Romans Lesson 17

Well, welcome to Life in the Word, our verse-by-verse study of God's Word.

This is Pastor Brian, and we're back.

It's been a while.

We took off, I think we last studied in May, and we took a little bit of time off, and it was good to have that time off, but it's also good to be back in our study of Romans.

And in tonight's study in Romans, Paul continues giving practical directions for Christian living.

And throughout his writings, Paul demonstrates that believers can practice their faith in a multitude of ways.

So to start, let me ask you, what does it mean to practice your faith?

And to answer that question, let me share with you the words of Jesus from Matthew chapter 7, verses 24 through 27.

Matthew 7:24–27

Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.

And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.

And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.

And the rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against the house, and it fell, and it was gr then great was the fall.

So here we have two men, both go to church, hear God's word spoken, both build homes, and both men face the trials and storms of life that we all go through.

But what's the difference between the two men?

Well, the first man did what he was taught from God's word.

He was a doer of the word.

He endured the storms of life because of it.

The second man did not do what God's word had taught him when he heard it, and his life collapsed from the trials and storms of life.

You see, there's a difference between reading your Bible and living out the Bible in your life.

Practicing your faith means that Scripture determines our way of life, despite what the world says or what the world does.

And for a Christian, practicing faith means actively living out core beliefs through daily habits, moral choices, and love for God and others rather than simply holding an intellectual belief.

It's an ongoing lifelong press process of discipleship and spiritual growth.

And as our culture grows increasingly hostile to God and his word, each believer has to decide how they're going to respond.

What they're going to do with God's word.

I mean, sure, we can avoid a lot of troubles by reading the Bible in the privacy of our homes without confronting this growing evil of our nation, but we cannot say we believe Scripture without also doing what it says.

In other words, truly following Jesus means putting his instructions into practice, even if it means ridicule or persecution.

You see, the second man in Jesus' parable is what I call a receiver of God's word, a receiver.

This first man, though, is what I call a reproducer of God's word.

He listens, learns, and then reproduces the word in his life, in his actions, in his words.

And it's my desire that as we study God's word this coming year, and we'll be in we'll be finishing up Romans, and we'll be getting in the book of Mark, which I'm really excited about, that my desire is that we all become reproducers of God's word.

So Paul throughout his writings demonstrates that believers can practice their faith in a multitude of ways without getting too far from the great commandment, which is the most important commandment is this listen, O Israel, the Lord our God is one, the one and only Lord.

And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.

And the second is equally important.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

No other commandment is greater than these.

We see that in Mark chapter twelve.

So let me pray, and we'll get started.

Father, thank you for the time we have together to be in your word.

Thank you for all those who are here tonight, and for those who hear this podcast tomorrow and the few and in the future.

Lord, use your word to speak to our hearts and change us, stretch us, mold us, and make us more like our Savior Jesus Christ.

In his name we pray.

Amen.

So Romans chapter 13, verse 8.

Romans 13:8

That's where we left off.

So let me read verse 8 to you.

Owe nothing to anyone except for your obligation to love one another.

If you love your neighbor, you will fulfill the requirements of God's law.

So why must we love others?

And we're talking about not just believers in Christ, our brothers and sisters, which yes, we are to love them, but we're to love everybody.

We're to love people, even the sinners, right?

Because they need Jesus Christ too.

We are permanently in debt to Christ for the lavish love and grace that He's poured out on us by His sacrificial death on the cross.

And the only way we can begin to repay this debt, and we can't, but we can show our how his love has changed us, we can have see that in our lives by showing the same kind of lavish love and grace to others.

And because Christ's love will always be infinitely greater than ours, we'll always have the obligation to keep repaying that love to others the best we can for the rest of our earthly lives.

So how does loving one's neighbor fulfill the law?

Well, the Ten Commandments, which are part of the law, it's a lot more than that, but the law is huge.

But these two Ten Commandments, I'm going to focus on those right now, because they contain two divisions, sometimes called the two tablets.

The first division gives us vertical, Godward commands, such as you shall have no other gods before me.

The second division contains horizontal commands that pertain to human relationships.

And each of the divisions can be summed up in the passage we just read from Mark chapter 12, verses 29 through 31.

Mark 12:29–31

Simplified, it says, Love God, love others.

And if we keep both the vertical and the horizontal commandments, you will keep the whole law.

That's what it's all about.

It's about caring, loving, and being what God is to other people, to be his mouthpiece and his arms and his hands and feet in this world.

