About ten years ago we went on holiday as a family to Switzerland. We arrived at the campsite after dark and woke up the next day to find that it was a public holiday. And on public holidays in Switzerland everything is closed! There wasn’t a supermarket or even a little corner shop to buy any food. There wasn’t a restaurant or a café for breakfast. We drove for maybe 20 miles and eventually in the town of Sierre the only place we found open for a meal and a drink was McDonalds! And apart from the fact that they put Swiss cheese in the cheeseburger, that food was identical to McDonalds I’ve had everywhere else in the world. The surroundings, the seating, the piped music. Identical to every other McDonalds I’ve ever been to, in England, in France, in Bulgaria, in America, in Canada. Every McDonalds is the same. McDonalds restaurants could be clones of each other.
I am told there was a time when Christian churches used to be like that. All the same. But nowadays that isn’t the case. There is variety in the church. There is diversity.
The apostle Paul has told the Roman church that the most important thing is LOVE.
Romans 13:8-10 8 Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
As long as they disagree in love,
Christians are allowed to disagree Showing discernment over INDISPUTABLE matters (14:1) 14 1. Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters.
WE TALKED LAST WEEK ABOUT INDISPUTABLE MATTERS –
Matters essential to salvation. We should be never judging but always discerning!
We should show discernment and I believe there are at least four areas at the heart of our faith which are indisputable and NON-NEGOTIABLE.
1. acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord and God within the Holy Trinity;
2. submit to the Bible correctly interpreted as the supreme authority for faith and practice.
3. recognise the fallen-ness of humanity and the need for personal repentance and faith in order to receive God’s gift of forgiveness and eternal life, which comes through grace alone on the basis of Christ’s atoning and substitutionary death on the cross;
The Bible teaches us clearly that Christ is the only way to God! “I am the way, the truth and the life,” Jesus said. “No-one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)
4. look for the working of God the Holy Spirit as the indispensable element in the life of any Christian and any church;
These indisputable matters, matters where there can be no dispute, no negotiation, are internal matters. But there are other matters, external matters, superficial things, where differences between Christians are not crucial and diversity is allowed.
Disputable matters – then and now
2 One man’s faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. 5 One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. In the church in Rome there were disagreements over eating meat bought from the local market which might previously have been offered at pagan temples in idol worship. There may have been disagreements over whether Christians were obliged to follow Jewish food laws, or observe Jewish festivals.
TODAY ??????
Christians and churches have found so many things to argue about. There may be doctrinal issues, like over the timetable of the second coming of Christ. Over beliefs about baptism or the forms of church government, or Sunday Observance.

But Christians can also be divided over cultural issues, different styles of worship, whether Christians ought to drink alcohol or to smoke, even over styles of clothing and use of money.
Christians are allowed to be different. In this passage when Paul talks about Christians who are strong he is not saying the strong are always right, that they are the more spiritual. He is not saying those he calls weak are in the wrong or are less spiritual. All Christians are accepted by God. In disputable matters, matters not essential for salvation, all are allowed to be different.
How should we live?
Christian freedom – verse 19 says all food is clean.
14 As one who is in the Lord Jesus, I am fully convinced that no food is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for him it is unclean. ”If the son has set you free you will be free indeed”. “We are not under law but under grace.” The Christian life is not about living according to a set of rules.
17 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, 18 because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men. There is no place for prim virtuousness, or puritan or Victorian asceticism or self-righteousness. God wants us to enjoy our Christian lives.
Acting from faith and from thankfulness 23 But the man who has doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin. Here is a verse which is often taken out of context. Paul is saying we should feel free to do what WE believe to be right, what our faith in Christ leads us to do, and never do things just because other people tell us we should or we can or we are allowed to.
6 He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. We should enjoy our Christian lives and do everything as an act of gratitude and worship to God!
Following your conscience
3 The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. 4 Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand It is what God says that matters. What God lets one Christian do he may forbid another Christian from doing. We are accountable to God – not to each other.
7 For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. 8 If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. When it comes to inessential, disputable matters there should be no “minding of other people’s business.” What other people do is between them and God.
10 You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. 11 It is written: “`As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, `Every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.’ ‘’ 12 So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.
We must each make up our own minds before God what is right and wrong for us to do. Martin Luther said:
“A Christian man is the most free, lord of all, subject to none.
A Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”

22 So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the man who does not condemn himself by what he approves. As long as our conscience does not condemn us we are free to live as we choose, to enjoy the wonderful world and all the things in it which God gives us so richly to enjoy – our conscience must guide us.
What about when we disagree? Do not look down – do not condemn 3 The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. We need to learn to accept one another – to make efforts to value each other’s differences and distinctives, especially to receive from other Christians who may be different from us. What we cannot do is just ignore each other!
Do not cause others to stumble – we mustn’t let our freedom harm other Christians.
13 Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling-block or obstacle in your brother’s way.
We may not have a conscience about doing certain things, but we must respect others who do have such a conscience.
15 If your brother is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy your brother for whom Christ died.
The challenge is to show love not only by what we do but also by what we refrain from doing.
19 Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. 20 Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a man to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. 21 It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother to fall It is sadly the case that some Christians are too busy enjoying their own freedom to watch out for the effects their behaviour has on other Christians, sometimes younger or less mature Christians. We should NEVER make another Christian act against their own conscience.
Love must come first Romans 15 1. We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. 2 Each of us should please his neighbour for his good, to build him up.
“The strong” should give way, because they can. “The weak” cannot give way, so “The strong” should. So to sum up.
5. May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, 6 so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 7. Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.

Next week I will preach on Romans 14

14:1. Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgement. 4 Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.

Hear also the serious warning Jesus gives us in the sermon on the mount!
Matthew 7:1-5
7 “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way as you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

4 Who are you to judge someone else’s servant?
“Do not judge, or you too will be judged

Solemn warnings about passing judgment especially on other Christians. Is it EVER right to judge others?

Well – Jesus was Himself passing judgement on His hearers when he talked about takin the plank our of your own eye before trying to take a speck out of another man’s eye. Paul was passing judgement on those Romans who were judging others. Judgement can sometimes be good – necessary – essential!

14:1 Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters.

“without passing judgment on disputable matters”

BUT WHAT ARE DISPUTABLE MATTERS ???? Some aspects of Christian life and faith and indisputable. Some matters demand, not so much “passing judgement” but definitely showing discernment.

Possibly the most important area where we have to pass judgement is in areas of doctrine – the truths of the Christian faith. The New Testament is full of warnings about false teachers who seek to deceive the church from inside the church. We will look at these passages in just a moment. Christians and especially church leaders have a solemn responsibility to `guard the gospel’.
`What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you – guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.’ (2 Tim 1:13-14).

Church unity is no optional extra for Christians. It should be at the heart of our agenda because it is at the heart of God’s agenda! (John 17:20-23) But great difficulties can arise when it comes to working out church unity in practice. It is too simplistic to say that we are obliged to work and worship with all who call themselves Christians. Whilst it is not appropriate for individual Christians to make judgments about whether other people are truly saved, it is absolutely vital for churches and church leaders to know what the Bible teaches and to defend the truths of the gospel against any deception or dilution. We must avoid the traps of pride and self-righteousness, but we must also make sure that we are faithful, in love, to the truth as we have received and believed it. We should be prepared to enter into dialogue with any others who call themselves Christians. But we must hold fast to our convictions. Conscience demands that we only work and worship alongside others who worship the same Lord and preach the same gospel.

We should show discernment and I believe there are at least four areas at the heart of our faith which are indisputable and NON-NEGOTIABLE.

* acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord and God within the Holy Trinity;
1 John 4:1-3
4 Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 This is how you can recognise the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

The Jehovah’s witnesses, the Mormons, even the Jews have got it wrong because they have wrong ideas about who Jesus Christ is. The earliest declaration of faith is simply this – Jesus is Lord! We don’t pass judgement – but we must exercise discernment!

* submit to the Bible correctly interpreted as the supreme authority for faith and practice.
Acts 20:27-31;
27 For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God. 28 Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. 29 I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. 30 Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. 31 So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.

We need to stand firm against theological liberalism and wooliness and the post- modern political correctness which says that the only thing we can be certain about is that we can’t be certain about anything!

In beliefs and practice I believe it is right and important to be (to borrow a phrase) “tentatively definite” – that is to proclaim boldly and defend vigorously the truth as we have currently grasped it, whilst remaining humble enough to recognise that God may always teach us something new (probably through a Christian from a very different tradition) which will cause us to re-examine and even change our position.

We don’t pass judgement – but on the authority of Scripture we must exercise discernment!

* recognise the fallen-ness of humanity and the need for personal repentance and faith in order to receive God’s gift of forgiveness and eternal life, which comes through grace alone on the basis of Christ’s atoning and substitutionary death on the cross;
Remember the warnings against the 7 churches in Revelation: Rev 2:14-16,
14 Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: You have people there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin by eating food sacrificed to idols and by committing sexual immorality. 15 Likewise you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. 16 Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.
20-24.
0 Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. 21 I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. 22 So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. 23 I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds. 24 Now I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, to you who do not hold to her teaching and have not learned Satan’s so-called deep secrets (I will not impose any other burden on you): 25 Only hold on to what you have until I come.

