Who is the firstfruits of Achaia unto Christ?
So we're supposed to salute, that we're supposed to salute this guy.
Remember we're talking about a church, Paul's writing a letter to the church
in Rome. Why is he saying all this stuff?
Because he wants when these people come to visit, that they would
see that these are people worthy of being in the same church with them
and also saluting them and saying hey, we got a visitor
from another church tonight. Did you salute him? I salute you, brother Colin
thanks for coming tonight. But we should be
saluting people that are coming and visiting our church.
We shouldn't just let them sit there and nobody ever says hi to them.
That's not a loving church, we need to do that. I'm not saying nobody did, I'm just saying
that we should do that. So salute means a gesture
of respect, homage or polite
recognition of acknowledgement. Especially one made
to or by a person when arriving or departing.
So when you salute someone, it's someone that's leaving
or someone that's arriving. So why is he telling this
church at Rome to salute people? Because they're coming to visit that church.
He's like these people are okay. These people are good people.
It's kind of like people used letters to communicate
back then but now we use all kinds of different things to communicate, don't we?
So you could just do a Facebook post and say hey, so and so is coming to their church
or whatever. That could be, like we communicate in a way
different way today. Most people don't write handwritten letters anymore.
But back then that was the way people did things and Paul's just saying hey
these are good people, hey when they come help them and these are
people that have helped me. So it's kind of like a way of just saying hey
these people are okay. When they come to your church there are not some wolves
in sheep's clothing that are, you know Paul's just like putting a stamp on them and saying hey
these are good people. Now just because the pastors say hey this is a good person
do they always end up staying a good person? Not necessarily.
No, but like as far as Paul knew at that time all those people were good people.
And I think that they were all good people. So I don't think there's anything wrong
with being in the know about who's coming to your church.
I think that was a perfect example of brother Colin being here. He texted me earlier
and said he was going to be at your church tonight and I was like oh that kind of fits with my sermon a little bit.
So you know and Colin
you know people know Colin and he's a good guy so
he's, I've known him for a long time so
that's someone that we should salute when we see him hey. But you know sometimes there's people that come in
and they got pink hair and you know they get exited right
out the door. But there's sometimes we're leery of people.
But if it's someone that you know it takes the
pressure off a little bit. Especially in churches like ours there's always
weirdos trying to creep in and do weird stuff right.
It's been a while since we've had to throw anybody out of here but you know
I'm pretty big so you know maybe they just realized that there'd be a mistake
I don't know or Sean or you know we're all
packing guns here and things like that so it makes people a little more leery
about trying to infiltrate. But I believe this chapter
is here to help us to understand that it's right to commend believers
moving to other churches or for whatever reasons. Because people
move to churches it shouldn't be like why are they moving to that church?
You know. But so I don't think it's wrong for like a person in leadership
to say hey pastor so and so I just want to let you know one of our church members
is moving to your church and we do that all the time. And so we do
it by phone or by text message or by email or
you know Facebook messenger or whatever it is but we communicate
those things. Why do we communicate those things so we know that person is a good person
and they didn't like just try to destroy the church right before they left.
So we pick on the old IFB for saying you know like if one of us
like one of the new IFB people get kicked out of their church then they call the other
pastors and say these guys are bad guys or whatever. I don't think
that's right. You know let someone live something down but I'm saying if someone is like a total
wolf you know I think a pastor should say something.
Because in this chapter it talks about marking people
but we should also mark people in a good way. So there's nothing wrong with marking
someone in a good way and saying hey this person is coming to visit your church just wanted to let you know
you know they've been a great help to me maybe you can use them in some way.
That's what I think that this chapter is written for so that we can understand that this
is biblical to do that. Everything should be such a secret all the time
and everything should be out in the open.
You know Jesus said what I say to you in the ear preach from the house tops.
So there's nothing wrong with like saying hey you know so and so is coming to your church
they're a good dude or whatever they're a good lady.
And I think that it's also biblical for us to mark and warn
other people about people that would come that would be wicked.
And so you can't have one without the other.
That's what this chapter is teaching. Hey commend those people that are good
salute those people that are good, greet those people that are good
mark those people that are bad.