I invite you to open your Bible and turn with me to the last chapter of the book of Romans. Romans 16:1-16 will be our text together today. And I want you to imagine with me if you were there the first time the book of Romans was read. So, you've got believers from all over Rome, gathering together to hear the words of the Apostle Paul. He's written us a letter. Can you imagine the excitement as they begin to read that Paul wants to come to Rome, and he wants to encourage them and to be encouraged by them? And then Paul says, “Because I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes.” And from that moment forward, you're locked in on what Paul is saying as he's teaching you about the righteousness of God. God has wrath towards unrighteousness, but there is a way for you to be made righteous. You can be justified by your faith in his Son, Jesus Christ.
And so, you're learning about salvation. You're learning about what it means to be dead to your sin, and alive to God. You're learning about how God has a plan for the Jews and for the Gentiles, and how it's all going to work together. And you're so locked in to listening to Romans that you kind of forget where you are. Have you ever had that experience when you're watching a movie or you're at a concert, or you're reading a book, you lose track of the space you're in or what time it is because you're so focused on the story or what you're learning? And then, all of a sudden, by the time you get to chapter 16, Paul starts talking about the people there in the room. And it's like you kind of start looking around, oh yeah, I'm here with all these other people. And he starts mentioning the names of these different people that he knows there, the believers there in Rome. And so, this passage that I'm about to read for you is Paul starting to give his shout outs and saying, hey, when you're done reading this, greet this person and greet this person, and greet so and so over here, because Paul, he clearly knows a lot of those people. And so, for us, this is like a list of ancient names. And I'm afraid that a lot of us might just fly over this passage. But I really want you to pay attention to the people that were in the room when Romans was read. And how does Paul see those people, and what does he have to say to them? So out of respect for God's word, I want to invite everyone to stand up for the public reading of Scripture. And even though some of these names might be hard for us to pronounce, I want you to give this your full and undivided attention, because this is Paul writing to those believers there in Rome. This is the Word of God. Please follow along with me as I read, starting in Romans 16:1.
I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church at Cenchreae, that you may welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints, and help her in whatever she may need from you, for she has been a patron of many and of myself as well. Greet Prisca and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks but all the churches of the Gentiles give thanks as well. Greet also the church in their house. Greet my beloved Epaenetus, who was the first convert to Christ in Asia. Greet Mary, who has worked hard for you. Greet Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners. They are well known to the apostles, and they were in Christ before me. Greet Ampliatus, my beloved in the Lord. Greet Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ, and my beloved Stachys. Greet Apelles, who is approved in Christ. Greet those who belong to the family of Aristobulus. Greet my kinsman Herodion. Greet those in the Lord who belong to the family of Narcissus. Greet those workers in the Lord, Tryphaena and Tryphosa. Greet the beloved Persis, who has worked hard in the Lord. Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord; also his mother, who has been a mother to me as well. Greet Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas, and the brothers who are with them. Greet Philologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints who are with them. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you.
That's the reading of God's Word. Please go ahead and have your seat. Did anybody find some new baby names in there? Huh? Is there going to be little Phoebe running around our church? If God blesses somebody with twin girls, they could be Tryphaena and Tryphosa. I mean, you see how to us, we don't have faces to go with these names. We don't know who these people are, so it's hard to really pay attention to what's going on. But I think if we actually give this text some careful observation, there are five things, meaningful things, that we can really come away with here today. So, there is a handout there in your bulletin. If you want to pull that out and take some notes with me, we've got the whole text there on the right, so you can underline and circle some of the key words, some of the repeated themes that we're going to see.
And we're going to break these sixteen verses down into two groups. First of all, the commendation in the first two verses, and then all the greetings in verses 3-16, sixteen different times. He encourages them to go greet somebody there because of what Paul knows about them or thinks about them. So, let's start with a name that I hope you will never forget. This is a lady that is supposed to be known in the church, and it is our sister, Phoebe that he commends here in verses 1 and 2. So Paul makes this commendation, this introduction of Phoebe to the Romans, which leads most scholars to believe that Phoebe, this lady, she is the one who brought the letter to the believers in Rome. Okay, so this is a lady. If there's one name you're supposed to know out of what we read, it's this lady, Phoebe. Okay, and this lady is introduced not just as like someone the Romans should know, because she came and brought them the letter, but there are two things said about this lady that we need to pay attention to. He says, “I commend to you our sister, Phoebe.” And then he says, “a servant of the church at Cenchreae. Okay, so “servant” here is the Greek word “diakonos”. What he's saying is she is a deacon at her church in Cenchreae. Okay, so he introduces her as a deacon.
I don't know if you've heard of these people, the Deacons of the church. Sometimes, the ladies are referred to as deaconesses, but they are both male and female. A Deacon is a recognized servant in the church, someone who's known for doing the ministry of the Lord Jesus. And that's how Phoebe is to be known. And so, he says, I want to commend Phoebe to you. She's a deacon at her church. And then look at what he says, “that you may welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints.” Make sure you really bring this lady in and help her in whatever she may need. Wow. Like, hey, if Phoebe needs something, you guys should do it. That's the high level of confidence that the Apostle Paul has. Imagine. If you're Paul and you wrote this master class on the gospel, and you wanted to get it to Rome, you're looking for a reliable, faithful servant of the Lord who can deliver your letter to the believers in Rome. And he says, I gave it to Phoebe, this lady, she's really serving the Lord. So, Paul speaks of her in a very confident way. And so, we need to really think through who she is now when he says that you would help her here, it's different than what he said last week. If you look back up to verse 24 where he talked about going to Spain and how he wanted to be helped, in that verse, we saw he was talking about financial assistance. They were going to give him money to go to Spain. The word for help here in relation to Phoebe is not about money. It's like what he's saying is, I want you to stand beside her, is what that word for “help” means there in the Greek. So, when he says, I commend her, he's basically saying, I stand with Phoebe. I'm with Phoebe. Phoebe is one of my people. I stand with her, and I'm now asking you to stand beside her, help her in whatever she needs. So, he was making a strong introduction of Phoebe to them, and he wants them to be with Phoebe, for Phoebe and whatever she might need there in Rome. That's what he's saying. You’ve got to stand with her. She's a deacon.
