Trinity Church Spokane Valley
Romans 12:11-13 - John Dunn
- Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much, Paul. I really appreciate the opportunity to do this. Please, would you stand up and turn with me to Romans 12? We are going to read through the whole chapter together. I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you, not to think of himself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body, we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function. So we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members, one of another, having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them if prophecy in proportion to our faith, if service in our serving. The one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness. Let love be genuine, uphold what is evil, hold fast to what is good, love one another with brotherly affection, outdo one another in showing honor, do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord, rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer, contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another, do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him, if he is thirsty, give him something to drink, for by so doing, you will keep burning coals on his head, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. This is the word of the Lord. - Just pray just once more. Oh Father, thank you for the grace of hearing your word. But we are weak. Give us strength to be attentive to hear your word. Let us hear and let us obey. Help me this morning that I may not be a hindrance to the understanding of your word, but may I communicate the truths of your word clearly that you may be exalted in Christ's name, amen. Please be seated. - Yes. - As we heard from Dan Ferguson two Sundays ago, genuine love is the theme of this subsection that we're going through today, which is verses nine to 13. Also, this entire chapter and the following chapters are the Apostle Paul's call to believers to now live lives in response to the mercies of God revealed in the previous 11 chapters. We ought to now live out our redeemed blood-bought lives in a way that is pleasing to God. The way we are to do this, because our flesh is still so stained with sin, is to go through the discipline of renewing our minds so that we are no longer being conformed to this world, but are being conformed to the image of Christ. One of the areas that the world has a very distorted view on is love. The world's view of love is utterly selfish. The world's love is dependent on what the object of our love can give us. However, our minds must be renewed so that we can see that genuine love is selfless, and it is unconditional. And this is what Dan showed us two Sundays ago. The next part of this subsection, verses 11 through 13, addresses the reality that love is genuinely hard. It is difficult. It is sacrificial. It goes against everything your flesh once and what the world teaches. Love requires perseverance. Love requires endurance, but praise God that in his goodness, he has given us his spirit and his word so that we may learn and grow in genuine love that is also enduring. So let us look at today's verses, which is 11 through 13, do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord, rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer, contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. I believe that verses 11 to 12 are focusing on our personal relationship with God. They are focusing on our own hearts before him, because if our hearts are not right, it will be impossible to endure in love. And this is the main theme of this small section. Genuine love is also an enduring love. The section answers the question, "How can I endure in love?" And I believe there are three ways we can endure in love. Verse 11 says that we endure in love when we wholeheartedly serve the Lord. And verse 12 shows that we endure in love when our lives are fueled by prayer. And lastly, verse 13 shows that we endure in love when we commit to live sacrificially. So point number one, we endure in love when we wholeheartedly serve the Lord. Our ability to love our neighbors is only possible if we first love God. We see this in verse one of this chapter. Christian, your response to the gospel, the mercies of God ought to be the presenting of your bodies as living sacrifice to God. In both the old and the new testaments, it is made clear that the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Only second to this command is the command to love your neighbor as yourself. So begins with love in God, not the other way around. Also, we can only love God because he loved us first. And his love has been shared abroad into our hearts. So as said earlier, verses 11 and 12 deals with our personal hearts and our love for God. So verse 11, be not slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. A genuine love serves the Lord. In this verse, Paul deals with both the intensity and focus of love that is genuine and enduring. Do not be slothful with zeal, be fervent in spirit, describes the intensity or potency of our love. The first part, do not be slothful, describes the intensity negatively, whereas be fervent in spirit describes it positively. I think we all understand what it means to not be slothful, that simply means don't be lazy, but what does the added word zeal mean? The Greek word here means earnestness, eagerness, with haste, diligence. I think that the Alice Bee has translated it well by saying, do not be lazy in diligence. I believe that this is the heart of what Paul is getting at here. If we are to endure