CCC Livestream - It's All About The Gospel - Romans 16:25-27
Live Worship Gathering: 3/15/2026
Preaching: Jason Purdy
I invite you to turn with me to Romans 16.
We will look at verses 25-27 today.
This is sermon number 46 of 46 through the book of Romans, so we are finishing
the book today.
Just so you know, in the reformed baptist world that I live in, many pastors who
are my age say they don’t believe they will be ready to preach through the book
of Romans until close to the end of their ministries.
And then, we have pastoral examples like John Piper who spent eight years with
his church going through Romans with a total of 225 sermons on the book.
So, let me clarify, I certainly never chose to preach through the book of Romans
thinking I was going to somehow, “do it justice.”
There are depths of truth and grace in these passages that can be meditated on
for a lifetime, and will continue to reverberate for eternity.
I am under no illusion that I have anywhere close to exhaustively mined the text
of Romans for all it has to offer.
I never expected to do so, nor does John Piper believe he did so in eight years
and 225 sermons.
While the text of Scripture means what it says and says what it means the
spiritual blessings and depths of connections with the rest of the Scriptures and
the depths of applications that can be made to ones life can be mined deeper
and deeper with truly no end.
While the teachings of God are limited like I taught last week, the depth of
meditations on God’s word, and applications to ones life and eternity are truly
without end.
Some of the reasons I believe God put it on my heart to walk through Romans as
we have in this season of church life is that by God’s grace, he has brought some
of you to become a part of Christ Covenant Church in the past year or two, and
focusing on a rich exposition of the gospel of Jesus Christ provides you such a
rich foundation for your life and faith from here on out.
Another reason is as we live lives following Jesus and being in community
together, it is so important for us to understand that we all war with the old
ways of our flesh while also being steadily renewed and changed by the power
of the Holy Spirit now within us.
We always need the reminder and encouragement of the future glory that will
be revealed to us at the end of this life on earth and the truth that nothing in this
life can separate us from the love of Christ.
I find it helpful to understand that responding to the gospel by offering
ourselves as living sacrifices allows us to continue on in service to one another
in every age and stage of life that we find ourselves in.
Also, some of us have come from similar backgrounds and cultures when it
comes to family and faith and church, and many of us have come from differing
backgrounds and cultures when it comes to those things, some of us have
experienced a lot of change in church culture throughout the years, so the
teachings on showing grace and love toward one another on matters of opinion
and disputable matters is so important so that we are not tempted to judge or
despise one another for those things.
I love the challenge of Paul’s ministry to remind us to be concerned with the
gospel going to places where Christ has not yet been named, encouraging us
toward missions support and missions service.
Then the encouragement of relationships in the present place where God has
placed us, welcoming and greeting one another in the Lord, showing no
partiality but love and grace toward all God places among us.
Then, last week, we considered the one kind of person we must not welcome,
but instead, avoid, which is the false teacher who causes divisions and obstacles
contrary to the doctrine we have been taught.
The passage last week ended with the reminder that the God of peace will
finally crush Satan under our feet, for he has already been crushed under the
feet of Jesus through the cross and resurrection.
There is no more fitting a conclusion than to once again offer a doxology.
A doxology is simply a short hymn or song of praise to God.
For knowledge is never an end in itself when it comes to the teachings of God
from the Bible.
The knowledge contained therein is always a means used to drive us to the end
of worship of God over and above all things.
Paul completed his exposition of the gospel in chapters 1-11 with this doxology:
Romans 11:33–36 ESV
33 Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How
unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”
35 “Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?”
36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory
forever. Amen.
He now completes the whole letter with yet another.
Please follow along as I read:
Romans 16:25–27 ESV
25 Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the
preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was
kept secret for long ages 26 but has now been disclosed and through the
prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the
command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith— 27 to the
only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.
1. The Gospel Of Jesus Christ Strengthens and Upholds
Us
The doxology is centered on God in the way that our whole life and being is
meant to be centered on God.
For it is in God alone that we live and move and have our being.
And it is God alone who is able to strengthen you.
The word Paul uses for strengthen also gives the idea of establishing you,
upholding you, and propping you up.
The truth is: we are creatures, not the Creator, and because we are creatures, we
must lean on and depend on something outside of ourselves for life, for hope,
and for meaning.
Think about your physical being.
You need water and food and shelter to sustain your life and you cannot create
any of those things on your own.
