We're up to Romans 14 and we're almost in fact through Romans 14, so I want to bring that to a conclusion. There's a big unit of thought that started in 14 verse 1 and it really spills over all the way to chapter 15 and verse 13. We have these chapter breaks, but the fact that Paul spends such a great amount of time on this issue is telling that it's very important. It was important in the first century. and it has a lot of application now. So we've been focusing on what we might call non-essential items, not non-essential doctrinal items, but non-essentials where the Bible hasn't said thou shalt not or thou shalt, and yet they become an object of division. And it is because of weak or what we would use the word maybe immature Christians, Paul uses the word weak in the faith, who believe that you either must or must not keep a certain holiday. That would be Christmas. That would be the Sabbath. You must or must not drink liquor. You must or must not eat certain foods like lobster and shrimp and all these things that, at least under Jewish dietary restrictions in the Old Testament, you couldn't eat some of these things. Or perhaps it might have been meat that had been sacrificed to an idol. But people had these kinds of views. And what Paul would tell us in Romans 14 is that a mature Christian understands they have liberty to eat these foods, the wine, and keep or not keep the holiday. You're at liberty to keep Hanukkah. You're at liberty to keep Christmas. You don't have to. The very fact that we have, you know, large groups of people who will come and knock on your door on Saturday morning and tell you you can't celebrate Christmas. Romans 14 says they're wrong. I mean, it's just that simple. But their reasons are different. Some people have a sincere belief that you can't do these things, and it's a conviction, and so it's not enough to know that you have liberty. You have to say, well, how do we interact with those who are spiritually immature, as Paul calls them out, who think that you can't eat certain things, keep certain days, or drink certain things, and how do you interact with them? So you beat them down with the Word of God and try to show them they're wrong, and Paul's pretty emphatic. The answer is no. And so we spend a lot of time on chapter 14, getting up through verse 19, which is where I'll start just to read it for context, but Paul is not going to tell us to beat people down who are Christians who have a sincere conviction that you cannot eat meat or cannot eat bacon or cannot celebrate Christmas. You've just got to beat them down with this and destroy them. He says God's doing a work in their life and you better not interfere with it. And you, mature believer, while you have liberty in Christ, your liberty on these non-essential issues does not surpass your obligation to love the brother that's weak in the faith. That's the key. It does not surpass the obligation to love that brother. And we have a mindset, just in this country as a whole, of vindicating our rights at all costs. If it means bringing a lawsuit, you bring a lawsuit. I've had plenty of Christians want to bring lawsuits, and I've seen it. The very idea of having a right and not exercising it in deference to the spiritual well-being of another believer is foreign to our flesh, it is foreign to our culture, but it's right there in the heart of God's word. So we'll see that. So verse 19 says, let us therefore, it's kind of a beginning of a conclusion, chapter 14 verse 19, let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace things wherewith one may edify one another. If you're going to fight about this with a One who Paul's called weak in the faith. You're not going to make peace And in fact, you're not going to edify them and that's part of the problem, right? It will take time Especially, you know someone comes up in a culture that tells you you can't eat certain foods and they've been told that from the time of being a small child and and now they've got liberty in Christ to eat those foods and Is it really worth your fighting over it with them? You're not going to edify them by that. You're not fighting with them about what the word of God says. You're fighting about a cultural thing. And we shouldn't be ignorant that we have our own cultural things that are problems for us, our own blind spots. So he says, you know, you have to follow after the things which make for peace and things wherewith one may edify one another. And then he says in verse 20, this we didn't cover last time, And it's stated in a somewhat awkward way, but it makes perfect sense. He says, for meat, that is, you, mature believer who understands that you can eat meat, it doesn't matter where it got purchased from or whether the animal got sacrificed and all that stuff. You know it's just a piece of meat. You know you can eat it. But for the purpose of that meat or whatever other food it may be, for the purpose of that lobster tail, he says, for that purpose, destroy not. the work of God. Don't elevate your liberty to eat whatever you want above the work of God in the life of another person who's not there yet in their conviction about the expression of this liberty they have when it comes to this matter of a non-essential item. Food is not important enough to distort the work of God in their life. And that's the key here. All things are pure. Now