Romans - Part 24

The Final Chapter - Romans 16:1-27

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Sermon Transcript

Do you guys remember a time in your life when you finished some sort of project or maybe a season of life? So maybe it was school or that's your undergrad or graduate and that just came to an end or maybe it's some project at home, a renovation of sorts, but you just, there's the end of a culmination of time, energy and effort and you can look back and be like, man, that was good. I put all that work into it and now it's over. And I'm very thankful. Do you guys have anything in life that you can think of and draw upon? Well, I think that's us in Romans today. We're tying it up. We're in the last chapter, and I just love that we'll be able to look back in this year of church life and say, "Man, we went through all of Romans, and that is no small feat." And so I just want to congratulate all of us together. Pastors and us, we all did it. In about half hour, we'll have done it.

This series in Romans was Paul's fullest explanation of the Gospel. We learned the good news all about Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. We went verse by verse, chapter by chapter, to unpack the layers of Paul's words as he wrote about who Jesus is, his death, resurrection, and life, and his ultimate sacrifice to us, And also about how Jesus' life was so, and who he is, was so life-giving to all of us believers. And so through this series also we've better understood our humanity's state of sin, and because of that state of sin, how we so desperately are in need of a Savior. And today we're wrapping it all up by ending by seeing evidence of the power of the gospel. Paul's gonna end just kind of laying this out of saying, "Given all of this, all this better, this is evidence of what this can look like, what this life looks like. So we want to start by going and reading, you guys can follow along on the screen or there's Bibles in seats in front of you, chapter 16, starting in verse 1, it says, "I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae. I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of his people and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been the benefactor of many people, including me." Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my co-workers in Christ Jesus, they risked our lives for me. Not only I, but all the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them. Greet also the church that meets at their house. Greet my dear friend Epenetus, who was the first convert to Christ in the province of Asia. Greet Mary, who worked very hard for you. Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been imprisoned with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was. Greet Ampliatus, my friend in the Lord. Great Urbanus, our coworker in Christ, and my dear friend, Stachys. Great Apellis, whose fidelity to the Lord has stood the test. Great those who belong to the house of Aristobulus. Great Herodon, my fellow Jew. Great those in the household of Narcissus who are in the Lord. Great Tryphina and Tryphosa, those women who work hard in the Lord. Great my friend, Persis, another woman who has worked very hard in the Lord. Greet Rufus, chosen the Lord and his mother, who was a mother to meet you. Greet Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas, and the other brothers and sisters with him. Greet Philologus, Julia, Nereus, and her brother, or her sister, his sister, Olympua, and all the Lord's people with them. Greet one another with a holy kiss.

That was a gauntlet of names. A little trick. Don't stop, just keep going. Confidence, right? Just confidence. Just confidence. You just walk right through everybody. No, it's great. I love this part of the chapter in Romans. And so this book in Romans actually is like an extra part that might not have been always distributed with the letter to all of the churches. This was a very personal part of a section of this book in Romans, Romans, because Paul here is mentioning some incredible people in the church in Rome, and he's telling them this list of people who are gospel people. This whole series has been on the power of the gospel and how that changes who we are. It affects our everyday lives. It changes what we do on a daily basis, and it changes us down to our deepest level. And Paul here is wanting to end this to go, this is you, church. This is you, church in Rome. You are these people. Remember what he said back in chapter 15, verses 14? He said, "I myself am convinced, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with knowledge and competent to instruct one another." Paul knows this church in Rome is an incredible, special group of people. And Paul here takes time out of his travels and his scribing and his writing to go, "I want to make sure I let them know how amazing they are.”

Some of these people, we really don't know what they did. Some had huge jobs, some might have just been cleaning toilets. But Paul wanted them to remember that we all have a part in the role and the body. Paul talked about this in chapter 12. He says, "Remind us to not think higher than ourselves that we all have a function in the church. We're a key component, we're a key member in God's family and we all have different gifts. Some of us serving, some of us teaching, encouraging extreme generosity, leading, showing mercy. Paul here is making sure that the church in Rome and those key people don't forget their roles. You and I have a specific role in this church Spring Valley family. God has brought you here through, some of you I've heard your stories through miraculous moments, to be in this place for a purpose. And it's for each of us to fill our role and to use the gifts and talents, abilities, the way we've been created in Him for a specific purpose. And Paul here is making sure that they understand the same and without it the church cannot function. Pastor Andre is amazing. But he can't do everything. He can't do it all. He tries. Actually, that's probably me. I overreach my boundaries a lot of times. But we all have a function and a role, and when we don't do that, we're missing pieces. We don't have the full, beautiful picture that God has for us.

Paul mentions specifically people by name with their gospel impact. Priscilla and Aquila, we don't know much about them, but they risk their lies for the gospel. That's like, they put it all out there. But then there's also Urbanus, Apelles, Herodion, Rufus, and I find it extremely awesome that Paul here mentions a handful of women. In that culture, that day and age, women were just to do whatever. They weren't regarded as anything special or something amazing, which is unfortunate, but Paul here sees the greater picture, right? He talks about them. And some of them have some incredible things behind them. Mary, who worked very hard for you. I can see Mary, this one that's just going around the church. Like anything that needs to be done, Mary's on it. It may not be pretty. It may not be in front of people. It'll probably be behind the scenes that no one will ever see, but Paul knew about it because he understood what it took to lead and grow a church. Tryphena, Tryphosa, these women who work hard in the Lord. Perseus, another woman who works very hard in the Lord. I'm finding a trend here that the women are working hard. What are the dudes doing? Like Rufus, bro, get off your butt, man. Mary's running around. Do something, bro. No, but seriously, these ladies are showing up. They're putting in the effort. And again, we don't know what they did, but what's amazing is that we know that they are giving everything they have for the church and that's awesome. What a legacy.

We see so many characteristics in this short section of verses of what it means to live and be in the church, to be present, be willing, be caring, to love one another with total disregard for self. The way Jesus loved, right? And because of this, the gospel spreads. And we all probably have people through this church we know have come and gone and we've heard stories. But these stories at this moment haven't stopped here in Rome. They've traveled all the way to where Paul is. He is hearing these stories of these people in this church and he is rejoicing with them. And because of their hard work, their commitment, their persistence, their Their legacy echoes through the halls of history here in Romans as church after church, Christian after Christian reads these names. They will never be forgotten for their care for the church and their commitment to the gospel. That's legacy if I've ever heard it. That is incredible. And church, I want to encourage us. May we be like these people. May we be gospel people that, like the church in Rome, like the comparisons of Paul in this letter that we see, that his heart is so appreciative. Pastor Andre found this incredible nugget that if you were to add up all of these people's legacy and time in the church, it is over 25 years of service, just right here in these verses. How amazing is that? Can we be people of the gospel that partner with God, work with the Spirit, and shows the power of the gospel in community.

Yeah, so he's in his first 16 verses, he's turned his attention to the people of Rome and said, "Thank you for your service. We're partners together." And he also wants them to have a rich history that it started now. There's 25 years of evidence of the gospel, but he wants it to continue. And he knows what they need. He knows that they need to prioritize the gospel in order for that to happen. So let's go ahead and read the next part of our verse starting or chapter starting in verse 17. It says, "I urge you brothers and sisters to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them. For such people are not serving our Lord Christ but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people. Everyone has heard about your obedience so I rejoice because of you. "But I want you to be wise about what is good "and innocent about what is evil. "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. "The grace of your Lord Jesus be with you." Do you remember the focus of our first 11 chapters? They were just, they're very dense, and it was all about the truth. Paul was kind of laying out argument after argument about what the gospel is about, going back explaining the Old Testament, unpacking that to make sense in light of the person of Jesus, the Messiah. And it was just, this is the truth, over and over and over again. Before he got to the practical application of the letter, he said, "I want you to know what the gospel is. I want you to know it inside and out." He wanted that to happen because he knew that division amongst the church is possible over what is the gospel. So he says, "I want you to know it. I want you to know it. I don't want you to be divided. I also don't want you to trip up over false gospels. I don't want you to be distracted by what you think may be the gospel, but really isn’t.

Pastor Chris and I were talking this week and he brought up this great point about how the early church had, when it was functioning as it should, being all about the gospel, loving each other. It's a body of people that has this gravitational pull. It draws people in. When people see a church being a church the way we should be, people are attracted to that. They want to be a part of a group of people loving each other, sacrificing for each other, caring for each other, all focused on the love of Jesus. But that can bring in some different types of people. And some people may not understand the gospel, right? They may not understand it. And there's a difference too. When someone comes in who doesn't understand the gospel, sometimes they just don't understand, but they generally want to. And so over time, you see that their heart is learning and they're trying to understand who Jesus is, what this life is about, it also can bring in people who don't understand the Gospel and don't care to. And sadly, if you're in church long enough, you just come across these people who are contrary to the Gospel for whatever reason. There are people who maybe misunderstand it and they're just fixed on it. There's no room for learning in their minds or in their lives and they just say, "No, this is it," and it's wrong. They interpret Scripture in a wrong way or Or maybe they understand the gospel but they add to it. Kind of what Paul was trying to explain. You don't get to add to the gospel. It's not this and all this, this and this. It's simply that Jesus died for you, that he loves you, and you have to give your life over to him. You don't have to do a bunch of things after that. But some people have this misunderstanding of the gospel, and some of those people love to share it. I don't know if you've been around those type of people who are all about their own gospel. "Hey, I know you believe this, but I actually know the truth, and I know it's actually this. No one else understands it, but I do." And you're like, "I don't think you understand what the Bible's about. I don't think you're getting it." But sometimes those people love to share, and Paul is saying, "Avoid those people. These people can trip you up." Maybe in the context of a church, and again, if they're willing, if there is a genuine part of them that wants to understand, maybe they can start to understand who Jesus is and what he does. of those people, it's just better to say, "Okay, I need to have some boundaries, I need to have some space, because you clearly are not drawing me to God, you're drawing me away from God." And Paul says, "I don't want that for you.”

I love what he says in verse 19, when he says, "I want you to be wise to what is good and innocent about what is evil." So what's the remedy for this? How do you avoid division and not get tripped up by false Well, the answer is to know the truth inside and out. Know the gospel. I think I used this example months ago when we were in whatever chapter this was about, but this example of counterfeit money. For those in the FBI who study counterfeit, do you think that they spend most of their time studying the counterfeit bills? Do they spend most of their time studying what's out there that is false? Or do they spend most of their time studying and knowing the real currency? The answer is they spend all their time, all their time studying real currency. They know the feel of it, they know all the different details, all the look of it, so that when something false comes by, they can automatically know, "This isn't it. I know the feel. I know where something should be. This is not real." And so we need to have that about the Gospel. We need to know the truth, focus on the truth, so that when something false or not aligned with the gospel comes in front of us, we can say, "Nope, I know what the Bible says, and that's not it." The problem when we start to put too much attention on things that aren't true, when we focus on... and sometimes our heart is in the right place, like, "I want to know what's false so that I can steer away from it." And maybe it's good to just be aware of what's out there, but when we spend too much time focusing on that, what it can do is it can breed fear within us, it can breed hatred, it can breed a desire for division. We no longer want to have compassion or kindness or generosity or a desire to see those people who think they know the truth but really don't. We don't really want to see them come into the family of God.

When focused on the truth, we'll know the truth through the Spirit of God in our hearts, and we'll better live out the truth and live out the gospel and better be Jesus for the people around us. So know the gospel inside out. And church high souls want to tell us that this is a lifelong pursuit. We have Bible studies and maybe if you've been in the church long enough, you've done the same Bible study over and over again. And that's okay. It's okay to, you don't have to say, "Oh, I've already gone through that book. I'm good." No, we are lifelong learners of the gospel because there is so much in here that we could could spend our whole lives studying it and still not know everything there is to know about God. There were these rabbis in the Old Testament and even now there's rabbis who spend all their life focused on maybe a chapter, just one chapter. They know the rest but like this is my focus, this is my emphasis, I know this chapter. And over a lifetime they are still learning things. They could have been rabbis for 50 years and said I know whatever it is, Psalm something, inside and out. I've studied it and meditated on it for 50 years, and I am still getting new truths out of it in my lifetime. And so I just want us to have that perspective, that as we know the truth, just have that expectation that this is going to be a lifelong journey of continuing to know more and more and more about Jesus. And so we see that Paul cares for the Roman church and for their souls, and he knows what they need, and it's most importantly to know the gospel. But he also brings up the point that we shouldn't be alone in knowing the gospel.

Yeah, and this leads us to our next section, where Paul here actually shifts back to talk about a few more people. He's going to give a few more shout-outs here, but what we have here is actually on the other side of the letter. This is actually Paul's personal crew. This is his team. And so he says, and starting in verse 21, "Timothy, my coworker, sends his greetings to you. So does Lucius and Jason and Sosipater, my fellow Jews. I, Tertius, who wrote down this letter, greet you in the Lord, Gaius, whose hospitality I and the whole church here enjoy, sends you his greetings." Wait a minute. We've been talking this whole time that Paul wrote this letter. But then this one bro shows up like right at the end and he's like, "I actually wrote it down." So what do we got going here? Well, real quick, just a little rabbit trail here. Tertius is actually what we call a "amanuensis," which is actually a secretary who's assigned to an employer by taking verbal dictation, copying, and writing on their behalf. So basically, in short, Paul is just teaching and talking and saying this, and this bro is just trying to write down as fast as he can. I think some of these sections in Romans, he would be like, "Okay, time out! Pause, Paul! I gotta catch up here real quick. Say that one more time for me. I wanna make sure this is right.

But what we see here are more gospel people, more gospel people, and this is Paul's personal team, his team with accountability. And what I find most interesting about this is that Paul wasn't solo. We think about the apostle Paul, we think about this superhero, super giant Christian that he was, and he's out there just doing all this stuff. He's trailblazing for the gospel. He's on the forefront of church multiplication and church planting and making new churches. And we sit here and we go, "Wait, Paul had people? Paul needed people? One hundred percent." Paul here in himself is saying, "You guys can't do this alone. I can't do it alone." And if Paul can't do it alone, yeah, you and I, we ain't doing it on ourselves. We ain't doing this alone. Like, there's no way that we can do this on our own. And this is incredibly encouraging for me. I don't know about you, but this is incredibly encouraging for me because the world tells us that we have to do it all, carry it all, make it all, be it all alone. And Paul here is saying, "No. That's not how you do it. Nobody can do this alone. We need a team. We need support.

We need a church family. And this is Paul's church family that are with him at all times, traveling, helping, supporting, loving, caring for him. We are not meant to live life alone. That's just not how we were created. This is a core value of who we are here at Spring Valley. We are meant to live life in community. That's why we have these events like Friendsgiving and chili cook-offs and Memorial Day barbecues. It's for us to be with each other and hang out. We run semesters of doing community groups. The name is literally in the title of what it is because we wanna be with one another. 'Cause when we gather together on Sundays and we're not all here, we're missing part of who we are. We're missing part of our family. And it is our desire to have everybody present every single Sunday. Let me say that again. It is our desire for all of us to be here present every single Sunday to hold it a priority, to protect it, to be here together. Why not to make Pastor Andre and myself feel great about ourselves? The house was packed today. We're such great pastors. No, because we know so much life happens in passing with each other. You're grabbing a muffin, a cup of amazing coffee, to hanging out after church to go, "Hey, do you want to go grab lunch? Let's grab lunch." There's a group in the church that started just meeting on Fridays at Pete's Pizza. And there's nothing that Andre and I started. It was just like, they're like, "Hey, we're going to meet Fridays at Pete's, and just can you let the church know about it? We just want want to hang out. Yeah! Let's go! That's what life is about, is this community together. And Paul sees this, and without us here present every single week, we're missing God's beautiful picture. And I think it's hard because in our world we've accepted minimal commitment as full commitment. We've allowed that culture to kind of seep into our lives and I think it's this audacious lie that Satan has allowed Christians to believe. That minimal commitment is actually full commitment. If we would think about this, tell this to Paul. If he didn't have full commitment of his crew, without Tertius present, we wouldn't have this full letter to Rome. There's another dude in here by the name of Timothy. I don't know if you've heard of him. There's two letters written to him in the New Testament. He was at the forefront of the gospel in Asia Minor. Without Timothy fully present, we wouldn't have the church in Corinth, we wouldn't have the church in Thessalonica, we wouldn't have the church in Philippi, and the church in Asia Minor would not have ever existed. This is huge.

Paul reminds us in Romans 12, 1 through 2, "Therefore I urge you brothers and sisters, in view of God's to offer your bodies as living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing and perfect will. Church, we can't behave like the world and live like a Christian. Those are contradictory to each other. Can we be in the world, around other people, hanging out with them, eating pizza, having a good time, laughing? Yes, absolutely, 100%. Being a Christian doesn't mean you isolate yourself from everybody in your life. I can only hang out with Christians. No, that's opposite, true. But our actions should be different than the world. Our commitment should be different than the world. Our priorities should be different than the world. The way we live our lives, our calendar, our day-to-day actions need to be different than the world. And Paul here shows us how to step into accountability and responsibility and sacrifice and humility. Paul could probably tell every single one of those bros how to live their lives. He knew it all. And yet, he surrounded himself with other people to speak truth into his lives. We should do the same.

The scripture gets quoted a lot, but I always come back to it, of Proverbs 27:7, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” We have a dull blade epidemic in the church. We have a dull blade epidemic in the church today. We were walking around as dull Christians and we wonder why we don't fully commit to being in church community. And we wonder why when we walk through Christ that it isn't different in our lives, it isn't acute, it isn't effectual against this world around us. Church, we're just gnawing. Gnaw, gnaw, gnaw. Just, you ever use a dull blade on anything? It is the most frustrating thing in the world, right? You try to slice a tomato with a dull blade, you end up with tomato sauce, okay? There ain't no slicing of tomatoes for your sandwich anymore. And we're going around trying to hit back at Satan with a dull blade and we're like, "Ah, Christianity doesn't work." Well, if we had our lives sharpened in Christ by being around each other daily, weekly, Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, then we would have this effective tool that God has given us. We're not sharp. And Paul here understands that so well. And the best way to live in community, to be focused in the truth, to have a team and to surround ourselves, yourself, with like-minded community of faith, making each of us stronger and stronger in the gospel.

And Paul has shown evidence of the power of the gospel by listing all the people whose lives have been transformed and are partners with him for the gospel. He shared the need for the gospel to be a priority in everyone's life, and now he hasn't done it alone. And so let's read now his final words of this letter to Rome. It says, "Now to him who is able to establish you in accordance with my gospel, the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writing by the command of the eternal God, so that all Gentiles might come to the obedience that comes from faith, to the only wise God, be glory forever through Christ Jesus, amen.

Little side note, I'm very thankful that you got all the hard names, and I got like none in the whole chapter there. Was that planned? I don't know.

So, in this final section, Paul is blessing them. He's blessing the church, and this is a form of a doxology, which from previous chapter, we know that doxology means words of praise. And so he is wrapping up this doxology with themes that are all throughout the letter to Rome. He's talking about the mystery revealed in the work in the person of Jesus Christ. He's mentioning that the Gentiles are now a part of God's kingdom. They can be, they can, yeah, they need the gospel, and they are welcome in the kingdom of heaven. And he's also talking about the need for our obedience to God. Paul's giving his blessing to the Roman church and he's telling them to live missionally. You need to live with intentionality in your life.

I had a recent conversation about this desire in my own life, to live more intentionally, live more missionally, be more prayerful over people that I come in contact with, praying for them by name, that God, you would help me be a part of their story. If that's your will, God, if you want to use me as a tool for your gospel in that person's life, it's so easy to be passive. It's so easy to say, "God, if you want this to happen, great, but you've got to make that happen. If the door opens, sure, I'm just going to stay here, though, until you really force me through that door. I'm very comfortable where I'm at with my faith, but God, if you shove me through that door, then sure, I'll do the work for you." And that was me, if I'm being honest, if I'm confessing that right now, that was me. When I get comfortable or when I'm stressed out in life, I tend to just kind of take a step back and be more passive in my faith. And I want to be intentional and say, "God, no, where, I'm looking now. God, where can I be a tool for your gospel? Where can you use me? God, is this it? God, I'm talking with someone. Should I bring up you right now or is there a way to steer this to church, to the gospel?" That's what Paul wants. He wants focus on the gospel. He wants the church in Rome to be living missionally, to be living in their everyday life, looking for opportunities to spread the gospel.

And he knows this because the gospel, once you read and understand and live out the gospel, it means action. The gospel does not, it does not yield passivity or inaction. It's not something that once you learn it, you're like, well, that's great. And now that is something in my life and my status has kind of changed, but my life continues the same. No, it means something different. And Paul is saying, "Hey, now that you know church in Rome, now that I've had 11 chapters of what the truth is, you've had other chapters to know what this life should look like, now here's your blessing, go and do it, go and live it out." He's saying, "Church in Rome, go, go spread the gospel." And he's saying to us today, Spring Valley Church, Go, go and spread the gospel. Live out the gospel. So as we wrap up, I just wanna ask a few questions from our chapter today. Where are you seeing the evidence of the gospel at work in your life? Paul just presented those first 16. Here's the evidence of the gospel in my life. Here's all these people. This is evidence of God at work.

And so if you pause and reflect on your life, where are you seeing the evidence of the gospel at work in your life? Are you pursuing the gospel? Are you committed to knowing it inside and out? The lifelong journey of knowing the gospel. And then do you have that team around you? Maybe you're looking around this church and this is your team and I love that. Hopefully we're on your team. I wanna be on your team. Pastor Chris and I wanna be on your team of people who are encouraging you, supporting you, sharpening you. And we want you to sharpen us too. Do you have that team around you? And then are you ready to live missionally? Are you ready to not be passive in your faith, but to be active, to be praying to God, God, where can I work? Where's an opportunity for me to be of use for your kingdom?

So there you have it. The Book of Romans. Give yourself a hand. - Good job everybody. - You made it! - Good job everybody. - Proud of you guys. The book of Romans, as we stated at the beginning, is all about the power of the gospel. The power of gospel in Jesus, the power of the gospel in his death on the cross, his burial, his resurrection, the ascension, and how this miracle, 2000 something years ago, changed our lives, changed who we are. This isn't a something where you just, you pray a prayer and you check the box and you're like, sweet, I'm in.

The gospel doesn't stop there. God wants this gospel to change who we down to, like our cellular and molecular level of our lives transformation. That's the power of the gospel. And as we live our lives, this power of the gospel should just ooze out of us. It should change the way that we think, the way we act, we live, the words that we use, how we interact with other people here on this planet earth. It should change us. And it is a miracle that we even have the ability to even talk about this power of the gospel. I don't want us to forget that. So the question for us, might add more questions. - That's great. - I need the questions, they're good. - That was like a sermon question.

