July 14, 2025 • 26 mins
A study in the book of Romans, chapter 1.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Kwave's Pastor Spotlight featuring the Bible teaching of
our local Southern California pastors. This week we're pleased to
feature a longtime friend of Kwave, Pastor Brian Jamieson, lead
pastor of Orange County Christian Fellowship. They meet Sunday mornings
at 250 South Prospect Street in Orange.
We'll have more information on how you can reach them
(00:22):
after today's study. It's true that Paul's letter to the
Romans was not written to us. After all, we're not
first century Jews living in Rome. What does Romans chapter
one have to say to us about living in a
church community today? Here's Pastor Jamieson with more of his
look at Paul's gospel message.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Well, last time, uh, we were, uh, looking at how, uh,
we have been given this grace. We have been made
bond servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are called, uh,
to our place in the church. We have been separated
to the gospel and all of these things, the grace
that we have received are all through Jesus, right? It
(01:07):
is not of works that any of us might boast,
but instead,
We have been given this incredible privilege to be called
sons and daughters of God by grace. Now, continuing on
in verse 7, the apostle Paul says, to all who
are in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints,
grace to you and peace from our God and our Father,
(01:31):
the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, you might not think that
there's a lot there, but, uh, this is actually again
a very concentrated text. There's a lot being said here.
And we just need to dig a little bit into
the history of the relations between Jews and Gentiles, between
the nation of Israel and Rome, to really understand why
(01:54):
this is such a profound and meaningful um declaration by
the apostle Paul. So he says,
To all who are in Rome, right? So, to the,
these men, these Gentiles, who, uh, to the nation of
Israel would be considered, these are the tyrants, these are
the oppressors, these are the evil, um, despots that the
(02:19):
devil has sent against the righteous people, the seed of Abraham.
Um, the Rome is this vile, brutal nation that has, um,
usurped the authority of Israel. And so the fact that
the apostle Paul is addressing, uh, those who are in Rome,
and specifically he calls them beloved of God.
(02:42):
I love this. I love this because in Paul's day,
what Paul would have been taught by his rabbi, uh,
before him, the Gentiles, according to the rabbis and, um, uh,
Israeli tradition, the Gentiles were not.
more than um they they were basically kindling for the
(03:04):
fires of hell, right? The rabbis taught the people that
God made the Gentiles only that they might feed the
fires of hell. That is their place in the world.
Well, that is, uh, not what the Lord Jesus Christ thinks.
That's not what the Gospel of Jesus Christ declares. And
(03:25):
like I said, the roots of the gospel go deep
back into the Old Testament and over and over again, the,
the word of God declares that the Messiah would be
a light unto the
Gentiles that he would be a hope for the hopeless,
and that wasn't just the hopeless of the nation of Israel,
but it would be the last of the nations. And
(03:47):
so he says to all who are in Rome, beloved
of God, and this one, this must have been a
very controversial statement among the Jews called
To be saints, right? So in the same way that
the nation of Israel was called by God, chosen by
God to be the keepers of the oracles of God,
(04:08):
so too now the church, right, which God has again,
he has torn the veil from top to bottom. He
has made.
Entrance into the holy of holies available and uh because
those who were initially invited to salvation, many of them rejected,
not all, there were myriads of Jews who believed tens
(04:29):
of thousands of Jews believed, um, at the preaching of
the apostles, but many of them did not believe and
so they turned away from these things. And so, um,
God opened the door. He, he sent his servants out
into the highways and the byways, not just the nation
of Israel, but now all nations under heaven are now
(04:53):
available to be saved. The gospel has gone out, and
here in this presentation of the gospel to the church
that is in Rome, beloved of God, they are called
to be saints.
Now, just for your information, guys, uh, a saint just
basically means an anointed one, a chosen one. And I,
(05:13):
I know oftentimes we can confuse them with the uh
capital S saints of the Roman Catholic tradition, uh, but really, uh,
any person, any man or woman who is called by
Jesus Christ who receives the Holy Spirit is a saint
of the Lord, a chosen of the Lord. So if
you didn't realize that you were a saint, there you go. Congratulations.
(05:36):
So the apostle Paul continues on. He says, grace to
you and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. And I love this because again, the relations
between the nation of Israel and Rome were bad. The
relationship between Jews and Gentiles were bad. The
Jews thought themselves as superior to the Gentiles as the
(05:57):
Gentiles thought themselves to be superior to the Jews, right?
There was absolutely no love between these nations. And so Paul,
the Jew among Jews, as he declares in his own testimony,
he says, grace to you and peace.
Right? Grace to you and peace. I love this, right?
(06:19):
Undeserved unmerited favor to you and shalom, peace from God, right,
and I love this because he said, he uses the
word our.
Right? He is now placing the Gentiles, and specifically the
Gentiles of Rome in a place of equality with the Jew.
