Good morning. If you still have your copy of God's Word over at Romans chapter 12, we're going to finish up our vision series today. The last one being a vision for, a proper vision for service and for community. Now I have to say that as difficult and as complex as some of these other visionary parts have been, a vision for proper worship, a vision for proper evangelism, discipleship, a vision for proper leadership. In my opinion, this is the hardest vision of the bunch, is the idea of the entire church community together having a proper vision of service and community toward one another. And there's a few reasons why I think this one becomes one of the more difficult ones to talk about and then to actually follow through with. The first one has to do with just the busyness of American culture. And I know that we talk about that a lot, but I was able to find some stats. And again, stats are always averages. you know, and so it's kind of where they usually land. And you can tweak stats to get them to say whatever you want to. But they ran some stats not long ago for the average American between the age of 24 and 54 during their work day, so a Monday through Friday if they work a traditional five-day work week. And this is kind of how it breaks out for the average American. Average American spends about seven and a half hours of their 24-hour day sleeping. so getting decent amount of rest. They spend about eight and a half or so hours on their work day. That would include the time they're actually at work for their eight hour shift if they have one or the amount of time it takes to go back and forth to get there as well. The average American during their work week spends a little over two and a half hours in what they call leisure slash sports. If you've seen some of the health statistics in America, that's probably less sports and more leisure, meaning Facebook and Twitter and TV and things like that. The average American during the work week spends about a little over an hour engaging in household activities, whether that's preparing food, picking things up, cleaning up, washing dishes, doing clothes, whatever They spend about an hour plus, about an hour or so caring for others. Maybe it's a sick child, maybe it's a sick parent, maybe it's a sick friend, whatever it may be, but there's other people that they are caring for. They spend a little over an hour eating and drinking throughout the course of the day during the work day. On the weekends, it's more time than that, but during the work day. And then they dub in a category for the rest of the time, almost two hours doing other. So whatever doesn't fit in any of those categories, we spend almost two hours a day doing whatever those things may or may not be. And so when you begin thinking about the idea of American Western Christians really plugging into the idea of serving one another, having community with each other, doing all the one another things that are supposed to actually take place according to the New Testament, Unless there's a real shift in the way that we spend the vast majority of our time during the week, there's very little time in the average American standard week for these things to happen. And I know a lot of times, you know, people say, well, I'm just too busy and then we try to figure out ways to make excuses for why their excuse of being too busy isn't real. But this is real life. This is how it is. I don't know how the past couple of days have gone for you guys, but Amanda and I were talking about it for our past couple of days. This was a non-work day, but our Saturday weekend day off, we left our house at 10 that morning to go start doing all the stuff that we actually had to do. It's like stuff we couldn't really get out of, stuff we had to do. And we didn't get home until almost 10 o'clock that night from the stuff we had to do. on our off day. And I see a lot of nodding. There's a lot of people that's kind of what, even on your quote unquote non-work day off day, that's a lot of times what your schedule looks like. You've got some appointments and you've got some things. You've got stuff happening with your kids. You've got other sort of activities going on. Maybe you've got a help thing that you're plugged into or somebody wants you to help them with a project or whatever might be going on. There's stuff that's happening and there's just not a lot of time left. And so this is one of the hardest ones for us as incredibly busy Americans to really wrap our minds around. But the problem is that the church is never going to be what the church ought to be unless we make some kind of time for meaningful service and community. We have to do that. We have to find somewhere in our time-slammed schedules to actually engage other people. Now, all you have to do is take a quick perusal around the room. There is absolutely no way, because usually what happens is People look around at the church that they're at and they go, there's no way that all the stuff you're about to talk about I could do with everybody in this room. And you know what? You're absolutely right. No way. There's no way you could do all of the, it's nearly 100 one another statements in the New Testament that Christians are supposed to do to one another, that you could do that with everybody in this room. There's no way. Even if suddenly you found yourself independently wealthy and had no more work week at all, where like that big block of time, eight plus hours every day was suddenly freed up, you still couldn't do all of the one another's for everybody in the room. So what normally happens with us as human beings is we look around at the daunting task. I got a couple of hours to spare each week. I know I'm supposed to be about this community building thing. I know I'm supposed to be plugged into other people's lives. I know they're supposed to be plugged into my life. It's what's most mutually beneficial for Christians according to the Word of God. I know this is true. But I can't do it with everybody. And so what we usually