Please turn again, and the Bible is found in the book of Romans, at chapter 12. Romans, chapter 12, in the Pew Bible, begins at the bottom of page 947. We're going to read Romans 12, from verse 1 to verse 13. We're going to especially be focusing on verses 9 to 11 today. Romans 12, reading from verse 1 to verse 13, please give your attention to the Word of God. 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. 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 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 that God has assigned. 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. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, 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. The one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness. 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 and seek to show hospitality. We're going to be especially considering verses 9 to 11. 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 and zeal. Be fervent in spirit. Serve the Lord. You know, we have here some quick-hitting instructions. And I beg you to remember that this is not how most of his book has been. Moses' book has not been telling you what to do at all. It has been telling you what God has done for us. But here, beginning at chapter 12, he turns from what God has done for us to what we are to do by the power of God's Spirit in us. Here we turn from statements about God's past action to imperatives that are to guide our own life. And so I've got to tell you, I was trying to think this week how to preach a string of instructions like this. I think I know how to tell a story when something happens in the text. I think I know how to follow the argument when he's kind of unfolding something at length. But this is kind of like a do this, do this, do this, do this. So I said, how do I preach a sermon on this? So I look back. You always want to look at the context. I look back to 1134. Who has known the mind of the Lord? Mind is the key thought through here. Verse 2, it says, be transformed by the renewal of your mind. So our mind is on the table, but before he got to our mind, he's talking about the Lord's mind. Notice what he says right at the end of chapter 11, how unsearchable are God's judgments. How deep is His wisdom? Who can counsel God? He knows what to do. We're not to tell Him, God, this is how you really should do things, dear owner. So what brings us all together is this idea of mind, of God's mind being deep and wise and all-powerful. And our minds are to become more like His, or more than that, We're to be transformed so that we can discern His will. Look again at chapter 12, verse 2. We have to be transformed by a renewed mind. Why? So that we can test and know what God's will is. We want to come to know what God's will is so that we can do it. Verse 1, so you can present your bodies to God. That is, so that you can carry out what is His will. That's how it goes here. You want to present your bodies as an offering to God, but how do you know what to do? Well, your mind must be transformed so that your mind can discern what is good in His sight. And that's what we're talking about today. If you come now to verses 9, 10, and 11, He's giving us instructions on the kinds of things that are in accord with the mind of God. Our mind is to be transformed this kind of way. Now, when we say, don't be conformed to the world, but be transformed, He's telling us both, don't go by conventional wisdom. Now, there are places where conventional wisdom is perfectly fine. Should you buy a Toyota or a Suzuki? You say, well, Toyota has better, the conventional wisdom is Toyota has better reliability. Well, then fine. Follow conventional wisdom and get the Toyota. That's fine. But when it talks about you and your place in the world, you and what you're up to, you and your goals, you and how you relate to other people, this is where you are not to hold to conventional wisdom. But we're also not saying hold to your own idiosyncratic wisdom. It doesn't say, don't be like the world, march to the beat of your own drum. That's not what it's saying. Because both the conventional wisdom, and your own idiosyncratic way of doing things. They both put yourself at the center. Conventional wisdom says, well, what would you like to do? What makes you happy? And your own idiosyncratic wisdom says, well, I like to do it this way. And in both cases, the I is primary. And so what we're being called out of is the self-centeredness of the I like, I want, I feel, I think. When we called out of the I, not to just lump it in with the collective conventional wisdom I, but with the God-directed I. The Christian puts God at the center. So as we put God at the center, what does that look like in practice? He says, let love be genuine. You can translate that word without hypocrisy. It's the ah hypocrisy word in Greek. It's how they like to do things. They have a word for something, and they want not to do it, you put ah in the front of it, like an atheist thinks there's not a God. Agnostic thinks he doesn't know. Agnostic is no, ah means not. So here the word is ah, hypocrite. Let love be not the hypocrite. Don't let love be the mask you put on, let it be the actual face that