ROMANS: The Motivating Nature of Then

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We ask Holy Spirit that you would speak.

Speak in a language that we understand.

Uh we don't we're not super important people.

We don't have big words.

And if we were honest, most of us wouldn't even consider ourselves to be good.

But because of the redeeming nature of the gospel, we're right we've been made right.

And being made right with God changes the way we think about ourselves, changes the way we listen to the Bible when it's taught, and it changes how we live when we walk out of this building.

This building is not the church.

We are the church.

And so we've come together to be equipped and edified, prepared and sent to live for this day that is coming.

And so, Holy Spirit, uh, make that reality happen in our lives this morning, we pray in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

You can have a seat.

If you have a Bible, I invite you to take it and open it up to Romans chapter 13.

Romans 13 · chapter mention

If you don't have a Bible, there's one on your row, I'm on page 948.

948.

I want to talk to you this morning about the motivating nature of then.

The motivating nature of then.

You say, What do you mean?

We are, if you're our guest, we're preaching through the book of Romans, and it kind of divides into three big sections.

The first eight chapters, and then chapters nine, ten, and eleven, and we're in the last section, chapters 12 to 16, and the theme of this section is just everything.

Because Paul begins to take all these theological truths that he's unpacked in the first 11 chapters and kind of break them down and say, hey, this is how this applies in your life.

And it feels like he's covering a thousand topics, but really what he's kind of saying is, hey, this is not just for information.

The learning here is for not just knowing, but it's also for the living.

You learn so you can live a certain way.

And he picks up in Romans chapter 13 and verse 8, and he says this, Oh no one anything except to love each other.

Romans 13 · chapter mention

For the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.

The commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and any other commandment are summed up in this word.

You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself.

Love does no wrong to a neighbor.

Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

Besides this, you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep, for salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.

The night is far gone, the day is at hand.

So then, let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.

You say, What do you mean when you talk about the motivating nature of them?

Let me see if I can get at it this way.

How many in this room remember uh you older folks?

Uh and by that I mean over 20.

How many of you remember being 16 years old?

Okay, I see your hand.

Remember 16?

Remember how you thought when you were 16, and you thought you had it all together, and your parents would say you say stuff to you, and you just roll your eyes like, get off of my back, please.

I'm 16, I got this.

And then you got a little bit older, and then when you got to be 21, did you ever want to look back at that 16-year-old and kind of go, man, if I could just talk to that person?

Oh, and because when you're 21, you kind of thought, I got this.

I'm 21.

Are you kidding me?

I'm legal.

And then you turn 30.

Remember that?

And you want to look back at that 21-year-old and go, why did you go out with him?

And then you got 30, and you're kind of like, man, 30, I'm telling you what, this is a whole new lease on life.

And then you turn 40.

And then after that, you turn 50.

Yeah, ouch.

Yeah.

And then you got to be 60.

60's a new 40.

And now that you're 60, you look back and you don't even think about that 16-year-old because it depresses you, and you you lie about the 21-year-old, and you kind of want to.

But here's my point.

The further you kind of get, the more you look back, and here's the thought that goes through your mind.

I wish I would have known then what I know right now.

Because now in our culture, it's kind of like, oh, you you people you feel like you're getting old, blah, blah, blah, blah.

No.

No, because the older you get, the more you begin to realize that the things that the Bible says are not to prevent you from having fun or whatever.

The things that the Bible said are prepare you to live fully in the now.

And so, just as in your 30, you look back and you say, Man, I wish I could talk to that 20-year-old.

The Bible invites us this morning to kind of step out there then.

Think about then.

Think about this day we've been singing about, this glorious day.

And let's just kind of stand there for a few minutes this morning and look back at right now and let it kind of shape the way we think about now because we live in a culture that it's infatuated with now.

Pepsi's big logo, live for now.

And if you want to know what living for now looks like, I got a name for you: Justin Bieber.

I mean, Justin, come on, buddy.

How much trouble can you get in?

All right?

I mean, something's off the rails with that kid.

Now they got a petition going around to deport him back to Canada because he's from Canada.

And I might, I may or may not have signed it, I don't know.

But anyway.

Because here's the deal.

