House Rules

Transcript

JR 36
09/08/2024
House Rules
Romans 12:9-13
Jesse Randolph


If you were to head in to a home décor store or a home décor website you would inevitably come across one of these “House Rules” signs. Sometimes they are oriented vertically, sometimes horizontally, sometimes they are on metal, sometimes they are on laminate or vinyl or distressed wood. You hang the sign on the wall and you do that to remind your visitors but also the members of your household what you stand for and what you strive for and what you are seeking to do. Some of these signs have a decidedly religious bent to them—In this house we let our light shine; We pray more, we worry less; We forgive, we forget; We keep short accounts. Those sorts of things. Some of these signs are quite neutral as it relates to faith. It will say, In this house we make mistakes, We giggle, We live, We cry, We make memories, We have fun. And then there are those signs that have nothing to do with the Christian religion but rather steal from Christian presuppositions as they prop up the religion du jour of the day which is a statist, secular anti-theism. In this house we believe that black lives matter, and women's rights are human rights, and science is real, and love is love. You've seen those signs on lawns these days, right? Three different types of households, three different types of house rules.

Well, that idea of a household is an appropriate ‘launching off’ point for where we are going to be going today because 1 Timothy 3:15 speaks very clearly about the church being the household of God. And that being so, with this church being God's household, a household of “children of God” as Romans 8:16 puts it, “those who have been made fellow heirs with Christ” as Romans 8:17 puts it, what are our house rules? If we were to walk over to our newly-opened Welcome Center over there and grab a Sharpie and a ruler and a stencil, ready to etch forever on the walls of the Welcome Center what our house rules are, this household, this localized expression of the church of God, what would we (against Kevin's and others' wishes) write permanently on those walls with that Sharpie? What would we say our house rules are? Which passages of Scripture would we go to? Well, after much prayer and consideration and preparation this week I can't think of a better passage for us to turn to as we think of the house rules of Indian Hills Community Church over the next year than Romans 12:9-13. Turn with me if you would to Romans 12 as we consider the rules of this household, what we stand for, what flies in this household, what doesn't, that sort of thing. Romans 12:9, God's Word reads, “Let love be without hypocrisy by abhorring what is evil, clinging to what is good, being devoted to one another in brotherly love, giving preference to one another in honor, not lagging behind in diligence, being fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, persevering in affliction, being devoted to prayer, contributing to the needs of the saints, pursuing hospitality.”

Now currently on Sunday mornings as you know we are in the middle of a series in the Gospel of Luke. We just finished chapter 1, we have 23 chapters to go, we'll be getting back to it soon. But today with it being Fall Kickoff we'll take a bit of a different angle, working through this important section of Romans, looking for God's guidance to lead us as a church in the year ahead. Now by way of refresher what is Paul's letter to the Romans all about? Well, the letter to the Romans is about righteousness. In fact, go with me all the way back to Romans 1, we'll do a brief flyover of the entire book of Romans, leading back up to chapter 12. Paul's letter to the Romans is all about righteousness, it's about the righteousness that is imparted to us through the saving gospel of Jesus Christ. Look at Romans 1:16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel,” it says, “for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.” And why do we need the righteousness of God? Well, I hate to burst the bubble of anyone who was raised on Disney, but we are unrighteous, we are wicked, we are sinful, we are sinners. Romans 1:18 tells us so, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them.” Paul then in the remainder of Romans 1 gives this list of unrighteous deeds and actions that we were once marked by. And the list is so timely and timeless, it applies not only to the Rome of Paul's day but the Washington D.C. and the San Francisco and the Los Angeles and the Hollywood and frankly the Lincoln, Nebraska of our day.

Paul next underscores the righteous judgment of God which awaits those who practice unrighteousness. Look at Romans 2:2, “And we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who practice such things.” And to those who say, not me, I'm innocent and think I ought to be spared God's righteous judgment, Paul says over the page in Romans 3:10, “There is none righteous, not even one.” Instead Romans 3:21 says, “The righteousness of God is imparted apart from the Law,” and instead Romans 3:22 says, “Righteousness comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” And this requirement of faith is not a new one, which is what Paul is getting at in Romans 4 when in speaking of Abraham, the patriarch of Israel, he says this in Romans 4:20, “With respect to the promise of God he did not waiver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God and being fully assured that what God had promised He was also able to do. Therefore, it was also counted to him,” Abraham, “as righteousness.” Then in Romans 5:18 we're told that “as through one transgression,” that would be the transgression, the sin of Adam, “that resulted in condemnation to all men, even so,” it says, Romans 5:18, “through one act of righteousness,” meaning the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, “there resulted justification of life to all men.”

