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Well, good morning Rock Point. How are we doing? Half of you seem like you're doing okay. The rest of you, you'll get there with us. Hey, if you have a bible, open up to Romans chapter 12. We have a lot to cover this morning, so hopefully you got no plans for the next few hours because we will be breaking through
the book of Romans. I'm just kidding. It should only be about fifty minutes or so, okay? Would you pray with me, Father? God, I ask, Lord, as we get ready to do this supernatural act of having you speak specifically and individually to each and every one of us, that God, we would be present. That whatever distractions
we brought into this place with us, that God for these next few moments would our minds be still, our hearts be present and our phones be silent. It is in the mighty name of Jesus as everybody said, amen.
So hey, before we get to Romans 12, let me kinda set up where we're going. I don't know about you guys, but math is not something that's ever really come easily to me. I'm terrible
at it, but I've never really enjoyed math, right? And now the beautiful part about being a parent is I have to relive all of the horrors of junior high math all over again, right? I have a sixth grade daughter and right now I'm getting to the limitations of what I remember about math, but thankfully
there's a lot of great resources that you can Google. Like you can literally Google these math problems and they solve a lot of them for you or they pull up different YouTube videos that somebody has solved them for you. So the challenge that I have is, I don't know if you had a math teacher that told you the same thing they told me of like, hey, you have to remember these things because it's not like you're gonna grow up one day and just have a calculator in your pocket with you at all times.
Well hey, I actually have a super computer in my pocket at all times, lady. I can talk to it and it will tell me the math problems, right? So my daughter is like, dad, don't know why I have to remember this. Like I don't wanna be like a mathematician or an engineer. And part of me is like, man, I don't know if you need to remember this, but your teacher says you do, so let's both just do the homework and we'll get out of here, right? All of that to say,
when I was sitting in my admissions counselor's office when I was getting ready to enroll for the first time in college, I was playing sports there and so you get preferred admissions. You get to sit and pick your classes before everybody else because they have to fit around your practice schedule.
That's the only benefit of playing sports in college, is you get early admissions. You never have to worry about will you get the classes that you want. Well what she was doing is she was looking at my high school transcripts and in high school I took AP pre calculus,
so she was saying, hey the logical class for you to take here would just be calculus. And I remember right there in that moment I was like, alright this is going to be an interesting conversation. I'm going to have to navigate this one creatively,
right? Here's the context that I didn't want to tell her that I will tell you this morning. When I took AP pre calculus in high school, I had that math teacher that was like the guy that everybody knew you just took because he was really easy and he didn't really give homework. I had that teacher. And moreover
the year that I had that teacher for AP pre calculus, it was his last year teaching ever. He was retiring after our class. He started our year off and he said, hey guys, this is my last year teaching. Don't blow this for me. And we were all like, what does that even mean?
Well, a few weeks into his class it became very apparent what that meant. We weren't gonna actually learn pre calculus at all. He was not going to assign homework because he didn't wanna grade it, but I was in luck because I didn't wanna do it. So it was a perfect match.
And then when there was a test, I kid you not, I don't know how this guy was employed, but he would give us a test and he would walk out of the class
not to return again until the end of the period. It was almost like he was inviting you to cheat. I remember the first time he passed it, I was like, this is a test. There's got to be a camera somewhere. Like nobody move. Right? But then pretty quickly, we started to realize like, he just was basically giving us the option to do this test together so that we could all just get an A. And at the end of the period, there was a door to come into our class and on one side was all windows.
This side, if he came into the right, he could have like sneaked attacked us and jumped into the door and surprised all of us, but he wouldn't do that. He would come this way and slowly walk across the glass
signaling to everybody, I'm about to come back. Get back into your seat so that nobody sees you cheating and we can all agree that you did this fairly. All of that to say, I didn't learn much in pre calculus.
So I'm sitting there with my guidance counselor in college, I go, how do I tell this lady that there's no shot that I'm gonna be able to do calculus because the whole pre part of the calculus that you're supposed to have is the foundation,
I know nothing of. And I'm just assuming that's part of the foundation you need to thrive in calculus. But I don't wanna just tell her I cheated my whole way through pre calculus, so I get creative, right? And I go listen, what if we change my major? See, I was kinda figuring out if I was gonna do business major, and the business major I had to have some higher end math classes,
but if I switched my major to political science, which was something I was considering because the plan was to go to law school, my dad's a lawyer, that was always the plan. And political science is what you do if you're going to law school because other than that it's a pretty worthless degree. You can't do anything with a poli sci degree except go to law school or teach political science.
