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Let's ask the Lord's blessing
upon our time. Heavenly Father, we do thank
you for your marvelous grace in our lives, and Lord, we admit
that we are debtors to grace every day, but we thank you that
you have shed your grace on us and called us to be sons and
daughters of the living God. We thank you for that. We thank
you that you have given us your word and that we can have this
precious, this precious possession to guide us through all our life
until that day when you call us home. We pray now, Lord, that
you would keep us faithful to your word. And as we open it
this morning, Lord, that you would open our hearts and our
minds to receive it, that you would drive it deep into our
hearts. and that we would hear it and obey it with joy and thanksgiving. For this we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. What is a precept? A precept in simple terms is
a rule that regulates behavior. So for example, the laws of the
United States regulate the behavior of the population of this country,
or at least they are supposed to. In religion, the precepts contained
in sacred documents serve to regulate the lives of believers. And so for us as Christians,
the laws contained in the Bible regulate our lives. with due
consideration, of course, to make the distinction between
the moral and the ceremonial law. So for example, we are to
keep the moral law. We are obligated not to lie or
steal. But we are no longer obligated
to continue to meet the ceremonial laws and so you don't go home
and cut down some trees and live in a shelter for a week. Nor
do we sacrifice animals as a substitute to cover our sins because Jesus
became our substitute. He fulfilled every precept of
the law for us by his perfect obedience and pay the penalty
of the law which was due to us by his death. And so we are no
longer under the law, but under grace. That does not mean, however,
that we can do whatever we want to do, because the moral law
continues to regulate our behavior, teaching us how to live as members
of God's family. Now we knew the law before we
were saved because God's law is written on the hearts of all
men. As Paul writes in Romans chapter
two, beginning in say, let's say verse 12. For as many as have sinned without
the law will also perish without the law. and as many as have
sinned in the law will be judged by the law. For not the hearers
of the law are just in the sight of God, but the doers of the
law will be justified. For when Gentiles who do not
have the law by nature do the things in the law, these, although
not having a law, are a law to themselves, who show the work
of the law written in their hearts. Conscience also bearing witness
and between themselves their thoughts either accusing or excusing
them. So the law was written on our
hearts. It's written on the hearts of
all men and women. And so we know it. We know the
difference between right and wrong. But knowing the difference
between right and wrong and then doing it is an entirely different
kettle of fish. Not only did we not obey the
law, we actively rebelled against the law. And we had no power
to keep it. But that changed when God transformed
our hearts. Because of that, we now love
the law of God. We love what we used to despise. And we can say, along with the
psalmist, In Psalm 119, these words. Psalm 119, 127, and 128. Therefore, I love your commandments
more than gold, yes, than fine gold. Therefore, all your precepts
concerning all things I consider to be right. I hate every false
way. One of the most identifiable
characteristics of a person who has been born again, who has
become a genuine Christian, is that they now love what they
once hated and they hate that which they once loved. So instead
of rebelling against the law, we now to seek to be conformed
to it. as the Psalmist again writes
in 119. How can a young man cleanse his
way? By taking heed according to your word. With my whole heart
I have sought you. Oh, let me not wander from your
commandments. Your word I have hidden in my
heart that I might not sin against you. That is the change that
has occurred in the life of every believer. Now our passage this
morning is from Paul's letter to the church in Rome. Having
concluded what we might call the doctrinal section of the
letter, what God has done, he now writes about what we are
to do and how we are to respond to what God has done. And his
initial exhortation captures the dramatic change that should
be evident in the life of a believer. And we'll begin in Romans 12,
verses one and two. And by the way, I'm reading from
the New King James. Romans 12, the first two verses.
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you
present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to
God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed
to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,
that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect
will of God." And the remainder of Paul's letter to the Romans
essentially expands upon this initial exhortation. And in the
following chapters, he touches on many areas of the Christian
life. One of the most important concerns
our attitude about good and evil. And this brief statement that
is before us this morning deals with that subject. Our attitude
towards good and evil. In this very short verse, Paul
gives three vital precepts for living the Christian life. Romans
12 9. Let love be without hypocrisy.
