Biblical Foundations 9: Elevating Community 2 (Romans 12)

.
Over the last 8 posts we have been digging deeply into the Bible to understand the foundations of this local church—
.

• Why does God have us attending here? (VISION—where is God taking us?)
  .
• What is He doing in and through us, both within the walls of this building & outside of it? (MISSION—how is He getting us there?)

 

The first six posts were primarily focused on elevating God—how do we do that? What does that look like?

In the last two posts we began looking at elevating community—growing closer to other Christians through a deep study of the Bible and the vulnerable sharing of what we are going through. Your local church’s options for Bible studies/small groups are not there just to try to fill up your time! They are there on purpose—being in such a group is foundational to being a Christian.

• Furthermore, regarding community with other Christians, what would it look like for each of us to look around each Sunday and contact ONE PERSON—JUST ONE!—who we didn’t see at church that morning? Or to contact one person who we DID SEE at church and simply ask, “How may I be a blessing to you this week?” What would that do to strengthen Biblical community at your local church?!

.
Then last week we focused on elevating community by growing closer to Christians through serving them, by sacrificially putting the needs of others in this congregation ahead of our own needs—that is, why is it important for us to be volunteering at our local church?

 

1. Our service/good deeds must start with other Christians:

• If there were a food shortage, it would be AWESOME to share your portion with your non-Christian neighbor; but if you have hungry children, you would be right to give your meal to them first instead of your non-Christian neighbor.
  .
• Non-Christians will know we are Christians—Jesus’ disciples!—by the way we love one another…loving other Christians! (John 13:34-35)
  .
• 1 John has 6 different passages (please click HERE) about the priority and importance of loving brothers and sisters in Christ. Wow. Some say, “I love Jesus, but not the Church.” If we aren’t learning to love the Church, then we don’t love Jesus. Period. 1 John 4:20
  .
• Galatians 6:10: “Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, ESPECIALLY to those who belong to the family of believers.”
  .
• Look how verse 10 connects with verse 9 that we looked at two Sundays ago! “Let us not become weary in doing good, for in time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” How do we not give up following Christ when we are weary? BY SERVING OTHER CHRISTIANS!!!! This is why volunteering is so much more than just the actual task that you are doing—God uses our five loaves and two fish to help other Christians not give up & keep going!!!! YES!

2. A local church is more than just a building, and it is even more than a group of individual Christians—TOGETHER we are the literal Body of Jesus Christ! Not the DIS-membered Body of Christ, but together-MEMBERS of His Body.

 

Let’s dig through Romans 12 together to learn more about this!

 

Romans 12:3-8: Humble Service in the Body of Christ

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. 4 For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your[a] faith; 7 if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; 8 if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead,[b] do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

 

Verse 3: Being a Christian and NOT being a connected member of the Body of Christ may mean that we are thinking of ourselves more highly than we should! We bristle at this, but humble yourself under the mighty hand of God and ask Him if it’s true! Do you only attend your local church for what you can get, or also for what you can give? What does that say if you only RECEIVE when you are there? What does it say if you only make withdrawals there and not deposits?

.
Or it might mean that you are thinking of yourself too LOW—I don’t have much to offer, I’m not good at much, I’m too scared, I’m too tired, I’m too busy, etc. This is NOT how God looks at His children! This is no longer true of us who have received Jesus as Savior by faith and who therefore have God the Holy Spirit living inside us!
.
It requires GRACE from God and FAITH in God to look at ourselves soberly—not too high and not too low. Not to look at ourselves through the mirror, through our feelings, through our past, through our bank account, through our accomplishments, through others’ opinions, but through God’s Word!

.
Verses 4 & 5: God has designed the Church—the Body of Jesus Himself—to have different functions and different roles…ALL are important! We are all connected!