If living for now is if it's just, hey, eat, drink, and be merry, if there is no then, then why not just live for now?

But the Bible says there's a then, there's a day coming.

And you need to think about that.

And you say, how do we think about that?

Three things the Bible tells us.

Number one, the urgency of time.

The urgency of time.

If you're gonna think about, if you're gonna let then motivate you, you need to understand the urgency of time.

That's verse 11.

Uh he says, besides this, you know the time.

Now he starts off saying, Oh no one anything except to love one another.

For the love of one another, you fulfill the law, and he talks about all the commandments and all this stuff.

And you say, well, why don't you start in verse 8?

That's where we started reading.

Because Romans 13 is about, hey, the first part is, hey, you gotta be rightly related to the authorities in your life.

Secondly, you've got to be rightly related to your neighbor by loving them.

That kind of fulfills all the commands.

If you love your neighbor as much as you love yourself, and he's saying, hey, this is how you do.

Be a good citizen, be a good neighbor.

And by the way, it ends with that's what you should do.

Here's why you should do it.

Here's why you should do it.

So that's why he starts in verse 11 with the says, besides this, you know the time.

That the hour has come for you to wake from sleep.

The urgency of the time.

The hour has come for you to wake up, to kind of wake from sleep.

If you've gone on a long road trip with your kids, you understand this.

And regardless of where you go, when you get about 10, 15 minutes out, one of you, you or your wife, turn back and you say this to your kids, hey, you need to start waking up and get your shoes on.

We're almost there.

Paul is writing, he's been going from chapter 1, verse 1.

Now you need to understand, when the book of Romans was written, it was a letter written to the church at Rome.

It didn't have chapters and verses and numbers.

It was just one long letter.

And he's been writing since have you ever got a letter that was this long?

Can you imagine getting that?

When's the last time you wrote a handwritten letter?

Yeah, hold on.

Uh we're supposed to do that?

Let me tell you something.

This day and age of email, it is hard to overestimate the importance of a well-written just note or personal letter.

But this is a personal letter.

He's been going this whole time.

And it's starting in what we call chapter 1, verse 1, where he began all the way up to now, and he says this.

Hey, he's still got a ways to go, but he says, hey, besides this, you know the time that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep.

Now, when he says you know the time, the Greeks use two words for time.

The first one was Kronos.

Kronos.

And Kronos time is movement.

It's like it's 7 o'clock, then it's 7.15, then it's 7.30.

It's kind of like a horse.

A horse just kind of gets up, puts on the blinders, and just kind of plows kind of through it all, gets done, goes back to the barn, gets it up, and does it all again.

It's just a movement.

The second word the Greeks use for time is Kairos.

Kairos is moment.

It's this moment.

It's like a hawk.

You say, What do you mean?

Horse and hawk.

Is this ag class?

What are we doing here?

Uh a lot of mornings I come to work and I'm parking on the side of the building.

Right back here on one of the telephone poles is a hawk.

And that hawk will just sit there, not move at all for hours.

And I'll get up and get a book off my shelf or something, and I'll glance out.

He's still there.

While back I was glancing out, and all of a sudden the hawk just kind of just hopped off the thing, threw his wings out, went into a glide pattern, just kind of glided down over the field right there, picked up breakfast, and flew off.

That's all the activity the hawk is going to have to do.

Why?

Because the hawk understands not movement, but moment.

But moment.

Kairos means, hey, for this moment, for such a time as this, right now, I have an opportunity that I've never had before and I may not have again.

And that's what Paul is saying.

It's the word kairos in Romans 13.

He says, hey, wake up.

Why?

Because you know the time.

When you think about kind of the spiritual timeline of your life, do you understand what time it is for you spiritually?

And say, how do you mean?

You're not 16 anymore.

Let me ask the question.

How many in this room have been a Christian longer than 10 years?

Can I see your hand?

Hold it up real high.

Look around the room.

Alright, put your hand down.

How many of you have been a Christian longer than 20 years?

Okay, just or 20 years.

Look around.

Put it back down.

How many of you in this room have been a Christian at least 30 years?

Let me see your hand.

Still a lot of people's hands in there.

Put your hands down.