Abhor that which is evil. Cling to what is good. Let love
be without hypocrisy. The Greek language has four words
for love. Storge is familial love or a
natural affection. Phileo is brotherly love. We call the city of Philadelphia
the city of brotherly love, which it hardly is, but we call it
that way anyway. So Phileo is brotherly love. Eros, passionate or erotic love. Paul uses the fourth word. You're familiar with this word,
agape. It's the kind of love that God
has for us and that we are to have for others. It's a sacrificial form of love. It seeks the very best for its
object. In this way, it is free from
self-interest. Interestingly, however, no one
actually loves this way without benefiting from it. The prime
example, of course, is the love of Jesus for the church. He loved us, and he saved us
from God's wrath by taking our penalty on himself. In so doing,
his love was focused entirely upon his object, and that, of
course, is the church, the people of God, the people that God had
given to him before even time began. This love was not done out of
mere duty, but out of deep and abiding affection. William Newell
captures this in his hymn at Calvary. Oh, the love that drew
salvation's plan. Oh, the grace that brought it
down to man. Oh, the mighty gulf that God
did span at Calvary. That gulf was spanned by Christ's
love. We said that no one loves this
way, which is a selfless love, without actually benefiting from
it. So just how did Jesus benefit
from this wonderful demonstration of selfless love? An oft-overlooked
portion of Isaiah chapter 53 that great chapter describing
the sacrifice of Christ is found in verses 10 and 11, Isaiah 53,
10 and 11. But I'm going to preface that
by starting in Isaiah chapter 53, verse four, speaking of Jesus. Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities.
The chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes
we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray.
We have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid
on him the iniquity of us all. What a demonstration of selfless
agape love. So how did Jesus benefit? Verses
10 and 11. Yet it pleased the Lord to crush
him. It pleased the Lord to crush
him. It pleased God the Father to
have his son crucified. It pleased him. Here we see God's pleasure. God's pleasure in his Son, and
the satisfaction of what Christ's finished work did, which was
to justify sinners. God's love in the work of Christ
is therefore, on one hand, wholly unselfish, because it seeks the
very best for others. And yet, because Jesus does all
things to please the Father, and because God does all things
for his own glory, the sacrifice of Jesus is at one and the same
time the very highest expression of self-love, not to be confused
with selfishness. Christ sacrificed himself to
secure those whom God had given him before the foundation of
the world, a people who would become his eternal bride. The joy resulting from that selfless
act will be realized when Jesus, the bridegroom, is joined to
his bride at the marriage supper of the Lamb. Come with me to
Ephesians chapter 5, please. Ephesians 5. Reading 25 through 27. Husbands, love your wives just
as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her, that
he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water
by the word, that he might present her to himself a glorious church,
not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she
should be holy and without blemish. What greater joy and what greater
self-love can the bridegroom have when he is joined with his
bride, finally united? See, in purely human terms, loving
my wife is the very best thing that I can do for her. And it
turns out to be the very best thing that I can do for myself. Happy wife, happy life. Loving my wife is also the very
best thing that I can do for my children, and for the church,
and for my neighbors, and for society at large. Do you see,
my friends, the power of such sacrificial love, which is wholly
unselfish, and at the same time, it is full of self-love, because
we benefit from it, just like Jesus did. Ephesians 5, 28. So husbands ought to love their
own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. What did Jesus say was the great
commandment? He said the great commandment
is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind,
and strength. And then he added something to it. And your neighbour
as yourself. We often miss the weight of that
last clause. To love God, is to love ourselves. Well, the modern versions capture
the sense of what Paul is saying in this verse, verse nine. Neither of the modern versions
capture what I would say the depth of feeling that his words
convey. Love must be sincere, the NIV
says. It must be genuine, the ESV says. But the authorized version is
much better. Love must be free from hypocrisy. The Greek is unhypocritos, and
it means literally against hypocrisy. Why did Paul choose this particular
word? We're helped by the context.
He'd just spoken of the need for humility. Look at 12.3. For I say through the grace given
to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself
more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly as
God has dealt each one a measure of faith. There's a cautionary
word here. For where humility is lacking,
hypocrisy will be present. It's likely that this particular
letter was written from Corinth, where hypocrisy was one of the
great problems in the particular church. They claimed to love
God, but they were tolerating sin in an incestuous relationship
in the church. They claimed to love each other,
but they were taking each other to court. and they were trampling
over each other at the Lord's supper. They were playing the
hypocrite. In the Greek, hypocrite means
to play a part like an actor on a stage. But a more formal
definition of hypocrisy is this. It is a pretense of having desirable
attributes and principles that one does not actually possess.
In other words, it's living a lie. Hypocrisy is living a lie and
we see it every day. Politicians are notorious hypocrites, promising much when they're campaigning,
often doing the very opposite after they have been elected.