Romans 6:18 says that as unworthy recipients of God's righteousness, “having been freed from sin,” it says, “you became slaves of righteousness.” Romans 7:6, we are reminded that the Law which once governed the people of Israel is no longer our master. It says, “We have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were constrained so that we serve in newness of the Spirit, not oldness of the letter.” Romans 8:10 we're told that “if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness.” In Romans 9 Paul lays out certain key details concerning God's righteous plan of salvation which started with Israel and then fanned out to the Gentiles. And Romans 10:9 tells us that no matter whether a person is a Jew or a Gentile it is through belief in Jesus Christ that they attain righteousness. Romans 10:9, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart a person believes, leading to righteousness and with the mouth he confesses, leading to salvation.” And then finally in Romans 11, after laying out God's plan of redemption and salvation for future Israel, Paul, taken with all these truths of the righteousness of God and our inherent unrighteousness as evil, wicked sinners, bursts into these words of praise at the end of Romans 11. Look at verse 33, “Oh the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who became His counselor? Or who has first given to Him that it might be repaid to Him? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.”

And that leads us back to Romans 12, this pivot point in Paul's letter to the Romans, where having just reached this summit of Christian theology at the end of chapter 11, he now moves into the realm of practical theology in Romans 12. First is the call in Romans 12:1-2 as those who have been declared righteous before God to live lives of sacrifice, to “present yourself as living sacrifices.” Then there is the call as those who have been declared righteous before God to serve one another with the gifts He has given us. That's what we see in verses 3-8. That then brings us back full circle to our passage, verses 9-12 where Paul moves on from these unique gifts that the person declared righteous might possess to the specific virtues they are to display, and getting back to our theme in our text for this morning, the house rules they are called to follow in the household of God, the church.

There are thirteen of them, thirteen house rules in these five verses that we are going to work through quickly this morning. And not surprisingly, as we look back at Romans 12:9 we see that Paul starts with love. Look at verse 9, “let love be without hypocrisy.” That's at the heart of our text, that's the central command of this passage. House rule #1 etched on the wall is love. “Let love be without hypocrisy.” I say it is not surprising that Paul starts there with love because that is so characteristic of his writing, to put love in a prominent position, no matter who he is addressing, to put love in first place. We think of how love sits at the head of the fruit of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5:22-23. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience,” etc., etc. We think of how love caps off the list of gifts given to the church in I Corinthians 13. Love eclipses the noise of a gong or the clang of a cymbal. Love supersedes gifts of prophecy and knowledge and faith. Love transcends the giving of one's possessions to the poor. Love surpasses the surrender of one's own body, even at the point of the stake to be burned. I Corinthians 13:4, it says, “Love is patient,” you've heard it at the weddings, “Love is kind, not jealous, does not brag, is not puffed up. It does not act unbecomingly, does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered. It does not rejoice in unrighteousness but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” And then it says, “While faith, hope and love each abide, the greatest of these is” what? Verse 13, “love.”

And where does this command to love come from? What is its source? What is its fount? This command to love comes from God Himself who in I John 4:16 is described as love, “God is love.” God not only does love and God not only demonstrates love, He is love. He is the standard of love, He is the epitome of love. And as those who have believed upon Jesus Christ, we are the recipients of God's love and in the most powerful and profound way. Romans 5:5 says, “The love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who is given to us.” 1 John 4:10 says, “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” And now having received so great a love, God's love, we are called to love one another. 1 John 4:11 says, “Beloved, if God has so loved us we also ought to love one another.” 1 Peter 4:8 says, “Keep fervent in your love for one another.” We'll get more on that word fervent a little bit later.

I came across this cheeky little “churchianity” jingle this week, and it goes like this.
To dwell above with saints in love,
That will indeed be glory.
To dwell below with saints we know,
Well, that's a different story.
It's funny, I get it. There's a little wry smile out there, we laugh, we chuckle. But it's wrong. I get it that that's the experience that we see, but it's wrong. Why can I say that? How can I say that? Well, are you a new creature in Christ? If you are, you have no business being a self-focused, simmering sourpuss towards your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Instead, you and I and all of us are called to walk in love toward one another. And note that it's not just any kind of love that we're called to demonstrate, getting back to our text in Romans 12:9, it's a specific type of love. “Let love be without hypocrisy.” In this house, in the household of God we love and we love without hypocrisy. That word “hypocrisy” comes from a common Greek word that was used to describe a play actor, somebody who would literally just walk around with a mask, putting an emotion on their face that they didn't actually have in their heart. Well, there are mask-wearers in the church, too. Some wear the mask out of fear of becoming known. Some wear the mask to avoid accountability. Some wear the mask to avoid getting caught. Some wear the mask to cover up a double-mind. But all of it, the mask, the acting, the false appearances, the false pretenses is hypocrisy. It's a sham. It's a cancer to the body of Christ. It's poisonous when let loose upon the people of God.