Here's my book of Romans question. - Serious questions. - Book of Romans question. Will we truly embrace and live in this power of the gospel for our lives? Will this version of the gospel just stop at a prayer or will it change us through the power of Lord almighty and change our lives, change our families, change our church, change our community? Really, the choice is ours. I know what I will choose. The question is, do you know what you will choose? Let's pray.

Jesus, we thank you so much for your servant, Paul. God for his faithfulness and willingness to take the time not only to detail, like down of the smallest piece of the gospel, just to explain it to the church in Rome, God, but to continue on with all that he did for the gospel. Jesus, we're so grateful for him. And Jesus, we're grateful for you. God, thank you for your power of the gospel. Thank you that it's bigger than who we are. It's more complicated than we can fully understand. It's something that is only something as big as it can come from you, God. Not some story some person made up or some fairy tale, but that God, you came down from heaven, you gave your life for us so that our broken relationship with God would be able to be restored through the power of the gospel. Jesus, let this transform who we are, the way that we live. Let it transform where we live, where we learn, where we work, where we play. God, that we would see our community saturated with your power of the gospel to change this world. God, give us gospel appointments where we get to show up in people's lives and just to share love with them. We don't have to have all the answers. We don't have to have the perfect pitch. We don't have to have all this salvation stuff memorized, but just to show up and to show them love the way that you showed us love on the cross, God. I pray that for each of us this week in these coming weeks. God, we're grateful for who you are. We thank you time and time again. We love you, Jesus. Amen.

Romans - Part 23

Our Outward Focus Fuels The Gospel - Romans 15:1-33

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We are continuing back in our series in Romans. We are two weeks away from wrapping this bad boy up. It has been a journey, and I am so grateful for each and every one of you. Like, give yourselves a hand. Like, you guys have made it, you're here. Like, it is something to be celebrated. Like, this isn't just like regular old, regular old, but this is awesome stuff. And so probably, honestly, the longest series that I've been a part of in a church, And it's pretty cool to be a part of this and to be here with you guys through this series. And so if we could, I'd love to just pray real quick and then we're gonna jump in to our chapter 15 of Romans today.

Jesus, we thank you for today. God, we are so grateful to be here. God, I am so grateful, God, for the amazing blessing of this church family. God, and we know we're missing a lot of people morning God and we hope that they're joining us online God but you're with them wherever they are we know there's a lot of sickness and even a grieving loss in our family and so God we pray for all those in our church family today as they walk through some some hard times right now Jesus would you be present with them God we remember them we're we are sad with them we are hurting with them God we are in intercession, as you would say that you call us to pray for our family and those in our lives. And so Jesus, we call upon you to be with them today. God, as we study your word this morning, Jesus, you would continue to give me the words you put on my heart, God, in that this day would just be honoring and glorifying to you. We love you, Jesus. Amen.

So Paul here is actually wrapping up basically the letter. This is the, he's come to the last section of his letter, and we're gonna finish the series tomorrow as Paul kinda had some last remarks. He has a couple words for specific people, and you know Paul, he can't put anything in a letter without having some truth or something, some wisdom in it, right? So we're gonna, there's still gonna be a piece of that where we're gonna work through next week as Pastor Andrei and I wrap up the series, but today is basically Paul's final words. And so if you were to write a letter, put together, you probably have something to really say and to want to communicate right at the end of your letter, right? It's kind of like, "Ah, we open as important in the middle, give or take, and in the end it's like, here is my final send-off." And Paul here is gonna work through three different parts, the first of which is gonna be talking about how now this power of the gospel affecting us, how we then continue to further on the gospel in our actions. And the first Action in that is honoring God by honoring one another and then Paul is gonna dig into some nitty-gritty He's gonna talk about the gospel mission and what it means and how do we live that out and then Paul himself actually He's not one to just sit around and say hey you guys go do this you do this you do this Paul is a man of action and he wants to tell you right here at the end what his plans are Now that he has taken this time to clearly communicate all of the details down to the smallest little piece What the power of the gospel means and he's gonna share some plans for us So our big picture today where we're headed. All right is a purposeful outward focus rooted in love for others ignites and grows the gospel of Jesus Christ That's where we're headed today. And so if you would open up your Bibles, there's Bibles under the chairs if you want You can get it online Those of you brought your Bibles. That's awesome.

We're gonna be in Romans chapter 15 And Paul here is getting to this point where he wants to teach us some final lessons and that this purpose outward focus in love grows the gospel. So these past few weeks we've been talking about probably chapter 12, 13, 14 and now 15 is really a purposeful shift. It's gone from all this deep theology and head knowledge and background and ins and outs and all the details about the gospel and Jesus Christ, Paul shifts in chapter 12 to go very practical. He gets to this point where he says, "Hey, you need to live this out," talking about living our life as a sacrifice, how love above our own personal gain to not dispute with people who are in the church and of the faith and to not cause other people to stumble. Paul here is wrapping up the whole series talking about this topic again. And here is the first part of the chapter we're going to cover this morning.

Romans chapter 15, starting in verse 1. It says this, "We who are strong ought to bear the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up. For even Christ did not please himself, but it is written, the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me. For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us. It was written where I lost my place. Man, I hardly do this. Written to teach us so that we ought to, through endurance in the scriptures, may have the encouragement they provide, we might have hope. May the God who gives endurance and and courage give you the same attitude of mind towards each other that Christ had, so that with one mind and with one voice you may glorify the God of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Accept one another then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God. For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God's truth, so that the promises made to the patriarchs might be confirmed, and moreover, that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy. For it is written, 'Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles; I will sing the praises of your name.'" Again it says, "Rejoice you Gentiles with His people, and again praise the Lord all you Gentiles. Let all the peoples extol Him." And again Isaiah says, "The root of Jesse will spring up, one who will raised to rule over the nations. In Him the Gentiles will hope. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Whoo! Paul's not letting up, is he? No, he's still coming in swinging. He's still hitting here hard. And side note real quick, we've been doing this study for a couple weeks on Ruth. Ruth here, actually I'm gonna put these two together, okay? So So you got that root of Jesse? Jesse is actually the son or the grandson of Ruth. So Ruth has a son, Boaz, Boaz has Jesse, then Jesse has a son who is King David, and then we know out of the line of King David comes Jesus. That was the church answer right there. I was just the softball. Like just say Jesus, okay? That's where it is. So like Paul here is like wrapping up all of this stuff in the power of the gospel, detailing where all this comes from.

But he first says in here, his first main point, if you're writing something down, you can write this down. It says, "We live with humility as our aim." Paul says there in verse 1, he says, "We have an obligation not to please ourselves." It's our obligation, church, to put the needs and the desires of others before our own. That's our obligation, to put others in front of us, whether they're weak people, whether they're strong people, whether they're in the middle, go to the gym every other week, strong people. Like, we are to put other people before us. And Paul here is saying, we are obligated. This word obligated means that we are bound, compelled, perhaps maybe legally or morally, to do something. Think about the obligations you have in your life. You have any obligations in your life? Maybe Maybe you're married, you're obligated to be faithful to your spouse. Maybe you're obligated to be a loving parent, or some of us here, a grandparent. Maybe you're obligated to show up at work at a certain time. Maybe you're obligated to pay taxes, your mortgage, your rent, your utility bills. I would hope that you'd be obligated to support your church. My wife thinks that I should be obligated to give her gifts every single day of her birthday month. There we go. I got an "amen" from the back on that one. But we have obligations in our life, right? And as Christians, people who call ourselves followers of Christ, we have obligations too. We are bound, we are compelled by the love of God and the work of Jesus to put others before ourselves. If we're obligated to do something, we better make it our goal or our aim to live that out to be sure that we do that thing. You better be obligated to pay your taxes or you're gonna get in some serious trouble. You better sure have a plan how to love your family. And I better be sure how to figure out how to give my wife all these gifts she needs on her birthday month. But we are obligated to put others ahead of ourselves. And Paul here is saying this is our aim, that we truly believe and have allowed the gospel to change who we are, we should live with humility as our aim.

The second thing Paul talks about here in verse 4, he says we're to live with the Bible as our guide. It says here, "For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide, we might have hope." So what What does this matter? Does this matter at all? Why do we care about being humble? And why do we care about bearing with one another? We care because God has commuted through His Word, the Bible, the Scriptures we believe, of how we live our lives. This is a guidebook on how to live our lives. This isn't an old dusty manuscript, a fairy tale story, or something that makes you read and it just makes you feel good, right? No, no, no. This is the Word of God. This is God's words to us so that we know how to live our lives and conduct ourselves. And Paul here is saying it is written to teach us for our instruction to bring the benefit of hope and encouragement. It's good to know what God wants for us, right? Have you ever had a job or a task and you didn't really know what you were supposed to do? You didn't know how to do it, you didn't know the details of it, you didn't know the end result that your boss or somebody that you wanted to have the alchemy of, you're kind of lost, right? You're kind of like, "Ah, maybe I'll try to figure this thing out as I go." But God here is saying, "This is how I want you to live your life. This is your calling." First Timothy, or Second Timothy, excuse me, 3 16 says, "All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, rebuking, correcting, for training up in righteousness so that the man of God, a woman of God, may be complete and equipped for every good work." I don't know about you, but I want to be equipped. I want to be complete. We talk about here with our different teams, and I learned this actually with Starbucks back in the day. I was your friendly neighborhood barista, the Green Apron back in the day. That was my jam. We always talked about setting your employees, your co-workers up for success. We talk about that here at Spring Valley with our teams and we volunteer when we serve with them. Our goal is to set each other up for success. God has given us instructions of how to set us up for success in life and that is His word. The Bible will teach us and help make us complete. It will help teach us how to love God and how to show God love. It will teach us how we show love to other people and how to love others. It will tell us how we live our life and we must live with the Bible as our guide. Paul wants to just drive this home that scriptures are so important. That's what we talk about being in God's Word on a regular basis because if we don't have the manual, the guide, we're just gonna get lost. We're gonna make our own choices. I don't know about you, I know my choices aren't as good as God's choices, right? You can get lost out there on your own.

Paul continues on and says, "We are to live with Jesus as our example." Paul here uses so many Old Testament Scriptures here, which has kind of driven his point before of using the Bible as your guide. He's using Scripture. But he says here in 15 3, he says, "For even Christ did not please himself, but as is written, the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me." These are Jesus' words. These are Jesus' words basically saying, "When I went to the cross, I took those insults, and other people hurled at you," he goes, "I stepped in front of him and I took him." That is on me. And this is this humble example that Paul lives out himself, and he's teaching us where he learned it from Jesus. And that Jesus wasn't about Jesus. Which honestly, if you think about it, nobody would have thought anything twice about Jesus being Jesus because he's God, right? He could be, he could do, he could say whatever he want to say? He is God. Ain't nobody stopping him. But Jesus takes this humble approach and he says, "No. I'm gonna live as an example of a humility for others." Jesus was insulted for our sake. He suffered for our sake. He died for our sake. Jesus displayed the ultimate humility so that we might be changed by His loving sacrifice. It was a sacrifice to help change the world. Paul continues in verse 7, he says, "Accept one another then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God." Jesus here is our example. If He was humble, if He sacrificed everything, if he gave up his own power and his own rights and his own way to say, "Hey, this is about me," and in doing that he opened himself up for us. We ought to do the same for those in our lives. Paul quotes Psalm 18, Psalm 117, Deuteronomy 32, Isaiah 11, to really demonstrate that Jesus wasn't just for the New Testament people. Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament scriptures and God's chosen people of the Jewish descent. So Paul here is communicating and saying, "Yeah, Jesus is here for those who have this storied past with Him, all the way back to the Israelites and Egypt and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all those fathers, Father Abraham, he had many sons and many sons that follow Abraham. Jesus is here for them, but Paul is reminding us Jesus is here for us too. And that because of Jesus there is no separate, there is no dividing, it is just for everyone. It's all human kind. Jesus, by humbling himself, lovingly welcoming others, changed the world and brought hope to those who were lost. That's what Jesus is all about. So we too are to humble ourselves and display that same love to the world specifically and more than that, abundantly for our brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ. We live with Jesus as our example.

Fourth thing in this opening section Paul talks about is that we live with the Spirit as our power. See, all of this would never be able to be accomplished without the power of the Holy Spirit, right? Paul says in 5 and 6, he says, "May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind towards each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and with one voice you may glorify the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." We need God's help, right? There's no way we could do this on our own. What God calls us to in this Bible is overly crazy, mission impossible. Like there's no way that this is happening in our lives without Christ and without the direction and the power of the Holy Spirit. That's the only way that any of this is ever gonna be able to happen and Paul here recognizes that. Paul has found himself in thousands of different situations where there was no way that he was gonna be able to get out of prison, be saved, be rescued, redeemed, fed, clothed, sheltered without the power of Jesus, acting in the Holy Spirit for him. Paul knows this firsthand. And you and I are the same way. We can't humble ourselves on our own. We can't live in harmony on our own without the power of God, we're helpless. Without the power of God, we're sheep without a shepherd. You and I need the power of God's Spirit in our lives. We need God's Spirit in our church. What do you have in our lives? We don't live it out in the church. It ain't happening. We could all be doing our own thing and that's great. But think about what it would be to unlock the power Holy Spirit through our church. That'll be life-changing. We need hope, we need joy, we need peace, and we can have all of these godly qualities through the power of the Holy Spirit. If we want to live the Christian life, if we want to live with humanity, if we want to live as those who love our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, we do so by the power of the Holy Spirit. There's no other way around it. So when we live with humility as our aim, we live with the Bible as our guide, we live with Jesus as our example, and we live with the power of the Holy Spirit in us, we honor God as we honor one another.

Paul continues on in chapter 15 verses 14 to 21. He's going to share here some personal stuff. He's going to share a little bit more of his firsthand experience, his own ministry, and how this power of the Gospel unlocks this for our lives. So I don't want us to forget here this mission that Paul is trying to portray with this Scripture for our lives. Paul talks about this in verse 14, he talks about this idea here, is that we to see gospel encouragement. See, I think sometimes we talk about this gospel idea, and we think about, "Oh, well, that's only if I lead somebody to Jesus, and we say the right words, and we pray the prayer." That's something that the church in America and the U.S. kind of developed themselves over the past 50, 60 years. Paul here is talking about this idea of a gospel being something so much greater than that. The gospel changes who we are. And Paul here focuses in talking about this idea of encouraging. He says, "I myself am convinced, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness, you're full of knowledge, and competent to instruct one another." Paul here wants to encourage the church in Rome. They're doing a really good job. They're doing really good stuff. They're living out as witnesses, they're loving one another, they're sharing with those that are their lives, the needs, and God's doing some incredible stuff in the church in Rome, and Paul here wants to encourage them. And I think this is a key component in the gospel I think sometimes we forget. You ever had somebody like really encourage you? Like somebody like show up in your life, Maybe it's a note, it's a text, it's a phone call, but just real encouragement. It sticks with you, right? It can change your day. Shoot, it can change your week. You get some really cool encouragement. Paul here wants to remind them, "You guys are doing really good. You guys are doing really good, and I want you to keep doing this." and he wants to remind them of why he was writing them and why this mission of the gospel is so important, but he wants to encourage them first. He doesn't want them to forget that. I don't want us to forget that. I think sometimes in the church we've lost this. We've lost this heart of encouragement, whether that's taking care of those that we know, or it's a neighbor, or it's a family member. Sometimes we forget that. And I want us to be reminded of that.

Can I encourage you guys real quick? I just want to take, I'm gonna take a side note here. I want to encourage you guys. Church, I want to tell you that you are friendly and you're a welcoming church. You care about one another in a way that I have not seen in churches before. It's beautiful. You care for Pastor Andre and myself through your prayers, through your appreciation during October, or Pastor Appreciation Month. You guys don't just keep it in October and then now, oh, we'll see you next year. Like, you guys keep this going year-round. You're incredible. You care about what the Word of God says for your life. You care about when you hear of a need, you step up. You have a reputation and you care for those in your life and in your community. You're doing so great in those areas. I want you guys to be encouraged.

That's a heart in a prayer of Pastor Andre and myself that our gatherings on Sunday morning, you would come here and you would leave encouraged. You wouldn't feel the same maybe as you did when you walked in here. That whether through the Holy Spirit or through a cup of mediocre coffee or through a muffin or— We're not like high-end chocolate fish espresso, I understand that. But we want you to be encouraged. We would hope that when you come to this place, you would be different when you left because you were here with us in presence of God together. I want to remind us of this as the holidays are coming up. you're going to be need to be an encourager. I know some of you have some tough family situations and you are the gospel encouragement for your family. And I want to encourage you as you encourage your family in some hard situations. And we are praying for you. And if there is something specific we can pray for, write it down, drop in a card, we will pray for it. you walk into some hard situations in your families this holiday season, places you don't want to be, people you don't want to be around, meals you don't want to sit down and have to deal with that uncle again. But you are called to be that gospel encouragement. And Paul here is saying that is how the gospel is furthered, is in encouragement, because reality is our world's hurting, right? Our Our world is hurting. We got wars going on. We got chaos around the corner. We got political leaders that are supposed to be our guide that can't even get along with each other. It seems like whatever corner we come around, there's stress, there's anxiety, there's worry, there's anxiousness. Jesus wants to show up in that, in our world and in your life today. And every single day after that, and forever and ever and ever. And it starts with the gospel of encouragement. I want you to be an encourager yourself.

Paul continues on focusing on this idea of explanation. So Paul encourages them, but then he says, "Yet." Just because they're doing great doesn't mean they don't have anything they can't learn. Paul here wants to encourage them to then help them explain the gospel a little bit more. This is Paul's baby here in this letter that he has written. He has taken hours to put this letter together to teach the church in Rome. He says, "I have written you quite boldly on some points proclaiming the gospel of God." Paul here is reminding you it's not his gospel that he's written, but it is God's gospel, and he wants them to continue to grow in their explanation, to be able to share themselves more with others. He continues on, he says, "Because of the grace God gave me to be a minister of Christ Jesus, therefore I glory in Christ Jesus in my sacrifice to God. I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done." Paul here is continuing to even clarify the gospel in his statement of encouragement. But it boils down to this, the church, the gospel of Jesus is for everybody. The gospel is for everybody. It's not about Paul. It's not about the early church. It's not about the fourth fathers or pastors that have come after and those pastors after that. It is about Jesus. The power of the gospel is centered in Jesus, will always be in Jesus and is always for Jesus. Paul here is saying, in probably the best explanation, just a eloquent way of how the gospel is as we walk through these last few weeks, the minute details of the gospel and that changes us. But Paul also calls us then to then share that with others. This isn't just some this amazing thing we hear and we go, "Oh, I love it." It's for us to come in and change us so that then we go, "This is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I can't stop but telling other people about it." You ever had that friend that learned something new or like got into that new hobby or changed their diet and they can't stop talking about it? Kind of annoying, right? God wants that for us. Not to be annoying, but God wants that for us, for other people, that we can't stop talking about it. And in a way that is encouraging, that is loving, that is giving, that is caring.

Paul's going to talk about four key things here at the end of what true relational gospel life looks like, but he He wants them to understand this. He says this in 1 Corinthians, "When I came to you, brothers and sisters, announcing this mystery of God to you, I did not come with the brilliance of speech or wisdom. I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified." We over-complicate this idea of the gospel. We feel, "Well, you know, if I don't have the understanding of all the Bible, if I don't have the degree, if I haven't gone to school, I'm not properly changed." No, the gospel is us living our lives going, "I was messed up, I was lost, I was hurting, I was broken, Jesus showed up, he turned my life around, and I want to encourage you." That's the gospel. Don't overcomplicate it. Paul here is saying, "I didn't have all the answers, I didn't have it all figured out, but it didn't stop me." He still showed up. Paul here is saying, we show up in people, which when we show up in that, it takes us to gospel expansion. When we show up through encouragement, explaining the gospel, it creates this explosion of growth, fueled to this fire of the gospel, to change the world around us. Paul talks about all these different places he's going to go, where the gospel is going to expand north from Israel up into Syria, over into Turkey and Greece, and even into modern Croatia. He's just ready to explode this gospel explanation. And it's really the fulfillment of the words of Jesus in Acts 1-8. It says, "But you will receive the power," remember? "The Holy Spirit comes on you. You be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Paul has this massive vision for the gospel to spread. And I want that to encourage us, not put us down. Because the reality is, if you were to look anywhere around this building, there's people that don't know this Jesus that we worship. There's people that don't have this peace that we do. There's people that don't have this hope, this joy that nothing can take away. That is our gospel expansion. We don't have to be on the level of Paul going to the ends of the earth. That was his calling with Jesus. Our calling may be just our neighbor next door. Maybe how we conduct ourselves online, which if you think about it, takes it to the ends of the earth with technology this day. Isn't that incredible? Maybe it's your family. That's some of the hardest mission work right there. be easy to take me overseas. Now I have to try to show Jesus to my family. Oh, that's what we're called to. That's our mission where Jesus is asking us to take His gospel. So how does all of this work out? Paul here closes this section, talks about four things. He talks about Christian fellowship. Paul talks about, hey, I'm leaving Jerusalem, you guys are in Rome, I gotta go to Spain, I can't wait to see you. Paul's gonna take a jaunt through the Mediterranean Sea, pop into Rome on his way to just spend time with them. Why? Because he desires to be with them. You and I should desire to be with one another. We should want to be here on Sunday because there's something here that we don't get the rest of the week, right? I talked to you guys about some of this. You guys, there's something different about Spring Valley on Sunday morning I just don't get during the week. That's the power of the Holy Spirit. Now I get it, an introvert, you're like, "Eww." I'm an introvert myself, by the way, if you guys didn't know, I fake it really well. Sometimes I don't fake it really well. But even our introverts, it's okay to be here to want to spend time with one another. And Paul sees this and says, "I'm going to come see you. I'm going to make a detour on my trip to come see you." The importance of Christian fellowship.

He talks about the importance of Christian giving. He says in Romans 15:26, "For Macedonia and Ahia, we are pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the Lord's people in Jerusalem." We would read that and go, "Cool, they sent some money," and you keep going on. Here's what's going on. Those are two Gentile churches sending money to the Jewish church in Jerusalem. That's a witness. Because right now Paul is trying to bring these two, which are like oil and water, not mixing well, not playing nice with each other, two different groups of people who both see Jesus as their Savior. Paul here is saying the church is living this out by being generous to send money, even to the church in Jerusalem.