Here in the letter to Romans, Paul, who has not met his readers in Rome, he's never been there yet, not yet, is assuming that they have a vertical love for God.

But he doesn't have any idea about their horizontal love for others.

But I think he has an idea, because we've talked about this before, especially concerning the Roman church that consisted of both Jews and Gentiles.

These Jews, for the most part, had come from Jerusalem from the Passover.

They'd heard Peter at Pentecost, and they became believers, were baptized, and they went back to Rome as believers.

But they still have the law.

They still don't have, they don't understand the grace yet.

And the Gentiles, they didn't have the law.

They didn't know the law.

So there was conflict at this church for a while.

And so many of the Jews in the church at Rome who were reading this letter from Paul are probably asking the same question that the Pharisees asked.

I would assume.

They might have been thinking, who is my neighbor?

To the Pharisees, Jesus illustrated his answer with the parable of the Good Samaritan.

There was a deep and understand, there was a deep hatred between the Jews and the Samaritans.

The Jews saw themselves as pure descendants of Abraham, while the Samaritans were a mixed race produced when Jews from the northern kingdom intermarried with other peoples during the exile of Israel to Babylon.

And in the parable, Jesus shares, a Jew was beaten and robbed as he traveled.

Two other Jews, a priest and a Levite, passed him by, but a Samaritan who happened along, the person they would believe least likely to help, was the one who actually stopped and cared for this unfortunate Jew.

Thus Jesus was explaining that a neighbor is not just a person next door or across the street or one of your own faith, one of your own nation.

A neighbor can be of any race, creed, or social background.

It's someone that has a need.

And we're all called to love no matter our differences.

Let me give you an illustration of what I mean.

This was an amazing thing that happened.

And you may not remember, or you might remember back in, I think it was June or July of 2012, when Chick fil A, president and CEO CEO Dan Cathy, who was a devout Christian man, made public statements affirming his opposition to same-sex marriage and stating that his company supported the biblical definition of a family unit.

If you remember, people in this country lost their minds.

It became a national news story about the hateful, bigoted Chick-fil-A organization.

It was on every newscast.

People organized a national protest against Chick-fil-A for the convictions.

University students, even mayors, came out against Chick-fil-A.

I mean, all the universities were up alarms because pretty much every university in this country had a Chick-fil-A on their campus and they wanted them off.

And while they were doing this, others supported Chick-fil-A by going to the stores, particularly on August 1st, which led to a record-setting sales for the restaurant.

I remember going there with our youth group at the time when I was a youth pastor.

We went there and it seemed like the whole world was at the one we were at in Mesa, but a couple of my students had worked there or did work there.

So we went and we got on the massive lines that were there and got our food, but eventually they ran out.

So so anyway, while all this was going on, and it's very interesting that something happened that few people know about.

Dan Cathy, then CEO of Chick-fil-A, didn't say anything about what was going on, all that was happening.

Instead, he privately reached out to one of the gay rights activist leaders of the protest against Chick-fil-A.

He asked if this leader could spend some time with them.

It was those two men, Dan Cathy and the other was named Shane Windemeyer.

I mean, they ended up spending so much time together that they developed a friendship.

I mean, these are two opposites, right?

In fact, Dan Cathy that year asked Shane Windemeyer to be his guest in his suite at the Chip-fil-A College football bowl game.

And about a year later, Shane Windemeyer, again a gay rights activist, wrote this article in the Huffington Post, and the title of the article was amazing.

Listen to the title.

Coming out as a friend of Dan Cathy.

He wrote this in the article.

It is not often that people with deeply held and opposing viewpoints risk sitting down and listening to one another.

We see this failure to listen and learn in our government, in our community, and in our families.

Dan Cathy and I would together try to do better than each of us had experienced before.

And listen to what he says next.

Never once did Dan or anyone else from Chick-fil-A ask Campus Pride, that was the name of the protesting organization, to stop protesting Chick-fil-A.

On the contrary, Dan listened intently to our concerns.

And I love this statement.

He sought first to understand, not to be understood.

Dan and I shared respectful communication.

We built trust.

His demeanor has always been one of kindness and openness.

Dan expressed regrets and genuine sadness when he heard about people being treated unkindly in the name of Chick-fil-A, but he offered no apologies for his genuine beliefs about marriage.

You notice that what he did?

He wasn't okay just having deeply held convictions.

He embodied deeply held compassion.

And where everybody else saw the issue to debate, Dan Cathy saw an individual to love.

Let me just say this: if your Christ-like convictions are being used to withhold love and compassion towards others, they're different from you, or you just don't like, or whatever, they've hurt you.

