Painting a Happy Little Church

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Don Filcek; Romans 12:9-21 Painting a Happy Little Church

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to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsack preaches from his series in the
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Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God. Let's listen in. Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church.
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As Dave said, I'm Don Filsack, I'm the lead pastor here. And I'm really glad for the opportunity we have to gather together and to hear from God's word and to sing his praises and to interact with his people.
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It really is a privilege that he's brought us together in community and that we have the opportunity to grow in faith, grow in community, and grow in service together.
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How many of you are grateful for other Christ followers in your life?
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How many of you are grateful? And you can maybe even assign a name to some people that you're thankful for and the impact that they've had on your life.
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I have had so many people in my life that have picked me up when I'm down. And that seems to go, you know, it's not even a week that goes by that I don't have some interaction that seems to be a boost to me.
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And so I hope that you have that experience too. I've had people invest in me over the years in the church, disciple me, encourage me, teach me, strengthen me.
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And the fact of the matter is, nobody is a self -made individual. Nobody in the Christian faith is a self -made individual.
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We all need others in our lives speaking truth into us to show us, how many of you ever have had a blind corner in your life?
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Like it's just like, I have a blind spot where I don't see my faults, my failures, and somebody else has been faithful to give that to you, right?
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And so that's not always the most comfortable aspect of relational living, but it is a good thing, right?
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That is a good thing, and we all need that at times. So, as a matter of fact, the text we're gonna be looking at this morning, kind of to introduce it, is the first one
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I personally ever studied and taught to anybody in a real ministry context. It was in a context where people were investing in me significantly.
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You see, the first five verses of our text this morning in Romans chapter 12, nine through 21, were the summer verses for Camp Barachel in the summer of 1993, the first year
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I was a counselor up there. And all of the campers memorized those verses. We taught those verses.
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I taught those verses to my campers every week during the morning devotions of that first summer up there. And it was just such a great summer, a rich summer of learning how to teach
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God's word. So this is a passage that's kind of close to my heart. It's the first one I ever studied and taught to anybody. And it was a great summer.
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Did I ever mention that I met my wife Linda at camp that summer? Have I mentioned that before? It was a really great summer.
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Really good summer. And Romans 12 was a part of that. But the text we're looking at presupposes that doing life together with people can be messy.
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In other words, we need instructions on how to live rightly together, especially since we are sinful people and we are fallen people.
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We need instructions in how to not break the church.
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We need instructions in how to not break each other. And for this reason,
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Paul is gonna give us what may feel like a fire hose of commands this morning, what ought to feel like a fire hose of commands to us.
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And all of these commands center around the common theme of relationships. The common theme of relationships.
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Now, it's gonna be how the church and how we relate together in the church. That's the first half that goes up to verse 16 is about how we interact with one another.
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And then from 17 through 21 is about how the church is to interact with the world out there. So there's a little bit of a break in there, but all of these commands center and swirl around the concept, the theme of relationships.
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There are 31 commands in our text this morning. 31.
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So don't forget that this letter was written to the church in Rome, and it would've been read out loud in the public gathering, and they would've been like, slow down,
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I can't keep up with these commands. Like, what am I supposed to do? So before we read it,
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I wanna point out that it's meant to overwhelm you. The way that it's written, the purpose for which it was written is to overwhelm you with a picture of what relational life needs to be in the church.
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It is meant to keep us on our heels as I read it. It is intentionally disorganized so that we keep wondering what's gonna come at us next.
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But while we read it, I want you to consider what kind of a picture all of these commands are summarizing for a church.
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What do these relationships look like? What are we being called to? Because Paul is indeed seeking to paint a picture for us this morning.
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It's a picture of a new kind of love. A picture, a painting of a new kind of community. It's a picture of Christ -like love that leads to Christ -like action in our midst and in our community at large.
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So rather than getting caught up in each individual command, let them keep hitting you, let them keep coming, let them keep adding to the painting.
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And listen this morning for the big picture. I would even encourage you to feel it while I read it.
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Let it get in here, not in here. What does that mean? What does this command mean? What does this command mean? You're gonna get stuck and you're gonna miss them.
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So let it hit you and let it have an impact on the way that you feel about relationships to begin with.
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And we'll take it apart, we'll look at them almost one by one in a little bit.
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But as I read it, I want you to let it hit you afresh. So that by the end, you will have a feel for what kind of people we are being called to be.
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And ultimately, a calling in a sense for what kind of church we will be if we take these commands to heart.
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So if you're not already there, please open your Bibles to Romans chapter 12 verses nine through 21.
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And get ready for the fire hose that's coming at us. Romans chapter 12 verses nine through 21, recast the precious words of God.
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This is a holy moment for us. Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil.
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Hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.
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Do not be slothful in zeal. Be fervent in spirit. Serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope.
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Be patient in tribulation. Be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints.
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Seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them.
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Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another.
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Do not be haughty. Associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight.
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Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.
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If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine,
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I will repay, says the Lord. To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
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For by so doing, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
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Let's pray. Father, it is amazing that you would give us so many instructions in just one short passage, and it can overwhelm us to, because our minds are designed, and you, the designer of us, know that our minds are designed to pause and to take a moment to think and to listen and to hear, and you give us this firehose of commands, relationally, about what it means to be a church, and I thank you,
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I thank you for the portrait, I thank you for the painting of what this means for us, relationally. What it means to have genuine love for one another.