See, here's the thing.

You need to understand spiritually what time it is because the longer you are a believer, you're tempted to one of two things.

You're tempted to become sentimental and universalistic in your thinking.

In other words, the older you get, you're kind of like, well, God loves everybody, and the ground's level at the foot of the cross.

You begin to take phrases that are laden with sentiment and quote them like you're quoting the Bible.

And they're nowhere in the Bible.

You just say them over and over because they make you feel better and you get magical thinking.

You start thinking, well, I want to be positive and not negative because I want to treat everybody, and treating everybody right and good is a great thing, but it's a vain substitute for the gospel.

It's a vain substitute for the gospel.

And so don't, the longer you become a Christian, you are a Christian, the easier it is to kind of slip into this sentimental, hey, you know, hey, I, okay, God's gonna come one day, but probably not in my lifetime.

And you fall asleep to these things.

Allow me to demonstrate.

A friend of mine went to school at Baylor.

Anybody go to Baylor?

Anybody?

There we go.

Succumb bears.

There's one.

My wife went to Baylor.

My daughter thinks she's going to Baylor.

She's not going to Baylor.

I can tell you, I've seen the checkbook.

She ain't going to Baylor.

But a friend of mine was at Baylor, he was in his apartment, and like all of us, he would procrastinate and he had a paper due and he knew it was due.

Procrastinated to the day before, went to the library, got like 15 books, took them home, put them on his kitchen table, put on a pot of coffee at 11 o'clock at night, started working on the paper due the next morning.

And so he's there cranking it out.

How many of you remember what that was like, huh?

Because you were 19.

Now that you're 30, you try to talk to people about being disciplined with their time.

They just look at you like you got a horn coming out of your head.

Like, okay, whatever, old man.

So my buddy's there, he's working on his paper, and he says at 11 o'clock, about 12:30, he was in a good rhythm, and all of a sudden, somebody, he said, I thought the horn was stuck.

Somebody in the parking lot right outside his door is rank, rank, rank.

And he's like, okay, that's just a bit annoying.

So he turned his music up a little bit louder.

And he and the guy's just like, dude, get off the horn, okay?

They're not coming out.

It's not the Dairy Queen.

Come knock on the door and get whoever you got.

So he's kind of thinking all these things in his head.

He said it went on for almost 10 minutes.

And they just breathed that in for a minute.

Because just then, when I made that obnoxious, some of you were like, okay, that's enough of that, okay?

I got my Super Bowl vibe on a little early last night, and I don't feel good.

He said, You just, and finally the guy was like, you know, there's kind of like the little toot honk, like doot toot.

And then there's the angry honk, the guy just laid on it like a fog hawk.

And he said, I couldn't take it anymore.

I was just fixing to get up and go out there.

And about that time there was a knock on the door.

And he's like, You ain't coming for me, are you?

And he opens the door, and the Waco police are standing there.

And he's like, Oh, oh, uh, help you.

And he says, Uh, do you own a vehicle license plate number, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And he said, Yeah, yeah, why?

Because somebody was breaking into your car, and this guy he was dropping his girlfriend off, and he could tell by the way they were acting, they didn't own that car, is he was just laying on the horn to wake you up to let you know that you were being taken advantage of.

And all of a sudden the horn wasn't offensive anymore.

Paul writes in Romans chapter 13, verse 11, and says, You know the time.

Romans 13:11

It's time to wake up from this kind of a culture-induced slumber.

Besides this, you know the time, the urgency of the time.

If you're going to be motivated by then, you got to understand the urgency of the time.

And by the way, when it says the Bible talks about the urgency of the time, it's not talking about fatalism.

In other words, don't go to your Super Bowl party today and look at all the food and all the drinks and think, we shouldn't be doing this.

We should just take this money and giving it to the poor.

No, you shouldn't.

You shouldn't have a good Super Bowl party.

Now, some of you that's hard to hear.

You're like, oh, we should.

Christianity involves fasting and feasting.

And if you just do the fasting part, oh, we're gonna give this all away.

After a while, you become a really joyless person.

So if you're going to a party tonight for the Super Bowl, enjoy yourself.

And if there's wings left over, bring them to my house.

