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

Okay, let’s take a look now at the people whom we left behind. Let’s go to Corinth now. We’re in verse 21. Timothy, my fellow worker, sends you greetings along with Lucius, Jason, and Sosipater. Now then, Timothy is a fellow worker. I don’t need to tell you anything about Timothy, do I? Lucius is probably Luke. Oh, this could be… There are two Luciuses in the Bible. Alright, we don’t know who it is. Who is Jason? I have Jason, who is from Thessalonica, thank you, and he has obviously come to visit Corinth, which tells us a whole lot. Brothers and sisters went from one town to another visiting one another, which is just wonderful to do. It’s just one of the greatest things in the world. There’s a whole flock of people from one church descending on another. It lifts the spirits of both churches. I love it. I think it’s wonderful. If you can ever find another church to go visit, do so.

Okay, Sosipater, who is Sosipater? Okay, they’re all mentioned in Acts 13. Okay, do we know anything more about him than that? Now they seem to be…see, Paul calls them his relatives, and I don’t believe that. I don’t even think that they’re all Jews. Maybe they are, but if this is Lucius from… maybe it is Lucius from Jerusalem. Does anybody know anything about Tertius? Okay, well, that’s pretty clear, isn’t it? Well, let’s think about this. First of all, we learn that he can read and write, which, in itself, puts him in a very small minority. He probably makes his living doing this, but he is a believer, and Paul has dictated this whole letter. Now, that’s quite remarkable, isn’t it? I have a notion he went through several drafts, frankly, personally. This is a very well-written letter, and if it were dictated…I dictate, and I tell you it’s very difficult to dictate that much material. He’s a Greek, obviously. He is helping Paul. I know this was very exciting to him. Anybody here who can do shorthand who would like to help me with a book, I pay absolutely nothing, but it is exciting, and in the acknowledgment, I’ll say I acknowledge you. Anybody here want to do that? This is basically what’s going on here. I know that this brother was thrilled to death when Paul leaned back and said, “Oh, Tertius, add your greeting.” He gets, “Wow, wonderful. So Tertius adds his greeting.”

Alright, who else? Boy, this is just so clear, isn’t it? Gaius has one very large living room, and the entire gathering gathers in his home. And obviously, Paul is sitting in his living room dictating this letter, probably living with him, or Gaius has dropped by where Paul is. I would say he is probably living with Gaius. Thank God for Gaius. Here’s a brother who has a large house, who’s not stuck with himself, who is one very hospitable brother. I don’t know if this is one of Paul’s co-workers. Gaius is a very common name, probably not the Gaius who comes with Paul to Ephesus. Nonetheless, praise the Lord for Gaius and the opening of his home for the church to meet there. May his tribe increase.

Now, we have Erastus. What do you know about Erastus? He was from Corinth. What else do you know? He was the city treasurer, that’s right, he was sent with Timothy to Macedonia. Yes, praise the Lord. This is a heavy-duty brother. That was a pretty, pretty heavy trip Timothy was going to make. The false information guy got it as a bishop – a bishop where? Okay, leave that bishop business alone. I know this man, I’ve forgotten his name, but he’s got writings that nobody else verifies; he’s “bishoping” and making everybody one of the 70 just right and left. If he could find a name in the New Testament, he made him a bishop. Well, let me tell you one other thing about Erastus that’s quite interesting. This very, very, very rarely happens in Christian archaeology, and to my knowledge, he is the only person in the New Testament whose existence has been historically proven archaeologically. In the ruins of Corinth, there is a stone they dug up. It lists all the people who built this particular building, and one of them says Erastus, the city treasurer. So, this old boy actually made it into the Bible and into human archaeology, both, which is, by the way, for those who try to disprove the Scripture, one little thing like that just weighs so heavily. Pick up a granite stone with a man’s name on it; it’s also mentioned in a piece of literature written at the same time.

Okay, our brother Quartus. What do we know about him other than that he had an electric wristwatch? Do we know anything about Quartus at all? He was a Christian whose salutation was sent to the church in Rome. Okay, go ahead. And according to tradition, he ultimately became a bishop. Secundus is the second child, Quartus is the fourth child. Who is Tertius? Oh, I didn’t know this. This is wonderful. So Alpha is the first child and Omega is the last child.