you really have. Not a fake smile, but an actual genuine greeting. That means not an eye-rolling, but actually, you're glad to see the person. That means not gossiping as soon as she's out of the room. Even if you know some, you bite your tongue. Love me without hypocrisy. And remember that Jesus condemned hypocrites most strongly of all. He was condemning those who pretended to want to follow God when their hearts were far from Him. But in this way, we become hypocrites. If we pretend to love, but do not really, then we are hypocrites, pretending to be following after God. Now, who are we to love? Well, there's no reason to limit it. To love all people, genuinely. But if you look at what he's been talking about beforehand, the body of Christ, and he's talking about afterwards, one another, There's a special emphasis here on love one another within the body of Christ. As I was saying about loving without hypocrisy, there's some ways in which, of course, this is much harder. Much harder to actually love someone than to just fake it. You can fake something for a little while, and then, whew, you get to go home again. That's easy. On the other hand, you might say it's easier to love without hypocrisy. Because then you don't have to remember what you said. Because you said what you meant. It was genuine. And so there's no need for retractions, for memory, and for trimming your sails. When your love is up to that hypocrisy, you just live an open and obvious life. And that is ultimately easier. Now, I want to address something. Because I've heard, I think I've only heard men come up with this. The women might need to hear it, too. It says, let love be genuine. So, if I don't feel love for my wife, does that mean that I shouldn't do anything nice for her? Because if I did something nice for her, that would be hypocritical, because I don't feel in love with her after after eight years. I've heard this more than once. What do you think of that? Since love is to be genuine, I shouldn't show love when I'm not feeling it. This is bad reasoning. It is bad reasoning first. Husbands. And wives. Because you took a vow to love and to cherish till death do us part. And the whole point of the vow was not to say, I'll do it when I feel it. The point of the vow was to say, I'll do it when I don't feel it. Because we know you'll do it when you feel like it. The vow holds you to doing something when you don't feel it. So, you have a vow to keep. Vows are very important in scripture. There's an old commandment about it, the third commandment. So keep your vows. Secondly, the emphasis in the Bible on love is leaning more towards action than to feelings. It doesn't exclude feelings. We can overstate that sometimes. But the main emphasis of biblical love is to do what is good for the person loved, to take care of them, to feed them if they're hungry, to warm them if they are cold. That is the emphasis of love. It's not warm fuzzies. Nice and clear. but to actually physically care for a person. And you can certainly do that when you don't feel like it. So there's no excuse here for saying, I don't need to love my wife in any concrete way until I'm feeling like it. No, I have a vow to keep to cherish my wife. I have instructions here that love means taking care of that person. And then here is the interesting secret. Often, what you need to do to start loving your wife again is to start acting right. And frequently, when you do the right thing, the feelings follow. Now, this is a secondary consideration. It is less important than the vow before God. But it is interesting how often when you start your feet moving in the right direction, and you start your hands and your mouth moving in the right direction, sometimes the feelings discover that they're along for the ride. And that is partially God helping us, God aiding us, God coming to our help and our wives' help. When we have honored Him by doing the right thing against our feelings, often then He helps us out by helping the feelings change. So, to deny love, because you don't feel it, is an excuse. It is a lazy excuse. It is a selfish excuse. We are to let love be genuine, and sometimes that means starting not with the feelings, but starting with the actions. Start with the actions, and let the love become genuine from the outside in. Now, he says, let love be genuine, and then he says, abhor what is evil. The word abhor is a strong word here. It means hate. In fact, it means really hate. And there's a certain cast of mind that would think he's being contradictory. How can he say, let love be genuine, really hate what's evil? Someone might say, well, how can love and hate coexist in the same person? Well, I'll tell you how it can coexist. If I love this child, then I hate the cobra right behind her. If I love this child, then I hate the cancer that threatens his life. And if I hate this young person, then I hate the oxycontin or the booze or the heroin that might threaten to take his mind and will and life. Yes, in a world of actual dangers, love for someone means hatred for whatever endangers the person. It's a sentimentality that says, oh, love and hate could never coexist. That's for fairyland places where there's no dangers. Where there are