I'll show you what to do with them.

He says, hey, understand the urgency of the time.

Secondly, the comprehensive nature of salvation.

It's the next part of verse 11.

He says, Besides this, you know the time that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep.

For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.

So I had you raise your hands a few minutes ago.

He says, For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.

You kind of think it's easy to read that and kind of go, what do you mean it's nearer to us?

See, when you first become a Christian, a lot of times, and this is because this is the way preachers preach it, is that we we talk about salvation.

And by salvation I mean a relationship with God, a priority relationship with God that kind of changes your life.

But we don't talk about salvation as pastors the way the Bible talks about it.

We talk about salvation in terms of avoidance.

Like I remember I was not a Christian in high school, and people would ask me, Well, you don't want to go to hell, do you?

And then my thought was, I don't know, are you going to be there?

Because I just didn't, I was just kind of, I didn't meet that many people who I would that profess to be Christians.

They were really enjoyable to be around.

They weren't fun, they weren't very intelligent, they couldn't kind of enunciate a worldview that you'd be like, oh, now that's kind of interesting.

I'd like to hear you more about that.

Instead, it was, you're gonna go to hell when you die.

You don't want to go to hell, do you?

Uh I by the way, when I was 16, I wasn't thinking much about hell.

I was living in it in my mind.

It just wasn't.

So here's what I'm saying.

When the Bible talks about salvation, it's comprehensive in nature.

It's not just because salvation is not just what I did back on July 5th, 1982.

That's when I became a Christian.

July of 1982.

Now, when I say that, let me also say this.

Some of you, when you hear somebody talk about, I became a Christian on this day, your first thought is, well, I don't remember the day.

Is something wrong with me?

Let me out my wife.

My wife can't remember the day she became a believer either.

But let me tell you this: she's a much better believer than I am.

Uh and don't say hallelujah to that.

Do you hear this down here?

These disrespectful.

Hallelujah.

No, I didn't grow up.

For me, it was a really contrasting thing.

I did not grow up in the church, I did not go around, I didn't go to church hardly at all.

And we went some as a kid.

Uh, but but but so for me, it was a really, it was a night and day thing.

I mean, when I became a Christian, people were like, Are you kidding me?

No way.

That's what people's literal response when I told them, hey, I became a Christian, I don't want to do that anymore.

And they're like, You what?

My wife grew up in the church, grew up in a Christian home, good mom and dad, kind of like the cleavers.

They just did all the right stuff.

She's a little kid, she became a Christian, and she just lived like it.

She didn't party much in high school, she didn't do any of that kind of stuff.

And and by the way, look at the way God rewarded her.

I'm just saying.

But when we met, I didn't have a frame of reverence.

When we met, we were talking to know each other.

I said to my wife, I said, So you never partied?

And she's like, No, you never been drunk?

No, never been drunk in my whole life.

Am I missing something?

Well, I'm no, no, I'm just because I'm kind of thinking, I'm going on a date with like Mother Mary here or something.

What are we gonna talk about?

And I'm like, so you never just went wild for a period of time?

No, I just I just never did.

I was kind of boring.

I just I had a relationship with God, I just wanted to live like it.

And I remember thinking, that ain't normal.

Because it's in church, you can look at someone like me that was just an idiot and becomes a Christian and go, oh, that's normal.

I just want to say my life's testimony is is more normal.

That that's it's okay.

Because we kind of look at the guy that has the dramatic conversion and think, oh no, that no.

No.

That's but what do you mean when you say the comprehensive nature of salvation?

What I mean is this it's past, present, and future.

I became a Christian on July 5th, 1980.

That's my past.

That's the big theological word is justification.

That's when I was made right with God by God.

The present, I'm being sanctified, I'm being set apart.

And let me, I told the first service this and they didn't enjoy it, which means it's probably right, so I might as well tell you.

One of the most sanctifying things in your life is to not get your way.

It just is.

You shouldn't always get your way.

Like yesterday.

In our house, the kind of unspoken norm is that I get to watch whatever I want to watch on TV.

I don't want to watch, like, I don't watch a whole lot of TV shows.

I watch sporting events that take like three and four hours.