But when she said, yeah, you switch to political science, all you have to do is take one undergraduate class in a basic math credential. I was like, hey, we're on to something here. So I switched my major to political science and she signed me up for intro to basic algebra in college.
I sat in a college classroom that my dad was paying pretty decent money for with a teacher that shockingly had a master's degree and we were doing long division together.
And not like the long division where you get to the decimals, like we were doing remainders, you know what I mean? There was one point in class where this kid in the back raised his hand, he was like, wait, I was tracking with you when there was numbers. Where did you get the R from? And I'm like, these are my people. These,
I am in the right class, I am in the right place. I am glad that I am here. The reason that I start there is obviously just so we can laugh a little bit. I think we can have fun in the house of God, but also to display this thing that is kind of built into our humanity.
As I was studying the section of Romans 12 that we're gonna see today, what Paul is going to lay out is essentially the way that we are called to love and live in this world. And here's the challenge that you and I have in our humanity. We have this uncanny ability to figure out the goalposts,
figure out the fastest way to get there by satisfying the letter of the law. But in the process a lot of times we can completely miss the heart of the law. If you look at Christianity and you boil it down all throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament, Christianity defined is really just two things.
You probably even know them, love God, love people. The greatest commandment is to love God with all you have and to love your neighbor as yourself. When Jesus was asked to sum up everything, he said it comes down to two things, love God and love people. But the irony is this part of loving people,
we get a little bit squirrelly on. We're like, okay, loving God, I can do that. He's invisible, he doesn't talk that often audibly, like I can rock with loving God. But loving people,
There's a really famous story in Luke chapter 10 where again ironically it's a lawyer trying to find a loophole out of how to do this. He comes to Jesus and he says, who really even is my neighbor? You said love my neighbor, can you define neighbor? And Jesus tells the parable of the good Samaritan. He says the people that you and I are called to love the way that God loved us
is every single person we interact with, especially the people that we often discount. The reason that I start there is in Romans chapter 12, Paul is going to begin to transition.
We've been walking through the book of Romans. If you're walking in this morning and this is the first message you've heard without the context of the other 11 chapters, this message can be taken out of context.
Because what this message is not going to be is a message of these rules that you and I have to go and live and do to be good Christians.
That's not what this message is. This is actually going to be Paul is going to show us 24 things we're supposed to do if we're going to love and live like Jesus did and impact the world through the way that we love people.
But it starts with the premise of that you and I have no ability to do this on our own. Through our own power, we'll never be able to accomplish this. This friends is on the foundation of 11 chapters of Paul walking systematically through a dissertation of who Jesus is.
And how you and I outside of him stepping out and doing something for us, we had no ability to get to God. You were never going to be good enough, but the good news is you can't be too bad to be too far gone.
But he says Jesus stepped out and made a way and his invitation to you is to begin to live in you and empower you to live a completely new life. And he says for 11 chapters, he builds the case for you and I to see how ridiculously incredible this God has loved us. And then in Romans twelve:one, he says, There for.
He begins to draw conclusions that should be the obvious assumption we all come to on the premise of seeing 11 chapters of the faithfulness and the goodness of God. He's going to say based on all of that,
your and I's response should be to offer our lives as a living sacrifice, to literally take the pink slip of the ownership of our life and say, you know what,
I can trust this God and I will hand over the ownership of my life to Him. And then we enter into this process where he says, will begin to make us into a new creation. It doesn't happen overnight. Our minds will be transformed, will be made new, will be transformed and made into the image of Christ.
In the beginning part of Romans chapter 12, he talks about how as we do this and as we enter into this new role, this new life that we've been given, we will all have different positions to play. Some of you will have positions to play that include generosity.
Hospitality. Some of you will be prayer. Some of you will be praying in tongues. Some of you it will be whatever your job is. He says, we will all have individual assignments. We will all have individual positions to play, but we all wear the same uniform regardless of position. Romans twelve:nine-twenty
one, Paul is going to give us the how, the fine print of the contract of how we are called to love, the uniform we as Christians are called to wear. Here's the big idea that we're going to look at today if you're taking notes. When God moves in you, love is supposed to move through you.
