Jan. 28, 2018 AM Our Unending Debt by Pastor Josh Sheldon

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Jan. 28, 2018 Our Unending Debt Rom. 13:8-10 Pastor Josh Sheldon

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Turn if you would in your Bibles to Romans chapter 13.
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Romans 13. Our text this morning will be verses 8 through 10. To remind us of the flow of the
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Apostles thought though I'll begin reading at verse 1 of this chapter. And as we go through the message we're actually going to circle back a bit further and go back into chapter 12.
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One of the reasons for doing this is so we understand that this is not an excursus that the
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Apostle has taken. The verses 13 1 through 7 which we covered last week is part of this entire flow of thought that the
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Apostle has. And Lord willing we'll be able to continue to demonstrate that. They didn't go off here into another place and in verse 8 come back to his line of reasoning that he had in chapter 12.
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This is all one flow of thought. So I want to start at verse 1 and please pay particular attention when
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I get to verse 8 because 8 through 10 will be our text for the preaching. Romans 13 beginning at verse 1.
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For he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong be afraid for he does not bear the sword in vain.
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For he is the servant of God an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection not only to avoid
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God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes for the authorities are ministers of God attending to this very thing.
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Pay to all what is owed to them. Taxes to whom taxes are owed. Revenue to whom revenue is owed.
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Respect to whom respect is owed. Honor to whom honor is owed. Now for this morning.
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Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another. For the one who loves has fulfilled the law.
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The commandments you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and any other commandment are summed up in this word.
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You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
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Did the Apostle Paul come up with something new? Was Jesus emphasis on love something unique?
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Was that an innovation? I would argue not. That the Lord God Almighty has always been a
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God that is love as John says in his epistle God is love and that the same
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God who is love demands love from his people and among his people.
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At the earliest age young Jewish boys as I was are taught the great banner of Judaism which is
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Deuteronomy 6 4. Hear O Israel. Hear meaning obey. Hear O Israel.
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Shema Yitzhariel. The Lord your God. Adonai Eloheinu. He is one
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Lord. Adonai Echad. And you shall love the Lord your God. We learn that right away. V 'havta et
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Adonai Elechecha b 'kol avavacha u 'v 'kol nashfa u 'v 'kol modecha. You shall love the Lord your
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God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your strength all your might and then
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Jesus adds all your mind. Everything we have is given over to loving the Lord our
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God and then in Leviticus chapter 19 where does this love go? You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
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And what does the Lord Jesus Christ say? But this. The great command is the one
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I just cited to you. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and etc. And the other is like it.
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And we often call that the second great command but it's not really the second. Jesus doesn't say this one is under it.
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This one's number two in the hierarchy. Jesus says the other is like it. Let's take it that way.
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These verses that I just read owe nothing to anyone except to love each other.
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And from these verses we often hear this application that we are to keep out of debt.
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And then Paul goes on to say but you have a debt and it's a debt that cannot be repaid. It's a debt that you can never completely extinguish.
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The technical term for making payments on a debt, on a mortgage, on a loan, it's called servicing the debt.
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Here's a debt that we have that's laid upon us by the Lord Jesus Christ from the hand of the Apostle Paul which requires lifelong servicing.
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And I hope this doesn't discourage you or depress you but if you make payments every day against this, if you service it as much as you can, if you pay extra upon it as we do with mortgages to pay down the principal quicker and pay less interest and get it over with, you could do that every moment of your life and you'll never get this one done with.
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I hope that doesn't discourage you. I hope that doesn't make you say well I don't know where this message is going but I'm walking out now because it sounds like he's gonna tell me do something that is impossible to do.
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And in a sense I am, in another sense no it is something we can do, we will do. We have a debt that can never be repaid and this comes from verse 8 that I just read.
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Verse 8 Paul insists on the one hand that we keep out of literal debt, literal debt, pay taxes, pay the revenue, keep out of literal debt.
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He says then in verse 8 owe nothing to anyone and that's in order that we have all the more to give to the spiritual obligation we have that we love one another.
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We have an ongoing debt. It's an obligation to the Lord that is serviced by our mutual love to another and it's a duty that we have so long as the
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Lord tarries or calls one of us home to him. The debt of love is owed to Christ, the
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Lord Jesus Christ who saved us and the terms of this debt are that we love one another.