These churches God was condemning had watered down ideas of sin. They were tolerating immorality. They were promoting other ways of salvation when the Bible teaches us clearly that Christ is the only way to God! “I am the way, the truth and the life,” Jesus said. “No-one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)

So I stand opposed to so-called `multi-faith’ worship and the preaching of any other gospel I oppose any implications of universalism. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved! Don’t believe and you are doomed! We don’t pass judgement – but we must exercise discernment!

* look for the working of God the Holy Spirit as the indispensable
element in the life of any Christian and any church;
not just thinking about people who use the same kind of language about the Holy Spirit as we do – but about a spirit filled life – holiness – joyful witness! We need discernment over manifestations which could come from the Holy Spirit but could come from other sources. But people who reject the work of the Holy Spirit, the miraculous, the prophetic are grieving and quenching the Spirit. And of course we should expect to see the fruit of the Spirit.
Matt 7:15-20;
15 “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16 By their fruit you will recognise them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognise them.

Then Jesus goes on to warn that we must test the Spirits. Not every apparent “work of the Holy Spirit” is genuine!
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
In matters such as the deity of Christ, the reliability and authority of Scripture, the way of salvation and manifestations of the Holy Spirit we don’t pass judgement – but we must exercise discernment! Guard the gospel!

Here are four areas in which it can be right for Christians to ignore the command “judge not lest you be judged! But are there any others? I believe there are. In the case of another Christian who does something or says something which is clearly wrong, Jesus sets out a procedure to follow.

Matthw 17:15 “If your brother sins against you, (some versions don’t have against you) go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. 16 But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector

As individual Christians we should not take it upon ourselves to correct each other in every little thing. But if the sin is serious – we have a duty to point it out. If our brother won’t listen to us privately, we explain the situation to another one or two mature Christians (entirely privately – no excuse for gossip!). If he won’t listen to the two or three, take it to the leadership. And ultimately if he won’t listen to the whole church then fellowship is broken!

In the case of serious problems – we MUST show discernment. Not “passing judgement” but seeking to bring a brother to repentance. We must follow the procedure Jesus outlines. But if that does not work – if there is no repentance – at least we have done our best to rescue our brother from sin. And then that is the end of the matter. We have to leave the matter to God for Him to sort out.

14: 4 Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.

We live in a complicated world – a moral maze. How do we know what is right or wrong? Abortion, Euthanasia, Stem cell research, global warming, the population explosion, being rich Christians in a world with so much hunger. How do we make moral choices in today’s world?

Our passage this evening is one of the hardest in Romans, if not in the whole of the New Testament because it speaks to one such moral dilemma. Romans 13:1 gives us a very clear unambiguous command – yet a command which many Christians in different contexts have felt led to disobey. Here is the question for tonight. Is it ever right for Christians to rebel against the state?

Romans 13 Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves…. 5 Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience.

Submit to the governing authorities – the Bible says. But what about in being a Christian in South Africa in the days of apartheid? Or indeed in America in the days when slavery was perfectly legal. Surely those Christians who stood up against oppression and discrimination were disobeying Romans13. What about those Christians who resorted to violent resistance? Christians like the German Lutheran Pastor Deitrick Bonhoeffer who conspired against the Third Reich and was involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler? Or how about those Christians who broke into the American air base at Greenham Common to protest against Nuclear weapons? Surely all of these were disobeying the clear commands of Scripture!

How can we know what is right and wrong in today’s world.

Some Christians will tell you it is easy. Just obey the rules God has given us in His Word, the Bible, his guidebook not just for Christians but for the whole of humanity.
Read the 10 commandments which God gave us. Read the words of the prophets and the words of Jesus. Just obeying the rules in the Bible and you will be ok.

In theory of course I agree with that approach. I absolutely agree that the Bible should be our ultimate authority in all matters of faith and conduct. I am totally committed to the inspiration, reliability and sufficiency of Scripture. But we live in a complicated and ever-changing world. We need to take great care as we apply the rules in the Bible to today’s world. As simple examples, we Christians claim to live by the Old Testament rules but completely ignore the Jewish laws about which foods are clean or unclean to eat. Christians of most traditions agree that the Bible especially in 1 Corinthians condemns homosexual acts (and I agree with that understanding.) However most Christians also agree that commands found in that same book of the Bible about women always covering their heads during worship do not necessarily apply any more. So it is not so simple as to say that we should always “obey the rules in the Bible.” In practice there are some Bible rules which Christians disregard – for very good reasons.

Then there is another important reason why “obeying the Bible rules” is only the beginning of ethics for Christians. There are situations and ethical dilemmas in today’s world where the Bible doesn’t give us any rules at all! We should not be surprised to discover that the Bible doesnt mention Global Warming. Or population control. Or gender reassignment. Or genetic engineering. Stem cell research was not remotely envisaged in Bible times. What do we do when the Bible doesn’t give us any rules?

Vivisection and medical experimentation on animals was not contemplated in Bible times. Some people would suggest that animal experiments which lead to increased knowledge and possibly valuable medicines are more morally acceptable than the ways in the Old Testament animals were used at God’s command in ritual sacrifices.

Is suicide a sin? Church tradition has always said yes, but actually the Bible is silent on that question. If ending one’s own life is not explicitly forbidden then is helping somebody who wants to die to end their own life necessarily wrong? How do we decide what is right and wrong when there isn’t actually a specific rule in the Bible about euthanasia?

It is too simplistic to say that Christians just have to obey the Bible. What about all the dilemmas where the Bible doesn’t contain a rule to guide us.

Not only in situations where the Bible is silent, but actually in every situation, the Bible itself points us beyond specific rules to general principles by which we Christians must live our lives. We saw this just last week from later in Romans 13.

Romans 13:9 The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” 10 Love does no harm to its neighbour. Therefore love is the fulfilment of the law.

Here is the fundamental underlying principle of Christian ethics. Love. Loving God, and loving your neighbour as yourself.

Augustine said “love God, do what you like”, What he meant was that if we are truly loving God then that love will guide us in all our actions. A popular phrase today is “W_W_J_D? What would Jesus do?” How would Jesus express HIS love in this particular situation?

There are other general principles too of course. Principles of justice and righteousness. Principles of truth and honesty and integrity. And this is where Christian ethics in the real world gets very messy. Because there are situations where different Biblical rules or principles are in conflict – in tension.

Consider the 9th Commandment: Do not bear false witness. Do not lie. Christians have rightly always valued truth and the obligation always to tell the truth very highly. But you are a Christian in mainland Europe sheltering Jews against Nazi persecution in 1943. The soldiers are at the door demanding to know “Do you have any Jews hiding in your cellar?” Are you allowed to lie and say no?

Or what about the seventh commandment. Do not murder. Is it ever acceptable to take a human life? Is it ever acceptable for a Christian to take up arms to defend his country if that might involve killing the enemy. Is it ever acceptable to use “lethal force” when acting in self defence, or to save the life of an innocent child? Is killing people always wrong?

Many Christians believe that all human life is sacred and that includes the human embryo from the moment of conception. That makes all abortion wrong. But what about a situation in the early stages of pregnancy where the pregnant mother is about to die and the only way to save her life is to abort her baby. If the mother dies the baby will also surely die. Could it be that in that situation although it is always wrong to take human life, the right thing to do would be to abort the baby and save the mother’s life? We will discuss that specific issue in a few weeks time.

For now, let’s come back to our example for this evening. Is it ever right for Christians to rebel against the state? To stand up to the governing authorities? Even if that leads to violent resistance? Romans 13 is totally clear and unambiguous. Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities … he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves…. 5 Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, There is the Bible rule. Rebellion is forbidden.

But there have been times in places in history when Christians have rebelled and led rebellion and hindsight and history have said they were right and justified in rebelling. South Africa and apartheid. Times of oppression and persecution even in recent years when Communist and Islamic States have declared evangelism or conversion to Christianity or gathering for worship illegal. Yet in those times believers have followed the apostles’ example in saying “We must obey God, not men”. They have even gone against these direct commands in Romans 13. And many Christians would say they have been right to do so.

When asked why they have disobeyed this specific Bible command to be subject to the ruling authorities, some Christians have said that they don’t believe Romans 13 applies any more. It may have applied in Bible times but it doesn’t apply today. Some people use similar arguments in discussions about issues such as homosexuality. The Bible doesn’t apply today.

But here in Romans 13 there is nothing to suggest that this command not to rebel is tied to its original context or its original culture. Six times the passage mentions God. The reason you obey the ruling authorities is because of God. God has established all the authorities – no exceptions – all authorities. Rebelling against authorities is rebelling against God. Rulers are God’s servants – obey them!

