Wake Up! Get Dressed! Love! (Romans Week 31) by Rich Nathan

Good morning.

I just want to say publicly, I think uh Michael's doing a great job.

And so can we just say thank you?

It's nice to hear God's word preached well.

I just appreciate that.

And um yeah, I think you're doing a great job.

So and I tell you that every week.

Well, let me begin.

Uh how many of you like to watch your favorite movie just over and over again?

That you have you have some favorite movies and you just, you know, rewatch them, and maybe especially during Christmas time, you know, there are traditions where you just watch the same Christmas movie over and over again.

It's a wonderful life, you know.

Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.

That's a theological truth, and you can.

Or the Christmas story, you know, with Ralphie who desperately wants to get a BB gun, and his mother keeps saying, You're gonna shoot your eye out.

Or uh the princess bride, you know.

As you wish.

As you wish, yeah?

Inconceivable.

Or The Godfather with Clemenza, leave the gun, take the cannolis, I'm gonna make him an offer.

He can't refuse.

My wife Marlene has got to be in the top 1% of repeat movie watchers.

Whenever we fly overseas, you know, I take it as an opportunity to like see movies that I haven't seen before that are in the theaters.

She just watches the same movies.

Every time we got off the plane, I said, What did you watch?

And it's it's the exact same movie over and over again.

And and she particularly loves two romantic comedies from the 1990s uh Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail with Tom Hanks and uh Meg Bryan.

And and uh Sleepless in Seattle, for those of you who haven't seen it, uh Tom Hanks plays A Widower.

He has a young son, and his young son is really concerned about dad's emotional well-being, so he calls up a radio therapist.

For those of you who are younger, there used to be something called a radio.

And and they would determine what you listen to by way of music.

You didn't get to choose.

They i i i it ask your grandparents.

And anyway, they also had on these radios therapists who you would call up and you know, and and they would counsel you over the radio for voyeuristic pleasure of the rest of us.

And so, so uh Tom Hank's son calls up this radio therapist and says he's worried about his dad, and she says, Well, why don't you put him on?

And he gets on the the show, and and uh they start talking, and and she says to him, What did you love about your wife?

and then he runs through a whole list of things that he loved about his wife.

It's quite quite romantic, very tender scene.

And then she says, How are you surviving?

And Tom Hanks says, Well, I plan to wake up in the morning, get dressed, and breathe in and out until the end of the day.

And I hope one day that I won't have to remind myself to get up and breathe in and out.

What he's saying is that when you're going through a hard time, sometimes the only thing you can do is just keep moving.

Keep thriving, you know, keep keep surviving.

You you don't have any other choice.

The pain won't go away.

I'm just trying to survive.

Well, we've been going through a series from the book of Romans since this church opened uh in January, and uh we uh are hearing from the Apostle Paul, and the Apostle Paul says, you know, you can do more than survive.

You you can really thrive in life.

The counsel is not just get up in the morning, breathe in and out, and try to get through the day.

Paul's counsel boils down to three things that we're going to study today.

Wake up, get dressed, and love.

Wake up, get dressed and love.

Let's turn to the Lord and then we'll turn to God's word together.

Lord, we thank you for worship in this place.

We thank you that the name of Jesus can be exalted.

And we're grateful, Lord, that you've revealed yourself to us, that you've opened up our hearts.

I pray, Lord, for soft hearts to receive your word, and I pray for power in ministry at the end of this talk.

We welcome you in Jesus' name.

Amen.

I'm gonna be reading from Romans 13.

If you have a Bible, Pastor Michael encourages people to bring their Bibles every week.

Some of you are quite disobedient.

Bring your Bible.

Let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another.

For whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.

The commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal.

You shall not cover it, and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command, love your neighbor as yourself.

Love does no harm to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

And do this, understanding the present time, the hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.

The night is nearly over, the day is almost here.

So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.

Let us behave decently as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy.

Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.

