Hebrews Lesson 163 June 11, 2009
NKJ Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own
understanding;
6 In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct
your paths.
Open your Bibles to Romans 12. It’ll
be a minute or two before we get there, but that is where we will start with the
first verse that we look at. In fact you might hold your finger there wherever
else we go because several times tonight we will be coming back to Romans
12.
We’re at the end of the teaching
section in Hebrews 10 that began actually in Hebrews 7:1. Hebrews 7:1 through
Hebrews 10:25 is the teaching section before we get into the warning section,
this key section in the book of Hebrews. We’ve come to the verse that talks
about the responsibility that believers have toward one another and in
reference to based on verse 25, in reference to the body of Christ, our
responsibilities to one another and to meeting together as a body of believers
and why that is important, why it is significant.
Hebrews 10:24 says:
NKJ Hebrews 10:24 And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works,
“In order to provoke” could be one
way of translating that, or, in order to incite to action, to encourage others
to action specifically in terms of love and good works. These two words are
simply chosen as a summary of the whole spiritual life. One thing I want to
come back to though as we look at this as we started last time studying the
Doctrine of One Another, the verb that we have here is katanoeo.
I’m getting distracted in my own
mind. The last two days I’ve been in a Greek in a week class. It’s a first year
Greek class, but they’re teaching a new form of pronunciation based findings in
the last. And studies that have been done in the last 15 or 20 years where they
have a pretty good idea of how historical Greek was pronounced. By historical
Greek that’s what they’re referring to: Koine Greek as opposed to Attic Greek,
which was prior to that and later Byzantine Greek and then Modern Greek. Modern
Greek is quite different. There’s been a simplification of the language over
the last 2,000 years or so, so that vowels specifically tend to flow towards
either an “a” or an “e” sound. So whereas you might have several endings (vowel
endings) that you have in some Greek words - “ei” is one ending that’s a double
vowel or a diphthong. You also have an “ada” ending and some others that were
distinguished in pronunciation in the Koine period and even in the classical
period. In the modern period that disappeared. Now the significance for that is
that the subjunctive mood which used an “ada” ending, which would be pronounced
more like an “a”, and the “ei” ending which I was taught was pronounced the
same way would not have been that way in the Koine period because you have to
be able to hear the distinction in the sounds to know whether somebody is
talking in the indicative mood or in the subjunctive mood. In Modern Greek is
when those vowel sounds came together as one. Modern Greek actually dumped the
subjunctive mood. It fell out because you couldn’t hear the difference anymore
between the indicative mood and the subjunctive mood.
Now I thought that was interesting,
but other people may not. But they’re using this new pronunciation system. I’ve
been sitting there all day listening to a whole new way of pronouncing Greek
words. So now when I look at a Greek word, it’s like confusion sets into my
head.
“Okay. How do I say that now?”
It’s been interesting. This guy is
teaching. I’m going to it to sort of observe his method. He’s teaching first
year Greek in basically 22 hours – 2 hours last night, 8 hours today, 8
hours tomorrow, and 4 hours on Saturday morning. So it’s rather intensive. I was brain dead at 1 o’clock this
afternoon and I know Greek. I’m looking at these other people in there who
didn’t even know the alphabet until last night.
I’m thinking, “How in the world are
these people even assimilating this?”
It’s got to be like drinking water
out of a fire hose. It completely overwhelms.
Anyway when you look at Hebrews
10:24 and we have this initial verb katanoeo,, it is an intensified form because of
the prefix of the kata which is the preposition that is attached to the root verb noeo which is
the word for thinking or thought. It is related also to the word phroneo which we will see tonight. You hear the noeo. That’s your root. Nous is a
word that you’ve heard before. That’s the Greek word for mind. So you move from
nous to noeo, and you
see the same root. One’s a noun; one’s a verb - moving from mind to thought or
thinking. So you have this group of words like phroneo, katanoeo, hupernoeo, words like that huponoeo, which
indicate different ways of talking about thinking, thought and
concentration.