do, our default as Christians is, well, I'm just not going to try to do it with anybody then. And we make up a bunch of marvelous excuses as to why we won't do it with just anybody, since we can't do it with everybody. Well, I don't want anybody to get their feelings hurt. I don't want it to feel cliquish. I don't want anybody to be left out. And we start finding all these self-justifying reasons why we don't make it happen. But the reality of it is we have to make it happen. even if it's just in smaller context with just a handful of other Christian people, it has to be a real meaningful part of our lives. So, what does that need to look like then? How can we squeeze that into the incredibly busy American schedule? Well, let's take a look at what needs to be happening. In verses 4 through 8 of chapter 12, It's been read for us already. The first thing that we see is a celebration of diversity. And in this case, it's not a celebration of ethnic diversity or racial diversity or socioeconomic diversity, which also are celebrated in the scripture because the gospel rises above all of those things. But in this case, it's a celebration of the diversity of spiritual gifts that people have received. I love how In verse 4 it says, for just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, verse 5, who are many are one body in Christ and individually we are members of each other. And then he begins explaining what that's about and he starts talking about spiritual gifts. This is a celebration of the diversity of spiritual gifts that exist among the people in the congregation. We are many members but we are one body. Elsewhere in the scripture, I believe it's over in Corinthians, Paul uses the same concept and he talks about how somebody might be a hand, somebody might be a foot, somebody might be an eye, somebody might be an ear. We're all different parts but we're all part of the same body. So there's one chief goal in the Christian life. We have the same goal and it's Christ-likeness. We all want to be as much like Jesus as we can be. That's the goal that we have. Now, I might be a hand, you might be a foot, somebody else might be an eye, somebody else might be an ear, but we're all one body moving toward the same direction of being as much like Jesus as we possibly can be. And we have to learn to celebrate diversity. The great problem with a fallen human being, even a redeemed one, is that our original core sin of pride and unbelief that leads to envying and coveting, all you have to do is go back and read the story in Genesis 3. That's what happened. There was unbelief, there was pride, and then there was a longing for a coveting of something that they should not have had, that really wasn't theirs, that they desired to go and get. That's essentially how it all boiled down. God said, you can't have this. They began to be proud of themselves and not believe God's Word, and they wanted to have what they weren't supposed to have. And you can essentially boil down all human sinning to that cycle. I get a little too stuck on myself, I get a little too unstuck on God, and I start wanting stuff that I'm not supposed to have. And I find reasons to justify why I should get to have the stuff I'm not supposed to have. Sadly, even among redeemed Christians, that cycle finds its way even in spiritual things. And so what happens is instead of celebrating the diversity of spiritual gifts that come, and Paul, like I said, talks about this in the other section where he talks about the division of spiritual gifts and the diversity of the Christian body. He says what happens is, is what if the foot were to say, I don't want to be a foot, I want to be a hand. And now there's a coveting of what it is that the hand is doing rather than embracing the reality of being a foot. What if the eye said, I don't want to see anymore, I want to hear. Man, isn't it cool how they get to hear stuff? That's amazing. I want to do what they're doing. I don't want to see anymore. And so instead of celebrating that, there becomes a coveting of what the other is doing. And that's dangerous for the church. Now, because these different gifts of grace come in, we have to exercise them accordingly. We have to not be envious of other people's gifts, as was just mentioned, but we also have to be, we have to not be burdensome towards the gifts of others. So there's two problems. One, sometimes we're envious of what other people's gifts are. I am incredibly, incredibly, incredibly envious of the people who have what's actually, and Steve Mills and I were talking about this a couple weeks ago, who have the actual biblical gift of the evangelist, gift of evangelism. I had a friend of mine a long, long time ago who very clearly, he still exercises it to this day, he has that gift. He could walk into a room, you could have been having a conversation for months with the most hardened atheist you've ever seen, and that guy's not budging. And this guy could walk into the room and lean over to him and say, one or two verses about how great Jesus is, and that dude is on his face, repenting, calling out on the Lord to be saved, and you're like, what? I mean, there's a guy I used to joke with. I used to say, man, you could go to a revival meeting and open up the phone book and a thousand people would ask Jesus to be their Savior. You know, it's just, it's ridiculous, you know. And I could become envious of that. But the opposite problem is not just envying the gifts other people have, but often becoming burdensome towards the gifts that they do have. And you say, what do you mean by that? Sometimes we feel like people ought to be meeting needs for us that they're not actually gifted to meet for us. That's why they're supposed to be. a conglomerate of the use of gifts in the congregation. That's the reason why there's supposed to be an exercising of the diversity of our gifts among one another. And a lot of times what happens is somebody exercises a spiritual gift toward your benefit, but it's not the one that you felt like you needed