Romans 12:9 - 12:21

Romans — Steve Gregg

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Romans 12:9 - 12:21

RomansSteve Gregg

This text covers a variety of topics related to the response to God's mercies. Christians are urged to love without pretense, abhor evil, cling to good, and show affection to one another. We are also advised to judge what is right and wrong, serve the Lord zealously, be patient in tribulation, and prioritize helping both Christians and non-Christians. The passage urges us to maintain peaceful relationships with others, even with enemies, as revenge is best left to God.

Transcript

So we resume our treatment of Romans chapter 12, picking it up at verse 9. Now what has gone before in verses 1-8 is so rich that any Bible teacher worth his salt would want to spend several sessions just expanding on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which we have many other cross-references, certainly many questions arise about them and can be answered. And I do have entire lectures on these passages. For example, in my series, Charisma and Character, there's many lectures on the gifts of the Spirit there and go into these very things that Paul lists.

In a treatment going through Romans, however, we can't linger too long on every topic, especially topics like that where there's a great deal of biblical material to consider. If we had unlimited time, we could, but we don't. So we move on, simply observing that Paul said that we should recognize that we are part of a body we're not individually all of that.

We're not, you know, it's not really that we're so important in ourselves. We do each make an important contribution, but it's to a larger identity. That's body of Christ.

It's not about my identity. It's not about me getting attention, me getting credit. It's about me making a contribution.

God has given me a gift to contribute to the well-being of the overall body, and that's supposed to be my mentality. I'm supposed to be transformed by the renewing of my mind. And one of those things has to be renewed is my radical individualism, where I think that it's really pretty much all about me.

I've got to change that mind. I've got to begin to realize, you know, there's other people every bit as important as I am. And the overall body of Christ as a whole has got to be the priority over myself.

And so he talks about each of the gifts, and oh, it is so tempting as a Bible teacher to look at those gifts and say, oh, I want to talk about that gift. I want to say more about that. But I have in other places, and you can, if you need to, you can find those lectures at the website.

We'll just have to move on now. Now, I said in our last lecture that in chapter 12, Paul really compresses a lot of sermonic material. If a person were to give 10 or 12 sermons from this chapter, he would not exhaust the material.

And there are that many different subjects that are hinted at. We've already suggested a few of them. Certainly, present your body as a living sacrifice.

That's a great text for a whole sermon. Or be transformed by the renewing of your mind. That's a text for a whole sermon.

Don't think more highly than you should than you ought. That's a text for a whole sermon. Now, the reference to the gifts in verses 4 through 8, that's certainly material for a whole series.

You see, so much is compressed here. And I think, again, it's because Paul is accustomed in his letters to give an equal time to practical teaching as he gives to the theological teaching. But he's used up so much of his parchment and the theological teaching in the first 11 chapters.

He only has a little bit left. He's got to cram it all in in short exhortations instead of expanding on them. So, a lot of subjects come up here, but they all are related, of course, to our response to the mercies of God.

I beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of God, he said in verse 1, that you do this. You present your body. Transform your mind.

And so, your mental and physical activities have got to be different. And in what ways? Well, here's a bunch of ways. Verse 9, let love be without hypocrisy.

Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good. Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love.

In honor, giving preference to one another. Not lagging in diligence. Fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.

Rejoicing in hope. Patient in tribulation. Continuing steadfastly in prayer.

Distributing to the needs of the saints. Given to hospitality. Now, right there, you've got a whole sermon series for several months.

Just each of those phrases speaks of a separate duty, and not a small one, but a broad one that could be expanded on. It may well be that the first line in verse 9 is to be seen as sort of an overarching duty that all the others unpack. Let love be without hypocrisy.

It simply means love genuinely. And since the whole duty of the Christian is love, this could be the umbrella under which all these other duties hang. And what would it mean to love without hypocrisy? Well, it doesn't mean you love evil.

It means you hate evil. Well, how can you love and hate evil? How can you be a loving person and hate evil? Well, you hate evil because the persons you love are damaged by it. Evil is like a cancer in the human race.

Evil destroys people. It destroys families. It destroys relationships.

It destroys children. It destroys marriages. Evil destroys.

If you love people, you will hate that which destroys them, just like you hate a cancer in somebody that you care about. You would do anything to remove it. You abhor it.

You cannot be a loving person and be apathetic about evil unless you're just not thinking. You might not be thinking about the damage evil does. You might just say, well, no one's perfect.

I can tolerate a little bit of evil here or there. Well, the trouble is evil is like a cancer. It spreads.

It's like a leprosy. It takes over more and more. And so it's a little leaven in a lump that spreads out, Paul said in 1 Corinthians 5. So you have to hate it.

If you see a rat in the house and you've got a baby in the house, you have to get rid of that rat. And if you don't do it soon, there's going to be a lot more behind it or cockroaches or whatever. Things that are loathsome, you realize they don't just stay the same.

If they're not dealt with, they increase, they take over. And so is evil. You have to loathe it, abhor it, not be tolerant of it.

Take a firm stand against evil. Now, doing so often is going to get you charged with being unloving, of course, because once you begin to speak out against evil, so many evil people, or even people that aren't that evil but are nonetheless toying with evil things, compromising with evil things, they become so identified with their behavior that to criticize the behavior, you have to be a loving person. But to criticize the behavior, they take as a personal attack on themselves.

You see, if you caught me in a lie and you said, Steve, that was a lie, that's not okay, I wouldn't say, you hate me. I would think, oh yeah, well, I guess I did tell I shouldn't do that because I don't identify myself with being a liar. I'm not perfect, so when I find out I'm not perfect, I have to repent and try to do better.

