Reservoir Presbyterian Sermons
Approaching the Vacancy (Romans 15:14-16)
We're going to read God's word now and I'm going to read two passages from Paul's letter to the church in Rome. The first reading is from Romans chapter 1. You'll find that, if you've got the church Bible, you'll find that on page 1600. I'm going to read from Romans chapter 1 and verse 7. Romans chapter 1 verse 7, "To all in Rome, who are loved by God, and called to be his holy people, grace and peace to you from God, our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ." First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you because your faith is being reported all over the world. God whom I serve in my spirit in preaching the gospel of his son is my witness how constantly I remember you in my prayers at all times. When I pray that now at last by God's will, the way may be opened for me to come to you. I belong to see you so that I may impart you some spiritual gift to make you strong. That is that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith. I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that I planned many times to come to you but have been prevented from doing so until now. In order that I might have a harvest among you just as I've had among the other Gentiles. I'm obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. That's why I'm so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome. I'm not ashamed of the gospel because that's the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from verse to last, just as it is written, the righteous will live by faith. And then if we can turn forward a few pages to Romans chapter 15, Romans chapter 15 and I'm going to start at verse 14, Romans chapter 15 and verse 14. This is our page 16191619. Romans chapter 15 verse 14. I myself am convinced, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness filled with knowledge and competent to instruct one another. Yep, I've written to you quite boldly on some points, to remind you of them again because of the grace God gave me to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles. He gave me the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, a glory in Christ Jesus in my service to God. I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I've said and done. By the power of signs and wonders through the power of the Spirit of God. And so from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ. It's always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known so that I would not be building on someone else's foundation. Rather, as it's written, those who were not told about him will see and those who have not heard will understand. And this is why I've often been hindered from coming to you, but now that there is no more place for me to work in these regions, and since I've been longing for many years to visit you, I plan to do so when I go to Spain. I hope to see you while passing through and to have you assist me on my journey there after I've enjoyed your company for a while. Now however, I'm on my way to Jerusalem in the service of the Lord's people there. The Macedonia and Achaia were pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the Lord's people in Jerusalem, and they were pleased to do it and indeed they owe it to them. For their Gentiles have shared in the Jews spiritual blessings and they owe it to the Jews to share with them in their material blessings. So after I've completed this task and I've made sure that they've received the contribution, I will go to Spain and visit you on the way. I know that when I come to you, I will come in the full measure of the blessing of Christ. I urge you, brothers and sisters, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me. Pray that I may be kept safe from the unbelievers in Judea and that the contribution I take to Jerusalem may be favourably received by the Lord's people there, so that I may come to you with joy by God's will and in your company be refreshed. The God of peace be with you all, Amen. Friends, this is God's word, please keep your Bibles open on that page or even the previous page and we'll pray and we'll ask for God's Spirit to help us to respond to this that we've just read. Heavenly Father, we thank you that what we have here is your word where you reveal yourself to us and you teach us to live Christ-honoring, gospel-focused lives. Please help us and equip us. Now we pray in Jesus' name, Amen. I've had the great privilege of preaching God's word to you here regularly for the last 11 years or something like that, but as I'm sure most of you are aware, this morning is my last sermon that I preach as your minister and so I thought it would be good for me to finish with some words of encouragement as you go into what we call, in Presbyterian speak, we call a vacancy. Vacancy is a bit of a funny word, I can assure you that church won't be vacant, church will continue every Sunday, most of the ministries and the meetings of the church will keep on going during the week. For the next month I'll be technically on leave, but I've arranged Travis Moroni who's come and preached here before, he'll be preaching for the next month and then after that we've got Peter Hasty who's the current principal of the theological college, he'll be organizing the preachers going forward, he's been appointed as, he's another Presbyterian word, interim moderator, that means that he temporarily takes on the responsibilities of the minister and he's here to steer you through the process so that you can call your next long-term minister. Peter probably, I caught up with Peter during the week, he probably won't be able to be here every Sunday because he's also looking after the church up in Kangaroo Ground and he's the main preacher there, but anyway, can you see that when we say vacancy, we mean the position of minister will be temporarily vacant, but church definitely goes on. And for this morning I want us to think about the passage that we just read from Romans chapter 15 and especially verses 14, 15 and 16, these verses describe a different situation to ours, but I think they contain some really helpful truths and what I want to show you from these verses is I want to show you first of all why the Roman Christians don't actually need