Challenge to Church

Good morning. Joy to see you and to be here for such a wonderful and august occasion. It brings back so many remembered memories. I can remember that very first ministry that God gave me many years ago. And I remember that I didn't know much of what I was doing. But I had the good sense to know that I wasn't going to do it very well unless I listened to my wife. After 41 years, I can tell you that while a lot of people who fill up my world would probably think of me in some terms of being a success, apart from God who can overcome all fools, I owe just about everything in my life to my wife who has given me a pattern and a model for how to relate to people, how to love people. And so my thought this morning is, Keith, you and I have been most fortunate to have married women able to overcome even our failures. I'd also like to say thank you especially to the parents of both Keith and Lisa. We had the privilege of marrying them in one of the most unique weddings I ever recall having done. And Peg and I to this very day talk about that wedding fondly. It was a memorable wedding, but the thing that we remember even best are the two Christian families. And so what we're experiencing today is the long, faithful, sometimes tedious effort that comes from parents who chose to be good parents rather than to pursue the pleasures of a culture which tempts us to materialism and worse things than that. So I'd like to also give my sincere appreciation and thanks to the families who have been such an encouragement to me. And to my friend, Keith, I marvel at how God works in us in ways that we could never have expected. And neither of us would have ever dreamed that a moment like this would have come, I don't think. And especially to know that we have the special and lifelong privilege of knowing that he allowed us to do this together. It's a precious joy. The Scriptures tell us this saying is trustworthy. If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. First, God used us to bring you a wife, and now God is leading you to another woman, his church, who is his wife. As we're gathered here together, I find myself looking back at 40 years now of ministry and saying to myself, is there anything that could be said to make this day so memorable that it would forever change things for the better? Probably not. But I could wish so. Because I have learned, like every child learns, that there is a cost to not doing things God's way. That there's a high price to pay. And I know as happy as we are today, that there are going to be unexpected sharp turns in the journey. That there are going to be bumps in the road and that there might even be signs saying road closed ahead. Is there anything that can be said to make a difference? Well, the good news is everything that I'm going to say, I'm just going to cast on my father and say, you make this work. So I'm going to ask you to do something that I almost never do, and that's turn to the book of Romans. It's not that I don't like Romans. I never have ever felt that I fully comprehended what Paul said in the first 11 chapters of this book. So I'm going to ask you to turn with me to chapter 12, where I begin to think that I understand some of what he's talking about. Paul's books are about half the time they're divided between a first section, which comprises the epistemology or the doctrine upon which he builds the faith, and then the second section, is divided into praxis, where he talks about how the faith is supposed to work in our lives and says, I'm not by training a theologian, I'm going to turn our attention instead to the praxis section beginning in chapter 12. And as we look at this, I'll try to be kind to you. Pastor Keith told me that I could go till noon before I stop. Oh, that's on a different day. That's a different time zone. Right. I knew there was a catch. It's I understand with two sermons, I want to leave some time for our esteemed guests to still have some part of your thinking that can work, so I'll not overstay my time and and quickly draw our attention to some three areas in Romans chapter 12 through 13 that I think fit our situation this morning. Now, look. I get frustrated with myself. I don't know how to make this first point be anywhere near as precious to you as it is to me. I don't know how to tell you to get to preciousness. I just know that the first point is about the most precious thing in this life, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. I can spend a lot of time exegeting Romans 12, 1 through 2, But the most important thing about Romans 12, 1 through 2, is that it's first in his list of practical items. Whatever you're going to do as a church fully depends upon whether Jesus Christ is central. Paul starts out by saying, present your bodies a living sacrifice. And we can't stop the presentation halfway through and say, I've changed my mind. I don't want to be a sacrifice. We cannot call ourselves Christians. And say, I know I've been sacrificed, but I've changed my mind. The single most important event of my life, was when I gave my life to Jesus Christ. The second most important time in my life is when I found Him in a uniquely and deeply personal way that was far deeper than when I gave myself to Him. And I don't know how to tell you to do that. I just know that everything in this life depends upon whether Jesus is indeed someone that we give ourselves to as unreservedly as possible. Nothing else I say matters unless that is done, and I can't do that for you. Just