Skip to content

The River ChurchSermons

Introduction/Main Theme

Josh Combs · Sunday, 27 April 2025 · Romans 1:1-17 · 35:47 · 4,829 words

Romans S1 · 1:1-17 Goodrich

There is no public page for this message yet — the transcript below is the whole of it.

The gospel is good news about God's Son, Jesus Christ, who came in the flesh, died for sin, and rose from the dead to offer forgiveness and eternal life. The sermon explains that faith is not mere belief but believing obedience—a full surrender to Christ as Lord. It explores Paul's radical transformation from persecutor to apostle as evidence of the gospel's power to change lives. The preacher invites listeners to examine whether they have genuinely responded to the gospel and to consider baptism as a public declaration of faith.

What this sermon is about

Ranked by keyness against every other sermon in the corpus. Each one is a word this sermon actually said — nothing here was written by a model.

saul 15 number 24 gospel 36 ladder 6 new 28 rome 13 stephen 5 faith 32 saint 8 appointed 5 emperor 5 persecute 6

Topics

The Gospel 10 Faith 8 Righteousness 4 Obedience 3 The Flesh 2 The Holy Spirit 1 Baptism 1 Salvation 1 Prayer 1 Government & Authority 1 Sanctification 1 Death & Resurrection 1 Grace 1

Scripture referenced 17

Verified against the transcript. A reference the recording does not support is never listed here.

Romans 1 2:19 Acts 7 2:25 Acts 7:58 2:25 Acts 7 2:34 Acts 7:58 2:34 Acts 7 2:42 Acts 7:58 3:53 Acts 8 4:11 Acts 8:1 4:11 Romans 1 10:51 Romans 1:2 12:44 Romans 1:3 13:05 Romans 1:4 14:03 Romans 1:5 16:28 Romans 1:7 17:18 Romans 1:8 20:24 Romans 1:14 21:51

Transcript

Every word, as spoken, with the second it was said. Each word links to its own entry in the index.

Pre-service announcement — 8 lines, 0:42. Excluded from every count and search on this site, kept here so nothing is hidden.

Hi everyone, my name is Stephen, and thanks for checking out this message today.

We are so glad that you are here and want to connect with you and your family.

The easiest way to do this is to text RIVERCONNECT to 97000.

There we can help answer any questions you may have or even pray with you.

You can visit our website, theriverchurch.cc, to learn more about us and what we are as a church.

Finally, if you want to support the work we are doing here at the River Church,

financially, please feel free to text 84321 with the amount that you would like to give.

Thank you for joining us, and we hope you are blessed by today's message.

Bibles this morning to the book of Romans, Romans chapter number 1.

If you don't have a Bible, I want to encourage you to share with someone sitting next to you,

or you can take out your phone, download a Bible app or the River Church app.

There is a Bible feature on there, but I want to encourage you as much as I possibly can

to be following along in the scriptures.

If you are a guest, I want to welcome you.

Thanks for being here today.

Honored to have you with us.

We would love to connect with you after the gathering.

If you are watching online, thank you for joining us that way as well.

Romans chapter number 1.

Today we are beginning a series that will take us from now until the end of November.

So we are going to dive into the book of Romans.

Really, we could start right now and for the rest of my ministry,

preach through Romans.

But I don't want to do that to you.

I'm going to be honest with you.

So we are going to spend from now until the end of November going through Romans and exciting series.

So let's begin in verse number 1.

The Bible says,

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God.

So the author here of the book of Romans, which is really a letter,

is a man by the name of Paul.

I want you to hold your spot there in Romans 1.

And I want you to turn to just the previous book, to the book of Acts,

and go to Acts chapter 7 and verse 58.

Chapter 7, verse 58.

The event that we're jumping into in chapter 7 of Acts is the ramping up of the persecution of Christians.

At this point in the story,

of the Bible,

specifically the New Testament,

Jesus has risen from the dead.

And then a month or so later,

Jesus ascended into heaven and the apostles began to preach.

Peter and John and the others began to preach and people began to believe in Jesus.

They began to put their faith in Jesus.

Well, almost instantaneously,

persecution came against the church.

And there was a man by the name of Stephen.

Stephen was one of the early,

kind of proto types of a deacon in the church.

Stephen was also just mightily used of God.

And he began to preach and he began to be persecuted so much so that they,

the religious leaders were enraged by Stephen.

They took him out of the city and they began to bludgeon him to death with stones.

And the Bible says in Acts 7 verse 58,

they cast him out of the city and stoned him and the witnesses laid down.

Their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.

Verse one of chapter eight and Saul approved of his execution.

You look at verse number three of that same chapter,

but Saul was ravaging the church and entering house after house.

He dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.

Jump over to Acts chapter number nine,

verse number one,

but Saul still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.

So early on in the church,

the villain who was leading the charge of opposition against Christians was this man named Saul.

He was there as a young man when Stephen was murdered.

He was so zealous and so passionate about persecuting persecution of Christians.

That he would travel around.

He was looking for men and women,

their families to imprison and potentially see them killed.

He wanted to crush Jesus's church.

Something happened in Acts chapter number nine.

He was on his way to the city of Damascus.

So he was headed north from Jerusalem.

And the Bible says in verse number eight,

and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him falling to the ground.

He heard a voice saying to him,

Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting?

Why are you persecuting me?

And he said,

who are you Lord?

And he said,

I am Jesus whom you are persecuting,

but rise and enter the city and you will be told what you are to do for the next several days.

And in that blindness,

Saul is contemplating what he has been doing in the name,

supposedly in the name of God.

Jump over to Acts chapter number 13,

a little later into Saul's story.

Acts chapter number 13,

Saul is listed there.

Beginning of the chapter is one of the prophets,

the elders in the church of Antioch.

God begins to move in his heart and the other heart of the man named Barnabas there

to go into the world to preach the gospel where people have not heard about Christ.

So they travel.

Verse number nine,

very important verse here in our story.

But Saul,

who was also called Paul.

So when we pick up,

in Romans chapter number one,

we're introduced to a guy named Paul.

And if we don't pause there,

if we just race into the book,

we won't stop and be amazed at what God has already done.

By time we get to verse one,

the villain of the early church has become the great preacher and evangelist of the early church.

This is a radical gospel transformation.

Paul would ref reference his former life in Judaism in Galatians,

in Philippians.

He would talk about how he had all of the credentials marked,

but he would say,

I count that all the former things that I had thought I had achieved.

I counted his loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus,

my Lord.

His name was Saul.

He was named after a prominent,

really the first king of Israel in the old Testament.

So his name had a kind of a royal connotation to it.

Paul was a Roman seer.

He was a Roman seer.

He was a Roman seer.

He was a Roman citizen.

He was from an educated family,

a prominent influential family.

Now he's not going by the name of Saul anymore.

He's going by a Gentile Roman name.

He's going by Paul.

So look at Romans chapter number one,

Saul now called Paul.

When you understand his background just a little bit more,

verse one is beautiful.

Paul writing here says,

and he introduces himself.

He says,

he says a servant of Christ Jesus called to be an apostle.

Set apart for the gospel of God.

That word servant there is the Greek word do loss,

which is where we get the word slave.

He says,

I belong to Jesus Christ.

What Jesus Christ wants from me is what I do.

I've become a slave of Jesus Christ.

He says,

I've been called to be an apostle.

He says,

I was called not appointed,

not self appointed,

not voted in.

I was appointed,

called by Jesus Christ to be an apostle.

Apostle means one cent.

If you hold your spot in Romans and just go back maybe a page or so to Acts chapter number 26,

you'll see Paul telling the story of his conversion,

but not just his conversion,

his commissioning to ministry.

And I said,

who are you Lord?

This was on the road to Damascus,

the bright light.

And the Lord said,

I am Jesus whom you are persecuted.

But rise,

stand upon your feet for I have appointed,

I have appeared to you for this purpose to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you,

delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles to whom I am sending you to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light from the power of Satan to God,

that they may receive forgiveness of sins.

And a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.

There's the commissioning of Paul.

Paul says the moment Jesus appeared to me,

my life was transformed and my purpose in life was transformed.

So that's why back to Romans chapter one,

he says,

I'm a slave of Jesus Christ.

I belong to Jesus Christ.

What he tells me to do is what I'm going to do.

And I'm called.

I'm appointed by him to be an apostle.

I'm sent by him.

I'm a messenger for him.

And I am set apart for the gospel of God.

Gospel meaning good news.

throughout the Roman world,

the Greek word for gospel,

just going to read a note from one author.

He says,

this was a common term used in the worship of the emperor.

So it was common throughout Paul's day.

Many of the Caesars claimed deity for themselves and demanded,

worship from every person in the empire,

whether that person was free or slave,

rich or poor known or unknown favorable events relating to the emperor were

proclaimed to the citizens as good news as gospel town.

Harold would stand in the village square and shout good news.

The emperor's wife has given birth to a son or good news.

The emperor's heir has come of age or good news.

The new emperor has ascended to the throne.

So,

this idea of good news of gospel was related often to the emperor.

Look at what Paul says here in verse number one.

He says,

I am set apart for the gospel,

And this is good news of God.