Now, do you know who the deacons are? This is a very important group of people in the church of Jesus Christ. And my concern is people pay too much attention to the pastors and not enough attention to the deacons. I can tell you here in Huntington Beach, the reason we're able to minister to as many people as we have at this church, we only have three elders, three pastors. We have seventy-nine deacons at this church, people that we have recognized in a formal way for their service to the Lord here at this church. These people are making this church happen. These people are making a lot of churches happen, and we don't really talk about them or know about them in the way that we should.
So, go with me to 1 Timothy, chapter 3. Everybody grab your Bible, over to the right, and there's a bunch of books that start with T and find 1 Timothy there, and go to chapter 3, where it explains to us who these deacons are. Paul writes 1 Timothy to his disciple, Timothy about how we should conduct ourselves in the church, the household of God, the church of Jesus Christ. And he describes these group of men that are going to be elders. We refer to them, usually as pastors. Here it uses the word “overseers,” the guys who teach the church. They're in verses 1-7 of 1 Timothy 3. But then what often gets overlooked starts in verse 8. It says, “deacons likewise,” and from verse 8 to 13, it describes who these deacons are. Let me read this for you, because I want to make sure that we all understand the value of having Deacons in the church. This is 1 Timothy 3:8. “Deacons likewise must be dignified, not double-tongued, not addicted to much wine, not greedy for dishonest gain. They must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. And let them also be tested first; then let them serve as deacons if they prove themselves blameless. Their wives likewise must be dignified, not slanderers, but sober-minded, faithful in all things. Let deacons each be the husband of one wife, managing their children and their own households well. For those who serve well as deacons gain a good standing for themselves and also great confidence in the faith that is in Christ Jesus.”
So, Paul's thinking, hey, Phoebe has got a good standing as a deacon. You should stand beside her and support her. That's how Paul's talking about her. So, people today think about serving at church completely backwards. People today think this is how we think here in the American church, give me a job to do, then I'll do it. That's the opposite of what it says about the deacons. The deacons have already been serving. They've been tested. Then, after a season where they prove themselves, then we recognize them as deacons. You don't get a position. And then you do the work; you do the work of the ministry. You serve the Lord Jesus and his people. Then you get recognized as a deacon. That's what it says here. And it describes a lifestyle, the character of this person. And really, if you study what it says about the overseer, and then you study what it says about the deacon, there's no difference in the way they live their lives. They're supposed to be living as mature Christian people at home and at church. The difference is, the overseers, the pastors, they're able to teach the deacons. It doesn't mention teaching, but it does mention a lot of the same ways that they should live.
So, these are people who are maturing in their faith. They're growing up in Christ, and they are proving themselves blameless. They're passing the test of faithfully serving, then they get recognized as a deacon. Phoebe was one of these people. These people are extremely important, and we are so blessed to have the deacons that we have here at this church. Now, there are deacons here at this service, and they're starting to feel awkward right now, because they know me. They know there's a list of names. They're afraid I'm going to start shouting them out here in the service, and they're afraid. I'm going to make them all stand up here in a moment. And these deacons that we've got here at this church, they're not looking for people's approval. They're not looking for fame or notoriety. They just want to serve the Lord Jesus, and so they kind of dread this recognition that I'm giving them right now. Multiple deacons came up to me after the service last night, thanking me for not exposing them to the public, right? But you know who they are. If you have somebody leading your fellowship group, they're a deacon. If you know somebody who works full time with the kids or the youth, they're full time here at the church, they're a deacon. We're holding them to the qualifications given here in 1 Timothy 3:8-13. And so, if you know somebody who's a deacon, I want you to think about how you could stand beside them
Let's get that down for point number one: “Come alongside a deacon.” Come alongside a deacon. That's what I want to encourage you to do. The deacons are the people here serving. The deacons are ministering and making disciples of the people here. And, unfortunately, that means the deacons get taken for granted. They get dehumanized, where people just expect the deacons to give. But deacons, they're real people, too. They're just like you. They need someone to encourage them. They need someone to support them.
And so, Phoebe, she's come to the saints in Rome. Hey, stand beside her. Stand with her. Be ready to help her. Wow. What a great thought for us to think about the deacons here this way. So, if you know who these people are, if you flip your handout over, you can see where question number two is declaring this Deacon Appreciation Week here at the church, much to the dismay of the people who are actually deacons, right? But you know what? They need encouragement to keep going in their faithful service, because they've already proven themselves in their service beforehand, and so they've been tested. Okay? Well now we want to encourage them and stand beside them and encourage them to keep going. So, if you know somebody who's a deacon, I want to just challenge you, give some time to what could you do to encourage them. Maybe even ask them how you could support them and help them in the work of the ministry that they are already doing. Wow.
Phoebe, she's a deacon. What's fascinating is that if you go back to Romans 16 with me, what is fascinating about this is there are no pastors mentioned among the saints of Rome. There are no elders mentioned. There is a deacon introduced, though, here with Phoebe. And so we want to recognize, I hope, something that can happen at our church, something that we can even spread to other churches, is the value of the people that serve as deacons, and that we could make sure that we want to encourage them, that they won't grow weary in doing good, but they'll keep going, and they'll reap a harvest if they do not give up. So, if you know a deacon, come alongside of them to encourage them. That's what he says about Phoebe. But then he says something else that's very interesting about Phoebe here in verse 2. Look at the end of verse 2, he says, “for she has been a patron of many and of myself as well.” So, our sister Phoebe, is both a deacon and a patron. So now we are back to talking about money. Phoebe is apparently a lady of some means, and she has supported people in ministry. So when you think patron, you’ve got to go back to the time of Lords and Ladies, the nobility, the high class, where they might see an artist, or even in the history of the church, someone who preaches, and then they financially support that person's art or their ministry; they become a patron, a financial backer of someone else. And so, Phoebe is one of these people. She supported Paul. She supported many other people. She's someone who is giving out of her means to support the gospel going out in the Church of Jesus. So, I don't know if you ever thought about someone who's a patron of the gospel, okay, but Phoebe is not the only person that we meet like this. She's not the only lady we meet like this in the Scripture.