• Imagine if your spleen took a few days off! Imagine if your left foot decided to stop being your left foot! Imagine if your medulla oblongata took a break! (don’t know what that is? That’s ok! But you can’t live without it! 🙂 )
  .
• Why do we think it is any less catastrophic when different members of the Body of Christ don’t give, don’t serve, don’t play their role? THIS IS NOT MEANT TO MAKE YOU FEEL GUILTY! But it is meant to sober us and understand what is at stake—I am simply using the illustration that God Himself uses.
  .
• In Christ EACH MEMBER BELONGS TO THE OTHER. Wow. That is staggering and humbling. In ancient Sparta, each soldier had a shield, but an individual’s shield didn’t protect that individual—it protected the soldier to their left! Thus everyone had to stay in the line & play their part or else they would be leaving their teammate/fellow soldier exposed to the enemy! That’s why the Spartan wives told their husbands as they left for war: “Come back with your shield or ON IT!” They were to NEVER lose their shield because to do that would be to leave their fellow soldiers vulnerable. They were to ALWAYS play their role for the greater good.
  .
• What if we looked at our service in the local church as not primarily about us but about God first and other Christians second—our shield protects and blesses and encourages the person sitting NEXT to you! And if we don’t show up, if we aren’t plugged in, then another CHRISTIAN will miss out on encouragement, blessing, love, etc. What would that do to our decisions about serving, attending when we’d rather sleep in, being in a small group when we’d rather just chill/hang out?

.
Verses 6-8: The gifts we have are part of God’s GRACE to us! “Gifts…according to the GRACE given to each of us.” They’re not primarily about us or even for us—they are part of God’s unearnable and undeserved GRACE to us, and they are not meant to be kept in a china cabinet on display or neglected in a box in the attic—they are to be used to honor God and serve others!!! If you have received Christ Jesus as your Savior and God, you have gifts to use—these verses are saying “Use them!” Not sure what they are? Just get plugged in and start serving and over time God will reveal them to you!

.
I said we would work backwards in these first nine verses of Romans 12—now that we have established a more Biblical understanding of the Church and our role in it, let’s look at verses 1-2 for some powerful closing Truth:

.
Romans 12:1-2: Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

.
Verse 1: “offer your bodies as living sacrifices”; our service is a sacrifice; not convenient or easy but costly to us.
.

• But how do we do this when we are stressed, exhausted, weary, etc.? Galatians 6:9 says to not grow weary in doing what is good because doing good for the LORD, offering our bodies as living sacrifices, CAN be exhausting if we forget WHY we do them and WHAT we are actually doing when we do them:

.
“In view of God’s mercy…”–THAT is the key to serving Christians when we’re weary.

.
I don’t know anyone who mows their lawn or tends to a garden at midnight; no you do those things in the daytime, in view of the sun that shines everywhere and gives light and warmth to every corner of the garden or lawn…even if you did so at night, you would work IN VIEW of some light source (e.g. you wouldn’t put the light on the BACK of the mower!).

.
Similarly, we serve the LORD and follow Jesus for the long haul IN VIEW OF GOD’S MERCY, constantly remembering what He has done for us on the cross, constantly remembering that, if we have received Jesus as our Savior through faith, He has pardoned us and set us free from the spiritual Death Row of our sin, where we were waiting for our execution day. The mercy and grace and love of God—and thus the terribleness of our sin—must be constantly in our view, in our attention, lighting up every corner of our daily lives. We read the Bible, pray, worship God, serve Him and serve others, tithe, etc. always in view of the mercy of God, always in view of what He has done for us! The Cross—and our sinfulness which made the Cross necessary!—is not something only for newer Christians, is not something you MOVE ON FROM as you mature!

• The Cross of Christ is not the umbilical cord which you need in the womb but once you’re reborn you shed it and move on. NEVER! We must live each day in full view of the Cross of Christ—how TERRIBLE we are and how TERRIFICALLY Jesus loves us—if we are to truly know God deeply & have rich Christian community.
  .
• In fact, moving on from this Truth prevents us from maturing, prevents us from running the race that Jesus has marked out for us! But focusing on the Cross daily, this gives us energy and strength to be with Him, and to give up certain other activities so that we have time and energy to be with Him, more energy to sacrificially serve other Christians, etc. There’s a reason Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 (please click HERE) that he resolved to know NOTHING except Christ and Him crucified; this enabled Paul to keep going though he was afraid, weak and trembling! If Paul needed this laser-focus on the Cross, how much more do WE!?
  .
• Again, if your hand gets tired writing out a long thank you note to someone who donated one of their kidneys to you so that you could live and not die, it would be helpful to write that thank you note IN VIEW of the amazing sacrifice and love and gift and sacrifice of that person; that helps give us the energy and strength to keep writing that thank you note! But if we get distracted from what they have done for us and begin to forget, well of course we will lose motivation for writing such a note, especially when we get a cramp in our hands!
  .
• Similarly, when we get tired of reading the Bible, praying, learning to sit in silence and stillness with God, serving at church, developing real community, etc., we must fight to stay in view of the mercy of God, what He has done for us on the cross, the terrible price He paid to offer us forgiveness, new life, and adoption into His family…only when we constantly focus on God’s mercy on a daily basis will we have the fuel needed to do what He commands us to do…

.
Verse 2: “do not conform to the pattern of this world…”

.
The pattern of the world is to do what is easy, convenient, safe, pleasant, personally and immediately rewarding.