at the time. And rather than being thankful to God for the gift that they have that they're using, you say, well that's fine, but that's not really what I needed. This person needed to be more like this. Don't they understand that this is what I needed in my life right now? Why in the world are they over here doing this thing? And you've got somebody else over here maybe that has the gift that you think that you need and they're trying to exercise it, but you're putting them off. No, no, no, I don't have time for you right now. I'm really mad that this person didn't do what you're trying to do for me right now, even though they're not really gifted to do it. And you say, Philip, nobody does that. We do it all the time. You say, well, I don't see that in the Scripture. Let's go back to Genesis 3 again. When Ab and Eve were confronted with their sin of pride and unbelief and coveting, what was their natural response then to God in their fallen state? Well, if you hadn't given me this woman, God, didn't you know I needed something better than that? Comes to the woman, woman, what are you doing? You know this snake. Why would you put one of those in here, God? This is the natural human response. We either want what we're not supposed to have, Or we get frustrated when people give us the things that we might need that we don't really want. That's what we struggle with. Instead of being grateful, instead of being content, instead of being delighted that God has supplied the gifts that He has supplied, and reveling in the diversity of the gifts that God has given, and being joyful that God is meeting our needs in various ways, we get frustrated. We think our way of doing it and our way of accomplishing it is better than God's way of doing it and accomplishing it. And so we have to learn how to celebrate the diversity of the gifts that have come. So that's the first thing. The second thing is that we have to do everything that we do in the community of faith in both love and humility. We have to do everything that we do in love and humility. He says here in verse 9, and this is an incredibly difficult saying. At the front of verse 9, he says, let love be without hypocrisy. We have to love without hypocrisy. So what is hypocrisy? The root of that word was a word from Greek theater, and it meant to play act. It meant to wear a mask. And that's actually how they did acting a long time ago, because they only had a certain number of actors. Typically at that time, the actors were only allowed to be male instead of female, but often the plays had female parts. So they would take these masks and they would put these masks on. Usually the mask had a special tool built on the inside of the mask that would help project the voices since they were doing the plays outside. And they would put these masks on and it would help them play the different roles. And so one actor might be three or four parts in a play. Maybe a male, maybe a female, maybe one of the animals if it was a funny comedy or whatever. And so they would put these on And it was play-acting. They were mask-wearing. That's what that word was for. They weren't being who they were supposed to be. Paul here says we need to love without play-acting. We need to love without putting on a mask. We need to love without hypocrisy. In other words, we actually just need to love for the sake of loving. We don't need to love with some sort of end result in mind, some end goal in mind, some sort of accomplishment in mind. We don't need to show care and concern for people in the hope that it creates advantage later. We just need to love. Because here's the great theological question, and I've said this a lot from the pulpit, that theology and practice cannot be separated. That's why we have to have good theology and good practice put together. What advantage did Jesus have coming to the earth and dying on the cross for our sins? Now, a lot of people say, well, it made Him the glorious Son of God. Was He not already the glorious Son of God? He's eternally the second person of the Trinity, last time I checked. I mean, He was already the King of kings and the Lord of lords before the creation of the world. It's not like coming to the world gave Him any extra status. And when He talks about loving mankind, He doesn't talk about it in the benefit that He gained from it. He says, I didn't come to be served, but to serve, and to give my life as a ransom for many. There was no personal advantage to Jesus dying on the cross for our sins. It didn't make Him any more glorious. He's already all glorious. It didn't make Him any more God. He was all God already. It didn't make Him any more the King of Heaven. He was already the King of Heaven and Earth as it was. He is the second person of the Trinity. You cannot add value to a member of the Trinity. They're inherently, eternally valuable. And so when He demonstrates His love for us by coming in the incarnate form, He is demonstrating genuine, full-out, self-sacrificial love. That's what He's doing. And then He tells all of us, In that wonderful passage in John, I need you to love each other the way that I've loved you. How has He loved us? Not from my own advantage. Self-sacrificially. In other words, love without hypocrisy. That's what He's talking about there. And so how do we do that? How can we love without hypocrisy? Well, He gives us the one step. And I love that God is, He understands we're simple. I know that we're the most rational, intelligent creatures that exist on the planet, but we're still really simple when it's compared to God. And so here we go. How do I love without hypocrisy? Abhor what is evil and cling to what is good. That's it. I need to hate evil things. Whatever the scripture says is evil. I need to hate evil things and I don't need to just hate the evil things out there. I need to hate the evil things that are in here. And before I start hating the evil things out there, I need to begin. Judgment begins in the house of the Lord. I need to look internally before I take the