Paul and then I want to show you why, even though they don't actually need him, they should want him to come anyway and then I'll finish off with three life takeaways to encourage you as you head into this next phase. So let's start off with why the Christians in the city of Rome don't actually need Paul and I'm getting this from our memory verse, shall we say it again now, let's say it with me I myself, so this is verse 14 if you need to look at it, I myself am convinced my brothers and sisters that you yourselves are full of goodness filled with knowledge and competent to instruct one another. Here's something that's I think important to bear in mind if you want to understand what this verse is saying. Back at the start of the letter in the passage we read in chapter 1 Paul mentions that he's never been to Rome, he's never met the Roman Christians that he's writing to. I mean he knows obviously he knows some of the people in the church there because the last chapter of the book has a whole lot of greetings where he says I say hi to that person and hi to that person and these people that he's met in other places but who now are currently attending the church or the churches in Rome. I mean Rome was a big city, probably the biggest city in the world at that time, about a million people and already by this stage the church in Rome wasn't just one congregation, it was a whole network of churches meeting in different places and so it's likely that even though he knows some of the Christians in Rome it's likely that he's never met maybe most of the people in the Roman church. Now why is that important? Well it means that when he speaks about their goodness and when he speaks about their knowledge and when he speaks about their ability to instruct one another this is not something that he's saying just from his personal experience of them. This is not a case of hey I know you guys and like you're okay I'm sure you'll be fine. Now this this must be Paul's theological conviction about the people of God. When Paul says I'm convinced it must mean that he's convinced that where there's true faith in Jesus because he says I've heard of your faith he says where there is true faith in Jesus then there is also goodness, knowledge and competence and the fact that this is his theological conviction about those Christians in Rome means that this can also be applied to you God's people in reservoir. See in this letter Paul has already explained how through faith we are united to Christ we're made right with God we're filled with his spirit and it's because we have the spirit of God that we also have goodness and knowledge and competence. I mean let's just think about those three things. Paul says you are full of goodness that the word is like describes like a sponge that is soaked in water you are soaked in goodness. Do you remember goodness? Goodness is a consistent quality of character which flows out in blessing to others. If you're full of goodness it means that you're able to have a positive impact on people around you. Goodness of character includes an eagerness to give spiritual blessings and an eagerness to do good works that help those around you. And so what this is saying is that even without Paul ever having been there the Roman Christians are able to bring God's blessing to each other. He also says you're filled with knowledge and it's sort of smooth the sentence out a bit in the English translation literally in the Greek it says you're filled with all knowledge but hang on how's that right? Filled with all knowledge because surely there's plenty of things they don't know but I think Paul's point is that if you know the gospel then you actually know everything that is essential in order to be saved and to live a godly life. So being a Christian starts by believing the good news that Jesus died for your sin and rose for your new life. I mean there's this funny thing that on the one hand as a Christian you're always a student you're a lifelong student of Jesus and his word you never stop learning from him and yet as you learn you never move past the death and resurrection of Jesus. You never get to the point where you say well I've looked off learnt all about what Jesus did now let me focus on something different. Now what you do to keep on growing is you keep going deeper in your appreciation of the death and resurrection of Christ and you work out what it means that Jesus died and rose again what that means for all the different parts of your life and so in that sense the gospel the gospel that Paul's been writing about in this letter in that sense the gospel is all knowledge. I mean just think about your own experience of being a Christian. It doesn't actually take that long in the scheme of things before you stop learning really new things from sermons week by week. I mean sure there's sort of new stories and there's new words and there's helpful background information and there's always stuff that you're picking up over time but the gospel itself is quite a simple message. I mean look at what Paul says in verse 15 he says look this stuff that I've been writing to you about it's not as if you've never heard this before I'm just reminding you I'm just reminding you that the good news of the death and resurrection really is central to everything in your life. I guess my challenge as a preacher from week to week it's it's it's not to not that I need to find something new to say. Actually no the challenge is how can I remind you in a fresh way about that thing you already know. How can I remind you that that thing you already know really is important and really does matter. The French theologian John Calvin he wrote about this verse and he pointed out that okay the three things you know the three dot points in our memory verse the first two are what qualifies us for the third. What he means is that if you're going to be competent to instruct each other then you need two things you need goodness you know including that that desire to be a blessing to others and you need knowledge knowledge of the gospel because it's the gospel message that's here for us in God's word it's the gospel message that blesses. If we have goodness and knowledge then we're able to speak the truth in love. So it says you're full of goodness