Well, the Apostle Paul has a certain logic to the flow, but if you'll permit me a little pastoral license, what I'd like to do is just uh take the end from the beginning.

And because the the typical way that we go through our day is we first wake up, we then get dressed, and then we carry on by loving.

So I'm going to start at the end and then work towards the beginning.

And the first injunction, therefore, would be wake up, wake up.

Romans 13, 11 and 12 again.

And do this understanding the present time.

The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.

The night is nearly over, the day is almost here.

Paul is saying that the hour of Jesus' return is drawing near.

The time when all wars will cease, all violence will end, is coming.

The time when cancer will be healed and all the pains in our bodies will go away.

There's coming a time when every funeral will stop in midstream.

And every grave will open up.

And all the craziness that's going on in the world and in Washington and every other world capital, it will all be done.

The hour is drawing near, and it's nearer now than when you first believed.

That's what Paul says.

The dawn broke in the first coming of Jesus.

Light came over the horizon, and through the life and death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, light streamed into the world, and this light continues to this day through the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

We experience the presence of God in worship through his gifts.

But one day it won't just be dawn.

One day it will be high noon.

The sun will rise, and all the dead will rise with him.

And so the Apostle Paul says, Wake up! You know, the Bible has a couple of messages regarding sleep.

And one of the messages is that a good night's sleep is a gift of God.

It's a gift, it's a blessing to have peaceful dreams, to wake up refreshed.

Oh, that's a gift from the Lord.

The Psalms particularly talk about the blessing of sleep.

We read in Psalm 127, verse 3 in vain you rise up early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat, for he grants sleep to those he loves.

Psalms 127:3

And the reason why we can sleep peacefully is because of a psalm that uh what uh we read a few psalms earlier in Psalm 121.

He will not let your foot slip, he who watches over you will not slumber.

Do you understand why you can sleep peacefully?

It's because the Lord never sleeps.

So you can sleep.

We go to sleep because our heavenly Father never sleeps.

Sleep is a sign of spiritual and psychological health.

That's why the psalmist says, in peace will I lie down and sleep, for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.

It's because of Jesus' childlike trust in his father that we find him in a boat, sleeping like a baby on a cushion during a storm, while the other disciples, you know the story, when the other disciples are freaking out, Jesus is fast asleep.

And that's the kind of trust that God calls us to.

That no matter what's going on around you, you can put your head on your pillow and say, Lord, you've got this.

I don't have to fret, I don't have to spin, I don't have to worry about work or family, you've got this.

I'm sleeping in the bosom of my heavenly father.

But in contrast, sleeplessness, whether it's in Seattle or central Ohio, sleeplessness is always a sign that something is wrong.

Always.

Something is wrong emotionally, something is wrong spiritually, something is wrong physically.

We're sleepless because we're anxious, because we find it difficult to trust.

We're sleepless because we're experiencing an emotional problem.

Depression often leads to sleeplessness.

Anxiety leads to sleeplessness.

Sometimes there's physical problems.

We're in chronic pain, and so we're sleepless.

Sometimes our medication can make us sleepless.

Sometimes it's guilt.

But sleeplessness is always a signal.

Something's not right.

Something's not right.

We're worried about our finances, we're worried about our children or our grandchildren.

Sleeplessness is in the Bible a particular mark of the wealthy.

Here's what it says in Ecclesiastes: the sleep of a laborer is sweet.

Whether they eat little or much, but as for the rich, their abundance provides them no sleep.

And we see this over and over again with rulers in the Bible, especially in the book of Daniel.

Do you notice that every king can't sleep?

I mean, uh, Nebuchadnezzar can't sleep, he's troubled by anxious dreams.

And uh King Darius can't sleep because he's troubled by guilt.

And you can go way back to the beginning of the Bible.

Pharaoh can't sleep because he's having nightmares.

Sleeplessness is a function of, or is an indicator that something's wrong.

Politicians frequently can't sleep.

They're up in the middle of the night pounding out angry tweets or self-congratulatory texts.