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That's the way we pay it and this is what the Apostle Paul is speaking of here or writing of in these verses in Romans.
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Well the debt can be paid, as a matter of fact it must be paid. This obligation must be serviced even knowing that it can never be completely extinguished.
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It can't be retired the way we did our mortgage here at the church a few years back but yes it can be paid, it must be paid.
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As I said, here O Israel, here obey O church to love, to love the
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Lord your God and to love your neighbor as yourself. Love is a debt and we pay it back to him.
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The check that we pay back with if we want to make a metaphor of that is drawn on an account though that's a little different from how we pay our mortgages.
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When I write a check for paying the small loan that we have on our house, they deduct it from my checking account.
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The checking account goes down. When I get my paycheck, the check goes back up and then I write a check and it goes down.
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You understand all this but the check that we present to the heavenly cashier though, when we service this obligation here to love one another, owing nothing to anyone except to love one another and Paul goes on in quotes from Deuteronomy, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
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Well there's one where we don't have an account that goes down. We have an account that's filled over and over.
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That we're doing something here, we need to understand as we love one another in the way that Christ would have us love one another, which is the way that Christ loved us, a direct line from his love to ours or should be.
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We're doing something that's foreign to ourselves. Do you have in yourself a perfect love for your neighbor?
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Well of course not. Do I? No. Where does this come from? Well it comes from Christ.
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Romans 5 .5, speaking of the love of God that was poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
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Notice please that this is the account from which we draw this resource that we write the check as it were to.
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It's against that and that love was not metered out to us. That love was not broken into easy to handle parcels to save the delivery man's back.
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It was poured out and in this God passes the test that he sets for himself in Malachi when he says to the people of Israel, put me to the test, says the
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Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there's no more room for it.
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And this, dear ones, is our resource for servicing this ongoing, this constant obligation, this debt that we have to Jesus Christ to love one another.
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You know when we take on debt, any kind of debt, any financial obligation, whether it's mortgage, rent, car loans, college loans, whatever it is, we take on this obligation, or I hope we do, in accordance with what we can pay back.
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The monthly payments of servicing of the debt need to be within the resources that we can use.
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This debt, as I said, it demands that we pay it with something we don't have in and of ourselves, love which is pure brotherly affection, not sensual, not selfish, not greedy, the kind of love
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God showed when he sent his son, the kind of love Jesus showed when he died for us while we were still enemies of both him and his father.
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The verses before us, 13 8 through 10 in Romans, it can really cover a very vast scope.
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You think of all that's in there, we have a lesson there about not being in debt. We have there love, agape, repeated five times in three verses, and in every verse there's this reference back to the law, to the commandments, to the
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Mosaic law. There's a lot there, and mixed all through it is this constant obligation we have to love.
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The first part of verse 8, it seems to command that we never be in actual literal debt, and some even think that that makes it a sin to borrow anything at all for any purpose whatsoever.
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In my estimation, that's far too reductionist against what the
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Apostle Paul is presenting to us here. To simply turn it into, well don't be in debt, you can't take a loan for a car, you must save your money and pay cash for that and for your house and for anything else, those things might be true and they might be practical, but I don't think that's what the
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Apostle is getting at here. Some make it a sin to borrow anything, and that turns this crucial and this profound instruction into a little more than a primer on good personal financial management.
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So let me ask up front, let's let's cover this practical side first. Can you have debt? You say,
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Pastor, at the end of this message I'm gonna come to you. Am I in sin because I have a mortgage or a car loan or a college loan, and am
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I going to sin because I want to take this loan for this other thing I need? Can I have debt? And the answer is sure, you can have debt.
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But then ask the next question, can I have debt that extends beyond my means? Well Psalm 37 21 says, the wicked borrows and does not repay.
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So the answer there is no. If you are putting the lender, not yourself, if you're putting the lender at risk to miss even a single payment, to even be late and wonder and worry for a moment whether the payment's actually coming, if you're gonna put him at risk for that, well the answer is no.
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I think Psalm 37 21 would call that wickedness. So you can borrow.
