The Transformative Power of the Gospel

I'm going to read from Romans chapter 12 and start the session this evening, Romans chapter 12 verse 9, as I'm supposed to tell the time, this is October the 6th, Debbie tells me to remind her because when she fills these out or she puts them on the internet she doesn't know which ones they are so it's all my part done. Pardon? Oh okay. Paul has started with chapter 12 with the practical dimensions of this letter that he's writing and all this builds together is what he's trying to get across and Paul ends his discussion about how Jews and Gentiles, he's writing to a church that has both Jews and Gentiles in it with a natural animosity that would come from them and he's trying to write about the power of the gospel and how it changes or transforms people's nature and character and all the way through he's talked about how sin has affected all mankind and how God has provided this remedy through faith. His practical conclusion when he comes to it is that the people in the church as a result of this should offer themselves as living sacrifices to God. The surrender to the authority of God completely and allowing God to take their lives and do anything that he wants to do with them. This absolute surrender to God is the key ingredient in all the scriptures and understanding what happens. Once that takes place in the New Testament especially the Spirit of God comes on people and the transformation begins to occur in their lives. This transformation he says will result in renewed thinking a different way of seeing and thinking about things. This is the mark of a surrendered life to Christ. A person thinks differently about their life than they did before they came to Christ and what they'll be able to find then is the will of God. So two things Paul says as a result of all the things he said in the book up to now. When you come to Christ your mind and your thinking will be transformed. The second thing that happens is you will be able to find God's will and purpose for your life. In the next section of chapter 12 he talks about what the church is like as a community. There are people there in that community now that the Holy Spirit is in their life who have spiritual gifts and they begin to exercise those spiritual gifts without a training class, without preaching services on it. They begin to exercise these gifts simply by doing the will of God day by day. What do you want me to do? He talks about what happens to them. Some of them have different gifts. Some of them learn how to be able to preach. They proclaim the truth of God. Others are seen as having this impetus from God to begin to serve and take care of people that are around them. Others learn to teach. Others are encouragers. Others contribute to the needs of others. Others give generously. Others are leaders in the church. Others govern diligently and they show mercy and they live lives cheerfully. All of these spiritual gifts are given by the Spirit of God when a person surrenders their life to Christ. The New Testament church is quite different than what we find today in many churches, most all churches. We have people who come and join the church and they don't seem to have any passion to do anything other than simply come to church some and then sooner or later that drifts away. What Paul describes in the New Testament church was a whole different kind of experience. People come and say, God, take control of my life. And inside of them becomes a passion to be obedient to God. They want to do what God tells them and they begin to ask God for direction, teaching them to think differently. And slowly they begin to see the needs that occur and respond and discover that they have powerful gifts within them to do things that people around them need. So the first mark of this church of transformed people is the presence of the Spirit. And they automatically begin to move with the Spirit of God to exercise what he calls what we call spiritual gifts, gifts from God that enable a person to be of service to other people. Once he finishes that characteristic, they're powerful spiritually, spiritually emphasized or motivated service to other people around them. Verse 90 says, Love must be sincere, hate what is evil and cling to what is good. Now, Paul is in this chat, in this paragraph is sort of writing almost like it's in in code, almost like he's not using any verbs at all. There are two words here in the Greek language, love sincerely. And so he doesn't even fill in all of the parts. So you see the idea that he's getting and what he's talking about. Now, Paul is writing this letter, probably from Corinth. And Corinth, you remember, if you read that, that there was a terrible problem in that community, that spiritual community, because they were fighting about who had the most valuable spiritual gifts. And Paul there defines this body of Christ as people who have gifts from God to be able to serve. Now, the Bible lists a few gifts that we have here, but there are multiple ones, I think, not necessarily any list anywhere given. But what happens is the spirit of God motivates us to see needs around us and respond to that. It could be thousands of things that God might get us to do. You find someone that has a family and a small child and you say, you know, I