Romans 12:9-21
Romans - By Faith • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Last week Brandon Moore was with us and he shared about how we are all needed as a part of the body of Christ.
We need greeters, youth workers, kids min, prep, but also coffee, prayers, giving, etc
In October we are having a volunteer event called Recharge. There are a ton of signups in the lobby. This is for people who currently serve in an area and people who are interested in serving. We will have a short encouraging word, food, and some trainings. I encourage you to sign up and attend. Do both.
To Paraphrase Brandon, we have gifts and we need to use them for them to be activated and useful.
We had someone reach out after the message last week and realize that she was serving in the wrong area. So she is now changing directions. That is awesome!
I also want to mention giving. Giving at church is partnering with us in God’s mission. Some people have a gift of giving. They are able to give in amazing ways. Maybe that is you. If so please do. We need people who partner with Journey financially. I do not talk about a tithe which means tenth. 10% is just a marker. The Bible talks about giving with a sincere and glad heart. 10 % is fine but your heart and consistent giving is much more important.
My family decided last year that 10% was not where our hearts were so we increased that. I tell you that only to say that the heart is what matters. If you give consistently to Journey thank you, if you give inconsistently please consider becoming consistent, and if you do not give pray about it and ask God if He would have you partner with us.
God is doing a lot here and as I pray I believe there is more He wants to do, He will provide but often it is through you and I.
Let love be without hypocrisy. Detest evil; cling to what is good.
Love one another deeply as brothers and sisters. Take the lead in honoring one another.
Do not lack diligence in zeal; be fervent in the Spirit; serve the Lord.
Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; be persistent in prayer.
Share with the saints in their needs; pursue hospitality.
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.
Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.
Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud; instead, associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own estimation.
Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Give careful thought to do what is honorable in everyone’s eyes.
If possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
Friends, do not avenge yourselves; instead, leave room for God’s wrath, because it is written, Vengeance belongs to me; I will repay, says the Lord.
But If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. For in so doing you will be heaping fiery coals on his head.
Do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil with good.
Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them. Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good.
I like the way the NLT says this. We are to really love others and really hate what is wrong. Hold tight to one and passionately reject the wrong.
Detest, hate or apostygeō to dislike, abhor, have a horror of
We are called to have an aversion to what is wrong. It should cause a reaction in us.
I am deathly allergic to shellfish. My throat closes up and I could literally die if I eat it. When people ask me what I want to eat I tell them anything but shellfish.
We are to have the same reaction to evil.
It should be something we reject with passion. This includes things that happen in and around us and the things we use for entertainment.
I have spoken about this before. We cannot abhor evil in some areas and engage in it for entertainment. That is hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is something we all have but we should not embrace that but understand it and remove it when we find it.
The rest of the verses in Romans 12 unpack this for us. So I would like us to go through these verses one by one.
Like Brandon mentioned we have a shift in chapter 12. We move from the theological to the practical. We move from truth to praxis.
We are moving from orthodoxy which is right belief to orthopraxy which is right action.
Love one another deeply as brothers and sisters. Take the lead in honoring one another.
I love this. Take the lead in loving and honoring other people. If a group of people are sitting around bad mouthing someone do we join in or do we speak up?
Take the lead. We are called to be leaders. We are called to speak life and not death.
With the tongue we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in God’s likeness.
Blessing and cursing come out of the same mouth. My brothers and sisters, these things should not be this way.
Does a spring pour out sweet and bitter water from the same opening?
Can a fig tree produce olives, my brothers and sisters, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a saltwater spring yield fresh water.
The tongue can be used to tear down or build up. When we tear down people we are tearing down a creation of God. When we curse people, we are cursing someone created in the image of God. This should make us weep. This should cause us to lament. This should cause us to see ourselves in a way that makes us see the hypocrisy in us.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of the bones of the dead and every kind of impurity.
In the same way, on the outside you seem righteous to people, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
I have done this and do it from time to time and it disgusts me that I do. Woe is me for I am undone.
This sounds harsh and it is. The Word of God sometimes cuts us to show us where we fail.
The call is to speak life and take the lead in honoring other people.
Romans 12:11 (CSB)
Do not lack diligence in zeal; be fervent in the Spirit; serve the Lord.
We are called to have zeal which is passion. We are called to be hot for Jesus. We burn with passion. We then take that passion and add diligence. We are to have the passion and then add intelligence and thoughtfulness.
It’s like tattoos on our knuckles.
We take that. Those two hands and serve the Lord with it.
Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; be persistent in prayer.
When we do that we can rejoice in hope, we can be patient in affliction and we can be persistent in prayer.
We are focused on Jesus and what He has for us. We are focused on who He is. We remember what He has done. He becomes the focal point of our faith, desire, and hope and then we press into that.
Share with the saints in their needs; pursue hospitality.