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To take Romans 13 8 as a lesson in not borrowing at all, I think, makes too little of what the
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Apostle is saying. For yourself, for me, whether you've borrowed for things worthy of debt or things that are frivolous,
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I leave that to you. One man's jalopy is another man's dream car, one man's mansion is another man's shack.
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To borrow from Paul, let each man be convinced in his own conscience. Now Paul's point here, and we're going to get to the love that we need to show each other, but Paul's point here flows very smoothly, very neatly from verses 1 through 7, which
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I started with. They were told to be subject to the governing authorities because they, with all their ability to coerce our obedience, the sword placed in their hand by God, whether they know it or not, we know it, but that's where it came from, from God.
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They are there by God's decree and by his will and for our good. That section ends with the command that we pay what we owe, taxes to whom taxes, revenue to whom revenue, and so forth.
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I notice when I read that that there's in those four that he mentions, taxes, revenue, honor, respect, it breaks evenly 50 -50 between abstract and literal debt.
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The literal debt being the taxes, the revenue, the abstract being the respect and honor. And I noticed then that verse 8 in our text this morning does the same thing.
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He says, owe nothing to anyone, there's your literal debt, but the debt of love.
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And that's kind of an abstract thing, to have love be a debt. And again, this isn't a precept against all borrowing, it means you pay what you've committed yourself to.
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Now some might object that they didn't commit themselves to income taxes, that they were foisted upon them. True or not, their authority to levy and collect the taxes is from God, as we just read, so we pay them.
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It's a debt, like it or not. I think this makes the best sense of these verses here.
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I personally, we have a small loan on our house, it's something I owe, but at no point can the bank come to me and demand that I make a payment.
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They can't come to me and demand a penalty for a late payment, because we consistently service the debt, we pay it each month.
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So I can say with all honesty, with all compliance to verse 8, that I owe no one anything.
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I'm not woken up in the middle of the night in terror wondering if I'm going to be able to make a payment, I know that it's been taken care of, so that energy that would otherwise go to that is given over to the church and to my spiritual responsibilities.
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So what do we owe? What do we owe? It flows from verse 7, we pay what we owe, and then the rest of verse 8 through 10 explains why, and it's simply this.
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Love fulfills the law. You owe love, that's why you pay it.
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And what happens when we pay this love, when we service this obligation that we have to the Lord Jesus Christ, that we service with each other?
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What does the Apostle say? We are fulfilling the law. Love fulfills the commandments.
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The law hasn't been mentioned in this book since chapter 10, that's where we read that Christ is the end of the law for everyone who believes.
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And all of a sudden, the law comes back up, and here it is in the exact context of love.
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Love and law. We need to deal with these this morning. Start with love.
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Love has really fallen on bad times, has it not? I mean, if we think of what society at large thinks of love and how they define it and how they do it, if you will, it really has fallen on some hard times.
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It didn't happen all at once. It didn't happen just in our generation. And if we read the Bible and talk about how things are going to get worse and worse, the next generation might look back wistfully upon ours and say, boy,
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I wish we could define love as well and as purely as they did. And of course we look, and we look back at the generation before us and say, you know, they had it more right than we do.
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It's gotten worse and worse. And the preacher in Ecclesiastes says, do not ask why the former times were better than these, because you do not inquire wisely about this.
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But let's understand that love has indeed fallen on bad times. Today it's so confused with sex, which in God's design is a product of true love, biblical love.
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Love, I mean, what is it? I mean, too often it's an ooey -gooey, squishy, feel -good emotion that's based on the moment, is an attraction that has about as much foundation as a castle of sand.
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How many of you remember the Righteous Brothers? I'm always dating myself. Okay, a few hands. They had that great hit, You've Lost That Loving Feeling.
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Do you remember that? You've Lost That Loving Feeling. Oh, oh, oh, that loving feeling. You've Lost That Loving Feeling.
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Now it's gone, gone, gone. Oh, oh, oh, it's gone. And you'll all thank me for not having sung that.
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But that's how love is viewed. It's something that comes and goes. It comes. You say, oh, this is great.
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I've caught love. It feels so good. And then it goes. And you go, oh, I hate it when that happens. And we can ask ourselves, well, where did it go?
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Did it fall out of a hole in your pocket? Did some hacker get into your computer and take away your love?
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Did thieves break in and steal it? Maybe moths or rust destroyed it. More likely, they never really had it because they didn't understand it.
