Pastor's Spotlight - Bryan Jameson Part 5

A study in the book of Romans, chapter 1.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
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 after today's study.

(00:24):
We're glad you're here for this Friday's study on Pastor Spotlight.
Today Pastor Brian wraps up his week of studies in
the book of Romans chapter one. We've been looking at
how the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, is
for everyone, and they need to hear it. Here's Pastor
Brian Jamieson with more.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Today we're gonna be taking up in verse 16, and
Paul begins like this, for I am not ashamed of
the gospel of Christ. What a way to start a paragraph.
What an incredible, uh, thing, because you know what, if
I'm honest.
And, um, and I really want to be. There are

(01:06):
definitely times in in my time, even as a pastor
that I have been embarrassed or I have been ashamed
of the gospel of Jesus Christ. When I'm in the
right situation, I find myself, um, you know, keeping my
mouth shut instead of opening it when I, I can
feel the nudge of the Holy Spirit and um it's
something that once it happens and I walk away from it,

(01:28):
I beat myself up and I'm just like, uh.
You know, but we have to understand that um the
things that we would do, we don't always do, but
the things that we don't want to do, too often
we do those things. And the apostle Paul struggle with that,
just like we do. But you know what, it doesn't
necessarily mean that we have somehow failed God or disappointed

(01:50):
him or let him down because, you know what, um,
Jesus actually said of Peter, he says, tonight before the
Rooster crows, right? You're going to deny me 3 times.
And Peter in his heart, wanted to declare, it's like, no, Lord,
you know, even if I must die with you, he goes,
I will not deny you, right? I will stay by
your side, even if it cost me my life. And

(02:13):
that was Peter's heart, and I don't think Peter failed
in that. I think in a situation that was
Well, quite difficult, right? He was surrounded by enemies. He
was surrounded by people that um did not have the
same view as him, who were cheering the beating and
hopeful execution of his Lord, Jesus the Messiah, right? Peter.

(02:37):
You know, he, he loved Jesus and to the best
of his ability, you know, he wanted to serve him.
And so then when he did deny Jesus, Jesus wasn't like, Yo, Peter,
how dare you? I can't believe that. You know, he,
he kind of looked over his shoulder and he saw
Peter and Peter wept and ran out into the night.
But the Lord wasn't somehow like shocked like Peter. I

(02:59):
can't believe you didn't do that. I, I can't believe
even after I told you, the Lord wasn't shaming Peter.
Right, in the end, he understood it. Peter loved Jesus.
He really, really did. And if you don't believe that
Peter loved Jesus, well, um, when Jesus was resurrected, you know, he,
he had to tell Mary Magdale, he says, listen, go

(03:20):
tell the disciples and Peter that I will meet them,
because Peter had taken himself out of even being a disciple.
Right, Peter, right? The, the, the guy who, you know,
was the rock, right? Petros, you know, the guy who
kind of was the leader of the disciples, you know, he,
he didn't even consider himself worthy to be called a

(03:42):
disciple anymore, where Peter had to say, go tell my
disciples and Peter that I will meet them. So here's
the thing, guys.
Sometimes we will mess up. And if you're worried about this,
let me just settle your nerves right now. You will
mess up. There are going to be times where you
absolutely stumble, where you will absolutely fall. And you know what,

(04:06):
when that happens, when it happens, not if it happens,
but when it happens, I, I want you to look
to the Lord, confess your sin, right? Because if you
are faithful to confess your sin to Him,
The Bible says that he is faithful and just to
forgive you those sins. He's not gonna shame you, but instead, he,

(04:29):
like the father in the parable of the prodigal son,
he is gonna see you off in the distance the
moment you start returning to him, whether it was
Moments ago or whether it was years ago, the moment
he sees you on the horizon turning towards him, he
is gonna run to you. He is gonna put his
ring upon your hand. He is gonna throw his mantle
over your shoulders. He's going to kiss your neck and

(04:51):
he's gonna throw a party in heaven for you. Right?
So guys,
We are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, and
we must now, right, we don't want to put ourselves
into situations like Peter did where he was surrounded by
unbelievers and he, he was surrounded by these men and
these women who are hostile to his faith. Now,

(05:12):
Um, that doesn't mean that we're not to have interactions
with people outside of the church. In fact, it's necessary
that we have interactions with people outside the faith, outside
the church, but here's the, the, the real big test
that each and every single one of us need to
make sure that we are following.
Are we pulling them into the light, or are they

(05:34):
pulling us into the darkness? You see, Jesus ate and
drank with sinners, right? Jesus congregated with men and women
who were sick, who were blind, who were naked, who
were outcasts of the kingdom of heaven, because it is
the sick who needs a physician, right? It, it is

