Speaker 1: All right, good morning, good morning, good morning, you can grab your.
Speaker 1: I almost feel bad for like interrupting that, you know.
Speaker 1: But hey, kids, y'all go ahead and head down the hall to kids.
Speaker 1: Me, can we give it up for our kids?
Speaker 1: is there a heading out?
Speaker 1: Yeah, what a great day, what a great day already to be together If we have had the chance to meet.
Speaker 1: My name's, james and I get the privilege of serving here as campus pastor, and it's an honor honor to have you here today.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for being in the room.
Speaker 1: We're we're in the middle of a series right now called In the Fire, and what we're talking about through this series is learning to thrive in the trials of life.
Speaker 1: Because, how many of you know, life is difficult, man, like we can all agree on that.
Speaker 1: Life is hard.
Speaker 1: And the question then becomes well, how do we go through the difficulties of life?
Speaker 1: Do we?
Speaker 1: do we crumble under the weight of trial?
Speaker 1: or or, like an olive that is pressed so that the oil can flow, Did the trials actually bring out the best in us?
Speaker 1: And today, today, we're going to talk about dealing with difficult people, and now is not the time to elbow the person next to you to look at him.
Speaker 1: This is for you Now.
Speaker 1: I mean it might be, i don't know, i guess between them and the Holy Spirit, but no, let's not.
Speaker 1: You know, i want to try to keep the peace at Sunday lunch and all that stuff, but I was dealing with difficult people.
Speaker 1: How do we deal with people that just make things more difficult than they need to be?
Speaker 1: And what we're going to see today through the scriptures is that the apostle Paul actually wants to flip the script and say Hey, in your relationships with people that the world would term difficult, let's, let's start, as Michael Jackson would say, with the man in the mirror.
Speaker 1: Let's examine ourselves and see how God wants to change us as we relate to the people around us.
Speaker 1: My, i'm going to start here today.
Speaker 1: My family this week lost a hero.
Speaker 1: My grandfather passed away suddenly early Friday morning, late Thursday night, and so we talked last week about walking through pain and how hurting with hope still hurts, and so my family is kind of living in that right now.
Speaker 1: I didn't see, we didn't see it coming.
Speaker 1: It was unexpected, but I want to start this morning and just honor my grandfather.
Speaker 1: He's 82 years old, lived his life to to serve Jesus and to love people.
Speaker 1: If you ever met him, he would talk to you like you had known him forever and he had known you forever.
Speaker 1: And you know he was the guy that, like we're eating dinner and trying to leave the restaurant, he's back in the kitchen like praying for the kitchen staff and all like, just like he, just everywhere he went, he knew somebody.
Speaker 1: He's encouraging somebody, he's got a word of you know prayer or encouragement for somebody He just met.
Speaker 1: That's just who my grandpa, my grandpa, was, and so moments like that you don't see coming, but I'm grateful to have had him in my life for 30 years And I know most of you in the room never had the chance to meet him, but if, if you've heard me speak, you've heard him in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: I I found last night a note that he had written for me when I first started in ministry And you know it was his list of.
Speaker 1: You know, if this is, this is what it looks like to do ministry well, and it was all about relationships with others and serving Jesus with integrity.
Speaker 1: And so I'm grateful, grateful to, to, to him and to my family for that type of legacy, and I just I wanted you to kind of know what we're walking through because I don't know any other way to, any other way to lead than just to to, to bring you in on where we're at today.
Speaker 1: And I want to talk about him a little bit throughout throughout our time together, because when it comes to relating to people, i don't know if anybody better at dealing with people and encouraging people and loving people well than my grandfather.
Speaker 1: So that said, paul in Romans, chapter 12, is going to give us some really, really practical wisdom.
Speaker 1: If you ever read the book of Romans, there's a lot in Romans that's like it's so theological, it's so spiritual sounding.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's like I don't even know what to do with that Cause I'm really not even a hundred percent sure what that means.
Speaker 1: And that's a lot of Romans.
Speaker 1: But when Paul gets to Romans 12, it's like he flips the script a little bit and says, hey, from this point forward let's talk about how the internal transformation of the gospel is lived out on the external level.
Speaker 1: And so that's what we're going to read today.
Speaker 1: The subtitle in my Bible says marks of a true Christian.
Speaker 1: In other words, if you know Jesus and you've been changed by the love of God, the grace of God.
Speaker 1: You've been forgiven by the mercy of God.
Speaker 1: This is what's going to be happening in your lives.
Speaker 1: We're going to read nine through 21 together this morning.
