The Invitation To Love: Romans 15:13-21

Speaker: Steve Anderson

Passage: Romans 15:13-21

Focusing On The Holy Spirit

We’re studying in the book of Romans today. We’ve been in the book of Romans for a long time. In my opinion, the book of Romans is the most powerful book in the entire Bible. It is considered not just by Christian scholars but also by literary scholars as one of the greatest literary works of all time. It’s been a privilege for us to study this. 

It’s been good for us to go through it slowly. I don’t know about you, but every single one of these messages on Romans feels like the Holy Spirit is moving in it and convicting me. How many know we’re not perfect? We’re not perfect. This is a work in progress. Paul talks about working out our salvation. That’s what we’re doing every single day. 

The book of Romans is masterful at doing that. We’re going to stay in Romans 15 as Paul brings this letter back full circle. We’re going to talk about the Holy Spirit today. This passage in Romans 15 talks about the Holy Spirit. If you go back to chapter one, Paul talks about the Holy Spirit. In verse four of chapter one, he talks about the power of God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

In verse 16, he talks about the power of God unto salvation through the preaching of the gospel. Right in the middle of the book of Romans, we get Romans eight, which I think is the most powerful chapter in the entire Bible. Twenty-two times there’s the mention of the word “spirit.” 

There are so many powerful scriptures in there talking about the work of the Spirit regenerating us. Chapter eight starts, “There is no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus.” How many know that’s a good start to a chapter? 

Pastor Gary was talking a little bit about that. We don’t have any condemnation because Jesus Christ bought us with His life. He bought us with His blood. We have salvation through Him. Because of that, we have no condemnation. 

The word “spirit” appears most in Romans chapter eight. It has the most of any chapter in the entire Bible with 22. If you’re having a bad day, spend the day reading Romans eight. In fact, if you’re having a good day, spend the day reading Romans chapter eight. I guarantee you, it’s going to refresh you. 

In Romans chapters nine through 14, we’ve covered a variety of things that Paul needed to address with the church in Rome. This church was made up of Jewish and non-Jewish believers. In these chapters, there’s a lot about relationships and getting along. That’s where a lot of that conviction came with me. I’ve got some things I need to work on there. 

Now Paul is starting to bring the letter home. So if you have your Bible, turn to Romans chapter 15, starting in verse 13. 

“I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in Him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit. I’m fully convinced, my dear brothers and sisters, that you are full of goodness. You know these things so well that you can teach each other about all of them. Even so, I have been bold enough to write about some of these points, knowing that all you need is this reminder. For by God’s grace, I am a special messenger from Christ Jesus to you Gentiles. I bring you the good news so that I might present you as an acceptable offering to God, made holy by the Holy Spirit. So I have reason to be enthusiastic about all Christ Jesus has done through me in my service to God, yet I dare not boast about anything except what Christ has done through me, bringing the Gentiles to God by my message. And by the way, I worked among them. They were convinced by the power of miraculous signs and wonders and by the power of God’s Spirit. In this way, I have fully presented the good news of Christ from Jerusalem all the way to Illyricum. My ambition has always been to preach the Good News where the name of Jesus Christ has never been heard rather than where a church has already been started by someone else. I’ve been following the plan spoken of in the Scriptures where it says, ‘Those who have never been told about Him will see. And those who have never heard of Him will understand.'”

Thank you, Lord, for Your word. 

The Power Of The Holy Spirit

Hope, joy, peace, trust, holiness, service, and preaching the gospel are all in that passage of Scripture, linked together by one thing: the work of the Holy Spirit. Paul mentions the Holy Spirit three times in this passage of Scripture. Two of those times in these nine verses, Paul references the power of the Holy Spirit in verses 13 and 19. That’s what I want to focus on today.

Anybody that knows me knows that I love talking about the Holy Spirit. I love talking about the power of the Holy Spirit and the power and the glory that we are supposed to operate in as Christians. We can spend months talking about the Holy Spirit. But I want to keep it very simple and practical for today. I’ll start in the book of Acts because that’s where it all started. 

The church began with the Holy Spirit filling a room of Jewish men and women who had just witnessed the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus promised that He would send the Holy Spirit just before He ascended to Heaven. He told them a little bit earlier than that, “It is a good thing that I’m going to go because when I go, I’m going to send the Holy Spirit to you.”