Turn with me to Luke chapter 8. Everybody, go back to the left, to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 8. Have you ever wondered, how did Jesus and the twelve disciples pay for their three year tour, going around teaching and doing miracles like, don't these guys have nine to fives? How are they affording this? Have you ever wondered where all the money come from for three years of endless ministry all around Judea and Samaria and Galilee? How did they afford that? Well, here in Luke 8, it says something very interesting. It says, “Soon afterward, he,” Jesus, “he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him, 2 and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out.” Maybe you've heard of Mary Magdalene And look at Luke 8:3, “and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means.” Do you know about Joanna and Susanna? So, Joanna is married to Chuza, and Chuza is the household manager for who? King Herod. You’ve got to understand when we say, even in Romans 16, families or households, you're not just thinking of a family unit like we would today. You're thinking of a whole group of people, like a whole family, and they might have servants that live in their household. You're almost talking about a whole business of people. And so, imagine King Herod's household and all the servants and all the operations that he would have going, so he's the right hand man to King Herod. He's the CEO of company King Herod. Chuza is probably like the second most powerful guy around if he's Herod's household manager. Did you know that his wife, Chuza’s wife, is going around with Jesus and the twelve, and she's the one paying for it? Susanna is going around helping pay for it. There are even other ladies providing so that Jesus and his disciples can go from city to city, village to village, proclaiming the good news of the gospel. Did you know that there were lady patrons supporting the gospel ringing out with Jesus and the disciples? And even Paul is saying Phoebe is one of those people. She's a patron.
So, point number two, let's get it down like this: We want to “pray for gospel patrons.” We want to pray for people who have considerable means, who can support the work of the gospel. This happened with Jesus and the twelve. This happened with Paul and this lady, Phoebe. I hope these are names that you will remember from this sermon. Write them down, Phoebe and Joanna and Susanna. These are ladies who decided to invest their money into the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ and the gospel going out to save more souls.
Now if you were here last week, we talked about how Paul wants to go to Spain, and he wants the Romans to help him, or send him, or pay for him. And so, we collected an offering at the end of last week's service. And I just want to take a moment to praise the Lord that everybody here was very generous. And so, we have now financial resources that we can send to Tokyo, Japan, and we can send to Uganda, and we can send to India, these three places we're praying for and focusing in on, we have money to give. But what I'm realizing as I'm getting to know the situations in Tokyo, and India particularly, is I can see how some of our money could help them get a bigger church. Some of our money could really help support them. But what I'm seeing is they're going to need ongoing support. Just setting them up in a bigger building is not going to meet all of their needs, just kind of addressing some of the problems. Who's going to keep paying for their pastors? Who's going to keep paying the rent of these places, their church isn't able to raise enough money to meet their own needs. They're going to need a patron. And I begin to wonder, will people here in Orange County, California, rise up and say, I don't just want to give money at one time. I want to become a backer. I want to become a supporter of one of these other churches across the world. Will God raise up patrons here among us? That's something we want to pray for. That's something that did not just happen even with Jesus and Paul.
There's a book that I would really recommend if you've never read it. It's called Gospel Patrons, and you could download it, a PDF of it, off the internet. You could order it online. Gospel Patrons tells some great stories about some of the famous people that did ministry. Did you know who was paying for it? In fact, it talks about Lady Huntingdon. This is a lady I would want you to know. And this lady, she's of the Lord and ladies of England. She's this nobility there in England, a rich woman in England, and she becomes the benefactor of a guy named George Whitefield. Who's ever heard of George Whitefield before? George Whitefield, if you don't know who he is, write that name down. George Whitefield. He was this evangelist, this fiery preacher with this melodious, booming voice. Thousands of people could gather to hear him preach in the open air. And he would ride his horse up and down the colonies. This is like in the 1740s. Before we were ever a country, George Whitefield was out here evangelizing America. And he would have thousands of people come to hear him preach. Like if you heard George Whitfield was in town, you would just stop the work you were doing on the farm. You would stop working in your shop, and you would follow the crowd out to go there. Wow, George Whitfield is here! That stops everything, people going out of town to find where he is. Benjamin Franklin once estimated that when he heard George Whitefield preach, that there were more people listening to George Whitefield preach than was the population of the entire city of Boston at that time, that so many people came from all the villages around Boston, so many people emptied out the city of Boston to so more people than is the population of the city gathered together to hear George Whitefield preach to them. And even though Benjamin Franklin was not a believer in the Lord Jesus, he had so much respect for this guy, George Whitfield as a preacher. He thought it was so good for these people to be listening to him. George Whitefield and Benjamin Franklin became friends. They were correspondents who would write letters to each other because George Whitefield, he set a tone of the gospel in America that affected the foundation of the nation. Some of the ways that our country is today, it goes back to the evangelism of George Whitfield at the time of the Great Awakening in America. And how could he afford to just ride his horse up and down the colonies? How could he afford where he stayed at night? How could he afford the food that he ate? You want to know why Lady Huntingdon was supporting his trips to the colonies from England? And this lady, this lady, if you read about her, she had a rough life. Her husband died while they were still young. Many of her children died in front of her eyes. And in all these trials that she went through, her faith just grew stronger, and she really believed that she should use her financial means to support the gospel. And at one point, she became the patron to George Whitfield, and she actually hired him to be the chaplain of her household. She would invite the other rich elite people from London, the high society, over to her house so she could have George Whitfield preach to them how hard it is for the rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. And here he is calling out the rich people to their face, preaching to them the gospel of Jesus Christ. And she hoped that many of the Lords and Ladies of England would get saved, so they would help her to spread the Gospel all over the world. Gospel patrons. Ministry always costs money somebody has always got if you want the gospel to go somewhere, it hasn't gone before. People weren't buying tickets to hear George Whitfield. Somebody else was paying it forward.
