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Welcome to studies with Stearman. Join us as we look deeper into the Bible. Strengthen your faith with us even as we see the day approaching. And now here's Gary. We have been studying Romans chapter 12, and we had gone through the first seven or eight chapters of Romans 12. It's really hard to depart from Romans 12:1, 2. You could almost devote the next year or so to those two verses because they have so much in them. But the whole idea in the 12th chapter of Romans is the presentation of one's self in the very same way that the ancient Levitical priesthood used to present sacrifices at the altar. And Paul begins chapter 12 by saying, I beseech you, I beg you, I plead with you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice. We do this through the priesthood of Christ. We needn't to go through any priest. We can present ourselves a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is our reasonable service. It's the logical thing to do given what we know about God. It's fascinating to me that Paul says we are acceptable unto God. We are not perfect, but we are acceptable. And so we can present ourselves as a sacrifice. We are not to be patterned after this world. Verse 2. We are to be transformed progressively by the renewing of our minds in order, and this is a very key idea, in order that we may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Our whole life is devoted to proving that God is what he says he is. It's one thing for God to say, I am this and I am that, and I am this and I am that. But it is quite another thing for you to prove by your individual life that God is what he says he is. And I can prove it because he's working through me. What Romans 12:2 says that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. For I say, through the grace given unto me to every man that is among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. This is pretty much where we left off last week, and we were beginning to get into the gifts of the Spirit, the idea that each of us has a gift. But before that, I want to just say again that when Paul says, for I say, through the grace given unto me to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, that is such an amazing thought. Given the way the world operates, we operate in a self esteem modality. The whole idea of self approval is all intertwined with the idea of self esteem. And there are so many self esteem teachers out there these days. The difference between self esteem from the world's perspective and self esteem from the Christian perspective is that we have a balance. That is to say, we are approved by God, we are accepted by God, and we know that that's a humbling experience. What Paul says is, do not be high minded. Do not think above the way you ought to think. And it's worth repeating in the third verse. There is this play on words in the Greek. He says, I urge you not to be high minded above that which you ought to be minded, but to be so minded as to be sober minded. We mentioned last week that sober mindedness in the Greek language is sophrenen, which is to be in one's right mind. And he said, I want you to be in your right mind, not conceited, not sold on your own self and your own ideas. And conceit is treated as a type of insanity by Paul. And by the way, if you read through the epistles in general, you will discover that conceit is usually resigned to the arena of insanity. You can become so sold on your own internal thinking that you lose track with reality. Well, that's the very definition of insanity. 12:4 for as we have many members in one body, and are all members that have not the same office, and all members have not the same office, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and everyone members of another. Verses 4 and 5 are an illustration of the church as an organism. The way of the world is the corporation. And we've said this so many times, but it's still worth repeating. The way the world operates is that you build a corporation from the top down. You have a chief executive officer, and then you have a president, and then you have vice presidents, and then below those you have managers, and below those you have supervisors, and then below those you have various subdivisions of leadership. That's a corporation. The CEO is at the top and the janitor is down here at the bottom under somebody's supervisory authorization. The church is not put together that way. The church is a body that has a head. The head is Christ, and the rest of the body is joined together in Christ. And we are all parts of the same body. There is no president or vice president or manager or supervisor. There is only the head and then the parts of the body. And the body has a myriad of parts. But it is never to be Understood as a top down corporation. It is to be understood as an organism in which we operate together in communion. Koinonia is the Greek word, we operate as one. So reading this again, for as we have many members in one body and all members have not the same office. And the word for office there in the Greek is proches, which means function or a mode of acting. Paul says all members have not the same office. This is not talking about one being above another, as in a vice president being over a manager, but rather function within the body under the head. So we, being many, are one body in Christ and every one members one of another. There is a divine union in the body of Christ that cannot be said of a corporation. There is no divine union in a corporation. In fact, if you look at the Pastoral Epistles, first and second Timothy and Titus, you will discover that nowhere in those Pastoral epistles is church structure outlined, which is amazing. They're the Pastoral epistles. You'd think they would have some model for the church. This man is to be over this man, and this man is to be over this man. And this man does this and this and this, and describing in detail all the functions and structures of the church. You don't find that the Lord left that open because he realized that there would be as many different bodies as there are locations all over the world. So what you have is the Spirit being able to operate freely depending upon the requirement, the local requirement. That's left up to people in their own communities, people in their own cultures. All sorts of different kinds of churches have evolved. Some of them very, very good, some of them not so good. Some of them have even substituted their hierarchy as priests who stand between the believer and God, which of course is not scriptural. But the guiding principle is in verse five. We being many, are one body in Christ, and everyone members one of another. There is a divine equality and freedom in the body of Christ having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let's prophesy according to the proportion of faith or ministry. Let us wait on our ministering. He that teacheth on teaching, he that exhorteth on exhortation. He that giveth, let him do it with simplicity. He that ruleth with diligence, he that showeth mercy, with cheerfulness. There are seven divisions there of service or office, if you will, or function, prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhortation, giving, ruling and showing mercy. Now, I don't think that you can tack up a sign on your office door that says office of exhortation. Or office of prophecy. It doesn't work like that. You can't hang out a shingle that says your name followed by your area of ministry. The idea here is that gifts are transmitted through Christ, through the believer, out into the world at large. Prophecy. Prophecy is not prediction, but it is inspired delivery. Inspired delivery of warning. Maybe someone in society needs to be warned about what's happening. We see the Old Testament prophets serving that function very often, as when Elijah walked up to Ahab and said, you'd better shape up or the Lord's going to judge you and your kingdom. The prophets function that way to a great deal in the Old Testament. Inspired delivery to exhort, as when Isaiah, for example, exhorted Hezekiah or any of the Old Testament prophets exhorted their brethren. Prophecy is instruction. It is sometimes it's judgment. Sometimes the prophet delivers a word of the Lord saying, you people have gone too far. That's it, the Lord's going to judge you. Prophecy, that is the gift of the prophet as we understand it in the Old Testament, ceased with, I believe, John the Baptist. John the Baptist was the last of the Old Testament prophets. You have the 12 minor prophets ending with Malachi in 400 BC and then 400 years later, along came John the Baptist. And he is generally considered to be the last of the Old Testament prophets. And he prophesied of the coming of the Messiah. And he also prophesied against the society of that day. By the way, look what happened to John the Baptist did not go well for him, as with many of the Old Testament prophets. And so prophecy then is inspired delivery of the word of God. Gifts are charisma. That is to say, the Greek word charisma is translated into English as gift. We speak of charismatic personalities. For example, Billy Graham had a charismatic personality, if anyone ever did. In other words, that's just simply a different way of saying he had a gift. The gift that you get may not be public speaking or exhortation in public. It may be a very quiet, private gift. But everybody has a gift. Believe me, everybody has a gift in Christ and through Christ. And so prophecy then is divinely ordained speech. Verse 6 says, Having then gifts, differing according to the grace that is given us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith. I mentioned this last week, but I want to mention it again. The word proportion there in Greek is analogia, which is our English word, analog. It's a mathematical term. And he says, let us prophesy according to the analog of our faith. It's talking about the interpretation of divine revelation, whether it's out of the word of God or whether it is a spirit led exhortation of some sort. Interpreting divine revelation in accordance with the strength and the clearness and the fervor and the other qualities of the faith bestowed upon us. So the character and the mode of your speech conforms with the rules and the limits that your faith circumscribes. In general, that sounds complicated, but what is being said here is don't overrun your headlights, stay within the proportion of your faith. So reading it again, having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given us, whether prophecy let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith. In other words, allow your faith to guide you and not yourself. It's very easy to run ahead of God and say, I'm going to do