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They didn't have it because they didn't understand it. It's much like that testimony from the girl that I read this morning.
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We don't know what right is except that God defines it for us. And by knowing
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God and His holiness and His purity and His love showered upon us by His Son, Jesus Christ, we can define what is wrong.
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And by knowing what is wrong, we come back to knowing what is right. It's not an ooey gooey squishy feeling.
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Now it may make you feel that way, but ultimately that's not what it is. What is love?
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What is this agape love? In these three verses, we have love five times. In these three verses, love, agape.
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And we need to limit ourselves just to what we have here in these three verses because love is such a huge subject that we could never really finish it, could we?
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But what do we have here? I've said it several times already. We need to get this into our head. Love is a debt.
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It follows in the Scripture here right on the heels of the literal debts we owe. So it almost has a commercial flavor to it.
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But that's okay. We can live with that because it is an obligation. It is a duty.
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It is a debt. And it's one that requires constant servicing. Love is a debt.
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A debt is something that is owed or that one is bound to pay or perform for another, a liability or obligation to pay or render something, the condition of being such, excuse me, the condition of being under such an obligation.
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Now does that sound strange to your ears? It should. I mean, before we admit it, it really does sound funny.
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Here in this 21st century and we're surrounded by this other view of love and how, you know, it's just this thing that kind of passes by and it makes you feel wonderful and warm for a moment.
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Does it sound strange to say it's a debt? You owe love.
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Like the bank that could send a collector, the repo man with the tow truck, if you don't make the payment on your car, bang on the door, say, you owed money and we're taking it back because you didn't pay.
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Is it like that? You know, when we recite wedding vows, we promise to love, honor, obey, words to that effect.
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We commit ourselves. Even today when many couples write their own vows, love is almost never left out.
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We're placing ourselves with all the integrity of our word into an obligation. We're freely entering into this debt, the debt of keeping our word, the obligation to love.
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So love as a debt may sound odd, but it's really not all that strange. The fact is, if we think about this, we're born into debt.
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We're born into a debt that we inherited. In much the same way, we're born into sin because we inherited that from Adam.
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And Adam is the one we need to go back to to understand this debt. God's given his law.
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His law sets forth his demands for the conduct of his people. It's a law he gave to Adam, though not in the detail he gave to Moses and Israel from Sinai, but he gave his law to Adam.
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Subdue the earth, go forth and multiply, which was actually a blessing. He seems to have done this.
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But there is one law, a prohibitive law, much in the same form as the Ten Commandments with the, you shall not, you shall not eat of the tree of life.
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Of course, when Adam disobeyed that, he introduced sin into the very being of his descendants. And he bequeathed to us also this enormous debt, a debt that would make the unforgiving servant of Matthew 18 despair even more than he did.
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He passed onto us this unsatisfied obligation, commitment to obey
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God, this unsatisfied commitment and obligation and debt and law to obey the
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Lord our God. Well, later God, of course, from Sinai gave the law to Moses.
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And like the command to Adam, it is a law to be obeyed in every particular, which of course we cannot and no one can.
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But even so, even knowing this, obedience is what? Demanded. Listen, if you're alive, you owe
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God disobedience. We owe it to our maker to obey his law.
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It's a debt. And one thing about debts, they don't just go away, do they?
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They don't just vaporize. Not like that righteous brothers with the love. Could you ever say,
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I've lost that deaded feeling. Whoa, that dead feeling now it's gone, gone, gone. And I feel so happy now.
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No, debts don't just go away. They demand something. They demand to be serviced.
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They demand to be paid. Law or commandments is as prominent in Romans 13, 8 -10 as love is.
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You just can't separate the two. The greatest command, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might.
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I recited to you in Hebrew a moment ago. That's Deuteronomy 6, which is the second telling of the law.
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It's on the eve of Israel's return to the promised land. And the whole context of that book is to love
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God by obeying him, to service this debt of love to our maker.
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Deuteronomy 11, 13 says, and if you will indeed obey my commandments that I command you today to love the
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Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul. 1
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John 5, verse 2, it carries us forward into the church today. By this we know that we love the children of God when we love
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God and obey his commandments. Do you see this connection, this welded connection between the love that we have for each other and the law?