and love, my friends, we must be diligent in all that we do. Work hard and light is what Paul is saying. Now, for some people, working hard comes easy. I think we all know at least one person who seems to never slow down, who is always busy, whenever there is a need, that person is there to help. And what a blessing they are to us. But for those who perhaps are not naturally, let's say energetic and are not normally a get things done kind of person, Paul is saying here to you, you must run away from laziness. I believe that Paul has added in zeal after this, after the phrase, do not be slothful, because a person may find it doable to simply not be lazy. All they need to do is just get the job done when it needs to get done. But I think the added in zeal is Paul showing us that it's not that we just need to get the work done, we need to look for it. We need to look, intentionally look for what needs to be done. We must seek it. This is the sense I believe Paul is getting at. Genuine love not only does a lot of work, it looks for work that needs to be done. I believe that they are at least three areas in our lives in which we need to be diligent. The first area we need to be diligent in is within the local church. It is possible, I believe, that Paul intentionally added this injunction directly after the preceding one, which was "outdo one another" in showing honor, because a person who has the propensity towards laziness might say something like this. So, sorry, it might be tempted to think that the way to show honor to a fellow believer is to step aside and let them exercise their gifts. The person might say something like, "I know that I can serve here, "but so-and-so is definitely more gifted than I am, "so I will just step back and let that person do the work." Or, "I know that there is this need in the church, "but so-and-so is already doing this, "so I will not need to do it." Friends, if you are a believer, you have been given some spiritual gift to be used, and it is to be used diligently, and it's for the edification and building up of the local church. If you have the gift of service, serve diligently, if you can teach diligently, if you have the gift of exaltation, use it diligently. And when you are tempted to step back and stop doing the work in the church, endure, push, push through, be proactive in seeking out opportunity to use that gift to the glory of God. And the way we truly show honor to one another is by serving one another with the gift that God has given us. Genuine love requires work. Seek opportunities to serve wherever you can at Trinity Church, or wherever your local church is, if you are visiting here this morning. The second area we are to be diligent in is in our daily vocation, whatever that may be. We are to be diligent in all the work that God has given us to do. This includes your nine to five job, it includes running your business, it includes schoolwork and studies, it includes raising a household, raising children, whatever it may be, you need to be diligent in this. Mustn't be lazy. But sadly, this is a struggle for most people, including Christians. Here this shocking study. In a study conducted by the Bureau of Labor Studies, which studied about 2,000 full-time office workers, what they found is that although the average American works 8.8 hours a day, they are actually only working two hours and 53 minutes. So that should shock us. That means that the average person here in America is only working about three hours a day. This is not diligent. So my prayer is that this is not speaking of you, and if it is, repent, turn away from this laziness. And remember, the main reason why we should be doing this, and I'll get to this a little bit more soon, is that we are serving the Lord. Remember the work that we do, we are representing our Lord. We are His representatives. The way we work reflects our precious Lord. And may it never be that an unbeliever says that he will never become a Christian because he has seen Christians and they are lazy. And may it never be. There's much I would love to say about work and about rest even, but time will not allow this. But I want you to remember this, that work is good. It is a gift given to us by God. And remember, work was given to us, given to men before the fall. So it is a good gift. So do it well and do it lots, seek it out. And if you are not, if you are lazy, the Apostle Paul says this very sobering thing, is that this church must admonish you. And in 2 Thessalonians, three verse 10, Paul even says that those who do not work should not eat. So work, friends, work, work diligently. Now there is a third area in our lives that we need to be diligent in, but I'm gonna save that for the next section. But for now, remember that the first two injunctions of this verse do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, are saying the same thing, but are addressing it differently. The first injunction is calling for pragmatic service to God. But to God against thinking that this is all that serving entails, all that serving is, Paul adds be fervent in spirit. The Greek word used for fervent means to be hot, to boil. So what Paul means here is that we ought to be boiling or hot in spirit. Not only do we need to work hard, but we also need to do that work with feeling, with passion, we ought to be passionately diligent. Those who find it easy to work hard, but with no real emotion or passion, the pragmatists, if you will, you are told be fervent in spirit. May your spirit be on the boil. Do your good work passionately and zealously, but how do you do it? That's the