Jesus, in the middle of His Sermon on the Mount to His disciples, Matthew 6, recognized how hypocrisy can fester among the religious types. As He is telling them how to act and how to function in Matthew 6:2 He says, “Therefore, when you give to the poor do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets so that they may be glorified by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.” Translate for the modern time, if you are living your best life now you have your reward in full. If you are living like a hypocrite now you got your reward in full. It's not just our Lord -- the Scriptures all over the New Testament testify repeatedly to how important it is to root out hypocrisy from all of the different pockets and soils of our life. We're called to be unhypocritical in matters of faith. 1 Timothy 1:5 says, “But the goal of our command is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and an unhypocritical faith.” We are to be unhypocritical in our exercise of wisdom. James 3:17 says, “But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruits. without doubting, without hypocrisy.” And then bringing it closer to our passage, Romans 12:9, we are to be unhypocritical in the love that we show one another. Here is 1 Peter 1:22, “Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a love of the brothers without hypocrisy, fervently love one another from the heart.” Love, then is to be without hypocrisy. True love, biblical love, familial love doesn't wear a mask. It is not given over to play-acting. This isn't a house of entertainment or a theater, it's the household of God. And the love we are called to show our brothers and sisters here who are part of that same household cannot be disguised and cannot be dressed up. No, genuine love, familial love, family love is to be pure and sincere. 1 John 3:18, “Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue,” play-acting, “but in deed and in truth.”

So that's house rule #1, we love and we love without hypocrisy. And one of the ways we do so is by doing what house rule #2 dictates, which is to abhor what is evil. Look at verse 9 again, “Let love be without hypocrisy by abhorring what is evil.” Now that word you see there in verse 9, “abhor,” means to hate strongly, to despise, to loathe. It's an intense term. And note, to abhor what is evil, to hate what is evil, it's actually a function of our love. We are to love by, that's how the LSV I'm reading from has it and I think that's a good translation, we are to love by abhorring what is evil. Isn't that interesting? We often think that love is all about sentimentality and flushed cheeks and butterflies in the stomach and flowers on the doorstep and chocolates on Valentine's Day and poems that begin with ‘roses are red and violets are blue.’ But note here that true love in the body of Christ, what it's actually marked by according to Paul as he is moved by the Holy Spirit, is abhorrence, hatred, a holy hatred of every evil thing. A righteous hatred of all that is evil. Now that starts with the evil that still clings to us. We are redeemed, we're saved if we've put our faith in Jesus Christ but we're still tempted to evil. And that evil still does exist. There are those times when we have that wicked thought or that jealous idea or that lustful desire. Spurgeon, Charles Spurgeon himself, once said there are times when my imagination has taken me down to the sewers of earth. And if we're being honest and to our shame, we've been in that sewer, even as believers. And we should hate that.

We should not only hate, though, the evil that still pops up from time to time in our hearts, we should hate the evil that is all around us. We should hate the evil messaging that conflicts with the exclusive message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We should hate that messaging which calls into question the veracity, the truth of God's perfect Word. We should hate evil that threatens to make its way into churches. We should hate any messaging which interferes with God's perfect design for marriage, for relationships, for procreation, for family. We should hate that divorce is rampant and that children are being indoctrinated in a progressively godless agenda. We should hate that there was an abortion truck outside the Democratic National Convention a few weeks ago, but do you know what we should also hate? That the Republican Party is playing fast and loose with when an abortion, they would say, is permissible. You might be thinking, that sounds a little harsh, Jesse. I thought this whole Christianity thing was about love and loving people. You sound hateful. Well, amen. That's what the Word is telling us to do. Our charter, our compass aren't feelings, the way the cultural winds are blowing. Our charter, our compass is the Word of God. What does the text tell us? Verse 9, we are to be “abhorring what is evil,” hating what is evil, having an intense revulsion toward all that is evil. And this isn't what theologians call a “hapoxlogamina,” this one word, this one instance of hatred being mentioned in the Scriptures. It's all throughout. Psalm 97:10, “Hate evil, you who love Yahweh.” Psalm 119:104, “From your precepts I get perception, therefore I hate every false way.” Proverbs 8:13, “The fear of Yahweh is to hate evil.” Proverbs 13:5, “A righteous man hates a lying word.” Proverbs 28:16, “He who hates greedy gain will prolong his days.”

To be a good Christian, then, means to be a good hater. (Don't tweet that.) A discerning hater, a hater of evil, a hater of evil the way that God is a hater of evil. Proverbs 6:16-19, how many things does Yahweh, God, hate? Seven. “There are six things which Yahweh hates, even seven which are an abomination to Him—haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked thoughts, feet that hasten to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies and one who spreads strife among brothers.” When we hate evil, we are modeling the character of God Himself. Jesus, again during His earthly ministry, demonstrated over and over that He loathed pretense and sham and hypocrisy. He tore off the masks of the hypocritical religious leaders of the day, calling them broods of vipers and whitewashed tombs. That's hatred. That's sanctified, godly hatred of evil.