think I could help by just babysitting that child for a while. You see, someone has an older parent and he has a need of relief and you come and you do that service. The Bible doesn't try to list everything that they did. But what was happening in this church was there were people who saw needs and were automatically driven by the spirit to respond to those needs. Now in the church and Corinth, they were so caught in this, all the spiritual gifts that they were exercising, that people with their spiritual gift began to say, of course, you know, in the church, some of you have spiritual gifts or your service that you give. But the key gift is what I have received. And so there was a debate about who had the better of the spiritual gifts. And Paul, you remember, emphasized immediately following his discussion of the gifts, the 13th chapter, 12th chapter of First Corinthians, the 13th chapter was about love. So you have the gifts, whatever your gifts might be, and you can speak with the tongue of angels and you have all this kind of power. If you have love, it is worthless and empty. So he comes back in the Roman book to emphasize the same thing. As soon as he finished talking about the spiritual gifting in the Roman church, he then begins to talk about the dimension of love as a primary motivator for spiritual gifts. There are a lot of reasons why people might use spiritual gifts without love. If you help someone, they brag on you. So you could do it in some ways for your own sense of self-building, your own self-esteem. If you do use gifts of service for people, they have gratitude towards you. So you might use it to be able to cause people to respect you or to like you or to want to be around you. There are all kinds of reasons why people might do good things for other people. Paul stops here in Romans, as he does in First Corinthians, to say that the primary motivator for all spiritual gifts is love. So he says, love must be sincere. There are a lot of different reasons why you could do church work. It might make you look important. People might see you as a great Christian. There are all kinds of reasons why you might preach, all kinds of reasons why you might teach. And sometimes you have trouble in churches because people want positions of leadership and authority. And they want what human beings give them, a recognition. They want to be important people. Paul emphasizes, both in Corinthians and here, that the spiritual gifts are without value unless there is love and sincerity. I am doing this. Love now means sacrificial, self-denying service for other people. I'm giving myself an obedience to the Spirit, to this ministry that I have, that I see. And the only thing I want to do is to be helpful to other people. I watch myself to make sure that my own motives are not the center of what I'm doing. So love, he says, must be sincere. It must have one purpose and one purpose only. It is obedience to God. I am sacrificing because God has asked me to do this. Now, the motivation he gives us here is not the result of the church encouraging people to do this, but it's the Holy Spirit within them that drives it. He's saying, give the test of whether or not you're really motivated by the Spirit as to whether or not your motive is love, and whether or not it's sincere self-denial, sincere sacrifice, sincere service. That is, you have only one thing in mind. I want to serve this person. I am interested in helping this person. I am sacrificing not to get praise for myself, but because God has told me this is what I need to do, and in obedience to Him, I'm doing it. The motivation of what they were doing in the church was spirit driven. Sometimes in our own settings, we use guilt and shame to motivate people to teach in a class or to work in the church or to take jobs in the church. And sometimes you can get people to do that. What Paul is talking about is all those methods by which we generate people to do work in the church are pointless and worthless because what needs to happen is the Spirit of God needs to give that motivation. You may have noticed that whenever we take any of our offerings, like the Lottie Moon offering or the Bible Web offering, I try hard not to get you to give so that we'll reach a goal. Because whenever you do that, you're doing it not because God has asked you to, but because we want to achieve this much money. And sometimes we get in the church different kind of motivations. Let's all do this so that we'll achieve this goal, so we'll reach this number of people, so that we'll have this accomplished. And those motivations can be directed by God. But if we're not careful, they become our human motivations. And whenever you're doing this in terms of human motivation, sooner or later, it runs out. The Spirit of God is constantly renewing the motivation when we're doing it in obedience to Him. So what Paul is talking about is, as you're doing your ministry, keep checking yourself to see, is love the driving force? And when you say you love people, do you really sincerely love people? Or are you simply doing this because you'll look good, or because people like it, or because you'll have significance with other people? And then he tacks on something that seems the opposite, or doesn't fit to me in here. Then as I began to reflect on