dangers and where there is love, then there will be hatred of the dangers for the sake of embracing the one who is loved. We're called there to something that's counter-cultural, when we're told to have genuine love that abhors what is evil. Often you have somebody say, I just want you to be happy. Is that a good goal, parents, for your children, to say to them, I just want you to be happy? I would say it depends on your time frame for the happiness. in the longest sense of happiness, then that is a fine goal. But that's not usually how people mean it. And what I mean is this, the one who embraces evil will not be happy. The one who embraces evil will not be happy in the long run, and probably not happy in the intermediate run, although they may feel happy in the short run. This is partially because of the nature of evil. The devil doesn't love you. The devil only pretends to love you to suck you in, to seduce you. You will be like gods, knowing good and evil. That turned sour very quickly for Adam and Eve. It turned sour before God even showed up. Already, before God showed up, their relationships were curdled, and they were trying to make clothes out of leaves. So that's the first reason why those who embrace evil will not be happy, because evil will not make you happy. Evil pretends to make you happy so as to have the traps clamped down on you. And the oxycontin that made all your problems go away is suddenly the problem, or whatever it may be. But the second reason in which embracing evil will not lead to happiness is the wrath of God, which is where this book of Romans really had its jumping off point. And so we're to abhor what is evil, because the devil is cruel, and God is a just judge. And if we have a genuine love for people, we don't want them to be captured by what is evil. We're called to a sharp-edged, realistic love here. Abhor evil, because your love is genuine, and dangers are genuine. Instead, we're to hold fast to what is good. Again, a very strong word, a cling word. It's the word that's used for husband and wife. As in, for this cause, a man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife. That's the word here for us, cling to what is good. That puts a rather vivid twist to it, right? You know what husbands and wives do. You say, this is too much. Well, no, it's not too much, because you cannot float your way into the kingdom of heaven. You can float your way to hell, because broad is the way that leads to destruction. But you cannot float your way to the kingdom of heaven. You have to swim. You have to swim with some vigor. You have to, in other words, work to take the narrow path. Those who find it are few. And so he tells us here that we need diligence when he says, hold fast to what is good. Now, how do you hold fast to what is good? There's all kinds of ways. Here's one. When you know what's right, you don't let your friends bully you out of it. You don't let your coaches bully you out of it. You don't let your teachers or bosses bully you out of doing what is right. That's one way in which you cling to what is good. And of course, to have the strength for this, you need to be clinging to God. Clinging to God in prayer. Clinging to God in the church. Clinging to God in His Word. He begins here, and he says, let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil. Really hate it. Cling to what is good. And is this any new teaching here? I think about two years ago we began going through 1st Timothy. And I asked you to memorize a verse. The verse was, the goal of our charge is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. And this is the same message here. The goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart. That is, let love be genuine. Let us have a good conscience because we have shunned what is evil and we have clung to what is good. How do I know that clinging to what is good is the wise course of action? Because I have a sincere faith in God. We have here the same message we have heard before. Now he goes on in the next verse. He says in verse 10, love one another with brotherly affection. And you all should really like this verse. So almost all of them. A couple of visitors don't have to like this verse. Do you know why you have to love this verse? What do you think is the Greek word behind brotherly affection? Philadelphia. Yes. It says love one another with Philadelphia. Because phileo is one way to say love, and adolphos is brother. I love one another with Philadelphia, with brotherly affection. And the other word for love is not the simple agape or phileo. It's the word used for parental love for children, philostorgos. Children are storgos. Got the philo again. That's love. That's how this family loves, parent-child loves, if you're looking at someone too young to be your sister. Love with parental loves or with brotherly and sisterly loves. Charles Hodge comments, you know, God tells us that we're one family. But where's the proof? We weren't born into the same family. We have not gone down to the courthouse and changed our names to the same name. We've not filed adoption papers for each other. Where is the evidence that we are one family? It must be in our love for each other. or there is no evidence. That