That's not Christ-like at all.

A lack of love is often easy to justify, even though it's never right.

And love is an act, it's an action, something we do.

We must love as Christ loved us.

His taking our sins to a cross was the greatest act of love ever displayed.

So when we love our neighbors, we will act with love by refraining from breaking the horizontal relational commands of which Paul gives examples in the next verses, 9 and 10.

Verse 9.

For the commandments say, You must not commit adultery, you must not murder, you must not steal, you must not covet.

These and other such commandments are summed up in this one command.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

Sho sh somehow many of us have gotten the idea that self-love is wrong.

But if this were the case, it would be pointless to love our neighbors as ourselves, right?

I mean, even if you have low self-esteem, you probably don't willingly let yourself go hungry.

You clothe yourself reasonably well.

You make sure there's a roof over your head if you can.

And this is the same kind of love we need to have for our neighbors.

Do we see that others are fed, closed, and housed as well as they can be?

Are we concerned about issues of social injustice?

Loving others as ourselves means actively working to see that their meds are their needs are met.

There's so many, there's so much need out there.

People who focus on others rather themselves rarely suffer from low self-esteem.

Look at verse 10.

Love does no wrong to others, so love fulfills the requirement of God's law.

See, Jesus leaves no loophole in the law of love.

Whether love demands it, we are to go whenever love demands it, we are to go beyond human legal requirements and imitate the love of Jesus Christ to others.

James chapter 2, verse 14 through 16 says, What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith, but don't show it by your actions?

James 2:14–16

Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, you say, Goodbye, have a good day, stay warm and eat well, or it could be simply pray for them.

I see that all the time.

I'll pray for you, have a good day.

But then they don't give that person any food or clothing.

What good does that do?

I mean, does this verse bug you as it does me?

I remember years ago we'd watch on TV all these commercials about these homeless kids on TV, and we'd say, we need to pray for them, we need to pray for them.

But as we're praying for them, God was changing us.

God didn't change them, he changed us.

And eventually we said, wait a minute, we've got to do more.

We've got to do more.

What good is it just to pray when we can give and we can be a part of it?

So we got involved with a couple organizations that are helping feed the poor around the world.

And in Matthew, and I'm not saying that to pat myself on the back, please, don't take it that way.

I'm just telling you, this is the way God works.

In Matthew 6 19, Jesus tells us, don't store up treasures here on earth where moths eat them and rust destroys them and where thieves break in and steal.

Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal.

Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.

Prayer changes our heart sometime.

I love that.

Now, in verses eleven through fourteen, Paul wants believers to realize their constant need to show love, especially considering the time.

The time of Christ's return is near.

Look at verse eleven.

And I want you to notice as I read here the language of contrast that Paul uses to make a very important point.

He's going to use terms that are opposites.

They're contrasting statements that he's using to try and stress a very important point that would become evident as we read through these verses.

Verse eleven.

This is all the more urgent for you, for you know how late it is.

Time is running out.

Wake up, for our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.

12.

The night is almost gone, the day of salvation will soon be here.

So remove your dark deeds like dirty clothes and put on the shining armor of right living.

Because we belong to the day we must live decent lives for all to see.

Don't participate in the darkness of wild parties and drunkenness or in sexual promiscuity or immoral living or in quarreling and jealousy.

Instead, clothe yourself with the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, and don't let yourself think about ways to indulge your evil desires.

So Paul uses contrasting terms.

He talks about light and darkness, night and day, talks about being asleep, being awake.

He talks about removing and putting on.

And he uses these terms to stress a very important point that has that all has to do with, and again, look at the beginning verse 11, knowing the time.

Knowing the time of Christ's second return.

I think we would agree with me that our lives are pretty much dominated by time, by clocks.

We manage our schedules.

We have certain appointments that we make around a certain time.

Some of you may be watching the time right now to see how long I'm going.

We're always aware of time.

Airplanes take off and land according to a precise time schedule that the FAA controls.

Time is a big part of our lives.

Most sporting events are used by time.

Some are not.

Baseball, golf, no.

The point is that we're all very well aware of time, especially as it relates to our personal lives.

And here's the big question that Paul is posing to us in the end of chapter 13.

Can you discern the times?

Do you understand the times in which we are living?

Or how much do you understand what's happening in our culture in our world today from the perspective of God's word?

And are you aware of the lateness of the hour as it pertains to the second coming of Christ?

And here's the bigger, more important question.

Are you ready for that?

Are you ready for his return?

Are you living for Jesus?

