The Message of the Manger: Part 4

The Messiah of the Manger

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Man, this Christmas season is flying by. I know last week, Pastor Lauren got all of us thinking about the Christmas traditions that we do. She had mentioned donuts in her family, which I thought was awesome. I don't know if you guys are in the midst of carrying out all your traditions. We have Christmas cookies going, and then we have some movies on, and we love it. We still have to do the Christmas lights, and behind Bel Air here, we haven't gone through yet. We're looking forward to doing that. And so, hopefully you guys are enjoying those things. I know it goes by fast, and so we want you to enjoy that. But yeah, the season is, 2024 is just around the corner. And today, speaking of things going fast, our series is coming to an end. We're wrapping up our Christmas series, The Message of the Manger. We've had, three weeks ago, we talked about the mystery of the manger. That was the incarnation, how Jesus is fully God and fully man, and wrapping our heads around that to the best of our ability. We also talked about the miracles, all the impossible things made possible by God for the birth of Jesus. And then last week, Pastor Lauren talked about the majesty of the manger and how people were awaiting the coming heavenly king.

And so today, we're gonna shift our focus from this moment around the manger. I don't know if you know this, by the way, we have a manger up here. Did you guys see this throughout the, it's been there? I love it, Pastor Chris built a manger for us. But we're shifting from the scene directly around the manger around Jesus' birth, and we're gonna look forward to what he's gonna do in his life. We wanna answer the questions, why was Jesus born? Why did God send his only son to earth? In other words, why do we have Christmas? In order to understand that fully, I wanna take us back a bit and help us understand why we needed Jesus to descend from heaven, why we needed the incarnation, why God had done all these amazing things, all the miracles, and why people were waiting for a king, the majesty around the manger. Because God didn't just do this for fun. He didn't just say, "Hey, this is a good time in history." They just kinda like, "Let's put Jesus in the story right now. "This works out, this would be a good time." Or, "Hey, it's getting kind of shady. "I think we need Jesus to kinda help it out a little bit." No, there was way more intention and purpose in the arrival of Jesus. There was a need for him. And this moment at the manger is a culmination of so many other moments. This was anticipated and prophesied and waited for, for years upon years, generations upon generations. And so I wanna start briefly at the beginning.

Now let me ask, how long do you think humanity was in need of a Messiah, of a Savior? Well, it's all the way back at the very beginning of our Bibles, thousands of years ago, in Genesis in the Garden of Eden. You may be wondering, this is Christmas, Why are we talking about Genesis right now? Well, without understanding what happened here at the beginning of the Bible, we won't fully grasp and appreciate what is happening when Jesus is born. You see, we believe that the Bible is one coherent story, all leading us to Jesus and God's plan of salvation. It's important that as we read scripture and try to understand what God is doing in the midst of different people and different scenarios, that ultimately it's driving us to the arrival of Christ. The moment where Jesus the Messiah arrives. And it's gonna point us to what will happen in Jesus' birth, life, death, and resurrection. So, to go all the way back, just a brief refresher for some of you, or maybe something new. We're gonna go back to the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. And back then, everything was perfect, right? God had created this Garden of Eden. He had put Adam and Eve in there to be partners with him, and everything is great for a time until it isn't. Until Adam and Eve, and we know of the fruit and the tree, and they choose to separate themselves from God, and sin is inserted into the story. They choose to try to do life apart from God. And all of humanity from that point on has a sin problem. And that sin problem is a separation from God. Instead of being destined to be with him forever, humanity is at risk of never being with God, and apart from him for eternity.

So that is the sin issue, and it's an issue that God wants to correct, but in his perfect and beautiful way, and it's gonna take time. And he alludes to his plan when speaking to Adam and Eve and the serpent in the garden. After everything goes down, God is debriefing with each of them. The big moment happens, sin enters, and God, I'm going through this so fast, but God is talking to Adam, and he's like, "Hey, this is how life is gonna change." He talks to Eve, "Hey, this is how life "is gonna change for you." And he talks to the serpent, the enemy. And he says this, in Genesis 3.15, he says, this is God speaking to the serpent, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, "between your offspring and hers. "He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel." The "He" in that verse is foreshadowing to the coming Messiah, Jesus. Jesus will defeat the enemy. And so everything in our Bibles, everything, up until we get to here, right around here, Jesus' birth, everything in between is God's plan unfolding about bringing about that Messiah. From the moment that sin enters the story, everything else is pointing and leading to Jesus entering the story. It's from this moment on that we know that God has a plan of salvation. Someone is going to come and rescue humanity. Like I said, sin has corrupted humanity and driven us away from God, and there's nothing that humanity can do on its own to restore that broken relationship. The human situation because of sin is hopeless and chaotic and despairing and void of any love.

But Jesus brings love and peace and hope and joy to humanity, as he is the source of all those things. And he brings restoration for our relationship with God. Jesus is born to confront the issue of sin. This is why we need Jesus. This is why God has sent his son to earth. And this is how the manger points us So what Jesus the Messiah will do. So there was our brief Bible lesson from the past and now we're back in Jesus' time. There are many references to Jesus being the Messiah in helpful passages in Scripture and they all describe a little bit about who He is and what He does. We don't have time to go through them all but I would encourage you this week and up until Christmas and this season to maybe do a Google search in your personal time and you know Bible passages Messiah and see what you learn from that. But today I want to focus on one, and that's in Luke. We'll be in Luke today, chapter four. And in this scene, this is Jesus, grown up by the way, we're far past his birth, we're gonna come back to the birth, but we're far past his birth. He's a grown man, he's starting things, he's starting his ministry. And so he's coming from the wilderness, where he spent significant time being tested and tempted by Satan. And he succeeds through that temptation and testing by resting on his purpose, his mission, that he came to be the Messiah. He's a part of the rescue plan. He is the rescue plan. And so he comes back from the desert and he's like, "I gotta let people know who I am now." He's kind of been under the radar. He's just been Jesus living his life.

And so he goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath and he reads from a scroll of Isaiah. Isaiah's a book in our Bible. It's full of prophecy. And this is an epic moment of Jesus sharing who he is. So if you guys wanna follow along, I'm gonna read from verse, starting in verse 16, chapter four of the book of Luke. It says this, "He went to Nazareth, "where he had been brought up, "and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, "as was his custom. "He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah "was handed to him. "Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written, "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, "because he has anointed me "to proclaim good news to the poor. "He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners "and recovery of sight for the blind, "to set the oppressed free, "to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. And the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, "Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." This is, I mean, amazing, thinking of how long people have been waiting for the Messiah, how long generations after generations and the people, this wouldn't be the first time they've heard this passage before. So they know everyone's anticipating at some point there will be someone to come rescue us. And they recognize as Jesus is reading this, like that's him. This is the guy that we've been waiting for. All their eyes are fixed on him. So what is Jesus gonna do? Let's find out what the Messiah is all about. I just wanna go line by line here and break down what Jesus is saying by reading this scripture.

So the first part says, "The Spirit of the Lord is on me "because he has anointed me." Well, anointing symbolizes holiness and authority. In the Bible, kings, prophets, and priests could all be anointed to signify that they had been set apart and selected for a specific role. And the Hebrew word here that Jesus is using when he says "anointed" is also the word for Messiah. So he's saying, "Look, it's me. I am the anointed one. I am the Messiah, the one you've been waiting for." So we know that Jesus, as the Messiah, has been anointed, he's been purposed, he's been selected for this role by God. To redeem and to rescue, to sacrifice and to be king. The passage continues to proclaim good news to the poor. Jesus as the Messiah brings good news, brings the gospel. John 4, in the Gospel of John, there's a different scene that's a little bit more explicit in explaining this role of the Messiah. There's a conversation between Jesus and a woman, and the woman says to Jesus, "I know that the Messiah, called Christ, is coming, and when He comes, He will explain everything to us." says to this woman in this passage, "I, the one speaking to you, I am He." And so we know that Jesus brings truth. He brings perfect understanding and explanation to the Scriptures, to the way that we are supposed to live according to God. His purpose was to reveal truth and to... He has the power and clarity of sharing God's perfect Word. This is the role of Jesus as a prophet, being the voice of God. And he would do this throughout his life by teaching in synagogues, by having conversations with his followers, parables, more conversations with his disciples, explaining what scripture really means and what God is actually calling people to.

