Trinity Church Spokane Valley
Romans 12:14-16 - Jeremy Kuhn
- Good morning, Trinity Church. It's wonderful to see you all this morning. If you're visiting with us, my name is Jeremy Kuhn. I'm one of the elders here. And you may or may not know, we've been going through the Book of Romans, chapter 12, for the summer, looking at what it looks like to have a life that is pleasing to God. We've had a few different sermons so far this summer, but they're all focused on the same theme of that life that is pleasing to God, what it looks like to love genuinely. And we're going to continue that this morning, as we look again at chapter 12. I trust that you have had enough time to get there this morning, so please, with your Bibles open to chapter 12, stand with me. Please follow along to yourselves as I read. 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 he 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 and proportion to our faith, if service and are serving, the one who teaches and is 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, abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection, out to do 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 a 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 heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. This is the word of the Lord. Father, we come to you this morning with hearts that want to say that we are here in order to glorify you above all things, to give ourselves our lives in full service to you. But we know that that is not true. Our hearts are mixed with different feelings, with different desires, different ways of thinking. I pray, Father, that as we look to you and your word this morning, that you would show us clearly what it looks like to love you, to love our neighbors, but also that we would look to you as the one who has loved above all. We pray these things in your son's name. Amen. You may be seated. How do we exercise genuine love? That has been part of the question that we've addressed on the past couple of Sundays that we've spent in Romans. This morning, we come to a new set of verses that continue to tell us what a life of love looks like. This life of love is a life of worship. It is a life that is in response to the mercies of God. It is a life that is transformed from what we once were by the truths of the gospel. It is a life that takes the gifts that we have been given and use them in the service of the church and as a witness to the world. Ultimately, it is a life that brings blessing to others. The problem that we face is that we're often too self-focused, too self-centered to consider how to love others. We want to be the center of attention. We want our way. We want our rights. We want our comfort. We want respect. And we want to be loved. The passage we're focusing on this morning directs our hearts outward. Again, verses 14 to 16 says, "Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Sweep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty but associate with a lowly. Never be wise in your own sight." The command to bless governs these verses. Though each verse reads as a command, the command to bless pours over them. It cradles them and informs them. So the main idea I have for you this morning is this. A life pleasing to God thinks about how to bless others. A life pleasing to God thinks about how to bless others. Like I said, Paul's instruction in these verses are grounded in that command to bless. The way we bless in these verses focuses on what we should do more than what we should not do with the people in our lives. But what I want to focus on this morning is the heart behind these kinds of commands. It is a heart that is informed and fueled by the blessings that we have in Christ. There's three characteristics of the heart that thinks about how to bless. Three characteristics of the heart that think about how to bless. First, a heart that desires to bless or thinks about how to bless desires conversion. A heart that seeks to bless desires conversion. Two, a heart that seeks to bless is a heart that seeks to sympathize with others. And three, a heart that seeks to bless is a heart that seeks to be last. A life pleasing to God thinks about how to bless others. So Paul starts by directing our attention to those who persecute you. When faced with persecution, sometimes we're counseled. We even try to remind ourselves that God will bring justice. And that is indeed true. That's very truth is just a couple of verses away, but that's not what we're talking about here. Instead, what we have here is a very positive response. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them. Since our natural instinct is always self-preservation, what's needed here is the product of a renewed heart that genuinely wants what is good for our persecutor. What does it mean to bless? Well, bless simply just means to call upon God for their good, where to seek the spiritual good and material good for those who persecute us. Where to seek the good of those who seek to do us harm. This is in contrast to cursing. Cursing them is not a reference to just foul language or an insult, but calling on God for their ill, even seeking to do them harm. Who are the persecutors where command to bless? Well, these are those who have taken notice of you because you follow Christ, because you are a Christian. They know you're a Christian, and they target you in some way or another because of that. They target you because you have been recognized as belonging to