(06:41):
Think about what that means, in a world that is
wracked with racism and just so you know my opinion
on racism, racism makes no sense. Like, none whatsoever because
there are no races. Think about this, right? If we
are all in fact, the sons of Adam and the
daughters of Eve, how many races are there?
(07:04):
One, there is one race, the human race, and we
are all of one blood, Adam's blood, and so there
are no races, there's ethnicities, there's difference in color and
texture of hair and such, but in the end, there
is the human race and only the human race, so
racism may.
No sense and not only that, but is displeasing to God.
(07:27):
And so I love this that here the apostle Paul
says to these Gentiles of Rome that you are beloved
of God, that you are called or chosen to be saints,
the anointed ones of God, and grace to you.
Right, grace to you and peace. Right? The war is over, right?
The war between man and God is over in Jesus Christ,
(07:50):
and you, right? You are fellow children. You have been
given the right to become sons and daughters of God,
even as the nation.
of Israel had been, and God is now your Father.
And so he says, grace to you and peace from
God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Once again,
we have to recognize the lordship of Jesus Christ. He's
(08:11):
not just a friend. He is our friend. Yes indeed. Right?
He is not just a savior, although he is our savior, absolutely.
But he is, in fact, our Lord.
In verse 8, the apostle Paul says, first, he says,
I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all,
that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.
(08:34):
Can you imagine that? Can you imagine that if your church,
if your faith
It was such that you put your love and your
trust and your service to the Lord in such a
way that the whole world knew about your church. That's
what Paul is saying about here, uh, to those believers
in Rome, those Gentile believers in Rome. But I wanna
(08:54):
kind of back up just a hair. He says, first,
I thank my God, how?
Through Jesus Christ, right? His prayer life is through Jesus Christ. Now,
in Acts chapter 4 verse 12, it says this.
Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is
(09:15):
no other name under heaven given among men by which
we must be saved. There is one name that is
associated with salvation, right? One name under heaven, that is
under all of humanity, there is one name by which.
We are to be saved, and that is the name
(09:38):
of Jesus Christ. He is the only Lord. He is
the only Savior, and there are no others. But we
continue on. 1 Timothy 2:5, for there is one God
and one mediator between God and men. Who is that mediator?
The man Christ Jesus.
(10:00):
Jesus is the mediator. There is no other go-between between
God and man. Now, um, the apostle Paul later in
the book of Romans, he's going to address the, um,
the place of angels and, uh, and such, but right
now we, we definitely have a debate going on between
uh some churches, and that's uh the Roman Catholic view
(10:23):
of Mary. Now, Mary was an incredible woman, absolutely.
And uh she was chosen and called by God to
um have the incredible blessing of bearing the Messiah. But
she is the mother of the physical body of Jesus.
She is not the mother or co-creator of the spiritual
(10:44):
entity known as the Son of God. That is not
what Mary is.
There is one God and one mediator between God and men,
the man Christ Jesus. We don't need to pray to angels.
We don't need to pray to saints. We don't need
to pray to Mary because there is only one mediator.
A mediator is somebody who speaks on behalf of God
(11:06):
to people and on behalf of people to God. There
is one mediator, Scripture says, between God and men, and
that is Christ Jesus.
Um, we're also not to, um, look to Peter as
our way of, you know, speaking to God. Um, it's
(11:27):
just not the way it's meant to be, right? In
the end, right, in the end, Psalm 37 verses 5-6
says it very well. Commit your way to the Lord.
Trust also in Him, and he shall bring it to pass.
He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light and
your justice as noonday.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
You're listening to Kwave's Pastor Spotlight featuring Pastor Brian Jamieson,
senior pastor of Orange County Christian Fellowship in Orange. Visit
their website at OCCF.cc. And now, let's continue with today's
study in Romans chapter one.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Now you might think it arrogant to bother the Creator
of the heavens and the earth, but that's just not
so any more so than a good father receiving his
toddler onto his lap, right? You bringing your problems, you
lifting your prayer needs before the Lord is not bothersome
to him. He encourages it. He actually asks us to
(12:29):
pray without ceasing.
To keep asking, to keep seeking, to keep knocking. He
wants you to have relationship with him. And so we
are not to go to any other person. We don't
pray through our pastor. Hey pastor, pray for me. Now,
that's not a problem to ask your pastor to pray
for you, but if your only contact with God is
(12:50):
through your pastor, then that is a problem, right? We
are to take
our prayers and our petitions before the Lord. We are
to make intercessions to the Lord ourselves. We are to
have a ministry of prayer. And so here Paul says,
I thank my God through Jesus Christ, Him giving thanks.
So when you are saying grace around your dinner table
(13:13):
or the breakfast table or at lunch, right? You're giving
thanks through Jesus to the Father.
