When the Rubber Meets the Road
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Romans 13:8-14
I titled this sermon “When the Rubber Meets the Road” because this is where the Christian lives out their life.
We are preaching through Galatians on Sunday nights, Paul emphasizes the fact that obedience to the Law will not gain you salvation, and will not gain you favor with God.
Here in this passage he speaks of obedience to the Law.
So are we supposed to obey the Law or not?
We as Christians are free from the Law, in it’s bondage and a judgmental spirit.
We have been given the Spirit of God to lead us and teach us all things.
But the moral law will be obeyed, if we follow the Holy Spirit and the Word of God.
The moral law will be obeyed, if we truly love one another as we should!
Connection from Spiritual gifts -> Live peaceably with one another [live like a Christian] -> be subject to the laws and leaders of the land [law is for protection, Christians ought to obey authority] -> love one another (because we love, we will obey God’s Law) because we care about not bringing harm to another.
Love is the conscious thought for good of another.
I. Love Leads to Righteous Living 8-10
I. Love Leads to Righteous Living 8-10
Paul begins this section with a principle that is found throughout the Bible.
Owe no many anything - double negative - medeis medeis opheilo - no one/nothing & Owe/be a debtor
but agapao one another
Agapao - to delight yourself in
I am delighted with my wife - when I see her coming around a corner my heart skips a beat.
I seek to please those who delight me
Phileo - to be content with
I am content with my neighbor
I delight in peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream
I am content with Molasses cookies
Those who agapao have fulfilled [filled to the top, completed, finished] the law.
14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
14 And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.
Those who love have fulfilled the law
fulfilled - Done every question on the test. - “Did you answer every question?”
Finished every task on the To Do list. “Everything on the honey-do-list”
Carry through to the end.
How can he say this, because everything done with Agape love is done right, with the other person in mind.
Therefore it leads us...
A. To not do wrong 9
A. To not do wrong 9
Adultery, murder, theft, lying, coveting, or any other commandment it is summed up in this: Agapao your neighbor.
All the laws can be fulfilled by Loving God, Loving Others.
Love will prevent us from doing wrong.
Coveteousness - you want them to have more than you have
Lust/Pornography - They are the image of God, you would not want them to be exploited.
Murder - You will want them to live
Judgemental - would view them as better than yourself.
unforgiveness - would realize the need for forgiveness, and desire to release them from that debt.
Complaining - would not want to burden another, would be more encouraged to help
Profanity - would be more concerned about what others might hear, or leading others astray.
Impatience - give you more compassion while you wait for others
Agape love leads us to do no wrong, but it leads us ...
B. To Do right 10
B. To Do right 10
Agapao worketh no ill [evil, harm, bad] to his neighbor - love does not harm others.
That means if you are hurting someone, you are not loving them.
Now there is a balance to love, There is a kind of hurt done out of love that does help.
6 Faithful are the wounds of a friend; But the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.
That word faithful means to provide stability.
So how do you balance these two ideas?
Love is the starting place.
4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
Irena Sendler, is credited for helping rescue over 2,500 children from the Warsaw ghetto. She and her team smuggled the children out by variously hiding them in ambulances, taking them through the sewer pipes or other underground passageways, wheeling them out on a trolley in suitcases or boxes or taking them out through the old courtyard which led to the non-Jewish areas. Once she helped a six month old baby escape the Holocaust by sedating the baby and placing her in a carpenters box until she could take her out of the ghetto. She and the others in her group would give the children new polish names, carefully document their Jewish names and polish names so they could be reunited with their families, at least for those fees who survived the ghetto or concentration camps. The group would the assign them to foster families to care for them.
When asked why she put herself and her family at such risk, she said, “It was a need of my heart.” She rejected the appellation of hero. “I only did what any decent person would do. . . . The heroes were the babies—they were the heroes of their mothers’ hearts. . . . It was the parents and grandparents who gave up their children, they were the true heroes.”
OK, so Love leads to righteous living, that is a big part of the Christian life.
Now Paul moves to another part of the Christian life, The Spiritual battle.
II. Alertness Leads to Victorious Battle 11-14
II. Alertness Leads to Victorious Battle 11-14
Game they played at camp - Came in late, and couldn’t figure out what was going on…there seemed to be an offense, a defense and spotters
Paul gives three keys to having a victorious battle.
