The Letter to the Romans: Message #3 – Meet the People in Rome (Part 1)

Romans 16. “I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church in—not the church of—but the church in Cenchreae, which I think means century. Does anybody know? Alright. I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of the Holy Ones, and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been a great help to many people, including me, Paul. And now he goes into a greeting of the people who were in the city of Rome. Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus. They risked their lives for me. Not only I, but the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them. Greet also the ecclesia, the gathering that meets in their home.

Now you learn from that what? Good. We’ll come back to that in a minute. Greet my dear friend Epaenetus, who was the first convert to Christ in the province of Asia. Greet Mary, who worked very hard for you. Greet Andronicus and Junius, my relatives who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was. Greet Amplias, whom I love in the Lord. Greet Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ, and my dear friend, Stachys. Oh, by the way, interrupt me any time. I think this is kind of interesting here, what’s happening. Apelles, tested and proved in Christ, greets those who belong to the household of Aristobulus. Greet Herodian, my relative. Greet those in the household of Narcissus who are in the Lord. Greet Tryphena and Tryphosa. You want to do that differently? No? Okay. Those women who work hard in the Lord. Greet my dear friend Persis, another woman who has worked very hard in the Lord.

Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his mother, who has been my mother too. Now we come to a bunch of them. Does anybody want to help me with that first word? Who? Asyncritus.  I have Phlegon here. Does anybody want to challenge that one? Alright. Hermes. Patrobas, Hermas, and the brothers with them. Greet Philologus and Julia. I don’t know this one. Nereus and his sister, and Olympas, and all the holy ones with them. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ send greetings.

Now, I’m going to skip over just a little bit and come down here to verse 21. Timothy, my fellow worker, sends his greetings to you, as do Lucius, Jason, and Sosipater, my relatives. I, Tertius, who wrote down this letter, greet you in the Lord. Gaius, whose hospitality I and the whole church of the gathering here in joy, sends you greetings. Erastus, the city’s director of public works, and our brother Quartus send you their greetings. Alright, let’s see if there are any more here. No, I think that’s it. Now, I’m going to take just a moment to give a little review that brings us up to this moment, and then you’re going to help me find out who all these dear people are. Last meeting, we went through all the ways that churches are raised up, and virtually all of them are raised up by workers, and almost all are raised up by church planters—an office of the church that has been lost through the centuries. The Roman Catholics supplanted it with priests and monks. The Protestant Church and Reformation supplanted it with pastors, and it’s long gone. And today, the missionaries…you might hear a man say, “I’m a church planter; I raised up ten churches.” He means by that he went out, rented a storefront, led fifteen people to the Lord, and told them to: song, prayer, three songs, prayer, offertory, special music, sermon, and benediction. You can do that all day. You can do that any time of the day or night. Anybody can do that. That’s not raising up the community in our church life.

Here I am, just getting started, and I’m already off the subject. The churches were raised up, we said, by the Lord Jesus—an embryonic church. The apostles raised up the church in Jerusalem, staying there for a long period of time. Then there were churches simply raised up by a dispersion caused by persecution, when they just replanted the Jerusalem church all over Judea. We have the church in Antioch, raised up by a group of prophets and one guy who turned out to be an apostle; that was Barnabas. Then we have the Galatian churches and the Greek churches—Thessalonica, Berea, Philippi, and Corinth—raised up by two men who come into a city where Christ has never been named, win people to the Lord, and minister to them Christ and His church—Christ and the gathering of the body of Christ—and then leave them. That happened on two trips. Now then, on the last church that was raised up on his second trip—on his second trip, last church—now what church would that be? Second visit, second trip, last church—Corinth, right? Corinth. As he got there, he met some Christians. This was in about 49–50 A.D, and they had come from Rome. They have been run out of town by Claudius—the Emperor Claudius. Now, Claudius doesn’t know it, but he’s only got about four years left to live, and he is going to be poisoned, deader than a doornail, by his wife, who is his niece, whose name is Agrippina.

Now, you didn’t need to know that, did you? Alright, I’m going to tell you when he poisons her, though. Well, there’s definitely no church gathering in Rome. If it is, it’s infinitesimal; two or three Greeks, that’s about it. It couldn’t be anything significant going on there. Well, Paul says to Priscilla and Aquila, whom he obviously depends on a great deal, “Go to Ephesus ahead of me. I’ll be back in a while. I’m going to gather up one or two men from the churches I have raised up, and I’m going to take them to Ephesus, and I’m going to make them apostles. I’m going to make them church planters. These are young men called of God.” So, they pioneer. They go to Ephesus, and guess what they do? They do the most skullduggery thing you could imagine. They quietly and unobtrusively go in and join the Jewish synagogue. Now don’t tell me those folks are up to any good. I know good and well they are not. They’re sitting there in that synagogue, coming into those boring meetings, looking around, seeing if there are any seekers around there. That’s what they’re doing.

