Bible Guys Classics: Romans 15 Part 2

So today, jeff we're talking all about ambition. Ambition, Yes, like taking over the world kind of ambition that you have ambition. I am an ambitious person. Yes, oh, I'm looking forward to this one. Then all right, Well he's Chris and I'm jeff and we're the Bible guys. So Jeffrey, yes, sir. Does anybody call you Jeffrey my mom when I'm in trouble? That's true. That's true. Yesterday at the doctor's office. You know, they're like Jeffrey and I'm sitting in the in the room going I didn't even think about. It, and you want your eight year old Steff to go, yes, I'm here. So today we have dad joke competition. Oh oh, I'm wondering if you have dad jokes on your Okay, I probably do. Yeah. Yeah, So while you look those up, here's what I'm gonna do, sir, is I'm going to just read out my dad jokes to you. Okay, and so I'll give you a second. Oh you have it? Good? There we go, yes, okay, so you're going to read one. Well, let's trade off. Yeah, yeah, you okay, So I'm not gonna look ahead. Then right, here's here's my I think they're different. Are they different? What's your first two words of your first joke? What's the Oh yeah, yeah, okay, so it's it's it is the same. Okay, all right, I'll read you one. You read me too that okay. What's the difference between Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Yes, well, they're two different cities. The people in Dubai don't like the flintstones and people in Abu Dhabi do. Oh no, oh no, that is terrible. I wish I knew that. Well. I've been both in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, So I wish I knew that joke because I would have told that joke. I told that joke. Okay, I have one. How did the carpenter find her husband? I don't know. She used a stud finder. Oh that's funny, but I. Like that one. Yeah, well have you ever done? That's how my wife found me? Really? Hey, I always I always make that joke every time I use a stuff under Okay, I always got put my chest yah yeah, okay. Number three, I know, I know it's so dumb. Okay. A truck loaded with Vick's vapor rub overturned on a highway. Amazingly, there was no congestion for eight hours. That's a good one. That's actually really good. Okay, that's really good. I like it. Okay, A priest, a pastor, and a rabbit entered a clinic. A rabbi or a rabbit. Rabbit because that doesn't fit. A pastor and a rabbit entered a clinic to donate blood. The nurse asked the rabbit, what's your blood type? I'm probably a typo, said the rabbit. I don't get it, A typo rabbit instead of rabbi. Oh a typo. Wow, I even it out. You caught it. I thought the joke. Do you know that that joke probably reads way better when you read it. It's sophisticated. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know you have to read it, probably because. Typo is is a visual typo, right, yes, So I wasn't hearing it, And you know, I was actually thinking when you said the typo, I thought to myself, like, is there a rabbit called a typo? Yeah, like there's a there's like a certain kind, like there's jack rabbits, there's typo rabbits. So you think priests the pastor and a rabbi, which is what I caught. That's what you caught. You caught the typo at the beginning, and then the rabbit admitted he was a typo. By the way, what what blood type are you? I don't know what red I'm read? You know what? You know what Marion Poppins, the original one. You know that in the song it says underneath my blood is blue, and then he's like common knowledge and the back. Then they used to think blood was blue. Okay until it hit oxygen. Yes, did you know that? Yes? That's crazy, isn't it right? Okay, well enough talk about blood. It's amazing. I just can't believe you don't. Sitting there having breakfast, mine's oh positive, oh positive? But is that good? I can't believe you know I'm able to donate blood. It's able to. They're able to use it more than just just so positive? Oh negatives? Is universal blood? Oh negative? Is universal? Ab negative? I think right? I don't know. Is the one that can receive all blood? I should know what kind of blood I have? Yeah, I can't believe you don't know. I don't know. Yeah, don't you donate blood for a long time. They wouldn't let me because of all the places I've been in the kind of vaccines I've had. I had life culture, yellow fever vaccine, and a bunch of other things, and they told me they didn't want me to donate blood for a while. That's funny. Yeah, So I don't know I should though. Yeah. So Romans fifteen, we're in verse number fourteen. We're going to the end of the chapter and Paul is going to be unpacking the reason for his writing. He's going to be talking a little bit about his travel plans. Yeah, and under the blanket of ambition. His ambition. Yes, Okay, So he says, I am fully convinced, my dear brothers and sisters that you are full of goodness. You know these things so well you can teach each other all about them. Even so, I've 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, 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 that 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 fully presented the good News of Christ from Jerusalem all the way to Ollycrium. My ambition has always Oh, there it is, right there, there it is. My ambition has always been to preach the good news where the name of 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've never been told about Him will see, and those who've never heard of Him will understand. In fact, in my visit to you has been delayed so long because I've been preaching in these places. But now I've finished my work in these regions, and after all these long years of waiting, I'm eager to visit you. I'm planning to go to Spain, and then when I do, I'll stop off in roam, and after I've enjoyed your fellowship for a little while, you can provide for my journey. But before I