question. How can you be fervent in spirit? Is feeling not something you either have or you don't? Is not someone born passionate or not? Surely God cannot command us to do something that is simply unique to one's personality. Let me answer that objection or question with some warnings against passionate and loveless works. They are found in Revelation chapter two and chapter three. Jesus commends the church at Ephesus for their good works, but rebukes them for losing their first love. To the church at Sardis, he says, I know your works. You have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. To the church at Laodicea, Jesus rebukes them for lukewarm works. He said that he would spit them out of his mouth because their works are lukewarm, they are lukewarm. And to each of these churches, they were commanded to repent of their loveless and flat works. So this is not a small issue. Do not walk away from the sermon, believing that being boiling in spirit, being passionate, being able to do the works with feeling is a suggestion. It is a command. So two questions arise from this. What does being fervent in spirit look like? And two, how can you grow in that fervency? How can you grow in passion and zeal? So firstly, we see an example of a fervent spirit in Paul himself. In chapter one, verse nine, we see that Paul says that he serves God in his spirit. And he says, as a result of this, he prays without ceasing for the church at Rome, that he longs to see them and impart some spiritual gift. That he is eager to preach the gospel. He's not saying that he will visit them because he must. All that he preaches the gospel because he must. All that he prays for them because he must. He does these things because in his spirit, he deeply desires and he's passionately desiring to do those things. So if you serve, don't simply serve, desire to do it. Don't give because you feel you must desire to give, give cheerfully is what we are commanded to do. Secondly, how do you go about cultivating a zealous, boiling spirit? The answer is firstly, that we can only ever be fervent in spirit because of what God has already done for us. In chapter eight, the apostle Paul writes that we have been given the Holy Spirit so that we can walk in the newness of life. Paul says that the same spirit who raised Jesus from the dead lives in every believer. If you are in Christ, it is only because you have the Holy Spirit that you desire to do any righteous work. It is only because you have the Holy Spirit working in and through you that you could ever grow in godliness. It is only because you have the spirit of Christ within you that you can battle against the flesh. And it is only because you have the Holy Spirit that you can endure in love when it is exceedingly difficult to do so. Fervancy of spirit is only possible because God has given us the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we can and we must obey this command. But on a practical note, how do you go about increasing that fervancy? If you do feel cold, if you do feel passionate, how do you go about increasing that passion? I believe that the answer is found in the third area of our lives that we ought to be diligent in. Remember, I paused earlier so that we can get to this. I believe we need to be diligent in our personal holiness. We must be diligent in the spiritual disciplines. I believe this area is the most neglected area in the Christian life. And why? It is because being spiritually disciplined is very hard work. In fact, I believe it's more difficult than other areas of our lives. So Paul writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy, chapter 4, verse 7, "Train yourself for godliness." The Greek word used here for "train" is the same word we get the word gymnasium from. This gives us the idea that we are to sweat in our pursuit of godliness. 2 Peter 1, verse 10 says something similar, "Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities, you will never fail." I am in the habit of regularly asking Christians how their Bible reading is going. And sadly, most of them say that they struggle to read the word regularly. Friends, you cannot. You cannot expect to renew your minds if you are not spending regular time in God's Word. So for the sake of your own souls and for the sake of enduring love, diligently work at your Bible reading. Sweat at it. Now, there are many other areas within the spiritual disciplines. Reading the word is just one of them. And those other areas include prayer, which we'll speak about later, worship, integrity, et cetera. So my question is how diligently are you working at those things? If you work hard at growing in godliness by being spiritually disciplined, by spending time in the Word and in prayer, you will find, without a doubt, that your spirit will boil. It will burn. Its fire will continually be stoked more and more and more. So be spiritually disciplined. Do not be slothful, be fervent in spirit. This describes the intensity of our love. Now, let's move on to the focus and motivation of our love. And that is our service to the Lord, serving the Lord. When we are tempted towards laziness or reluctant works, remember we must endure in love because we are serving the Lord. In verse 11, we are exalted to serve God. It is tempting because we are created to work to think that serving the Lord is only about doing stuff for Him. Yes, we serve God by obeying Him and by doing good works, et cetera. But this is not what I believe Paul is getting at here, at least not primarily. He has already addressed the works issue in the beginning of this verse. So