40 Years of Transforming Communities: Romans 12:9-21

Well a sermon, a scripture reading this morning comes from Romans twelve.

We have a word this morning on community, and we see here many things that that are uh remind us of of how we are to be God's people.

And so Romans 12, 9 through 21 this morning.

Let love be genuine.

Abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good.

Love one another with brotherly affection.

Outdo one another in showing honor.

Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.

Rejoice in hope.

Be patient in tribulation.

Be constant in prayer.

Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse them.

Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.

Live in harmony with one another.

Do not be haughty but associate with the lowly.

Never be wise in your own sight.

Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.

If possible, as far so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.

To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him.

If he is thirsty, give him something to drink.

For by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Lord, would you give us to see who you would have us to be and how you would have us to live, that we might live as your people and your possession.

And we pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So we jump back into this series, uh, 40 years of God's faithfulness.

Um after you know, taking a week to take a break and focus on the promise for the month.

But this has been our series as we've been walking the last few weeks, and it'll remind us why we do take time to remember.

Uh, remembering is not for the purpose of some kind of sentimental uh walking down memory lane.

When the scriptures talk about remembering, it's purposeful.

It's a purposeful looking back in order to foster greater attachment and belief in God and the present and what he's done for the purpose of cultivating a stronger faith, greater clarity in the present as well as for future hope.

And so while we do that in many respects, each Sunday in our worship, I'm sure if you think about it in your own lives, maybe there's been times when even seasons of transition, you have you've stopped and you've taken a little bit of a, you've widened up the aperture a little bit and looked further down memory lane, as it were, of your life to remember, to take hold of what God has done and who He has been to you, so that you have a clearer vision for the present and how to move forward.

And so the scriptures call us to that kind of remembering.

And so this morning we consider God's faithfulness in transforming community and little communities within this community.

And we see it in a number of ways.

First, a loving community.

The Apostle Paul here says, in these in these words, he says, Let love be genuine.

Abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good.

Love one another with brotherly affection.

And he's speaking here, of course, to those who are in Christ, those who have come to know his love in personal ways for themselves, but have been brought into this community.

And this and this term, uh, this Greek term is storge.

And C.

S.

Lewis in his book, uh, The Four Loves, unpacks this quality of love.

He says, Storge love can be identified by its evidence between a mother and a child and the need love of the young and of the gift love of the mother.

It ignores differences of age, class, sex, or education.

And if you were to think about it for a moment, with even with your within your own family, uh there are clearly differences that you experience in your family.

We might think of age as one of those differences, the difference between parents and children, uh big age gap there.

Um, and then you have differing temperaments.

You have one family member who might be lively and loud, that child in your family, and then you have others in your family who might be more quiet and reserved.

There are differences.

Uh financial, uh a parent earning an income, a child perhaps without means, or if they're a little older, uh perhaps fewer means that their parents.

And although all of that is true, they are sheared, these differences are sheared within the bonds of family.

They express needs and they they give themselves towards the needs within it.

And so here the apostle Paul is referring to that kind of love and saying, let that familial love, that need love, that gift love, be genuine.

And the reason for that is because, as we all know, we are born into the family of God.

We don't choose who are our spiritual fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters.

God is the one who calls people to himself through the gospel, and we never know who might respond to that call.

I remember in my own uh life uh being particularly challenged by this when I moved from uh New Zealand to Australia after college, and although I was raised in the church, uh this was a new season for me in being out on my own.

And in the church that I began to attend in Australia, I had a had a large demographic of students.

And when I got there, I I was acutely aware of the differences that lie between me and and and and others that were there.

Um I, for one, had grown up in a in a different country and and they were uh Australian.

And um there was also a lot of students from other countries there.

Uh there were also college students who were trying to get through with as little debt as possible.

Uh noodles and eggs and you know that kind of stuff.

Uh I was earning an income.

And so uh I was I had more means.

Um they showed close proximity and being on campus together, many of them.

And I was working six days a week and required to live at least uh 30 minutes away from the church at that time.

And then there was conversation.

I was familiar in talking about rugby, which most of the world is familiar with, but not so much, and in Melbourne, where they love to talk about Aussie rules football.

And so I was I was aware of the differences that lay between us.

And initially that caused a little bit of distance from me and others, and I remember attending for about a year, uh coming to worship.