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And so, Father, I pray that you would open our eyes and allow the soap of your word to wash over our hearts and to correct the places and to cleanse out the falsehood, to cleanse out the wrong thinking that we have, even fundamentally about what the church is, but also about our role in it and the way that we interact with one another.
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Father, I thank you for 10 years of relative peace as a church. You have been so kind to us, you've given us unity, you've given us compassion, you've given us what
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I've seen as a genuine love for one another and for our community. Father, I ask that you would allow that to continue in our midst.
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Father, I pray that continued love would take the form of these commands, these things that you desire of us and the very shape of the church would be the shape of a genuine love, really, ultimately, the shape of your son,
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Jesus Christ. Thank you for his salvation that gives us hope, that gives us purpose, that gives us even the ability to consider keeping these commands.
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And so, Father, I pray that you would set us free from hearts that are set free through the cross to worship you, even now, in song.
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Father, that you would allow our minds to be engaged, our hearts to be engaged, our emotions to be engaged. And Father, that we would worship you in your glory, in Jesus' name, amen.
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Thanks a lot to Dave and the band for leading us. And if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts while supplies last back there, you're not gonna distract me.
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Our goal, though, is to keep our attention to God's word. So if you have lost your place or your device has been shut down, reopen it to Romans chapter 12, verses nine through 21, so you can see that the things that I'm saying are coming from the text, and I'm gonna be referencing it multiple times throughout the message.
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I wanna point out that it's not in my notes here, but I just love it when this happens. The songs really conveyed the gospel well this morning, and that selection was great.
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And part of it that I'm pointing that out is just the reality that we need to hear the gospel before we hear any rules.
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Because we're gonna see a bunch of rules. We're gonna see a bunch of commands. We're gonna see a bunch of instructions for how you should live.
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But if you're gonna try to keep these commands without first a relationship with Jesus Christ by which his
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Holy Spirit is living within you, that's not gonna work. These commands cannot change you.
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These commands cannot make you the person that you want to be, let alone the person that God wants to be.
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The only hope that we have for obeying and keeping any of these, a single one of these rules, is at the end of the day, a life given to Christ.
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And so, I love the way that the gospel comes in and the songs, and then you are gonna hear some instructions. You are gonna hear some commands.
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You are gonna hear how God wants you to live in light of the salvation you received in Jesus Christ.
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And so, buckle up. This is gonna be a 13 -point sermon here. 13 points on being serious.
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So, get your pens fired up. Get them warmed up, and here we go. How many of you know who Bob Ross is?
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Ever seen this guy? How many of you love Bob Ross? I mean, what a guy. I absolutely love Bob Ross.
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If you don't know him, you should, and go Google him and then watch some of his shows after this.
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Yes, I am endorsing him. My family will sometimes watch him just to calm down before bed, okay?
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Sometimes it just calms us down. I'm like, everybody, you know what? You're all going crazy right now. It's Bob Ross time.
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So, sometimes we just throw that up on Netflix and away we go. He works magic with a canvas.
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His voice is so soothing. There's just something about him. But whenever I watch him paint,
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I'm always amazed by the way that he can take so many brushstrokes. His paintings are just made up of brushstrokes.
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But at the end of the day, he takes all of these brushstrokes and creates an awesome painting with happy little clouds. Of course, there's no mistakes, just happy little mistakes.
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And always a tree in the foreground that covers up the mountain that he has done that I could never do.
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And I'm like, why are you covering that up with a tree in the foreground? But it always looks great in the end anyways. Some of you know what I'm talking about.
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But Paul tells us what he is going to be painting for us this morning in his opening words.
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But before he grabs the palette this morning, he explains it, much like Bob Ross will say, let's do a little winter scene here today, friends.
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In his own words, Paul tells us he's going to be painting a picture of genuine love.
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Of genuine love. Sincere love. Some of your translations say, let love be sincere, let love be genuine.
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At the end of the day, that word let is not even in the Greek text. It is genuine love looks like this is the gist of the start of this text.
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It's obvious he's writing to the church. He wants to define for each and every one of us what it looks like for those who are saved by the grace of God through faith in his son to live together in community.
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What does it look like to be a church? What are we being called to, recast? What does it mean to come into the faith?
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It's not an isolated, solo thing. It's something he's calling us all into together, into community.
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The church has got to be so much more than a gathering of people who show up at the same time on Sunday morning. We need more than that in our lives, and he's calling us to more than that in our lives.
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And so each brush stroke here in this text, each one of these 13 points that I'm gonna go through, each brush stroke is both descriptive and prescriptive.
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What do I mean by that? It both defines what genuine love looks like. It describes genuine love according to God.
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It shows us what that looks like. But it also tells us, it's prescriptive. It tells us to go out and live like that.
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Go out and live this genuine love that he's gonna describe in the text. And it's not merely an abstract theoretical ideal here that he's putting forward to us, a standard that we can't really live up to, but man, not as if he's saying this is what love should look like and that's it, but he's saying let's do these things in the power of his spirit in our midst, in our relationships with others here in the church, in our relationships with others out in the community, in our relationships with our families over the holidays that we're gonna get together and rub each other the wrong way and all that kind of stuff.