You can apply that as you will.

Let me ask you a question.

How are you sleeping?

How are you sleeping?

Do you find yourself able to just fall asleep?

And that you sleep peacefully through the night and you're able to trust in your heavenly father.

Do you find yourself tossing and turning and restless?

At the end of the message, I felt led by the Lord to invite any of you who struggle with sleep disorders or or struggle to just get a good night's sleep.

It is a prayer of yours.

Lord, help me to sleep.

Help me to sleep.

Give me the blessing of sleep to come up and we'll pray for you that the Lord would grant that to you.

So, sleep is a grace.

But on the other hand, the Bible has another message regarding sleep, and that is wake up.

Wake up.

Sometimes sleep is bad.

In Romans 13, 11 and 12, the Apostle Paul says, Do you not know what time it is?

The hour is coming, and darkness is everywhere.

This is not the time to lounge around.

Evil is pressing around you, and evil is pressing around your family and around this world.

Stop being so spiritually complacent.

Stop being so spiritually dull.

So lackadaisical in your spiritual life.

Wake up.

And have you ever noticed in the Bible how often it is that people have to be wakened from their spiritual slumber.

I don't mean physically, but spiritually.

Oh, we have the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane.

And Jesus has warned them that the hour of darkness has come.

And he's warned them that temptation is going to be all around them and that he is about to depart.

And despite all this horrible news, what do they do?

They're asleep.

And he has to keep going to them and saying, wake up, wake up, wake up.

They can't stay up.

I think of Samson asleep on Delilah's lap, and he's just completely oblivious to the danger that's all around him.

He's sleeping.

I think of the five virgins in Jesus' parable who are sleeping, well, ten are sleeping, but five are unprepared.

Has there ever been a woman on her wedding day that overslept?

But Jesus says, here's five women that just, eh, whatever.

And the bridegroom comes and they're not prepared.

Jesus talks about a sleepy farmer who, while he's asleep, the enemy comes and sows weeds among the wheat.

And that's meant to speak to us that are you spiritually obtuse or are you so dull, he says to us, that you don't know what's going on in your own life, in your own soul, in your own family?

He calls us to be watchful, to be awake, to not be spiritually sluggish.

So one way to figure out am I spiritually sluggish or am I spiritually awake is to just simply ask yourself a question: Do I ever wrestle with God in prayer?

Like ever?

Do I ever really struggle with the Lord to bring his kingdom into this world, into my own soul?

I'm wrestling with you, God, for my kids.

I'm wrestling with you for my grandkids, I'm wrestling with you for, you know, some injustice in the world.

I want to see you break in.

Do you ever wrestle with the Lord for an extended period of time?

If so, you're spiritually awake.

But if the very thought of wrestling with God makes you tired, if you say, you know, just just even that image of wrestling with God, it's like, it's like pushing this huge rock uphill, it just exhausts me.

I can't even imagine it.

If every time the darkness gathers, you find yourself wanting to escape.

I'm just gonna scroll through social media again.

I'm just gonna put my fingers in my ears and close my eyes and pretend that everything is going to work out.

Wrestling with God is something that just exhausts me.

Jesus says, wake up.

Wake up.

He's called us into a battle.

This world is at war.

This is not peacetime.

There is a war going on all around us, and darkness is gathering, and the enemy does come for loved ones to walk them away.

And so he says, wake up.

Now, if we want to not just survive but thrive, the Apostle Paul says, get dressed.

Romans 13, 12 to 14 says this.

So let's put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.

Let us behave decently as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy, rather clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.

When I was in college to help support Marlene and me, I used to work on flat roofs.

And in the summer, we would spread tar out over these flat roofs with a brush.

And sometimes the tar would splash up, it would get on my hands, it would get on my shoes, it would get on my pants, I would sweat through the day on, you know, a hot flat roof in the sun.

Imagine if I came home and I decided, you know what, I'm really tired.