Paul then says in this moment of Christian prayer, Paul knew the power of prayer. He knew that it changes people's lives. He knew that it changed his life. He knows how incredibly amazing this power of prayer is. And then 1530, he says this, he says, "I urge you, brothers and sisters, "by your Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit "to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me." Paul's supposed to be the superstar Christian, right? He's supposed to be like the Superman of the Christian early church. And Paul here is still saying, "I struggle and I need your prayer." If Paul needs prayer, oh Lord Jesus, we all need prayer. And in our Christian fellowship, we have the opportunity to pray with one another, to care for each other, to love each other, to be there when times are great, and when times they ain't great. We do that through prayer. Paul here takes a moment, he actually specifically prays for them, and then he closes with something think we overlook so easily in Scripture.

And that's peace. God's peace. Our peace to share, our Christian peace to share with others. He closes this, essentially at the end of his letter, he says this, he goes, "The God of peace be with you all. Amen." I sat on this verse all week. And at first I was like, "Okay, God of peace be with you all, amen." That's a cool little like email signature, just kind of like down there at the bottom. "Yeah, that's fine, just auto-fill, don't think about it." There's no auto-fill in Paul's letters. Every single word was with purpose and for a reason. And the more that I sat with those words, "God of peace be with you all," changed my week. There were moments of chaos I had this week, and I was reminded of God's peace. And there was just something that happened in that moment I can't explain. And the only way I can explain it is God. It's God. Paul wants you to know all the details about this gospel. He wants you to take it to the ends of the earth. He wants you to have all the answers, all the details. He wants you to have the strongest rebuttal to anybody who comes at you. This thing is written tighter than some legal documents that I've seen in my life. But at the end of the day, the power of the gospel is God's peace with us. So maybe this week you've been through some stuff. We're going to face stuff this week and in the coming weeks that we have no idea. No idea what's coming at us. But you know what will be with us? God's peace. God's peace will be with us every single day. And sometimes we need to remind each other about God's peace. Because sometimes it's so hard we can't even see it ourselves. We're so far lost, we're so far in the dark, we're so far with our head below water. That's where this power of the gospel comes together. And Paul here is saying, in Christian fellowship, in Christian giving and generosity, in Christian prayer, in Christian peace, we see the power of the gospel before our eyes. We can't go back, we can't see Jesus. We can't see Him on the cross, we can't see Him when He lived His life and His miracles and His disciples and everything He did in those years of ministry. can't see that.

But we can see the power of the gospel in each other. And the world around us sees that power of the gospel as well. So as we live with an outward focus, not on ourselves, with humility, and God is our example and Jesus is our guide and the Holy Spirit is our power and the the scripture of God, we live a life that is rooted in love. And when that love is lived out, it ignites and it grows the gospels in an exponential way that nobody can understand. And it changes the world. Paul had this calling to go to the world. Our calling is to change the world around us where we live, learn, work, and play. That's our calling to take God's peace with us as we go.

Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you for your peace. We thank you for your gospel, for your love, for your grace, for your mercy. Jesus, I pray this week as we go that we would carry your peace with us. We would bring encouragement to those in our lives, that we would live with humility, keeping our focus on you, keeping our calling central as Paul was so focused on doing. He knew his calling. There was nothing that was gonna shake him from that, not even the threat of death. Jesus, we may not face death anytime soon, but may we keep this focus of taking the gospel with us wherever we go at the forefront of our mind. God, that we see our community saturated with Your glory. That we see the world around us transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit. Not our power, not our friends' power, not the pastor's power, not anybody's power, but Your power, Jesus. Your Holy Spirit would be with us, reminding us of Your peace. That there's no place we can go without it. It's always right there with us. Jesus, may we go with your gospel. Bring people into our lives this week that we need to encourage in the gospel. We may not have to say anything about the word Jesus or the Bible or church, but just encourage somebody this week in the name of your gospel and the covering of your peace. We thank you, Jesus. We love you. Amen.

Romans - Part 22

Dealing with Each Other’s Differences Peacefully  - Romans 14:1-23

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Today we're going to be talking about something that we all need to hear. be difficult for us to hear, but it's important. Paul thinks it's important, so therefore we must think it is important. So we're gonna be talking about how to deal with each other's differences peacefully. Oh man, peacefully. That last part is so important. We all deal with each other in some way, but Paul says we have to deal with each other peacefully. We've been talking about, through the book of Romans in our series, about how all of us are equipped in different ways. we have different gifts, we're made uniquely, and that's to be celebrated, that's to be appreciated. But it also means, because we're different, that sometimes we ruffle each other's feathers, we get under each other's skins, and so we have to figure out how to deal with each other peacefully.

He's been talking, Paul has been talking a lot about living a transformed life. Ever since chapter 12, he's been talking about the first 11 chapters where all this belief and understanding, and now it's like, this is how to live it out. Chapter 12 and on is, this is practically how to live out your faith. And he's been emphasizing over and over again the importance of loving others, unity in the Spirit, and living at peace with each other. He says, "Because you are transformed by the Spirit, therefore live in this way." loving one another, unified in the Spirit, and living at peace with each other. And that's all been in general since chapter 12. He's like, "Hey, just generally do this." But now in chapter 14, he brings in a real-life example for the Church in Rome. He says, "I know that this is going on, so let's take this example and let's dissect how to live peacefully with each other through this example." And those examples are dealing with food and Sabbath. How perfect is that? It's our Sabbath day today, we have food, that's what the early church in Rome had some trouble over. Because Christians in Rome at the time were divided over the need to continue to observe certain Jewish traditional practices that derived from the Mosaic law hundreds and hundreds of years before the early church, and God gave the law to Moses, and then since then that meant that the Israelites lived in a certain way. And specifically about food, what they were to eat, and all that, and then there's Sabbath day. Well since that time, in those hundred years, it's developed a bit. And so there are some pretty extreme and very rigorous laws that they are to follow. And these things are ingrained in their minds. This is generation after generation after generation of the Jewish people living in a certain way. Living with certain food laws and living with certain Sabbath laws.

I don't know if you've ever had a habit that you've practiced for life and then tried to break. Or maybe you didn't need to anymore, you didn't need to do that thing, but you just kept doing it because you've done it all your life. I think of my dad, who, for all my life, woke up around 5 a.m. for work. And after he retired, he kept waking up at 5 a.m. And I was like, "I'm downstairs." I'd see him, and it's early morning, and I'm with Kinsley, and maybe it's just because I'm jealous of, like, "You don't have to be awake, and yet you are. I want to be asleep, but I can't. But I'd say, "Dad, you don't have to, why are you up?" And he's like, "I just, I am. It's fine. My body just wakes up." It was habit for him. Habits are hard to break, and that's maybe some of what we have to, what we're dealing with here with the Israelites. When it comes to these food and Sabbath laws, it was ingrained not only in their minds, but in their culture. They had practices that they all practiced together, And now, it seemed like life was changing. These food laws and Sabbath laws were potentially causing division in the church amongst believers. And that is, division is something that Paul really does not like. I don't know if you remember, if you were here for the beginning of our series in Romans 1, we talked about how this letter, in part, was to prevent division in the early Roman church. Paul doesn't want it. He doesn't want it for the Roman church, He doesn't want it for any church throughout history. He doesn't want it for our church today. He wants us to be unified together as believers. He loves unity.

So what's causing all this fuss? Well, let me give a little background before we dive into our chapter. These food laws were specific about what the Israelites could eat and could not eat. Now, to be clear, God's law does not forbid Israelites to eat meat in general. But many Israelites living in foreign countries chose not to eat meat because they were afraid that that meat had some association with a false god. In a foreign land, maybe that animal was offered as a sacrifice to a false god, and then it's somewhere down the line after the sacrifice did that, then it became food to sell. And so they just said, "No, we're not going to do that. We're not going to buy any meat, just in... We don't want the chance that it was associated with that." This comes from, if we were to look back in our Bible, and if this sounds familiar, this comes from Daniel. Do you remember Daniel in the Old Testament? Daniel was an Israelite who was taken into captivity, into Babylon. And there, he said to the king, "I'm not going to eat your meat." Maybe you who have grown up in Christian circles recognize the Daniel diet, the Daniel fast, which was just vegetables and grains. Sounds awful to me. I'm so thankful we have meat today. But Daniel said, "I'm not going to do it." And God blessed him, and he was very strong. He was stronger than all the other captives who did eat the meat. And so Israel's taking their cue from Daniel, saying, "Hey, it worked for Daniel. God blessed him. We're going to do the same. When we're in a foreign land, we're going to avoid meat, and we're going to be vegetables and grains." So that's some.

There were others in the early church who lived adhering to the words of Jesus, recent words for them. And he says in Mark 7-19, he declares that all foods are clean. Mark 7-19 says, "Are you so dull," this is Jesus speaking, "Don't you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? For it doesn't go into the heart but into their stomach and then out the body." In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean. So, we have two different camps forming. Now, if Jesus said that all foods are clean, why are some people still practicing the law? Well, we'll kind of get to that in Paul's passage here. I also mentioned Sabbath. So there's food laws and Sabbath laws. And Sabbath was, again, a custom practice for hundreds of years. And over time, that Sabbath list of what Sabbath meant, the list became a long list of what you can't do instead of here's what you are to do. And so in the new church, Sabbath started to take a different role, started to look different. And some were adhering to the very rigorous list of what not to do, and some were saying, "I think Sabbath is just this. It's changing." So again, we have these two parties, two sides forming in the early church, seemingly opposed? Paul's going to question that in a bit. But church, I wanted to ask us, can we relate it all to, in a body of believers, two sides developing within the church? Not talking about outside issues, but inside church issues, have we ever been a part of seemingly taking a side? Maybe it's something about worship, or baptism, or communion, or pews versus chairs, or something like, how do we do small groups? And these things that start forming, and there's a group of people saying, "We gotta do it this way," and there's a group of people saying, "We gotta do it this way." Well, Paul's heart, in our issues, or in the issues of the early Roman church, is that we live in unity with each other. And so we see the importance of dealing with each other's differences peacefully. I also wanna be clear here that Paul is less concerned right now with getting believers to a certain point of belief. Right now in this section of our passage, he's more concerned with the interpersonal relationship between believers. He's not necessarily going to address like, hey, all Christians, you need to be on this side. He's saying, we recognize there are differences. What's more important is how we deal with each other in those differences. Are we loving each other? Are we supporting each other? Are we pushing each other towards Christ? And he's saying this because sadly, the opposite is often true. Even amongst believers in a church, there's often hating each other, judging each other, despising each other, tearing each other away from Jesus with these church issues.

So Paul, in our passage, is gonna give us guidelines on how to live peaceably with each other. And Paul's advice is timeless. He's giving believers a guideline on how to live at peace because of what Christ did for us and for the sake of the gospel. It's so important for the sake of the gospel because of what Christ did for us. And so Paul's thoughts on the matter are laid out in chapter 14, and I wanna take the first 12 verses, which deal, or tell us how to deal with those who differ from us. That's our first section of the first 12 verses are telling us how to deal with those who differ. And he starts off in verse 1 saying this, "Except the one whose faith is weak without quarreling over disputable matters." I'm gonna stop right there, just verse 1. I want us to see that before we get to whose faith is weak and whose faith is strong, we can already sense the tone of Paul, which is again, beating that drum of unity in Christ, loving one another, living at peace with one another. He's going to say this over and over again. And so the sooner we get it, the easier this will all unfold in our minds, and we'll be able to live it out. But he also, I want to point out, the action that Paul tells us to take is not to persuade the other person, it's not to debate or ignore that other person of weak faith, it's not to shame or leave behind them who have weak faith, it's to accept them. It's to accept those who differ. Secondly, Paul states that there are disputable matters. There are secondary issues of the faith.

I had a professor in seminary who really So stuck with me ever since, I'm gonna share it with you. But he gave me some categories, the class with some categories, about how to think of certain things in our faith. And so he has these categories, there's four categories. And the first is the die for category. These are issues of the faith that we are, as Christians, should be willing to die for. These are the most essential, important issues. And these are, no matter what denomination, If you are a Christian, I'm expecting that you adhere to these, you believe these. These are things like Jesus is God. We believe in the Trinity. We believe that God's Word is truth. This Bible is God's spoken word. Those are the die for category. There's maybe a couple more, but those are the die for things. The most important, be essentials. The next category is the divide for. These are issues central to life and worship that maybe we cannot be at the same church. It's worth maybe. These could be things like preaching. Are you a, do you favor expositional preaching or exhortation, just encouraging words every Sunday? Maybe it's worship. I'm saying maybe because these are some of the categories that we might differ on what goes into the some of these categories after the die for. I think we should all agree on the die for, but after these, we might have a couple different differences. So maybe worship. I like this style of worship. I like this style of worship. Well, this church does this, so I'm going to go over here. The next category, third category, is the debate for. These are issues where we disagree, we might even growl at each other, but we work positively to live and laugh together in the the same fellowship. So we might have a good debate, but we're at the same church. We're in the same community. These might be who baptizes who, or maybe the date of creation. How old is this earth? Is it 7,000 years old? Is it 10,000 years old? Is it 100,000 years old? Let's have a good debate, but we're going to worship together. We might disagree. You might say this, I might say that, but we're at the same church together. The fourth category is the "decide for" category. These are issues where the differences are really no issue at all. Like, am I going to raise my hands in worship, or am I not? That's just a personal decision. Yes, I will, or no, it doesn't really affect anyone else. These are just things that some people do, some people don't. We're definitely in the same community, we don't all do it in the same way, right?

So those are four categories. Church, too often, we put things in the wrong categories. And especially the divide four category. Just because we differ on something does not mean that we cannot worship together. And I'm saying this all with not including the die for. We'll all agree, that's a given, we'll all agree on the die for category, but everything else, I think we put too much in the divide for. I think Paul says that too. These discussions often actually push people away from faith, away from the church, away from the people that we're supposed to be in life with. That's not what Paul wants at all. So he's recognizing that there are different categories of issues of faith, disputable matters. But he also brings up who's weak and who's strong in their faith. in their faith. And verse 2 explains, it says, "One person's faith allows them to eat anything, but another whose faith is weak eats only vegetables." So why are they weak and strong? Well, weak because their faith is not large enough to see that Jesus has changed the way that they are to live life by faith. They are still bound by parts of the old law. Paul is saying those who are strong in faith are those who believe that Jesus has changed what is needed to live by faith. Because faith is a—this is earlier, a previous sermon—but faith is a matter of the heart. It's not just our actions. It's not just, "If I do this, this, and this by the law, therefore God loves me." No. It's a matter of our hearts. So in our scenario here, Paul's saying that the weak are those who feel like they have to adhere to food laws. The strong are those who see that all food is clean, and they don't need to do that anymore. But again, as I stated before, Paul's not concerned about getting a certain, like, the weak becoming strong. He's more concerned with their interpersonal relationships. He knows people will disagree, but how do we live together? How do we live at peace with each other? Well, he says an important reminder in verse 3, "The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not. And the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does. For God has accepted them." That last part is key. "For God has accepted them both." The weak and the strong, God loves them. Christ died for them. They are a part of God's family. And verse 4 brings up the point of who are we to judge? It says, "Who are we to judge someone else's servant? So their own master, servant, stand or fall, and they will stand for the Lord is able to make them stand." Paul is reprimanding the early church here for thinking that they have the authority to decide who is acceptable in God's sight. Paul is reminding believers that the fate of Christians is not dependent on all of our opinions, but it's fully in God's hand. It's dependent on God's grace and power. It's not majority vote of, "Hey, we all, all of us believers think it's mostly this way, so God, if you could do that, carry that out, please." No. God is the judge. We are not.

Verse 5 continues, "One person considers one day more sacred than another. Another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind." Now he's switched over to Sabbath, he's talking about some Sabbath issues, and he's talking about the importance of one's convictions and conscience. Each person must operate with a clear conscience, regardless of their practice. Paul does not want any believer to be forced to do something that is against their conscience. And he's saying this, again, in the church, there's a baseline of "these are believers," he's saying this because oftentimes, isn't it that God speaks through our conscience, through the Spirit? We are discerning that God is pulling us in this direction or that direction. So he's saying, don't force someone who is in their conscious, fully convicted that this is the right thing to do. As a Christian, don't force that other believer to do something that they think is wrong. Verse 6, he says, "Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God. And whoever abstains, abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. He's saying both sides have sincerity. Both sides are acting out of good motives, trying to obey and honor God. At their heart, both the weak and the strong are striving to pursue God in their lives. And that's Paul's goal. That should be our, that should be an encouragement to all of us. If we are all striving towards God, maybe it looks a little bit different in these secondary issues, but that should be celebrated. That is a good thing. Paul continues, "For none of us lives for ourselves alone, "and none of us dies for ourselves alone. "If we live, we live for the Lord. "If we die, we die for the Lord. "So whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. "For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life "so that he might be the Lord of both "the dead and the living." I mentioned this last week. Paul, he's a little crazy, right? He lives all out. He wrote in Philippians to live is Christ and to die is gain. He's like, God take me now, if not, I am just like, I don't care if I die, I'm gonna be with you. If I'm here, I'm gonna live all out. He's saying the same thing. If we live or die, all of what we do, all of our lives are unto God. Christ died on the cross for all believers. So don't be judging other people because ultimately we will all stand before God and be judged. Judging others in this scenario is the role of God, and really, again, judging puts distance between us when there should be unity.

My senior year of high school, I just graduated, and me and some of my guy friends, we went on a road trip. And I look back, and I don't know why we did this, but we decided we were in another city, We said, "It's Wednesday, let's go to a small group." In a city we don't know anyone, but we found this small group of a Bible study. And we go and it was a college Bible study, and we get there as brand new, we haven't even been to college, we just graduated. And they had alcohol, and they had beer and wine at the Bible study. And I remember being so uneasy. I was saying, "What are these sinners doing? "Are you serious? Is this even a Bible study? Do they love God?" Now, again, we're not gonna get into if that was good or not, but I think it's very applicable to this situation. And I just sat in the corner and I think they could tell, I was just like, I was like this, and I was like, "I do not wanna be here, these Christians." And they had such a good conversation about Jesus. And they were, but the whole time, you know, they had their cups and everything. I was like, "So, so, I can't even do this." And we left, and I remember having a good conversation with my friends. They seemed less bothered than me. And it was an issue of, was that a sin? Was that a sin that they were doing that? And it's very much this conversation, and it was a growing point for me. Whether I would do that or not, separate issue. But if I look back, I don't think they were sinning. Was it the wisest thing? I don't know. But was it a sin for them to do that? Probably not. Were they fully convicted and saying, we are here gathered together. Let's assume they were all of legal age. That's totally fine. That is, they're worshiping God in a way that they are fully convicted, their conscience is clear. For me, it was not. And, but I was judging them. I was sitting in the corner of that room, judging them to the fullest extent, saying, "God, you should just smite them now. "Like, why continue? "This is terrible." And I had to learn that that was not okay on my end. That was not my place. Now, I should, I'm glad I did. "held to my convictions," as Paul will say, that's important, but I don't need to judge that other Christian for what they're doing.

So there we have our first, did I read every, oh, I didn't read. Oh, first, I'm gonna reread it. If I did read it, I'm so sorry. "You then, why do you judge your brother or sister? "Why do you treat them with contempt? "For we will all stand before God's judgment seat. "It is written, 'As surely as I live,' says the Lord, every knee will bow before me, every tongue will acknowledge God. So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God." Input my story. All right, we come to the middle of our chapter here, and verse 13 serves as this transition. The first half of the verse, which reads, "Therefore, let us stop passing judgment on one another." That kind of summarizes the first 12 verses. And the second half of this verse will introduce Paul's point for the rest of the chapter, which says, Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister. Paul's emphasis now is we need to pursue peaceful relationships. The focus is rather than being reactive, let's be proactive in initiating peaceful relationships with one another. We don't have to wait for some issue to arise. We can be proactive in developing healthy relationships, peaceful ones, knowing that there are issues, but keeping relationship as the focus. Paul's saying in this verse too, that not only is division amongst the church at stake, which is not okay, but people's salvations are at stake. When we put this division, we let that happen, when we let churches divide, people's salvation is at stake. Another quick story. I had a friend growing up. We went to church together, we went to a youth group together for years, we went to summer camps, Christian summer camps together. And then when we graduated, we went to different colleges and we'd come back during summer breaks and Christmas breaks and we'd hang out. In one of those breaks, we were up late at night having a conversation and he was telling me that he no longer thought that the Bible was inherently true. And I remember I just was torn. And I looked back, this is a bad story, by the way, this is an example of what not to do. But in that conversation, I got mad at my friend, and I keep shame on him. I said, "How could you think that? "You don't believe anymore?" And in this moment, I look back and I know that I pushed him farther away from Jesus in that conversation. Now, he's no longer walking with Jesus, and there's still hope, obviously, I haven't given up, I believe that God can do anything, but it pains me to see him not walking with Jesus now for years, and this kind of that time in his life and that conversation being a big point in which he left the faith. But I look back and I did not handle that conversation well. I was not concerned with unifying the body of Christ, living at peace with each other. I chose like battle in that moment. I chose to have, this is worth dividing over, This is worth so much more than what it was really worth. I know that His salvation is not on my hands, but I look back and I do know that I pushed Him farther away. Salvation is at stake when these issues arise.

We must be aware of that. We must love one another, live at peace with each other, and strive for unity. I'm going to keep saying it over and over again. Verse 14 reads, "I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean." Paul's reminding us that it's not necessarily our role to change people's minds. Paul makes his own stance clear, and he's saying, "Hey, I personally believe this. All food is clean. But for someone who thinks it's not, for them it's not clean. Let them be there. Let the Spirit do the work of changing hearts and minds. Right? Romans chapter 12, verse 1 and 2, "Transform through the Spirit." Not through other believers necessarily. We can contribute. Maybe God works through us. But it is not up to us to make sure that that person has to believe that thing. We are tools for the Spirit. We can offer. We can help. But we don't have to make sure, like, "Hey, we're not leaving this conversation until you believe this." That's, we can't do that. That's between them and God. Verse 15 says, "If your brother or sister is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy someone for whom Christ died." That's big. Guys, that's huge. He's saying, "Why antagonize them? If you know where they stand and you are doing something that you know is against their conscience, you are now pulling them away from Jesus. You are the one that needs a heart check in that moment." When we are antagonizing other Christians, we've lost sight of how to view them and love them like Jesus does. We are being selfish in that moment, prideful in that moment. Christ sees them as someone He died for, that He loves. When antagonizing someone and choosing to make those differences deal breakers, we are motivated by our rights that we think we have in Christ, not by Christlike behavior that we should be having between us and another person. Choosing stances and rights over loving behavior isn't the answer. Christ died for all, not just the strong in their faith, but the weak in faith too. Because both titles, as it's implied, they have faith. They have faith in Jesus.