Sports figures who use performance-enhancing drugs are hypocrites. Union bosses
living large on the contributions of their members are hypocrites. We see it in the church, in the
sickening excesses of the prosperity preachers, and in the sexual
misconduct in churches of all denominations. Untold damage
has been done to the cause of Christ by feigned godliness,
people who are living a lie. It's a sorry fact that the charge
of hypocrisy, which is frequently leveled at the church, has often
been well-earned. And sadly, many innocent believers
get tarred with that same brush. It doesn't take much to see that
there could be hardly a more damaging sin in the church than
the one of hypocrisy. And it can happen in very good
churches and it can happen to very good Christians. It happened in the early church.
Come with me please to Galatians chapter two. Galatians two. Paul is writing and picking it
up in verse 11. Paul writes, now when Peter had
come to Antioch, Peter, you will remember, was a very cowardly hypocrite
when he followed Jesus into the court of the Pharisees. And while
Jesus was being questioned, Peter was warming himself by the fire,
and he was accused, ah, we know you, you're one of his followers.
No, I'm not. And that went on a second time,
and then a third time, and he denied it, even with curses. Massive hypocrisy. Now, you would
think that after such a devastating failure that Peter would have
learned a lesson. But no, that he fell into it
again here in Antioch and dragged other people with him, notably
Barnabas, a prince of a man, was dragged into this hypocrisy. That should underscore how pernicious
and dangerous it is. No one is safe. We must be constantly
aware and guard against it. Hypocrisy occurs in the church
when we fail to deal with sin. We know it's there, we wink at
it, we shove it under the rug, we close our eyes, we turn a
deaf ear. and when we do this we are hypocrites
pretending to be holy when we are not. It occurs when we greet
people with smiles in the morning and then complain about them
in the afternoon or have roast pasta for lunch. It occurs when
we say that we forgive but we hold on to hurt feelings. It occurs when we promise to
pray for a person, but it's just a flippant little remark, and
we do not pray for that person. It's hypocrisy. Hypocrisy. Who among us can claim to be
innocent of this? Who among us? How to guard against
it? We must keep a close watch over
our soul. over our heart and especially
over our lips for out of the heart the mouth speaks. So let
love be without hypocrisy. Let it be genuine and sincere. The second precept is such a
contrast that it's almost shocking. Let love be without hypocrisy,
abhor or hate what is evil. Now, in order to grasp what Paul
is getting at here, we have to jettison any sentimental notion
of what we think love is. Love is not primarily a feeling.
It's a character trait. The context in which this statement
about abhorrence appears is that of love in its purest form. And for such a love to exist,
it must be separated from all that is not love. We got a clue
about this, of course, when we say that God is love. God's love
is not simply warm, fuzzy human feelings magnified infinitely. His love describes His being.
And the fundamental attribute of God's being is holiness. Holiness, separation from evil. God is completely separated from
everything that is not holy. Not only is He separated from
it, but He is hostile towards it. God hates anything that is
not love, and evil is the exact opposite of love. God hates evil
and has created hell as his response to it. Thus, Christian love will
necessarily hate evil because the love that has been planted
in our heart by God is God's love. It's that kind of love
that wants to be separated from anything that is evil and therefore
despises that which is evil. Actively does. Love and evil cannot coexist. which is why hypocrisy is such
a sin. It has a foot in either camp,
pretending to be good while compromising with evil. When a person is born
again, you see, there is an immediate separation from the old life.
John Murray put it this way, those who now belong to the kingdom
of light recoil from that which belongs to darkness. When that
which is good is the atmosphere of our life, we suffocate in
the paths of iniquity, and we despise the counsels of the wicked. At the very beginning of the
book of Psalms, Psalm 1 captures this. Blessed is the man who
walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in
the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
That one verse alone says separate from evil. Be separate from it. Don't let it contaminate you.
Fight against it. Avoid it. That separation from evil and
the journey into holiness begins the moment of our conversion
and then continues for the rest of our life under the superintendence
of the Holy Spirit as He draws us into more and more and more
holiness and righteousness. Because there's such a contrast
between good and evil, they cannot and should not exist in the Christian
life. Hence the example, for instance,
of the prohibition of a Christian marrying a non-Christian. Because
light and darkness are incompatible. Now the word that Paul uses to
translate habor, or hate, is a very strong one. It literally
means to shrink away from evil. When you see it, you don't investigate
it, you shrink away from it. Proverbs 4, 14 and 15. Do not enter the path of the
wicked and do not walk in the way of evil. Avoid it, do not
travel on it, turn away from it, pass on. In our age, the
once clear lines between good and evil are so blurred that
many people no longer know the difference. And we see many examples
of people calling that which is good, evil, and that which
is evil, good. Christians must be able to recognize
evil and take a stand against it. Which means, listen, taking
a stand against evil people. Because evil is always personified. It's never just an abstract idea. Evil is only seen when it's practiced
by those who are evil. So what does this mean for Christians?