This is God's good news.

This is not temporary,

supposed good news from an emperor.

This is good news from God.

And he begins to detail what his message,

He says,

this good news is news that God promised beforehand through the prophets,

through,

through his prophets in the holy scripture.

So the old Testament is filled with hundreds of promises of the Messiah,

hundreds of promises of the Christ that would be to come.

And those prophecies,

verse three are concerning his son,

who was descended from David,

according to the flesh and was declared,

declared to be the son of God and power,

according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead,

our Lord.

Look at his message here.

The message connects to the old Testament.

It isn't a new message that Paul invented.

It's a message that he says comes from God and God has been preparing.

God's been talking about this for hundreds of years.

the prophecies are all culminating in Christ.

And,

and the message is concerning God's son,

who's the fulfillment of God's covenant or God's promise to King David.

He's called here the son of God.

The word there in verse four,

we translate the English declared is literally the Greek word horizon,

where we get our word horizon.

I want you to think about that.

Paul says here,

what's been talked about in the old Testament through the prophets,

through the holy scriptures,

was about God's son who was descended from David.

So he's God's son and he's of the lineage of King David.

So he fulfills God's promise to King David.

And he was declared.

There was a horizon to be the son of God,

meaning there is this like the sun setting on the old covenant and in Christ,

the sun rising for the new.

If you've come to know the son of God,

it's like the sun rising in your life.

It's like a brand new day.

It's a brand new beginning.

So Paul said he was declared to be the son of God in power,

according to the spirit of holiness.

So look at how Jesus is described here.

He's described as the son of David.

So the fulfillment of that promise,

he's described as the son of God.

He's described as holy.

So the spirit of holiness.

So Jesus lived a holy,

perfect life anointed by the Holy spirit to do so.

And at the end of verse number four,

he's called Christ and he's called Lord.

Here's what Paul's message is about.

It's about the gospel.

when Paul says gospel,

when the Bible says gospel,

when we say gospel here,

we're not just talking about a philosophy.

We're not just talking about an optional life improvement method or a set of

When we say the gospel,

we're talking about the good news of God.

That is Jesus Christ.

The good news that Jesus Christ came in the flesh and he died on the cross

to pay the penalty for sin and that Jesus was buried and that Jesus rose

from the dead.

And that is good news because it provides a way for every person to be

forgiven of their sins and receive the gift of eternal life.

That's the gospel.

The gospel is not a philosophy,

just a philosophy or some idea or some theory or some,

some set of moral beliefs.

It is a message about God's only begotten son.

That's what Paul's talking about.

Now he goes to verse five in his introduction.

He says through whom no notice it's not a what it's a whom it's about Jesus.

So it's through Jesus.

We've received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for

the sake of his name among the nations,

including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.

So he says through Jesus,

through Jesus's work,

I've received grace through Jesus's work.

I've received the apostleship through Jesus's work.

I've received the mission at the end of verse number six.

He says,

through Jesus,

we have received personal belonging.

We belong to Christ.

Now who's he writing to?

He says to all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints,

grace to you and peace from God,

our father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

He's writing to Christians in Rome.

Rome was the capital of the empire,

an empire that spanned much of the known world.

If you ever,

gone through any ancient history or maybe just this afternoon,

you can Google it.

Google the map of the Roman empire.

It stretches all the way up into great Britain,

down into Africa,

It was a massive kingdom.

And so what the Roman armies would do is they would go and they would conquer

They would establish outposts.

They would tax and all of those taxes would travel all of those roads back to

The expression,

all roads lead to Rome was so that the military could,

could travel to wherever it needed to go and the taxes could travel back to

Rome was a spectacular site.

It was also an incredibly cruel kingdom led by Caesars who claimed to be God

in the flesh.

The title Augustus,

where we get the month of August was a title that Caesars would take upon

themselves to say,

I'm God in the flesh.

So in that city that was filled with what seemed like endless pagan temples

immoral practices.

There were some Christians.

Paul says to them,

you are loved by God.

He says,

you are saints.

And one great commentator on this says the focus being not on behavior,

but on status.

It wasn't that they always acted saintly,

but it's that in Christ,

they were called saints.

If you walk out in our lobby today and you look at the vision on the wall in

any of our locations,

you'll see gather with the saints.

for those of you who maybe grew up Catholic or a little more high church,

you think,

okay,

we're hanging out.

We're hanging out with the saints.

That's a little weird,

right?

But saints in the scripture was not about behavior.

Saints was about a status because of the gospel.

We're not just loved by God,

but he calls us his saints.

I look at verse number eight.

I want you to keep this in mind.

Paul has never met these people.