this, this, this, this, and this, and this. And what you don't realize is that God's not ordaining that at all. This is all in your head. You need to stay within the bounds or the proportion of your faith. It's a very important principle here and complicated, as are many things that Paul talks about. But again, you could translate verse six don't overrun your headlights. The bounds and the proportion of your faith. Particularly in prophecy, it's always tempting to stand up and say great swelling words of some sort or other, but they should be backed up by the Spirit and the Word of God. Not that you shouldn't speak those words. Occasionally the Lord calls upon you to do that. Ministry the gift of ministry verse 7 ministry. Let us wait on our ministering. Ministry is not a title or shouldn't be, although in our day it has become a title. So and so minister, so and so of such and such. Church pastor teachers are often referred to as ministers, and that's partly true. But the Greek word diakonia means it doesn't really mean office at all. It has nothing to do with the office of minister, but rather it is the servant in action. When the Greek diakonia is used, it speaks of the action of a servant. A servant actually doing something, performing some service with the hands, with the feet, whatever, doing something, getting something done. The part of speech here in this sentence in Greek it's called a locative of sphere, indicating that the servant should render service in the area where the Lord has placed him. And this is very important. The Lord will place you into an arena of service. How do you know that it is the Lord that has placed you there and not you yourself? Good question. The Lord can stop You. As I've always said, if someone wants to determine the will of the Lord in their life, all they have to do is do what they want to do. And the Lord will rather quickly tell you whether or not that's the thing he wants you to do. He'll let you know. Ministry. Ministry means practical work. It does not. Diakonia does not mean ministering in the word of God. That's subsumed under prophecy. Ministry means getting things done, stepping in and doing the stuff that needs to be done. Now, there are two words for ministry in the New Testament. One is diakonia, which means the servant in action. The other is huperites, which is a really neat word in Greek. A hupereton is the lowest man on a Greek sailing ship. Remember those Greek ships that had oars coming out of the sides? And you had your top row of rowers? And some of the big ones, the Greek and the Roman ships had three levels of rowers. They had the upper rowers, the middle rowers, and the lower rowers. And the lower rowers were chained to their benches and they sat down there pulling an oar in time to a man way up above on the deck, beating with hammers so that they would all row together. And the idea is you row till you die. And if you're down at the bottom of the ship, you're in a very bad atmosphere. It's just you don't want to be down in the bottom of the hold. I mean, it's going to be the hottest, sweatiest, most miserable work being chained to an oar that you can imagine. And that under rower, the third level rower is called huperites. That's the word that is used in the New Testament for minister, as in 1 Corinthians 4:1, where Paul writes, let a man sow account of us as of the ministers of Christ and the stewards of the mysteries of God. So Paul, when he says us, is talking about the apostles, he and the other apostles. And he calls himself a hupereton, a third level rower at the bottom of the ship. That's the word for minister. That is a humbling concept. So you want to be a minister. That means sweating at the oars. So it means either the servant in action or sweating at the lowest level of pulling the oars. Take your choice. Maybe you would rather not do any ministry at all. I don't know. But that's between you and the Lord. And so we have prophecy and then we have ministry. Let us wait on our ministering or he that teacheth on teaching. Teaching is simply the idea of laying out doctrine in the modern era. In our era, teaching has devolved into indoctrination. But teaching in the true sense is not indoctrination, but rather laying out doctrine to be logically consumed. And good doctrine should stimulate thought it should not produce mental slavery. Colossians 1:28 Jesus Christ, whom we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, teaching as didascalia, which means to teach or instruct systematically, using some kind of a systematic approach, teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. So the goal of teaching is to perfect the saints. Ephesians 4 talks about that for the perfection of the saints. That is the reason for the spiritual gifts, one of which is teaching. Colossians 3:16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And again this is the same word meaning to systematically teach teaching. Second Timothy 2:24 says, and the servant of the Lord must not strive he must not be argumentative, is what it says in the original language. The servant of the Lord must not be argumentative, but be gentle unto all men apt to teach patient. So the servant of the Lord must be apt to teach. The Greek word is didactikos, which means to teach. But it also means to be teachable. So above all the teacher must be teachable. A teacher must be open himself to learning. Otherwise