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In all of our relationships, he's calling us to live out a genuine, sincere kind of love.
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So as I go through it, I'm gonna be highlighting 13 brushstrokes. These are additive. They add on top of one another, verse by verse, to the big glorious picture of a happy little church, a happy little church that I hope that we are becoming.
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All 13 of these brushstrokes modify or clarify genuine love. And they all add to one another to produce a picture of what we are called to be together, recast.
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And so here's the first one, verse nine. A genuine love is discerning. A genuine love is discerning.
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Let love be genuine. Hate what is evil. Cling to what is good. You see, a genuine love exceedingly, increasingly hates evil.
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It's discerning. It actually, it has a category of evil. It has a category of good.
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And it understands that according to God's word. And the reason is because a genuine love doesn't want anyone to face the wrath of the
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Almighty God. That's why it's discerning. If you really love somebody, would you be okay with them sliding off into eternal condemnation?
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Of course not, of course not. So the word in Greek, abhor or hate, depending on your translation, the
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ESV tries to use a word we don't use very often, abhor, because it's such a strong word that it needs to be different than the generic, all -encompassing word hate.
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It is an extravagantly negative word in the Greek language, like the most extreme phrase that can be coupled together to speak of hatred in the
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Greek language. It is to exceedingly increase in your hatred toward evil.
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But equally, the word hold fast is a picturesque word. It's a radical word. And for the sake of people who might be more easily embarrassed here, good luck when we get to Song of Songs in the next series, but those of you that might be quick to blush, let me just say this about the word hold fast or cling to what is good.
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It is encouraging you to go on a honeymoon with the good. It is encouraging you to get married to good.
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That's the picturesque word of this hold fast here in the text.
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And so at face value, this first point might just look obvious. It might seem like common sense to say, by the way, church, good is good, and bad is bad.
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And you should want what's good, and you should not want what's bad, right? How many of you think that's kind of commonsensical?
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Want the good, despise the bad. Don't take the bad for yourself. Seems like common sense, but not so much in our current culture, right?
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Do you agree with me on that? It's kind of starting to get confusing. This first point anchors our love to the good desires, the good will, the good instruction of our
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God. What is good? This is why we cannot bow to the whims of our culture that tries to trick us into thinking that love is just love.
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In any expression, love is love. But according to verse nine, love is discerning.
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No, it's not just whatever you feel or whatever you think. Love is discerning, and it exceedingly hates the sin that leads to the condemnation of real people.
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Hates that. Doesn't say that it hates the people. That's not, it hates evil.
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It hates sin. It hates that which is an aberration from God's good design and desire for humanity.
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Genuine love joins itself permanently to the good that God wills and desires for us, for human flourishing, for what is good, for what is right, found in his instructions.
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So the first point is that a genuine love is discerning. The second, we move on. In verse 10, a genuine love works hard at elevating others.
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It works hard in the process of elevating and lifting others up. There are two commands in this verse.
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First, we are to have a familial brotherly affection for one another, a familial care for one another.
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The command is pretty straightforward, right? Love one another with a brotherly affection. Defer to one another, care for one another, meet the needs of each other.
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But the second command explains how far do we take that. Anybody with a brother, how many of you in here have a brother?
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Did you ever have any competition with your brother? Yep, I take that for granted. There is a natural and hopefully,
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I know it's not always this way, hopefully lighthearted competition between brothers. We know that.
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It turns in its ugliest state early on in the Bible to Cain and Abel. We know that it can become really violent and difficult between brothers, but hopefully, you have a lighthearted kind of relationship of competition with your brother, but we're called to take the dedication and commitment and alter the competition.
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We are to have a competition. The church should have a competition, and the competition should be seeing who can honor others more, who's best at honoring others.
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Outdo, the text says. Outdo one another in showing honor and deferring to one another.
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Recast, if we must have competition, don't let it be a competition for power. Don't let it be a competition for authority.
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Don't let it be a competition for your experience, your education, your intellect, or your social status.
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That's not the competition we're being called into. Let the only competition in our midst, recast, be for who can show more honor to the other.
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Not a roast, but a boast in others. Asking yourself, who can build up others the most here?
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It seeks heart after building others up. The third thing in verse 11, a genuine love stays on fire for God.
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A genuine love stays on fire for God. That requires some stoking. That requires some effort. That requires paying attention to the things that stoke the furnace of fire for God.
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The English Standard Version betrays a bit of an oxymoron in this text, a little bit of irony in Paul's writing.
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He says, don't have a slothful zeal. Don't have a slothful zeal.
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But the phrase is, in the first command, is really ultimately that idea of slothful zeal is a wordplay that basically means don't let apathy set into your life.
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Don't let apathy set in. You see, entropy is a real problem, isn't it?
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Entropy, that process. We know about it in the material world. In the material world, the word entropy, the law of entropy is just that things break down to lesser states of energy.
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Cars rust, things break down. You gotta get a new device after a certain period of time.
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You know, stuff breaks, your clothes wear out. You know, that type of stuff. And so we know that there's entropy in the world around us, in the natural world, but did you know there's also spiritual entropy as well?
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There's an entropy in our hearts, in our lives. If they're not fueled, if we're not adding more into the system regularly, we will find that our spiritual muscles atrophy.