what God told Peter, we've looked at that from Acts 10, we have the picture on the wall from Etiakoson. God says, don't look at anything I've made and tell me it's unclean. Right? God said that. Now Paul's saying the same thing here. But it is evil for the man that eats with offense. If you have a conviction that you cannot eat that food, that it would be a sin before God. We're not talking about a preference for diet or losing weight. or any sort of just preference, but you believe it's a sin before God to eat that food or a sin before God to celebrate that holiday or to not celebrate it, then it is for you. If you believe you're violating God's standard and you do it, it is an offense to God. Isn't that what he says? But it's evil for that man who eateth with offense. It's good neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine. This is the first time he specifically mentions wine, but he talked generally about drink earlier. That was the issue that someone might have a problem with you drinking wine for a host of reasons. But he says it's good neither to eat whatever meat it is that's causing the offense or to drink the wine. And I will say here, because it just needs to be said because of all the baggage that gets associated with this word. The word means wine, period. And so, and I only hear this from people, generally speaking, who believe that King James is a perfect translation until they get to the word wine. Then they'll caveat it and say, that's grape juice. It doesn't say grape juice, but you certainly can't have it both ways. If you think it's a perfect translation, it has to say grape juice to support your theology, except it doesn't. Paul uses a common expression, that no one in his audience had any doubt what he meant. And he's telling you, you have liberty to do this, to eat, to drink, but you shouldn't, he says, if it's going to cause your brother to stumble. He says, it's good not to eat the flesh or to drink the wine, nor anything, that could be some other that he hasn't listed. It takes us beyond just food and drink and a holiday, but a non-essential item where you've got liberty. God hasn't said you can't do it. It's a non-essential item though. We're not talking a doctrinal thing and he says it's good to refrain from that if it's going to cause your brother to stumble or is offended. It's going to be an offense to that person or is made weak. That's spiritually weak. It's a weakness in their faith. God's doing a work in their life, and we don't become mature overnight. Some people never become mature. God's moving us through this process. I don't want to push someone back. This is the kind of thing that can just consume a person, especially one who's young in the faith. It's the kind of thing that'll send them away from a church over something that's a non-essential. And he said, it's good not to do those things. It's good to give up your rights. because of your love for the brethren should exceed it." This idea of stumbling doesn't mean necessarily you've made them sin. It's just what it sounds like. The word is a word used in the Gospels with regard to the temptation of Christ. Like in Matthew 4, you know, if you dash your foot against a stone, you know, God will make sure that you don't even dash your foot against a stone. It's that word. But the idea is in their spiritual walk, they would stumble, they would stagnate. I've had this passage preached, you know, and heard it even in private lectures where people have explained to me why you can't eat certain things and drink certain things. And they go to Romans 14 and say you're causing them to sin. You're affecting their walk. You're not necessarily making them sin. They think you're the one sinning because you ate a lobster tail. But we shouldn't do that. Let's not mess up people's walk over something as trivial as a food. So these things where your brother stumbles, they take great offense, or they're made weak, you're sort of pushing them back on their faith. Don't do that. It's good neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine or anything where they stumble or is offended or is made weak. Hast thou faith? Now he asks the question, do you have faith? This isn't faith in the gospel. as such, he's not questioning whether they're believers. Faith always has content. Do you believe God? The general Christian faith is believing what God has said, not just in the gospel message, but in the whole of the Bible. Do you believe God? Have you faith? Have it to yourself before God. Now, the faith here is specifically faith that you have liberty in Christ to eat lobster tails, celebrate Christmas and Easter, I say this and it's almost absurd to me, but I'm telling you, I've had Christians tell me we can't celebrate Easter. Highly offended. You know why? They said there's no example of celebrating Easter in the New Testament. I take issue with that. I think the early church celebrated Easter 52 times a year. You understand? But just, I mean, this is like this real stuff. And then by application, there's some other things out there that aren't neatly food, drink, a holiday, where people get to stumble. But this is alive and well. People get all bent out of shape. Show me a Bible where you can have a Christmas tree. Romans 14. I don't have a problem with that. But a lot of people stumble. There's a lot of believers who