18 How Shall We Live? (Romans 11:33-12:21)

SPEAKER_00: We're in Romans chapter 12 today, and I'm excited because we are finally into the really fun part of the book. Well, I mean, Ray Steadman, who was the my pastor when I was a baby believer, he used to say that it was against the law, or it ought to be against the law, to quote the first two verses of Romans 12 without also reading the last verses of Romans 11. So we're actually going to start with the last couple of verses of Romans 11. In fact, if any of you have been reading along in Ray's commentary, he's written a book on Romans from guilt to glory. It was one of your recommended resources. If you've been reading that, you'll notice how similar his book is to my teaching. Because he had it first. I learned Romans at his feet a long time ago. So if you're noticing similarities, yes, I'm a product of plagiarism. Everything I know, somebody taught me. So anyway, I agree with him that the end of Romans 11 ought to belong with the beginning of Romans 12. Because in Romans 12 he gives us an appeal to bring our bodies to God and give it to him as a sacrifice. But the reason we do this is what he's just said in chapter 11. So in 1133 he says, O the depth of the riches and wisdom and the knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord or been his counselor? Who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things, and to him be the glory forever, Amen. I appeal to you, therefore, that's where he's coming from. So he's saying, Because God is like this, wise and great and glorious and loving and merciful, and you are like this, ignorant of the future, forgetful of the past, unable to control the present, therefore I appeal to you to give your um give yourself to God. So we've come to the third main section of the book. Uh it's the final section, and it deals all with practical Christian living. So the first eight chapters is for those of you who are new. We started last fall. The first eight chapters, Paul lays out his case for uh what the gospel is, that we are justified by faith and grace alone. And that takes him through chapter 8 and 9 through 11, which we just finished. He says, Well, how do we know the gospel is trustworthy? Is it too good to be true? And the way he answers that question is looking at how God dealt with Israel. And said, if God was trustworthy in his dealings with Israel, then we can be sure that he is trustworthy with the gospel. And now we come to the last section of the book, and this is the so what section. This is what I call the icing on the cape chapters, because from here on out it's application, and that's all he's gonna do is say, if everything I've said is true about the gospel and about God, and this is what grace means, and this is what uh how trustworthy the gospel is, what difference should that make? How should you live your life? So if you've been wondering where's the application, the next eight weeks, that's all we're gonna do is application. So we built the solid foundation of what is the gospel, how trustworthy is it, and now we're gonna answer okay, so what? How should we then live? How should what difference should that make to us? All right, so let me just do the first two verses. And I almost broke this chapter up and just did the first two verses as their own unit. So I'm we're gonna, you know, you're not supposed to have more than like three points in a talk, but we're gonna have like five today, but maybe six. We'll see how far we get. But it's it's just a great chapter. So having told us at the end of 11 how great God is, he says, Therefore, I appeal to you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship, or literally, which is your logical service. The idea is it makes sense. It's the only sensible thing to do. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what the will of God is, what is good and acceptable and perfect. There's a sense in which everything we're gonna say from here on to the end of the book follows from this first point. This present yourselves as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God. Um He's basically from here on out he's gonna explain what that means in a lot of detail and and uh um detail. I can't think of another word. So, okay, so let's talk about what that means. Present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice, which is your spiritual service, or literally, which is your logical response. It's the only thing to do. Worship is always one of those things that I find very confusing. It's a hard topic to nail down. It's hard to define. If somebody came to you and said, Well, what is worship? We'd probably get 15 different answers from 15 different people in the room. Um I think that at the heart, it's heart, worship is a response to God. He speaks first, he acts first, he um, and then we respond based on what he did. So he takes the initiative, and then our thinking, our obedience all becomes a response, our praise is a response to what he has done. And often we tend to view worship as a kind of like spiritual aerobics. You know, I decide that I'm gonna improve the muscle tone of my soul, and so I decide I'm gonna go worship and become a little more spiritually fit, and I have some exercise that I do, and I make this decision, okay, I'm gonna do it like I might decide to lose weight or put my finances in order or something. I don't think that's essentially what worship is. The other way we so it's not something we decide to do so much