come, I must go to Jerusalem to take a gift to the believers there. For you see, the believers in Macedonia and Akeea have eagerly taken up an offering for the poor among the believers in Jerusalem. They were glad to do this because they feel they owe a great debt to them. Since the Gentiles received the spiritual blessings God of the Good News from the believers in Jerusalem. They feel they at least they can do in return is to help them financially. As soon as I have delivered this money and completed this good deed of theirs, I'll come to see you on my way to Spain. And I'm sure that when I come, Christ will richly bless our time together. Dear brothers and sisters. I urge you, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to join in my struggle by praying to God for me. Do this because of your love for me given to you by the Holy Spirit. Pray that I'll be rescued from those in Judea who refuse to obey God. Pray also that the believers there will be willing to accept a nation I'm taking to Jerusalem. Then, by the will of God, I'll be able to come to you with a joyful heart, and we will be an encouragement to each other. And now may God, who gives us his peace, be with you. All Amen. Amen, there you go. Well, he's planning on covering some ground. Yeah, it's interesting how Paul made his plans, but there's no evidence he ever made it to Spain. Right, isn't that great? So he has vision beyond what he actually accomplishes. Yeah, And I have the Life Application Study Bible here. Yeah, And the notes actually mentioned something about this. It says Paul's future plan was to go to Spain because Spain was at the very end of the Western civil civilized world. He wanted to take Christianity there. Also, Spain had many great minds and influential leaders in the Roman world. And then it lists several first century leaders. Then it says, and perhaps Paul thought Christianity would advance greatly in such an atmosphere. And you know, it mentions that lyricum lyric, Yeah, right, lyric And it has a note on that too, and it says that it's actually located somewhere between present day Italy and Greece. So it's actually it's actually just above Athens and just just just uh wet or east of it. The modern day country of Yugoslavia. Are cool, mister map guy. So well, it says it in a note right here at the bottom. Oh does it? By the way, fall o our listeners, Jeff is actually extremely good at maps. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, so you look at me in my head, Yeah, you could maps, and you can immediately You're one of those guys like in the middle of the jungle, you can look at a map one time, I. Can find my way out. Yeah. Always. Yeah. So my family does a little orienteering, you know, this map and a compass and we do those kinds of things. We've kind of have like a family game that we play. It's kind of neat co yeah, I call letterboxing, and it requires you to be able to navigate some of the stuff. But I've always had in my head. I always had a map on my wall when I was a kid, a world map. I loved the countries. I loved the capital cities. I don't know why, but all that stuff is always there, and then if I look at a map, I can usually find where I'm trying to go without having to look at it again. You know, I always think of like either military movies. Or bank heist or robbery movies. Oh yeah, there's so many different movies where they say, Okay, you guys are gonna be positioned here right, and they put like and they put them down. I'm thinking, how do they even know where that is? You know, because on the map it looks like a red line. So all of a sudden in the movie, it translates it like they're behind this brick wall, and I'm like, that's where that was. Well, now none of us can navigate unless we can see it on the screen on our TV. And some lady tells us turn here right by the way. Did you know my wife Bonnie? So on ways, apparently you can change the voices, and so my wife recorded all those voices and put her voice on my Way's app on my phone, but I didn't know it. So I'm getting ready to go somewhere and then I'm driving down road and all of a sudden, she goes in a quarter mile turn left, but I missed the turn and then she goes turn around, right, and it's my wife telling me where to go now, so I can't never get away, even when I'm in a carmel West telling me where to go. It's so funny, I laugh every time. Isn't that great? But we've gotten to the point where we can't travel without having somebody on a screen tell us where to go. Right. Yeah. In those days when he was traveling, they were traveling more, you know, with the stars and an understanding of topography and all those kinds of things. So yeah, I find it interesting. That he, you know, Spain was the perception that was the end of the h world, you know, the edges of the earth. And it reminds me of that whole you know, take the Gospel to the to the uttermost parts, yeah, to the to the end of the ages, and it seems like, you know, our job now, of course, is we have we have tracked the whole world. Yeah, so we know you know where it is. But for them, they were like man that to take the Gospel. Well, they thought, if you, if you, if you went past what we now call the Rock of Gibraltar, which I think they called it the gates of Hercules. If you go past the Rock of Gibraltar and you enter out into the main portion of of the Atlantic Ocean, there's a good chance you're just going to fall off the edge of the world, or that there was going to be you know, dragons or something eat your ship. So they were terrified of it. Yeah, yeah, I was in my wife and I. Spain and Morocco almost touched the Rock of gibraltars right in between, but they almost touch each other. You can get across like and just a little raft back and forth. So in Morocco it's the furthest west settlement in North Africa for the Roman Empire. My