get messed up, who've always celebrated Christmas, and then they get challenged with this. They're like, I don't know if I can have a Christmas tree. Romans 14. But here's the deal. You know you can exercise your liberty. The faith here is faith to have liberty to eat these things. You can do it in private if you need to. This is the key. He's not talking about abstaining from this and now I can't have a piece of bacon in my house. But you can exercise this faith in a way that you're not causing the offense. Have it to thyself before God. It may be in the right culture in the right time when I would abstain from it all together like I wouldn't want That person, you know, I mean if I if I were trying to minister almost exclusively to two Jewish people I probably just wouldn't have any pork in the house at all. I mean just be the high ground But you'll have your faith before God in other words. It doesn't have to be out and in public and open you don't have to be always expressing it because it's a non-essential item and in this context The Roman church is a blend of Jews and Gentiles, and they're having, Paul anticipates, a clash on this. This word happy is the usual word for blessed. It's mercurius. It's blessed is he that condemneth not himself and the things which he alloweth. You understand you can eat those things, but you could condemn yourself in that liberty by allowing that liberty to surpass your obligation to your fellow believer who may not have that same conviction. So you could be condemned in your exercise of that which God has said you could do. That's what that last phrase says. Blessed is he that doesn't do that, that doesn't condemn himself in the very thing in which you have liberty to do because you are impacting a fellow Christian who Paul has, he's candidly said, they're weak in the faith, but he says, allow for that Have your faith before God, but before them, you don't have to use your liberty in this way to offend them. And you will be blessed in having abstained from the exercise of your liberty. You know, God help us, we have a right. It's my right, and I don't actually exercise it. That's what God's saying. And he that doubteth is damned if he eats. Now, this is the person who doubts his liberty to eat the bacon, or the lobster tail, or all these other different goodies that we like, like fried catfish, and he doubts he can do that. This is a real thing for a lot of people. They really do believe that's a problem, and so I'm not in any way making light of it. I don't want you to misunderstand. All I'm telling you is, if this is going to be a problem in someone else's spiritual growth, I'll give up catfish, liquor, shrimp, lobster, you name it, whatever the food is. That's a fact. I mean, I just will. You know, you go as a missionary to another country, you're going to give up dressing the way we do here, because you're going to look like a freak. No one's going to talk to you. Well, you will. And I've seen plenty of independent Baptists think you should go to China and dress like we do. I mean, grow up. You're going to give up rights on non-essential items to reach other people and impact them. And the person that doubts so is condemned if he eats. I don't want to convince someone who has that conviction. I don't say convince in the right word. I don't want to sort of cajole them into doing something that later they're going to regret. We need to give time and space for God to grow people up, and they may never reach that point of having liberty. It's very hard to grow up always being told something's a certain way and then to change. Because it's not about so much God's Word, it's just this cultural and parental influence. And I don't want to cause that person to be damned if he eats. And also, because it says, because he's not of faith, it's the weakness. But look at that last expression. If there was any verse in this Romans 14 and 15 to sort of put in your pocket and take it with you everywhere you ever go in your whole life, for whatever is not of faith is sin. Ouch. So, what if I eat and as I eat I think, man, I'm awesome. All my hard work has paid off and I can have all the caviar and steak I want. It's all me. Am I eating of faith? You know, that's why we talk about having a prayer about food. Jesus blessed the bread. I mean, that's what the Bible says. use a lot of ways to do even little things like eating, not in faith, going to work, but not do it in faith, or you can go to work and do it in faith. This verse has a broad application. He uses it in this context of the food, and so he would say to somebody, if you can't eat that food in faith, that you have the liberty to do so, then you shouldn't do it. But he could say to us, if you can't eat that food with an inward gratitude that this issue is from the hand of God, not just your labors and your own resources, that's not a faith either, and that's sin. So this is a pretty powerful verse, and you just think of how it would play out in a lot of different ways. I've had people ask me, can I smoke a cigarette? I couldn't find a New Testament verse on it. I know someone will say, well, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, and that's why you shouldn't eat Blue Bell ice cream, and shouldn't have very much red meat, and you should never have bacon, because your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. We