Phoebe, if you go back to Romans 16, Phoebe was one of these people, and Paul wants it to be known. Phoebe, this remarkable lady, she serves faithfully at her church in Cenchreae. She's supporting Paul and others as they're taking the gospel to new places. This lady, Phoebe, what a commendation, what an introduction. Help her with whatever she needs, he says to the believers in Rome. So, I hope you won't forget Phoebe, and I hope you will value the deacons and the patrons that are really working hard in the church. Paul sees the church for how it is. He knows the way the church works. It's not just one guy teaching the church. It’s a whole team of people coming together to make it happen. And so, when Paul thinks about who's going to be there among the believers in Rome, he's got a list of people, and he starts right here in verse 3. Maybe you've heard of this couple. As he begins to tell them to greet one another, he starts with Prisca and Aquila. Now, who's ever heard of Prisca before? What's her other name that she goes by, or her full name? Priscilla.
Okay, so let me just address names in the Bible right now. Okay? Because I hear people at our church say things like, why do they make it so complicated? Why can't she just be Priscilla? Why does he call her something different? You want to know why? Because she's a real lady; this isn't a story that we're making up. Okay? No, her real name is Priscilla, but Paul, he's friends with Priscilla and Aquila, so he doesn't call her Priscilla. He calls her Prisca, because they're friends. Right? Have you ever met a Debbie who goes by Deb? Does anybody know what I'm talking about around here? Right? This is how it is. Many people in this room go by multiple names. In fact, places go by multiple names. What country do you live in? Do you live in the US? Do you live in the States? Do you live in America? What's the answer to all of that? Yes, there's not just one name for one place. Everybody's got names and nicknames. What's my name? Am I Bobby? Well, actually, my legal name is what? Robert? And then, every once in a while, somebody will just call me Bob, and I'll just be like, well, we're going with Bob in this conversation. Right? And I'll just bob my head up and down, like, yeah, that's me, right? I have no choice. They can call me. There are many names to refer to me so I hear people complaining, why can't they just, you know? Why can’t they just use one name? Because it's not a made-up story in the Bible. Okay, you’ve got multiple characters named John. It's very confusing. Where are we talking about here? That's because they're real people, at real places, and it's a real story. Hey, yeah, he's saying Prisca and Aquila, because when he met her, she was Priscilla, but over time, she became Prisca. That's how it really works. And if you need help around here, let me just tell you shout Chris or Mike or Dan, one of the brothers will come running, and they'll help you with anything you need. I mean, you can get a two for one with Mike around here. You just start shouting, Chris, a godly guy will come and help you. We're blessed with many people of the same name here at this church. So, you’ve just got to understand, is it hard to sometimes follow all the names in the Bible? Yeah, you want to know why? Because we're talking about real places and real people that go by different names. And so, you have to do some hard work; you can't just glaze over them and expect it to be easy. You’ve got to really see what's going on.
So, this Prisca and Aquila are the same as Priscilla and Aquila in Acts 18 that Paul meets in Corinth, and they tent make together. This is the same couple that goes to Apollos and teaches him the way of God more fully. And so yeah, you should greet them. They're the first people Paul wants to bring up there in Rome and “my fellow workers.” And then he's going to go through and give 16 different greetings in verses 3-16. So, I want to make some observations about things that are repeated in these verses. We can't really figure out too much about everybody mentioned here, but there are some key things that Paul says multiple times that we can learn from. This is how Paul thinks about the saints there in Rome. So, if you look at verse 5, he says, “greet also the church in their house.” Okay, so apparently, Prisca and Aquila that we met in Acts 18, they had to leave Rome because they were told to leave Rome for a while. Well, now they're back in Rome, and they have a church meeting in their house, which makes us conclude that there were multiple churches that came together to hear the letter to the saints in Rome. That makes sense. Rome would be such a big city that you might need the church to assemble in multiple locations, because there might be a high number of believers to all fit in one spot, and they might be spread out throughout the city. So apparently, there's a church meeting at Aquila and Priscia’s house. But then, go down to verses 14 and 15, where you can see he starts to bring up other groups of people. Like in verse 14, you have a synchronous and everybody else there and the brothers who are with them. And then in verse 15, you have my favorite name in this list, Philologus, and everybody else who's with him, right? So, it's possible, like a synchronous and that crew represents a church, philologist, and that crew, they represent a church. It could be even multiple congregations coming together. Another thing I just want to point out to you is when he says, “kinsmen,” like in verse 7, this remarkable duo here, perhaps couple, “Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen.” Kinsman means fellow Jews. We saw that back in Romans 9:3, when he was talking about the other people from the nation of Israel. He called them this same word, his kinsmen. So, Andronicus and Junia, they were prisoners with Paul. So, at some point, they went to jail for the gospel, and they were known to the apostles. They go back to the early church all the way in Jerusalem. They were Christians even longer than Paul, and he knows they're there, and he wants them to be greeted. He highlights their fellow Jews. So, he's speaking to multiple churches, both Jews and Gentiles.