I believe what Paul is doing here is that he is turning our eyes to the motivation for our diligent and passionate work. I believe Paul is reminding us, as he did in verse 1 of this chapter, that serving the Lord means giving all we are to Him. A helpful way to understand what serving the Lord really means is to look at what Jesus said about it. In Matthew 6, verse 24, Jesus says, "No one can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money." Here Jesus is contrasting serving money with serving the Lord. Now hopefully no one thinks here this morning that we serve money by attending to its needs. Of course, we don't. Yet this is how we view our service to God. We tend to think that our service is attending to God's various needs, but God does not have any needs. No, the way we serve money is by building our lives around money. We do whatever we can to get the most benefit from money. We plan our futures, our retirements, our vacations, our homes, etc., based on what money can give and bring us. This is how we must serve the Lord, not money. We ought to be looking for the innumerable blessings that he has promised us instead of the temporal benefits that money brings. So our motivation to endure in love is because we serve the Lord. But the reason why we can endure in love is because the very one we serve is the one who serves us. There is absolutely nothing we can do for God, and there's nothing we can do for him that he hasn't already done for us. All obedience, all work, all love is only possible because Jesus has already perfectly obeyed, has already perfectly done the work God sent him to do and continues to do. And we can only love because God first loved us. And this is not just a once-off service to us, but we are told in Scripture that the Lord continually serves us by giving us what is needed for life and godliness. Hear Paul in Philippians 2 verses 12 to 13. Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Our Lord whom we serve asks us to serve him by allowing him to serve us. And we see this as well in Romans 8. Here we see how the Lord serves us by even interceding for us by his spirit. We see that the Holy Spirit strengthens us in our weaknesses. The Holy Spirit is working in us to make us more like Jesus. Jesus even said that he did not come to be served, but to serve, and he has not stopped doing so. So let the truth that the one we serve, the one who paid for our salvation with his very own blood, motivate us to passionately and diligently serve in love. And let the knowledge that our Lord is serving us spur us on to live a life that is fully pleasing to him. And this brings us to our next point. Point number one, we endure in love when we wholeheartedly serve the Lord. And number two, we endure in love when we are fueled by persevering prayer. Verse 12, "Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer." In this verse Paul addresses what is a very real obstacle to enduring love, and that is trials and tribulations. A Christian who is facing some kind of difficulty may say something like this. I really want to serve the Lord in my neighbor. I want to be useful in church. But you just don't understand what I am going through. Life is so hard right now. I am struggling with family issues. I am struggling with a bad marriage. I have severe financial problems. I am struggling with bad health. I am struggling with non-stop pain. Work is so busy, I don't have time to serve others besides my own family. I will get to it once this thing has been sorted out. Dear friends, the command to love is not dependent on whether things are going well or not in your life. You must love and you must persevere in it. I want you to know this morning that trials in this life are guaranteed. You just need to know this. This is important to grasp because otherwise you will be taken by surprise when trials do come. You most likely will react to those trials simply. Also Paul shows us that despite and even because of those trials we are to rejoice in hope and be patient through those trials. But we must first renew our minds. It begins by thinking rightly about this world we live in. Friends, we still live in a fallen world where there remains much suffering. This suffering is common to believers and unbelievers. Things such as pain, death, catastrophes, etc. And there are also trials that are unique to Christians such as persecution in its various forms. If you haven't faced any suffering yet, praise God, but know that you will not escape it for long. Jesus says in John 16 verse 33 that in this life you will, not might, you will experience many trials and sorrows. Sadly, much of the church has bought into this false teaching that God's will for your life is that you have a happy and prosperous life now. The consequence of this false teaching is that the church is filled with miserable and ineffective Christians who believe that they have been let down by God because they are experiencing suffering. We are all susceptible, let's be honest, we are all susceptible to be downcast in our souls when we experience suffering. One morning, when Martin Luther was experiencing suffering and deep despair, his wife, Catherine, came to the breakfast table wearing a black armband. When Luther saw this armband, he asked, "Who died?" To this, Catherine answered, "Well, with the way you have been acting and carrying on around here, I thought God did." The world is watching us, is how you are responding to the various trials and suffering showing the world that you believe that God is dead. Instead, this text commands us to rejoice, to rejoice in hope. And