need to be careful about this, but when someone asks that question, I'm serious, what's your answer? And I've asked some people, I said, do you feel like it's okay to do it? And every time they said no. You know that? They always ask the question, because they do feel uneasy about it. And then I said, then you shouldn't do it. Now, we can talk about a wisdom issue. That's an entirely different thing. And I get that. My grandfather died of lung cancer when I was four, and he was like 53, 54 years old. And I've watched plenty, and I know Brother Hudson's watched a bunch of them. And I know one of them, on that last lap, wished they could go back and smoke an extra pack of Camels each week. But the issue of wisdom is a little different from, has God said, don't do this, and yet usually when I'm asked that question, it's someone who has doubts. I say, well, do you think it's wrong? Well, I kind of do. Then you shouldn't do it, right? Chapter 15 just continues the thought he says we we then that are strong He means mature in the faith or strong in the faith. He uses the words through strong and weak to indicate maturity We then who are strong and the we includes Paul So now he puts himself in the group and he says we ought to bear the word bear is interesting It's it's really the word to be obligated We ought to be obligated to regarding the infirmities, the weaknesses of the weak, he says. You have a responsibility for the spiritual well-being of people around you to the extent that you can have any control or influence on it. We don't operate in a vacuum. I need to be sensitive about how my words and actions impact people around me. Those who are more mature should be especially focused on younger believers, and the goal is to help them along and be an encouragement, not to knock them down. He says you ought to bear, carry, be obligated to. It's such a strong word because it's not my business. No, it is your business. This verse makes it your business. The infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. But it's more pleasing to me if I get my way and exercise my rights all the time. And God says, this isn't about your rights. Now we're talking about God's standards, not how our culture thinks. And in God's standards, I'll give up putting me first to put someone else's well-being first. And this is particularly in the realm of their spiritual growth. Let every one of us please his neighbor for his good to edification. It's interesting that Paul would say in Ephesians, it's really a wonderful verse there, he says, and I'm going to give the the redneck paraphrase, don't run your mouth and say anything that doesn't edify other people and minister grace to them. Edify. Your speech, he says, ought always to be ultimately to edify, and if it's not, you can say something that's true, but it's not going to edify because maybe you're saying it with a mean spirit, or maybe it's just a timing problem. There's times of crisis when people don't need to hear you sermonizing so sometimes truth is identifying when you think about that here He says whatever we do our neighbor particularly when in our church family should be for his good for edification and we have an example of this he's actually going to quote Psalm 69 verse 9 but in verse 3 here of chapter 15 he says for even Christ and Please not himself, right? He didn't put his his will first Paul would have told the Philippians that you know Jesus had all this glory in heaven and he set that aside to take on the form of a human to be fully God and fully man, but his Glory veiled in in human flesh. He set aside his rights and became a human knowing that that the fuse was lit from the moment he was born, and it led to a cross. Here we have, you know, Christ didn't please himself, but as it's written, the reproaches of them that reproach thee fell on me, willing to give himself for other people. That's a pretty easy example. We're not being asked to die, we're being asked to pass on a lobstertail. It's not that much. If you can't give that much, for someone else's well-being, it's a real heart problem. You see where he's coming. For whatsoever things were written aforetime or written for our learning, that we through patience or endurance and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. This is a powerful verse. He says something similar if you go read 1 Corinthians 10, and I won't go through it at length, but the first 10 verses of 1 Corinthians 10 are using Old Testament examples, and then in verse 11, Paul says that Old Testament stuff, was written for our examples. He uses the King James, uses the old word, in samples, examples. I was reading something just yesterday where someone says, well, that's the God of the Old Testament. No, it's not. Paul tells us in a number of places, but especially here, that that Old Testament stuff has great application to us. No, it wasn't authored that says, dear 21st century, 22nd century Christian, you know, modern man. It had an original audience, but it has application. And specifically, those things, he's talking about the Old Testament, they are written for our learning. We can glean a lot from the Old Testament. It was to help us with our endurance and comfort were to draw comfort among other things from the Old Testament Why would I draw comfort from the Old Testament? You know one of the stories that's