Like today, I'm gonna record the Phoenix Open, and I'm gonna watch that, and I'm gonna go right into the Super Bowl.

And I told my kids, hey, when the Super Bowl comes on, shut your yappers, okay?

Don't touch the remote.

But my wife has shows she likes to watch.

Like yesterday, we're we're we're we're laying in bed drinking coffee, and it and the DVR kicks in and it goes to a show called The Pioneer Woman.

And I'm like, in my mind, I'm like, hello, it's the Saturday before the Super Bowl.

We should be being told what Peyton Manning's having for breakfast or something.

And so my wife's like, oh yeah.

And I'm like, oh yeah.

Uh of course I'm not saying this out loud.

I'm just kind of like, What?

The Pioneer Woman, in case you don't know, is a show where a woman cooks and just talks into the camera.

There's no one else there.

Women, why do you watch these shows?

They're just another reason to hate yourself.

Here's why.

You don't have these prep cooks that come in.

People cut up all the vegetables and it's all right there in little glass bowls, and you go, a little ginger, a little parsley.

So my wife sees that and goes, I'm gonna fix one of those recipes.

And by the time she, I mean, the kitchen looks like a bomb went off, and she's like, Here, this is probably not good, but eat it.

Thank you, pioneer woman, for ruining our day.

So a buddy of mine calls me yesterday morning and says, What are you doing?

I was like, You don't want to know.

He says, What do you mean?

I said my wife had to go do check on something.

We had to pause the DVR.

I'm watching a cooking show.

She's like, I gotta go.

Click.

One of the best things for me, one of the most sanctifying realities of my life is to not get my way.

Now, yesterday was funny because I I I kind of give in and watch those things, but then I kind of give little editorial comments, and for some reason my wife doesn't think that's funny, and she'll just pause the TV and go, Really?

Really?

You you watch men take sticks and knock a little ball in a hole out in a field.

No, no, no, that's not what it is.

It's a well-manicured lawn.

It is a beautiful piece of God's creation.

And watch your little mouth there about when you talk about that.

Okay?

And my wife today, my wife's so excited, she don't want to watch the Super Bowl, she wants to watch the commercials.

Well, then she wants to back up and watch the commercial again and watch it again and watch it again.

I'm like, the game, we're 16 minutes and 11 seconds behind.

Stuff is happening, and I don't know.

And my wife will go, You got a problem not getting your way?

Sanctification.

Sanctification.

It's the process.

Look at me.

Sanctification is the process by which you move gradually and consistently away from who you by nature are.

Are and more into who you by design God created you to be.

That's sanctification.

It's just holy sandpaper.

It is God just kind of loving you enough to not let you be you for the rest of your life.

See, that's the comprehensive nature.

It's past justification, it's present sanctification, it's future.

Here's another big word, glorification.

Now, why do I tell you that?

Because it's that is what Paul's talking about in Romans 13 when he says, salvation is nearer to us.

We are getting closer to the consummation, to realize in this entire thing.

If you've got a Bible and you're in Romans 13, turn to the right to 1 Peter.

If you don't have one, it'll come up on the screen.

But I want you to see this because one of the things you should notice in the Bible is that when it talks about salvation, the culmination, kind of a, oh, where you kind of realize, okay, now this is what I've been living my entire life, that awaits you in heaven.

Your best life, to put it in terms we can understand, your best life cannot be had right now.

It just can't.

Because if you and I can be completely satisfied apart from what God has prepared for us in heaven, then you don't need heaven.

Here's what the Bible says: 1 Peter chapter 1, verse 3.

1 Peter 1:3

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.

By the way, I don't have time to go into this, but look at me.

Your inheritance that's awaiting you in heaven is imperishable, it's unfading, and it's undefiled.

It's not based on, oh, did I do good today?

Because I want to have something in heaven.

The Bible says it's there waiting for you.

It's kept in heaven for you.

Verse 5, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time.

In this you rejoice, that your salvation is waiting to be revealed.

Though now for a little while, if necessary, you may have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold, that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Though you have not seen him, you love him.

Though you do not see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Now, what do we mean when we say, hey, the motivating nature of then?

