Transcription downloaded from https://yetanothersermon.host/_/gracepeace/sermons/56031/01132019-romans-15/.

Disclaimer: this is an automatically generated machine transcription - there may be small errors or mistranscriptions.
Please refer to the original audio if you are in any doubt.


[0:00] All right. I don't know what the custom here at First Pres is, but I'm going to have you stand while I read God's Word together. I'm going to be reading from Romans chapter 15.

[0:14] If you've got a Bible or if you've got it on your phone, you're welcome to join along with me from Romans chapter 15, the first nine verses. So here's God's Word. We who are strong have an obligation to share, to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good to build him up.

[0:39] For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me. For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God. For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy. Amen. This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

[1:36] Let us pray. Well, you can sit down and I'll pray. That's fine. Don't want to mess up the way we do things, you know. Let me pray for us. Our Heavenly Father, we thank You that You have welcomed us in Christ to this living hope and we pray that You might now let us see Jesus more and more this morning because we pray it in His name and for His glory. Amen.

[2:03] Recently, so I said we've moved here and we are planting a church and so I've been doing a lot of thinking over the last couple of months at how effective I am at welcoming people into the family of God. I generally like to think that I'm pretty good at this. You know, I'm a pastor. I'm a church planter for goodness sake. So I get to meet people. I'm pretty good about kind of taking initiative with people. You can just ask my children. I have no problem being super awkward and talking to folks. And in fact, when we moved into our neighborhood, we got to know one of our neighbors and we'd been there about a month and our neighbor said, good night. You know more people on our block in one month than I do and I've been here three years.

[2:45] And it's true. I think our family is pretty good at this. Our family throws great parties. We have people in our house all the time. We love doing that. But then I read this book that I've got right here. It's called The Art of Neighboring. I don't know if you've seen this. I would highly recommend it to you. I'm going to set it up here if you want to look at it afterwards. The Art of Neighboring. And it has this simple exercise to do that helps you reflect on how good of a neighbor you actually are. And so imagine the the eight closest houses to you. And this is like thinking of a house that's on a grid pattern. You've got your three neighbors across the street. You've got three neighbors behind you, you know, behind the alley. And then you've got your two neighbors on either side. Eight neighbors. Now, how many of those eight neighbors do you know their names?

[3:35] First and last names. How many of them do you know any personal information at all about them other than that they rarely take the trash out on time? How many of those eight neighbors have been inside your home? I got to tell you, when I read that, it just destroyed me.

[3:57] Because for all of my self-assurance at how great of a neighbor I actually am, it just it laid it bare that I'm not nearly the kind of neighbor that I want to be. And it made me begin to think if I'm not the neighbor that I want to be to the people who live closest to me, what does that say for for my church? What does that say for my community? How does that translate into into how I am in all of my public life if I'm not a neighbor to those who are closest around me? You see, people who are not Christians should receive the welcome of Christ from us. They should receive the welcome into our homes, into our churches. They should receive the welcome into the family of God, right? I should be better at this, I kind of think. I wonder if saying that, doing that little exercise makes you think of any sort of deficiencies in your own way of being a neighbor. How do you think your immediate neighbors might experience you? Do you think that they experience the welcome of Christ to you? Do they experience the welcome of Christ into your home, or into your church, or into the family of God? I don't know. And if they did receive that welcome, what might that look like for them? So that's the focus of the passage that I just read to you.

[5:24] In Romans 14, the previous chapter, Paul has been addressing the church. He's been talking to all the religious insiders. But in this passage, as he transitions, he makes this really masterful transition. He says that how the church treats one another inside the church impacts the welcome it's going to give to those who are outside of the church. And there's a principle here. The gospel that affects us impacts the church that we are in, which impacts the world that we serve. Gospel, church, world, right? It's pretty simple. And there's, it's a great principle because we could summarize it this way. This is a way that I like to think about this will probably make sense to most of you who watch television at all. What happens at church doesn't stay at church, right? What the things that happen here never just stay here, they always rebound out into the wider community in the world. And that's the exact principle Paul gets to at the very end. It seems like a little bit of a change in what he's talking about. But let me read verses eight and nine again. He says, for I tell you that Christ became a servant of the circumcised, the religious insiders, to show God's truthfulness in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs in order that the Gentiles, the religious outsiders might glorify God for his mercy. See the glory of that truth? What that means is that every experience of grace that you have had at First Presbyterian Church ought to be felt by the people who are your neighbors. Every experience of fellowship, every experience of love, every experience of spiritual growth that you have experienced ought to be felt outside. It ought to be seen and experienced by others. It's pretty amazing. So what are the things that we ought to see in our own life as our body together that ought to be experienced by those who are not in the room? I think Paul gives us four things, and I'll just work through these briefly. Four specific things that ought to happen and be seen and experienced by outsiders. Now, let me say this about my language here. I'm using the term outsider, and I'm not using that in a pejorative or a negative sense. I actually dislike the language of insider and outsider. I don't use that language very often because I think all people are welcomed into the family of God and into the gospel. And so outsider is generally a bad term because it sounds negative towards someone. I'm not using it in that way. I'm using it in the way that Paul is talking about it.

