Join me, if you would, in the book of Romans again, Romans chapter 12, as we continue on in our survey of the book of Romans. Again, this is very difficult to cover so much material in such a short period of time. But again, my plan is to try to give you the overview and not to lose sight of the forest for the trees. And that's easy to do when we sort of zero in on some of these texts, as wonderful as they are. My goal is for us to stand back and see the flow, the flow of logic, and that especially, I pray, will be the case today. I want to read this twelfth chapter of the Book of Romans. Romans chapter 12, beginning in verse 1. I will try to be covering from chapter 12 up into the first part of chapter 15. So pray for me. Pray for you, your endurance. We'll do the best we can. Romans 12, starting in verse 1. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, according as God has dealt to every man the measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one member is one of another. Having been gifts, differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith, or ministry, let us wait on our ministering, or he that teacheth on teaching, or he that exhorteth on exhortation, he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity or liberality. He that ruleth with diligence, he that showeth mercy with cheerfulness, Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil, but cleave to that which is good. Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love in honor preferring one another, not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing instant or diligently in prayer, distributing to the necessity of saints, given to hospitality, bless them who persecute you, bless and curse not, rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep. Be of the same mind one to one another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits. Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men. If it be possible, as much as life in you, live peaceably with all men. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath. For it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him. If he thirsts, give him drink. For in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." Well, we have now completed the didactic, the teaching portion of the letter of Romans. We have had eleven chapters of doctrine. If we think back over it, we began with the utter sinfulness of man, the totality of man's sin, the universality of sin, the lostness of man, if you will, and then we saw God's wonderful remedy through the propitiation that is in Christ Jesus. There is a redemption available to man, a propitiation, a reconciliation through his blood, whereby by faith we may come and be justified in the sight of God. And then the ramifications of that union with Christ, that this faith in Christ brings us into a living, vital union with Him, and the outworking of all that, the effect that that has on our life, and the final victory over sin that is God's purpose for us. And the certainty of that, because it rests not on us, it rests on the purpose of God Almighty, And then we ended last Sunday by looking at how that purpose, though to many eyes it had changed, that God was switching from plan A to plan B, from the Old to the New Testament, Paul is making it clear that that is not what's happening, that what is unfolding in this New Testament age is precisely and exactly what God had intended all along, that there has been no deviation whatsoever in his purpose. But now, the tone. changes completely. Everything to this point has been, with rare exception, about what God has done for us. Now, as we will see today, it is all about what now we are to do. how we are to respond to what God has done for us. Now, you might be saying, well, why didn't Paul just spare us a lot of time, a lot of grief, a lot of agony? Why didn't he just start here? Why didn't he just start with what we're supposed to do? Why did he fill up eleven chapters of all this teaching, of all this stuff that's sort of out here, this objective thing that God's doing, and then come around to what we're talking about here at the tail end of this letter? But you have to understand that the connection here in chapter 12, verse 1, that little word, therefore, as we say when you see the word therefore, you ought to look back and see what it's there for. Well, you ought to do that in this case. You ought to see the connection that everything that is flowing now that constitutes our duty towards God flows out of what he calls here the mercies of God that had just been presented to you in the first eleven chapters. And you say, well, that's really, why don't you just cut to the chase? Well, you can't cut to the chase. Because what constitutes the Christian life is that which flows out of our grasping by faith the enormity of what God has first done for us. That our life as a Christian is understood to be our response, our echo, our thunder to the lightning bolt of God's grace. that has come into our lives. This is all fruit. It's not root. This is not the basis of how we're saved. We had that understood back in the first 11 chapters, how God saves us. This is the outworking, the fruit that flows from that understanding. We are, in verse 2, to live very differently than people live in this world. And we live differently, not just to be different, not just to be peculiar, and we've got a lot of folks like that, but differently because our minds have been transformed. Our thinking has completely changed within, and so we now act completely different without. We are to present ourselves as a living sacrifice unto God. If you were in my Sunday school class this morning, we've already hashed through that somewhat. We saw with the Levites back in Leviticus, I'm sorry, Numbers chapter 8, that that is exactly what the Levites were to be. Moses literally presented the Levites as a wave offering before God. They