But why? Why are we commanded here to, back to Romans 12:9, hate evil? Well, it comes back to the love we have for the brothers. We hate evil because of the threat it poses to our beloved brothers and sisters in Christ. We don't want to see spiritual harm brought upon them. Because of the sincere love we have for those brothers and sisters in the Lord here in the body, we hate any corruption, we hate any evil which might find its way into their hearts. Because we love, we hate. We abhor what is evil. That's our second house rule.

That takes us right to house rule #3, look at the end of verse 9, it says, “We are to be clinging to what is good.” So it's abhor, hating what is evil, that's one side of the ledger. Then on the other side is clinging to what is good. I appreciate how one commentator expresses this, he says, “we call out to God for deliverance from the tempestuous waves of temptation, but we also row away from the rocks.” That's a really helpful word picture to think about what this looks like, to abhor evil, then to cling to what is good. To roll away from the rocks of evil and toward smoother waters of good. And how do we measure that? How do we determine what is good? Well, we start by remembering that we worship a God who is good and we worship a God who does good. That's Psalm 119:68, “You are good and You do good.” And then we ourselves are called to do good,
II Thessalonians 3:13, “But as for you, brothers, do not lose heart in doing good.” Galatians 6:9 from our Scripture reading this morning, “Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.”

So we are not only to be those who hate sin and hate evil and hate wickedness, which we do, we are also to be those who love the goodness of God and the goodness of His design and the goodness of His Word which is sweeter than a honeycomb. Is it not? We are called to love those things, to hold them fast, to be wedded to them. It reminds us of Philippians 4:8, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is dignified, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, consider these things.” We are to have this strong sense of good, a deep affinity for what is good as defined by God, a seeking after what is good. And as we see here in verse 9, a commitment to clinging to what is good. That's another vivid, illustrative term there, “clinging.” The word means literally to attach oneself to, it can even be translated to glue. In other words the Christian's attachment to goodness, his commitment to goodness isn't merely casual, rather it is firm and it is fixed and it is strong. The Christian's whole life is wrapped up in the pursuit of goodness. You could say he is glued to the pursuit of goodness, he clings to everything that is good. That means clinging to God's design for our relationships to one another, clinging to a biblical world view as we seek to impart it to our children and our grandchildren, clinging to biblical truth in a world which increasingly rejects it, clinging to a biblical ethic even if it means that we are called out or criticized. We cling, no matter the cost.

So house rule #1, love without hypocrisy; house rule #2, abhor what is evil; house rule #3, cling to what is good. House rule #4, look at the beginning of verse 10, “being devoted to one another in brotherly love.” There is that word again, “love.” Verse 9, that word “love” was a different Greek word, “agape,” it's a word many of us are familiar with. It describes that self-emptying, others-focused, sacrificial love that believers are called to have for one another that was modeled for us perfectly by our Savior in His death on the cross. Here in verse 10 there are two different Greek words for “love” used and both of these words highlight the familial nature of the love that we are called to show one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. Now the first word for love is the word translated “devoted” there, “being devoted to one another.” The word is “philostorge.” It means to love dearly. It could be translated to be tenderly affectionate. The old King James Version, the old KJV, has it as “kindly affectionate.” But that word “kindly” in its original context didn't mean like being nice the way that we think of kindly. Kindly meant kin, like family—brothers, sisters. So we are to be devoted to one another in this local body with a familial sort of love.

Now I think I'm still relatively new here to the state of Nebraska, I'm not sure how much longer I can get away with that line, but one thing I have been able to figure out and quickly, is that there are at least two types of roots that run really deep around here. One of those is the roots of family. This is an area and a community that is deeply loyal to their family. Blood, as the old expression goes, runs thicker than water. And then the other set of deep roots would be the roots of sports. I'm not going to mention last night's game. We have a community full of people who are deeply committed to their teams, whether it's the Huskers on Saturday or it's your favorite NFL team on Sunday or it's your kid's travel ball team literally every day in between. I'll put this as plainly as I can and I hope I come through as clear as a bell. To be devoted to one another as God's Word calls us to be here in Romans 12:10 is to have a level of affection and commitment and loyalty to one another, to the people sitting in this auditorium to your left or to your right that runs deeper than any other of those commitments. Any of them. Your last name here on earth doesn't matter compared to the new name you will be given in glory. The name that is emblazoned on the front of your favorite team's jersey will mean nothing a hundred years from now, a thousand years from now, a billion years from now. All that will matter is your identity in Jesus Christ. And church, this expression of believers who have put their faith in Jesus Christ, really is a family. And followers of Jesus Christ, as we see here in Romans 12:10, are to be devoted to one another. Not coolly indifferent to them, not mildly accepting of them, but loving them with this familiar sort of love and doing so, recognizing the words of our Lord Himself in John 13:35 that “by this all will know that you are My children if you love one another.”