if he's closed off and locked into his own system, he develops a strong headed arrogancy. And that's not the spirit of the Lord apt to teach. And that's 2 Timothy 2:24, where Paul is reminding Timothy about the qualities of a teacher. The quality of a teacher is first and foremost that the teacher must be teachable. A good teacher must place himself at the bottom, at the very bottom of the congregation, not at the top speaking ex cathedra, but rather at the bottom. It must be teachable. A good teacher always has his ears open and always considers himself to be last in wisdom rather than first. And once you make the turn and start saying, I know more than anybody else, you're already in trouble, believe me. Teaching, verse 8 or he that exhorteth on exhortation, one of the spiritual gifts number four given here, exhortation. Now both teaching and exhortation are given in the Greek grammar as locatives of sphere. The idea is that God gives you the gift of teaching. He gives you the gift of exhortation within a particular sphere of activity. It's one thing to exhort or to teach. It's another thing to exhort or teach correctly and in the right way to the right people at the right time in the right place. So God directs not only your activity, but your position within his desired realm of activity. You are not a free agent out here just teaching to be teaching, but you're rather teaching with a purpose. You're not exhorting as a free agent, but you're exhorting with a purpose. Exhortation speaks of the heart. It speaks of the will. The idea being that the one given these gifts should see himself as operating within a sphere of service or a purpose for which God, the Holy Spirit has fitted them at that time, not using a particular gift as a means to achieving some other end or some other goal or some other position. Exhortation. Now, here's the interesting thing. The word exhortation in Greek is parakaleo. It's the same word root as that given the Holy Spirit, the function of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said to the disciples, he said, I will send you another comforter. And he was referring to the Holy Spirit. The word for comforter is paraclete, which goes back to the root word parakoleo, which is translated into English as exhortation. So the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer is he moves you along, he builds you up, he beseeches you, he admonishes you, he comforts you, he speaks to you earnestly. That's the whole idea of exhortation. Open, free, earnest speech. And I say all that to say this. Have you ever noticed how hard it is to talk about meaningful things? It's one thing to stand around and talk about the new tires that you got on your car or about some new cleaning product that just does an incredible job cleaning up such and such a thing. You can stand around and talk about mundane things like that for hours. Trivia, you know, just everyday sorts of things. By the way, have you noticed this weather lately? What? This weather is incredible. I think it's hotter than it's ever been. And on the other hand, it's gotten really cold too. So I can't tell whether it's hot or cold and blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, and people talk. But then if a meaningful subject comes up, something of spiritual meaning, what happens? Everybody gets real quiet and they start looking at their watches and they say, well, I gotta go. That is what's Being spoken of here as exhortation. Meaningful speech. And it's rare. Meaningful speech is very rare. You go to a Thanksgiving dinner and you sit there with 10, 15 other people and you think about what all is not being said. This person down here at this end of the table hates this person up here. And boy, if I mention this spiritual principle out loud, Uncle Harry is going to get up and leave the table and he won't come back. He'd be on the back porch smoking a cigar. Among families, meaningful speech is often very, very difficult to attain. Have you ever noticed that? Everybody gets real quiet. But that's what exhortation is. It's the idea of parakaleo. It is beseeching, admonishing, comforting, speaking openly and earnestly about spiritual things. It is a rarity, true exhortation. Open speech is a rarity. It's a gift. It's one of these gifts mentioned here. It's number four, exhortation. The next gift is giving. Enough said on that, you know, oh, really? Thousands of sermons have been delivered on. And usually they have been framed around guilt about why you should give more than you're giving and you're not giving enough. And you really should search your heart and give even more. And then we go into all the reasons why you should give more and how they used to tithe 10% in the Old Testament. Actually, they tithed 30%. If you really read the Old Testament, they tithed their animals and their crops and their money. But tithing is not giving. Giving is the new Testament principle. You give of your earthly possessions as lead of the spirit. Some people are financially minded people. Have you ever noticed? I started noticing this when I was, I think in high school or maybe in my freshman year of college. Some people have a gift of making money. Money comes to them and flows through their fingers. I can name one person that I know, but I won't. All this person has to do, and I've known this guy for decades, all he has to do is walk into a room