In Acts chapter one, He says, “When I send the Holy Spirit, you will receive power.” It changed the world forever. From God-fearing people to spirit-filled people, it changed the world forever. When you are filled with the Holy Spirit, it changes your world. It changes the world around you. You have to realize that you have it and it’s inside you. 

The church is made up of individual believers. You can’t have the latter without the former. You are the church. You are the body of Christ. No believers, no church. It was and is vital for the Spirit of God to be active and work with individuals and corporately in the church. You can’t have one without the other. 

Paul describes it in Romans 15 as the power of the Holy Spirit. When the power of the Holy Spirit is in operation, that’s when you have the church operating at its finest. The word “power” in Greek there is dunamis. It means inherent power. The word “inherent” means permanently existing or power residing in a thing by virtue of its nature. That means the very nature of God is power. That power resides in you. It’s inherent in you when you become a Christian. 

Power to be filled with joy, peace, and hope in believing, as it says in verse 13. In believing, that’s for the individual. In verse 19, the power to conquer the world with the gospel message of Jesus Christ, that’s both individual and corporate. That’s the power of the Holy Spirit. 

Charles Spurgeon is one of my favorite people to study. He was a great preacher from the 1800s. He started preaching when he was 13 years old and pastored a church by the time he was 16 years old in England. He was unapologetically teaching the Word of God from a basis of truth and the basis of the power of the Holy Spirit, constantly coming against apostasy in his day. I think Charles Spurgeon would have a heyday today in this world. 

He said this. “The power of the church for external work will be proportionate to the power within.” I’m going to repeat that. “The power of the church for external work will be proportionate to the power within.” That means Vintage City Church is nothing unless the people that go here are operating in the power of the Holy Spirit. The church worldwide is nothing unless the believers worldwide are operating in the Holy Spirit. 

I want to give you an illustration of two cottages in wintertime in the mountains. One doesn’t have any snow on it. The other is snow-covered. The difference is that one has a fire burning inside of it, and the other had a fire once burning, but it now lays idle. One is snow-covered and the other isn’t. 

There is an active process to keep that fire burning. We’re going to talk a little bit more about that in a bit. The church and the individuals will conform to its natural environment if it doesn’t have the supernatural component of the Holy Spirit. The warmth and the joy and the peace of hope come from the power of the Holy Spirit. That’s in the first part of Romans 15:13. 

The power of the Holy Spirit changes the environment wherever you are. If you’re carrying the power of the Holy Spirit with you, you are changing the environment around you. If you have the power of the Holy Spirit operating in your family, in a proper, good, and positive way, it’s going to change the environment of your family. If you’re operating in the power and the glory of the Holy Spirit in your workplace, it’s going to change the environment. It has no choice because the power of the Holy Spirit is the greatest power that this universe has ever seen. 

It lives in you, it resides in you, and you’re carrying it with you. When you carry it with you, it’s going to change the environment. Paul said in Romans chapter 12, “Do not be conformed by the world.” That’s why the Holy Spirit is so important. If we conform ourselves to the power of the Holy Spirit, it transforms us. We’re not conformed by the world. 

The Flow Of The Christian Life

There’s this circular flow to the Christian life. The Holy Spirit descends from Heaven onto the believer when we say, “I want to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.” When that happens, the deposit is made into your life of the Holy Spirit, the very presence of God. That’s a descending thing from Heaven down to earth. 

Then the circular flow begins when the believer ascends back to heaven. It’s a spiritual dynamic that’s taking place. Paul demonstrates this in Ephesians chapters one and two, where Paul says in Ephesians 1:13, “When you believed in Christ, He identified you as His own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom He promised long ago.” 

In Ephesians chapter one, Paul’s building up the church. He wants to teach them more about Jesus and who He is and the dynamics around Him. In chapter two, he brings it back to the believer. He says, now here’s how this applies to you. In verse six of chapter two, he says, “For He raised us up from the dead along with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Jesus Christ.” 

I want you to get that. When you became a Christian, the Holy Spirit came upon you. Heaven descended on earth. But that dynamic doesn’t end there. All of a sudden, in the spirit realm, we are raised back into the heavenly realms, and we are seated at the right hand of God with Jesus Christ, the ultimate place of power and authority. That’s who you are. That’s where you are. That’s your position. 

Have you ever wondered about your position in the body of Christ? It’s seated at the right hand with Jesus Christ in the throne room. That’s who you are. That’s what the Spirit does to you. It elevates you. You’ve been raised to a place of authority. 