But some people are so committed to their sins that you criticize the sin, it's like you're attacking them. You can't be seen as hating that which is destroying them without being seen as hating them themselves. And this is where, of course, the mind needs to be renewed because we all would be in danger of falling into this error that when you criticize prostitution, people think you hate prostitutes.

When you criticize homosexuality, people think you hate homosexuals. When you criticize gambling, people think you hate gamblers. I mean, there are behaviors which will destroy people if they are left unchecked.

You have to loathe those behaviors. You have to hate those behaviors. The Bible says in Proverbs 8, the fear of the Lord is to hate evil.

If you fear God, you will hate evil. But that's only because you love evil's victims. You hate crime because there are victims of crime.

You don't hate the victims, and you shouldn't even hate, necessarily, the people who perpetrate because many times they are slaves of the evil also. It's the evil that's the problem, and many people become so saturated with evil, so identified with it, that you can hardly criticize the evil without it being understood to be criticizing them or hating them. Nonetheless, we have to be able, in our own minds, to do what Jesus did.

Jesus associated with people who did things that were disgusting. He was criticized for that, as if he didn't hate those disgusting behaviors. He did, but he obviously didn't have any hatred for the people.

He was reaching out to them. He wanted them to be saved. He was like a doctor going to those who are sick.

When he was criticized, he said, those who are well don't need a physician. Those who are sick need a physician. I am not sent to the righteous, but to the sinners, to call them to repentance.

A doctor who goes into a plague-ridden area doesn't hate his patients, but he hates the plague. He's there to destroy it. By the way, the doctor actually loves the patients.

The sinners that Jesus was associated with, he loved them, and they were plague-ridden. He was a doctor. That's what we have to understand Christ's role, and ours, in the world to be as healers.

Those who come to a world that's sick with evil and sin and deception and misdirection, and we are there to bring light and healing and deliverance. That's what the role of the church is, and to do so, we have to recognize what it is we're against. We're against evil.

You've got to love people without hypocrisy. You've got to abhor what is evil and cling to what is good. This means you have to judge.

You cannot abhor evil and cling to what is good without making a judgment between the two. How do I know what's evil and what's good? How do I know if I'm supposed to cling to this or hate it? I have to make a judgment, don't I? Judgment is absolutely necessary. It's the inevitable mental behavior of moral beings.

Only amoral creatures don't make judgments. When people say Christians shouldn't judge, they don't understand what judging is. The Bible says we shouldn't judge unrighteous judgment.

We shouldn't judge by appearances. We shouldn't judge hypocritically. We shouldn't judge by a double standard.

We shouldn't judge what we don't have competence to judge. All those things the Bible says. It talks in different places about not judging in those ways.

But it also speaks equally of the need to judge. Jesus said, do not judge according to appearances, but judge righteous judgment. John 7.24. Don't judge this way, but do judge that way.

You've got to judge. If you don't judge, it means you'll never make a distinction between what's right and wrong. You'll never know.

You'll be doing wrong without knowing you're doing wrong. That's not okay. Remember how many times Paul exhorted us to judge in 1 Corinthians? He said in 1 Corinthians 2, he said, he that is spiritual judges all things.

He speaks to the Corinthians at one point in chapter 7, he says, I speak unto you as to spiritual men, judge what I say. I'm expecting you to be able to judge what I'm saying. He says, let the prophets speak two or three and let the others judge.

He says about the man living with his father's wife, he says, I have judged already. And don't you judge? He says, we don't judge those who are outside, God judges them, but we must judge those who are inside. Paul said, you're going to court before unbelievers.

Isn't there a wise man among you who can judge these matters? Again and again, almost every chapter in 1 Corinthians has an expression. You've got to judge, judge, judge, judge prophets. See if they're false or true.

Judge between right and wrong among the brethren. Don't go to the judges of the world. Judge what I say.

I have no commandment to the Lord about this, but I'll give my judgment, he says. Making judgments is the normal function of a moral being. And we have to judge.

And without doing so, we cannot abhor what is evil and cling to what is good because we won't know what the difference is between the two anyway. We can't become bland, amoral, sociopathic people with no conscience and don't make a difference between right and wrong. That's kind of what non-Christians would like us Christians to do.

They probably wouldn't like it if everyone in the world did that because then if the world was full of sociopaths, they'd get victimized a lot. At least Christians who are making judgments are judging right from wrong and trying to do what's right. But a person who's not a Christian who can't judge between right and wrong, those who are given over to a reprobate mind that Paul talks about, they don't know when they're doing right or wrong, but they just do what they want to do and it usually ends up being wrong and it usually ends up making victims.

No one wants a world where there's no moral judgment being made at all. And so we have to take a stand for what's right and cling to it. Don't release our hold on it.

Be kindly affectionate to one another, he said in verse 10, with brotherly love. So, love, by the way, in the New Testament is primarily action, not emotion. But he does talk about affection, which is emotion.

Jesus said, greater love has no man than this, that he laid down his life for his friend. That's an action, not an emotion. I could actually die for you by choice without liking you very much.

If I decide that was a good thing to do. If I fear God loves you, God values you as much as he values me, I might find you very obnoxious, I might not like being around you, I might not like you, but I could still say I'm going to give my life for that person and it would be something I do, not something I feel. That's what love is.

