SERMON - The Impossible Commandments? - 3rd September 2023 - Glenboig Christian Fellowship
Reading: Romans 12. 9-21
Creator: Tadamichi | Copyright: tadamichi - Fotolia
Listen to the sermon as preached below:
The sermon began with a reading of the Metrical version of Psalm 73:
Thou, with thy counsel, while I live,
wilt me conduct and guide;
And to thy glory afterward
receive me to abide.
Whom have I in the heavens high
but thee, O Lord, alone?
And in the earth whom I desire
besides thee there is none.
My flesh and heart doth faint and fail,
but God doth fail me never:
For of my heart God is the strength
and portion for ever.
For, lo, they that are far from thee
for ever perish shall;
Them that a whoring from thee go
thou hast destroyed all.
But surely it is good for me
that I draw near to God:
In God I trust, that all thy works
I may declare abroad.
When reading this morning’s Scripture passage, you’d be forgiven for wondering whether there is actually any chance of us managing to fulfil Paul’s instructions!
Particularly when we look around our Churches (not just this Church, but the Church at large), we seem to see far more examples of these rules being broken than we do them being followed! Indeed, one of the complaints that one of my family, who doesn’t attend Church much herself, often makes is that ‘The Church is just full of a bunch of hypocrites’, and unfortunately time and time again we see that she’s correct.
Furthermore, given the state of the early Church, it is easy to wonder what Paul’s readers made of these instructions - surely there’s not much chance that the Roman Church would ever have been able to live by them either?
So why would Paul bother? Why would he give instructions that we could likely never achieve? I’d argue that it is to give us something to aim towards. After all, ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.’ (Prov. 29. 18)
Let’s take a look more closely at these verses. We won’t manage to cover all of them today, so I propose to look at the first half this week, and the second half when I am next with you in early October.
To begin, Dr Ellicott explains that the instructions that we are about to cover are ‘a number of general exhortations, not addressed to particular persons or classes, but to the Church at large.’ (Ell. Romans 253) This is worth remembering, these instructions are not just intended for the Church leaders, ministers, preachers. They are not just intended for new converts. They are not intended solely for those Christians who are long in the tooth. They are intended for ‘the Church at large’. They are as much for you and me as they were for the man or woman in the Roman Church.
9 Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good.
It is one thing to be loving, it is another thing to love. We can all ‘do’ loving things, but whether we have true love beneath the surface is another question. To have love ‘without dissimulation’ means to have love that is unfeigned, without hypocrisy. It is a love that is loving for the sake of loving, for the sake of the good of the other person. How many of us has been loving to someone to show us in a good light? I suspect we all have. It is part of our (sinful) human nature to take something good and pure and misuse it for our own selfish gain. We know from Scripture that ‘God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him’ (1 Jn. 1. 16), yet all too often we show love for the sake of our own selves, for the kudos that comes from being a nice guy, for the appropbation or appreciation of others, or to make ourselves feel good.
During last year, I was challenged in a Philosophy lecture, asked whether it is possible for mankind to ever do anything truly unselfishly, or whether every one of our actions is for a selfish purpose. Why do we give to the poor? Is it to help them in their plight? Is it to make us feel better about ourselves? Is it because we’d want people to give to us if we fell into need? Is it because we think our salvation depends on it? Is there any action of ours that is totally and utterly selfless? As difficult as it was to wrestle with, I do think it is possible to be selfless, but only if we ‘Let this mind be in [us], which was also in Christ Jesus’ (Phil. 2. 5).
One way we can seek to love unfeignedly, without hypocrisy, is to truly abhor that which is evil. And let’s be clear here, this is not to hate evil because it makes us feel bad, or because we wouldn’t want people being evil to us, I mean actually hating evil because it is the opposite of God. We know that God and evil cannot co-exist. It thereby follows that living in God necessitates not living in evil. If we truly ‘Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good’, we will be coming close to loving without guile, selfishness, deceit or malice.
10 Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another;
Paul’s choice of word, ‘brotherly’, is timely and pertinent. Those of us who are blessed with siblings know that, from time to time, they can really get on our wick! There have been times where my brother has really wound me up, and doubtless times when I have irritated him to despair as well. But there is a bond, a family bond, a bond of blood there that would be very hard, perhaps even impossible, to break. This is the sort of love that comes from a loving family. Now, of course, we acknowledge that (as a result of mankind’s sin), not every family is united in love, and this is tragically sad, but in this verse Paul is instructing us to see our Christian family in the same way we should see our blood family. That’s to say, united by something thicker than water, thicker even than blood. For whereas Matthew and I are united by blood, by a shared gene pool, we are united by the blood of Jesus Christ, for we are fellow sinners, saved by grace, called into a covenant relationship with Him and each other.