Excuse me, are you living your lives looking forward to the imminent return of Jesus Christ?

Because this is what Paul is alluding to here at the end of chapter, this chapter.

Are you ready?

How would you feel Christ's return today?

I'd be thrilled.

I'd be thrilled.

But I've asked that people to people over the years, many years, about that.

I remember when I was a youth pastor, I say, are you ready?

And they're like, oh, no, no, no, no, no.

I want to learn to drive a car.

I want to get my driver's license.

I want to get a car.

I want to get a wife.

I want to go to college, whatever.

The number one answer was always, I want to drive a car.

And even adults I ask today, they're like, no, I want to retire first.

I want to travel.

I mean, that blows me away.

They'd rather do these temporary things and be in the presence of the Lord, which causes great concern for me.

I ask myself all the time, have I prepared those people whom I'm served to be ready for this?

I mean, I think about that a lot.

That's why Paul said at the end of verse 11, wake up, for our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.

What does that mean?

Our salvation is nearer?

Understand that when a person accepts Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, when you believe you are saved, when you believe you're saved at that moment, you're saved from God's judgment, you're reconciled to God, restored, and that relationship begins the moment you believe you are saved.

But the fullness of our salvation is not realized until we are with the Lord at home in heaven.

And because the Lord is returning whenever, whether we die or whether he comes back first, whatever happens first, we're going to be with him for eternity.

So in the sense that Christ is going to return, we are closer to his return than we were yesterday.

You are closest to his return than when you first believe.

The fulfillment of what we believe is nearer today.

So Paul says in the first part of verse 11, for you know how late it is.

Time is running out.

That day is getting near.

Now listen, we're living in the season of the second coming of Christ.

I believe that.

Jesus even told his disciples like a season he will return, and you can be sure of it.

In Matthew chapter 24, 24, beginning verse 30, Jesus said, And then at last the sign that the Son of Man is coming will appear in the heavens, and there will be deep mourning among all the peoples of the earth, and they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory, and he will send out his angels with a mighty blast of the trumpet, and they will together, or they will gather his chosen ones from all over the world, from the farthest ends of the earth and heaven.

Matthew 24 · chapter mention

Then in verse thirty two he says, Now learn this parable from the fig tree.

You when it branch when its branches bud and its leaves begin to sprout, you know that summer is near.

In the same way, when you see all these things happen, you know that his return is near, right at the door.

So he told the disciples, just as sure as you know summer is near, when you see the fig tree beginning to blossom bud, bud, you can be just as certain that I'm coming again.

His second coming is certain when we see certain events unfolding in our world.

We know the season is here.

I mean, look at the massive amount of destructive earthquakes.

Look at the droughts.

I mean, these droughts are causing famine in horrible numbers.

There's 25,000 people a day.

Men, women, and children are dying.

There's that famine, there's wars all over, fires.

It seems like the whole earth is burning up and nations all around the world.

We see tremendous persecution.

I think almost 5,000 Christians have been killed this year, persecuted for their faith.

We see the LGBTQ extremism.

In our world right now, wrong is right and right is wrong.

We're near.

And Paul is urging his readers here in Romans 13 to know the time and be prepared.

Be prepared.

And since Paul is writing this in the first century, we should be more urgent and take this more seriously living in the 21st century because we're closer to the return of Christ than ever before.

So we have much more reason to take this more seriously and to heed Paul's words.

Verse 11, Paul says, this is all the more urgent.

Paul means we're living in the last hour, we're closer to the return of Christ.

Paul is provoking his readers to godly living while we wait for the second coming of Christ.

That's what the second half of Romans is all about.

If you remember, the first half was all theology.

The second half is Paul explaining how we must live our lives.

And that's basically the summary of these four verses we just read.

The time is short.

Are you ready?

How are you living your lives?

So we're called to godly living while we wait for the imminent return of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And so Paul says here in these verses, here's how you can be living while you're waiting.

And he gives us five directives that I've summarized like this, and here they are.

Now that last point looks a little weird, and I'll qualify it as we get to it, okay?

So let's look at these five directives that Paul gives us.

The first one is wake up, for our salvation is dearer than when we first believed.

Now he's speaking here figuratively.

So when we sleep, it's like what?

Well, it's an inactivity, it's unresponsiveness, it's a state of unconsciousness.

And if someone next to you is listening with you this right now and they're kind of falling asleep, give them a nudge for me, okay?

That's what sleep is.

It's inactivity.

You're at rest.

Paul is saying that the church has been lulled into spiritual apathy.