So Romans 13:1-6 are God’s commands for all people in all places. It is wrong to say that the rules in the Bible were for those days but the world has changed and Bible rules don’t apply in today’s world. That is a wrong idea here in Romans 13 and in many other places too. But if God’s rule still applies today – be subject to the ruling authorities – rebellion is wrong, then how can it ever be right to disobey such commands?

The answer given by many Christians in South Africa who rebelled against apartheid is this. That in rebelling they were following a greater command, a command which is more important than the command to obey authorities. They would say that they were obeying the greatest command of all – to love their neighbours. See the suffering and injustice of their black African neighbours, the obligation to love has taken priority over the specific command to be subject to authorities. Meeting the needs of those suffering under oppression have been more important than the command not to rebel.

What I am saying here is that in this messy sin-spoiled world, it is too simplistic to suggest that the Bible has a rule for everything and that all we need to do is learn the rules and live by the rules. In the real world, Bible rules and the fundamental principles of love and truth and justice which underpin them need to be applied very carefully. And sometimes it will turn out that those rules and principles will stand in tension with each other. Sometimes obeying one rule will lead to us disobeying another rule.

So to take the example of bearing false witness – not lying. You are a Christian in mainland Europe sheltering Jews against Nazi persecution in 1943. The soldiers are at the door demanding to know “Do you have any Jews hiding in your cellar?” Are you
allowed to lie and say no?

I believe that the right thing to do in that situation would be to tell a lie. To conceal the Jews in the cellar from the soldiers and so to save their lives. In my understanding that is the right thing to do because in that scenario the command to “love your neighbour” takes priority over telling the truth. I continue to believe that telling the truth is very important. It is a command which applies just as much today as ever it did. But in this messy world there may be just a few situations where the command to love will be in tension with the command to tell the truth.

Some philosophers and theologians would describe this as the principle of “the lesser of two evils.” To lie to the soldiers and protect lives is a “lesser evil” when it would be a “greater evil” to tell the truth and condemn those innocents to death.

In the same way, in South Africa, Christians argued that the command to love one’s neighbours took priority over the command to submit to the governing authorities. Again, I am NOT saying that the command not to rebel does not apply today. This is a general principle which is not tied to the original context of the church in Rome but is universal and timeless. In rebelling, a Christian will recognise that he is doing something which is in itself wrong. But he rebels against an unjust or oppressive reigime in order to obey the more important command to show God’s kind of love.

In the middle of the struggle against aparteid in South Africa, in a brave document entitled “A call of an end to unjust rule”, theologian Allan Boesak rightly pointed to love of neighbour as a possible motive for revolution. `It is the love for the neighbour which infuses, shapes and substantiates Christian action in the world. … the Christian is obligated to the neighbour, to unrestricted love.’

But at the same time the command not to rebel cannot be ignored. When love for neighbour leads Christians into protest or rebellion, the ` tension’ with submission to authority safeguards them from descending to situational ethics where `the end justifies the means’. Christian opposition to the state will be constrained to be humble, prayerful, regretful and moderate.
Rev Dr Dick France was vice-principal of London Bible College and taught me everything I know about the book of Romans. He wrote, “the apparently universal Christian conviction that at least some governments must be opposed … is surely better explained as a case of the “lesser evil”, where there is a conflict of principles, each in itself good, and divinely sanctioned. To resist government is bad in itself, but the alternative may be worse. … The same “conscience” which requires our submission to government … may also cause us to defy a particular government’s edicts to the point of advocating its overthrow.”

You may be thinking to yourself – surely if loving my neighbor required me to do something which was in and of itself wrong, like telling a lie or rebelling against the established authorities, then surely in such a situation I should simply do nothing. Better to take no action at all than to disobey one of the Bible’s rules. In fact – no! Doing nothing is not an option – because to fail to do good when we can is just as much wrong as doing something bad. Sins of omission can be as serious as sins of commission. To fail to take action can be a sin!

So although the Bible may command Christians to be subject to ruling authorities, and even though that Bible command still applies in today’s world, there may be times when it is not only permissible but actually imperative for Christians to disobey that command, in order to obey the greatest commandment which is to love our neighbour. Our neighbour may be suffering in a way that sitting around and doing nothing is not an acceptable way forward.

Bible rules, Bible principles and choosing the lesser of two evils. These are the kinds of ways Christian philosophers and theologians look at ethics in today’s moral maze. Is it ever right for Christians to disobey the civilian authorities? We are blessed that we don’t have to make these kinds of decisions every day – if ever! Our brothers and sisters living in the persecuted church do even today!

There are now just 51 shopping days until Christmas! By now many people have bought their presents. Some have written and addressed their cards. Many have already booked their Christmas dinner. I guess that most of us have thought about where we will be spending Christmas this year, and who with. But don’t make too many plans. Because Christmas Day 2012 may never come! There is an even more exciting and important Day coming, and that Day may come even sooner than Christmas.
Romans 13:11-12. And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here.
“The Day” of course means the Day of the Lord, the Second Coming of Jesus, the Day of the Return of Jesus Christ. Jesus Himself taught his disciples to be ready for His return.
Mark 13 32 “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33 Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come. 34 It’s like a man going away: He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with his assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch.
35 “Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back—whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn. 36 If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping. 37 What I say to you, I say to everyone: ‘Watch!’ ”

“Wake up!” says Paul. “Watch, be on guard, be alert,” says Jesus. And even sound evangelical churches like us need to wake up and watch and be on guard and be alert! Because we have tended to neglect what the New Testament teaches us about the Second Coming. Our lives are too comfortable. There are too many things in this life we still want to experience and enjoy before everything changes when Jesus returns. If only our attitude was like that of a poet a hundred years ago who wrote:
“The best part is the blessed hope of his coming soon. How I ever lived before I grasped that wonderful truth, I do not know. How anyone lives without it these trying days I cannot imagine. Each morning I think, with a leap of the heart, “He may come today.” And each evening, “When I awake I may be in glory.” Each day must be lived as though it were to be my last, and there is so much to be done to purify myself and to set my house in order. I am on tiptoe with expectancy. There are no more grey days — for they’re all touched with colour; no more dark days — for the radiance of His coming is on the horizon; no more dull days, with glory just around the corner; and no more lonely days, with His footsteps coming ever nearer, and the thought that soon, soon, I shall see His blessed face and be forever through with pain and tears.”
Jesus Christ is coming back. One day – maybe even today! The rest of the world may ignore that truth, but then that isn’t so surprising when even most Christians live as though this world was going to go on forever. But it isn’t. Our salvation is nearer now than it was when we first believed! Will we be ready?
C.S.Lewis wrote this about the Return of Jesus Christ.
“The doctrine of the Second Coming teaches us that we do not and cannot know when the world drama will end. The curtain may be rung down at any moment. . . . This seems to some people intolerably frustrating. . . . We do not know the play. . . . The Author knows. The audience, if there is an audience (if angels and archangels and all the company of heaven fill the pit and the stalls) may have an inkling. . . . When it is over, we may be told. We are led to expect that the Author will have something to say to each of us on the part that each of us has played. The playing it well is what matters infinitely.”
Playing it well – living our lives to the full for God’s glory – is what counts. Lives based on the certainty that Christ is coming back – and He is coming back soon!
The great preacher F. B. Meyer once asked D. L. Moody, “What is the secret of your success?” Moody replied, “For many years I have never given an address without the consciousness that the Lord may come before I have finished.”
The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. Wake up – because Jesus is coming back soon. Maybe even tonight. Maybe even before the end of this sermon! So there are two things Romans 13 tells us we must do to be ready for Christ’s return.
THE DEBT TO LOVE
Romans 13 8 Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellow-man has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,’’ “Do not murder,’’ “Do not steal,’’ “Do not covet,’’ and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbour as yourself.’’ 10 Love does no harm to its neighbour. Therefore love is the fulfilment of the law.
The debt to love each other is not a small debt to each other. It is our enormous debt to God for His love for us! God has loved us more than we can possibly imagine, certainly vastly more than we could ever repay. So we owe it to God to love our brothers and sisters and our neighbours.
The Old Testament Commandments were prohibitions – don’t do this, don’t do that! They were essentially negative. But the commandment which sums them all up is “Love your neighbour as yourself.” And that is entirely positive. It demands action and initiative. In recent weeks we have seen in Romans 12 how Paul spells out we should love other people.
Romans 12 9 Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. 10 Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.
13 Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.
But then our love must not be limited to our brothers and sisters in the church. We should love our enemies as well as our friends!
14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.
17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil.
18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
19 Do not take revenge,
21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
So we have this debt to God to love our neighbours. But who is my neighbour? The parable of the Good Samaritan makes it clear. The neighbour is the person we would not usually mix with, somebody we might not usually love and indeed may find it difficult to love. Our neighbour is the person God brings across our path who needs our help and compassion. And loving our neighbour is not an airy fairy feeling but an act of the will, a determination to seek and work for what is truly best for our neighbour. Wake up says Paul – and love your neighbours! Then as we show God’s kind of love to people, we should also,
LIVE IN THE LIGHT
Living a holy and Christ-like life has two sides to it.
PUT ASIDE
Romans 13:12 The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armour of light. 13 Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. I hope orgies and drunkenness and immorality and debauchery are not a problem for us! But the last two issues in that list are just as dangerous for Christians as the first four. Dissention, division, arguments and disunity can tear a church apart. And being jealous is just as harmful, whether it is over material or worldly things or over spiritual things. We must “put aside all the deeds of darkness!”
I can’t remember where I heard it, but there is a little saying which I have always found helpful and challenging. We should never do anything we wouldn’t want to be found doing when Jesus returns. And we should never say anything we wouldn’t want to be found saying when Jesus returns. Christ has died. Christ is risen and Christ IS coming again. We need to be ready.
We must “put aside all the deeds of darkness!” And then we must also “put on the armour of light.”
PUT ON
14 Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature. The secret is not to even think of doing evil but to live as Jesus lived, following our Lord’s example of prayer and holiness and service and sacrifice. Because Jesus is coming back and we all need to be ready!
Revelation 16:15 15 “Behold, I come like a thief! Blessed is he who stays awake and keeps his clothes with him, so that he may not go naked and be shamefully exposed.”
Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ WILL come again, like a thief in the night. So wake up! The Message puts it this way.
But make sure that you don’t get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of all your day-by-day obligations that you lose track of the time and doze off, oblivious to God. The night is about over, dawn is about to break. Be up and awake to what God is doing! God is putting the finishing touches on the salvation work he began when we first believed. We can’t afford to waste a minute, must not squander these precious daylight hours in frivolity and indulgence, in sleeping around and dissipation, in bickering and grabbing everything in sight. Get out of bed and get dressed! Don’t loiter and linger, waiting until the very last minute. Dress yourselves in Christ, and be up and about!
So wake up! The night is almost over. The day is almost here. Our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed! Remember the debt to love and to live in the light and not in the darkness. Real life is waiting out there – the sermon is over – time to wake up!

