Lead Pastor
Sermons by Wade Allen (Page 4)
In this final, synoptic study of Romans 12, we will reflect on some of the major themes from this chapter over the past ten weeks in an effort to see clearly what the Scripture means when it tells us to not be conformed to this world, but be transformed—be different! Transformation is a process! It starts with a decision to offer our lives to the Lord. Then the Lord works in us—humbling us and teaching us how to serve others within our giftedness. As we serve Him by serving others, it is His desire that our lives display the marks of a true Christian—genuine love for one another, diligent service to the Lord, patience in tribulation, persistence in prayer, and generosity in everything. Exhibiting these characteristics of a true believer is essential in our quest for overcoming the evil that persists in our lives. And we must never forget that the only way to gain victory over evil is with the righteousness of God.
Last week, I began our study through this last section of Romans 12. We focused in on the idea of blessing those who mistreat and malign you. We considered two ways that Paul encourages us to overcome evil with good. In today’s message, we will continue to discover what it means to overcome evil with good as we look at Romans 12:16-18.
Just as Paul challenges believers to love with authenticity in verses nine through thirteen, he is now challenging believers to overcome evil with good in verses fourteen through twenty-one. These two phrases—let love be genuine and overcome evil with good—serve as bookends to this section dealing with the characteristics of true believers. Starting in today’s study and continuing to the end of this series, we will be considering specific steps that we must take in order to overcome evil with good.
In this morning’s study, we are concluding this section of Romans 12 that is focused on genuine, authentic love. In today’s text, we learn that to genuinely love means to be generous with what God has blessed you and be gracious when others try to bless you. It also means that we should be generous in opening our lives and our homes to others and be gracious to accept invitations from others.
As we look at this next verse of Scripture in Romans 12, we want to take time to discover its unique characteristics and teaching, but we also want to see how it fits into the totality of teaching here in this passage. In order to do that, we need to take a moment to look at the immediate context of verse 12 to discern the characteristics of genuine, authentic love.
As an individual member of the body of Christ, a believer is the vessel by which God graciously reaches out to mankind through his/her words and actions. This is God’s charis (grace), charisma (spiritual gift, singular) or charismata (spiritual gifts, plural) at work in and through the believer. God does not want believers to live their lives under their own power, but always in dependence upon God and the outworking of His grace. When we choose to live in His power and under His control, the impact of our lives on others will be beyond anything we can imagine.
In our sermon last week, we focused in on how God wants His children to be different—we said “peculiar”—not conformed to the standards of this world but offering our lives completely to Him as holy, pleasing, living sacrifice. In some ways, the peculiarity of living a life for Christ can—in some demented way—meet this desire in us to be extraordinary. In fact, it is not uncommon for people who consider themselves to be completely sold-out to God to become proud of their perceived holiness. We may all have a deep-seated desire to be extraordinary, but God is calling us to be ordinary. If we are the superhero of our stories, there is no room for God to be glorified in or through us. But, when we see ourselves for who we are—and see God for who He really is—we will begin to see our part in His kingdom work, and our role in this work is a small (but essential) part of a much bigger work that God is accomplishing through the local, New Testament church!
We’re starting a new sermon series today entitled: “Therefore, Living in Light of Truth.” This series will be walking through the text of Romans 12, but to understand this passage we must take the previous chapters into consideration. The Oxford English Dictionary defines this expression as “drawing knowledge or information from; taking (something) into consideration.” Romans 12 is exactly that—practical conclusions based on previous statements. Our sermon outline today only has two points, but we’ll be looking at many sub-points as we go because our goal in this series is to examine this text not verse-by-verse or section-by-section, but word-by-word.
Why do bad things happen to good people? Why would God allow things like this to happen? Why didn’t God stop it from happening? If God really loves me, why is He allowing me to go through such pain? If you find yourself dealing with some of these questions, then I hope to be able to provide you with some steps to help you work through these feelings. Dealing with anger against God is a process; but unless you begin taking deliberate steps toward healing, you will continue to wallow in your anger and grief. There are many stories in the Old Testament about people who were angry with God. We have discussed some of those recently in your community groups. Today, we’re going to be considering a few of those stories to see how they navigated this minefield of being angry with God. We’re also going to look at the writings and teachings from the New Testament (Peter, Paul, James and Jesus) to gather pertinent teaching about the work of God in our lives.
In today’s message, we will read once again from Ephesians 4 where Paul tells us to get angry, but get angry without sinning. Being created in God’s image, there are injustices in this world that should cause us to get angry. Anger is not wrong—only anger that is out of control is wrong. This morning, we will look at a few of Paul’s letters and a few proverbs to help us discover four keys for making anger productive, not destructive.