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We grow weaker. We grow less enthusiastic, less passionate, less on fire for God.
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To be honest, we can be guilty as we age of even looking down on zeal as less mature.
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As if the mature thing is to be less off the handle. As if the mature thing would be to be less zealous, less passionate, less given to emotion, right?
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How many of you would just confess that you've had thoughts like that before? I know I have, and it's not true.
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Zeal and maturity, fire and truth, spirit and truth in our worship.
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Letting our emotions, yes, be engaged, and letting our brains stay engaged too. The word fervent in Greek is the literal word, the literal word for setting something on fire.
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That's a very earthy and material kind of word. Fervent, be fervent, be set on fire by the spirit.
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So ask yourself this, have you grown slothful in your zeal? Have you allowed apathy to set into your life?
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How are you doing at fueling the flame within you? You see, your love will indeed wane without fuel.
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I would suggest prayer. I would suggest connection with other believers, looking for new opportunities to serve, and of course, connection with his word as fuel to stoke the spiritual fire within you.
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And if you're at a place of apathy, you recognize that there has been zeal in your past that you would like to get back to, and you're saying,
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I just don't even know where to start. I would love to talk with you. I would love to interact with you, and just basically just say, how can we, what's your pattern, what have you got going on in your life, and where have you allowed apathy to creep in, and maybe we can do something together to stoke that fire.
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The fourth thing, in verse 12, we see that genuine love stays the course, stays the course.
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The last one, it stays on fire for God. Now it stays the course. Come what may, the life, you can see it there in verse 12.
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Come what may, the life of genuine love is fueled by a joyful hope. It is patient as it endures tribulation, and it is a life of constant, genuine love is a life of constant prayerfulness.
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You see, the healthy church is a church that's able to laugh with joy together. It is able to take on gladness and happiness and celebration together.
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It isn't all stern and somber. I find it interesting that Paul feels compelled, by the way, to command rejoicing.
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Do you see it in the text? Rejoice in hope, he says to the church, commanding us to rejoice in hope.
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He likely met some of the dour religious types, and he knew they needed some help.
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So he knew that nothing shy of a command to rejoice was gonna get through to some people, so he commands them to rejoice.
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But then there's also the second issue in the second command, and that's that we know that it isn't all laughter.
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There is real tribulation, there is real difficulty, so how do we respond in those seasons? How do we stay the course in those seasons for patient and affliction?
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Not every moment in our lives is a moment for laughter, of course, but we can be patient in tribulation because of the joyful hope we have in the gospel.
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So all tribulation for the follower of Christ, this is where my hope comes from, knowing that any and all tribulation in my life is merely temporary, it's always temporary.
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Whatever suffering, whatever affliction, whatever diagnosis, whatever difficulty we face, whatever poverty we may face, whatever hardships we face in relationships or whatever it may be, it's temporary.
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For the follower of Christ, it's always temporary. And we stay the course in prayer, committed and constantly turning to God according to the text of command because the tension of hope and tribulation is real in our lives.
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I think it's important to recognize that Paul never calls us to an ignorant, cheesy happiness that endures hardship, or that denies hardship, endures hardship.
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It's not this denial of the difficult at the expense of acting like everything is always okay.
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Instead, what he's calling us to in this staying the course is a robust joy that stems from the hope of eternal life.
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We ought to laugh the deepest and the loudest, church, because we are the most free to make sense of hardships and difficulties.
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And we alone have a cause to turn that to joy. And we can have, this is the beautiful thing, in the end, they're in constant in prayer, we can have an ongoing dialogue with the one in charge of it all.
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It's an awesome, awesome, awesome privilege to have a relationship with the one who's in charge.
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The fifth thing in verse 13, we find that a genuine love meets real needs. It's not just merely theoretical feelings about people or something like that.
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A genuine love in the church can never be summed up by feelings we have for one another. Now, it's good when we have feelings of goodwill towards one another, but real, genuine love addresses also what we do, how we respond, the things that we do for one another.
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We contribute to the needs of others, and we keep our eyes open for chances to practice hospitality. See, the brush stroke here is one of generosity and hospitality in the text.
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If you wait until your house is just perfect before you invite guests over, you just might never do it, right?
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Like, it's possible that if you just have to have everything just right, and the right fine china, and everything prepared, how many of you know that that's a recipe to not have people over?
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Now, it's nice when you can do that, and I mean, there's times and seasons for that, but I loved it when we lived in England, there was one couple who had, how many of the
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Stavells have, like six kids? And their house was just, I mean, young kids.
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They had adopted some and stuff, and they just had, I mean, she would invite us over and say, we'd like to invite you to the chaos this afternoon.
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And so we'd go over to their house for dinner, and she was not off. She wasn't wrong, and it was delightful.
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It was great, we had such great fellowship, and she would have laundry that she was folding in the living room, and everything was just kind of like all over the place, and we just enjoyed our time together.
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And I think it might even be her that said to us, if we just waited till everything was in line, we'd never have people over.
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We couldn't. But it's just that mindset of welcoming others in and bringing them in to your home.
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Let me encourage you to get over the idea that everything has to be just right. Get over even the selfishness of this being my castle, my place, which
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I think is increasing in our culture, where I just wouldn't want things to get messed up. Or whatever else might settle in as a thought, you know, it's just too much energy, just too much.
