Lead Pastor
Sermons by Wade Allen (Page 4)
This month, we have focused on the themes of Advent—hope, peace, joy—and today we will be looking at love. It is difficult for us to understand the love that God has for us… the love that He demonstrated through the gift of His Son, but God’s love is a theme we find throughout Scripture. As we’ve considered these themes of Advent, we have focused on the writings of the Prophet Isaiah. These prophecies of the promised Messiah were written over 700 years before their fulfillment. We will look again to the prophet’s writings in a few minutes, but first I want us to focus on the writings of another of the Old Testament books of prophecy—the Book of Lamentations.
As we enter into this third week of our Advent studies, let’s pause for a moment to remember that advent refers to the coming of or arrival of the Messiah. While looking at the prophecies that foretold of His coming, we have seen several, overarching themes that have arisen. The first week, we talked about hope, and that hope is to be found in nothing other than Jesus Christ. The second week, we considered the concept of peace, and determined that only Jesus is able to provide us with real lasting peace. Today, we are going to focus our attention on the concept of joy.
If I were to ask for a show of hands, I wonder how many of you could honestly say that your life could be described as peaceful… We sing the words—“Silent night. Holy night. All is calm, all is bright. Round yon virgin, mother and child. Holy infant so tender and mild. Sleep in heavenly peace. Sleep in heavenly peace.”—but do we even know what peace looks like? As we continue our sermon series—Anticipating Advent—today, we will once again be looking at the writings of the Prophet Isaiah. In Isaiah 2:1-5, there is a prophetic poem that addresses the future of Judah and Jerusalem. This poem “shows that when God restores Jerusalem and the family of Abraham, all people will be drawn to the Kingdom of God, resulting in peace among all nations.” Isaiah predicted that there would be a king—like His ancestor, David—that would bring peace to all nations. And in Isaiah 9, the prophet describes the arrival of this king.
The sermon series that we are starting today is a four-part series called “Anticipating Advent.” Today, we will be looking at the concept of HOPE as it relates to the prophesied arrival of the Christ child. Over the next three weeks, we will look at PEACE, JOY, and LOVE respectively. The Bible reading plan that I am inviting you to join will follow along with these same concepts.
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.