the grounds for our rejoicing in hope is because God is providentially working in and through every trial that we are facing, and it's for our good and for his glory. The entirety of the Book of Romans makes this abundantly clear. Friends, the question then is in what or in whom are you placing your hope? We are living in a world filled with unrest and turmoil, for sure. Sadly, the conversations among many Christians do not reveal a hope in God. Rather, what you hear in these conversations reveals a worldly hope. It reveals that the Christian's hope is mostly in man, in light of the current political environment. Hope in man is revealed in how Christians speak about this country's entire future hanging in the balance depending on who the next president will be. If so and so was president, things will be sorted out, this mess will be cleaned up. Or if so and so becomes president, the world will end. Their hope is in this world, and it is in man and not the glory of God. Friends, do you even know who God is? He is the creator of the heavens and the earth, and he sits and he laughs in the heavens at the futile plans of rulers, of nations as they set themselves against King Jesus. Your hope in man is futile, it is like dust in the wind. Another misplaced hope is seen in the expense of the social gospel. Millions of Christians have focused on social issues, often at the expense of gospel faithfulness, in the hope of gradually making the world a better place to get heaven to invade earth as it were. Or that the world will become a better place once every nation becomes predominantly Christian. This is not what the Bible teaches. Friends, you need to know this. In fact, in 2 Timothy 3 verses 1 to 5 and verse 13, it says that evil people will go on from bad to worse, and that in the lost days, things will increase in difficulty. People will increasingly become lovers of self. If you believe that things in this world should be better and are going to be better, how can you rejoice in hope when your experience proves this to be untrue? At the very best, your rejoicing will be short-lived. The consequence of any misplaced hope Christian is that you will be unable to endure in love because you are so busy being disappointed with life. You will be distracted and ineffective for ministry. So, what is the hope we are to rejoice in? The apostle Paul has not left us to guess at what it is. He has already told us. In the glorious 8th chapter, we are told that we must rejoice in hope of the glory that is to be revealed to us. The redemption of our bodies, the freedom from the body's bondage to corruption, and not only ours, but also all of creation will be freed from the bondage of corruption. This is the freedom from sin and death. This is when all things will be made right. This is when we will be fully conformed to the image of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our sinful flesh will no longer be, but most important of all. We will be fellow heirs with Christ, and our inheritance will be God Himself. To emphasize how unspeakably beautiful and wondrous this coming glory will be, Paul describes in verse 22 of chapter 8 that the whole of non-human creation groans for the coming revealing of the sons of God. If creation groans for this glory, how intense should our groaning and longing be for this coming glory? How intense is your longing for this glory? Oh, Christian, you can and you must rejoice. You can and you must rejoice because you have certainty that you will enter glory. You have the certainty because if you are in Christ, you have been given, as Paul writes in verse 23, the first fruits of the Spirit. This means that the Spirit has been given to us as a pledge of all the blessings that are still to come. Paul says in Ephesians chapter 1 verses 13 to 14, that those who are in Christ have been sealed with the promised Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it. God has given you the Holy Spirit, so rejoice. But how do you know that you have the Holy Spirit? Verse 23 says that those who have the Holy Spirit groan inwardly as they wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of their bodies. Friends, when you think of the future glory, do you groan and you long for it? Do you have the assurance that you are a son or daughter of God, that you have been adopted into his family? This is the ministry of the Holy Spirit. How can we be certain that this assurance is real, that it is indeed the Spirit within us that is testifying to these truths? Here in lies what suffering is necessary. It is through trials that our faith is truly and fully tested. It is only when we go through pain and suffering that our faith can be proven to be true. For the Christian, the more suffering he or she goes through, the more he or she will groan in desperate and eager anticipation for the promised future glory. Paul says in verse 18 that he considers that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed to us. And only if you have the Holy Spirit can you truly say that although the sickness, pain, sorrow or even persecution is hard, it pales in comparison to the coming glory. I love how Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 4 verse 17, where he says this momentary light affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. Now remember, the Apostle Paul was a trustworthy authority on this issue. During his many years of missionary work, he was given 39 lashes at the hands of the Jews. He was beaten with rods, he was stoned, shipped wrecked three times and was adrift at sea for a night and day. Paul suffered sickness, hunger