Romans 12:3-8 Breaking Up with Ourselves

Of the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsack preaches from his series in the Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God. Let's listen in.

The Church’s Mission of Faith, Community, and Service

Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church. As Dave said, I'm Don Filsack, I'm the lead pastor here, and it is a privilege for us to gather together in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

One note about our church, we are a church that values simplicity, and I think those of you that have been around here have probably noticed some things that are a little bit different in that regard.

We don't have a lot of flashy programs. We're seeking three primary things. We're seeking to connect to the truth of God's word so that we can grow in our faith. We do that on Sunday mornings. That's one of the reasons we gather together and kind of center our time on the word of God.

Second of all, we're seeking to connect to one another so that we can grow in community. It's our conviction that God has created us for community, that we need relationships with one another in order to practice the very things that God wants to sharpen in us and to get rid of the things that he wants to get rid of in us.

That happens best in community. And then lastly, we are seeking to connect to our gifts and talents so that we can grow in our service. That's the conviction that God has given each and every one of you, something that can benefit the others around you here in the church and out in the community.

Using those gifts and providing opportunities to serve one another is vital. Our text this morning is gonna touch on all three of those, faith, community, and service. In the passage, we're gonna be looking at, as I'm introducing that, and then we're gonna come to a time of singing and stuff, this passage that we're looking at, we are told that we are brought into community like members of a body, like parts of the human body, like arms and eyes and ears and hands and that kind of stuff.

And as members together of one body, we are to serve one another using our God-given abilities, the gifts that he's given to us, the talents that he's given to us in the service of one another. And this is the whole picture of why Recash Church exists.

This is why we started a church 10 years ago here in Matawan, was to exhibit this faith, community, and service. And we wanna be a place where those three things intersect in people's lives and here in this community.

And so I also find it interesting that the idea of community and service that's gonna be mentioned in our text this morning comes in the context of thinking correctly about ourselves. How we think about ourselves matters.

Paul has communicated the gospel in very detailed terms for the first 11 chapters of the book of Romans. And he is now giving instructions for our lives as followers of Christ. Now that we are followers of Christ, now that we've come in the door through the grace that is given to us, through the righteousness given to us by Jesus Christ, now that we've come in that way, we are being called to a different kind of life.

He's giving us instructions for how to live. And one of the major sinful patterns of this world, you see, last week he called us to not be conformed to the sinful patterns of this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

And so there's something that needs to be renewed in here. There's a wrong way of thinking, a wrong way of living, a wrong way of being conformed. And so one of the patterns of the sinful world around us that we're being called out from is thinking too highly of ourselves than we ought.

How many of you would ever just identify that maybe occasionally in your life you've had a problem with thinking too highly of yourself? Maybe a couple people? Some of you don't wanna raise your hand because that might look like you're thinking too highly of yourselves?

I don't know. Really raise your hand if you've had that problem,.

If you've had that struggle.

I think that accounts for many of us. And I think those of you that aren't raising your hand, maybe by the end you would. Maybe by the end you would identify that, yeah, I have been guilty of that. That's one of the major sinful patterns among humanity.

And I think it's something that actually sticks to every single one of us, even the most humble in this room. Still at the end of the day deeply is impacted by thinking too highly of ourselves than we ought.

So Paul wants us to make sure that we don't think of this living sacrifice business as a solo gig. We need community. We need the opportunities to serve one another that will help us to overcome this tendency in ourselves to think more highly of ourselves than we ought.

And we are called in this text to think right thoughts about ourselves. And we do so by faith in the gospel. We do so by understanding what it means to be brought into community. And we do so by engaging in service within that community.

And so let's open our Bibles, if you're not already there, to Romans chapter 12, verses three through eight. Again, Romans 12, three through eight. You can navigate in your device over to that or grab the Bible that's under the seat in front of you or the Bible that you brought with you.

I'm gonna be reading out of the English Standard Version, not because it's the best, it's just the one that I prefer for my personal study and then also for public reading, it seems to work well, so. But again, recast, this is God's precious and holy word to us.