This is for all of us, every single one of us. This is the fine print of the contract for us who say, yes, we're in. We're here, we understand, we love God. This is the fine print of the contract on how we're called to love people and love and impact
this world. But before we even get there, want to start by defining what love is and more importantly what it's also not. In our culture,
we use the same language and the same word for if I say I love my wife or I love pizza, I say the same thing. But we all inherently know that I love pizza much more emphatically than I do my wife, yet I use the same, no,
opposite. I'm just kidding obviously, right? But in the Greek language, we gotta, and we'll see more in a little bit, the Greek language which is the language that the New Testament is written and that has been translated for us to see in English, there's actually eight different words to describe love.
So there's a spectrum and there's a range, but what Paul is talking about is a love that is different than anything else that we've seen. So here's what love is not if you're taking notes.
We'll start with this, love in the context of what we're about to see, number one, it is not a feeling.
Paul is not saying that our job and our responsibility is to go and feel good about the people around us and have sympathy on them and let our feelings lead us, right? Just like a good marriage, the most unhealthy foundation that we can have is a foundation that's based on feelings.
For anybody that's had a relationship based on feelings, you know that our feelings change. The Bible says that we have to be really careful with our heart.
I know we're living in a culture that says live your truth and whatever you feel you should go and engage with, the Bible actually says something completely different. It says don't trust your heart. It is above all things deceitful and wicked and it will lead you down paths that you will not want to be on.
The hard part friends when it comes to our faith journey is no matter what your background is, no matter what your basic belief system is before you enter into a relationship with Jesus, there will come intersections of your faith where what you feel and what the Bible says to do, they will not be the same thing.
The impasse of that juncture, I would say is the measure upon which our faith will be explored.
Our faith really, those are the moments where our faith is really exercised. Faith is not a feeling, it's not something that's like, oh I have faith and so I made these decisions. Faith is really making a decision to take action even when we don't feel like it.
That's the hardest part about this invitation of faith that we've been given. It doesn't matter who you are or what you believe, there are things that the Bible says to do and not to do that will stand in contrast to how we feel sometimes. So here's what love is, this is gonna be our working definition of what love is. Love
is a choice, but more importantly it's a choice that leads to and is followed by action. Jesus says over and over and over and over over and and over and over again in scripture. Why do you come here? Why do you call me Lord yet you don't do what I tell you to do? He says there's many people
at the end time you're going to come to me, you're going to run to me, you're going to say, Lord, Lord. And he's going to say, get away from me because I never knew you.
In the book of Revelation it says that he's going to spit out the church, he's talking to a church that is not cold or hot, it's just kind of lukewarm following their feelings. He says that is actually repulsive to me. Friends, we have to remember if we're taking the ownership of our life and we're handing it to Jesus,
to put limitations on that is the equivalent of any of you who have gone through the process of enrolling into
the armed forces and showing up the first day of boot camp, right? Understanding I've signed a contract. This is now the life that I have. These are the masters that I'm going to have. And you show up the first day of boot camp, you're like, listen, I just want you to know I don't wake up before 09:00.
I don't look good in green camo or gray and I like my haircut a certain style. Like it would never happen, right? They take you in, put you in a seat and shave your head just to signify you're under new ownership. You have a new master. The same is true for us when it comes to our faith.
We have a new master, the question becomes why don't we obey? My hope and my goal this morning is as we fly through and I promise I'll move quickly through these 24 things, but that we would see things that we would be able to go, hey, these areas we've fallen a little bit short in. But that our hope is that we would walk out of here and not go, I've got to do better and try harder, but we would be able to sit with God and go, God, would you change my heart? Would you make me into who it is that I have to be, to be your hands and feet, to be and make the church what we're supposed to be, which is the hope of the world, not just a voting block. Amen?
That was a week, amen. Some of you were like, wait, we are not? Romans 12, longest introduction ever, here is how he starts
in verse nine. The fine print of the contract of how we are called to love people, Paul starts and says, don't just pretend to love others, you really have to love them. I know we're only half of a verse in but it's important to stop here for a second. In the very beginning Paul says again,
we have to just acknowledge that the temptation will be in our humanity
to go, okay, give us the rules, give us the 10 things to do or the things not to do, we will figure out a way to find a shortcut, we will satisfy the letter of the law and in the process completely miss the heart of the law. Friends, that's called religion.
The truth is, is a lot of the most hurtful, backbiting, gossiping people that I've encountered in my life are in church every single weekend and claim to do a lot of what they do in the name of God.