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I mean, just so much going on. Invite people in the church over, and I recognize that hospitality has morphed a little bit to being almost kind of like, hey, let's go out to eat together.
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Going out to eat together is great and it's okay, but how many of you know that sharing your home with somebody else is a deeper level?
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Did you guys know that? It's a deeper level. So let me encourage that in the church. There's nothing more awesome than seeing you guys, getting to know one another, inviting others over, and that's a beautiful thing, and that's where relationships are forged and formed in the generosity and hospitality of the church.
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The sixth thing, in verse 14, we find that a genuine love blesses all. It blesses all people, it blesses and does not curse, even those who do not bless us.
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This is a very difficult calling on us, to offer a blessing of good to those who persecute you.
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It gets harder even as the text goes on, but this is kind of a foretaste of what's gonna come in verses 17 through 21 about the way that we respond outside of the church, but I think he's got still in mind that there is, how many of you know that persecution can come from within the church?
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Some of you have lived that, some of you have experienced that, I'm sorry for that, but it is a difficult calling to offer a blessing of good to those who persecute you.
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That's tough, it's extremely counter to our nature, isn't it, to bless those who are persecuting us?
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But I wanna clarify and balance this command with other texts of scripture to help clarify what's going on here.
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Many of the psalms, David himself wrote psalms calling for God to intervene and to judge enemies and evil doers and those who are persecuting him.
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So was he calling down blessings on them, or was he calling down curses on them? What's going on? So how could we possibly reconcile this idea of blessing and not cursing, but David, King David did this thing.
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But we are not ever to offer curses. And while I think that this is a radical part of this portrait, it's radical, it's intentionally radical, this part of the painting that is being painted for us of genuine love, we are given the freedom to ask
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God for justice. That's okay, and we're gonna see that later. But the question comes down to what it means to curse someone.
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What does it mean to curse somebody? We are never to curse somebody. To damn someone with our tongue is both foolish and ignorant.
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Whether we would ask God to do so in cursing or whether we would do it ourselves in cursing is foolish and ignorant every time.
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We have no power over that which we speak, but God certainly does.
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And I recognize that I could be accused of arguing semantics here, but you are never ever to curse someone, to damn someone.
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You can't anyways. So how foolish to suggest it with your voice. So let me summarize this brush stroke by this clear and stark image.
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I think this summarizes it. Jesus Christ hanging on the cross. Can you see it? Do you have it in your mind's eye?
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Maybe you picture James Kavazial in The Passion of the Christ, or you've got some other image in your mind, but Christ hanging on the cross, and what did he say?
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Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
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But here's the other side of that that we rarely think of in this context.
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He says forgive them, but hear me carefully. If those soldiers that were there condemning and brutalizing the
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Son of God, if they never repented, Jesus Christ himself will meet those very soldiers as their condemning judge.
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He who uttered the words, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, if they do not repent of their sin, he will be their judge.
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And that's where these two ideas of cursing and blessing come together. We offer blessings and hope even to our enemies, even as we acknowledge that God will bring to wrath anyone who remains in their sin.
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Do you see the tension in that? The tension here in the way that we respond to those around us, but at the end of the day, blessings and not cursings, it's not up to us.
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The seventh thing, in verse 15, we see that genuine love is sympathetic, it's sympathetic. When we talk about having authentic relationships here as a core value, it's the
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A in recast is authenticity, and when we talk about growing in community, we talk about growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service,
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I often quote this verse. We don't want anybody to weep alone, and we don't want anybody to celebrate alone, and I've often said,
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I think weeping alone is better than celebrating alone, hands down. I'd rather weep alone than to have nobody there when things are going really well, no one to celebrate with, that's really lame.
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So we wanna be a church that celebrates together, we wanna be a church that mourns together and grieves together, and this adds to the painting, the image of a church that responds to needs, not merely materially, we certainly said earlier that a genuine love does meet needs, real needs, but it also has feeling with it.
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Feeling comes along in the process. We don't merely bring solutions, but we come alongside and we do life together with each other.
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Within a gathering, this requires significant tact, doesn't it? It can be really difficult to be committed to both grieving with those who are grieving and to celebrate with those who are celebrating.
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You see, we live in a church community, and Paul knew who he was writing to, God knew who he was writing to, and we live in a church community where a couple may be celebrating a birth announcement while another couple is mourning a miscarriage, right?
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How do we do this well? And in the real messiness of community groups, we may be called to celebrate together and mourn together in the exact same gathering, within moments of each other, and this is appropriate.
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This is appropriate in a life that is mixed with tragedy and triumph at every turn.
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Isn't that real life? Isn't it real life where we might be mourning one moment and celebrating the next?
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That's real life. The eighth thing in verse 16, we see that genuine love breaks down differences.
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There's the word harmony here in verse 16, and this is shown by four different commands in this one verse, four commands, one verse.
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We are called to harmony in our community. This sounds great until we disagree, right? Harmony, great idea.
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I don't like what you think, bad idea. But as a command from God, this must be brought into every disagreement we have.
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This command applies to all disagreements, and we seek to harmonize difficulties and disagreements within the church.