We have the opportunity to hear from God in the pages of scripture as we read Romans 12, three through eight. For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

For as in one body we have many members and the members do not all have the same function, so we though many are one body in Christ and individually members of one another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them.

If prophecy in proportion to our faith, if service in our serving, the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the calling that you've placed on our lives to not be conformed to this world, but to be renewed in our minds and the way that we think. Father, I pray that you would convict each and every one of us of those areas where we need to change our thinking, particularly in regard to ourselves.

We are so easily deceived into thinking that we've got things in hand, that we've got things under control, and even in that there is an arrogance. Even in that there is pride. And Father, we're a culture, a self-esteem culture, a self-improvement culture, a self-love culture, a self-care culture.

Father, I just don't see that here. And so, Father, I pray that even if that's a radical statement to anybody in this room, Father, that you would let your word deal with us, because I wanna care for myself, too.

I wanna take care of number one. But Father, you are calling us to serve one another. You've called us into community. You've called us to think gospel thoughts about our own lives. And so, Father, I pray that that would be a reality among us this morning, that even as we might, in our mopiness, think poor thoughts about ourselves, we still center it on us.

And so, Father, I pray that you would correct us all this morning by your grace and by your mercy. Let this not be a heavy text, but let it be a text that encourages us forward. And then, Father, I thank you most importantly that we have the first 11 chapters of the book of Romans by which we can launch out into worship and praise even now we can sing songs of delight, even as people who don't have it all right in our lives now, but you have made it right by a righteousness given to us.

And so, Father, I pray that even as we wrestle and struggle with our flesh, we wrestle and struggle with this world system and with all of these thoughts that rage in our minds, you've done it for us and that our hope is firmly placed in Jesus Christ and his sacrifice for us.

And so, let our hearts explode with praise and gladness and joy even as we have a chance to sing these songs to you in Jesus' name. Yeah, you can go ahead and be seated. But if you could do me a favor and reopen your Bibles if you lost your place there, your device over to Romans 12, three through eight, so that you can have that open in front of you.

And then remember at any time, if you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts, you're not gonna distract me if that's what you need to kind of keep your focus on God's word. If you need to use the restrooms, go out the double doors down the hallway on the left-hand side.

But again, our goal is that the remainder of our time together is spent focusing our attention on God's word, the very powerful word of God that has the power to change us. And I think that we run the risk when we enter into any portion later in the book of Romans after chapter 12 or 12 or later, where we need to, I'm gonna constantly, probably at the start of every message moving forward for the remainder of the time in Romans, remind us of the gospel.

Because it's very important as we enter into these what are called imperatives. Imperative, how many of you know what an imperative is? Just when I say that. A few of you, and a few of you like me didn't necessarily appreciate English class.

An imperative is a command. It's a command. And so everything prior to this, almost all of the verbs were indicative. They were saying something that's true of us or true about things before. They weren't command-oriented verbs up until chapter 12.

And then everything turns towards now do this. Do this, do this. Well, if you jump into the Christian life in chapter 12, you miss the gospel. You miss the things that God says is true of you and what you need to believe in order to be considered a child of God and given the righteousness that we need.

And so don't forget where we've been. That's my point. The gospel has been well-established by the Apostle Paul. You cannot be saved by keeping any of the rules that you find from chapter 12 on. You can't be saved by keeping those rules and those commands.

Instead, what we all need is a God-given righteousness, a new heart that is only available through faith in Jesus Christ and his substitutionary sacrifice for us on the cross. That's where the hope is found.

And now he's talking about now if your life is established on that foundation, on that bedrock of forgiveness of Jesus Christ and a new heart given to you, now go out and live in this way. And so the life of living for God by grace starts with us presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice like we saw last week.

And as a starting point in seeking that which is good and acceptable and the perfect will of God, moment by moment, day by day, and rendering those decisions as worship to God. And this comes through a renewed mind that seeks God and his will through the pages of scripture, knowing what he desires of us, digging in and seeing the very things that he says here and like these examples of Romans 12 on.