This morning a suicide bomber killed at least seven worshippers and injured dozens more in an attack on a Roman Catholic church in Keduna, northern Nigeria. Compared to our brothers and sisters in places like Pakistan, Syria and Nigeria, Most Christians in Britain don’t really experience persecution. But most of us even if we are Christians, and maybe sometimes because we are Christians, do find ourselves from time to time in conflict with other people. We may have neighbours, workmates, maybe even members of our own family we just don’t get on with. Maybe they insult us, laugh at us, pick arguments with us or maybe they just ignore us. So what should we do in those situations? What does it mean for us to love those who choose to be our enemies?
LIVE IN HARMONY
14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.
The ideas of Blessing and Cursing are neglected in today’s world, and even in the church. This is not just about saying nice things or nasty things to people and about people. Blessing somebody means asking God to bless them and bring good to them. And that has power because God answers our prayers! On the other hand, cursing means asking God (or asking evil spiritual powers) to bring judgment and punishment on people. And curses like blessings also have spiritual power to hurt and harm others. It should go without saying that Christians should NEVER “put a curse” on another person. Instead we should pray for God to bless others, even those who may be opposing us and opposing the gospel. Then another part of living in harmony should be,
15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.
We are not always very good at drawing alongside those who are mourning or are sad. We don’t usually know what to say. We need to remember that we don’t necessarily need to say anything! Just being there is often enough.
But rejoicing with those who are rejoicing can be even harder. Many Christians are not very good at praising and encouraging others and sharing in their joys and successes. Many of us just don’t know how to celebrate! In some puritanical way we can feel guilty if we are actually enjoying ourselves! It is strange because nobody knows how to do weddings or funerals better than Jewish people. Here is an element of our Jewish heritage which many Christians seem to have forgotten.
16 Live in harmony with one another.
Let’s be clear. Harmony is not unison. Harmony is not uniformity but the blending of voices. Nor is harmony a set of solos so far apart from each other that you can only hear one. Sometimes we can run away from conflict or hide from disagreements. But staying silent is not harmony. We don’t make harmony by avoiding other people but by sharing our lives with them!
Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.
It is easy to avoid conflict if we only mix with our own kind of people. But there is no place for snobbery in the church. God has chosen all kinds of people to be in his church. We do not have the option of having fellowship with some but ignoring the others.
Romans chapter 12 is all about being transformed into the image of Christ.
2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

If we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, it is no coincidence that Paul talks three times in this chapter about humility.
3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.
10 Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.
And now in verse 16 Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.
Hudson Taylor went to speak at a large church in Australia. The leader of the service introduced the missionary in glowing terms and told the large congregation everything all that Taylor had accomplished in China, and then presented him as “our illustrious guest.” Taylor began his message by saying, “Dear friends, I am the little servant of an illustrious Master.”
There is no place for pride or conceit in the church. We have heard the same message in three different sermons. The secret of living in harmony is Christ-like humility.
Live in harmony says Paul, and then he says
LIVE IN PEACE
Our lives should be filled with the peace only God can give, wholeness, integrity, wellbeing in body, mind and spirit. This is the shalom which is God’s give to all who trust in Jesus. The starting point for peace is,
17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil.
“We never repay evil for evil,” you say. But what if somebody makes a cruel remark and we hit back with a cutting comment. They bend the truth a little, so we bend it back the other way a little bit more. They are selfish and we lose out, so we are selfish and then they lose out. They make life difficult for us, so we give up bothering to share the gospel with them. They face a tragedy and we don’t get round to offering help or support. They stop talking to us so we stop trying to talk to them. “Do not repay ANYONE evil for evil.”
Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody.
It isn’t enough to be doing what WE think and believe to be right. Part of our witness is to be doing what everybody would judge to be right, society around us and of course God Himself. If our non-Christian friends and neighbours think that something we are doing is morally wrong, we need to doubly and triply sure that we are actually doing God’s will, and not just following our own selfish desires.
18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
As far as it depends on you! We all know that however much we try, there are some people we will never live at peace with. They won’t let us. The more love we show to them, the more it makes them mad at us. But it should never be OUR fault that we are not at peace with another person.
1 Corinthians 137 Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails!
Message: Love Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end. Love never dies!
Love always keeps trying. It never gives up! Live in harmony. Live in Peace, and
OVERCOME EVIL WITH GOOD
19 Do not take revenge, my friends,
It is perfectly OK to keep scores so you can pay people back, just as long as you only ever keep a record of the GOOD things people do for you. Love keeps no record of wrongs. Never. Ever. It is not for us to demand justice for ourselves, to go on vendettas or bear grudges. We are commanded simply to forgive others. Jesus teaches us in the Sermon on the Mount:
Matthew 5 38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ 39 But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40 And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 41 If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. 42 Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.

God calls us to forgive other people, whatever they may have done to hurt us, and simply to trust Him that justice will ultimately be done.
19 Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.
Only the Almighty God can judge the world with perfect justice. Our idea of justice is always blind and self-seeking. It is flawed because we only see part of the picture. We must not fight our own battles but leave it to God to punish the wicked and bring the truth to light. This is the example Jesus has given us.
1 Peter 2 19 For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. 20 But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. 21 To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.
22 “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.”
23 When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.

So we should never take revenge. It can be hard to trust God to bring judgment. Everybody thinks forgiveness is easy until they have something big to forgive. But Jesus commands us to love our enemies, to forgive others as God has forgiven us.
20 On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”
Here Paul is directly quoting Proverbs 25.
21If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.
22In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the LORD will reward you.
The burning coals are not there to increase the punishment of the enemy, but to lead them to repentance. Somebody has said, “Those who deserve love the least are those who need it the most.” So we are commanded to love our enemies in the hope that the burning coals of love and holiness will bring them to repentance and saving faith in Jesus Christ. If we repay evil for evil then our enemy will stay lost for ever. Two wrongs never make a right. But if we respond to evil with love then we may yet win our enemy over to Christ.
I came across the story of a Christian lady who owned two prize chickens. One day the chickens escaped from their run and made a mess of the garden of a neighbour she didn’t get on with. The man caught the hens, wrung their necks, and threw them back over the fence. The woman was upset, but instead of getting angry and rushing over and screaming at the man she took the birds and prepared two chicken pies. The woman delivered one of the freshly baked pies to the man who had killed her hens and she even apologized for not being more careful about keeping her chickens in her own yard. The man was speechless! The chicken pie and her apology filled him with a burning sense of shame.
Her motive in returning good for evil was to show her neighbor true Christian love, and maybe even bring about a change of heart. Repaying evil with good. Loving your enemies.
21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
We don’t have to sit back and let evil overwhelm us. We don’t have to let our enemies mock and persecute and ultimately crucify us. What we are allowed to do and what we should always aim to do is to respond to evil in positive ways. To pray for those who choose to be our enemies. To love them. To forgive them, and do and say everything we possibly can to show them the love of Christ.
12 Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. 2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Over the last four weeks we have seen that this renewed mind isn’t concerned with some holy huddle of a church. Being a living sacrifice is all about loving our enemies, living in harmony with other people, living at peace with people and overcoming evil with good. All of which is, of course, much easier said than done!