as a response we have to God. The other mistake I think we make is we tend to view worship as an em like an emotional fountain that I need to go drink from now and then. So, you know, I think, oh, I have to get my battery recharged or I'm getting dry, I need to go drink some more worship. So I I sing myself into some kind of emotional state or of joy or tears or gratitude or or some kind of appreciation. I think there is an emotional aspect to worship, but it's not primarily what it is. It's not worship is not something we decide to do, nor is it just emotional state. It is a response. So I think worship is when we understand something about God that we've never understood before, or we see an aspect of his character more clearly than we have in the past, or we understand something, and then we respond with this gratitude and service. The closest analogy I could come up with is have you ever fallen head over heels in love with someone? You know, that new love stage where you just can't think about anything else, and you find that everything you do and everything you think becomes a response to the other person of you redefine what you're gonna do with your day and how you're gonna act and what you're gonna wear and what you're gonna say, and it all becomes how would my beloved respond to this, or what would they think? And you stop sort of measuring or manipulating or um trying to control what's happening to you, and you start thinking instead of just me, you think about me and and your the person you love. So you redefine your whole life, your whole thought, your activity in terms of the other person. Uh and that kind of response I think is essentially what worship is. There's some change at the inner level so that now you see things differently, you think differently, you respond differently, and you're redefining it all in terms of of your beloved. Now, think about if we can respond that way in a human love relationship, think what we ought to do for God. I mean, that we ought to, when we truly see him for who he is, and when you see grace for what it is and the depth of our sin, there ought to be that kind of redefining. Now, the problem with my analogy is it emphasizes the emotions too much. I mean, when you think about you know those first stages of love, you think of the emotional aspect of it. But what I really want to emphasize is the response, not so much the emotions. I think emotions are part of it, but at its core, worship is that response to God. And that's what he's saying. Now that we've gone through the gospel, you've understood, we've gone through eight chapters of what is the gospel, how trustworthy it is, your response ought to be to worship, to present yourself as a as a sacrifice to God. And notice, I think the really beautiful things about these verses is he doesn't say, okay, first straighten out your life and then come to God. He doesn't say that. He says, just come. I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer yourselves. Bring yourself just the way you are, with all your problems, with all your brokenness, with all the temptations, all the frustrations, just come to God. And that is unique in religions. I have not yet found another religion that doesn't say, first straighten out your life, first reach this contemplative state, first figure out nirvana, first do this thing, and then you can come to God. The God of the Bible never says that. He says, Come to me. I'm the answer to your problems. I'm the one that can handle them. You can't handle the problems by yourself, but I have the answers. And notice too, he says it's by the mercies of God that we do this, that we offer Him. I mean, when you think offer yourselves as a sacrifice, do you think, oh, it's some heroic deed that I do? You know, a sacrifice that sounds like it's really difficult to accomplish. And it's something I do that I should get credit for because I'm making this huge heroic act. And I don't think that's what Paul's suggesting here. In fact, in some ways it's the opposite. If you think about sacrifice in um in Deuteronomy 15, that's one of the passages that teaches about the offerings of animals, and you probably remember this. The Israelites were told to concentrate, consecrate the first of their herd, the first of their flock, and give it to God. So they were to bring the best and the first and the high point to God, and then symbolically everything else would be included. But, and this was the major exclusion, if the animal had any defect in it, they weren't to bring it as a sacrifice. And later on the prophets would chastise Israel for bringing blind and lame and useless animals, because they would bring the useless ones to God and keep the better ones for themselves. What Paul's saying here is we're those blind, lame, useless, defective animals. We're the ones that ought to be set aside. But by the mercy of God, we can come and offer ourselves as a sacrifice. So we're permitted to give him our lives. It's not heroicism on our part, it's by his mercy, it's by his grace. Because we're the ones, we're those defective animals, we're the ones that have the brokenness and the blemishes and the temptations and the problems. And yet God offer God lets us come to him. And he says, furthermore, it's the only thing that makes sense. This is your logical worship. It's like this is the only way to respond. Once you see who God is and who we are, the only logical response is to give yourself to him for his plan and his