were an offering, and we think of normally offerings are animals that die, Their blood is poured out, but in this case, it is an offering that is alive, and what that meant was, from that moment on, the Levites were to dedicate themselves wholly and completely unto the service of God. That is what Paul is saying to you and I, who know God through Christ, through faith in Him, that it is our duty now to see ourselves and to present ourselves as a living sacrifice before our God. We are to demonstrate the will of God. But what is that will? Well, that's what is going to be sketched out for us in the rest of this chapter, and in fact, the next three chapters. It is a sketch of what constitutes the will of God for Christians. Now, we're not talking about the will of God that pertains to specific individual events in your life, you know, where you're supposed to live and what kind of work you're supposed to do, what company you're going to work for and what woman you're going to marry or man you're going to marry, things like that. No, we're not talking about that which constitutes those things. We're talking about the general sketch of what it is God's will for all of us as believers to do. There's no exceptions for anyone. This is what we're all called to do if we indeed belong to God. Well, let's first of all notice, and I'm going to sort of give you up front, just in case I don't get to them, the three divisions that I wish to show you from this section of Scripture. First of all, in the first division, how we are to relate to the saved, our Christian brothers and sisters. Secondly, how we are to relate to the lost. this lost world round about us, and then thirdly, how we are to relate to what Paul calls the weaker brother that is found in chapter 14. So let's get started. First of all, let's talk about how you and I are to relate to one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. Now notice that we are not just saved from something, we are saved to something, we are saved for something. We're saved from something, all right, hell, sin, death, but we're saved, too, for something, service. And here in these next few verses, starting in verse 3, we see how our service is to work. We serve Christ specially by serving his body. Jesus said, when you did this for the least of these, my brethren, you did it for me. We serve him by serving his people. And here we see that service sort of laid out before us. That the Christian, first of all, is to make a very sober assessment of himself. A sober assessment of the grace that has been given him. There is the presumption here, let me say this, that there's two extremes here. First of all, there's delusions of grandeur. That God saves me, so I'm going to be another Moses. I'm going to be another Spurgeon. And then there's the other extreme that, well, I can't do anything. You know, I don't have any gifts. I don't understand this and that. I can't teach. I can't do this. I can't do anything. Well, Paul deals with both those extremes. First of all, take a sober assessment of who you are and what you are and of the gifts that God has given to you. If He's given you the gift of teaching, then teach. But if he hasn't, don't try to teach. It's sort of like putting a square block in a round hole. If he hasn't gifted you in that area, then don't think that you're the greatest teacher that ever hit this world if you don't have that grace, you see? And on the other extreme, you say, well, I just can't do anything. Well, Paul says, yes, you are. Yes, you can. If you are a believer, then you have been given grace. You have been gifted in certain areas. You have certain abilities. Find them and use them. In other words, the Christian's first duty is to assess the grace that has come to him through Christ and then get after it. Put it to work. If you teach, teach. If you show mercy, then show mercy. You say, well, I don't know how to show mercy. You don't know how to show mercy? You don't know how to be compassionate. You don't know how to cook a meal for somebody. You don't know how to visit somebody in the hospital. You understand there's a certain bottom line here that all of us have been gifted in that area. You say, well, I just can't do it. No, you won't do it. Let's be honest. Sure you can. How much ability, how much grace does it take to cook a meal for somebody? How much grace does it take to go visit somebody in the hospital? Do you understand? to comfort somebody that's grieving, to send them a card to say, I'm thinking of you, I'm praying for you. And some of you, by the way, we have in our congregation folks that do that in a very special way. And I'm so grateful and thankful. I've been on the receiving end of some of those things, of people that just send a card. Thank you for this. Thank you for that. We need encouragers. We need folks to say, yeah, I appreciate what you're doing. I see what you're doing and I really appreciate it. Thank you on behalf of the body of Christ. You see, there's a certain minimum here that we're all gifted to some degree in certain areas. And maybe we can't all stand in this place and preach a sermon, but we all have abilities. And what Paul is saying, get with it. Find it and employ it. and use it. Find your niche. And then secondly, he reminds us, down in verse 9, that our service to one another is to be done out of a heart of love. That love is to undergird everything we do. And again, let me give you my definition of love. That love, as the scriptures define it, is not so much a touchy-feely thing, an emotional thing. Oh yeah, it has that aspect to it, but that primarily is not what it is. That love, and here's my definition, is a sacrificial determination to do another good. I sacrifice me for you, for your benefit, for your good. That's what it means to love. That's exactly how God loves us. God so loved the world that he gave us all the warm and