Paul continues in verse 16, "Therefore, do not let what you know is good be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and receives human approval." This is Paul having a big picture moment here. He's like, "Step back and take a look at what's happening. What we receive from God is less tangible than food and drink, but it is far more valuable. Our salvation is far more valuable than the issues of food and drink and what we eat at a table. If you treat other believers as more important than food and drink, you are serving God, You are pleasing God. And Paul says you'll be highly regarded by others as well. Let me ask you this. Have you guys ever been on the receiving end of someone's kindness, sacrificial love, special care and attention to your needs? Maybe it's different than what they usually do, but when they go out of their way to love you, to cater to you, have you received that kind of treatment before? And isn't it so special? Don't you feel so loved in that moment? And you think of that, Like that's a person that really cares. That's a person that went out of their way for me. I feel so loved in that moment. I like that person. I wanna be around that person. As Christians to each other, that's especially who we should be. We should also probably do that for people who are non-believers, but especially in the church, we should be doing that all the time. Should be known for that. All right, we're coming to the end of our passage. Verse 19 says, "Let us therefore make every effort "to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. "Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. "All food is clean, but it is wrong for a person "to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. "It is better not to eat meat or drink wine "or to do anything else that will cause "your brother or sister to fall.”

Once again, he's saying salvation is at stake here. We can actually work against the Spirit in trying to exercise our strong faith, pulling people away from God. And so Paul gives his guidelines. If you're in that situation, he's talking to the early church, if you're in that situation, you know that other person does not eat meat, then don't eat meat around them. Simple as that. You meet them where they're at. It's better not to eat meat or drink the wine or do the thing that you know causes that person to stumble. The stronger faith actually looks like doing what is necessary to love the other person. That is a strong faith. You might have your own convictions. You might know this is, technically Jesus is okay with this, but that person is in that place, so I'm going to reach them where they're at. Verse 22 says, "So whatever you believe about these things, "keep between yourself and God. "Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself "by what he approves, but whoever has doubts "is condemned if they eat, "because their eating is not from faith, and everything that does not come from faith is sin. Paul's saying, "Have your convictions." Most importantly, have those convictions between you and God. It's the most important place to have those convictions. If there's opportunity to share, if you share your convictions with others, that's fine, but that's not the priority. You don't need to make sure that every other person has the same exact conviction as you and how to live that out. Remember those tiers, those categories. These lesser issues, let's work to continue to worship together in community with each other. So, we have Paul's guidelines for dealing with each other's differences in a peaceful way, to live at peace with each other. And we know why. It's for the sake of the gospel. It's for the sake of preserving and encouraging the work that God is doing through His Spirit in each other's lives.

As we close, I want you guys to take an inventory. I'll just kind of reflect right now in your own life. Take inventory of your interactions with people in the church or other believers in your life. Because today's passage is really like an in-house meeting, right? We're thinking of believers, fellow believers. How do we treat people in this room? You don't have to look around if you want to. You can make the eye contact if you want to. How are you treating people in this room? How are you treating people in this room who you know you differ with on some issues? Have you avoided them or are you loving them? Are you being proactive in reaching them? Are you judging others? Which is a heart issue, right? And if that's the case, if you're struggling, then ask God. Submit that before God. Say, "God, man, don't call God man. That's not, don't do that. Have more respect and reverence. God, I'm struggling with loving this other person. I'm struggling with not judging them. I just constantly judge them for how they live out their faith. Ask the Spirit to help you in that, to give you what you need. And then like I asked, how are you being proactive in pursuing peaceful relationships? How are you being intentional to love other people in this church? Even in areas or in ways that you you may disagree, how are you thinking about loving others? Not just reacting, if this happens, then sure I'll love. How are you going out of your way, intentional with your time, to love? I'll close with this. Becky and I had the privilege of going to a musical this weekend. We got to see Les Miserables on Broadway, which is a personal fave, we hadn't seen it before. I love it. If you don't know the play or the musical Les Miserables, about takes place in the French Revolution. It follows this man named Jean Valjean, and it's this hard, hard life that he lives. But at the very end, he—spoiler, it's been out for years—spoiler, he dies. Sorry, still worth it, go see it. But he's reflecting on his life, he's had a very, very hard life, and he says this line, he says, "To love another person is to see the face of God." And I love that. I mean, this whole musical I love, and there's a lot of biblical themes throughout this musical. But he, through his hard life, has chosen to go out of his way, when he didn't have to, to love people, to care for people. And he sings this song, "To love another person is to see the face of God." I think Paul would completely agree, and Paul would motivate us to say, "How many times are you going to see God in your life? How often do you want to see God? Well, if you want to see Him often, love other people. Because as Paul has said in previous chapters, "When you do that, you are loving me." That's God. When you love other people, you are loving God. Everything we do in life, everything we do, the words we speak, the actions we take, is all a living sacrifice to God. So in everything we do, when we love others, even when it is difficult, even when they are challenging, we are loving God. So will you choose to love someone this week? Will you choose to live peacefully with someone who may be challenging or difficult this week.

Let's pray. God, thank you for your word. Thank you for setting the perfect example through your son Jesus. Thank you for Paul's letter to the Roman church to help us understand what it means to live this Christian life. And not just in the easy ways, but in the challenging ways. living with each other when it's difficult. I pray that you would rely on your spirit for that, that you would give us compassion, grace, kindness, patience, perseverance to remain united as a body of Christ for the sake of the gospel and because of what you've done for us. God, put that on our hearts. Encourage us, empower us in that way. And we trust that we will see the glory and the benefit of doing what you have commanded through your word That your kingdom will grow People will come to know you We praise you for all that you're doing in our lives and through us god we pray this in your name. Amen.

Romans - Part 21

More Evidence of A Life Transformed - Romans 13:1-14

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

It's good to be with you all this morning as we are, I mean we are so close to wrapping up our series in Romans. Not that I want to be done, but it's just nice to know that we're going to complete the whole book of Romans in one year. That is quite a feat for all of us. So, a few more weeks. We are in Chapter 13 today. As we continue to discuss the transformation done by the Spirit of God that occurs in our hearts, in our minds, basically the entirety of who we are, we continue to see, Paul explains, how the Christian life should be lived out, which is with love in all settings. In our series in Romans, we've turned the corner from knowledge and belief, which was a lot of the first many chapters of Romans, to now action and practice. Paul is reminding the believers in Rome of their responsibility to follow Jesus and explaining what that should look like. Last week, Pastor Chris preached on the transformation trifecta, or the transformation hat trick. We all learned what a hat trick, where that came from. Super, super interesting. But more importantly, we talked about what a transformed life looks like. And we continue that conversation today about a transformed life. Something to remember, as Paul is expressing how we live our lives, and how that should be changed to be more like Jesus, this is all under the umbrella of God's kingdom, right? we all belong, if you believe, to God's kingdom. And God's kingdom is a heavenly kingdom, not an earthly kingdom. Meaning it's not like the Roman Empire, it's not like America or any other country today, where it's bound by certain perimeters, and it doesn't come from a certain location or physical traits. God's kingdom, the identifying marker, comes from within someone. Right? It comes from the heart. what Paul talked about in chapters previously, it's what matters inside of your heart that if you belong to God's kingdom or not. In youth group right now, we're going through the parables. And we're talking about why Jesus taught in parables. You know, why did he just come out and say what he was trying to say? Parables are these short stories in the Bible that Jesus really short, and they all contain a lesson or some kind of truth, but it's hidden, right? It's hidden in there. And usually the parables talk about one of two things, either God and who He is and what He does, or God's Kingdom.

Well, Jesus spoke in parables to be subversive about His Kingdom, not to raise the suspicions of the religious leaders or the Roman Empire. Because if Jesus was just out there saying, "Hey, my kingdom is going to last forever. Hey, come be a part of my kingdom," then the religious leaders and Romans would have been like, "What is this guy talking about? And do we need to take care of this guy right now?" I want to raise some red flags. But Jesus spoke in parables, allowing those who wanted to wrestle with it to dwell on that, to figure out that story, and to hopefully come to the right conclusion that Jesus is God, and that his kingdom is a heavenly kingdom. Also, think about it this way. If Jesus really wanted to take over the world with an earthly kingdom, he could have done it, right? That we know who Jesus is and what he can do. But instead, Jesus himself talks about submitting to earthly authorities, to living in peace, and loving your neighbor and even your enemy. So Jesus' kingdom is subversive. It's not needing to overthrow the current kingdom or regime, but it goes for the heart of people. And God's kingdom can grow and thrive, regardless of what authority is in charge here on earth. So Paul continues to describe and exhort a life of transformation in Christ that should be present no matter what circumstance is going on.

So I want to read from chapter 13, we're going to read the first seven verses. Verse 1 says, "Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear from the one in authority? Then do what is right, and you will be commended. For the one in authority is God's servant for your good, but if you do wrong, be afraid. For rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God's servants, agents of wrath, to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment, but also as a matter of conscience. This is also why we pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing. Give to everyone what you owe them. If you owe taxes, pay taxes. If revenue, then revenue. If respect, then respect. If honor, then honor." This section right here is all about submitting to authority. This has been a passage well-referenced in the past three years now. In 2020, when everyone's life, in churches included, got flipped upside down, pastors were flipping to this passage so quickly. What does God say? What—and Christians—just what does God say about submitting to authority? And while we're not going to go into the answer to that question in 2020, I bring it up to say that we today still feel like this is very relevant.

What are we to do? Also, Paul thought it was extremely relevant during the early church. Which means, my point is, this is always relevant for the believer. This tension that we may feel about submitting to authorities is one that we can expect as believers of Jesus. Jesus addresses it, Paul addresses it, we will address it, for the rest of our lives in the church, we will continue to hear about what it means to submit to authority. And within these first seven verses, Paul speaks some truths. The first is, in the first couple verses, he describes that God is sovereign. Paul makes it very clear, "Submit to the governing authorities above that God had placed there." Paul is helping us right now comprehend how government and God relate to each other. And he shares that the governments are God's servants, at least they were supposed to be. They existed for punishing evil and rewarding good. And while sometimes that does happen, and the government is doing what God wants a government to do, we also recognize that we live in a fallen world, right? And there are times when a government is not doing what a government should do, run by people who are not following God's instruction, or not taking the opportunities that God has presented to either punish evil or reward good. But instead, the people in government might act selfishly, sinfully. And unfortunately, it causes injustice to many people. So church, we know we cannot expect to have perfection from a human government. Again, a government run by people who are marred by sin, driven by selfishness and pride. But as Paul says, it doesn't mean that God doesn't have a purpose or a plan or that he's not in control. God remains sovereign, constantly redeeming situations, constantly redeeming people, redeeming circumstances for his good. We'll get to more about submitting to authority and the good that is still happening in government. He also says that whoever rebels against these governments is actually rebelling against God.

Now, we might be quick to think of exceptions, and there are exceptions to this. I was just recently watching a World War II show, and obviously that brings to mind one of the biggest exceptions in history of rebelling against government, and how that, in that case, was better. It was more God-honoring to do that against an authority that was so clearly doing evil. But while there are exceptions, the standard truth that Paul shares that we need to remember and act accordingly is that no matter who is in charge and authority over us on earth, God is sovereign. And the expected actions for believers is to submit to that authority.

The second truth that he brings up is the need for Christians to fear God over the fear of man. Fear God over fear of man. If you want to be free from fear, then honor God. Honor God, follow his ways, and you will have nothing to fear. Now Paul, as you may know, is a bit extreme. He lives like, he'd be an adrenaline junkie if he were around today. I would expect him to be jumping off of cliffs and sky, like all these crazy things. He wrote in Philippians 1 21, "For to me," this is Paul speaking, "For to me to live is Christ, to die is gain." There's a little, I mean, even from his own words, he's like, "I'm living to die really. "I cannot wait to be in heaven with God. "God take me now and I don't care if I die." So while ideally we may all agree, yes, I get what you're saying, Paul. We may not live that hard in our faith. But he is saying, he has the eternal future in mind, and he's saying that that's the most important thing. A lot of things are going to happen on earth. A lot of maybe scary things are going to happen on earth. But ultimately, if we remember number one, that God is sovereign, we don't have that much to fear on earth. The biggest fear we may have is, where are we going to be with God? Are we going to be separated from God or are we gonna spend eternity with God? That is the biggest fear that we can have, an eternal perspective. Our eternal destiny is more important than anything that happens on earth. So Paul is saying, if you do what is right, according to scripture, if you honor God, then you have nothing to fear. Your heart, your mind will be at peace because you're living righteously before God who is judge over all, and that's ultimately what matters. So Paul's reminding believers in Rome who did deal with persecution and could have had a lot of things to fear in their day to day, don't fear them over God. Fear God and obey and follow Him.

And then thirdly, submit to authorities for our conscience because our whole lives are an act unto God. Remember this from chapter 12, verse one, "Your bodies, all of who you are, offer it as a living sacrifice to God." So even how we interact with the government is an act unto God. And so our point actually goes from submitting to authority to submit to God. If we think of it in this way, this will help us as we live out our faith in our day-to-day lives. As people transformed by the gospel, we must submit. You're gonna follow the example of Jesus, of the disciples, of Paul, who submitted to the authorities above them. Now this may mean a change of expectations for some of us, right? Some of us might expect our world today or our government today to perfectly reflect God's standards of righteous living. And as stated above, we live in a fallen world. I'm not saying we shouldn't try to influence this world for good, our government for good. Of course, of course we can and of course we should. We want to see people honor God. We would love to live in a society that has a structure that honors God. But as for our expectations, let's not be so surprised that sin is still rampant in our world. And even in the governments that we are called to submit to. Paul is writing this in the midst of the Roman Empire, which had its own many sketchy accounts, and it has its own history, that this is very needed. And we live today in a world, well, in America with a government that does good and still produces injustice, and we are called to submit. I also wanna remind us of this, that Paul is writing this describing a life of transformation through the spirit, right?

We're going back to chapter 12, was kind of this new section of the book, and we're still under that. This is all proceeding that heading of being transformed by the spirit. So not only are we called to live a life, submitting to the authorities, transformed by the spirit, but we need to be sustained by the spirit. We cannot do this on our own strength, out of our own will. We need the spirit of God to live like this. And furthermore, also from chapter 12, we need to use the gifts that God has given us, and we need to be within the community of a church. Then this instruction is much easier to follow, right? Together, we can submit to authority. We can encourage each other to fear God over man, and we can praise God together that he is sovereign over all, right? Together, we are stronger and able to do this. When one of us is not feeling it, the other, the rest of us can come around and say, "Hey, remember this truth, remember who God is?" And when we're feeling like we're not able to do it, we can have others come and support us. This is all read, meant to be read in the context of a church body. So Paul moves from the civil authorities that are above us to the law of God. That was a more tangible reality for the Jews, but still relevant for us today, as it is wisdom guiding us towards God. It's the law in our hearts. And so I wanna read verses eight through 10, which say, "Let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another. For whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and whatever other command there may be are summed up in this one command, love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law. This is all about loving your neighbor. Love is the fulfillment of the law. When we live out the life that we should, like Christ, it is a life full of love for others. Paul is telling us that the biggest evidence of a transformed life is upholding the law, the way of Jesus, and seeing a love for others coming from our lives. Remember that Jesus, when asked by the Pharisees, what's the greatest commandment? Jesus said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, "with all your soul, with all your mind." And the second is like it, "Love your neighbor as yourself." All the law, which as Jesus is saying, is all the Old Testament, all of that and the prophets, hang on these two commandments. So Jesus is saying, "This is pinnacle to your faith." And Paul is repeating that now. "Love your neighbor as yourself.”

These verses here in Romans tell us of a life that God intended for humanity to live, defined by love for one another. Because if we truly love one another, then we don't have late payments and outstanding debts from friends. We don't murder, we don't commit adultery, we don't steal, we don't covet. All those things are selfish. Those are actions that put our own desires, ambitions, before others, and even more so at the cost of others. When we act selfishly, and if we were to do any of those things, we are taking from someone else, but we should not be taking from someone else. Those actions are actions of a life that has not yet been transformed, and does not yet acknowledge Jesus as the ruler of their lives, but still follows their own path, their own heart. And all those evil actions happen when you love yourself first and foremost, when you're not loving God and loving others. So a life defined by the love of Jesus does no harm to neighbors, does not hurt other people, does not take from others. So church, what about you? Are you living selfishly? Are you leaning into your sinful desires and ambitions? Or are you living a life transformed by God, loving others? Are you loving your neighbor as yourself?

Paul continues in the rest of this chapter with this comparison, the difference between a transformed life and one not yet transformed by the Spirit, by addressing a situation that we all go through, but go through differently. It starts in verse 11, which reads, "And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over, the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh. Paul is talking about living with a godly urgency. Let me ask you this. Have you ever woken up from a night... Yeah, have you ever woken up from sleep so deep, so restful that you woke up actually energized? No coffee needed. You just woke up and you were like, "Oh my goodness, I need to do something. Let's do something today. Let's clean out that shed. What's my to-do list that I haven't gotten to?" You just woke up, maybe it was 12, I don't know how many hours you need to wake up like that. I can't remember the last time I woke up like that. Or any of you, maybe you're like, "I don't know what that's like." But it's a thing. I think our kids wake up like that. They wake up with all the energy and they're like, "Whoa, what am I going to play with right now?" But that's kind of what Paul is talking about here. It's a spiritual awakening. A spiritual awakening is when you give your life over to Jesus, and then he starts to transform you, and you see the new way in which you should live, and it's invigorating. It's, "Yes, God, what is this life that I'm called to? What can I do? How can I love?" And this is important because the time, as Paul says, the time is now to demonstrate faith in Christ and love for one another. Why is the time now? Why does he say the day is near? Well, we often hear the day is near in Bible, and we think of some apocalyptic scene from the Bible where the world is ending. But Paul is not necessarily doing that.

He's more so just describing in a figurative way that the darkness, which is the evil reign of sin in our lives, is coming to an end. In the daytime, the rule of Jesus, right, light in the Bible always representing truth and goodness, that time has begun. So these verses about the darkness ending in a time of light or daytime beginning within us also sound like Paul in Ephesians when he writes, "Put off the old man and put on the new." You guys have heard that verse, talking about, again, a transformed life. " Shed the old sin and the desires of our natural flesh and put on the new man," the one defined by the Spirit. step forward into a life of following Christ. That is what is needed right now. In verse 11, Paul says that our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. Today we would call that the process of sanctification. Through the work of the Spirit in our hearts, we are made more and more like Christ every day. And so when we finally get to heaven, one day we will then be made perfect. No more sin, no more evil, no more darkness at all. Right now, we still deal with that. Hopefully less and less as time goes on as we follow Jesus, but it is always around us. So he's writing to the church in Rome and he's reminding them that their sanctification, that moment of perfection in heaven is growing closer day after day, which should bring hope, which should bring joy and motivation.

And then in verses 13 through 14, Paul ends this section with more practical reminders of what righteous living looks like. A life of faith and obedience to Christ. No matter what is happening around us, if it is end times or not, this is what a life of Christ should look like. I was just met with Daryl a couple weeks ago, and we were talking about end times and how the end times can be a fun, especially intellectual, stimulating conversation. But really the most important thing about any conversation about the end times and that the Bible stresses is how we live as Christians. It's not necessarily important to know when things will happen, what is gonna happen, what it exactly looks like. The most important thing is how will we live as Christians? Will we honor God in those times? Do we feel the responsibility to live for Jesus no matter what is happening? The end times demand that Christians be bold in their faith, confident in their belief, and ready to share the gospel. In the last couple decades, there's a growing genre of movies, of TV shows about the end of the world and whatever that may look like. Zombies, I don't know, there's a bunch of them out there. But it's all about like, hey, the end of the world is happening. You know, movie scenes that like the world is destroyed. And inevitably, in these shows or movies, there is a character who lives out that, you know, the rest of their lives on earth, whatever, however long that is, simply for their own pleasure. Whatever that entails, whatever that means, crossing someone or going over someone, harming someone, they live to get whatever they want. Because why not? It's the end of the world. There's, what are the consequences? They're gonna do whatever they wanna do, no matter what it costs someone else. And that theme in those shows and movies exist because it's a real thought and desire that people have. Hey, if I wasn't limited by all these things around me, this is what I would do. It's something that even Paul recognizes and speaks against here. This isn't a time to live into the flesh, but to live urgently for Jesus. So again, as we consider these two types of people that Paul has kind of presented, one transformed by the gospel and the other not yet transformed by the gospel, we recognize the difference between the two and how they live, especially in light of governments, of community, of people around them. One is only for themselves, selfish, not loving others, but out for their own pleasure and ambition. and the other transformed by the gospel, through Christ, loving others, living with an urgency to share the gospel with other people. And you see church, Jesus wants us to look to the future, not with fear, but looking forward, seeing opportunity, an opportunity to live like Christ, to love others with the love of Jesus, to share the hope and joy and peace that is only found in Jesus. So many people look and move forward in fear and anger and with a negative outlook, but in Christ and transformed by the Spirit, we can move forward in peace, knowing that all of who Jesus is and all that he does is good, and that he is for us. We have nothing to fear but him. So we need to live with a godly urgency. There's no time for us to take our faith so casually, to think to ourselves, you know, I'll eventually get around to addressing that part of my life, but right now it's fine, I enjoy it. It's not good, but you know, we'll focus on this part over here right now. No, no, no. God's not saying that. He's not saying take your time in being transformed. He wants you to commit all out to being transformed by the Spirit.

Live a godly life now, have some urgency. I wanna take some time at the end here to reflect on a few things. And again, bringing forward these two types of people. One is first person who lives according to their own heart, out of selfishness, out of their own strength and whatever limits they may have. They are trying maybe to live amongst people, governments, the ever-changing political landscapes, but naturally they just live selfishly. There's a limit to how much they care for others. And usually they will harm others, hurt others, take from others. And they live in that evil and darkness. And that's tiresome, that's exhausting. It constantly tests the limits of that person, physically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and it brings forth no good fruit. It only yields more sin, more selfishness, and more darkness. Now, there's another type of person whose life is continually being transformed by God, by the gospel, someone who depends on God in their everyday life and has a heart and mind that love God and love others, loves others. They can live like Jesus amongst authorities, governments, and communities. They can live a life that fulfills the law, the way of Jesus, the way that God desired humanity to live. And they can live with the uncertainty of what may happen in the world, but confident that Christ is with them, living with an urgency to share the love of God and Christ with other people.