The reason I’m bringing that up is
when we get into the Romans 12 passage as well as the Ephesians 4 passage that
we’ll look at under the first couple of new points that we hit tonight, those
commands in relation to how we are to treat one another within the body of
Christ are surrounded by verbs related to thought and thinking, emphasizing the
fact once again that the essence, the core of the Christian life has to do with
thought. It doesn’t have to do with emotion. It doesn’t have to do with how we
feel about God. It has to do with thinking in terms of the way God thinks and
that the Word of God is given to us so that we can learn to think about God’s
creation the way He thought about His creation and the way He designed that
creation. When our thinking lines up with the way God created and made things,
then we are aligned with reality and we’re thinking in terms of reality. But
when we think differently, when our thinking is divorced from the creation as
He’s made it, then the further we get from the way things are as He defined
them, the more we get into a fantasy world. We’re just making up our own ideas
of the way reality is and we become divorced from reality; and therefore we
become more and more irrational.
So at the very essence when you
think about thought systems such as other worldviews (Marxism, eastern
religions, Buddhism, Hinduism, the various forms of mysticism), you think in
terms of humanism, secular humanism, and atheism - these various worldviews.
They all are going to have elements of truth in them because they’re living in
God’s world. So they have to some degree operate on truth as it is because
otherwise they would be walking of the edge of buildings and falling to their
death and things of that nature. So at least 50% I would think to 70% of any
thought system is going to have to fit with reality. But it’s the other 10, 15, 20, 30% that is what distorts the
rest of it into a different way of looking at things. So the more error there
is in the thought system, the more divorced from reality people are.
So often I get the question: how in
the world can people believe that? Well, you’re asking for a rational
explanation based on the absolute truth of God’s Word for people who have
rejected God’s Word. They’re suppressing truth in unrighteousness, operating in
a fantasy world, which by definition is irrational. So how can we ask for a
rational explanation for irrational behavior? We can’t unless we assume what
the irrational person has assumed in terms of their worldview. Ultimately
everything comes back to thinking a certain way and that thinking has to fit a
standard.
That’s what the word consider means
is to think. It means to contemplate to meditate. It means to give careful and
conscious thought to something, intentional thought to something.
It’s not just something that, “Well
this idea just sort of occurred to me. Maybe we ought to do this.”
No, it’s the idea of sitting down
and giving intentional thought to a particular issue. Here it is that we are to
consider, give thought to a course of action - how we can stimulate, excite,
challenge, stir up, people to a course of action. In other words, pursuing
spiritual maturity.
So that led us into looking at the
various passages in Scripture that talk about the believer’s responsibility to
other members of the royal family of God – royal family of God being a
term to describe believers in the Lord Jesus Christ who are part of the body of
Christ who Scriptures say are adopted into God’s family at the instant of
salvation. We are adopted into His family. We are heirs of God and so there is
a unique privilege that we all share as members of the royal family of God. We’ve
all been given the same resources. We’ve all been the same beneficiaries of
God’s grace in terms of what Christ did for us at the cross. We are all indwelt
by God the Holy Spirit. We all benefit from the filling of God the Holy Spirit.
We’ve all been given certain spiritual gifts. We are all equally valuable as
members of God’s royal family.
So there is a code of conduct, a
code of behavior that is mandated by the Word of God on all members of the
family. This is how members of God’s family behave toward one another. It is a
family relationship. So if you have positive views of family (Some people don’t
because of their background); but if you have positive views of a solid healthy
family; then you understand something about the kind of relationship that
believer’s should have to one another. We are members of the same family. We’re
not strangers; we’re not foreigners. We are all members of God’s family. Only
believers are members of God’s family.
Doctrine of One Another
Yesterday or the day before, I went
out to a small local nursery that I was told about and met a very interesting
guy who has this small nursery that nobody would probably ever pay much
attention to. He’s very knowledgeable about plants and all kinds of things. And
he’s a believer. He came over. We bought some plants. He brought them,
delivered them to the house.
As he left he said, “Next time I see
you, I want you to answer a question for me.” He said, “I know God loves me all
the time. But there are sometimes when I just don’t feel like I’m very lovable.
Now why does God love me?”
See that’s a question a lot of
people ask because they are often basing their concept of love on #1 emotion
and #2 their behavior. What the Bible teaches is that God’s love for us is not
based on anything that is in us, anything that we’ve done or haven’t done. It’s
not based on our failures or our successes. It’s not based on our obedience or
our disobedience, our morality, our immorality, our talents, our gifts. It’s
not based on any of those factors because frankly everything that we have is
from God. It is based solely and exclusively on who He is and on His character.