use. So the question is, how do we do that? He tells us in verse 2, do not be conform to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. That by testing you may discern what the will of God is, what is good and acceptable and perfect. So the first thing he says is, don't be conformed to the world or the patterns of this world, the schemes of this world. And I don't know about you, when I read that, I think, okay, I know what that means. We're not supposed to smoke or drink or play cards, and if we're really spiritual, we'd sell our television set and get rid of all the video games, you know, and um maybe the computer games and never watch an R-rated movie, and if you're really good, never drink coffee and tea again. Right? That's what we're supposed to do. That's the pattern of the world. Um I don't think that's what he's talking about. The the pattern of the world is, if you stop and think, is the pursuit of happiness and personal pleasure. Everybody's living to advance themselves. And to be conformed to the world is to live for yourself and your own personal pleasure, your own personal happiness and fulfillment. And the world says, what do I get out of this? What's in it for me? Um, how can I work this to my benefit? What why should I do that or offer that or whatever unless there's something in it for me? That's the spirit of the age. And not to be conformed to that is to stop thinking of putting yourself first, of serving yourself. It doesn't matter whether you smoke or play cards or watch our rated movies in that sense, it's more important whether you're pursuing your kingdom or God's kingdom. Um that sounds good, but then the how do I do that? How do I not be conformed to this world? I think he gives us his first clue by the renewal of your mind. Um, the only answer to how is this going to work is to let God change you in your inner being so that you begin thinking a new way. So instead of thinking, um, what do I get out of this? I think, how can I serve God in this? And we begin to look at life the way Jesus looked at life, seeing it as he sees it. What's really there, what's really important, not just what seems to be important or what looks important. So we need to let God change our thinking such that life becomes not self-advancement, but advancement of God's kingdom, advancing his will, not my will. That's the basis for living, and that takes a renewed mind. So the question then is, what is that gonna start looking like? Now, I'm not advocating that you go out and figure out how to do this on your own, because you should know from the first eleven chapters that this is something God is gonna work in us. We do our, we present ourselves to him and say, I'm here, use me, teach me, serve me, change me, and then he starts to process. But from three to the rest of the chapter, he's gonna tell us what that looks like, what it means to have your thinking changed, what life would be like if you stopped living for yourself and your own personal pleasure and happiness and begin to live to serve God. And it starts with how we view ourselves. And I think that's interesting because it's it echoes to me Jesus' saying, you know, don't take the take the log out of your own eye before you deal with the speck in your brother's eye. Seems like that's where God wants to start. The first thing he says is have a realistic view of yourselves. So let's look at verses three through, where are we going to go? Eight. For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them, if prophecy in proportion to our faith, if service in our service, the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness. So he starts to saying, By the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but think with sober judgment. That's the place to start. Um God starts renewing our mind, we begin to think more accurately about ourselves. And we can think too much of ourselves either in a positive sense or a negative sense. Um we tend to be more familiar with the the um being more impressed with ourselves than we ought to be. You know, we have these fantasies. We've called now I know you're not going to admit it, but we all do. I think we have these fantasies in which we're the star of the show, and everything revolves around us, and you know, after all, I'm the main character and you guys are just the supporting characters in the story, right? And that's how we all think. And we have these relationships, you know, that we we feel misunderstood because people are not recognizing our greatness. And uh so we can think too highly of ourselves, take ourselves too seriously, or we can think too negatively of ourselves. We start criticizing and degrading ourselves, and we feel hurt and we keep lists of who did what when and and how people have rejected us. And both sides of that coin are saying, I'm worth all this attention, whether you're giving yourself positive attention or negative attention. Um and I think the place to start Paul says is just don't think too highly of yourself. Don't put yourself in the starring role. Um and the other aspect of it is a lot of other religions say that you can change yourself by the sheer power of your thoughts. So just by you know finding that inner spark or or um reaching in or meditating, you can mold yourself by how you think. And I that's kind of wishful thinking. Religions like Christian science say that you can banish disease from your existence just by the force of your mental powers. And there are lots