Paul has never been to Rome.

Paul did not plant this church.

Paul writes first.

I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you because your faith is

proclaimed in all the world.

Their faith was famous for God is my witness whom I serve with my spirit in

There's the word gospel again,

the gospel of his son that without ceasing,

I mentioned you always in my prayers asking that somehow by God's will,

I may now at last succeed in coming to you for I long to see you that I may

impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you.

That is why we,

that is that we may mute,

may be mute.

We may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith,

both yours and mine.

I do not want you to be unaware brothers that I have often intended to come to you,

but thus far have been prevented in order.

Here's why I want to come in order that I may reap some harvest among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles.

Paul saying I've often wanted to make it to Rome.

I've tried to get there.

Plans have been made.

This has been my intention,

but things have just not worked out.

But I pray for you.

I want to minister you.

I think there's some things I can teach you.

And I think there's some ways we can mutually encourage and be beneficial to one another.

Paul says,

I'm under obligation,

both to Greeks and to barbarians,

both to the wise and to the foolish.

So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.

She says,

I want to get there.

I thank God for you.

Your faith is famous.

I pray for you.

And I've often wanted to get to you.

Now, let's step back and let's think about this for a moment.

Paul, formerly known as Saul, was a Pharisee,

meaning the most conservative of the Jewish religion.

These are Romans.

Rome dominates the world, overtaxes the world, is brutal to the world.

Rome would come into Jerusalem in 70 AD, years after this later,

and crush and destroy the city of Jerusalem.

These aren't friends and family.

Nationally, they're enemies.

I remember being in Jerusalem years ago,

and there were some very devout Jews there.

And I said to our guide, I said,

hey, what do they think about us?

And he says, oh, they view you as fuel for hell.

I've been insulted a few times in my life.

Never that way.

So Paul is this religious Jew,

extremely religious, extremely educated,

extremely arrogant in a lot of ways.

There's Christians now in Rome.

Paul, Saul's been converted.

He's now known as Paul, and he's writing a letter.

What could bring these two groups of people together

from the opposite ends of the spectrum?

Verse number 16 and verse number 17.

If you want to circle it, highlight it, star it, you should,

because 16 and 17 is the thesis of the entire book of Romans.

It's the springboard from which all of Romans will go.

Paul literally spends the rest of the book unpacking verse 16 and verse 17.

What brings Paul, former Pharisee, devout Jew,

now converted to Jesus together with these Romans,

it is the gospel.

For I am not ashamed, Paul writes, so I'm not embarrassed.

As Spurgeon says about this verse, I'm not going to tone it down.

Paul says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel, the message about Jesus,

for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes,

to the Jew first and also to the Greek,

for in it, the righteous, the righteous, the righteous,

the righteousness of God, for in it, for in the gospel,

the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.

As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

Here is the good news.

And if you just walk through these statements forward and then backwards,

you can see Paul's logic.

He says the good news is powerful.

It's the dynamic.

It's literally where we get the Greek word from which we get dynamite.

It's the explosive power of God that,

that does what?

That brings salvation, salvation from sin.

And it's salvation to everyone who believes.

Throughout the book, Paul will say that four different times.

This is a good news offer to whoever will believe.

First, that offer came to the Jewish people.

Then it went from there to the Greeks, to the Gentiles, to the known world.

The gospel reveals the righteousness of God.

The gospel reveals the righteousness of God.

The righteousness of God being that God is both just,

he's holy, and he's the justifier.

He's just in that he's perfect.

And he also, through his work on the cross and his resurrection,

offers his righteousness for us.

Righteousness meaning a right standing before God.

So look at this.

Paul says, I'm not ashamed of the good news.

The good news of Jesus is death, burial, and resurrection.

That is the power of God.

I want you to hear this.

Nothing else is the power of God.

There's no power of persuasion that matches that.

There's no religious rules.

There's no other story.

There's no other man-made thing.

This is the power of God, the explosive power of God that does what?

That brings people to salvation.

That saves people from their sins.

And it is offered to everyone who will believe.

Verse 17, the righteousness of God is revealed.

Here's a key concept.

Paul will spend a lot of time dealing with throughout Romans.

From faith for faith.

Here is the biblical response to the gospel.

It's faith.

I had someone say to me several months ago,

hey, you're a person of faith.

And I thought, okay, that's how I'm being classified.

I suppose that's better than fuel for hell.

And so the person says, you're a person of faith.

So we're going to have a conversation, not really about the Bible,

but we're going to have a conversation generally about religion.

So in our day and age, we would say, oh, that's your faith.

Or you're a person of faith.

You're a person of faith.