speck out of my brother's. I need to take the plank out of my own eye and I need to understand there's some internal problems. And they need to be worked on. And I need to hate the things in me that God hates. And I need to cling to the good things that God loves. And if I can start there, guess what my love will then do? It will not have hypocrisy in it. It will be a genuine, real, putting the other first kind of love. Now, I'm going to be as honest with you as I can be this morning. That is really easy to say and incredibly hard to do. It is so hard to internally look and see what's wrong with me and to hate it and to put it away and to grab what's good and to replace it with it and to then let that be projected out to other people for their benefit. That is so hard to do. In our fallen condition, even though we're being redeemed, in our fallen condition, everything of us still connected with Adam screams, don't do that. Look out for number one. And people become commodities rather than those who bear the image of God. What is it that I can get out of this person by engaging with them in the relationship that I'm engaging with them? And when I don't get what I want to get out of them anymore, then I have no need for this and I just move on. This is not the kind of love that it's talking about. And when you think about the people that Jesus engaged with the most, The ones he demonstrated, at least in our human perspective, the most outward love tour in his public ministry, they were people who could not do anything for him. They couldn't increase his status. They couldn't increase his clout. They couldn't benefit him in any sort of meaningful way. He was spending time with the tax collectors, the drunkards, the sinners, and the prostitutes. They were not being advantageous to him in the way that we humanly think of advantageousness. They just weren't. And yet these are the people that he poured most of his time and energy and his blessings on. He loved the other. So do everything in love and humility. It starts with love without hypocrisy. Second, though, we move to a devotion to one another in love. We see this in verse 10. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Give preference to each other in honor. Are we devoted to one another in love? When we think about each other, do we think in terms of devotion? A lot of times we reserve that word devotion to really strict contexts. We talk about having a personal devotion, a devotional time with the Lord. where we're devoting ourselves to the Lord. The most natural one that we think of in human relationships is our devotion to our spouse, to our marriage, to that person that we're closest with. Perhaps a kind of devotion until we launch those arrows out into the world toward our children when they need us the most at a young age. But once we kind of get past that point, the devotion language and effort and truth starts to trail off. The scripture calls for the Christian to devote themselves in brotherly love to one another, in collective here. That we're supposed to have that sort of appeal and pull and connectivity with one another in that sort of an aggressive kind of way. And how do we do that? It says that we give preference to one another in honor. In other words, I need to always assume that you are of greater value to the kingdom than I am. That's what it means to give preference to someone in honor. The picture being painted here is the one that Jesus gave in the parable about the man who came and sat in a seat of honor that he wasn't supposed to be sitting in. And when someone more honorable than him came, that person was removed from their seat and they had to sit in the lowliest of chairs because the more honorable person was there and they weren't going to move the other people from their seats. And so this is the picture that's being painted here. In that parable, Jesus says what you need to do is you need to go sit in the lowest seat. And if the king of the banquet so sees fit, he'll move you up from the lowest seat to a higher seat. But what we need to be about as brothers and sisters in Christ is we always need to be giving the seat of honor to somebody else. We need to be saying, you know what? I don't need to be the center of attention. I don't need to get the credit. I don't need people applauding me. I don't need people patting me on the back. I don't need people telling me I was doing a good job. In fact, I want to cast all that on somebody else. Somebody else is really the reason why all of this is going really well. You are doing a great job. You're doing what's best. You are the ones pulling this off and that is fabulous. This is the way that we need to constantly be treating each other. is giving one another preference in honor. That's one step toward having a devotion toward brotherly love. And I'm going to ask the question, do we honor each other that way? The problem is that because of that pride, unbelief, coveting, envy cycle that lives in us, we want to make sure we get ours. We want to make sure that people know and understand, hey, we're doing a great job and people need to know it and they need to tell us and they need to acknowledge it and if they don't, we're going to get frustrated about it. And that's how we focus in on how come nobody's acknowledging me. That's what happens in our lives. It happens in the church. It happens in our work. It happens in our families. It happens in our personal relationship. It happens just generally in culture. And for the Christian, that's not the perspective that we're supposed to have. We're supposed to constantly be going, but hey, you know, this person, man, you guys need, hey, no, no, this person, look at how great this is. We need to be giving preference to one another in honor. So what does brotherly love look like then? In the following verses through the end of 16, from where we are, Starting at about verse 11, Paul lists out about six things that point out to us what brotherly love looks like. First, it's the diligent, spirit-enabled