Romans 13:8-14 Love and Urgency

listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filseck preaches from his series in the

Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God. Let's listen in. Well, good morning and welcome to everybody.

Welcome to Recast Church. As Dave said, I'm Don Filseck, I'm the lead pastor here. And welcome everybody to 2020.

We're here. This is kind of a proverbial year. Like decades ago, they would have looked to 2020 and expected us to have flying cars and all of that kind of stuff.

We don't have those yet, but we do all have a computer and the access to the whole world in our pocket.

That's pretty impressive, right? Or watches that we can talk into and stuff like that. So pretty cool thing. I just want to point out that the passage of time and the way that we mark time is kind of a funny thing.

We keep track of, we're kind of designed that way, right? We keep track of days, we keep track of weeks, months, years, all of that.

And we set some resolutions to change at the marking of certain times. So at the start of a decade or start of a new year, often we make resolutions.

How many of you are into New Year's resolutions? How many of you made a resolution? Really, go ahead and raise your hand if you made a resolution this year.

Okay, some of us. A lot of us are not resolution makers, apparently. Some of you, if you're anything like me,

I kind of like the idea of if you have something that you need to change, change it. Don't wait for a special day for that, right?

But how many of you want 2020 to be better than 2019? So there might be some things that you want to change in that, right?

Like, I mean, there's something that's good about saying, okay, how is this? I mean, we get these pauses and these moments to reflect and go, 2019 on the way out, reflect on what went well and what didn't go well in the last year, and then how are we going to get better next year?

How are things going to improve in my life next year? And all of these

New Year's resolutions or the idea of changing or the idea of improving, whether that's at the start of a year or at the start of a month or at the start of a week, all of that's good, as long as it's genuinely tied somehow into us growing in faith, growing in community, growing in service, and that's what we kind of stand for here as a church.

The S in RECAST, RECAST being an acronym for our core values, replication, community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth, and the

S stands for simplicity, and that means that really at the end of the day, we're all trying to focus our attention, and as a church, we're trying to focus our attention on these three things, growing in faith, that is our relationship with God would be stronger in this next year, growing in community, that is that we would love one another better in this next year, and growing in service, that is that the skills and abilities that God has given us to bless this community and the community at large would be stronger in this next year than they are right now, and so that's kind of what we're driving for here, that is, not kind of, that is what we're driving for in this next year, and I hope that you're seeing that that growth is happening in you, and when we say that we wanna be growing in those things, that is a time stamp kind of thing, isn't it?

When we talk about growth, then we need to have that stick on the pantry wall or something where we mark our growth this year, and then we kind of see that we've grown next year, and that's what growth means, is that there's some kind of a marker that identifies, and sometimes year ends and year starts are a good time for that, but it certainly means that sometime in the future we're hoping that we're gonna be better than we are today, and I think all of us know that that isn't gonna happen on accident, right?

We're not gonna just accidentally, accidentally grow in our faith next year, accidentally grow closer in love to one another, accidentally be stronger in our ability to serve one another next year, and so our text this morning in the

Book of Romans, picking back up on that series that we left off at the start of December, we're gonna be going back in and finishing

Romans here at the start of this year, but going back into there, this text is gonna do a good job bringing into focus two areas of growth for us in this next year, two really motivations for us to walk into this next year loving each other better, serving one another better, and serving ultimately our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ this next year, but it's important to make sure that we put the cart before the horse when we jump into the

Book of Romans, especially here at the end of this book, because Paul has already spent 11 chapters out of 16 chapters, the book is 16 chapters, 11 of them he spends explaining the gospel that saves us by grace alone and not by rule keeping, not by keeping commands, not by improving ourselves, it's not the growth that saves us, it's not the ability to take on 2020 with an ability to please others, an ability to please

God that saves us, it's very fundamental that we understand that there have been 11 chapters that have come before this, if you missed the flow of this and you're just coming in now or maybe

Recast is new to you and you're kind of trying to figure out if this is your home church, I just want to make sure that you know that the past sermons are available on our website, they're also podcasts, so if you use the podcast app or whatever, you can subscribe and then you can get those updated for you, but listening to and understanding or even just going back and reading chapters 1 through 11 would be helpful as we dive in and really through 12, as we dive into 13 and finish this series up, but I would even suggest to you beyond that, that chapters 12 through 16, it's not that you're just going to misunderstand them, they could be dangerous without understanding the gospel, without understanding all that's come before it, taken without the previous chapters, our passage this morning could lead us, really mislead us into thinking that we need to get busy loving others in our own strength or that we need to put on Christ and put down our own raging passions and desires in our own strength and I don't know about you, but every experience that I've ever had in trying to put down sin and put it out of my life, looks like a game of whack -a -mole, how many of you ever played whack -a -mole at Chuck E.

