Overcome: Romans 12:14-21

Victories: 1. 2.

Prayer: Brookhaven Wesleyan Tony Bye

Missionary Prayer: Tim & Sandy Hewitt / BEM

Bible Reading: Romans 12

Vengeance

In his book “True Spirituality: Becoming a Romans 12 Christian” Pastor Chip Ingram spoke about a challenge he had in his college days. Chip grew up going to church but that was all that it was just going to church. The church did not believe in the Bible or in having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Therefore, while they went to church it played no part in their everyday lives. What did play a part in his life was basketball and he was pretty good. Good enough to earn a scholarship to a small college and the hope that it might lead into something bigger. But God had other plans for Chip when that summer a former high school coach paid his way to a basketball camp with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. What Chip found when he got there was college and professional athletes who had a sincere and real relationship with Christ, and it had an effect on his life. By the end of the week Chips basketball game had gotten better but more importantly he had asked Christ into his life and that began a transformation.

Now for Chip God had some work to do in his life and it started the first day of basketball practice his freshman year when he met Jimmy. Jimmy was a 6’6” ex-con, and Vietnam vet who was a Junior on the team and he made it known from the very beginning that He hated Chip and when he found out through the course of the season that Chip was a Christian Jimmy hated him even more. Being a freshman Chip was the low man on the totem pole and therefore the other teammates could make the freshmen do whatever they wanted them to and Jimmy took great advantage of this to make Chip his own personal slave. Not only did he make chip get everything for him Jimmy also mercilessly mocked Chip and at one point even threatened Chips life. Now as I said Chip was a decent ball player so in retaliation for all of Jimmy’s abuse Chip did everything he could do to humiliate Jimmy on the court every chance he got. From passes aimed at Jimmy’s head to no-look passes that he knew would make Jimmy look the fool for not being able to handle. What Jimmy did to Chip only made Chip want to do worse in return.

You can probably feel for Chip in this situation. Many of you might have similar types of stories where you are confronted by those who you don’t get along with and it seems like the only recourse before you is to get even as soon and as often as possible. I mean no one wants to be a doormat. The problem is that if you have ever found yourself in a situation even slightly like this the revenge usually doesn’t stop the problem nor does it truly make you feel any better. Instead, depending on how far it all went you probably ended up feeling guilty for you part in it and rarely does it end up with any reconciliation, only hurt feelings and more pain. We are going to get back to Chip’s situation later.

One Another

Ah but you are here sitting in God’s sanctuary. You can let your guard down, you can breathe easy at least for a moment. You are among fellow believers there isn’t any evil here. Right? You are right to chuckle because while it would be nice to say this is true of church we all know it isn’t. The fact is that sometimes our greatest moments of evil can and do happen right here. Which is why Paul is giving this advice to the Roman church.

If you look at verses 5, 10 & 16 you are going to see a phrase; “One Another”. Paul is giving this advice to fellow believers because He knows that we are still sinful human beings and we will be evil and be attacked by evil even inside these four walls of the church.

When asked by a young man what the greatest of all the commands was Jesus answered with, Matthew 22:37 “Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’” This is the number 1 reason you should want to be here in church. To love the Lord your God, because you want to know God more and you get you up every morning with that as your goal and you have a desire to pray and come to church because that furthers your desire to love God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength. However, I recognize that simply loving God with everything that we are can be disheartening when you aren’t seeing any results or when it seems like you don’t know how to do it better. This is where the second part of that statement by Jesus comes in. Matthew 22:38–39 “This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Ok so here is the second reason you should come to church. YOU HAVE FOUND YOUR NEIGHBORS. And the best part of these neighbors is that they know exactly how you feel. They too are struggling to make their relationship with Christ real in their everyday walk. Don’t think for a moment that the person down the pew from you has it all together. They are just as lost as you are and they are in just as much need of God’s saving Grace as you do. These are your “One Anothers”! The ones that you are supposed to love as yourself.

Paul wrote Romans 12 specifically for the members of the Roman churches because he knew that they would be in need of help. They would have days when they didn’t feel so good. Days when it seemed like the world would get the best of them. Days when they would horribly fall into sin. Days when they didn’t feel like they were loving the Lord their God with all their heart, with all their soul and with all their strength. Do you ever feel that way? Do you ever come to the end of yourself and wonder how in the world are you going to make it through one more day. Or you come up against a situation or person that makes your life miserable and you just can’t take it any longer. We all get there and we all deal with it, sometimes even inside the church.

It is this overwhelming feeling of loss or defeat that brings us to our knees, and it does just that it; it defeats us. We walk around either believing that God can’t help or God won’t help or that we are just too broken for God to want to help us. It is here that I want you to turn to the power of God to transform your life. As we dig into our scripture today I want you to look back at verse 2 where we started this journey a couple of weeks ago. Romans 12:2 “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

Overcoming

According to this scripture God has a perfect will for you. Do you believe that? Do you trust that? What God is trying to get you to understand is that by being transformed by the renewing of our mind we are attempting to align our lives with that perfect will of God so that our lives can be different from how they are. But the problem is that in the midst of all the junk that we live through and cause to happen we get out of alignment and we begin to feel lost and defeated. My friends, this is because we aren’t being transformed by God but instead we are attempting to do it ourselves or allowing the world to conform us. Christ cannot transform us if we are not with Christ. Christ cannot transform us if we are trying to do it all on our own. Christ cannot transform us if the world around us always defeats us. Therefore let me turn your attention to the end of this chapter and the very last verse. Romans 12:21 “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” This is our enemy, the enemy that consistently beats us down. Evil. And we lose hope because we feel like there is no way that we can overcome it. We see evil as an enemy we cannot beat.