The end of that verse says, "To the poor." And why "to the poor"? Well, Jesus would teach on the on the Sermon on the Mount, that the poor in spirit are blessed, because the kingdom of God, God himself, values those who the world may see poor in their eyes, God sees value in them. And so he's speaking the gospel to everyone, not just who the world would think, hey, the good news should come to those who have earned it, who have lived a certain life. No, Jesus came to give good news to absolutely everyone. The passage continues again, it says, He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind and set the oppressed free. So it's not just that the Messiah reveals truth, he does that, but he also has come to do things. He's come to rescue and to redeem. Now the Israelites for a long time had this idea of what that rescue plan would look like. They thought an earthly ruler, an earthly king, that would help them rise up against their oppressors, thinking of the Roman government, and we're gonna establish this new kingdom here on earth. That's what all of Israel thought. But Jesus is not talking about an earthly nation or kingdom. Jesus came to rescue, to save lost people, and to give freedom, but freedom from sin. Rescue from that eternal separation from God that they were dealing with. That people would no longer be bound by the oppressive sin and darkness in their life, but would have the light of Christ and have freedom in him. Jesus came to free sinners and to give new life, eternal life to those who believe.

And then it ends with, “to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” Now, this is referenced to an old Israelite tradition that every 50 years, any slave would be freed and any borrowed land would be returned to its original owners. And Jesus is not saying, "Hey, that's what's happening this year, everyone." He's saying, "I'm now ushering in a new era of salvation." This is an era where the work of sin can begin to be undone, where people were once separated from God, and now that relationship can be restored, not fully, like it will be in heaven, but we can once again commune with God the Father through Jesus. So this whole passage, verses 18 and 19, when Jesus is reading this, he's saying, this is what I'm bringing, what the Messiah brings, is an era worthy of celebrating, of anticipating, of getting excited about. This is what the Messiah will do. This is why God sent his only son to earth. This is why Jesus is born, and this is why we have Christmas. Jesus was born to save, to share God's truth, and to redeem the lost, to free humanity from their sin. And so in our scene, Jesus says all this, rolls back up the scroll, gives it to the attendant, and all eyes were on him. And it was clear that he was saying this about himself.

And in verse 21 it says, "Today the scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." Jesus has announced that he is the Messiah. And he's alluding to what will happen, God's plan that's gonna be carried out in the coming years of his life. Now today, our series is around the manger. We're approaching Christmas Day where we often think of baby Jesus, and that's appropriate, we can do that, we can celebrate that. But it's important to know that thinking of Jesus in the manger is to think of what that baby, the Messiah, will do in his life. While we celebrate the birth of Jesus, we truly celebrate the birth, what that birth brings, what the Messiah brings. You see, Christmas means less if we think we aren't in need of rescuing. Christmas means less if we don't think we need a savior. And Christmas means less if we aren't looking forward to the Messiah doing work in our own lives. The passage in Luke continues in a very unfortunate way. We won't read it, but let me just tell you what happens. Jesus says all this, and I wanna compare it to what we're doing today too. So Jesus says all this, he's at the synagogue on the Sabbath, which is what they would do at that time. We're today at church on a Sunday, which is what we do. And Jesus comes unexpected and claims to be the Messiah. And at first people were in awe. They're amazed at what is happening. But then the people wanted proof. They didn't take Jesus at his word any longer.

And so Jesus has some harsher words for them, telling them that prophets are not accepted in their hometowns and the people are offended. As one scholar says, it says, "People are more ready to see greatness in strangers "than in those that they know well." And that's what was true of the people in Nazareth. And so I just want us to pause and think about that. If you know Jesus, if you've been walking with Jesus for most of your life, are you at risk of being numb to the greatness that he's doing around you and in you and through you, especially in another Christmas season? Are you numb to how amazing the birth of Jesus is? Well, that's kind of what Jesus is saying to these people. He's saying, "Hey, I'm saying all these truths and you want more. You don't need more, but you want more." And they get angry. And they get so angry that they want to push Jesus off of a cliff. I'm not making that up. That's in the Bible. They are pushing him. This crowd, this angry mob, is forcing him to this cliff. They want to throw him off. They're so offended. But in verse 30, this is what happens. "He walked right through the crowd, and he went on his way." He just left. He walks on and continues with his purpose, with his rescue mission, because he is the Messiah. And they missed out on experiencing more of the Messiah in their lives.

And so what is our response to the Messiah today? Are we amazed, hearing amazing things, seeing amazing things from God? And sometimes we're in awe and we're like, "Yes, God, you are so good. "This is incredible." Or are we more offended and angry? Jesus, you wanna do what with my life? Jesus, you're asking me to change in what way? Jesus, you want how much of me? You want all of me? Sometimes these things offend us. They stir us up. We don't like that. And maybe we identify with both these groups if we're honest with ourselves. Even in the same day, we can be, at one point in the day, we're amazed at God. In the next moment, we're really offended. "God, I don't like what you're doing in my life right now." But verse 30 is a warning to us. He walked right through the crowd, went on his way. Our Messiah is on a mission. He's got things to do in our lives, and we don't want to miss out. If we reject or ignore the Messiah, we'd be missing out on being freed from sin, or seeing light in the darkness, or being rescued completely. So I wanna invite the worship band back up as we close. We're gonna close our sermon this morning and really our whole series with this. The Message of the Manger, that was the title of our series. And so I wanna make sure that we all know what that message is, be very clear. The message of the manger is one of salvation. It's about how the incarnation of God in the person of Christ came down through miraculous means and circumstances. Jesus came to be our King, came to be our Redeemer, our Rescuer, our Lord and Savior, our Messiah. And so will you this Christmas lean into God? Will you worship Him? Will you give him your entire life? And as you celebrate his arrival and you celebrate what his arrival means, don't let Jesus pass you by this Christmas.

Let's pray. God, thank you again for Christmas, for sending your son. Thank you for what that birth means and the fact that we get to have an opportunity to experience everlasting life with you. That through your son that you would bring salvation, that you would correct this sin issue that all of us are dealing with. So God, our prayer this morning is that in today, in this next week, and through Christmas and beyond, that you would draw us closer to you. And if that's by focusing on your birth, on the birth of Jesus, then so be it. If that's on focusing on what Jesus would do later on in his life, great. In whatever ways, God, I pray that you would draw us closer to you, that we would come to this point of surrendering, giving our lives over to you, worshiping you with all that we have. I pray that we would all, however we're feeling, at some point in this Christmas season, we would experience your joy, your peace, your hope, and your love. God, you are so good. We give you all the praise. We pray this in your name. Amen.

The Message of the Manger: Part 3

The Majesty of the Manger

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Welcome! I am so glad to be here with you today. Last time I was up here, I was very pregnant. So hopefully my lung capacity will be a little bit better this time. If I haven't met you, I am Pastor Lauren, and I am so excited to be with you today with our third week of Advent. Real quick, unrelated, I know you heard it from the guys, but I wanted you to hear it from me. Thank you so much for your generosity as we have transitioned with a new baby and just, we have not bought diapers yet because of you all. You guys have blessed us so much. I think we saw months worth of diapers left in our garage. So we are so thankful for that and for meals and gift cards. And then right after that, you guys have been so generous with Pastor Appreciation and just loving on our families. And so I just wanted you to hear that from me, completely unrelated to the sermon today, but thank you. Thank you for those that have given and sacrificed and served to fill in spaces when I was missing this the last couple of months. So thank you. Just wanted you to know that you are appreciated and you are so loved. And I just love the culture of generosity we have here in our SVC family.