Cheese or know at least what I'm talking about, you have this big bonker thing and the mole comes up and you hit it and then another one comes up and you hit that and do you know what

I'm talking about, is that what it's like in your life when you're fighting sin, God is gracious in my life to bring up areas where I'm unfaithful, where things are not going well, where I'm sinful and I've got sinful tendencies and so he shows me that and I'm like, okay

God, let's together in your strength knock this one down and then he's like, okay, just when you kind of get to that, okay,

I feel like things are in order, pop, something else is there and you're like, oh yeah, this, okay, yeah, I've got to deal with that, do you know what

I'm talking about and so life is this ongoing constant battle with sin and we see that and that's a part of what it means to trust in God and to rest in him and acknowledge that our salvation because if that was it, it's an unending battle and you're never sure if you're okay with God, right,

I mean if it's up to you to knock all of those moles down at the same time, you're in trouble but instead it's the fact that Christ has forgiven our sins and has washed them clean that gives us the basis upon which we can go out and launch into a life in 2020 of love and urgency, serving one another, loving one another and growing closer to God in our faith and so this morning is a call for those who have been embraced by the good news of salvation through the cross of Christ, that's fundamentally who this message is talking to and it's a call for us to walk in love with one another and to live a life with Christ in urgency, love and urgency, love and urgency is the flow of this text so if you're not already there in your

Bibles, turn in your device or in your Bible over to Romans chapter 13 verses 8 through 14,

Romans 13 8 through 14, we're gonna read this together before the band comes to lead us in worship, Romans chapter 13 verses 8 through 14 recast, this is

God's precious and holy word, it is him communicating with us in the written text what he desires to reveal to us this morning, oh no one anything except to love each other for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law for the commandments you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet and any other commandments are summed up in this word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, love does no wrong to a neighbor therefore love is the fulfilling of the law, besides this you know the time that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep for salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed, the night is far gone, the day is at hand so then let us cast aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, let us walk properly as in the daytime not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy but put on the

Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires, let's pray, father

I thank you for the opportunity that we have to gather together in your name it is such a glorious thing that here we are in 2020 and your word continues to move forward and your people continue to march on and you continue to grow us in faith you continue to grow us in community you continue to grow us in service toward one another and father

I pray that this text would be a part of us that it would it would be assimilated into us in a way that is powerful through the power of your spirit that has the ability to take your word and draw into our souls and to remind us of it throughout this week a sense of love motivating the things that we do a love that we can't muster a love that we can't manufacture or make but by your spirit it's brought to your children father

I do ask that you would bring us more love each person to an individual here more love for you more love for each other more love for our community more love for our families more love for our spouses father that you would allow love to rule and reign that that power by which we do what is right and in the best interest of others and father that you would bring to us a sense of urgency we have such a limited amount of time and as we mark the passage of time we mark the the passing of another decade father we all know where this is going in terms of our mortality but father

I pray that you would allow it to then inform and fuel the passion with which we live our lives in the here and now passion for you a passion for serving others a passion for love all driven by an urgency that says our

Lord is coming for us in Jesus name all right yeah you can go to be seated

I encourage you as every week to get comfortable and keep your Bibles open in Romans chapter 13 verses 8 through 14 again

Romans 13 verses 8 through 14 if you lost your place you can navigate back over in there because that's what we're gonna drive through for the time that we have in the remainder of our time together there are two things that I want to be careful to communicate in the coming weeks at the start of every message as we wrap up the book of Romans they're both very vital they are both very important and they are worth repetition they are worth us thinking through the first is the most important and that is that salvation comes to us by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone as revealed in Scripture alone for the glory of God alone those are the five solos of the

Reformation those are the five things that define the Protestant Reformation and the the the faith in which we rest is that it is in Christ it is by grace through faith in Christ alone by which we are saved we are not saved by any effort on our part no effort on our part could save us or rescue us from the sin that sticks to us that clings to us that is on the outside and on the inside on our behavior and the way that it manifests itself you live with somebody for a month you will know they are a sinner from the outside you will see it but those of you who have lived with yourself for a few years know that it's on the inside as well don't you you know that it doesn't even take a manifestation outside of you to know that it is a saturation with sin problem that we have that needed a remedy beyond behavior modification beyond the ability to love better or to be more urgent with our lives or more urgent with the way that we live and although this is going to be a call in this text to both a call to love more and to be more urgent do not conflate that with your salvation do not mix the call and the command and the understanding that now that we are saved we are supposed to now come into a life that honors him do you understand what