and hold out his hand. And money appears in his hand. And he spends money the same way. Money just flows through him like water. Other people, they're work and work and work and they get about 25 cents. Have you ever noticed that? It's a gift. And the idea of giving is that the Lord blesses you and then imparts to you the spirit of sharing. That within the sphere of the ministry of the Holy Spirit, to impart. Metadomi is the Greek word which means to give of that which you have or it means a transfer from one to another to impart one's earthly possessions. The Spirit may lead you to tithe 10%. That's fine. What if you don't tithe 10% for a while? Well, that's fine too. That's not for me to say, although I would remind you of what the Bible says. But I'm not going to guilt trip you if you're not giving money. This is between you and the Holy Spirit. And ultimately you're going to be doing business with the Holy Spirit in this matter. He may give you the gift of great wealth and the ability to transfer that wealth to the ministry of Christ. He may not. That may not be your gift. This is the way it works. And all of these gifts require sensitivity to the Holy Spirit. This is why it really bothers me to hear guilt trip preaching about why you haven't been giving enough to the work of the Lord. I do not believe in that at all. The New Testament principle is giving, not legalistically tithing. And you may be called upon to give 30%. The giving is not just 10%. It may go much higher than that. The point is here in verse 8. He that giveth, let him do it with simplicity. It says there, what in the world would that mean? And he that gives, let him do it with simplicity. The idea is straightforwardness in an uncomplicated manner, not complicated by agreements, covenants, attitudes and moods or conditions. I'll give you this if you give me that. I gave this. I want a certain tax deduction because I gave this. Although that may be appropriate. That's not the spirit of giving. The spirit of giving is to be uncomplicated by external trappings of any sort. Simplicity. Let the Lord take care of the details. He that ruleth. And again, here we have the idea of ruling. It's simply the idea of being placed in a position of authority. He that ruleth with diligence. With diligence. The Greek word for diligence is spudazo, which means speedy. It means get it done. Get it done. It doesn't mean I wonder if I should do this or I wonder if I should do that. You know, so and so said I ought to do it this way, but maybe I should do it this other way. I don't know. And a month later you're still saying that same thing, going round and round in your head. That's the exact opposite of what's being said here. He that ruleth with diligence. In other words, he that if the Lord Puts you in authority, get it done, take authority and do what needs to be done. By the way, there will be more on this later. This idea of ruling. He that showeth mercy with cheerfulness, showing mercy, benevolence, Mercy, eleos in the Greek means to be compassionate, to show pity, to be merciful. Now you say, well, everybody's merciful. Why should there be a gift called showing mercy? Well, not everybody's merciful. Some people are much more merciful than others. Some people are divinely moved to show compassion. As a matter of fact, it's very interesting that back in Exodus chapter 34, verses 6 and 7, where you have the Lord speaking to Moses and the Lord, you remember, the Lord tells Moses his name. Now, I'm convinced that Moses didn't get the Lord's full name. He got probably an abbreviation of God's true name. But even then it's very long. And here's the Lord's name, and I quote the Lord. The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin that will by no means clear the guilty. Visiting the iniquity of the fathers, upon the children, upon the children's children of the third and the fourth generations. That's what the Lord told Moses his name was. That's a long name. But twice in there is the word mercy. The Lord God, merciful and gracious, keeping mercy for thousands. Twice in the name of God is this word mercy or compassion. So one of God's primary personal features is mercy. Now, non believers always like to point the finger at God or the God of the Old Testament and say, oh, that God of the Old Testament is a nasty person. He makes war and he kills people by the thousands and he inflicts disease upon unbelievers. They just go into a litany of all the nasty things that God does in the Old Testament. But in fact, humanity has brought all this upon itself. The things that are enumerated in the Bible in the Old Testament in particular, do not speak to the character of God so much as they speak to the sin of man. Loving and merciful. God is interacting with a sinful man and doing the very best thing, which appears to human beings to be the worst thing. But God refers to himself as merciful twice in Exodus 34, 6, 7. So what is mercy? Mercy is taking the time, I think, just taking the time really, to empathize with other people. Well, I don't have time to empathize I got troubles of my own, right? I got more troubles than they have anyway. I don't think I want to do that. Well, obviously you don't have the gift of mercy if you think that way. But there are people who do have the gift of mercy with cheerfulness. So those are the gifts. They are not really ministry gifts per se. They are simply