How does he want us to live? What does he want our lives to look like now that we have been bought by Jesus Christ? And Paul begins a new paragraph in verse three by defending his right to give us instruction.

That's where he starts. He says, why should you trust me? Why should you listen to me is what Paul is saying at the very start of verse three. He is writing to the church in Rome and he says I'm writing to you by the grace that was given to him.

Paul was given a measure of grace and he says that's the very nature of why you ought to listen to me. This is a gift from God given to me to speak the words and commands of God. In other words, God's inspired and holy word brought to us today, recast through the apostle Paul, is an undeserved gift.

It is a grace to us that God would show us how to live a good life, how we are meant to be together in community, how we are to think of ourselves. This is a grace to us. Often, how many of you have ever been guilty of thinking of the rules and the laws and the commandments of God as a big killjoy, like a wet blanket on a fun night?

Do you know what I'm talking about? And it's like that's not the point. It is about his grace given to us to lead us into that which is for our flourishing, that which is for our benefit, church. He loves us enough that he doesn't just leave us to ourselves.

How many of you have ever gone a season living for yourself? Did it go well? Do you endorse that? Is that what you want for your children? Is that what, no, of course not. And that's not what God wants for his children.

And so, he is gracious to give us commands and rules and things for us as a church to live by and to walk in. And the main problem that this text exists to defeat, hear this short text, Romans 12, three through eight, it exists to defeat the human tendency to esteem ourselves too highly.

Now, I would suggest to you, and I know that I'm out on a limb on this, but I would suggest to you that every single one of us has this problem. Every single one of you is guilty of thinking of yourself too highly.

From the most arrogant among us, I don't know who that is, but from the most arrogant to the most guilt-wracked individual, we all think too highly of ourselves. So really, at the end of the day, I don't know, this is kind of a weird thought, but we all could line ourselves up by some kind of standard to determine who on, you know, we could line up on this side.

Most arrogant over here, most humble over here. Now, if we, I mean, God knows that, by the way. God has some kind of identification for that. He could do it. He could line us all up that way right now.

But the fact of the matter is, the whole spectrum thinks too well of themselves. The one that's clear over here, the most humble among us would still be guilty of thinking wrongly about themselves, putting themselves too much at the center, thinking too well of themselves, and thinking higher thoughts than they deserve to think about themselves.

I would suggest to you that the person that would be over there still doesn't, deep down, believe that they deserve hell. Deep down thinks, I'm really not that bad, though.

Do you get what I'm saying in this?

All of us struggle with this. It's a reality for all of us. I'm convinced, in my own life, by the way, that I often am most depressed and down when I pay the greatest attention to myself.

Can anybody testify to that?

Is that true of you? When I'm thinking and focusing and trying to pay all of my attention on myself, when I'm serving myself, when I'm striving after my own self-esteem, and when I cease to serve others, when I cease to see myself as God sees me, that is the pathway, a sure pathway, to a downcast soul.

Put yourself at the center and think a lot of thoughts about yourself. It is not just when I'm patting myself on the back for a job well done, but it's equally when I'm wallowing in self-deprecating defeat that I find that I'm thinking thoughts too much about myself.

And in any and all circumstances, there is always the temptation for way too much me in the picture.

There's a lot of me in there.

So in our text, Paul gives us three remedies to correct our love affair with ourselves. You can take that picture down if you'd like. Um, a little awkward. Three remedies, because I think that all of us could testify to having some degree of a love affair with ourselves.

All of us are guilty of that. And so our outline this morning is pretty straightforward, and each point is a remedy to thinking too highly of ourselves. These are the remedies. These are the things that God is gonna give us, and he's gonna give us some ideas and some thoughts about how we can defeat this in our lives.

And the first is a gospel honesty in verse three. The second thing is church unity in verses four and five. The third is an intentional service, verses six through eight. So three remedies in this text, given to us by the Apostle Paul.

Through the grace of God,.

That will help remedy thinking too highly of ourselves. Gospel honesty, church unity, and intentional service. You see, by grace, God is seeking to limit how high we think of ourselves. That's the limiting factor in this.