fuzzies. No, God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. He sacrificed His Son for our sake. Do you see? And you can trace that all the way through the Bible if you want, and you'll hardly ever find an exception. That is precisely how God loves us, through sacrificial action. And therefore, if we are to emulate the great love of God for our soul, when we say that we're to love others, it doesn't mean that we necessarily have the warm and fuzzies for them. I don't know about you, but I can't turn the warm and fuzzies on and off. I can't find the switch. If you'd figure out how to do it, let me know. It sure would make sacrificing for you a whole lot easier if I had the warm and fuzzies for you. But nine times out of ten, we don't have the emotional drive. But nevertheless, we can still sacrifice. We can still act compassionately towards one another. He tells us, starting in verse 9, how we are to show love by serving one another. We're to seek humility in all that we do. We are literally to work our way to the bottom. Because working your way to the bottom in the kingdom of Christ is actually working your way to the top. Isn't that what he said? Great, let him be your servant. He that would be chief will be a little higher than great. Be chief, let him be your slave. Even as Christ, who's he? Well, he's king. Why does he get to be king? Well, he's the boss's son. Of course he gets to be king. No. Because even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give his life a ransom for many. He deserves to be in the high seat, the chief seat, because none ever laid down their lives in sacrifice for others as he did. You understand? In the kingdom of Christ, working your way to the top means working your way to the bottom. And so we come with this humble frame of mind, preferring one another, looking at others and saying, you know, he's more deserving of the good seat than I am. He's more deserving of the good stuff than me. We are to occupy ourselves Notice the scripture in the King James here in verse 11 says, not slothful in business. And this is not really talking about your business, your secular vocation out there in the world. It's talking about the fact that if you are a Christian, you have a primary vocation. A vocation, a calling in life, you have a business. What is that business? Well, it's the business that the Levites had, serving God. He said, wait a minute, I'm a plumber, I'm an electrician, I sit behind an office desk, I'm a secretary. It doesn't matter. Your first primary vocation is serving Christ. Those are all avocations. Those are hobbies. That's what you have to do. I remember being in Nashville. I pastored over there for seven years and everybody in Nashville is either a songwriter, a singer, a guitar player. You can shake trees in Nashville and half a dozen guitar players fall out of them. I mean, everybody over there is... I mean, the fellow cutting my hair. What are you doing here? Well, I'm a bass player. Well, he's cutting hair to make a living. You understand? But what drives him is playing music. That's his life. Cutting heads is what he has to do to survive. You understand? And so it is with your calling and my calling that we have to do some things to put a roof over our head and keep food on the table. But our life is serving Christ. That's what we do. That's our calling. That's our business. And we're to be fervent in that business. We're not to be lazy, sitting on our hands. But fruitful we are to be concerned about holiness. I've had to amend my definition. That love is a self-sacrificial determination to do good for another with this little addendum, good as God defines it. Not as the object of my love defines it, nor even as I define it, but good as God defines it. I am to seek their good, and notice in verse 9, the last part, abhor that which is evil, cleave to that which is good. Notice that follows right after the duty of loving one another. Love, but love in a holy way. Seek the good of your object, but good as God defines it. We are not, because of love, to pat people in sinful situations on the back and tell them everything's fine. We are to seek their true good, good as God defines it. Well, then let us move to the second part of this, starting down in verse 17 of chapter 12, where we start the subject of how we relate to the lost. And man, we have a hard enough time getting along with the same, don't we? I mean, we got enough little faults and little crazy things that drives us nuts, our little eccentric behaviors and so forth. And in love, we seek to overlook those things. But man, Now we turn to a much more difficult problem. How do we relate to those who are lost? It's one thing to deal with family, brothers and sisters, and put up with their nonsense. But these folks who are enemies of Christ, enemies of the gospel, and truth be known, are enemies if they have their way. How are we to relate to these who hate everything we love and detest everything we stand for? that are working in the very opposite direction to everything that we are aspiring to. Well, let me say that certainly our primary duty is always to the saints. Paul writes in Galatians 6, verse 10, Do good unto all men, especially to those who are of the household of faith. You understand what he's saying? You have a duty of doing good to all, but particularly you have a duty of doing good to your brothers and sisters. Those are part of your household. spiritual household. But we still have that other duty, do good unto all men. Well, let's look at what he describes as our duty. First of all, we are to give no payback of evil. When we are cheated, we are to respond with honesty. When we are lied to, we are to respond with the truth. When we are cursed at, we are to respond with a blessing. When we are injured, we are to respond with something good. Now, those words are pretty easy for me to stand up here and say. They're awfully hard to put into practice