The Letter to the Romans: Message #1 – Background on the Book of Romans (Part 1)

Well, last year I went through Romans chapters 1-8. Have you heard it? Okay. It was wonderful, wasn’t it? Now, what we’re going to do is so totally different from that, you’re going to feel it’s a totally different book. I’m going to try to create for you an image of what it was like to be in Rome, Italy, in the year 56 AD, when this letter arrived. Okay, now that’s not going to be easy to do, but in the process of doing it, I want to share with you some things I have never shared in totality with anybody…all of it, one great big lump. Now, that has suddenly become extremely important to me. As I give you the background of how a letter got to Rome, Italy, I really have to share with you everything that’s on my heart – that is really big. And I want it to get in your heart. I really do. I want it to get deep inside you. So, I’m going to try to get it inside you tonight. I’m going to get it in every one of you, and especially some of you brothers, because I think Paul would like it, because I think the Lord would—because we’re dealing with some of the most important things and some of the most lost things of the Christian faith, as far as the practice of our faith. We get a lot of preconceived ideas of what the church ought to be and how we ought to do things, but we’re going to look at how they really, truly did it, without any puff or play-like. The really, really, really, truly, truly, truly honest-to-goodness, 21 or 24-carat, solid gold, genuine, grade-A New Testament way God’s people did things in that era.

Now, tomorrow night, you’re actually going to meet the people this letter was written to, but you’re going to have a totally new view of who they are. After that, everything from Romans 1 through Romans 8 might be considered very spiritual. Everything this week is going to be about church life—the practical—because that’s what Romans 12 through 16 is about. That’s what he wrote. That’s what we’re going to find out. We’re going to discover what was really going on in Rome. We’re going to find out what their problems were—a group of Christians living together in the city of Rome. And I’ll bet you they’re very similar to a group of Indo-Europeans living in Chicago, Illinois. Now, this is wonderful for me, because if I walked into the church in Rome, they’d all look just about like you. Now, I don’t want to wear this out—I see one white man over there—but if I were to have walked into the church in Rome, Italy, in the year 56 AD, they’d all look just about like you, except they wouldn’t be wearing glasses. They hadn’t been invented yet, and their clothes might be a little bit different, and that’s about the only difference. I have a notion that their number was just about what is in this room, too.

So, all of this becomes very, very exciting to me. I’m going to tell you a story tonight. I guess I should read a verse of Scripture. Sometimes people say, “Gene, you don’t begin your message with Scripture.” And you ought to begin your message with Scripture. If they tell me why I should do that, I will. Alright, here it is. Isn’t this profound?

This is Acts 18:1-2: “And after this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. And there he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome.” Now, isn’t that profound? Well, on that hangs one of the most exciting and intriguing stories the world has ever known. Now, I’m going to have to really tell you things that are so deep in my heart that you’ll just have to bear with me if I stop and talk to you about them, and they have nothing to do with Rome, Italy, but they have to do with what’s on my heart.

I’m going to start by beginning. First, I’ll ask the question: How did the church in Rome get raised up? And the answer is—all the scholars in the world don’t know. They have been speculating for 2,000 years on how the church in Rome got started. Now, one of the tragedies of being a scholar is that you read what some other scholar wrote, and you’re scholastic. So, when you write a book, you repeat what he says so you can quote somebody profound, and somebody fifty years later reads what you wrote, and he quotes you, and it becomes locked in concrete. So, all of them say they do not know how the church in Rome, Italy, got started. Well, I know how it got started. I know exactly how it got started and who started it, and when this meeting is over tonight, you and I will be the only people in the world who know exactly. Yeah, clap—that’s it. That’s wonderful. Amen!  And I am not joking. You will know, and you will be convinced as I am. This is how the church…in fact, I’m absolutely certain of it. No question about it whatsoever. I don’t care if the scholars don’t know—we’ll know.

But as we come to it, we will discover that Paul has done one of the most incredible things. I see in Paul’s ministry two majestic strokes of genius. I’m not talking about his message; I’m talking about a couple of things he did. He pulled off two of the most beautiful ways of getting the Lord’s work done. Nobody’s ever thought of it. Nobody’s ever duplicated it. And it’s the way things ought to be done today.