Well, we are on week three of the message of the manger series. Pastor Chris started us off with the mystery of the manger and talked about Jesus coming and being fully God and fully man and how we can maybe grasp that on some level, but there's still so much mystery there. And it's a wonderful mystery. If we could figure God out, I would be concerned. So I'm glad there is still some mystery and that I am not God and I do not fully understand Him. And then Pastor Andre talks about the miracles last week of the manger and the multiple miracles surrounding the birth of Jesus and His incarnation and Mary and Joseph and Elizabeth and Zechariah and even the wise men coming. And then today we are going to talk about the majesty of the manger. So something you should know about me is I love Christmas. I know that is not the case for everybody. I know this time of year can be really hard for a lot of people, but I am so grateful that I just love it. I love, it's just magical to me. I love the music and the twinkle lights and the presents and the songs, just the movies, just all of it. Give me all of it, I want it all. And I get it from my father. Now I'm a pastor's kid, so he's used me in a lot of sermons, so I have the microphone this time, so I get to use him.

But my dad loves Christmas, and growing up, the first-ish weekend of December, he would make homemade donuts, and a big breakfast, we'd have like our nice Christmas dishes, and he'd play Christmas music, And that was our way of ushering in the Christmas season. And as a tradition, we carried on with our kids. In fact, my parents are in town. And so he made donuts with my kids yesterday to help us continue that tradition. But when I was a freshman in college, I was not going to be home in time for Christmas donut day. But I went to college about, we went to college in Indiana. My parents were here in California. And I was so bummed I was gonna miss it. And we looked forward to it every year. But I went to college about 15 minutes from my grandparents. And that Saturday morning that my family was doing Christmas donut day in California, I get a phone call that my grandma is at the front door of my dorm. And I go downstairs and she has a plate of homemade donuts. 'Cause my dad called her and said, "You gotta make my kid donuts." That to me is the magic of Christmas. I want all of it. I love it.

But we're gonna talk about the majesty today. The majesty of Christmas, I've come to appreciate it more and more. I've always known Jesus is the reason for the season. You know, we know that that's why we celebrate. The older I get, the more I appreciate what it truly means that our God came to earth as a baby. And truly, appreciating the majesty of Christmas makes it that much more magical. It just enhances the magic of Christmas for me. So what do I mean about, or what do I mean when I say majesty? Majesty is one of those words that I know what it means, but to explain it, I'm like, oh, what's the definition of majesty? So I did what we all do and I Googled it. And some definitions that came up were impressive stateliness, dignity or beauty, Royal power, a title given to a sovereign. All of these accurately describe Jesus. He is impressive and beautiful and he is sovereign and has royal power. So today we're gonna focus on his majesty and specifically his kingship. His kingship isn't necessarily something we talk about super often, but diving into this, I found it is just, it is an attribute of Him that I think is really important and it impacts our daily lives. So how do we know that Jesus is King? How do we know that? What does it mean for us practically to have a King?

Well, the Bible talks about Jesus is King and there are many prophecies of the coming King or coming Messiah. And Messiah means anointed one. And in Bible times, prophets would anoint the next king as a symbol of their kingship. So Jesus is the Messiah. He is the anointed one. And it was foretold in the Old Testament, thousands of years before Jesus's birth, that he would be king and that he would sit on David's throne forever. So we're gonna be kind of jumping around in scripture today. So if you wanna follow along, great. pleased you, we got Bibles in the seats. You can pick it up on your phone or we'll have it on the screen for you. But our first passage today is Isaiah 9, six through seven. And it says, "For to us, a child is born, to us a son is given and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing it and upholding it with justice and righteousness. From that time on and forever, the zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this." This is just one of many prophecies of Jesus's coming King. The Israelites in the Old Testament, they wanted a King. They were struggling to follow God and his way for them. They saw the surrounding nations had kings and they wanted a king. They wanted a ruler and a warrior to help them conquer other lands. They wanted a protector. They wanted a king. The problem is their only options for kings were humans. So there was not going to be a perfect king. There were good kings and there were a lot of really bad ones too. David is one example. He was a good king. He made a lot of mistakes, but the Bible also says he was a man after God's own heart. So he was a good king, but he wasn't a perfect king. And he wasn't going to live forever, so he couldn't sit on his own throne forever. Someone else had to come. Only Jesus could be that perfect king. We know from the first week of our series that he was fully God, and so therefore he could be perfect. He could fulfill this prophecy. But we also know that he was fully man. And so he had to come from a family line. Specifically, he came from David’s.

Isaiah 11:1, couple pages later says, "A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse." Jesse was David's father. "From his roots, a branch will bear fruit." Branch here is capitalized, meaning it will be a person. Jesus is the branch. So here again, we have another prophecy of Jesus's royal lineage. And then in Matthew one, we see his whole lineage laid out for us. I think sometimes at least growing up, I was like, why do we need all of these names? Why do we need to know his family history all the way back to Abraham? But it shows us where he came from. It shows us that he is in the royal line. He is the one to fulfill and sit on David's throne forever. The Israelites begged for a king. In New Testament, the Jewish people were looking for a king. We, even today, need him to be our king. We need him to redeem us, to restore us, to protect us. but only Jesus can do that. Only He can do it perfectly. Author and theologian Amy Gannett writes, "Jesus is the true and better King who came from the line of David, who would lead His people only in righteousness, who could ever be trusted to guide them in the pathways of Jesus." They were good Kings, but there was no one like Jesus. The thing about having a King though, is that a King has subjects and the subjects must bow down to their king, must honor and submit to their king. So when we, as human beings, choose to follow Jesus, we are essentially saying, you are my king, you are my Lord. I submit to your authority, to your sovereignty, to your majesty.

Philippians 2:9-11 says, "Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledged that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. He is Lord. Everyone take a deep breath, 'cause that's really hard to acknowledge sometimes, that we are not the king or queen of our own life, that we are not the Lord of our lives. We like, as humans in general, we typically like to have control. We like things to go our way, or is that just me? Okay, I like to have control. I like things to go my own way. And it can be really hard to let that go, to submit to Him and acknowledge that He is King, He is Lord, and His ways are better. When we look at the Christmas story, we see someone who also had difficulty submitting to Jesus's kingship. Pastor Andre talked about this last week and talked about King Herod and how he was, he heard of this baby king and was threatened by him. He did not want to humble himself. He refused to acknowledge his authority and even went so far as seeking him out to kill him and kill thousands of other baby boys just to make sure he had his bases covered. It's interesting though, because in stark contrast to that, we have the wise men. They went and searched for Jesus at great personal sacrifice. They went to find Him because they knew He was King. They knew He was the one that they had been looking for and waiting for. They wanted to worship Him.

Matthew 2:1-2 says, "After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the East came to Jerusalem and asked, 'Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews?'" They hadn't even met Him yet and they knew who He was. "We saw His star when it rose and have come to worship Him." We know from different studies that the wise men took about two years to get to Jesus. So he was about two years old. He was a toddler. And these wise men came and bowed down and worshiped a toddler. Now we all know enough two year olds to know that that's humbling in and of itself, right? But they were willing to submit to him because they knew who he was. They were so convinced of his kingship that it didn't matter if he was two, 20 or 25, 80 years old, it didn't matter. He was their king. Many years later, around the time of Jesus's ministry, the Jewish people were under the oppression of the Romans and they wanted their king. They wanted someone to come save them. They were on the lookout of this king that had been prophesied in the Old Testament. They knew the scriptures, they knew that He was coming. They expected the Messiah to be an earthly king, to set up an earthly kingdom and to save them, to free them, to bring them redemption from the Romans. Unfortunately, that wasn't, or fortunately, that wasn't Jesus' plan. They didn't realize that Jesus would set them free. He would redeem them. He would save them from their sins and the consequences of their sins. He had so much better planned than anything they could ask or imagine. So although he was king, he wasn't what they were expecting. And because we're on this side of Jesus's death and resurrection, and we have the Bible, We know the end of the story. We know that he didn't come to set up an earthly kingdom, but an eternal kingdom.

Revelation 17:14 says, "They will wage war, they, his enemies, "will wage war against the lamb, "but the lamb will triumph over them "because he is Lord of lords and King of kings, "and with him will be his called, chosen, "and faithful followers." We get the spoiler alerts. We know what's coming. We know we have a king and he is gonna win. We're told that he will be triumphant. He will be the king of kings eternally. We have the opportunity now to make him the king and Lord of our life while we wait for that eternal kingdom. but it requires something of us. How do we do that? How do we put Jesus on the throne of our heart and our life now while we wait for eternity and take ourselves off of it? Well, I got a few ideas for us to help this process. The first thing is that we have to remember that our king wants a relationship with us. I don't know many kings that want a relationship with every single one of their subjects. Our king is different. He is good, he is loving, he wants our best and he wants to be in relationship with us. Does he want us to submit to him and to surrender to him? Absolutely, but he wants to be our friend too. He wants to be in relationship.