You got to tell yourself, because otherwise you're gonna be a Christian 26 years and be the most sentimental and inconsequential person anybody knows.

I had to call a friend of mine because it's easy as a pastor to figure out what everybody wants and then give it to them and kind of, hey, let's don't rock the boat.

Let's just kind of, you gotta give in, you gotta give a little to get a little, blah, blah, blah.

And pretty soon, as a pastor, you end up more of a politician than an actual pastor.

And so I just want to confess that this week I had to wake myself up because I woke up one day and I was supposed to have lunch with a friend of mine on Friday.

And the thought of having lunch with him, I was just like, I don't want to have lunch with you.

And so I was thinking, what's a lie that I can tell to get out of lunch?

That thought went through my mind.

Because I didn't want to sit there and have lunch and have all this resentment in me.

And so I was like, man, Lord, I don't and clear as a bell, the Holy Spirit said, call him and tell him you resent him.

And so I did.

I called him and said, Hey, I know we're supposed to have lunch this Friday, but the thought of having lunch with you makes me want to lie, and lying is a sin, so I'm just calling to tell you I got some resentment in me.

I'm not saying it's valid or right, but I'm just gonna birth the baby, and you can help me clean it up, and we'll name it later.

But I'm not having lunch with you because I am full of resentment towards you.

Y'all are like, I'm so glad you don't know my phone number.

Because you see, here's what the that's the Christian in me.

That's the I read the Bible and I take it seriously.

The pastor in me says, Well, brother, let's just have a salad and see where this goes.

How are you doing, brother?

No.

And by the way, he called me back the other afternoon and said, Thank you.

You're right.

Thank you for loving me enough.

I love you and I hate you for it.

And we laughed, and I said, I don't know if that makes sense.

He goes, Oh, yeah, I've been avoiding that, and you just basically pointed it out, and I gotta deal with it.

And the fact that I didn't deal with it meant that you had to deal with it.

And I said, and that's why I resent you, because you become one of my friends who think Neil enjoys awkward conversations.

We'll let Neil handle that.

Oh! And he said, What was that?

I said, just a rough guttural just came out of me.

Now, why do I tell you that?

Because I don't want to be, I've been a Christian since 1982.

It'd be easy for me to just kick it into neutral and just coast.

And just stop being an authentic person.

I don't try to be weird or different.

That's never crossed my mind.

I do want to be faithful.

I do want to take the Bible seriously.

Why?

Because my salvation is comprehensive.

I was saved in 1982, I am saved today, and I will be saved when I stand before God on judgment day.

That's because I've been justified, I've been sanctified, and on that day I'm gonna be glorified.

The third thing the Bible says to us about the motivating nature of then, the third thing is simply this is that the coming day.

Look at verse 12.

You still with me?

He says in verse 12, the night is far gone, and the day is at hand.

Just let that in for just a minute.

The night is far gone.

To the Jewish mindset, night and day represent two ages.

The night represented this age, this culture, this world in which we live.

The day represents this dawning reality that Christ instituted and it's going to be culminated when he comes again.

But the night is far gone.

We're deep into the fourth quarter here, Paul says.

Hey, sober up.

Stop thinking, hey, you know, this thing could happen whenever it could happen a thousand years from now.

It doesn't matter how we live, let's just all love each other.

That's all that matters.

Love conquers everything.

Uh well, be careful.

Because you can give yourself permission that the Bible never gives you.

The Bible doesn't give me permission to go meet with my friend for lunch on Friday and sit there and be full of resentment and just be phony and just, hey, good to see you, good to see you, hey, huh, huh?

And leave and still have bitterness in my heart.

And so you say, What do you say?

I said, That coming day.

This is this is what motivates, because there's going to come a day I'm going to stand before God.

And the Bible says in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ to receive what is due to him for the deeds done in the body, whether good or evil.

2 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

That means the bad that I've done is going to be dealt with, and the good that I've done is going to be rewarded.

That day's coming.

It says that everybody in this room is going to stand before God.

You're just going to now that that may stir up fear in you, may stir up anxiety in you.

But here's what Paul says it should stir up in us certain kind of behaviors.

And I want to close this morning just pointing these out.

Look at verse 12.