I’m going to tell you that in the New Testament, there are basically four ways that churches were raised up. Actually, there are six, but I will put it this way: there are four lines of churches in the New Testament. If you ever read Nee’s little book Concerning Our Missions, he presents two lines. I did not know when he wrote—I had never read his book—when I wrote my own notes on the early church, going from 30 AD all the way to the end of the century, I had four lines of churches. Brother Nee overlooked two, and I’m going to tell you what they are, and in so doing, we’re going to learn how churches were raised up in the first century. The last line is what I would call the Roman line, the way churches were raised up a la Rome. And it is so incredible what this man did.

Okay, the first church ever to exist on this earth was called what? Ah, you don’t know? What was the first church in the world? Don’t look at me like that. Yes, brother. Oh, I’m talking about a church, the first one ever to exist. I’m not talking about churches. I’m talking about the first church. One church is the only one that existed on this earth. The church in Jerusalem. Okay, let’s get back to reading The Early Church by Gene Edwards; I’m not going to put up with this. (laughter) Now, there is uniqueness to that church. No other church in the world has ever been raised up like that church was; probably never will again. I don’t see how it would be conceivable, although I’d like to watch it if it could be done. The only reason it could be done was because of the enormous unity born out of having lived personally with Jesus Christ. You can’t get twelve men of great stature working together; it can’t be done. Hey, trust me, it can’t be done. They’re too individualistic, too different.

This time—the first time, the only time—on the Day of Pentecost, a church was born in the city of Jerusalem. Please read The Early Church by Gene Edwards, Volume 1. You’ll learn all sorts of things. This is the way the first church ever raised up was raised up. It was raised up by twelve apostles—not one, not two, but twelve. No other church ever got twelve. It was important because it would be the model for all the Jewish churches to come, and it would be literally what the church was. Whatever those men made the church, it could be. It could have been a cow born, it could have been a kangaroo, it could have been a rock, it could have been a cloud floating through the sky. Nobody knew what Ecclesia was until Peter, James, John, and some other men showed the world what it was. It was a gathering of believers.

By the way, there was only one church in that city. They didn’t have any splits. They didn’t have the East Jerusalem Church and the West Jerusalem Church. In fact, the word church is really a misnomer. If we could use some other word, the assembly and the assembling in Jerusalem, the gathering that was in Jerusalem. It did not meet in a building. The only building that was off-limits to them was the temple. It was too small anyway. They did get the courtyard because they were Jews—they had a right to the courtyard. They had to meet in homes, and then the general meetings – probably fifty to a hundred or more homes. After all, there were at least 3,000 just to begin with. Big church!

Furthermore, it was the only church on earth for six or seven years. Now, the first thing I want you to know is that it blows soot out of all theories of evangelism. Don’t ever fall into this: “We’ve got to go save the world! The apostles went out from Jerusalem and preached the gospel all over the planet.” That is not true. The Lord told Simon Peter and the other apostles to go to the ends of the earth and preach. Now, I’ll show you how obedient they were. Pentecost came. Twelve men sat down in Jerusalem and didn’t move for six or seven years. The world went to hell, and they didn’t care. And that’s the truth. I’m not exaggerating. Men were dying without Christ all over the earth, and they were sitting there. Now why? It’s really simple: because the ecclesia is more important than evangelism. And I’m going to say that again, then you’re going to repeat it: because the ecclesia is more important than evangelism. Because the Ecclesia is more important than evangelism. In our day, evangelism is everything. “We’ve got to go save the world,” and we don’t end up with the ecclesia. We don’t have the gathering of the body of Christ. Evangelism is something that will organically come out of the church. It’s the church’s business. It’s not a man with a big, long trailer and a tent that he throws up and says, “Come here, evangelist so-and-so.” Evangelism is the church’s job. In fact, saints, everything is the church’s job. Everything ought to be done within the church. The church.