And here we come up against two very different ideas. On the one hand are those who
believe that it's wrong to actively oppose evil. We call them pacifists. and there are large Christian
populations that hold on to that particular belief, the pacifists.
On the other hand, there are those who believe that evil should
be resisted at every point. The truth, as it often does,
resides somewhere in between those two points of view, although
I'm convinced that it leans much more towards activism, because
I don't think that you can oppose evil without actually acting
against it. History records, of course, many
instances when the church has overcome great evils in this
world. There can be no compromise with
evil in the life of a Christian and in the life of a church. If we belong to God, we will
hate evil. This, of course, raises an obvious
question. Is Paul being inconsistent here with what he says just a
few lines later? Look at verse 17. Repay no one evil for evil. Have
regard for good things in the sight of all men. If it is possible,
as much as depends upon you, live peaceably with all men.
Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath,
for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the
Lord. And also, did not Jesus tell
us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us? He
did. Based on this and other passages,
there is a common notion in Christian circles that we should hate the
sin, but love the sinner. Well, this has something to commend
it, it's an oversimplification to a very complex issue. How, for instance, do we reconcile
that statement, hate the sin but love the sinner, with what
scripture says? Psalm 5. Psalm 5, five through six. The boastful shall not stand
in your sight. You hate all workers of iniquity. You shall destroy those who speak
falsehood. The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty
and deceitful man. Psalm 7 verse 11. God is a just judge. God is angry
with the wicked every day. Proverbs 6. 16 through 19. These six things
the Lord hates. Yes, seven are an abomination
to him. A proud look, a lying tongue,
hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans,
feet that are swift in running to evil, a false witness who
speaks lies, and the one who sows discord among the brethren. God hates this, hates it. He hates evildoers and punishes
them, not only in the life to come, but in this life as well. For instance, in Romans chapter
one, God's punishment against sin is made very clear in a contemporary
way. Romans chapter one, verse 24. Therefore, God also gave them
up to uncleanness. to the lusts of their heart,
to dishonor their bodies among themselves. They're doing dishonorable
things. What does God do? He allows them
to do them even more. Gives them up. Verse 26, for
this reason, God gave them up to vile passions. For even their
women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature, likewise
the men and so forth. And then verse 28, Even as they
did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them
over to a debased mind. You continue to sin, God's going
to allow you to sin even more. Listen to 1 Thessalonians chapter
2. Paul writes to a church in Thessalonica
which is being persecuted. 1 Thessalonians 2, beginning
in verse 14. For you, brethren, became imitators
of the churches of God, which are in Judea, in Christ Jesus.
For you also suffered the same things from your own countrymen,
just as they did from the Judeans, who killed both the Lord Jesus
and their own prophets, and have persecuted us. And they do not
please God, and are contrary to men. forbidding us to speak
to the Gentiles that they may be saved, so as always to fill
up the measure of their sins. But wrath has come upon them
to the uttermost." Paul is saying that God permits evil men to
continue to do evil until they have filled up the full measure
of their sins, and when that happens to a man or to a nation,
judgment falls. Ultimately, God resists evil
by eternal damnation. But that is then, what about
now? How are we to resist evil and
to what extent? Well, sometimes it's passive
and sometimes it's active and we have good examples of both.
Jesus showed passive resistance to evil when he was tempted by
Satan in the wilderness. What did he say? It is written. He stood and rested firm on the
word of God. He didn't lash out. It is written,
passive resistance, and yet, Active resistance when he made
a whip and drove the money changers out of the temple, saying, you
have defiled it. My house is a house of prayer.