And so which one are you? If you were to take inventory of your life right now, Just think and reflect back, maybe just even in this past week of your life. Think about your actions, your heart, your thoughts, the motivations within you. Which person are you? How have you been living? And have you been living the transformed life? Or have you been living in darkness? Or maybe falling asleep again to the new life that God has called you to? Are you living out of fear of man, of government, or anything or anyone other than God? And if that's you, if you're noticing that your life is not yet showing evidence of Jesus, but you want that to change, then do that today. Pray to God, repent of your sins, and ask that Jesus would reign in your life, and that the Spirit would start to transform your heart and mind. And if you do see evidence, if you've thought back in this past week, if you have moments where like, that was the spirit at work within me, thank you for that, then praise him and continue to strive after him and live dependent on him. So church, we'll close with this. How will you respond to every circumstance in love? Whatever you're going through right now in life, dealing with difficult family members, stressing about finances and it's leaving you frustrated and fearful about the future, trying to navigate your career, whatever it may be, take inventory, are you relying upon the spirit or your own strength to get through that situation? And how will you love others in that circumstance?

And then lastly, what urgency do you have in your faith? We can get so sucked in and hyper-focused on our lives that we forget the larger picture that God has called us to, that we are a part of. The things we think about that we dwell on could be good things, but if they put our faith, our responsibility to the gospel, our responsibility to the kingdom of God, if they put them on the back burner and it puts us to a spiritual sleep, then we are not living with the urgency that we need to. We need to be like Paul, a little bit more extreme, having the gospel on the forefront of our minds, having that eternal perspective on the forefront of our minds. As he says, to live is Christ. To live this life is for him, first and foremost. And to die is gain. My prayer this week is that God would show each of us how to live urgently for him while loving those around us.

Romans - Part 20

Transformation Hat Trick - Romans 12:9-21

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

I'm excited to jump back in. It's been, I don't know how many weeks since I've been up here to teach, and so it's like learning how to ride the bike again. So it might be a little wobbly this morning, but I know you guys will bear with me. But Pastor Andre has been holding down the fort for us for the last few weeks, diving, continuing in our series in Romans, and I'm so grateful. It's amazing to have a partner in crime like him around here to be able to work together and lead this church. So we're gonna be in part 20. Can you guys believe it? Part 20 of Romans, and we're gonna wrap up Romans chapter 12 today.

And last week, Pastor Andre jumped in and he really talked about this transition that's happening in the book of Romans right now. Paul has gone and focused so much on the details. I mean, the nitty gritty, the itty bitty pieces on the power of the gospel and how the power of the gospel. I mean, he argues with himself, it feels like, at some points in this book and we even get lost. I know we've had those weeks where it's like, okay, what did he say right there? I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, what? And he just like feels like you're running a circle. But he's literally putting forth a airtight argument about the power of the gospel and how that is focused and centered on Jesus Christ. And so Paul here is now in chapter 12, making the shift into, so then what does that mean for us? Because it's not just a situation where it's just about God. It's just about him and what Jesus did and all his power and his might and how amazing he is. That's all great and fine and dandy, but there's a very practical side for us and what it means for you and me every single day. Not just when we show up on Sunday and we go, "Oh yeah, power of the gospel. Hey Jesus, good to see you. Okay, cool. I'll see you next Sunday." But the power of the gospel affects us and our lives and our heart every single day.

And Paul here is locking down all the details of what it means to live this life in light of the power of this gospel. Pastor Andre last week shared and set this up with verses 12, one and two, in a different sort of a translation. And I love what he said here. Pastor Andre said, this theologian took these verses and kind of put it into some modern language for us to understand. Says this, he says, "So here's what I want you to do. God helping you take your everyday ordinary life, you're sleeping, you're eating, you're going to work, you're walking around life and place it for God as an offering. Embrace what God does for you is the best thing that you can do for Him. Don't become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what He wants for you and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out in you, develops well-formed maturity in you."

I love that version. 'Cause sometimes we can read these letters and if we remember these letters were written in the culture and the context of that day and age, still grounded in God's truth. So when we can take those scriptures and kind of unwrap them a little bit and turn them into our culture and understanding, it's pretty amazing. We don't lose sight of the truth that is at the core of it, but puts in a little bit sometimes, little bits and pieces to understand a little bit easier. But I love it, he said there right in the middle. He says, "Don't become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit right into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what He, God, wants from you and quickly respond to it." You and I, as followers of Jesus Christ, we call ourselves Christians, aren't supposed to look like the culture around us. We are supposed to look a little bit different. And that's okay. That's what Paul here is talking about. He wants you to be a little bit different. And instead, we're to be more like Jesus, to be all who God created us to be. God has a purpose for our lives. There's a reason that you're still here on this earth, breathing and alive. God still has a job for you to do. God still got something He has specific for you, and He wants you to receive that purpose and calling through the power of the gospel. The problem is though that sin has marred us, sin has changed us. It's disrupted this plan that God had for each and every one of us, this perfect image that Christ desires for us. But what's amazing is that in the power of the gospel in Jesus, we are healed. We have clarity and we are transformed. We're not the same that we once were. And Paul here in this moment, he's going to dive back into this focus on transformation.

And that's where we're going today. We're going to focus on verses 9 through 21 in this idea of being transformed. Paul here is gonna focus on three specific aspects of transformation in our heart of what I'm titling today, if you wanna write down, Paul's transformation trifecta. Or another way would be the transformation hat trick. You guys know what a hat trick is? So if you don't know, it's okay. I learned some more myself this week. It was really cool. I did a little deep dive on hat tricks. But a hat trick is a concept that's more focused on hockey or soccer, but actually originated with British cricket. But it's the idea of doing something three consecutive times within a period of time. So whether that's in an inning, whether that's in a half, that's in a game at itself, in a quarter, however you want to look at that time, a hat trick is done three times, usually associated with goals or scoring or touchdowns or something like that. Little side note. Last Thursday night, not Thursday, but the one before that. Oh boy, you know where it's coming. The Chicago Bears beat up on a team in Washington, D.C. and royally beat the snot out of them. It was amazing. Sorry if I got any Washington fans in here. I don't think we have any in our church. Whoa! But what was amazing is one of the wide receivers, DJ Moore, had three touchdowns in the game. And this is something we see more in modern sports, but back in the day, like that was huge. And for the Chicago Bears who have never had a decent wide receiver or quarterback since like the 30s or 40s, or a hundred year decades here, back in the day when the film was black and white and it was all blurry and you could barely see where the ball was. Yeah, that footage we've had great wide receiver. Today, no. So to see in high definition 4K, a game where there's three touchdowns was pretty amazing. It was a highlight of my week, but I'll digress. Paul here, he's talking about this idea of a trifecta or a hat trick. Side note, hat trick comes from British cricket when a pitcher or let me get the term correctly here. Where's it at? A bowler retired three batsmen or hitters and three consecutive balls would then give, be brought out a brand new hat at the pitcher mound by the other opponent team on their bill. That's a hat trick. There you go, the more you know.

We're gonna dive into Romans here real quick. You're not here to learn about hat tricks. But Romans chapter 12, we're gonna start in verse nine. Paul says this, "Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil, cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord's people who are in need. Practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. Do not repay evil, or evil, but be careful to do what is right in the eyes of anyone. If it is possible, as far as depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath. For it is written, "It is mine to avenge," says God. I will repay, says the Lord. On the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Pray with me. Jesus, we thank you for this morning. God, we are so grateful again to be here in your presence, to learn from your servant Paul and to learn from your word, God. Jesus, I pray that it would penetrate our hearts, it would literally transform us, as Paul is calling us to today, into who you desire for us to be, your image, God, not ours. So Jesus, I pray that we would have open ears, open hearts, open minds, and open souls today to learn what you desire for us. We thank you, Jesus, we love you, amen.

Paul's jumping in here, this first part, and he's talking about the first of the trifecta, and that is being transformed in love. Being transformed into those who are holy and pleasing to God, Paul says at the beginning of this chapter. It is about transformation. And is it to a point that we live out love in a sincere way? I think for us in our day and age, sometimes it's easy to get caught up in hypocrisy. It's really easy. It's so easy to get caught in this place where it is to live a life without hypocrisy. It's that's hard. Being a hypocrite means to claim to be one thing and yet you act like something else. It's about more than just being polite here, Paul is saying. You heard the term bless their heart. You're not blessing their heart. You're calling them a doofus in a really polite way that they have no idea 'cause they don't understand what you're saying. Paul isn't saying here, "Oh, just bless their hearts." Paul is saying here, "We have to be sincere. We have to love. We have to stop pretending to love people." Think we've done a really good job of that in our lives, of pretending to love other people, but then actually truly loving those who love us, right? It's easy to get caught in this. And Paul here is saying, "We have to be transformed. Love has to be sincere. It takes concentration, it takes effort, it costs us something, right? To love somebody, it costs a piece of us, whether that's our time, our money, our personal involvement. But we also have to remember that no individual has the ability to love a whole community. That's where the church comes in. Pastor Andre talked about that last week when we have all been giving gifts and talents and abilities to love people so that together we can collectively love the world around us. We should be known as Christians by our love. When people hear the word "Christian," I don't think they hear that. I hope and pray that one day the world will hear the word "Christian" in church and go, "That's a group of people who love." That's what I want to be known as, to be one who loves, not just claiming to love, but actually truly loving God first and foremost, as it says in the Scripture, but to really love others and love those around us. If you want to take a deeper dive into this, check out 1 Corinthians 13. It goes deep on what true love is.

Paul specifically uses also this word honor here. And I really like this, 'cause I don't know that we do a good job of honoring people in our society. I think we put people on pedestals, we give awards, we do all kinds of the charades, but I don't know that we truly honor people. Paul here says that we are to honor others by loving them. And we can honor people in one of two ways. We can either honor people for our own personal gain with different motives. We honor our boss, why? Maybe a little paycheck raise, a little bump up in status. Maybe if you have an employees or you manage people, you honor them, why? So they'll work harder for you so that you look good for the boss up top and you can make your way up in life. There's a lot of people doing things in life just to gain a competitive edge in the name of love and honor, but that's not at their heart. We might honor wealthy people, so they might give money to us or help us in a need. We might honor a powerful person so they might be inclined to use their power for our gain or maybe in hopes that they wouldn't use their power against us. You can also honor people by God's way. Honoring God's way is full of love. And it's honoring other people, not because of what they've done or what we can gain from them or how we can get a competitive advantage, but it's loving other people, why? because they too are made in the image of God. They too are a son or a daughter of the Lord Almighty. And that is how we honor, because of the unique contribution that they can make for God's church to change the world and to change lives for Christ.

Paul then touches next on hospitality. This is a huge way, a practical way of showing love to people around us, and I think it's a lost art. I will say this, you guys have so incredibly honored and loved our family during this time of our littlest being born. You guys have given us meals, you guys have sent money, you guys have showed up in our, I mean, we literally have had diapers and wipes sitting in our front room because we were out of room trying to store them, 'cause you guys are amazing. You guys have showed hospitalized, and we have felt it. We've never been loved like this in the church before. And you guys have honored us, you guys are incredible. Our crew, we have four kids now, we call ourselves a crew. Our crew now has been honored with your hospitality. And Paul here is saying, I wanna make a distinction here because there's a difference between hospitality and entertaining. I think sometimes we get caught in thinking hospitality has to be entertaining, that it has to be a perfect, the house has to be perfectly clean, the food has to be perfectly cooked. You have to be honoring, you have to have it all together when they show up at the house, everything has to be just absolutely right. Who's that about? It's about us. That's our own motive. But the way to truly show hospitality is about your guests. And I will say this, I read this week and it hit me hard that you can show hospitality even in the midst of a messy home. You can show hospitality with even a simple meal, a can of soup can show hospitality. You can do chores. You can clean a house together with somebody and show hospitality to them. And Paul here is saying, we have to show love in hospitality. So I want to encourage you, don't hesitate to offer hospitality just because you don't think it's good enough or you're too tired or you're too busy or you're not wealthy enough off to entertain because it's not about entertaining. It's about hospitality.

Paul then says in verses 14 to 15, bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse, rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn. we can, as brothers and sisters usually do, even in the church, brothers and sisters, we can get under each other's skin. We can really drive each other nuts sometimes, right? But Paul here is saying that we as a church family have to reconcile with one another. He's reminding us that even in the midst of conflict, disagreements, both inside and outside of the church that we're to work towards reconciliation. Coming together, showing love even when the other party is not showing love. That is true love right there. I think in today's world of this never-ending lawsuits and incessant demands for our legal rights and all these things that we get caught up in here. Paul is reminding us to forgive. To forgive, to break the cycle. That's what Paul wants here. He wants to break this cycle of non-never-ending, conflicting, battle, fighting, pushing back. "It's my right. No, it's my right. No, it's my right." Paul wants us to break the cycle with this idea of reconciliation to one with one another. 'Cause he says in verse 16, "Live in harmony with one another. "Do not be proud, but be willing to associate "with people of low position. "Do not be conceited." Not only is Paul here talking and making it incredibly clear that our personal state of pride needs to go away, Not only are we to not be proud, but we shouldn't even associate or spend time with the proud. This one kind of hit me weird this week. Because I'm like, "Well, God, if I'm not supposed to associate with Him, how do I share a gospel with people who don't know and understand this?" But I think there's a level here of being around people and associating yourself with them. that associating yourself or being with them, you allow their influence on us. But I think it first starts with us and how we act and our love and our hospitality and our generosity and our actions outside of them is the way that we show that towards them but still being around them but not letting that outside influence come into us. Does that make sense?

This idea of being humble and owning this mentality of humility. And that's our second one today, is this idea of being transformed in humility. If you want to be more like Jesus, surround yourself with people who are like Jesus. Simple as that. That's how it happens. When it comes to humility, Paul also says this in these verses, "Share with the Lord's people who are in need. Verse 13, he says practice hospitality. Verse 13, he says do not be conceited. Verse 16, he says do not repay anyone evil for evil. Verse 17, he says be careful what to do is to do what is right. Verse 17, Paul is super concerned with us understanding that the person who is transformed by Jesus is a person who is transformed in humility. That's what it's about. That is what God wants from us. Sinners are selfish. Sinners seek to prove themselves right. Sinners try to get their own way. Sinners care concern is primarily with themselves. That's not with the followers of Jesus, right? Followers of Jesus, they are transformed. They are selfless. They are humble. They seek the good of others to help care for them.

Paul wraps all of this up, talking about and focusing on the third aspect, is being transformed in peace. New Testament has a lot to say about this concept of people of peace and followers of Jesus being people of peace. Paul says a lot here in these verses on this and focuses in on what it means to be transformed by people of peace. It says in verse 12, "We are to be patient in affliction. Says in verse 14, "We are to bless those who persecute us." Verse 14 also says, "We are to bless and to not curse." Verse 16, "We are to live in harmony with one another." Verse 17, "We are not to repay anyone evil for evil, but we are to do what is right in the eyes of everyone." Paul clearly here then in verse verse 18 says, "If possible, as far as it depends on you, "live at peace with everyone." That seems like an impossible task, right? How are we to begin to live at peace if there are a world around us that seems to have no peace? Nevertheless, Paul says, "Do not take revenge, "but leave room for God." It's not about God. It's not about us. Could it be any clear what Paul is calling us to here? It's a monumental task when we really think about this as a whole, going like, are you kidding me? To all of this? But have you ever met somebody who's just looking for a fight? You don't wanna be around them. Nobody wants to be around them. Nobody wants to deal with them. You don't even wanna think about that person. You don't wanna go, as in the words of the Grinch, You don't want to touch them with a 10-foot pole. You don't want to go near them at all whatsoever. Those are not people of peace. That's not who God is calling us to be transformed into.

Now I understand that it takes two people to create peace. I get that. But what needs to happen is that we as Christians might not be responsible for breaking that peace. That's our part. That's our calling. That we have to be not thinking about revenge in the lives of others. Did you know that repaying evil with evil actually hurts us? I talked about that cycle earlier, right? Of like perpetual action, action, action, action. Paul here is asking and calling and pleading with us to break this cycle. Because when there's forgiveness, there is freedom for you and you are set free from bitterness. Even when we think, "Well, if I just got revenge." Have you ever actually gotten revenge? It doesn't feel good. You never get revenge and you're like, "Woo-hoo, here we go. I got it. Bingo." No. You feel horrible. You're just miserable afterwards. and you think, "Why did I even do that?" Repaying Ephraim for evil only hurts us. But Pastor, you just don't understand what this person did to me. Pastor, you just don't get it what happened. I understand this is hard, and this is a tricky subject. 'Cause we have society around us saying, "Eye for an eye, tooth for tooth.”

Paul here says in verse 19 and 20, Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written, it is mine to avenge. I will repay says the Lord. On the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed them. If he is thirsty, give them something to drink. In doing this, you will keep burning coals on their heads. I struggled with this one this week. I really did. And then I read this theologian author, somebody way smarter than me, wiser. And they said this, "giving your enemy a drink of food "is not excusing their misdeeds, "but rather you are recognizing them, forgiving them "and loving them in the spite of their sins." Which is exactly what Christ has done for each of us. We have all been there at some point. Man, that hit me hard. It isn't easy whatsoever. But it gives us a greater understanding of what is going on here in these moments and what God is actually doing in the lives of other people. So what's with the deal with this coals on the head and heaping it on there? Like, what's going on? Well, this actually comes from a tradition, and not in the sense of us just basically being able to get after our enemies or take a blowtorch to our enemies. But what is happening here is this idea of this concept of ancient Egyptian tradition of carrying coals in a pan on one's head in public as a sign of remorse. It's a physical act of seeing someone carrying a pan of burning coals on their heads. Like, "How, how, how, how, how, how, how, how, how?" But they are saying to the point, "I am so sorry for what I did. I want everybody to know that I am deeply sorry." And Paul here is saying, "When we give our enemy food when they're hungry, when we give our enemy water to drink when they're thirsty, when we forgive them, when we say to them, "I love you. You hurt me, but I love you." When you do that to them, it's as if you're putting a pan of coals on their head. And they, in that moment, would hope, they would see and recognize what is going on, and they would find remorse for their own sins. That it isn't in the revenge is their remorse, But it's in our loving and a sincere, caring way that we'll actually begin to transform the lives of those around us. They become ashamed of their actions and in hopes it would help them to turn from their sinful life.

Paul closes with, I think, a single perfect sentence of everything here. He says in verse 21, Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. That's our calling. That is our greatest, hardest, most climbing the top peaks of the mountain journey calling that we have in our lives. That you and I are called to be people of peace. Simple as that. We're to love God, and we are to help care and love for those who do wrong around us. We are to love our enemies, maybe to the point where they become ashamed for how they have treated us, and in hopes that that changes their lives. This is how someone lives, when they're truly transformed by the power of the gospel. We are transformed by being renewed, Paul says. We are transformed by being loving. We are transformed by being humble. And we are transformed by being peaceful. So my challenge for you today, this week, live as a transformed person. For those of us in here who have accepted Christ into our lives to say, we're here to live different, salvation just doesn't stop when you pray the prayer when Jesus comes into your heart. This is a lifelong journey of being transformed into who God wants for us to be, fulfilling our calling that he has given us.

I wanna challenge you into thinking about, look at all these verses we just went through, thinking about one aspect of transformation that you can live out this week. To just start with one. Start in one place of, maybe I need to be more of a person of peace. So when I show up at work, I have a smile on my face. Not necessarily the grumpy, the I haven't had my coffee yet, I'm still waking up, but be that person of peace. Maybe you need to be more generous this week in some way. Maybe there's a practical need in your family or a neighbor or someone in your life where you can show up and be a presence of God's hospitality for them. Maybe you just need to let that person on the freeway emerge in front of you when you really don't want to. Spouses are looking at each other all over the room. Be the person of peace and traffic. They probably won't have any idea what you're doing. But they might pay for the order and drive through behind you, just 'cause. There's so many different ways you can live this out. And I think for us to try to take all of this on at once would be absolutely overwhelming, overwhelming and we would never get there. But just one step. How can you this week do one thing to live out being the transformed person that you already are? And it's not going to be our own might. It's going to be God's power in us. That's the greatest thing in all of this. All we have to do is let God's power shine through us. to have the power of the gospel just be reflected through our lives. So how can you be one more step transformed this week and then build on it? Build upon that each week. You got 52 weeks in a year. Be back here October 2024. You might be a completely different person. Be completely transformed.

Pray with me. God, we're so grateful for today. God, we're so grateful for your servant Paul, who in his heart, writing to the church in Rome, just explaining what the gospel is and then how it changes us, God, to transform us this day. So God, I pray that you would put on our hearts and our minds this week, how we can be more transformed by the power of the gospel in our lives, to live that out in a very real and practical way. And God, let it not just stop there. But God, may we continue every moment of every day to say, God, what do you desire for me in this moment? How can I live transformed here and now in this space, in this space, whether it's at home, where it's at work, whether it's where we live, learn, work or play. God, I pray that you would use us in our transformation to transform the world around us, Jesus. God, we thank you for today. We worship you, we praise you. God, be with us as we go this week. We gather together next Sunday. We love you, Jesus. We praise you. Amen.

Romans - Part 19

Paul’s How-To’s of Faith and Fellowship - Romans 12:1-8

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We are excited about what this morning looks like. Today we are in significant moment in our series on the letter of Romans. We have been following Paul now as he's been laying down a foundation for 11 chapters. That's 18 weeks of our lives so far, all the way back in March of this year is when we started, and we have gone verse by verse following Paul's argument for the gospel. So far Paul has focused on the reader, the church in Rome, and consequently us today, hearing and learning the knowledge of the gospel focused on knowing the truth. But today we transition to what that knowledge should do, what that knowledge should look like lived out in the Christian's life. This is going from, this is going to be a practical teaching from Paul aimed to help believers live out their faith. And here Paul is going to showcase his conviction about the relationship between belief and practice, or knowledge and action, which is something that even today we all struggle with. We still need the reminder and encouragement that if we believe something, our lives should adhere to that. True belief in something equates to a life that lives out that belief. There are those who will say one thing, maybe claim a belief in something, and yet their lives, their actions don't line up with that. And that usually causes us, if we see that in someone, to doubt. Like, I don't know if you really believe that, you say that, but the way I see you live your life doesn't line up with that. We probably know some people who claim to believe in Jesus, who claim to have faith in God, and yet their lives show no fruit. Doesn't show like they know the truth, they don't live in a way that adheres to the gospel. So this is what Paul is gonna address today. He's saying that if you know all this, chapters one through 11, who God is and what He's done, then you should live like this.