it, I could see what he was talking about. Love must be sincere. How can you tell if it's sincere? Because it will hate what is evil, and it will cling to what is good. Love does not embrace evil, pride, arrogance, self-sufficiency. Love never embraces what God sees as negative motivations in our lives, or negative circumstances. Instead, love, when you have the love of God in your heart, and it's motivating you to do something, and you find out that what you're doing is contrary to what God wants, it rebels against that. The Spirit of God is our guide. He will tell us when what we're doing does not have the proper motivation for us to do it. And it's a good thing for people to come to church. Wayne was talking about this tonight. It's a good thing for people to come to church because they hear the gospel. But there ought to be, in coming to church, a desire to grow, and to learn, and to be transformed and changed. And when people come to the church, or read the Bible, or even pray, and their motive is not good, they're not driven by the Spirit of God to say, I want to hear something from God today. Or to pray, to say, God, I have a burden on my life and in my heart, and I want to share that with you. I have a need for you that I need for you to address inside of me. Without those motivations of the Spirit, it soon becomes empty or hollow. What Paul is describing is the life of a follower of Christ is Spirit-motivated, Spirit-driven. And now there are tests for it. Is it sincere? How do you know if it's sincere? Look to see if it embraces the pure motives of God. Look to see if it clings to what is right and what is good. Then he says, Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. He's talking about the community of faith. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. He's talking about the church being like a family. How do you know the Spirit of God is there? You're devoted to each other in the community of faith by the same motivation that comes when you have a family. This is my brother or sister, and so because of that, I have a connection with them. There's a closeness that binds us together. So you should see the love of God driving you to be devoted to each other. When you look around at the people who are going through struggles and difficulties in your family, you were talking about your dad and his spiritual situation. You see great motivation to want to be able to see someone you love come to know Christ. Whenever we're in our church family and people talk about their relatives being sick, we have a great motivation to make sure that our relatives are cared for. One of the tests as to whether or not the love of God is motivating us is if we have the same kind of motivation for people who are not earthly kin to us. Why does that show that? Because the Spirit of God sees everyone as His children. And if He motivates us, we have the same concern for people we don't even know who we discover have these problems as we do our closest friends and family. See each other in the church as brothers or sisters in Christ, and be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Now, he's describing a church that's maybe not like a big church. It's more like, you would say, a small group, a Sunday school class, where you know each of those people that are there. And whenever one of them is not there, and you think, hmm, wonder why my brother or sister is not here, what would you do? You would call them. We kind of are in a pattern where we come to the Sunday school class, and if somebody doesn't show up, we might not even notice them. And if we do notice them, we say, I wonder why they're not here, and we go on about our activities as we would without even noticing that. What he's describing is a group of people who are so much a part of each other's lives that if they see another person in any kind of situation, they would react to that by the love of God in responding as if that person were a physical member of their family. He's describing a very powerful, close-knit group of people who feel a part of each other's lives. This is not the way most churches are. It's not the way most churches operate. But God is describing through Paul what he intends the community of faith to be. Here is God, the Father of all the people in the group. He places His Spirit within us, and when we come to the group and we see any kind of need that arises, the Spirit of God prompts us to respond to that need in the same way we would if they were a physical member of our family. This is the mark of what the church is supposed to be. That's why churches need to have small groups, Sunday school classes, whatever kind of small groups you have. And in having those, there is a place in which this kind of nurturing takes place. Love, if it's in your life, it will cause you to be devoted to each other like a brother or sister is devoted to a brother and sister. That ought to be the normal process of the Spirit of God inside a person's life. The next thing he says is sort of a test of love. Honor one another above yourselves. We are to look at each other and to see this other person as more important than we are. Instead of asking them to look at us and take care of us and provide our needs and meet our needs, we are to look at other people and discern what