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

Well, I’m going to take verse 13 all by myself. Can I do verse 13? This is the richest verse in this whole thing. Does any of you know the story? Those of you who studied Rufus, did you get the story? Let me see your hands. You got the story of Rufus? If I’ve left out anything, please let me know. Forgive me for being so selfish here as to tell the whole story. You were wanting to tell it, weren’t you? You really were. Oh, I know you were. Were you? He was. Were you wanting to tell it? Say your version. Come on up. You come here with me. I’m going to help you tell it. This, you can count on. This is for real.

Alright, let’s hear it. Rufus’ name is Red. He was one of the sons of Simeon, Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus, who carried the cross of Jesus. He was eminent in the Lord. His name is twice mentioned in the New Testament, and he is referred to as the son of Simon and the brother of Alexander. Now there’s a footnote that says probably the backslider referred to in 1st Timothy. I don’t believe that. I didn’t put that down. I don’t believe that. Okay, thank you.

Alright, here we go. It’s the day the Lord dies. There is a black man whose name is Simon. He’s from Cyrene, and the Lord can carry the wooden cross beam no further. He collapses, and one of the Roman soldiers pulls this black man out, probably in an act of prejudice, and makes him carry the cross. Somehow, in the weeks and months ahead, that brother, that man, gets saved. There can be no question that man was converted to Christ. When the dispersion came, he and his wife, who was a very devout, wonderful, loving, caring woman, fled, and they fled all the way to Antioch. They had two children. One of them was Alexander, and the other one, when he was born, she must have been white, purple, pink, yellow, or green, if we assume he was truly dark black. Because that little kid was born, she looked at him and said, “That kid’s as red as a beet.” He wasn’t black and he wasn’t white; he was red, so she called him Red. Rufus Red. I don’t know how old he was. I have no idea how old he was when Simon of Cyrene got to Antioch and began preaching the gospel there like a house fire, but I can tell you this: he was one of the five men who raised up the church in Antioch. I can tell you something else. Every time Paul got sick, his wife took care of him. She cared for Paul to the point that she was like a mother to him. Rufus grew up in the church in Antioch, and he got his name mentioned in the book of Mark.

Mark wrote the book of Mark, perhaps in the city of Rome. He is writing the narration of the Lord’s crucifixion, and he says, “Simon of Cyrene,” and he stops and realizes that all the people in Rome are going to read a copy of this and would be interested to know, and he puts in parentheses, “the father of Rufus and Alexander,” which he could just as well have said, “who are living right here in Rome with me right now,” or “Rufus, who is living right here in Rome with me right now.” Rufus is asked by Paul, who has been in the church in Antioch from the beginning, to come to Rome. He can sit around and tell you everything there is to know about the church in Antioch. He was there; he will tell you things Paul would never tell you, or Barnabas would never tell you, or Silas or anybody else, because he’s a young brother, and you know what it’s like when young brothers get together. You don’t know about this, like. “Hey, we heard, when did you…” “Yeah, well, I tell you I was there and it was so…wow” …that’s what single brothers are like when they get together. That’s not all he could do. He could give you one gripping account of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as seen through the eyes of his father. I can’t believe that guy backslid. Maybe he did, but I don’t want him to. Isn’t this a tour de force we’re getting here? Isn’t this incredible? Don’t sit there and look at me like a bunch of Baptists. Say amen. I just told you everything. I told you more than you’ve ever heard. I just can’t believe anybody whose father—I don’t believe he’d do that. That’s some other Rufus who backslid. I don’t know. Maybe he did, but I hope not. Excuse me, but I’m…there you are. I thought you died; maybe I couldn’t see your face anywhere.