I'm saying because it's very easy for us to think that these commands in the latter half we don't understand the beginning and understand that salvation comes alone by faith in Jesus then we can begin to think that it's our works it's our behavior that oh we've got to cross all our t's and dot all our i's to be okay with God so that's the the first thing that I want to keep emphasizing to us is that salvation is a work of God and our part is to trust in his son

Jesus to rescue us from our sin but the second part follows closely in logic to the understanding of the way that salvation comes to us that is that since we have been saved by such an amazing act of love that Jesus Christ would come here and live among us as we celebrated over Christmas but then to go to Easter and understand that he would sacrifice himself that he would die on our behalf and make himself the sacrifice for our sins and take the penalty on himself that we deserve because of that act of love or how our hearts now desire to honor the one who has saved us so his commands are not a burden for the follower of Jesus Christ they are now altered into a way to honor the one who has saved us and gave himself up for us and so that's why we can gospel gospel gospel for 11 chapters in the book of Romans and then 12 through 16 read like a list of commands well but it's because because this is now true of you church now go and live this way in an honoring way to the one who loves you so much and has infused you with love we are altered and the law is altered into a way to honor the one who saved us so verse 8 begins right away with a command and it begins with a command that could be easily misunderstood because of the the nuance of the way that we think of in absolute so when we look at this law right away it's it's in English standard version it's translated directly and literally but not in the whole scope of Scripture so it says oh no one to anything well go ahead and raise your hand just just if you have a mortgage does anybody in here have a mortgage

I'm not gonna ask you to go through all these so a lot of us have debt here we owe somebody something the church is paying on the building that we're in right now some of us have auto loans some of you have home equity loans some of you have student loans we have all different kinds of some of you have a credit card in your wallet right now with a balance on it which after the holidays right so we we know that that there's debt here in this room and so the question is are we all disobeying the

Lord and Savior in these things it says oh no one anything but we have to look at the context is he talking about finances is this a passage about finances not at all see

Dave Ramsey is rightly popularized caution about borrowing I think that's right for him to do so in a very high debt culture and a high debt society but this is not the passage to bring

Dave Ramsey in to talk to us about debt and finances because that is not at all what the text is about it's not a passage about borrowing one verse earlier

Paul told Christians to pay what you owe to all he implies that you do owe people something and the gist of this phrase in Greek is to make sure that you pay all outstanding debts that's what he's going for you have you have a debt you need to pay it and you need to agree to the contract and you need to follow the contract even the

Old Testament law permitted borrowing but it was always explicit about meeting the conditions of all of your contracts and so be careful about the way that you think about that and if you did if you differ from the way that I'm reading this and I'm seeing this and you're like this is the passage that has made me never borrow any money then

I'd love to sit down and talk with you about that and kind of work through our understanding of that but this this talk about borrowing really steps aside quickly in the text because the core issue that Paul is driving at is to get us to an understanding that our truest debt is a debt of love a debt of love that we owe to each other now the outline for this text is very simple it's a two -point outline it's the motivation of love that we're gonna see in verses 8 through 10 motivation of love and the second is the motivation of urgency in verses 11 through 14 and again

I think these are motivations that God would seek through this text to bring into your life at the start of this next year a sense of our calling to love one another and a sense towards living life with a sense of urgency in light of the days that we are given so let's talk about this first motivation of love as Paul addresses it he starts out explaining that there is one debt that you will never and that's why he's talking he's kind of he's kind of playing off of his the end of the last text where he said you owe you know pay taxes to whom you owe taxes and all of that and then he goes but one debt you're never gonna finish one debt you're never gonna fully be able to repay is the debt of love you see really in a deepest sense possible according to this text the

Christian could never call into Dave Ramsey and declare themselves truly debt -free they can't call in and say that because we always have a debt a debt of love to discharge to those around us and I find this personally as I've thought about this this week and as it's kind of convicted me and settled on my shoulders

I I think this is a great way to think about our relationship with one another it's something that's kind of refreshing and different and new to me

I don't I don't often think just confession for a moment I don't often think of myself as indebted to all of you now that I do work for the church and so there can be a sense of obligation or responsibility or things like that or even just a sense of love and commitment and a desire to do some good things

I I can think of the the good that I do for others as generous or I can think of it as a kindness or a blessing to others how many of you know what

I'm talking about like when you do something good for a co -worker that's undeserved you think of it as just generous but it's it's