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It still might sound funny to some of you is to say your love is a debt. And the law says you must love, but that is what it says.
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And a lot of the way we hear it could just be in the way we emphasize it. What if I said God, because of the redemption that he gave his people in Jesus Christ, has made an obligation for you to love one another the way
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Christ loved you. Does that sound a little better to you? It says the same thing. To say we owe
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God this allegiance, this obedience because of what he's done for us.
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Therefore we gladly take upon ourselves this obligation that God has put to his people.
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A lot of times it's just the emphasis. But whether it sounds funny to tell you your love is a debt and an obligation and that the law says you must love, however that sounds in our ears, that is what the scripture tells us over and over.
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And not something that came up in the first century when Jesus came and spoke of love. And says a new commandment
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I give you, that you love one another. Read the high priestly prayer. Well really that's proper in chapter 17 of John, but go back to chapter 13 and read all the way to 17.
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See how prominent love is. How often Jesus commands his people to be loving.
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Just as the apostle does here in Romans 13. The Lord says to love him first and foremost because first of all, what?
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He's worthy of love. Without his love we really have no definition of love or any basis for it.
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It's a lot like what I said about governing authorities and the laws they administer. Unless there is a God of order there can be no law.
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Even ungodly nations owe their very desire to have laws to the fact that there is a God of order who gave us the desire to have law.
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And it's the same with love. We with every person who ever has or ever will live, we owe to him love.
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This debt. So what are the terms of this debt? A debt has to have terms.
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We don't just start paying a bank. I mean we went to the bank. We made the terms with him. If we don't like those terms we go to another bank.
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There has to be terms, though we don't shop around with God of course. Second half of verse 8 where he starts with owe nothing.
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The second half, but to love one another. Leviticus 19 .18 as I said.
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The second of the great commands, but really the other is like it is a better way to put it. And this love that we owe to God, this debt that we need to service to God has this outlet.
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And what's the outlet? How does it get paid? Well it gets paid with an active and persistent love for each other.
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An active, persistent love for each other. And that's the payment literally to God.
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To Christ Jesus who died for us. To the Holy Spirit who poured this love out into us and made us able to even do this or even think about this or even want to do this.
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Persistent, active, determined love for one another. When he writes no one, oh no one, he seems to include those outside the church.
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And that makes me think that one another, oh no one, that's those over here, oh no one, anybody, anything, except to love one another, that's a term that is normally used for the church.
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Who are the one another's? Every time you see them in the scripture, especially in the epistles of the
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New Testament, one another is us. One another is fellow believers, brothers and sisters in the
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Lord. This doesn't mean that we have a license to be unloving to non -Christians.
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That would be ridiculous. That doesn't say that. Many of us have family members, sons and daughters who have not come to Christ yet we love them.
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But this is much like Jesus in John chapter 17 verse 9. He says, I do not pray for the world, but I pray for these, the disciples.
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I pray for those who will believe their word which is us. But Jesus is not saying there,
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I never pray for the world. I don't care a hoot for the world. That's not what he's saying. He's saying right now at this moment,
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I'm not praying for the world, I'm praying for them who are going to bring the gospel to the world. So for me taking one another to be loved within the church,
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I'm not saying never love outside the church. I'm saying this immediate context that Paul is speaking of here, writing of here, is here.
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What he says is that by showing love for one another, we service this debt that we owe to God and we fulfill the law.
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Now this is a debt that goes on. This is something that, as I said, as long as the
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Lord tarries, or as long as he keeps from calling us to himself, this debt goes on.
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The NIV does a really good job here, as does Phillips paraphrase, let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another.
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For he who loves his fellow man has fulfilled the law. Very consistent with what
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Dale read to you from 1 John. So we have this ongoing duty to satisfy this debt of love by which you and I do what?
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We fulfill the law. We follow Christ's command. This is obeying him. This is
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Deuteronomy 6 .4 and all the other Deuteronomy passages I read. Obeying God by loving.
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And the same law that demands our total obedience is thus fulfilled.
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That's what Jesus said. That's what Paul, the apostle, is saying here in Romans 13. All the commandments summed up by this imperative of love, not just the four listed in verse 9, adultery, murder, stealing, and coveting.