filled with knowledge and competent to instruct one another. That word instruct it's not a word which necessarily describes preaching a sermon or it's not saying that everyone's competent to stand up and teach a class. It's a word that sometimes gets translated in our Bibles as admonish or warn you're competent to admonish one another. It's you know those personal conversations where we talk about whatever's going on in our lives and then we bring in the gospel and we connect the gospel with what's going on in our lives and we urge one another not to give up trusting Jesus. That's admonishing and so what he's saying here is that Romans, people of God, people of reservoir, you don't actually need Paul there in order to help each other press on in the faith. You need Jesus, you need the Holy Spirit working through you, the Holy Spirit pointing you to God's word and reminding you of God's word but that's who they have they have Jesus they have the Holy Spirit whether Paul's there or not. And so okay to apply this and forgive me if this is obvious it's the same with me. I mean as I look around this room we've built up a deep connection over the years and some of you have heard the gospel through this time of my ministry at reservoir some of you I've had the privilege of baptizing but I'm not your connection to God whether whether I'm here or not you have Jesus your Savior as your direct connection to God. You have his Holy Spirit continuing to work in you and to work through you and so actually you have what you need to help each other keep on growing in Christ does that make sense? Although I don't know maybe you're thinking okay that sounds good but Andrew are you saying that well there's no point having ministers in the church we've you know well there is a point because what Paul talks about next is why even though the Roman Christians don't need him they should still want him to come. See this is where Paul's up to can you see him on the on the map there he's got a plan his plan is to first of all visit Jerusalem and he's got a gift that he needs to deliver there and then he wants to travel to Rome and spend some time with these Christians and then he wants to go on and start a new missionary work in Spain. Back in chapter one Paul when he introduced himself he said I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong. So this this visit and this stop over in Rome he says I hope that this will this will bring a spiritual gift to you I hope that this will strengthen you in your faith there will be a spiritual benefit for these people if Paul comes and has a ministry among them. I'm in our passage so Romans chapter 15 over the page verse 16 Paul describes his ministry as the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God the priestly duty what does that mean because like a priest is someone who connects you with God and Paul's already made it clear that it's not as if he's the one who stands in between the Roman Christians and God he's already made it clear that no you are directly connected to God through Jesus but what he's saying here is that when he preaches the gospel he's bringing a message he didn't make up himself he's bringing a message from God he's bringing a message from God which is powerful the gospel is God's power to save people and as we keep on hearing the gospel that's how God changes us and grows us to be more like Jesus as this verse puts it he preaches the gospel so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God that's that's you have you ever thought of yourself like that but that that that you that your life is an offering to God that when you get out of bed tomorrow the way you live is an act of worship different kind of worship to what we're doing here this morning but but your your life is lived in the presence of God facing toward God and so so Paul's saying I've got this priestly duty not not to stand in between the people and God but but there's something priest like in his ministry because when he comes and preaches God's going to use this message to bring blessing and that blessing that comes from God he's going to strengthen them and empower them so that they live their lives and present their lives to God he's saying that when we proclaim the gospel it's not just a horizontal thing it's not just that someone comes and gives a talk about whatever's been on his mind lately and there's a bit of information that that gets handed over that in the preaching of the gospel he's saying there's there's a vertical component from God to us and he's saying as we respond to that and we live our lives our daily lives have a vertical component because we're living in the presence of God for the glory of God and so well if that's what's going to go on if Paul comes and preaches the gospel to them well of course the Romans should look forward to Paul's arrival and what God's going to do as Paul comes and opens up the word and so applying it to you reservoir do you need to find another minister well need is a strong word like there's a sense in which you don't need in order to be saved or in order to be able to grow and yet finding the next long-term faithful gospel minister will be a blessing because the gospel that your next minister preaches is God's power for salvation and for growth as most of you know I've been involved at the football club for years or something and and it strikes me how many similarities there are between a football coach and a church minister like there's a sense in which the coach trains the players but if something happens on game day if the the the coach wakes up on game day and he's like oh I'm not sure I feel so good I'd better do a rat oh I've got covid like the players still know what to do the players can go out on the field and that the players will gather at quarter time and they'll they'll give each other feedback and they'll instruct one another and they can play well together even if you're in the long term it's it's it is helpful to have a coach to have someone who keeps on feeding in clarity of direction and strategy and so I guess what I'm trying to encourage you here is yeah get a coach but remember you guys are the players you're not the spectators I'm here's three life takeaways for you as God's dearly loved people in reservoir and