must be the evidence that we are one family in Christ. When I was in college, there was one, at that time, Bible-believing Christian group on campus, Swarthmore Christian Fellowship. And the story had been passed down at the time just before I got there. There were a couple of converts from Hinduism, Indian young women who'd come to Christ. And being from India, they would dress in the brightly colored saris and so on. You could tell, I'm Indian. I'm dressed like an Indian person. And so there was this time when the snow was on the ground. And Nandini, I think it was, was enjoying this novel experience of snow. Because if you're not in the north of India, you're not going to see it. And she's throwing snowballs. And there's the Christian Fellowship members throwing snowballs at each other. And somebody walking by said, you know they love each other. And the group remembered it and said, ah, we're doing something right here on campus. If the people who are not walking in Christ can walk by and see our group of people from many backgrounds throwing snowballs and giggling at each other. But of course, brotherly affection is not just for fun in the snow. It's for fun in the snow, and it's for working on things together. It's for helping each other out. whether with tires or plumbing or flooring, for cleaning out houses, for loving one another in a time of need or distress or grief. All this is love one another with a brotherly affection and a family love, because that's what a good family does. And whether we come from a good family or not, we know that's what we would like our family to do. And so that is what we are to do here. He said, love one another with Philadelphia, and outdo one another in showing honor. Now, Matthew 23 sets some caps on showing honor. It says, call no man father, for you have one father. Call no one rabbi, for you have one teacher, the Christ. So there are certain caps put by Jesus on showing each other honor. We're not to outdo each other in lining up titles for each other. But we can still follow this instruction when we show honor and say, after you. We're saying, you know, I think Laurie's contributions are really important for this church. Or whatever it may be. Sometimes it's showing honor by biting your tongue and not telling your funny story, but listening to the other person's funny story. There are many ways in which you can outdo one another in showing honor. So he says in verse 9, it's genuine love for all. Verse 10, he says, there's a further description of that love within the church. It should be like a family. And then he goes on to say in verse 11, serve fervently. Now, the ancient church talked about seven deadly sins. And the medieval church kept talking about these seven deadly sins. And the Protestants have really not centered our instruction on them, but there's something to be learned from the so-called seven deadly sins. They are, in fact, deadly. Which one's the worst one? Well, the medieval thinkers generally said pride, and so we have that back in verse 3. Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought to think. He dealt with pride. But the ancient monks found sloth. to be the greatest danger. I think this makes a lot of sense. If you're around people, you're tempted to think you're better than them. If you're not around people, you don't have anybody stirring you up and you get lazy. So the monks, who were often by themselves, found sloth to be the greatest danger. But sloth really is a deadly sin. If you are pressing on in the Lord, and you know the Lord is holding you in His right hand, Well, then what would dissuade you from going on in the way of righteousness? As long as you are full of zeal for the Lord, a wise zeal, a knowing zeal, what could stop you? What could stop a church that is going forward in zeal? And so the devil is afraid of our zeal. The devil does whatever he can to dissuade or discourage or deaden our zeal. Let you be full of zeal for a while, and he will frustrate you. He will try to get you frustrated with all the other people who are not as zealous. He will try to discourage you by pointing out your sins. He will try to turn your faith in Jesus Christ into a religion of works and say, you know, you're not as zealous as you used to be. You better not go to Jesus until you get that zeal thing worked out, which is completely backwards. He says, don't be slothful in zeal. which is a contradiction in terms. How could you slothful zeal? But we need more than a wordplay. So he goes on to say, be fervent in spirit. And the word fervent suggests fever. And in fact, both words mean hot. This Greek word means hot. It's the same word that you get in Revelation 3. Jesus says to a certain church, you are neither hot or cold. I wish you were either hot or cold." It's this word, hot. And we have a positive example in the person of Apollos. In Acts 18, it says that he was boiling in spirit. That's this word here. We're to be boiling in spirit. Now, how can we be boiling when we have so much to do? How can we be boiling given our lives and how few others are boiling at any one time? He says, fervent in the Spirit. And while we can think of our own spirits, our own minds, we also should think of the Holy