8/28/22 Romans 12:9-21 “A Heaping Helping of Jesus”

26 Aug 8/28/22 Romans 12:9-21 “A Heaping Helping of Jesus”

8/28/22    Romans 12:9-21         “A Heaping Helping of Jesus”

I remember a few years back when I was asked to do a funeral by a pastor who was on vacation.  It was a different denomination but the same community.  I was honored to be able to do this for the family but this family needed some closure as the dad of 4 little girls was killed in a car accident.  It was a terrible blow for this family and their recovery was going to be a long process.  As I was preparing for the funeral, I couldn’t help but notice how blessed we are with the love that Jesus has provided for us.  I saw people come with food for the family, with paper products and toys and books for the girls.  I saw people help out with the pets.  I saw people mow the grass.  People just came and helped.  This is the love that Jesus talks about.  Many of us are so fortunate to live where we do because you and your neighbors possess this love.  This family continued to need different things and this community kept stepping up to the plate.  Someone said to me that they just didn’t know what to do for this family.  All you can do is let the Spirit lead you.  The worst thing you can do is nothing.  When I lived in the West Fargo area I got to experience church people doing nothing.  It feels really rotten to experience nothing.  So, I ask you today to make sure that you keep checking on people you know in similar situations because winter isn’t far away.  In today’s reading we have Paul talking about love.  He hits us hard and fast with what it means to love.  We will just cover parts of this as we find out what it really means to love one another.

Wayne Major tells the story of driving on the freeway somewhere and passing a hitchhiker.  Now we all know that it may not be the safest thing to do to pick up a hitchhiker and I do not advocate doing it.  Wayne didn’t think much about passing by as he was on the freeway.  After he passed, he glanced into his mirror to see a black rain cloud closing in on him.  As the rain began to fall, the hitchhiker waved his arms frantically to get Wayne’s attention.  Finally he brought his arms down in disgust as the rain began to fall.  For the rest of his trip, he kept thinking about how he had blown it.  He had not shown this stranger Christian love and he was a pastor.  You see we are all guilty at times of doing nothing.  Sometimes it is only our presence that is needed.

Paul begins by telling us that love is to be sincere or genuine.  First of all we must be sure that we are all on the same page when we are talking about love.  When Paul was writing this, there was something like five different words for love.  There was the word that meant a romantic love, the love that was very obvious in most marriages I that I have presided.  They had a word that meant the love that we find in a family.  This is the love and bond that a brother and sister may have.  There was also a word that meant the love we have for our country.  This is where we would willingly die for our country.  Of course there is what I like to call the love of peanut butter or chocolate or both.  This is the love we have for foods or activities.

There was one problem with all of these.  If you aren’t careful with any of these kinds of love, they can leave you high and dry.  You can be divorced, betrayed or your country may be totally wrong.  The trouble with all of these is that they are based upon humankind.  Any time you base things on yourself, you will come up short because you are very, very limited.  You are what you are and what you see and that is it.  Therefore, no matter what you do, if you base it on yourself, you will not do very well.

Paul uses a word for love that wasn’t used all that often in those olden days.  He used the word agape.  This is the type of love that is totally unconditional.  With this love, if someone spits in your face, you give them a hug.  This kind of love cannot be earned and it is not deserved.  It is the kind of love that comes from God.  It is no wonder that it wasn’t used much in those olden days and I would guess that outside of church, it isn’t used much today either.

This is the love that Jesus has for us.  However, we do have one little problem.  In order for us to know that this love is happening to us or for us, we have to give the same type of love back to Jesus.  You have heard me say many times that we are to love God before we love anything else.  This is usually a part of every wedding that I perform.  If we don’t love God before anything and everything else, then we just don’t know love because God is love.  If God is first in your life, He will help you make your spouse first in your life or your children or your church.  But you have to love God above all else and first.

There are a couple of ways that we can have this love of God.  We can learn to love God this way by reading the Scriptures.  Read the Scriptures and see all of the phenomenal things that happened.  Look closely at how God blessed these people when they were obedient.  Then take a look at your own life.  Try counting your blessings.  All you have to do is look around you to see that you are truly blest.  If that isn’t working then maybe you have to ask yourself if you are really following and loving God.  Maybe you are just going through the motions.  I think that we have many motion Christians in the world; those who just go through the motions of being a Christian.  We even have many pastors like this.

The other thing that you can do to help you to love God with all your heart, soul and mind is to pray.  Everyone needs a prayer life, there are no exceptions.  If you think that you are an exception, then you are not getting much out of life.  When you make God number one in your life, then you should eagerly wait for the times each day when you go to Him and talk to Him.  It will become an automatic deal.

It may not show very much, but I do work out and exercise on a regular basis.  I started this about 35 years ago.  I still remember when I was just beginning to exercise, how there were times when I just felt like giving up because it was just too much work, but I kept going.  Then a funny thing happened after about a year or so of regular exercise.  I found that when I didn’t exercise, I didn’t feel as good as when I did.  Therefore I wanted to exercise several times a week.  Exercise had become a habit.

Well, the same thing happens when you have a prayer life only you don’t have to pray for a year before this happens.  When you get into the habit of prayer, then when you miss your prayer time for whatever reason, you feel like something is missing in your life.  And you are missing something.  You are missing Jesus Christ and He is missing you.  If there is one thing absent in the world today, it is people with a prayer life.  Jesus makes a difference in our lives and in the world.  We need to be talking with Him at all times through prayer.

