814 Rom.12.9-13 Different Giftings, Same Ethics Pt.1
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- Last week, we spoke about the different gifts God has given the church – grace gifts – that individuals use to serve Him & His church
Date: 25-11-18 814 Echuca
- Last week, we spoke about the different gifts God has given the church – grace gifts – that individuals use to serve Him & His church
- Today, we transition from gifting to ethics & attitudes
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- We did have one gift Paul spoke about in the last passage – mercy
- All of us are to be like God & show mercy, but there is a gift a person has which excels in this task
- It might include such things as visiting the sick, caring for the elderly or disabled, providing for the poor
- Interestingly, the apostle appends this instruction of “showing mercy, with cheerfulness”
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- God has given us grace gifts that need to be used a certain way
Q. To be exercising the gift grudgingly is really defeating the purpose don't you think?
- Let's say a person exercises forgiveness towards another & thinks...
- “I'll let you off, but I'm still fuming inside”
- You say to someone else, “I can forgive, but I cannot forget”
- Yes, sometimes the damage done to a relationship can be hard to move forward from
- There may be forgiveness given, but there are emotions to deal with
- But when we consider the grace given to us, then that puts a whole different spin on it
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- You want God to be still fuming at you, even though He has forgiven you?
Q. Do you still want Him to secretly hold bitterness & resentment in His heart towards you?
- You say that you don't believe God would do that – that when He forgives, all is gone & you are completely restored to Him
- That your sins are buried in the deepest ocean never to surface again & yet, sadly, this is not the way many Christians act after they have had difficulties with one another
- Either forgiveness means emulating God's forgiveness or not
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- Gifting is different from ethics & attitudes
- Some people have gifts that others do not have & the reverse applies to them – they don't have what other people have
- All these gifts, to be clear, are by the grace of God
- One person has a grace gift from God that is beneficial to the body while another person has a different kind of gift that is also beneficial to the body
- But every Christian has a grace gift from God
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- While gifting is unique to individuals, ethics & attitudes are the same for us all
- You may say that you are of a certain personality & that personality works against, say, “rejoicing in hope”
- It may be true that, because of your personality, you have to work harder to get your attitudes & emotions in order, but you still need to do that – you need to work on that
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- Today's instructions are about attitudes & ethics
- This all stems from a mentality that is FUTURE oriented
- You would be right to think that this list is difficult to fulfil
- It is difficult because people assume this stems from a mentality that is only located in the present
- Whereas, in fact, it stems from a mind, set on the future, as it operates in the present
- We are told that time & time again – to have our minds set on where Christ is seated in the heavenly places & that we are seated with Him there now
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- As we come to this passage today, the underlying design of this section is love
- He is not always specifically speaking of love, but he keeps coming back to love as the single most important facet of Christian behaviour
- Love is the mark of a new creation in Christ
1. Love's Quadrant vs.9-10
1. Love's Quadrant vs.9-10
1. Love's Quadrant vs.9-10
1. Love's Quadrant vs.9-10
- The first set of values we come to is what I'm calling “Love's Quadrant”
- Love's quadrant is here expressed in it's behaviour
1. Love is sincere
2. Love hates evil & clings to the good
3. Love is loyal
4. Love puts others first
- “God is love” says the apostle John
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
- Unfortunately, we have been so accustomed to think of love as located in the emotions that we lose sight of what it truly means to love
—7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
- Unfortunately, we have been so accustomed to think of love as located in the emotions that we lose sight of what it truly means to love
- To be sure, love must involve the emotions because we are driven by both the mind & the emotions, but love should not be seen as originating with how I feel
- We will see this clarified soon through what the apostle Paul writes about love hating evil & clinging to the good
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- The biblical kind of love is expressed, however, in action
9 By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
9 By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
- Tangible action that showed or demonstrated God's love for us
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- But this is also to be the case with our relationships, one to the other
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.
—11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.
- So basic is Christian love to the people of God, that Paul doesn't write about the need to love, but of what such love entails
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- It is relatively easy to fain love
- In other words, it is possible to fool people about our love
- In the first sector of the Quadrant, I mentioned that “love is sincere”
- It is literally, “love is not hypocritical” or “Love is not play acting”
- Playing a role even though it's not true in reality
6 Do not eat the food of a stingy man, do not crave his delicacies; 7 for he is the kind of man who is always thinking about the cost. “Eat and drink,” he says to you, but his heart is not with you. 8 You will vomit up the little you have eaten and will have wasted your compliments.
- So here is an attempted expression of love, but he was play acting
5 But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.
But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.
-- Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart,
22 Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart,
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- Unfortunately, love is has been turned on it's head to mean something radically different from what God's love is about
- Sexual perversity – relationships that are not sanctioned by God are given the tick of approval by most members of our society
- “Love is love” they say – “no, it is not”, God says
- Love is defined by God & He says that love, in fact, hates evil
- It doesn't hate the people, but it hates the sin & the evil
—6 love does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;
6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;
- In contrast to this, love clings to the good
- The word used here is used by Jesus when He quotes Genesis of the man leaving his father & mother & clinging to his wife
- You “tie yourself (tie the knot) to what is good.”
- It's like standing on a steep hill - a slippery incline – you have to bind yourself to the stake or poll on the hill or else you'll eventually slip & slide down into the “evil”
“Genuine” Christian love, Paul is suggesting, is not a directionless emotion or something that can be only felt and not expressed. Love is not genuine when it leads a person to do something evil or to avoid doing what is right—as defined by God in his Word. Genuine love, “the real thing,” will lead the Christian to that “good” which is the result of the transformed heart and mind. — Douglas J. Moo
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- The ESV's “Love one another with brotherly affection” speaks of the Christian church as an extension of your own family
- There's one trait in a family that I find lacking in the church family - & that is loyalty
- “Blood is thicker than water” goes the saying – family gets our loyalty
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- I'm finding that loyalty is such a lost word in today's western world
- Loyalty, to the world, tends to sound like a restriction of choice & that is anathema to the modern mind
- If I have to be loyal, I'm locked in – wow, what a problem to have
- In fact, these very same people bemoan the fact that no one is loyal to them
- If we want or desire loyalty, guess what, we should be loyal too!
- Paul wants us to regard our church family as an extension of the affection & loyalty we have for our own family
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- The fourth quadrant here is to “put others first” or as our reading has it, “outdo one another in showing honour”
- Probably, this has to do with honouring the ministry of others
- This would be a way of ensuring a respect for the value of other ministries in the church, other than our own
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- Obviously, the apostle would not say, for e.g. that if someone wants to insist on speaking in a tongue, that the world has to come to a stand still
- In 1 Cor. he himself puts limitations on gifts & says that the spirits of the prophets are subject to the control of the prophets
- So this is not a blatant license for anyone to do their thing regardless of it's benefit to the church
- But he is saying to show love, by respecting & even preferencing the gifting of others over yourself
2. Love's Diligence v.11
2. Love's Diligence v.11
2. Love's Diligence v.11
2. Love's Diligence v.11
- Love is not only expressed in its character or its quality, it is also expressed in its zeal
- v.11 “Not slothfulness in zeal but fervent in the spirit”
- Apollos was such a man, described this way, in
—25 This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he was speaking and teaching accurately the things concerning Jesus, being acquainted only with the baptism of John;
25 This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he was speaking and teaching accurately the things concerning Jesus, being acquainted only with the baptism of John;
- Being fervent in the spirit is an idiom that means “to boil in the spirit”
- So it speaks of the zeal of a Christian's life for loving service in the Lord
<Image> - “Your Road to Walk”
- I can hear people saying to me now, “That's not me”, “I don't have that kind of interest & zeal”
- Well, if this is you, you have one of two choices – give up or seek to change your direction
- But your choice will depend on what you think of God & what He has done for you in Christ
- It will depend on whether you consider yourself a new creation in Christ or whether you prefer the world (remember Lot's wife)
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- I don't want to make it sound fatalistic, because it is not
- I can assure you that you aren't, nor will be, the only person struggling with a lack of zeal
- If we didn't struggle with this, there would be no need for him to mention it
- But the fact that he does, means that we can rise ourselves up to the challenge
24 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.
NIV -- And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds,
3. Love Is Future Driven v.12
3. Love Is Future Driven v.12
3. Love Is Future Driven v.12
3. Love Is Future Driven v.12
- There is a way of thinking that leads to despair & a way of thinking that leads to victory in the Christian life
- Let us not forget what prefaced this chapter:
2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
—2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
- Can I suggest to you that the difference is in turning from the pattern of the world to the renewing of our mind
- That will involve us understanding the changes that God has brought about through our Lord Jesus Christ
- Those changes are earth shattering in both quality & quantity
- He has brought about our salvation from sin & imparted to us the gift of everlasting life
22 For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. 23 And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. 24 For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.
—22 For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. 23 And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. 24 For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.