And he's very right.

The bride of Christ has become unresponsive and inactive.

She must wake up.

We must wake up.

Jesus said in Mark chapter 13, you too must keep watch, for you do not know when the master of the household will return in the evening, at midnight, before dawn or at daybreak.

Mark 13 · chapter mention

Don't let him find you sleeping when he arrives without warning.

I say that I say to you what I say to everyone, wait for him.

Be vigilant, be awake, be active.

We must be engaged because the time is short.

We must be doing the work of Christ that we're called to do while we have that time to do it.

We have to know the hour in which we live, so we have to be vigilant.

But let me warn you if you haven't found this out already.

Sometimes, you know, when we engage our faith in these times, the times will try to cancel you and the times will try to label you.

They will label you because you engage your faith when you live it out.

And the world's going to try and stop you, but we must go on.

The times in which we live in will label you things like haters, bigots, intolerant, Christian nationalists.

And when you stand on Christian principles, people will throw all kinds of erroneous labels at you in order to try and intimidate you, to keep your mouth shut, and to keep your faith to yourself.

Because I believe in marriage only between a man and a woman, I've been called homophobic.

That's a threat intended to shut me up.

It's used to instill fear.

It's like what we talked about the last time we got together, why people in several major cities around this country are woken up early in the morning for prayer by the Islamic mosque.

Why isn't it stopped?

Because Islamics have figured out how the LGBTQ people keep people quiet by using the word homophobic.

So radical Islamists pin the word Islamophobic.

So when thousands of people have complained about the wake-up blast for prayer in their cities, they're silenced by the word you're an Islamophobic.

People don't want a label put on them.

That's the times in which we live in, and Christians remain silent for fear of labels quite often.

And if I hear one more person say to me, Well, my faith's private, I don't talk about it.

I'm gonna throw up, I think.

That's a code word for I don't want people to know that I'm a Christian.

I don't want to be labeled.

Which means if you're so afraid that you don't want people to know who you are, then you're probably not.

You're not a Christian.

So don't worry about it.

Private faith is of no public good.

As followers of Christ, we must let people know who we are, who we belong to, who we serve because of the times in which we live.

Jesus said in John 15, 18, if the world hates you, remember that it hated me first.

Did you guys see the opening?

Anybody see the opening ceremonies of the winter Olympics here?

It was awful.

It was disgusting.

It was all these drag queens.

And I saw a headline, are you ready for this?

I saw a headline that read, LGBTQ leader says drag queen ceremony.

Mocking Christians didn't go far enough.

This article ran on the Associated Press.

See, the world's motive is to keep our mouth shut.

They want you to keep your faith to yourself while they mock you all day long.

Paul tells us in 2 Timothy 3 1 through 5, I'm sorry, you should know this, Timothy, that in the last days there will be very difficult times, for people will love only themselves and their money.

They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents and ungrateful.

They will consider nothing sacred.

They will be unloving and unforgiving.

They will slander others and have no self-control.

They will be cruel and hate what is good.

They will betray their friends, be reckless and puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God.

They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly.

Friends, we cannot remain silent.

We have a mandate from the Lord Jesus Himself to share the good news of the gospel.

We're to penetrate the world like salt and light to make a difference.

And let me tell you something.

The church at Corinth believes the same lie.

They believe they should keep them faithful themselves.

It's a personal thing.

I don't want to talk about it.

Paul rebuked the church at Corinth.

Listen to what he said in Corinthians 15, 34.

And again, it's a call to wake up.

Wake up.

Think carefully about what is right and stop sinning.

For to your shame, I say that some of you don't know God at all.

So back in Romans, excuse me, I'm sorry.

So we are to be God's mouthpiece in the world.

So be unashamed, wake up, be active, be engaged, be vigilant, be doing what God has called you to do.

Paul adds also in 1 Thessalonians 5, for you are all children of light and of the day.

We don't belong to darkness night.

Be on your guard, not asleep like the others.

Stay alert and be clear-headed.

Night is the time when people sleep and drinkers get drunk.

Okay?

Now listen, that was number one.

Number two and number three go together.

Here he talks about remove and put on.

It's verse 12 in your Bibles.

It says, The night is almost gone, the day of salvation will be here soon.

So remove your dark deeds like dirty clothes and put on the shining armor of right living.

He's telling us to remove that old self that you had before you came to Christ.

And the message is don't go back to those old ways.

Please don't go back to the old ways.

Remove the word work of darkness in your lives, and then put on, we are now the children of light, so put on the shining armor of right living.