because we're born again doesn't mean that we have been a complete sacrifice. On the contrary, my experience has been in my own life that I can present myself as a sacrifice and yet still fail to come to know this One who is everything. I thought about making this my message, but I think I'm going to move and stare set my way through Paul's thinking to something that perhaps I can be more effective in communicating you to. Following the command to present ourselves, Paul then goes into a section of his book that I call Behaviorisms. Following chapter 12 with the call to present ourselves, he then proceeds to list a series of behaviorisms, beginning with a very surprising behaviorism in verse three, when he said, for by the grace given to me, I say to every one of you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. These behaviorisms are introduced With a particularly biblical concern, it's a concern that revolves around pride. And so as Paul talks about presentation to Christ, he then introduces his behaviorism with a necessary condition for acting as if we've been offered to Christ, and that's that we ought not to think of ourselves more highly than is fitting. Why would he do that? Well, quite obviously, because all of us are going to exercise behaviors. But if the behavior is not exercised with the proper frame of mind, we will suffer a problem in how the relationship works. It's not that I want to say to you that Paul said to us, we're all nothing. So what on earth is pride? Is he saying to us that the proper frame of starting this discussion is that we think of ourselves as lowly beings, unfit to hold our head in such a way that we can see one another? No. What he's doing is conditioning us to think, as we are a church this morning, conditioning ourselves to think that if we think through the prism of ourselves first, it will ruin all the other behaviorisms. And so he begins to list a series of behaviorisms, none of which work if all of them start with What I want. What I think. The great American problem for which there is no medical cure. Itis. So he begins to talk about the things that he wants us to do and then moves in verse nine. He then moves in verse nine to let love be genuine. and proceeds to tell us of what is evil, hold fast to what is good, love one another with with brotherly affection. So he goes from the subject area of Christ to behaviorism, behaviorism that is controlled by his warning about pride. And then in nine through twenty one, he talks about relationships. And how this thing we're doing together this morning, the church works, and it's not an accident that at the top of his list in the very first thing he said in verse nine is. Let love be genuine. Let love be genuine relationships in the faith, love is obviously the absolute opposite of pride, and the moment we're going to talk a little bit in the time we have about what is love. And then in a most surprising fashion, after he talks about relationships in verses nine through the end of the chapter. He then shifts to something that I don't think any of us would have guessed. Submission to the state. How are we to make sense of a movement that flows from submission to Christ? To. Relating to one another successfully. To relating to the state. And I think that the answer. Perhaps can be found in seeing how he makes the transition in verse eight, clearly using the language that fit versus one through seven of chapter 13. Oh, no one, anything except the love one another. In that statement, he seems to have brought together two completely disparate subjects, love one another, obey the state. And he seems to bring them together into one thought through this hinge statement, oh, no one, anything that is human beings or the state except to love one another. And that's what I'd like to talk about in the remaining time that we have this morning. Love one another. What on earth is love? It's dominant in both scriptures and contrary to what some of you might think, Paul is not inventing the command to love one another because he's now a Christian. As a matter of fact, In my own personal study of the last section of chapter 13 and all of chapter 14 and the first part of chapter 15, virtually all of Paul's teachings, not all of them, but almost all of Paul's teachings in this section of Romans come from Leviticus 19. Paul is building his ethic about Christ on what God said first in Leviticus 19. And so because of that, it's very natural for him to build on his comments about the state, to build on his statements, oh, no one anything except to love one another, for the one who loved one another has fulfilled the law. And here, of course, he makes sure that his audience failed to catch that he's drawing this from the Leviticus 19 passage. So we don't have a lot of time and I don't want it, but this is so important to me to share this with you, because I don't think I have a long time to live unless I manage to live to be 200. I don't think I have a long time to live. This is very important to me to talk with you about this this morning. So what is love? It's a word that virtually defies a definition, and indeed, it seems like its meaning is almost always derived from where it happens to be used. I teach at Liberty, I teach a course in the senior year called hermeneutics and it's supposed to teach us how to interpret the scripture. So one morning I went in and I created a visual of every place in the book of Genesis where the word love appeared. And then we took class time to go over through