tendencies given concerning the leading of the Holy Spirit. I've heard people say, oh, I know my gift. Or I've seen meetings where people are asked to write on a little piece of paper. Which spiritual gift do you have? You write on a piece of paper and you fold it up and stick it in a fishbowl or something so that then later on those are collected so that then the people present can see how many people have what gift. A certain person might put their hand up and say, my gift is ministry. Or another one might my gift is mercy. I am definitely a mercy. But you can't be a mercy. You show mercy. Let love be without dissimulation is the Next verse. Verse 9. Paul says, Let love. This is agapao, the love of God. That is totally selfless love. Let love be without dissimulation, which is a good old King James word, and it comes from the Greek word unhypocritical. In English, it's easy to understand that one. In other words, let love be unhypocritical. Why? What is that talking about? It's talking about what goes on to a great degree all the time. People rush, I just love so and so. And they're engaging in political speech. They want other people to know that they love so and so because that will be seen as a feather in their cap. The idea of actually loving so and so is secondary. What they really want to do is be seen as someone who loves so and so. Right? In other words, the gift of the love of God is not to be a political gift. I love you, brother. Oh, I just love you. And then when you get home, you're talking to your wife about, man, I can't stand that guy. You know what I'm saying? Love is not to be political. That's just basically what it means. If you love somebody, you love them, and if you don't love them, don't say so or wait until the Lord gives you the grace to love them. But the idea of love, of God's love coming through believers toward other people, is one of the central features of Christianity. And it's part of the process of growing in Christ, of renewing the mind Learning to express love to other people is not an easy thing at first. But eventually, as you become mature in Christ, expressing the love of God becomes easier and more natural. And this is the goal. Let love be unhypocritical. Abhor that which is evil, cleave to that which is good. Good is good, bad is bad. Learn to be discriminating. Learn to express your opinion about things as God would express his opinion about things. Or begin to arrive at a state where you're thinking mirrors God's thinking. And when you begin to do that, your love will be without hypocrisy. Also, you will begin to call evil evil and good good before you are mature in Christ. You can't do that necessarily. I can remember many, many, many years ago when I was in college. That's the second time I've referred to college today. I don't usually do that. I'm going to have to stop doing that. Anyway, about a few years ago when I was in college, it occurred to me one day after listening to someone lecture that this person was very, very opinionated. I mean, this lecturer had sharply defined opinions. And it occurred to me later on that I didn't have sharply defined opinions. And I really thought, you know, I've got to begin to get some sharply defined opinions. And I said to myself, how do you do? I didn't really know how to do that because my attitude and my tendency at that time was what the world does, which is, everything's okay, I'm okay, you're okay, that's okay. If you say this is good or bad, you're being opinionated, and that's probably not a good thing. And so you tend to go along and get along. But then when I became a Christian, I noticed that the Bible is an opinionated book. It has lots of opinions. I mean, really sharply defined opinions. And the more I came to maturity in Christ, the more sharply defined became my opinions. And that's what we have here, abhorring that which is evil and holding fast to that which is good. The word for cleaving or holding fast is the Greek word for glue. Kalos, just a common word for gluing something together. Glue yourself to the good. Separate yourself from the evil. Develop opinions, but not just any old opinions. Begin to absorb the mind of God. As it says in First Corinthians, we have the mind of Christ. Become opinionated, and don't be ashamed of your opinions if they are the opinions that come to you through the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. And the problem is not enough people today are opinionated in that way. There's a lot of people say, oh, you may believe this. And so. And so may believe that another person believes this. It's okay if they believe all those different things, you know, because we're all going to get to the same place eventually. And so, so we're all going to get to the mountaintop, but we're just going to climb different parts of the mountain to get there. And so it doesn't really matter how you think about this or that or the other thing. That is absolute balderdash, to use a non biblical word. It is biblical to be opinionated. Be kindly affectioned. Verse 10. One to another with brotherly love in honor, preferring one another. Put other people ahead of yourself. You go ahead of me. Regard others as superior to yourself. Regard others as more deserving than yourself. Regard others as being ahead of you in line. Show them honor as you would show honor to your own. That's what it says. Be kindly affectioned, one