We ask that you would come and magnify your all, magnify yourself in our joy,

magnify your righteousness, in our peace, and help me to make plain the meaning of

Romans 117. I pray that you would open our hearts to receive this word.

I pray that you would banish Satan and his bent to pluck the seed of the word from the path from our midst and give us a free course of communion with you in your word.

We need you. I need you to speak and the people need you to help them listen and so come and teach and change and save and empower and humble and reconcile and heal and strengthen. and I invite you to take a Bible and to turn to Romans chapter 1.

And we're going to read verses 16 and 17 again, as we will next Sunday, until I sense that this glorious truth in verse 17 is sinking in.

Romans 1 verses 16 and 17.

For I am not ashamed of the Gospel,

for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

To the Jew first and also to the Greek, for or because in it that is in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, but the righteous man shall live by faith.

Now the question we're asking, if you're here last week, you'll remember this, is how does the gospel save believers?

We're not asking the question, how does the gospel make believers, which it does? The gospel has

in it when it is spoken or preached in the power of the Holy Spirit, a power to take

unbelievers, open the eyes of their heart, draw them to the beauty of Christ, incline their hearts to faith, and save them.

The gospel can do that. It's doing it on Tuesday night.

Seven people professed faith in Jesus last Tuesday night.

He's doing it on Wednesday nights.

He's doing it in your lives as you get on the phone or as you go to the hospital.

I prayed with a man after the first

service who's off to speak to a dying farmer who has maybe a month to leave live and he just wants to make sure that he knows God and he's saved.

The gospel will do that.

But what I want to focus on with you is what I see in verses 16 and 17, namely that the

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