Speaker 1: The apostle Paul writes these words let love be genuine.
Speaker 1: Abhor or hate what is evil.
Speaker 1: Hold fast to what is good.
Speaker 1: Love one another with brotherly affection, outdo one another and showing honor.
Speaker 1: Don't be slothful and zeal.
Speaker 1: Be fervent and spirit.
Speaker 1: Serve the Lord.
Speaker 1: Rejoice and hope.
Speaker 1: Be patient and tribulation.
Speaker 1: Be constant in prayer.
Speaker 1: Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.
Speaker 1: Bless those who persecute you.
Speaker 1: Bless and do not curse them.
Speaker 1: Rejoice with those who rejoice.
Speaker 1: Weep with those who weep.
Speaker 1: Live in harmony with one another.
Speaker 1: Don't be haughty or proud, but associate with the lowly You're.
Speaker 1: Be wise in your own sight or pay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all, if possible, so far as it depends on you.
Speaker 1: Live peaceably, or live that peace with all Love.
Speaker 1: Never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God.
Speaker 1: For it is written vengeance is mine, our repay, says the Lord.
Speaker 1: To the contrary, if your enemy's hungry, feed him.
Speaker 1: If he's thirsty, give him something to drink, for by doing so you will heap burning coals on his head.
Speaker 1: And then I love verse 21,.
Speaker 1: Don't be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good Father.
Speaker 1: My prayer this morning is that you would take the practical words of Paul and, by the transforming power of the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, give us the strength to live a life of love And open our eyes this morning to the truth of your word and help it to find a good place in our hearts in which to take root.
Speaker 1: In Jesus name, amen.
Speaker 1: I I'm not a scientist by any stretch.
Speaker 1: I was a history major in college.
Speaker 1: I I like science when I was in school.
Speaker 1: I'm not a scientist.
Speaker 1: If you are and I'm wrong, wait till after and you can correct me on this.
Speaker 1: I do, however, know, as what my dad would call to you, how to use the Google machine.
Speaker 1: Um, and so I.
Speaker 1: I use the Google machine this week and this is what I've found.
Speaker 1: Scientists tell us that, on a DNA level, human beings are 99.9% identical.
Speaker 1: Fascinating DNA, molecular level, we're 99.9% the same, which, to me, it says a couple of things.
Speaker 1: We got a lot more in common than we have.
Speaker 1: That separates us, that divides us And, at the same time, that 0.1% seems to be pretty significant, does it not?
Speaker 1: Because our world today is far more divided than united.
Speaker 1: People today are far more at odds than they are together, like mine did, like it's a whole lot easier to foster and further division than it is to bring people together across the aisle, whatever that aisle is, is it not?
Speaker 1: We see it all across our world today division happening by religion or political identification, or color of your skin or socio-economic status.
Speaker 1: There's so much that society divides us and puts a golf in between us And yet DNA level is 99.9% the same.
Speaker 1: There are moments where that 99.9% is Evan.
Speaker 1: I remember being in Israel a couple of years ago and our group was leaving the western wall, the wailing wall, and we're walking out of that area of the Temple Mount around to the steps of the Temple And in process, as we're walking, we come upon a bar mitzvah happening And there are bus loads of people unloading to celebrate this bar mitzvah.
Speaker 1: There's music playing, people are singing in Hebrew The majority of our tour group.
Speaker 1: They were young once, but they were no longer.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't call them young today necessarily, but it was fascinating watching them listen and hear and absorb this Jewish bar mitzvah, people singing in Hebrew and this group of Baptist just begins to like dance, and I wish if I had a video to show you today of this group of Baptist dancing to a Jewish bar mitzvah in Israel.
Speaker 1: There's the 99.9% Right there, something about the music and the celebration and the joy.
Speaker 1: We were just united in that moment.
Speaker 1: It was incredible.
Speaker 1: Never forget it.
Speaker 1: Those moments are few and far between.
Speaker 1: The reality is that we live in a world that is divided.
Speaker 1: We live surrounded by people that you and I might term difficult.
Speaker 1: Anybody know any difficult people.
Speaker 1: Anybody live with a difficult person.
Speaker 1: Anybody like we got difficult people in your family, kids.
Speaker 1: You should not be raising your hands at that right there.
Speaker 1: And I'm just saying come on, bowen Reeves, you know like not to call any names or anything.
Speaker 1: You know Like we live within a difficult world, and not only that.
Speaker 1: We also, if we're honest and we should be honest because we're in church on a Sunday morning we all have people that if we had an hour of free time, we wouldn't choose to spend it with them.
