Rome was a complex and progressive society – and the church there faced many of the same temptations and challenges offered us by society today. Learn insights from Paul’s letter to the Romans about how we can live in our world today – and keep our focus where it belongs.

<p>Rome was a complex and progressive society – and the church there faced many of the same temptations and challenges offered us by society today. Learn insights from Paul’s letter to the Romans about how we can live in our world today – and keep our focus where it belongs.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Dalton SDA Church

The Book of Romans

Chester Clark

Romans 1 – Not Ashamed

Romans 2 – Love that Hates

Bad News, Good News

Righteousness by Faith

Wanted: Dead & Alive

Romans 7 - Freedom from the Law

Romans 8 - Living by the Spirit

Romans 9-The Calling

Unexplainable Ways

Reasonable Service

The Bible and Politics

It's 1 of my favorite parts of the New Testament.

In fact, the book of Romans is probably, of all of Paul's epistles, my all-time favorite.

Not because it's brief like some of the others, you know, you can read them in just a few minutes and have a blessing from them.

Romans is a little more complex and complicated, but it's 1 of my favorites because Romans shows Paul's attempt to give a complete picture of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And Romans is a gospel in itself, an epistle in itself for which all Christians can be grateful.

This morning we're going to look at the first part of the first chapter of the book of Romans.

We're going to be thinking about the Rome in which Paul was thinking of, of which Paul was thinking of, the Rome to which he was writing.

And we begin here in the first few verses, Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated under the gospel of God, which he had promised to for by his prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning...

Concerning his son, Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to flesh and declared to be the son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness and by the resurrection from the dead.

In these 2 verses, Paul basically summarizes the Christian faith, doesn't he?

He says Jesus, His Son, God's Son, was made flesh like us.

He came in the likeness of flesh and then He was declared to be the Son of God with power.

He was obviously Christ, the Son of God, throughout His life, and even more obviously when He came forth from the tomb, resurrected by the power of God.

By whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations, for His name, among whom are you also the called of Jesus Christ." Now, here Paul is thinking about the Romans, and he's imagining what it must be in that city of Rome, that cosmopolitan capital of the world at the time.

He's thinking that he knows that there are people that are believers in Jesus Christ in the city of Rome.

In fact, he knew that there were probably some people who were in lower castes of society who were believers in Jesus Christ.

He had also heard that there were some even in the household of Caesar who were believers in Jesus Christ.

And as he's thinking about them, he wants to write them a letter.

He wants to tell them of his love for them and his love for Jesus and Jesus' love for them.

And as he begins writing, I think it's obvious that he is thinking of them and his great concern for them.

In the next few verses, he says, to all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God our Father and Lord Jesus Christ." And he begins to say, look, I've wanted to visit you in Rome but I haven't been able to yet.

And let's just take a minute to think about what Rome would have been like in the imperial days.

I know none of us have had the opportunity to actually be there then, but there's a lot of historical evidence, there's a lot of history that we can look at and try to remind ourselves what Rome was like.

We know that because as the empires of Daniel chapter 2, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome, it would be the last of those empires, but it would last longer than a couple of them put together.

Over 600 years Rome would bear sway over that part of the earth, a powerful, powerful empire, and also an empire that was filled with luxury, an empire that was filled with art and culture, a very high society, you might say.

In fact, it is said that in imperial Rome, about the time that Paul was writing, it is said that in the city of Rome, there were as many or more statues than there were inhabitants.

That's how opulent and lush it was with artwork and with what we would consider and what they considered the trappings of society.

I don't know, is there anyone here who also likes history?

Because I love history and I probably bore some of you who didn't raise your hand sometime in my sermons because I talk quite a bit about history but as I think back about Rome, what it would have been, I know that it was a grand city, an awesome city.

In fact, still today when we see the ruins of Rome, we see it as a grand and awesome city.

I've had the privilege many times of taking groups, mostly student groups, on church history tours, and often we would stop in Rome and see the remnants of what Rome is, or used to be, still today.

Still many, many items that are beautiful, that are fascinating, that show the artwork and the culture.

The Trevi Fountain just being 1 of them, it's not only a beautiful fountain, but it shows us some of the culture of Rome with the myths that they believed in and the different things that these statues represent to their culture and to their myths and mythology.

This is just 1 of the areas where we can point to their engineering feat and this would have been the case in Paul's day.

This was not post-apostolic times that Rome built these engineering feats.

Here we see a picture of 1 of the many, many aqueducts that were built to supply Rome with water.

Not just Rome, but other cities around the Roman Empire were served by aqueducts in order to carry water across valleys from their sources up in pristine springs to the cities, which would be on the opposite side of a valley.

Now, they're impressive architecture, not just because they're still standing today, 2, 000 years later, not just because of their size and proportions, but they're impressive because with the perfect form and perfect balance, we can see today, they also had perfect drop, so that the water flowed across.

I mean, if you engineered it wrong, you understand, you would get to the top and the water would be flowing the wrong direction.