to another with brotherly love. And brotherly love. There, Philostorgos, which means familial love. What that's saying is you love the brethren, the brothers and sisters in Christ in the same way that you love members of your own family. It's very simple. And you know what? It actually happens. If you are with a congregation of believers, you begin to regard them as members of your own family. And by the way, you can have meaningful conversations with them. Back to the gift of exhortation in ways that maybe you can't have conversations with your own family. Verse 11. Not slothful in business, not lazy, fervent in spirit. And again, this is written in the Greek grammar as a locative of seer. Be fervent within the sphere of the Holy Spirit. Paul here is exhorting to fervency in the Christian life that is engendered by the Holy Spirit. And that's one thing the Holy Spirit really does in his daily ministry. He causes people to be moved emotionally. He causes people to be motivated. He causes the heart of man to be directed in a particular way. Get things done. Particularly the work of the Lord is what's being said here. Romans 12:12. Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation. We do rejoice in the blessed hope, and we are patient in tribulation. Tribulation here being the daily troubles. As the Old Testament says, man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. I think that's one of the great idioms in the Bible. You Ever sit around a campfire and you watch some fire, and every now and then these sparks go up off of the flames. The Bible says man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. Meaning if you got a fire, you got sparks, and if you're a human, you have trouble. It's a natural thing. It is simply natural for there to be trouble in this physical human life. We rejoice in hope, we are patient in tribulation, and we continue instant to persevere, to give constant attention to prayer. In verse 12, we, as Paul says, pray without ceasing. That is to say, we are constantly in a prayerful attitude. Prayer in the life of the Christian is not a formality so much as it is an activity distributing to the necessity of the saints, voluntarily sharing with the fellowship those things which you have to share, given to hospitality. Hospitality is kind of a mark of one's spiritual progress. If you open your life to other believers, it's kind of a mark of your own spiritual maturity. It's a mark of the operation of the love of God in your life. Romans 12:14. Bless them which persecute you and curse not. This is a total reversal from the Old Testament, the days of the 12 tribes. You remember, Abraham was given a Covenant in Genesis 12, and God told Abraham, I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. And in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed. So the idea of blessing and cursing, curse for curse in kind, is part of the Abrahamic covenant. Well, when Jesus came, he changed all that. Matthew 5:44. But I say unto you, love your enemies and bless them that curse you. Do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. And so the Christian standard is, bless those who curse you. That's a difficult thing to do. Jesus, of course, stands as the model for that sort of behavior, because that's what he did. He blessed the very world that cursed him. He blessed all of the people around him who cursed him. It's amazing. Bless them. Now, the part of speech in the Greek in verse 14 allows this to be translated as a request. Ask God to bless them which persecute you. It can be translated that way. It can be translated either bless those who persecute you, or it can be translated, ask God to bless those who persecute you. It's the same thing almost. But if you combine the two meanings, you get the idea. Verse 15. Rejoice with them that do rejoice and weep with them that weep. That goes right back up to what? Compassion. Showing mercy. Be of the same mind, one toward another mind, not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits. Back in Romans 11:25, you find the same verbal construction. Romans 11:25 says, For I would not, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, that you should be wise in your own conceits. That blindness in part has happened to Israel till the fullness of the Gentiles become it. To be wise in one's own conceits is the Bible's way of saying to believe your own lines or to believe your own material. Believe your own thoughts rather than the word of God. You know you can. And many people have arrived at a position where they believe their own thinking before they believe anything else. They come up with ideas, they develop theories, very complex theories, and eventually they come to the point that they begin to believe those theories more than anything else. It's possible to become so totally absorbed in your own theories that you lose track of reality. That is called a conceit. It's a failure to be objective. Be not wise in your own conceits. So Romans 12:16 says, Be of the same mind, one toward another mind, not the high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits. It's easy to hate somebody who's different from you. A guy that barely has a high school education. He may be a very brilliant farmer, may operate 320 acres out here of wheat land and raise some cattle and so forth, but never went to school much beyond high school and wasn't really