But then after about a year, finding myself struggling spiritually, uh, feeling an increasing conviction over a lack of fulfillment and depth in my own walk.

And so I eventually I joined a small group.

And I remember that first day when I joined a small group, sitting in the living room, not knowing anyone, and hearing uh these introductions of other people.

And I remember thinking to myself, I would never have chosen to sit or to associate with these kind of people based on interest.

They were very different.

And I'm sure they felt the same about me.

But what I found was that as we began to share life together, God used this newly formed bond to increasingly cultivate a more genuine love between us.

A kind of love that I wasn't able to share with uh with colleagues or with any other relationships I had at the time.

And perhaps you found yourself with that kind of experience.

You're you're born into the church of God.

You're given a set of family members, and and you're trying to make sense of how do I how do I grow in this love?

So the apostle Paul says, let that kind of love grow in genuineness.

And as it takes place, it's a wonderful gift of God when that happens.

C.

S.

Lewis writes about this kind of genuineness.

He says, the moment when one first says, really meaning it, that though he is not my sort of man, he is a very good man in his own way, is one of liberation.

It does not feel like that.

We may feel only tolerant or indulgent, but really we have crossed a frontier.

That in his own way means that we are getting beyond our own idiosyncrasies, that we are learning to appreciate goodness or intelligence in themselves, not merely goodness or intelligence flavored and served to suit our own palate.

And it's being owing to God's faithfulness over the years that we have seen this kind of love grow in genuineness in our midst.

Differences in age, differences in sex, uh, differences in education, wealth, uh, political views.

And it's of course it's not talking here about the diversity of a pluralistic culture.

Uh pluralism wants unity by trying to erase distinction, by saying, let's just go along to get along.

Pluralism wants to say, you have no right to say that Christianity is the only way.

It says we want unity and diversity by erasing distinction.

By saying no one way is right.

But that in itself, remember, is a truth claim.

And it's a false one.

And neither is it loving, because the unity of being part of the family of God is a unity that understands that God alone has the blueprint for life.

And Jesus alone is the way of salvation and that life.

And as a result, what is needed is a family that's tuned into the same tuning fork.

A family that comes in repentance and faith to Jesus so that we don't choose our, remembering we don't choose our family, but that God does.

There is this non-selectivity in the family of God.

A diverse people responding to his call through the gospel, and that's a beautiful thing.

Again, in the early years of this church, uh the emphasis was placed on being part of a community of many, right?

And worship together, that community of many that we gather in, but also a community of few, a few.

Uh that takes place in smaller groups, and and and that is oftentimes in our covenant fellowship groups.

But it can happen in smaller bands of folk together.

And then we have a community of two.

That that bosom friend, that person who you can be close with, you can share your heart and depth, and know that they are able to speak into your own heart and and love you with all your honesties and and and and growth and all that's needed in your own heart and life.

And so a community of a few, a community of many, a community of two.

And the reason for that is because we need to understand that there is a two-way relationship in the family of God.

And being born into the family of God, you have something to give away to other people.

Don't forget that.

I need your story, and you need mine.

And if you want to do a search sometime, look up all the one-anothers in the scriptures.

Do a search on all the one-another, maybe this week, and look over those references in the Bible if you've never done that.

And it's clear that you and I need other people to help us in life.

And then spiritual life is true.

To share the gospel, to share how the scriptures are meeting you and how they're being worked out in you.

We need each other.

Second thing is there's also a need for transforming community.

Uh, as part of Tom's D Men, he shared it uh before, he often shares it in the choir's class.

He was given a task, and that task was to write a vision statement.

The entirety of the class was on that one thing: write out a vision statement for your church.

And so he did, and he worked on that, and that's what you see in your bulletin each week in front of you.

APC is a welcoming community of believers, rejoicing in the gospel, being transformed by its power, and responding in grateful hearts to our God and our world.

And you see, there is this need for transformation through the gospel and community.

That's where that arises from.

And it's been a continual emphasis that's that's what we need in order to grow.

Because maturity is what is where we're headed.

And there's a problem if we never grow up, if we never uh, if we always live in a state of endless infancy, we know that in our own families.

If if everyone remains an infant, that's a problem.

And so we need to grow up into maturity.

And the qualities in these verses fall into three general emphases.

First is serving for vitality, second, serving for healing, and third, accountability.

And in each of these two areas, vitality, healing, accountability, we can apply ourselves and grow emotionally and volitionally.