That’s why that love never changes. It never increases. It never decreases. As
a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, we’re not only recipients of God’s (what
we might call His) unconditional love or sometimes impersonal love. His
unconditional love emphasizes the fact that it’s not based on conditions of
behavior on our part. The fact that it’s impersonal means that a personal
relationship is not necessary because God doesn’t have a personal relationship
with unbelievers.
Yet God loved the whole world in
such a way that He sent His Son, His unique Son to die on the cross for all
unbelievers. So it’s not based on a personal relationship. It is based though
on knowledge and on integrity. So when we come to these commands that we are to
love one another as Christ loved the church, it means that we have to
understand something about integrity and we have to understand something about
the basis for that love. The basis for that love for us in terms of that
horizontal relationship between one believer and another believer is not based
on either who I am as the one loving or the other person as the one who is
loved because my character has flaws and their character has flaws and there
will be failures on both sides.
There will be days that you wake up
and you don’t feel like loving anybody. I know two people in this congregation
that I don’t really believe that’s true.
I’ve never seen that. Maybe their husbands or wives could tell me. But
we have a couple of people here that I’m just not sure they have a sin nature. That’s
another story.
But for most of us we have days when
we wake up and we just don’t really believe that we could love anybody. We
frankly don’t want to love anybody.
That’s a good day just to stay home and not interact with anybody. Other
days we wake up and we’re feeling very good. We‘re in a good mood and we feel
like we can love other people and we just love everybody. But there’s this flux
that takes place based on all kinds of different things that are going on with
us biologically, emotionally, and spiritually that affect that. So there is
that ebb and flow in terms of emotions.
But for love to have the kind of
meaning that God’s love has which is the basis for the kind of love that we are
to have towards other people; it has to be based on something that doesn’t
change, something that’s not in a state of flux, something that is not mutable.
So the love that we have for other believers is not supposed to be based on our
own character or even our own spiritual maturity. It must be based on an
understanding of God’s character, who He is, and what He’s done for us and for
others through Christ on the cross.
Those other people that we look at,
sometimes we look and say, “I just can’t understand why God wants me to love
them. Look at what they’ve done to me.
They have betrayed me. They have abused me. They have mistreated me and sometimes
in horrible, horrible ways. How in the world can God expect me to love that
person? That is beyond my capability.”
Well, that’s right. This kind of
love as I pointed out last time is part of the fruit of the Spirit. It’s the
Holy Spirit who produces that in us as we grow and mature. Part of growing and
maturing is understanding who God is, and understanding the nature of His love,
and the fact that in terms of His justice, you who are have trouble loving that
unlovable person are just as obnoxious and unlovable toward the righteousness
of God as that person you can’t love is to you.
So we get in this high and mighty
state of arrogance where we say, “I can’t really love that person. Look at what
they’ve done to me.”
We’ve missed the whole point. The
point is God loved them just as much as He loves you. As far as God’s
concerned, you’re not any better as a dirty rotten, fallen, depraved sinner
than they are; and you’re no more deserving of God’s love and I’m no more
deserving of God’s love than anybody else is. So we have to understand the nature of that love that we are
to emulate.
Jesus said, “We are to love one
another as I have loved you.”
So that puts the standard onto a
more stable and immutable foundation. Now this command to love one another as I
pointed out last time pervades the New Testament. John, Paul, and Peter each
mention this. It’s based primarily on Jesus giving a new commandment, John
13:34-35, which is the main verse we looked at last time. Then I looked at all
the other verses related to loving one another.
The basis, the pattern, the model is
to understand how God loves us. That takes a lifetime to understand as a
believer because that is the whole process of studying God’s Word and learning
about and observing the patterns of God’s behavior toward His creatures. In the
Old Testament we have the adoption of the nation Israel as God’s precious
possession. So we look at how God deals with Israel in love. See that
automatically challenges most people’s understanding of what love is because
they would think that if somebody loves me and they did to me what God does to
Israel in terms of discipline; then how can that be love? That’s because people
have a deluded, shallow, superficial and emotional view of what love is; and it
doesn’t have any room for true righteousness judgment or discipline from the
framework of a righteous God who has complete integrity and complete knowledge.