service of God. You see that in verse 11. Not lagging behind in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. I can't properly serve you if I'm not properly serving the Lord. If all I'm doing is trying to meet other people's needs without being concerned about my service to the Lord, it's just social. It's just some sort of social construct. It's not really what true gospel stuff is supposed to be about. It's the reason why people who don't have a relationship with the Lord can actually do some, at least, appearing social good things in the world. Because being an image-bearer of God, there are moments where we look across the aisle and we go, hey, this person has a need, alright, I'm going to go meet this person's need. And it becomes a social good for that individual. But it's not really meaningful as far as a relationship with the Lord goes. And so Paul starts saying, listen, if I'm going to have real brotherly love, I have to start with serving the Lord. Diligent spirit enabled service of God. The second thing that has to happen if we're going to have real brotherly love toward one another is we have to find joy and hope. We have to find joy and hope. Notice what it says in verse 12. It says rejoicing and hope. Humans are the worst. I happen to be one, so I'm including myself in this. Humans are the worst in looking past anything that's good and finding the one thing that's bad and talking about that thing. The worst, the absolute worst. It's the classic story. I'm not going to say it happened at my house when I was a kid because my mom might be listening to this and I don't want her to get upset with me. But I've heard of this happening in some people's houses where A parent gives a child a list of chores. I want you to do these 10 things before I get home from work today. It's summertime, the kid's at home or whatever. The kid decides to slough off and play video games or go outside with their friends or ride bikes or whatever they decide to do. They recognize, oh, mom's going to be home in an hour. I haven't done any of the 10 chores that I was supposed to do. Of course, mom's oblivious to all of this. She has no idea. She's assuming the child's being very diligent and getting all their work done. And so the child runs in and they start scrambling through the list. And they get nine of the ten things done, which, by the way, is a remarkable miracle of God and of itself for any child to get that much stuff done that they were given of a list. I'm just going to say. And then the parent comes home and they start looking around, they look around, they go, why didn't you take out the trash? They find the one thing that the person didn't do. And they're angry about the one thing. Now, should the person have done the one? Yes, kids, you should have done the one thing. There were 10 things on the list. You should have done 10 of them. But that's our natural response as humans. People do it in the workplace. People do it in a relationship context. People do it in family situations. People do it in the church. We look around and we say, man, you know, these people are loving this way and these people are supporting these folks like this and these people are helping this way and these people are using that gift and people are offering this class and this thing going on. But man, there's this one thing. Why aren't we doing the one thing? Worst church ever! They don't do the one thing. And it's like, well, what about the other hundred things that are going really well? Christians, if we want to have brotherly love toward one another, like real, genuine brotherly love, we have to learn to rejoice in hope. We look around at the hopeful things that God is doing. And we find joy in those things. Hey, you know, we've got a few struggles, but look at what good thing God is doing in our lives right now. Let's rejoice in the hope we have of seeing God work in this way. That's how we show brotherly love to each other. And he follows that with the third step of enduring hardship. Notice what he says. He says rejoicing in her hope, persevering in tribulation. So when we do find the one thing, because by the way, you can't keep neglecting the one thing, whatever it might be. We all have to grow and we have to develop and we have to mature. But how do we respond to the one thing? We we we persevere in tribulation. That's what we do. We say, you know, we're struggling in the one thing. We're not going to abandon hope, though. We're not going to let it consume us. We're not going to lose joy. We're going to keep chiseling at it through the power of the Holy Spirit. We're going to keep molding the clay and working alongside one another. And we're going to try to get better at the one thing. And we're going to persevere in the tribulation of the one thing not being the way that it needs to be. And we're going to find joy and hope in all the other things that aren't the one thing. That's how we start to show brotherly love toward one another. And how do we do that? Because I don't want to do that. I don't. It's hard. It's way easier to complain about the one thing than to find joy in all the other things. It's really difficult to persevere in tribulation. It's really difficult to look past the current circumstances and see the small nuances of God's thread of mercy and find hope on the other side of that. That's hard to do. So how do we do that? How does it become less difficult? Well, here we go. By doing the most difficult thing, being consistent in prayer. It says we need to be devoted to prayer, just like we need to be devoted to one another. And then that actually, at the end of those four things, it actually fleshes itself out into an action plan. Here it says, contributing to the needs of the saints. That whole phrase, contributing to the needs of the saints, is actually best translated, sharing the needs of others. In other words, it's the picture in Romans, earlier in Romans, where it talks about, you know, there's this big burden that needs to be picked up and we can't quite