And he says, and I thank, uh, my God through
Jesus Christ for you all that your faith is spoken
of throughout the whole world. Wow. In verse 9, he
continues on. He says, For God is my witness whom
(13:34):
I serve with my spirit in the Gospel of His Son,
that without ceasing, I make mention of you always in
my prayers, making request, if by some means now that
at last I may find a way in the will
of God to come to you.
And what can we dig out of this portion of scripture,
this portion of Romans chapter one, right? He says, God
(13:56):
is my witness, right? And the first thing is to
understand that God is always with us. Now, oftentimes we
can get discouraged because the evil seem to get away
with everything, right? We, we can look around and there
are people who are lying, cheating, stealing.
There are people who are oppressing, they're tyrants, and we
(14:16):
can just become so fed up with it and we
can become disillusioned where the justice system seems to be
breaking down where it just seems like nothing ever goes
the way it should go, and we can get really,
really upset with God. We can become despondent and we
can become discouraged in these things. But I want you
to realize something.
(14:38):
He says, God is my witness. Why is God Paul's witness?
Because God is ever present. He's omnipresent. He's everywhere, always.
And so let me ask you this. Do you think
a wicked person, just because the law, the legal system
of the United States of America hasn't caught them or
(15:01):
in some way lets them go when they shouldn't? Do
you think that evil person has gotten away with anything?
Do you think they somehow just, you know, snuck one
over on the Lord, that like, you know, God like
missed it, you know, he was busy, you know, making
sure that the planets were spinning in the right way and,
and that he somehow missed that person doing that bad thing.
(15:23):
The answer is of course not, certainly not. The Lord
is a witness to all of us, to all of humanity.
So when you see an evil man or an evil
woman doing vile things and they seem to be getting
away with it, you need to pity them.
Because the fact that they can get away with evil
(15:43):
and vileness like that declares that they are not in
fact sons or daughters of God, right? So you need
to pity them for that, and not only that, but
there is a certain expectation of judgment awaiting them.
Right, they may get away with it for a day.
They may get away with it for a week. Heck,
they may get away with it for the entirety of
their life, but the moment that they breathe their last,
(16:06):
the moment they pass from this life in our mortal
plane and enter into eternity, I promise you, they have
not gotten away with anything.
Remember Jesus told the story of the rich man in Lazarus,
and the rich man, he, uh, fared sumptuously all the
days of his life, and Lazarus was this poor beggar
(16:27):
who had, you know, open sores on his body, and
he basically just fought the dogs for the scraps at Lazarus,
I'm sorry, at the rich man's table. OK? And then
it happened.
That the rich man died and then also Lazarus died.
And then now that Jesus takes us into the afterlife
(16:48):
and we see uh the rich man on the bad
side of Hades, uh, the, the, the side of punishment
and torment, and we see Lazarus in Abraham's bosom or
what is also called Paradise.
OK, and there, that man was, he was basically being
consumed in flames, but never actually consumed. He was burning
(17:10):
and he, and he was like, oh, you know, Father Abraham,
you know, send Lazarus to my family that, you know,
that they won't end up in this place. And Abraham
just says, hey, they have the law and the prophets,
and if they don't have that, if they won't, um,
if they won't, um, repent with that, even if one
should rise from the dead, they will not repent.
(17:30):
Right, and, and so, um, you know, God is a witness, right?
Nobody gets away with anything. Everywhere we go, everything we do,
every thought, every motive, God knows. OK, so please, please
don't be discouraged when you look around and you see
wicked people prospering. It's OK, right? It's OK because
(17:54):
God is a witness, right? God is gonna make sure
all the the the scales will eventually balance and justice
or grace will be um the the answer to every
single life. Those who are found in the Lamb's Book
of Life, they will find grace, and those uh whose
names are not found in the Lamb's Book of Life.
(18:14):
Justice. So he says, God is my witness whom I
serve with my spirit, right? It's not just a fleshly pursuit.
We serve God with our spirits, right? We follow Him,
we yield Him, we learn to discern the still small
voice of God in our lives. Right? There are many
occasions uh in ministry where
(18:36):
Maybe somebody's doing something that isn't quite right, and I,
I've had occasions where, you know, it's like, oh, I
gotta go rebuke that person. I gotta go talk to them.
And then the Holy Spirit says, stop, don't do that.
Not yet, wait. And even though I know scripturally speaking,
I have the authority to rebuke that person because of
the actions that they're doing or because of the words
that they're saying, sometimes the Holy Spirit will say, wait,
(18:59):
don't do that yet. I'm working on something else in
their life right now. Be patient.
And so we wait and um the Lord many times
has done an incredible work where that person ends up
surrendering themselves and they come to a much more profound, um,
repentance rather than just being rebuked by me. And then
oftentimes nowadays when you rebuke somebody in the church, they
(19:21):
just flee the church, right? They, they don't receive the correction,
they just run away to another church, and that is
not a healthy thing. But sometimes God says, speak and
sometimes
Says, hold your tongue. And so we serve God not
just in the flesh, not just by the letter of
the law, but we serve God with our spirits, right,
in submission to Him. He says, so I serve. He goes,
(19:43):
God is my witness whom I serve with my spirit
in the Gospel of His Son. Again, everything is centered
in the gospel. He says that without ceasing, I make
mention of you always in my prayers.