But now let me show you the three things I want you to see that we can focus on as our three points from this section. It starts with Phoebe. In verse one, go back to Phoebe. How does he introduce her? I commend to you our what, everybody? “Our sister, Phoebe.” So, do you ever hear somebody at church say, brother or sister? Does that seem a little awkward to you? Does it seem a little cheesy, a little cringe? Well, don't tell that to Paul, because that's how he thinks about it. He's not saying my sister Phoebe. It's not like, well, I gave her the letter because she's my sister. No, he's saying “our sister Phoebe.” It's very clear they've never met this lady, and it's very clear she's already our sister. So, the number one way that the Greek New Testament refers to us is as brothers. And because the Bible is written in a masculine tone, when it says brothers, it includes brothers and sisters, we are family. That's what it's saying. It doesn't really call us Christians. It doesn't even call us believers, it does call us those things, but the number one thing it calls us is “brothers”. We're supposed to think of each other as an extended family, blood brothers and sisters because of the death of Jesus Christ, we've all been adopted into the same family by our Father in heaven who loves us. So, he says, sister Phoebe, our sister, like right away you welcome her like a sister. And this is just how Paul thinks. In fact, go down to when he talks about Rufus in verse 13. Look at what he says, “Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, also his mother.” Hey, is Rufus his mom? There “because she has been a mother to me as well.” Wow. She cared for me like I was one of her own kids. See that? Wow. So, you’ve got Paul writing to the Romans, acting like Rufus is his mom. She's like a mom to me, too. And then notice what he says, “and the brothers who are with them,” in verse 14. So we've got a sister, we've got a mother over here. We've got the brothers over here.
Point number three, let's get it down like this: We want to “see church as a family.” We want to see church as a family. Church is not a place that you go to. Church is people that you love. And if you think, oh, I'm going to church means a building, a service or some kind of organization. No, this church is a family of people who all believe in Jesus. Can I get an amen from anybody on this? This is so important, and if you haven't learned to think this way, you need to change the way you think. For some of you, this is a reminder of who we are. For some of you, you need to hear this, and you need to stop thinking like American culture acts like, you just go in and out of church. And the point of church is everything that happens face forward. You sing the songs, you hear the word, then you leave, no, that's no, that's not what it says. Yes, we're going to worship God, and yes, we're going to hear from God's Word. But there's something very important. We're going to do it together, which is why we're happy to do online church for people who are watching online right now, we're happy to do that if you're home sick or you're traveling. But online church is not real church because you’ve got to get in the room with the people. They're your family. Don't you want to be with your family? That's the idea. I mean, sometimes there are a lot of challenges that happen in families, but the idea is, you go to a family reunion and you find out there's an uncle or an aunt or a cousin or somebody that you've never met, but they're your family. Do you think of them, then, as a stranger? Do you think of them as a random person, or do you have an inclination to go and get to know them because they are your family? That's how we're supposed to think about people at church, and too many people at church treat other people like strangers. Oh, you're some random person. Nobody here is random. Everybody here is brought here by God to learn about Jesus Christ. And if you believe in Jesus, you are adopted into the family of God, and by the blood of Jesus that covers your sin. You are now a brother or sister in Christ, and that's how we're supposed to think of each other.
Go to 1 Timothy 5 again, when he's training Timothy how to conduct himself. This is over to the right in the Ts, 1 Timothy, chapter 5. He's training Timothy how to think about church. Church comes with instructions. The Bible tells us what we're supposed to do here at church. And in 1 Timothy 5:1-2, Paul is teaching his disciple, Timothy, this young pastor of this church in Ephesus. Here's what he says to him, and this is 1 Timothy 5:1-2. “Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, 2 older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity.” Timothy, are you saying something to an older gentleman? Well, he's your father. An older woman, she's your mother. Those guys, they're your brothers. That lady over there, she's your sister. He's training Timothy to think in familial terms about the other people at church. Is that how you think?
And when I go to Uganda, when I leave on Thursday, and again, you can get the schedule on your way out. You'll see, if you look at that schedule, I'm teaching 1 Thessalonians. That's what they asked me to do, to teach 1 Thessalonians, to train up future pastors there in Africa. Well, 1 Thessalonians is the first book we ever went through here in Huntington Beach. And so, to me, this is like going back to the roots. Going back home is what it feels like. Because one of the things that happened in 1 Thessalonians, chapter 2 and chapter 3, Paul literally says to the brothers in Thessalonica. He says, I love you guys so much. I love you like a mom cares for her kids. I speak to you like a father speaks to his son. In fact, when the Jews came in, chased me out of town and I was torn away from you, it was like you were orphaned from me. This is what Paul a man, a man writing to a church saying, I'm like your mom. I love you so much. I care for you so dearly. See, this is how Paul thinks any and that helped us here at this church to start seeing people here as a family and praise God. There are a lot of brothers and sisters here, they do know each other like a family. I've heard many people at our church say that they are closer to other people here at this church than they are to their own family. Praise God for that. But if you're not a part of that, we want to invite you into that, and you need to change. Way you think about it, you need to be like the people at church are my brothers and sisters, and I need to get to know them until that really feels like how it is, until I'm right there with them and we're sharing this relationship that God has brought us into. So, this isn't Paul's like, Man, I got brothers there, I want to introduce my sister to you. Man, Rufus, mom. She's like a my mom, too. Great. I want that you should go greet her. He's thinking of them as a big family of people.
Now go back to Romans 16, because there's another theme, and it starts right there in verse 3, with Prisca and Aquila. Notice what he calls them right away, Prisca and Aquila, “my fellow workers in Christ Jesus.” They're coworkers. They work with me in the ministry of Jesus in the gospel. They strive side by side. Notice how he says this again in verse 9, when he's talking about “Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ.” So, not only did he see the people as family, he saw people as people who were working. Do you see that there's a lot of work to do when it comes to the Church of Jesus, making disciples is hard work. There's a lot of practical things that need to get done, physical things. And then there are people that need to be invested in and welcomed, loved, they need to be taught. And so, he sees it as a lot of work, and he values the people who are working with him. In fact, he says something here about the women. Look at verse 6. He mentions Mary. We don't know which Mary this is here, but he says, in verse 6, “Greet Mary, who has worked hard for you.” And this is a different word, but the same idea. Like, do you guys know how hard Mary has worked? Like, the idea behind this word is, like, there's been much work. Work is kind of what it what it means like, wow, I don't know what Mary was doing, but in Paul's mind, Mary was somebody who was making church happen in Rome.