when that jerk cuts you off on the freeway tomorrow morning and gives you a little salute. And I think I know what runs through your mind, what you want to do, how you want to respond. You know what I mean? And yet, notice what Christ is saying. You and I are called to a different lifestyle. We are to manifest Christ-likeness all the time, a hundred percent of the time, to a hundred percent of the people, with every excuse because, well, they're evil. We are to strive for peace as much as it lasts within you, Paul says, and that is an admittance, isn't it, that it's not always possible. But if at all possible, we're to seek peace with our fellow man, live peaceably among them. We are to commit our grievances unto God rather than in rendering vengeance ourself. I know there are times we want to get a two before and go not some sense into somebody, wring their necks and all the other things that crosses our mind. And what Paul is saying is that you and I are to commit our grievances to God. We are not to take the law in our own hands. We're not to act as judge, jury and executioner. that we're to turn the matter over to God. And it is an act of faith to do that. When you're cheated, when you're mistreated, when you're abused, we want to go and straighten that fellow out. We want to go clean his file. And what Paul is saying is an act of faith. You and I have to turn those things over to the judge of all. And to trust that he will see that justice is done. And we will not seek it for ourselves. You say, but I just want to get even with you. You can. Paul says, hey, you want to retaliate? You can. I encourage you to retaliate with kindness. If your enemy hungers, feed him. You want to get at him? You want to get under his skin? You want to get back at him? When he's hungry, feed him. When he's thirsty, give him drink. And he says, by doing so, you heat coals of fire on his head. I don't know exactly what Paul is saying. Actually, he's quoting one of the Old Testament texts out of Proverbs. But I do understand enough to say this is how the Christian retaliates. This is his instinctive action. Well, it's not too instinctive, but it's ought to be our instinctive action towards acts of evil and malice that are done towards us. This ought to be our instinct that we respond back with kindness. And all the stories you hear down through the ages of Christians that did exactly that. Oh, aged Polycarp, the men sent to take him to die as a Christian. He first set those soldiers down, cooked them a meal. Stories like that throughout Christian history of the saints of old who responded in kindness to these acts of indignity and hatred that were being done towards them. That's how we're to respond. That's how we're to get even. We are not to fight fire with fire. We're to fight fire with water. With that which is the opposite of what is being done to us. To lies, we fight it with truth. To hate, We respond in love to acts of evil. We respond with good. We do not seek to overcome evil with evil. We overcome evil with good. Easy to say, so difficult to put into practice. And notice that it's not just this, but as we go into chapter 13, we see another area whereby we're to relate to lost men, and that is we are to relate to the government that is over us. We are to, simply put, pay what we owe. And to our government, we owe obedience, we owe respect, we owe taxes, as much as I hate to say that, we owe it. It is God's institution, Paul goes on to say, that this is not just something man-made, this is the institution of God, whereby these magistrates serve as God's ministers to execute vengeance on evildoers and to reward good doers. Now, that's not 100% of the time. We know that. But most of the time, let's be honest, it's the fella committing the crimes that gets caught and thrown in jail, most of the time. 90% of the time. 99% of the time. The fella that's minding his own business, going about his life, rarely gets in trouble with his government. Understand? And notice the connection between this and what just was said earlier in the end of chapter 12. He says you're to turn these things that are done to you over to God. And now he turns around and says that God has set up this other institution, government, to cause vengeance to fall on evil doers. It may well be through the government that God's wrath and justice is carried out on the perpetrator of evil done to you. You are not to seek vengeance yourself, turn that over to God, but God may well employ the human institution of human government to be used in that process. And then notice you are also to owe no man anything in verse 8 but to love him. And again, a misunderstanding of that is, well, if we owe no man anything, I mean, I guess we can't ever take out a loan or anything like that. Well, you have to make a distinction between debt and credit. I've got a mortgage on my house, but I don't owe it. What I owe is, at the end of the month, the monthly payment. That's what I owe. You understand? There's a difference. In fact, I think the NIV translates this much more correctly. Pay your debts that are outstanding. Let no outstanding debt remain. The Old Testament law, a man works for you that day, you owe him his wage at the end of the day. You did not let that debt remain outstanding. And so it is that the Christian is being told to pay up. Pay what he owes. See that his debts are paid. But in particular, he has an outstanding debt to always love his neighbor. And notice, this is now in the context, not of your Christian brother and sister, but of your neighbor at large, the world that is around you. Verse eight reminds us, as so many texts in the New Testament, that love fulfills the law. That if I love my brother, I'm not going to be robbing from him. If I love my brother, I'm not going to be stealing his wife. If I love my brother, I'm not going to murder him. I'm not going to lie to him. I'm going to fulfill the