When we lay down our lives for the brethren, when we give up our rights for someone else, when we go a second mile, when we only have to go one mile carrying their stuff for, when we turn the other cheek, when we have every right to strike back, when we give to everyone who asked us, even though we have the right to withhold because they have no claim on our good. Whenever we give up our rights for someone else, that is what love is if we're doing it unto the Lord and because we value them. We can do that for people we don't even know.

We can do it for people we don't like. We can do it for our enemies. Jesus said, love your enemies.

You can't feel good about your enemies if they're persecuting you, but you can love them by doing good to them. That's what Jesus said, love your enemies, do good to those who persecute you. Love in the New Testament is not primarily an emotion, it is a choice and action.

However I may feel about you, I will lay down my life for you. I will give up my rights for you because that's what Jesus did for me. Of course, I think he felt something positive toward us, but there were certainly people that he didn't like very much.

There's many people the Lord hates, the Bible says, which simply means he finds them disgusting, but he died for them anyway. He loved them. And so do we.

We have to love everyone, but toward our brothers we should in fact have the emotion of affection as well. He said, be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love. He means toward brothers.

You might not feel affection for everybody that you're called upon to make some sacrifice for out of love, but love is more enjoyable when you have an emotion with it. Husbands and wives can show their love for each other by being faithful even when their affection has gone bad, when their affection has disappeared, when it's just mechanical, they can still lay down their lives for each other, they can still serve each other, they can still do the loving thing, but it's a lot more fun if they haven't lost their affection for each other. Affection makes love enjoyable.

Love doesn't always have emotion with it, but it's ideally the case that it should, especially among family members and your brothers. So cultivate affection for someone. Cultivate good feelings for them.

Now that means that the things they do that make you feel badly toward them, you're going to have to somehow either overlook or remedy or just look past that and look at something that really you like. There are ways to look at somebody that will encourage you to feel good toward them, and there are ways you can look at someone that will encourage you not to. Every two people who happen to have an intersection of their two lives in the real world, whether they're married or parents and children, people who live together like that or people who just work together or go to church together or have any kind of connection, will soon learn there are things about the other party that they appreciate.

And other things that they don't appreciate. There are things that they laugh at and enjoy and find entertaining or whatever, and there are other things that they find annoying. You will find this with every person.

So how do you cultivate affection for the person? Well, quite simply, by focusing on the things that cultivate that feeling. Think about the good side of it. This is not just sort of a mental trick you do with yourself.

It's reality. Everyone does have something worthy of your affection, and everyone has things about them that's not worthy. So concentrate on the things that are.

Look at Philippians chapter 4. You know this passage, I'm quite sure. But look what Paul said and the context in which he said it. In Philippians 4, 8. Familiar, I'm sure.

Meditate on these things. I believe that he means in other people. Whatever things that other people have in them that are praiseworthy, that are lovely, that are virtuous, that are good.

Think about those things. When you think about your brothers and sisters, think about those praiseworthy, lovely things about them. There are things like that about them.

There are other things, too, you could focus on, and that will not encourage you to have affection for them. We have some obligation to be selective in what we meditate on. We're supposed to meditate on scripture, for example, day and night.

That's not automatic. We have to choose that. We're to meditate on the better features of people who are our brothers and sisters.

It doesn't mean we're blind to their defects. In fact, if our brother has overtaken a fault, we're supposed to recognize that and go and restore them in the spirit of meekness, Paul said in Galatians 6, 1. But the point is, our habits of thought toward our brothers should be those that reflect on those favorable things, those lovely things, those righteous things. We're not blind to their defects, and sometimes we even have an obligation to address those defects, to help them, to restore them from a fall.

But still, when it comes to attitude, we should cultivate affection, which can be done. If you wonder how you can feel loving toward someone, cultivate gratitude. Gratitude almost always produces feelings of fondness.

If you don't love God as you should, you don't feel like you love God like you should, you always wished you loved more, then meditate on things for which you should be grateful. Meditate daily on the benefits he's given you. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, David said in Psalm 103.

Don't forget his benefits, because if you don't, you'll be grateful. And if you're grateful, you'll naturally love God. And likewise with other people.

When marriages start to go sour, the spouse should meditate on the things that their spouse has done for which they should be grateful. There's hardly a marriage in existence, I would imagine, where a spouse has never done anything sacrificial for the other person. There probably are some of those, but there are not many.

Just being married is a sacrifice that you make, because you're giving up all other options. You're giving up your freedom. That's a sacrifice.

Be grateful that your spouse has done that for you. If they've served you in other ways that they weren't forced to do, be grateful for that. If that same kind of sacrifice is being made year after year after year, all the more reason to be grateful.

The more you reflect on the praiseworthy, the things that really you should be grateful for, the more your affection for that person will be developed. So Paul commands us to be kindly affectionate to one another in brotherly love. It's not just the sacrifice, not just laying down my life for my brother.

It's doing what I can to actually feel affectionate toward him too. And he says, in preference or in honor, giving preference to one another. That would seem to mean that you lay down your rights sometimes.

Suppose you're sleeping in a room with a roommate who wants the window closed while they sleep, and you want the window open. Well, you're both sharing the same window, and you like the window open when you sleep. Your roommate wants it closed.

Some people can be very intolerant about this. I heard about a case in YWAM where two girls—no, it wasn't in YWAM. It was in another Christian community kind of situation where two women I knew were both in the same room, and one wanted to sleep with the window open, the other with it closed, and they were intolerant about it.

And it made them hostile toward each other because they had to share a room and a window, but they didn't agree about whether it was to be open or closed when they're sleeping. Well, what do you do? How about in honor, prefer the other person? Well, that means I'm going to not get my way. Exactly.