He says, The night is far gone and the day is at hand.

Next two words.

So then.

Because this is true.

What kind of lives should we live?

He says, so.

Then let us cast off, first thing, let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

Let us cast off, let us put on.

The Bible never says it's not about don't, don't, don't.

When it says don't do this or get rid of this, it says, hey, put on this.

Let's cast off the deeds of darkness.

Let's stop doing the things that we would only do because we believe no one sees us.

You are who you are.

I am who I am when I do the things that only I and God know about.

That's your authentic self.

It's not the person that you manage your public persona, and then behind the scenes, you're a totally different person.

No, that totally different person is really who you are.

And so the Bible says, hey, cast off the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.

If you hear armor, you should think Ephesians 6.

And he talks about, hey, put on the armor of God.

Not going to go into that, but just other than to say, if you're a woman, my wife teaches a Bible study right up here on Wednesday nights at 6:30, where they're just going to walk through the armor of God.

They did all the background stuff this past week, and now they'll just get into the, hey, this is what the Bible says.

This is how the Bible says we kind of dress ourselves.

It kind of empowers us to live and do what the Bible says we can do.

He says, cast off and put on.

By the way, the Bible is replete with references to light.

He says, cast off the deeds of darkness, put on the armor of light.

Let me just read a couple.

I read too many in the first service.

But like back in Isaiah, when God was, the prophets were speaking and saying, Here, the Messiah is going to come, and this is what it's going to be like.

He uses this language.

He says, The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.

Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them light has shined.

Jesus says in John 8, I am the light of the world.

Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of light.

May you be strengthened, Paul writes in Colossians 1, may you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints of light.

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Now just here, he says he has delivered us from the domain of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of his beloved son.

There's things in darkness that are not a big deal.

There are things that you're just supposed to do because everybody else does them.

But the Bible says when you've been transferred in the kingdom of his son, what was not a big deal over there is a big deal here.

It's just a big deal.

And it goes on and on and on.

Jesus Himself says in John 3, he says, Hey, men will not come to the light because their deeds are evil.

For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his deeds should be exposed.

So he says, Hey, because all this stuff is true, because you got to know what time it is and the day is coming.

What do we do?

Hey, let's cast off and let's put on.

Secondly, he says, walk properly.

Walk properly, verse 13.

What do you mean?

Let us walk properly as in the daytime.

Not in immorality and drunkenness and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy.

And by the way, well, you know what struck me?

You ever read the Bible and things strike you?

You're like, whoa, I never saw that.

The Bible puts jealousy in this passage on the same level with immorality.

You jealous of anyone?

You secretly in the back of your thumb, your your mind where only you and nobody else knows.

You have somebody you just kind of look at and you're like, You say, no, why are you telling us this?

Because when the Bible says, hey, let us walk properly, the Bible can use a few words and say a whole lot.

For example, there was a man that lived a long time ago, his name was Augustine, one of the early church fathers.

He was a he was a rascal.

He had a mistress, he was called to minister, and he struggled with this call to ministry, and so he lived in uh an adulterous lifestyle or a fornicating lifestyle.

Uh and he he he would pray things like, Lord, give me moral purity, but not yet.

And and and he was just honest about it.

And he was a very gifted man, very brilliant man, and people were like, Man, you're just throwing this all away.

And he wrote in his journals one time, he said, Boundlessly, I was held by a love for women.

And some of you in this room, you understand that.

Why do I tell you that?

Because at the height of this tension inside of him, where he knew God had called him, he knew his mother Monica prayed for years because she knew that God had called him to ministry and to be used of God.

He was in his backyard and he heard some kids in the next yard chanting, take up and read, take up and read, take up and read.

And he just thought, okay.

And he grabbed the Bible.

You ever grab the Bible and just crack it open?

He cracked it open and looked down.

And he read Romans chapter 13, verse 13, where Paul says, Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in drunkenness, immorality, sensuality, quarreling, and jealousy.

Romans 13:13

And in just that brief moment, Augustine, that was his moment where he realized just that little phrase, let us walk properly, changed his life.

He put away his mistress, surrendered to God, became one of the early fathers of the church, wrote a great book called Confessions.