law, the requirements of the law, if I truly love him. And notice how the text goes on to say exactly that. And now to sum it all up, in the last part of chapter 13, Paul gives us two sort of illustrations to help us sort of put this in a nutshell. How we are to act is as people act in the day as opposed to how people act in the night. You'll see that in verse 12, the night is far spent, the day is at hand, therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, let us put on the armor of light. Let's live like folks live in the day rather than like folks live in the night. In our modern world, it's very difficult to tell the difference between day and night. Sometimes we can work all night long if we want to. In the old world, when the sun went down, everything came to a halt. You didn't work, you didn't walk at night. Certain things you did in the day, certain things you did at night. And the things done in the night were typically, well, not good things. In fact, my father had three stores in North Texas, and his theory about preventing theft was to put up a whole lot of light. Because his theory was that thieves hate light. And he's right. It's some of the best thief-theft prevention you can do. Because thieving, stealing, is typically something done in the dark, right? That's a nighttime activity. Immoral, sexual immorality is usually not done out in the open where everybody can see it. It's done in hiding, isn't it? It's done in dark. It's done in the dark. Drunkenness, he talks about, is something that is typically connected to that which takes place under the cover of darkness in the night. In other words, there's a lifestyle that goes on with darkness, and you and I have come into this marvelous light We've got eleven chapters of light that we have just studied that have enlightened our thinking, enlightened our minds, and we are now to exhibit conduct that is congruent with that light that we have just received and embraced. And that means that we act like folks in the daytime. We're not drunk. We're sober. And that's not talking necessarily about alcohol, by the way. I can be drunk on everything from soap operas to boats. Ball games. To be drunk is to be under the control of something. To be inebriated with some thing is to be an idol. That idol has control of you. It is to walk in sexual purity. It is to walk as one would walk in transparency in the daytime. And that's the first illustration. The second illustration is the last part in verse 14, that we're not to make provision for the flesh, we are instead to, let's use Paul's words here, put on, put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a wonderful metaphor, Paul uses it elsewhere, that the Christian lifestyle is like the clothes that we put on. We have an inward life that nobody sees. It's secret. It's hidden. I look at your forehead, and I thankfully cannot see what's going on in there. In some cases, I'm not sure anything's going on in there. In other cases, what's going on in there, I just do not know. You're all looking up here, and I think you're all focused and centered on every word I'm saying. You're just hanging on to the word. If I could really see inside your forehead, I'd see that it's about fishing. It's about hunting dogs. So in all these other pursuits of life, and you can just sit there and look at me, and I'm happy, and you're happy, and we never know. So there's this hidden life, you see, inside of us that I never see. But the Christian is to put on, not only to have the thinking of a Christian, but he's to put on the garb. The garb is what I can see. He's to put on the garments of Christianity. He's to put on, can I use this word, the lifestyle. of Christianity. Now, we're not to be hypocrites. We're not to dress up like a Christian when we really are empty inside. But we're to have truth inside, light in our soul, and then dress that way on the outside. We are to live a life congruent with what we believe. You ladies know more about this than I do, but you know there are certain colors that look well on you. This is just all hearsay, I don't know anything about what I'm talking about, but I read and I see commercials, you know, that there are certain colors, and I say, you know, some of you are springs, and some of you are falls, and some of you are Halloweens, and April Fool's Day, you know, some of that. But there are certain things that bring out the natural beauty that you have. You're sexual. It compliments you. It adorns you. And Paul will use exactly that figure of speech that we are by our behavior in the world to adorn the gospel that we say we believe. We are to live a life congruent with that gospel. And then we come to chapter 14. A whole chapter devoted to the topic of relating to our weaker brother in Christ. Now, do you see anything just by the volume of material that is being committed to that subject that this is a major deal? This is a difficult area of Christianity. How do I relate to the weaker brother? Now, by the weaker brother, let's sort of define things here, and you can read through chapter 14 and see very clearly that it deals with what we sometimes call disputed things or doubtful things. In other words, it is things as the two illustrations he gives us here, what we eat, and secondly, the days, the holidays that we observe. Those are the two of the many that Paul probably could have picked, he picks those two sort of to stand as representatives of the others. In other words, is it right for me as a Christian to observe this holiday, or is it right for me as a Christian to eat or drink this stuff, this food? And he is pointing out the fact that many Christians have convictions about such things. Some allow them. Some are very strict and say, no, I couldn't possibly do those things. And that somehow, with all this diversity of opinion about convictions over such things, we've still got to get along. Now, we're not talking about