Isn't that what love does? You give up your rights. You have as much right to have the window the way you want it as they have, but give up your right. Prefer their preference.

Why not? This is the way of peace. The wicked don't know the way of peace, Paul said. The way of peace they have not known, but the way of peace is to learn to give up your rights.

The other person may not have any more right than you have, but it's going to be tension all the way until somebody backs down, and you're not being a wimp by saying, I will give up my rights because I win. I'm the first to do it. The first one to say, out of love for you and honor for you, I will let you have your way.

That person wins. They got there first. That's where both should get to.

In Philippians chapter 2, verse 4, Paul says, let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. This is what love is. Don't just demand your own rights.

Consider other people's interests. It may be, since their interests and yours conflict and neither has any more right than the other, that you will be the mature one. You'll be the loving one.

You'll be the clean one. You'll be the Christ-like one. Christ-like? Exactly, because the very next verse in Philippians says, let this mind be in you which was in Christ, pointing out that he didn't just look out for his own interests, but the interests of others.

He existed in the form of God. He had all the privileges, but he emptied himself, made himself, took the form of a servant. He put others' interests and needs ahead of his own.

He didn't have to. He gave up his rights as God to become a slave to people. That's the mind of Christ.

Let that mind be in you too. That's how you're going to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. In honor, you prefer other people to yourself.

There's only one man restroom. We both, not knowing the other needed it, we both approached the door at the same time. When we both got there, it was sort of like the three stooges, saying, okay, who's going to go through? We're going to both go through and break the door as we go through.

He deferred to me. I would gladly have deferred to him too, but he deferred to me. I thanked him for his magnanimity.

He simply said, inasmuch. Since we were both biblically literate, we knew the rest of that sentence. There's only one sentence in the Bible that begins with the word inasmuch.

It's inasmuch as you do it to the least of my brethren, you do it to me. That is, inasmuch as you do it to a Christian, you do it to Jesus. If Jesus wants to use the bathroom at the same time you do, who's going first if it's up to you to decide? Obviously, what you do to your brethren, you do to him.

You prefer the other over yourself. Why? Because Christ does that. Actually, the truth is, if it was you and Jesus, he probably wouldn't let you let him go first.

And you shouldn't let him not go first. That's like I said, the three stooges. Everyone's deferring to the other.

No one wants to go through the door first and suddenly they all go in at the same time. It can be a comedy of errors when everyone's been the deferring one, but usually it doesn't work out that way. Usually one person is willing to defer before the other, and you should be the one.

That's the most Christ-like place to do it. And then verse 11, not lagging in diligence, so not lazy, not slothful. Why not? How is that a moral issue? What if I want to sleep all day? What if I do want to just sit around and do very little productive? Why is that a sin? Well, it's a sin because I'm on the clock, God's clock.

As soon as I'm awake, I'm on the clock. I'm a servant. I have a master.

I've got duties. God wants me to serve him. He wants me to promote his kingdom.

He wants me to serve his family. If I'm not doing that, I'm taking a break without authorization from my master's service. It's a sin to be lazy.

The energy God gives us to be employed, used, stewarded for the kingdom of God, and to lack in diligence, even to do your work more slowly than you should or can. It's being lazy. Sleeping more than you should is very much forbidden in Proverbs.

The lazy man in Proverbs is the worst character of all the characters in Proverbs. The fool is almost the worst, but he says, do you see a man who's a slothful in his work? The fool, more hope for the fool than for him. You don't get much worse than the fool as far as Solomon's concerned, but you can.

Worse than that still is the slothful man. Why? Well, look at 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. Paul's reasoning is given here. 1 Thessalonians 4. Notice this.

1 Thessalonians 4. Notice this. 1 Thessalonians 4. Notice this. Now, maybe they didn't want to.

Maybe they'd prefer not to. Maybe they'd rather produce just for themselves, but now they have to do extra work for you. That's not loving.

If your consumption requires a certain amount of work to be done, which it does, then it's unloving for you to do less than your share of work and still do your share of consuming because you're loading the burden of producing what you're consuming on other people. This is why so much in a welfare state is not really loving and just. Now, there are no doubt people who legitimately need help.

It's best, though, if that help can be given by the generosity of donors. Because then there's an act of generosity, and the Bible certainly does encourage helping the poor as an act of generosity. But a welfare system often encourages people just to get benefits from the government and no work.

And they figure, what's it hurting? Hey, a paycheck comes to the government. Excellent. Where's that money coming from? Someone's doing more work than they need to for their own consumption in order to provide for the consumption of the person who's getting the benefits.

The food and the wealth doesn't come out of nowhere. It comes from work. And the person who's not working but eating is requiring somebody else to work more than their own eating would require to feed themselves and you too.

This is not loving. The loving thing is to be diligent. If somebody is going to do more work than they consume, it should be me.

I should leave this world with a net gain for my having been here. Sure, I have to consume. Everyone has to consume, but we can produce too.

And I hope that when I die, I will have produced benefit to others more than I have consumed. If I've consumed more than I've produced, I've been a drain on the world. I've been a drain on other people who weren't as lazy as me.

That's not loving. Loving means I lay down my rights for someone else. I prefer them above me.

If someone's going to have to work more than they need to survive to support someone else, let it be me who works more and the other person I'll supply for him. I'll prefer him and his needs above my own rather than preferring mine and say, why? You make more money than I do. The government can siphon off some of yours and give it to me.