[8:06] He's just making a simple comment that there are those people who belong to the family of God, and there are those people who don't. The outsiders are those who don't. So what should an outsider experience from you and from Christ's church? Okay, the first thing is this. They should experience that the weak are welcomed. Look back at verses one and two. We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good to build him up. Paul's been talking about in chapter 14 about how people in the church treat one another, and he uses this language of strong and weak. And he's saying that the strong people are the spiritually mature. You know, they're the older ones. They're the wiser ones. They're the gray-bearded people, and they're the people that you look up to. The weak, he's saying, are the people who come into the church bringing all of their baggage. They're just immature. They can't help it. They come in with their failings.

[9:12] They come in with their big opinions not based in reality. They come in with their misunderstandings. They come in with their sin patterns that haven't been sanctified yet.

[9:25] And what Paul is saying is that in spite of their difficulty, their weakness, they are not dismissed. They're not rejected. They're not marginalized. They're not treated like second-class citizens.

[9:40] Instead, the weak people are the people who are welcomed. One of the best examples of the weak being welcomed by the strong actually comes out of Harry Potter.

[9:51] I love Harry Potter. It's one of our favorites. We've read all of the books in our family. And one of my favorite characters in Harry Potter is Neville Longbottom. Remember Neville if you've read it. Neville is this, he's kind of this clumsy, oafish boy.

[10:08] He can't seem to do anything right, and he becomes the butt of the jokes for all the popular kids at Hogwarts. But, when it comes to Harry and Ron and Hermione, Neville isn't rejected.

[10:19] In fact, from the very beginning, from the first time they meet Neville, they bring Neville in to their group. They bear with his failings and his weaknesses, and they build Neville up.

[10:34] And it takes time. If you've read the books, it takes seven years, seven books later, before Neville finally has his moment. But Neville has his moment. And when he has his moment, he blossoms into this character of courage, and of strength, and leadership, and sacrifice for other people.

[10:55] And he actually becomes one of the most admirable characters in the entire story. All because Harry, Ron, and Hermione were with his weakness.

[11:09] He wasn't rejected. He was brought in. Because of their love. And that's what should be happening in the church. In the church, people shouldn't be valuable for what they contribute.

[11:22] People are not valuable because of their gifts. People are valued simply because God is the one who is at work in them, and they have inherent dignity and worth. Even with their weakness.

[11:33] Even with their weakness. Even with their failings. Even if they don't add a whole lot to anything. They are valued. They're welcomed.

[11:45] They're protected. You know, I remember feeling like the weak person in the church. And I remember the strong, wise people caring for me. Maybe you feel like you're the weak one as well.

[11:59] Hopefully you feel that way. I mean, think about all the people that are so easy to dismiss. The people who look different. The people who are just kind of less sophisticated. The people who don't know, like, the social cues and the lingo that, you know, every church has.

[12:15] And people who maybe come from a different socioeconomic class than you do. Whether higher or lower, frankly. It's so easy for those people to be dismissed and marginalized.

[12:30] But in Christ, every person is welcomed. Is what Paul is saying. They're welcomed in Christ. That's the first thing. The weak are welcomed. The second thing is this. That self-protection is rejected.

[12:44] Look back at verse 1. We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good to build him up. For Christ did not please himself.

[12:57] But as it was written, the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me. Jesus did not come to selfishly please himself. No.

[13:08] He came in welcoming us who were the weak ones. Jesus received criticism. It has this little quotation there. The reproaches of those who, how does it say?

[13:20] The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me. That's actually a quote from Psalm 69. And it's talking about the Messiah. And in the Messiah's zeal, his passion and love for God and for God's people, he got criticized.

[13:34] He got reproached. He got rejected. And Jesus took that on. Jesus' zeal. Jesus' self-giving love. His welcome of people cost him.

[13:46] One of the most famous places was when Jesus, do you remember the story of Zacchaeus? Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem and he stops in Jericho and there's Zacchaeus, the wee little man. And he calls Zacchaeus down and Zacchaeus is immediately and dramatically converted by Jesus right there.

[14:03] And so what does Jesus do? He throws a party. Of course he throws a party. He goes to Zacchaeus' house. He throws a party in somebody else's house, which is pretty great. He goes to Zacchaeus' house and they bring in all of Zacchaeus' friends, all of his notorious sinful friends, all of the people that had poor reputations, that were taking advantage of people, all of the people that the religious insiders would not associate with.