Christ and his kingdom. Jesus warned his disciples that the world would hate them. The world will hate them because they are not of the world, but belong to Christ. This is promised to us. But we are not to take this as bad news. In the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, Jesus says, "Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you on account of his name and for righteousness sake." You see, the persecutors see what Christ represents. And because of your union with him, your life that follows him, they see what you represent, which is him. What Christ represents is what is truly good. He exposes what is truly evil. And the persecution comes because the persecutors love the darkness, and they don't like it when someone tells them that what they love is evil. The range of intensity that we can face in persecution is rather wide. Moccury, isolation, ridicule, maligning accusations, suspicion, fear, hatred, sometimes legal action. In some places, people face imprisonment and death. In every case, whether it's just a rude comment or being sent to death, it doesn't stir up those warm and fuzzy feelings that we have towards the person who's bringing it. The response we want to give to persecution is different than the response we are to give to persecution. And it requires a renewed heart. It requires what this chapter started with, a willful presentation of our bodies as a living sacrifice and a renewal of our minds. We need to prepare and train our thinking for when we face it. It also requires a genuine love that seeks to show hospitality. There are those who persecute us in some ways that are still going to be willing to associate with us in a more private setting. We need to be ready for that. Remembering Jesus' promise that we will be blessed will help make us ready to do what we're commanded to do. The Apostle Paul, for example, knew what it was to be blessed by those whom he sought to persecute. Acts 9, familiar story, tells us of the conversion of Paul, also known as Saul, and the blessing he received from someone he would have targeted. Early on in the chapters of Acts, Saul is on the hunt for Christians. And during his hunt, Jesus brings him to a halt by appearing to him. And after humbling Saul, Jesus tells him to go into Damascus and wait further instruction. And in the meantime, the Lord appears to a man named Ananias. This Ananias in Acts 9 was a faithful disciple of Jesus. And Jesus told him to go to find Saul and lay hands on him so that he could regain his sight. Now Ananias is no fool. He's been watching the news. He knows how much evil Saul has done to Jesus' saints in Jerusalem. He knows that Saul has come to Damascus, like a bounty hunter to arrest those who call in the name of Christ. But Jesus reassures Ananias. He tells Ananias that Saul has a chosen instrument of his and that he will be a preacher of Christ. So Ananias believes. Ananias goes. He goes and he calls Saul, brother. Brother Saul. Ananias had been told by Jesus to go and be a blessing. Ananias went to Saul, trusting Jesus, trusting the Jesus had called him, and that all was now safe. So when Saul arrives, he tells-- or when Ananias arrives, he tells Saul that Jesus has sent him so that he may regain his sight and to receive the Holy Spirit. This is a conversion mission. It's a conversion mission that Ananias took up gladly. Saul had given himself to the persecution of the church. And though one of the disciples that he would have gladly persecuted and arrested was ministering to him, he was approached with a blessing, and he was called upon to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Saul's healed of his blindness both physically and spiritually, and he gets baptized. Saul was blessed, a great example. Sometimes we look at Saul and just think of the story of his conversion, but we need to look at Ananias too. He gave himself to bless Saul. An even greater example is that of our Lord Jesus. Jesus gave the greatest blessing to his enemies. Jesus faced persecution even though he was worthy of nothing but worship, because he is the eternal incarnate Son of God. But rather than love and worship Jesus, they loved themselves, and their worship, what they thought they worship was false, because they had rejected the Son. All that Jesus taught and revealed about who he was, what was truly a good, it also exposed the evil of the people, and they hated him for it. They hated him so much that they wanted to put him to death, which indeed was God's plan from the beginning, but there were certainly times when Jesus rebuked his enemies. Like the prophets who had come before he exposed the hypocrisy and evil hearts of his opponents, but he did not return reviling for reviling. He did not act with maliciousness. His words of rebuke were an act of love and meant to bring repentance, but they still did not repent. But when the persecution of Jesus was at its worst, while he was being crucified, he prayed to his father, saying, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Father, forgive them. Father, forgive them. Rejected, insulted, beaten, humiliated. Hung up to die. Father, forgive them." Jesus died on the cross, praying for God's blessing of forgiveness on his enemies. And it wasn't just some sentimental prayer, some lip service, the prayers of Jesus are effective. It is at the type of prayer that says, "Be warm and well-fed and then does nothing practical." The blessing pronounced by Jesus, his prayer for forgiveness came to fulfillment