violations of clear moral teaching. Let me make that clear. We're not talking about whether I say, well, I think it's all right to commit adultery. No. That is non-negotiable. Okay? We are talking about things where there is no thus saith the Lord. Whether you drive a Ford or a Chevy. Whether you've got a red tie on or a blue tie on. We are not talking about things that are clear violation of moral standards. We're talking about things that are disputed and Christians come to different conclusions over. Now, let me first point out that, my, do you think we have problems with that? Consider Paul. When he is roaming through the Gentile world with all these cultures, he's got Jews in these congregations that must think they eat kosher, and then he's got Gentiles that'll eat anything that crawls. How in the world are these two people with convictions about such things ever going to get along as one body in Jesus Christ? You see the problem? And folks, they're not the only ones that have a problem. Now, some of us grew up in rather rural, isolated areas, myself being one of those, growing up on a farm in a rural area in northeast Texas. And pretty much everybody where I grew up all thought the same way. The church sort of functioned as a local chapter of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Well, now that I think about it, alcohol because tobacco and firearms were generally pretty okay. In other words, that the church sort of functioned as the arbitrator of those kinds of disputes, and everybody pretty well fought exactly alike. But, when you go into the cosmopolitan area, and when you come into a place in modern society like Memphis, and we're going to find that you've got people coming from every kind of background imaginable, from every kind of upraising imaginable. And in some of our cases, we think, well, this is terrible. How dare, how could you possibly do such a thing? Why don't you do it like I do it? And that involves things like food, drink, going to the movies, watching TV, whether to have a TV or not to have a TV, how we educate our kids, how we discipline our kids. How we, well, dare I go on? I mean, I can give you a long list of these things, and all of us have our ideas, and we have our convictions, and Paul's saying it's great for you to have your convictions. Happy is the man who has faith, that believes he's doing what God wants him to do. But the general principle in Romans 14 is that you who are strong must give way to those who are weak. The strong brother is to bear the infirmities. Look at chapter 15 verse 1. Here's the summation of chapter 14. We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak and not to please ourselves. Now notice, strong and weak. This is tricky. I want to ask you, when it comes to your convictions, are you the strong one or the weak one? Be careful. You see, it's got you. It's a trap. Because the moment you say, my conviction is the right one, you're putting yourself in the position of the strong. Because you're saying, this other Christian over here, he may be a Christian, but he doesn't see what I see. He doesn't have the light that I have. He doesn't understand things like I understand things. And so he's the weaker brother and I'm the strong one. The moment that I assert my conviction, I put myself in the place of the strong, haven't I? And what's the rule? The strong must bear the impurities of the weak. Okay, you're rather strong. And Paul would say in some cases, and he uses the idea of eating meat or eating only vegetables, and he said we know that There's nothing wrong with eating meat. He's putting himself in the camp of those who would say it's OK. But then he turns around and says, if this is going to cause my brother to stumble, then I'll eat no meat as long as the world stands. I will not assassinate my brother. I will not cause him to stumble over food. Oh, there's a wonderful verse here. Romans 14 in verse 17. Romans 14, 17. For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. I am not called to be the final arbitrator of everybody's conduct. I am to allow my brother a certain amount of liberty to work these things out for himself, as under God he is seeking to please his Lord, his Master, and so to his Master he will either stand or fall." Oh, this is hard. Paul didn't devote an entire chapter to this area for nothing. It's one of the most difficult things we face, and yet it is one of the most essential. Because if we're going to possibly get along as the body of Christ, we've got to buy into what Paul is saying here. We've got not only to nod our head to it, we've got to practice it. Let's use alcohol. That's the hot topic, of course. I have been in circumstances, places in this world, where a Christian could not possibly be a Christian in dream. That was just the understanding. I mean, it's just, no need to argue it. I've been in other places of this world where wine was on the table at every meal." And you said, well, I sure hope the pastor didn't find out. It was the pastor's house! Now, what are you to do? How do you relate? different cultures, different ways of life, different backgrounds. How am I to say, man, how could you possibly call yourself a Christian? These are clearly Christian people. They may have come to a different conclusion than I have come to, a different conviction than I have come to, but I must honor that they are seeking to serve the Lord as best they can and accept them as my brother and sister, or there is no possibility of unity. And notice that if I let that divide the body of Christ, I'm letting food, drink, divide the body of Christ when Paul says, don't you dare do it, because the kingdom of God is not those things. All right. Let me make just a few observations, all ends, by the way, with this plea for unity down here in the last verses or the first part of Chapter 15, which is where we'll start next time. Look at verse six, that you