of new age philosophies out there that say you have to tap into mental energy, and once you do, you can turn yourself into anything you want to be. And they make a claim that the power of our mind is great enough that if you just harness it right, you know, pay them $19.95 and get their secret booklet, then you will you can create wonders for yourself if you just learn to think right. That's not what I think Paul is advocating here. As you know from the first eight chapters, we are powerless to change ourselves. We're not gonna change unless God does it for us. Now I think what he's saying here by think with sober judgment is there are some things that are objectively true, and you want to figure out what that is. You want to figure out who God made you to be, why he put you here, and then do it. I mean, you're here in Charlottesville at this point in history, in this church, and this body, and this family, and your neighborhood for a reason. He put you here and now on purpose. You're here to do something in whatever spot you're in, figure out what it is, and do it. And that's really what he's advocating. That's how you present yourself to God. Now, you know, I we can imagine great heroic deeds for ourselves. I don't know about you, but with uh the Narnia movie being so successful, I sometimes think, you know, we really need another C.S. Lewis. We need someone to come along and be that kind of apologist and write those kind of wonderful stories, and I could do that, you know. God could pick me for that role, right? Well, don't hold your breath. It's probably not gonna happen. Um when my daughter was about four, she really wanted to be six feet tall. And she used to think every night, oh, I'm gonna be six feet tall. Well, she is almost six feet tall now, but it at four she wasn't, and we said, you know, no amount of thinking is going to change that. You can't uh you can't wish yourself into being six feet tall. Um just to give you another analogy, you know, Billy Graham's getting older and he's kind of slowly retiring from public ministry, and I think probably most every teacher in in America has thought, well, God's gonna have to replace Billy Graham, you know, on that world stage, and he could get me. You know, I could do that role. Um that's probably not gonna happen either. And I think that's what Paul's saying basically, is look at who you are and where you are and why you're here and do that. Don't go seeking after something that God hasn't given you to do. That hoping and wishing that things are gonna turn out a certain way is not gonna change them. But what you want to do is look in the mirror and say, This is the kind of person God made me, this is my calling, these are my gifts, these are the people he's put in my life, this is what I can do, and I'm perfectly delighted to do it. I'm going to step out and do it. I'll be who I am. Um and that is incredibly freeing, and I think that's what he's asking of us. Present yourselves to God. Look around and say, who has he put in my life? Who's he put on my doorstep? Who are the family members that I'm called to love and care for, my neighbors or people in the church? Just do that. You don't have to imagine heroics or you know, be the next Billy Graham or C.S. Lewis, just do your part. He goes on to say that we're all like a body, and we all fit in this community together. So the teach that teaching he echoes throughout the New Testament. Probably he gives the clearest, longest explanation of it in 1 Corinthians 12. But basically what he's saying is in the body, God gives us hands and feet and arms and eyes and ears. We all have a different role to play, and we're all necessary. We're not here to compete with each other, we're here to do our part. So you don't try to, you know, here with your elbow because that wouldn't work. You need ears, you need arms, you need hands, you need legs to move and arms to lift, and that we're all here, and everyone's contribution is different, but it's in harmony, it's useful, and we ought to appreciate each other. So what he's advocating, I'm thinking, is find your place. Find um what is your contribution to the body, and then gratefully do it. Get on with it. I think one of the symptoms of uh foolish thinking is believing that we're never quite ready to do what we're called to do. You know, y and you're probably thinking, Well, I couldn't do that. I'm too fill in the blank, you know, I'm too old, or I'm too young, or I'm I'm too extroverted, or I'm too introverted, or I'm too loud, or I'm too quiet, or I'm too obnoxious, or I don't have the right education, I didn't go to the right schools, or I haven't don't have enough training, or I'm not articulate enough, or I'm not good enough. I mean, we all have something. And here's the secret: you're right. There probably is something about you that is too whatever. Because we're all those lame, blind, defective animals that ought to have been cast aside. And yet God says, I'm going to use you anyway. Whatever it is about you that's too whatever, it doesn't matter. You um the starting point is to just to bring yourself to God and say, use me, here I am. Um I think that's um I mean that's incredibly freeing. The great insight of this passage, I think, is you can discover who you are, you can figure out what your contribution is, and when you do, do it. If you're a teacher, teach. If you're uh have the God-given capacity to show mercy, show mercy. You don't need to get trained over and over