That's the problem that he's identifying. That's what he chooses. And I suggest to you, this is already a corrective to our culture. The notion that we might not think.

That that's the real problem.

But this is where Paul draws up, and this is where God draws up the battle lines in our lives. First, when he begins to give us the imperatives. Do not think more highly of yourself than you ought. This is ground zero of the battle.

This is where he starts the attack against the sinful world system. That we live in and breathe in and move in in the sinful world system that first and foremost is gonna say, you gotta take care of number one.

You gotta care for self. You gotta make sure you're okay. You gotta fix yourself. You gotta think about yourself. You gotta meditate on yourself. You gotta fix yourself, right? How many of you hear that in the world?

And he says, he says, don't think more highly of yourself than you ought. Because we often think our problem is thinking too lowly of ourselves. We think if we just stood up for ourselves, if we were more assertive, if I had more love for myself, then I'd arrive at joy, then I'd arrive at happiness.

But this shows up in the modern therapeutic mindset that I've been hearing so much lately. I just need to take care of myself. I understand the sentiment, but it wasn't the sentiment of Jesus or Paul or any other of the biblical writers when Jesus says, love your neighbor as yourself.

He doesn't say, love yourself. He says, love your neighbor as yourself. What does he presuppose in that instruction? What's the presupposition?

You love yourself.

I think Jesus took that for granted because he knew it was true. He knew it was already true.

You already love yourself enough. You really do.

Now, some of you are going, wait a second. Let's pull back on this a little bit, Don. Is there some kind of a caveat to this or whatever? Well, I'm just trying to deal with the text. I'm trying to deal with, not just this text,.

But the entirety of what I read.

In the pages of scripture here. I'm here suddenly out of nowhere, out of nowhere in the giving of first instructions. Paul assumes that the church thinks more highly of themselves than they should, so he's addressing it to us.

He puts a finger on a consistent human problem. He is not misdiagnosing our problem here. He gets it right, and the fundamental problem is that you and I all think too highly of ourselves. You see, fundamental to a renewal of your mind is to think correctly, and to think correctly about yourself.

So the problem is set up in verse three, and the pattern of this world in general is that humans think too highly of themselves, but don't get hung up on looking for exceptions because some of you, your mind is churning and you're thinking about exceptions right now.

This is indeed a general truism that we all know works if we really seek it out in our hearts, but our tendency to look for loopholes often comes from a desire to squirm out from underneath conviction.

This is one of those texts that we would like not to convict us, and so we could find exceptions to the rule or anything like that, but let this text, Recast, talking to all of you, this has impacted me this week, let this text speak to you rather than trying to figure out who it does and doesn't apply to.

Let it speak to your heart.

Matter of fact, maybe even just for a second here, you can listen faster than I can talk, and so maybe right now in the quiet of your heart, you would just say, God, show me, correct me, fix me, help me to think rightly about myself this morning through the pages of this text.

The remainder of this text this morning is taken up with what is expressed in verse three as sober judgment. We should have sober judgment, that's how we should think about ourselves. We are called to lower our thoughts, to lower our thoughts, not to think more highly of yourself, to lower your thoughts about yourself.

We must think of ourselves with sober judgment, and it's a pretty cool phrase. In Greek, it means an unfoggy and clear view. An unfoggy, all kinds of things could come in and cloud your view of yourself.

The words of others, the praise of others, the praise of self, the accomplishments, the whatever it might be, the gifts and talents that you have and that you've honed and that you've worked hard for, the wealth that you've accumulated, the status that you've accumulated, all kinds of things cloud your vision.

Maybe it's even just ignorance of God's word that could cloud your vision to thinking right thoughts about yourself, but we're being called to have an unfoggy, clear, like any of you ever, on a foggy day, we're about to get a couple of those, any of you ever just scrape just a little hole, you don't have much time, and so you're driving down the road with just this thing, and then what happens?

That little patch fogs up, and then you're really in trouble, and then you're driving into the glare of the sun, and it's like, I'm in trouble. Pull over, please, before you get in a wreck, right? I think all of us have had that experience where you have a clouded, unclear view of what's really going on out there.