So love is not just this warm,
fuzzy, emoted, sentimental Hallmark card, feel-good kind of thing, which has
come to characterize what many Americans, what our pop culture envisions as
love. It is much more complex and much more profound than that. So the more we
study all through the Scripture and we observe God’s patterns of behavior
towards those He loves, then we come to understand what love is all about.
Same thing when you get into the New
Testament and the ultimate example of God’s love is John 3:16: “God loved the
world in this way that He gave His unique Son that whosoever believes in Him
should not perish but have everlasting life.”
NKJ Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that
while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Jesus said:
NKJ John 15:13 "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay
down one's life for his friends.
So that’s the pattern for understanding
what love is. It ultimately starts with God. It doesn’t start with those kinds
of feelings that you had when you were 15 years old and had your first crush on
some boy or some girl. It’s not related to the kind of love that you
experienced in your home. It’s not related to any other sort of human
experience. But that’s always the frame of reference for understanding love for
most people - something within their experience.
For the believer, we have to get out
of our experience and go into the Word of God and there we come to understand
what real love is all about. Love involves as I pointed out in the third
point…
NKJ 1 Thessalonians 5:11 Therefore comfort each other and edify one another,
We’ll see that in another category.
just as you also are doing.
So here we have these words based on the word group parakaleo. You have sumparakaleo. Sum is a prepositional prefix which intensifies
the word there. Sum means together
with so it emphasizes again the coming together with one another.
Then 1 Thessalonians 4:18 and 5:11 use the word parakaleo. It has that idea of
encouraging, challenging, helping, aiding, assisting one another.
Now we come to the fourth point.
This is why you’re in Romans 12.
Now that’s a difficult concept for
us to get into our heads (that we are members of one another) because that directly
challenges a certain mentality that we as American have built into the way we
think. We studied this in the past that every person born in whatever country –
I’ll use China or India versus the United States – you’re in, whatever
that worldview is, you grow up from the time that you are in the cradle and you
are trained by various factors to think about reality a certain way. Each
culture has its different patterns. If you grow up in a pagan culture –
an eastern culture such as China or India - where ultimate reality is just this
sort of nirvana nothingness that is out there. Ultimate reality isn’t personal.
It is infinite; but it’s not personal, then ultimately death is being absorbed
into that impersonal blob that’s out there and you lose all sense of
self-consciousness. So self is not a category that is important.
But if you’re born in the United
States of America, self is very important. Each individual is emphasized and we
have a value based on our history, based on our culture to emphasize the
importance of the individual and the individual’s talents and abilities so that
they can have the freedom (historically at least in the United States) to have
the freedom to choose to do whatever they want to with the talents and
abilities that God gave them.
To have real freedom you have to
free to succeed and to have to also be free to fail. To the degree that you
limit the freedom to fail (through government cushions), you also have to limit
people’s freedom to succeed. We’re seeing great examples of that right now in
our country as we’re not letting various corporations fail and experience the
results of their bad decisions, their foolish decisions and in some cases
criminal decisions.
Then on the other hand we’re coming
along and we’re going to now limit (or there are people who think that we ought
to limit) the degree to which people can be compensated in certain jobs, in
certain positions. So you cut off the motivation to succeed at some level
because somebody thinks somebody else makes too much money. So you have the
government coming in and wanting to limit freedom.
But historically in the U. S. there
has been this emphasis on individualism. This was built into our national
psyche during the years of the frontier where people would leave everybody
behind. They might be 16, 17 years of age, getting on a wagon train. They might
never again see their family. Life for them was going to be what they made of
it and they were going to head out into the West and they were going to make
their own life. It was up to them and their own resources. They were going to
pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. So this emphasis on the individual
and the individual’s ability is stressed highly in our culture.
But when you come to passages like
this in Scripture it becomes difficult for us to identify this sort of
corporate thinking that you have that we are members of one another, that there
is an interrelationship and interdependency among believers in the body of Christ
because we’re trained as Americans to think in terms of independency; whereas
you have people from some other cultures and they only think in terms of the
village or they only think in terms of the family or the group. So every
decision they make is made on the basis of a family and the impact it has on
the family. They never really think of it in terms of themselves as an
individual. These are different ways in which the culture around us, and the
worldview that we absorb from teachers, peers, parents, professors through life,
shapes our thinking.