may be with that you may with one mind, one mouth glorify God, even the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, wherefore receive you one another. That's talking about the weak brother. Receive you one another as Christ received us. There's the rule. Jesus didn't get a gem when he got me. He didn't get a winner. He didn't get somebody that had their head screwed on straight. And he received me. In spite of my quirks, in spite of my crazy ideas, He received me. He put His arms around me. He embraced me with His love. And that's how I am to receive my brother and my sister, even though we may disagree about a number of things. Now that brings us just to a few observations, and I'll quit. That's, of course, dangerous for me to say, but just note. I want to note the omissions here, the omissions, the things that Paul does not include in this discussion. He says absolutely nothing about what happens in Sunday morning in a church congregational setting. Doesn't talk about elders and deacons, doesn't talk about church government, doesn't talk about how we're to worship. Notice that? That's all missing. He says absolutely nothing about how we're to function in our homes, that is, in our marriage relationships or in raising our kids and things of that nature. Thirdly, he says absolutely very little about any act of personal piety, that is, our prayer life or our praise of our Lord and so forth. Please do not misunderstand me that I'm saying that any one of those areas is unimportant because each of those areas is addressed by the Apostle Paul in other places in the New Testament. How we're to worship in church, how we're to relate to our spouses, how we're to have our homes governed and ordered, how we are to deal with our prayer life and our praise and all of those things are addressed by Paul elsewhere in the New Testament. It's not that they're in any sense not important. But notice that on a treatise of how you're supposed to live as a Christian, their absence is pretty striking. And what that suggests, that as important as those things are, they do not in any way exhaust my duty as a Christian. But this whole thing has the flavor of turning me away from myself unto others. Let me explain. The instruction of that I'm to love my wife as Christ loved the church. That's true. And I'm to love her because she's my own body. And Paul says, no fool takes a hammer to his own thumb. She's your own body, so treat her like that. To love her is to love yourself, he says. And that's true. But that's hardly the highest motivation. Well, I just gotta love her because after all, she's part of me and I don't hate myself, so I better love her. You understand what I'm saying? In some sense, loving my wife is a very selfish thing. I'm getting the good out of that. Right? When Mama's happy, everybody's happy. When Mama ain't happy, nobody's happy, right? So having a wonderful home situation and so forth to some degree is a wonderful thing, I'm the one that benefits. And to have a wonderful prayer life and praise of my God, those are wonderful things, but that's all personal. And what Paul is dealing with is relationships here. Relationships with other believers, relationships with lost people, relations with that weaker brother that doesn't see things like you see things. He's pulling us out of ourselves and focusing on that Christian conduct that deals with other people. Not with just our own little corner of this world. God's will is that we serve in love. And the measure of our love is not seen when we love the lovely. It's seen when we love the unlovely. I recall one of the old writers, saying that if you want to see an exhibition of the most marvelous love of, say, a mother to a son, it is not the mother who has a son who always delights her, who always has pleased her, who has never disappointed her. And oh, how she loves that son. But she loves that son. It's easy to love that son because the son is so lovable. But if you really want to measure a mother's love for her son, it's when she loves that wayward son, that rebellious son, that son who has turned his back on her time and time again, and yet still she sacrifices all for her son. Do you see the point? We are to respond to one another in love. And it's easy to love your own, your own kids. It's easy to love your own wife, your own folks, folks that see things like you see. The real test of Christian love is when you've got to rub shoulders with somebody that's so different and so unlovely and unlovable. And yet in spite of how they rub you the wrong way, They love Christ, and you must love them. Observation number one. Observation number two is that this shows that most of the time our problem is not a lack of ability, but it's a lack of willingness. There's a sense in which we've all got the ability to do what Paul says here in these verses. Because the problem is that we don't want to. I mean, let's be honest. I can do what he says. The problem is I don't want to. I don't want to think of others better than me. I don't want to think that my brother deserves the good stuff and I don't. I don't want to think that I ought to be the one with the mop in my hand and my brother sitting in the easy chair. I can. I don't want to. I don't want to sacrifice me for you. That's the bottom line. And so that what is needed here is not necessarily more ability. It's more motivation. And that's what Paul has just spent 11 chapters doing. giving you and me the motivation to do what he's commanding us now to do. And my friend, if the mercies of God that have been displayed before your eyes in the preceding 11 chapters won't move you to do what Paul is saying, me, your pastor, cracking a whip over your head is not going to do it either. Not even going to come close. If these things the great grace of our God, the free justification that has come to us undeserving sinners in Jesus Christ. If the thought of God's vast love