WWUTT 189 The Faith God Has Assigned?

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If you are a Christian, then you have been saved, called from darkness into light by the grace of God.

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We've all been extended this grace, but we've all been given this grace in different ways when we understand the text.

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Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text promotes sound doctrine while exposing the faulty.

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Here's your host, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We were looking at Romans 12, verses 1 and 2 yesterday, and honestly, if there's any two verses that I quote the most from the pulpit, it's gotta be

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Romans 12, 1 and 2. They were significant verses for me when I was a kid, but I didn't understand them in the right way.

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When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. I used to read Romans 12, 2, and I thought that as long as I'm not doing what everybody else is doing, or I'm not trying to please them or be popular with them, and instead

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I'm doing what makes the Lord happy, then he will give me the desires of my heart.

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He'll make my hopes and dreams come true, but that's not what that passage means. What it means is that we are no longer to walk in the old self, which was like everyone else in the world, but we're to take off the old self, put on the new self, which is being transformed in the image of its creator, and according to the word of God, testing all things so that we might present ourselves as living sacrifices unto the

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Lord, holy and acceptable, which is our spiritual worship. That's what

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Romans 12, 1 and 2 means. I didn't understand that when I was younger, but it's the understanding that I have now.

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Like I said yesterday, I'm now reading these verses in a way unlike I have never read them before because I've never given so much attention or so much time to the book of Romans the way that I have last year and this year.

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When Paul gets to Romans 12, 1 and he says, I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, it's in light of everything else that we have read in Romans up to this point.

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We've received orthodoxy in the first 11 chapters, and then in the next six chapters, starting with verse 12, we get orthopraxy, orthodoxy being right teaching, orthopraxy being the practice of that teaching.

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And so that's what Paul is presenting now to the Roman Christians, that we present ourselves to the

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Lord as living sacrifices. We no longer are conformed to the world or the old ways, but we are constantly being renewed, submitting our thoughts to Christ and being renewed after the image of our creator.

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According to the word of God, we're able to test and approve what is good and pleasing and perfect.

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So we're going to read that again, and we're going to move on today to about verse eight. At least that's the section that I'm going to look at.

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Whatever we don't get to, we'll wait until next week. So Romans chapter 12, verse one, I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

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Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

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For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith

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God has assigned. For as in one body, we have many members and the members do not all have the same function.

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So we though many are one body in Christ and individually members, one of another having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us.

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

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So we go back to verse three here where Paul says, for by the grace given to me.

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And this is a statement that he made actually at the beginning of the letter where he says that in his greeting, that through Christ, he has received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Christ Jesus.

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So Paul is calling attention to his authority as an apostle there. And when he says in verse three, for by the grace given to me,

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I say to everyone among you, he's coming back to that grace that God showed him and called him to the position of apostle.

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And he's using his authority as an apostle to give these Roman Christians a command.

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I tell you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think.

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That's what he's saying there in verse three, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

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And he will say later there in verse six, having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us.

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So each and every one of us have been extended a certain measure of God's grace. For the apostle

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Paul, he was a murderer of Christians. He was Saul of Tarsus before he was Paul, the apostle, and he murdered

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Christians. And yet God, by his grace, called Paul out of that murderous venture into becoming an apostle to the

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Gentiles. What a measure of grace that was. And to each and every one of us, we've been extended the grace of God called from darkness into his light.

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But that calling has come with a gift that we've been given by the Holy Spirit for the purpose of ministering to the saints, to the glory of God, to the praise of his glorious grace, the way that it's put in Ephesians chapter one.

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So all of us have received this grace, but we've all received a different measure of grace and a gifting according to that grace.

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So here, Paul is referring to the gifting of grace that he's been given as an apostle to command

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Christians not to think of themselves more highly than they ought to think. He comes back to this again in chapter 15, where he says, we who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves.

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Let each of us please his neighbor for his good to build him up.

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So these gifts that have been given to us are not for our pleasure. They are not for our benefit, but rather that we might edify the body of Christ.

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Paul talks about this more in first Corinthians 12. And when we go further into this next week, we'll look at that passage and also where Paul calls to this in Ephesians chapter four also.

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So there are some other places where he talks about gifts that have been given to different members of the body of Christ. And we have it here in Romans chapter 12.

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And we are and we are to serve each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

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The faith that we have has been given to us by God. I've said this to you before, if you've been a longtime listener of this broadcast and you've heard me say it, but you do not manifest your faith.

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You did not concentrate or think hard enough and just, you know, and then, bam, oh, I believe.

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OK, I get it now. That's not how we came about our faith. As I mentioned earlier this week, when we were going through the first 11 chapters of Romans and we were highlighting different sections,

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I mentioned in chapter four in verse 17, where God gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

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So at one point we were dead in our sins and our trespasses, and God called us from death into life.