And by volitionally, I mean our desires and our actions can grow.

And so, first, vitality.

Outdo one another, he says, in showing honor.

Emotional maturity and family life is when someone can look beyond themselves and serve for the betterment of others.

Even to the point of celebrating their successes, finding joy in the joy of others and their gain and what they need.

That is a sign of emotional maturity when that takes place.

But also volitional.

Don't be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit.

Serve the Lord.

If you think about it, most of the time intimacy or change in a family is cultivated.

It's less face-to-face and it's more side by side.

It's not that face-to-face interactions don't happen in family life.

We know that they do, but if you think about life in your family, oftentimes it's you're doing stuff together, you're being active together.

And that's been evident over the past 40 years.

God has worked time and time again within our serving alongside one another.

Just think of the bonds that have that have taken place, the bonds that have been strengthened and often deepened.

Those of you who have served on a mission trip together, there's oftentimes a bond that's forged, a deeper bond that's established in doing so.

For some of you who are here for those early years, when I was not here, the moving ministry, right?

Helping others vacate their own homes and move to another home and all that that entails.

That ability to serve side by side and the bonds that developed and grew in those years and on those occasions.

Christmas in April was another one.

The ability to serve again, side by side, seeing others reached.

Days of serving together in our young adult ministry, Koinania, serving side by side at VBS, children and youth ministries, covenant fellowship groups, ministry to women, ministry to others through the diaconate, hospitality.

I mean, we see all of this side by side living and life that goes on together.

Young, old, it doesn't matter.

That's how life and vitality take place and joy.

We ought to be a joyful people as we go about this.

This is this is working for the vitality of the family of God.

I personally I just get a lot of joy in seeing, even as we walk in the doors, you may have noticed it this morning, but the ability to walk in and see children able to serve alongside parents or others in ways that are meaningful, giving a warm welcome, perhaps, serving as ushers, greeters, all the various ministries that you might have opportunity.

And so I encourage the youth.

That is a way that you will grow emotionally and volitionally as you serve alongside others in this family.

And and it's a joy for me to see many doing that.

But vitality.

Are you serving toward the vitality of God's family?

But also healing.

For healing to take place, we also need to grow emotionally and volitionally.

If you think about a member in your own family, if there has been any illness or pain, the family, what do they do?

Well, they tend to tend to be drawn to the pain.

Even if you're not the one suffering, there's an emotional connection that's felt when someone in your family is experiencing pain.

And the same is true when the body suffers, when inflammation and hurts arise, it requires other members of the body to share in that emotional and physical need of others.

We see that.

Here, contributing to needs, weeping with those who weep, living in harmony, showing hospitality.

Our diaconate uh does a lot of uh heavy lifting here, but the mercy ministry of this church goes far beyond the diaconate.

Because care can take shape and form in many different ways.

And it has over the years.

We see that, we've seen that often, conversations in homes, encouragement in hallways or coffee shops, specific opportunities to relieve financial pain, serving the hurts of others.

But life, like life in any home, we need to continue to be vigilant.

It's dynamic, just like home life, right?

Things aren't static, it's dynamic, and so we need to watch out and be aware of hurts as they arise.

And I think this triad of rejoicing in hope, being patient in troubles, and constant in prayer is intentional here.

Because you see, when hurts are felt, when what comes naturally to us is for us to lose hope, right?

And to lose our joy.

And what's true of us naturally is we can often become impatient with a situation, especially when they're not going away anytime soon.

And then we feel our prayers beginning to dry up.

And what we need are others who are drawn to us in our need.

And help us to focus our hearts on the reason we have for hope and joy in Christ, to foster patience through presence and listening, and to encourage us to lay out and detail our request to God.

God uses these interactions in this process of healing, of bringing love to others.

Author Tim Chester states it this way: He says, the brother who speaks a word of comfort to you, the sister who bakes a cake for you, the family who welcomes you into their home are all the hands and feet of God.

When a brother hugs you, Christ is hugging you.

When a sister sits by your hospital bed, Christ is sitting by your bedside.

When a friend weeps with you, Christ is weeping with you.

Christian love is the overflow of God's love to us.

I love that.

That is the kind of embodied love that Christ would have us demonstrate in this family.

And I've seen that to be a precious remedy so many times when hurts have arisen in this church family.