Speaker 1: You all right, like can we laugh at that?
Speaker 1: I don't know, i'm not sure, i'm still trying to figure it out myself, but that's reality, right, like we don't get along with everybody.
Speaker 1: Not everybody likes us And, if we're honest, we don't like everybody either.
Speaker 1: But what do we do?
Speaker 1: We're faced with dealing with difficult people in the day today.
Speaker 1: The context of what we read in Romans, chapter 12, paul has spent a lot of time working through the gospel.
Speaker 1: He's riding to a church in Rome, a group of believers that he's never met, but he's heard of their faith And he knows the environment in which they live is hostile and becoming more hostile to their faith, and so he's trying to encourage them.
Speaker 1: Hey, your faith in Jesus has the power to change everything.
Speaker 1: In Romans 1.16, he says I'm not ashamed of the gospel because it's the power of God for salvation.
Speaker 1: First to the Jew and then to the Gentile, paul says I'm not going to stop proclaiming the gospel.
Speaker 1: I don't want you to stop proclaiming the gospel because there's power there to set people free.
Speaker 1: And he talks about what that freedom looks like.
Speaker 1: In Romans 5.6.7, he begins to lay out this picture of hey, you used to be under the weight of the law.
Speaker 1: In other words, your standing before God was based on how well you could live up to God's perfect standard of righteousness.
Speaker 1: And if you read the Old Testament, what we see over and over and over again is that human beings, because we're sinful, we cannot achieve perfection in our own power, in our own strength.
Speaker 1: And Paul says you were under the weight of the law, and because you couldn't live up to it perfectly, you were also under the curse of sin.
Speaker 1: Sin had grabbed hold of your heart, your flesh was leading the way.
Speaker 1: You were a slave to what you wanted in the moment.
Speaker 1: So on one hand, you're condemned by the law because you can't reach God's standard, but on the other hand, you're a slave to sin and you can't do anything to fix it, and that's not good news.
Speaker 1: Then Paul says this but you're no longer under the law because Christ Jesus, through his death, barrel and resurrection, has set you free from the grip of sin and the weight of the law And you now live under what Paul calls the law of grace or the law of love.
Speaker 1: So what you and I were powerless to do in our own strength, jesus has done lived the perfect life, shed his blood in our place, resurrected from the dead.
Speaker 1: Now we don't have to achieve moral perfection to be right with God because Jesus did.
Speaker 1: We don't have to set ourselves free from the weight and the grip of sin, because Jesus already has.
Speaker 1: How do we get right before God?
Speaker 1: How do we achieve righteousness before God?
Speaker 1: It's through faith in Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: And Paul says Hey, there's freedom there.
Speaker 1: You're free now.
Speaker 1: You're not a slave to your desire.
Speaker 1: You have the power by the spirit of God inside you to obey God.
Speaker 1: And he's really clear.
Speaker 1: Paul is really really clear.
Speaker 1: Your freedom in Christ isn't the freedom to do whatever you want.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I think we're afraid that if we tell people that you're free in Christ, that means they can just go out and do whatever they want to do and live however they want to live.
Speaker 1: And Paul is really clear Now you're free to choose to obey Jesus.
Speaker 1: You're not a slave to your sin anymore.
Speaker 1: You're free to follow God and to do what he wants.
Speaker 1: And instead of being under the law of righteousness, you're now under the law of love.
Speaker 1: Everything's changed because of that.
Speaker 1: And so, in Romans 12, paul begins to outline for us what that looks like.
Speaker 1: He says Hey, god is doing a work on the inside of you.
Speaker 1: He's renewing your mind so that you don't conform to the ways of the world, but so that you live a transformed life.
Speaker 1: And then in Romans 12, verse nine, he just gets super practical And this reads a lot like Proverbs.
Speaker 1: It reads a lot like Matthew five and the Beatitudes, where, where Paul just begins to say, hey, here is what the gospel looks like lived out, here's what faith in Jesus on the inside looks like on the outside.
Speaker 1: And I love this for our conversation today dealing with difficult people, because what Paul is going to tell us here has less to do with what happens to us and more to do with how we respond.
Speaker 1: And how many of you know that, no matter how much you want to control what people do around you, the only thing you can control is who you are in your day to day life.
Speaker 1: Circumstances are outside of your control, people outside of your control, what happens a week from tomorrow outside of your control.
Speaker 1: But what we can control is what God is doing on the inside of us, whether or not we lean into that and obey that and follow the leading of the spirit.
Speaker 1: So here's what we're going to do.