You ever want to read a good book?

Read Augustine's Confessions.

You'll understand that the Bible understands the things that you think about and go through.

He also wrote another book called The City of God.

Greatly used of God.

And you say, Why do you tell us that?

Because sometimes some of you can think, well, I've sinned so much, God could never use me.

That's a lie.

That's not the voice of God that tells you that.

That's not what God's about.

Third thing the Bible says to us, and we'll be done this morning, it says, put on the Lord Jesus and make no provision for the flesh.

What do you mean, put on the Lord Jesus?

Putting on Christ refers to kind of clothing your soul with the kind of the moral disposition of Christ.

And that sounds all heady and everything, but basically you begin to take on the habits of Jesus.

And there's more curiosity about that than we would probably want to admit.

And let me give you a real practical example.

You ever seen a bracelet someone's wearing it says WWJD on it?

They're wanting to put on the moral disposition of Jesus.

They're wanting to say, what would Jesus do in this situation?

But the Bible says, hey, put on the Lord Jesus and make no provision for the flesh.

I want to finish by just kind of talking about what it, what the Bible means when it says, make no provision for the flesh.

We upgraded a couple months ago to HD.

We never had HD on our cable package, and we got a H high definition TV, and then all of a sudden I was like, Bam, where have we been living this whole time?

It was like a brave new world.

And I was just like, and the guy came to hook it up and he said, Good guy, we're just chatting it up.

He lives in Cata.

Said, you go to church anywhere out there?

He goes, No, you know, funny you say that.

My wife, she's been kind of riding on me, telling me, hey, I want to go to church, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I said, You got kids?

And he goes, Yeah.

I said, Children are designed by God to stop you in your tracks and make you realize you don't have all you need to do this.

Man, say that again.

You got kids?

I said, Where do you think I learned that?

I didn't read that in the book.

And so we got talking, and he said, Well, Mr.

McClinn, I want you to know that you've gotten a complimentary six-month subscription to all our premium movie channels.

And part of my head says, Oh, I like boxing.

I do.

I love boxing.

I don't like UFC or whatever.

I like the pugilistic sport of two people getting there and getting it on.

And I thought, I can watch boxing.

And immediately what rose up in me is, make no provision for the flesh.

And I said, uh, I don't want that.

He goes, No, it's free.

I said, that's cost many a man a lot.

That ain't free.

He goes, You don't understand.

You get HBO and Showtime and blah, blah, blah.

You got HBO 1, 2, and 3, and HBO Latino, and da-da-da-da.

I don't care how many 17 HBOs you got, 14.

I do not want that in my home.

Not just by the grace of God, that's not been a big struggle for me.

But here's also another reason.

I don't even want to get let it be an option.

But here's another thing.

What one generation allows in moderation, the next generation will excuse in excess.

Things that aren't a big deal for you are a problem for you.

They'll get your kids.

They will get your children.

Because your children grow up and they go, oh, mom and dad kind of dabble in this.

And they go, My mom and dad turned out okay.

Children do not have the maturity to not justify sin.

And so the Bible says, make no provision for the flesh.

You say, What do you mean?

God came up after the first service and said, Hey, help me.

I think I know what that means.

What does that mean?

And I said, When you get ready to sin, do you have the means in your home to sin in the manner you prefer?

He just smiled and said, No, no one's ever asked me that question.

So I ask you all the question.

When you get ready to sin, do you have in your home right now, or in your office, or hidden in your vehicle, the means to sin in the manner which you prefer?

And I wish we didn't all know what I mean when I say the manner that you prefer.

But most of us have this besetting sin that we've just kind of accommodated and kind of rearranged the furniture around to make it feel more normal.

And the Bible says that's not normal.

Cast off the deeds of darkness.

Let us live properly.

Let us put on the Lord Jesus and make no provision for the flesh.

Have you made provision?

Is there anything in your life that you've allowed to stay that if you put on the Lord Jesus would have to go?

Stand to your feet.

Let me speak a blessing over you.

Your God is the God of queso and chips.

Your favorite beverage.

And anything else you will partake of today.

Only remember this live properly in relation to all of it.

And enjoy it.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Bless you.

You're dismissed.