What Paul says is if we're going to make any attempt to do this and we're truly going to say, you know what, we understand we have a responsibility to love this world. And that God's plan A to reach the world is through us and there is no plan B and we're gonna take that seriously.
We have to start by saying, listen, we're going to have this tendency to be hypocrites. And some of your translations that say love must be without hypocrisy. The Greek word that Paul uses here is hypocriteo. He's referring to the Greek theater. He's talking about somebody who would play multiple roles in
the same play. They would go between scenes and put a mask on and come out and be somebody different.
And what Paul is saying is if we're gonna make any attempt at this, we have to understand we're called to be one person. One person at church, one person at work, one person at home, one person on Friday nights, one person on Saturday nights, it doesn't matter where you are, you have to be the same person. And if you try to just be the person that loves people and loves people well at best,
it will be hypocritical. If you're taking notes, write this down. Our love has to be without hypocrisy. This love has to be without hypocrisy. The four Greek words
that we see here, this is really powerful and important for us to understand. Throughout the Bible or throughout the New Testament, see four words when the word love is used. There's four different Greek words. We see storge which is like this empathy friendship bond.
And then there's phileia which is again the friendship definition. Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. There's eros, which is the erotic love, romantic love. If you don't know what that is, ask your parents after church. Sorry. And then if you've been in church for any period of time, you've heard this one, agape.
Agape is what we see all through Romans chapter one through 11. It's this unconditional God love. It is an attribute that is only given to God. It's this bet the farm, risk it all, do whatever it takes, relentless, never ending, nonstop pursuit. It is the way that God loves us. For 11 chapters Paul has been saying God
agapes you. It doesn't matter how broken you are, it doesn't matter how far away you are, God agapes you. And then in Romans twelve:nine he does something unprecedented and he says that as you begin to understand how much God loves you,
you and I will begin to not just filet or store gay the people around us, we will actually be able to supernaturally love the people around us. And he says that we will agape each other.
This is important for us to see because this entire process of loving people, it's a supernatural thing and it can only come as a byproduct of understanding how much we've been loved
first, right? One John says that we love because He first loved us. This is something that flows through us, not something that we manufacture. Here's how he continues in this verse. He says if we're going to do this don't just pretend to love others, really love them and we have to hate what is wrong.
We have to hold tightly to what is good. This verse almost doesn't make any sense in the context of what Paul is talking about. He's giving us instructions on how to love the world
And he says you've to understand your first attempt is going to be to just fake it. We can't do that. It has to be without hypocrisy, it has to be genuine. And if it's going to be genuine at all, we have to start by aligning on what is good and what is evil. And as the people of God,
we have to begin to have hearts that hates what God hates and loves what God loves. This for us is particularly challenging because we are living in a time where when you read the Bible and it says this is good and this is bad, our culture goes no, no, no, no. This is actually what's bad and this is what good is.
And the church has started to morph and started to go, yeah, you know what, you're right. Like I don't know, are these things really that bad? And as we begin to do that, we miss the heart of the entire thing. There is a part of this that we have to do corporately and collectively.
What Paul is talking about here specifically is we have to do this personally first. If we're going to take serious our responsibility to love the people around us, to love them like Jesus by pointing them to Jesus, we have to be willing to realize there's things in our life that we've become okay with
that we need to start to hate. We need to start to actually abhor the sin that is in our life because here's the truth of sin, what we like to do is have sin be like in this little corner of our life. And we go, yeah, I know I need to deal with it but it's just there, it's just I've got it isolated
and the bulk of the time I'm here and I do this. And what the bible tells us about sin is it's designed to kill, it's designed to destroy every part of who you are. And I don't know about you, but man I find myself in moments where I go why am I so frustrated? Why is my temper so short with my kids?
Why am I getting so frustrated? Are there days? Sure, I had a hectic day at work, There's things going on that are external. Yes and amen. But the truth is, if I'm honest, it's this thing that I haven't dealt with just rearing its head in all kinds of different ways.
What Paul is saying is we have to be people who hate it, begin to hate the sin in our life. If you hate it, you will begin to deal with it differently.
Dads, we have to understand the websites we're looking at, the things that we're going to, it's not just something that we're dealing with. It is a king cobra that is in our house that is going to kill and destroy every single thing in its path. If we're going to make any attempt to do this,
we have to start to hate what is evil and we have to cling to what is good. The word that Paul uses in the Greek, the root word is what we get the word glue and super glue from. It's like this idea of in this culture as everything gets crazy, we have to fight to hold on to what's good. We have to stand for what is good even though it might seem crazy and it might go against what we think naturally makes sense.