wife and I went to all those ruins and things, and they have a little story about that that people thought that if you went any further you'd probably, you know, you're going to die. That's where all the monsters live is out there. So yeah, it's pretty easy. So that's why he's thinking about going to Spain, is he has this ambition, he has this desire to go beyond, to preach where nobody's heard the gospel yet, to do what nobody else has done yet. And I think that's a pretty cool ambition. But Before he gets into that, he's talking about how just basically these couple of verses before he talks about his ambitions, so like maybe fourteen through nineteen, he's kind of saying, Hey, you didn't need me to write this. You guys already know these things. I'm just reminding you and you know, to payback off of what we talked about yesterday. Sometimes we don't need brand new information. We need more importantly, we need a reminder of the most important information. And so he's saying, you guys didn't need me to write this, but I wrote it as a reminder to you, and I can't wait to come and visit you guys after the rest of this work is done. Right, Yeah, that's great. Yeah yeah. So then he talks about his travel plans. He and he basically lays out everything. And by the way, we understand that he's writing this probably from from the city of Corinth. So later on and uh, he talks about like the city that he's in and most likely people believe that he was writing to Rome from there. Uh, But but he doesn't actually get to Rome like he planned. He eventually gets there, and when he when he's there, he gets in a little bit of trouble, and then he visits Rome a second time, and then of course that's his demise. Right, That's that's when they they he's in prison, and then they had him Nero. So it's funny how all the way through this last journey, of these last several weeks of this podcast, we've been in the Book of Romans and he's talking. About his delight and desire to go there. Yeah, yeah, never knowing that there's really going to be the city of his demise. Yes, I think. I think there's a couple of times where he does in his writing's hint that he's aware that there's a good chance he's going to die in Rome, but he's still desired to be there. He still wanted to go. That was before he went back the second Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. But this time it's all bright, bright eye. It's gonna be great. We're gonna hang out, it's gonna be great. Yeah. So, just for our listeners, it was believed that Paul was beheaded somewhere around sixty eight a d. And it's he's believed that it's believed that his bodies or bodies buried between the beneath the catacombs beneath the streets, the catacombs around. Have you have you visited the prison that he was in. I think I've asked you that before. I can't remember. No, no, no, no. I I saw the prison that could have been the prison for John the Baptist when he sent word for Jesus. Yeah. In in Rome, there's a prison that they say that's the cell. That's the prison he was in for the executed. It was pretty pretty dank. It's pretty rough and. Well, I'll tell you, I've only been to Rome, like on a layover for about fourteen hours, and we just drove around and saw things. We didn't even explore them. I was on the outside of the Vatican. I was on the outside of the Colisseum, you know, the Trevy Fountain whatever that is. And we got some good gelato. Okay, I'm sure that's why he is excited to go the gelato. The gelato in spring in Rome is incredible, and that's what he was in. I get meat boves. So so this phrase anyways, we should, we should. What I wanted to highlight was, he says, my ambition has always been to preach the good news where the name of Christ has never been heard. And sometimes people imply that ambition is bad, right, And I think that there's self centered ambition, and then there's godly ambition, right, or a holy ambition. And in this situation, you know, if my ambition is just about me climbing the ladder, me being impressive, me having power, me having wealth, me accomplishing my agenda, well, then certainly that that is wrong. But ambition just I think ambition itself is fairly neutral and it's positive when we decide, hey, my ambition is to align with God's mission, and then that's what he's saying here. So I think it's reasonable for us to ask ourselves, do you really want more than anything else for God's work to be done? And if so, then pray for a holy ambition. Yeah, and that that's really what he's saying. So my ambition is to preach Christ where he's never been heard, and that that's a noble thing. You know, there's still places around the world a few hundred people groups have never heard even heard the name of Jesus. Before. You know, what you're really saying, the way I heard it was, it's really the focus of your ambition, that's correct. So it's it's. It's is it sitting around your you know, selfish needs or wants or desires. Which is the you know, the bad form of ambition or is it selfless? Is it for others or for God? And so, yeah, the ambition is a good thing. In fact, some of the best friends and the people that I spend the most time with are some of the most ambitious people I know. Yeah, and so it's really great. And I think that I think that some ambition for yourself is okay, But the best ambition is you know, to strive forward for others and have selfless ambition. Selfless ambition has moved forward some of the greatest movements in our lifetime, right right, Some of the best you know, organizations that we now look to and have changed the world have been have been you know, progressed by selfless ambition. That's right. I just think we have to be aware of the fact that every good thing has can have a dark side, right sure, And so sometimes our society embraces the dark as the norm, right, self