for me will not move me to love, nothing's going to do it. This is the prerequisite. This is what you must know in order to do these things. That God has come to you in sovereign grace and in blood redemption. and has paid an awful price for your soul. And now I can do nothing else but yield myself a living sacrifice unto Him. It is my reasonable service, my logical response. What else can I say?" And then that brings me to my last observation, that this would be true of any Christian. But those of us who believe in sovereign grace, those of us who believe in electing grace, that salvation wasn't just not my production. I can't even boast in its production. I can't even boast in its reception. I'm saved in spite of me. It's all grace. You and I who confess those things, If it's true of any Christian, these things ought to be true of you and me. You understand? Maybe the Armenian who says, you know, like we changed the song up a little bit, Jesus paid some, some to him I owe. I mean, that makes sense. If Jesus just made your salvation possible, Then you ought to donk your hat to him, you ought to nod, you ought to give him time of day every now and then, but you don't owe him anything, because after all, he did his part, you did yours, and between two of you, you made a pretty good team, you know, and you got his part to boast of, you got your part to boast of. But my friend, if Jesus paid it all, all to him, all, I cannot dodge that. And therefore, I ought to see myself as Daniel, who he and those Hebrew lads taken to Babylon weren't content just to maintain, not just sort of stay the course, but they were going to outstrip everybody in the palace. That you and I, as believers in God's sovereign grace and mercy in free justification, in a salvation that leaves us nothing to boast in, because it is all of God that you and I ought then to work harder than any Timberlite that believes he's going to work his way to heaven. You and I ought to be more filled with the Spirit than any ranching Pentecostal. You and I ought to be more meek and humble than any Quaker you ever crossed paths with. You understand? Because of all people, we're the ones who say God did it all. It's all Him. And if that's true, then I owe Him my everything. I owe Him my life as a living sacrifice. And I cannot say, but wait a minute, I'm too good to stoop to that. I'm too good to kowtow to that. I can't rub shoulders with that guy. What else can I say? That I am a living sacrifice. I've given up my rights. And therein lies the great paradox of Christianity. Oh, there's many of them. We who have been set free, we see ourselves as the greatest slaves that ever walked the face of this earth. We've been set free from sin, but I'm now the slave of Christ. We who see our sin debt forgiven, completely and utterly see ourselves indebted to love in a way that we were never indebted before. We who rest, rest in the merits, in the work of Jesus Christ our Lord, labor work hard, striving according to his working that works in us mightily. That's the great paradox of Christianity. Paul wrote Titus. I'm going to sum it up above here. He says, Titus, tell those Cretans, and that's what they were, Cretans on the Isle of Crete. Now, we call people Cretans. That's usually not a good thing. Because we think of a Cretan as a lowlife, simpleton, big-mouthed, rich, Neanderthal. Well, they were Cretans. And Paul says, yeah, that's a pretty good way of talking about them. They're about as uncouth as their reputation. You tell those Cretans that it is not by works of righteousness which we have done, but it is according to His mercy that we have been saved. And a few verses later he says, Titus, you tell them over and over and over again, tell them that it's not by their works that they're safe, so that they will be careful to maintain good works. That's the paradox. Tell them it's nothing that they do, have done, or will ever do that sets them right with God. It's all the work of Christ. And tell them that so that they will be careful to maintain good works. What a paradox. But that's, after all, the purpose of Christianity. Again, Titus 2.14, Christ gave himself for us to redeem us. from all iniquity, and to purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. One sober question. Is that process happening in you? Is it happening? That's the purpose of God in salvation. His purpose is never thwarted. Is that happening? Let us pray. We ask your help, Father, in discerning our own standing, our own situation before you. And, Father, we are embarrassed when we look at our lack of fruit when we look at our lack of love, our lack of willingness to sacrifice for one another. And Father, we come up with every excuse in the book. We can't. Don't know how. Don't like them. And Father, you have undermined every one of our excuses. May we be that people that are described in your word, redeemed from a sinful world, but redeemed unto a people zealous of good works. Father, we are the first to admit and confess that it is grace and grace alone that has saved our soul. But in making that confession, I must then confess that my reasonable response to that grace is to offer you my everything, my all, my life as a living sacrifice. Father, may you cause us to see that serving Christ is our 24-7 vocation. Wherever we are, whatever we're doing, May Christ's likeness be seen in us as we relate to our Christian brother and sister, as we relate to a lost world around us, and as we relate to those who are weak in the faith. Give us grace that we might with one mind, one voice, speak the same thing. Pull in the same direction, labor for the kingdom. Thank you for equipping us. Thank you for calling us. And Lord, as we examine our life for fruit, may we not be surprised that you purge us, that you prune us, that we bring forth more fruit, this kind of fruit. Father, do it. Do it for the sake of Jesus. In His name we pray, Amen.