.

We are debtors.

That is the passion that is to consume Christ’s church. God forgive us if we have dampened that passion. God forgive us if we have allowed this debt to accumulate. There are many who would never dream of putting the church in financial debt but they still don’t realize the debt we owe to those without Christ.

That is the passion that is to consume us. In his book ablaze for God, Duewel tells of a “Notorious British murderer who was sentenced to die. The morning of his execution the prison chaplain walked beside him to the gallows and routinely read some Bible verses. The prisoner was shocked that the chaplain was so perfunctory, unmoved and uncompassionate in the shadow of the scaffold. He said to the preacher, “Sir if I believed what you and the church say you believe, even if England was covered with glass from coast to coast, … I would walk over it, if need be on my hands and knees and think it worthwhile, just to save one soul from an eternal hell like that.”

The debt of sharing our faith and the good news.

And note that it is for everyone. We are in debt to everyone. That is what the passage says in verse 14 – it is for the Greeks and non-Greeks both to the wise and the foolish” essentially it is for everyone. Paul makes it plain in verse 16 “… the gospel is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. First for the Jew and then for the Gentile.” We forget this sometimes. We think the gospel is only for those who dress like us, act like us, look like us, who like styles and music and fades. No the gospel is for everyone! And we are in debt to everyone who does not know Christ as Saviour and Lord.

So Paul says in verse 15, “That’s why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome.” Why? Because he is a debtor.

Now here is the second way to ignite that desire for the lost. Verse 16. I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.

Paul had a passion to share the message of Jesus Christ because he was convinced of it’s power to save. “I am not ashamed” he says. True there were many who would laugh at the message. The Jew would laugh at Paul as he speaks of the Son of God, the Messiah hanging on a cross. The well educated would mock Paul as he speaks of the cross of Christ as a way to eternal life. “Foolishness” they’d cry, “That death should bring life” And the powerful would turn away in contempt of the gospel message that calls for complete dependence on God and strength being found in weakness. “Impossible,” they’d shout. But Paul would stand his ground and say yes you can talk of all your rituals and laws. Yes you can outline all your philosophies and yes you can march out all the armies at your command But I can tell you that no ritual has brought righteousness. Only faith in Christ. No wisdom has brought a dead sinner alive. And all the power on earth can not change a sinful soul into a new creation. Only Christ can do that. I am not ashamed of the Gospel.

And so many in our day call us fools for believing. Fools for giving our lives to Christ. Are you out of your tree? They say. To believe all that myth and story? And we say, “We are not ashamed of the gospel. Why? Because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.

And we know it’s power we know it’s power to save. As the good news of Jesus Christ is proclaimed we have experienced it. Haven’t you experienced it? It has saved us from the power of sin. It has saved us from the result of sin, it has saved us from purposelessness, it has saved us from hopelessness. The good news is the power of God.

Janet and I heard Charles Colson preach four years ago in Amsterdam and he said, “I was once in the office next to the President of the United States. I had what I thought was all the power in the world. Then along came Watergate, and I found myself in the midst of that terrible scandal. One night I visited a friend at his home. He had been converted at a Billy Graham Crusade in New York when he was one of the leading businessmen in America. That night he witnessed to me about Jesus Christ. And in a flood of tears in my friends’ driveway, I surrendered my life to Christ. Nothing in these 27 years has ever been the same since; nothing can ever be the same gain. I discovered real power. It isn’t the kingdoms of this world, which come and go. Real power is in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which transforms the hardest human heart.”

That’s the power of the gospel.

My friends sometimes we lament our day we think the obstacle for world evangelization is too big. The world is too hardhearted. The governments are too powerful. Persecution is too great. In North America the complacency is too settled an attitude that the we think all is lost, we cannot make a difference with the message we have. Hogwash!

Don’t be ashamed of the Gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation for everyone who believes.

It was in 1902 a young man by the name of Lenin was so enamoured with the ideas and philosophies of Karl Marx that with 17 men he went out to recruit followers and he recruited 40 thousand. And with that 40 thousand he turned a nation of 100 and 60 million to communism. We give thanks that it is finally been revealed for the evil that it is. But he did it. And 2/5’s of the world’s population came under it’s influence and did you know that he did it with nothing more than Satan’s power?