(05:54):
the people who recognize their own spiritual darkness.
Who are brought into the light. And so we need
to understand that when we surround ourselves with people, it
must be in submission to the gospel. When we surround
ourselves with unbelievers, we need to make sure that we

(06:15):
are ever drawing them into the light, that we are
ministering the gospel of Jesus Christ to them in small words,
in our actions, whatever it may be, we are constantly
drawing them to the light. However,
If we find ourselves being put into a place where
we are now feeling embarrassed about the gospel, where we

(06:37):
begin to feel like, oh, I shouldn't open my mouth.
I really want to, but I shouldn't. Well, guess what?
That means they are now in control of this relationship
and they are pulling you from the light into the darkness,
and that is not OK.
Now, there, there's some neutral ground that can happen from
time to time, as you're playing the long game to

(06:58):
draw them into faith in the name of Jesus, right?
But you cannot be moving towards the darkness. If you
are moving towards the darkness, if you are beginning to
feel shame or behave as though you are ashamed of
the gospel of Jesus Christ, then you need to stop.
You need to pray, you need to go before the
Lord and ask him, right? Because we need

(07:21):
We have to have this boldness that the apostle Paul,
we need to have this declaration. I, Brian Jamieson, am
not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. I, I should
be able to say that to myself in my private time.
I should be able to say that when I'm at
a restaurant. I should be able to say that when
I'm at my work. Obviously not during work hours, of course, right?

(07:42):
But I need to be um a man of God
who serves the Lord, who is set apart for the gospel.
Right, that's who I am. That is my identity. My
identity is wrapped up in Jesus Christ. My identity is
not found in the people around me. My identity is
not how my culture looks at me.

(08:06):
OK, because this culture, guess what guys, it's wicked. This
culture that we find ourselves in, it's evil, it's depraved,
it does call good evil, and it calls evil good.
If you don't believe me, all you have to do
is open a social media source. All you have to
do is open a newspaper or turn on the TV.

(08:27):
It's everywhere.
It's absolutely everywhere. So in this generation of wickedness, of
people who are unashamed of the vile things that they do,
how is it that we, the church of Jesus Christ,
can be ashamed of our Lord and Savior?

(08:48):
Guys, it doesn't make any sense. It's not right. We
need to be emboldened. We need to be empowered by
this Holy Spirit that we might stand boldly upon the
gospel of Jesus Christ, and we need to be a
light in the darkness. As a city on the hill
cannot be hidden, we who have put our faith in

(09:10):
Christ must not hide ourselves, right? You, you don't light
a lamp and
Then hide it, right? You light a lamp that it
might shine light for all to see, right? To give
light in the darkness that you might not stumble. And
in the same sense, we are the lamp, right? The gospel,

(09:31):
the truth of Jesus Christ. He is the light.
Right? We need to make sure that we shine the light,
and we can't do it if we are ashamed, if
we're embarrassed about the claims of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Guys,
it cannot be. We need to boldly speak, even as
the apostle Paul did. I am not ashamed of the

(09:55):
gospel of Christ. Why?
For it is the power of God to salvation for
everyone who believes, right? Notice that the gospel of Jesus
Christ is the power, the very power of God.
To salvation.
Right, so how can a person be saved if the

(10:16):
power of God, the declaration of the gospel, never hits
their ears?
Right? That's something that we must do. Now, that that
that's not to say that God's not ministering. He, he
is sending messengers all over the place. There are people
all over the, the Muslim world that are receiving dreams that,
you know, these incredible dreams where Jesus overthrows Allah, and

(10:39):
those people, they're called the dreamers, right? They they they're
dumbfounded and so often they end up surrendering their lives.
To Jesus. People in the Amazon rainforest have visions of angels,
you know, that, that come and say, hey, when people
come with this symbol and it's a cross, when they,
the people who come with this symbol, when they come,

(10:59):
listen to them, right? God is doing a work all
around the world. We don't need to worry about those
people in Africa who have never heard the gospel because
God will bring it. And it could be that God
will bring it through you. You never can tell.
Right? But the, the gospel of Jesus Christ is the

(11:20):
power of God to salvation for everyone.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
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 (11:42):
Now, one time I was doing a missions trip in Haiti,
and um you know, obviously the people there are most
of them are very, very poor. Um, I think it's
like an 85% unemployment rate is, it is really, really
just tragic. And while I was there, I was ministering
the gospel.
Through the use of a translator, and I was ministering