I'm just gonna get in bed with these filthy tar-covered clothes and boots on.

What do you think Marlene would have said?

Come here, honey.

What are you doing?

Get out of bed with those filthy clothes.

That's what the apostle Paul is saying.

Get up and change out of your filthy clothes.

And uh just like you wouldn't wear filthy clothes to bed, Paul tells us there's three pairs of things that you need to take off: carousing and drunkenness, immorality and debauchery, dissension and jealousy.

He's talking about the drunken party culture of the Greco-Roman world.

One commentator said that the debauchery of the Grecan Greco-Roman world was so extreme that it would put a frat toga party to shame.

It would be like a frat toga party was like a convent.

He says, if you want to get a sense of the Greco-Roman party culture, it would be like Las Vegas on spring break with the Emperor Caligula being the MC.

And so there are some things that, as followers of Jesus, we need to take off.

A follower of Jesus should never drink too much alcohol.

We should never find ourselves tipsy, we should never find ourselves intoxicated.

A follower of Jesus should never smoke weed.

That's just basic.

Because we never want to be under the control of.

Anything other than the Holy Spirit.

And so followers of Jesus don't get caught up in a party culture.

That's not fitting.

We take that off.

Now, some of us are feeling really self-superior and going, I'm glad I don't do that.

I mean, my wife Marlene has never had anything lit between her lips.

Nothing.

She's never taken a puff of a cigarette.

She's never smoked weed.

It's unlikely that she's going to start.

So she can feel superior, right?

But if you ever read scripture and you go, I don't do that, I'm better than the person who does it.

If you ever read scripture and go, that doesn't apply to me, thank God, then you're reading the Bible wrongly.

Because what you always want is not just to read the scripture, but have the scripture read you.

And drill deep.

And the Apostle Paul says that we don't just take off party culture.

But there are other things that we need to take off.

Listen in Colossians 3, verses 8 to 10.

Colossians 3:8–10

But now you also put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.

Do not lie to one another since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, and have put on the new self who is being renewed in a true knowledge according to the image of the one who created him.

So we say, we can't say, well, I don't get drunk, the Apostle Paul says, yeah, but do you ever slander anyone?

Do you gossip?

When you're cornered, do you find yourself just bending the truth a little bit, shading things, not completely telling the truth all the time?

What's coming out of your mouth?

Yes, put off intoxication, but also put off evil speech.

Friends, if Romans has taught us anything, we should never rely on our own righteousness before God.

As we've been going through the book of Romans, one thing that it's told us over and over again is the only righteousness that we should cling to is the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ that we receive by faith.

On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.

So we understand the Apostle Paul tells us to take off dirty clothes.

What should we put on?

Paul says this rather clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ.

And do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.

Put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, what does that mean, put on the Lord Jesus Christ?

How do we do that?

Well, how do you put on a person?

It may be that we're supposed to put on Christ-like attitudes, but I think there's something else going on here when it says, put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

You know, we find help from Greco-Roman theater.

When you put on a person, what they would be saying to an actor is immerse yourself so much in the role that you're playing that your own identity is subordinated to this person that you're playing.

You put this person on, you inhale them, you inhabit their being.

You immerse yourself so much in this other person that to a certain extent you become them.

And when I think about this idea of being an actor, I think about certain actors in Hollywood.

They're called method actors.

I don't know if you're familiar with this.

But method actors immerse themselves in the role that they're about to play, and they become so uh absorbed with it that it's not just when the director says roll them that they're playing that role.

Way before that, they're acting like that person.

One of my favorite actors in Hollywood is a guy named Daniel Day Lewis.

He's won several Academy Awards.

I don't know if you're familiar with him.

He played Lincoln, he won an Academy Award for Lincoln.

But his first Academy Award was for uh a movie called My Left Foot.

I don't know if you've ever seen that.

It's unbelievable.

My Left Foot, he back in the 1980s, he played an artist named uh Christy Brown.