But the water flowed through these aqueducts as masterfully designed channels of water to their perspective destinations.

I just have a few pictures of Roman aqueducts that still are existing today and inspire us with their beauty and with their impressive formation, with their engineering.

And so, these are things as Paul's thinking of Rome, he's realizing they're living in this environment.

He's realizing Christians are living in a very sophisticated, very advanced society.

They're living in a place where nothing is impossible, where we can do it, we can build it, we can conceive it and achieve it.

And this is the culture that he is writing to.

Here is another instance of Roman engineering and this is the Roman roads.

Many of you know that the Roman roads covered 50, 000 miles by this time in the empire.

50, 000 miles of roads networking, spider webbing across Rome.

You've heard the expression that all roads lead to Rome?

It's because they were built by the Romans for the purpose of sending messengers out and sending soldiers out and sending the commerce of the empire out, and indeed they were leading to Rome.

50000 miles of road, This particular picture is none other than the road that Paul would himself walk down.

These stones make up what we know as the Appian Way, or the Appian, Via Appia Antica, as it would say in the Italian street signs along this street.

The old Appian Way, there's a new Appian Way that looks quite different.

But this is the old Appian Way, this is the road that Paul would have journeyed down.

The roads, 50, 000 miles of Roman roads were carefully leveled.

Valleys were filled in, mountains were cut down, And then many feet of foundation materials would be put in before the final surface of stones would be laid.

And that's why in many cases they're still today intact and the stones are still there and in some way usable.

Notice with me what he says in Romans chapter 1 and verse 13.

Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, but was let, or prevented, until now, that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles." Paul's telling the church in Rome, look, I have been wanting to come and visit you.

I've been wanting to come and spend some time in the city of Rome.

I've been wanting to make my journey over to visit you because I want to preach here also.

You see, Paul, the great evangelist, had spent time in different parts of the Roman Empire.

In Asia Minor, he had worked among the Greeks, he had worked among the Celtics, in Galatia and others, So he'd worked among several major language groups that the church had become well established in, but he had not yet had much opportunity to travel in the part of the world we would today call Italy, in the Latin world where the Latin language was primarily spoken.

He had not yet had much opportunity to go there and he wanted to.

He wanted to have some time to visit Rome and to establish further the church that was there.

And he's thinking about them, he's writing them because they are on his mind.

Now, if we look at a summary of the life of Paul, and boy that's way too small, isn't it?

But we see here a timeline of the life of Paul And we come down here to Paul's conversion was in AD 33.

His first missionary journey would have been right here, right here, about 46 and 47.

His third missionary journey was the longest, 52 to 57, about 5 years.

Somewhere around the end of that third missionary journey, he's probably, we believe, in Corinth, and I'll get to that in just a minute, he's riding from Corinth to the church in Rome while he's still on a missionary journey.

He was going to finish up his missionary journey, his third trip, and get back to Jerusalem for 1 of the feasts.

As people from all over the world be gathered in Jerusalem, he wanted to go there and have an opportunity to share Christ before them.

After Jerusalem, he intended to go to Rome and to visit the Roman Christians.

In fact, this would happen if we look at a map of Paul's last missionary journey, as well as his trip to Rome.

We see the red here is where he was traveling on his missionary journey.

He started in Antioch, he makes his way across Asia Minor, he comes over here through Greece and Macedonia, and here he comes to Athens and and to Corinth, and he's riding here from Corinth.

He's about to head back, and this was his path as he comes back, back to Jerusalem.

What he didn't realize was that once he got back to Jerusalem, he would actually be captured as a, well he would be caught up in a, what you might say, a religious dispute between the Jews who hated him and the Roman Empire who was obligated to try him.

And when they went to try him, they realized it was a matter of Jewish prejudice against Paul and they would have let him loose, but Paul was afraid that if he went to trial there, he was going to not get a fair trial, so he appealed to Caesar, and this complicated his life greatly.

Appealing to Caesar for trial meant that he had to be carried all the way from Jerusalem, where he'd been captured, and carried all the way to Rome, where he would stand trial before Nero.

And so, in the end, Paul did end up going to Rome, but not in any way in the manner that he expected to be going.

He went not as an apostle to preach the gospel, he went as a prisoner in chains.

Although he was able, we find in the book of Acts, he was able to do a great work even as a prisoner.

And so, Paul is here in Corinth, he's on his third and last missionary journey, and he's riding to the church all the way over here in Rome, where he's never been, saying that he wants to be there.

Now, there's several indications that we can look at to see that the epistle was written from Corinth.

He references Gaius, who we find is in Corinth, and Erastus, who we also find Timothy, who was in Corinth, was, in his letter to Timothy, he talks about Erastus.

And he also commends Phoebe, whom he elsewhere describes as rendering special service to the church at Cincre, which is an eastern seaport of Corinth.

And so we believe that Paul was writing from Corinth as he is writing the believers in Rome.

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The Book of Romans

Romans 1 – Not Ashamed

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