I don't know about you guys, but I don't pray
near enough. I, I pray, I pray often. I, I
have little alarms on my phone that remind me to
(20:05):
pray 3 times a day. I have things set up
on my phone, so every time I look at a
text message, there's like a group of people that I see,
a group of faces that I see on my.
that reminds me to pray for the leadership of our church, right? I, I,
I do pray. I pray for my family, I pray
for my wife and my kids, right? I, I, I
pray for all those things, but I, I want you
(20:27):
to see what Paul says here. He says, without ceasing,
I make mention of you always in my prayers.
And what does that look like? What does it mean
to pray without ceasing? Does that mean that that we
Christians are to be sitting on our knees all day
long in a prostrate position, just praying without ceasing all
(20:48):
day long? And the answer is, of course not. No, that,
that's not what's being implied here. The idea is that
we are to have a running conversation with
The Lord all the day long, right? All day, every
day we begin that conversation with Him when we first
start to wake up, but before we even open our eyes, like,
(21:09):
Good morning, Lord, how you doing today? You know, praise
be to God. Thank you for the gift of this day, right?
We begin that conversation and then, you know, maybe it
pauses from time to time as we
Have other conversations or do other works, but then throughout
the day, we continue to turn our attention to the
Lord and we speak to him and we talk to him,
(21:30):
and we ask him for guidance, and we ask him
for counsel, and, and we continue to pray for those
that we love and those that we serve with. And
so Paul says, without ceasing, I make mention of you
always in my prayers.
Making requests, and, and here's a specific request that he has.
He says, if by some means now at last, and
(21:50):
may find a way in the will of God to
come to you.
Now this I love, and you've heard me say that
a couple times already, but I do. I love this
because being in the presence of the church isn't a
burden to the apostle Paul, right? isn't it funny how
(22:10):
nowadays with all of our social media and you know,
all of the, the constant stimulation that we have that
it seems to be a burden to be in the
presence of other believers.
How can that be? That should not be, right? The,
the highlight of every single week should be the times
(22:30):
that we get to go spend with our brothers and
sisters in the Lord, where we get to go to
the house of the Lord and worship and praise His
holy name, right? We, we should be.
Like this, like, I, you know, I can't wait, right? I, I, I, I'm, I'm,
I'm requesting God if by some means I might run
into another believer today, that I might rejoice with them
(22:52):
and praise you with them. He, he's literally looking, he's like,
that I might find a way in the will of
God to come to you.
I need to find a way, Lord, let there be
a divine appointment today where I can come and be
in the presence of another believer, a brother or a sister, that,
(23:12):
that we might encourage on each other and lift each
other up.
Um, for many a Christian nowadays, we, we, we get
so distracted and we get so overstimulated by our phones
and our iPads and our devices and TVs and streaming
services that we begin to get
Frustrated. We, we, we've become addicted to these things and
(23:35):
when we leave them, we're on withdrawals and we're constantly
thinking about when we will have our beloved Netflix back
instead of appreciating the time that we have with one another.
And so guys, we, we need to take this lesson
from the apostle Paul, right? We need to serve God
with our spirits. We serve God by ministering the gifts
(23:56):
that he has given us, uh, to our brothers and
sisters in the Lord, and I pray that your heart
would be moved by God to long for the presence
of your brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
This is Pastor Spotlight, and you've been listening to Brian Jamieson,
senior pastor of Orange County Christian Fellowship. We invite you
to join us right here at the same time tomorrow
for more of Pastor Brian's study in Romans chapter one.
Pastor Brian has a rich history of ministry in Orange County.
He was ordained in 2006 by Joey Barran, pastor of
(24:32):
Worship Generation. While serving at Worship Generation, Brian served in
many ministries all the way up to associate pastor. In 2010,
Brian was sent out to plant Orange County Christian Fellowship,
now in Orange. Pastor Brian says that OC Christian Fellowship
is a beautiful small local.
Church focusing on discipleship, fellowship, and the study of the
(24:56):
whole word of God. You're invited to come worship this Sunday.
Sunday worship at OC Christian Fellowship is at 10:30 a.m.
at 250 South Prospect Street in Orange in the fellowship hall.
Wednesday night worship and study is at 7 p.m. at
4101 Noel Ranch Road in Anaheim in the library on
(25:19):
Second floor. For complete details on worshiping with Orange County
Christian Fellowship, visit their website at OCCF.C. That's OCCF.cc. We
invite you to join us right here at this same
time tomorrow for more of Pastor Brian Jamieson's study in
Romans chapter 1. We hope you'll join us. Pastor Spotlight
(25:44):
is a production of Kwave Radio.