What claim have I got to that? That's an injustice. That's not love. If I'm capable of working, I ought to work.

If I'm not capable of getting a job, I should serve people anyway. My activities should be in the service of God and humanity. If I cannot find a job for some reason or unemployable, I can find some way to bless other people.

But just being lazy and saying, I'll just receive, receive, receive because I don't want to work. That's about the most loathsome character trait Solomon in his Proverbs could imagine. Paul says, no, don't lag in diligence.

The opposite of diligence is slothfulness. Don't be slothful. Don't be a lazy bum.

But be fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. So you need to serve God zealously, fervently from a fervency of spirit and enthusiasm, a zeal. Serve God diligently.

And you serve God generally by serving people, by the way, in as much. Now he says. In verse 12, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer.

OK, we need to be rejoicing in hope and patient in tribulation. These two are related when you're in tribulation. Patience comes from having hope.

If you have no hope, you despair. Hope means you you expect that somehow things are going to get better at some point. I have hope of this and that will give me endurance.

If I think it doesn't matter whether I succumb or float or drown, doesn't matter because it's never going to get better. Might as well just give up now. Why persevere when there's nothing on the other side to persevere for? I'll just give up like the rats that we read about who were tested for this very quality in a lab.

They were put in a in a barrel of water to see how long they would swim. Well, they swam a long time, maybe 20 minutes, but they soon found out there's no way out. So they gave up hope and they stopped swimming and they sunk.

Well, before they drowned, they were rescued by the researchers and dried off and put back in their cages and given a little time. And then they're put back in the water again. This time they didn't swim for 20 minutes and give up.

They swam for hours and didn't give up. Why in the world? What made the difference? Well, they have some memory that they had been rescued previously. It was a possibility they'd be rescued again.

They knew there was such a thing as getting out of this. As long as there's hope, you'll keep dog paddling. You keep treading water.

If you think there's no hope, you just say, OK, I've tried all the exits. There's no way out. I guess I'll just sink and die.

What's the point? If you're in despair, you don't try anymore. If you are maintaining your hope, rejoicing in the hope, God is going to be good. God is going to save me out of this, if not in this life, at least in the next and very probably in this life.

Because trials don't come to stay. It comes to pass. It doesn't come to stay.

And therefore, having hope that God will rescue, that God will work all things together for good. He hasn't done it yet, but it's happening. He's promised.

It's going to be. That's my hope. This is going to turn out good for me someday.

This will turn out for my deliverance, Paul said in one of his letters. This hope that he has. And that gives endurance, patience in tribulation, perseverance in hardship.

If you maintain hope, you will be able to persevere through the hard times. Because it's a dark tunnel, but you believe there's light at the other end. If you believe you're just walking into a deep cave, you might as well stop walking.

Because you're going to hit a rock at the end and it's going to be dark for the rest of the time. But if you're walking through and you think, I think there's light around the corner there, I'm going to keep moving forward. I think it's going to be better for up ahead.

Hope causes you to continue. Despair just causes you to sit down and give up. So continuing steadfastly in prayer, of course, in your tribulations, and in your hope that things will get better, you're praying for that outcome.

You're praying through the tribulation. You're continuing in it. You're not giving up.

See, you give up hope, you give up prayer. Why pray? Nothing's going to get better. But if you think things will get better, if I call out to God, if I trust God, He's going to make things get better.

I'm going to keep petitioning until that happens. I'm going to continue in prayer through these tribulations, maintain my hope, and not stop. Verse 13, distributing to the needs of the saints, given to hospitality.

Those are kind of similar things. Hospitality is, of course, when you let strangers into your space, which you'd just as soon keep private, of course, if it were up to you alone. Hospitality, the Greek word hospitality means love of strangers.

Most of us show hospitality to friends, of course, and that's reasonable enough to do. And that's good. It's better than not.

If you don't let your friends into your space, if you don't serve your friends ever, then you're pretty much of an ogre. But when you actually do it for strangers, this is the real show of hospitality, when people you don't know but you care about. Picking up a hitchhiker is hospitality.

You're letting them into your car, you're letting them into your world, where you were comfortable without them. And they were uncomfortable outside, and you let them in. You share your warmth, you share your benefit, you share your shelter, your security, your ride with somebody who needs it.

That's hospitality. And, of course, distributing to the needs is very similar, specifically to the saints. When it comes to giving, we should be concerned even about non-Christian needs.

When Jesus told the rich young rulers, sell what you have and give to the poor, he didn't specify which poor. If there's poor, help them. The fact that they're poor means they need, and if you're a loving person, you'll share with them practically if you can.

But there is a priority. Where there are more poor than can all be helped, you should prioritize. There's a thing called triage.

Who can I help and who can I not help? Well, when it comes down to that, I need to help the Christians. Why? Because they're family. There is, after all, an obligation to family.

And Paul said that in Galatians 6. Galatians 6.10, he said, Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially those who are of the household of faith. We should not limit our generosity to Christians, but we should make sure that the Christians are first on the list. We do have an obligation to the family.

I mean, if we could help everybody, we'd do it. But we don't have opportunity to help everyone. It's within the range of our opportunities.

We can help a certain number of people. And to tell you the truth, there may be Christians I haven't helped, and I still will help somebody I don't know to be a Christian at times. But my priority, if I know the difference, if I have two families that are in need, and one's a Christian family, a working man who just can't make ends meet, and the other's not a Christian, I have an obligation to the Christian.

It's not like I don't have equal compassion for the other family, I just don't have enough to go around. So I've got to make a choice. I have to choose the brother.