You need those things to be provided for you from outside of yourself.
And the more confident you are that you have access to those things, the more
strengthened and supported you feel when it comes to your physical life.
In the same way, you are a spiritual being.
We know this because even when all of our physical needs are met and satisfied
that does not mean that our whole being is satisfied.
We can have all that we need to sustain a healthy physical life and still be
miserable and still be looking and longing for something to strengthen,
establish, uphold, and prop us up.
You need light, life, wisdom, hope, and freedom in order to maintain your
spiritual life, but you cannot create any of these things on your own.
You need them to be provided for you from outside of yourself.
And the more confident you are that you have access to those things, the more
strengthened and supported you feel when it comes to your spiritual life.
Our spiritual life of light, life, wisdom, hope, and freedom comes from God
alone.
But we have all sinned against God, desiring to know good and evil for ourselves
and desiring to be our own God.
And in our sin, we live with guilt and shame because of the death of our souls.
The Bible says as sinners, we all walk in this world with no light, no life, no
wisdom, no hope, and no freedom.
But while we were dead in our trespasses and sin, God in great love and grace
sent His son Jesus.
And Jesus was fully God filled with all light, life, wisdom, hope, and freedom.
Jesus was also fully man, made a creature who was born and who suffered in
every way as you and I do yet without sin.
And Jesus was hated by many who walk in darkness and spiritual death to the
point where they nailed Jesus to a Roman cross.
Yet, Jesus did not suffer and die for any sins of his own, but for your sins and for
my sins.
Jesus took the punishment of your sins and my sins onto himself, becoming
obedient to the gracious plan of God to save us even unto death.
Three days later, God the Father rose his Son Jesus from the dead defeating our
darkness and death, our foolishness and despair, defeating the chains of sin
that we could not break free from.
Jesus died in our place for our sin, and Jesus rose in our place defeating
everything that sin had wrought in us.
And for all who respond to the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ with
repentance and faith, you are saved from the wrath of God that will come
against sin, and you are given light, life, wisdom, hope, and freedom that is all
bound up in Jesus Christ alone.
And it is this gospel that is able to strengthen, establish, uphold, and prop you
up no matter what situation you find yourself in.
This is why the gospel is not a message you need to hear and respond to one
time, then go out and live however you want.
The gospel is the message that you need every moment of every day, and it is
the message you need preached to you over and over against throughout your
life of faith because it is the only message that is the power of God for your
salvation both today and for eternity.
Would you just consider with me that anything else that you could ever find to
trust in and lean upon to strengthen, establish, and uphold you could be taken
away in an instant?
Whether it be your money, your family, a relationship, your reputation, your
health, an addiction, good works you can do, and even your physical life?
One phone call could be to inform you that one or any of those things has been
stripped from you forever.
There is only one thing that can promise to strengthen and uphold you
throughout all losses, even the loss of your physical life, and that is the gospel of
Jesus Christ.
There is only one person who can truly promise you that He will never leave or
forsake you and that nothing can separate you from His love, and that is the
person of Jesus Christ.
Never forget the promise of
Philippians 1:6 ESV
6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to
completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
No matter what you lose on this side of eternity, there is only one loss that
would be ultimately devastating in eternity, and that would be the loss of not
repenting and believing on the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation.
In order to experience the strengthening and upholding of God’s hand in every
circumstance of life, you must center your life of Jesus and the things of God.
Attending a service every Sunday is not centering your life on Jesus.
It takes your own time in God’s word, meditation on it, prayer as you enjoy your
own personal relationship with God, a meaningful commitment to God people
in the church, and God’s mission in the world.
The gospel of Jesus Christ strengthens and upholds us.
2. The Gospel Of Jesus Christ Reveals Great Mysteries
Verse 25 goes on: according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret
for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings
has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal
God, to bring about the obedience of faith
You know those movies that reveal something at the end that shocks you and
makes you want to watch the movie again to see if you could pick up on the
signs that lead to the big reveal all the way through?
One of the most famous ones when I was a teenager was The Sixth Sense.
He was dead the whole time.
I’ve told you my movie spoiler statute of limitations is ten years, so please see it
within the first ten years of its making if you don’t want me to spoil it for you in a
sermon illustration.
Well, just like when the mystery is revealed at the end, you start seeing all the
ways the stuff before the reveal was leading us to it,
When you see the big reveal of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the New Testament,
you realize all the signs of the Old Testament were pointing to that reveal.