The problem is that a lot happens in our lives after we are filled. When you become a Christian, it doesn’t mean things are going to get easy. How many can say that things maybe have gotten a little bit more difficult? That is because the devil looks at it and goes, dang, I had them inactive, and now they’re active. So I’m going to try to do everything I can to disable that. That’s why we get attacked. 

We can point to our own lives or the lives of others we know who once burned strong but are now mere snow-covered cottages. For whatever reason, we lose our joy, our peace, our hope, and we eventually lose our love. A once-burning fire is gone. 

A fire needs fuel to keep going. It needs fanning for that new fuel to catch with the embers. Some of you probably came into this room today and you are thinking, I was once burning hot and I’m not burning so hot right now. Some of you might even be questioning your salvation. I don’t even know if I’m even saved anymore. Because I don’t feel that zeal, I don’t have that activity, and I don’t feel like I’m valued or have anything to offer. That’s a lie. That’s a lie. You have something to offer. 

God always uses the least of the least of the least throughout the Bible. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’re going through. There are still embers down there, waiting for some fuel to be added on. When that fuel is added to those embers, the fires will go on again. If that’s you, get ready. You need to add fuel to the fire. Once that happens, you’re going to get that fire back again. 

Paul And Timothy

Timothy was going through that with his church in Ephesus. Timothy was mentored by Paul throughout his ministry. Paul took him under his wings. He said, Timothy, I need you to go to Ephesus because things are blowing up there. I want you to head up the church there. Some say that the number of people involved in the Ephesian church numbered 100,000. Timothy was overseeing all of that. 

The book of First Timothy is Timothy reaching out to Paul saying, I need some help in doing this. Paul writes to Timothy about church management, church structure, and church organization. Timothy, do this, do this, do this. 

Second Timothy is a whole different dynamic. Timothy is not reaching out to Paul for help growing a church. He’s talking with Paul. He’s asking, what do I do because Nero’s decreasing my church with persecution. Nero was going crazy. Second Timothy was Paul’s last letter. He’s writing it from prison. Nero had him arrested. Paul is about to be beheaded. He’s about to lose his life and he knows it. He writes this incredible letter to Timothy, encouraging him. Second Timothy 1:6 says, “This is why I remind you to fan into flames the spiritual gift that God gave you when I laid my hands on you. For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity but of power, love, and self-discipline.” 

Paul’s telling Timothy, you know what, get back to some of those original things. You need to add fuel to your fire. That’s going to take some discipline on your part. You can’t let fear and timidity rule you. You can’t let it drive you away from the work that God has called you to do. Timothy, be self-disciplined, add fuel to that fire, and then let the work of God fan that flame and let that fire rise up again. That’s what Paul’s telling Timothy here.

He’s going through an earthly fire, but Paul shifts the emphasis to a spiritual fire. There is always a spiritual solution to any earthly problem. If you’ve got something you’re going through — a trial, a circumstance, a sin that you’re entangled in again that you need deliverance from — finances, healing, or anything else — anything that’s going on down here can be taken care of in the spirit realm. Paul had a keen awareness of the spirit realm. He communicated it so well through many of his letters, especially in Ephesians. In Second Corinthians chapter 12, we learned that he was caught up in the third heaven. He got a peek into the spirit realm. That’s why I believe he is so good at communicating what’s going on spiritually to help us deal with things that are happening physically. 

That’s why in Ephesians chapter six, he says, that we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood, but against these powers and principalities and forces of darkness. He had a peek into that. He communicates that to us. Make sure you realize anytime you’re going through something physically down here, take it to the spirit realm. Take it to the Lord. It was crucial to Timothy individually and to the church that he was pastoring. I call it heavenomics. Heavenomics is the trickle-down of the Holy Spirit. 

They needed their leader in Ephesus. They needed Timothy to be full of the power of the Holy Spirit. He needed a church full of the same. That’s when the church is at its best. When the pastors and the leaders and everybody are filled with the Holy Spirit, and everybody is operating in the power of the Spirit bursting at the seams, that’s when the body of Christ begins to do some good damage. Damage against the things that the devil has done. Remember what Spurgeon said, “The power of the church for external work will be proportionate to the power within.” 