John 15:15 says, "I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends for everything that I learned from my father, I have made known to you." So the first thing is remember, he wants a relationship with us. Secondly, we must submit to his kingship. We must surrender to him, just like the wise men did. We have to choose his way over our way. And I do not stand up here as someone teaching this because I have it figured out. I promise you I do not.

The Lord typically gives me a word or a phrase for the coming year to focus on in my study, in my just everyday life. It's just something that I can be intentional with throughout the year. Well, this time last year, the Lord gave me the word surrender. And I'm just gonna tell you, If the Lord gives you the word surrender, buckle up. And I knew something was probably coming. If I needed to work on surrendering more to Him, there was probably something coming down the pike. And there were, there were so many opportunities this year for me to practice surrender. We had our fourth baby. There were some professional things that were opportunities for me to trust Him. There were things that didn't go my way that required me to pivot. And I'm still pivoting. Like don't, I do not have it figured out, but it was lots of opportunities for me to say, or to ask myself, do I trust him as my king more than I trust my own ways? That's a hard question to ask. And there were some days, if I'm honest, I wanted it to be my way. I had to surrender my plans, my will, my timeline. I wanted it to go the way I thought it should. But these opportunities to surrender and these situations throughout the year grew me deeper. They took me deeper in my relationship with Jesus and my faith in Him and to grow my trust in my Lord and my King.

Next, we must choose humility. Being humble, like I said, can be so hard 'cause it's not necessarily our natural inclination. But if the wise man can bow down to a toddler, we can bow down to the risen King. I wonder sometimes if it's easier for us to focus on some of the other attributes of Jesus, like savior, friend, shepherd, because they kind of make us feel good. You know, baby Jesus at Christmas time is cute and cuddly and makes us feel good, right? It benefits us in some way. But Jesus is King? That requires us to humble ourselves and acknowledge that He is King and we are not. Humility. We have to practice humility. And lastly, we must keep an eternal perspective. Jesus isn't just king right now. He's not just an earthly king that will pass away. He is an eternal king. And so when it's hard to submit, when it's hard to be humble, when it's hard to go His way or choose His will for your life, Keeping that eternal perspective that it is not just about right now, it is about eternity, makes it a little bit easier. Here's a secret sauce for you though, okay? Here's what makes this work. We make that choice to submit to Him over and over and over again. When you choose to follow Jesus as your savior and you make that choice, that's a one-time decision. You don't have to keep asking for salvation. He's given it to you, it is a gift. But our part, our submission sometimes require us to do it over and over again. Sometimes day by day, we have to keep submitting minute by minute in some occasions. We have to keep choosing Him to make Him King over and over again. So all of this is the majesty of Christmas. It's the majesty of this manger that when a baby came to earth, he was the fulfillment of so many prophecies and promises. He was the answer that we were looking for that we all need. Fully God, fully man. came as a miracle, not only to create the coming physical kingdom, but an eternal one, and to be the King and the Lord of our lives right now.

So my prayer for us this Christmas season is that we would celebrate the magic of Christmas. Go to the parties, eat the food, make the donuts, Have presents, do it all, go see the lights, celebrate with your people, enjoy the magic of Christmas, but let that magic be even better by remembering the majesty of who was in that manger. Remember that he came to have a relationship with us, to identify with us as humans, to be the perfect King that no one else could be for us, to save us, to redeem us, to protect us. And as we leave today, I just have a question for us. You can just kind of take with you and maybe think about this week and answer for yourself. I gave you some ideas of things that can help, but we all have to answer this for ourselves. What would it look like for you to trust Christ alone, to be your king and keep him on the throne of your heart? What does that look like for you personally? How do you practically live that out? Worship team's gonna come up and I'm gonna pray us out. But I pray that you are encouraged to not forget that even though he came as a baby, he was still our king. He's still the Lord of our hearts. And if you don't know him as the Lord of your heart, as the king in your life, please come talk to us. Let us share that with you. If you have questions, we'd love to answer them. But for those of us who've already made that choice, what an added part of Christmas we get to just celebrate even more.

Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you for this time. We thank you that we can fellowship together and celebrate the Christmas season with all of the fun and the magical things that come along with it. But help us to never forget the majesty, the grandeur of Christmas, because you are King. You sit on the throne right now, God. You are King eternally and in our hearts today. We praise you that you are King. We praise you that your way is better. May we submit and humble ourselves before you, our King and our Lord in Jesus' name, amen.

The Message of the Manger: Part 2

The Miracle of the Manger

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

So far, I mean it's December, it's finally December, I feel like Christmas was being pushed off and pushed off and now it's here we can all you know go full in. I love this time of year I've always loved Christmas. It's a season for many things it's a season of giving as we're talking about with this outreach. It's a season of special food I know this Christmas food kind of like Thanksgiving only comes around once a year unless you guys are having stuffing all the time which that's awesome but for us it's only around Christmas time. Christmas movies those are awesome and again just all these things that only happen during this time the decorations hopefully family, hopefully also a season of rest or break, whether from work, there's some time off, or school, but we just love this season.

And it's also a season of miracles. Miracles, we think of miracles, or maybe some of us experience something, but this year, this time of year, they just kind of come to the forefront of our mind just a little bit more. I want to remind us that each week in our series, "The Message of the Manger," we're looking at different aspects of Jesus's birth, trying to highlight God's plan, His providence, and His provision in the arrival of our Savior. We're striving for a better understanding of the true story, the true message, and the true purpose of Christmas. And Jesus's birth is a pinnacle moment in history. We want to have it on on the forefronts of our hearts and minds every day this season. And so this week we're gonna be focusing on the miracles of the manger. Last week was the mystery, this week we're doing miracles, and it's because the circumstances surrounding Jesus' birth have God's fingerprints all over them. I wanna start by defining what a miracle is. A miracle is an act or event that occurs outside the bounds of normal or natural means and demonstrates God's involvement. So it's something that is outside of human possibility where God is intervening. And I have today three miracles, three small stories, vignettes, and when we put them together, they help us see even more the work that God is doing around this very first Christmas. So are we ready to dive into these three stories? Okay, good. Are you ready at home, all those at home? Okay.

The first miracle of the manger might be the most obvious, and that is the birth of Jesus. How was that possible? You start off, many of you probably know this story, of with a young woman, probably in her late teens, who is betrothed to be married to a man, and her name is Mary, and she is approached by God through a messenger, an angel, letting her know that her life is about to change forever. Now, anytime there's a pregnancy announcement, that is some kind of recognition that life is about to change in a drastic way. And I don't know about you, but seeing some of these pregnancy announcements recently, they're getting pretty extreme. They started with just like, hey, leaving the pregnancy test out on the counter for the husband to come home to and like, oh, what's happening? And then, you know, now it's like cake and then you open it up, you slice it open and it's pink or blue. And then there's balloons that pop in the air. I don't know if you guys have seen these things. Some of you are like link stairs, but others of you know that these viral trends of pregnancy announcements are getting very, there was just a huge fire that happened because of a pregnancy announcement that went wrong. So, careful with pregnancy announcements. But they're going, they're huge. And all that to say that a pregnancy announcement signifies a big change in life. And this pregnancy announcement would have gone viral today, if it happened today, but it's extreme. And so I want to read for us, and you guys can follow along, we're going to be in a couple different scriptures. We're going to start off in Luke chapter 1, and this is a conversation where the angel is approaching Mary. So I'm going to start in verse 20. You guys can read along in your own Bibles. I love that, or you can read it on the screen.

But it says, "The angel went to her and said, 'Greetings, you who are highly favored,' speaking to Mary, 'the Lord is with you.' Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary. You have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son. you are to call him Jesus. He will be great, and he will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob's descendants forever. His kingdom will never end." "How will this be?" Mary asks. "Since I'm a virgin," the angel answered, "the Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.”