again, just start doing it. Do what you've been called to do. And the other application of that is not only can you figure it out and do it, we need you to figure it out. We that's part of being a body in a community. God has put us here in Charlottesville, and He's given us the right mix here, and we need each other. If if you don't go out and use your gift, then we're the rest of us, you know, are limping along with without a foot or whatever. Each person is uniquely gifted and uniquely needed. We need you to serve, we need you to do that. No one, there's no one else on the planet who will do what you have been called to do. Now, some things are obvious. If you're a wife, there's no one else who's been called to be a wife to your husband. That that's kind of a given. If you're a mother, there's no one else who's been called to be a mother to your children. And I think those are roles we ought to take profoundly seriously. Those are our responsibilities. Um you get outside your family, it becomes a little less clear because there's a lot more choice. What's my role in the church? What's my role in my neighborhood, my community? Um, then you have it takes more discernment. But Paul's saying, by the grace of God, look in the mirror, think soberly, think rightly, and start taking a steps in that direction. And when you do, get on with it. Serve. Um before we leave this section, I will just want to talk a little bit more about the gifts. There's usually a two-part division of the gifts, um, speaking gifts and serving gifts, and I think he kind of echoes that here. Prophecy starts out the kind of category of gifts that are more speaking gifts, and then he mentions serving, let him serve, and that's kind of the other category of gifts. First Peter divides them up similarly. And I just want to say that point out that both are necessary. We tend to look at, if you have a serving gift, you tend to look at teaching gifts and say, Oh, I wish I had that. And if you have a teaching gift, you tend to look at serving gifts and go, oh, I wish I had that. Um they're both necessary to the body. We can't live without either one of them. All the gifts are needed, and there's no hierarchy. There's not like there's some spiritual giant status if you have one gift versus another gift. Now, some are more visible, some are more up front, some are more behind the scenes, but they're all important. Um my daughter, as I may have mentioned once or twice, plays soccer, and she most often plays in the defensive midfield, and you sometimes fullback, but usually defensive midfield, and in that position, her job is to make plays happen. So from that position you can see three-fourths of the field, and you can see where the seams are and see where the openings are and see where the play is developing, and your job is to get to the ball to the person who could actually score a goal. And she has a t-shirt that says offense sells tickets, defense wins games. So, you know, if you're in the front, if you're a striker, that's the person who kind of gets the glory. They're the one that usually is in front of the net and gets the ball into the goal. Um, but they play with their back to the field most of the time, and they can't see more than a couple of people in front of them. So they're dependent on the people behind them to drop the ball over their shoulder and get it to their feet. But they're usually the ones that get credit. Um I bring that up because it's kind of an analogy between speaking and serving gifts. One may be more up front, one may get more attention, but you can't survive without the others. There it's uh the one sells tickets, the other wins games. Um if we had only a good offense, we'd lose every time. If we had only a good defense, no one would come less because the game would be too boring. And the point of all that is just as all the positions are needed on the soccer field, so all the gifts in the church are needed. We aren't in competition with each other. We are players on the same team, and um we need to pull together to work together. So Paul's saying, gain some self-understanding, look at who you are, uh, figure out what God has called you to do, expect he's gonna use you, and then you are free to be that person to exercise your spiritual gift. I think he ties it to having a measure of faith. The more we grow in faith and maturity, I think the more we're able to see who we are and agree that God has done this wonderful thing in us and we're uh free to live it out. Now, think about what the church would be like if we lived that really well. I think our world is crying out for that kind of community. There are lots of people that don't have friends, that don't have family members within any reasonable distance from one another, they don't know how to fit in, you go to work, you come home, you talk, you never talk to anyone. There's this loss of human relationships and community in modern America. And the church is a place to have that. And if you think about it, it's the best place to have it because it's the one organization that says you can be fully different and fully connected. Because every other organization you join, you join because you have a common interest. You know, maybe your kids go to the same school, or you went to the same school yourself, or you cheer for the same team, or you have the same political point of view, or um you wear the same clothes, or something, you join these organizations and associations, and