Speaker 1: I've gotten a list of nine ways that God wants to work in our hearts and it's right from Romans 12, nine through 21, and every one of these nine things is applicable in dealing with difficult people.
Speaker 1: We're just going to run through the list and I'm going to show you at the end today why this actually has the power to change the world.
Speaker 1: Because here's what you're going to be thinking as we're going through this list There's no way that would actually work And I know you're gonna be thinking that because that's what I was thinking as I was reading this Like this sounds like it's too good to be true, but I'm gonna show you something at the end that hopefully will encourage you.
Speaker 1: So here's kind of the breakdown of Romans 12, verses nine through 13.
Speaker 1: This is what we can call general relational wisdom.
Speaker 1: It's geared towards people in the church.
Speaker 1: This is how you relate to each other.
Speaker 1: Let's start there.
Speaker 1: Number one don't be fake.
Speaker 1: You wanna relate well to other people.
Speaker 1: You wanna be able to deal with difficult people.
Speaker 1: Don't be fake.
Speaker 1: Paul says this let love be genuine, hate what is evil and hold fast to what is good.
Speaker 1: Can I just tell you this morning that, no matter what you feel about God, god is confident in what he feels about you.
Speaker 1: He loves you.
Speaker 1: He loves you with a real, genuine, authentic, everlasting love.
Speaker 1: He loves you, james.
Speaker 1: I don't know how do you know?
Speaker 1: Because he sent his son.
Speaker 1: And John says very clearly in 1 John, we know love because God, the Father, sent the Son to shed his blood for us.
Speaker 1: That's love.
Speaker 1: God loved it.
Speaker 1: He didn't just say he loved us, he took action to demonstrate the depths of his love for us.
Speaker 1: And Paul says hey, if you want to relate well to people, you wanna handle difficult people as they come your way in life, let love be genuine, don't be fake.
Speaker 1: Know that God loves you and love people.
Speaker 1: Know that God has served you, and so carry that on.
Speaker 1: See, we look at love sometimes and we think love's a feeling Hallmark type Perfect moment, snow at sunset, problems have been worked out, coming up on the two hour mark, they gotta get married in the next three minutes.
Speaker 1: That's love.
Speaker 1: It's gotta be like that.
Speaker 1: But when scripture talks about love, love for God is not necessarily a feeling-based love, because that conception of love just wasn't in the author's minds in the New Testament.
Speaker 1: Love for God, in the New Testament vocabulary, is evidenced in obedience to God, and you see that idea over and over and over.
Speaker 1: How do you know if you love God, well, according to the Bible, it's because you obey what God says.
Speaker 1: Our love for God isn't because we lift our hands in worship and we get goosebumps when the songs come on and we always feel like God's really, really close to us.
Speaker 1: No, the evidence of our love for God is that we do what God says.
Speaker 1: We love God and we obey God and we love the people around us and we serve the people around us.
Speaker 1: And that leads to this pursuit of what is good.
Speaker 1: We begin to turn away from what is evil or sinful or broken And we begin to pursue that which is good and wholesome and holy.
Speaker 1: We progress and become more like Jesus.
Speaker 1: So we don't wanna be fake.
Speaker 1: Number two we want to go beyond what's expected.
Speaker 1: Jesus said it like this if someone forces you to go a mile, go two.
Speaker 1: How will people know that you care?
Speaker 1: They'll know you care when you go beyond what's expected.
Speaker 1: Verse 10 says love one another with brotherly affection.
Speaker 1: Outdo one another in showing honor.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 1: We live in a world.
Speaker 1: Man, everybody's competing.
Speaker 1: Are they not Competing at work for the promotion?
Speaker 1: competing with the people down the street that just bought a new car?
Speaker 1: competing with what your friend from high school you hadn't talked to in 24 years posted on social media.
Speaker 1: You gotta post something better.
Speaker 1: Like we just compete.
Speaker 1: And Paul says hey, compete, sure, compete.
Speaker 1: Outdo one another in showing honor.
Speaker 1: Be more encouraging than the people around you and then challenge them to be more encouraging than you.
Speaker 1: Outdo one another in building people up, speaking truth and life into the lives of people around you.
Speaker 1: You wanna compete for something?
Speaker 1: Outdo one another in speaking honor over people's lives.
Speaker 1: How beautiful would that be.
Speaker 1: When's the last time you scrolled through Facebook comments and you're like oh, that's honors, that's honoring.
Speaker 1: How honoring are they on Facebook?
Speaker 1: We don't honor on Facebook.
Speaker 1: We get ornery on Facebook.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's like let's outdo in showing honor.