every one of those appearances of the word love. What they all saw is that in nearly every case, Love was understood precisely through how it was used in that context, not through a definition, because no definition really fit how this word works, or even a set of definitions. The problem, however, is that in English, oftentimes the way the word works doesn't fit very closely to how the word works in the Bible. I happen to have a Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. It's actually multipurpose. You can use it, of course, to study every word in the English language or in a moment of violence, you can kill someone with it. Weighs about 30 pounds, I think. So I got out the Webster and I always feel like I'm in danger of harming my body by just lifting it. And I went to the word love. And I found that he had six major definitions for love. not one of which address how the Bible tends to use the term. In Webster, in every case, love either talk about feelings or human sexuality, but had virtually nothing to do with how the Bible springboards into an understanding of this word. And so we, in our culture, use the word as if it's something that flows from our inner being. We act on the basis of love, and we would think it foreign not to do that. We are not, in our culture, motivated so much by truth or by loyalty, but instead by feeling. Over the course of my career, I've had many opportunities in working with couples, who are having marital problems. And when they are in my office, I ultimately, sooner or later, come to a declarative statement from them that justifies why they want to end their marriage. And almost inevitably, they look at me and say. We're no longer in love. And I look at them rather mockingly and I say in love. Is that like being in the tub? I know when I'm in the tub. I'm all wet in the tub. Is that what love is? Is this a place that you're in? What they really mean and are trying to say to me is we don't feel like loving one another anymore. We see the Bible doesn't really use the word very much that way. The trouble is, it's still nonetheless an extremely difficult word to understand. The Bible tells us it's a fruit of the Spirit. As a matter of fact, the structure of the passage rather suggests in Galatians that the fruit, love, is from which all the other fruit emanate. It's like a pyramid. And love is at the top and the other parts of the components seem to all come from the Spirit through love. And then that formation disseminates all the other fruit. So one would think love is natural, right? If it's the fruit of the Spirit and if we're born again and we all have the Spirit, this is natural stuff. I can't stop myself. I love you. Well, I think we all know that that's a fruit that we choose not to eat from all the time. As a matter of fact, one of the things that needs to be brought into the picture is that The only love that is truly natural to us, I believe, the only love that is truly natural to us is self-love. And loving others is indeed a work of sanctification. It means that I must somehow learn the process of dying daily. Most of us have read the great C.S. Lewis. Lewis had the gift of all philosophers. He could make something that was incredibly simple sound incredibly profound. When he approached the subject area of what is love, he created a poem. May I read it for you this morning? All this flashy rhetoric about loving you. I never had a selfless thought since I was born. I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through. I want God, you, all friends merely to serve my turn. Peace, reassurance, pleasure are the goals I seek. I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin. I talk of love, a scholar's parrot may talk Greek, but self-imprisoned always and where I begin. If that sounds morbid, my friends, it's because it's the truth. What is love? I have no time to develop. But it's hard work, whatever it is. And indeed, that's the point I will leave with you as I move into the final parts of our message this morning. The question really, perhaps, may be less what is love than it is what love does. Love, I believe primarily, is conforming to and performing It is conforming to and performing the relational requirements of our covenants. Whatever we feel. Feeling or the lack thereof is not an excuse in how we relate to one another. As a matter of fact, what the scriptures tell us in the Old Testament and in the Gospels and in the New Testament. Is. that it is love that is the fulfilling of law. Now, I try to tell my students that law is not technically correct if we think of law as a series of commands. You know, at Liberty, we have a thing called the Liberty Way. I've been there 12 years and I am happy to tell you I've never read it yet. But what it is, is a collection of laws. You shall do this, you shall not do this. If you do this, you shall pay this, you know, so on and so forth. The Bible isn't a collection of laws, it's a collection of instructions. And those instructions are not there to tell us what to do and what not to do, so much as I believe those instructions follow into and sustain and nurture the path of love. Love fulfills a law. I don't pretend to understand that, but the Scriptures are clear. Love fulfills the law. The law was given, these instructions were given so that we might learn what loving is in the kinds of ways that 10 or 20 years from now could truly make a difference so that you could look back 20 years and say, thank God for the goads. Our lives have been changed