interested in high school. So he's not an educated man. He tends to. To scoff and scorn educated men. Why are them Harvard boys? They wouldn't know which end of a cow is. You've heard that kind of talk, right? Rural people. Man, that guy is over educated. What he needs to do is just change into some jeans and get out here and work with the rest of us. There's this attitude. And then from the other end, from the Harvard end of the scale, the highly educated person tends to look down on the man of low estate and regard him as a bucolic idiot. So he doesn't really know what he's talking about. Both of these men are wrong. Both the farmer and the Harvard guy are wrong because each of them has a field of knowledge that the other one does not have. The Bible says, be of the same mind, one toward another. In other words, within the body of Christ. You have a commonality mind, not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits. Works both ways. You can be wise in your own conceits if you're a farmer. You can be wise in your own conceits if you're a highly decorated military guy. You can be wise in your own conceits if you're an Ivy Leaguer. Eventually those conceits must be erased in the face of the word of God and the leading of the Holy Spirit. Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of man. If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. If it be possible. This is in the objective case in the original language. And it says, if others will allow it, as much as it is in you, live peaceably with all men. This takes into account that it may not be possible, but if it's at all possible, make it a goal. The 19th verse. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves. That's the same idea. One of the things that drives people is getting even. Don't get mad, get even, right? Vengeance is one of our big, big, big drives in this world. But the Bible says, don't avenge yourselves, but rather give place unto. For it is written, vengeance is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord. Vengeance is mine. I will pay back for you, saith the Lord. And by the way, this is in the emphatic voice in the Greek. It says, do not avenge yourselves, beloved, with an exclamation point. There's no exclamation point in the Greek. But the Greek language in that case places great emphasis on the primary part of the sentence. Do not avenge yourself, it says. And that's really a great idea. It's very freeing not to have to avenge yourself, but simply to be able to turn it over to the Lord and he'll take care of it. And if you really believe that, then you are freed from a great burden. People go through their entire lives harboring ill feeling toward people who have done them wrong. Why, back in 1968, I'll never forget it, my Uncle Fred took Grandpa's shotgun when it was clearly in Grandpa's will that I get the shotgun. I never forgave Fred for that. And you stew your whole life about things like that. Multiply that by about a hundred and you've got vengeance. And it can drive you crazy. Vengeance is mine. Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him. If he thirst, give him to drink. For in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. This comes from Proverbs where Solomon says in Proverbs 25:21, if thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat. If he be thirsty, give him water to drink. Thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. And the Lord shall reward reward him the burning pain of shame and remorse which a man feels whose hostility is repaid by love. That's burning coals. If you repay hostility with love, ultimately the individual toward whom you are acting in this way will be open to the impingement of shame and of remorse and of guilt. The Bible refers to those as coals of fire. This is the only kind of vengeance that a Christian is at liberty to contemplate. All the other forms of vengeance are out. The only vengeance you're really allowed is if your enemy hungers, feed him. Whoa. And you can just go from there. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. This is our final thought. Evil in this sentence is kakos in the Greek. Isn't that a good word for evil? Kakos. I love that. It just really sounds evil. And in the Greek, that is evil in the abstract. Just the whole idea of evil. But overcome evil with good. Now, there are several Greek words for good, but the one used here is agathos, which means that which is worthwhile. Overcome evil. Kakos with agathos. Overcome the concept of ontological evil. Just evil with good. And the word for good here means something worthwhile. Like, for example, you refer to a good tree or that oak tree that I've got out in my backyard, that's a good tree. This is really a good tree. Or my car that I've driven for 120,000 miles and it's just as good as the day it was bought. That's a good car. That's what's being spoken of here. The idea of good Christianity is like a good tree or a good car. It is evil in the abstract here, but good in the sense of that which is really, truly worthwhile in life. Overcome evil with good. One more word about good or goodness. There are many types of goodness mentioned in the Bible, but the goodness that's associated with Christianity is sturdy reality, the kind of goodness that you can take hold of. It's not an abstract good. It is a practical worth while good that changes things and people around it.