Well, Paul comes in with his young men, and it’s probably around 52 A.D. He’s going to be in the area for about four years. He’s got all these young men with him. Let’s see if we can name them. I’ll go as far as I can, and you help me with all I forget. The two T’s—Timothy and Titus. By the way, they will later add Tychicus and Trophimus. And there is Secundus, and there is Gaius, and there is Aristarchus. And help me with that word. Sopater? Oh, excuse me. Sopater? How many was that? Is that six? Let me do it again. You count with me. Timothy. Titus. Secundus. Gaius. Aristarchus. And who? Sopater, and later, Tychicus and Trophimus. Well, there’s Ephesus right over there, and they’re coming over the hill, and they’re really excited. Paul’s excited. They’re all excited, and they’re looking…boy, that’s a big city! Look at that big outdoor amphitheater they’ve got there. What’s the population of that thing? Probably a couple of hundred thousand people.

Wow, this is really exciting. What’s that going on over there? I don’t know. There’s a bunch of men over there doing something strange. Unusual, unbelievable coincidence. Paul walks over and says, “Who are you guys?” They said, “Why, we are followers of John the Baptist.” “How long have you been here?” “We’ve been living here since about 28 A.D.” “Did you ever hear of Jesus?” “No, I can’t say we did.” “Have you ever heard of the Holy Spirit?” “No, I can’t say that we have.” “Well, I have a few things to update you on.” And he preached the gospel to them, laid hands on them, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit. And I believe they spoke in tongues, didn’t they? Did they? And they were the first converts in Asia. Now they go down into that town with a half a dozen or a dozen men, where they haven’t even gotten started, and they’ve already got six, eight, ten, twelve converts. Paul nudges Secundus and says, “Now, isn’t that easy? Nothing to raising up a church.” And they come in, and for two years Paul preaches there, and I’m sure the young men do too.

He teaches in a school of Tyrannus, which just happens to be located, it happens to be located…this guy is just really incorrigible. Where is the school of Tyrannus located? The Scripture says, “And it was hard up against the synagogue.” So, anybody going to the synagogue would have to pass Paul of Tarsus in there, teaching those young men and preaching, and probably some of the meetings are held there. This goes on for two years. And one day, news comes to Ephesus. Agrippina. You remember Agrippina? You remember her? She dropped some arsenic or cyanide or whatever they were using those days in the tea, or coffee, or meat, or mutton, or bread, or something of the Emperor Claudius, and he curled up his toes and died on cue. And a sixteen-year-old boy named Germanicus mounts the throne of the Roman Empire. It is 54 A.D., and the ban on the Jews is lifted, and Paul goes crazy. He’s going to send all these people he can find. As he gathered up workers to go to Ephesus with him, he is now going to write a bunch of letters, contact all his friends – I think he contacted every friend he had, real close friends – and asked them to go to Rome. And in 54 A.D., Christians—Gentiles and Jews—began packing and moving there, and they got there, who knows, six months later. They’d probably been in that city for a year, a year and a half, or two years when Paul wrote a letter to them, plus the converts and others who had been added. It is to these people that he writes the letter in the year 56 A.D.

Oh, by the way, Germanicus has another name. Does anybody know what Germanicus’s name was? That’s right. You’re a sixteen-year-old boy who will rule brilliantly and beautifully and excellently for the next five years. In fact, he ruled so well that he never quite lived down his reputation as a good ruler. No matter what he did, there were people who just kept on remembering those first five beautiful years. Well, after that, he became one of the great buffoons, tyrants, and madmen of human history. In fact, he is usually ranked number one as the greatest villain and buffoon in human history. The degradation of that man, if the stories told on him are true, are unbelievable, but there were five or six years in there when this young boy who mounted the throne served brilliantly, and then gradually became one of the most depraved, corrupted human beings that ever breathed air on this earth, if the stories about him are to be believed—and the stories are not believable. Believe me, they are not believable.

Anyway, the letter is written. Some years ago, a question was asked of a group of literary authorities: “Name the ten most influential pieces of literature ever written.” The Bible did not make it in their list. The Book of Romans did. It is considered the most influential single piece of Christian literature ever penned. Now, to give you some idea, Paul’s Book of Romans led Augustine to the Lord. Luther was converted while reading Augustine’s commentary on Romans. And John Wesley was converted to Christ while listening to someone read out loud Luther’s commentary on Romans. So, you go from Paul to Aquinas to Luther to John Wesley—all just from the Book of Romans. I think that the book is made far too complex by too many people, and we’re uncomplexerizing it right here, right now. You heard Romans 1 through 8, did you not, by hook or crook? That didn’t come out so terribly difficult, did it? Yet it has been considered the great, most ponderous of books. I think you remember my giving the illustration of the gentleman—oh, his name is on the tip of my tongue—what was his name? Don Gray Barnhouse, who had a radio program, and if I’m not mistaken, his entire radio program, which extended over the entire period of his life, was an exposition of the Book of Romans, and he never finished. He died first. That’s too much. Even Paul didn’t know that much about the Book of Romans.