I mean it's me being generous to them but to think that I owe a debt of love to those around me

I don't know about you but that turns sour in my sinful mind I don't owe you a meal when you go in for surgery that's just my kindness right

I don't owe you a hospital visit when you're sick that's just my that's my responsibility or that's my that's my love for you or something like that but no

I owe I have a debt that I owe to the church because we're all bought together and we're all together in this thing that God is bringing together and that's where the the debt comes out of a relationship with Jesus Christ and a recognition that we are brought intentionally into relationship with one another for the betterment of ourselves and others that we would learn to love why are you sitting here this morning

I hope it's much more and I and I think that over time it must become more than sitting here and taking in a show

I hope that there's a part where it turns into a love for the others sitting around you a genuine commitment a genuine desire to see their betterment and that God would motivate and move us maybe even this next year to transform us from a from an audience to a church

I hope but God forbid that this is all that we are as an audience together on Sunday mornings

God is not building an audience God is building a church a gathering for the glory of his

Son a gathering for the conveyance of love in the culture and society around us that they would see our love and we'd be known by our love and it would be something that's winsome and glorious for the world to see around us do we owe each other something according to the text we do

Paul pictures love as a responsibility in this text a responsibility to one another and not merely a feeling but we need to allow

Paul to continue to drive this conversation because the moment that we use the word love in English especially in our

American society and culture our minds will almost absolutely always go in the wrong direction when we hear the word love you see

Paul is backhandedly commanding us to love one another forever this is this is something you'll never be done with this is something that will carry on till the day you die the love for others in the church the love for one another he said there is a debt you owe that you cannot finish paying it is to love each other in the church but that love he has in mind is more than kind words for those who are hurting and broken in our midst or it's more than just hospital visits is more than giving meals to your community group during a surgery or during a downtime for a couple that's suffering and going through something he's talking about a love that takes the shape of good and healthy

God honoring community really he defines this love by a strange thing after if you've read if you if you follow the logic up through chapter 12 all the way from chapter 1 to chapter 12 that he reintroduces some of the laws here ought to shock us to some degree but he really is defining the love in the church toward one another as the shape of the law the law provides the shape for what love we express to one another here in this place it's like like like there's a container that's gonna hold our love in the container is the shape of the law and I want to suggest to you and maybe you're maybe you're a little fuzzy but this is a very contemporary message and I want to kind of flesh this out for us you see we live in a society that's untied love from a reasonable standard what does it mean to love to just kind of have good feelings towards another or to kind of do what

I think is good think about love detached from law looks like me doing what

I think is best for you what I think is best for you might have nothing to do with God's intention for you you understand and that's what's going on in our culture in so many avenues right now love is just empty shape that we can fill anything in and define it in any shape or way that we want and it can look like this in one context and it can look like this in another context how many of you have ever just literally been confused about what love looks like in a context that's why we need a standard that's why we need an understanding of what is the shape of real love because the fact of the matter is

I don't without God's Word I often will get it wrong what is in your best interest do you know what

I'm talking about I won't be able to get what's best for my wife or what's best for my kids or what's best for my other relationships or what's best for my church or I will get that wrong regularly without something to anchor my love to and that anchor is

God's good will and plan for humanity as revealed in His Word and so what happens is when we've untied love from the dock of a reasonable standard the boat starts to drift out a little ways and what we do is we come down to the dock to jump on board love and it's drifted off and it's now unattainable and we can't get on it any longer and we're trying to paddle out to it and we're not able to really discern what love is any longer you see

I would suggest you our culture has whispers and rumors of love but without the truth of God we make it base we make it crass often many people just flat out when you hear love in our culture some people literally think about physical intimacy and sexuality we make it base and we make it crass while uttering something under our breath about consent that's the direction that our culture goes with the word love but look at verse 9 for the power of this biblical calling to love one another don't forget as we look at verse 9 by the way that Paul is seeking to declare love as a motivation for the way we ought to live and in the discussion of love he goes back to commands and says don't commit adultery don't murder don't steal don't covet that's interesting that he that he phrases this on the flip side how do you think that's a pretty low standard for love like don't harm each other that's a great place to start when you really understand and I'm sure you've seen it what lies in your heart this is work now certainly the way that Jesus defines murder brings that up a notch even don't even call somebody fool whoever has hated somebody has committed murder in their heart so you know that Jesus takes these laws and ramps it up a bit and gets down to the spirit in the heart of it so Jesus takes these laws in Matthew chapter 5 in the