And that devotion that we are to have toward one another, we see back here in verse 10, should result in the expression, it says, of brotherly love. “Being devoted to one another in brotherly love.” Now that word, “brotherly love,” is a familiar word, it's the Greek word “philadelphia.” So we are to be devoted, “philostorge,” to one another in “philadelphia,” brotherly love. Paul is doubling down here, he is hanging the same picture in a new frame as he describes the familial love that we are to have toward one another. As Christians we are members of one family and as members of one family we love each other. The church is not a collection of acquaintances or a gathering of friends or a menagerie of mildly acquainted individuals. No, we are brothers and sisters, we share one Father, God Himself, and we should be acting like it.

We need to move on. House rule #5, also found in verse 10, it says we are to be giving “preference to one another in showing honor.” I really love how the ESV captures this, it says we are to be outdoing one another in showing honor. Outdoing one another in showing honor, note that. We are not called to outduel one another in hammering through details of theological minutiae, I know more than this guy. We're not called to outrank one another as we push our way to the top of church leadership. We're called to outdo one another in showing honor. Or as it says here in the Legacy Standard Bible, “giving preference to one another in honor,” meaning we are not seeking honor for ourselves, we're not trying to be greedy glory-robbers, accolade-acquirers. We're deflecting, we're deferring, we're working hard to ensure that others receive the honor rather than craving the spotlight for ourselves.

Going back to verse 9 again, Paul is not only advocating here for a lack of hypocrisy in the way that we love one another in the body of Christ, verse 10, he is advocating for the presence of great humility. It sounds very much like Philippians 2:3, “regarding one another as more important than yourselves” and now outdoing one another in showing honor. It's so basic but it's so important to stress because a lot of difficulty and heartache that is stirred up in the church always has to do with individual members of the body feeling like their rights and their privileges were not duly considered, or feeling like they weren't given their proper place or feeling neglected or feeling like they weren't properly thanked when they brought a tray of brownies over or feeling like they weren't given a platform equal in prominence to so-and-so, and then there is trouble. That sense of entitlement or under appreciation or unfairness starts to swell up. And if you are struggling with that or have struggled with that or will struggle with that, remember our text in Romans 12:10, we are to be “giving preference to one another in showing honor.” When we do that, I love how one commentator put it, he said, “The church will be the noblest school of courtesy.” That's the kind of church I want to be a part of.

Moving on, verse 11, we come upon house rule #6, “not lagging behind in diligence.” You see it there at the head of verse 11, “not lagging behind in diligence.” Now that word “diligence” translates a word which couples the idea of haste and zeal. Haste and zeal gives us this word for “diligence.” And knowing that we face a real enemy that prowls around like a roaring lion and knowing that the time is short and the days are evil and knowing that the 60 or 70 or 80 or, if you are fortunate, the 90 years that the Lord gives us here is just this dress rehearsal for eternity, what this is telling us is that we are to live our lives as followers of Christ with zeal, with urgency, with diligence. Old Testament believers had that same command. They were called to be diligent in how they served the Lord, spurred on to be diligent for how they served the Lord. We think of Solomon in Ecclesiastes 9:10, he says, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.” Also in the Old Testament, Jeremiah 48:10, there is this warning against being slack in doing the Lord's work. It says, “Cursed be the one who does the work of Yahweh with a slack hand.” And that follows for us too, today, as followers of Christ. We are reminded in I Corinthians 15:58, we are to be “steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.”

See, a holy exhaustion is a good thing. We're not to grow sluggish, we're not to grow lethargic in our diligence for Christ. We're not to, verse 11, be “lagging behind in diligence” in our pursuit of Christ and our service to Christ. There are so many these days who want to talk about just finding rest in Jesus and finding joy in Jesus. And don't get me wrong, we have those things if we have truly put our faith in Christ. We have the ultimate form of rest, knowing that we are right with the living God, and we have joy, knowing where we are going. But don't get that mixed up and think that just because I have rest in Jesus, now I'm on this prolonged, lifelong rest break and doing nothing for Him. No, we are to be continually zealous for Him, never letting our zeal wane, never shrinking back or hesitating or being lazy, refusing to slip into this condition of deadening spiritual inertia. Horatius Bonar said it well, he said, “'Tis not for man to trifle, life is brief and sin is here. Our age is but the falling of a leaf, a dropping tear. We have not time to sport away the hours, all must be earnest in a world like ours.”