and thirst, constant dangers and even backstabbing by so-called brothers in Christ. Yet he continued serving the Lord with ever increasing and enduring love. And why is this? It is because he had his eyes fixed on the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. His eyes were set on glory. The reason why trials are so refining and so important to our faith is because it causes us to look upwards and not around us. They cause us to hold lightly to this world and long for the world to come. Trials cause us to trust God more. Do you think your suffering compares in any way to Paul's? If not, why are you letting suffering prevent you from loving those around you? So remind yourself of the great glory that is ahead of you and rejoice in hope. But sadly, most of us still struggle with lack of joy. We crumble under the weight of suffering. But praise God that he serves us still. He has given us the Holy Spirit to strengthen us, that we faint not in weakness. This is where the last injunction of this verse comes in. Be constant in prayer. Scripture is replete with exhortations to be constant in prayer. Not only this, but our Lord Jesus and our apostles exemplified lives of prayer. Prayer is one of the chief graces God has given us to endure in faith and in love. And here is another area that needs a renewal of mind. Prayer is not something you do to get what you want, and this is what the world teaches. Yes, we are to bring our needs before the Father, and we all to pray with faith knowing that God is good and you will only give us that which is good for us. However, prayer is primarily the grace God uses to conform our wills to his will. The more we pray, the more our wills are aligned to God's will. The more our wills are aligned with his, the more our requests are in line with what God wants and not what our flesh wants. The late E Stanley Jones, a missionary to India, described prayer as follows. If I throw out a boat hook from the boat and catch hold of the shore, and when I pull, do I pull the shore to me or do I pull myself to the shore? Prayer is not pulling God to my will, it is aligning my will to the will of God. So when our wills are conformed to God's, we will know what is good and acceptable and perfect. If prayer is one of the graces God has given to conform our wills to his, then to live lives pleasing to God, to endure in love, to rejoice in hope and be patient in trials, we need to be constant in prayer. Verse 26 of chapter 8 says, "Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep forwards, and he who searches hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. Even when we are not praying, friends, even when we are not praying constantly, the Spirit is. When we don't know what to pray for, the Holy Spirit does. Now let me use an illustration to try and explain what this amazing verse means. How many of you knew how selfish you were before you got married? Many go into marriage thinking that they are relatively decent people, that they are selfless mostly, but however only once in the crucible of marriage are you faced with the reality that you are rather selfish. The response to that realization for the Christian should be repentance, it should be pleading with God to change your heart, to make you selfless like Christ is selfless. It is the trial of marriage that has revealed your greatest need and has given you the opportunity to ask God to conform you to the image of his son. So trials are a gift because they reveal our greatest need which is to be made like Jesus. The problem is, friends, we are still so blinded by our sins that instead of praying that the Lord works in us, we pray that the Lord will deliver us from the situation, that the Lord will take us from that trial, so continuing with the marriage analogy, when faced with the trials of marriage most Christians do turn to God in prayer, but instead of asking God to change your heart, you ask Him to change your spouses. And trials are meant to take us to God in prayer, but those prayers should primarily be for God to work in you, to give you patience, to make you Christ like. And most of our prayers are selfish, and this is because we are weak. But God's grace abounds here. Despite our selfishness, we are guaranteed that we will receive the glory hopeful, because even when our prayers are tainted with selfishness, the Holy Spirit is praying for us. In the beginning of our Christian pilgrimage, we only ask God to remove the trial, yet the Holy Spirit continue to praise within us according to God's will. And because the Holy Spirit prays according to God's will, it is 100% certain that you will be made more like Jesus. And the more trials you face and the more you see that your prayers are answered in a way that is different, but far better than what you had initially hoped for, the more your will will be aligned to God's will. The more you realize that the most important thing for you is not the end of your suffering, but growing in godliness, living a life pleasing to God, the more you realize this, the better. And as you grow in this knowledge, the more you will treasure the promise of the coming glory. And in that you will be filled with an ever-growing, uncontainable joy in hope. Christian, the way you grow in holiness, the way you are patient in suffering, the way you rejoice in hope is through enduring prayer. The degree to which you are filled with joy and are patient in trials is directly proportional to your prayer life. So now I need to be careful here. I don't want anyone here thinking that it is wrong to pray for healing or deliverance from your suffering or whatever their trial is. On the contrary, God wants you to pray for all things good. James 5, 13 to 14 says, "Is anyone among you suffering, let him pray? Is anyone cheerful, let him sing praise? Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders and let them pray over him, anointing him with the oil in the name of the Lord." There it is. If you have suffering, pray and trust God that he can relieve you of that burden. But should God not choose to deliver you from the suffering, then you must know that he is doing something better which is conforming you into the image of his son. And if God does deliver you from that suffering, know that even that brief deliverance pales in comparison to the glory that is before you when you receive your resurrected body. And for that you can give praise to God and you'll forever be in the presence of King Jesus, who is the fountain of never-ending satisfaction and joy. And then before we move on, just a practical note, is that when you go through suffering, this is about love, when you go through suffering, remember that you're suffering, learning how to suffer in difficult times helps you help others to rejoice when they too are suffering. So it gives you training on how to encourage your brothers and sisters in Christ who are suffering. So now, we endure in love when we wholeheartedly serve the Lord. We endure in love when our lives are fueled by prayer. Lastly, we endure in love when we live sacrificially. Remember why it is that you are called to genuine love. It is because of all the mercies of God that preceded chapter 12. We have been freed from the law of sin and death because we have been redeemed by Christ who appeased God's wrath upon sinful and rebellious humanity. Because of Christ's atonement, we have been reconciled to God. God did this because of his unspeakable, wondrous, and unmerited love. How much does God love those who are in his son? Romans 8 verse 32 says, "He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all." God gave us the one whom he loves with an eternally perfect love. That is how much he loves you if you are in Christ. And not only this, Jesus willingly laid down his life for those who are his. God's love willingly gave that which was most precious to him, Jesus. And Jesus gave up his heavenly glory, condescended to earth, became like us, lived a life of discomfort, endured suffering that is common to man, was hated by many, was ridiculed, was falsely accused, was reviled, and then he gave up his life, all done willingly because he loves his sheep. Therefore, we are to love genuinely and to endure in that love because God has loved us with a love beyond comprehension and he loved us first. And if genuine love is sacrificial for God, then we must not expect it to be anything different for us. And this is exactly what verse 13 shows. Let us look at verse 13 together. It says, "Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality." Both these injunctions make clear that genuine love is sacrificial. It requires you to give whatever material resources you have available for the edification and building up of the saints. However, this is an obstacle to many Christians. And it's mostly an obstacle to those who live in the comfortable West. Many Christians find it easier to work hard for the church in the name of love than to selflessly give of their material resources. This is because there is sadly such a great love of money even in the church. And it is damaging to the church, and it is damaging to your soul. So this command is given that we may love our neighbors, but also as a grace given to us that we may be freed from any love of money. This command is echoed throughout Scripture. Listen to what Ephesians 4 verse 28 says. It says this, "Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his hands so that he may have something." What do you think it says next? That he may have something to eat, that he may have something to provide for his family, that he may have something in his bank account, that he may have something to live a comfortable life with. No, this is what Paul says. It says that the thief must labor so that he may have something to share with others, to share with anyone in need. God has given everyone here, everyone who is sitting here, resources to share. Yes, to provide for your needs, but primarily that we can share with those who are in need. I think Randy Alcorn says this brilliantly. When he says, "God prospers me not to raise my standard of living, but to raise my standard of giving." There is a family here, and I won't mention names. There is a family here at Trinity that has chosen to downscale their standard of living, even to the point of selling their home that they might buy a cheaper one so that they can increase their giving to saints in need. This is amazing. And another couple that I know has been giving towards mission work for the entirety of their marriage. And a few years ago, the husband retired, and after a few months of retirement, his wife comes to him saying, "Unfortunately, we won't be able to maintain the standard of giving anymore." And the husband's response to that was to go back to come out of retirement, to go back to work so that they could maintain that standard of giving. These saints get it. We are given so that we can give. Now, the word used here, the word used here for contribute in this verse, sounds a bit cold, sounds a bit distant. It sounds more like a duty that must be done. Rather, the word actually means to share in the needs of the saints. It has this idea of partnership, of