If you look up the origins of the word “sincere” you will find it comes from two Latin words sine and cera. Together they meant “without wax”. Centuries ago when a potter made a vase or a bowl he would put his own seal or stamp on it. If it had cracked in the baking process he would patch the bowl or vase by filling the crack with wax before glazing it over. Only if there was no flaw in the pottery could he also put on the stamp, sine cera, no wax, to say that the bowl or vase was perfect and flawless.
“Love must be sincere,” says Paul in Romans 12:9. Without flaws. No pretence or sham. Not half-hearted. But 100% genuine. Love must be sincere.
Paul is spelling out what it means to become living sacrifices, offering the whole of our lives in worship to God. And a big part of what that means is that our love must be sincere.
REASONS FOR LOVING (verses 4-8)
What is the basis for our Christian love? We looked at these verses last week.
We are one body
4 Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.
We should love one another because we are joined to each other spiritually in the one Body of Christ.
So we belong to each other
Because we belong to Christ we also belong to each other. This means we have a responsibility to love other Christians in the same way as Christ as loved us. Each member belongs to ALL the others. No room for exceptions there. There is no get-out clause. No loophole. We ALL belong to each other and are commanded to love ALL our brothers and sisters. There is no space for feuds or grudges. But let’s also remember especially the folk who have come to the church more recently. We should love our new friends as well as our old friends.
We should use our gifts to build up the church and to bless each other.
6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given us.
prophesying, serving, teaching, encouraging, contributing to the needs of others, leadership, showing mercy.

We should all use our gifts, all our skills, all our talents for God’s glory. Whether it is prophesying, serving, teaching, encouraging, contributing to the needs of others, leadership, showing mercy. If we aren’t using our gifts as we should then others aren’t blessed, God isn’t glorified, the body of Christ isn’t built up and as often as not somebody else ends up having to do the piece of service WE should have been doing, and that puts pressure on them which just isn’t fair. Using the gifts God has given us is one expression of love, but there is much more to love than that. So Paul goes on to explain

LOVING IN THEORY – what love should ideally look like

9 Love must be sincere.
The New Living Translation puts it, “Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them.” The Message puts it, “Love from the centre of who you are; don’t fake it.”
We live in an age of superficiality, of outward appearances, of deceit, of faking it. You may know the film, “Liar, Liar” with Jim Carrey as a compulsive liar who for the purposes of the plot was condemned for a whole day to speak only the truth. Both in his profession as a lawyer and in his personal life he was so used to lying to get his own way that the results of him having to tell the truth are hilarious. Our love must be honest and true. Coca Cola used the slogan, “It’s the real thing.” Our love must be the real thing! Love must be sincere.
Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.
Honesty and openness are essential. We must hate evil and run away from it because we know it will kill us. Mae West once said, “When I am given the choice between two evils, I choose the one I have never tried before.” Christians are to HATE what is evil! And we must cling to what is good, as we would cling on to a life jacket if we were drowning.
That means we must always be looking for the best in others. Remember 1 Corinthians 134 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Keeping no record of wrongs. No grudges. No feuds. Hating evil. Loving the good.
10 Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.
“Devotion” is devalued in today’s world. You hear of it in the context of faithful pets, “his devoted dog.” True devotion is not soppy sentimentality but an attitude of determination. Determined to seek the very best for the other person. Our brotherly love should be devoted.
Honor one another above yourselves.
An exaggerated sense of our own importance is a big barrier to loving other people sincerely.
A man who had a high opinion of himself stepped on a coin-operated scale that dispensed a card, giving his weight and comments about his personality. After reading the card, he handed it to his wife and said, “Here, look at this!” She took it and read aloud, “You are dynamic, a born leader, handsome, and much admired.” Giving it a second look, she added, “Hmmm, I see it’s got your weight wrong too!”
Honour one another above yourselves. Paul has already made this point.
3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.
Honour one another above yourselves. It is so easy to look down on other people, and their weaknesses and failings, and forget that we ourselves are ten times worse! We need to see ourselves as we really are, scumbags every one of us! Then we will stop judging other people and start honouring them above ourselves.
There is what love should look like in theory. So now Paul moves on to
LOVING IN PRACTICE
11 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.
It’s easy to start showing God’s love another person. The hard thing is to keep on loving them, day after week after month after year. If we are loving others in our own strength then that strength will run out. We need God’s strength. We need to stay on fire for God! The Message says, Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame.
Our love should never be half-hearted or lazy. Never be lacking in zeal. “Zeal” is another word which has gone out of fashion today. It has become associated with extremists and terrorists. But Jesus Christ deserves every bit of enthusiasm and our passion and zeal any of us can offer. Keep your spiritual fervour – anything less is unworthy of Christ who died for us. 1 Corinthians 137 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.
Our Christian hope gives us joy. Affliction can leave us discouraged and impatient. But to know hope and patience, to keep on loving when it gets harder and harder to love, for that we need prayer. Faithful prayer. Enduring prayer.
Philippians 4 4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
If we want to keep on loving we need to keep on praying.
13 Share with God’s people who are in need.
Our love has to be practical! Meeting needs and healing hurts. Note that we are not commanded to share what we have with the whole world. But we are commanded to help GOD’S PEOPLE who are in need.
James 2 14 What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? 15 Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?
1 John 3 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?
Our love has to be practical. It has to touch our wallets as well as our hearts.
Practice hospitality.
We should show our love by welcoming others into our homes. That is not just a bed for the night, but it can be as simple as a tea or a coffee or sharing Sunday lunch together. There are 101 opportunities for fellowship every week if we will only open our homes and share our lives with each other by practising hospitality.
Love must be sincere. Years ago now we were decorating the girls’ bedroom and as we were painting the ceiling the wallpaper cracked. What would we do? Would we replace the wallpaper, or just stick back the torn pieces and paint over the cracks and hope nobody would notice? There’s no place for just painting over the cracks in the life of the church. God loves us so much and we should love each other just as Christ has loved us. Love MUST BE sincere!

12 Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. 2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