Speaker 1: Third thing Paul says is be serious about your faith.
Speaker 1: Be serious about your faith.
Speaker 1: Don't be slothful in zeal.
Speaker 1: So don't take for granted what God has done and what God's calling us to, thinking that this transforming life is just gonna happen.
Speaker 1: Let's rest in God's grace.
Speaker 1: But then let's be serious about pursuing a life of holiness.
Speaker 1: Let's be serious about pursuing God in the pages of his word.
Speaker 1: Be fervent in spirit.
Speaker 1: Paul says Serve the Lord, rejoice and hope.
Speaker 1: Be patient in tribulation.
Speaker 1: Be constant in prayer.
Speaker 1: Let those be the things that guide and direct your life.
Speaker 1: And let's be serious about faith.
Speaker 1: And then, in verse 13, paul says to live with generosity.
Speaker 1: Live with generosity, and I want you to see this.
Speaker 1: Contribute to the needs of the saints.
Speaker 1: So take care of the people in the body.
Speaker 1: And Paul says seek to show hospitality.
Speaker 1: So care for one another, but don't get so called up locking arms and looking in that you forget they're people on the outside that God's trying to bring to the inside.
Speaker 1: So take care of each other, but keep your circles open.
Speaker 1: I love that picture.
Speaker 1: Right In your life, groups take care of one another, outdo one another in showing honor.
Speaker 1: Let love be genuine.
Speaker 1: Be serious about pursuing your faith together and always be looking for the next person that needs to be part of the circle And welcome them in with open arms.
Speaker 1: Let love be genuine.
Speaker 1: Seek to show hospitality to those who are on the outside that God wants to bring to the inside.
Speaker 1: And you kind of see a shift there, right, paul's talked a lot about hey, let's make sure that as the church, we're loving each other, we're faithful, we're doing what God's called us to do, we're taking care of one another.
Speaker 1: And let's not forget, there's a world of people that don't yet know God, and we're gonna see that.
Speaker 1: So we've got the general relational wisdom don't be fake, go beyond what's expected, be serious about your faith, live with generosity.
Speaker 1: And now the difficult people here they come.
Speaker 1: Verse 14, paul says this bless those who persecute you, bless them and do not curse them.
Speaker 1: I saw something on social media a little while back that made me laugh.
Speaker 1: It said that when you're driving down the road, if somebody does something they ought not to do on the road, that you should just give them a thumbs down, that they get highly upset.
Speaker 1: And so we're driving down 2060 the other day and this guy cut me off and I'm like Tara's, like don't do that, don't do that.
Speaker 1: And I was reminded of that when I read Romans 12, 14,.
Speaker 1: I was like Tara's right, tara's always right.
Speaker 1: Bless those who drive badly on 26.
Speaker 1: Don't curse them, bless them.
Speaker 1: Bless those in your office who talk bad about you.
Speaker 1: Bless those in your family when you're not getting along and Thanksgiving dinner's awkward Cause your uncle did it again Like just bless them, don't persecute them, don't curse them.
Speaker 1: Like what kind of life would that be When people spoke badly of us, or people did something to us we didn't like, or people like fill in the blank When people hurt us.
Speaker 1: If our primary initial response was not I curse you in the name of God, we would never say it like that We might.
Speaker 1: You know, like there's an old song called I'm praying for you And it's like sounds great at first And you start listening to the chorus and this guy's like praying that these people like wreck their car and like their life falls apart and their bank account gets hacked and like all that Like that's not what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: How do we bless those who persecute us?
Speaker 1: How do we receive bad but give good?
Speaker 1: You know, you know How many of you like growing up.
Speaker 1: It's like the second you felt like somebody offended you.
Speaker 1: You're like I'm coming after them.
Speaker 1: You know that's all that's in there for all of us right.
Speaker 1: And we get offended and people confront us and like we get criticized.
Speaker 1: Like that's life.
Speaker 1: But Paul says you don't have to return that in kind, proverbs says it like this a gentle answer turns away wrath, life and death is in the power of the tongue, and so as people speak ill of you, there is power when you look back at them and you've got every right in the world to go in and tell them like it is, and you choose to respond with kindness and grace and compassion.
Speaker 1: I think the best example of Romans 12, 14 that I can think of is the example of Jesus on the cross.
Speaker 1: He's looking and he's got the ones who crucified and gathered around the foot of the cross and they're casting lots, they're gambling over his clothes as he bleeds and dies And his words are Father, forgive them.
Speaker 1: They don't know what they're doing And what the gospel writers do.