Applying The Holy Spirit At Vintage

How can we apply this as a church here at Vintage? When you come through the doors on a Sunday morning with Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you are bringing the Holy Spirit in with you. The very presence of God comes into this place. If this place lies empty, this church is nothing. This church cannot pick itself up and go out into the community and go out into the world without people in it. You are the very carriers of the Holy Spirit, the very presence of God. You bring that into this place every morning when you come to church here. 

In First Corinthians 6:19, Paul says, “Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who lives in you and was given to you by God?” If you take away nothing else from this message, I hope you’re taking away the fact that if you know Jesus, you’ve got the Holy Spirit inside you. 

Part of being a Christian is trying to figure this thing out. It’s a mystery. I’ve got this thing living inside me, but sometimes I just don’t know what I’m doing with it or how to operate it. Some people cover it up like a collectible car and put it in a garage, taking it out for a ride every once in a while. I don’t think that’s what God intended. 

God loves this church, but He did not create this building. He created you and me. Together, that creation built this place. That’s the dynamic look of this body of Christ here at Vintage. You are the apple of His eye. You are unique. You are one of a kind. It was His pleasure, His plan, and His purpose for His very spirit to reside in you. Dwell on that for a second. The same spirit that created the heavens and the earth, the same spirit that had the power to raise Jesus Christ from the dead, the greatest source of power this world will ever know, lives in you.

You may not be able to fully comprehend that, but you need to embrace it and believe it. The more you embrace it and believe it, the more it will come alive in your life and the more the Holy Spirit will begin to speak to you, educate you, convict you, and teach you about what is going on in here. 

You are the only thing in history that was created in God’s image. That fully qualifies you to carry His spirit. It’s carried by individuals. Last Sunday, Pastor Gary, Pastor Daniel, and I were talking after David’s message. We were pondering this thought, what if all of us were to come into this place so powerfully and overflowing with the Holy Spirit, that the worship team was feeding off of us, instead of the opposite? 

Hundreds of individual power sources, supercharged and ready to go. That happens when a bunch of individuals all link together with the same mindset and the same lifestyle, living in the power of the Holy Spirit 24/7 rather than coming in on Sunday to be filled up once a week. That’s when the Worship Team goes, “What in the world is going on out here?” It’s circular when you come into this room and you’re there to minister to the person next to you and they’re there to minister to you. 

But we’re humans and life happens. I would love for nothing else than to come here on Sunday mornings full of life, hearing from God regularly, ready to give. I’ll be the first to admit, that doesn’t happen all the time. June was one of the worst months my wife and I have gone through in a long time. I don’t need to get into details. It was just a bad month. Church was not the first place I wanted to be. 

I’m sure a lot of us can relate to that. Why do I want to go to church feeling like this? I don’t want to take this into there. So we stay away. The furthest thing from our minds, when those things happen, is maybe I should check in with the Holy Spirit. 

Sometimes we just get going so fast in the wrong direction and we bypass the easy fix. Just check in with the Holy Spirit. He’s living inside of you. It’s not that far from here to here. Sometimes it feels far though. 

How The Holy Spirit Works In Our Lives

Two main things remain true. God will always love you. He will never leave you. As long as you claim him as your Lord and Savior, He’s right here. He will never leave you or forsake you. The Holy Spirit helps make you feel as sure about the promise as you feel about your trial. 

That’s the power that comes from the hope that’s in the promise and that’s what David Mitchell talked about last week. Understand this, there is holiness and obedience and reverence of the Holy Spirit that needs to be acknowledged and embraced. That is a good starting place. Holiness, obedience, and reverence of the thing that’s living inside of you. It starts by going low and having that servant mentality. It continues by letting the Holy Spirit speak to us. It might be just one word, and it creates faith. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of Christ. That’s Romans chapter 10. You guys are going to go back and read Romans all week long now because it’s powerful. It changes you. 

The Holy Spirit helps create faith, but it also corrects us and it convicts us. Jesus is the one that sent us the Holy Spirit. In John chapter 16, just before He goes into the garden of Gethsemane, before He’s ready to be handed over, He has some time with His disciples. He goes over a lot of things. One of the things He talked about was the Holy Spirit He was about to send them. In chapter 16, starting in verse seven, He says, “When the Holy Spirit comes, he will convict the world of its sin and of God’s righteousness and of the coming judgment. The world’s sin is that it refuses to believe in Me. Righteousness is available because I go to the Father, and you will see Me no more. Judgment will come because the ruler of this world has already been judged. There’s so much more I want to tell you, but I can’t bear it now. But when the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth.” 