Would to God I could choose everybody. I'd love to help all the poor, but that just can't happen. So as the opportunity arises, we need to be generous to anybody, but especially prioritize helping the Christian family where there's need.

So Paul says, distributing to the needs of the saints and giving to hospitality. Then he says, and this is pretty much the rest of this chapter, is devoted to how to behave toward those who are not friendly to you. He's been talking about general issues, preferring other people, honoring them, laying down your rights, being diligent, abhorring evil, and so forth.

But he says in verse 14, bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse. This is essentially almost a direct quote from Matthew 5, 44. Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount said this.

Now, he's going to come back to this thought in verse 17, though he interrupts it and doesn't talk about your persecutors or your enemies. In verses 15 and 16, he says, rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep, be of the same mind toward one another, do not set your mind on high things, but associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own opinion.

Now, these are miscellaneous instructions, of course. You need to be sympathetic toward others, so when someone else is rejoicing, you share in their joy. Things may not be going that well for you, but you care about them as much as you care about you, preferably more so.

So their joy, you rejoice. You may not be going through good times, but you can share in their joy. When my children were little, we didn't have a lot of money, and they often saw things that other kids had that they wanted, and I said, we can't afford that, sorry, we can't afford it.

Why don't you just enjoy the fact that they have it? It's a good thing. Enjoy theirs. Enjoy their happiness.

Participate in their happiness. You can't have your own, but they have one, and be glad about that. Why don't you enjoy them having it? Enjoy the fact that somebody else has it better off than you.

Why not? What stops you from doing so? You can choose to do that. Rejoice with those who rejoice, and of course, weep with those who weep. When you're feeling good and someone else is despondent, you need to be careful not to be, well, what should I say, just insensitive.

There's times when people need to be commiserated with and need some sympathy, and just to be jolly isn't necessarily going to be helpful to them. One reason I'm stumbling along here is because there's a proverb I ran into just reading in Proverbs, I think this morning earlier, and I'm trying to think of where it is. It's in Proverbs 25, if I'm not mistaken.

Though maybe, oh yeah, yeah, here it is. Proverbs 25, 20. It says, like one who takes away a garment in cold weather, and like vinegar on soda, is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.

Somebody who's weeping, someone who's got a heavy heart, and you come and just, you're cheerful and singing songs, singing a happy song, that's insensitive. That creates a volatile situation. You ever pour vinegar on soda? It fizzes.

The two react violently to each other. Not violently enough to blow your house up, but if you put them together in a stopped bottle, you know, or container, it could actually, in some cases, break the bottle. It's a violent mix.

You take a blanket away from a cold person in the cold, you're not likely to get a good reaction from that person. You're bringing them discomfort. And if you sing songs to somebody who has a heavy heart, that's not really the solution.

Weep with those who weep. Rejoice with those who rejoice. And don't be insensitive.

Because Paul said elsewhere, in 1 Corinthians 12, he said, when one member suffers, all suffer. When one member is exalted, all rejoice. He said in 1 Corinthians 12, because he was talking about the body being one, and Paul's already raised that point earlier in this chapter.

Somebody else's good fortune is yours, because you're of one body with them. If Christ's body, in any part, is benefited, the whole body should say, that's a good thing, that's me too. Because it's not just me.

It's me and my brethren are all one body. Their benefit is my benefit. Their disaster is my disaster.

And so, he says, be of the same mind toward one another, which probably means the same thing. He's probably summarizing that statement. Be, you know, in tune with where others are.

If they're weeping, share, commiserate in a way. Be sympathetic. If they're rejoicing, go ahead and rejoice in them.

Be of a similar mind to them. Be of one mind, the same mind toward one another. Do not set your mind on high things.

Obviously, by contrast to associate with the humble, the next line, it means don't aspire to high positions. That's what it means. Because it's the opposite of associating with humble, low people.

If you want to be in a high position, you associate with the people who are climbing. The ones who are in the high positions are on their way there. You either ride their coattails or you climb up with them yourself.

The point is people who want fame, fortune, people who want attention, want respect, they want a high position in society, high status, they're going to not really hang out with the humble, the low, the poor, the disenfranchised, the marginalized. That's not going to be the crowd they hang out with because there's no advantage to them in it. Those people can't take them to the top with them.

And he says, don't be that way. Don't aspire after high things. Don't set your mind on high things, but associate with the humble.

It won't get you anywhere in society's eyes, but it'll get you somewhere in God's eyes. You never know. One of those humble people might end up being an angel, unawares.

Some have entertained angels unawares. Better yet, that person may be Jesus in as much. So, he gets back to the... And don't be wise in your own opinion.

Don't think you're so smart. You're not. Now, these last verses have to do with, again, your treatment of people who are not friendly to you.

He has already said in verse 14, bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse. He's going to describe what it means to bless and not to curse somebody, if they're your enemy, if they persecute you. He says in verse 17, repay no one evil for evil, have regard for good things in the sight of all men, which apparently means wish for the best, for the good things, the best things for all people, even the one who does you harm.

If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. This is written in Deuteronomy 32, 35.

He says, therefore, if your enemy hungers, feed him. If he thirsts, give him drink, for in so doing, you'll heap coals of fire on his head. That too is a quotation.

Proverbs 25, verses 21 and 22. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Now this section is practical instruction of what it means to repay or to, I should say, to bless those who curse you and not curse them.

They curse you, either verbally or in some other way. They bring a curse into your life by mistreatment or by cheating you or something else like that. Your life is cursed by their actions and by their influence and your life is worse off.