We looked at these verses three weeks ago. In response to the grace which saves us on the basis of Christ’s atoning death on the cross, in response to the free gift of eternal life, in response to God’s love which never lets us go, in view of all God’s mercy we should offer ourselves to God to be living sacrifices. Our lives should be a continuous stream of loving actions continuously offered up as our worship to God. We should let God change us to be like Jesus, so that we will be different and stand out from the crowd as our thinking is reshaped.
J.B.Phillips Don’t let the world around squeeze you into its own mould, but let God remould your minds from within.
In this way we will live according to God’s will, following God’s perfect plan for each of our lives. This is our appropriate response to God’s love – to become living sacrifices. Now in Romans chapters 12 to 16 Paul spells out in practical terms what it means to be a living sacrifice. He begins with our life together in the church – how should we behave and relate to each other as fellow believers?
EACH BE HUMBLE
3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.
Being a living sacrifice becomes much easier when we get rid of any misguided ideas we may have about how important we are. We are loved by God and precious in His eyes – but that doesn’t mean that any of us are important in the church. It certainly isn’t the case that God NEEDS us!
Have you noticed that in all of the Psalms he wrote, great King David never once mentions his victory over Goliath? Not once! We live in an age of superlatives – the greatest evangelist, the greatest preacher, the greatest theologian, the greatest minister. In the world people chase after dignity and position and title and celebrity. And this attitude can creep even into the church. Contrast that with the apostle Paul who called himself and saw himself as “the least of all the apostles.”
A young American student visiting the Beethoven museum in Bonn was fascinated by the piano on which Beethoven had composed some of his greatest works. She asked the museum guard if she could play a few bars on it and for a large tip the guard agreed. The girl went to the piano and played out the opening of the Moonlight Sonata. She said, “I suppose all the great pianists who come here want to play on that piano.”
The guard shook his head. “The famous Polish pianist Padarewski was here a few years ago and he said he wasn’t worthy to touch it.”
“Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought.” It was the sin of pride that got Satan thrown out of heaven. Pride is the deadliest of the seven deadly sins. So Paul urges the Christians at Rome to be humble – to view themselves as God does. In C.S.Lewis’s Narnia books, Aslan says to Prince Caspian, “You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve – and that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar and shame enough to bow the head of the greatest emperor on earth.”
How do we avoid pride? I came across a little article entitled “How to be perfectly miserable.” It listed a few things we can do which will not only make us miserable but keep us that way.
1. Think about yourself.
2. Talk about yourself.
3. Use “I” as often as possible.
4. Judge yourself entirely by what other people think about you
5. Listen greedily to what people say about you.
6. Expect to be appreciated.
7. Be suspicious.
8. Be jealous and envious.
9. Be sensitive to slights.
10. Never forgive a criticism
11. Trust no one but yourself.
12. Insist on consideration and respect.
13. Demand agreement with your own views on everything.
14. Sulk if people are not grateful to you for something you have done for them.
15. Never forget a service you may have rendered.
16. Be on the lookout for a good time for yourself.
17. Shirk your duties if you can.
18. Do as little as possible for others.
19. Love yourself supremely.
20. Be selfish.
Let that be a checklist of sins to avoid! “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought,” Paul warns us. Be completely humble – that is just the first step in being a living sacrifice in the church. Next we should
TAKE CARE OF EACH OTHER
4 Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.
Paul will expand on this later in Romans 12 and in Romans 13 he will talk about loving your neighbour as yourself as the fulfilment of the law. In Romans 14 Paul will explain how this should work out in practice when Christians disagree and how loving each other will mean not judging each other. Everything Paul will say about loving each other rests on his understanding that together as Christians we form Christ’s body here on earth. “Each member belongs to all the others” in the Body of Christ, says Paul. We will learn much more about loving each other in weeks to come, but for tonight here is a simple question. Here in North Springfield Baptist Church how true is it that “each member belongs to all the others”? Do we really see each other as parts of the same body?
If I cut my hand my eyes look to assess the injury. My feet take me to the first aid box. My other hand applies the Savlon and Elastoplast. In the church how successful at caring for everybody? Are any neglected? Do some fall through the net? At the same time – are we all prepared to belong to one another? To open up and share our lives with each other and allow other people to help carry our burdens? Taking care of each other in the Body of Christ is another part of what it means to be living sacrifices in the church.
EACH PLAY YOUR PART
6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given us.
God gives every one of us natural talents and spiritual gifts. That gifting may change over time but we are all accountable to God for the ways we use the gifts He has given us and to make sure we do not waste them. Sometimes people say, “It must be nice to be a minister.” Some people spend lots of time and energy wishing they had different gifts and different roles in the church. But it is God who chooses what we are good at and what He wants us to do for Him. So we should each get on and play the part God gives us to play, serving in the ways He has chosen for us, which all depends on the gifts God has given us.
If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith.
God still speaks to His church today in prophecy, words of knowledge and words of wisdom, in pictures and dreams and visions. Sometimes we don’t recognise God’s words to us. On the other hand, sometimes people think God is speaking to them when in fact it is only their own wishes and ideas. So with prophecy we always need discernment – let him use it in proportion to his faith.
7 If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach;
Some people think that teaching is more glamorous or important in the church than serving. Paul puts them together and in fact neither is more or less important than the other. Both teaching and serving are equally vital for the life and growth of any church.
8 if it is encouraging, let him encourage;
Every church needs its encouragers, its Barnabas, its Son of Encouragement. Some churches have more than their fair share of sons and daughters of DIScouragement. Some Christians believe they have been given a ministry of discouragement and criticism. But I am delighted to say that we are spared from such people here!
if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously;
Generosity is not about large amounts. The widow’s mite was a generous contribution. But parts of being a living sacrifice are sacrifices from the wallet or the purse or the bank account.
if it is leadership, let him govern diligently;
The responsibility of leading a church shared by Minister and Deacons demands our best efforts and continual diligence.
if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.

Sometimes people can help others in a grudging or resentful or grumpy fashion. Every church would benefit from an outbreak of cheerfulness among the people of God!
We all have different gifts and different jobs to do. God calls each one of us to play our part in the Body of Christ – because if we don’t the body will stop working properly. And there are so many ways in which a body can go wrong!
Most of you know that I enjoy doing things with computers. Not just programming them and creating websites but also taking them apart and fiddling with the electronic bits inside. Taking a computer apart is very easy. Anybody can do it. The tricky bit is to put them back together again so they are working better than they were before. That’s the fun part! Because if just one component is not working properly the whole thing is useless. It’s the same with cars. With just one bit not working the car rattles or screeches and it can become extremely dangerous, or just stop working at all. The human body is so much more complicated than a computer or a car, and so is the Body of Christ the church. God calls us to work together as living sacrifices, to be completely humble, to take care of each other and to use the gifts God has given us for His glory. But we each have to play our part!

Romans 12:1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.
It was the great preacher Doctor Martyn Lloyd Jones who said, “whenever you find a “therefore” in Scripture you need to ask what it’s there for.”
The third section of Paul’s letter to the Romans beginning at chapter 12 verse 1 is a series of instructions for Christian living. The “therefore” is there to give us the motivation for obeying the instructions which follow. “Therefore” refers to everything in the letter which has gone before. In the light of God’s grace, in the light of the fact that we are saved by faith not by works, in the light of the fact that nothing can separate us from God’s love, because of everything we have learned from the first eleven chapters of Romans, Therefore …. in view of God’s mercy says Paul, this is how you ought to live.
12: Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices,
C.T.Studd was the 19th century captain of the English Cricket team who became a missionary first to China and then to the Belgian Congo. He once said, “If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.”
In the light of everything that Jesus Christ has done for us, each of us should
BE A LIVING SACRIFICE
offer your bodies as living sacrifices,(NIV)
Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. (MESSAGE)
This doesn’t sound too hard, until we remember that the only thing a sacrifice is called upon to do is to DIE. Paul is not saying here, “Go to church.” He is not saying, “be a good witness” or “live a good life,” or “love your neighbour.” The function of a sacrifice is to die – to give up its life. To become a living sacrifice means to die with Christ, to die to self, to be crucified with Christ. The problem with most living sacrifices is that they keep getting up and walking off the altar and refusing to die. Even when we realize that we are forgiven and saved, most Christians are still so selfish that we want to choose for ourselves how we live and to do what we want to do. But instead God calls us to be living sacrifices,
Holy and pleasing to God
Being holy means being set apart for God’s service, belonging to God instead of belonging to this fallen world. Being holy means to be pure and free from sin and dedicated to serving and obeying God
And being pleasing to God means always doing what God wants instead of what we would choose for ourselves. “Holy and pleasing to God” – that’s what it means to be a living sacrifice.
This is your reasonable (spiritual) act of worship
To be a living sacrifice is not some emotional response but rather a rational logical dedication of our lives to God’s service. “Acts of worship” were the words used for the worship offered in the Jewish Temple, but Christian worship is not just once a week in some religious place but rather a whole life filled with actions of a living sacrifice. This means continually focusing our minds on pleasing God in whatever we do. Somebody has written,
“Worship in our time has been captured by the tourist mindset. Worship is understood as a visit to an attractive site to be made when we have adequate leisure. For some it is a weekly jaunt to church, for others, occasional visits to special services. Some, with a bent for Christian entertainment and sacred diversion, plan their lives around special events like retreats, rallies and conferences. We go to see a new personality, to hear a new truth, to get a new experience and so, somehow, expand our otherwise humdrum lives. We’ll try anything — until something else comes along.”
That kind of once a week, “tourist worship,” “worship as entertainment,” is not true Christian worship. Christian worship is a life filled with service continuously and consciously offered up to God, twenty-four / seven.
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.
But being a living sacrifice in a world which hates God is not easy. It means we have to
BE DIFFERENT
2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
J.B./Phillips translation puts it this way. “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its mould!”
It can be so easy and so tempting to fit in, just to go with the flow. But the only thing that goes with the flow is a dead fish. Christians are supposed to be different. Christians are supposed to stand out from the crowd – however much that costs. The job of a living sacrifice is to die, and Jesus Himself was crucified because he didn’t fit in, because he was so different!
Remember what Jesus said in John 15 18 “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 19 If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. 20 Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.
If we are living sacrifices we can expect to stand out from the crowd! But sometimes we aren’t brave enough to dare to be different! Russian Christians sometimes call us Westerners “Four Wheel Christians.” They think that we drive to church for our dedications and our weddings and our Christmas services, and ultimately for our funerals. But real faith should mean much much more than that. The life of a living sacrifice should be very different! So Paul says,
LET GOD CHANGE YOU
but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
The gospel calls us all to repent, and the word repentance, in Greek metanoia, literally means a change of mind or a change of direction. The problem many of us face is that by the time we become Christians we have lived so long in the world that our ways of thinking are corrupted and perverted by the world around. We saw this so clearly in Romans 1
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.