These are the very first things Jesus says about the Holy Spirit. He will convict the world of sin. There is a sense of correction and conviction by the Holy Spirit that will take place. He will convict the world concerning God’s righteousness and God’s judgment. The Holy Spirit will guide us from where we are, back to the true north, back into the truth. 

It doesn’t talk about the gifts of the Holy Spirit and it doesn’t talk about the fruit of the Holy Spirit. He talks about the conviction work of the Holy Spirit. When Pastor Gary was talking about that earlier, I noticed many of you left your seats and hit your knees. That’s the work of the Holy Spirit. That’s the Holy Spirit saying I want to drive you to a place where you can revere my holiness. That separates believers and churches today. That reverence of the Holy Spirit and that embracing of the truth. 

We’re seeing it more and more in these last days where churches and Christians are saying, I don’t want to go that route anymore. I want to fashion a gospel in my own image. I want to find churches that have the same.

That can happen to anybody. It can happen to anybody in this room simply because we’re human. If we let our guard down for a second, the devil is going to sneak in with false gospels and false truth, changing the way we think and removing the truth of the Holy Spirit. If you keep going in that direction, it’s just like getting one degree off when you’re sailing on a big ship. When you’re one degree off, if you go far enough, you’re going to be way off track. 

That’s what’s happening to a lot in the body of Christ today. Sin is being embraced instead of conviction, false teaching instead of truth. Paul tells Timothy this in Second Timothy 3:5, holding a form of godliness although they’ve denied its power. When we deny the very power of the Spirit of God, we open ourselves up to a power of a different spirit. Nothing good comes from that. 

Paul told Timothy a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear. They will reject the truth and chase after myths. 

I know many people in my life that have gone in that direction even though they once had a fire burning. Those lies douse that fire. Some of you may know people like that as well. I must maintain that it can happen to me. These are dark and deceptive days. If Timothy needed warnings and encouragement, so do I. 

After all, “greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world.” If we’re going to teach about the Holy Spirit, I think we need to let the Holy Spirit work and move. There are needs in this room, and as I’ve been talking to you this morning, maybe the Holy Spirit’s been speaking something to you, piercing your heart. Maybe now is the time that you need to act on this. 

The devil is going to say to you, you know what, you’re cool, everything’s good. Stay in your seat, you don’t need to act on it. You acting on the Holy Spirit’s conviction will be adding fuel to the fire. 

When we come to the place where the Holy Spirit can continually convict us, then we will disarm the pride that can eventually destroy us. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and it requires holiness. God entrusted you with this very Spirit. You need to cherish it, guard it, honor it, revere it, own it, and use it. 

I want the power of God flowing in me so powerful that when I come in here, I’m ready to explode. Don’t tell me God can’t do it because I’ve seen it happen before. Some of you in this room have experienced such a movement in the past. It was so powerful. We had the wife of a guest speaker for a church camp get up and share a dream in the Saturday night service with 1200 people in that service. Some of you might recall this. Instantly, all of the men got up out of their seats, came up to the front, fell flat on their faces, and started crying before the Lord. 

The Holy Spirit moved powerfully through a word by a wife of a guest speaker. She didn’t know anything about our church. She gives that word, the Holy Spirit pierces the hearts of the men, they come forward, and they say I’ve got to get things right. 

The next Saturday night, before the first strum of the guitar, all of those men were up front, arms raised, and they were ready before the worship team was ready to start. Like I was telling you before, they were going to pull the worship team down to where they were. The worship team was going to feed off of them. Don’t tell me it can’t happen. I’ve seen it happen. 

There are testimonies in this room of God moving by His Spirit in powerful ways. There are needs in this room that need to be taken care of today. 

Let me close with this. Let the Holy Spirit speak to you. What is He trying to say right now? We’re all works in progress. We’re all working out our salvation. You came in here with some things and I don’t want you to leave here without the opportunity to take care of that. 

Holy Spirit, we ask you to come and speak to the people. You are living inside of these Christians that are in this room. If there are still people in this room that haven’t accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, I know that the Holy Spirit is speaking to them right now. Salvation will come to them as they act on that. Father, let your Spirit move powerfully in this place, let your voice be heard, and let us act in obedience in Jesus’ name.