Go down to verse 12. Look at how he says, “Greet those workers in the Lord, Tryphaena and Tryphosa.” In fact, how about the “beloved Persis, who has worked hard in the Lord,” toiling, laboring there in God's harvest field. Wow. Five different times Paul brings up in these Greetings how hard the people are working. This is something he values. Do you value this? Is this what you think about church? Do you come to church to receive? Or do you come to church to give? Do you come to church so for other people to serve you, or do you come to do the work of service yourself? What a lot of people don't realize about church is there were people here early this morning making all of this happen, people who had to go before us, out in the parking lot, driving trolleys, with the kids, with the youth, setting up, tearing down, serving coffee. All of that takes work, and all of that is just to set the stage so we can get to the real work, which is investing in people's lives and making disciples. You're not even really doing the real work of the church till you're taking what you know about Jesus and you're passing it on to somebody else. Are you a part of that hard work?
Let's get that down for number four: “Value those who work hard.” We want to value those who work hard. We do not want to be one of those churches here at Compass Bible Church, Huntington Beach. We don't want to be one of those churches where twenty percent of the people do eighty percent of the work. Have you heard about that? I've heard that stat my whole life going to church, that twenty percent, just a few people, do the majority of the work at church. That's wrong. That's not how it was ever meant to be. Everybody who's a part of the church, we're all in the family. We're all here to serve. We're all here to get equipped to do the work of the ministry. There is something for you to do in the Church of Jesus Christ, and you shouldn't stop looking until you're doing it.
Go over to 1 Corinthians 15. It's just a few pages over to the right here from Romans 16, 1 Corinthians 15. This is another letter that Paul writes, and as he comes to the end, there's a dynamic conclusion in 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul preaches the gospel, that Jesus is the Christ, that Jesus died on the cross for your sins, and on the third day, Jesus rose from the dead, just like he said, just like all the prophets said, and Jesus, after he rose from the dead, he appeared to Peter, he appeared to the twelve. There were over five hundred eyewitnesses who saw Jesus alive. Don't believe Paul? Go ask them that are still alive. You could go ask them if they saw Jesus. And because Jesus rose from the dead, that's why we're here. If Jesus didn't rise from the dead, what? Are we even doing on a Sunday morning, but because Jesus did rise from the dead, that's why we have a living hope. That's why we come here, because we believe that we have a new life. And even if we die, we will live. In fact, some of us may not even die in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, and our mortal bodies will be resurrected into immortality. That's what he says in this chapter. Do you believe that even if you die, you will live? Do you believe that Jesus is going to come and appear, and we will be like him, caught up in the air? Okay? Well, if you believe that, then how should you then live? And so, look at verse 58 at the end of this epic chapter, death has been defeated. We will live forever with Jesus. Then he says this, okay, so what's the conclusion of the resurrection? Therefore, notice how he addresses them. “Therefore, my beloved brothers.” Notice the brothers. We'll get to the beloved in a minute. “Therefore my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord.” Man! What a statement. Always, that's twenty-four seven, abounding. That's energy, that's passion, “always abounding in” what? See, I think today we would think, always abounding in the grace of the Lord. That's what I grew up here in a church. Just keep receiving what God gives to you when you actually read what the Bible says, grace is robust. Grace is strong. If you're really receiving the goodness of God, it has such a profound effect on you that it equips you to go and do something. Are you always abounding in the work of the Lord? Most American Christians are part time. They clock in and then they clock out. We're looking for full time people for Jesus Christ, people who value the hard work. And we have people there. We have deacons that work very hard here, that I would encourage you to stand beside. But we also have a lot of people who work hard at this church. It's a blessing for me to get to serve with them. It's a blessing to see they keep coming back, they keep giving. They're not taken. They're here for other people. They genuinely care more for other people than themselves. It's a privilege to see people like that, and we need to value them. We need to say thank you to them. We need to appreciate them. If you know somebody and they're really serving Jesus here, they're caring about other people here. They're meeting the needs. Man, you should greet them. You should say thank you to them. You should be like, wow, we couldn't do what we're doing here without you doing it. Yes, Jesus is the one who builds the church. Jesus gets the glory, but Jesus uses the work of his people, and Jesus what you're doing for Jesus, it matters. You have a master who knows how you serve him, and he will reward you. He made that so clear, you will be rewarded according to what you do in the name of Jesus. Because everything, notice what it says here, “always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord, your labor is not in” what? it's not it's not a waste, it's not worthless. It's not vain. If you're really doing something for Jesus, it's worth it.
See how far away that is from how American Christians think about church, where you go to a service as in other people are serving us, rather than what is the hard work of making disciples that I need to be a part of? What practical physical needs does the church have? How can I help meet those? But then let's get to the real need, which is the great harvest of souls that we need to see, and the maturity of the believers, that they would be not just saved, not just sanctified, but that they would be discipled all the way to the point where they can go and make disciples themselves, that they're so mature in Christ, that they've grown up so much in their faith, that they could take what they know about Jesus and they can give it to somebody else. They can pass it on to the next person. That's the work that we're here to do. It's hard work. It's labor. It's toil. It requires sweat equity. You're going to give and give, and when you feel like you've got nothing left, you're going to have to give some more. It is hard work to build the church of Jesus Christ. Are you doing it? And do you appreciate the people who are doing it? Do you value them? Paul, he clearly thought, wow, Mary, wow. Trifina and triphosa, wow. Persis, these people. They're doing the work. Greet them. Where would you be without them? And the work that they've done for you see, what Paul understands is that some people were doing the work before other people even showed up. Like there are people in this room. You came here and you got saved, and you don't even realize that there wasn't even a here to come to until some of the people here started doing work, and you don't even know some of the people who worked hard so you could come here and be saved. But it requires a lot of hard work of the people, as Jesus builds his church, and so we want to value that always abounding in the work of the Lord. What a bold thing to say. Is that what you're thinking that you're one of the workers in God's harvest field of North Orange County?