Sermon on the Mount through chapter 7 ish and he takes these laws and he ramps them up to the spirit of the law really filling it out with love for us but don't don't commit adultery don't murder don't steal don't covet just that covet alone is a really good one for us to work on isn't it how do we respond and how do we work to work with one another and by the way he puts a blanket on this he explicitly states four of the

Ten Commandments and then he gives a blanket that covers all biblical laws given by God for the benefit of human relationship he says any of those laws any of those laws that pertain to the way that we interact with one another all of those are summed up in love your neighbor as yourself love your neighbor as yourself that golden rule and I want to suggest to you that the flow of this matter significantly he says that these laws are summed up in love for love you love your neighbor as yourself and love for neighbor love for each other it fulfills again it's the shape of the law in it and it's what the love fills up is that is that law that God has set out for us and he doesn't merely leave us to guess what he means by love nor does he merely leave us with laws and commands you see

Paul wants to get down to the heart of motivation he wants to be sure that we understand the underlying reasons he would be encouraging us back to consider laws after he said you're free from the law he has said that explicitly throughout the book of Romans you you don't have to follow the law any longer you're saved by grace through faith in Christ alone that's done we're not talking about that right here so that is where salvation comes into the picture but now how do we live what motivates the

Christian life now that we are in the family of God what motivates us he wants to make sure that we understand the core reasons the underlying reasons and it's because the law can be applied in two different ways with similar outcomes

I have to illustrate this a little bit I can look at a person and I cannot tell if they are good because they are law abiding or if they are good because they are full of love do you hear what

I'm saying so you can picture two different kinds of people let's start with the first one consider one option a person can approach the law and they approach the law with duty and fear and a sense of responsibility and I want to do all the things right so they don't commit adultery they don't murder they don't steal they don't covet right that's what it looks like on the outside and all the while internally why are they doing that there's all kinds of potential motives but I would suggest to you that all of those motives for the law abiding individual is personal it might just be they don't want to get in trouble self -serving it might be because it makes them look better or it makes them feel better or it makes some circumstance in their life better but do you understand what

I'm saying this person person a looks on the outside like a really good individual and what's going on inside that their heart a self -centered keeping of the law now let's talk about the other person on the other side the other person looks on the outside identical to this person over here this person doesn't commit adultery doesn't murder doesn't steal doesn't covet does some really good things but what's motivating them the love of God in Christ Jesus Christ love filling them with the recognition that they have been saved by his death on the cross and that's radically altered the way that they view the world and the way that they think about it on the in on the inside do you see how these two people might look the same on the outside do you see how what's going on on the inside is extremely important and extremely different fundamentally different what's going on inside of these two individuals

Paul's putting forth these two notions for us and understanding that love is the motivation he's driving for the love of God in Christ poured out into our hearts through the

Holy Spirit that dwells within his children and so the heart is the heart is what matters most in even in our service to one another it's what matters most in both cases these people love themselves

I want to point that out both of these people love themselves and in the the golden rule takes that for granted by the way love your neighbor in what way as you love yourself

I give myself some good food from time to time you give yourself some good food from time to time you watch some fun shows you have some entertainment you do things for yourself from time to time yeah

I think all of that raise your hand if you do something once in a while just go ahead there's no shame in that we all do it so we we do indeed love ourselves and that is a given in the golden rule but only the redeemed only those who have experienced the love of Christ and have been embraced by him and really understand their freedom now in Christ they are the ones who actually love others they have an added motivation to love others in verse 10

Paul goes on to state what is obvious love does no wrong to a neighbor and it's in this that we find that the love for one another fulfills the law it completes the law but it's it's so important that we see what power is brought here in Paul bringing up the law in the context of describing our motives our motivation of love the law still has the purpose of defining for us that shape of love see as I go back to kind of thinking about my illustration about the boat and the being moored and then being let go and drifting off many today are seeking to define love is the highest of ethic even within the church you will hear it now you'll hear it in messages you'll hear it on the radio you'll hear it in Christian books that love is the highest of ethic and there's not something so wrong with that depending on how you define love but when you say love is the highest ethic what our culture is doing what many

Christians are doing what many churches are doing is they're then pulling a switcheroo on the word love not defining it according to the way that scripture does not not saying that love only works when it's tied to God's good plan for humanity with what he desires and says is good for each other love is a word that has been redefined by our culture to mean a feeling that drives us to passion basically the gist of the definition in our culture think about the way that we speak of love in our culture we fall into it right as if it's a pit or a trap that's laid out for us we say that love is blind as if we can no longer make rational decisions when you're in love we say love is love how many you ever heard that phrase love is love how many of you know your

