In the days when I listened to serm

In the days when I listened to sermons rather than preached them, I had a “five minute rule.” It was a simple rule applied to preachers during the first five minutes of their message: the speaker had five minutes to get from his introduction to the text in the Bible. If, in that five minutes, the speaker had not begun to expound the Scripture text, I knew he would never get there. And so I would mentally turn the speaker off and read from my Bible for the rest of the sermon.
As my five minutes are passing quickly, let us turn our attention to our text in Romans 1:1-17. This is Paul’s introduction to the entire Epistle to the Romans. While all of Paul’s epistles have introductions, this particular introduction is especially important. The church in Rome was not founded by Paul. The Roman saints had not been brought to faith through the preaching of Paul. He did not seem to be well-known in Rome.51 Paul had not yet been to Rome, and most of the saints there would not recognize him if they saw him.52
Our study of Paul’s introduction will concentrate on the reasons Paul gives for writing this epistle, which will also prove to be the reasons why the Romans should read and heed his words. Paul’s introduction will also help to explain why the Romans did receive Paul’s epistle, and why this epistle has continued to bless and to impact the lives of men and women down through the ages of church history.