- So we are groaning within ourselves for the redemption of our bodies & have the hope of the future embedded in us
Q. However, how close is that hope to your heart?
Q. Have you grown weary & tired & forgot about the things to come?
- For the Christian it is not impossible for them to move forward
- But it was impossible for the Israelites under the Law
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- So despairing were the Rabbis that the two heavyweights in Hillel & Shammai debated whether it were better for man to have never been born
- After two years they finally agreed that it was better for him to not be created
- That was the hopelessness instilled by having to live under the law
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- But we are not like that – we have a sure hope for Jesus was raised from the dead
- We have the first-fruits of the Spirit & have been predestined, called, justified & glorified
- There is no reason in the world for the Christian to not have hope
- There is no reason in the world for the Christian to not have their mind driven by the reality of our future
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- So Paul says, “rejoicing in hope” - you can only do that when your mind is set on the glory to be revealed
- You can only be patient in tribulation when your mind is directed towards the future
- You can only be “devoted to prayer” (NASB) when you realise that the future blessings of God have now entered into the present
- When you realise that you are His child, you realise He now has an active interest in hearing your prayers
- You can be devoted to prayer knowing that He is willing & more than able to respond to those prayers
<Image> Christ Lite Cola
<Image> Christ Lite Cola
Q. Is there such a thing as Christ lite cola? “The refreshing taste of salvation without the bitter aftertaste of obligation”
Q. How can we ignore such a great salvation?
- So the problem of struggle for many Christians comes down to the mind that is set in & only, in the present
- Our head-space needs an overhaul. It must get filled & dominated by the future – by what's coming & by what's truly important in light of the future we have
- The apostles of Jesus had this future mentality firmly in mind when they persevered through tribulation
- After Peter & John received a flogging, Luke reports...
-- So they went on their way from the presence of the Council, rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name.
41 So they went on their way from the presence of the Council, rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name.
- That can only be done with a mind set on the future
4. Love that Touches Home v.13
4. Love that Touches Home v.13
4. Love that Touches Home v.13
4. Love that Touches Home v.13
- This last facet of love in today's passage which is, by no means, the last because it will continue through next week's message as well, addresses the support a family gives to it's members
13 contributing to the needs of the saints, pursuing hospitality.
—13 contributing to the needs of the saints, pursuing hospitality.
- When we consider our church family as an extension of our own family, we would be concerned to see them in need
- When we consider our church family as an extension of our own family, we would be concerned to see them in need
- In the early church when Jews who turned to Christ were being kicked out of the Synagogues, Christians gave generously to help them in their dire need
- In the Jewish community, everything centred around the Synagogue & if you were excommunicated, then you were left high & dry financially
- The Jews were instructed to not give any employment, nor help, to a person who had been so excommunicated
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- In , we see that Barnabas sold a parcel of land to help care for the needy Christians who had been so treated by their society
- The way our society has been tracking, we may see Christians, once again, put in a dire position like this again
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- Paul, also, mentions the need to pursue hospitality
- I'm using the Lexham Bible translation because it brings out the meaning here
- It is not only encouraging us to be hospitable, it is encouraging us to pursue it, to chase after being hospitable
2 Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it.
—2 Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it.
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- It's a scary thing to open your home to strangers, but in a day where motels & hotels were not the run of the mill, what was available were often dangerous places to stay
- It would be relatively easy for someone to come in at night & stab you & take your belongings – they had there fair share of bandits & robbers
26 I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren;
—26 I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers
- Christians opened their homes to fellow Christians & kept them safe
- This would also be a huge benefit to missionaries who were travelling
- The true ones were never flushed with cash & it would help support their ministry by providing lodging for them in their travels
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- At all times we need wisdom in the way we do this
- I'm not sure that the apostle is telling us to leave our brains behind when we invite strangers into our homes, especially, when you have children
- There are ways & means of confirming people & we should make the most of that before we open our home to complete strangers
- The early church did have guidance on this, so it does not seem to me that you have to do the Ostrich thing & stick your head in the sand & ignorantly invite a stranger to stay in your house
- The church used letters of commendation & sent letters with the missionaries they sent out endorsing there work
3 When I arrive, whomever you may approve, I will send them with letters to carry your gift to Jerusalem;
—3 When I arrive, whomever you may approve, I will send them with letters to carry your gift to Jerusalem;
- Nevertheless, our love of our Christian brethren should cause us to pursue hospitality
Summary
Summary
Summary
Summary
- Love is the mark of a new creation in Christ
- This self-sacrificial love is driven by the fact that the future has begun for the Christian
- If you take anything away with you from what has been said today, I hope you take with you the truth that your mind is to be driven by the reality of our future
- If this is the case, then your love cannot help, but abound for each other
- A selfless love, a loyal love, a preserving love will abound because you realise that your future is now & will be forever