Mary's having this conversation with this angel who tells her she's gonna have a child and she's engaged and so she's she might be wondering like is this gonna be like my future child with that guy or is this something different and the angel says oh it's very different this is going to be the most different thing ever to happen when it comes to a pregnancy you're gonna have a child that comes from God through the work of the Holy Spirit this is going to be a miracle this is God getting involved outside of human means in the most personal way by sending his Son. This is, and I love this phrase, this is the author of life inserting himself into the story. This is God intervening in human affairs for the sake of bringing salvation to the world. This miracle birth is more than just bringing life into the world through miraculous means, it's about bringing eternal life through the only way possible, Jesus. So Mary is going to give birth to Jesus, who is human, is a child, but is also something more, who's God. We talked about this last week, the mystery, and she's going to do so remaining a virgin. And this is the first of our major miracles. So what does this miracle mean? Well, the miracle of the virgin birth signifies that this baby is unlike any other ever born. The The miracle of the birth, this divine causation behind Jesus lets us know that this life and death of this child is going to be deeply divine and purposeful and missional. The miracle of the virgin birth shows just how powerful God is. For us in our finiteness, in our limited power and capability, the virgin birth is truly a miracle because it's something that is impossible happening.

But for God, I want us to realize this, this is nothing extreme. In the realm of what God can do, this is effortless. He's not straining to make this happen. That's how powerful He is. From the miracle of healing a blind man, to turning water into wine, to the virgin birth, this is not hard for God. And it just shows how amazing, how capable, how powerful our God is. The significance of the virgin birth is this, that Jesus is truly man, but also truly God. And it signifies that the divine initiative in salvation, that means that salvation does not come from man, but from God. And so this miracle, think of this miracle as absolutely life-changing, world-changing. And I love if we think of this as the news of this miracle, starting small, just started with Mary and the angel, and then to Joseph, obviously. And then as time went on, it maybe grew and the circle became large and maybe her extended family knew about him, I'm pregnant, it's not Joseph's and here's what's happening, here's what the angel said. And so now we fast forward thousands of years later and now the whole world can know about this birth. It's a miracle. All right, the second miracle, we gotta go fast 'cause a lot of miracles to get through.

The second miracle of the manger is found earlier in the same passage and it has to do with Elizabeth and Zachariah. Now Elizabeth is Mary's older relative. And God is absolutely purposeful in this miracle. I want to say that from the forefront. This is so intentional by God and what he's doing. Imagine Mary, not yet married, and the possible shame and judgment that she would face in society as she is having a child out of wedlock. And she's saying these things like, "Hey, it's of God." And people are like, "Sure, sure it's of God, trying to hide whatever you want to hide." but the shame and judgment and how that would test her faith. And so God was thinking of that, knew of that. And we have the story of Elizabeth and Zechariah. So I wanna read from Luke chapter one, you guys can follow. I'm gonna be jumping around here, but I'm starting in verse five. It says, "In the time of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah. His wife, Elizabeth, was also a descendant of Aaron. Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord's commands and decrees blamelessly. but they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive and they were both very old. If that sounds familiar, hold on to that thought.

Verse 11, "Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. But the angel said to him, 'Do not be afraid, Zechariah. Your prayer has been heard. Your wife, Elizabeth, will bear a son, and you are to call him John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth. for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He was never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go on before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. Zechariah asked the angel, "How can I be sure of this? I'm an old man, my wife is well along in years." And the angel said to him, "I am Gabriel. "I stand in the presence of God. "I have been sent to speak to you "and tell you this good news. "And now you will be silent and not speak "until the day this happens, "because you did not believe my words, "which will come true at their appointed time." I'm gonna fast forward a little bit. During the part where the angel is talking to Mary, the angel says this to Mary as a way of encouraging her. Says in verse 36, "Even Elizabeth, your relative, is going to have a child in her old age and she is said to be unable to conceive and she's now under six months for no word from God will ever fail.”

And then later in the chapter, we won't read it, but their baby is born, Elizabeth and Zechariah. They have their baby. And again, as Scripture says, Zechariah during this time was unable to speak because he questioned Gabriel, said, "How can this be?" And Gabriel says, "It's going to happen, but by the way, you can't talk for the whole pregnancy." So for ten months, this guy cannot speak. I'm sure Elizabeth is just having a great time making all the decisions. What are you... Okay, I'm going to go ahead and buy all this stuff for the... Yeah. But the baby is born, and they're trying to decide a name, and it should be named something in the family line. But in that moment, to everyone's astonishment, Zechariah can speak and says, "No, the angel said it was going to be named John. This baby is going to be named John." amazing, amazing story.

So where is the miracle here? Well, in the life of Elizabeth and Zechariah, this is a huge miracle. They were unable to have a child, and now God has given them a son. And, as I said, if that sounded familiar, is there anything else that happened in the Bible? I'm glad it did. And if it didn't, that's okay. Let me tell you how amazing our God is, and how He links things, and how He uses those references to encourage people. So, If you guys thought of Abraham and Sarah, then good. That should, the way this is written, what was happening, even Zechariah and Elizabeth would have been reminded of Abraham and Sarah, who were also past childbearing years, and God gave them a child to fulfill a covenant that God made with Abraham, to be the father of God's people, and that the promise of the Messiah would come through Abraham's descendants. And now we have Elizabeth and Zechariah, who are going to have a child, and that child's entire life will be focused on announcing the coming Messiah. That reference, again, would have been in Elizabeth and Zechariah's mind, and I think it would have been of great encouragement to them to think of. I know in our great history of this nation of Israel, there was another couple who prayed and wanted a child, and God gave them a miracle baby. And we too are about to experience a miracle baby. So this is God intervening in ways that were not possible by human means. And how does this, again, miracle tie in with the miracle of the manger? Well, the lives of John the Baptist and Jesus are linked together from even before they were born. And again, there's no doubt in my mind that Mary is facing this new ordeal of being pregnant as a virgin, that seeing her relative Elizabeth, who is elderly and now pregnant, going through her own miracle would be of the greatest source of encouragement to Mary.

If ever there was moments of doubt, and maybe there were in Mary's mind of, "God, is this really happening? Can I do this?" And then she sees Elizabeth, who is experiencing her own miracle, and so clearly God is intervening in Elizabeth's life. How encouraging is it to Mary to say, "God is intervening in my life. God is in control over what's happening." Mary can hold God's Word strong in her heart, that she would believe and have faith in her own pregnancy. It's God's way of saying to Mary, "I'm right here with you. I've got you. Don't worry. I've got things under control." And we also know that John was born first, and so she could see that whole miracle through its entirety, and again, be a source of encouragement, empowerment, and peace, as Jesus will soon be born. So what does this second miracle mean? Well, it conveys that sometimes we need help. Sometimes we need some encouragement and some evidence that God is at work, and God knows that. He sees that, and He meets us where we're at. At the same time, this miracle also shows that God is not holding back from doing whatever is necessary for the the birth of the Messiah. God's pulling out all the stops to make it happen. Even these references to the Old Testament, and keep in mind that would have been a huge boost to their faith, God is doing everything to make sure that Jesus comes into this world and the purpose, the plan of salvation is going to come to fruition.

All right, the third miracle is one that truly foreshadows greatness and God's redemptive plan. It's going to bring everything together. And this one actually happens after Jesus is born. If you're in your Bibles, we're going to be flipping over to Matthew 2. But I'll just kind of summarize where we're at. You guys have heard of the three wise men or the three magi? Well, they've come from the east. God is doing his own work over there and brought these three wise men to go visit Jesus. And along their way, they come to Herod, the king of that area, and they say, "Hey, Herod, we're on our way to see the new king of Israel, the new king of the Jews." And he's like, "Uh, what? I am the king of the Jews. This is news to me." And he does not like this. He's threatened. But he plays it coy, and he's like, "Oh, yes, you as well? Well, let me know if you find him so I can also go and worship him." He's lying. He doesn't want to worship Jesus. And so the magi go and they follow the star, but they're warned to not return the same way. God's intervening, God's protecting Jesus, and He's guiding the wise men's path. And so they go to Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus, and they deliver their three gifts. Do we know their three gifts, by the way? Yes, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Good. And then they leave, and they go a different route.