(12:03):
the gospel to this old man who was just kind
of sitting on the side of the road. And he goes,
he goes, that Jesus, he's the, the white man's God.
He's the rich man's God. He goes, I'm too poor
for Jesus. And I said, Hey, you want to know
a secret? And he goes, what?
I said back where I come from in the United States.
I said, the people there say, I'm too rich for Jesus,

(12:24):
that's the poor man's Jesus, that's the poor man's God.
And he looked at me with the funniest look and
he goes, Really? I said, yeah. I said, brother, here's
the thing, Jesus is for everyone.
Guys,
The power of God to salvation is for everyone rich, poor, slave, free, Jew, Gentile, male, female,

(12:48):
it doesn't matter. Jesus is the God who created the
heavens and the earth. He is the creator of all life,
of all humanity.
And so guys, we must not be ashamed of the
gospel of Jesus Christ, which will bring salvation to all
the lost, to any who believes. Now, uh, this is

(13:11):
also a very important thing that we have to look
at as well, because what does it mean to believe?
Who is the gospel for? Is it for only a
select few, or is it for all of the world, right?
It is absolutely for all the world, right? The, the gospel,
the salvation of God, the power of God for salvation

(13:34):
is for everyone who believes. It's not for a selected few,
it's for everyone.
The truth, the grace, the power of Jesus Christ is
for any and all who adhere and surrender their lives
to him. Guys, it cannot, it cannot be that we

(13:57):
keep our mouth shut. We know the truth. We have
received the truth. We have experienced the power of God
in our lives. We have seen the miracles that he
has done to transform our lives.
How can we keep that secret?
How can we be silent in the face of men

(14:18):
and women who go about their days with no hope,
thinking that they were an accident of the universe, that
they are nothing more than stardust, and they have no
value beyond what they feel, you know, in any everyday experience.
How horrible that is.

(14:39):
Some of you have been Christians your entire life, but
many of us like myself, uh, we came to Christianity
in our adult years, and I remember the path that
I walked. I remember the hopelessness. I remember the emptiness
that I had all of those years. I remember the
sense of guilt that always racked me and I didn't

(15:00):
understand why.
But you know what, men and women did preach the
gospel to me.
Right, I, I, I did have uh people that were
unashamed of the gospel, and though I laughed at them
and mocked at them for a time.
Right there did finally come a time when I sought
to overthrow the faith of my wife. My wife Heidi, um,

(15:23):
she was a Christian and I pretended to be a
Christian in order to win her hand in marriage. And
then as soon as we got married, I just stopped
at all and I was like, I, I do not
believe in Jesus and I spent the next two years
of my life kind of like Lee Strobel, uh, trying
to destroy my wife's faith. And it was through the
process of reading the word of God.

(15:45):
That I ended up surrendering my heart to Jesus. Guys.
Guys,
Do not be ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It does have power. I am a living testimony. You
are a living testimony. And the Lord says of the
people of faith, he says, you are my witnesses. Darwin

(16:09):
has his witnesses.
Right? God has His. We are God's witnesses. We should
not bow our knee to the philosophies of men in
contradiction to the word of God. We need to stand
upon the word of God. We need to boldly pronounce
our faith and walk, right? Walk in the name of

(16:31):
Jesus and tell everyone of the salvation, everyone who would hear,
even the ones that you don't think will listen.
One of my very favorite uh salvation stories was this dude.
It was at an evangelical event called Labor of Love,
and there was this guy walking and he had a
haircut of the Marvel character Wolverine, right? That's what his

(16:53):
hair looked like and he was walking around bare chested
and he had this big old satanic tattoo that covered
his entire chest and most of his torso.
And he was walking by and I, I locked eyes
with him and I said, hey, bro, I said, is
there anything I can pray for you or your family about?
And he looked at me and at first he, he

(17:13):
almost mocked, but then he stopped and a thought ran
through his mind and he said, you know, he goes,
my sister is really sick right now. Would you be
willing to pray for her?
And I said, yeah, I absolutely will. And so I,
I put my hands on his shoulders and his two
friends that were sitting there who also looked pretty rough, uh, they,
they kind of watched in amazement and I prayed over him.