told all through the Old Testament is God's gonna save sinners through his son God's gonna reunite in a future Jew and Gentile in a single kingdom under the rule of his son. I mean that's Psalm 2 that's the book of Daniel the book of Zechariah in the end God wins and because of that we win and The Old Testament's full of hope, and he says that, that we might have hope. Hope is a conviction about the future that changes your entire outlook on life today and allows you to operate in a different realm than those people that have no hope. You can make decisions on a whole different set of logic and assumptions because you have hope. Now, the God of patience and consolation, the God of hope, He says, grant to you to be like-minded one toward another according to Jesus Christ. Now he's talking about unity. If you're fighting with people about lobster tails and whether you can celebrate a certain holiday or have to keep a Sabbath, you're not going to have unity. And he especially wants us to look forward to a specific example of unity. The ultimate unity is Jews and Gentiles who not only have fought really since there was a Jewish person to begin with, with Abraham. Abraham fought with people. But today in our world, I mean, Iran is avowed to destroy Israel. And if I read my prophecy right, they're going to take a shot at it eventually. They're going to lose miserably, but they are going to take a shot at it. Make no mistakes about it. There's no heart desire in, you know, speaking at a high level in these nations for peace. But God has said how these things will unfold, and eventually Jew and Gentile will be consolidated as the people of God. He's always said that, so despite what we see, He's going to have that. If that's the case, shouldn't we have unity today? Jew and Gentile? Or even a weaker brother and a more mature brother? To have unity now, because guess what? In heaven, we're all going to be singing the same Hallelujah chorus together. See? So our hope, because it looks forward to this unity in the kingdom, should change our perspective today where we shouldn't be fighting like children in a nursery where there's three boys and one Tonka truck. But people do that. People do that. So that's why Paul has to address it. He says, verse 6, that you may be with one mind and one mouth. our heart attitude, but then also our words, one mouth, glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. So with our heart attitude, which will express itself in our conduct and our unity, but also with our words, we would come in unity and glorify God. We'll do that here shortly when we sing in our service, but it ought to reflect not just the words, but a true unity, a true camaraderie, a family within a local church. not split over non-essentials like these things that Paul's talking about. Wherefore, receive ye one another as Christ also received us to the glory of God. Christ received everybody that came in faith. I don't have a right to not receive you over these non-essentials. And so, now I say that Jesus Christ was a minister or a servant of the circumcision for the truth of God. That is, he came primarily with a mission to, you know, he primarily remained within Israel and preached to Jewish people. uh... to to confirm the promises made in the fathers and and that the gentiles might glorify god now he begins looking forward they'll glorify god as it's written and he's going to quote psalm eighteen verse forty nine but it says for this cause i will confess to the among the gentiles and sing unto thy name that was david writing and he says uh... i'm going to confess the to the gentiles david for saw a future from his time when the gentiles would be the people of God as well. And this is our example of future unity to motivate current unity. In fact, Paul gives four different verses he quotes from the Old Testament. He said earlier, he says, those things were written a long time ago, for our hope, for our comfort, and now he's proving it. He's saying, let me show you some things written a long time ago. He's got Jewish people in the audience. They need to hear this. They need to hear their old scriptures telling them of a time when Jew and Gentile have unity. This was a shock. It was a surprise even to Apostle Peter. He wouldn't have had to have the dream in Acts 10. So it's that issue, and it's culturally important. So he quotes Psalm 1849. Then he says, in verse 10, and again he saith, Rejoice ye Gentiles with his people. That's a reference to that we call it the Song of Moses, his parting song in Deuteronomy 32. Moses says that. Moses looked forward to a time when Jew and Gentiles would rejoice as the people of God together, even though he was leading just the Jewish people at that time. Verse 11, and again, in other words, again in the Old Testament, praise the lord all you gentiles and laud him all you people the very lengthy psalm 117 smack dab in the middle of the bible you just cut it in half and there you are right psalm 117 and uh... if the gentiles are praising god they've been you know it's not just a jewish program it's a program for everybody and again isaiah saith and this is from isaiah I think it's 1110, yeah, 1110. Isaiah says, there shall be a root or a branch or a stem of Jesse, and he that shall rise to reign over the Gentiles and him shall the Gentiles trust. Who is that specifically? Jesus. He's