Why Authentic Faith Requires Real Community

Thank you Father that all scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. Open our hearts to receive Your Word that we may know You better and be thoroughly equipped for every good work through Your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Simeon Stylites wanted to devote himself to pleasing God and in his mind the best way to do this was to remove himself as much as possible from the world. He joined a monastery but he found that too distracting and so instead he built a pole 18 meters high and decided to live on top of it. He lived on this pole for 37 years and during the heat of summer the freezing winter rain wind. Simeon used his time to pray and occasionally preached to all those who were below him until his death in 459 AD. Simeon Stylites started a movement in which people thought that the godly life required removing yourself from the world and sitting on top of a pole. Well Simeon right, does pleasing God require sitting 18 meters above the world disengaged? Well actually we see today that the answer is no. Pleasing Jesus requires engagement not separation. So as we look at Romans chapter 12 verses 9 to 21 it'd be good to have your Bibles open there. We need to remember the context of the book of Romans. We are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ who died on the cross for our sins in our place for our sin. The Romans chapter 5 verse 8 but God demonstrates his own love for us in this while we were still sinners. Christ died for us. The Christian life it's not about us doing good things and earning salvation. Jesus makes us right with God and then having been made right with God we can now live out who we are in Christ. And it's important we understand this because if we don't understand it we will live with the burden of thinking that we have to live up to God's standard which we can never achieve. So instead we trust in Christ and when we do that we have the assurance of forgiveness we have the promise of eternal life and then we also have the freedom to be able to live for Jesus. Last week we saw that we are to be living sacrifices not being conformed to the pattern of this world but having our minds transformed by the renewing work of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit applies his words to our hearts and minds so that we would know how to live for Jesus. And we saw one particular area where we are to live the transformed life was in verses 3 to 8. It was the way we use the gifts God has given us to serve the church and not ourselves. Well today we see more of the transformed life. And verses 9 to 21 contain lots of exhortations about how we are to live lives that please God. And none of them suggest isolation but engagement. The first three areas of engagement we're going to look at are in the family of God. So in the family of God we are to engage with love. Verse 9 love must be sincere. In the church there is no room for hypocritical love only genuine love. Judas when he betrayed Jesus with a kiss that was a hypocritical show of love. He looked the part but in his heart was betrayal. Instead with a sincere heart we are to love like Jesus loved us. And this love is a discerning love hate what is evil cling to what is good. As our minds are transformed we will love what God loves. We will hate what God hates. We will love righteousness and good but we will hate sin and evil. And if it happens that we find ourselves loving and desiring sin and evil we need to seek forgiveness from God and ask God to transform our hearts and our minds. Then in verse 10 our love will be directed towards each other be devoted to one another in love. The love mentioned here is brotherly love family love the the church is a family we're more than just a collection of individuals we are a family Jesus's family and we ought to love one another. Faults in all. Now at this side of heaven you're never going to find the perfect church because the church is made up of people like you and me with all of our faults of all with all of our sin all of our character flaws we're not perfect and yet through faith in Jesus we are being transformed by the grace of God to each day become more and more like Jesus and we are called to love each other and in perfect bunch we might be we're not called to climb a pole so that we can't love but love as a family and this is hard particularly when someone is being unlovely but that is what Jesus did for us when we were unlovely when we were his enemies Jesus went to the cross and in love died for our sins and so by the transforming work of the Holy Spirit we follow the example of Christ and we seek to love others not necessarily easy it'll be trying and yet there's the exhortation from God to love one another so we are to engage in the church family with love for one another we're also to engage with zeal and now there are a few other commands in here that I am actually skipping over about how we are to live as a church family like honor one another but I think all of those ones that I am skipping a cup shit in that the love loving each other though isn't the only goal of our church family it sits alongside serving the Lord with zeal we ought to have zeal for serving the Lord in verse 11 as zeal is best described as great energy enthusiasm or passion for a person cause or goal in this case our energies our passions our enthusiasm is to be directed towards serving Jesus pleasing him is our goal as zeal is not what lack of zeal I think could be best described maybe as the way that some people would look forward to a soggy bowl of wheat bicks in the morning as you might like having a soggy bowl of wheat bicks but it's not your greatest passion or desire and if it is well