Okay, I’m going to take just a moment to describe to you the city of Rome so we can get into this. Are you with me? Okay, this is what they’re going to find. The tradition of Rome was that it was started by Romulus and Remus, who were raised by a wolf, and it was located on a hill, near the Tiber River. Now that’s supposed to have started, I don’t know, in what B.C., but can anybody help me here? I’m not prepared. I seem to remember around 700 B.C. Well, Rome had a little village, had a war with one of its neighbors, and conquered it, and that disturbed another neighbor because they had conquered another village. So, they attacked Rome, a little village called Rome, and Rome conquered them. Then, as the town began to grow a little bit, some of the neighbors down the road got a little bit more concerned about them. They were prospering more than others, so they declared war on Rome, and they conquered them. By the way, this is not accurate history, I hope you know this. Then some of the neighbors up north declared war on them, and by now, you know, their 10 or 15 villages are conquered people all here together, and they conquer these guys. And this goes on for several hundred years. They don’t ever lose a battle, and they always fight for safety. That’s all they do. They are not particular conquerors so much as they are protectors of their city.

So that by the year 200 BC, they’ve got the middle of Italy. Now, that’s not a whole lot when you consider where they were by 44 BC. 200 BC and 44 BC are not a long time, considering what happened between 200 BC and 44 BC. What happened in 44 BC? Ah. I don’t believe you don’t know. What happened on March 15th in 44 BC? Alright, I’ll give you another hint. The 15th of March is called the Ides of March. The Ides of March, huh? Still don’t know, huh? Oh, you ignorant, ignorant, culturally deprived human beings. Okay, I’ll come back to that later. They have a battle with another city in Africa, of all places, and this is a very powerful, large, ancient, and venerable city, and they conquer it. They feel they’re not going to be secure until they conquer everybody. So, they have one big battle with the Greeks, and they defeat the Greeks, and by this time, they have almost all of Italy, they have conquered North Africa, and they have conquered the Greeks.

Their biggest problems that they’re having right now are with barbaric hordes to the north—the Germans, the barbarians, the Germanic, the Visigoths, the Vandals, and people like that. They are a republic, but don’t let that kid fool you. That’s supposed to mean they are somewhat of a democracy, but only the elite vote. By the way, they have enslaved an enormously large number of people, and in 44 BC, their leader announces that he’s going out to fight the barbarian hordes, and his son, or his half son, or his son by adoption, fears that before he goes, he is going to destroy the republic and announce and make himself a king, and so he kills him. It is usually considered that that probably was the most influential assassination in the history of humanity and that had it not happened, the history of the Western world would be totally different than what it is today. Who will ever know? Many of the wars that have befallen Europe for the last 2,000 years are a result of the fact of that assassination.

Did you notice in the Reformation—I bet you’ve never noticed this—that the Reformation took place along the lines of the Roman Empire. That’s how culture, powerful culture, is. Southern Europe, which had been the Roman Empire, remained Catholic. Northern Europe, which had been the barbarians, more or less became Protestant, more or less. Cultural differences that would have been wiped away had Julius Caesar not been stabbed to death by his son, Brutus, on March 15, 44 BC. Then you have these names made famous by Shakespeare: Mark Antony, not Richard Burton, Mark Antony, and a man named Augustus, or he was later named Augustus. Octavia was his name. They have all these big battles, and finally, Octavia emerges. He puts down and makes a puppet of the Republic and announces himself to be the son of Caesar, and he calls himself Caesar. And the word now means, from that day forward, chief cook and bottle washer. The word czar, Kaiser, Caesar—all the same word. You’ve never heard of the Kaisers? Kaiser Wilhelm started World War I, and, of course, the czar was overthrown by Lenin. All of this dates back to those days. Anyway, Caesar Augustus issued a decree that the whole world would be taxed. Caesar Augustus, Julius Caesar, the men who came before them, and just after them, went into one incredible conquest. They conquered all of North Africa, Spain, and all of southern Europe, the Greeks, and they came down during the time of Mark Antony, and they conquered Egypt, and they conquered the Jewish world, and this was all new. When the Lord Jesus was born, the Jews had just recently been conquered. This is all new stuff. Rome was a new name to a large part of the world. Everything was under its heel, but it was not like the Greeks, who had been around forever. This was the new kid on the block, and they had the whole…most of the known world…under their conquest.

(Continued in Part 4)