That takes us to house rule #7, still in verse 11, we are called to be fervent in spirit. It says, “not lagging behind in diligence, being fervent in spirit.” And that word “fervent” has such a vivid, picturesque meaning. It means to boil. Picture a kettle on a flame. Whatever is being warmed up on that flame is staying warm, it is kept at boiling temperature, it is what I'm told is called a rolling boil. That's where we want to be spiritually—not lukewarm, not afraid to show a little enthusiasm, not bored to death with the routine of church life, not just going through the motions. You know, get to Fall Kickoff, we're excited in September, but by March we're feeling the grind. Instead we are to be a people who are earnest and passionate with fire in our bones, with a zeal for Christ because we are so fired up that He has set us apart for His service and we are so fired up about the mission He has put us on.

And I'm just going to assume that for some of you, what I have just said might be a little too passionate, a little too fiery. You might think that sounds a little too charismatic, what I just said—be on fire for Christ. Well, I'd just encourage you to remember the words of Jesus to the church at Laodicea in Revelation 3. What does He call them out for? Not being fiery, not being cold or hot. Being lukewarm. He says in Revelation 3:15, “I know your deeds that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot, so because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold I will spit you out of my mouth.” In other words, Jesus rejects the church that has grown lukewarm. Jesus rejects the church whose spiritual temperature is now the equivalent of tepid old bathwater. He rejects the church that is full of people who dress the part for Sunday but whose hearts are otherwise far from Him. He was fervent in His love toward us, was He not? He was fervent in His love toward us when He set His face like flint to go to Jerusalem. He was fervent in His love toward us when He was like a sheep being led to its slaughter. And now the least we can be as His people is ardent in spirit, passionate, boiling over in our zeal for Him.

That takes us to house rule #8. It's at the end of verse 11, it's this catchall statement. He says we are to be “serving the Lord.” You could literally translate that, as it relates to the Lord, slaving. As it relates to the Lord, slaving. Make no mistake, if you are a Christian here this morning you are a slave, a “doulos.” Obviously it's a word that has some highly charged connotations in our post-American Civil War context, but we can't read Antietam and Bull Run and Gettysburg into the Bible. We can't allow the Emancipation Proclamation to overrule the Word of God or supersede the Word of God. The words of the living God were given to us many years before what happened here in America a couple hundred years ago. No, as Christians we are slaves and as slaves we have a Master. And that Master, Jesus Christ, He purchased us from the slave market of sin and then what He did is He placed His gentle yoke over us by which He now directs us and equips us and permits us to do His perfect will. So as those who have been bought with a price, the shed blood of our Master, as those who have been purchased and redeemed, as those who have been saved, we serve Him, we literally slave away for Him. And not out of this place of foot-dragging duty, but instead with devotion and delight. We worship unto the Lord, we sing unto the Lord, we eat and drink unto the Lord. Everything we do is unto the Lord and in service to the Lord as it relates to the Lord, slaving.

Verse 12, we get to house rule #9, we are to be “rejoicing in hope.” This one has a real specific meaning and context. As Christians we rejoice, not because we have some vague notion of being sentimental or optimistic. No, we rejoice because we have hope, true hope, a future hope, a glorious hope. We have hope in the fact that the tomb is empty, that Christ is risen and that we will one day rise in new, glorious resurrected bodies. We have hope in the fact that Christ is returning. 1 Thessalonians 1:10 says, “We wait for God's Son from heaven whom He raised from the dead, Jesus who rescues us from the wrath to come.” We have hope in our heavenly inheritance as we remember that God, 1 Peter 1:3-4, “on account of His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to obtain an inheritance, incorruptible and undefiled and unfading, having been kept in heaven for you.” And then we have hope in our future glory as we remember from 2 Timothy 4:8 that “in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord the righteous judge will award to me on that day and not only to me but also to all who have loved His appearing.”

See there, and I say this having sat through countless biblical counseling meetings in my ministry, and I have to remind myself of this and remind the people I minister to of this, there is no such thing as a hopeless Christian. That's a contradiction in terms. There is no such thing as a hopeless Christian. Sometimes we feel hopeless, sometimes we despair, but there is no such thing as a hopeless Christian. No matter what our current circumstances are, no matter how painful and difficult things may be, when we measure the things we are going through, when we measure our temporal troubles against eternal realities like who we are in Christ, like the tomb is empty, that death is defeated, when we measure those temporal troubles against truths like the coming of our Savior and the future resurrection of our bodies and the future glory that awaits, we quickly come to realize that our griefs in this world have an expiration date. And so we can, like Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6:10, we can be sorrowful, we can grieve, we can shed tears. Our hearts can hurt, that's okay. But at the same time he says, yet rejoicing. “Sorrowful, yet rejoicing.” We rejoice, back to Romans 12:12 here, “we rejoice in hope.”