Speaker 1: When they write that phrase, they write it in such a way.
Speaker 1: The original language It implies that Jesus is saying that over and over and over, as he's bleeding and dying for the sin of the world, father, forgive them.
Speaker 1: They don't know what they're doing.
Speaker 1: Father, forgive them.
Speaker 1: They don't know what they're doing.
Speaker 1: It's blessing instead of cursing, and that's our example.
Speaker 1: He's our, he's our king, so we want to respond to cursing with blessing.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that looks like for you.
Speaker 1: I don't know who the difficult person is in your life that you've got in mind right now, but my prayer and my hope is that the next time you're dealing with a difficult person.
Speaker 1: Romans 12, 14 comes to mind.
Speaker 1: You're like how do I, how do I spin this?
Speaker 1: How do I let my love for God be evident through my words?
Speaker 1: How do I respond to their anger?
Speaker 1: there They're cursing with a gift of blessing from God.
Speaker 1: Second thing Paul says is Hey, in order to do this, you got to meet people where they are.
Speaker 1: You got to meet people where they are.
Speaker 1: Verse 15, he says rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.
Speaker 1: Philippians two talks about how, how, in Christ, our job is to consider others as greater than ourselves, to look to the needs of others before we seek to meet our own needs.
Speaker 1: To care I'll say it like this to care more about others than we even care about ourselves.
Speaker 1: This is not in my notes and let me show you.
Speaker 1: I should say this We live in a world that that is really concerned with self-help and self-care, and that can be a good thing.
Speaker 1: Jesus took time away to pray.
Speaker 1: Jesus took time away to fill his cup, to be united to God, but I don't see many limits to the love of Christ when he walked and met with people.
Speaker 1: I see Jesus going above and beyond to meet people where they were.
Speaker 1: John, chapter four a woman at the well that he had to go to Samaria.
Speaker 1: No, he didn't.
Speaker 1: There was a much shorter road And we had to go to Samaria to meet a woman where she was, in the middle of her brokenness.
Speaker 1: His disciples didn't understand it, they didn't get it, but the kingdom of God got bigger that day because Jesus met somebody where they were.
Speaker 1: May we do the same.
Speaker 1: May we seek to to understand rather than just to condemn and judge.
Speaker 1: Number three when it comes to dealing with difficult people.
Speaker 1: Number seven in our overall list don't be arrogant.
Speaker 1: Don't be arrogant.
Speaker 1: Verse 16, live in harmony with one another.
Speaker 1: Don't be proud, but associate with the lowly.
Speaker 1: Don't be wise in your own sight.
Speaker 1: Be humble enough to know that, that, that we don't have it all figured out.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm 30 years old And if I know anything, it's that I don't know nearly as much as I thought I did when I was 22.
Speaker 1: I had all the answers.
Speaker 1: Eight years ago, i'm telling I don't know what happened.
Speaker 1: I think I had kids, i had my wife, i got to have kids, my wife had kids, i helped, but like that's never mind, like I don't know nearly as much as I thought I did, and the more I learned, the more I understand that I've got so far to go when it comes to being like Jesus and responding like Jesus and loving like Jesus and leading like.
Speaker 1: I've got so much to work on.
Speaker 1: There's no room for pride when it comes to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: Jesus bled and died because my sin was great And there was nothing I could do to reach myself up out of the pit.
Speaker 1: I couldn't climb out and there was nobody else but Jesus that could get me out.
Speaker 1: There's no room for pride at the foot of the cross.
Speaker 1: There's no room at the foot of the cross to look at somebody else, regardless of what they do or their status in life, or how much money's in their bank account or the color of their skin.
Speaker 1: There's no room at the foot of the cross to look at anybody like they're less than you.
Speaker 1: Jesus said if you want to be great, serve, because even the Son of God did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life away as a ransom for many.
Speaker 1: So let's not be arrogant.
Speaker 1: Let's know enough to know that we don't have it all figured out.
Speaker 1: Let's keep a spirit of humility, but let's also be confident in the truth of God's word to know that, hey, we don't have it all figured out and we're not always okay, but God's got it all figured out and he's always okay.
Speaker 1: So, like Paul said, hey, if we're going to boast in anything, let's boast in our weakness and the strength of God's grace.
Speaker 1: Difficult people come your way.
Speaker 1: It's easy to get prideful, be like, thank God, i'm not like them, thank God, i'm not doing things like they're doing things.
Speaker 1: But let's just remember, hey, everybody's on a journey, everybody's walking through something, everybody's going through pain.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be so prideful that I think that I know better than them or I've got it figured out more than they do.