So look at Romans 12:1 just to give
you background on this before we get into a couple of passages here. Paul says:
NKJ Romans 12:1 I beseech you
Or challenge you
therefore,
brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living
sacrifice,
Now he uses the word body because
he’s talking about the whole person. He’s avoiding some sort of Greek type of
thinking that would say, “Okay, I’m going to give my body to one thing but I’m
going to give my mind to something else.” He’s using the body because it stands
for the whole person.
holy,
That means set apart to God.
acceptable to
God, which is your
reasonable service
The idea in the Greek there is that this
is our service as part of believers once we’re saved to serve God.
Now he describes the basis for this
and how this is done in verse 2. It involves two commands, a negative and then
a positive.
First of all he says:
NKJ Romans 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the
renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect
will of God.
Now that’s hard for us because
everybody in this room was significantly conformed to the thinking of the
culture and the world around them before they were saved. I was saved when I
was 6. But the problem that we have is that when we have a sin nature, that sin
nature has an affinity for the characteristics of any cosmic thought, any
worldview, pagan worldview. So by the time we are 3, 4, 5 years of age we have
already absorbed a mindset that is counter to the Word of God because the only
option we have as a spiritually dead sinner dominated by a sin nature is to
adopt thinking that is contrary to God. So we are reared in an environment
where we have a soul that is oriented to antagonism to God and conformity to
the spirit of the age.
Literally that’s the word there for
world. It’s not kosmos
but ionos.
Instead we are to be transformed by the renewing of the mind. It is thinking. That’s
where it starts because that’s the problem.
Our “thought forms” as well as the
“thought content” is characterized by paganism. Now that really gets people
sort of twisted inside out if you start thinking about how you think. It’s very
difficult to think about how you think because it is sort of like a fish being
in water. You don’t know what it’s like to be in air because you’ve always been
surrounded by water. As a fallen sinner your thinking was always shaped by a pagan
worldview of one form or another and characterized by sin. So to think in terms
of those structures that were basically embedded, adopted, absorbed into your
thinking before you were saved is extremely difficult because that forms the
habits of your mind. It structured your mind long before you were conscious of
how you were thinking and what you were thinking.
I had a seminary professor who once
said, “It’s hard enough for most people to think, but it’s almost impossible
for most people to think about how they think.”
That’s true. It takes a lot of
effort and training, teaching and consciousness and conscientiousness to think
about how you think. There are people in this world who never do think about
what they think in terms of content, much less how they think. But you can
think the wrong way and have right thoughts. It’s like saying that a right
thing must be done in a right way; but a right thing can be done in a wrong
way. Well, a right thing in terms of a morality system can be done in a wrong
way in terms of a thought framework.
See you have some great moral
principles in some cults. Take the example Mormonism. They emphasize the
family. They have a strong emphasis on marriage. They distort that in polygamy,
but we'll not get off on that tonight. But they have understood certain
principles about what we would call divine institution #1 which is individual
responsibility, divine institution #2 which is marriage, divine institution #3
which is family. They understand that. But it is encapsulated within a way of
thinking that actually distorts all three of those. So at the surface it looks
like they’ve got the details right; but because it’s in a web that is
distorted, those details really aren’t right. They are trying to do a right
thing the wrong way. A right thing done the wrong way is wrong. So right
thoughts thought in a wrong framework is wrong. Maybe you never thought of it
that way before. I can tell for some of you, I have already lost you, so let’s
get a little more concrete.
We’ll look at the Word here.
NKJ Romans 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the
renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect
will of God.
The main thing I want you to notice and
you can circle or underline that word “mind” because it’s emphasizing thought.
The word there in the Greek is the word nous, which is the standard word for the mind,
for the place where thinking takes place within the soul.
Then in verses 3 through 8 he’s
going to make his first application. See what’s happened in Romans in terms of
this letter is the first 11 chapters dealt with the righteousness of God in
terms of the unjustified sinner in the first three chapters and how they become
justified in chapter 4, reconciliation of the one justified in chapter 5; 6
through 8 is how the justified sinner is supposed to live. Nine, 10 and 11 deal
with how God’s justice relates to His previous promises to Israel. In chapter
12:1 he says, “Therefore in light of God’s righteousness and justice and what
He has done to justified sinners; how then are you to take that (all this heavy
doctrine that I’ve taught, been explaining for 11 chapters, how do you take
that) and put it into application? That’s how Paul normally handled things.
