In this way I have aspired to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation.yes, making it my aim to preach the Good News, not where Christ was already named, that I might not build on another’s foundation.Yea, so have I strived to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man’s foundation:yea, making it my aim so to preach the gospel, not where Christ was already named, that I might not build upon another man’s foundation;
3 sermons cite this verse
… That's it, everybody. I am targeting this to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build on another man's foundation, but as it is written, to whom he has not announced, they shall see, and those who have not heard shall understand. He is quoting, I love this, he's quoting from Isaiah, the Apostle Paul, New Testament, quoting from the book of Isaiah to be his ministry, motive, and point of action. Paul, what are you doing? I am going to go preach where Jesus has not been heard. Where do you get off doing that? The book of Isaiah. That's how we're supposed to live. It's thrilling. It's exciting. Remember, I've told you before, if your Christianity is boring, you're doing it wrong. And so we get a great, great insight by the apostle. By the way, for your note takers, it's Isaiah 52 verse 15 is what he was quoting. But we go on in verse 22 and he says, for this reason I also have been much hindered. …
So last week, I used some maps that talked about how Paul and Barnabas left Antioch to spread the gospel where it hadn't gone. So let's pick back up where we left off last week with these maps. So Antioch's over here on the far right, eastern part of this map. The pinkish-reddish arrows represent Paul and Barnabas going out from Antioch, going and taking the gospel to places where it not yet gone. In all these cities, they're sharing the gospel. People are coming to faith in Christ. They're gathering together in churches. The blue arrows represent them coming back to Antioch. So that was Paul's first journey into places where the gospel had not yet gone, sent out by the church at Antioch. That set the stage for the second journey he took. Antioch, again, over here on the right, he goes north, this time with Silas. They pick up Timothy along the way. They're going into places where he's already gone, and that's when God says, I want you to go to new places where the gospel is not yet gone. So they go up north to Philippi, Thessalonica, down to Corinth. We were reading 2 Corinthians last week, Athens, Ephesus, all these places where people are coming to faith in Jesus for the first time. Churches are starting for the first time. They go down to Jerusalem, and then they go back to Antioch. Again, that was kind of home base for Paul. That then sets the stage for his third journey. This time he leaves Antioch, and you'll notice he goes to all the …
Let us pray. Again, our Father, as we continue our study of this grand book of the New Testament, we pray that we may hear these words and do them. We pray that we may understand the teaching of the Apostle and love what we understand to be true. For we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. You can tell in this portion of the Epistle of Romans by the very tone of it that the Apostle is beginning to wind this letter down. You can anticipate how he is gradually now drawing it to a close, the weighty theological matters that he expounded through the first eleven chapters, then transition to practical application in chapters 12, 13, and 14. And now Paul begins to speak in these final pages of his personal relationship to those who are receiving the epistle. And because the epistle is winding down and we're moving into that area where Paul speaks personally of individuals, we tend to skip over these things lightly as if they had no great weight of divine revelation. I'm looking down from this pulpit into the face of Paul McCann, who gave me a tape a year or so ago of a classic sermon that was preached in the pulpit of First Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh by the late great Clarence McCartney entitled, Come Before Winter, where this magnificent sermon was preached on a simple phrase that Paul used in his final request to Timothy in the second and last epistle that he wrote to his beloved disciple. …