But that is not the pattern of Christ—He does what is difficult, inconvenient, dangerous, unpleasant now but ultimately rewarding in the long-run/the next life. Look at the pattern of Christ that Jesus gives us in Luke 22:

• Luke 22:24-27: 24 A dispute also arose among them as to which of them was considered to be greatest. 25 Jesus said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. 26 But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. 27 For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.

During the last supper, after Jesus and His disciples share the bread and the wine which represent His body and blood in His upcoming sacrifice, Jesus paints a profound picture of what greatness looks like in the family of God, in the Church:

• serving other Christians, treating them as better than ourselves—Jesus is our example here! Matthew 20:28—He did not come to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many!
  .
• Do you go to your local church just to be served or to serve? If you are a Christian and you attend a local church, if you are blessed by others serving you, then you have a Biblical responsibility to serve others there as well. If you receive anything there, you have a Biblical responsibility to also give so that others can receive. We aren’t reservoirs—collecting and storing blessings; we are pipes through which blessings flow from God through us to others.

Pattern of the world is to treat church as a cruise ship where you go and get served and get what you want;

Pattern of Christ is to treat church as a pot-luck where everyone brings a dish to share;

Pattern of Christ is to treat church as an aircraft carrier—all-hands on deck to refuel others and launch them out into the culture to proclaim the grace and Truth and love of Jesus.

Pattern of the world is to serve others when it is easy, convenient, fits into our schedule, etc.—like food, if we have leftovers of time/energy then we will serve…

But the pattern of Christ is to serve God & others with the firstfruits of our time—the big round chips at the top of the bag and not the crushed crumbs leftover at the bottom of the bag.

.
Verse 1 again: “…this is your spiritual act of worship.”

.
WOW! As we learn to invest the time God has given us in the ways that God commands us, we are spiritually worshipping God! Does that change the way you look at Bible reading, prayer, small group, tithing, serving at church? It’s worship to the LORD!!! It’s so much more than just work, it’s WORSHIP, an intimate act between God and His people!

.
And this gives us strength and energy and fuel to keep offering our bodies to the LORD even when we don’t see the results, even when we can’t see the difference that our sacrifices make—we aren’t primarily doing these things for the results, we are doing them to WORSHIP GOD for His amazing love and grace and mercy!

And so we can keep reading the Bible,
We can keep praying,
We can keep serving,
We can keep loving that friend/family member…
.
…even if nothing is changing in the situation because the results are secondary–worshipping God is the first main reason for doing those things!!!

.
Oh loved ones, do you see how serving at your local church and elevating community in Bible studies is SO MUCH BIGGER and MORE IMPORTANT and MORE ETERNAL than we realize?

.
Now you might say, “Wow. This Christianity thing really takes a lot. To really know the LORD and grow isn’t going to happen as a hobby, is it?”

.
Exactly! God is not the God of “half-measures”, “some,” or a “little bit.” He is the God of ALL…

• He gave ALL of His Son Jesus for us, not just a portion of Him…
  .
• He wants to forgive ALL our sins (Psalm 136)…
  .
• He invites you to cast ALL of your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.
  .
• The first greatest commandment is to love God with ALL our hearts, ALL our minds, ALL our strength, etc…
  .
• Romans 8:32–“He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us ALL, will not God also, along with Jesus, graciously give us ALL good things” to be who He made us to be and do what He made us to do?
  .
• God gives ALL of Himself, and as we are re-born and transformed through faith in His Son He will teach us how to give ALL of ourselves as well—this is part of what it means to be made in the image of God…THIS is foundational to this local church, this is a cornerstone of what God is doing in and through His Church around the world…

As tough as this might be at times, isn’t this WAY BETTER than just attending a church, than just playing “church”? God’s way is always harder–but always BETTER!–than human ways…