Gooding, David: 1 - Introduction

Thank you very, very much for coming. What I'm looking forward to this weekend is particularly to be enriched by you, as Paul says when he came to Rome, he was looking forward, yes, to contributing to them, he says, but even more so to be contributed to by them and to be strengthened in his faith and work for the Lord. You have, uh, I suspect, been on railway stations sometime in your dim and distant past and seen some containers, some churns, some, uh, old trucks perhaps, and on them they've got to return empty, you'll see, so that when they've fulfilled their various tasks, they come back to where they started, only they come back empty. You should regard me like that this weekend. Uh, my job is going to be just to introduce the various passages of the gospel, to suggest some lines along which we might like to invent the Gospel of Romans, that is, to suggest some lines upon which we might like to investigate, uh, its message, but by no means to, uh, insist that you follow my ideas, of course not. And then I'm looking forward, if it so can be arranged, to hearing the results of your discussions. It will be in your discussion groups where the real hard work will be done. And I'm hoping I can prevail upon the management to arrange some report back sessions where I may have the benefit of your discussions and the things that the Lord has shown you. We are, as you'll see, to study together the Epistle to the Romans. Uh, that was my suggestion, I have to confess to that. I'm aware that all of us know Romans. We know it inside out and upside down, and doubtless if you woke us up in the middle of the night, hit us on the head with a brick and said, start quoting Romans chapter three, well, we could do that backwards if necessary. And yet, if you're like me, if you're like me, there are bits and pieces of Romans still that somehow don't quite fit, or you don't see your way through it, and, uh, you don't follow the drift of the argument, or you don't see how it applies. And then, if you're like me, there are other parts to it too, where you feel you've understood it, but getting it across is another thing altogether. Uh, probably hasn't happened to you, but it's happened to me, and quite recently that trying to expound chapter six. and what with old men, uh, and bodies of the sins of the flesh and other such things around, and explaining it all, uh, it is so easily to hang oneself and get it all around one's neck. So I'm looking forward to that, and uh, uh, I trust we shall very soon, uh, get to know each other and feel free to make our contribution one to the other, and that as we do so, the Lord himself will reveal himself to us. It is to be noticed that the Epistle to the Romans, being a great exposition of the gospel, is nonetheless written for Christians. And in my advanced old age, I grow more and more to feel that the gospel it is, that is the test of everything. And therefore it is good for us from time to time, even though we are teachers of God's word, to come aside and let the Lord himself speak again to our hearts the gospel of our salvation. To redirect our confidence. In Romans chapter five, Paul comes to one of his early climaxes, and he puts it thus: not only so, but we joy in God through Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. As you know, that word for joy doesn't mean so much I'm HAPPY all the day long, every day, that kind of joy. It's a kind of a joy that can exist in the midst of the tempest and the darkest of nights and the most difficult of circumstances. It is a word that indicates a certain exultant confidence and the joy that arises from it. If ever you've been in the examination room and your knees have knocked, as you've approached the desk where that paper lies, you see, fearing what's on it when you turn it over. You've turned it over and seen the very question that you were preparing late last night before you went into the examination room, and in that moment you know you've defeated the examiner. Marvelous feeling. That kind of confidence, you see. Ah. And this is the word that we shall find Paul using. And as he comes to his great climax, he says, and not only so, amidst all these magnificent blessings, our exultant confidence is in God. The very God who, as he shows in the early chapters, must condemn our sin. Yet we have come to see that the basis of all true confidence and assurance for time and what lies beyond is in that God. And the more we get to know him, the more we realize that it is because God is the kind of God he is, that we are saved and shall be saved eternally. So that our confidence grows in God himself. Therein is fulfilled Jeremiah's great words that Paul so often quotes: He that glories, let him not glory in his wealth or his riches or his knowledge or what have you. He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. So this weekend, I pray and trust that as we study the word of God together, and this epistle in particular, God himself will draw near. This might become one of those sacred occasions when we not only are confirmed in what we believe and what we should believe, uh, that we might meet the God who lies behind it all, and our knowledge being increased, above all, our faith in the Lord be increased. That the Lord would look upon us, returned empties, perhaps you may feel the same as I do, and not only speak to us this weekend, but speak to us in some sort as may meet the needs of those who are spiritually dependent on us. So, as a token of our worship of the Lord, I just want to read those famous verses that finish the third section of the epistle from Romans eleven verses thirty three to thirty six. With a prayer. And as we study the epistle together these hours to come, our hearts might be lifted through this profound sense of the worship of God that filled the heart of the apostle, even as he wrote these words. Romans eleven thirty three to thirty six: Oh, the depths of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out. For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or who has first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and unto him, are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.