centered ambition. But you know, God has made many of us ambitious people. It's just how He's wired us. And he goes Okay, now I want to make God the focus, God's mission the focus of my ambition, and I want to go where nobody's ever gone before. Well, hey, a lot of people say, oh, Paul, maybe maybe he has critics, or say Paul is just a prideful person. He just wants to go further than everybody else, or whatever. And there's always people who are willing to be critics about your ambition, what you believe God wants you to do. That's willing to tear down what it is that you're dreaming about doing. And I would just say, you know what, you don't have to gauge. You don't have to argue with those people. You don't have to be angry at those people. You can use their negativity as fuel for you to just keep going and doing the thing that you believe God's asking you to do or telling you to do. And it's okay that you have ambition to go accomplish something great, to make a difference in the world, to fulfill God's mission in your life. And it doesn't matter that there's other people who look at your ambition and go I think that that's inappropriate. Right. Only you can know whether or not your heart is right with God on this. Yeah. And I would say for those who might look at Paul's ambition as a possible negative, just realize there's a reason why God recruited Paul right. When he was sawd. He was the most ambitious person for the wrong thing ever, you know. So God recruited this man who was incredibly ambitious on his way to Damascus to implement a system that was working in Jerusalem for persecuting Christians. So was the he was the epitome of campussing or you know, or what do you call it, expanding your. Location state for the business multi syite. And so that's what that's what Paul's doing. And so God says, hey, we're going to take that same ambition and we're going to use it selflessly. We're going to use it. You're going to use that same ambition for me. You're going to take it to different cities, only this time you're going to be pro God, not anti God. Yeah. And you know what it reminds me of is that, like I had a bunch of sales jobs. Do you know any sales jobs I've had When I was in college. I actually sold car washes. I was the guy when you pulled up, they say, I know you only wanted a seven dollars car wash. Let me talk you into the sixty four dollar hand wax. I think fifteen minutes while you wait, and let me do a little demonstration on your hood, you know, so that there's a bright spot. Now you have to do the whole thing wax. Right. So it's like I. Sold MCI long distance, I sold BP cards with Discover Card private issues on telemarketing. I actually sold Techmatic adjustable beds I did. And then get this, I sold used cars. Yeah, okay. I had all these sales jobs and I was pretty good. All of them made a bunch of money. And uh and and so who would have. Ever thought, well, I want to buy one of each right now? Yeah? Okay, So who would have ever thought that God would have said, I have different plans for you instead of saying sting in sales and and and you know, making money, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna have you sell Jesus. Which, by the way, the only time I did really, really, really well in sales is when I believed in the product. So I actually didn't believe in the Techmatic. Uh and I had to quit there because I couldn't sell it. I mean I could, but it felt dirty, right, But I believed in MC, I buddy, MC, how long distance? I could sell that to you because I believed in it. And I get to push the best product in the world. Jesus has the best rewards heaven. Right, Uh, it's free. What's the cost? It's let me think it's free. Right. It's the best news ever, it's the best. It's the best sales pitch ever to say. You know, Jesus died for you. He loves you, and he wants to make your life better from top to bottom, and he is the answer to everything. And oh, by the way, it's free because he paid the price. And if you think about it, it's just like Paul in a very much a smaller way. Yeah, God took my gift mix and he said, this is how I'm going to use you. I've always thought of it that way. So the only way to really achieve your ambitions is to set goals. And every once in a while people say, well, goal settings not very spiritually either, it's inappropriate. We just had a conversation with our staff the other day. Oh it happens all the time and meetings where I'll hear people talk about how you just need to wait for the Holy Spirit to tell you what to do, and you know whatever. Oncet you ask me, we'll make Chris mad this year exactly, that is because that just made me mad. So what I was going to say is, it doesn't matter what the critics say about your goals either. Again, it's all about the focus. What is the purpose behind them? Is it for you and fulfilling your own desires? Okay, well, then your critics might be right, it might just be a wrong thing. But if you're setting goals, we just had a meeting with our staff and we announce the few goals that we want to see happen in our church and within our organization. There's nothing inappropriate about that. It's a good thing to have goals. It's a good thing to have ambition to go achieve and to kind of focus your energy. And so we even see it here with Paul that his ambition, his personal ambition. Did you know that there were lost people everywhere, even in the places where nobody had heard. Yeah, but he said, my ambition is go where nobody's heard. Right, So it's just different and he was going in a different direction than Peter was going or everybody else, and that's okay. It doesn't matter what the critics say. So ambition can be a good thing. It doesn't have to be a negative. Well, that's probably a great place to end and hopefully we will see you next time on the Daily Bible GUYSH