Welcome to Kwave's Pastor Spotlight featuring the Bible teaching of
our local Southern California pastors. This week we're pleased to
feature a longtime friend of Kwave, Pastor Brian Jamieson, lead
pastor of Orange County Christian Fellowship. They meet Sunday mornings
at 250 South Prospect Street in Orange.
We'll have more information on how you can reach them
(00:22):
after today's study. It's true that Paul's letter to the
Romans was not written to us. After all, we're not
first century Jews living in Rome. What does Romans chapter
one have to say to us about living in a
church community today? Here's Pastor Jamieson with more of his
look at Paul's gospel message.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Well, last time, uh, we were, uh, looking at how, uh,
we have been given this grace. We have been made
bond servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are called, uh,
to our place in the church. We have been separated
to the gospel and all of these things, the grace
that we have received are all through Jesus, right? It
(01:07):
is not of works that any of us might boast,
but instead,
We have been given this incredible privilege to be called
sons and daughters of God by grace. Now, continuing on
in verse 7, the apostle Paul says, to all who
are in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints,
grace to you and peace from our God and our Father,
(01:31):
the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, you might not think that
there's a lot there, but, uh, this is actually again
a very concentrated text. There's a lot being said here.
And we just need to dig a little bit into
the history of the relations between Jews and Gentiles, between
the nation of Israel and Rome, to really understand why
(01:54):
this is such a profound and meaningful um declaration by
the apostle Paul. So he says,
To all who are in Rome, right? So, to the,
these men, these Gentiles, who, uh, to the nation of
Israel would be considered, these are the tyrants, these are
the oppressors, these are the evil, um, despots that the
(02:19):
devil has sent against the righteous people, the seed of Abraham.
Um, the Rome is this vile, brutal nation that has, um,
usurped the authority of Israel. And so the fact that
the apostle Paul is addressing, uh, those who are in Rome,
and specifically he calls them beloved of God.
(02:42):
I love this. I love this because in Paul's day,
what Paul would have been taught by his rabbi, uh,
before him, the Gentiles, according to the rabbis and, um, uh,
Israeli tradition, the Gentiles were not.
more than um they they were basically kindling for the
(03:04):
fires of hell, right? The rabbis taught the people that
God made the Gentiles only that they might feed the
fires of hell. That is their place in the world.
Well, that is, uh, not what the Lord Jesus Christ thinks.
That's not what the Gospel of Jesus Christ declares. And
(03:25):
like I said, the roots of the gospel go deep
back into the Old Testament and over and over again, the,
the word of God declares that the Messiah would be
a light unto the
Gentiles that he would be a hope for the hopeless,
and that wasn't just the hopeless of the nation of Israel,
but it would be the last of the nations. And
(03:47):
so he says to all who are in Rome, beloved
of God, and this one, this must have been a
very controversial statement among the Jews called
To be saints, right? So in the same way that
the nation of Israel was called by God, chosen by
God to be the keepers of the oracles of God,
(04:08):
so too now the church, right, which God has again,
he has torn the veil from top to bottom. He
has made.
Entrance into the holy of holies available and uh because
those who were initially invited to salvation, many of them rejected,
not all, there were myriads of Jews who believed tens
(04:29):
of thousands of Jews believed, um, at the preaching of
the apostles, but many of them did not believe and
so they turned away from these things. And so, um,
God opened the door. He, he sent his servants out
into the highways and the byways, not just the nation
of Israel, but now all nations under heaven are now
(04:53):
available to be saved. The gospel has gone out, and
here in this presentation of the gospel to the church
that is in Rome, beloved of God, they are called
to be saints.
Now, just for your information, guys, uh, a saint just
basically means an anointed one, a chosen one. And I,
(05:13):
I know oftentimes we can confuse them with the uh
capital S saints of the Roman Catholic tradition, uh, but really, uh,
any person, any man or woman who is called by
Jesus Christ who receives the Holy Spirit is a saint
of the Lord, a chosen of the Lord. So if
you didn't realize that you were a saint, there you go. Congratulations.
(05:36):
So the apostle Paul continues on. He says, grace to
you and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. And I love this because again, the relations
between the nation of Israel and Rome were bad. The
relationship between Jews and Gentiles were bad. The
Jews thought themselves as superior to the Gentiles as the
(05:57):
Gentiles thought themselves to be superior to the Jews, right?
There was absolutely no love between these nations. And so Paul,
the Jew among Jews, as he declares in his own testimony,
he says, grace to you and peace.
Right? Grace to you and peace. I love this, right?
(06:19):
Undeserved unmerited favor to you and shalom, peace from God, right,
and I love this because he said, he uses the
word our.
Right? He is now placing the Gentiles, and specifically the
Gentiles of Rome in a place of equality with the Jew.
