9/21/25   Romans 12:9-13       “Love Is Hating Evil!”

17 Sep 9/21/25   Romans 12:9-13       “Love Is Hating Evil!”

9/21/25   Romans 12:9-13       “Love Is Hating Evil!”

No matter what people say, I think that we still live in one of the safest places on earth.  I also know that we aren’t nearly as safe as we were 100 years ago, 50 years ago or even 20 years ago.  Agencies can make the figures seem to tell us that we are much safer now but then again you can do whatever you want with statistics if you know how to manipulate them.   Everyone knows it is wrong juggle stats so we move on to try to blame people or things.  Remember, we live in a world where no matter what happens, there has to be something or someone to blame for it.  Crime and an unstable world are no exceptions.  Many say that Islam is to blame.  Many say that greed is to blame.  Many say that a lack of food in many places is to blame.  I think that all these and more are somewhat valid statements but not entirely correct.  I don’t think there will be many who hear this who will really like what I say next.  I say that we are to blame.  We are the ones who hire crooked politicians.  We are the ones who can’t figure out how to get food to people because it might be too expensive.  We are the ones who have allowed terrorists to go unchecked.  We are responsible for the moral decay of this country because we have allowed our country to fall away from God.  What I’m trying to say is that we are a broken people living in a broken world. Today, we are going to look at Paul and his discussion of love.  Loving God and our neighbors as ourselves is the way out of all this.

Love is what makes everything work.  For example I knew a pastor once who thought he had it made because he was now in a bigger church in a city.  There was only one problem, well maybe many.  He was hired by this church and then when he got there, they found out that he didn’t go and visit anyone at any time.  He didn’t go to people’s houses.  He didn’t visit the sick.  The one that really got them was that he didn’t visit the dying.  Fortunately, the church saw this wasn’t working very well and they got rid of him.  On the other side of the coin, I also have a good friend in the ministry who visits everyone, including strangers.  He would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it.  He is a tremendous comfort to the sick and dying.  Churches have flourished with him as a pastor.  One pastor lives in love and the other lives infatuated with himself.  Unfortunately, there is such a shortage of pastors that the bad ones don’t get drummed out but only moved to ruin another church.  My question is which type of pastor would you like best?  That answer is seemingly easy but we still hire the pastors that haven’t done the job in the past and they will not in the future either.

The reason is that they lack love and that is what this whole passage is all about.  We may wonder why Paul spends so much time on love when it should be a relatively easy concept to grasp.  In the days of ancient Rome, there was very little love like we think today.  Their culture would be absolutely foreign to us today.  They didn’t value life so death was not a big deal.  Because they didn’t value life, they had no reason to help people who were hurt.  The lame, sick and injured either got better or they died.  Love didn’t exist as we know it.  Marriages were arranged so if you got lucky, you would love your spouse.  There wasn’t the selfish love we have today because people held their communities in higher esteem than themselves.  Of course this didn’t always apply to royalty and the rich.  What we call evil might just have been the way of life to them.  Therefore Paul spends some time telling them about love.

He tells them that love must be sincere.  Hate evil and do what is good.  As a quick aside here, saying the word hate in a sermon is what got me in trouble with my liberal instructor during a worship class in my schooling.  Anyway, this isn’t too far from the 3 rules of John Wesley.  Wesley said to stay away from evil, do all the good we can and stay in love with God.

Let’s start with hating evil.  To love is to hate evil!  Digest that statement for a minute!  Hating anything is totally against anyone who is the least bit in sync with modern society.  They say we are to love everything but this is a direct contradiction to the Scriptures.  We are also told to hate evil in Proverbs and the Gospels.

It shouldn’t be so hard to hate evil.  What is hard is to know ‘what is evil?’  And really it isn’t too hard to see evil if you want to see it.  I think that the countries and religions who kill Christians for no reason other than they are Christian are evil, very evil.   I think there is evil involved in those who are trying to change what the Bible says.  I think it is evil to continuously go directly against the ways of the Bible.  Evil is gunning someone down just because you don’t agree with them.  Evil is everywhere and we are to hate it.  Being tolerant of evil could be our downfall!  We are to be intolerant of evil!  Repeat!

If you really want to find out who are the evil ones, then just do all the good you can.  I guarantee that evil will come out of the woodwork and try to stop you.  But we are commanded to do good so don’t ever stop doing the good things.  I think most of you know how good you make others feel by the good you do.  Just as a minor byproduct of doing good is that you will feel good also.  So, the first thing Paul tells us is that love is hating evil.

Love must also be sincere.  We mistakenly think of love in terms of our society.  Remember that God is love.  Therefore, there can be no love without God.  Non-believers can have infatuation, longing, lust and many other things but they cannot have love without God.  I think that when we have God’s love, it can’t help but be sincere.  Anything else is just a fake.  We all know that there is nothing worse than fake love.  So let’s be true and sincere when we are dealing with love in any way.

The second point Paul is making is in the next verse where he tells the believers in Rome that love is honoring others.  These people were a definite minority at this time.  They were also trying to be as faithful as possible.  The only people they had for support was God and each other.  They were to be devoted to each other.  They were to help each other and honor each other.  Often times, their world that they used to know before Jesus didn’t exist anymore so they had to rely on each other.