And the angel comes to Joseph and gives him a message. And so I'm going to read from Chapter 2, starting in verse 13, "When they had gone," that's the wise man, "an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. 'Get up,' he said, 'take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for King Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.' So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night, and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet, 'Out of Egypt I called my son. When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious and gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem in its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time that he learned from the Magi. If that rings familiar, then hold on to that thought. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled. A voice is heard in Rama weeping in great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because they are no more. After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in the dreams of Joseph in Egypt and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who are trying to take the child's life are dead." Herod, again fearing for his reign, commits an awful atrocity by commanding that the newborn babies, two years old and younger, be killed. And as much mourning as that takes, there's also a miracle in this.

God intervenes outside of human possibilities, God sends a messenger via angel to Joseph, telling him to take his family and baby Jesus and to flee to Egypt. Now, if you know your Bible, and this part sounds a little familiar, and you're thinking, "Where have I heard a ruler trying to kill baby boys two years old and younger, and you got to Moses, then I'm proud of you. Good job." And if you don't know your Bible, that's okay. Let me tell you again How amazing our God is that he would do this so purposefully. Again, for Mary and Joseph, this would be very much on their mind. These are all, when he does this, when we come across this from the stories, this is purposeful by God. This is God trying to say to us as readers and also to the characters at that time, to the people at that time, "Hey, I'm up to something. If this sounds familiar, it's because I am doing something great that maybe I've done before in a similar vein." He's trying to give them a heads up. He's trying to give them encouragement, some foreshadowing. So again, Egypt, Pharaoh, Moses, this was the same similar situation that Pharaoh, when Israelites were in captivity in Egypt, Pharaoh, fearing of what could happen in the future, orders baby boys to be killed, and miraculously Moses is saved in the basket. We all know that story in the basket in the Nile and is rescued. And Moses would grow up to become the leader of Israel, bringing salvation to them by delivering them from slavery in Egypt by the power of God. And Moses would become their first, Israel's first prophet and priest. Well, in our passage today, under similar circumstances, Jesus is being saved from certain death, and he's going to bring salvation to the world, from people's slavery to sin, and he's going to be our perfect prophet, priest, and king.

So, I love this. I love when God does this. I love when the Bible makes this apparent to us that God is up to something big. What's the significance of this miracle? Well, God was telling them, "I am at work right now. I'm doing something amazing. This is crucial to my plan, to my people, to the world. And even as we read this today, a couple thousand years later, from when this all happened, we can still be reminded that God is the bringer of salvation. His heart is to save what is lost, to redeem what is broken, and to bring life and true freedom where sins' bonds are tight. The miracle of Jesus being saved from death affirms that nothing is going to stop God's plan of salvation. Absolutely nothing. And so we have these three miracles, and these miracles help us see that the birth of Jesus is the most central point of all of history. The birth of our Savior is the most important birth of all time, because the birth of this Messiah, God's plan of salvation, was being carried out through this child. Jesus' birth is absolutely a miracle, and it's surrounded by other miracles. Even though the situations for these people seem dire, improbable, or impossible, we see that God is in control. He cares and He provides for them, looking out for them. And church, I know you know this, but He does the same for us today.

And so I want us to know some messages for us from the miracles of the manger. I want to ask you some questions as you reflect on these miracles. The first one is this. What impossible situation do you need God to show up in this Christmas season? For Mary, it was having a child as a virgin. For Elizabeth and Zachariah, it was having a child in their old age. And then for Mary and Joseph and for the baby, it was being saved from having Jesus be killed as a baby boy. What situation are you in where you desperately need God to show up and and intervene in your life. You know, as happy as the holidays can be, they're honestly, they can be a mixed bag of emotions and situations. And, you know, we could be missing loved ones. We can be reminded of deep hurts and wounds that we have in our hearts. Finances can be tight and maybe we don't get to celebrate in the way that we want to, or give in the way that we want to. As happy as this time is, it's also true that the enemy doesn't take a break at Christmas. You may have areas in your life that you're facing challenges that are even getting harder as we speak in this time of year.

So where can God be at work in your life? The miracle of the manger helps us to recognize our need for God's intervention. We need to ask God for help. So I encourage you in this time, with whatever's coming to mind, whatever situation or person the Spirit is putting on your heart right now, to cry out for God and ask for a miracle. Ask for God to intervene. Maybe you've tried all the human ways to fix the issue or to address whatever's going on, and now, God, in your own way, in a way that is beyond normal means, please intervene. Pray that prayer this week.

Second question, what is God trying to draw your attention to? We saw in our passages how God was cluing people in to the work that he is doing. Elizabeth and Zechariah experiencing a similar situation to Abraham and Sarah, Mary and Joseph and Jesus going through a similar experience to Moses in the Old Testament. And these were all God's way of saying, I'm up to something, I'm here, I'm present, I'm working. So what might God be trying to get you to see that He's doing? The miracles of the manger help us to expect God to show up. All these signs are that there's something big happening, God is on the move. So I want to say to you, don't miss God trying to get your attention. Is it through, is He trying to get your attention through relationships, people close to you that have influence over you, and they're saying something to you? Maybe God is speaking through them. Or maybe it's through circumstances that something is lining up, or the way that things are happening in your life, it seems that maybe God is pulling you in a certain direction. Or maybe it's in the silence, it's in the quiet, it's through the lack of all those things that God is trying to speak to you, trying to get a hold of your heart. Whatever it is, expect God to show up. Expect God to be at work in your life. You may not know all the details, you may not know how he's going to do it beyond the next step in front of you. You may not even know that. But you can still expect God to be at work, to be present and engaged in your life.

And the third and final question, what are you expecting of God? What are you expecting of God? Praying for miracles, we can all, I'm guilty of this, we can often think of something glamorous or over-the-top, amazing. "God, if you could just answer my needs in this amazing way." But God, it's not that God can't do that or doesn't do that, but look at the story of the manger. When Mary and Joseph didn't have a place to go, did he send them to a five-star hotel or the most amazing birthing center in Bethlehem? He was like, "Don't worry, I got you. This doula was off, and so she's perfect for you." No. They were in a stable and Jesus was put in a manger, a feeding trough, right? Like, we have, we can, we tend to have expectations. But just because God chooses to intervene doesn't mean it's going to be exactly what we expect. It's not going to be necessarily the nicest or prettiest or most expensive thing, but will it help us? Yes. If God is sending it, then yes, it'll help us. Will it point to us to God? Yes. Will it provide for our needs? Absolutely. So, check your heart and your expectations of what you expect of God. The miracle of the manger helps us to accept God's provision, whatever it may look like. If it means fleeing certain death, then we have to run. If it means not being able to talk for 10 months, but then getting to celebrate a new baby boy, then we'd be silent. And if it means doing whatever is necessary, that may not be desirable, but it's what God's calling you to do, then we do it out of obedience and thankfulness. So accept God's provision, whatever it may look like. I'll ask the worship man to come back up right now. I want to close with this. I hope this week that you are encouraged in in this Christmas season, that when you think of Jesus, when you think of the manger, that you're reminded that it can be a season of miracles, of God intervening in your life, in a way that's outside of human possibility, of human means, all with the purpose of drawing you closer to Him. And let us remember this, that the greatest miracle is Jesus' birth, and that it also brought the greatest gift. That's the gift of salvation, which we'll talk about more coming weeks. But if you want to talk more, I want to put this out there too, if you want to talk more about this miracle, the miracles of the manger, or the fact that Jesus brings salvation, we'd love to do that with you. And so if you want to talk to myself or Pastor Lauren or Pastor Chris, please come see us afterwards or email us throughout the week. We'd love to answer these questions during this Christmas season. So this week, let's have joy and peace in our hearts as we keep our hearts and minds on Jesus.