the one, the one that'll have the government on his shoulders. He will rise and the Gentiles will trust him. So this is a very specific hope that's in the Old Testament, and it's a hope that really looks forward not just to a kingdom, but to a unity. Now the God of hope, he says, fill you all with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost. We're not abounding in hope if we don't have the unity. The unity and the hope go together. A hope rooted in a future unity brings a unity now, and he wants them to abound And I myself am also persuaded of you, brethren." You know, really, in a lot of sense, the theology ends in verse 13 of the whole book of Romans. It sort of comes to a close, and everything after this is more or less his closing remarks. Paul's going to talk about a lot of biographical stuff, what he's doing at that time, and then he'll end in chapter 16 with some greetings, but you'll see a change here. Paul says, I myself am persuaded of you. Remember, he's never met them. He's never been there. But he's persuaded of you, my brethren, that you also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another. Sounds like he has a certain confidence. It may be by their reputation. Maybe he's heard from people that have traveled from Rome. It's a large city with a large church. He's probably met some people from the church or something. He's got confidence in them. He's being an encouragement to them. He wants to go there. He says, I've written them more boldly in verse 15 unto you in some sort as putting you in mind because of the grace that's given to me of God. That grace is his apostolic ministry primarily to Gentiles. And he's written to them. He wants to see them. He says that I should be able to minister, should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles. ministering the gospel of God, what the whole book was about, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable. The Old Testament people made animal offerings, and if it was acceptable to God, that was sort of, you know, the smoke went up from the animal and things like that. Paul's offering of his life is seen in the fruit of it. all these Gentiles, where he's planted churches and he's led people to Christ, that's his offering. Not an offering to be slaughtered or anything like that, but his offering to God, that he would want to be a sweet saver. We should all want that. People that we've discipled, people that we've led to Christ, that would be our offering to God. It's not the only offering. As Paul said in Romans 12, you know, that your life should be a living sacrifice. And so it goes to raising your children the way God would have you raise children. He says a lot about that. And dealing with elderly parents, the way God said you should do that and what's right. He says a lot about that. But in this specific context, Paul talks of his offering, he's spent a lifetime now, in a sense, with a ministry. He preached to Jewish people, but he had a real focus on Gentiles, and that they would be an acceptable offering being sanctified, set aside by the Holy Ghost. set aside by the Spirit of God, Paul would boast not in what he's accomplished, but what God's done. And you see this here in verse 17, I have therefore whereof I might glory. And you could stop there and say, Paul has a basis to glory, to boast, to strut around like, like, you know, peacock. But, but he says through Jesus Christ. through Jesus Christ. I'm going to boast about what Jesus has done through that grace that was given to him, that apostolic ministry, what Jesus had done in those things which pertain to God. And so what did Jesus do? You know, I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ has not wrought by me. He says, I'm not going to talk or boast about anything that wasn't something that Christ did through me. So I'm not going to boast about all that other stuff. He says, it was to make the Gentiles obedient, a general expression for their coming to Christ, obeying the gospel, but obeying the word of God generally, by word and deed, through mighty signs and wonders. You know, Paul didn't have a healing ministry and Jesus didn't die there. Jesus did miracles that vindicated his message to be the son of God. It turns out in all of history that only the son of God could walk on water. You realize that? Only the Son of God could cleanse a leper. The very first healing recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 8, after the Sermon on the Mount, is the cleansing of a leper, because never in history had anyone cleansed a leper and sent him to the priest to be certified clean. But Jesus did it. To heal a blind man with a birth defect in John 9 had never happened. There were stories of healing blind people, but never one born blind. Not a one. And then you have Paul. Paul preaches and he doesn't have a 40 minute time slot like we do today. A time slot the world would want to shrink and shrink and shrink and then say, well, why even waste 10 minutes on this? Paul preaches a long time and some fellows up there in the window and he's like a lot of us. He just fell out the window and died. He'd been up there a long time. You know why? They didn't have electricity back then, so not only was he up in the window, and I'm sure Paul was being riveting, but you're burning those lamps, giving off that carbon monoxide, and the