Now go back to Romans 16. We see the theme of the family. We see the theme of the work. One more theme that I want you to see is the theme of “the Beloved.” Look what he says about a penis here in verse five, when he says, greet my beloved Epaenetus, who was the first convert, the first fruits of Christ in Asia. Here's Paul remembering when he went to Asia, which is what they kind of called modern day Turkey. And he went there for the first time, and then he saw this guy get saved, and how he loves that guy who got saved there in Asia, the first guy who got saved. See how Paul calls him? His Beloved. Look at verse 8. He says, “Greet Ampliatus, my beloved in the Lord.” Oh, I love that guy and the Lord Jesus. You’ve got to greet that guy for me. I love him. How about verse 12, where he refers here to Persis, “the beloved Persis who has worked hard in the Lor.” Even Rufus in the very next verse, verse 13, “Rufus chosen in the Lord,” elect in the Lord.
What does that mean that God would choose people, that God would elect people, that God would predestine people? Have you heard about that? That's something Paul really taught us about in the book of Romans that God chose beforehand, people that he would save. And why would God choose these people? Because they were doing good work. Because they were better than other people? No, God doesn't choose people based on who they are. God chooses people based on who he is, that God wants to set his love upon them. God is like this loving Heavenly Father, predestining his people, choosing them beforehand, like a father would go and adopt a child. So, God has chosen to set his love on you, not because of who you are or what you did. God loved you simply because he wanted to, because that's who he is.
And so, when you are one of the people of God, not only are we family to each other, not only should we work hard for the church, but we are the beloved. If you believe in Jesus, then you know God. You've entered a relationship with God. In fact, you have entered into the relationship of God, where how the father perfectly loved his one and only Son for all of eternity, you are now in that same relationship, and just as the Father perfectly loves his Son that he's pleased with, so God now loves you, and you could not be more loved than you are right here, right now, if you believe in Jesus.
So, number five: We want to “Behold what it means to be beloved.” Behold. You’ve got to see this, what it means to be one of the Beloved. This is a word we need to bring back. Oh, I love those people at church. They're my beloved people. Oh, my beloved brothers and sisters at church. Here's Paul, grown man. He's got no problem saying, Oh, that guy. He's my beloved I love that guy. That's one of my favorite things about being a part of this church in Huntington Beach is I've got brothers. I've got brothers who are fellow workers with me in the gospel here at this church, and they will text me things like, I love you like a grown man texting me, I love you. And it doesn't even feel weird, it doesn't even feel awkward. I'm just like, love you too, bro. Right? Heart emoji, no, not really. But you know, I'm like in there, right? Love you too, bro. There are people, they'll come up to me after the service. I love you so much, and I'll just be like, I love you, too. And we mean it. It's not weird, it's not awkward, it's real, it's genuine. I love you. I can remember some of the first people that got saved when we moved up here to Huntington Beach. Man, if somebody even says their name, if I even just think of them in my head, I'll be like, I’ve got to text that guy. I haven't talked to that guy for a minute. How's he doing? I love that guy. See, is that how you think about it, that we've all entered into real love, true love? What everybody in the world wants, but nobody has if they don't know God. Genuine, true love.
So, we use the word love in so many ways, like, oh, I love what I'm eating for lunch, or oh I love what you're wearing today. We use it when we have this strong feeling towards someone, then I love them. But that's not what love really is. I mean, that's the way we use the word. But this genuine care, where you're willing to sacrifice, you're willing to put the other person as more important. And what is the purpose behind this love? That that person could be right with God, that they would be out of their sin and right in the presence of God. That's what love is. We're the people who know that we are the beloved, and this is what we need to be, because this is what the world needs to see. They will know that we are the disciples of Jesus by our what everybody it's not by our Bible teaching. It's not by our commitment to the truth. Now that's very important. We're about preaching the Bible. We're about women of the Word. We're about doing what the Word says. But love is an ingredient that is not spicy enough. In most Bible churches these days, people don't say to each other at church, I love you. People don't say you're my beloved. People aren't willing to lay down their lives. You really go to a church when you love the church, otherwise, you're just a visitor. But the people who are really the church. They're the beloved.
Go with me to 1 John. Look at how he writes to these people here in 1 John, the people he knows they believe in Jesus. That's who he's writing to here in 1 John. Maybe you've read the Gospel of John, and John wrote the story of Jesus, and he's in the story, but he doesn't refer to himself as John. Maybe because he's like the deacons here at our church, and he doesn't want to talk about himself, right? Maybe because there's already a John, the Baptist, that's known as the John in the story. So, he doesn't call himself John when he writes from his own eyewitness perspective, the story of Jesus? No, he calls himself “The disciple whom Jesus…” what, everybody? “The disciple whom Jesus loved.” He defines his identity in the love of Jesus. Most important thing that ever happened to John, Jesus loved him. In fact, when he sets up the scene of the Last Supper, the upper room where Jesus and his disciples have their meal together, and Jesus teaches them on the night before he dies on the cross. The way that John introduces that scene in John 13, verse 1, as he says about Jesus having loved his own who were in the world. He loved them to the end, to the fullness, to the completion. When Jesus cried, it is finished, what was finished was his love for us. And so, John, he looked at himself, and he looked at all the people that Jesus died for, all the people that Jesus saved. He saw them as the beloved. Let me just take you through 1 John. Look at chapter 2, verse 1, where John now, as an older man, says, “My little children,” look at how he refers to them. My little children. Look at chapter 2, verse 7, “beloved” he calls them. Look at chapter 2, verse 12, “I am writing to you little children.” Go over to chapter 2, verse 18, “Children.” It is the last hour. How about verse 28 of chapter 2? “And now little children.” And then in chapter 3, verse 1, he says, “See, can you see it?” Can you behold it? Do you get it? Can you see what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God? And we are the children of God. We've been adopted. We're in the family. Can you see it? Is it real to you that God, the Almighty, holy, everlasting one, has chosen you, and he has set his love upon you, and now, by God's own decision, his steadfast love will be the constant of your life. It will define you everywhere you go, his goodness and his mercy will chase after you. You are the children of God. Do you see it? It's like Do you guys realize how much love we share? Do you realize that everything the world is looking for is found right here among us, the sons, the daughters of the Father? We've been adopted together. And then he says this in chapter 4, verse 7, I want to read this for you. He says, “Beloved, let us love one another.” Hey, do you really love the other people at church? For