Would you guys pray with me? God, thank you again for sending your son in the most miraculous way to the Virgin Mary and for all the other miracles that happened during that time to encourage Mary and Joseph to save them, to save Jesus. God, we see as we read these stories, we see that you are so clearly at work in ways that aren't always recognized at the time. And so we take that today and pray that that be true too, that even though we may not see it, God, we want to trust that you are at work, that your fingerprints are all over our lives. And God, we pray for miracles. There are things that are on people's hearts right now where they are desperate, that they see no other possibility beyond your intervention. And so we pray in your perfect way, however glamorous or unseen it is, that you would intervene, that you would be at work in each of our hearts and in our lives. And God, we pray that someday that you would make that appearance to us so that we could give you all the praise for what you're doing. We're so excited to worship you with everything that we have. So we pray this in your name. Amen.

The Message of the Manger: Part 1

The Mystery of the Manger

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Yes! Let's go! - So Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year. So glad you guys are here. Welcome. Thank you everybody who's joining us online. I know we got a lot of people out that are sick and we love you, but we love you from afar. We don't want that sickness here, amen. But we pray that you restore health and get back to 100%, be back here as soon as you can. We miss you. We're not the same without you. So we are this morning gonna kick off our Christmas sermon series. And this year we're going a little different. I know we're not technically taking the traditional Advent route, but don't worry. This Advent will come back, we promise. But we wanna do something a little bit different this year. Pastor Andre and Ari had taken some time earlier in the year and really prayed through kind of, what does God wanna share with our church family this Christmas? What does God wanna teach us this Christmas season? And the more we talked about it, the more we focused in on what Christmas is about, we just kept getting drawn back to the manger and get back to this place where Christ first came that first ever Christmas and was placed and laid in that manger. And that changed the trajectory of the world. And Christmastime is awesome. There's so much excitement and joy and fun that happens at Christmas, whether it's presents on Christmas morning, and maybe it's a favorite food that you cook or bake only at Christmas time, or maybe it's a family tradition that you have wrapped around Christmas that you only do during that Christmas season. And I love those. And they can be so much fun and excitement in that with lights and music and food. But it's important for us to even in the midst of all of that, to still celebrate when Jesus came, what that meant for the savior of the world in Jesus Christ. And I think for us, unfortunately, we live in a world where there's really two polarizing opposites when it comes to Christmas, right? Either you have on one side, maybe it's all about just the stuff. And you don't necessarily hear about Jesus. You hear about the North Pole, you hear about Santa, snowmen, elves, reindeer, you fill in the blank and they miss Jesus. And sometimes on the other side, for those of us who have been in the church, it seems like forever, we hear the story of Christmas and go, "Oh yeah, I remember Christmas. The wise men and the shepherds and the manger scene and the donkey and Mary and Joseph and everybody else, the angels. Yeah, I remember Christmas.

But I think even there it gets lost because we forget truly what Christmas is about. And this awe and this majesty, this mystery that we're gonna talk about this morning that comes with the manger. And I want to encourage you this year, that as you walk through Christmas, now through the next 30 days until Christmas morning, that you might have fresh eyes. You might have a renewed perspective, a renewed outlook maybe on what Christmas is about. That in the message of the manger, there's mystery, there's miracle, there's majesty, there's Messiah. And as we look at the manger scene and baby Jesus that was wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in the manger, that in that very moment, the world changed. Let us not forget that, that when we look at that baby in the manger, we look at the savior of the world. So we're gonna be in John chapter one this morning, and we're gonna go deep today. We're jumping into some deep, deep theology. So I want you guys buckle up. It's gonna be some heavy stuff. I actually took a course, a class in college. It was all about Christology, which is just the study of Christ. I've never had a class in my life hurt my head so much. The book that was involved in this class was one of the thickest books I've ever owned in my life. And I remember times sitting in my dorm room reading this and I would just have to stop and I would literally start to have a headache because these theologians and these people that had giant IQs, way smarter than myself, would take paragraphs upon paragraphs upon pages upon pages to just take one little sliver of who Christ was and try to explain it in normal people terms. And you still couldn't fully understand. It was just like, oh my gosh. So this morning, if you walk away and going, I don't even know what Pastor Chris said today. Hey, you're in common company. I don't know what I'm saying today either. So it's all right. And if you walk out of here going, that makes sense. I understand it all, you're preaching next week. So you come and tell me.

No, but we're gonna start in John chapter one this morning And we're gonna start all the way at the beginning. It said, "In the beginning was the one who was called the Word. The Word was with God and was truly God. From the very beginning, the Word was with God. And with this Word, God created all things. Nothing was made without the Word. Everything that was created received its life from Him, and His life gave light to everyone. The Word became a human being and lived here with us. We saw his true glory, the glory of the only Son of the Father. From him, the complete gifts of undeserved grace and truth have come down to us. Jesus came that very first Christmas. And in that, John here starts his gospel account on talking about this Word. And this word translated, if you were to dive a little deep into this, is translated as logos. And that word in the Greek means basically God. This logos, this word, this God came. And that term, if you wanna write something down this morning, big term here would be incarnation. And the incarnation here is God becoming man, fully God still, and yet at the same time, fully man. And we at Christmas time are invited by God to further understand this mystery. It's something that for centuries, the church has talked about and yet still doesn't fully understand. That's how big God is. I love that about God, that we can sit here and talk about it and try to understand it and to learn about who he is. And yet we still kind of fall short. 'Cause that's who God is. And we on our humanity are limited. And that this mystery is okay. Because this mystery pulls us in. It draws us in to see the miracle of Jesus. It pulls us in to point to his majesty of who God is and truly shouts that he is the Messiah. That's what this mystery does. And when we come into this place of seeing Jesus coming to earth, we're faced with this struggle of two. Of Jesus being fully the person of God, and yet fully a human. And so we struggle in this because sometimes we sit here and we try to wrap our minds around this thing and go like, okay, he's fully God, but he's fully human. He's fully human and he's fully God. How does all of this come together? And John here is pointing us in the direction of helping us to understand.

So let's unpack this a little bit here. Unpack this. It says in the beginning was the word. What is this beginning? Well, this beginning is actually even before time came into existence. This is pre Genesis 1, 1. This is time before when there really was no time when God was there. There was no world, there was no creation, there was no night, there was no day, there were no nothing out there and yet God existed. And at that time, all things were originally created. This logos was already in continuing existence. Clear as mud? This term here, I'm gonna have a four of these. I'm gonna call them the four essentials of Incarnational Christology. Okay, we're gonna have four of these this morning. The first of which is this, yes, good word. This first one is one eternal person, the logos, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit have always existed and will continue to always exist. And this is what John here is saying, "In the beginning was the Word." God has always been, will always be, and will forever always continue to be. That's how God is. John continues on, he said, "The Word was with God." The Logos was already in face-to-face relationship with God. They were close, tight relationship with one another. That's where God being there with the Logos, with the Son, with the Holy Spirit, all together have this incredible relationship that you and I get to have just tiny glimpses in our earthly relationships. This is where we say God is an incredible relational God. This is his nature, this is who he is. And we see that even before time began. And the word was God, John continues on. The Logos was already existing with the same characteristics of God itself. John talks about this, talking about the deity of the incarnate Christ in verse 18 of John that says this, "No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son who is himself God and is in closest relationship, remember, relationship with the Father, has made him known. Paul also talks about this in the words of, not Paul, John talks about this. When Jesus has died and he's risen again and he appears before the disciples and Thomas shows up, and Jesus says, "It's me." Thomas, come touch my side, touch my hands. I am here, I am risen. And Thomas literally says, my Lord, my God. These are the same words that are used in the original manuscripts that talk about Thomas at that moment going, Jesus, you are God. You're not some separate entity. You're not some lower thing. You are God. And there was a never a time when this word that John talks about that was separate from Jesus, they have always continued to exist. And then John says, the word became a human being. You might remember it as the word became flesh. And this is Jesus. That very first Christmas, the word became flesh. This logos changed his way of living to be fully conformed to concrete humanity, just like Adam and Eve. And this is what we call the incarnation. The word literally means in flesh. God entered the world as a human man, Jesus Christ. So that's Christ divinity. That's his God side.