English teacher would mark you an F for that you're not allowed to use the word in its definition probably the most unhelpful of all definitions is to say you know what love you know

I'm gonna define that that's what it is you know what love is love that's not helpful how in what in what way shape or form because we say that because we don't want to give it content we don't want it to be constrained we don't want

God's way of love to influence the way that we think it's to love do you see what

I'm saying there's a motive why would we define it so watered down or we say all love is equal which sounds really good at face value except that it's false because Hitler's love of the

German people was not equal to my love for my wife I don't want you to compare those two they are not the same the way that he would have declared his love for the fatherland is very different than the way that I love my spouse or I love my church

I'm saying this because we are all being called in this passage to live a life of love and that that requires a tricky navigation in a culture that's all over the place with love and we need to see what

Paul means by love and he's saying that love takes the shape of the law of Christ what is good and what is pleasing to God is the only thing that is within the realm of genuinely loving one another how do we love each other we love each other by honoring

Christ in our midst by doing what he desires of us and by trusting that the things that he reveals in Scripture are indeed the loving thing to do you see what

I'm saying because sometimes it doesn't appear that way on face value do you know what I'm talking about it feels unloving to rebuke somebody who is not doing well you know

I'm saying is that is that loving in our culture what do you guys think nobody's responding are you guys asleep are you is it okay to rebuke somebody in American culture not really right not unless you're online save that for the chat groups right like that's where all the rebuke is but I mean face to face no thanks

I just love everything you do everything you do is fine and everything I do is fine and you do you and I'll do me and it's just gonna be all it's all good but that's not loving that's not loving according to Scripture love takes the shape of the will of God for us so we must know the will of God love does good for our neighbor and we have to trust

God to define what that good is he's not defining love as some subjective good that changes from circumstance to circumstance instead he is rooting love to the good commands of God and the principles we see in Scripture especially in here when

I say the law of Christ let me define that for you really what we need to pay attention to most importantly is those commands and those rules issued from Christ in the

New Testament or issued from the epistles in the New Testament we really need to zero in on those those are things that demonstrate and define the shape of our relationship why do

I feel okay eating bacon because the whole

Peter incident in an axe where in the New Testament God said something new about that and he told

Peter to take and eat all of the animals that were available there and he said it's it's it's free you're free in this

I do I work to just try to see what is the New Testament saying to me is the shape of the love of God for my life and for the way that I roll in the way that I work towards God and towards everybody else and let me let me be clear as we wrap up this first motivation of love a motivation to move out into this next year that Jesus died so that people could be moved back into a right relationship with his father in a right relationship with each other that's why he came he came to restore our broken relationships that were broken at the fall a broken relationship with him and a broken relationship with each other love for God and love for others so when we love we are indeed fulfilling the purpose for which the law was given and even the purpose for which

Christ came to show us the right way to live with others and to bring us by his spirit into a right way of living with others and only the spirit within his children makes this possible

I would even suggest that maybe just a straight -up application to this is just to pray for more love to ask

God to give you more love have you ever prayed that prayer you should you should pray that regularly in your relationship with your spouse or with your family with your parents or with your kids in relationship with your with all of your co -workers in the church

God I don't feel it right now but would you give me more a deeper commitment to do what you desire for me to do in the lives of others around me because that is what's good that's what's good that's what's right loving one another to apply this first motivation certainly pray for love but also consider where you stand in relationship to God if you've asked

Jesus to forgive you and to be your Lord and King then you are now being called to love one another as though you have a debt of love to the body of Christ and that debt looks like obedience to that law of Christ and that requires that you know the shape of that love through his word and you can leave it to a pastor of course to bring the application back to reading your

Bible more but honestly honestly aside from listening to it from reading it from studying it from memorizing it

I can't think of any way other than those ways to get it in here and I need it in here if I if I expect to love people well this next week

I have to keep checking with his word I have to keep going back to what he desires because it doesn't take much for me to get it wrong my flesh if I if I try to love my wife just straight up in my flesh it's gonna go off very quickly do you know what

I'm saying she chuckled um some of you back there couldn't hear that but some of you up here we're like no she'll verify that so we need the we need the power the consistency the regularity of God's Word in our lives constantly going back to it so that we can see what the shape of our love is supposed to look like for one another

I love one another comes through the word showing us what is loving and then his spirit taking that truth and granting us the desire and the will to act on it and also by way of application

I want you to just think this through how many of you have probably within the last month or two given advice to someone they come to you they come to you with an issue or a problem or something in their life and they're like hey what do you think