So from the very start our minds are opposed to God, locked into evil thoughts and selfish attitudes. We can’t begin to live holy lives or to please God until God has changed us.
Our minds need to be transformed, metamorphosed like a caterpillar into a butterfly, made new by God so that our thinking can glorify Him. Too often Christians are not caterpillars but simply chameleons, not transformed inwardly but simply changing on the outside to blend in with their surroundings.
be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Our minds need to be renewed so that our thinking can glorify God!
J.B.Phillips Don’t let the world around squeeze you into its own mould, but let God remould your minds from within.
This renewing of our minds will take hard work. It will take learning, immersing ourselves in the Bible, learning from theology and church history and morality and ethics so that we will really know how to please God. And renewing our minds is an ongoing process, a lifelong process. It’s about Sermons and Home Groups and personal Bible Study and prayer and reading Christian books. It’s about asking God to revolutionise the way we think about everything!
Philippians 4 8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
Be transformed by the renewing of the mind. It does disturb me how some churches in these days are only concerned with experiences and emotions and devalue and neglect study and developing a Christian mind. This is so important, says Paul, because only as God transforms our minds,
Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is
God has his general will, the way he wants all Christian to live, loving each other and loving our neighbours and proclaiming the gospel by every means that we can. But God also has His specific will for each of our lives, his perfect plan to give us the very best life we could possibly have.
his good, pleasing and perfect will.
And the most appropriate response any of us can make to God’s love for us is to devote our lives to finding out what God’s good, pleasing and perfect will is for our own life, and then living that out day by day.
God’s will is GOOD – it has no bad bits, no sneaks, no tricks, no hidden surprises, no booby traps. Jesus said, “How much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask Him.” Jim Elliott, the missionary martyr to the Auca Indians, said, “That man is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
God’s will is PLEASING Obeying God pleases God, but it is also pleasing and satisfying to us. However much it costs, following God’s will is worth it!
God’s will is PERFECT – it is complete, self contained, self-sufficient. If we are walking in God’s will, we won’t need anything else to live life which is a happy and completely fulfilled. It is enough to be a living sacrifice!
Another missionary to Africa, David Livingstone, wrote this in his journal.
“People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege.”
To offer ourselves to God as living sacrifices is indeed a privilege – after all Christ has done for us it is the least we can do!
12 Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. 2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. NIV

For a thousand years the people of Israel had been waiting for their Messiah. But when Jesus Christ the Son of God was revealed, very many of God’s chosen people rejected Him As we were thinking about this morning from Mark 6, when Jesus went back to Nazareth and preached the gospel, many did not believe.

ROMANS 10:15 As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”
16 But not all the Israelites accepted the good news. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our message?” 17 Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. 18 But I ask: Did they not hear? Of course they did:
“Their voice has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.”
19 Again I ask: Did Israel not understand? First, Moses says, “I will make you envious by those who are not a nation; I will make you angry by a nation that has no understanding.”
20 And Isaiah boldly says, “I was found by those who did not seek me; I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me.”
21 But concerning Israel he says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.”
God’s chosen people refused to believe. So the gospel was taken beyond the Jewish people and many Gentiles did believe and were saved. But for Paul this leaves important questions unanswered. What future plans does God have for the nation he had chosen in the Patriarch Abraham two thousand years before? Here is Paul’s vital question.
11:1 I ask then: Did God reject his people?
We remember that this is a very personal question for Paul –
I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin.
So Paul really cares about the people of Israel and their future in God’s plan of salvation. And here is his answer.
11 I ask then: Did God reject his people? By no means! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew.

For the rest of Romans 11 Paul will explain how God has NOT rejected the Jews. Although it might appear that Israel has been rejected, or cast away, two things matter.
Firstly, that rejection is not total. It is not complete. Not all of Israel has been cast away. And as we will see in a few minutes secondly, that rejection is not final, it is not permanent.

THE REJECTION OF ISRAEL IS NOT TOTAL

Paul has already explained in Romans 9 that God has always kept for himself a remnant of Israel.

Romans 9 27 Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: “Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved.
29 It is just as Isaiah said previously: “Unless the Lord Almighty had left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah.”
Paul had also explained that salvation was always on the basis of faith and never earned by works.

Romans 9 6 It is not as though God’s word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. 7 Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children. On the contrary, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” 8 In other words, it is not the natural children who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring. 9 For this was how the promise was stated: “At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son.”

Not all who are descended from Israel are Israel – only those who truly believed. So Paul now gives another example of the faithful remnant, this time from the time of Elijah.

Romans 11:2 Don’t you know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah—how he appealed to God against Israel: 3 “Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars; I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me”? 4 And what was God’s answer to him? “I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” 5 So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. 6 And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace.

Just as the faithful remnant in Elijah’s time had been preserved, so some of Israel were being saved in Jesus’s day. Those who put their trust in Jesus as Messiah and Lord. That faithful remnant included all of Jesus’s apostles, and of course one of the faithful remnant was the apostle Paul Himself! Has God rejected Israel? By no means!! The rejection was not total! The remnant were still being saved!

THE REJECTION WAS NOT FINAL

God still has a plan for Israel. We will think in a moment about how this plan will be fulfilled. But Paul wants everybody to know that there is still hope for the Jews! And at the end of time, God will redeem his chosen people Israel.

25 I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. 26 And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written:
“The deliverer will come from Zion; he will turn godlessness away from Jacob. 27 And this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins.”

28 As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies on your account; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, 29 for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable. 30 Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, 31 so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you.

God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable. God made his promises to the Patriarchs Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and when the time is right God will keep those promises to their descendants who are still His chosen people. That time will not come “until the full number of the Gentiles has come in”, and that will not be completed until the time when Jesus will return. At that point, “All Israel will be saved.”

When it says “All Israel will be saved” is it important to note two things. Firstly, Jewish teachers commonly said that “all Israel will be saved,” but then went on to list which Israelites would not be saved. So the phrase means “Israel as a whole (but not necessarily including every individual) will be saved.”
Paul’s expectation is that there will come a point in the future when the great majority of the surviving Jewish people will receive the blessings of salvation. He is not talking about a gradual salvation of individual Jews, but a mass conversion of a substantial number in the end times.

But the second thing we need to note is that the only way Paul expects those Jews to be saved is if they turn to Christ for salvation. This is his point in quoting Isaiah 59.
26 And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: “The deliverer will come from Zion; he will turn godlessness away from Jacob. 27 And this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins.”
The Jews will only be saved through Jesus Christ their deliverer, probably in the very last days just before, or even as the time when Jesus returns. In the passage we are about to look at Paul makes it clear that salvation is received by faith alone, when he says about the Jews,
23 And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again.
So Romans 11 is teaching us that a day which is coming when huge numbers of the Jews alive at that time will repent and put their faith in Christ.

This is a difficult issue. Here is a helpful paragraph from the IVP Bible Background Commentary on the New Testament.

“Unlike some interpreters today, Paul does not regard God’s promises to ethnic Israel as cancelled—only deferred; God still had a covenant with the fathers. Most readers today subscribe to one of two systems: Israel and the church are separate and irreconcilable entities, and Israel will be restored; or Christians become the true Israel and ethnic Israel has no more purpose in God’s plan. Paul would have rejected both extremes, believing that ethnic Israel as a whole would return to the covenant in the end time, joining the Gentiles and Jewish remnant that already participate in it.”

Paul is saying that God’s call and election of Israel remains even though they have rejected their Messiah. So what’s happening to Israel now, in these days?

7 What then? What Israel sought so earnestly it did not obtain, but the elect did. The others were hardened, 8 as it is written:
“God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes so that they could not see and ears so that they could not hear, to this very day.”
9 And David says: “May their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them.
10 May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see, and their backs be bent forever.”

As Paul was writing the majority of the Jews had rejected Jesus. God had hardened their hearts. But that wasn’t the end of the story!
11 Again I ask: Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all!

God still has plans for Israel. But their rejection of their gospel was itself part of God’s masterplan, opening the door of salvation to the Gentiles.

11 Again I ask: Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all! Rather, because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. 12 But if their transgression means riches for the world, and their loss means riches for the Gentiles, how much greater riches will their fullness bring!
13 I am talking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I make much of my ministry 14 in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them. 15 For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? 16 If the part of the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; if the root is holy, so are the branches.

Here is God’s masterplan. The Jews have rejected Christ and some Gentiles have accepted Him and been saved. But Paul’s hope is that Jews will see Gentiles enjoying the blessings which had originally been promised to them and be inspired to repentance. If the Jews are provoked to jealousy, they will then seek once again the salvation which had always been intended for Israel. Paul explains this with a picture of an olive tree which everybody would know represents the nation of Israel.

17 If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, 18 do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. 19 You will say then, “Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.” 20 Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but be afraid. 21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.
22 Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off. 23 And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. 24 After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree!

In God’s perfect masterplan of salvation, the nation of Israel since Paul’s generation has been cut off from the olive tree to make space for Gentiles to be saved. But God’s plan is that one day the remaining descendents of Abraham, ethnic Israel, will be grafted back on to the olive tree and share in the blessings of salvation which by God’s grace are rightfully theirs. What a great day that will be!

SO WHAT’S GOING ON WITH ISRAEL RIGHT NOW?

We need to recognise that this is a question which Paul wasn’t really concerned about. Christians today often want to know where contemporary Jews stand in relation to the Kingdom of God. Paul isn’t answering that question. His perspective is eschatological – his concern is with the end times – where will Israel stand when Jesus returns. And his answer is that although at present the nation of Israel has been rejected, they still remain potentially part of God’s eternal Kingdom.
But what part does the nation state of Israel today have in God’s purposes, if any? Opinions differ!!!

Here were Paul’s questions. “Did God reject Israel? By no means!” His answer was in two parts – not completely, not totally, and not finally, not forever. And then Paul asked, Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all!