So he comes to the therefore in 12:1
and now he begins to get down to what most people would call real good
practical application. He sets it up in terms of changing the way you think in
verses 1 and 2. Then in 3 through 8 he’s going to apply that in terms of this
new relationship that we all have with one another as members of the royal
family of God. He’s going to build that in relationship using this whole image
of a body as a metaphor that we are part of that body and just as each part of
our physical bodies has a different function and a different purpose and some
may be more obvious in terms of it’s significance and importance than other
parts; but all of it is important.
Many of us came through, grew up in
a time period when we were taught that tonsils and the appendix were vestigial
organs. Do you remember that? They weren’t important at all. Just take them
out. I came along just about the time they stopped doing that so I still have
my tonsils. I begged doctors when I was in college “Take them out please.”
Nobody would ever do that because what they discovered later was that both the
appendix and tonsil have something to do with the immune system and taking care
of toxins in the body and things of that nature. They’re important. They’re not
just insignificant left over pieces of evolution. God has an actual reason and
purpose for tonsils and for the appendix. So every body part is important. It
just has different functions. Just because your function isn’t that of the
brain, your function is that of the little finger or your function is that of the
little toe or the big toe. Without the right toes you have trouble with
balance, other things of that nature. Paul is going to use that analogy to talk
about the different gifts that God has given to each believer within the makeup
of the local body. That means that everybody’s important.
We have to think in terms of two
things here. I want you to think in terms of the overall universal church, the
universal body of Christ. That’s all believers through time. That’s every
believer from the time of the first day of Pentecost when the church was
birthed when the Holy Spirit came in Acts 2 all the way to the rapture. Every
believer, every person who trusts in Jesus Christ all through that time are
part of that body of Christ. Now some are dead. They have already lived and
have died and they’ve gone to be with the Lord. Others have not yet been saved.
Some have not yet been born physically. They will at some future time. Every
single one has been given a spiritual gift and their function is vital to the
body of Christ.
But some believer who lived in
Ephesus in the 3rd century whose name we don’t know is just as
important to the body of Christ as you are, but not at the same time.
I’m really twisting your brains
tonight; but what we’re going to do is talk about time, and then we’re going to
talk about space. And I’m going to draw an analogy between the time layout and
the spatial factor. The time I’m showing you that God gave certain gifts at the
very beginning. Apostles and prophets were limited to the foundation of the
church, Ephesians 4:4.
But all of the other gifts are fully
operational all through the history of the church so that in every time frame
in the 3rd century, in the 4th century, 5th
century, all the way up to the 21st century there are always
believers who have the gift of leadership, the gift of mercy, the gift of
pastor-teacher, the gift of evangelist. They’re spread out diachronically, that
is chronologically down through the ages.
At the same time God looks spatially
in terms of time segments for example the first part of the 21st
century and He’s going to distribute the spiritual gifts across that same time
period as well as spatially. By that I means in terms of a local church, so
that we not only talk about the spiritual gifts in terms of the universal body
of Christ throughout the last 20 centuries, but we’re also talking about the
fact that in local assemblies God is going to give a distribution of spiritual
gifts. He’s not going to have a local assembly over here that only has the
gifts of evangelism and pastor teacher and this assembly over here has maybe
one person with the gift of pastor teacher and everybody else has the gift of
helps or leadership or administration. There is going to be a spread of these
gifts.
So if you look at West Houston Bible
Church we’re going to have a congregation as members of the body of Christ that
are going spread of spiritual gifts, whatever the proportion is that God believes
is important for us to have. We’re going to have some with the gift of helps,
some with the gift of mercy, some with the gift of leadership, some with the
gifts of giving, and these are all important for the function of this localized
body of believers.
You go to some other congregation.
They have the same thing. Those gifts are important to the function of that
localized body of believers so that the gifts are operational and significant
not just for the total universal body of Christ, but also for each individual
local body of believers.