As the resurrected Jesus walked down the road with two men, the Bible says in
Luke 24:27 ESV
27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all
the Scriptures the things concerning himself.
At that time, all the Scriptures that were written were the Old Testament
Scriptures, and Jesus says they all concern himself.
And I would argue that this is not only true of the Old Testament Scriptures but
it also true of your life and my life leading up to the moment where we were
saved by Jesus.
Once being saved by Jesus, we can look back and see all the signs and markers
of guilt and shame and foolishness, and all the markers of people and places
and situations God placed in our path in order to have the mystery of His
glorious gospel revealed to us for salvation.
What is the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been
disclosed?
Colossians 1:27 ESV
27 To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the
riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Christ in you, the hope of glory.
The Old Testament hinted and point to him all the way through.
God gave his son Jesus through the virgin birth, through his perfect earthly life,
through his death in our place that we deserved, through his breaking the bonds
of death and sin in his resurrection, and through his ascension to the right hand
of God the father to always make intercession for us.
The mystery is that not only has Christ done these things for us, but through
faith, we take on his righteous life, his sacrificial death, and his glorious and
victorious resurrection as if it were our own.
Christ in you, the hope of glory.
The mystery extends further. Consider:
Ephesians 5:32 ESV
32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the
church.
The mystery is a marriage between Christ and his church.
Our earthly marriages are meant to be a physical representation of the spiritual
union between Christ and his church.
The wife is to represent how the church submits to their Lord Christ by
submitting to her husband as far as the husband is submitting to the Lord and
the clear commands of Scripture.
The husband is to represent how Christ loves the church by giving himself up for
her and loving her as he does his own flesh.
It is a mystery and a profound union that God says refers to Christ and the
church.
This does not mean that you must be physically married, for it is the physical
weddings around us that point us to the perfect marriage of Christ and His
church, not the other way around.
Finding yourself as a member of Christ’s church through faith in him is makes
you part of his perfect bride whether you ever physically marry in this life or not.
This mystery is that the church is the bride of Christ, and being in Christ, the two
have been made one.
The mystery then extends one more step further. Consider:
Ephesians 3:6 ESV
6 This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body,
and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.
The Old Testament had hinted that all nations would be blessed by the coming
Messiah, but it was in Christ coming, living, dying, rising, and establishing His
church that the gospel went forth to all peoples, nations, and languages.
The mystery is that there is no religious background, gender, ethnicity, social
status, or class that could ever disqualify you from the love of God toward you in
the gospel, neither could any of these things disqualify you from full adoption
into God’s family - the church - with all the rights and privileges promised and
offered.
The mystery is that the power to break every -ism, whether it be racism, sexism,
classism, ageism, ablism, is found in the gospel of Jesus Christ that reckons all
humanity in one state which is sinner, and offers one hope to every and all
human and that is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
We are one in Christ, and we need no other commonality or distinction in order
to walk with one another in loving and accepting community from now until we
see the Lord Jesus face to face.
Verse 26 tells us that this mystery has been made known to all nations,
according to the command of the eternal God to bring about the obedience of
faith.
Paul certainly does not mean that the mystery of the gospel had already been
made known to every nation sufficiently at that point.
If that were the case, why in the world would Paul have written just one chapter
earlier that he makes it his ambition to preach the gospel where Christ has not
yet been named?
Why would Paul be hoping that the church in Rome would assist him on his way
to Spain to share the gospel where Christ had not been named?
Verse 26 cannot mean that the gospel had sufficiently made it to the nations to
the point where there was no more need for evangelism or church planting.
Instead, it means in context, that the mystery of the gospel of Jesus Christ has
now been sufficiently revealed through the work of Jesus and the continuing
work of the Holy Spirit that God’s church can now take the sufficient gospel to
every nation of the earth and it is sufficiently powerful to save all who hear the
gospel anywhere in the world.
This is the command of the eternal God, to go and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit
and teaching them to obey all that Christ has commanded.
It is this preaching of the gospel that leads to the obedience of faith.
I believe in a context like ours that still has a lot of churches and compared to
many other places in the world and even in the country, a good number of
people that attend churches, it is important for us to understand what it meant
by the obedience of faith.
All the way back in
Romans 1:5 ESV
5 through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the
obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations,
A saving response to the gospel is repentance and faith.