Romans 11 is a very difficult portion of Scripture and great minds differ on what it really teaches us about Israel here and now. But Paul ends this section of Romans with a wonderful song of praise to God which we can all say Amen to. We may not understand some of God’s wonderful plan of salvation – but it is all safe in God’s hands!

33 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!
34 “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?”
35 “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?”
36 For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.

All through Romans we have been learning about God’s wonderful way of salvation through grace in Jesus Christ. We have heard many times about how God offers to put people right with Himself through the death of Christ on the cross. And we have heard many times what human beings have to do in order to receive that free gift of God which is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. We don’t have to obey the Jewish Law – nobody ever could. We don’t have to earn our salvation by good works – nobody ever could.
We simply need to receive God’s gift by faith. To put our trust in Jesus Christ. Paul repeats that again here in verse 10.
10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved! That’s all you have to do. Well in fact, that isn’t all you have to do. Because Paul goes on to explain that a person has to declare that faith, to confess it publicly, in order to be saved.
10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.
Not just believing with your heart but also confessing with your lips!
9 That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.
In Paul’s understanding the believing and the confessing are inseparable. If a person has saving faith in Jesus Christ, it is inevitable that the person will speak about that faith.
In today’s world and even in some parts of the church, that idea has been rejected. You may hear preachers say, “as long as you truly believe in Jesus you will be saved.” I certainly hear Christians say about friends or even members of their family, “He lives such a good life, I am sure he believes inside, he just doesn’t like to talk about it, but I am sure he is really a Christian, deep down inside.”
As far as the apostle Paul is concerned, just believing deep down inside isn’t enough. 9 That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
We need faith in our hearts. But we also need the word of confession. The outward declaration of our belief in Jesus Christ which is our confirmation and witness to the world that we are saved!
11 As the Scripture says, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.” 12 … the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, 13 for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

That calling on the name of the Lord is necessarily open and public. You can’t be a secret disciple. Either the secret will kill the discipleship or the discipleship will kill the secret.
In this passage Paul is assuming two things:
1) it is vitally important for as many people as possible to be saved because without Christ they all face God’s judgment and a lost eternity, and therefore
2) Christians should be doing everything we can to make it possible for people to be saved

The start of the process of salvation comes as people respond in faith to the gospel of Jesus Christ. But before anybody can ever respond comes the prior stage:-
HEARING THE GOSPEL
14 How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard?
If people are to be saved they have to believe in Jesus Christ. And if they are going to believe they first have to HEAR the gospel. So far in Romans we have heard about God’s call on people’s lives.
Romans 8 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
Salvation is the free gift of God according to His Sovereign election and call. But back in the 18th Century our Baptist Ancestors the Particular Baptists fell into an error called hyper-Calvinism. The Particular Baptists argued that since God is going to save whoever He chooses, God doesn’t need our help for that so we don’t need to tell anybody the gospel. Even worse, they argued that telling people about Jesus might even get in the way of God’s election and call. So for the Particular Baptists it was actually wrong to tell people the way to be saved! Predictably, because nobody was being saved in Particular Baptist churches, they all died out!
But it seems that churches today have their share of closet hypercalvinists. There actually are Christians who make the mistake of thinking they don’t need to tell their friends and neighbours about Jesus because God can save them without any help from us. How wrong can they be!! Of course people need to be told about Jesus! People need to hear the gospel.
There is a lot of fuss being made today about Missionary Congregations – churches oriented towards reaching out into the community. The fact is you cannot have a true church which is NOT a missionary congregation. A church which is not proclaiming the gospel of Jesus is not a church at all! People need to hear the gospel!
The Swiss theologian Karl Barth was quite possibly the greatest evangelical thinker of the 20th Century. He wrote, “The church exists to preach the gospel. The life of the one holy Universal Church is determined by the fact that it is the fulfilment of the service as ambassador enjoined upon it.
Where the life of the Church is exhausted in self-serving, it smacks of death; the decisive thing has been forgotten, that this whole life is lived only in the exercise of what we called the Church’s service as ambassador, in proclamation. A Church that recognizes its commission will neither desire nor be able to petrify in any of its functions, to be the Church for its own sake.
The “Christ-believing group” … is sent out: “Go and preach the gospel!” … In it all the one thing must prevail: “Proclaim the gospel to every creature!” The Church runs like a herald to deliver the message. It is not a snail that carries its little house on its back and is so well off in it that only now and then it sticks out its feelers and then thinks that the “claim of publicity” has been satisfied. No, the Church lives by its commission as herald. The Church … must ask itself whether it is serving this commission or whether it is a purpose in itself. If the church becomes a purpose in itself, then as a rule it begins to smack of the “sacred,” to affect piety, to play the priest and to mumble.”
You cannot have a non-missionary church. The church exists to preach the gospel.
Romans 10 14 How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?
PREACHING THE GOSPEL
In the New Testament the word “preach” appears just 6 times in the context of preaching sermons in church. But the same word preach appears 106 times with the meaning of announcing or proclaiming the good news, acting as a herald or delivering a message. Preaching is essentially proclaiming or announcing – a preacher is simply God’s messenger.
Preaching can take many forms. From Billy Graham in his great rallies to ordinary ministers in their pulpits week by week. From open-air preaching to evangelistic courses like Alpha and our own “Meet Jesus” course. From delivering leaflets and scriptures and booklets to concerts and dramas to radio and TV programmes. Paul said to the church at Ephesus,
Acts 20 20 You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house. 21 I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus.
Wherever and whenever it happens, preaching is proclamation and announcement. We can be witnesses to our faith by compassion and healing. Mission can be expressed in actions in teaching or agriculture or medicine or caring. But it is only preaching if the gospel is proclaimed in words. If the way of salvation is announced.
Let us be clear about what the Christian gospel is. The gospel is not an offer. The gospel is not an invitation. The gospel is not a debate. The true gospel is simply an announcement that Christ has come, and that Christ is Lord of all. And that announcement is so earth-shattering that it demands a response from every one of us who hears it. JESUS IS THE CHRIST! So repent and believe!
And preaching is simply the announcement of that gospel. The message has to be in words people can understand. It has to be relevant and practical and speak to where people are at! But the message has to be delivered!!
Have you noticed how the verb “to preach” has acquired a negative connotation nowadays? For more than 1900 years “preaching” was welcomed by everybody as a worthwhile and noble activity. But now we live in this post-modern world where truth is relative and the only thing you are allowed to be certain about is that you aren’t allowed to be certain about anything any more. So preaching is seen as something bad. “Don’t you preach at me!” “We don’t want to be preached at!” As if warning people about a terrible danger is a bad thing. As if telling people the way they can escape that danger is a bad thing! We must not be ashamed of proclaiming the truth of the gospel, of declaring that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that Jesus Christ is Lord of all and that people must repent! Very sadly, anybody who preaches the gospel in these days can expect trouble. But we must not be afraid – we must be obedient! Remember that preachers are not making up the message they are delivering. They have been
SENT WITH THE GOSPEL
Paul had his own personal experience of being send out on his missionary journeys by the church which sometimes supported him, the church at Ephesus.
Acts 13:1 In the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul. 2 While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” 3 So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.
4 The two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus. 5 When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues. John was with them as their helper.
Every evangelist and missionary and preacher needs an experience of being sent by God. That is one of the things which keeps us going when the going gets tough.
But evangelists and missionaries and preachers also need to be sent by churches: churches which help in practical ways and sometimes with money but always most importantly with prayer.
You will remember how in the letter to the Ephesians Paul asks that church to pray for him. But listen to what he wants them to pray for.
Ephesians 618 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints. 19 Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, 20 for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.
Those who preach the gospel need the support of sending churches. We should pray for the missionaries we support. Jerry and Ruth in Nepal. Esther Townsend in Zambia. Other missionaries we may know personally.
I hope you also pray for your minister in the different opportunities he has to share the gospel. For our Sunday Services as we have visitors and guests who may not know Jesus. But there are other opportunities as well. For example I will be speaking at three assemblies for Harvest for the Hungry next week – all opportunities to share the gospel. And this Friday evening between 8 and 10 pm I will be the guest on Phoenix FM, the local radio station for Brentwood and Billericay which you can also hear in most of Chelmsford, talking about Harvest for the Hungry.
We need to pray for those sharing the gospel at Toddler Group tomorrow and Drop In on Friday and Impact Youth Group on Saturday. It would make such a difference if every member of the church took a special interest in one of our outreach activities, found out what goes on and prayed week by week and especially as the activity is taking place.
But each one of us has our part to play in sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. God has sent all of us to announce his good news. By telling our friends and neighbours that God loves them!
Romans 10 15 And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”
All of us share in this privilege of telling people the way they can be saved!
John Wesley used to ask young Methodists who wanted to become a minister two questions about their preaching. Did anybody get converted? And did anybody get mad? Unless the preacher answered yes to both questions, Wesley would not ordain them as a minister.
“How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”
How can they hear? May it never be the case that anybody in North Springfield could say, “We never heard the gospel because North Springfield Baptist Church never told us!