Speaker 1: Let me figure out instead how to be confident in Christ and humble in my flesh and live like that Number eight overall.
Speaker 1: Do the right thing simply because it's right.
Speaker 1: How many of you know that they're not going to be people lining up to give you trophies as you bless those who persecute you?
Speaker 1: You might not get celebrated in this world, people probably aren't going to understand.
Speaker 1: But Paul says it like this repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.
Speaker 1: I love that word honorable.
Speaker 1: In the Greek It literally means beautiful.
Speaker 1: So Paul says live a beautiful life Even as people do bad to you and there's ugly things entering your world and pain entering your world inflicted by others.
Speaker 1: Paul said give thought in that moment to building a life that is beautiful and do what's right, not because they're gonna praise you, not because they're gonna back off and their judgment of you or their condemnation of you, but just because that's the way you build a beautiful life by doing what's right and good, simply because it's right and good.
Speaker 1: And then Paul says this if possible and I love this so far as it depends on you live peaceably with everyone.
Speaker 1: Live at peace with everybody, everybody, anybody.
Speaker 1: Have problems with the word like live at peace with the people you like and get along with.
Speaker 1: I'm good with that.
Speaker 1: Paul says live at peace with everybody, everybody, the person that you get along with the least.
Speaker 1: Have you done everything in your power to live at peace with them?
Speaker 1: And y'all, let's be honest.
Speaker 1: Sometimes that means if you might need to pray for them from a distance and forgive them from a distance and not be in close contact with them for a season.
Speaker 1: That's okay.
Speaker 1: That may be what it takes to make peace, but sometimes it means going to somebody that has wronged you or you've wronged and saying, hey, i wanna reconcile, i wanna make peace.
Speaker 1: Peace isn't just gonna happen on its own.
Speaker 1: Peace has to be made, and Ephesians two is really clear Jesus has made peace between us and God through the blood of his cross so that we can live at peace with others.
Speaker 1: And that starts in here in the body, but it extends beyond these walls.
Speaker 1: So far as it depends on you, just a quick question who in your life do you need to make peace with?
Speaker 1: Who in your life do you need to go to today, this week, have a difficult conversation, put yourself out there a little bit and say, hey, i wanna do everything in my power, live at peace with you.
Speaker 1: Maybe they understand, maybe they don't.
Speaker 1: Maybe God reconciles and redeems.
Speaker 1: Maybe he doesn't in this moment, but Paul says hey, it's much more about your heart before God and your heart for others.
Speaker 1: That's what you can control.
Speaker 1: That's what's on the table for you is to do your part and then trust watch this trust that God's gonna handle his part, cause that's where he goes next.
Speaker 1: He says hey, you don't have to avenge yourselves, you don't have to defend yourself, you don't have to go out and get people who get you.
Speaker 1: He says God will work that out, god's the judge and he doesn't need our help with that.
Speaker 1: He's just, he's righteous, he's good, he's perfect, he's got it.
Speaker 1: On the contrary, in Paul quotes proverbs.
Speaker 1: He says if your enemies hungry, feed him.
Speaker 1: If he's thirsty, give him something to drink.
Speaker 1: And I love this is so Paul.
Speaker 1: Paul's like hey, and when you do that, it's gonna be like your heaping burning coals on his head, not gonna understand.
Speaker 1: It's gonna freak him out a little bit.
Speaker 1: They're not gonna get it.
Speaker 1: It's gonna make him like what's going on?
Speaker 1: I don't understand.
Speaker 1: But there's power in love.
Speaker 1: There's power in making peace.
Speaker 1: There's power in returning good for evil.
Speaker 1: There's power in a word of peace spoken into a hostile situation.
Speaker 1: There's power in a genuine love and desire for what is good.
Speaker 1: There's power there.
Speaker 1: My grandpa had a list of quotes my dad found in one of his Bibles And to me the best one on the list was this A bulldog can whip a skunk, but it never smells the same again.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what Paul's getting at here.
Speaker 1: It's not always about being right and winning the argument, it's not always about getting the last word.
Speaker 1: It's about loving well, being confident.
Speaker 1: Hey, that God made you a bulldog, and that's great.
Speaker 1: Just be a bulldog and love everybody else.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Like let God do the work as you do the work and you do the work, and I think that's what Paul's getting at here.
Speaker 1: It's not always about being right and winning the argument.
Speaker 1: Let God do the work as you do what God's told you to do, james.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know if this really has the power to change the world.