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We will work through every single disagreement that we cannot let love overlook. Now, some disagreements are just not worth noting, and at the end of the day, somebody looked at me funny, and I can forgive that and let it go, right?
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We don't have to address every petty little concern that might offend us or make us feel uncomfortable.
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But if it's something you can't, you can't get past, and you try to give it over to God in love, and it just can't be mashed, then we address it.
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We go through it. We seek harmony together in it. And I say this, at the risk of sounding like I'm boasting,
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I'm just trying to let you know a little bit about how my heart works. So if I ever pursue you in disagreement, it's part of the way that I was designed and made.
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And I think it's in part a good thing for a pastor to have, but I've always been a person who runs to conflict to resolve it.
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That's the way that God put me together. I know that the majority of Americans, the majority of us probably have harmony somewhere in our strength finders, and we like everybody to disagree, and we want everybody to, but part of my desire and my lack of fear of conflict is because I've seen how things fester.
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Any of you ever seen that? Instead of going, I mean, you could have spent 10 minutes getting together and over a cup of coffee or a half an hour over a cup of coffee talking about the disagreement and figuring out that this was just a misunderstanding, and instead, two years later, you won't talk to each other, and you've divided a church over it.
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Do you know what I'm talking about? Have any of you seen that kind of thing fester in a family, in a neighborhood, in relationships, in a church?
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We've seen that kind of stuff, haven't we? Only Dave and Rachel, apparently. Raise your hand if you've seen that, if you've seen that firsthand, the way that things can really fester and build up, and we need to be people who are eager to address it in its infancy.
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And we might not see eye to eye. We might actually find that there's genuine disagreement, but now we know what we're dealing with.
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There's so much speculation in our culture, and it's a broken system. Let's think about the way that these four commands war against divisiveness in the church.
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You show me a church where there's division, and this verse is not being believed or applied.
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Let's look at it together, verse 16. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty.
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Associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight.
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How many church divisions begin with that not being followed? How many church divisions could be resolved by that being applied?
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You show me a church where there's division, they're not doing this. There's a haughty demanding for my own way.
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Both sides of the argument are always wise in their own sight, aren't they? There is no seeking after harmony.
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There is no willingness to compromise to come together, and often the arrogance leads to a two -tiered system of higher and lower people in the church.
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Those who are in the know, those who are in the places of power, and those who are not. And to clarify, this is not suggesting that we have to have lockstep uniformity on all things.
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Harmony doesn't mean that we clone ourselves, and everybody is just a little clone, and everybody says it exactly the same way and believes exactly the same thing, and march step, that's not the point.
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But we will always work through things to logical conclusions. The fact that we have many different churches,
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I mean, that probably troubles some people in the room. The fact that there's so many divisions in the church, and there's six different churches in the
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Matawan area, and if you expand out to West Michigan, you get hundreds of different choices of where to go to church.
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But I wanna clarify, I don't believe that's all a bad thing. I don't think that's a bad thing.
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You see, theology does matter. Theology does matter. What we believe, and what we practice, and how we do things.
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I mean, recast has a way of doing things, a way of thinking about things, a way of understanding the word of God, a way of understanding who he is.
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And there are some times when in seeking harmony, you go after harmony, and you find that you need to divide in order to maintain harmony.
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The division would be, you have Paul and Barnabas who don't see eye to eye. They can't both take John Mark and not take
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John Mark. One of those things has to happen. One of them wanted to take a cousin with him on a mission strip, and the other guy said, no, he bailed on us last time, and we're not gonna go do that again.
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Right, when we needed him most, he took off on us. So we're not gonna go down that road. They can't do both, right?
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You can't have a church that both ordains women and doesn't ordain women. You can't do that, that's not possible.
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So there's things that you have to, we're not gonna be a church that both says, well, you have to pray to Mother Mary in order to have your sins absolved, and another one that says you just need to ask
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Jesus Christ to forgive you because of what he did. Do you see what I'm saying? And so it matters in terms of maintaining harmony.
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Sometimes there's division. That's the logical conclusion to harmony. But addressing it and going for it and seeking to figure out what is going to produce harmony in any given situation.
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The ninth thing in verse 17, we see that genuine love takes the community into account before we act.
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Oh my goodness, this is so un -American. Taking the community into account before I as an individual act?
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Oh, Don, now you're stepping on toes. Let's let the word of God step on our toes here. The first command in verse 17 assumes a scenario in which someone has been wronged.
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This gets really, really heavy really quick. Okay, in verse 17 it says, repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.
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What? How do you respond when someone does evil to you?
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That's what's being asked. It presupposes that someone has done something wrong to you. So how do you respond when that happens?
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The second command in the verse shows us what we ought to do when we are wronged. We ought to consider more than just ourselves in that scenario.
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When we are the recipient of evil, we are not to act alone. And you might say, but I was the one who was hurt.
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I was the one who was attacked. Paul says give thought to the impact on the entire community before you respond to evil with evil, and then don't.
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And then don't respond to evil with evil. Even when we are wronged, we still consider how our actions will impact our community.
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How will our responses impact the church of Christ? In verse 18, the 10th thing, we see that genuine love is quick to make peace.
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It seeks as much as it's up to us to make peace. I love how verse 18, verse 18 is a beautiful thing.