on the day of Pentecost when the spirit was poured out and the very people that were there to put him to death, responded in repentance to the preaching of Peter and received the forgiveness that Jesus had prayed for. So as you face persecution, as you face your persecutors, I want you to mind how your heart is responding. Think about what you really desire for those who are persecuting you. And then remember the blessing that you received from the one whom you once rejected. If you're pursuing a godly life-- and I hope you are, because that's our call-- if you're pursuing a godly life, you will face persecution. I've seen t-shirts and mugs that say, I don't discriminate, I hate everyone. We laugh at this. But when we do, it's revealing something about us that's true. We don't love people very well, much less those who target us. We are a promised persecution if we desire to be godly. So when you're persecuted, seek to bless. Repent of your desire to strike back. Seek to be gracious. Pray for their salvation. Pray for your own heart. You have reason to rejoice because Christ told his followers that this means that they will see him in you. When you're being persecuted, it is because the world is seeing Christ in you. Christ, while we were his enemies, he blessed us. Out of the overflow of God's blessing to us, we should seek to bless our enemies as well. A life pleasing to God thinks about how to bless others. And the blessing that God has given and continues to give causes us to bless those who persecute us. Point 2, secondly, that life pleasing to God has a heart that blesses through sympathy. In order to bless others being sympathetic, we need to guard against selfish, coveting hearts that seek to be sympathetic and seek to be sympathetic. Verse 15 says, "Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep." We all have a problem with our hearts. We all tend to want something driven by selfish motives. What about me is the question that pops into our minds when we encounter significant moments on other people's lives? Very practically, boys and girls, how do you feel when your friend gets invited to the party that you're not invited to? Or how about they got something new and nice, something that you would like for yourself? Usually we want what the other person has, and we're not really happy that someone else is getting to enjoy that. Do you rejoice with them and the privilege that they received, or are you jealous? If you're not waiting about the party, but perhaps your friend got the job you were hoping to get, you're still hunting for one. Perhaps your friend has a happy baby and yours cries all the time. Are you happy for people that are enjoying good circumstances? Do you rejoice with them who have received good things? These may be silly examples. They may be sensitive examples. But truly, our inability to rejoice with them is due to the coveting nature of our hearts. We're stuck in that thought of what about me. I mean, do we really want nothing good for one another? This is here in Romans 12 because we need to hear it. We need to be told to rejoice with those who rejoice because we can't stop looking at ourselves. We covet the gift, we covet the blessing, we covet the attention, and good circumstances bring. So in order to show genuine love, we need to share in their happiness. We should strive to rejoice with those who have caused to rejoice. Most of all, reason we do this is because rejoicing is the characteristic that God has over his people. And he wants us to rejoice over him and his works, which those works get poured out on each one of us. Rejoicing is a response to what is good. It's a recognition of the mercy and grace that God shows to others. Most importantly, most significantly, I think, is how God rejoices over people when they turn to him. God rejoices when his center repents and believes in his son. When someone turns to Christ, we should rejoice because God rejoices. This is typically the case here, but I don't want to take it for granted that it always is. Luke 15 gives three parables of the lost being found. You might be familiar with them. The first two parables highlight the rejoicing that happens in heaven over one center, her repents. But there are times when we don't rejoice at this news. Well, why is that? Well, if we look at the third parable, the story of the prodigal son, it ends on a note where the other son is not rejoicing with those who rejoice. In that parable, the obedient son is jealous. But he is also very aware of the history and the evil actions from his father's son. That's what he calls him, his returned brother. This brother of his devoured his father's property with prostitutes. This other son had wasted away all these things in his own selfish pursuits. Now I'm ready to admit that sometimes it's hard to believe the news of some conversions. In fact, even the believers in Jerusalem did not want to believe that Paul had been converted. Instead of rejoicing, we become skeptical because we know they're past. We are suspicious of the genuineness. And we do this because we lose sight of the fact that regeneration and conversion is a work of God on the center. We hold back on the celebration because we want to see the fruit. And don't get me wrong. We do want to see fruit of conversion. But I'm afraid that in our desire to recognize true belief, we're hesitant to embrace and rejoice with a new believer. But that's not how God operates. There's rejoicing in heaven when the center repents. So we