God has been so gracious in bringing healing to many in this church through many seasons over these last 40 years.

But we've been led to believe even more deeply, I think, that moving toward pain and not away from it is necessary.

And constancy in prayer is essential for both vitality and healing.

And so vitality and healing.

But then the third thing, the other area of transformation, is accountability.

We see it in the negatives here.

Do not be haughty, never be wise in your own sight, never repay evil for evil.

But then positively, give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.

If we think about family life, once again, there's a season when independence is sought out.

Can anyone guess what those years are?

A few pointing.

Yeah, it's the teen years.

And maybe a little bit into the early adult years.

Teens want their space, right?

They're growing in their independence.

But even then, they need parents to be intervening and shedding light on the decisions that they're wanting to make.

Right?

To leave them to themselves, even by law, is considered an abdication of responsibility by the parent.

And so even teens need accountability.

They need insight into their blind spots and instruction on decisions that will lead down the path, lead them down the path of righteousness and integrity.

And again, C.S.

Lewis in his book, The Four Loves, makes the point that it's a sign of immaturity when family members treat one another in ways that would never be acceptable with anyone else outside their doors.

He says I've often been more less concerned about the teenagers and more about sometimes the parents.

And he cautions against those who give themselves permission, thinking to themselves, well, I just come home to relax.

I can't always be on my best behavior.

If I can't be myself in my own house, where can I be?

We're a happy family, it's okay.

No one really cares, we all understand.

And Lewis says those kind of excuses are so nearly true, yet so fatally wrong.

And so we need one another to be counseled away from excesses.

We need others to help us consider to put into practice what is honorable in the sight of all.

Working toward transformation and community, emotionally, volitionally, through vitality, healing, and accountability.

And then finally, lastly, we we see verse 18 and the following, we the way we relate to those outside the family.

The emphasis is on winsome, being in a winsome community.

If your enemy is hungry, feed him.

If he is thirsty, give him something to drink.

For by doing so, you'll heap burning coals on his head.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

And you see, the only way we can do that is if we're reminded ourselves by our own need for the gospel and its light in our lives.

Frequently considering who we once were and also how we're being changed in the present now by God's grace.

Because if you look throughout the Bible, we see the true picture of family.

We see family bonds that, though once being created good, after the fall of our first parents, we see that families being tainted, corrupted by sin.

We only need to read a few pages to encounter that in our Bibles, right?

We see that the first murder was between brothers, Cain killing Abel.

Out of a heart of envy.

And that's only the beginning.

We we go on and we read of Jacob deceiving his brother Esau out of an attempt to gain more blessing for himself from his parents than his brother.

And then we go on to see siblings willing to sell their younger, proud brother into slavery in an effort to humble him.

And go on then to deceive their father.

And again, that's only the first few pages.

We could go on and on and on.

The scandals between family members.

What's clear in the scriptures is that the bloodlines of man cry out for a remedy.

And that remedy is found in the one who interposed his own blood into this fallen race.

A one-time sacrifice to redeem.

To redeem us from all of our imperfections, all of our failures, and all of our faults.

A sacrifice once and for all to perfect us for all time.

We who are being sanctified.

And so we remember, and we are aware of the reality often that none of us have hit the mark.

All of us fall short of the glory of God.

None of us are perfect.

We have not been brought into a family of God because we are perfect.

The opposite is true.

And yet here we are, we're working our way in this life together.

And so what is true is that none of us are perfect.

But what is true is that we are perfectly loved.

And we are called to be the same overcomers as the one who overcame all for us.

And so, yes, there are more souls to be won.

There is more work in us to be done.

But it's his perfect love that will do it.

And so may we keep our hearts near to his heart as his beloved family.

Amen.

Let's pray.

Oh Lord, we ask, we pray, would you do that?

Would you keep us close to your heart?

Lord, there is indeed more work to be done.

There are more souls to be won.

And Father, we praise you and thank you that in the giving of your son and the shedding of your blood, Lord, we have hope for transformation, we have hope for life.

We have hope for reconciliation, we have hope for forgiveness.

Lord, all of the things that family life entails for it to thrive and to be blessed, for rejoicing to take place, for healing to happen.

Oh Lord, we thank you that you are such a God who gives us all the resources that we need for life and godliness.

And so, Lord, we ask and pray, keep us near your heart.

Even as we go from here, we pray, strengthen us by your word and your spirit now.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.