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Paul writes any other commandment, the whole scope of law, fulfilled here in our mutual love for one another.
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We don't do this by just having a loving feeling. That'd be back to you've lost that loving feeling. And with this disappearance, any need to actually be loving.
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The law is fulfilled by the doing of it. The four laws that Paul cites are prohibitions.
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And so we service this debt of love to each other by not, by not committing adultery, you are loving me.
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By not stealing, you are loving the sister next to you. By not coveting, you're loving the brother behind you.
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By not, by obeying. And it says in Malachi, why do we commit treachery against one another?
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By disobeying the Lord. By breaking the covenant. Same concept here.
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You service this debt to God when you don't do these things. And when we don't do these things, it includes me and all of you.
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When we don't do these things, we are what? Loving each other. And then there is the doing.
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That's refraining. Let us refrain because that's obedience to God. And hear,
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O Israel, hear is listen. Hear also means obey. So don't do these things.
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That's obedience. But there's a lot of doing. There's a positive demonstration that certifies this love.
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They don't prove it. If you do these things and you say it's because you love Christ, well, I'm going to be inclined to believe you.
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Doing the things Jesus demands is not the same as believing in him. So don't ever substitute that I did this thing, therefore
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I must be a Christian. A Christian is one who by faith has repented of their sins and gone to Jesus Christ and trusted in his suffering on your behalf.
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Trusting that God poured his wrath for your sins on him and that he paid the price fully and therefore you repented of your sin and gone by faith in the
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Lord Jesus Christ. That's what a Christian is. So don't let the doing of anything be a substitute for faith in Christ.
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It's not. But at some level the doing does certify our faith, doesn't it?
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I will show you my faith by my works, says James. So there's doing.
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It's not just the prohibitions. Though I want us to keep in mind that when we don't do what we're told not to do, we are fulfilling the law.
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And loving each other fulfills the law. So I can say that by not doing the things that we're not supposed to do, we are in fact loving each other.
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Well, let's look at some positive things. Turn back in Romans to chapter 12, please. It's been a few weeks since we were there.
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I don't mind going back to it because as I said, I think the Apostle Paul has been on a steady stream of thought here in 13, 1 through 7 about the governing authorities was not an excursus.
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It's one line of reasoning. Look up at verse 9. What do we do?
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If I'm saying, and I hope you believe this, that by not doing the things you're not supposed to do, you are in fact loving your brothers and sisters in the way that Paul means it here, the way he ties love together with the law.
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But there's doing. Verse 9, let love be genuine, pure brotherly affection, no ulterior motive, genuine because it is the love of Christ that is poured into our hearts by His Holy Spirit.
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Let love be that way, positively. Be like this towards people. We don't use each other.
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We don't go after each other for some agenda. A pure, genuine love.
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The verse goes on, abhor what is evil, positively hate what is evil. It's like that testimony
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I read this morning. I know it is evil because God has shown me what is good, which is the second half of that clause.
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Hold fast to what is good. By doing this, you are loving your neighbor, your one another here in the church, and thus servicing your part of that debt to Christ to love.
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Verse 10, love one another with brotherly affection. So how do we do that? Read on.
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Outdo one another in showing honor. Don't get in each other's way to receive honor, but shoulder your way to the front of the line, which is where you get the first chance to show someone else honor.
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That's loving. That's satisfying your commitment to Christ. That's fulfilling the law.
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Verse 11, do not be slothful and zealous. There's a prohibition. Be fervent in spirit. When you come to this place and worship with us, with a burning desire to glorify the
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Lord Jesus Christ, to be an example that we can look to and say, this day I want to worship the way that brother or sister did.
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I want to sing with that enthusiasm. I want my hands to just jolt out of my socket so I bring up so high does
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I give praise to God. When you have that kind of fervency and spirit, you're loving me, the people next to you, and extinguishing this debt that can never be extinguished.
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The end of that verse is serve the Lord. Serve the Lord by being fervent in spirit amongst us, amongst the one and others, to bring us all to higher levels of fervency in our worship of the
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Lord Jesus Christ. That's loving us. Let me just go on and read verses 12 through 18.
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I'm not going to comment on these as I go through them, but I'll put them before you. Rejoice in hope. Be patient in tribulation.
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Be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you.
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Bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another.