I should do I think that probably the chances are that in the next month everybody in this room is gonna be asked their opinion about something from the youngest of us to the oldest of us some peer or some friend or someone else is gonna ask you what should

I do or share with you something that's going on and if we're not careful we can set up some pretty fuzzy ambiguous notions of love as the center of our advice

God just loves you and wants you to be happy it's probably the most common advice given in our culture right now

God loves you and just wants your happiness or the loving thing would to do

I've heard this literally said the loving thing to do would be to get a divorce or thank you for that somebody

I like that response or it's okay have you heard this one before it's okay as long as you love each other have you heard that one it's okay as long as you love each other and God says the opposite through the

Apostle Paul in this text he says you are constrained in your love to do things in the way that I've designed you in the way that I desire and the way that I've made you to flourish this is what flourishing looks like in the advice that you give give biblical advice give

God's Word as advice give things that are frowned and principles you don't have to take them to chapter and verse and reference it and all that but give them biblical advice give them things that you're gleaning from this to identify what

God desires of them and so that's that's love but the second point is just as important and it's the motivation of urgency so we are to be motivated in the way that we work and live in this next year by love but also by urgency you see he has given us instructions to love and now he reminds us of how the march of time should also motivate us to live for Christ and it's worth noting that verse 11 is written to the church all of this passage is written to the church and he's telling

Christians in verse 11 wake up wake up church it's time to get to work our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed he says and this is the ultimate call to grow in our faith as time marches toward the return of our

Lord and how many of you need that reminder regularly every day feels a lot like the day before and the weeks start to blend together and the months can start to blend together and time just churns like a blur and we can tend to lose perspective that there's a day coming that won't be like any other day it's coming it's a glorious day and maybe 2020 will be the year anybody that would be excited if this was the year of the return of our

Lord wouldn't that be glorious wouldn't that be amazing I can say this one prediction for sure about the return of Christ are you ready

I'm gonna predict something we are closer today than we were yesterday everybody was like I'm getting ready to get up if some people are like getting ready to put their coats on and leave but that's that's it that's that's all the best

I can say but it's a glorious statement we're closer today than we were yesterday we are closer as the text says

I love the way that it words it we are closer than at the beginning to our salvation to the day of our redemption to the day of the glorious return of our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ but notice that this is not a call to frantic urgency like the fire alarms been pulled and we're all supposed to just run every which way and you know find an exit and hurry it's rather a call to purposeful sowing of our lives it's not a call to frantic franticness as a call to an urgent life a life that recognizes that we're limited and we've got a limited amount of time it's a it's a call to battle sin it's a call to do good to love one another in the shape of the obedience of God in verse 12 he says the night is almost gone there's only one sliver of night left is the way that the

Greek looks despite what various translations look like that's the gist of the phrase there is barely any night left the dawn of the light of dawn is upon us and this is the way we are being called to live our lives recast the night is almost gone and the dawn is almost here

I confess that I don't often live with this sense of urgency I've I've grown to experience life as routine days strung together like like so many beads on a piece of string and I expect tomorrow to just be one more bead put on that string but Paul is trying to wake us up because in our daily routines like I mentioned earlier we doze off into thinking that we have time to make things right and we can become so mired in a term that I love

Philip Yancey uses it in the book what's so amazing about grace a book I highly recommend but he talks a lot of that book about ungrace he kind of coined that phrase is the opposite of grace but it's ungrace and it covers a whole host of issues and in that book he even talks about interviewing for that book a lady who demonstrated unforgiveness toward her daughter for decades they did not communicate for decades of unforgiveness decades of ungrace how many throwaway days do you guys have how many days do you have to throw away you have a lot of those we don't have we weren't given any of those we don't have a single one we don't have a day to throw away in the cause of Christ I'm not saying not vacation can be building up and recharging and all

I'm not saying I'm not saying that I'm just saying you don't have days to throw away and ungrace and unforgiveness you don't have that decades how many years are too long to waste and squabbling unforgiveness

Paul says wake up wake up or can you imagine a scenario where a man loses the family he loves as he continually chooses pornography over his wife how many years does a man have to sew to playing around at the fringes of life wake up another person might give into their addiction to alcohol instead of engaging in the battle for their own life and they just give up on their family and they give up on themselves how many years are we given how many years how many days do we have to wallow wake up the night is on the way out recast this is glorious truth the night is on the way out in the dawn is almost here by the way as negative as those circumstances sound that I just expressed this is an optimistic passage the urgency doesn't come from impending cataclysm the urgency comes from the appending arrival of our