Paul is focusing more on the practical aspect of faith, and as we move forward in chapter 12, there are tones of the beatitudes, of the Psalms, of Proverbs, even the law of the Old Testament, where wisdom, divine wisdom, is at the forefront of the text. And it's all about how one's life should be oriented around God's values and the person of Christ. In our passage, there's gonna be themes of humility, of a servant's heart, of love and compassion and kindness, all characteristics perfectly embodied by Jesus, the perfect example of the Christian life. They're all key values of God's kingdom, which when compared to this world, is an upside down kingdom because it values very different things than the world values. Remember this letter is being written in light of the Roman Empire, a kingdom with very prominent values, known for its growing borders through different war campaigns, known for engineering like the Roman aqueducts and the roads, for architecture that has lasted centuries, for the use of the Latin language that unified so much of the world, and also known for their politics, not just at the higher level around the emperor, but down to the lowest people. There was a fixation in the Roman Empire on status. And Jesus, the New Testament authors, including Paul, have that reality in mind when they speak to what God's kingdom values, and who God's kingdom values. The lowly, the meek, the poor in spirit, the widow and the orphan, compared to the Roman reality where one's status is based on merit, and money, and power, and influence. So, knowing the truth of the gospel, how should one live in that reality? In chapter 12 here, Paul speaks directly to the church about how the gospel provides not only salvation from God's wrath and the demise of sin, but also how the gospel provides the power to live changed lives. The NIV Study Bible says that Christ cannot be our Savior without also being our Lord. I love that approach. He doesn't just save us in a moment and then we no longer have continual relationship with him. No, he must continue to reign in our lives. So what does it look like to have Jesus reign in our lives? What does it look like to know the truth and live by the truth? What does it look like to be a Christian? Paul's going to answer that today.

Why don't you pray with me one more time and then we'll we'll dive into our scripture. God, we come before you again this morning. We pray for open hearts and minds to hear your truth. And that there be an openness on us to be transformed by the hearing and reading of your word and that your spirit would work inside of us to draw us closer to you to make us more like you. So bless our time this morning. We pray this in your name. Amen.

I wanna start by reading the first couple of verses of our passage. You guys can read along in your Bibles or on the screen up there it says, "Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, "in view of God's mercy to offer your bodies "as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. "This is your true and proper worship. "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, "but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, "and then you will be able to test and approve "what God's will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will." These first two verses here in chapter 12 are all about believers being holy. And I wanna go phrase by phrase in these two verses because what Paul says here is truly profound and I don't wanna miss out on anything. So we're gonna, today's gonna look a little bit different. We're just gonna go literally word by word and try to understand exactly what Paul is saying.

This first phrase that he says in verse one is, "I urge you, brothers and sisters." Other translations say, "I appeal to you, I exhort you." Paul is encouraging the church in Rome to do something, pushing them towards action, holy obedience and action according to God's will. He's saying, you've just heard 11 chapters of the holy knowledge, the gospel. You have to do something now. There must be a reaction. You can't just hear it and be still. He then says, by the mercies of God, by the undeserved kindness of God, which is a key theme in all of Paul's writings, by the grace that God first gives us, says then do the following. And next he says to offer your bodies, all of who you are, yield yourself to God, give all of who you are over to God's purposes and glory, to be used by him, for him, and to be transformed like him. Then says as a living sacrifice. Now, he's addressed this again in the chapters before, but he's just restating it. No longer are required to do animal sacrifices, to bring about justification, to be seen as righteous before God. Now we give our lives to God. Hebrews 13 says, "Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that openly profess His name. And do not forget to do good and to share with others, "for with such sacrifices God is pleased." Again, our living sacrifice is what we do and what we say, and that should be unto the Lord. First Peter chapter two, verse five says, "You also, like living stones, are being built "into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, "offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God "through Jesus Christ." We know that it is so important that everything about who we are and what we do, be offered unto God as service to God, as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This next phrase emphasizes that our sacrifice is set apart for God. This is something intentional that we do to give God glory, to give him praise. In the Old Testament, such terminology, holy and pleasing, associated with the worship done at the tabernacle or the temple. Sacrifice and worship were often found together. This phrase "holy and pleasing" describes the aroma of those Old Testament sacrifices. When the animal was put on the altar, we may think that's really gross and kind of is, but God loved it because of what it meant. When that sacrifice was on the altar and that That aroma was being sending into heaven. God said it was holy and pleasing because it meant that the people were recognizing who God is in their lives. They were worshiping Him. They were humbling themselves, coming before God saying, "God, we need You. I can't do this on my own. You are God over my life." So they were worshiping Him with everything. They were living in God's will, being made righteous, and God was receiving all the glory. So this holy and pleasing is a harkening back to that, saying when you do this, when you live your life for God, God is so pleased by that. It's an act whereby we are setting apart ourselves for His purposes.

And then Paul says, this is your true and proper worship. Worship that is coming from all of who we are. Like Jesus says, the most important commandment, worship. I love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind and strength. Everything we have, when we give that to God, that is true and proper worship. Some translations say true and spiritual worship. Contrasting again the fact that there is no longer a physical sacrifice being made, but now it is a matter of the heart. It's a spiritual matter within us, of if we are giving to God everything that we have. Paul also uses the word true here. true and proper worship, implying that true happens when you have a correct understanding of the gospel. When you understand all that he's laid out, this argument in chapters one through 11, and then you live according to that, that is true and proper worship. Verse two starts with, "Do not conform "to the pattern of this world." As you know, this world is fallen, marred by sin, and it has its own pattern of thinking and living that does not align with God's design. We as redeemed believers must avoid that, steer clear of that. It's often easy to adhere to the pattern of the world because we are born sinners, and the patterns of this world often revolve around selfishness and what serves us, so we like that. We're like, "Yay, I like this pattern of thinking because I benefit from it. It's all about me. But that's not how Jesus lived. Jesus lived serving others with God's purpose at the forefront of his mind. So we must not conform to the patterns of this world. We must recognize as believers that God's thinking is different. His patterns as the creator, the ultimate, the true designer of this world, that's what we must follow. And if we are not intentional and purposeful "adamant about living according to the way of Jesus, "but instead the way of the world, we will fall, "and we will fail, and we will continue in sin." All right, so do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. This is talking about the work of the gospel within us, in our minds and in our hearts. Again, that relationship between knowledge and action, belief and practice. As we conform to the truth of God, it leads to transformation in the life of the believer. And this happens through the Holy Spirit's work in our hearts. The gospel works at how we process and think and observe and filter information and what we see in this world. It changes it. And then what comes from us has also changed the fruit of our lives, our actions, our words. They become a reflection of Jesus, no longer a reflection of sin. It's evidence that our minds and hearts are undergoing a transformation by the work of the Spirit. And we are ultimately changed and transformed to be more like Jesus, right?

That's our prayer every Sunday, is that through the hearing of God's word, through the understanding, the more that we learn about Him, the more that our lives look like Him. Then he ends this verse two with, "Then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing, and perfect will. So once you have the heart and mind of Christ, then you will see things the way that God sees them. You will better understand what is of God and what is of sin, what is in line with God's heart and what comes from this fallen world." He's talking about the discernment and wisdom that believers can have, that when we witness something, when we experience something in life, We know that maybe the world would say, this is how you should process this. This is how you should think. This is what you should do if this happens. But we know that after we hear the gospel and the Spirit is at work and say, no, that's not, you should do this. It should be a response of love, of compassion, of kindness, responding in God's truth. We will understand what God's will is. So, these first two verses, as you can see, are pivotal to this letter because they signify the beginning of the end and this transition to practical living out your faith. I want to read one theologian's summary of these verses because I think it'll help us understand how Paul would read it or write it if he was writing to us today.

He's saying that Paul's saying, "So here's what I want you to do. I think we have, yeah, thank you. Here's what I want you to do. With God helping you take your everyday ordinary life, your sleeping, your eating, going to work and walking around life and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for Him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what He wants from you and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you and develops well-formed maturity in you. I love that.

How great is that? Such practical wisdom and instruction for our daily lives with God. This is all about a Christian being holy, being set apart for God's purposes, a life lived out to honor and love God. And now Paul's gonna shift. He's gonna shift from an individual relationship with God to the corporate setting of the church. And I love, he's so intentional in that. He's saying your relationship and your, what God is doing in you is not just for you, but it's also for the purpose of his church. So now we come to verses three through eight. And the church shares a common mindset and purpose, and Paul instructs its members to use their diverse gifts to serve this unified goal, God's kingdom, His glory, and His people, all in the love of Christ. This is all about believers being the church. So the first two verses, believers being holy, and now we're gonna be talking about believers being the church. So I just wanna go verse by verse again. Verse three says, "For by the grace given to me, I say to every one of you, do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you." Paul has brought this up a lot in his letter to the Romans, but it needs restating. We need to proceed and live life with a spirit of humility. We are all sinners in need of God. We are all believers following Him and serving Him. So view others with humility and think of yourself with humility. And then exercise the grace given to you by God. What you received from God should not be kept just for you. You should be passing that on, pouring that out on the people in your life. It doesn't matter who they are, but with humility, love and serve others.

Verses four and five say, "For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, So in Christ, we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. This is a favorite of Paul. He loves using the metaphor of the church being a body. And it works. And he does so to emphasize the unity that we must have as believers, that we all work together, we're all together working for a purpose. We are obligated to serve for the benefit of each other and for the body as a whole. But it's also important to recognize that we were all created differently, uniquely. God made each of us with our own, the way we think and process, what we like in this world, what we're good at, we all vary, and that is intentional by God. I was thinking this week, I'm thankful for our pastoral team, that Pastor Chris and I are very different. He's a Bears fan, I'm a Niners fan. Well, it's true, but that's not the biggest difference. When we were recently having a conversation that we are thankful that God has brought us together to serve because even as we carry out our pastoral duties, we're different. And if we were both the same, and this church would only receive a very one-dimensional pastoral care, but because we're different, we can reach all of you and shepherd and be pastors in a more holistic way. We're thankful for that. And same for all of you. All this church is better, and it's a fuller picture of heaven because of how different all of us are, how God has gifted you all differently. Each of you are uniquely wired and made, and when we're together, we are a body of believers. And without some of us, we're missing part of that body. So we need each other.

Let's acknowledge how we are made differently and what we bring to the table and be thankful for it. Paul's also saying there's a sense of belonging here. We owe it to each other to serve and to bring it to exercise our gifts. It's kind of like this church potluck that we're gonna have, this fall festival. Some of you are known for the dishes that you bring. And so we know that like, hey, that person is gonna bring this. They always make it and we need it. And without it, our meal will be incomplete. And so that person feels a sense of obligation in a good way of like, hey, I gotta bring this because I'm that person. I always bring it and it's needed. And so again, that's good and I'm not hinting at anyone, but please bring your chili. Everyone bring your chili. It's so, so good. Someone make one spicy too. We gotta make sure we have a spicy one. The church is diverse and we need and belong to each other.

Verse six, Paul continues, "We have different gifts "according to the grace given to each of us. "If your gift is prophesying, "then prophesy in accordance with your faith." We all have different gifts. Paul brings up prophesying, another way of saying that would be the gift of speaking truth into someone's life. If you have that gift, then use it. We won't get into all the gifts and what they mean today, but we're gonna follow Paul's train of thought here, explaining that if you have a gift, that it needs to be used in God's church. If God continually puts truth on your heart to share with someone, don't hold back. Do not hold back that truth. You need to be sure God has put that on your heart for a reason. And you need to share that with the people that you are in church with, this body of believers that you belong to. Verse seven, if it is serving, then serve. If it is teaching, then teach. If it is to encourage, oh, we'll stop at teach, hold on. If it is a gift of serving, then serve. I was just talking with Eric this week and talking about how he is so grateful that he found a place that he can serve in this church. He loves serving and they do the hospitality. And so he has found his gift and now he was joyfully serving in that way. And it's fulfilling to him. I know that many of you are serving in this church in a way that is fulfilling to you. If you have that gift of service, then serve. And if it is to teach, then teach. I know we actually have teachers as people who are career teachers here at this church. And I love that they are actually teaching through the children's, Abby and Amy, who is literally there right now. That's amazing. And we also have people who teach like Carolina and Julie and Becky and Derek and Lauren and Donna and Donna. And they all serve and they teach our kids the truth of Jesus and it is amazing. And so you have been given that gift, maybe just for a season for those times. and we're so glad that you are using that gift.

Verse eight says, "If it is to encourage, then encourage, then give encouragement. If it's giving, then give generously. If it is to lead, do it diligently. And if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully." The first one about encouragement. Did you know that according to research, the ideal praise to criticism ratio is five to one. We more often hear negative comments, criticism, and discouraging remarks compared to positive, encouraging, loving words. And they stick with us, those negative ones stick with us a lot longer. We need encouragement in our lives. If God has gifted you with the gift of encouraging others, church, we need that, we need you. We need you to be sharing that encouragement. We need to be hearing from God through you about what's good and what's loving. What are we doing that is helpful for others? We need your encouragement. If it is to give, then give generously. I don't know what each person gives here. I don't know what you give. But I do see the number, the big number, each month. And I know that we have very generous givers in this church. We are all thankful for those who, all of you who give, and for those that God has enabled to give more. If God has blessed you in that way, then continue to give generously. Paul says, "If it is to lead, then do it diligently." Often people lead when it benefits them. It's easy. It's easy to lead others when the leader is seeing direct benefit from that. But Paul says to be diligent to lead knowing that it will not always be easy, knowing that the call from God to lead his people is a call to lead against the current of the culture around us. And that is hard, but it's so good. So we need to lead diligently, faithfully, depending on the spirit as we lead. And then he ends by saying, if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully. I love how intentional Paul is with his words here. One can show mercy and still be struggling with it in our, inside the heart. We can show mercy but be bitter. We can show mercy but become hardened in our hearts about what is happening and the fact that we have to show mercy again. Paul knows that cheerfulness means depending on the spirit when we show mercy. If we rely on our own strength, there will be an end. We only have a bank that goes so deep before we are at the end of ourselves. And we can no longer show mercy with true love and cheerfulness. So in him saying, "Show mercy and do it cheerfully," he knows that you need to depend on the Spirit to do that. So in this whole section, verses three through eight, this is the how-to for being the church, for being a faithful fellowship, a body of believers living out faith corporately. So I just wanna first encourage you, Spring Valley Church, you are doing this. We see this happening right now. And it is so encouraging to be a part of. I hope that you feel encouraged seeing it and experiencing it. We want more people to experience it. So secondly, I wanna encourage us to be praying and seeking that this continues to grow. We want more people to join this church to bring the gifts that God has given them so that we can become a fuller and fuller body of Christ.

Paul's words here about believers being holy and believers being the church are so encouraging, empowering, and uplifting for us. And so I just want to ask a few questions as we reflect on these words. First, do you know the truth? Paul's first word here in chapter 12 is "therefore." He's saying with the understanding that with everything before this, you now have a better if not correct understanding of the gospel. And if you're here today and you feel like you're in a therefore moment where the message of the gospel has finally clicked, where you've heard it and in your heart and mind you want to respond and you want to say, "I now understand. I've heard the Paul's argument for the gospel and I want to believe." I want you to know that that can change You can act on that right now. And if you pray in your heart right now, God, I know that I'm a sinner. And I know that my sin has separated me from you, and I believe that Jesus died for my sins so that I can be forgiven, and I want to repent, and I want to accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior. You can pray that prayer, and your life will be changed. And the gospel will be the power of living a transformed life in you. you. If you prayed that today, if you prayed that right now even, please come see Pastor Chris and I. We want to celebrate with you, we want to pray for you after the service. And if you're thinking about it, whatever it is, wherever you're at in the gospel message responding to it, we are all here for you. So the first question is, do you know the truth of the gospel? Secondly, what are you conforming to. This past summer at district conference we had our general superintendent, Reverend, I don't know his title, it's very long, but Wayne Schmidt, he's a great guy, and he shared one time the importance of starting his day off with quiet time, worship, with God's Word. He made it a rule in his life that whatever time in the day he consumed, of the world news, he wanted to have more time-consuming, something spiritual, something about God. And he made that rule because he started to notice and recognize that he was being conformed by the news. Constantly thinking negatively and fearfully, always being prone to anger and anxiety, and that wasn't drawing him closer to God. So he made the decision, "I'm going to always in my day have more of God in my life than anything else.

What are you conforming to? Maybe it's work and the desire to excel and achieve and maybe you're conforming to this need to do more and that's taking all of who you are, your heart and mind and it's less about God and it's more about achieving something, doing something. Maybe it's being conformed by social media. You're seeing on social media the things that you want to experience, the way that you should live life, the things that you want, and it's not helpful. It's not drawing you closer to God, but rather, you know, further to yourself and your desires, your heart, and these worldly things that we want. Whatever it is you're conforming to, is it of the truth of God? Is it about the gospel? Is it the way of Jesus? And if it's not, then let the Spirit work and convict and follow His guidance and changing that. And then finally, the last question is how are you serving the church? Well, we talked about how the Spirit should be at work in our lives on an individual level. I love that Paul immediately addresses the corporate aspect of our faith. We were meant to live in community and to serve the community. This community is made up of different people with different gifts and they are all needed. And remember, beyond just your gifts being needed, there's also belonging. You belong to this church. So how are you serving? Recently, a different pastor reminded me of the different types of service. There is serving out of your gifting, and there is serving because of a need. Oftentimes, and the goal is that you're serving in your gifting. Let's say you love children's ministry, then we would love to have you serve in children's ministry. That's great. Sometimes though, there's a need, and the church may need you to serve in that way. Maybe it's not children's ministry. You do not have that gifting. That is okay, but maybe we have a need, and for a season at a time, you fill that need.

How will you serve your church? Now again, I look at this beautiful small church that we have, and I know that so many of you are serving, and maybe in multiple ways. So I don't mean this to be convicting or to put guilt on you, but rather as a reminder that you are called to serve. So do so with cheerfulness and depending upon the Spirit. And if you aren't yet serving in the church, whether in a formal capacity or informally, how might God be leading you to serve? As we continue in our series in the weeks to come, it's all gonna become more practical. It's all gonna become, Paul's words are gonna focus on how our lives should look like and what we should do to live like Jesus. So as we close today and reflect on these questions and the truth of God, I just want you to be encouraged to know that God is at work in your life and in our church and He's not finished. He's gonna continue to work and that's our prayer. That we would see that, be encouraged by it and thankful that He is present in our lives. Would you guys pray with me as we close?

God, thank you again for the truth shared to us through the gospel, for the letter of Romans written by Paul that now as we have heard the argument for the gospel, now we look to what does it look like in our lives? And God, I pray that you would make it very clear to us what we need to do, what needs to change in our life, to serve you, to be conformed to you, God. And how do we serve this church? I pray that this week in our individual lives that you would speak to us. And God, as a church, you would also be guiding us, that we would know how to serve each other well, serve those outside the church well, but that this body of believers would be a healthy and good picture of what you intended the church to be. Continue to equip us and empower us to be your people, God. So we look forward to the work that you're gonna do in us and through us. And we pray this in your name, amen.

Romans - Part 18

A Practice of Praise - Romans 11:33-36

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

The fall is here, I don't know if you're feeling that. of my favorite parts, yes, about fall, is not just the weather, the football season, but usually we're a TV family, we love shows, and there's, you know, the new seasons start coming back. And so we just, one of our favorite shows is Survivor, we're a Survivor family, and the first episode of the newest season just came out on Wednesday, and we watched it last night. Now for you, those of you who don't know, Survivor is a show where a group of people are left stranded on a tropical island. Well, that part sounds great. All they have is the clothes on their back and very minimal food. And they are left to survive, not just the elements, but also the social part. Because every week, someone is voted off the island, and you are trying to be the last person, the survivor, the lone survivor. So it is a very challenging game. And it's brutal. And it's very testing for every aspect of a person mentally, physically, emotionally, even spiritually. And so the game ends when it finally comes down to three people, these three contestants who have survived over weeks of the elements and not being voted off. And you're wondering why. We're not sponsored by Survivor, so this is not a paid advertisement. I promise you it pertains to somewhat. You'll see a great transition coming up. But it finally comes down to three contestants. And one of my favorite parts is that that morning, they're the final three. And the game ends with all the people that have been voted out, are a lot of them coming back and actually voting for the winner. So they get to vote who wins that season. But the final morning, when the final three, usually it's three, when they wake up they get this what they call survivor meal, survivor feast. And it's the celebration of the fact that they made it. There's no more of the game, kind of, there's one last night, but it's the final morning. There's no more days after this. That night they're going to find out who wins. And that morning, after having little to no food, and surviving the elements, and playing the game mentally all the time, they get to have this break. And the people, the producers, they bring in this huge feast. And after usually eating maybe rice and beans, they get to have orange juice, and melons, and amazing fruit, and bagels, all of this just a huge feast for breakfast. And during this time, it's totally different than the game, which is usually go, go, go, and you're strategizing all the time. time they get to take a break and they just get to eat and kind of relax and just reminisce on the season. They're like, "Hey, man, this was..." They get to reflect and just pause and it's a really cool, really cool moment. Transition.

Why do I bring this up? Well, Paul... That was rough. This was rougher than I thought. Paul has one of those moments today where after writing for so long in this letter, he has a moment where he just pauses and he And he reflects on what God has done and who he is in relation to the nation of Israel. And he's brought to this moment of praise, this literary Ebenezer of sorts, where he's recognizing and praising God. Paul stops to reflect and process on the character of God, and it's a beautiful moment here in the letter of Romans. And it's a blessing that we appreciate, and it's enriching for our lives today. So we're gonna dive into just four verses. We've been covering a lot every Sunday, almost a chapter at a time, but today we're just gonna take it a little bit slow and just take four verses that I think are gonna be enriching for us and bring us a lot of joy and encouragement. So let me go ahead and pray and then we'll dive. And God, we've, again, come before you, Lord, and we just pray that you would bless the reading of your word, the teaching of your word, and that you would empower us and equip us to be more like Jesus. And I pray that you would encourage us in our lives to take moments where we pause and reflect on who you are and what you've done. So as we do that this morning, right now together, we just pray that your spirit would be at work. We pray this in your name, amen. All right, we're gonna be in Romans 11, starting in verse 33 through 36. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there, we'll have it on the screen. But if you do look in your Bible, in most translations, there's a little heading, and it's called doxology. Now, what is a doxology? Well, doxologies are conclusions to songs or psalms or prayers and are found throughout Scripture. Sometimes they can be meant as a group response or recitation. Little fun fact, the word doxology, though, is not a part of the original text. If you were to look at the Hebrew manuscript, really none of the headers that we have in our Bible, they're not there in the Hebrew. they've been added later. And so doxology is not there, but it means words of glory, which I think is a really great summary of what it is. And these doxologies are a series of declarations of praise announcing who God is and what He has done, and usually focusing on God's creation and redemption. A more well-known doxology is the song that, if you grew up in church or you've been around the church for a while, you've probably heard "Praise God from whom all blessings flow." That's a doxology found in 2 Corinthians. But our doxology today is a spontaneous praise of God regarding his actions towards his people. Remember, Paul has just written three chapters about the dynamic relationship between Israel and God. And now Paul just pauses to take a moment to put together some words of glory about God. In this section, Paul is quoting two passages, Isaiah 40:13 and Job 41:11. And both of those scriptures in the Old Testament celebrate God's exalted status and wisdom over His creation. These verses point out the dependency that creation has upon its Now as a part of creation, we humans, we have no right to assume His role as Creator or Judge. We do not have anything to offer God that He might need. We have to realize and remember that He is fully self-sustaining. The Trinity, God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit, they are perfect and whole. And in light of His greatness, all of humanity must recognize His mercy, which He demonstrates by offering Christ that all might believe and may be saved." Now that's a lot, that's just the beginning, but that is all packed in these four verses right here.