Spirit who lives in our spirit, with our spirit. Think of the Holy Spirit who helps us to pray when we don't know how to pray, who works within us to stir us up. We're to seek the leading and the prompting and the reminding and the power of the Holy Spirit. And this way we will continue to be fervent in spirit. How do we do this? Well, first of all, it says elsewhere, do not quench the spirit. If your conscience tells you something is wrong, listen to your conscience. If you go on overriding your conscience, you sear your conscience, and you begin to dampen the voice of the spirit in your soul. If someone else rebukes you, don't counterattack, but receive the rebuke. Don't quench the spirit. And don't replace the spirit. There's a very suggestive verse that says, do not get drunk with wine, but be filled with the spirit. And you say, well, that's an interesting contrast. Why are we bringing wine and the spirit into the same sentence like this? Seems to suggest that there are two things that can fill you. And the one could serve as a replacement for the other. But if you are being filled with wine, Where does the Spirit find place? So we are not to quench the Spirit, not to replace the Spirit. Instead, we are to use the means of grace, the means that the Spirit uses in our lives. The Word, prayer, the sacraments, the collective worship together. And there are times that each one will seem dry or boring. Times when reading your Bible seems boring. and the church service seems boring. There will be those times. What is happening then? The Lord is strengthening you, to have you walk by faith and not by sight. That is, to learn how to walk by obedience for a time, and without immediate confirmation and good feelings. He would have you be stronger, so that with Paul you can be content in this circumstance and in that. and to be constant. The danger is in turning aside. And when you say, because this has not been working for me for a month, I will go elsewhere. I will turn aside and fill myself with something else, because I have not tasted the Spirit for some time. Now we're to continue after the Spirit, continuing to pray, knowing that the Spirit is helping our prayers when we feel like it, and when we do not feel His presence. There is another danger with the Spirit. Some people always get fascinated by the Spirit, by the gifts of the Spirit. So it goes on to say, be firm in the Spirit and serve the Lord. If you have some spiritual gift, why do you have it? So that you can serve the Lord with it. And how do you serve the Lord with it? By serving your brothers and sisters with it. Serving within the body. The Spirit does not give us gifts so that we can be puffed up, or proud, or superior, but so that we can serve. So he goes right into it. Be fervent in spirits, and keep your head on straight, serving the Lord. In this way our love is genuine. It is not conventional. Rather, in the words of 2 Corinthians 5, 14 and 15, the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this, that one has died for all, therefore all have died. And He died for all. that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who for their sake died and was raised. This is why we serve the Lord. Because He alone has died for us. He alone opens the way to God. He alone not only lights the way, but is the way. So for this reason, we serve the Lord. Yes, the burden of this passage is that our love must be genuine. We must love genuinely as we fervently serve the Lord. Love avoids injury. Therefore, it abhors evil and clings to what is good. And love knows that we are a family. There's a saying that blood is thicker than water. I don't know the chemistry of that. Sounds true. But the point is in chemistry, when you say blood is thicker than water, what you mean is when your friend writes your brother, side with your brother. Right? Because the family tie will probably outlast that friend tie. But Christians nuance this conventional wisdom by saying that it depends on the water. Blood is thicker than water? Depends on the water. If the water is the water of baptism, Well then, it is thicker. Because it makes us into an abiding and eternal family. That water is thicker than blood. And so in some settings, still, we will be with our families. Yet in other settings, we are called beyond our families to the family of Christ. Let us be called here and told that in some cases, some water is thicker than blood. And so let us serve and love without hypocrisy. Let us form a wide and growing family at church as we serve the Lord, and we don't put ourselves at the center. Rather, Christ is at the center. He is the head of the body. Let's pray. Father, we pray that you'd help us to grow in our wisdom and understanding, not for our advantage, but that we may know what is your will. And we may see how it is that You would have us to carry it out. So Lord, we pray now that You would give us this increasing wisdom, that discerning Your will, we may love without hypocrisy, that we may see and abhor the evil, that we may see and cling to the good. Help us, Lord, to love one another with this brotherly affection as we with zeal pursue after You. serving you. We pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.