should rejoice with the repentant, encourage them in their new life. When a woman gives birth to a baby, we don't just set him down and look for proof of life. We rejoice at the first cry. And then we clean him up. We dress him and nourish and cherish him. Lead him as he grows. This is what Christ wants from his people. He wants his people, the church, to receive the newborn with rejoicing. Then we help clean off the old sinful flesh. We direct them to continue in faith and godliness and holiness. And with every other blessing, like what I come back to, what I said earlier, what about me? Every other blessing is a blessing from the Lord. Conversion being the highest one of those. But when we face every other blessing, we want to rejoice with those who have received the blessing. Because it is a sign of God's goodness and grace, His common grace, would you not want your friend to rejoice with you? Every single one of God's blessings are worth rejoicing over. And we should be especially glad when our good and generous Father brings cause to rejoice in others. His being gracious, we should always rejoice over that. The same need is present with those who weep, so this is different. When people are having a hard time in their life, it can be for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes bad things just happen. Job, for example, lost everything. We as readers know what was going on, but Job didn't. He never got an answer as to why he was facing the suffering that he did. From his perspective, he did know that it was at the hands of the sovereign Lord, but these bad things happened to him and he was miserable. His friends, when they heard the news, made plans to come and comfort Job. Initially, they did that and they did great. They wept, they showed remorse for him, they sat with him for a whole week. But when Job spoke and shared his hurt, his friends stopped being compassionate and started offering advice and answers. They started to try to explain why Job was suffering instead of sympathizing with his pain. They told him he must need to repent of something instead of feel his hurt with him. And we tend to do the same thing. Why do we do this? I think if we're honest with ourselves is because pain is not comfortable. When someone is sad, we don't like it. We want to fix it. We want to explain it. We even want to remind the hurting person of the good promises of God. And those are not bad wants, but they may not be timely. If you've spent any time on the internet, you may have seen a video of a guy in a gal, let's just say they're a husband and a wife. And it starts in, they're sitting on the couch and it starts in, zoomed in on the wife's face. And the wife has spoken to her husband about a problem that she has. It's affecting every area of her life. She's miserable. In the video, the screen pans back and there's this giant nail sticking out of her forehead. And the husband, he's just looking at her. You can see that he's looking at the nail and he says, you've got this nail in your forehead. She doesn't say thank you. No, she gets upset with him. She says it isn't about the nail. She wants him to stop trying to fix it and just listen. So he does, in the video, everything in him wants to just help her get the nail out of her head because he knows that's what needs to happen. But he just listens and says that, that seems really hard. And that's all she needed. The video ends with her thanking him for listening and to give a big hug and all's well, right? Now this of course is a parody, but it illustrates something that's true about all of us. There are times when those who are hurting just need to be heard they need to be sympathized with to show that they are not alone and we just want to fix it. Well, the solutions can come later. Right now you just need to weep with them. The coveting heart, it does want something different. We're selfish, we want something more. Sometimes that selfish coveting heart just wants out of the situation and not have to deal with it. For those who like to help, it just wants to offer solutions. We want to just help fix the problem rather than offer compassion. We don't want to engage in the pain. Again, why is this? Well, various reasons exist. Like I said, we don't like pain. We also don't like it when people linger in grief. Perhaps it's evident right away that there is something wrong with the way somebody's thinking about a situation. But none of this matters in the moment to the one who's grieving. A grieving person is a grieving person. We need to come to them in their grief and share in their grief. We need to weep with those who weep. If we are going to speak into this grief, we need to show them that we love them first. We need to be there for them. We bless them in this way when we're there with them. When we do speak, we need to be careful about what we say. People can say some well-intentioned things that end up not being very helpful, at least not in the moment of grief or trouble. Again, we need to look to what Jesus has offered us as an example, remembering how Jesus was when Lazarus died. When he first showed up, Martha is the first one who meets him, and she's just telling him about what has happened, what could have happened if he'd been there. She met Jesus with faith. Jesus reassures her. But when Mary came and he saw her weeping and the Jews who had come to Lazarus' tomb, he saw them also weeping. Jesus has deeply moved and he weeps at the tomb of Lazarus. He joins in the pain. It was in