forever. That can happen. But less because of how we're going to feel and more on whether we choose to obey those things that God has told us to do repeatedly in His Word. Love fulfills the law, and the law is embodied around two commands to love God and love one another. And love does no wrong to a neighbor. Let me bring the thoughts together with a series of final exhortations to you as a congregation, if I may. We're all congregations, aren't we? It's good that we don't think of ourselves in terms of laity and clergy. We are all in Christ. We're all brothers and sisters. We're not doctorates. We're not lawyers. We're not. We're just one where we're not identified by what separates us, but by what unites us. Love, I believe in the Scriptures, is inseparable from submission. And I think that's precisely why the Scriptures start out by telling us, present your bodies to Christ as a sacrifice. That's a form of submission. Submit yourselves to one another. Now, the words, by the way, submission isn't used in here. Hupotasso is the Greek word. It's not used here. It's the only Greek word I know. It's not used here. But it is submission to present your bodies. It is a submission for me to change how I behave, because together it makes a difference in how Christ is honored. It's submission when we choose to obey the state because the scriptures tell us to do so. And it is submission which results in the fulfilling of the law. Love is inseparable from submission. submission to Christ and to one another. Indeed, in this crucial passage in Romans chapter 15. The author tells us that this is exactly what our Lord did in chapter 15, verse eight. For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised. to show God's truthfulness in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. Christ became a servant precisely means that Christ submitted to the Father, who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but took upon himself the form of a servant. It is in losing all the freedoms that we might possess and submitting ourselves that we finally begin to enjoy freedom. Has it occurred to you that in our country where freedoms abound, We have so many freedoms that we have our freedoms truncated. Exercising our freedoms is not the means to gain true freedom. Losing our freedoms in submitting to one another is indeed what Jesus said, the truth shall set you free. Becoming Christ's slave finally gives us freedom from the greatest slavery of all. Self slavery. Dear friends, I pastored three churches. I'm presently in my 18th interim pastor. I kept track over a 10 year period of a seminary where I taught. In a 10 year period, these are the facts. I counted the percentage of young men who began seminary. I tracked the numbers as they made their way through the seminary program. And I laboriously tracked their careers 10 years after graduation from seminary. Here's what I found. From the time they started seminary until 10 years after graduation, fully 95 percent of them were no longer ministers. They gave up. They were done. That's shocking, isn't it? The only comparable figure I know to that is in World War Two, 95 percent of all German submariners perished at sea. What can make a difference here? Well, first of all, and most of all, first of all, friends, it's not enough to be saved. There has to be an ongoing juncture in which Jesus is someone that you love with every part of your body. And until that happens, we're just playing games. But when that happens, then there's a second plan, a second stage that gives us a journey to walk. And that journey is when we choose to submit to one another, when your fellow parishioner becomes more important than you, when your pastor proposes something that maybe you don't like, but you submit. Because truly, when we submit for the sake of something bigger than ourselves, We become part of something that lasts so much longer than we last. And who knows centuries that might follow this when people might look back and say, I remember a moment at the church. I remember reading of a moment at the church a hundred years ago when there was this moment when the church decided to do and follow a new track, a track in which faith is measured by obedience. And obedience is qualified by submission, and submission is generated by an unqualified, ever-deepening love of the Lord Jesus. For such moments, we are fully dependent upon our God. Would you join with me as we close this with prayer? We remember those words. Lord, I do believe. Help my unbelief. Lord, we could say this morning, as we think of your precious and your gracious and your loving being. Lord, we do love you. Deliver us from ourselves. Give to us a picture beyond what we want. To what you know is best. Show to us a path that is so clear. that we will never depart from it. Thank you for this time. Lord, I pray for this congregation. Help them to submit. Not because of the exercise of power, but for the joy of losing power. For power we possess is power that we steal from you. And God, be pleased to work in wondrous and powerful ways in this your church and give us years that we might look back and just say, we understand better now. This love for which we ask. So this morning, as imperfect as we are. And sometimes foolish. You know, our hearts. Hear us tell you that we love you. Thank you for giving us a father to whom we can submit. Work in the remaining part of this service. And be glorified in everything that is said and done. We pray in the matchless name of Jesus. Amen.