their need is and elevate that above us. So much of the quarreling that takes place in the church is a result of people not getting their way. Not having what they want. Not getting things to come the way they want it to. I mean, you can talk about all kinds of things. The temperature in the room, for example. People, I want to have it hot or I want to have it cold. They are mad if they don't get it that way. Music is a big one, you know. I want to have this kind of music or that kind of music or some other kind of music because that's what I like. What do you do when you have someone that you really care about? You try to make sure that they have their needs met. That they sense that they are more important than you are. What happens for so many of us in the Christian community is we are still motivated by our own human nature. Demanding that it be served instead of being a servant. He says the test of love is whether or not you want for the other person what they feel they need in place of demanding that you get what you want. The quarrels in all human relationships, whether it's marriage or family or at work or whatever, mostly stem over you don't do what I want you to do. This is not working out the way I wanted it to work out. And I'm going to demand that it be done my way. What he says is, if the Spirit of God is in you and He's giving you motivation, and He's caused you, he said it before, transforming or renewing your mind, not like the rest of the world that's self-centered and self-focused, but instead you find it is a place where every person is trying to honor the other person or to give them what they want or need even ahead of themselves. They're sacrificing themselves in behalf or for another person. What should happen in a church is if people would, if they were fighting or quarreling, they would fight or quarrel over who gets to do the most dirty work. Who gets to do the most things that no one else wants to do. That's where the fight should be. It should be who gets to do the sacrificial, self-denying service that no one else wants to do. Because it would mean I am placing everyone else in a position that is honored above me so that I see myself as the servant of all of them. You remember the story of Jesus when He came with His disciples. They came into the room. No one had offered to wash their feet walking in the dirty dust of the streets. And Jesus took the bowl and He took the rag and He went to the people and He started washing their feet. He took the role of a servant to wash the feet of His disciples. This picture is a powerful example of what Paul is talking about. He looked at the group and said, their feet are dirty and hot and I know that they will feel more comfortable if their feet are washed. Who's going to do it? Well, no one's volunteered. He could have said, I'm the Son of God. They need to wash my feet. And He would have been right. He could have said, I can't believe that these, my disciples, I've given so much to teach them and help them learn and help them to grow and this is the way they treat me. And He would have been right. But you see, the Spirit of God inside of Jesus caused Him to say, what can I do to make them feel served and loved and cared about? So He took the bowl and water and began to wash their dirty feet. The picture of this is what Paul is talking about. You must think of the other person around you, other members of the church, other members of the congregation you're with, and you must honor other people even above yourself, making sure that you are the servant to the others around you. Never be lacking in zeal. Now, what the Bible is talking about is when the presence of the Spirit of God is in us and we're open to the Spirit of God, then we are anxious to do the work of God. A lot of times we talk about in the church, you know, that we need to be renewed, we need to be reinvigorated, invigorated. We want someone to come in and have a program or a service that would cause us to be excited. Someone told me today that they were so thrilled about doing the story because it had just re-energized them in their Christian faith. And that's a good thing that a person is re-energized. But it's not the story that does that. It is the Spirit of God inside. And when a person says, I'm going to read the Bible, listen to it, and try to do what it says, then the Spirit of God brings energy. It's not the story, it's not the service that should energize us. It is always the Spirit of God. And when the love of God is in us, it gives us enthusiasm to do His work. That's why we run out. The Spirit of God, His presence and power in us cause us never to lack zeal. Now, here's a little simple test. If you find yourself getting tired of doing the work of God, then you see the Spirit is not in charge of what you're doing. You are in charge of it. Your human nature gives out. But the Spirit of God never gives out. Two things He does. He never asks you to do things where you give up. And He always gives you the energy and enthusiasm to do what He tells you to do. If you're doing something someone else tells you to do, you'll run out on that. But if it's something you know God's asked you to do, and you're doing it faithfully, you will find the energy of God to drive you so that the motivation is there. Love must