Romans 12:9-21 Painting a Happy Little Church

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

Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church. 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.

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. How many of you are grateful for other Christ followers in your life?

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. 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. 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.

And the fact of the matter is, nobody is a self-made individual. Nobody in the Christian faith is a self-made individual. 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?

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? And so that's not always the most comfortable aspect of relational living, but it is a good thing, right?

That is a good thing, and we all need that at times. So, and as a matter of fact, the text we're gonna be looking at this morning, kind of to introduce it, is the first one 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. 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 I was a counselor up there.

And all of the campers memorized those verses, we taught those verses, 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 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. 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.

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. In other words, we need instructions on how to live rightly together, especially since we are sinful people and we are fallen people.

We need instructions in how to not break the church. We need instructions in how to not break each other. And for this reason, 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.

And all of these commands center around the common theme of relationships. The common theme of relationships. 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.

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.

There are 31 commands in our text this morning. 31. 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, I can't keep up with these commands.

Like, what am I supposed to do? So before we read it, 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.

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. But while we read it, I want you to consider what kind of a picture all of these commands are summarizing for a church.

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. 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. 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.

And listen this morning for the big picture. I would even encourage you to feel it while I read it. 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. So let it hit you and let it have an impact on the way that you feel about relationships to begin with. And we'll take it apart, we'll look at them almost one by one in a little bit.

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. And ultimately, a calling in a sense for what kind of church we will be if we take these commands to heart.

So if you're not already there, please open your Bibles to Romans 12, verses nine through 21 and get ready for the fire hose that's coming at us. Romans 12, verses nine through 21,.

Recast the precious words of God.

This is a holy moment for us. Let love be genuine, abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good, love one another with brotherly affection, outdo one another in showing honor, do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord, rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer, contribute to the needs of the saints, seek to show hospitality, bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse them, rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep, live in harmony with one another, do not be haughty, associate with the lowly, never be wise in your own sight, repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.

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, 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, for by so doing, you will heap burning coals on his head.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

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 fire hose of commands relationally about what it means to be a church, and I thank you.

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. 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.

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 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. 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, 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. 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.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. But if you're gonna try to keep these commands without first a relationship with Jesus Christ by which his Holy Spirit is living within you, that's not gonna work.

These commands cannot change you. These commands cannot make you the person that you want to be, let alone the person that God wants to be. 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.

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. You are gonna hear how God wants you to live in light of the salvation you received in Jesus Christ. And so buckle up. This is gonna be a 13 point sermon here. 13 points on being serious.

So get your pens fired up. Get them warmed up. And here we go. How many of you know who Bob Ross is? Ever seen this guy? How many of you love Bob Ross? I mean, what a guy. I absolutely love Bob Ross. If you don't know him, you should.

And go Google him and then watch some of his shows.

After this.

Yes, I am endorsing him. My family will sometimes watch him just to calm down before bed, okay? 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.

So sometimes we just throw that up on Netflix and away we go. He works magic with a canvas. His voice is so soothing. There's just something about him. But whenever I watch him paint, I'm always amazed by the way that he can take so many brushstrokes.

His paintings are just made up of brushstrokes.

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. And always a tree in the foreground that covers up the mountain that he has done that I could never do.

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. But Paul tells us what he is going to be painting for us this morning in his opening words. 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.

In his own words, Paul tells us he's going to be painting a picture of genuine love. Of genuine love, sincere love. Some of your translations say let love be sincere, let love be genuine. 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. 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.

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? It's not an isolated, solo thing. It's something he's calling us all into together,.

Into community.

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.

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. What do I mean by that? It both defines what genuine love looks like.

It describes genuine love according to God. 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. 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.

In all of our relationships, he's calling us to live out a genuine, sincere kind of love. 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.

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. And so here's the first one, verse nine.

A genuine love is discerning. A genuine love is discerning. Let love be genuine. Hate what is evil.

Cling to what is good.

You see, a genuine love exceedingly, increasingly hates evil. It's discerning. It actually, it has a category of evil. It has a category of good. 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 Almighty God.

That's why it's discerning. If you really love somebody, would you be okay with them sliding off into eternal condemnation? Of course not, of course not. So the word in Greek, abhor or hate, depending on your translation, the 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.

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 Greek language. It is to exceedingly increase in your hatred toward evil.

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.

It is encouraging you to go on a honeymoon with the good. It is encouraging you to get married to good. That's the picturesque word of this hold fast here in the text. 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.

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? 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?

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 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.

In any expression, love is love. But according to verse nine, love is discerning. 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.

Hates that.

Doesn't say that it hates the people. That's not, it hates evil. It hates sin. It hates that which is an aberration from God's good design and desire for humanity. 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.