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Therapeutically, in the modern psychology movement, it's one that we need to grasp, we need to understand, and we need to have on our tongue.
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We need to be ready with this one because it's couched in very knowing terms, very powerful terms.
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You see, God knows fully that you are not able to reconcile with everybody. He tells you that in this text, in this verse.
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He says if possible, he starts out that way, if possible. In other words, what he's about to say might not be possible, but as much as it is up to you.
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How many of you know you're not the only one who has a say in whether you live in a life of peace? Raise your hand if you knew that.
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I am not the only one who has a say in whether or not my life is peaceful. But in as much as it's up to me, if possible, make peace with all.
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We all know this. We all know that it's not possible to forge peace unilaterally on one side.
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We cannot do this. It is impossible to do this. But we all know it, and then we like to pretend in a different direction.
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This is the therapeutic view of forgiving others for your own sake. How many of you ever heard that?
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Even if they don't want you to forgive them, at least forgive for your own sake, because otherwise it will eat you up. Have you guys heard that before?
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Well, that's not helpful. It really isn't. Because I think all of us have had this experience.
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Have you ever forgiven someone who doesn't want to be forgiven? And they are eager to twist the knife for the next time that you interact with them?
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But you just forgave them, right? So this ought not to hurt, because you've forgiven it.
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You've let it go. How in the world could bitterness ever come back in your heart over this? Because I've taken care of it.
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And so you're stuck pretending it doesn't hurt, and it does. Verse 18 is much more reasonable than much of that therapeutic nonsense of our day.
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It is in the scriptures, do your part to promote peace while acknowledging that God knows it won't always be effective.
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And as much as it's up to you, live at peace with all. The 11th thing, verse 19, shows that genuine love leaves revenge to the
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Lord. Genuine love leaves vengeance to the Lord.
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This command is once again fraught with all kinds of anti -American cultural overtones. We love the thought of being able to defend ourselves, our rights, our property, defense, defense, defense.
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And to be honest, it's a little bit different because I'm saying defense, and it really is revenge is the idea here that he's talking about.
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We wrap those two things up pretty tightly in our thoughts. And further, we have another complication to understanding verse 19, because praying for God's vengeance and retribution is all over scripture.
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It's all over the place. So the longing for vengeance is good and right. I think the longing for justice is godly.
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How many of you have hungered for justice? You've hungered for things to be set right.
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I would say to you that one of my personal biggest problems with life is just not being able to discern what is true when people are warring.
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When people, just the inability to really get down to what is and isn't just. You see it in our culture.
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You see it with O .J. Simpson. You see it with all kinds of things in our culture where it's just like, that was a long time ago.
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Some of you don't even know what I'm talking about. But some of you do. But I mean, the idea that where is justice?
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Where does justice lie? And it's tough. So we see this all over scripture, and longing for justice is good.
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But hear me carefully, church. The personal, the personal application of vengeance is shown to be a lack of faith in God to rightly judge.
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The personal application of judgment. As if I am the rightful judge of others, and I will give them what they deserve.
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Remember, though, that these instructions are limited to those in the church. Who's he writing to? He's writing to us.
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He's writing to us as individuals. He's writing to the church, Rome. This does not apply to governments.
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This is not a passage seeking to address capital punishment. That's gonna be addressed in the next chapter, where Paul indicates that the government bears the sword with intended effect, fear of retribution.
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But the implication is that the government is an instrument of vengeance against evil in a way that we are not.
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A Christian cannot rightly see themselves as the instrument of God's judgment on sinners. But in our limited time this morning,
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I need to add one more caveat to this. Let me be clear that this passage is about vengeance and not, at the end of the day, as I started, it is not about defense.
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This is not about defending others from wicked violence. Let me just encourage you, because I'm in Michigan, there's probably more guns than people in this state.
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I don't know if that's true or not, but my guess. So, I mean, this is rubbing up against our culture in a way that I would encourage you to be very discerning in the way that you understand what it means to carry a weapon.
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And you need to understand that biblically, not, first and foremost, culturally.
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You hear me? Make sure you have a biblically informed view of that before you launch out into carrying your peace.
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All right, that's enough on that. I'd love to talk with you individually about that. I can't keep going. I'm getting a warning here that I've got less than 10 minutes left.
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And we've got a couple more points. The 12th thing, verse 20, shows that genuine love does good to enemies, leaving the final word up to God.
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Again, it's still that notion that God is gonna have the final word in everybody's life. So we do good to enemies.
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We feed them when they're hungry. We give them water to drink when they're thirsty. And Paul is following Jesus on this one, by the way.
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Paul is following Jesus. And he straightforwardly tells us to do kindness to those who oppose us, to love our enemies.
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And in that, he says, you do this giving them water, and then you do this feeding them when they're hungry.
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And then by doing so, you are heaping burning coals on their head. Now, there's all kinds of interpretations.
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And that phrase alone has developed its own lore. It has some unsubstantiated interpretations.
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It has mythology of stories associated with something about putting a wet cloth on your head and that it was a service that was kindness to take the coals out of the fire and put it on someone's head in a pan so that they could carry it to make a fire so that they could feed their family.
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As if this is a good thing, but that's just not what I get out of my reading. Not at all, actually.