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Previously, we did not have faith. And then we heard the gospel of Jesus Christ proclaimed.

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And now by the same word that calls into existence things that previously did not exist, now we have faith where we previously did not.

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And so it is it is God who has given us our faith. We did not just decide to have faith, but because we heard the word of God and believed it was by the power of God that we've been given our faith.

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We read in Hebrews 12, too, that Jesus is the author of our faith and he is the perfecter of our faith.

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At least I think that's what it is in the NIV. I believe ESV is the founder and the perfecter of our faith.

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But Jesus gave us our faith. There really is no part of the process of salvation that we can take credit for.

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As Jonathan Edwards once said, you contributed nothing to your salvation, but the sin that made it necessary.

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And so it is the work of God in our lives that he has done through Jesus Christ our

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Lord by nothing that we have done, but what he has done to the praise of his glorious grace.

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And so let us, by the grace that has been given to us by God, serve according to the measure of faith that he has assigned.

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For as in one body, we have many members and the members do not all have the same function. So we though many are one body in Christ and individually members one of another.

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This is an illustration that I think is most popular according to what we read in 1 Corinthians 12.

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At least that's the version that's most popular. One body, many members. So the foot can't do what the hand does, the hand can't do what the eyes do, the torso can't do what the legs do, you know, these kinds of things.

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That's kind of the illustration that Paul gives of one body and many members as we read it in 1

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Corinthians chapter 12. So it's just the same in the body of Christ. There's many members and they all do different things because they've all been apportioned grace differently.

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But Paul's also sure to level out in 1 Corinthians 12 that there is no part of the body that is more important than the other for even the lesser parts of the body are still necessary for the entire body to function properly and they will be given the greater honor.

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And so there's no one who can say, well, I have greater grace and God is showing that much more to me.

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No, we're not serving ourselves. This is not to benefit us. It is for the benefit of the body of Christ.

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We've been given these gifts so that we might edify members of the church.

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We might build up others. We do this for the sake of the faith of God's elect in Titus 1 .1

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that I also mentioned earlier this week. So having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them.

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And then as we come back to this next week, we'll get a little bit more descriptive and jumped around to some different parts of the

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Bible that also describe members of the parts of the body and their usefulness, what

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God has called them to do. Now everybody in the church is different and you can look at a congregation and know that without having to interview anybody.

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How? How do you know that? Because a congregation is full of men and women.

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There are things that God has called a man to do that he has not called a woman to do.

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There are things that God has called women to do that he has not called men to do. A woman cannot do a man's job.

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A man cannot do a woman's job, but the two of them in their strengths and weaknesses are able to complement one another so that they are a fully functioning body of Christ.

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Now just as we see this clearly in men and women, so it is the case with every member of the body of Christ.

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There are certain people who are going to be given certain gifts and you cannot infringe on that person's gift or you are not properly submitting to what the

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Lord has called them to as it says in Ephesians chapter five, we're supposed to submit to one another in reverence of Christ.

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And so what that means is we realize this person has been called to a certain thing and has been gifted in that and I can't do their gift and their calling or else

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I would be going against Christ and what he has gifted that person to do. So out of reverence for Christ, we submit to one another that each person has an opportunity to exercise their gift for the benefit of the body of Christ to the praise of God.

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And that's what we're going to talk about more next week. And just this little part that I've mentioned here about gifts

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God has given to men and gifts God has given to women, that's very un -PC. That is not like our culture at all to accept any kind of viewpoint like that.

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But we're going to look at that further next week as well. How God has called men and women to different things.

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And women, it is, it's a great thing for you to rejoice in the role that God has called you to.

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Men, likewise, rejoice in what God has called you in, not boasting over something that God has called you to that he hasn't called a woman to do, but stepping up and filling the role that he has called you to.

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And women, stepping up and filling the roles that he has called you to as well. And it is all to the praise of God, not for us and our benefit, but to the praise of his glorious grace.

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Our great God, we thank you that you have called us from darkness into your light and that you have given us our faith, that you have extended to us various measures of grace so that we all have been called to different gifts.

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We are all different in this body, united in one mind in Christ Jesus, but we're all different so that we might be able to show love and grace to one another as we grow and learn with each other in this body, being shaped and conformed in the image of Christ.

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What a beautiful and wonderful thing to have been called to be a part of this. So might we remain faithful to our gift so that we are edifying the body of Christ and also preaching the gospel to others that they might hear it.

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They will have faith where previously there was none, and they will be called to salvation further to the praise of God.

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God, it is in the name of your son, Jesus Christ, that we pray, amen. This has been

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When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabriel Hughes. For all of our podcasts, episodes, videos, books, and more, visit our website at www .utt

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.com. If you'd like to submit a question to this broadcast, or just send us a comment, email whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com,

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and let your friends know about our ministry. Join us again tomorrow as we grow together in the study of God's word.