dude fell out the window and died. Paul healed him and kept a teaching. He wasn't going to interrupt a sermon for a dead guy, but the fact of the matter is that Paul's message was always about the Christ, and it's vindicated by the miracle. When the book of, you know, the book closes, you know, our bookends of the Bible are Genesis and Revelation, there will, during the Tribulation, be two witnesses, and we can debate who they are, but they do things Moses and Elijah used to do, and they are clearly telling about the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. And for three and a half years, because people hate that message, they try to kill these guys, and finally they're successful. And they celebrate in the streets. I have to think, we could go to the local store and buy a Hallmark card, or at least in our current technology, we would send an e-card to somebody. The two witnesses are dead. We finally shut them up. We're going to humiliate them and leave them out in the street, and they do. And three and a half days later, what do they do? What better way to vindicate a message about a savior who died, was buried, and rose again than for his messengers to get killed, martyred, thrown out in the street like dead animal carcasses, and raised again in a public way in which everyone's aware of it. That's one of those old me moments. But you understand, those things didn't happen so it could wow us or so that Benny Hinn could sell expensive tickets for you to go watch actors pretend to be healed and all that nonsense. It was to vindicate the message. of God, and if you cannot raise dead people, you haven't got that gift of healing. It's that simple. But Paul did, and these people had witnessed in the early part of the apostolic ministry before the completion of the canon, they had witnessed dead folks coming back to life, and no one said, wow, I wonder if he really did that. I don't know. I mean, he was in the grave four days, this is John 11. You imagine someone in the crowd saying, well, maybe he just hid in the grave for four days to fool us all. That's why Mary said, oh, Lord, he stinks by now. You understand. This is, you know, he says, through mighty signs and wonders, not parlor tricks, not things anybody could do, by the power of the Spirit of God, it was never Paul, not once, so that from Jerusalem and round about all the way into Lyricum, that's Yugoslavia, if you didn't know. That's northern Albania. That's a long way. From Jerusalem to Yugoslavia, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ, and he tells them momentarily, we won't get to much today, but he says, I'm going to Spain next. Why? If you look at the Roman Empire and you go all the way to the eastern edge, western edge, would be Spain. Spain. I'm at one end of the kingdom, the empire. I'm going to go all the way to the other. We're not 100% sure if he ever made it, but he's going to tell the Romans on my journey to Spain, I'm going to stop in and see you. If I knew Paul was coming over to my house, I'd probably clean it. What about you? If you knew Paul was coming to your church, Would you? Yeah. Can you imagine that? All of a sudden a whole lot of things start changing. Yay, so I have strived to preach the gospel. Isn't that an interesting word? The word means to struggle. I've done everything it takes, pulled out all the stops to make sure that message got out. That will define us as a church. We'll pull out all the stops to get the gospel message out, or we won't, but it will define us. Not where Christ was named, and we know he went some places other people went, but as a general matter, Paul picked the places where Christ had never been talked about, and he went there, and you're like, well, I wonder if Paul spoke Spanish. No, he didn't, and he was going to go there anyway. Not where Christ was named, lest I should build on another man's foundation, because it is written to whom he was not spoken of, they shall see, and they that have not heard shall understand. For which cause I also have been much hindered from coming to you, but now having no more place in these parts. In other words, I've kind of been everywhere. having a great desire these many years to come unto you he says I'm going to come whensoever I take my journey into Spain I will come to you and I'll trust I'll see you in my journey and to be brought on my way hitherto by you if I first be somewhat filled with your your company so he's going to see him on the way to Spain we're going to stop there and one comment Paul had times when God told him not to go somewhere and I think it was because of Someone else was going to take Christ's message there. I mean, there's kind of a basic strategy. I mean, we need more laborers. We know that. That's been true since Jesus said it in John 4. But sometimes God will orchestrate, especially for places where the gospel hasn't been. And that should be a special missionary focus of ours, even in these states. Because now things have reversed so that now the United States has become that place where the gospel hasn't been, at least for these recent generations. Paul, we read in Acts 16, wanted to go into certain areas past Bithynia and stuff, and God said no, and the reason is because Peter probably went there. But he always wanted to take it where it hasn't been, and that's what we'll do. That's what we have to do.