We have to fight to hold what is good. Here's how Paul continues.
He says that as we do this, we will then love each other with genuine affection and we'll be able to take delight in honoring each other. He continues in verse 11 and he says, Never be lazy but work hard and serve the Lord enthusiastically.
Again, this section of scripture you could do like 12 different sermon series on because Paul jumps from like point two to point four and then back to point one, like it's all over the place. He starts with going, hey, make sure it's authentic.
Make sure you hate what God hates and you love what God loves. And then he talks about being diligent and working hard and not being lazy. And it almost doesn't make sense unless you begin to understand that the most practical way,
the most practical place that you and I will love people who don't know who God is, is at this four letter word called work. The most meaningful worship, the most impactful ministry that most of us will be able to do
is at the place that we spend the most amount of time. Think about it, if you're at a job, if you're at an office from nine to five, and I know with COVID we all work via Zoom now, but when we worked in offices,
from nine to five you're with the same people five days a week. If you just look at the waking hours, it's kind of sad to think about, but we spend more time with our coworkers and our boss than we do awake with our families. And yet so often we compartmentalize our life to a point that we go, I do ministry here,
I do ministry on Wednesday nights at middle school or I serve here and we just go to work. And that's me working. And Paul is saying, no, no, no, it's not separated.
Again, the root word of integrity is integer. It just means you are one person wherever you are, you are the same at work that you are at church that you are at Friday night. What people see is what they get. What Paul is saying is that you and I have to remember that as we work, I know we report to a manager
but our real boss is the Lord. The reason that we go to work and we work hard and we are never lazy is because people are watching. Your coworkers, your boss, your supervisors, they might not know your faith and what you stand for, but what the bible tells us, what Paul is saying is that the way that we work,
it should say something about who we are. And friends, this is where we have to become missionally minded because I know a lot of us and I have been in those seasons where I had to wake up on Monday going, man, the last thing I want to do is go to this dang job right now.
But my kids, they have to eat food, right? So I have to go to work. And it's so easy to get into the pattern of being frustrated and ungrateful and being upset that I'm in these circumstances.
And what we can do is pray for those circumstances to change and I believe that they will in time, but while we're there, we're going to be on mission remembering our boss is not the manager we report to. As Christians, we have a different master and that master says show up and work hard because you are representative of the king that you serve. And as you work hard and as you are faithfully
at work, you will begin to do what we're called to do, which is to love this world. It is a simple seemingly
out there point that doesn't make sense, but Paul brings in the thing that we often forget about, which is the greatest mission field that we have. The people that we work with, the schools that we go to, the people that we impact the most. Here's how he
continues in verse 12. He says, Make sure that you rejoice in a confident hope. And as you do that, you will be patient in times of trouble, but remember to keep on praying. So right here, Paul starts to give us the practical part of how do we do this?
How do we practically live this out? And again, it's all kind of these disconnected thoughts, but there's a thread in there if we can see it.
Paul is saying the way that we do this and we show up to work remembering that there's a mission, is we have to be confident in the hope that we have, right? Paul says in another passage, when somebody dies, when somebody passes away that's a Christian, yes, we're gonna mourn because they're not here. But we're not gonna mourn like those that don't have hope, right? Because we understand that this isn't forever. This is temporary. This is not eternity.
But there is an eternity that all of us will spend somewhere. Then what Paul says is that we have to be confident in that hope, knowing how the story ends, how it plays out. And as you have hope in the ending and you live your life from the vantage point of eternity to here, it will begin to change how
you operate. The picture that he's painting here is one of a farmer. It's a picture of a farmer that is doing back breaking work, tilling the soil and planting the seed and watering the ground. What he's saying is that a farmer would never do that season after season after season if it was just about the working and never
the harvest. The farmer works hard and diligently because he knows a harvest is coming. Paul says that if we're going to do this, we have to remember that this life that we have is but a vapor. It feels like it's a long time, but it's just like this in the scope of eternity.