you're expected to be like everyone else. You like the same music, you cheer the same team, you you have the same political point of view. What Paul's saying is in the body of Christ, you get to be fully connected with everyone else radically and connected the way a body's connected, meeting each other and individual, completely different. You're not supposed to look like me, and I'm not supposed to look like you. God hasn't that would be redundant. It wouldn't work as well if we were all carbon copies of each other. So the marvelous gift of the body of Christ is we get to be ideally who we are, and ideally and really connected to other people. And that's what he's going to talk about in the next section is that connection. So let's look at nine through sixteen. Let love be genuine, abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good, love one another with brotherly affection, outdo one another in showing honor, do not be slothful in zeal, but fervent in spirit, serve the Lord, rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant to prayer, contribute to the needs of the saints, and seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse them, rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep, live in harmony with one another, do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly, never be conceited. So, having taken a sober look at ourselves and figuring out where God wants us to serve, now he's saying, look around you. How do you treat the other members of your community, the other people in your in the body of Christ? And I think what he's adding here is essentially passion. Listen to the vocabulary he uses, abhor what is evil, hold fast, show affection, outdo one another. He uses zeal, fervence, rejoice, be constant, rejoice, weep, live in harmony. The verbs he uses are really active, passionate, energetic kind of words. So he's saying, um, be engaged from the heart, be committed to the people around you, be deeply committed to them, care enough about them that when they rejoice, you rejoice, when they weep, you weep. Uh, look at life from their perspective, have their burdens matter. So the encouragement is to draw us out of ourselves and to begin to weep and mourn and rejoice and pray with those that God has put us in community with. So we've got the sober judgment, but then this passionate commitment to others, and along with that, I think the other theme through that section is generosity. Along with being passionate, he's saying, give more than you get. That's essentially the point he's making. Look for ways to spend yourself for someone else. Instead of keeping track of how much I'm getting, what am I getting out of this, like the world does, or what's in it for me, try to give more than you get. Be the kind of person who serves. You probably know people that you know you go to a restaurant and somehow they have this uncanny ability to beat the check. And you know, I never know you know quite how they do that. What Paul's saying is the opposite of that. Be the person that reaches for the check, not not just in restaurants, but in relationships, in spiritual things, in everything you're in. When you have a chance to act or give or serve, do more. Be aggressive in doing that. Outdo each other, give yourself away. And that's what he's advocating. Um, if there's work to be done, I think he'd say, do more than your share. Try to try to figure out where God wants you to use, and then be passionate and generous in doing it. Just a couple of comments on the specifics in verse 16: do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. You know, there's always in every social group there's kind of the high status and the mid-status and the low status people, humanly speaking, anyway. You know, we kind of rate where we fall on the social totem pole, and we always want to associate with the people in the inner circle, with the, you know, the kind of the spiritual giants, because then maybe their status will rub off on us, right? And I think what Paul's saying is don't do that. Look for the person who needs you. Don't look for the person who can give you something, look for someone who might need you. So, you know, we get this huddle syndrome where everyone's in a huddle trying to see into the inner circle. The answer to the huddle is turn around. Look at the people behind you. That breaks the huddle. That gets um that gets the body moving and serving. Um be hospitable. Hospitality is not just entertainment, it's it's giving to people who are unlikely to pay you back. Um, serving when you're not worried about, well, if I have them to dinner, then they'll have me to dinner. It's just giving to give yourself away. Um, we gotta move. All right, let's look at the final section. Now he's gonna extend this passion and generosity, I think, to what do you do in the face of persecution and difficulty? What do you do? Um he's gonna add to show grace and mercy in the face of antagonism. And it's interesting to me, I think, in this whole section, he's still talking about the church. He's still talking about believers. And he says, When you're persecuted, bless those who persecute you. I think the reality is we may both love the Lord and we may drive each other crazy. You know, there are there are just some people that we're gonna clash with at some level. And how do you deal with that? And as far as you can, live peacefully. So let me read that section. Verse 17 to the end. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him, if he is thirsty, give him something to drink, for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. I think it's certainly true that outside the church there's gonna be persecution and disagreements and antagonism. It can also happen inside the church, despite our best efforts. There are times when we aren't gonna get along, and when we don't get along, we need to seek not to respond with anger and vengeance vengeance, but with grace and mercy. And I think his point is basically we aren't wise enough to know how to seek revenge. We aren't wise enough. It's too complex to know. I mean, sometimes God allows us to be hurt because that pain is something we need to learn. Um, but we aren't wise enough to know when somebody else needs that pain. That's up to God. He will avenge evil. Uh and the remarkable thing is he may decide to punish evil by nailing that evil to the cross. There he may win to the wicked to himself because of his son, and we're not wise enough to know how that's all gonna play out. So our job is to trust that he will take care of it, that he won't handle it. It's his job. In verse 20, he's quoting Proverbs 25 if your enemy is hungry, feed him, if he's thirsty, give him something to drink. In so doing, you will heap burning coals on his head. The idea of that is to do unexpected good, uh, to do more than you're expected. If you're asked for one thing, give more, give generously to that. Um it's an extraordinary calling, and I confess it's a lot easier to teach it than it is to do it, especially on a regular basis. So um, but he's saying our motive ought not to be revenge and hurting, but our motive ought to be grace, as we have been shown, grace. Now the phrase he burning coals on his head is really difficult to interpret. There are about um four or five different streams of thought as to what it means and how it came to mean what it means. It's a phrase that Paul didn't originate. It comes from Proverbs, and it probably came from more ancient literature than even Proverbs. But all the different lines of thought agree on one thing. They all end up at the same point, and that is that the significance of it is doing unexpected good. Repaying evil with good or doing something nice in the face of anger. Every different line of thought ends up in that place. The question is, how did they get there? I'm gonna tell you the one I like best, and I also have to tell you right now it's not the favorite. It's the uh it used to be and probably 50 years ago, but now it's fallen out of scholarly favor, and there are some other lines of thought that have taken preeminence. But to me, I think it still makes the best sense, so I'm gonna tell it to you. And that is um, in ancient times they didn't have matches. So if your fire went out, you had to go borrow someone's coals to restart your fire. And you would probably go to your neighbor and take a jar with you or something that you could carry a hot um hot coals in. And if your neighbor was generous, he would fill your jar to overflowing. Instead of just giving you here's one coal, he might fill the entire jar to the top, and then usually they carried those on their heads, you know, with this padded. So the image of heaping burning coals on their head is filling the jar to overflowing. And it becomes a picture of an ample, generous response. And and then the metaphor comes is giving generously. Now, the current kind of scholarly fashion is that it doesn't come from that source, but it came from this Egyptian myth of that's pretty long and complicated that I'm not going to go into. But whether no matter where the phrase came from, how it came to mean what it means, every line of thought ends in the same place, and that is showing good in the face of evil, or giving more than is expected of you. So verse 21, then he says, Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. And there's a sense in which that could be a summary of everything we've learned so far. That the evil of the human condition, with all its wickedness, with all our brokenness, all the lies, everything that Paul went through in the first four chapters of Romans, um, that God is going to overcome all of that with good and grace, and then we are to reflect that as we serve Him. Now, we're out of time, but I just want to summarize, does this overwhelm you? I mean, do you look at this and go, Great, she just added 250 things to my to-do list, you know, and I can't do any of them. Um, I'm not that kind of person. It's overwhelming. Um if you are, let me just address that, because that's my first response. I look at this and I go, this does not describe me. This this may be the ideal, but this is not me. Um and if that overwhelms you, go back to the first chapter where he says, Um, don't think more highly of yourself, but think with sober judgment. That's the starting point. You don't have to exercise every gift. You just need to exercise the gifts God has given you. You don't have to meet every need in Virginia or in this church or in the community or in the world. Just figure out what God's put on your doorstep. Start there. So you don't have to do everything, just your calling. And so we want to learn to distinguish between being called and being driven. You know, if you if you're driven, you've taken on too much, you're overcommitted, you're stressed, you're probably working outside your area of giftedness. If you're called, you're doing what God's asked you. It may be growing and