Lord our Savior our King our Jesus coming for us you feel it what are we being taught told to wake up to the reality he's on his way we don't know when today is closer than yesterday the master is returning and his servants will give an accounting of our days at the return of our master so in light of the coming dawn wake up and get dressed he says this is a it's all like kind of in Greek it kind of flows a little bit better than what they translated in English but wake up and get dressed put off your night clothes of darkness and put on the armor of light night and darkness are clearly a metaphor for evil and day and light are a metaphor for what is good in Christ honoring and that's what we're to put on that armor of light the phrase armor of light uses a

Greek military word to remind us that we're being called to wake up to a battle a lot of times that's that's the big nature of our apathy of our lethargy of our slumber is the fact that we forget that we're in a battle and there's a battle for our hearts so he says step one wake up step to put on your armor walk in the goodness of obedience and love that he was just talking about earlier you see the deeds of the night are listed here in explicit details and we're not to engage in these kinds of deeds that come under the cover of darkness things like orgies and drunkenness sexual immorality sensuality quarreling jealousy

I'm currently reading a book that's called the history of the world in six glasses it was a new New York Times bestseller has anybody here heard of it it's a really intriguing book it was given to me as a gift and I actually do recommend it it's kind of interesting it's it's taking six beverages and framing history according to the popularity and the use of these beverages so beer and wine and liquor and tea and coffee and coca -cola so it's actually framing history and the notion of the way that these these beverages influence society and culture but it's very interesting because I was reading in the book on wine and it made a very clear link to this passage the guy's not necessarily

Christian he's a just a secular historian and author but he makes a key link to this idea of words that make us uncomfortable orgies drunkenness but that was a really common connection between those two and what were called the

Greek symposia of the time this was the word symposium by the way comes from the Greek practice of drinking parties it was a drinking party and it was wine was a big crater of wine was set up at the center and and they would have these drinking parties and it was noted in one one historian

Eusebius said after the first three craters crater is a big bowl of wine after the first three gentlemen go home that's what he says honorable men go home and then he lists all the uses of the other ones after that all the way up to nine craters of wine you leave respectfully after three but at the ninth eighth and the ninth are like orgies and that type of thing so the purpose of these the purpose of these drinking parties was just this crazy lifestyle and what

I just want to point out is how God is faithful to address the cultural issues of our day and I want to take a moment to consider drunkenness real quick I know that our time is running but uh drunkenness occurs in this text and I think it's worth stating from up front when you see that they're a bunch of churches take different opinions about this drunkenness is a sin and I want to make sure that you understand that the standard for your life as a follower of Christ should be to never push that line but here at recast we are always seeking to be biblical on the topic of alcohol enjoy it without getting drunk don't tempt yourself and hear me carefully church to abstain from alcohol is a noble personal decision that's a noble personal decision and it becomes ignoble when you apply it to others when you force others to follow your convictions on this you would have a hard time fellowshipping with Jesus when he was here on earth so don't make sure that you are okay with your own convictions and don't force those convictions on others so we've been called in this text to wake up be done with the night put on the armor of light and in a very strong way

God is calling us in this text to starve our sinful nature which is what he means by our flesh here in the last verse he says instead fuel

Christ and his will for us the spirit and sinful flesh are at war within us and the question is which one are you gonna feed this year which of those are you gonna feed the spirit or the flesh it's gonna require some frank and introspective personal discussion inside yourself to determine that if you prioritize love for each other then the question for you this year is what must

I add to my life and if you are to stop feeding your sinful nature then the question is what needs to go what needs to be kicked out of my life right now see love and urgency flow from the sacrifice of Jesus Christ we love because he first loved us so before we come to communion make sure you receive the love of God through faith in his son is your trust in his sacrifice on the cross to cover your sins is that what you're trusting in if so then

I encourage you to come to one of the tables in the back during this next song take a cracker to remember his body that was broken for us and take the cup of juice to remember his blood that was shed for us and then from a place of remembering his love for us let's go out to a life of loving one another and let's wake up to the urgency that he's calling all of us to putting on Christ and making no provision feeding none of our flesh let's pray father

I thank you so much for the call to trust you more in our motivations and the things that drive us father

I I ask for myself and for this congregation for this church father that you would give us more love and that you would give us that sense of urgency that you're calling us to to cast off the deeds of darkness to put on Christ and to walk with him we look for and long for the day that he will return but I pray that he would not find us in apathy he would not find us just going through the hamster wheel of day after day after day but he would find us faithful loving one another serving one another and drawing closer to him day by day