It's a recipe for disaster, right? So we need a sober judgment, a clear, honest, accurate assessment of who we really are. That's what we're being called to. Now, I wanna point out just kind of an illustration of how this works in the negative, how you can actually come across as being humble, come across as being contrite, and sometimes in the lowest points of life, really, you're still thinking too much of yourself, you're still thinking too highly.

When I was in high school, my soccer team made it to the district finals my senior year. I love soccer, soccer was the only sport that I seemed to really excel at. I didn't really excel at basketball until later, and some might question whether that's true or not, but soccer was my sport.

We played against Lowell. Does anybody even know where Lowell is? That was our district final. We won the game, three to one, district champions. That year, I was co-captain of the soccer team. I actually was later nominated as the most valuable player, and I don't say any of this to booze myself because of the way that this story goes.

At that district final game, everybody lined up to receive their medals, and I was not present there. I actually had wandered off the field at the final whistle and was off moping in a playground, okay, sitting on a swing, totally beside myself.

I was angry, I wasn't present. They were literally, my team is lined up receiving district champion medals around their neck, and I'm over moping in the playground.

I'm the co-captain.

I'm gonna be nominated later.

I didn't know this at the time.

I'm gonna be nominated as the MVP for the year. I'd wandered off upset with my performance in that game. I was sulking and cursing myself in my mind while the team enjoyed the victory, and the reason?

The reason was that I thought so highly of myself that I was beating myself up.

Why?

Because the score would have been three to nothing if it wasn't for me. I scored a goal in that game. I scored an own goal in that game. The other team makes a cross. I misplayed it. Perfect shot into the back of the net.

I mean, the goalie, I could still see it in my mind, the goalie arching for the corner. It went right into the cross, right there. Like, there's no way. I mean, the best keeper in the world was not gonna field that ball.

Shank in.

I was beside myself.

I'm the most valuable player.

I'm the co-captain.

And even at this low point of self-loathing in my life, I was betraying my own self-centeredness and my own pride. I don't make mistakes. Mistakes are for lesser people. And I was angry. Can you see it?

Can you see thinking too highly of myself in that context? The game was fine. We won. The keeper was totally forgiving about it and was like, hey, we're district champions, awesome. I would've loved to shut out, but hey, whatever.

You see, I'm convinced that even in moments where we think we are thinking low thoughts about ourselves we are still way too full of ourselves.

This is what it means to be a fallen human.

And so how do we combat this pervasive human problem that stalks us in the low points as well as in the high points? It'll never work for us to run around in our day saying, don't think too highly of yourself, don't think too highly of yourself, don't think too highly of yourself.

That's not gonna cut it. At the end of verse three, we get the first movement towards a sober and unclouded correct judgment of ourselves and it's found in, the end of verse three, it's a gospel honesty.

We are called to have a gospel honesty about ourselves. You see, the phrase at the end of verse three is a bit hard to discern in English. It says this in the ESV. It says it, there's a bunch of different translations, but this is the English Standard Version that I read earlier, that we are to think about ourselves with sober judgment according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

So something to do with our faith is supposed to inform the way we view ourselves. Something to the effect of the amount of faith that we've received is to inform the way that we think of ourselves. Well, how much faith have we received?

Well, it's not again, it's not the, I'm convinced that because Paul is encouraging us to not think too highly of ourselves, not at all, it's not possible that what he's saying is line yourself up according to the most faith and the least faith, figure out where you're at in the pecking order.

God has given to each one a different measure of faith and so you need to figure out where you fit in that and just roll with that. That's not at all because how many of you know that that's a breeding ground for us to think more highly of ourselves than we ought or to feel too lowly about ourselves and that way that would have its way with us but I don't believe that that's what he's getting at.

I don't believe that he's suggesting that we line ourselves up in that way.

And look around the room and go,.

Well, who's got the most faith? I guess I'm probably one of the highest.

That wouldn't be what he's getting at.

Instead, I believe that he's calling us to consider the way we came into salvation. How was it measured out to us?