He was an Irish artist who had cerebral palsy.

And he used to paint and write with his left foot and a paintbrush between his toes.

So, what does Daniel Day Lewis do to play this uh crippled artist?

He flies to Ireland several months before, and he gets in a wheelchair, hunched over, and he begins to practice painting with his left foot, and he spends time with severely disabled uh children and young adults, and he's so hunched over in the chair for several months that he actually breaks two ribs.

Another actor said, Why do you do this?

Well, why do you take so much time just to play a role?

And Daniel Lewis's response, Daniel Day Lewis's response was so classic, he said, I'm not a good enough actor to do it any other way.

Do you know what he's saying?

He's saying, I don't have the ability to just become an artist with cerebral palsy when the director says, three, two, one, roll them.

I can't just turn it on and then turn it off when he says, now cut.

This applies to us, brothers and sisters.

We are simply not good enough actors to practice Christianity when temptation rolls around.

We can't just put it on.

Well, we can't just suddenly say, okay, now there's a crisis, I'm suddenly hit in the face by something horrible, and now I'm going to trust in Jesus.

If we haven't been moment by moment, day by day, months before, practicing the Lord Jesus Christ, when the hour of darkness, when the hour of temptation comes, we will be rolled over.

And so if we want to have peace, the way Jesus had peace and was able to lay down on a pillow and go to sleep during a storm, if we want to have peace instead of anxiety, if we want to forgive the way the Lord Jesus forgave his enemies, if we want to love like Jesus, we need to do what Jesus did way before the time of temptation.

What did Jesus do?

To prepare himself.

He got up early in the morning.

He took time with his heavenly father, he immersed himself in holy scripture.

He practiced these spiritual disciplines so that when darkness came, he was able to do what he otherwise would not have been able to do before that.

We can't turn Christianity on and off like a faucet.

Wake up.

Get dressed.

Last thing, love.

Listen to what the Apostle Paul says in Romans 13 8.

Let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another, and whoever loves has fulfilled the law.

Now, Paul has already told us in the book of Romans about the importance of paying our debts.

In Romans 1, he says that we owe a debt to bring the gospel to the unbelieving world.

We have a debt to share the gospel with those who don't yet believe.

In Romans 8, he says we have a debt to the Holy Spirit to live a holy life.

And in Romans 13, the passage that Michael preached on last week, Paul tells us we have a debt to the government to pay our taxes.

And so the whole Bible tells us that followers of Jesus have a responsibility to pay our bills.

We don't take out loans that we don't think we can repay.

You know, we don't buy houses and go, well, I sure hope my income is enough to pay this big mortgage, but if not, oh way, I'll just walk away from it.

You know?

That's the way of the world.

That's not the way of followers of Jesus.

The way of followers of Jesus is our word is our bond.

If we make a promise that we're going to repay something, we repay it.

Followers of Jesus ought to be trustworthy.

And so even if it takes years, we repay what we borrowed.

Now, Paul says there is, however, one debt that you'll never be able to repay.

The debt of love.

Every other debt that you take out, everything else that you owe, you can pay off.

If you get a big mortgage on a house that there can be after 30 years, you know, that letter in the mail that says your bank balance is zero.

Paid in full.

You go, I'm free.

I now own the house that I was borrowing from this bank.

But there's one debt that you'll never be able to repay, and that's the debt of love.

Back in the third century, there was a church father named Origen, and he said, Let your only debt that is unpaid be that of love.

A debt which you should always be aiming to discharge in full, but will never succeed in discharging.

In other words, we can never say to another human being, I'm done loving you.

You've got all the love from me you will ever get.

The tap is now being turned off.

I don't owe you anything anymore.

You didn't love me the way I wanted to be loved, I'm not loving you.

You didn't love me the way I deserve to be loved growing up.

So I'm not loving you.

We can never turn the tap off, Paul says, regarding love.

Why?

Our Heavenly Father says this in the book of Jeremiah.