that action that the people saw and knew that Jesus loved them, that he had loved Lazarus. In order to weep well with those who weep, we need to have the right thinking about God in his purposes and our suffering, suffering and troubles. And the causes of weeping remind us that this world is not right. And the only one who will make it right is Jesus. Jesus will return and he will make all things new. He will remove all causes of sin and suffering. He will wipe away every tear. But that day is not yet. And we need to make sure that we're not trying to replace Jesus by trying to take the pain away. God does mature us through suffering, but the type of suffering is not directly tied to any specific type of need for growth. The Lord Jesus himself suffered and he matured in his humanity but not for any sin or fault of his own. We need to look to him just like Jesus looked to his father who would deliver him. And we need to remember that for the person who is suffering. But that's all they really need. They need to see Jesus. And the best way to help them see Jesus is to represent Jesus to them in that moment. Ed Welch offers some good advice on this issue in his book side by side. Just some practical advice. Don't tell them it could be worse, right? Sounds obvious, doesn't it? It's pretty cold. But it's not too uncommon to hear people say, "Well, at least this didn't happen." Or at least that didn't happen. I'm sorry you lost your job, but at least you didn't get arrested. Something a little bit more sensitive, I'm sorry your mom died, but at least she's in a better place. These kinds of statements attempt to minimize grief rather than share in the grief. The grieving person already knows that it can be worse. And God doesn't minimize our troubles, and neither should we. And something else that's unhelpful is ask them what God is teaching them through this. The first problem with this is that we have removed ourselves from being the sympathetic, Christ loving a person, loving person who is sharing in their sympathy and becoming a teacher. It suggests that God has a specific lesson he is trying to teach someone through a specific pain. And this is neither helpful or biblical. The general truth is that suffering just is meant to help us learn to trust God and to conform us to his son. But this in the moment of weeping, in the moment of grieving, this is not the time to bring that up. The believer will learn that as they look back. They'll trust that it's true when you simply love them and mourn with them. Don't tell them to look to Jesus, show them Jesus through your compassion. The last bit of advice that Welch gives, which I think is helpful, is don't tell them, call me if you need something, right? That's very well-intentioned, but a grieving person is not going to be thinking about the things that they need when they're suffering some kind of pain. Just look to see what you can do. Pick up some groceries, offer a ride, practical stuff, take out the garbage. There's dozens of ways to help people, right? But it's that practical help that comes to them, it comes to be with them in their suffering. That is how we bless them. And out of the overflow of God's blessing, we want to have that heart of compassion, whether it's with rejoicing or with weeping, we need to be sympathetic as he was towards us. A life please and God thinks about how to bless others. We bless others by desiring the conversion of our enemies. We also bless others by having a heart of compassion. And finally, we bless others by seeking to be last. In order to bless others, as God has blessed us, we need to seek to be last. In other words, we need to live selflessly. Verse 16 returns to the theme of thinking that Paul mentioned in verse three. In fact, there are seven words with the same root for thinking in verses three and 16 together. If you have the ESV, you can see verse three has the first three thinks. The first one's not think more highly. The second one is how you ought to think. The third one is to think. A fourth use of the same root is given as sober judgment. Then in verse 16, Paul returns to the necessity of thinking rightly, though with different words. The first three, the first of the three is rendered in the ESV and the NIV as living in harmony with one another. This is actually a very useful translation. The wording behind it more literally, we would say, would be that we're thinking the same thing toward one another. There's a harmony when we're on the same page. The second thing in verse 16 is the command not to be proud or haughty. So we're thinking too highly of ourselves and which echoes verse three, not thinking more highly of himself than he ought to think. And the last think is that the end of verse 16 of not being wise in your own sight. So wise, overly thinking highly again of yourself. So in this verse where 16, Paul gives two positive commands and two negative commands, things that we should do and two things we should not do. The comparison and contrast is important because it specifies what our thinking should lead to. If we're going to bless others, we need to be thinking rightly about ourselves and about everyone else around us. It should lead us to not exalting ourselves. It should lead us to humility. It should lead us to living selflessly so that we can seek to positively bless others. The contrast to being haughty you can see there in the verse is associating with a lowly or people in low position. If you have footnotes at the bottom of your