maybe we can chat later I'll be curious to hear but I think zeal is more like crunching that corn flakes it's a cereal to get excited about because it's covered in sugar and nuts and in our house it only happens on holidays and there's excitement there well we ought to have zeal for serving Jesus it's there's to be an excitement and energy now zeal is not something that we create in and of ourselves it's not something we conjure up but zeal is actually something given to us by Jesus as we reflect on him and what he's done for us on the cross if we want to increase our zeal for serving the Lord we need to go back to the cross and it's not something we do individually although individually we should be zealous for serving Jesus but actually also as a church we should be zealous for serving Jesus a newcomer should be able to walk in and go oh this church is zealous for serving Jesus so we engage in love we engage with zeal but we also together engage in trusting God in verse 12 we are to be joyful in hope patient in affliction faithful in prayer church family life won't always be easy the christian church in Rome had afflictions in verse 14 they were persecuted in verse 17 they had enemies and in those hard times we're to look to the hope that we have in Christ the hope that we'll not disappoint the hope that brings eternal joy and so where as we go through hardship we are to be patient and we are to trust God we are to be faithful in prayer trusting our heavenly Father I was having a chat with someone this week and they asked me the question what would happen if God answered every single prayer you prayed this week with yes what would look different this week if God answered every single prayer that you prayed it's a challenging question because it puts a big spotlight on your prayer life individually but also as a church would are we praying for transformed lives among us would we see a full thriving church would rock Hampton be completely different I'll leave that thought with you we also see that as we depend on God we also to be caring for one another through these hardships sharing with each other in verses 13 in verse 15 rejoicing with those who rejoice and mourning with those who mourn we had to do life together through the highs and the lows there are lots of commands in this section about living together as the family of God and this is how we are to live a life pleasing to Jesus and we live in a very individualistic world where we read as we did in the gospel reading today take up our cross and follow Jesus and we think about that in terms of me what I need to do and that's true each person is called to put their place faith in Jesus each person is called to deny themselves and follow Jesus but when we do that we are made part of the family of God so part of taking up our cross and following Jesus is actually living as part of this family of God it's not like being by like being Sony and the starlight and withdrawing but it's actually by engaging in the messiness of church in the messiness of the relationships with imperfect people loving other imperfect people knowing that we are sinful and we need Jesus we serve Jesus with zeal yes individually but also together as a church we love our brothers and sisters in Christ together encouraging one another serving one another honoring one another being there for one another and Jesus himself models this for us doesn't he Jesus did not spend three years of his ministry on top of a pole he spent his time with people he spent his time with slow to understand disciples teaching them showing them the kingdom of God the temptation for us is to disengage when something doesn't go our way when we feel slighted or dishonored the temptation is just the pullback and that's exactly what the devil wants us to do but actually as God's church we ought to engage to love sincerely to be devoted to one another in love so a transformed life lived to please Jesus engages with the family of God but the love doesn't just stay in the family of God it flows out to even those who are hostile towards us and so the next point that we'll look at is when we will engage with love for our enemies our Paul's teaching in verses 17 to 21 echoes the Lord Jesus this teaching first acknowledges that there is evil in the world evil done against us where we want justice where we want revenge Jesus is teaching men was counter-cultural as it is counter-cultural today don't seek revenge our revenge I think for many people is second nature it's an automatic response you keyed my car I'm going to key yours you ignore me I ignore you you hit me I hit you you hurt me I hurt you you wronged me I wronged you it's payback time it's the storyline of most action movies the hero wants revenge in our polite civilized society maybe our desire for revenge stays in our hearts and minds and doesn't get acted on but the desire is there and there is something about this that is right injustice should anger us evil done against us should anger us and it should move us to action but the action is not revenge what do we read here in God's word do not repay anyone evil for evil verse 17 and do what is right live at peace with everyone in verse 18 do not take revenge verse 19 and we will be able to do these things as Jesus transforms our heart by his spirit if we are to engage in our enemies it is to be from a position of seeking to love them now that's counter-cultural but we can do this and we can do it for two reasons we can love our enemies firstly because we're not sweeping their actions under the carpet it's not like we're saying that the evil thing that they have done doesn't matter because we have turned the other cheek no it's actually very opposite we can do it because we know that