be sincere. And if it's sincere, you will never be lacking in zeal. But keep your spiritual fervor serving the Lord. That's the key. The spiritual fervor is there if I'm always serving the Lord. If I'm keeping my job, if I'm doing what other people want me to do, if I'm doing something because I want to do it or because it's energizing to me, then pretty soon you're going to find that runs out. His point is that the love of God is inside of you. It gives you spiritual fervor. When you run out of spiritual fervor, then you know the Spirit and His love is not driving you. And if you see this as service to God, it gives you that fervor. Here's what I think Paul is saying. If you have a job, whatever you're doing, and you think of it in terms of a job, then it gets burdensome. I remember reading one time a guy talking about going on a construction site. And he went up to a guy and said, What are you doing? He said, I'm earning a paycheck. He went up to another guy and he said, What are you doing? He said, I'm digging a hole. He went up to another guy and said, What are you doing? He said, I'm building a beautiful building. See the difference in those kind of motivations? I'm digging a hole. I'm earning a paycheck at the end of the day. And the other guy has a vision of a beautiful building he's building. What Paul is talking about is that serving God changes your perspective. If you see your role as being obedient to God, then whatever kind of obstacles come up, you can say, I am doing this for Jesus. If you're doing it for people, you'll find that people will complain. You'll find they'll criticize you. You'll find they'll fail you. You'll find that all kinds of obstacles will come up. But if you do an act for God, whether it's teaching a Sunday school class, preaching a sermon, going out to visit someone, ministering to someone, and when you do it, you know God has asked you to do it, and you do it in obedience to Him, then when you do it, whatever the response is from those people, you know God is saying, well done, my faithful servant. When you're doing the jobs that God gives you to do, and you know it's Him that you're serving, the only thing you need from the one who died for you is to know that He's pleased with what you do. If you don't have that, you get bitter, you get resentful, you get burdened down with what you're doing because you've lost the motive that God wants. I am doing what I'm doing because I love God, and He's asked me to do this. There are a lot of bad things that people ask you to do, and a lot of things that are nasty that you'd be asked to do. But if Jesus was sitting here with us and threw up on the floor, is there a single person here that wouldn't grab a rag and, I'm going to help him. But there might be some people that would come in and sit down in a chair and throw up and we'd want to turn and go the other way. Smell, looks, behavior might cause us to change that. What God asks is, when I give you an assignment, I don't want you to think you're teaching a Sunday school class. I don't want you to think you're preaching. I don't want you to say I'm doing the music. I don't want you to say I'm taking care of the babies. I want you to say, I am serving God. And if you love God and the Spirit of God is in you, then you will find the motivation to keep on doing it because God's love makes our service to God fill us with spiritual fervor and zeal because we're doing something for someone we love more than even our own lives. So what Paul is describing for us is the means whereby we have a test to see if what we do in this world is really prompted by love and the Spirit. Is it sincere? Do we find ourselves hating evil and making sure we're doing what's good? Are we devoted to the people around us as brothers and sisters in Christ? Do we put other people's interest and need ahead of our own? Do we finally run out of zeal and we can't stay with the task? Do we find our spiritual fervor grows because we are serving the Lord? Those are signs that the love of God is driving our lives. And we have been renewed and transformed by the renewing of our minds. We've learned to think about these things in a new and different way. And whenever you think about them the way God wants you to, then you can do things the way God wants you to do it. Let's pray. What has God said to you tonight? He may have helped you to see some people around you who need encouragement, maybe who've run afoul of not being able to have the power of God's love to help them and motivate them in what they do. Maybe he's pointed out to you some way in which you've been thinking about your service to God in the wrong way. He asked us to learn how to live this life in Christ differently than the people around us live. Father, we ask for your Spirit to fill our hearts, our minds, our lives. We ask for your Spirit to give us motivation that we never have as people. We ask that you'd give us sincerity of love, that we would see other people as more important than ourselves, that we might never lose the zeal or the passion for serving because we're serving you. Give us the joy of following you. Give us the victory of being able to be your servants and finding endless power and strength to be faithful. In the name of Christ, we ask for this. Amen. When do we change time?