fellowship. I believe what Paul is saying here is that our love for our brothers and sisters in Christ must be such that we even take on their needs as our own. Whatever their needs are, we step into their lives in such a way that we share the burden of that need. This is because the purpose of this giving is not primarily to alleviate the burden that the saints are going through. It is primarily an opportunity for us to walk alongside these believers to encourage them in the Lord, to help them grow in their knowledge of who God is, that they too may live lives fully pleasing to him. And I am so encouraged by Trinity Church. I know that Trinity Church is exceptionally generous, but may we be a church that is ever-increasing in that generosity. For those who are worried they don't have anything to give, for those who feel they are living paycheck to paycheck, let us hear again what Romans 832 says. "He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" The old things do not refer to everything you want, but everything you need to live lives fully pleasing to God, and God's will for you is to be generous. Therefore, God will supply everything you need according to his riches and glory in Christ Jesus that you may be generous. So, Christian diligently and zealously share what you have with saints in need in our midst because you serve the Lord who gave it all for you and who supplies everything you need to give. The next injunction is where Paul gets specific, and he says, "Seek to show hospitality." I believe that where sharing happens the most gloriously is in the ministry of hospitality. For many this command, this injunction, is even harder to do than the first. Hospitality costs not only your material resources, it requires you to share yourself. It requires you to share your time, your heart, and for many, even your families. However, even this view as costly as it is and costly as it sounds is very mild compared to what Paul had in mind. For Paul's original audience, being hospitable was more costly than just sharing of resources and time. It could have led to suffering because in many places Christianity was outlawed. It was illegal to be a Christian. Christians were persecuted. And if you were caught with Christians under your roof, you would have gone to prison or even worse. Yet Christians in the early church and even today in countries where Christianity is illegal willingly and joyfully open up their homes for fellow believers. Hospitality is hard, but here are some encouragements to help you move towards greater hospitality. There are two. The first motivation to be hospitable is that God has showed us the greatest hospitality. God took us while we were still His enemies and brought us into His family, making us co-heirs with His precious Son by adopting us. If God has shown immense hospitality to us, while we were His enemies, how much more should we show to those who are our friends? The second motivation is that receiving strangers in the name of Christ is receiving God Himself. Jesus said in Matthew 10 verse 40, "Whoever receives you receives me and whoever receives me receives Him who sent me." Friends, whenever you receive a Christian in the name of Christ, you are receiving God into your home. And here is a sticky point. Jesus does not care about what your house looks like. He does not care how neat your home is. He does not care about whether you've dusted this past week or not. He does not care whether your children's rooms are tidy, whether they're messy, whether the beds are made. He even doesn't care what food you have to serve. He cares about you receiving saints into your home and you have a home for this purpose. So not only must we be willing to be hospitable, Paul tells us here to seek it, be intentional about it, so in closing. How about this Trinity Church? If you see anyone or any couple or family who you have not been properly acquainted with, why don't you, as soon as you are able, invite them over to your home so that you can become acquainted with them, so that you can start sharing your life with them. And even today at the church picnic after the service, why don't we all be intentional about meeting new people? Getting to know them and perhaps even sharing what you have brought to eat with them. So can we do that Trinity Church? Many are, and I'm very encouraged by that, but let us all strive for this. So in summary, if we are to genuinely love, we must endure in that love. And there are three ways we can endure in love. We endure in love when we wholeheartedly serve the Lord. We endure in love when we are fueled by persevering prayer. And we endure in love when we love sacrificially. Let us pray. O God of all grace, you are worthy of all our love. But help us to love you as we ought to. Help us to love your church as we ought to love him. May the remembrance of your mercies ever be before us, that we may zealously pursue genuine love. We thank you for giving us the Holy Spirit who continually serves us by working in us and by praying for us that we may be conformed to the image of your Son. We thank you that the Holy Spirit is our guarantee of our inheritance, therefore we can always rejoice in hope and be patient in trials. O God, we are weak, so in order to do hard things like sharing our material goods and opening our doors to strangers, we need your help. I pray that every person will go out from here determined no matter what it costs to zealously pursue genuine love by giving generously of their wealth, time, and their homes for your glory. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]