So the first point is that a genuine love is discerning.

We move on.

In verse 10, a genuine love works hard at elevating others. It works hard in the process of elevating.

And lifting others up.

There are two commands in this verse. First, we are to have a familial, brotherly affection for one another, a familial care for one another. 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. But the second command explains how far do we take that. Anybody with a brother, how many of you in here.

Have a brother?

Did you ever have any competition with your brother? Yep, I take that for granted. There is a natural and hopefully, I know it's not always this way, hopefully lighthearted competition between brothers.

We know that. 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. 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?

Outdo, the text says.

Outdo one another in showing honor, in deferring to one another. Recast, if we must have competition, don't let it be a competition for power. Don't let it be a competition for authority. Don't let it be a competition for your experience, your education, your intellect, or your social status.

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. Not a roast, but a boast in others. Asking yourself, who can build up others the most here?

It seeks heart after building others up. The third thing in verse 11, a genuine love stays on fire for God. 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.

The English Standard Version betrays a bit of an oxymoron in this text. A little bit of irony in Paul's writing. He says, don't have a slothful zeal. Don't have a slothful zeal. 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.

Don't let apathy set in. You see, entropy is a real problem, isn't it? 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.

Cars rust, things break down. You gotta get a new device after a certain period of time. 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?

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. We grow weaker, we grow less enthusiastic, less passionate, less on fire for God.

To be honest, we can be guilty as we age of even looking down on zeal as less mature. 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?

How many of you have just confessed that you've had thoughts like that before? I know I have, and it's not true. Zeal and maturity, fire and truth, spirit and truth in our worship. 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. That's a very earthy and material kind of word. Fervent, be fervent, be set on fire by the spirit. So ask yourself this, have you grown slothful in your zeal?

Have you allowed apathy to set into your life? How are you doing at fueling the flame within you? You see, your love will indeed wane without fuel. 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.

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, 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.

The fourth thing, in verse 12, we see that genuine love stays the course, stays the course. 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.

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. 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. It isn't all stern and somber. I find it interesting that Paul feels compelled, by the way, to command rejoicing.

Do you see it in the text?

Rejoice in hope, he says to the church, commanding us to rejoice in hope. He likely met some of the dour religious types, and he knew they needed some help. So he knew that nothing shy of a command to rejoice was gonna get through to some people, so he commands them to rejoice.

But then there's also the second issue in the second command, and that's that we know that it isn't all laughter. 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 patience and affliction? 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.

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. 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.

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.

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. It's not this denial of the difficult at the expense of acting like everything is always okay.

Instead, what he's calling us to in this staying the course is a robust joy that stems from the hope of eternal life. We ought to laugh the deepest and the loudest, church, because we are the most free to make sense of hardships and difficulties.

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.

An awesome, awesome, awesome privilege to have a relationship with the one who's in charge. 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.

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.

We contribute to the needs of others and we keep our eyes open for chances to practice hospitality. See, the brushstroke here is one of generosity and hospitality in the text. If you wait until your house is just perfect before you invite guests over, you just might never do it, right?

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? 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 kids of the Stavells have, like six kids, and their house was, I mean, young kids, 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 and so we'd go over to their house for dinner and it was, she was not off.

She wasn't wrong and it was delightful. 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.

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. We couldn't. But it's just that mindset of welcoming others in and bringing them in to your home.

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 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, just too much energy, just too much, 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.

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? 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.

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. This is a very difficult calling on us, to offer a blessing of good to those who persecute you.

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?

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.

That's tough.

It's extremely counter to our nature, isn't it? To bless those who are persecuting us, but I wanna clarify and balance this command.

With other texts of scripture.

To help clarify what's going on here. Many of the Psalms, David himself wrote Psalms calling for God to intervene and to judge enemies and evildoers and those who are persecuting him. 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? Well, 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 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. What does it mean to curse somebody? We are never to curse somebody. To damn someone with our tongue is both foolish and ignorant.

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. We have no power over that which we speak, but God certainly does, and I recognize that I could be accused of arguing semantics here, but you are never ever to curse someone, to damn someone, you can't anyways, so how foolish to suggest it with your voice.

So let me summarize this brushstroke by this clear and stark image. Nope, I think this summarizes it. Jesus Christ hanging on the cross.

Can you see it?

Do you have it in your mind's eye? Maybe you picture James Cavazio 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?

Father, forgive them,.

For they know not what they do. But here's the other side of that that we rarely think of in this context. He says forgive them, but hear me carefully. If those soldiers that were there condemning and brutalizing the Son of God, if they never repented, Jesus Christ himself will meet those very soldiers as their condemning judge.