And then we have Christ's humanity, his human side. And it says this in Philippians chapter two, who being in the very nature of God, do not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name. And at the name of Jesus, every niche about in heaven and on earth, under the earth and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord to glory of the God, the father. So God himself emptied of him, his own plans, his own agenda, his own desires. I'd be curious to see how that conversation went in heaven. God walks over to Jesus and goes, "Hey, I got a plan." And Jesus goes, "Yeah, I know. "I gotta leave, don't I?" And God goes, "Yeah, it's gonna be tough, "but it's gonna be worth it." Finally, to the point, the plan of redemption, of salvation for the entire planet, is gonna happen and it's gonna be through you, Jesus. And Jesus empties himself. It says in verse six and seven, see this existence in the form of God that Jesus had is translated as morphe theo, a God form or a God being, a person. Is it an essence? Anybody drinks sparkling water? You have those cans where it's like the essence is like they just rub the fruit on the outside of the can and hope that something tastes like it. (congregation laughing) Or they had the giant batch of water and some guy with like a spray gun went, "Psst, psst, psst, all right, bottle that." You guys know what I'm talking about? This isn't what God here is, is with Jesus. This isn't just a man that has a little spritz of divinity over him. This is a whole divine lifestyle. one that is in lockstep with God. We just finished a series in Romans. I thought about getting them this morning. All right, turn your Bibles to Romans 1, one. It'd be like, oh, just kidding. But Romans, I gotta go back to Romans. It's just so good, right? The power of the gospel. Romans talks, Paul talks about this in chapter 12. He says, "Do not conform to the power of this worm, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what's God's will." His good, His perfect, His pleasing will. Jesus has a morpheiau with God. It is in lockstep with who God is. And so God then, He humbles Himself in Jesus and takes on the status of a human. But this isn't a thing where Jesus is now separated from God, if you're taking notes, our second point of our super deep theology, essentials of incarnation Christology, is God and Jesus has the same eternal deity as the Father. So when Jesus took on the form, as it says in there in the Greek, morphandalo, the form of a bondservant, Jesus did not walk away from his divinity. Jesus wasn't just a good guy here on earth who performed some tricks and pulled the great escape artists after his death on the cross. Jesus was and continues to be to this day, God. He takes on this form of a bond sermon Another way would be saying that Jesus then devoted to another, to the disregard of his own interests. Jesus took on the calling and accepted God's great salvation plan in him and became a servant to come here to earth, to go to the cross for you and for me so that our biggest problem in life, our sin problem would be put away with and our relationship with God could be once again restored with him. Amen. That's what we celebrate at Christmas. That is the mystery of the manger. And so Jesus takes on this human likeness, this homatoia, a forefront, and this brings on himself these physical traits of a human person. Jesus looked like an everyday ordinary dude in Israel in that day and age. I'm sorry to tell you, Jesus didn't have long blonde hair, wearing a white robe with the blue sash. If you grew up in church, you knew that flannel graph figurine. Jesus looked like a normal person in that day and age. You wouldn't have been able to go, "Oh, there's God." He looked like a regular guy. And yet what? He was God. He was God. Our third incarnational Christology point is Jesus then had the same temporal humanity as us. The same temporal humanity as you and me. And yet what? He was still God.

So how does that work? How does all of this work? How does all this come together? Well, these two natures are united in what we call Christ's fullness. These two natures are pulled together. A big term for this, you ready? Is hypostatic union. I told you you're getting some good stuff today. A hypostatic union. This is the union of Christ's human nature and divine nature. See, they don't just merely coexist and take turns leading from time to time, nor are they blended together to create a third nature. The human and divine are united as one. Jesus had one fully divine nature and fully human nature. They were not mixed and they didn't create something new. Instead, they coexisted in perfect unity while retraining full attributes of both. This is important, okay? This is super important because the reality here is remember that Jesus' human nature was not a fallen human nature. That's where this born of a virgin Mary comes into play here is that Jesus comes through a sinless line. He was free from sin. He was free from any corruption. And yet he lived as a human with divine nature. There was no transfer of one to the other. So if we were to say it like this, another way would be the divine, if you were to take divine godly deity attributes and put them onto a human, the human would cease to exist, right? And if you were to take a human and to give it character and nature of God to make it a God-like figure, it would cease to be a human. God brings this mystery of this unity together to where God walks this line that no other human has ever walked. Perfect, blameless, full step of God's will. of God's will and yet not losing his divine character. The scriptures teach us that the human nature of Christ remained in its integrity after the incarnation and that the divine nature remain divine. Our fourth point of incarnational Christology would be full unity of the person of Jesus. a perfect harmonious being, fully God and fully human. And this union was incredibly personal. Again, reflecting this nature of God, incredibly relational. God, Jesus did not have a split personality. Some might say he had split personality disorder. That was not who Jesus was. It wasn't like when miracle time happened, The God side took over and da, da, da, da, da, da, da, bread and fish, water into wine. But then when Jesus was hungry, which says in scripture, when he was tired, when he was worn out from travel and being with people, it wasn't like the God side went away and he never experienced some of our physical struggles that you and I face every single day. He was still God, even in those moments and yet remain blameless. The two natures didn't take times being in control over him. He was one whole person with two natures that were perfectly united with him.

I love this quote from Dr. Jerry Bercheres. Maybe this will help bring some understanding here to this. He says, "The Logos, the second person of the Trinity, who was fully equal with God in every way, emptied himself of the divine role and lifestyles and prerogatives, I'll get there, and took a fully human nature, living as a perfectly spirit-filled human, submitting himself to the will of the Father and the leading of the Holy Spirit in order to reveal the Father, redeem the world, and become the Messianic King.”

This is the of the incarnation. This is the purpose of Jesus coming that very first Christmas, to be laid as a babe in the manger, to redeem, to reveal the Father, to reconcile the world, and to become our Messianic King. So all of this to say, we could take weeks and talk about this. You just got the speed version. But all of this to say, as we look at the manger, I don't want you to get frustrated and go, I don't understand this God. I don't understand how this perfect union coming together fully God, fully man, born without sin, born as a baby, not as a human coming together. I don't want us to get frustrated with that, but rather might we stand back and marvel at this mystery. To stand back and to look and to hear this message of the manger that even from the beginning, when the heavens and the earth were not even created before time even existed, when there was nothing but God, the Word, the Logos, existed and it was there. And the Word came to us and made flesh and dwelled among us. This isn't some fairytale that we tell every Christmas. Jesus, God, deity, walked among us humans on earth, as a servant, to love us, to show us there's a better life to live, to show us that this feeble, fragile thing that we think we know as love isn't really true love, but a fraction of the real thing that God wants us to experience, that fake peace that the world tries to sell us isn't true peace, that fake hope isn't the true hope that we have in the cross. And that grace and mercy that we might try to share with each other isn't the full picture of what God desires for our lives. And that this message from the manger is a mystery. Pastor Andre and I have studied this for a long time and we still don't fully get it. But that makes us step back and go, "God, you are incredible." That you somehow fixed a problem that we didn't know we had and yet you figured it all out to the tiniest detail. And you did it through a baby in a manger? That's incredible. And that God took on flesh and he dwelled among us. We'll invite our worship team up. We're gonna close in the song this morning. But as we think about Christmas this season, we think about the manger and the baby. Don't get caught up in this mystery, but to remember what God did, that the Word became flesh, the Word was God, and the Word dwelled among us. It's not something we can fully understand. I feel there's days when I wake up and I understand it a little bit, and then the next day I can wake up and go, I have no clue what happened. (laughs) But let's marvel in that this Christmas. So when you look at a manger scene, you look at a manger, you see those throughout the season, these next 30 days, let's marvel at this mystery. Let's marvel at this idea of how God came that very first Christmas and changed the trajectory of the world. And let that grow our faith. and let that flow over us and consume our heart with this beautiful picture of what God did.

Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you. Jesus, to come in the way you did that very first Christmas. God, we are so grateful of how you gave up your rightful place on the throne in heaven and came and took on flesh and dwelled among us, God. May we revel in that mystery this Christmas season to hear the message of the manger with a new perspective this year, that Jesus, you would be reminded us of your Messiah person that you are. God, don't let us get caught up in the hustle and the bustle of Christmas, but to focus back on what you did that very first Christmas. We thank you, Jesus, we love you. In your name, we can only pray this. Everybody said, amen.

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.