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Do not be haughty but associate with the lowly. Never be conceited. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to 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. A steady stream of thought all the way through these verses and down to chapter 13 of verse 10.
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This debt that we have, an inherited debt, we inherited from Adam sin and we know that and God made provision for that in the
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Lord Jesus Christ. We inherited from Adam with sin this obligation, this debt to obey
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God, to follow his commands. Who could do that? None but the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Only he lived this perfect life of obedience to God.
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With every breath he took, he glorified his father. It's his life that pays this debt that we owe and it's because of his sacrifice, his death and burial and resurrection, ultimately his ascension because when he ascended back to the
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Father on high, he did what? He sent the Holy Spirit who's the one who poured out this love into our hearts so that we have this resource, not natural to us, completely foreign to our nature that we can draw upon.
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And I think of it like the man with the talents in the parable. One was given five. He returned five to his master.
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The master said, well done good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with little.
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I will give you much. And the man with the two talents, the same. I don't want to talk about the man with the one talent right now.
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I want to be those who go to the Lord having taken these five talents of love that he trusted me with or two or one or a half or whatever it is and go back and say, here's what
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I've expended. All that you gave me, all five talents, all 20 talents, all half a talent, all quarter of a talent, all of it
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Lord. And receive back that extra measure.
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Having been faithful with little and now trusted with much. I think that's the way this works. This is possible because of Christ.
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Christ in his perfect obedience to the Father perfected the law. By his death on the cross, he paid the penalty of the law and we are left with what?
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Fulfilling the purpose of the law. And is this not what the apostle says? By loving one another, you fulfill the law.
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I think what he means by that is all that the law pointed to. First of all, most primarily as a person and a work, the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Him. He's the point. He's the focus.
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He's the sum. And for us is this. To know that all of this could only have been fulfilled by the
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Lord Jesus Christ and he gives it to us to continue to fulfill this purpose. To love one another with all these positive ways that we have.
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How does that relate to debt? I've kept myself back from keeping this to be a lesson in how to manage our personal finances.
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I'm not going to go there very much. We have people in the church you can talk to about those things. It comes back to him or it comes back to us this way.
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If we have a constant obligation to love one another and preceding that constant obligation is no owe no one anything.
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I think the idea is this and we'll close with this. That anything we commit ourselves to outside of this
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Christian life that we have, any debt, whether it's literal debt or even abstract, whether the literal was the taxes and revenues, the abstract was the revenue and the honor, those sorts of things.
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If it reduces our ability because it takes away resources that should be contributed to the needs of the saints, be it spiritual or monetary.
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If it takes away our ability because we've gotten ourselves into so much trouble with debt and loans for things that we didn't really need that we lose sleep at night so we come here on Sunday when we're supposed to be loving one another and building one another up and I'm just too tired and cranky to do so.
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Every decision made on this side has to do with this. If we owe nothing except to love one another then everything we do on this side needs to be questioned and analyzed in terms of what it will do for ability on the other side.
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I think that's what he's getting at here. Is this not what we do as parents? How will this affect my children?
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My ability to take care of them, put food on the table, get them to college, pay for the wedding, help them with their first home.
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Don't we think that way? We should and all through Proverbs we're commended to think that way.
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What does Paul say here? Owe nothing except to love.
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I've gone through many positive ways. I just took them straight out of chapter 12 of Romans.
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We could examine the Bible for many lifetimes and find more and more ways. I would leave us with this, that this is the purpose to fulfill the purpose of the law and this is what it accomplishes.
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It's the payment of the debt that we owe to Jesus Christ and we owe it to him by administering it to one another and as we administer remember it is
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God by his Holy Spirit who makes us supply. Amen. Gracious Father we do thank you again for bringing us together and forgiving us these words from the
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Apostle Paul and Lord that you would by your spirit continue to mold us into this loving people that would bring the most honor to your name.
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We thank you Father that we can look at all the law in the Bible be it in the New Testament of the Old Testament from Sinai to Adam in the garden or to us from Christ on the mount where he preached that sermon.
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All this Lord we fulfill that purpose as we love one another so we thank you Lord that you not only set forth the terms but you give us the resource that we need to pay them and we pray that we would continue to do this in a way that brings the most honor and glory to your name.