love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Let's just reclaim what love is here for a moment. A feeling of passion for another person is not love, it's lust. A lot of people say they love somebody really they're hurting that person's soul by causing them to sin. No, the only way you can really know love is you have to go to the source, the eternal source. You have to know God to know love. And if you do know God, then you can love one another freely. You have received freely. You can give. And so, he says, in this, let me just give you a good definition of love. He says, verse 9, “In this, the love of God was made manifest among us.” Here's how you can see the love of God, that God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. “In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us, and he sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Jesus was the sacrifice to atone for our sin. “Beloved, If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one's ever seen God, but if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.” They can't see the love of God. But when they come and see us, do they see the love of God? Then, man, if everybody is peeling out of here to get in their cars and go be with their family and go get back to their own work, then how in the world are there's the world ever going to see that we love one another because we have the love of God, because there's something different about us, because we now, through our faith in Jesus, have entered into the eternal relationship of the Father and the Son. And nothing in this world can separate us from the love of God in Christ, Jesus, our Lord, it doesn't matter if you feel it. It doesn't matter if you see it. You could not be more loved than you are right now. And you need to believe it. You need to receive it. And if you really understand how God loved you in his Son, Jesus, you will feel compelled. You will feel shaken up; you will be stirred from the inside out. I’ve got to pass this on. Look at how God loved me. How could I not love his people? The Bible goes so far as to say even John. Go down to verse 19 of 1 John 4. Look at how he continues to unpack this we love because he first loved us. “If anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he is a,” what everybody? He is a what, a Lot. Oh, I love Jesus. I go to church. Oh, I don't really like those other people at church. I don't love them, then you're a liar. He says you don't really love God or Jesus. If you don't love the people of God, the church of Jesus Christ. You want to know you love God. Well, what does it look like to love one another? See, that's what John's doing is he's putting them as they go together, the love for God and the love for his people. There's no separating that love, because they are the beloved.
And so, is that how it is for you? Can you honestly say that you're willing to lay down your life? Can you honestly say that when you come into the room, the other people are more important than yourself, because that's how Jesus came for you, and that's how we're supposed to be here for one another, to love them. And so, if you go back to Romans 16 with me, let's just think this through Paul. Wow. What a master class. He's taught them so much in the first 15 chapters, but now he's like, hey, here's Phoebe. Take care of her. And look around the room. It's like coming out of the movie. It's like coming out of reading the book. Well, I got so caught up in that, what time is it? And then you start looking for who's all around me. Well, greet this person and look at this fellow worker over here, and look at this mother over here. And look at this, look at this person over here, my beloved, the first person who got saved in Asia is there among you. People who were there, saved before me, are there among you? Hey, do you see them there? Greet them 16 times in verses 3 to 16, he says, greet, greet, greet, greet. Then at the end he says, “Greet with a holy kiss.” Now there's something we don't do in America. We don't do any of these holy kisses. We do like a holy bunk, you know, like a holy pound is like, kind of what we're doing, maybe, maybe a holy side hug. I don't know we're right. We have a high fives, right? Where I haven't seen anybody doing holy kisses. It would probably be weird, right, if you took that literally. But he's like, greet somebody. Hey. Do you realize, all the people that are there that are other church, do you realize there's deacons there, there's hard workers there, the beloved people of God are all around you? So, I don't know how we could really study a passage that he tells them to greet these other people 16 times and not go greet somebody here at the end of this service. Do you know somebody who works hard? Go thank them. Go, value them. Is it like, well, I don't know some of these people. Well, get to know them like they're your family, like you want to find out who they are and care for them. So I'm going to pray for you, and then we'll go and greet one another just like it says, Let me pray for us.
Father in heaven. I just thank you for this list of ancient names that some of them we don't use anymore. We can barely pronounce them. And yet, what a blessing it is for us to take a moment here today and to look around the room when Romans is being read, and to see it's not just a personal book for me, it's not even just for my family, it's for all of us as a family, that we are the beloved, the people of Jesus Christ, your people, Father. Father, I want to thank you for choosing to adopt me as your son. I want to thank you for all my brothers and sisters that you would choose to set your love upon us, that we would be loved. And I pray that we would refer to each other as the beloved, that we would refer to each other as brother or sister. God, I want to lift up those who work hard here at this church. God, I pray for our seventy-nine deacons, and I pray for everybody here, if they know one of these deacons, that they would treat them like a real person who has real challenges, real hard times, and yet that deacon is choosing to put other people as more important than himself or herself. Let us encourage those deacons. Let us appreciate them for the work that they are doing. Let us come alongside and stand beside them and say, don't give up. Keep going. God, I pray that you will put fresh wind in the sails of our deacons here this week, and that they'll know we appreciate it. I pray for some of these people who've gotten saved here in this room, that they would meet one of the deacons that was here serving long before them, and they could say, hey, thank you. I got saved because you were doing hard work for the Lord. Thank you for what you're doing. Let the people here be valued. God, I pray that you would raise up patrons here among us, people who have the means to give, that they would be generous, that they would pay it forward, that through this church, we would be able to provide long term support for other churches in other parts of the world. And then, God, unite us together in our love. God, I just pray that this would be a church that is weird, even compared to other churches these days, because when the service is done, people don't act like it's over. They act like no part of the reason I came here was the other people in the room. When Romans is read, I have people it's hard to even pronounce their names. Sometimes I can't even put a face with their name, but I want to get to know them, because they're my brothers. They're my sisters. They are the beloved of Jesus Christ. God, I pray that when people come to this church, they will realize the disciples of Jesus are really here, and they'll know it by our love. God, I pray that you would do that work here among us, that you would put on our hearts to greet one another, even now, to not think about ourselves, but to really reach out in the love of Jesus Christ. We pray this in his name. Amen.
Thanks for being here, everybody. Let's greet one another.