While we are still in verse 12, here comes house rule #10, that ties right in with what I just mentioned, it says “rejoicing in hope,” and then next you see “persevering in affliction.” Here we're given another one of these powerful doses of realism. Note it doesn't say persevering if affliction, it's “persevering in affliction.” It is a given, it is assumed that there will be affliction in the life of the believer. It's “persevering in affliction.” That word “affliction” can be and is translated in other places as tribulation. Affliction, tribulation. And it's not a word that describes some sort of minor pinprick of inconvenience or difficulty like a stubbed toe or the fast-food restaurant getting your order wrong. It describes deep trouble, deep waters, serious trouble, like losing your family for your faith, losing a limb for your faith, losing your life potentially for your faith. See, in our comfortable Christian bubbles we often forget that the Christian church was born into affliction, it was born into tribulation, it was born into distress. The earliest chapters of church history were written in the blood of the martyrs. Our Lord Himself said, John 16:33, “In the world you will have tribulation.” And then later on the various apostles and writers of the epistles would say things like this, Acts 14:22, “Through many afflictions we must enter the kingdom of God;” 1 Thessalonians 3:4, “For indeed when we were with you we kept telling you in advance that we were going to suffer affliction just as it happened and as you know.” See, the reality is we aren't promised freedom from difficulties or afflictions as we strive to follow the Lord. No, the exact opposite is true. You can't choose whether or not you will go through afflictions and tribulations in this life. You can't choose what those tribulations and afflictions will look like. You can't choose when on your life's timeline you'll go through those tribulations and afflictions and you can't choose how long you will be taken through those tribulations and afflictions. But what you can choose to do is what we've all been called to do which is to persevere. We're all called to persevere, to bear up, “hupomene,” it means to actively and steadfastly endure and we can do so knowing that future hope that we hold. And we can do so with the joy that only a follower of Jesus Christ can have. James 1:2, “Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith brings about perseverance and let perseverance have its perfect work so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” And you can persevere knowing that it will be God's power, not your own which will give you the ability to do so.

Here are some words from William Cowper who wrote the hymn, There Is A Fountain Filled with Blood. In a different poem he writes:
Set free from present sorrow we cheerfully can say
Even let the unknown tomorrow bring with it what it may.
It can bring with it nothing but that He will bear us through.
Amen.

House rule #11, end of verse 12, is that we are to be devoted to prayer. I won't preach a whole sermon on prayer here, but I'm going to give you just a few truths to hang onto. First, end of verse 12 where it says being “devoted to prayer,” that could also be translated very literally, it's like Yoda-speak, it's backwards, “in regards to prayers continuing.” In regards to your prayers continuing. It's helpful to break it down like that because it reminds us that prayer is not just this bedtime ritual, now I lay me down to sleep. A prayer isn't spitting out trite phrases and memorized clauses which we repeat over and over to the point that they have no meaning to us. Prayer is not just a thing you do when you fold your hands and close your eyes and take your hat off. Prayer is not just a thing you do in church or when it's the culturally appropriate thing to do like they serve the food and somebody pray. No, prayer is simply talking to God. Walking through life in this continual conversation with God. And prayer isn't supposed to be some sort of demanding exercise as though God is holding a stopwatch over your head and He's only going to accept the prayer when you go 15 minutes or longer. It's not this exercise where you have to use all these big words to prove to the living God of the universe how eloquent you are and use words like supplicate or supralapsarianism. He doesn't need to hear that. No, prayer is about you communing with your heavenly Father, speaking to Him as your Father, praising your Father for who He is, expressing your gratitude to Him, sharing your burdens and your worries and your concerns and your fears with Him, confessing your sins to Him and asking for His help in doing all these things we've been looking at here in Romans 12, abhorring what is evil, clinging to what is good, being fervent in spirit, etc., etc. Yes, we have these convicting statements in Scripture about prayer. 1 Thessalonians 5:17, “Pray without ceasing.” Colossians 4:2, “Be devoted to prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.” And we read those and we are convicted and we think about how little we pray and how much more we should be praying. But I want to encourage you that prayer really is simple, it's meant to be simple. It's communing, speaking with God your Father.

There is a little story about D. L. Moody the great evangelist of the 1800s which I think encapsulates this point about the simplicity of prayer. Moody worked tirelessly for the Lord, he burned the candle at both ends and there is this story about how one night after traveling and ministering and preaching and serving in this very busy season, he gets back to wherever he was staying, he rolls into his bed and (whoever the attendant is with him and records this) says, all he did was he pulled his blanket over his eyes and said, Lord, I'm tired, Amen. That's the kind of prayer that we are called to pray because it reflects being continually in conversation with God. Not just for some special occasion, not to look good in front of other people, but just continually in conversation with Him.