Let me get back to the story that we started with, Chip and his teammate Jimmy. They were at war with each other Jimmy treated Chip worse and worse and Chip fought right back. However, Chip was also learning much about his walk with Christ at the same time. During that freshman year Chip started to get discipled by a group of Christians on campus and it just so happened that after hearing about Chips difficulty with Jimmy, the leader of the group had him open to this passage, Romans 12:14-21. After Chip read the words the leader said, “Chip, I think this man is very evil. and there is only one thing I know of that is more powerful than this kind of evil, and that is the good that comes from God.” Now I can almost feel the earnestness and saccharine sweetness of this statement as it hits your ears. “Yeah right” your saying, “God’s goodness that’s what’s going to get me past the evils in my life, FAT CHANCE!” How is goodness ever going to overcome the evils I see on a daily basis? That’s the problem with the evils of this world they are just so large and your defeat seems so very very certain.

We have a pathway to overcoming the evils and defeats of our lives and it is in Christ. However, you have to believe that God’s goodness is more powerful than the evils of this world. As I said earlier “nobody wants to be a doormat” and this whole overcoming evil with good just seems like a good way of getting stepped on. But is it? Is that what we see in Jesus. Was the cross just a great big turning of the other cheek and taking the hit or was there something stronger happening there. This is a change of mindset from our normal inclinations. Normally when we are hurt our reaction is to hate and seek revenge. Our sin nature, instead, must be put aside and we must do something completely unnatural to us and that is to let God take revenge for us and instead do good to those who are our enemies. We think of this as being a weakness, like we are becoming doormat Christians who are forever stepped on and used. However, this is only the truth if we believe that evil is more powerful then Good. Is God right in saying that Light overcomes Darkness? Is God right when He says in Matthew 5:44 “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,” or in Luke 6:27–28 ““But I say to you who hear: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you.” ? Do you believe these to be true for your own life and will I put your trust in them to the point that you put them into action? Can you in the midst of your hurt and pain return goodness for evil. Can you with joy give your enemy the food they need or the drink the require? When you are discouraged and beaten down will you actively seek to love the people who have done the beating?

Chip thought pretty much like each one of us would have felt in this moment. “There is no way my returning goodness for Jimmy’s evil is going to do a bit of good.” However, Chip leaned in and gave it a try. He went out of his way to get Jimmy’s tray at meal times, He stopped the no look passes and he gathered Jimmy’s laundry after practice to be taken off to the laundry. Now wouldn’t it be great if by the end of the season all of this goodness would have elicited a result in Jimmy to the effect that he gave his life to Jesus. Yes that would be a good ending but as Chip tells the story that did not happen. Instead Chip is pretty sure that not long after that season Jimmy was caught selling drugs and was sent off once again to prison, and you might be saying ah ha there is the vengeance that God declared in verse 20, but I am not so sure. You see after spending weeks of trying his hardest to return goodness to Jimmy for all the evil, the thing that really changed was Chip. These are his words, “To my amazement, within a couple of weeks, one big thing changed - me! The anger and bitterness melted away. His insults and words lost their power; the sting was gone!

God is in the transformation business and as we grow closer to Him it is not that God is going to change your circumstances but He will more than likely change you! God may never in your lifetime defeat your enemies or free you from your evils but He will transform you and give you the power to get through it.

Gospel

‌If you are here today and you know that you are not a believer, you have never asked Jesus into your heart or maybe you did but haven’t ever allowed God to change you then let me tell you how you can change that today. Your sin and your brokenness are there to point you to Jesus because only He can provide you with a real solution. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is that solution. Here is that Gospel: Jesus died on the cross for our sins and because He did we can ask for our sins to be forgiven and the Bible says he will forgive them. Jesus is the Lamb of God who died for your sins. God sent Jesus so that Jesus might take the punishment we deserve so that we might return to God and be called His own. Romans 10:9 says, “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” ‌It is just that easy. You can confess Him as your savior. If that is your desire today you can say this prayer with me. Bow your heads. God holds out His outstretched hand for you. Are you going to continue in your sin or are you going to take His Hand? He is calling and all you have to do is believe.

‌It is just that easy. You can confess Him as your savior. If that is your desire today you can say this prayer with me. Bow your heads.

‌Dear Lord, ‌I know that I’m a sinner. I’m sorry for my sin, and I ask you to forgive me. I believe you died for my sins and rose from the dead. I repent of my sins and I ask you to come into my life and take control. I make a commitment to follow you, and I trust you as my Lord and Savior.

‌Friend if you prayed that prayer today I ask that you come and speak to me after the service.

‌Benediction: Romans 12:2 “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”