Anybody got anything on this next totally unpronounceable name? Asyncritus? Nothing on Asyncritus. I have nothing on Asyncritus. I have something that says that his name appeared among the freemen of Augustus, but it doesn’t mean a thing to me. Let’s make short shift work of this if we can, please. We got a single brother’s house going here, folks. This is all in the world this can mean. Phlegon, Hermes, and Hermas may have been brothers or twin brothers, but more likely, there were two Hermans there, and they had to distinguish them somehow, so they made one a Hermes and the other one a Hermas. Patrobas and the other brothers with them. Now, we have here at least one, two, three, four, five, six. There have to be at least seven single brothers, right? These five have all come together from some place, and they have led a couple of other young, dumb, single brothers to the Lord. And they’re all living in a room. I know this is true. You can put it down. It’s inspired. I know what it looks like. This room is about 10 by 10. They have these bunks built up against the wall and a little bitty table here, and some little cooking instrument in the middle of the room. The room is filthy and stinks, and these six brothers are having the time of their lives. They think they are the most spiritual humans that ever lived. They think their room is a palace, and they think it is as clean as a room can get. They are what you call young, dumb, single brothers, and they are the salt of the earth. That’s what they are. Amen. They are what make my motor run.

Have you got anything on any of these people? Yeah. You mentioned Patrobas with him, right? Yeah. There was a Patrobas. We had gotten in our group that there was a man by the name of Ticetus who wrote during that time, who said that during the time that Paul wrote this, there was a Patrobas in the household of Nero who was free for some unknown reason and was later on beheaded because the Romans were not able to crucify him. Oh, so he’s a Roman. Yeah. Okay. He cannot be crucified as a Roman. That’s interesting. I have never heard that, and he was killed during that particular period. Some of these people’s names, the graves of them, appear in the catacombs, but they don’t know if it’s the same person or not, or if it’s just the typical name of that day. We’re never going to know. So that may be where they got this. I have never heard anything like that. Do you have anything on Hermes and Hermas other than the fact that these are pure, out-and-out heathens? They’re both named after a god—Mercury. He was the head of a house. He can’t be the head of a house; he’s a single brother. Okay. I have that one of these brothers might have gone to preach the gospel in Dalmatia, which is just kind of the ends of the world. It’s a real wild place for wild people. I love this verse 14. I love these single brothers. God bless them. They’re what made that church wonderful. Hollering and shouting, jumping up and down, getting excited, imaginations running wild, and telling stories that are only half true, but thinking that they left out something, and all of those wonderful things.

We come now to a home that is filled with Christians. The home of Philologus, he has opened his home, and there are a whole bunch of Christians packed into this house living there. Now, does this sound like church life or does this sound like church life? This is church life. Alright. Does anybody have anything on Philologus? If you do, say so quickly. Julia. How do you pronounce the next one? Was she the wife of Philologus? I don’t know. Probably. I would think so. The wife or the sister of Philologus. I know that Paul draws a blank here on someone whose name he wished he could remember. No one else in the room could remember either. Nereus? Nereus. What was his sister’s name? No. What was his sister’s name? No, y’all don’t remember? I hate to do this, but I’ll write it down. Nereus and Nereus’s sister. If anybody remembers her name, please let me know, and I’ll change it before we mail this thing. I believe that’s what happened here. Paul has a slip of memory because he doesn’t mention her name. Alright, I think we’ve got Philologus and Julia married, and we’ve got a brother and a sister living there.

And Olympus, do we have anything about Olympus other than the fact that he was probably Greek? I’m sorry, is Olympus a woman’s name? Oh, I didn’t know that. Okay, and probably who? You’re a member of the household. A member of the household of Philologus. When I see here, I don’t see a member of the household of Philologus. I see a house full of Christians; they piled in together just like they did in Jerusalem, and they’re going to hold forth there with the gospel. And all the holy ones—I wish the word saint were not in the Bible. That’s another transliteration, not a translation. Too bad. And all the holy ones, they all were holy. Greet those who are in this house. Alright. Greet one another with a holy kiss, and all the churches, and I’m sure that means the Gentile churches from which you came, and maybe some of the Jewish churches send you greetings.