Evenly.

Saving faith, that is a faith that trusts in Jesus and his work on the cross is what brought you in, every one of you.

That's it.

That's the measure.

Look around you right now, Recast. Go ahead and take a second to look at other people.

Really. Please, humor me.

Everyone in this room who professes faith in Jesus Christ came through the same door as you. We are united and we are together in Christ because of the faith that was measured out to us. You see, the standard of value in the church, a gospel honesty is recognizing that we all came the same way.

We all were brought into the faith in the same way. The standard of value in the church is a saving faith measured out evenly to each of us. Kings stand no taller than peasants at the foot of the cross.

Everyone who has ever been saved and brought into the church of Christ has come on their knees. So the first remedy for thinking too highly of ourselves is a gospel honesty. We are all needy beggars pleading for crumbs of righteousness from the bountiful table of the Almighty.

Let that be sober judgment indeed. And one more word on gospel honesty before we move on. Stop believing your own hype. Stop believing your own hype. We get into these ruts of self-righteousness, of self-justification.

We cut ourselves all the slack and that's why we can get so angry at a person who drives just like us when we're in a hurry. We're allowed to be in a hurry, aren't we? But God forbid that somebody else is in a hurry and cuts us off.

What about when somebody criticizes you? I mean, think about a sober judgment about that. I've heard it said, and I don't even know who I'm quoting here, but someone said, you know, when somebody criticizes me, the right answer ought to be you just don't know the half of it.

You're thinking too low about your criticism because if you knew all of it, you would bring that too. I mean, certainly we're at times falsely criticized, but that's because they didn't know the right category too.

To criticize us in.

Am I right? But our tendency, what is your first response when somebody criticizes you? To put up a defense. To lean into the cloudiness. To cloudy and muddy the thing instead of with laser-like focus and with clarity from scripture identify, yes.

Yes, I'm broken, I'm fallen, I sinned. I shouldn't have responded in that way. And apologize and said it right. But what if people around you, what if people around you truly knew what you know about yourself?

What if that was just the standard alone? What if they knew every deep and secret and dark thought you've ever had? Every deep and secret thing you've ever done? Do you think you'd be vindicated? Or do you think you'd be ashamed?

Do you think you would disgust people or impress them?

It's a rough question, isn't it?

Because I think I can hear in the room a sense of, yeah, we know what it means to have an unclouded view because at the end of the day, we really do know ourselves, don't we? We really do know the deep and secret things, the darkness within us.

So I guess what Paul's saying here when he says think soberly about yourself is the gospel and his grace that defines us. Have a gospel honesty. What is the best thing about you? The best thing about you is faith in Jesus.

The faith measured out and given to you as a gift, that is the greatest thing about everyone. And you know what's beautiful about that? Look around.

We have that in common.

Everybody here on the same par of value because we've been brought in by the great and awesome grace of God that has given us faith in his son. So stop pretending and grow a bit of honesty. Grow a bit of sober judgment.

The more we contemplate and consider the glorious gospel that saved a wretch like me, the more we will naturally be moved away from thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought. We will let God's thoughts define us.

And we most importantly will let God's great mercy reign in the church because all of us, as I said, came through that same door of faith. And that faith was measured out and ladled into our mouths in the same portions.

No one here, hear me carefully church, no one here is super saved. No one here is super saved.

You're either saved or you're not. That's the measure. You're not super saved.

God assigned your faith and measured it out to you like a mother feeding her slobbering infant. Oh, here you go, here's a little faith for you. Each of us received Christ that way. So commit to living in a gospel honesty, recast.

Unity in Christ and the Meaning of Church Membership

The second thing, the second remedy to thinking too highly of ourselves is church unity. God is doing something in our midst by bringing us in a humility of recognizing that we're not the only one that God is working on.

He's working on a community, bringing together a group of people who are dependent on one another. We have a dependency on one another in order to walk in this Christian life. You see, the first remedy is somewhat isolated.

We can work on the way we think about ourselves and we can think about things with a gospel honesty and leave it there, right? Like that might be all that we're tempted to do.