the first one is as you approach the vacancy just remember to put into practice anything you've learned from me which is from God's word I mean my aim in these last 11 years has been to help you grab a hold of Christ and to trust in him and to live for him so so do it maybe maybe you've been coming along here for a while and you've been trying to figure out what Christianity is all about it's all about Jesus take the plunge entrust your life to Jesus say to Jesus oh I am your student I trust that your death pays for my sins I I acknowledge that you are my lord and I want to begin the new life that you offer me if you haven't already get baptized get fully involved in Jesus church I mean today's passage one of the things it reminds us of is that the message about Jesus isn't like isn't intended to be just like a general happiness improver like that you know that stuff that you put in the flower to make the breeder you know ten percent better know that the message about Jesus is God's message this is God in in proclaiming this message God is reaching out to you God is calling you to respond God God is calling you to live your life in his presence as an offering of thanks to him do you get that I mean that the fact that you are hearing the gospel is evidence that God has taken an interest in you and that he wants you to draw near to him so remember when you get up tomorrow remember each day you're living in the presence of God remember that that he soaked you in his goodness and so express his goodness in the way you live your lives take notice of the poor and the sick around you be an example of faithfulness and gentleness in your home and in your workplace when you get the opportunity talk about your faith there's still thousands of people in reservoir who haven't heard the message of Jesus and over the last 11 years we've had so many wonderful opportunities to share that message but for now it's over to you to keep going I mean you might feel that oh I'm not so good at that I don't have the right words I don't have the confidence give it a go trust that God is able to do these life-changing things even through your weakness here's a second life takeaway now it's the time for you to stop and think how how will I build up others in faith I mean I understand that with uh without myself and Susie and the kids there's going to be a number of gaps to fill in the ministries of our church wouldn't it be great if that maybe there's some of you who aren't currently serving in an organized way wouldn't it be great if you could step up and take on some of those roles or maybe take on a role that frees someone else to step up and continue the ministries of our church I mean but it's it's fine if we adjust our programs we don't have to keep everything the same I don't mind if you change all the programs ultimately rosters and programs and all of that are tools to organize us as we seek to build one another up as people in the end it's it's people it's each other who matter so I wonder if each of you could aim to have maybe three or four or five you know I realize some people are sort of more social than others but just I wonder if each of you could have just a few people that you are personally connected with and that you talk to regularly and you have some idea of what's going on in their lives so that you can pray for each other and remind each other of the truth of God's love for them because remember you are filled with goodness and knowledge and you are competent to instruct one another so if you've been any place the people of God think oh look I'll leave the job of caring for people to someone else then what do you get you get you get a new minister coming and you get him having to just put all his energy into try to raise things to sort of maintenance mode but when a church community are already caring for each other already speaking the truth in love to one another then when the new minister arrives he's he's able to move things forward to build on that I mean I'm so thankful when I came here back in 2013 there definitely been some ups and downs for the church over the years but through all of it when I got here you were praying for one another and caring for one another I know you were and you still are but when I turned up I saw you were being encouraged by John Wilson's preaching and so when I arrived I didn't sort of I didn't feel like I had to come in with you know a set of jumper leads to to restart things I was actually free to focus on reaching out and welcoming in people who were coming to Christ he's a third life takeaway now is the time to be earnest in prayer for the next minister I mean that's how Paul finishes the chapter he says hey can you pray for me Romans 15 verse 32 pray so that I may come to you with joy by God's will and in your company be refreshed by God's will a new minister will come by God's will and so talk to God about that pray that the when there'll be this thing called the selection committee that gets set up pray that they'll have wisdom to identify someone faithful someone dedicated to the gospel someone able to relate to the people of reservoir pray that God will put it on the heart of the man of his choosing to say yes I want to come I want to be part of the ministry that's happening in this church pray that when he comes how does how does Paul put it in verse 29 pray that when he comes he will come in the full measure of the blessing of Christ so thank you for the privilege of sharing the gospel with you and sharing our lives with you over these years and I am convinced that you yourselves are full of goodness and filled with knowledge and competent to instruct one another and so may God continue to bless you and continue to strengthen you through this time of vacancy and into whatever he has planned next let's pray heavenly father what an astonishing thing that you the creator of all things you the eternal infinite god have taken an interest in us and in the gospel you have announced your love to us and that you've invited us to come and live in your presence and to live our lives in worship as an offering to you please keep working enable us to encourage to instruct to build up one another please keep feeding and strengthening this congregation we pray this in Jesus name Amen