When the Bible, specifically Romans, talks about faith,

faith is a believing obedience.

A believing obedience.

The older I get, the more adverse I am to ladders.

When I was young, I'd climb up any ladders, any scaffolding,

hang out construction, I-beams, the whole deal.

I didn't care about that.

The older I get, now I look and go, okay, I am 16 inches off the floor.

I could die.

Of course, probably not.

I don't care.

I start going out and cleaning gutters.

I start putting up shutters, whatever the job might be, and alive.

What's the weight limit on this ladder?

Every step, I'm like, oh, my gosh, babe, is the life insurance good?

I love you.

This might be it, right?

Because it's scary going up a ladder.

But I'm trusting that ladder to hold me.

I believe it will hold me.

And the evidence that it's going to hold me,

or the evidence that I believe that is I'm taking another step up every rung of the ladder

to where I'm going to be.

To where I need to be.

When we hear the gospel, the response is faith.

A believing obedience.

Not a casual, oh, that's good.

I like that idea.

That seems good.

No, a saving response to the gospel is full surrender.

That's why Jesus said, anyone who will come unto me, let him deny himself,

take up his cross and follow me.

Whoever will find his life will lose it.

Whoever will lose his life for my sake will find it.

Will you just cast your whole life onto Jesus?

That's what's meant.

That's what's meant by faith.

And then Paul, at the end of verse number 17, quotes the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk.

He says, the righteous shall live by faith.

So the gospel comes.

Jesus dies for our sin.

Jesus rises from the dead.

That's a true message that's been testified from the prophets throughout history.

We have the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.

We have eyewitness account of the truth of that.

How will we respond?

How will we respond to that?

That determines whether your soul is saved from sin or not.

That is what determines whether you're sitting here on your way to heaven or on your way to hell.

Is your faith in what Jesus has done.

Because that's the only way to receive the righteousness of Christ.

What we mean by the righteousness of Christ, and we'll expound on this as we go through this series,

is that Jesus gives you his righteousness.

We are sinners.

We're separated from God.

Jesus is perfect.

That's why.

Early in the passage it says, the spirit of holiness.

He was perfect.

He was righteous.

He was the lamb of God without spot, without blemish.

But he paid the penalty for our sin.

He rose from the dead.

He did what we could not accomplish.

So we have to come to him in faith.

Believing obedience.

Later on in Romans chapter number 10, Paul would say, if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord.

So there's obedience.

And believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead.

You'll be saved.

You see that?

Believing obedience.

That's the combination of what faith really is.

It's not just having a set of facts in our minds.

It's not just knowing some Bible verses from Sunday school or catechism or whatever it might be.

It's not just having a Bible or a devotional book.

It's a believing obedience.

It's living for Christ.

That's why we see at the end of verse number 17, three key words.

Righteousness, live, and faith.

So do you walk out of here responding to the gospel in believing obedience?

We know Paul did.

The gospel changes us.

For Paul, the gospel changed him.

And the proof is in this letter and in his other letters.

You consider his back story and the transformation that Jesus brought about in his life.

So as we study this book, my prayer for you, our prayer for our church,

is that you will deepen your understanding of the gospel.

And what does that mean?

That you will deepen your understanding and love and affection for Christ.

What Christ is.

And I love verse number 17, from faith for faith.

It's kind of this idea as we exercise our faith, our faith continues to grow.

As we take that first step of believing obedience, it's almost like the spiritual momentum begins to grow.

Maybe for some of you today is the day where you take that first step of believing obedience in Christ.

You've heard the gospel, but you've never responded in crowning Jesus Lord of your life.

And you need to do that today.

I'm going to ask you this.

Across the room, to bow your heads and close your eyes.

Maybe you're here, you need to surrender to Jesus.

I just want to give you a moment of quiet to do that today.

Right here, right now, you can call out to Jesus to be saved.

Confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord.

Believe in your heart God raised him from the dead.

That's what will save you.

That's what will save you from your sins.

That's give you forgiveness, the pardon, and the holy heavenly court of God of your sins.

And we'll give to you the gift of eternal life.

Maybe you're here and you've surrendered to Jesus.

And you need to be saved.

Maybe you need to be public about that.

In a few moments, I could have some folks at this gathering or the next gathering that are going to be baptized today.

Maybe you've been delaying on that.

Maybe today's the day you need to do that.

In just a moment, I'm going to pray.

I'm going to sing.

I'm going to walk right through those curtains on my left, your right.

There'll be some folks back there with some t-shirts and shorts and towels.

And they'll help you get prepped to be baptized today.

And baptism is just a public show that you have put your faith in Christ.

It's a public demonstration of what God has done already in your heart.