(06:41):
Think about what that means, in a world that is
wracked with racism and just so you know my opinion
on racism, racism makes no sense. Like, none whatsoever because
there are no races. Think about this, right? If we
are all in fact, the sons of Adam and the
daughters of Eve, how many races are there?
(07:04):
One, there is one race, the human race, and we
are all of one blood, Adam's blood, and so there
are no races, there's ethnicities, there's difference in color and
texture of hair and such, but in the end, there
is the human race and only the human race, so
racism may.
No sense and not only that, but is displeasing to God.
(07:27):
And so I love this that here the apostle Paul
says to these Gentiles of Rome that you are beloved
of God, that you are called or chosen to be saints,
the anointed ones of God, and grace to you.
Right, grace to you and peace. Right? The war is over, right?
The war between man and God is over in Jesus Christ,
(07:50):
and you, right? You are fellow children. You have been
given the right to become sons and daughters of God,
even as the nation.
of Israel had been, and God is now your Father.
And so he says, grace to you and peace from
God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Once again,
we have to recognize the lordship of Jesus Christ. He's
(08:11):
not just a friend. He is our friend. Yes indeed. Right?
He is not just a savior, although he is our savior, absolutely.
But he is, in fact, our Lord.
In verse 8, the apostle Paul says, first, he says,
I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all,
that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.
(08:34):
Can you imagine that? Can you imagine that if your church,
if your faith
It was such that you put your love and your
trust and your service to the Lord in such a
way that the whole world knew about your church. That's
what Paul is saying about here, uh, to those believers
in Rome, those Gentile believers in Rome. But I wanna
(08:54):
kind of back up just a hair. He says, first,
I thank my God, how?
Through Jesus Christ, right? His prayer life is through Jesus Christ. Now,
in Acts chapter 4 verse 12, it says this.
Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is
(09:15):
no other name under heaven given among men by which
we must be saved. There is one name that is
associated with salvation, right? One name under heaven, that is
under all of humanity, there is one name by which.
We are to be saved, and that is the name
(09:38):
of Jesus Christ. He is the only Lord. He is
the only Savior, and there are no others. But we
continue on. 1 Timothy 2:5, for there is one God
and one mediator between God and men. Who is that mediator?
The man Christ Jesus.
(10:00):
Jesus is the mediator. There is no other go-between between
God and man. Now, um, the apostle Paul later in
the book of Romans, he's going to address the, um,
the place of angels and, uh, and such, but right
now we, we definitely have a debate going on between
uh some churches, and that's uh the Roman Catholic view
(10:23):
of Mary. Now, Mary was an incredible woman, absolutely.
And uh she was chosen and called by God to
um have the incredible blessing of bearing the Messiah. But
she is the mother of the physical body of Jesus.
She is not the mother or co-creator of the spiritual
(10:44):
entity known as the Son of God. That is not
what Mary is.
There is one God and one mediator between God and men,
the man Christ Jesus. We don't need to pray to angels.
We don't need to pray to saints. We don't need
to pray to Mary because there is only one mediator.
A mediator is somebody who speaks on behalf of God
(11:06):
to people and on behalf of people to God. There
is one mediator, Scripture says, between God and men, and
that is Christ Jesus.
Um, we're also not to, um, look to Peter as
our way of, you know, speaking to God. Um, it's
(11:27):
just not the way it's meant to be, right? In
the end, right, in the end, Psalm 37 verses 5-6
says it very well. Commit your way to the Lord.
Trust also in Him, and he shall bring it to pass.
He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light and
your justice as noonday.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
You're listening to Kwave's Pastor Spotlight featuring Pastor Brian Jamieson,
senior pastor of Orange County Christian Fellowship in Orange. Visit
their website at OCCF.cc. And now, let's continue with today's
study in Romans chapter one.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Now you might think it arrogant to bother the Creator
of the heavens and the earth, but that's just not
so any more so than a good father receiving his
toddler onto his lap, right? You bringing your problems, you
lifting your prayer needs before the Lord is not bothersome
to him. He encourages it. He actually asks us to
(12:29):
pray without ceasing.
To keep asking, to keep seeking, to keep knocking. He
wants you to have relationship with him. And so we
are not to go to any other person. We don't
pray through our pastor. Hey pastor, pray for me. Now,
that's not a problem to ask your pastor to pray
for you, but if your only contact with God is
(12:50):
through your pastor, then that is a problem, right? We
are to take
our prayers and our petitions before the Lord. We are
to make intercessions to the Lord ourselves. We are to
have a ministry of prayer. And so here Paul says,
I thank my God through Jesus Christ, Him giving thanks.
So when you are saying grace around your dinner table
(13:13):
or the breakfast table or at lunch, right? You're giving
thanks through Jesus to the Father.
And he says, and I thank, uh, my God through
Jesus Christ for you all that your faith is spoken
of throughout the whole world. Wow. In verse 9, he
continues on. He says, For God is my witness whom
(13:34):
I serve with my spirit in the Gospel of His Son,
that without ceasing, I make mention of you always in
my prayers, making request, if by some means now that
at last I may find a way in the will
of God to come to you.