A. Awake to Work 11
A. Awake to Work 11
Knowing - perceive with the eyes
the time - season / opportunity
high time - now is the time
Salvation - time of redemption
nearer and nearer
Peter, james, John and Andrew came to Jesus as he sat on the Mount of Olives over against hte temple.
they asked him when will the last days be?
He warned them of many false teacher that would come.
He told them of many signs that would come.
He told them, no one knew when it would come except the father, that no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, nether the Son, then he gives them this advice:
33 Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is.
34 For the Son of man is as a man taking a far journey, who left his house, and gave authority to his servants, and to every man his work, and commanded the porter to watch.
35 Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning:
36 Lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping.
37 And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.
It’s more than just physically being awake, but also mentally.
A big part of the battle is knowing when to strike
When it is the optimal time.
Deer hunting - lined up ready to shoot, but I waited too long to get a better shot.
It’s high time now!
We need to focus on doing the work of the Lord!
B. Dressed to Win 12
B. Dressed to Win 12
Sleeping time is over
Time to work is here
Put off works of darkness
22 That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;
put on armor of light (literally weapons)
Light - people don’t like the light because it reveals who they truly are!
19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
We need to teach the next generation how to be a successful Christian.
According to Barna research group, Generation Z is the first truly post-Christian generation. That’s because these teens and young adults (born from 1999–2015) are the first generation to be raised in fully post-Christian, secularized society.
And it shows.
These young people are twice as likely as the average US population to identify as atheists.
More than one-third of Gen Z (37%) believes it is not possible to know for sure if God is real, compared to 32 percent of all adults.
Teens who do believe one can know God exists are less likely than adults to say they are very convinced that is true (54% vs. 64% all adults who believe in God).
Of the young adults in this demographic, 84% support same-sex marriage, and 1 in 6 (15.9%) self identify as LBGT.
It would be easy for pastors and youth workers to dismiss these statistics as relative to the young people “out there” and assume that the young people in your youth group and Christian school are far more grounded in their beliefs. That would be a mistake.
We too easily underestimate the power of secularization in our culture. It is forceful, and it is persuasive.
When you’re fifteen years old and every non-church voice tells you that truth is relative, God is adaptable, and Bible-believing Christians who say that people shouldn’t live out their own truth related to their sexual identity are bigots, you need solid answers.
When you’re a teen who was raised in church, but you have questions about the reliability of the Bible on one hand and your own sexual identity on the other, you need thoughtful, compassionate, and biblical engagement.
When you’re a newly-saved fourteen-year-old who has grown up hearing that evolution is science, abortion is compassionate, and the highest standard of morality is living out “my truth,” you need careful discipleship that answers real questions.
The reality is that our secular culture is aggressively giving Generation Z a worldview that either ignores, denies, or re-imagines God, His Word, and absolute truth.
Our teenagers need to be taught the truth in love!
5 Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.
6 Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.
7 For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night.
8 But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.
A big part of being dressed to win is putting on the Lord Jesus Christ.
24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.
Put on - to filled with the spirit of Christ.
Filled - controlled - glove.
C. Prepared to Succeed 13-14
C. Prepared to Succeed 13-14
13-Walk honestly [decorously] as in light
not in
rioting - late night feasting and drinking (emphasis on the flesh)
drunkenness - intoxication (controlled by)
chambering - sensual bed - (fleshly desires)
Wantonness - unbridled lust or shamelessness
strife - debate or contention (fleshly debate/fight)
Envying - pursue after - jealous over things (Materialism)
14
PUT ON - sink into
Jesus Christ - Do what He would do.
Make no provision for - make a way for
flesh - deprave nature of man
to fulfill - complete those lusts.
Don’t go where you have a tenancy to sin
Don’t do the things that would lead you to do wrong.
This is where the rubber meets the road.
This is what it is to be a Christian in this world!
Love Others - it will keep you from sin
Prepare and protect yourself from sin.
Live purposefully, not by happenstance.
I have decided to follow Jesus - no turning back
Decisions were made at camp this week.
It’s going to take purposeful living to keep that decision.
Some of us in this room need to decide that we are going to be purposeful in our Christian walk.