pick it up. And so the Holy Spirit comes alongside of us and he helps to carry the burden with us. This idea of sharing the needs of others is, I come to understand a need that someone has. They can't carry this need on their own. God perhaps has gifted me or gifted you or gifted someone with the spiritual gift necessary to help carry that burden. And so they come alongside that person and they grab the other side of the thing and they pick it up and they carry it. That's the picture there. That's the picture of what's going on there. And then the last part, and I love this, it says practicing hospitality. Practicing hospitality. This phrase is most literally translated, pursuing friendliness to strangers. Pursuing friendliness to strangers. I've only touched on the edge of this a few times because no one likes to really express their weaknesses. But gone in a providential moment this morning in our Sunday school class had our Sunday school teacher where I go make a public statement about this. And so I was like, you know, all right, God, nudge received and I'll take it. It's really hard for me to practice friendliness to strangers. I know it seems weird because I'm a public speaker guy. I thrive in two contexts and two contexts only. One to one or two, just talking to one or two people, or pretending that you're all one person, which is what I do every time I get up. I don't see a crowd full of people. I'm just pretending there's one person out there. I'm just having a conversation with one person, which I can do. And so this makes this seem really easy. You get me in a group of about four or five or more people, small group of people, party size people. There's six or eight couples at a get together. I just, I lose it. I really don't know what to do with myself. Who should I be talking to? Who should I not be talking to? Where should I be standing? Should I eat while they're talking? Should I laugh? Should I agree? I become markedly uncomfortable in an environment like that. When I'm engaging a handful of strange people that I don't know, this has never been my thing. Ever. I know you find this hard to believe. Because it's like, no, all preachers are extroverts. Absolutely not. And so I have a really hard time personally reading this verse. I'm looking for the hook that says, if it's your spiritual gift. But it doesn't say that. It says if you want to show brotherly love, then everybody needs to learn how to practice friendliness towards strangers. I don't like it. I just don't. I overcompensated for it as a kid by being like really hyperactive and loud. Because if I was really hyper-inactive and loud, I wasn't really engaging anybody, I was just being a nuisance. And then as an adult, I swung way far the other way, and I would just find the one person in the room I wanted to have a conversation with and pretend that nobody else was there. But that's not practicing friendliness towards strangers. And so God doesn't really care about our comfort zones. He doesn't care about our anxiety issues. He doesn't care about the way that our personalities are shaped. He made us the way that we are, and then He calls us to come out of it. And we need to learn, and some people do this, they have no problems with this. Chad Barnes who prayed this morning, man, there are no strangers. And no loss of practicing the friendliness towards them. And you guys are nodding, you know that this is true. You know that this is true. But this is what we're called to do. If you want to have brotherly love, we need to have diligent spirit and able service towards God. We need to find joy and hope. We need to endure hardship. We need to be consistent in prayer. We need to share, carry the needs of others. And we need to pursue friendliness towards strangers. And in order for us to do that, he closes this section off with having unity of mind. We need to have the same mind together. This is what needs to happen for us. It said, Bless those who persecute. Bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. Be of the same mind toward one another. Do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly. I have to have unity. I cannot be arrogant. I cannot think of myself as greater than others. I have to not be socially withdrawn from the people that are labeled as the lowly. I can't be wise in my own eyes. I have to be open. This is carrying over from that pursuing friendliness to strangers. I have to be willing to engage with those that I might not typically engage with. And that is true of all of us as believers. This is how we exercise brotherly love. And finally, so we have a celebration of the diversity of gifts. We do everything in love and humility. And then it closes with striving for peace. In verse 17, he says, Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. If possible, as far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God. For as it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. But if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a drink. For in doing so, you heat burning coals on his head. Do not become overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." As a young man, newly converted, when I really started reading through the Scriptures and began to be discipled and began to understand how my life was supposed to be different now that Jesus was really in it, I came to this text. This text was a breaking point text for me personally. Because I was what you could identify as an instigator. I didn't let things go. I was an angry young man. I most certainly was going to get mine if somebody had mistreated me, had disrespected me, you know, this is kind of where I grew up. And you just didn't allow those sorts of things to slide by. And when I read this, I remember vividly coming across this text as a young Christian convert going, never Never pay back evil for evil. Never. Like, I mean, I can think of it half a dozen times without trying why it's a really good idea to do that. Never pay back evil for evil. Never take your own