their actions do matter and their actions also matter to God and God will act loving our enemies is an act of trust in God it's a display of faith verse 19 do not take revenge my dear friends but leave room for God's wrath for it is written it is mine to avenge I will repay says the Lord we trust that God will deal with the injustice that God will make all that is wrong right God is not going to just let an injustice go unchecked whether it be by nations committing war crimes or people in your life committing evil against you we trust that God will act like the psalmist who cries out to God deliver me from my enemies in Psalm 3 and we have evidence that God will act as we look at the Old Testament we see that God regularly punishes and judges sin he's promised a time when Jesus will return and all injustice will be judged and here is the thing we don't need to act on God's behalf in this God will meet out his judge justice and judgment fairly with the exact right amount and he will do it more perfectly than we ever could see when we take revenge we get caught up in anger we get self-focused we think of ourselves highly we do a poor job of justice we try and take God's place and we don't do it well but God will God in his perfect character with the right amount of mercy and compassion will execute his justice so that all the wrongs in this world will be righted so that's the first reason we can love our enemies God will judge the second reason we can love our enemies is because we've had our evil and injustice forgiven by Jesus we too deserve his wrath but Jesus died on the cross taking God's anger upon himself in our place no matter what evil we have done whether we've wronged others and maybe we have been the cause of wanting other people wanting to seek revenge on the cross Jesus takes the justice that we deserve upon himself so we can be right with God so that we can have forgiveness through faith in Jesus and it means that instead of seeking revenge in verse 20 if your enemy is hungry feed him if he's thirsty give him something to drink don't show anger show love don't show enmity but show kindness give them exactly what they do not deserve not because what they did is an evil but because God will repay God will show his wrath see God's wrath is not a temper tantrum like a child might throw sometimes even an adult might throw but it's our holy God's measured response to human sin and rebellion we can trust him now part of the way that God brings justice is by using the government of the land we'll have a look at that in more detail next week but it's not wrong to rely on the government to bring about justice what is being spoken of here is revenge personal justice crusades now this is not saying that if you're in a situation of evil that you need to stay there and endure it it is appropriate to leave evil situations it is appropriate to call on the authorities when needed but we do want to make sure that we're not seeking revenge now here is the twist if we love our enemy like Jesus suggests we're told in doing this you will hit burning coals on their head in verse 20 responding in kindness to evil trusting God to judge and not meeting it out ourselves is like pouring burning coals on someone's head it's quite an image isn't it it leaves it to God God is more likely to be able to prick their conscience we don't do this action of love with the heart seeking only revenge i'm going to give you this drink and i want to see burning coals poured on your head i don't think that's the attitude that Jesus is encouraging here but rather as we love as we seek to turn the other cheek as we seek to copy Jesus God can use that and we're trusting that God will bring about his justice in his timing and the person who has wronged you might be frustrated by your response they might be baffled by your response it might bring in them guilt they might completely ignore it but God will judge you will be showing them Jesus showing them the transformed life that Jesus is working in you our verse 21 sums it up do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good the best way to deal with evil is through good so Jesus didn't climb a pole to escape the the messy world he engaged ultimately he died on the cross so we could be forgiven but he also leaves us with this example we need to get down off our poles if we're on one and engage we need to engage in the church we need to engage by loving our enemies i want to leave with you just a couple of questions for you to think about and they're just kind of application questions is there someone here in church this morning that you can love is there someone here that you need to honor above yourself is there someone at work or in your circles that you need to forgive is your prayer life this week something that you need to work on expressing your dependence on God maybe we can pray that our love would be sincere that we would hate what is evil and cling to what is good and be devoted to one another in love let's do that now heavenly father we thank you for Jesus we thank you that he came and died for us so that we can be forgiven so we can have eternal life and that we are now by the power of your spirit at work in us able to engage in your church engage with each other as a church family so how Lord help us to love one another sincerely to hate what is evil and cling to what is good help us to be devoted to one another in love we ask Lord that you would increase our zeal for serving you that you would increase our dependence upon you and we also ask that ask Lord that you would help us as we seek to love our enemies and to not seek revenge but to trust your your good judgment help us this week to live lives that honor Jesus we pray this in his name Amen