And as we remember that, then during times of trouble we can have peace and we can have hope and we can have patience when everything around us is falling apart. Right now our world is at a tense moment and it can be scary. Yes and amen. I wish a lot of the stuff would stop. But friends, we have to remember,
we know how this story ends. As Christians this shouldn't surprise us. Like is this World War III going to end the world? I don't know. But if it does and this is what institutes Jesus coming back, that's good news for us. We win in the end. And
when we know that and when we live from that vantage point, it's how we can fulfill and do all of this, but the most important thing that Paul says here is if we're gonna have any attempt to fulfill this, we have to be people who are praying people. Prayer to the spirit is like blood to the body.
When it stops flowing and the connection point breaks, whatever on the other end of it slowly dies off. Friends, we have to, if we're going to impact this world, if we're going to love this world like Jesus and point people to Jesus, we have to stay connected to the source.
All of this is something that is supposed to get worked out. These are all horizontal relationships, but they are the overflow of the vertical relationship. We have to remember again, if you're taking notes write this down. These are not rules that we're supposed to legislate, these are actually promises
that we're supposed to embrace. Let me explain what I mean. What Paul is saying is that this is a crazy tall order, just wait. He's about to start talking about loving people who have persecuted you and hurt you and people who have taken advantage of you. If we have any attempt to do this, we have to remember these are promises that God will live through us as we have the process of the old person that we were passing away and the new creature comes to life in the spirit life that we've been given and we wage war with the flesh. God will begin to do this stuff through us. Hopefully there's some of you that are in here that are going, you know, it's crazy as you're talking about this. I can see some of these things happening in my life. I can see God doing this in my life because that's what the promise of the new life in Christ is.
And I know that when we give our lives to Jesus, we don't give you like a coat of arms knowing that you're in battle now, but we are in battle. Our war is not with people, but it's a war against our flesh. And we have to engage in the fight if we're going to have a chance to win.
All of these are things that God will begin to do in you and through you. Here's how he continues. He says, As we rejoice in our confident hope, be patient in trouble, keep on praying. And then he goes into a whole another tangent in verse 13. When God's people are in need,
be ready to help them. Always be eager to practice hospitality. Paul goes down another rabbit hole and says, you gotta be generous. God's people should be known by how much they give.
And you know what's really cool, is now we have a lot of data that is showing. Everybody thinks the church is this place where like, it's just like this place of oppression, but there's so much data that is showing that the church is actually full of some of the most generous people around. We adopt children at a rate three times higher than the average people in our community.
The amount of money that we give to help people is so much higher than just the standard person. And we don't do that to pat ourselves on the back to go, look at how awesome we are. But that's what the spirit of God will produce
in us. Remember we serve a God who first, when he saw us in our need, what did he do? He so loved the world that he did what? He gave. He gave the greatest thing that he had, he gave his son and his expectation is that as you receive that gift, that it will produce in you a spirit of generosity and the overflow of that will be one of generosity.
And here's the truth, know some of you are now going, oh here we go, it's the money talk again. They always do this at church. God doesn't need your money or even want your money. What God wants is the blessing that's on the other side of you stepping into the generosity
that he wants you to participate in. The people in your life, the people in your circle of influence that are in need, God is gonna meet their needs with or without you. The question will be, will you get to participate in the miracle and be on the receiving
end of what is there for the giver because it is so much more blessed to give than it is to receive. I don't know if you know any wealthy people. One of the cool parts about my life is I've gotten to spend a lot of time with people who have a lot of money. The only people that I know that are wealthy and joyful,
they've understood that these resources, they're not mine. I'm a steward. I'm a manager. I'm not an owner. And they hold their resources like this. And it's no wonder to me that their capacity to hold resources is so much more
than the people that go I hold my resources like this. They're mine, I've worked hard for them, I don't have much, I don't know how to do this, there's no margin. I'm not saying that all of us have the responsibility to give radically and generously, but what I do know
is that every single one of us can meet the needs of those in our circle of influence. And the Bible tells us that as we're faithful in the little things, he will begin to make us faithful with much. If you're sitting here going man, but this is my business. I did this. I built this. Did you?
Because the very breath in your lungs is a gift from God. The ability to think the thoughts, all of it is from Him. We are not managers, we are not owners, we're managers and we're stewards of God's resources. And the incredible part is as we begin to understand this and embrace this, what happens to us is the burden
and the weight that we feel of going, man, there's all this pressure, there's all of these things. We begin to realize God is my provider. He's my provision. It's his responsibility to take care of my family, not mine. What Paul is saying is that we're people that are supposed to live generously.
Here's a simple challenge that I have for each of you for these next few weeks, is let's sit down in the morning and go God would you show me some practical need that I can meet in my community, in my area? Would you show me somebody that I can bless?