And what can we dig out of this portion of scripture,
this portion of Romans chapter one, right? He says, God
(13:56):
is my witness, right? And the first thing is to
understand that God is always with us. Now, oftentimes we
can get discouraged because the evil seem to get away
with everything, right? We, we can look around and there
are people who are lying, cheating, stealing.
There are people who are oppressing, they're tyrants, and we
(14:16):
can just become so fed up with it and we
can become disillusioned where the justice system seems to be
breaking down where it just seems like nothing ever goes
the way it should go, and we can get really,
really upset with God. We can become despondent and we
can become discouraged in these things. But I want you
to realize something.
(14:38):
He says, God is my witness. Why is God Paul's witness?
Because God is ever present. He's omnipresent. He's everywhere, always.
And so let me ask you this. Do you think
a wicked person, just because the law, the legal system
of the United States of America hasn't caught them or
(15:01):
in some way lets them go when they shouldn't? Do
you think that evil person has gotten away with anything?
Do you think they somehow just, you know, snuck one
over on the Lord, that like, you know, God like
missed it, you know, he was busy, you know, making
sure that the planets were spinning in the right way and,
and that he somehow missed that person doing that bad thing.
(15:23):
The answer is of course not, certainly not. The Lord
is a witness to all of us, to all of humanity.
So when you see an evil man or an evil
woman doing vile things and they seem to be getting
away with it, you need to pity them.
Because the fact that they can get away with evil
(15:43):
and vileness like that declares that they are not in
fact sons or daughters of God, right? So you need
to pity them for that, and not only that, but
there is a certain expectation of judgment awaiting them.
Right, they may get away with it for a day.
They may get away with it for a week. Heck,
they may get away with it for the entirety of
their life, but the moment that they breathe their last,
(16:06):
the moment they pass from this life in our mortal
plane and enter into eternity, I promise you, they have
not gotten away with anything.
Remember Jesus told the story of the rich man in Lazarus,
and the rich man, he, uh, fared sumptuously all the
days of his life, and Lazarus was this poor beggar
(16:27):
who had, you know, open sores on his body, and
he basically just fought the dogs for the scraps at Lazarus,
I'm sorry, at the rich man's table. OK? And then
it happened.
That the rich man died and then also Lazarus died.
And then now that Jesus takes us into the afterlife
(16:48):
and we see uh the rich man on the bad
side of Hades, uh, the, the, the side of punishment
and torment, and we see Lazarus in Abraham's bosom or
what is also called Paradise.
OK, and there, that man was, he was basically being
consumed in flames, but never actually consumed. He was burning
(17:10):
and he, and he was like, oh, you know, Father Abraham,
you know, send Lazarus to my family that, you know,
that they won't end up in this place. And Abraham
just says, hey, they have the law and the prophets,
and if they don't have that, if they won't, um,
if they won't, um, repent with that, even if one
should rise from the dead, they will not repent.
(17:30):
Right, and, and so, um, you know, God is a witness, right?
Nobody gets away with anything. Everywhere we go, everything we do,
every thought, every motive, God knows. OK, so please, please
don't be discouraged when you look around and you see
wicked people prospering. It's OK, right? It's OK because
(17:54):
God is a witness, right? God is gonna make sure
all the the the scales will eventually balance and justice
or grace will be um the the answer to every
single life. Those who are found in the Lamb's Book
of Life, they will find grace, and those uh whose
names are not found in the Lamb's Book of Life.
(18:14):
Justice. So he says, God is my witness whom I
serve with my spirit, right? It's not just a fleshly pursuit.
We serve God with our spirits, right? We follow Him,
we yield Him, we learn to discern the still small
voice of God in our lives. Right? There are many
occasions uh in ministry where
(18:36):
Maybe somebody's doing something that isn't quite right, and I,
I've had occasions where, you know, it's like, oh, I
gotta go rebuke that person. I gotta go talk to them.
And then the Holy Spirit says, stop, don't do that.
Not yet, wait. And even though I know scripturally speaking,
I have the authority to rebuke that person because of
the actions that they're doing or because of the words
that they're saying, sometimes the Holy Spirit will say, wait,
(18:59):
don't do that yet. I'm working on something else in
their life right now. Be patient.
And so we wait and um the Lord many times
has done an incredible work where that person ends up
surrendering themselves and they come to a much more profound, um,
repentance rather than just being rebuked by me. And then
oftentimes nowadays when you rebuke somebody in the church, they
(19:21):
just flee the church, right? They, they don't receive the correction,
they just run away to another church, and that is
not a healthy thing. But sometimes God says, speak and
sometimes
Says, hold your tongue. And so we serve God not
just in the flesh, not just by the letter of
the law, but we serve God with our spirits, right,
in submission to Him. He says, so I serve. He goes,
(19:43):
God is my witness whom I serve with my spirit
in the Gospel of His Son. Again, everything is centered
in the gospel. He says that without ceasing, I make
mention of you always in my prayers.