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Quite the contrary. As a quote from the Old Testament, where this text comes from. As a quote from the
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Old Testament, where coals of fire are routinely used for judgment. You can never have a picture of a good thing.
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They're always a picture of God's justice, His judgment. So it's likely that this phrase, that by doing good to those who are your enemies, by doing those who seek your evil and seek your harm, that you are piling judgment on their heads.
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That's the imagery. We don't like it, but that's what I believe the text is saying.
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And that ties in well with verse 19. But for our part, we do good to others. That's what we're being called to.
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Even our personal enemies. But if they choose to not repent, it's gonna prove in the end that our good actions will indeed increase their judgment in the end.
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We don't do it, we don't do the good so that they will be judged more severely.
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But that may be the case even as we seek to obey God by doing kindness to those who oppose the church.
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By the way, one of the reasons I take this application this way, I take it that direction, is that it's only been in recent times that this passage has been interpreted as a good thing.
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You go back into history when people were burning Christians in gardens in order to light their dinner parties and those
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Christians understood this text. Those Christians understood this text and all of the early church fathers with one voice said, what it means to keep burning coals on someone's head is they will incur a greater judgment because you gave them a drink of water and they refused to be kind in return.
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That's what they understood to be. So again, there's other interpretations out there, almost all of them extremely modern and not under persecution.
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We're very soft as a culture and we want to read this as a loving thing.
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Verse 21 shows that genuine love wields only one weapon and this is our last one this morning, folks.
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We made it to number 13. We did it, we're here. Verse 21 shows that genuine love wields only one weapon and it is the weapon of good.
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That is the weapon we have. As a church, that is the weapon that we have to wield as Christians.
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Evil is not to have the final word in our gatherings. Evil is not to have any place in the way that we interact with the culture out there.
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Instead, we are to overcome evil with what? With good. This doesn't mean we have no backbone.
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It simply means that we seek to love all at all times. But we are not those who are overcome by evil.
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We are those who fight evil here. Overcome is a struggle and battle kind of word and we overcome evil.
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In this battle, we are to engage in evil, not roll over and play dead, but the issue in our text is what weapons are we allowed to employ as we battle evil.
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And we do not combat evil with evil, but we combat evil. We take up the good fight and we combat evil with good.
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In the end, this text shows us to be like one of those composite pictures as a church where the big picture is made up of tiny little pictures.
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Have you seen those before? I think that those were popular like in the early 2000s where you'd have, and I loved some of those.
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There'd be like pictures of people doing things and then the bigger image would be like Abraham Lincoln or the bigger image would be like a picture of Jesus Christ.
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And I think that's the image that we're looking for. We're like that kind of picture.
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And the little pictures are us as individuals living out the love of Jesus inside the church and outside the church.
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And the big picture that we're all making up is our Lord and Savior. So how are we doing at this recast?
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How are we doing? How are you doing? Are we loving well? I would suggest to you that none of us have all of the brush strokes on the canvas yet.
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God is continuing to paint us more and more into the image of his love. So it's a reasonable question to say, where is your picture?
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Where is your canvas lacking paint today? Which brush strokes need a focus from you this week?
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Is it hating evil and loving the good? Do you need some work in the area of refusing to retaliate?
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Is it maybe an increase in generosity toward the people of God? Or the very practical opening up of your home and your life to hospitality?
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There's a lot of options from this text that God could be pinpointing in your life. And again, I know that it's overwhelming and that's gonna require that if you're gonna really get what you need out of this text, you're probably gonna have to go back and look at this again.
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There's a lot of options, but whatever it is that God has highlighted for you this morning, let's rejoice together that he is faithful to address how we interact together as a community.
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That he's faithful to call us to a genuine love for each other and for the world.
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And then let's come together to take communion this morning, and as we do so, we celebrate the one who perfectly lived the genuine love of God for us.
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He is the standard and the model for our love. And if you've asked Jesus to be your Lord and Savior, then please come to one of the tables and remember his great love for us.
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Take the cup of juice to remember his blood shed for his church. And take the cracker to remember his body broken for his church.
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And then let's be a church that lives out genuine love person by person, moment by moment, day by day, as we make up this overwhelming composite painting of our
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Lord together. Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the concern that you have for your church.
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I thank you for drawing us together. And I do pray that you would start fundamentally with any notion that we have that is wrong thinking about what this church really is.
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It's very easy, because we're a simple church, to not recognize the call to connect with one another. We don't have a lot of programming.
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We don't have a lot of weeknights together. So Father, I pray that you would help us in our hearts to start there with a recognition of the calling that you've placed on us to love, sincerely and genuinely love one another.
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And then for the way that we interact with the community at large, Father, I pray that you would let us be known by our love in this community.
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Let that be a fundamental thing, that when people are at the coffee shop, and I heard about this church in Matawan, this recast thing, one thing
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I know is that they love each other. So Father, I thank you for the communion that we're about to take, the unity that we have in Jesus Christ, and really the hope that we have to accomplish anything, any of these commands.
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We give you the glory, and the hope comes from the cross of Christ that we would be able to sacrifice our own wishes and our own desires, and give of our resources, and be kind to one another, and not retaliate to those who are evil to us, and to bless those who curse us.
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And Father, I pray that you would work in each heart, pointing out in this overwhelming text what we need to do different, in Jesus' name, amen.