So I want to dive in. I want to go ahead and read the first verse, which says, verse 33, "Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments and His paths beyond tracing out!" Now remember, this is all coming after Paul's attempt at an explanation of God's sovereign, redemptive plan with Israel. And Paul seems to take a step back here and to recognize his place and God's place. And Paul's saying, "Even though I'm pretty sure, Roman church, this is how it works, God's ways are above mine, and all of Him is beyond me." has a sense of humility here. And echoes the words found in Isaiah 55, 9, which says, "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts." That's God speaking to the nation of Israel. We cannot fully understand the ways of God. He is infinite, and we are finite. The more we think about the crazier, like, He is infinite. There is no limits, there is no, like, edge to which we can, these are His borders, this is what we can understand. No, it is, it goes forever. And we, just being finite creatures, have a hard time understanding the infinite. So there is a part of God that will always remain a mystery until we are in heaven and we can have a perfect understanding of who He is. I love the ancient world and the Hebrew imagery here because it's very straightforward. It's based on a world that they could see and what made sense to them from the understanding that God gave them. So when it says the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than yours, they're saying when we look up, this is the ancient Hebrew world, when we look up we see clouds in the sky and the Sun and at night we see the stars and the planets and the moon, that's the heavens, way up there. They didn't know how far that is. They did not have any understanding or measurement of it's this many miles or whatever. That's way up there. And as high as that is, which it could be so high, that's how high God is over us. Now we today have a better understanding through science and all the research that we can do and the technology of how high and how far things are. And maybe even with that, this analogy works even better. that we know that space is so, so far, and even what we've explored is probably more than what the ancient Hebrew people understood, and yet still, God's ways are beyond that, compared to where we are. I recently saw this conversation between two scientists. They were talking about space, and one of them asked, "How do we understand, what's a way to put, measure, how much we know about space?" And so this other scientist responded with, "Okay, take a 12 ounce cup, scoop some water out of the ocean." Now compared to the ocean, what we know about space is that 12 ounce cup. The ocean is how much we don't understand. And I think that's just helpful to us to know that probably God's ways and our ways are even more than that. And that's huge. That is vast. God knows everything, and as the Creator, He's holding it all together. And so now, when we read that verse, it probably makes a lot more sense. Yes, His ways are much higher than ours. His thoughts are above ours. The depth of the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God. Proverbs 3:5-6 says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight." I think Paul is drawing from this when he says his paths are beyond tracing out. We may not resonate as much with this phrase of "make your paths straight" because we live in a world where the roads are made for us. They are pretty straight. We also on top of that have Google or Apple Maps, whichever you use, and they tell us the most efficient and quickest way to get from point A to point B. We're not having to figure out, "Oh God, where are my paths? How do I get from this place? What's the fastest way?" much told for us. But in life, this is what God will do. If the goal is to progress towards God, towards His kingdom, and to be with Him, as we venture to do that, we also have to recognize that our sin and this world will try to make our path crooked. It will draw us in different directions.

So, in a way, we're taking side streets, we're zig-zagging all over the place because we're drawn by sin and the world to not follow God in the the straightest path. But when we lean on our own understanding, when we follow God with everything that we have, we can look back and say, in that section of time when we are following God, oh, that was the best. That was the best way. Maybe it's not straight, maybe it's not a perfect line, but it's the best way. It was the way that God meant for it to happen. The author of the Proverb is saying, and what Paul is alluding to in our passage, is that God's ways, while we don't always know as we're on that road, he knows. And if he knows what's best, if his ways are higher than ours, then there's no other path that we should prefer to be on. This really also gets to our very human problem of sin, thinking that we know best, that we think we know the best way to get there, the best way to live, the best decisions for our futures, for our finances, for friendships. And in thinking that, in doing what we think, We are placing ourselves in the driver's seat where God actually belongs. We're taking the place of God in our lives, which is a sin. To think that we don't need God, or that we're better than God, or maybe we have a better perspective than God on what's happening in our lives, which when I say it, sounds like, "Well, of course we don't," but we can tend to live like that. That is living in sin. And so this doxology and the words of the Old Testament are telling us, reminding us, the depths of the riches of His wisdom and knowledge of God, His paths are best, even if they're beyond our understanding.

Paul continues in verse 34, let's read that together, it says, "Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor?" Have you guys ever found yourself in a situation where you are by default the expert in whatever's going on? Maybe it's a parent and you're with your child, or you're a teacher with your students, or maybe you're just in whatever situation you know most about what's happening and there are other people around you that don't. And in that situation, have you ever had that child or student or the other people who are ignorant to what's going on to tell you what to do? Hey, why don't you just do this? This seems pretty easy. If you just do this, I think it's gonna work out. I think you'll figure out what's, your solution is right there. You ever have that happen? I'm thinking of my daughter and students in the past. Usually those people think that they're helpful, especially the little ones who are trying to be involved, and it's really cute. Some people though, say those things in a derogatory tone and are just like, you are overthinking this. It is this simple, just do this. I don't know if you get where I'm going here. But do you think that you might sometimes barely do this with God? By sometimes I mean like all the time. We probably do this a lot with God where we're in our minds having prayers or thoughts. We're like, God, I have a good read. I'm in this situation, God. I don't know if you know that God, but like I'm living it right now. And I think if you just do this, if you could just do this, I think we got the answer. And we go from asking God what is best in the situation to telling God what we want him to do. And in just the phrasing of that and that approach, we are treating God in a way that is like a vending machine. God, if you just do this or a genie in a bottle, just this is what I want, I think this is best. I've got the wisdom here, God. Thank you for the wisdom you've given me to then tell you what to do. Here we go. Who are we to counsel the all-knowing? I'm not a car guy at all, but a while ago I had this lemon of a truck that just would not stop having problems, and one day the engine just, to my understanding, blew up. And I didn't want to let it go, so my brother-in-law very graciously, who was a mechanic for a time, said, hey, I'll work on it. I'll try to rebuild your engine for you. It was very kind. And he would just give me updates. He's like, hey, I've got this much done. I'm working on this part. And I can't even repeat the parts, because I do not know anything about cars. He's like, I'm working on this. I'm having trouble with this over here. But I'm going to figure it out. At no point in any of those conversations did I feel the confidence or wisdom to say, hey, have you tried this? It sounds like you're taking the long way on that one. I think you should probably do this. Yeah, I think that's what Paul is talking about here. Our relationship with God should be one of clear boundaries and recognizing that we are not God. We do not have his perspective, his wisdom. We do not know what God knows. The counsel should be a one-way street where God is giving us wisdom and counsel. And we should be recognizing that God has all the wisdom And we need to have a position of humility, submitting to God. And if we don't understand asking God, hey, what's going on? Can you help me understand? Rather than telling God what to do. We do not counsel the Lord. It's easier said than done, but something that we should be conscious of nonetheless.

Then Paul moves to verse 35, which reads, who has ever given to God that God should repay them? It's been happening lately. A little example of this, I think, happening is sometimes over a meal, Kinsley and I, my daughter, who's four years old, four and a half, will split a sparkling water. And I'll go in and I'll get a sparkling water and I'll open the can and she'll ask, "Can I have a sip?" And I'll say, "Sure, you can have a sip." And she will then take the can and say, "This is mine. "And you can have some if you want some." And I'm like, "Hold up here. I'm the one that gave you the sparkling water. I am the giver of sparkling water in this family, in this dynamic relationship. I give you sparkling water. You do not give me sparkling water. In fact, I can go get my own. I don't need you for sparkling water. I can go get another can. And I can open it. You can't even open this. I can go buy more. Like, you offer me nothing when it comes to sparkling water. (audience laughs) I kid, obviously. I don't have that conversation with her. But who are we to give God, Who are we to think that we give God anything that He doesn't already have? Like I said at the beginning, the Trinity is fully sufficient, overflowing, not in need. We do not give Him anything that He is lacking. We do give to Him. We talked about giving this morning with our ties, our offerings. We give Him praise and adoration and glory. But it's not because He's lacking it. God has given us everything. The air we breathe, the jobs we have, the families and relationships that we enjoy, the homes we live in, the emotions and the minds that we feel and think with. We are giving Him our broken hearts, our sinful hearts, for God to mend and to transform. And then we give back what God has already given to us, our time, our money, our resources. Who has given to God that God should repay them? No one. Have you ever tried bartering with God? God, if I do this, does this mean that you can do this for me? God, if I just give you my tithe this month, or maybe a little bit extra, 'cause God, you need my money, then will you help me through this tough situation? God is not lacking in any finances. Or sometimes we'll say, God, if I attend church more regularly, because you need me in your church, that means that you'll start to, you'll have to start blessing my life, right? You're gonna start doing some things, I'm gonna start seeing you work in my life. God is not dependent on our attendance. God does not owe us everything. We need to realize in our relationship with God, how we communicate with God, that we have no leverage over God. We have no higher standing in any area over God. We don't come before him with any sort of, At least I have this that God needs from me that he doesn't already have. We have nothing to give in that manner. Again, except for our broken hearts and what he has already given to us, and we give back as a way of worshiping him, submitting to him, depending on him. So, who has ever given to God that God should repay them? No one.

And that leads us to verse 36. He ends this doxology with this, "For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen." It starts with "from God." God is the source. The source of all things good in this world. God is that source. Through God, it's all by the work of God and the work of his Spirit, the work that Christ did on the cross and continues to do in our lives. It is through Him. And then for God. It's all about His glory. As Paul mentioned at the beginning of this book of Romans, the root motivation of the gospel is the glory of God. That God be praised. That He receive the credit, the honor, and the praise. It's all for Jesus. It's all about God's kingdom, and it's only by him and through him that it is possible. So I love this moment in this letter to the Romans where Paul stops for a brief moment to write some words of glory, praising God for who he is and what he has done. It's a beautiful doxology. And I want to ask us today, do we have doxologies in our lives? What does that mean, Pastor Andre? Well, do you have moments where you are praising God for the work that He is doing? Where you are pausing and reflecting on who God is and what He has done for you? So often in life, we just keep going and moving from one thing to the next. And even if we do praise God, it's kind of just a quick thought, "God, thanks for that. I'm gonna go. I gotta keep going." But what would it look like to have moments of doxology in our lives, moments where we really pause and have words of glory towards God? You know, the Bible is full of these moments. Anytime, especially in the Old Testament, anytime something big happened where God was at work, where the main character, the person, or maybe the group of people experienced God's work, the following happened. They paused, they gained some perspective, and then they praised God. Think of Noah after the flood, or Abraham after almost sacrificing his son Isaac, or Moses and the Israelites after crossing the Red Sea by God's hand, or Joshua and the Israelites after crossing the Jordan River into the Promised Land. The list can go on and on. There are so many of these moments, and the pattern is always the same. They pause, they take a break from what is happening, what's going on. They gain some perspective. They look at what God had done, and then they praise Him for what He did and who He is. So I wanna quickly share about incorporating that into our lives.

The first is to pause. Even Paul paused in this letter after writing, wrapping up his thought about the nation of Israel, and he just paused, and I can see this. We can kind of like, wherever Paul is writing, and he's vigorously writing about Israel and God, and you can just kind of see him like, take a breath. He's thinking about everything he just wrote, and then he just kind of, I imagine it kind of slowly just writing these words of glory, this doxology, praising God. I'm gonna riff on our Sabbath practice community group content right now. So if you're a part of that community group, This will be repeat, but I think it pertains to what we're talking about. It is so important to have moments of pause in our lives, to stop and reflect. What do I mean by that? Well, God created this world that we live in, and every one of us, we have natural rhythms in life. Even the world does. So, think of spring and summer, where everything is more vibrant and full of life. There is an energy, but we also have fall and winter, where that energy kind of goes down and things slow down and it's usually a time of rest. God created us humans, people to stop and have moments where you look back, get some perspective and then move forward again. For the Israelites, this was most apparent in their practice of Sabbath with which God started in them as he created them to be a nation. It was a day every week where they were to stop, rest, delight and worship God. It's something that God himself modeled on the seventh day of creation where he rested and enjoyed what he had done, what he had created. We are to live a life where we pause regularly. God knew this as our creator and set this up in the nation of Israel. So in pausing from the everyday routine, the Israelites were able to rest, they were to recharge their inner battery, delight in what God was doing in their lives, delight in the the joys of life, even have fun, and then worship God. We have something similar now in our routine. You guys are all here this morning worshiping weekly. We have every seven days we gather together to worship God. But we still don't always stop well, we don't rest well, we don't always delight well. You wanna know why it's hard to stop? One of the reasons is 'cause you live in a world, we all live in a world that doesn't stop. Doesn't stop. We live in a world that is 24/7, seven days a week. I saw on social media recently a man boasting about his three shifts in one day. This was not because he needed it. It's not because he had three jobs. It's one job and he just was bragging about how he can work three shifts in one day, seven days a week, and be outworking everyone. That is not how God meant for us to live at all. That is not sustainable, but that's what the world values. The more work you do, the more valuable you are in the world's eyes. Not in God's eyes. We live in a world that is nonstop. But it wasn't always like this. Did you know that for a majority of history, and even in America, the world operated on six days on and one day off? It was common for cities, towns, villages throughout history to all have the same day off. working. Not always for religious purposes, but a lot of times it was for religious purposes.

And then recently, in American history, that changed. And when I say recently, I mean relative to all of history. It was only in the 1960s that this shift really occurred. And Pastor John Mark Comer, the one who put together the prayer practice and the Sabbath practice that we're going through, shared about this. He references Silicon Valley, which we would all think as the tech capital of the world where things are always going 24/7, probably in unhealthy ways, that even Silicon Valley had Sundays off until the 1960s. And in the 1960s, I forget which year, but it was a 7-11 that started opening on Sundays. And now, as we know from that, from the 1960s to a 7-11 being open to now where it is very common for shops, restaurants, retailers to all be open on Sundays. And if they're closed, we still have Amazon. That is all the time, at the touch of our fingers. And while we may not have to work on the weekend, we are consuming and buying and participating in this nonstop culture of our world. All this to say that our world, the culture we live in, does not value your rest or you taking moments to pause. Rarely do we work for companies and jobs that encourage healthy rest. Now, not only is it outer forces, the world that we live in, that doesn't help us pause, but there is an inward struggle that we have with pausing too. We tend, like I said before, we tend to go from one thing to the next. We wake up and our day is go, go, go. We have to take the kids to school or get to work, and then on our breaks, we're scrolling emails or social media or shopping online on Amazon. And then we gotta go back to work, or you pick the kids up, and then we have after school things, or you're getting dinner ready, you're shopping, you're doing chores around the house, you're keeping up with podcasts, your TV shows, whatever it is, your mind is constantly engaged in something, whether it is work or entertainment, it is not necessarily restful for you.

We have a hard time stopping. Whether good moments or difficult circumstances, we don't often pause to fully process what we are thinking, what our hearts are feeling, and probably not what God is doing in our lives. In our Sabbath practice community group, we're talking about getting into the rhythm of practicing a 24-hour break every week, a day that is different, full of delight, worship, a break from technology, a break from work. And maybe that's the answer. When we're talking about pausing, maybe that is the answer. It's a Sabbath better, all of us. But at least, let me encourage you to more regularly in life, especially when you see God working, to pause. Take a moment, an extended moment. I'm not talking about, cool, that was great. Take minutes, an afternoon. Maybe you journal, maybe you pray out loud, maybe you go for a walk and talk with God, but pause and give your mind and heart time to process and enjoy what God is doing in your life. That leads us to the second point, perspective. In this pausing, we then reflect on the work that God is doing. In these doxologies, the common thread is focusing on God as creator and redeemer. And by doing that, it helps us gain perspective. Oftentimes when we're going through life, our focus becomes more and more about ourselves. We tend to like look down at our own hearts and minds and our focus becomes solely on our desires, our feelings, our satisfactions, our discontentment. And if it goes on long enough, we become selfish. The more we go on in life, the less rest we have, no pausing, we just tend to look down and look inward. Problem with that is that's not how God created us, greatest commandment, right? To love God and to love others. How do we do that if we're only looking at ourselves? Pausing and then reflecting on the work that God has done brings our vision up again. We start to look beyond ourselves. We're thinking of others and what God is doing in life. It's about remembering that we are a part of something bigger, the kingdom of God, his church, his family. And while we matter, of course, we have value, We also need to see how what we're experiencing fits into God's plan of redemption and just recognize that we don't see it all. Even when we do get perspective, His ways are higher than ours, right?

We gotta recognize that God may be up to something and just taking a moment to pause and reflect on what God is doing, even if we understand this much of it is helpful for us, brings us closer to God. In order to gain some perspective in your life, After you pause, right, these all kind of go together, you pause, then ask yourself this, what is God doing in my life? How have I seen him at work this week? If I look back on this past week, and I give myself long enough to process and really think, have I seen him move? Have I seen him move in my life? Have I seen him work in someone else's life? If I look back on this past year, where have I seen God at work? And I think if we pause long enough, things will start to come to our minds, and then we'll be filled with perspective, and that leads us to the next one, which is praise. We praise Him. Finish your personal doxology by praising God for what He has done and who He is. Like all these examples in the Bible, like we sometimes do on our own, take time to praise God for the work that you see Him doing. I'll tell you this story really quick. This last week, Kinsley and I got into this habit. After school, I pick her up and there's this creek by our house. And one day we were driving home and I thought I saw something in the creek. And I was like, oh, let's go take a look at what that is. So I pulled back around and parked. And sure enough, there was a turtle, a little turtle in this creek. And I was like, Kinsley, let's get out. Let's go see the turtle. But before she got out of the car, the turtle kind of slipped into the water. And of course, she's really-- the day is ruined now. She was like, no, I want to see the turtle. And I was like, I'm so sorry. The turtle was there. She's like, "I didn't see the turtle." And so I said, "Why don't we pray? "Let's pray to God. "God, can you help the turtle to come out of the water? "God, we would love to see this turtle." Just kinda like, it's silly, but sometimes I think God appreciates when we bring the silly things to him. Just an opportunity to say, "Kensley, you can pray for anything. "Whether God answers it or not, I don't know, "but we can pray. "We can bring our desires before him." I didn't tell her all that, I just thought that. So I was like, "Kensley, let's pray." So we prayed, "God, can you let the turtle know that we want to see it, and it would be fun if it came out of the water, and she prayed that version of prayer. And we kind of walked a little bit farther along the creek, and sure enough, what do you know? We saw the turtle. The turtle had come back out at a different place. Yeah, it was great. And I was like, "Whoa, that was really cool." And she was like, "That's great, let's go home now." And I was like, "Hold on." That was, like, I'm amazed. I was like, "God, that was crazy. I did not think you were going to show up for turtle, but you did." And I was like, "Let's..." I felt convicted. I was like, we can't just move on with our lives. Like, we gotta recognize that God did this. This is crazy. And so I said, let's thank God for the fact that we saw this turtle. And so we then we prayed a prayer of praise. God, thank you for letting us see this turtle. Next day, she wanted to see this. We're like, hey, can we go see the turtles? There were no turtles. And she was like, I still wanna see. Can we pray? Can we pray that we see the turtles? Like, sure, let's pray to see the turtles. And we didn't see them and we walk a little bit further and what do you know, four turtles. There's two big turtles and I think two little turtles. so I'm assuming it's a little family of turtles. And she was like, "See, we prayed and God brought the turtles out!" And I was like, "Yeah, I do not know what's happening right now, God, but I don't know what her expectations are going to be in life." But she also was like, "Let's just go home." And I was like, "No, remember, if God did this, we need to praise Him. We got to have a moment of praise." And so we're getting into that rhythm of praising God. I share that to say we need to build the habit of praising God. It doesn't necessarily come naturally. We have to work and be intentional in our moments of praise. And again, all of these work best together. When you pause, that should lead to a moment of perspective. And after you have perspective, don't stop there. Give moment to praise. Praise God for what He is doing. And we praise Him because we believe that it is from Him, and through Him, and for Him, all things are for His glory. To Him be the glory forever and ever.

So this week, my encouragement to you is, and maybe today, before you start your Monday, take time and practice this. Take a moment to pause. Maybe as a family or just by yourself, give yourself, don't just give yourself a minute, give yourself an extended period of time. Gain some perspective and praise God. Ask yourself where you've seen God work and then maybe put into words, maybe you do write it out, you write yourself a little doxology, "God, you are this. Thank you for this until you be the glory. Or maybe you take a moment to pray out loud. Or at the least, a prayer from your heart of words of glory to our creator and our redeemer. All right, let's pray. God, thank you for this doxology, these words from Paul, for thousands of years ago when He wrote it. Thank you for encouraging him to pause and to have perspective and to praise you. And I pray that you would help us to have that rhythm in life, to get that practice, that pattern established, Lord, that maybe it's weekly, regularly, at the very least, when we see you work. Or maybe, God, it's when we haven't seen you work and we just need to take some moment to pause and, God, where are you working in our lives? I want to see you, help us to establish a pattern of pausing, of gaining perspective and praising you. And our desire is that our hearts be made more like you, that you help us to be like Jesus to the people in our lives, where you have placed us. And we don't always know why we're doing what we're doing, why we're, where we're at, and the path that we're on, but we recognize that your ways are higher than ours. So God, help us to have humility. And God, I just pray that you would give us boldness and courage to live out our faith, to be a witness. And again, that you would get all the glory, that your church would grow, that your family would see the benefit. So we pray this in your name, We give you all the praise. Amen.