Well, your life could be blessed by people who bless you. Well, you can bless them. You can do good to them.

And when Jesus said we should love our enemies, he said, do good to those who persecute you. Bless those who curse you. These are related things.

I've been blessed by the actions of a lot of people. And by others I've been cursed somewhat. My life has been cursed in some ways by some people's actions.

But those who have cursed me, I'm obligated to do good to them. And why? Well, he says in verse 18, if it's possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. Meaning, peace is a good thing.

Not everyone will be peaceable with you. You don't have control over everybody. It's not all within your power.

It's not always possible. Because it only takes one person to break a relationship. This is sometimes denied in some special teachings of Christians that say, well, I've heard it often said, there's no innocent party in a divorce.

Ever heard that one? Well, there's nobody totally innocent. There's no one like Jesus who has never done any wrong of any kind. But there certainly are people who are innocent of the divorce.

There are sometimes people who want the divorce and the other party doesn't want it. And the party that doesn't want it has done nothing to justify it. And the person who seeks the divorce has no grounds for divorce.

Well, then, there is an innocent party there. Now, that innocent party isn't a perfect human being and may have sometimes done things that weren't all that lovable. In other words, they're about average.

That's not the same thing as giving grounds for divorce. Being a human being and having flaws that you're working on isn't grounds for divorce for your spouse. And therefore, if a spouse without grounds divorces, they did break it up.

And there is an innocent party that wanted to keep working on it and so forth. That happens a lot. And that happens with friendships too and with relationships between neighbors.

We have a neighbor actually in this neighborhood who's very hostile and we don't even know why. And Dana has particularly done good things, taking over cookies at Christmas and greets the person on a regular basis. The guy just is grumpy and looks away and he won't speak and he seems very hostile.

And you think, well, what's up with that? As much as lies in us, we're trying to be at peace with them. But it doesn't all lie within you because a relationship takes two people to cooperate. Make sure you're not the one who's uncooperative.

Make sure you're not the one who's causing the problem. Make sure that your treatment of that person is just, kind, loving, and then if there's no peace, that's not your fault. The other person has to be kind of decent and civil too and not everyone's willing to do so.

So there will be occasions when you will not have good relationships with people though you've done everything you know to do. And Paul knows that. He says, if it's possible, suggesting there will be times it won't be.

As much as lies in you, suggesting not everything in the relationship does lie on your side. It's not all your responsibility. There's another side too.

Well, but as much as you have control over, live peaceably with all men. Make sure that if there's a rift between you and anybody, that you didn't cause it. That you didn't wrong them.

You do the thing that would promote peace and if peace doesn't come, well, then your conscience is clear. Now, there are people who will persecute you for being good. There are people who will hate you because you stand for something they know they ought to stand for but they don't want to and their conscience bothers them.

They're jealous or angry or convicted and so they'll hate you for good. They did that with Jesus too. And what did he do? Well, he said, Father, forgive them.

They don't know what they do. He didn't strike back. When he was reviled, he did not revile.

When he was killed, he didn't kill back. He didn't call 12 legions of angels to rescue and kill his enemies. That wasn't how he rolls and that's not how we roll.

He said, beloved, do not avenge yourselves but rather give place to wrath. Now, if there is no context to this, we might think give place to wrath means instead of feeling wrath, kind of let it go. Let your wrath go.

Give it air. Just let it dissipate. Don't get angry.

That's not what he means. He means in the relationship, instead of wrathfully responding in vengeance towards someone who's wronged you, give place to God and his wrath. Let his wrath avenge you.

Now, I know he means that because Paul says, because it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. In other words, there needs to be repayment of wrongs done. But wrongs done to you should not be repaid by you.

You can stand back, love your enemy and let God avenge in his time and in his way. It's always much better because when we avenge ourselves, we never know, we might be overreacting. We might have misunderstood even the gravity of the offense or the intentions of the person.

I mean, when we avenge ourselves with people who've wronged us, we are capable of increasing the injustice, overbalancing, and going beyond what is owed. So, better to just stay, act like a Christian all the way through. Someone's persecuting, someone's wronging you, don't avenge, just love them still.

Love your enemies, Jesus said. What will that do? That will put God on the case. If you avenge yourself, God will hang back, say, well, you want to do it, you do it.

You're going to mess things up, but you go ahead, I'll stand back. I won't avenge if you're going to do it. No sense both of us doing it.

But if you don't avenge yourself, then there is an unredressed injustice. You have suffered an injustice and justice has not been done. Now the judge of the universe is on the job.

He's got to redress injustice. You have not done it, so it gives him a place to do it. It leaves the job open for him.

And so you give place to his wrath because he said it's his job. Vengeance is mine. That's my business, not yours, God says.

That's mine to do. I will repay. Trust me about this.

It may seem like the wicked are getting away with it. It may seem like your persecutors are not being punished. Trust me, I will repay, God said.

Now when he quotes here from Proverbs 25, verses 21 and 22, he says, Therefore, if your enemy hungers, now this is your enemy we're talking about, if he's hungry, feed him. In other words, he's not good to you. He's an enemy, but you can be good to him in practical ways.

This is loving your enemy. He's hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give him drink.

Now this line, For in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head. This is actually in the proverb. And it has bothered some people.

A lot of preachers have tried to remove the offense of this statement. You being good to your enemy, it's really just kind of a passive aggressive way of being hostile because you're heaping coals of fire on his head. That doesn't sound very Christian.