But what does ‘kindly affection’ look like? Is it just being civil to each other? Well, for some Christians, this would be a jolly good place to start! But it goes deeper than that, because as we learned in the previous verse, this is not about surface level civility, but about a changed heart, an altered attitude, a new way of seeing each other, ourselves, through the lens of God.
A big way that this change can be seen is through the Church family, ‘in honour preferring one another’.
What does it mean to prefer? Well, I prefer Cadbury’s over Galaxy, I prefer apple juice over whisky, but surely that isn’t it? No - perhaps it would help if we understood ‘prefer’ as ‘anticipate’ - anticipating each other’s needs, treating each other well not as a result of being treated well ourselves, but through taking the initiative.
I am reminded of a television programme I once watched, detailing the life of a monastery. In the shared, silent, meals, the monks were encouraged to be attentive to each other’s needs - not simply passing the salt when asked, but actively looking out for the brother who needed the salt, or the dish of potatoes, or whatever it was. Not simply answering a fellow brother’s request for help, nor reciprocating another person’s kindness, but anticipating a fellow brother’s need and acting on it before the request came. Can we say this is how our Church looks, friends?
11 Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord;
What does sloth in business look like? Not some tree-climbing marsupial chairing a board meeting!
For business, it would be as well for us to read ‘zeal’, we should not be slow to show zeal, commitment, and the commitment and zeal we show should be genuine, not the half-hearted commitment a teenager may show when sent to clean his room. Furthermore, as one called not to be slothful, there should be no delay in this commitment - it is not something that should take a while to warm up. Rather, as much as it within us lies, we should be ready to commit, 100%, from the get-go.
The literal meaning of ‘fervent’ is ‘boiling’ or ‘seething’. We can all imagine the boiling pot of water, bubbling away ferociously, at any moment liable to overflow. Or perhaps we have been seething in another (slightly less pleasant) sense, as more and more weights of the world sit upon your shoulders. Like a coiled spring, you can feel the tension rising, the upset building, until suddenly, SNAP!
Well, I don’t think that last example is quite what Paul had in mind - but there was certainly an urgency in his mind as he wrote these instructions. We can all imagine that Christian whose Spirit is on a constant boil, ready at any moment to overflow and flood whatever situation they are in. This overflowing is far from a problem, in fact it is a joy to behold.
This, of course, is the very essence of serving the Lord. For in serving the Lord, we are allowing His Spirit, which came upon us ‘the hour [we] first believed’ (cf. Hymn: Amazing Grace), to overflow into our lives and the lives of others. For when we act, it is (as Paul was later to write) ‘yet not I, but Christ liveth in me’ (Gal. 2. 20).
12 Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer;
What is the hope of the Christian? There is a conversation for an elevator, or a long bus journey. What do we hope for as Christians? Is it the easy life? Is it the warm, fuzzy feeling inside? Is it the thought of sitting on a cloud playing a harp? As Christians, our Gospel hope (and, indeed, promise) is that of everlasting life, when ‘the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace’. (Hymn: Turn your eyes upon Jesus)
And how else could one respond to this, but to rejoice? This is amazingly Good News! This world is not all there is, as we ‘have a future in heaven for sure, there in those mansions sublime’ (Hymn: Heaven came down, and glory filled my soul)
But what does this hope give us? A certain smugness as we consider those who don’t have this assurance? A fear for our family and friends who have not accepted the Lord Jesus Christ into their lives? Sadly, one or both of these is often the common response that the Christian shows. However, there is another, more positive response - ‘patience in tribulation’.
Without doubt, this virtue was more needed in the first century Church than its twenty-first century successor - after all, the greatest opposition that most of us face in this world is the odd snarky comment from a stranger, or a general antipathy towards what we do. For the early Christian, this ‘tribulation’ was more likely to involve chains, or lions, or blood, or starvation, or loss of family.
Allow me to quote from William Sangster:
The life of God does not depend on circumstances. When it first spread through the world, the Romans were the masters, and fearing some secret disloyalty to Rome at the heart of this new transforming life, they persecuted people who possessed it, and cast them to the lions. But those victims were the happy ones.
The harder, bitterer, more terrible sentence passed on to Christians in those days was damnatus ad metalla - condemned to the mines. Their sufferings there beggar description. Under the scourge they rowed their own galleys to North Africa, and then trekked through the scorching mountains to the Numidian Mines. Arrived at the mines, their chains were shortened so that never again could they stand upright. They were branded on the forehead with red-hot irons. As like as not, one eye would be gouged out, and with a lamp and mallet thrust into their hands, they were whipped underground never to return.
