I hope you'll take your Bibles and turn to Romans 1, verses 16 and 17. And this will be the end of my focus on these two verses. We've been with them for six weeks and next Sunday we will move on to verse 18 and linger there for a week. But these verses are the theme of the epistle and so we will never really leave them.

We'll come back to them again and again and again because they are Romans in summary.

Now before I read them, I want to put them in a bigger, wider context today, there are only two great concerns in the world. One is the concern that God be properly displayed in the

universe and the other is the concern that you and I find everlasting joy in him.

These are the two great concerns of the universe.

The display of the glory of God, and everlasting contentment in Him. Now what I saw in meditating afresh this week on these verses is that verse

16 addresses the second of those big concerns and verse 17 addresses the first of those big concerns.

verse 16 says I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for salvation. And that's what we want.

Salvation means escape from wrath and

judgment and the arrival in our lives of everlasting joy in the presence of Almighty God forever and ever and ever.

We want that.

That is one of the great concerns of the world. Can I live forever

in heaven and happiness instead of in hell and misery.

That is a huge concern.

And the other one, verse 17 says,

in it that is in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith

as it is written, the righteous man shall live by faith.

And so you see that central affirmation,

something about God is revealed in the gospel.

This is a God display. This is about God. So verse 16 is all about

salvation by faith and verse 17 is all about its foundation, a demonstration of something about God.

So these are the big issues in the world.

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