9/28/25 Romans 12:14-21 “A Little Bag of Jelly Beans”

25 Sep 9/28/25 Romans 12:14-21 “A Little Bag of Jelly Beans”

9/28/25    Romans 12:14-21       “A Little Bag of Jelly Beans”

Last week I talked a little about love from our series on Romans 12 and we found that love isn’t always what we think it is. There might even be people who hear me talk about what love is and what it isn’t who disagree with me.  That’s fine.  I’m not the last word on the subject, but God is.  Often times we like to define things like love in our own terms and that’s it.  You won’t listen to others or your pastor or the Bible.  You might have decided that infatuation is love and that’s it.  Well, I’m not going to argue with you and your infatuation but I would like to add to it.  What I mean is that if you have a narrow view of love, like it’s just infatuation, then you are missing out on some of the best attributes of love.  You miss out on sincerity, honor, and devotion to mention just a few.  You see, love is a multi-faceted emotion or state.  If you concentrate on the one beautiful flower at your feet, you will miss out that you are standing in a field of the prettiest flowers in the world.  Today, Paul is continuing his discussion of love.  Let’s see if we can expand our definition of love and try to include all the facets.

I don’t know what it is that makes us think that we have the right to revenge but we do think that way for the most part.  And this mentality has been around for centuries and it doesn’t seem to get any better because we are drifting farther and farther away from God.  Here is a quick little story about Abraham Lincoln who was approached by man who insisted on bringing a lawsuit for $2.50 against an impoverished debtor.  The man had no money and would be able to pay nothing.  Lincoln tried to talk the man out of this frivolous lawsuit but the man was bent on revenge.  When Lincoln saw that the man would not back down from his demand, Lincoln decided to take the case.  He charged the man a legal fee of $10 which the client eagerly paid.  Then Lincoln gave half the money to the defendant.  The defendant willingly confessed to the debt and paid the $2.50.  But even more amazing than Lincoln’s ingenious settlement was the fact that his client was satisfied with it.  This case of revenge doesn’t even make sense.  And if you think about it, how many cases of revenge do make a lot of sense after the dust clears.

We will get back to this revenge in a moment.  First, I want to lead us up to it.  (If you remember) last week we talked about the previous verses as being a sort of progression, a progression of love.  Verses 14-16 continue in this vein as he elaborates on what it means to love.  As we have seen and will see that love is much more than what we generally think.

At first Paul tells them to ‘bless those who persecute you.  Bless and do not curse.’  We know that these people were being persecuted at the time.  My assumption is that human nature was about the same then as it is now.  I don’t think that we have quote, unquote ‘evolved emotionally’ since that time or any other time for that matter.  The people would be angry at those who persecuted them.  Notice that Paul doesn’t tell them not to be angry but rather he tells them what to do with their anger.  He tells them to bless their persecutors.

I have to ask you, “How bold is that?”  We really don’t have persecutors in this country like what the Roman Christians had.  But there are many places in the world where Christians are murdered by Muslims and other religions just because they are Christians.  They are kept from holding any important positions.  They are segregated in schools and businesses.  And still they will hang onto their faith to the death because they have seen these false faiths up close and the liars that are persecuting them.  We would be far less tolerant of some of these groups if we had to see their evil up close and personal.  There are many, many stories from these countries where thousands of these people have hung onto Jesus Christ until death.  I admire their faith and pray that we will never have to be tested like that.

But we are tested also.  We are smeared almost daily in our national news and social media.  We are discriminated against by our government.  I have experienced the absolute hatred of some of these people as they have gotten into my face about something.  Paul is telling you and especially me that we are to bless these people when they attack us like this.  And I want to reinforce doing this by telling you that I have seen this work first hand.  Our enemies get so flustered when this happens to them that they really are unable to react.  They usually don’t know kindness and goodness.  When it happens to them, they don’t know what to do and, in the process, you have planted a seed that might one day grow.  That is all we can do is plant the seed.

Then Paul tells them to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn.  Paul doesn’t want them to do this with just each other but he also wants them to do this with outsiders and strangers.  We talked a little about how the Romans had little compassion for others.  This is the beginning of a concept that is foreign to them.  When they found someone who was rejoicing, no matter who they were, they were to rejoice with them.  And the same thing can be said for those who were mourning.  When they did these things, people noticed.  They noticed that they felt good about it and wanted to know more about Jesus and Christians.  Seeds were planted.

This is one of the areas where we don’t do too bad a job.  This community, the good churches in the area are always on the leading edge of caring for each other.  We talked a little (before) last week about how outsiders don’t understand this compassion we have for total strangers.  But we don’t have to go too far to see the other side.  I have noticed that people, especially in cities, love to put up a fence around their property.  I have seen in a very limited number of cases where people meet in the street and have fellowship there like they used to do over an unfenced backyard.  But usually when the fence goes up, most communication goes down.  You end up not knowing who is living next to you.  You end up being paranoid about all your neighbors when you don’t even know them.  If it were up to me, I would tear out all fences in cities.  They are not needed.  How can you rejoice with people you cannot even see?  How can you mourn with your neighbor if you have never talked to them because of this barrier?

I am against anything that discourages fellowship.  It could be a physical fence or it may be a mental fence where we won’t talk to someone who is of a different color or religion or nationality.  We have trained our police to call the SWAT team instead of trying to talk to someone who may or may not be dangerous.  The list goes on and on where we refuse to fellowship with someone for whatever reasons thus extremely limiting our ability to mourn with the mourners and rejoice with the rejoicing.  We cannot live in harmony when we don’t even know each other.  I will say to you to keep on doing what you have been doing and don’t copy the cities.