stretching, but it will also probably bring joy. Um so you know, when we're driven, we're often focused on ourselves and thinking, if I don't do this, then that person will think I'm not a good Christian. Um that's not the focus. The focus is on calling God or on serving God. So if you're called, you're looking for how can I serve him with the way he's given me. A few years ago, I had a friend call me who really was in a bad situation and needed help, and I was so busy I couldn't even take the phone call. I mean, literally every minute I was on the phone, I was seeing all the balls that I was going to drop because the minutes were ticking away, and it hit me at that point, like a two by four, that I was radically wrong. That that I was I was driven and not called, and that I had a big problem. If I am too busy that when someone calls in desperate need and I can't even take a 10-minute phone call, then my life was out of whack, and I had to make some radical changes. That I'm not advocating that kind of busyness. Busyness is an idol, I think, in our society. We we tend to think the more busy we are, the better people we are, the more status we have. And I'm not advocating that you're you become more busy, but that you spend your time on what you're called to do and let the rest go, trusting that there's a whole body out there, and God's given other people to meet those other needs, um, and he'll give someone else to serve in that area, you don't have to do it all. Jesus is the Savior, not us. We don't have to do it all. So take an honest look at your calling and your gifts, but at the same time, I'd say don't view them as limits. Look at gifts as opportunities. Sometimes we tend to use it as an excuse. You know, God will drop something on our doorstep and we'll say, Can't do that, that's not my gift. Well, you have to ask, why did he drop it on your doorstep? Maybe he wants to develop that gift in you. Maybe it's an opportunity that you never had before. Just to give you an example, I love teaching, it's always been my joy, but I gave it up for about, I don't know, three and a half years because I went through a period where my mother, my mother-in-law, and then my husband's grandmother were all diagnosed with cancer, different forms of cancer, and they all eventually died in the in the same three-year period, in fact, within about 18 months of each other. And during that time I dropped out of everything. I I was invisible at church. I stopped practicing I stopped teaching, I stopped doing everything, and I spent a lot of time serving. And if you'd asked me, I would have told you I am serving challenged. You know, I'm I'm more of the academic type. I like to think about it. Doing it is a little harder for me. Um so during the cancer years, as I call them, God worked on that in me, and I learned to serve because I had to. I, you know, there were just times you had to be in the emergency room at 1.30 in the morning or or fetching prescriptions or whatever needed to be done. And when I look back on that, I see not only was he teaching me by giving me practice, he taught me by example because there were wonderful people in this church who rallied around and met my needs, and I saw how they used their hands-on gifts. And by example, I learned a lot by being the recipient of some really wonderful service. So I hope and pray that the next time I have an opportunity to do one of the hands-on gifts that I'm better at it because I had practice and also I had examples to learn from. But if I'd looked at that and said, no, I can't do any of this serving stuff. I'm a teacher, I don't do I think, you know, I think I would have missed out on a lot of what God had for me. Uh, and I wouldn't want to miss it. So all that's to say, here you are now, in ten years, you may be someplace else. And there are different seasons of your life. When you have young children, your calling is really different than when you have no children, or when you have teenagers. I mean, there your life will change and your the opportunities you have to serve may change. So don't think, well, I took a test ten years ago and I figured out my gifts, and now I know and I'm done for life. Um you never know what God will call you to do. So if you're overwhelmed, I'd say, don't be overwhelmed. The point is, you're free to be who you are and just who you are. You don't have to be anyone else. So stop and take your sober look and ask God to replace all that worry and anxiety with a gracious face which says, This is the kind of person I am, this is my calling, these are my gifts, this is what I can do in this season of my life, and I'm delighted to be that person. I want to be the person that God made me to be. I'm sorry I went over. Let me just pray to close us, and um we'll still take a couple of questions. Father, we just thank you that you are a God who gifts us and enable us, and we pray that you will indeed give us understanding in these great things, that we would discover the excitement and the joy and the fulfillment that comes from giving our lives to you and moving in the direction and the programs that you have for us. We pray that you take away our self-centered desires and our love of ourselves and advancing of self and replace them with the gracious response of worship of serving you. And help us discover who we are before you and then fulfill that. And uh that we might find bring your name glory and find fulfillment in our own lives. In Jesus' name. Amen.