Moving on to verse 13 we come to house rules #12 and #13. Here is house rule #12, note Paul's exhortation at the beginning there, as members of the household of God we are to be “contributing to the needs of the saints.” That word “contributing” comes from a Greek word that many of us have heard before, it is “koinonia,” often translated fellowship. What it actually means is commonality, partnership, mutual sharing. So what is being communicated here in verse 13 is that as followers of Christ we are to be literally sharing, having in common with other believers. It's the way that the church lived and functioned in the earliest days of its existence. Acts 2, the Day of Pentecost, Acts 2:44, “And all those who had believed were together and had all things in common. And they began selling their property and possessions and were dividing them up with all, as anyone might have need.” But then that carried over deeper into the church age. We see examples, like 2 Corinthians 8-9 is all about a collection for another body of believers. 1 Corinthians 16:1-4, a collection for another body of believers. Romans 15:25-27, a collection for another body of believers. (You'll have to look those up some other time.) But even getting beyond that specific concept of taking a special offering for other churches, the concept of sharing stated more broadly is all throughout the New Testament. 1 Timothy 6:17, it says, “Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty or to set their hope on the uncertainty of riches but on God who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy. Command them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future so that they may take hold of that which is life indeed.” Galatians 6:10, it says, “So then while we have opportunity let us do good to all people and especially to those who are of the household of faith,” kind of a broader expression of sharing. Or this one, Galatians 6:2, “Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.” So the big idea here is that as a body of believers, as members of one another we are to share with one another as needs arise. Our possessions aren't really ours, our wealth isn't really ours. It's all a stewardship, it's all a loan from God and we are to use what He has loaned us for His purposes among His people in the church. And that's not Communism, friends, that's Christianity.

House rule #13 in the same vein, last few words of verse 13. We are to be “pursuing hospitality,” “philoxenia.” It's a word that means love of strangers. So we are called to have “philostorge,” being devoted to one another; we're called to have “philadelphia,” brotherly love; and now we're called to have “philoxenia,” love of strangers. It's one of our house rules, our final house rule is to show love to strangers. This is not about entertaining those whom we already know and are super comfortable with. This isn't about having a pleasant social exercise among friends like a pizza and board game night. This is to be diligently and eagerly showing Christian love to strangers. There is a specific context to this command. In the early days of the church, travel was dangerous and inns were rare and rarely available, and when they were around and they were available they were expensive. So what happened in these early days of the church is that traveling Christians, as they would go wherever they were going, they would be shown hospitality, they would be welcomed into the homes of those other believers who were dotted around the land. We see it mention in 3 John, it's a major theme of that little letter. We have 1 Peter 4:9, “Be hospitable to one another without grumbling.” We have Hebrews 13:2, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it.” Of course that's remembering Abraham and Sarah back in Genesis 18. And this virtue of hospitality is so important that Titus 1:8 tells us that the elders of a church are to embody this and be exemplary in showing hospitality to strangers. So house rule #13, not only are we to have the open heart toward one another and being devoted to one another, not only are we to have open hands toward one another as we share what the Lord has loaned to us, we're to have an open door, showing hospitality to brothers and sisters who we don't yet know. William Tyndale, the great English reformer, I think gave us a great description of this command to be hospitable. He said that the Christian is to have a harborous disposition. A harborous disposition. Isn't that a great picture? Our homes are to be like harbors, shelter for strangers, a fold for fellow believers to come into.

So there we have it, our thirteen house rules taken from Romans 12:9-13. As we move into this new ministry year, as we get into all the programs and events and planning, my plea with you, my prayer for all of us is that we would do some heart checking and some soul searching. Before we get busy, before we start racing around, let's ask ourselves the question earnestly, are we this type of church? Are we on mission? Are we keeping up with the house rules? Are we keeping our house in order? My prayer is that we will be that church this year and for many years to come until the Lord comes for us. Amen?

Let's pray. Father, thank You for this time together in Your Word. Thank You for these clear and convicting reminders from the 12th chapter of Romans about the kind of people we are to be individually, as individual members of the household of God and who we are to be collectively as Your church. God, I pray that we as a body of believers would not grow weary in striving after these things and pursuing these things, knowing that we can only do so because of Your work of salvation in our hearts. And God if there is anybody here this morning who is not a follower of Christ, who has not been made right with You, who has not been redeemed and saved, I pray that they would not take this list as a thing they must do to now get right with You, but rather they would see the emptiness of their current spiritual condition, they would see the barrenness of their life, they would come to the end of themselves in their pursuits of all that is ungodly and wicked in this world. And see that what they need to do is put their faith in Jesus Christ, be made right with You, be renewed and reconciled and redeemed, have the Spirit now indwelling them and controlling them and convicting them as they strive to honor You with their lives. Thank You for this special day of fellowship and remembrance of who You are and what You have done. May we be faithful in serving You and living for You this day and every day. In Jesus' name, amen.