You've made it a den of thieves. Active resistance. And then passive
again at his trial and his crucifixion when he stood in your place and
in mine. We see the same thing in Paul's
life. Active resistance to evil when he cursed Elemas the sorcerer.
and passive resistance when he was flogged and thrown into a
jail in Philippi. Resisting evil is not a one size
fits all thing. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was involved
in the plot to assassinate Hitler. Now murder is forbidden by God. But was it wrong to try to kill
someone who has already killed millions and has plans to kill
millions more? Was Bonhoeffer to hate what Hitler
was doing, but to love him anyway? Lying is forbidden by the word
of God, but Rahab lied to protect the Israeli spies. And the result of her lies was
that the city that she lived in was destroyed. The result
of that lie was that her next door neighbor, people that she
had perhaps known for years, were killed. Was she wrong in
doing so? Was the Ten Boom family wrong
in lying to the Nazis to save Jewish lives? Can Christians
just verbally oppose evil without actively resisting it? If you
see someone beating a child in the street, do you just call
the police and stand by? Or do you do something? You step
in. There's passive resistance, and
then there's active resistance. It requires godly wisdom to know
the difference. These are not simple issues,
are they? Can we hate abortion? I presume we hate abortion. But can we love those who are
actually facilitating it? I can pity them because they
are captive to an evil philosophy, and I can pray for them, but
loving them seems incomprehensible to me when I tie love to feelings. If I let my feelings dominate,
there's no possible way that I could extend any kind of love
to someone who is murdering infants. These are not easy questions,
and they're not simple. It takes us deep into the realm
of Christian ethics, and we can't deal with it all today, but it
challenges, doesn't it, to pray and to act and to think deeply.
Indeed, failure to form biblical responses to evil has led much
of the church into what I would call a theological and ethical
wasteland. Much of the church occupies such
territory today. I stress a biblical response
because, frankly, some of the solutions offered by the modern
church or that the modern church is involved in are, in fact,
not biblical. which I think is one of the reasons
why we are having such a hard time shaping our culture. Could
it be that our answers to these evils are really just politics
and religious garb? Are evangelicals putting more
faith in ethically compromised politicians than in the Holy
Spirit? Has American Christianity strayed
so far from our biblical roots that we have become nothing more
than the religious wing of one political party? Could it be
that we have stopped relying upon the gospel, which is the
only message that can combat evil? For decades, the dominant form
of Western evangelism has been to tell people that God loves
them, and has a wonderful plan for their lives. That is soft
evangelism. And while some will be saved,
a lot of others are going to be led into a false sense of
security. It's a very different gospel from that preached by
the Apostle Paul or by, say, Whitefield or Spurgeon. which
stressed the sinfulness of man and the wrath of God that hovers
over the sinner, but that also stresses grace, and that God
will receive all those who will put their faith in Christ. See,
the love that hates evil has nothing to do with sentimentality
or feelings. Feelings can't be dismissed,
of course. Jesus burned with anger at the hypocrisy of the
Pharisees, and his blistering words to them were charged with
passion. And yet he was always full of
grace, wasn't he? Always willing to take someone into the fold. Always willing to express unmerited
favor. and it's unmerited favor that
will unlock the heart. It's unmerited favor that unlocked
your heart and mine when we realized how wicked we were, how wretched
we were, and how gracious God is. The love that we are to show
unbelievers is a gracious love that they do not deserve. Romans 12, 20. Therefore, if your enemy is hungry,
feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a
drink. For in so doing, you will heap
coals of fire on his head, coals of conviction, that in God's grace will drive
them to Christ. Remembering that our sins may
be different from theirs, but just as black. just as black. The only reason we are saved
is because God determined to set his love upon us. He extended
kindness to the undeserving. And so, love hates sin and can
have a holy hatred of evil people. I think David captures this at
the very end of Psalm 139, that marvellous Psalm of God's total
sovereignty, when he says this, I hate those who hate God, and
I hate them with a perfect hatred. What's a perfect hatred? Is hatred
unmixed with evil? Is hatred without malice? Is it possible? It is by grace. The one thing that all people
need, be it a murderer like Paul, or a neighbour next door who
cheats on his taxes, is grace. And with the Apostle Paul, we
can all say, there but by the grace of God, go I. We are to
hate evil, but love our enemies. Not from some hidden depth of
kindly feelings, which we don't have, because we hate the situation,
but by showing the kindness that they do not deserve, which means
that we must be willing to get our hands dirty. Jude puts it
this way, Jude 20, 23. For you, beloved, building yourselves
up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves
in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ
unto eternal life, and some, and on some have compassion,
making a distinction. Others, save with fear, pulling
them out of the fire, hating even the garments defiled by