For company they had the scum of the earth. They worked beneath the lash of gaolers who killed for amusement. If the poor prisoners were fortunate they caught the prevalent fever and died. Yet many lived on.
Louis Bertrand has told in Sanguis Martyrum of their sufferings and triumphs. Many, it seems, wrote messages with charcoal on the smooth rock; prayers some of them, and the dear names of remembered friends.
But one word appears again, and again, and again. The Abbe Dimnet says it runs in long black lines, ‘like a flight of swallows chasing one another towards the light’: Vita, Vita, Vita.
Life! They had it! There! When circumstances were so hard that they could have barely been harder in Belsen. Life! That life was ‘life indeed’.
(Taken from ‘Let Me Commend’, William Sangster, p30-31)
If the hope in Christ was strong enough to sustain those brave, poor, followers of Christ, it should certainly be enough to sustain us in our need!
13 Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality.
But how else can the Christian life change us? We saw earlier that, in preferring others to ourselves, we take the initiative to serve their needs. This is seen most clearly in this verse, where Paul commends the act of charity, distributing whatever they had among those in most need.
The Christian faith was not a solely middle-class thing in the ancient world. Indeed, many Christians (particularly those in the Church in Jerusalem) were in dire need. Yet throughout his Epistles and ministry, Paul commended the work of charity to his readers and hearers. Often it is through going without that God is able to bless us, for we often (without realising it) make the object or position another point of worship in our lives.
Jackie tells the story of when God told her to give up her car. She loved her car. It was a lovely colour, it had an excellent ‘Sport’ button, it had plenty of space, it made her feel good. There was just one problem: by her own admission, it had become a sort of idol in her life. It was her status symbol, her source of pride. She became obsessively careful of the car, fearing damaging it, never wanting anything bad to come of it. After a while, God laid it upon her heart to give the car to a family in need. After thinking and praying it over, she complied with God’s request. Only once she had done this a) did she realise the place that the car had taken up in her life, and b) was she able to go deeper in her relationship with God.
Even from their little, Paul was encouraging his readers to give generously, to show hospitality.
Let’s remember the account in 1 Kings, where the prophet Elijah was in need of a drink and something to eat. Coming across a widow, he asked her to draw him some water from a well, and bring him some bread to eat. She replied, ‘As the LORD thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die.’ (1 Kgs. 17. 10-15)
It was only when, prompted by Elijah, she went and baked him the cake, that she found that neither the oil nor the meal ran out. To receive the bigger blessing, she had to be a blessing.
14 Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not.
In striking similarity to Our Lord Jesus’ instruction in Matthew 5, here Paul instructs us to bless the very people who cause us harm. Of all the instructions he is giving, this is the one that challenges me the most.
Last night I received a text message from a friend. This friend attends the Church that, a year or so ago, I was on placement with (while training to be a minister). This friend informed me that the minister there had lost his black preaching gown, and she wondered whether I a) knew where it was or b) had it. Unfortunately I neither have nor know where it is. In replying to this message, I felt prompted by God to offer the minister the use of my black preaching gown. Now, as things turned out, the offer wasn’t needed. However, this prompting was a difficult one for me to be obedient to, as this minister in question had played a large part in my being forced out of my training course, as his misrepresentation of events was one of the pieces of evidence that led to my having to stop training.
I have already felt a huge blessing since God delivered me from that course, but last night I was faced with a challenge. Did I pretend not to hear God, or did I offer a man who had done me great harm, the use of my preaching gown? Now, on the surface, this seems a silly decision to lose sleep over, but as we’ll all know, these kinds of highly emotive decisions can seem very big. In the end I knew it was the right thing to do, so I made the offer. As I mentioned, the offer wasn’t needed in the end, but I can’t help thinking it was a test of obedience on the Lord’s part. Was I willing to ‘Bless them which persecute you’?
As I said at the beginning, friends, we are only half way through this passage, but here feels a good place to bring today’s sermon to an end. We have seen the importance of a genuineness in our love, a family bond in our Church relationships, a Spirit at all times ready to bubble over in praise and service, a hope that can help us overcome even the greatest of challenges, a kindness and hospitality which allows us to serve others even when we ourselves may be poor or deprived, and a spirit of blessing and not cursing. These are some tough teachings, so I would encourage you, over the next few days and weeks, to really read over and pray into these commands. Pray that the Lord would show you where you are struggling to meet the challenge, and pray that He might give you the strength to live up to the Apostle Paul’s instructions.
And now to God alone be all honour, glory, worship and praise, this day and forevermore. Amen.