And so preachers who feel awkward about this have come up with an explanation of this heaping coals of fire on the head, which is absurd in my opinion, but they do it anyway. Because it makes the congregation feel a little better about what the Bible says than to suggest that I am by being good, really by a certain kind of a ruse, bringing harsher judgment on these people, I'm just being mean in a nice way. Right? So since that seems hypocritical and that seems not really genuinely loving, I better understand this.

What does it mean to heap coals on the head? So the preachers often say, and I've heard this time and again, that in those days, of course, they didn't have, you know, matches. They couldn't just light a match to light the stove. And it was hard to start a fire without matches in those days.

So they would keep a bonfire going all night long in the courtyard of a group of homes. And they would all share the community bonfire. And when they needed fire in their ovens every morning, they had to go to the bonfire and collect the coals and take them back to their house.

Well, in the Middle East, people carry things on their head. So the women would go out in the morning to get the coals to bring home, to build the fire, to bake the family meal. And they would bring out these jars to put the coals in.

They'd put them on their head and carry them home. It's all very domestic, all very nice, no sinister aspects of this at all. Now, to help them up with that load and heap the coals on their head for them so they could carry them back to their house, that's sort of just being a nice guy.

That's helping out. That's being chivalrous. That you'll be, if you do these nice things, you'll be helping them up with it.

You'll be heaping the coals on their head where they want them. This makes it a very nice and bland thing. A very bland thing.

And a very stupid thing for someone as smart as Solomon to say. If your enemy's hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give him a drink.

That's like doing him a favor. Well, duh. I mean, do you even have to say it? And if you want to say that's doing him a favor, why this particular example? It's like the favor of helping someone put coals on their head in the morning when they want to take it to their house.

Is that like the best example you can think of of doing a kindness to someone? I mean, most of those women have no trouble putting them on their heads themselves. I mean, it seems like some practical assistance would be a better example. Because actually feeding the hungry and giving drink to the thirsty, that's a much bigger favor than helping someone up on their head with a jar of coals.

What is the point of even saying that? Now, the point of the proverb is the same as the point of Paul in quoting the proverb. And he is amplifying what he has just quoted from Deuteronomy. In Deuteronomy, God said, Vengeance is mine, I will repay.

Paul says, okay, then, when you have opportunity to avenge yourself against your enemy, don't. Just continue to show kindness to him. Well, what's going to happen then? Well, the judgment of God is eventually going to be launched on him.

The coals of fire are being heaped up. If somebody does something wrong to you, it's as if the judgment of God is due him. If you avenge yourself, well, that neutralizes it.

The score is settled. And therefore, there's no coals of fire there. He doesn't deserve any more judgment.

You already gave it to him. If he does wrong to you and you do good to him, and he keeps doing wrong to you and you do good, the coals of judgment are accumulating. You are heaping up coals of fire.

There's never a time in the Bible where coals of fire mean anything else but the judgment of God. Coals of fire are a frequent image of the judgment of God. It's saying that the man is not experiencing instant judgment at your hands nor even at God's hands, but he's going to be judged.

The judgment, God's keeping track. The punishment due him is accumulating. You're heaping up coals of fire.

They haven't dropped down on that person yet, but you're doing it by not doing it. By you not hurting them, it leaves an unsettled score that God has to settle. And the more you do good to them, the more they ought to do good to you, but they don't, and that accumulates their guilt.

This is definitely talking about the accumulation of judgment upon their head, which God has promised to repay at some point in time. Until he does, that judgment isn't nowhere. It's building up.

As you do good to your enemies, their judgment from God is accumulating, amassing. You're heaping coals on their head. Now, is this a way of being mean or passively aggressive toward them? No, you don't want them to suffer judgment.

You're actually being kind to them because you genuinely care about them. But in case you wonder whether justice will never be served, whether you helping them simply means injustice will prevail forever. No, it won't.

There's a score to be settled. God's keeping track. You hope, of course, they may someday repent and that bucket of coals may be emptied, not on their head.

But we know that those who don't repent, every day they live in sin, more culpability is accumulating. And that is what he's talking about there. He's not talking about helping somebody take coals to their house.

To me, that'd be an absolutely ridiculous thing to say in the proverb. It doesn't make sense at all. It's just a way of not making it sound so mean because Christians don't like mean.

Christians like nice. So preachers like to make nice out of mean or out of simply judgment. This is not mean.

The enemy is the one who's mean. That God would judge him is not mean. That's just God making sure that justice is done and injustice does not prevail.

Do not be overcome with evil but overcome evil with good. This is simply saying the same thing another way. If your enemy does something wrong to you and you turn around and do something wrong to him, you've been overcome by that evil.

He has inaugurated evil and you've responded in kind. You have been overwhelmed. His action has dictated your action, an action that you would rather not do that is even maybe an evil action on your part but you've been overcome by his action.

But you can overcome his evil by doing good. At least overcome the evil in yourself that would respond. You turn around and do good and you overcome the evil.

When a person does you wrong unjustly, evil has been introduced into the situation. What are you going to do? You're going to take it on yourself and be evil yourself and retaliate in kind? That's you being overcome by the evil of somebody else's actions. You don't have to let them dictate whether you'll be evil or not.

You'd make that decision yourself. You say, you may want me to be angry. You may want me to hate you.

You may want me to have a long-standing feud with you but I'm just not interested. I think I'll still help you out here. I think I'll still be a loving neighbor to you.

Well, then you have overcome the evil that was trying to overcome you by being good. And that's what Paul says Christians must do. All right, it's time for us to quit.

So let's take a break here.