revenge. Ever. Like, really? Ever. And I'll be honest with you, I still struggle with the full fleshing out of how that works today. I get it as an individual, but what about as a nation state? Does that apply to nation states or just people? Like, you know, there's some real theological outflow. I mean, I don't think the Bible teaches to be pacifist, but don't ever take your own revenge ever. That's tough. That's really hard. Never do that. And then this next part is kind of it's wild respect. Or take thought for, as a better translation, what is right in the sight of all men. In other words, respect the right as understood universally according to God's presence in us as image bearers. Friends, there's a reason why every culture on the planet, every culture on the planet that has ever been studied historically has developed some version of law for their culture. And the reason for that is that we are image bearers of God. God has written eternity and his law on our hearts. Now, as mangled as it may be coming from our twisted sinful hearts, it is still there. And there's a reason why every culture in the world from the most animistic tribal groups of people to the most civilized societies that have ever existed. People want some sort of law, order and structure to declare this is the thing that is right and this is the thing that is wrong. Even if they get those incorrect, even if they call the wrong right and the right wrong, it doesn't matter. There is a longing in the human person to understand that there is an objective right way to be and an objective wrong way to be and that you should be penalized or rewarded accordingly. By the way, that's a natural apologetic for the fact that Christianity is true. It's just beautiful that that's true all over the earth and all time and space. And he says here that we need to give thoughtful, we need to respect the right as universally understood in human beings as image bearers. In other words, God has stamped on us that which is right. And if you're in a Christian context, it's being undergirded by the revelation of God. So that really is the thing that's right. You're not getting it wrong. You're reading it from God himself saying this is what is right. And when it's properly understood, we need to honor that. We need to honor the fact that there is a right way to be. You want to be able to live at peace with people? Everybody come to the same conclusion that there's a right way to be and then live that way. Guess what happens? You live at peace with people. Why do people go to war? Because one person thinks this is the right way to be and the other person over there says, no, that's absolutely not the right way to be. And it creates a clashing and you don't live at peace with one another. In the Christian context, this becomes our guide. If I'm living in such a way that it's not according to the universal right as supplied by God, I need to yield to that rather than being contentious with other people. It's why we're in community in the first place and why we're able to hold each other accountable for what's going on in our lives. It's so that people can come to one another and say, listen, this thing that's coming out of your life, this thing that's coming out of my life, it doesn't really jive well with God's universally understood right and it's causing problems. And you need to let that go so that it will cause us to be able to live at peace with one another. And then that's when we need to be humble enough, remember this whole thing started with humility, saying, you know, you're right. That needs to get severed out and replaced with something else so that there can be unity and peace. And then he closes this section with, as far as it depends on you, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with all men. And that's where he talks about never taking revenge and leaving room for God. But I like this as far as it depends on you, as far as it depends on you. In other words, have you done everything that you could do And a lot of times when we say that, and I know it's true of me, even just now when I said it, and I knew I was going to say it and the thought still came into my head. A lot of times when we say, all right, I did everything that I could do, what we actually are telling ourselves is, I did everything that I could do to them to get them to understand why they need to be different. That's what we actually mean by that. As far as it depends on you, when Paul says that, he's not, as far as it depends on you doing the stuff you need to do out there to get everybody else to change and agree with you. No. As far as it depends on you, have you turned the microscope inward and said, okay, am I striving in every way that I can to be the peacemaker that's described in the Beatitudes of Matthew? Am I being that person? Am I trying to love my neighbor? Am I trying to abhor what is evil? Am I trying to cling to what is good? Am I trying to find joy and hope? Am I trying to persevere through tribulation? Am I being consistent in prayer? Am I helping to bear the needs of others? Am I actually striving for peace here first? a bunch of years ago, and I don't normally cite Buddhist thinkers from the pulpit, I don't usually encourage that, but a bunch of years ago I was listening to a lecture from a modern Buddhist philosopher and she said, everyone claims that they want world peace and they claim that they would be willing to do whatever it would take to attain it until I ask them Well, what are you doing then with your ex whoever to have peace with them? Because everybody has an ex somebody, you know, some sort of broken relationship, a friendship, a marriage, a family situation, a work relationship, something that's gone sour, something that's gone south, where there's a cantankerous circumstance between you and another human being. And the point that she was making was everybody says they'll do whatever it takes to get world peace until you ask them very specifically about their ex whoever. What are you willing to do? Because