I don't know about you guys, but I don't pray
near enough. I, I pray, I pray often. I, I
have little alarms on my phone that remind me to
(20:05):
pray 3 times a day. I have things set up
on my phone, so every time I look at a
text message, there's like a group of people that I see,
a group of faces that I see on my.
that reminds me to pray for the leadership of our church, right? I, I,
I do pray. I pray for my family, I pray
for my wife and my kids, right? I, I, I
pray for all those things, but I, I want you
(20:27):
to see what Paul says here. He says, without ceasing,
I make mention of you always in my prayers.
And what does that look like? What does it mean
to pray without ceasing? Does that mean that that we
Christians are to be sitting on our knees all day
long in a prostrate position, just praying without ceasing all
(20:48):
day long? And the answer is, of course not. No, that,
that's not what's being implied here. The idea is that
we are to have a running conversation with
The Lord all the day long, right? All day, every
day we begin that conversation with Him when we first
start to wake up, but before we even open our eyes, like,
(21:09):
Good morning, Lord, how you doing today? You know, praise
be to God. Thank you for the gift of this day, right?
We begin that conversation and then, you know, maybe it
pauses from time to time as we
Have other conversations or do other works, but then throughout
the day, we continue to turn our attention to the
Lord and we speak to him and we talk to him,
(21:30):
and we ask him for guidance, and we ask him
for counsel, and, and we continue to pray for those
that we love and those that we serve with. And
so Paul says, without ceasing, I make mention of you
always in my prayers.
Making requests, and, and here's a specific request that he has.
He says, if by some means now at last, and
(21:50):
may find a way in the will of God to
come to you.
Now this I love, and you've heard me say that
a couple times already, but I do. I love this
because being in the presence of the church isn't a
burden to the apostle Paul, right? isn't it funny how
(22:10):
nowadays with all of our social media and you know,
all of the, the constant stimulation that we have that
it seems to be a burden to be in the
presence of other believers.
How can that be? That should not be, right? The,
the highlight of every single week should be the times
(22:30):
that we get to go spend with our brothers and
sisters in the Lord, where we get to go to
the house of the Lord and worship and praise His
holy name, right? We, we should be.
Like this, like, I, you know, I can't wait, right? I, I, I, I'm, I'm,
I'm requesting God if by some means I might run
into another believer today, that I might rejoice with them
(22:52):
and praise you with them. He, he's literally looking, he's like,
that I might find a way in the will of
God to come to you.
I need to find a way, Lord, let there be
a divine appointment today where I can come and be
in the presence of another believer, a brother or a sister, that,
(23:12):
that we might encourage on each other and lift each
other up.
Um, for many a Christian nowadays, we, we, we get
so distracted and we get so overstimulated by our phones
and our iPads and our devices and TVs and streaming
services that we begin to get
Frustrated. We, we, we've become addicted to these things and
(23:35):
when we leave them, we're on withdrawals and we're constantly
thinking about when we will have our beloved Netflix back
instead of appreciating the time that we have with one another.
And so guys, we, we need to take this lesson
from the apostle Paul, right? We need to serve God
with our spirits. We serve God by ministering the gifts
(23:56):
that he has given us, uh, to our brothers and
sisters in the Lord, and I pray that your heart
would be moved by God to long for the presence
of your brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
This is Pastor Spotlight, and you've been listening to Brian Jamieson,
senior pastor of Orange County Christian Fellowship. We invite you
to join us right here at the same time tomorrow
for more of Pastor Brian's study in Romans chapter one.
Pastor Brian has a rich history of ministry in Orange County.
He was ordained in 2006 by Joey Barran, pastor of
(24:32):
Worship Generation. While serving at Worship Generation, Brian served in
many ministries all the way up to associate pastor. In 2010,
Brian was sent out to plant Orange County Christian Fellowship,
now in Orange. Pastor Brian says that OC Christian Fellowship
is a beautiful small local.
Church focusing on discipleship, fellowship, and the study of the
(24:56):
whole word of God. You're invited to come worship this Sunday.
Sunday worship at OC Christian Fellowship is at 10:30 a.m.
at 250 South Prospect Street in Orange in the fellowship hall.
Wednesday night worship and study is at 7 p.m. at
4101 Noel Ranch Road in Anaheim in the library on
(25:19):
Second floor. For complete details on worshiping with Orange County
Christian Fellowship, visit their website at OCCF.C. That's OCCF.cc. We
invite you to join us right here at this same
time tomorrow for more of Pastor Brian Jamieson's study in
Romans chapter 1. We hope you'll join us. Pastor Spotlight
(25:44):
is a production of Kwave Radio.
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