Speaker 1: Verse 21 says don't be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Speaker 1: Scholars think that Paul wrote this letter somewhere mid to late 50s AD.
Speaker 1: And that's important because, remember, he's riding to a church in Rome, the epicenter of the world.
Speaker 1: In that day, the Rome was the place.
Speaker 1: And in 54 AD, a guy came to power in Rome.
Speaker 1: His name was Nero.
Speaker 1: You may have heard about Nero, you may remember him from school history class.
Speaker 1: And 10 years later, in 64 AD, a fire broke out in Rome, destroyed over two thirds of the city, and a lot of the Roman populace was blaming Nero for the fire, saying hey, he did this, this is his fault, he just wants to rebuild Rome to his liking, to his standard.
Speaker 1: Like this is Nero.
Speaker 1: And so Nero.
Speaker 1: Nero in that moment decided hey, we need a scapegoat for the fire.
Speaker 1: And Nero chose to blame the followers of Jesus in Rome.
Speaker 1: And Tacitus, the Roman historian, writes this about what happened in 64 AD To get rid of the report, nero fastened the guilt for the fire and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace.
Speaker 1: Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, pontius Pilate, and a most I love this part a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out, not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular.
Speaker 1: So Tacitus is like hey, there was a movement in Judea surrounding this guy named Christus, because there was this belief, that mischievous superstition about Christus in his life, and it made it to Rome.
Speaker 1: And so Nero fastens the guilt for the fire on these Christians.
Speaker 1: And this is what happened, according to Tacitus, and accordingly, an arrest was first made of all the Christians who pleaded guilty And then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city as of hatred against mankind.
Speaker 1: Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths, covered with the skins of beasts that were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burned to serve as a nightly illumination when daylight had expired.
Speaker 1: So, 10 years after Paul writes this word, this persecution breaks out against the church, and Christians are hated.
Speaker 1: They're public enemy number one.
Speaker 1: They're deemed enemies of the state, haters of mankind.
Speaker 1: They're torn apart in the Colosseum and other Colosseums around The city.
Speaker 1: They're lit on fire at night to light the streets.
Speaker 1: They are persecuted.
Speaker 1: The crucible of persecution is heavy, and yet they refuse to back down from their faith.
Speaker 1: They lived out the love of Jesus, even as they're hated and they're killed, even as the world works against them.
Speaker 1: The church of Jesus grew, the spirit worked, the name of Jesus proved to be more powerful than the greatest might of Rome And 300 years later, through the love of the church displayed in the crucible of persecution, the Roman Empire becomes a Christian Empire.
Speaker 1: Like, come on, like.
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
Speaker 1: And so today there's a church in downtown Rome called Rome Baptist Church.
Speaker 1: My grandfather pastor there for more than a decade And every single Sunday, as he preached in Rome Baptist Church, more than 50 nations would be represented in his congregation.
Speaker 1: And he's preaching the gospel in the heart of Rome, in the very place where the enemy tried to stop the mission of the church.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of years later, my grandfather preaches the gospel and the great commission is happening in that very place, because a group of Christians in first century Rome heard Paul say hey, overcome evil with good.
Speaker 1: May the same be said of us today, hundreds of years from now, thousands of years from now.
Speaker 1: May the world look at the church in the United States of America in 2023 and say, hey, their love was genuine.
Speaker 1: They pushed away from what is bad and they ran toward the good.
Speaker 1: They love, they serve, they lay down their lives to care for the people around them And through their lives, the gospel was preached And people who were sitting here today going.
Speaker 1: they are difficult.
Speaker 1: May they come to faith in Jesus Through the love that we share when we show.
Speaker 1: So, father, i pray this morning that, just like the first century Christians who didn't let the fear of death or the threat of violence against their lives stop them from loving with a real love, father, in the same way may may we today not be overcome by the fear of man or the desire to fit in or the desire to get the last word and then argument with somebody that we would call difficult.
Speaker 1: But, father, may your love dwell so deeply in us and be so transformative in us that it overflows to the world around us.
Speaker 1: May people see Jesus through us and, father, through the church in the world today.
Speaker 1: May good overcome Jesus.
Speaker 1: Amen.
Speaker 1: We're going to stand and we're going to sing, and I want to invite you this morning.
Speaker 1: If you need to pray, if you need to pray for reconciliation with someone in your life, if you need to pray for somebody, this is your moment.
Speaker 1: The altar's over.
Speaker 1: If you want to join the church, you want to give your life to Jesus, this is a chance for you to respond as the spirit leads.
Speaker 1: So let's stand and let's worship together this morning.