The Lord appeared to us in the past saying, I've loved you with an everlasting love, but I've drawn you with unfailing kindness.

God never turns the tap of love off to us.

So we can't turn the tap of love off to anyone else, even those who have hurt us.

So if we owe people love, what is the definition of love?

What's the definition of love?

And the apostle Paul says, let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another.

For whoever loves has fulfilled the law, the commandments.

And whatever other command there may be is summed up by this one command.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

Paul defines love as fulfilling God's law.

In other words, he's saying the content of love is obedience to God's commands.

Back in the 1960s, there was an episcopal priest, he's a moral philosopher named Joseph Fletcher, he wrote a book called Situation Ethics.

And he said, the only thing you need to do in any situation is just love.

Love and you'll be fine.

And he presented a number of moral, you know, I mean, really hard moral cases.

And he says, love is the issue.

Love, love, love, love, love.

That would be great.

We could have a Bible, not with 2,000 pages, but one page.

If we weren't so fallen, so self-deceived, so full of sin, God could just simply say love, and that would be enough.

The problem is this that if God didn't give content to this word love, we would believe all the time that we were being loving when we're really being cruel.

So, you know, an adulterous husband could say, you know, I'm not going to tell my wife that I've been having a long-term affair because that would be unloving.

And because I love her so much, I'm going to preserve her feelings by lying to her face all the time.

And I'm actually loving when I'm having this affair because I really love this other person.

The Apostle Paul says, Oh, love is not that elastic, it's not that subjective, it's not that squishy.

Love has backbone.

Love has content.

Love has a spine.

And the spine that carries love is God's commands.

That as you obey the commands of God, you're acting in love.

That's the way it works.

See, listen to what the Apostle John says.

He says, this is how we know what that we love the children of God by loving God and carrying out his commands.

In fact, this is love for God, to keep his commands, and his commands are not burdensome.

Paul says, love fulfills the law.

Here's what he's saying.

When we read the Old Testament and we find all of these commandments, we go, why are there all these laws here?

There's so many laws and rules.

The Apostle Paul says, these laws and rules, they're all signposts pointing ahead of themselves to love.

That if you follow this command far enough, it will get you where God wants you to be, which is a lover.

God created the universe to create people who would join him in this great dance of love.

He wants to fill the world with love.

And the way we get there is by being obedient to God's commands, then we know that we're on the right track.

Now, love goes beyond law, but it never falls short of law.

And so God's commands give content to love.

They form a backbone for love.

Now, Jesus doesn't just say, okay, obey the law.

Paul doesn't just say obey the law.

Let me finish with this.

If you really want to get content for what it means to love, the Apostle Paul repeats the second great commandment, and he says, love your neighbor as yourself.

In any given situation, if I don't know what to do or how I'm supposed to act, we should ask ourselves the question, how would I want to be treated if I were in this other person's situation?

How would I want to be treated?

If I was sick, would I want someone to visit me or someone to send me a kind text?

Well, if I would like that, then I probably should do that with someone else who's sick.

If you know someone who's elderly and shut in and they're alone, how would you want to be related to if you were alone?

Then do that.

If you know that someone's in the hospital, would you like to be visited in the hospital?

Then act in love and visit them.

If you were poor and hungry, would you like somebody to give you food?

Then if you see someone that's poor and hungry, that's what Jesus wants you to do, to help that person and buy them a hamburger, give them some food.

The same thing is true in all of life.

If you screwed up, would you want to be related to for the rest of your life based on the worst thing you ever did?

Or would you want people to show you mercy?

Then when you find out the worst thing that somebody did, show them mercy.

If you like to be forgiven, forgive.

See, that's the content of love.

Treat people the way you would like to be treated.

That's what the Apostle Paul is saying.

So, brothers and sisters, the counsel for life is not, I plan to wake up, breathe in and out, and try to get through the day.

The Apostle Paul tells us wake up, get dressed, and love.

That's God's word for us today.

Why don't you stand?