That means that every single
believer in the localized version of the body of Christ that meets at West
Houston Bible Church is important to the function of that body. There is no one
here that is not important or significant for the function of the body. So when
people are not present or they’re not involved or they just come and sneak in
at the last minute and leave right away afterwards and they’re not part of the
body; not only does the body miss the opportunity of being ministered to,
edified by their spiritual gift, but also that person misses out on the
opportunity to be involved in serving that local body of believers in terms of
the spiritual gift that God gave them for the purpose of serving in that local
church. So maybe that gives you a greater understanding of the importance and
the role that we all play within the health of that body.
Now of course you have people within
a local congregation that have different levels of maturity. You have some
believers that are more mature so their gift if more evident, more operational.
You have others who are less mature so their gift is not as obvious and not as
operational. But it will become so as they grow and mature. So that’s some
background to help you think through the next couple of verses.
So in verse 3 Paul says:
NKJ Romans 12:3 For I say, through the grace given to me,
That’s a reference to his apostolic
gifts, which are involved in giving revelation from God.
to everyone who
is among you, not to think of himself more highly.
“Of himself” is added for clarity in
the English.
than he ought
to think, but to think soberly,
That doesn’t mean with the absence
of alcoholic beverages. The word sober there has to do with objectively in
terms of reality. The only way you can get the terms of reality is when you
have the Word of God in your thinking. So we’re to think honestly about who we
are, not with either a false humility or saying, “You know, I really can’t do
that.” and you know you can; but you just don’t want it to appear as if you’re
promoting yourself; or, on the other hand always promoting yourself in terms of
an overt arrogance. Pseudo humility is just as arrogant as overt arrogance is
so the Scripture says we are to think objectively and accurately about whom we
are and we can only do that when we’re evaluating ourselves from an objective standard
like the Word of God. So we’re not to think more highly than we ought to think
but to think soberly or accurately or objectively.
as God has
dealt to each one a measure of faith
What that indicates it that there
are different proportions of how God distributes the spiritual gifts. Some
person may have the gift of pastor-teacher, but he has three quarts. Another
person has the gift of pastor-teacher and he has three bushels. Another person
may have the gift of giving and they have a couple of gallons. Somebody else
has the gift of giving, but it’s only a quart. We’ve all experienced that. We
have listened to pastors who have just obviously tremendously gifted by God.
I’ve been under and heard others who we know have the gift of pastor-teacher,
but it’s not as remarkable as someone else. So there is a difference in degree
of distribution which is what Paul refers to there.
Then in verse 4 he says:
NKJ Romans 12:4 For as we have many members in one body,
That emphasizes the distinction and
importance of every individual. We have many members, but there is one body of
Christ. We are all part of a greater whole.
but all the members
do not have the same function,
Then in verse 5 he says:
NKJ Romans 12:5 so we, being
many,
Once again talking about the many
individuals.
are one body in
Christ, and individually members of one another.
Now if you stop and think about that,
that is an important concept that we lost: that we are member of one another.
We do not exist as individual Christians existing in isolated islands totally
separated from other believers. Now that runs counter to the kind of thinking
that characterizes American individualism. I’m not saying that there’s not a
place, a role for thinking in terms of people’s individual abilities and their
own self-reliance. But in the body of Christ that is not the pattern. The
pattern is that we are members of one another and there is interdependency in
the body of Christ from one member to another because we’re designed as a team.
That’s probably the best analogy that most of us can comprehend.
We’re like a super bowl Dallas
Cowboys team back in the 60’s and 70’s where every player worked well with
every other player. It was like a well-oiled machine. Every part was important
and every part functioned individually; but the whole team was successful only
when everybody worked together as a whole. You see the same kind of thing in
any sort of team operation. You can’t have one person exerting himself or
elevating himself as being more important than others. They all work
together.
Then Paul goes on to describe 7
different spiritual gifts in this particular passage.
Before I move on, one thing I didn’t
highlight; but back in verse 3 Christ said:
NKJ Romans 12:3 For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you,
not to think
Emphasizing the word thinking again.
Here it shifts to the word huperphoneo, which is emphasizing the thinking, the concentration.
of himself more highly than he ought to think,
Again we have the word phroneo.
but to think
soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.
So three times in that one verse
there’s an emphasis on thought, the importance of accurate objective thinking.
That then becomes a part of how the individual members interface with one
another.