[14:34] And it really made the religious insiders angry. And they criticized Jesus for his association with that. And you have to remember, Jesus was on his way to the cross, on the way to Jerusalem, and in stopping in Jericho, he inflamed the criticism of the religious insiders.

[14:57] The religious insiders took that criticism all the way to the cross. Jesus' grace was costly for him.

[15:08] He didn't stay in self-protection. And we should expect that when the church proclaims the overwhelming grace of God's welcome, it's going to be misunderstood and it's going to be criticized.

[15:26] Think about it. Leaders who proclaim this grace, what do we say about them? We say sometimes that they are soft on moral failings. Sometimes we say that they're weak on personal responsibility.

[15:40] We say that they're too accommodating or they're associating with undesirable people. Or simply they're just unrealistically hopeful. Remember when Peter said to Jesus, you know, you're not going to go to the cross.

[15:56] That's what Peter was saying was, Jesus, you're unrealistically hopeful about how this thing is going to happen. You don't know what you're talking about. I'm the religious insider here. I'm going to tell you now. Jesus repeatedly had people criticize and try to change his ministry.

[16:11] And so we in the church should, people should hear from the church the unrestrained and beautiful proclamation of the welcome of God in Christ Jesus.

[16:23] And we should know that we're going to get criticized for it. We should know that that's going to happen, that people are going to misunderstand us. Because any time you choose to love someone, you will be vulnerable to criticism, to rejection, to loss.

[16:43] That's what it means to love someone, to commit to someone, whether it's a spouse or a child or as a church commits to love its city, it's opening itself up to be hurt by it.

[16:56] The welcome of Christ means that we cannot be about self-protection. It can't be. So that's the second thing. The weak are welcomed. Self-protection is rejected.

[17:08] The third thing, spiritual growth should be expected. There's this weird little thing that Paul does in the middle of this passage, verse 4. All this beautiful, lofty stuff about the welcome of God.

[17:20] And then he says this, verse 4. For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction. That through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope.

[17:31] He changes from this lofty stuff to, oh yeah, and about the Scriptures. He says everything written beforehand. Now you've got to remember that Paul, you know, Paul's Bible was just the Old Testament.

[17:43] Paul was writing the New Testament. And that seems odd. And I think what Paul is doing is he's telling us to not overlook that overtly simple truth. That if we are to live out the Gospel in the church, this welcome of the Gospel, it must come, it must be nurtured by the sound teaching of God's Word.

[18:04] The Scriptures are the means of encouraging and strengthening our hearts towards God's welcome. Our lives should be changed by the Scriptures. What kind of a change ought you to see in your life?

[18:17] Well, he gives it to us. He says, through the endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures, you should have hope. That living hope we sang about a minute ago.

[18:28] That hope. What does he mean by that? Well, he's not talking about the, he's talking about an inner transformation that is deeper than simply moral improvement.

[18:40] He's talking about a transformation at the deepest part of who we are. A transformation of our loves. A transformation of our motivations. Greed and bitterness and lust.

[18:52] Those things can be papered over for a little while through our morality, can't they? Yeah. If you've been a Christian for a while, you've worked hard to make sure that people don't see those kinds of things.

[19:03] But they seep out. And sometimes in the most complicated ways, they seep out. And what he's talking about is this transformation that changes us at the deepest core of who we are.

[19:17] And what he's saying further is that you will not be equipped to bring the welcome of Christ to the world unless you have experienced that internal transformation. And we can take that one step further and say, people outside of the church ought to see your inner transformation.

[19:35] They ought to be able to observe it. People, non-Christians, should see you changing and growing. If the gospel has changed you over the last few years, you should rejoice in that.

[19:47] You know, this is something that the Baptists have on us Presbyterians. You know, when something great happens in their life, they're telling you about it. And that's actually godly. That's good.

[19:58] We ought to be the kinds of people that celebrate when God has done something in our lives and let people see that. Let people see the work of God in us. We're not all the way there yet.

[20:09] But we're making strides. And what Paul is saying here is that we should expect that spiritual growth happens and that should be seen by other people. So, spiritual growth is expected.

[20:23] Weak or welcomed. Self-protection is rejected. Spiritual growth is expected. And finally, fourth thing, is that unity should be experienced. Unity is experienced.

[20:34] So, verse 5. May the God of encouragement and endurance grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice, I love that, glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

[20:53] Finally, outsiders should see unity among us. You know, look, if you've been around, if you've watched the church in America at any level, it's super easy to find arrogance, selfishness, and hypocrisy.

[21:08] And that is sadly there and we need to fight against that. But, when a church begins to take on the wonder of grace in the welcome of Christ for themselves, what does it look like?

[21:19] It looks like harmony, he says. He says it looks like one voice praising God like a beautiful choir singing together. I was actually in the choir in my high school.