I wish I could tell you guys all the stories, I hope you also are encouraged by this because so many of you are doing this so incredibly well. This is a church that is generous. Anytime we throw up a need, it is amazing
at the generosity of this church. And I wish I could tell you all the cool stories of all the incredible things that you guys do to support and bless the people around you. But like there's simple things that never get noticed that are happening all day long at the church here. You know this entire facility, we have a big campus.
All of it is landscaped by a guy that brings his crew of landscapers that he employs, that he pays, he brings equipment, he brings the chemicals, we don't pay a dime and it's run 100% by him, not because we've asked him to do it,
because he's begun to understand man it's greater to give than it is to receive and this is my simple way of giving back with what I've been given. I don't say that to say hey, we all need landscaping companies, we all need to come pull weeds on the weekends but if you want to you're welcome.
What I'm saying is that each of us have been uniquely gifted to be generous in some way. What is your responsibility? Because as all of us do the little, it collectively becomes the super natural. Here's how Paul gets ready to wrap this up. He says, as we do all of this, we'll then be able to bless those who persecute you.
He says, you don't have to curse them. He says, we can actually pray that God will bless them. Paul goes into a thing here that is a whole other rabbit trail, but he talks about the people who have hurt you the most, the people that have persecuted you. He said in our humanity, in our old self,
our knee jerk reaction to the guy in the fast lane when we're doing 80 and he's on our bumper doing 90 and honking at us is to give him the number one sign out the window. Right? He said that's our natural humanity. All of us have something.
And he says as we live in this life empowered by the spirit, we can get to a place where we genuinely pray like God would you bless them. And it's not just for the superficial things like the road rage issues that we have. He's talking about the greatest points of pain and hurts that we've experienced.
And I don't know what it is that you've walked through, but here's what I do know, because we live in such a fallen and broken world that all of us have been hurt deeply by people. And sometimes it's the people closest to us that have hurt us and betrayed us the most and they are the hardest to love.
And what Paul says is that as the spirit of God begins to work in us, we can get to a spot where our prayer is that God would bless them and in our heart we're no longer cursing them. Because here's the truth and the reality. It's a pretty famous saying, maybe you've heard it before. The idea of holding on to bitterness,
it's like the equivalent of drinking poison and expecting it to hurt the other person. It's only going to destroy you. It's only gonna impact you.
And don't hear what I'm not saying. There are seasons and things that we've gone through. We need to sit with counselors and we need to process through all of that stuff. We have incredible resources, there's incredible counselors here if you need that.
But what Paul is saying is you can't mistake the spiritual component of getting over hurts as well. He says, can start by just praying for them. If you're here and there's something that you know,
that there's a bitterness is in your heart towards somebody that has hurt you. Here's my challenge to you for the next few weeks, is that you would start and just pray a simple prayer and say, God, would you give them what they deserve? What you mean by that? Totally between you and God.
But here's my commitment to you. Here's my commitment to you is if you do that every day, no matter how deep that hurt is, eventually it might take weeks, it might take months, but if you sit every morning and you pray God would you give them what you deserve? Would you give them what they deserve? At some point
what will begin to happen is you will realize that though your sins looked different, though your issues manifested differently, the bible said that you and I deserved wrath because of our decisions. But we met a God who met us in our mess
and instead of wrath, He gave us grace and love, compassion and understanding and acceptance exactly where we were and eventually what will begin to happen is our prayer that has a motive truly to curse this person will begin to go, God I hope they get what they deserve,
which is the same mercy, the same grace, the same unearned forgiveness that I received. And what begins to happen is the chains that held us in bondage, they won't have the same power over us. Here's the truth as somebody who's walked through deep hurt through things that have happened to me in my life.
I had things that happened that stole my past. They were deeply impacting my present, but I had a choice of whether or not I was going to give them my future. And at some point we have to let go of these hurts and these pains if we're fully going to embrace the new life that God has for us.
Friends, we can begin to bless those who persecute us. Here's how Paul kind of wraps the rest of the scripture up. In verse 15, he says, we have to be happy with those who are happy and we have to weep with those who weep. We have to live in harmony with each other.
Don't be too proud to enjoy the company of ordinary people and don't think you know it all. I wish that that was like the instructions for Christians on engaging on social media. It's what it should be, right?