You got anything here you want to add? Yes, sir, let’s just come up with some really good information about Nereus. Nereus, okay. Yeah, maybe she would want to say. Well, sister, speak. Nereus became a Roman soldier under Vespasian to protect the priestess of Emperor Vespasian. She was exiled to another land, and Nereus had to go with them. During Nero’s Christian persecution, she was burned at the stake. His ashes are known to be counted at the Church of Mural of Arquilio for the Cemetery of St. Domitia. Okay, I’m going to believe everything up to his ashes. I know too much about the period of Constantine, when anything you wanted to say was considered sacred, and all you had to do was say it, and people would believe you. That’s a beautiful story. I have never heard it. I had no idea about this. Well, that would be interesting to know.

Okay, now we have to face a major problem here. What’s a holy kiss? No, don’t let anybody ever sell you on a handshake. I think, in my personal judgment, there is no question what a holy kiss is. It was literally the kind of greeting that the French and the Italians, especially, use. I don’t know if the people in Spain give it or not. Over here, we always laugh about it, but I always enjoyed going to Europe and giving a holy kiss. This came all the way through to the first-century Christians, and it seemed to have been unique to them. Now, they try to say, and this sounds so much like a Puritanical evangelical saying, that the sisters gave one another holy kisses and the brothers gave one another holy kisses. They’re afraid that if we touch one another, we’ll all sin. It’s the other way around, saints. When you start building walls – big, huge walls and mystery and stuff like that—then you start having problems between brothers and sisters. You can overdo this morality business to the point it turns on you and fosters immorality. Does that make any sense to you? I’m sure you understand that.

A holy kiss. At least you’ve seen the French do it. They meet their heads together, and both go like that. Probably it was a kiss on each cheek. The first time I was in Italy, I just got kissed and kissed and kissed and kissed, and I was just floored that anybody would do that, but I felt later really lucky that I had been in Italy because I found out—and I know this will strike you as humorous—but we’ve got to remember cultures. I believe it’s in Hungary, and perhaps in Romania, but I’m pretty sure in Hungary, and also in some parts of Yugoslavia, there ain’t no kissing on the cheek. It’s head-on. Brothers to brothers kissing one another, as well as sisters to sisters. I have been delivered from that. My ability to conform to someone else’s culture ends there. It’s a weakness on my part, but don’t try that with me. Let the Hungarians do that. But the other part, I wish that we would do some restoring here. I know when my brothers and sisters in Christ went to Europe, they came back home doing that, and as far as I know, they have never stopped. They may not do it as often as they did when they first got back, but we ought to hug one another. We ought to touch a lot. We really ought to touch a lot, saints. If we don’t touch one another, first of all, we’re not good Latins. Secondly, we are fostering a problem when we do not touch. We ought to touch. The Lord touched.

Touch, saints. Touch one another. Y’all do that, don’t you? Am I trying to tell you something? Am I in trouble here? Do y’all? I bet you don’t even know if you touch. Do you ever think about it? Touch one another. What’s the silence? Are you thinking about it? Come here, brother. Come here. Yeah, come here. You know what I mean by touch? No. Touch. Touch. Touch one another. Sister, come here. Come here. Well, listen. Try this in some places, and they’ll throw you out. This is touching. This is touching. Now, there could be “he’s too ugly” and “she’s too pretty”. Alright, I’m glad you laughed. Thanks very much for laughing. I lost wherever I was going. I lost it completely. Oh, a story I read, I found it unbelievable. A study was made. I think I told this on the tape somewhere, that the sociologists sat at coffee shops in Italy, France, the United States, and Great Britain and counted the number of times people sitting there touched one another in an hour. The statistics completely elude me, so let me invent them. The Italians, 200 times within an hour. The French, 120, 140, 160, something like that. The Americans, down around 30, 40, or 50, depending on where you are in America. And in Great Britain, zero. You do not…a British person does not touch another human being. Now, there’s a reason for that. If they ever touch one another, they fall into gross sin immediately. Don’t look at me like I’m serious, but that’s what they think. That’s what they think. And so, they shouldn’t touch one another, should they? Poor people. I always felt sorry for the British. What they need is some Latin blood. My goodness, I learned.