Well, as we end today, as a benediction, I just wanna read our passage again, fully straight through, with this new, hope maybe understanding or reminder of what God is saying here. So, could we stand for this? Is that okay? Can we stand as I read this? Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable his judgments and his paths beyond tracing out. Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Who has ever given to God that God should repay them? For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever." And all God's people said, amen. - Thanks for listening. And if you would, please take a moment to subscribe and leave an encouraging review to help others find our podcasts on whatever platform you are listening on. We hope you have a wonderful day. We'll catch you next week.

Romans - Part 17

Patterns of Salvation & Redemption - Romans 11:1-32

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

How are you guys doing this morning? Doing good? For those doing the Sabbath practice, how's your Sabbath going? Are you resting well? Are you able to find some time to delight in something this week? And I see some thumbs up, that's good. I'm trying to do that. I'm trying to rest well, trying to Sabbath well. I wanna give you guys an update on the Snyder family as you've probably saw Pastor Chris is here. No baby yet, continue in praying as this is, yeah, just the time where we want baby to be here. So please, please continue to pray for Lauren, the whole Snyder family, but yes, and I'm sure in the coming days, we're praying that something will happen. And I also want to let you know that we have a meal train being set up, and so there's a sign up, a physical sign up sheet in the back. If you would like to sign up, we're actually gonna make that digital, and we're gonna send out an email probably tomorrow or Tuesday. So if you, you can sign up there and I'll put you on the digital version, or if you just want to wait, but we just want to bless and support our pastor and their family in that way. So be sure to look at that on your way out. Alrighty, anyone feel, this is just me maybe, anyone feel like they came to a Sunday super rushed and life is just going a thousand miles an hour? Is that anyone? Yeah, okay, I see some. Maybe you're hearing like, man, I am well in my resting phase and it is Sunday on the weekend and I am just grooving. That's great. I'm on the thousand miles an hour, like life is just going. So I'm just ready to breathe and slow down and dive into some scripture today.

Today we're just gonna continue in Romans. We are just gonna be going Romans, Romans, Romans. I hope you are enjoying it and not being dulled to what is happening here, but our each week, our prayer that it's engaging and that God is speaking to you in some new way. So we are going to be in chapter 11 today. Paul in this section is wrapping up his conversation about the fate of Israel. For the last nine, 10 and 11, those chapters, He's been talking about and laying out this argument, and it hasn't necessarily been easy to comprehend, but this argument of what is happening to Israel. Remember that Paul himself is a Jew. He's a Jew that punished and persecuted the early church. He was a high ranking Pharisee that was overseeing the persecution of Christians. And he's on this fast track of being high up in Pharisaical leadership. And so there were the very followers of Jesus that Paul is now encouraging and hoping to grow through his letter are the very ones that he was trying to eradicate at some point. And I say that, that's a whole other sermon, but you get, hopefully you understand some of the feelings that Paul has for his own people as one who thought and was in the position of them. His desire is that his people do not forsake God, but come to see Jesus as their savior, just as he did. He understands where they're coming from, the stumbling blocks that they may have in their minds and in their hearts that are keeping them from putting their faith in Jesus. And he's just trying to lay out this argument, this well thought out letter, so that they could understand. So throughout this passage, we're gonna see that he is filled with hope for the future of Israel, that ultimately they would be saved. Today we're gonna talk about this pattern that Paul talks about, which is a pattern of salvation, not new to Israel, but as Paul will point out, it's been seen throughout all of scripture, the Old Testament, and we're also gonna see how God is a God of redemption. So these patterns here that are developing, pattern of salvation and a pattern of redemption. And Paul's gonna lay out how this is our God, and this is the God that has been since the beginning of time. Let me go ahead and pray, and we'll dive in again. God, just be with us this morning. We are excited to be here together and to gather around your word. And we seek a deeper understanding of who you are and what you do. And so we just pray that you would, through your spirit work in our hearts, draw us into your presence. And may we be encouraged and equipped this morning. We pray this in your name, amen. All right, we're gonna start in the first 10 verses of chapter 11. And these first 10 verses are talking about Israel's past. So if you wanna read along with me, I'm gonna start in verse one. It says, "I asked then, did God reject his people? "By no means. "I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham "from the tribe of Benjamin. "God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew. "Don't you know what scripture says "in the passage from Elijah, "how he appealed to God against Israel? "Lord, they have killed your prophets "and torn down your altars. "I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me. And what was God's answer to him? I have reserved for myself 7,000 who have not bowed the knee to Baal. So too at the present time, there's a remnant chosen by grace. And if by grace and it cannot be based on works, if it were grace would no longer be grace. What then? What the people of Israel sought so earnestly, they did not obtain. The elect among them did, but the others were hardened.

As it is written, God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that could not see and ears that could not hear to this very day. And David says, "May their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them. May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see and their backs be bent forever." Paul is making it clear that this has always been the case. And we've talked about this in previous chapters that some Israelites do believe and some do not. In the first six verses, he's explaining those who do believe and he's even using himself as an example. I am a Jew that still believes. And he also references, this has been a pattern of God as we've seen it before with Elijah and the Israelites in the past, this remnant who have believed. He brings up this example of Elijah that we covered a bit in our summer series, these impossible moments. And Elijah's talking to God saying, God, I'm the only one. Elijah, the prophet, the voice of God is thinking to himself, he is the only follower of Yahweh left. And I don't think he's speaking in hyperbolic. I don't think he's like, "God, I know there's some," but I think Elijah is like, "I am the only one. There is no one out here that believes in you." And God says, "No, I have 7,000 that still have not bowed the knee to Baal, but are worshiping me." And this brings us up to say that even in ways that we do not see, the Spirit is always at work. God is always at work in people's hearts. Maybe the evidence, we don't see it yet, But God, and he's done this even in the Old Testament, God is at work. He's establishing a pattern of some who believe, some who don't, and a pattern of redemption and salvation. So Paul is looking to the past and saying that the pattern still pertains to the present, what we've seen in the past, that God, there's always some who believe, that's still true today. There are some who have declared with their mouths and believed with their hearts, to quote from last week's passage, what Paul wrote. Verses seven through 10 talk about those who don't. The Israelites who have hardened their hearts, they have a pattern of sin and rejecting God. And Paul talks about how God has given them to slumber because they were already closed off, a dulling of their spiritual senses because they have a habit built up of turning away from God. So they do not hear or see the truth. Paul has in chapter nine already referenced the story of Pharaoh and hardening his hearts. but maybe you can today, think of people in your life who you know their spiritual senses are dulled. They cannot see, they cannot hear the truth. And sometimes you just wanna shake them. You won't be like, "Hey, how are you not seeing this?" Maybe they're surrounded by it, maybe they're in church or you know that they have heard of God, that God is present in their life. And you see God working, but for some whatever reason, they don't see God working. You just wanna see like, how do you not see this? That was God right there. How do you not understand this? God was at work in that moment.

That's Paul to the Israelites saying, God is all around them. God is working, but he's not surprised that they don't believe. Because again, this pattern has been around, those who believe and those who don't. We think of two Israel's history. If you start with Abraham, the first one of God's promise. And he had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. Ishmael from Abraham's own will and power and Isaac, the son of blessing. And it's not Ishmael that God proceeds with, it's Isaac. And then from Isaac, his two sons, you get Jacob and Esau. And the Bible is very clear that Jacob is the one who God loved and Esau, the one that he hated. It's very strong words. And then from Jacob, we have all those who would believe in the Messiah and all those who would reject the Messiah. So there is a pattern present in God's people and plan seen throughout Israel's history of salvation and redemption of those who don't believe and those who do. And what Paul is referencing here, and he's gonna get, we're gonna further get into is that even those who rejected all long ago, all the descendants from Ishmael, all the descendants from Esau, they now have an opportunity to come to know and to believe in Jesus. And that speaks to the redemptive heart of God. All right, let's find out more about this pattern of salvation and redemption as we continue. Verse 11 says this, "Again, I asked, "did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? "Not at all. "Rather because of their transgression, "salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. "But if their transgression means riches for the world, and their loss means riches for the Gentiles, how much greater riches will their full inclusion bring? I'm talking to you, Gentiles. In as much as I'm the apostle to the Gentiles, I take pride in my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them. For if the rejection brought reconciliation to the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? If part of the dough offered as first fruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy. If the root is holy, so are the branches. Some of the branches have been broken off and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others, and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this, you do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in, granted, but they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith.

Do not be arrogant, but tremble. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either. Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God, sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you also will be cut off. And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree? All right, that's a lot. We got into some gardening stuff right there for a second, which we'll talk about. I just wanna focus on a couple things in this section. Paul is talking about Israel's present. The first 10 verses all about Israel's past. Now we're talking about Israel's present reality in the early church. And the reality is this, Israel's rejection of the Messiah equals the Gentiles opportunity to be saved. Maybe that's not how we would have drawn this up, but this is God's plan of redemption and salvation. Israel's rejection of the Messiah equals the Gentiles opportunity to be saved. And in Israel's present reality, we see a few different things. First, again, that God is a God of redemption. Paul anticipates the thought that maybe Israel is too far gone, did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? And he says no. Rather because they did stumble, salvation was brought to the rest of the world. This is a primary example of God's redemptive plan, turning something so negative and unfortunate, Israel, God's own people rejecting the Messiah, and turning it into God's kingdom glory and gain, which is Gentiles being grafted into the kingdom. Only God could have willed and executed this plan where so much of the world is brought into his kingdom. It's an amazing example of God's redeeming love and grace and heart.

In verses 23 through 24, we see more evidence of God's redemptive heart as he wants Israel to be in the family, to be redeemed. It says that they can be grafted in. That's only something that God who has endless amounts of grace and compassion and forgiveness and kindness can do. How many times do we feel, how many times does it take for us after we feel burned, betrayed or hurt by someone to say, that's enough, I'm kind of done with you, no more. I've been hurt enough and now I'm gonna put some distance between me and you. Now that may be healthy for us, don't get me wrong, that's maybe a good thing. We are finite creatures and we have boundaries and limitations, so that's maybe good. But that also just speaks to how amazing God is that he can be betrayed and hurt and burned over and over and over again. And yet once that person, that Israelite, no longer persists in unbelief, but instead believes God is ready to bring them back in. Endless amounts of grace and love. God wants them to be a part of the family. We get more of this in the next point, which is about grafting believers in. Any gardeners here, anyone who read this and was like, I totally understand what grafting in trees is all about. Yeah? OK. Well, that's impressive to me. That's amazing. I had to learn. I had to research. I was like, what is this process about? I do not know. I'm not often in the backyard grafting my trees together. But I learned that it's about taking a shoot from one tree, a little branch. And you open up. You make an incision and a cut in some other tree. And then you put that one shoot in there. And hopefully it takes, and it'll start growing off of that tree. And there's a bunch of reasons why you can do it to repair a tree. If this section of a tree is damaged, you can hope to mend it by putting some good branches in. Or maybe you just want to have freedom in how your trees are growing and you want to create something. My dad is really into bonsai. He got really into bonsai trees. I don't know if you know those little small ones that look like miniature trees. And so he's been in for about a decade or so. And he's got like 10 good bonsais. And I go with him now sometimes to this bonsai expert over. And we tend to his trees. And he tells us when to wire it, and to shape it, and where to cut it. And a lot of it is just leaving it alone for a whole year. And then you come back, and you have one week of lots of maintenance. And then you don't touch it for a year. But grafting is something that you can do in bonsai. And you can create something. And you can grow a tree in a certain direction. And it's just amazing. It's really cool. And so, Paul is, anyways, Paul is using this metaphor that Israel is this olive tree. And the unbelievers of Israel, those who do not believe Jesus as the Savior, have rejected, who have rejected Jesus, are pruned off, they're cut off from the tree. And then, he's grafting in some. He's making those incisions, he's bringing in other believers, the Gentile believers, and having them be a part of Israel. Now, I just want to be clear, the term "Israel" does not mean that we become Jewish, it means Israel as in the faithful who have put their faith in God.

So in the following chapters 9, 10 and 11, he's been using this term Israel as those who have put their faith in God. And so we become a part of the tree of Israel, those who live by faith. This pruning also may sound cruel, may sound unfair to us, but is God's exercise of justice, and he's perfectly okay to do it, and it's good. And Paul's trying to explain that, that this whole thing, this fate of Israel is actually good in the long run. And good if we back out and see the whole picture, because of what Israel is doing, Gentiles get to come into the family of God. The point is, we as new believers are grafted into the family of God, into Israel, and we must have faith to be on this tree, this tree of life, this tree of the family of God. And if we don't, if we don't have faith, it says in verse 20 that we can be broken off too. This is what God is doing through Israel's present reality. Many of them have rejected Christ, but God is being a redeeming God and grafting Gentiles into the family of God. We'll come back to the grafting analogy later. But the last part of our section that Paul is talking about is a warning of arrogance. He tells the Gentiles who were grafted in, who are part of God's redemptive plan, and maybe they're starting to feel good about themselves in comparison to Israel say, "Hey, man, God's own people don't believe "that I'm here on this tree. "Look at me, this is awesome." He's saying, "You are no better than an Israelite. "Better check yourself." He reminds them that the root supports you, not that you were brought in to be the source of God's work. No, no, no, it is by grace that we are saved. And that means that we didn't do anything to get ourselves onto this tree of life. So don't be thinking all high and mighty of yourself, you Gentiles who are now on the tree of life, but have humility. And he talks about not being arrogant, but trembling. I like this idea of trembling. This term in the Greek is thought of, it's the thought of being afraid, but not just terror, like we're about to be in the Halloween season right now, not that kind of afraid, but it's rather having a proper attitude of awe and respect towards something, often more powerful than you. And in this case, it's talking about God. So tremble before God, have a proper attitude of awe and respect. I think of it, have any of you been to Yosemite? Maybe some of you have been to Yosemite. I love Yosemite and I haven't, it's been a few years, but the part, the whole park is amazing. And it's, you know, the views are incredible. The part that filled me with awe was one of the waterfalls. to Yosemite Falls, and being at the very top, it's very high up, you get up there, you see the whole valley, you see everything, and it's incredible. And it fills me with a certain awe of like, man, God is amazing for creating this. I also don't like heights. I am terrified of heights. And so being up at the top of the falls, my legs are going weak, like 25 feet from the edge. It's very much over there, but I am like more points of contact to the ground. I need like, I start getting lower and lower, but I want to see you over the edge, but I have this proper, I think, a proper view on respect towards what could happen if I am closer to that edge. And I also think of the waterfall itself, and I've touched the water and I feel and hear and see the power of the water flowing down and going over that edge. And I know that one misstep from me, and I could be overwhelmed by something much greater and more and larger and more powerful than I am. And so while there was some fear while I was up there, I also just, it's a proper reverence in trembling, literally trembling, the top of the waterfall.

And I think that's what Paul is talking about, having a spirit of humility while we're on this tree as we've been grafted in, but still trembling, that we are a part of something bigger than us, that we serve a God who is much more powerful and in charge and sovereign, and who has the power to cut us off if we are no longer faithful. having a proper view and attitude and respect for God. In verse 21, he says, "God didn't spare his own people for their unbelief. What makes you think that he'll spare you if you don't believe?" So he gives us, the readers, a warning about arrogance. So, just wanna recap. That was a big section of this chapter, but I just wanna recap again. Israel's present reality, where many of the Israelites have rejected the Messiah, means that the gospel went out to the rest of the world. And we see that God is a God of redemption, that when one believes they are grafted into the family of God, and that we are to have a spirit of humility, not one of arrogance.

And that leads us to the final section of our passage, verse 25. And it says this, "I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited. Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way, all Israel will be saved. As it is written, the deliverer will come from Zion. He will turn godlessness away from Jacob. And this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins. As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies for your sake. But as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs. For God's gift and his call are irrevocable. Just as you who are at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, So they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God's mercy to you. For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all. We've had Israel's past, we've had Israel's present, and now Paul's addressing Israel's future. What will happen to them? And Paul believes that many of them will return to God, that many of them will be saved. there will be more faithful Israelites to come, descendants of Abraham who believe by faith, and God will be grafting them back in. He's cut them off, but he will graft them back in. And in the meantime, he anticipates the readers, this early church in Rome, to say, "But why in the future? "Why not now? "Why can't God do that now? "Why does it have to wait?" And Paul again approaches this with explaining the pattern of salvation and redemption, that right now it means that Gentiles, more Gentiles can come into the family of God. Israel has experienced a hardening by God, in part to help Gentiles come to faith. God's redemptive plan and pattern turns to the Gentiles as Israel struggles. He says that the nation of Israel are currently enemies of the gospel. Again, Paul's words can sometimes be very harsh and that we read that now and it's like, man, enemies of the gospel, but it's true. They do not believe in Jesus as the Messiah. But the call from God to be a part of the family remains forever. That call is irrevocable. That call doesn't go away. We talked about God being, God who redeems. So this situation, Israel has turned their back on God.

But God's call still goes out and says, in verse 10 or chapter 10, he was saying, "I hold my hand out to a disobedient and stubborn people." He's waiting and he continues to wait. And the question remains, will they answer? And Paul believes that they will. They will eventually answer the call. Verse 32, everyone, including Israelites, are dealing with sin nature. They are born sinful, bound to disobedience, but that disobedience is an opportunity for God to have mercy. Talk about a God of redemption. Any moment we see, we are disobedient to God, Any moment we see someone else living a life of disobedience, we should automatically think that's an opportunity for God to redeem that situation. Imagine the witness and testimony it will be to see Israel, a nation that has rejected Jesus for so long, finally come to saving faith. What a testimony to God that will be, to God's unending work, faithful covenant to His people. To see a people so entrenched in denying Jesus have their eyes open, their ears able to hear, and their hearts finally aligned with God. I mean, the celebration that will happen on that day. Paul is filled with hope. I want to share a story with you. I grew up in the church, and I grew up at a different church with this family who had a son who was the same age as me. We grew up in elementary and junior high and youth group together. And it was very clear by the end of high school or end of our youth group days that he was not following Jesus anymore with his life. And as many of us went off to college and continued in church, wherever our colleges were, he fully embraced a non-Christian secular lifestyle and has turned his back on faith, knew what he was doing and just went in that direction. Eventually I came back to work on staff and served on the board with his dad and leadership positions with his mom. And so I would hear in times of meeting and prayer requests, them praying for their son. And they say that right now he is not at all interested in faith, but they maintained a relationship with him and they're doing their best to continue to be a witness and a presence of Jesus in his life. And they had broken hearts. There was pain as they would share this and sorrow over the current state of their son, not walking with God. but they still had hope and prayed that one day, at whatever time of God's choosing, whether soon or far in the future, that their son would turn back to God. And right now, still not necessarily, I don't know where he's at with God, but I know this, he's closer than he has been in the past decade. He's closer, he's open, he's listening. His ears and his eyes are not as dull as they once were.

The conversations that he's having with his parents They share that, I mean, they're encouraged that he is partaking even and wants to ask questions. They continue to pray and hope and they believe in a God. They've seen God's pattern and work throughout scripture, throughout history. They know that God can redeem anyone in any situation. And so they're praying that that would be true of their son. And without a doubt, if he ever does fully commit to Christ, I know that there'll be rejoicing, tears of joy, and a huge appreciation and relief of the work that God had done, and evidence that God had never quit working in their son's life. And they continue to hope. I don't know about you, maybe you can think of someone in your life that that story relates to, that there's a person in your life, that that is them. That you are continuing to pray. They're not with God right now, they're not walking with God right now. They know who God is maybe, or maybe they don't, but you're praying and hoping in the God who can redeem anyone that that will be true in that person's life. We have to continue to hope. We know who God is, what he can do. We believe in a God who redeems. I wanna leave you with a few reminders and thoughts of encouragement. The first reminder is that we serve a redeeming God. How can you see a world in a way that highlights God's redemptive pattern? If you see someone, if you know someone who's in a bad place or an unbeliever, instead of judging them where they're at in that moment, maybe at their worst, or just signing off on that that is their fate forever, why don't we pray and hope for God to redeem them? We can be so quick to judge and just say, "Ooh, that person, yikes, too far gone." No, that is not what God is about. That's not the God that was, he sees that and he is hoping and praying that that person will come to him. and we should have the same thoughts. We wanna align our hearts with God and remember that we serve a redeeming God. If God can redeem Paul, who was killing Christians in the early church, and was anti God's own kingdom, and God can redeem him, God can redeem anyone. Whoever you come across, as bad as they might be, view them in God's eyes and see, that's an opportunity for God to redeem. Secondly, a reminder that you can be grafted in.

If you're here this morning and you believe, praise God that you are here as a believer, and you are now on the tree of life, and Jesus is your source, you are evidence of God's redeeming plan, pattern of salvation. And you gotta rejoice and recognize that you are part of the family of God. And if you have not yet declared, with your mouth and believed in your heart, then hear this today, you too can have faith and belong to the family of God. God's heart is that through his son Jesus, you would come to believe, and you can be grafted into the family of Christ. And then lastly, it's a reminder that we must have humility. That warning to the Gentiles also goes out to us. We cannot be arrogant in our faith. So the question for us today is, are you becoming superior in your heart in any way regarding your faith and your relationship with Jesus? When I say superior, meaning, Are you comparing yourself to other believers and thinking you are better than anyone? Do you ever have thoughts like this? Well, I've been here longer at this church and therefore I am entitled to this, this and this. I've been a Christian for more years. So my word and thought weighs more heavily than that person over there. I am so, I don't know if we use on fire anymore. I feel like that was a generational term for being, But maybe I'm more spiritual than that other person, just the way I live my life. So I'm closer to God and yeah, I matter more to God than that other person. Or maybe I know so much more of the Bible. Man, I know my Bible a lot compared to some of these other people. It can be as simple as at least God loves me this much compared to how little God loves that other person. As if God did not love others the same amount. And some of those might have sounded ridiculous to you, but I know for a fact that those are all thoughts that Christians have towards other believers. We can begin to feel superior over others.

And so let's embody Christ, who is the perfect example of humility, and recognize that we are all sinners in need of Jesus. That's our status right there. There's no greater than compared, when we look around, all of us on the same level, we are all sinners in need of Jesus. We sit before Jesus with a sin problem and we all need the same thing, salvation. So have a humble heart. I wanna ask yourself this week as we close, these are some questions for you to reflect on and go and may the Spirit work in you and all of us. Ask yourself this, what is God trying to tell me? Where am I seeing God's redemptive plan being worked out? maybe in my own life or in the life of someone I know, and ask God to continue to give you a spirit of humility in your faith, keeping you humble. The more humble, that's not a humbler, I don't think that's a word. The more humble we are, the more we stay in tune with our need for Jesus. The more superior in our faith we start to become, the more distant we find ourselves from the need, our need for God. We don't think we need Him as much. So remain humble, ask for that humility.