the flesh. we must be willing to take risks,
which means we could get hurt. Maybe not physically, although
there's no guarantee about that, but certainly emotionally when
we experience rejection. We give the gospel message in
the hope and faith that God is going to work through that message. But sometimes we just run into
a brick wall and we are rejected, sometimes with a rejection that
can hurt, especially if it's from family members. So we are
to love without hypocrisy. We are to hate evil. And then
finally Paul tells us, cling to what is good. It's an interesting
word. It's the basis for the English
word glue. And it literally means to be
cemented to all that is good. In a world that is increasingly
hostile to the church, it's tempting to retreat from society. It's
tempting to have limited contact to unbelievers so that we don't
have to experience all the unpleasantness. But to do so is to isolate ourselves
from reality and fail to engage the world. And the people of
this world, secular people, see such an insulated lifestyle as
odd. And it lacks the credibility
to speak to the problems of modern life. And modern life is messy. It's tough, it's dangerous, especially
for Christians. But you know, Modern life is
far more dangerous to unbelievers, because it can be snuffed out
at any moment. The people around us who don't
know Christ need help, and many of them don't know it. Some do,
but they don't know where to turn. So we must live in such
a way that they see in us that which is lacking in them. A seminary
professor of mine said, we have to live in such a way as to make
them jealous, in a holy way, a holy jealousy, that they look
at us and they see there's something about them, don't understand
it, they're really weird, but there's something about them
that draws us. This is exactly what happened
to my wife and I and how we began on our journey to Christ. We
were at a family reunion, and one of the family members, one
of the older sisters who led what I would call a colorful
life, had come to know Christ. And the change in her was so
dramatic, so incredible, that when Nikki and I were driving
home, we said, we don't know what happened to Ella, but we
like it. We like it. There was a holy
jealousy starting to burn in our heart. And soon after that,
God drew us to Christ. That's the way we are to live,
my friends. Even little things make a difference in the corner
of the world that God has placed us. When you get in your car
on Sunday morning, and you drive to church, and you drive past
the guy that's cutting his lawn on a Sunday morning, that's a
whisper of the gospel. He sees you driving by. Oh, I
wonder where they're going. Oh, he's got a coat and tie on,
my goodness. A whisper of the gospel. Yeah,
they think we're weird. Let them think so. But let them
come and ask, what is it with you? We're to live in the freedom
and the joy of God's love and grace, cemented to that which
is good. You are familiar, aren't you,
with Colossians. Sorry, Philippians chapter four,
verses eight to nine. Philippians 4, 8 and 9. Finally, brethren, whatever things
are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just,
whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things
are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is
anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things. The things which
you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do
and the God of peace will be with you. Living this way certainly means
that we must cling to all of this that Paul has talked about.
And we must cling each to one another. We must pray for one
another. We must not neglect the gathering
of ourselves together as is the manner of some. To do so is to
place ourselves and the whole church in danger. There are many
things that compete for our time. Some are legitimate, others are
not. But take this as a maxim. Anything that takes the place
of worship, study, prayer, and fellowship is something which
will war against your soul. So we have these three precepts. Our love must be without hypocrisy. Is it? or are we pretending to
be something that we're not? We are to hate evil and avoid
it, do we? Or do we compromise in some way? We are to cling to that which
is good, hold tight to the word of God, hold tight to sound doctrine,
hold fast our confidence in the Lord, Hold on to the promise
of eternal life. Cling to each other. Most importantly,
cling to Jesus. Heavenly Father, we want to thank
you for your word. And we pray, Lord, that it would
strike deep into our hearts. You know us better than we know
ourselves. Lord, if there is any hypocrisy
in our life, if we are pretending to be what we are not, Would
you please expose it? And then by the power of your
Holy Spirit, work in us to change us. Lord, if there is in some
way we are compromising with evil, turning a blind eye to
that which we should not, Lord, would you reveal it to us? Reveal
it and deal with it in our lives. And then, Father, help us to
cling to that which is good. You have given us so much, so
much, but you have especially given us yourself. Help us, O
Lord, to cling to Christ. And Lord, I pray this morning
that if there be someone here who does not know Jesus as Lord
and Savior, that you would do what only you can do, that you
would reach into their hearts and change them. Put a fresh
heart in them. Take away the stony heart of
flesh. Reveal to them their desperate need of forgiveness in Christ.
Reveal these things to them, we pray, O Lord, and then draw
them to Christ. For this we ask in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Precepts
| Sermon ID | 622251549131942 |
| Duration | 51:22 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Romans 12:9 |
| Language | English |
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