And this leads right into the last part of these first verses.  They were to be humble.  They were not to be conceited but rather mingle with people of low positions.  I think this was the key to the early spread of Christianity.  Christians weren’t the only people who were persecuted.  Many other groups were also.  Plus, there were many workers who barely made enough to put food on the table.  There were many poor shepherds, fishermen and slaves who lived without hope of much of anything.  It was to these people that the early Christians went.  It was the poor and downtrodden where the hope of Jesus Christ ignited and spread.  It is the same way in 3^rd world countries today.  The poor are leading the way in faith.  They lead in faith and sometimes this leads to their death.

It is not up to us as to who we invite to church.  It doesn’t matter to me if a family is poor.  They need Jesus.  It doesn’t matter if they are of another religion, not denomination, but religion like Islam or Hindu or Mormon.  They need Jesus just as much as anyone else.  It doesn’t matter if people are homosexual, they need Jesus.  Everyone in the world needs Jesus.  I read an alarming statistic recently where, and this is an approximation, about 80 people die every minute of every day who don’t know Jesus.  Therefore, we have a job in front of us and it is for all people.  I don’t think that we have any trouble with serving anyone who comes along but we just need to be reminded once in a while that we are servants for Jesus first and foremost.

In verses 17-21 Paul shifts just a little as he spends some time talking about revenge.  To begin, he kind of repeats what he has already told the people.  He says ‘do not repay anyone evil for evil.’  I think we can all think of situations where we have done the complete wrong thing.  We have repaid evil with evil.  I want to ask you, ‘What was the result of this?’  I would hazard a guess that just about every time if not every time you have done this, it has ended in a hollow feeling at best with the distinct possibility that things ended badly.

I’m not always the brightest bulb in the marquee.  I have been in situations where someone has counseled me to make the right decision and I have still made the wrong one and things went from terrible to worse.  I have also seen this happen many times to other people.  We seem to think that the way they handle conflict on TV is the right way, when it is usually so very, very wrong.  If you are in a decision situation where evil has been done to you, listen to that little voice in the back of your mind.  Remember what you have learned on the Christian journey.  Forget what the world says and make the right decision according to the Gospel.

I think that it is interesting when Paul states ‘Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody.’  I’m sure they had the same kind of problems we have today.  We have people who come to church and then leave and act as if they had heard nothing at all.  They leave to go right back to their cursing, lying and cheating ways of life.  Some people feel that they have been forgiven by coming to church so that they can go back and repeat their sins to make more money or appease whatever earthly god they have.  People go out and continue to sin where other people can watch them.  They blacken the eye of Christianity.  This is what gives us such a bad name.  We need to be careful when we walk out the doors because people are watching.  Young eyes are watching all the time.

We know that Jesus Christ changes lives!   He doesn’t change us only for the hour we are here.  When we walk out that door, we should be able to control ourselves enough so that we practice what we have heard.  I expect most people to run out of steam on this by next Sunday.  That is why we have our services weekly.  We need a refill every week just to get through until next Sunday.

Paul is reminding everyone that we are to leave revenge to God.  He will take care of it for us.  We should understand this because as I just said, we usually mess it up pretty badly.  God commands us to feed our enemy when he is hungry and give him something to drink when he is thirsty.  When we do this, then we will be heaping burning coals on the enemy’s head.  Revenge comes when we do the good things in life, not when we try to get even.  Once again, these people don’t understand why we would do them good.  They burn up by being indignant or by being full of rage.  Leave all this stuff for God and we are to just keep doing all the good we can.

Do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.  This is the climax of this whole section.  This is the ultimate love.  The Romans lived in a pagan world where this was a foreign concept.  Today we live in a pagan world and they don’t understand this concept either.  But we have to learn to rise above the world.  When the world slaps us down, then we should offer the world a meal or a drink or whatever they may need.

Jeff Strite tells this wonderful story of a family that was reading from the Bible when they ran across Romans 12:20, “If your enemy is hungry, feed him.”  The 2 sons, aged 10 & 7, were puzzled by this as were the parents who were new Christians.  The boys asked, “Why should you feed your enemy?”  The parents could only think of one answer and said, “We’re supposed to because God says so.”  They didn’t know why.  So, one day the 5^th grader came home complaining about the boy who sat behind him in class.  “Bob keeps jabbing me when the teacher isn’t looking.  One of these days I’m going to jab him right back.”  The mother thought that Bob must be some sort of terrible, terrible brat and the teacher sure wasn’t doing her job.  She was angry and ready to go to the school and give that teacher an oral jab.  The mom was still fuming when the 7-year-old spoke up.  “Maybe he should feed his enemy.”  The parents and brother were startled by this and were ready to dismiss it because, well, it just didn’t apply to this situation.  Finally, everyone looked at the father to lead the way in this situation.  He could only offer the advice he had given before.  “I guess we should because God said so.”

So, they decided to feed him and found out that he really liked jelly beans.  Then they prayed about the enemy, Bob, and jelly beans.  Then they went out and bought a bag of jelly beans which the 5^th grader took to school the next day.  He then waited until Bob jabbed him.  Then he turned around and set the bag of jelly beans on the ‘enemy’s’ desk.  Would feeding the enemy work?  The next day the boy ran home from school calling out to Mom, “It worked, Mom!  It worked!”  He continued, “He was so surprised that he didn’t say anything.  He just took the jelly beans.  But he didn’t jab me the rest of the day!”  In time these 2 boys became best friends, all because of a little bag of jelly beans.

People, this isn’t too hard.  Jesus made it easy so you could follow Him.  Let’s see if you can begin to practice love in all phases of your lives.  When you do, others will see and become attracted to this love that can only come from Jesus.  This is a way He loves you and you will feel great about contributing to the world of God.  Thank you, Jesus, for first loving us.  Let’s pray.