(17:36):
And not only did I pray for his sister, but
I also prayed for him. And you know what, uh,
he was moved. And then I looked at his friends
and I said, hey, can I pray for you? And
the one guy goes, yeah, will you please pray for me?
And he gave me his prayer request. I prayed over him.
And then the other guy, he felt it was like
dominoes were just going down, right?
And, and they all ended up allowing me to pray

(17:57):
for them and the dude, the Wolverine looking dude who
had the satanic tattoo, he said, you know, I'm named
after one of the apostles. He goes, I'm named after Andrew.
I said, yeah, bro. I said, it's time for you
to start bringing people to Jesus again.
And he shook his head, yes, and they went off
and it was like it was just the most incredible thing.
But guys, that's just the point. We can't be ashamed,

(18:19):
we can't be embarrassed. We can't say, hey, I will
preach the gospel to this person and not that person, right?
We are servants of the Most High, right? We are
bond servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have been sanctified,
set apart.
To the gospel, that we might live it, we might
walk it in front of people, but that we also

(18:40):
might speak it.
Right, it is so important. And he says, for the
Jew first, right? So this power of salvation for everyone
who believes was to the Jew first. Jesus came to
the Jewish people, to the nation of Israel, right? The
gospel was for them first, and the apostle Paul, every
time he'd go to a new city, he first began

(19:01):
at the synagogue. He would always go into the synagogue
and through the Old Testament, he would
Prove that Jesus is the promised long-awaited Messiah. And then
some people would believe, many would reject, and then the
moment that that happened, he would separate himself from it.
The the new converts would come with them and they
would start a church, and they would begin reaching out

(19:24):
to the Gentile world, right? So the gospel, the gospel
of Jesus Christ is very much for the Jew also.
Right, God is not finished with the Jews, right? He
still has a plan and a purpose for them.
I like to think of it as a um as
a chess clock. I don't know if you've ever seen those,

(19:44):
where there's two clocks and the people who are playing chess, they,
they push the buttons. Well, the time of the Jews
was from basically from Abraham all the way until the crucifixion, right?
That was the time the Jews, their clock was running
and God was interacting with the world through the old
covenant through the Jewish people. Then
After the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the clock was hit,

(20:07):
and now the new clock, the clock of the church
began to run, and the time of the church is
at hand. And so now God is ministering to the
world through the new covenant through the church. But guess what?
There is an event that is on the horizon, the
rapture of the church, and when the rapture of the
church happens, guess what? That clock is getting hit.

(20:28):
One more time, and God is gonna begin ministering to
the world through the Jewish people once again, and they
will nationally, finally repent and come to Jesus, and they
will say, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the
name of the Lord. So the salvation of Jesus Christ

(20:49):
is not only for the church, it is all
Also for the Jew, right? God is not finished with
them yet, right? The church is not Israel. We do
not replace them. We're only being used in the new
covenant for a time until our time is complete, and
then God will continue his work through the Jewish people.
And so, the gospel, the power of God unto salvation

(21:13):
is for the Jew first, but also for the Greek,
for in it.
The righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.
The righteousness of God. I love that because God is love, right? We, we,
we all, um, love to declare that. We, we love

(21:34):
to own that. God is love, but guess what? God
is also righteous. God is also just, and he's just
as just as he is loving. And you think, well,
how can those two things reconcile? They seem like they're opposites.
The cross. The cross is the perfect merger of justice

(21:56):
and mercy.
And that is the gospel, right? Because God looked at
sinful humanity, right? Since the fall, since Adam and Eve,
he looked at humanity and and all of the evil
and vile things that we have done as a race.
He looked at all of it and instead of just
condemning us, his heart, right, cause he, he must judge

(22:18):
sin and his heart must have burned within him because
he sent his own son.
To come and take our place. So Jesus, who never sinned,
right now has the resources to die in our place
to pay our debt. And Jesus did that, right? And
so God is still just sin was judged. But God

(22:42):
is also merciful and loving because he took the sin.
He took the the payment upon himself instead of allowing us.
To feel it, so the sting of death was taken.
Because God felt the sting of death in his own son.
So in it, in it, the gospel, the righteousness of

(23:04):
God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written,
the just shall live by faith. Right? So the just,
we do not begin as the just, right? We are
the justified. Those who have been justified, right? Those who
have been rendered innocent.
Shall live. We are not condemned any longer. There is

(23:26):
therefore no condemnation in Christ Jesus. Those who have been
justified shall live. And how do we have access to
this amazing grace?
It is by faith alone. It was doubt that brought
sin and death into the world, and it is faith
that brings life everlasting life with Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
This is Pastor Spotlight, and you've been listening to Brian Jamieson,
senior pastor of Orange County Christian Fellowship, and we've been
pleased to bring you 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

(24:11):
Worship Generation. While serving at Worship Generation, Bryan 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.

(24:31):
Focusing on discipleship, fellowship, and the study of the 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

(24:52):
4101 Noel Ranch Road in Anaheim in the library on
the 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 the same time Monday

(25:15):
for another time of.
Going in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ here
on Pastor Spotlight, we'll feature the teaching of another of
our wonderful pastors here in the California area. We hope
you'll join us. Pastor Spotlight is a production of Kwave Radio.