Repentance is a change of heart from I am Lord to Jesus is Lord.
Faith is trusting that Jesus did not only die and rise again for the salvation of the
world, but Jesus died and rose again for me personally.
And here is the most important thing to understand in our context: while the
obedience of faith for salvation happens in one moment in time,
It also continues throughout the long haul of the Christian life while you are still
on the earth,
And is not completely accomplished until God has brought you safely all the
way home to heaven.
The concept of the obedience of faith completely negates any kind of idea that
you can be saved from death and hell because of some decision you made way
back when even if you never really submit your life under the Lordship of King
Jesus through identifying with him in baptism and learning to obey his
commands through continual relationship with Him and His church.
The gospel saves us from so much more than we first imagine.
It not only saves us from death and hell, it saves us from our sin and selfishness
in this life by graciously providing us a faith family to love and worship with and
serve with and encourage one another as we, by God’s grace, walk out this life
all the way home to heaven.
Consider these words from a commentary by Kent Hughes:
Romans—Righteousness From Heaven Praise for God’s Work (vv. 25, 26)
What a mysterion, what a miracle, and what a call to praise God! God is able to
prop us up. Actually, he is able to do even more. He is able to establish us. His
way of doing this is Jesus! When Jesus is the subject of our proclamation, our
conversation, our meditation, we stand! And as we live and grow in Jesus, the
mysterion opens wider and wider, and we become more firmly established. The
unfolding mystery of God Incarnate assaults our souls and draws us up to glory:
O the deep, deep love of Jesus,
’Tis a Heaven of Heavens to me,
And it lifts me up to glory,
For it lifts me up to Thee.
The gospel of Jesus Christ reveals great mysteries.
Finally,
3. The Gospel Of Jesus Christ Leads Us To Worship Him
Alone
Verse 27: to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.
I want you to consider with me the fact that God is referred to as the only wise
God because He is the very source of all wisdom itself.
“So, if you lack wisdom, ask of God, who gives generously to all without
reproach,” James writes.
I read this definition of wisdom this week:
Wisdom, among other things, is the ability to devise perfect ends and to achieve
those ends by perfect means.
This our God does without limit.
He has the ability to plan the perfect ends and use the perfect means to make it
to those ends.
It is why Paul is able to make the stunning promise of:
Romans 8:28 ESV
28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good,
for those who are called according to his purpose.
If God has called you to himself through repentance and faith in the gospel, then
God is using the perfect means of every detail of your life and every detail in the
universe to bring you to the perfect ultimate end of being with God and enjoying
him for eternity.
Too many times I am shocked by the depth of my own sin, and shocked by the
depth of darkness in the world, and shocked by the depth of despair that I can
feel in the midst of a difficult situation, and shocked by the depth of hurt I can
feel,
But, what we are called to do over and over again when we find ourselves
swimming in those depths is to take the depths of our sin, and the depths of the
darkness of this world, and the depths of despair, and the depths of our deepest
hurts and present them before the only wise God,
The God whose grace is deeper than all our sin,
The God whose light can light on any darkness,
The God whose hope can overcome the deepest despair,
The God whose comfort is deeper than the deepest hurt,
The God whose wisdom is deep enough to turn all sin, darkness, despair, and
hurt into the perfect means that He uses to bring all things, including you, to His
perfect ends.
Have you ever flipped through one of those magic eye books?
The point of the Magic Eye book is that every page has a picture on it that looks
like just a jumbled mess of colors that makes no real sense,
But if you relax your eyes or touch it to your nose and pull it out, you begin to
see a 3D picture and design in the midst of what seemed like a jumbled mess.
Same kind of idea comes from a tapestry.
I remember my grandmother used to due those yarn tapestry things, and she
would always lay it upside down, so it just looked like a huge mess of colored
yarn, but if you turn it to the front side, it makes a beautiful picture with purpose
and design.
So oftentimes, our life looks like the jumbled mess of colors and yarn.
But, God sees the other side of the tapestry.
And in eternity, he will wow us for eternity by seeing how it all fit together.
How it was all God’s perfect means to meet his perfect ends.
It is faith in the truth of God that leads us to worship him in all things.
Are you centering your life on Jesus?
Are you living out of the mystery now revealed; the reality that you are in Christ
and Christ is in you?
Does his truth lead you to worship?