Engagement on social media as a Christian is really simple. If people are happy, be happy with them. If they're sad, be sad with them. Don't feel like you're better than people and don't act like you know it all. Amen. Paul says our job is to engage
in people's life who look different, who believe different, who vote differently. He doesn't say find a bunch of people who look and vote and dress like you do and then live life with them. He says, no, no, no, no. We as Christians were supposed to live differently, but we're not called to live separately.
How can we impact a world that we never actually embrace or experience? Paul says we have to be the hands and feet of Jesus. Be the hope of the world. And here's the ultimate goal. He says in verse 17,
never pay back evil with more evil. Do things in such a way that everyone can see that you are honorable. Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone. Dear friends, never take revenge. Leave that to the righteous anger of God for the scriptures say, I will take revenge. I will pay them back,
says the Lord. Instead, if your enemies are hungry, feed them. If they are thirsty, give them something to drink.
In doing this, you will, this next verse is like my favorite verse in the whole Bible. You will keep burning coals of shame on their heads, like that's the strongest language ever. He says, don't let evil conquer you, but conquer evil by doing good. Well, Paul says his friends, our job
with engaging a world that doesn't know God is not to legislate their morality. Our job is to live peaceably and hospitably with all people.
We have to remember the way that God interacted with us in the very beginning was not get all of these things right, do all of these things, make sure you dress this way, and that your sexual preferences are this, then when you come into church, then you can enter into a relationship with me. That's not how it works.
It starts with God meeting us in our mess. It starts with us meeting him while we're still yet enemies of God is what the Bible says. And then what he'll do is in his kindness and in his gentleness and his patience and in his good suffering, He will invite us into a life beyond our wildest dreams, which yes,
will probably include modifying some of our behavior and changing some of those things, but that is not our responsibility as his representatives. It's his and his alone. Our job as the church is to love people really well. And as we love them, we can begin to introduce them to their Savior. Friends,
my hope and my goal in this is there's 24 individual things that we are called to do. My assumption is that 22 of those, maybe even 23 of them, you're already doing at 120%. But the one or two that you're not, would we begin to have the boldness to go before God this week and say, God, would you begin to change my heart?
Would you help me understand that I've settled into just kind of playing church and I've made this thing stand for things that it never was meant to be stood for.
And it's not my job to get vengeance for you. And I know sometimes we think that Jesus needs to be defended because we think about the Jesus of the gospels and it's like this little cute guy that's got long hair and sandals and he wears a dress and he's kind of a hippie and he loves all people and we got to protect him. He's like don't worry about that.
I got vengeance.
Don't you worry there will be a day where I come and I separate the wheat from the chaff and there will be a day of judgment for all people. And the book of Revelations tells us that when Jesus comes back, He's not coming back as the sacrificial lamb that He came as the first time. He's coming back as a gangster conquering king that has tattoos across his thighs that say Lord of Lord and King of Kings on a white horse with hair that looks like fire. He's a bad mamajamba,
who will defend himself? And friends, when we truly understand that it frees us up to just love people, to just show up and go, it's not my job to change people, it's the favorite part about what I get to do because I don't have to change you. The Holy Spirit will do it for you.
My hope and my goal is that all of us would find one or two things that we can begin to ask God, God would you change our hearts so that we can be what the church was always supposed to be, not a voting block but the hope that the world needs, the light into the darkness, the salt into an otherwise tasteless
world. So Father, God I ask with every person here, every eyes closed and head bowed, that right now that we would just have a holy moment with you. And the Lord that we wouldn't just come here to check a box and to go through the motions, that Lord that we would truly invite you in to change us
and understand that we're not the master of our lives anymore. And that God, you can have all of us
and we give you permission to change us. We give you permission to change us from the inside out, to remove from us the heart of stone that we had and give us a heart of flesh that feels, that is compassionate, that is loving, that is caring, that is giving.
And that God, what the Bible says will be the promise of the fruit of the spirit living in us is that we would be people who are gentle, who are patient, who are kind, who are self controlled. That God you would begin to do that work in us. And as each of us step back into our families and our jobs and our schools
and our sports teams and our circles of influences, as those people that we would begin to reach the world for Jesus, understanding that we are your plan a to reach this place and there is no plan b. Father, give us the courage to walk out a few differently this morning. It's in the mighty name of Jesus that everybody said,
amen. Thanks for joining us online this weekend. Let us know if we can help you in any way. Make sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on rockpoint.io for prayer and everything happening here at Rock Point.