Then starting in verse 6 there’s a
list of various spiritual gifts. None of the lists that we have in Scripture, I
believe, are exhaustive of the spiritual gifts; they are a representative. In
this list we have prophecy, ministry or service to the local body of Christ,
teacher. I think there is a difference between someone who is a gifted teacher
and someone who is a pastor-teacher. The pastor-teacher is one who has a
responsibility towards a congregation and the pastor emphasizes the leadership
aspect because it’s based on the word for shepherd. That’s what a shepherd did.
He had a responsibility for leading and taking care of a flock of sheep. So the
gift of pastor-teacher is someone who has that gift of leadership to oversee a
congregation and take care of a congregation. He does it primarily through
teaching. But that’s different from someone else who may have a gift of
teaching.
I have studied under some great
teachers in my time in seminary education - tremendous academics, tremendous
knowledge, but not necessarily men who would make good pastors because they
didn’t have that sort of leadership gift. But they had great abilities to
teach. There are people in every congregation who have the ability to teach and
can teach in Sunday school with kids, can teach other adults; but they don’t
have that gift of pastor-teacher. So you have the gift of teaching. You have
the gift of exhortation, which is really to challenge. It’s that word parakaleo
again, to exhort, to challenge, to comfort, to encourage, the gift of giving,
the gift of leadership with diligence, the gift of mercy. These are the 7 gifts
that are listed here in Romans 12.
Then just as we wrap up the other
verse that supports this is over in Ephesians 4.
NKJ Ephesians 4:25 Therefore, putting away lying, "Let each one of you speak truth with his
neighbor," for we are members of one another.
Now once again you get into a
section that emphasizes thought. This begins in verse 17.
In Ephesians Paul follows the same
kind of pattern that he followed in Romans. He has more of a teaching
instructional, doctrinal, theological section in chapters 1, 2, and 3. In 4, 5
and 6 he gets into what most people today want to call practical things. But
for Paul there’s nothing more practical than theology. So all practical things
start with understanding who God is and what God has provided for us in
salvation. Starting in chapter 4, he starts drawing out the implications of
this for our behavior. I’m just going to read through these verses and
emphasize a couple of things before we get to verse 25.
Paul says:
NKJ Ephesians 4:17 This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no
longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind,
What’s he saying? Don’t be conformed
to the world. He saying the same thing he said in Romans 12:2. Don’t be
conformed to the spirit of the world.
Verse 18 describes their thinking.
NKJ Ephesians 4:18 having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of
God, because of the ignorance that is in them,
Once again that’s a thought
concept.
because of the
blindness of their heart;
NKJ Ephesians 4:19 who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work
all uncleanness with greediness.
NKJ Ephesians 4:20 But you have not so learned Christ,
What’s learning? It’s thought. It’s changing the way
we think.
NKJ Ephesians 4:21 if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth
is in Jesus:
NKJ Ephesians 4:22 that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which
grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts,
What’s he saying? He’s saying don’t
be conformed to the world but be transformed by the renewing of your thinking
which is verse 23.
NKJ Ephesians 4:23 and be renewed in the spirit of your mind,
By being renewed by your emotions….
Is that what that says? No, it says be renewed by the spirit of your mind. It’s
thought. Change the way you think.
Changing the way you think is integral to putting on the new man, which
was created according to God in the true righteousness and holiness.
NKJ Ephesians 4:24 and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in
true righteousness and holiness.
That’s not talking about salvation.
That’s talking about living in light of who you are now in Christ.
NKJ Ephesians 4:25 Therefore,
Conclusion
putting away
lying, "Let
each one of
you speak truth with his neighbor," for we are members of one another.
So neighbor there isn’t the
unbeliever living next door to you. Neighbor there is he’s using that as a term
for other believers in the body of Christ. We are to speak truth with other
believers because we are members of one another. There is this interdependency,
interrelationship that every believer has with every other believer in the Lord
Jesus Christ. So we are to exercise in terms of that relationship. We are to
live out our lives on that basis.
Now the next point we’re going to
get to next time is to give preference to one another in honor. Now we’re going
to go back to Romans 12 for that. That’s why I spent so much time on the
context because we have three verses in Romans 12 that deal with the behavior
that we’re to have toward one another. This of course will flow out of what he
said about humility and not thinking more highly of yourself than you ought to
think and this will lead to the application of the principle that we are to
give preference to one another in honor.
We’ll come back and start there next
Thursday night. Let’s bow our heads and close in prayer.