As we move on, I read somewhere that there are 15 or more commands in just these few verses in Romans.  I’m going to lump the rest of them together kind of the way John Wesley did.  Wesley told us to do no evil.  Paul is saying to hate evil.  We have talked a little about the Roman civilization before.  It was a very corrupt system.  The strongest was the winner.  Murder was accepted under many circumstances.  There was no real morality like we think of today.  It was a system where most of us would be repulsed today.

Paul tells them and us to hate evil.  We are to stand our ground when we are confronted with evil.  Don’t ever think that you are better than the next person.  These are some of the parts of Wesley’s three rules.  Do only good, do no harm and love the Lord.  I have talked about this before.  We live in such a crazy world.  We have been duped for a long time into thinking we should accept the lessor of two evils.  This isn’t what Paul says.  This isn’t what Wesley says.  These guys were innovators and devout followers of Jesus Christ.  They would never think of accepting the lessor of two evils.  If they were confronted with two crooks running for a political office, they would find a way to vote for a third, honest person.

Also the path to Jesus is not the only narrow path.  I think that the real, fact-based information highway is getting pretty narrow also.  It has gotten to the point where we cannot really believe anyone.   I get emails every day that have been forwarded and they are totally false.  Sales people are calling all the time and giving false information.  It used to be that we could rely on our national news people to give us factual information.  But now everybody has an agenda so everything we read and hear has some sort of slant to it.  The news media, even the local media, is usually false.

I want to tell you people today that this is all evil.  There is no good in any of this.  We live in a world that is full of evil and it is getting worse all the time.  There are very few places left in this country where you will find only good.  Our churches aren’t even exempt from evil.  For example, we all know what the Bible says about homosexuality.  Yet we are supposed to blindly accept it because we are told this is what our society wants.  Now don’t get me wrong here.  I will accept any person’s sexuality but they need to know if it is Biblically wrong or not.  Paul is saying that we are to confront this evil and not let it be ok.  Jesus is our leader and not the movie stars of Hollywood.

Another factor is our economy which is on the brink of disaster.  There will be some major changes in our lives in the next few years.  The time has come for the people of Christ to stand up for Christ.  When we see evil, let’s talk about it.  Let’s take the time to start some action against evil.  Maybe we could have a new committee in our churches to talk about evil and confront it.  Wouldn’t that be an interesting concept?

Whatever we decide to do we have to do it in the love that Jesus has for us.  Paul tells us to hold onto what is good.  John Wesley tells us to do only good.  This is obviously pretty hard to do.  You can read in the papers or listen on TV to people who disagree with others, many times you will find them calling the other side all kinds of names.  Even if you are on the right side of an argument morally, it is always wrong to belittle the other side.  It is always wrong to belittle anyone.  There can be no good to come out of this.  I find myself turning off news shows because of this.  Our local news here in Fargo is full of people doing this every day.  Maybe this should be the first place to confront evil.

Paul tells us to bless people.  Be happy with those who are happy and cry with those who are crying.  It is ok to rejoice at weddings with others and cry with others at funerals.  It is ok to tell people that they are doing a great job even if you think that it could be a little better.  We are called to encourage others at all times.  Being a Christian is about being as positive as you can for as long as you can.  As a matter of fact John Wesley said:  “Do all the good you can, By all the means you can, In all the ways you can, In all the places you can, At all the times you can, To all the people you can, As long as ever you can.”  This is what it means to be a Christian!

I’m going to give you an action point.  This week I would like you to find someone who needs encouragement and encourage them.  Find someone who is having a bit of a bad time for whatever reason and take the time to be sad with them.  Also find someone who is rejoicing and happy for whatever reason and take the time to be happy with them.  And as I said in the beginning, be genuine in your feelings by using the agape love we get from Jesus.

Scott Bradford tells the story of a woman and her son, Patrick, at a grocery store.  The woman was just coming from radiation treatment for cancer and she was in a hurry, not feeling very well.  But Patrick saw a woman in need.  She was riding in one of those motorized wheelchairs with a small basket.  The basket was full and she was piling things up in her lap.  Patrick wanted to help but his mother said that they didn’t have time.

Patrick decided to help anyway.  He went to the front of the store and got a regular grocery cart and then he followed the woman throughout the store.  He stayed with her through the checkout lane and then he pushed the basket out to her car.  When they got to the car, Patrick found the woman’s son, who was in his thirties, sitting in the car playing video games.  Patrick asked if he was going to help unload the groceries.  The son gets out and helps as he asked his mother where she found this kid.  The woman replied, “I didn’t find him.  He found me.”  Then the mother proceeded to give her video game son an earful as they loaded the car thus showing us that there might have been a dysfunctional factor working here also.  The woman then tried to pay the helper but he refused, saying, “We’re supposed to do all the good we can do.”

Here is a boy who comes from a family where there are high medical expenses so there isn’t a lot of money to go around who is refusing money because the Lord wants him to do all the good he can.  Remember this as you go about your week.  Jesus loves everyone and that includes all who we meet.  Go to them and serve them a heaping helping of Jesus.  And thank you, Jesus, for first loving us. Let’s pray.