Two things with this one. First, share with others who need it. This is like giving that we spoke about. We are looking to build and expand the building so that we can give to others. We want to be a space where others can use the building for needs. We have baby showers and events and the more space we have the more we can do this. So we give to the Shift project and we give weekly so we can bless others who are in need. Because of your giving we do this often. We are a very generous church. We give items and time away all the time. Sometimes people need things so we help where we can. Sometimes they need to talk to someone so we pay staff to meet with people. This only happens because as a body we give financially.
Secondly, we pursue hospitality. This word hospitality means lover of others. So we are called to seek to love others. This requires intentionality of the highest order.
It does not happen by accident.
We all have a million things to do in a day. Is loving our neighbor on our list of things to do today?
Romans 12:14 (CSB)
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.
This is taken directly from Jesus.
bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.
It is this idea that we turn the other cheek. What does that mean though?
Evil would be defeated, not by military victory, but by a doubly revolutionary method: turning the other cheek, going the second mile, the deeply subversive wisdom of taking up the cross.
N. T. Wright
To turn the other cheek is to not retaliate for your own personal retribution. It is to remove the offence and instead take the wisdom of the cross which is to forgive and turn the un-offended, unstuck part of yourself to someone.
when he was insulted, he did not insult in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten but entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.
This is hard, this is contrary to our nature and our flesh but this is the call.
Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.
This is one of my favorite verses in all of the Bible because it tells us a basic truth about life. We need to be in community. If there was ever a verse that I think sums up small groups this would be it.
The only way to do this, the only way to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep is to be in community with people. We have to know each other in order to do this.
If a stranger tells me the best news they have ever gotten at best I can say, “good for you.” I have no emotional investment into their good news. It is just news to me, but if I have emotionally invested in them. If I have given time and attention to them then I can rejoice with them.
In the same way we do not generally weep when we drive by a cemetery and someone is having a funeral. Why? We have no connection to them. However if a dear friend looses a loved one we weep with them even if we do not know the person they lost. We are called to invest in each other and the only way to do this is in community.
Spend emotional capital in other people and everything will change.
It is not good for man to be alone. I would also ask, and this is just a question. If you feel that you do not have community, have you given yourself to community?
We have small groups starting. Please I cannot encourage you enough sign up for a small group. give yourself to community here at journey. spend emotional capital.
rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep and others will then rejoice and weep with you.
Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud; instead, associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own estimation.
If I could give you the Pastor Mike paraphrase;
Be nice and get over yourself.
So many of the issues I have and I see in other people is that we place our desires and preferences over other people.
I will tell you again what I tell myself all the time, get over yourself.
I cannot preach this message enough, assume positive intent. Believe that other people are not out to get you and that they have a reason for what they did or said. Give them the benefit of the doubt.
Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Give careful thought to do what is honorable in everyone’s eyes.
This is very similar to what we saw in verse 14. But it adds that we are to think about what we do. We are not animals that simply respond to any situation or stimuli around us. We have minds and we are to use them to think about our actions. Again this is hard and often unpleasant.
Self reflection and asking God to help us understand our motivations are so important to our spiritual growth.
If possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
This is such an important verse and principal to live by.
This verse does not say peace at any price. It does not say peace above all else.
Do not be yoked together with those who do not believe. For what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness?
Sometimes peace is not possible. Sometimes we have to reject divisiveness and wickedness and take a stand but and here is a big but, we should attempt peace when possible.
It is easy to not live at peace. It is easy to just cut people off. It is easy to label someone as a problem and cut them off. It is hard to look within yourself and ask if there is more you can do.
This verse commands us to live at peace as far as it depends on you. That means we cannot compare to someone else. More than anything else it is a situation between you and your Maker.
God can give you peace in a situation with people that makes no sense. Why?
And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
The peace that comes from God surpasses or bypasses the brain and understanding. It has nothing to do with understanding.
Friends, do not avenge yourselves; instead, leave room for God’s wrath, because it is written, Vengeance belongs to me; I will repay, says the Lord.
But If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. For in so doing you will be heaping fiery coals on his head.
We are called to stand up for righteousness. We are called to defend the poor. The widow. The childless. We are called to be defenders of the weak. We are not called to avenge ourselves.
There is a time to take up arms. There is a time to fight. But there is also a time to let God work. A time like we already discussed to turn the other cheek. We do not return insult for insult.
This verse is summing up so much of what we have looked at. We turn the other cheek. We try to live at peace. We seek the good of others. We bless when cursed. We give to our enemy.
In blessing them we give them over to God and let Him work on them.
Do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil with good.
In doing all this we are not conquered or overcome by evil but we overcome with good.
That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it.
Darkness cannot overcome light and evil cannot overcome good. Yes for a time the darkness can be present. We live in a world that is fallen and sometimes the evil seems to win but it has lost.
Turn off lights and take out phone light
We do not shovel darkness out of this room we turn on the light and darkness leaves.
When we chose to love biblically things change. But it starts with us taking a stand and choosing to love right.
At Calvary the light won. Good was victorious and we have an empty grave that proves it and because Jesus was victorious we are victorious. We win because He won!