[21:32] And I loved it. It was one of the best things I did in high school. And our senior year, we went on one of these choir trips. We went to Florida. We went to Disney, of course. You have to go to Disney. And we did some sort of singing competition.

[21:45] But the thing from that trip that has stayed with me is we did a recording. And we sang for this recording somewhere in Florida.

[21:55] We went to this old 17th century church. It's set back in these trees with these just ancient oak trees that are dripping with falling Spanish moss.

[22:09] It's this old stone cathedral with really high ceilings. And our 80-person choir was all just crammed up on this stage. And we sang the pieces we had brought were these ancient Christian hymns in French and in Latin.

[22:24] And we sang them without any accompaniment at all. And it was beautiful. Because we sang with one voice. I remember feeling that our choir, this was the best that our choir had ever sounded.

[22:39] Whether it was the acoustics or not. It was the best we'd ever sounded. We were perfectly in tune in rhythm and perfectly united as one voice. And when we stopped, the sound rang out in that room.

[22:57] And all these high school kids stood silently for probably a minute. Because we all recognized the beauty of that moment.

[23:13] That's the picture that Paul wants you to see. That's the picture that the world ought to see when it looks at the church. Is this moment of beauty and unity.

[23:25] Look, if you're not a Christian and you're just here today for whatever reason. Glad you're here. I hope that you've seen some of this. It's easy to pick out the problems.

[23:38] I know they're there. But maybe you have seen glimpses of this kind of beauty in God's people. You know, where somebody who is weak that you know has been valued and protected in a way that's beautiful.

[23:53] That there have been people who are willing to be vulnerable and not rest in self-protection and selfishness. That people have grown in their spiritual lives.

[24:06] That there has been a unity that has been fostered. That you've seen this happen in other people in your life. That you love, have experienced this in the church.

[24:17] And I want to say, if you've seen even a glimpse of that, what you need to know is that that glimpse is an invitation to you. It's an invitation from God.

[24:27] It's a welcome from God to you. It's the welcome of grace. Because every person who has become a Christian has experienced this welcome from God.

[24:39] Just like you might experience it. Every person has been the weak one who has been brought in and built up in Christ. They have been protected and valued in the gospel of Jesus.

[24:53] Every person who has come to the welcome call of the gospel has been built up by the selfless giving of God in Christ Jesus. They have all been changed from the inside out through the scriptures by the power of the Spirit.

[25:08] They have each one of them been united to Christ and united to one another. Every person who has come to Christ has experienced that welcome like the father in the prodigal son parable.

[25:22] Where the son comes slinking back and the father comes and wraps him up in his arms. Of love and acceptance and welcome. And because of that, Paul says this one line.

[25:36] You should memorize this. You should, you know, sear it on your brain. You should get it on a tattoo on the small of your back or something.

[25:46] I don't know how you remember things, but it's this. Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God. Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God.

[26:02] Because in that is the core of what the church should be about. It's that the gospel has come. It has changed me. I am now a part of God's redeemed community and I am being changed within it.

[26:14] And in that context, I am now sent out into the world to proclaim the welcome of Christ to other people. So that they can experience the very same welcome of God. So that God would be known and glorified.

[26:28] That's what Paul is talking about here. And that's the heart of our welcome to the city. You know, if we just do service projects, we are not going to have any real impact in the city of Chattanooga.

[26:40] We have to be people that live out of the welcome that God has given to each one of us. We have to see that happen in our community and then it gets lived out in the world.

[26:51] If you are not transformed by that gospel, you will not be helpful to people out there. That's who we should be. That's what God is calling you and I to be.

[27:04] Whether it's at our church plant, Grace and Peace Church. Or whether it's at First Presbyterian Church in downtown. Wherever that is, that is the calling that the welcome of the gospel would be lived out.

[27:18] Okay, I'm going to stop here. May it be true that First Press, the Grace and Peace, that all of our brothers and sisters in Christ across denominational lines might be those who live out the welcome of the gospel, that we can proclaim the welcome of Christ for the glory of God.

[27:37] May that be true of us. Amen. Let me pray. Our Father, Son, Holy Spirit, we pray that you might make this welcome true of us.

[27:48] That you might be glorified in it. Help us. We don't know how to do this well. We're so weak at this. And yet we know that in our weakness we've been welcomed. We know that you have not rested in self-protection, but you've welcomed us in.

[28:06] You've grown us up. You've unified us. Do that again, we pray. In Christ's name. Amen. Amen. Timothy. I will, therefore, understand us, this ح zone.

[28:19] I will, therefore,uz, stand at house to go only 내 nom. Any move in,owany, every man with God呢, do this well. Do it? Any move in? You ever want to stay coming back?

[28:31]  Be glad that you go away. Under this wall is Amaia company. They're in terms of letting him see me come to me. Hey, aby God wants me to come back.