step one of world peace is local peace. What are you doing to make peace there? In other words, as far as it depends on me, am I living at peace with all people? Am I doing whatever it's taking here to have peace out there? Because that's usually where it starts. It usually starts here. And so am I leaving room for God? And so how do you do that then if you have a legitimate enemy? Like if you have a real full out, for real though, they despise you, they can't stand you, they want only ill for you, they're maybe even actively planning ill against you. How do you then respond this way toward a person like that, an actual enemy? The scripture says here, love your enemy. Love them. Jesus said it very plainly. Paul kind of gives an explanation of what it looks like. If your enemy is hungry, feed them. If they're thirsty, give them something to drink. Be kind to them. Be at peace with them as far as it is within your power to do so. And friends, the reason Paul says this is there's no way for us to be like that with our enemy. And by the way, the scripture, whether we like this or not, it doesn't matter if we like it or not, the scripture lays it out like this. All of those who are not under the gospel are enemies of the gospel, whether they realize they're enemies of the gospel or not, which by extension makes them enemies of the church. Even if they're very nice and friendly towards us, if they're not in the kingdom, they're passive enemies of the kingdom. And so how can I love my enemy, the one who's outside of the faith out there in the world, if I'm not pursuing peace and love with my brother who's already in the kingdom. And so the reason he started with all the other stuff that he started with is because if I can't do that here, where I already agree about salvation, I already agree about the cross, I already agree about the gospel, I already agree about the basics of the doctrine, I already agree about all of these things, I already agree about the general principle of how life should be lived, in the Christian faith, yet I still can't find peace with that person. If I can't do that, how am I going to love the one who's on the outside of the kingdom? How am I going to do that? And so that's why he starts there. He said, well, Philip, that doesn't really help us as far as the whole service and community thing. Absolutely it does. Because the service and community thing is not about finding time in your busy schedule to add another event. It's about finding space in your life to be a different kind of person. It's about finding room in my heart and in your heart to be more Christlike more often with as many people as we can be. It's about praying for people. It's about living at peace with people. It's about forgiving people. It's about being reconciled to people. It's about finding ways to try to be like Jesus as much as we can as far as it relies on us with people. Now, of course, you do have to break out time and be in people's lives and be in Bible study with people and pray with people. We need to make time for that. But this idea of truly being in community is one more of attitude rather than opportunity. It's how am I going to approach people? Am I going to approach people with the genuine belief and trust that the Christ in them will resonate with the Christ in me? Jesus is going to get along with Jesus. Or am I going to approach people more in myself? Philip approaching people rather than the Jesus in Philip approaching people. It's more about an attitude. It's more about a perspective. It's more about a yielding humbly to the Spirit of God than it is exalting myself. It's more about giving preferential honor to the other than it is lifting up my own name. It's really more about attitude and not about opportunity. And this is how Jesus did it. He took the opportunities that came His way. He gave opportunities to the other disciples. But His constant attitude was one of, I didn't come here to be served but to serve. That was the constant attitude. And so whether it was with the one lowly woman at the well or the thousands of people on the mountainside who needed to eat, the opportunity actually didn't really matter. It was about the attitude that was brought into the opportunity. Am I going to exalt the image bearing person that I'm looking at now or am I going to exalt myself? And if we want to have a proper vision for service and for community in the Christian church, it's got to start with the attitude of the exaltation of the other. not the exaltation of self. Let's pray together. Father God, thank you. Thank you for this word, this clarity of truth that you've given, that our attitudes need to be changed, that our hearts need to be transformed. Father, thank you. Thank you for the truth of your word. Thank you that it lays out for us an action plan that we can take where our lives can be changed from the inside out and actually have a meaningful impact on the lives of those around us. Father, teach us to be humble. Teach us to be gracious. Teach us to be forgiving. Teach us to love the other without hypocrisy. Teach us to be this way. Teach us to search internally first before we try to be corrective externally to others. Father, teach us to let go of those things that so easily beset us, those things that trip us up, those things that hold us back, those things that we struggle with, those sins that we have, those fears and phobias and nuances that come into our lives that make us ineffective because we embrace fear more than we do faith. Father, let us have an attitude of Christ, a longing to make much of the other person, and assuming the best in the other, and rejoicing in the hope that comes from that, and persevering in the tribulation of the shortcomings, but not lingering on them, but rather being the kind of gracious people that we need to be that make much of Christ where we find Him. And Father, in that, when that happens, we will really love each other. And the world really will know that we're Your disciples because of it. In Jesus' name, Amen.