page, you should see that an alternative translation is something like doing humble tasks or menial work. And no matter which way you take it, it means the same thing, right? We're not thinking that we're too high to either associate with someone who is in our category lowly 'cause that's a judgment call we're going to make or with the work that we think that we're above, right? Same effect. We don't want to approach these things. We're commanded not to approach these things thinking that we're above them. Well, how is this a blessing? Perhaps an obvious answer is that means we're being nice. Sure, we need to be nice. We don't want to be the one who turns our nose up with people, right? We don't want to think that we're above certain kinds of work. We don't want to be the jerk. But the blessing that the text points us to is that this is an act of worship. When we take it in the context of Romans 12, this is an act of worship to lower thinking about ourselves and to remind ourselves that everybody is worth our investment. Everybody is worth our time and our blessing. This kind of blessing points us to that because it reflects the heart of our savior. Jesus described himself as gentle and lowly. He went and sat and ate with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus went to all and he invited all to come to him. A well-known passage that speaks of the humility of Christ is Philippians 2. In verse three of Philippians two, Paul writes words that echo his instruction in Romans 12. He says, "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves." But to the Philippians, he backs up this command with the truth of who Jesus is. Jesus is God, and though he was God, in joyful accordance with the will of his father, he took on human nature. He took on the form of a servant, even to the point of death. Paul writes that this incarnation of the sun demonstrated Jesus' willingness to not consider equality with God in terms of receiving glory and honor while he accomplished the tasks of securing our salvation. Jesus, God, the sun incarnate, humbled himself to the point of death on a cross. He had every right to be worshiped and exalted and glorified and served, but that is not the kind of king that he is. He demonstrated that humility is the mark of greatness in the kingdom of God. He showed us that true glory is through humility, a humility that does not live for the self, but lives selflessly for the sake of blessing others. Part of the nature of pride, which is the opposite of what we're commanded here, is a sense of competitiveness. We're not going to live at harmony with one another when we're competing for a place in the game, when we're competing for the attention and affection of others. When all we're thinking about is the positive opinion of others or is trying to get ahead in the game, we are not going to be a blessing, so we need to look to Christ. Pride keeps us from associating with a lowly because we know we have nothing to gain from them. The command phrases in verse 16 point us in a different direction. They point out that being blessing for others for the glory of God is the height of wisdom. They point out that the unity we are to experience with one another in the church is a sign of our love for Christ and our love for one another. It's a genuine love that serves the Lord and serves people. These phrases point out that our association with a lowly is a reflection of Jesus' association with us. We had nothing to offer him, yet he came to us. He treats us with love because we are as bride, the gift from his father, and out of the overflow of God's blessing, we strive to live humbly and selflessly as Christ lived humbly for us. A life pleasing to God thinks about how to bless others. In order to bless others, we need to remember most of all that we have been blessed in every way by being saved from our sins in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is through that, through remembering that by which we lay ourselves aside. It's by remembering his loving work to save us that we seek the good of our enemies, even praying for their salvation. It's remembering the sympathy and compassion of God that we're able to sympathize with our brothers and sisters, whether rejoicing or weeping or anything in between. And it's by remembering the humble and lowly nature of Christ that we are able to live selfless lives for the sake of serving our Lord and loving our neighbor. Let's pray. Father, we give you praise and thanks because you have qualified us to share in your kingdom. You have called us to be saints. You have called us to represent you. You have delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of your beloved son. In your son, we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins, the sin of selfishness and pride, covetousness. All of this has been forgiven of us. We ask you to fill us with the knowledge of your will so that we could walk in a manner worthy of you so that we could walk in a life that is fully pleasing to you. Help us to live a life that seeks to bless others, that the fruit of our life would indeed be seen and worked out with good works towards those who hate us and those who do not. Help us to increase in the knowledge of you to help us live a life that is pleasing to you. Strengthen us by your spirit. Strengthen us by your might so that we would be able to endure and joyfully, patiently anticipate the fruit of your work and your coming again. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]