Unfortunately, the world today isn’t a lot different.  Maybe you haven’t realized it yet but we Christians are becoming the distinct minority.  The church keeps caving in on every subject that comes along.  The church reminds me of the spoiled child.  It sees all the evil in the world and then calls it good.  Then it wants to incorporate the evil into the church.  If it doesn’t, it gets mad and pouts until it changes.  People, if we don’t stand for God, then we don’t stand for anything.

As our numbers dwindle, we find that we are the only ones left.  We need to honor each other in order for God’s church to survive.  We are fortunate that we live in this area where families still have a chance.  We have some moral values that many places in this country don’t have.  And the most astounding thing we have that outsiders tell us about is that we take care of each other.  People come here and don’t understand how we can care for each other.  Many people have never heard of this before and it is one of our greatest regional assets.

Look at our churches.  I wouldn’t want to give up our prayer time for anything.  We are always holding each other up in prayer.  If someone in the congregation needs help, you are the first ones there.  There are many places in this country and especially in the world where behavior like this is unheard of.  We live in a special place and we need to find ways to keep it that way.  That is one of the reasons we need a revival meeting soon.

The next thing Paul talks about is something that I have no trouble doing.  We love each other by showing our zeal or excitement as we work for the Lord.  The Roman Christian had to be careful how they showed their zeal for Jesus.  Therefore, they might have been a little subdued unless they were in a setting of other Christians like we have here today.  The Christians in Iraq have to be very careful because they live in an evil area where just being a Christian can get them killed.  Society in this country would like nothing better than to silence us also.

You all know that I lived for many years without knowing Jesus Christ.  When I first got to know Jesus, I was excited.  I have been pretty much excited by this ever since.  I can’t help it but get excited when I think of all the good He has done for us, for you.  I look out at all the crops in the area and I praise the Lord that He is so good as to provide us with abundant food.  I look at all the housing we have, the houses, apartments and trailers.  He is so good to provide us with ways for shelter in the cold, cold winter.  Think about all the free time you have.  God has granted us vacations and time out from our jobs.  How many of you give thanks to God for your vacation even if you aren’t going any place special?  Look at our grocery stores.  Look at all the churches we have.  God has truly blessed us with so much.  Praise the Lord!

Maybe I shouldn’t get so excited about these things, but I remember back when I didn’t know Jesus and there was no joy.  What I thought was happiness were times that were few and far between.  The life we have in Jesus is far, far better than any life without Jesus.  I have a zeal for Jesus Christ.  Some of you also have this zeal but unfortunately, many of us were raised to be stoic.  We are either very Norwegian or very German or very whatever and we don’t have a tendency to show zeal.

I think it has been about 28 years or so since Princess Diana was tragically killed in a car accident.  Does anyone remember this?  I remember that this accident was what all the news people talked about for several days.  In this country royalty has no real function.  And even here the reporters were covering this story of the death of the Princess of Wales.  The assassination of Charlie Kirk is very similar.  I would like you to think for a minute about what it would be like if we had 50% of that zeal for this princess or Charlie when we talk about the very Prince of Peace himself.  Please don’t doubt me when I tell you that you really have your priorities in the wrong place because this is a good example of it.

We need zeal.  We need to get excited about Jesus.  This is the best way that there has ever been to live life.  This is the zeal we need when we are telling others about it.  These Romans had seen and heard of all the miracles that were happening because the disciples and Paul were excitedly talking about Jesus.

So let’s do a little experiment here.  Which way of speaking do you think would attract more people?  (Talking monotone)   Jesus is very good.  He helps people.  He does good things.  (Excited)  or  Let’s talk about what Jesus did from Anne Graham Lotz.  The blind could see, the deaf could hear, the lame could walk, the tormented were set free and best of all the dead were raised back to life.  Jesus fed 5000 people and then 4000 people with next to nothing.  He calmed the storm with a word and He walked on water.  The disciples got to see all of this plus they saw how He confounded the Pharisees.  These disciples had been with Jesus, they had touched Him, ate with Him and watched Him pray.  They had seen His power which was not of this world.  They had received His love.  They watched as He went to the cross to die.  They had seen Him buried and they had seen Him raised back from the dead.  They watched Him ascend back to heaven.  They had seen it all.  It was impossible for them to be quiet.

It should be the same for us.  We have seen the changed lives.  We have seen the healings from Jesus in our community.   We have seen the daily miracles that happen all around us.  We should especially notice this out here in rural America.  We have seen families come together as the result of prayer.  We have seen what happens when we take some clothes to people who cannot afford clothes.  We have seen so many things happen in our lives.  We need to be excited about all this as we go and tell others.

People, it all starts by our hating evil.  We are not to put up with it, we are to hate it.  When we hate evil, then we are honoring each other.  We are giving each other the affirmation that this is the right path, the only path.  This makes it a lot easier to show our zeal, enthusiasm, our outright excitement as we serve and do the things the Lord tells us.  In this excitement we are to tell others of this wonderful God who is the maker of all things good.  What we have talked about today, is a progression.  We start out hating evil and end up by really being excited about telling others of this love that Jesus has for all.  I feel sorry for that poor instructor who told me never to use the word hate in a sermon.  Unfortunately, there are many who think like her in this world.

But they don’t have to because Jesus is waiting.  Jesus is always there whether it be for you or me or a total stranger to us.  Jesus is there waiting to give the love that can be found at no other place.  Confess, repent and ask Him into your life.  It is a big job to spread the Word of Jesus but He trusts that you can do it through Him who has given you everything.  I praise the Lord every time I think of His abundant love.  Thank you, Jesus, for first loving us.  Let’s pray.