Do you hear the implications here?

Paul's telling us we're in a spiritual battle.

Put on the armor of light, walk as children of light.

And in order to do that, we better know who we are in Christ, because the world's going to try to eat us alive unless we have our confidence in knowing who we are in Jesus Christ.

This is why Peter would write in 1 Peter 2.9.

You are a chosen people, you are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's very possession.

As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.

That's who we are in Christ.

Therefore, get rid of your old ways and put on the new.

Listen to what Paul writes in Colossians 3 12.

He gives us a short list here of things we could put on now that we're in our Christ.

Since God chose you to be holy people, he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tender hearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.

Make allowance for each other's faults and forgive anyone who offends you.

Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.

And that's just a few things that we give out Scripture that we're to put on to help us bring this new identity in Christ out and put it out in public.

So work on being tender, work on being kind, work on your humility, work on your patience.

Okay?

And the last one he talks about here is forgiving one another.

He says, as Christ forgiven you, that's a tall order, right?

But it's a necessary one.

If God forgave us all our sins, we can and must do no less.

We need to put on new things and be more like Christ and less like our old selves.

Okay?

Number four, he tells us live decent lives.

Verse 13, because we belong to the day, we must live decent lives for all to see.

Don't participate in the darkness of wild parties and drunkenness or in sexual promiscuity or immoral living.

To live decent lives means walk with Christ.

Your daily relationship with Christ should reflect Christ, not your whole self.

People should see Christ in you.

We need to live in a way that honors and recognizes Christ, right?

Remember, if people know you're a Christian, they're watching you.

Believe me, they're watching to see if you have something they need.

So live a life that honors and pleases the Lord by putting on the character Christ.

Now the last one is think not.

And I told you, I'm going to qualify this because really the rest of what Paul is saying here is think not how to gratify sinful desires.

That's what he says at the end of verse 14.

Paul writes, instead, clothe yourself with the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ.

What does that mean?

How do we clothe ourselves with the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ?

By connecting with them through his word, through prayer, through fellowship, through baptism, all these different ways connect us to Christ and helps us to understand that our lives are in the presence of the Lord.

When we walk on this earth, the Lord's presence is with us here on earth.

Therefore, avoid all these situations that open the door to gratify sinful desires because that would make us poor examples of our commitment to live like Christ.

Instead, clothe yourself with the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Don't let yourself think about ways to indulge your evil desires.

This means give no thought to or think not.

Don't let yourself think about ways to indulge yourself.

It's worth reminding yourselves every day that we fight a battle to resist or to give into temptation.

This is one or lost in our minds to start with.

Again, the battle to resist or give into temptations is one or lost in the mind because we first think about it and then we decide to act on it.

This is why Paul says, make no provision.

Don't think about how to gratify the flesh, because most sin, almost all of it, is premeditated.

Romans chapter 12, 2 told us, don't copy the customs and behaviors of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

Then you will learn to know God's will for you which is good and pleasing and perfect.

How does he transform us?

He uses Scripture.

Scripture transforms our minds.

We need to be in Scripture.

We need to memorize Scripture.

So if you don't take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ, we're going to give in to temptation every time.

But if you fight the battle in your mind and you take captive every thought and you say, Lord, I'm not going to go down that path.

I'm not going to think those thoughts I'm having about indulging the sinful nature.

We need to put scripture into our heads.

It will go a long way to preventing us from actually giving into temptation.

And that's why Paul says here, don't let yourself think about ways to indulge your evil desires.

This is a battle that will continue until we die and leave this fleshly body.

So don't let your sin nature dominate your thoughts and desires.

Start by winning the battle in your minds with the Word of God.

So what time is it?

It's time to get ready.

It's time to live godly lives, lives that will please God.

It's time to prepare for the second coming of Christ.

We need to wake up, remove our old self, put on the new, our newness of Christ, live decent lives, and think not how to gratify sinful desires.

I'm going to close this passage with Scripture tonight that Paul spoke to young Titus in Titus chapter two.

For the grace of God has been revealed, bringing salvation to all people, and we are instructed to turn from godless living and sinful pleasures.

You should live in this evil world with wisdom, righteousness, and devotion to God while we look forward with hope to that wonderful day when the glory of our great Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, will be revealed.

That's the end of chapter 13.

I hope you'll take this, think about it, meditate on it, and I hope you'll become, as we go through this process, reproducers of God's word.

Thank you for joining us.

Join us again next week as we'll get into Romans chapter 14.

Romans 14 · chapter mention

Have a good week.