The Neighborhood Church, Bentonville, AR

Real vs. Fake Christians…How Do You Know? [Sunday Message]

• theneighborhood.church • Season 2025 • Episode 44

Share episode

Pastor Joe Liles unpacks the essential characteristics of authentic Christian living from Romans, Chapter 12. The message challenges listeners to move beyond surface-level faith and embrace a transformative spiritual journey.

Pastor Joe dives into the core principles of Christian identity: genuine love, serving with enthusiasm, extending grace to others, and maintaining hope in challenging seasons. Through personal stories and scriptural insights, he reveals how Christians are called to be agents of peace and reconciliation in a divided world.

Key themes include:

  • Understanding true Christian character
  • Valuing others above ourselves
  • Serving with passionate commitment
  • Responding to conflict with unexpected grace
  • Living out faith practically in daily life

This message is Ideal for believers seeking deeper spiritual understanding, those exploring Christian faith, and anyone interested in a message of hope and meaningful living.

Support the show

Check out more here...

Yeah, so we're in a series on Romans right now, and our series on Romans has been a walk through understanding what it means to be Christian. Thank you, Joe. I appreciate that. And when we're walking through this identity of what it means to be Christian, there's really an understanding of who Paul was writing to when he wrote the book of Romans, and we're now four weeks into this series, which means we've traversed through different things like the understanding of what righteous is in this right relationship with God, and understanding God's relationship with God's people, which are the Jews. And then you have these new Christians, the Gentiles. And Paul hasn't even planted this church. This was a church that Paul is not even visited yet, and so he's writing them in the book of Romans. And we're trying to understand what it means to be Christian by hearing from two different people groups, the Jews and the Gentiles, that are trying to reconcile their faith with each other, while also having Rome do what it does in Rome, right? And they have pagan gods and different things, and they're trying to reconcile all these things that are going on. And we've been saying, How can we understand what it means to be a Christian within this? And so we talk through righteousness. And then last week, we talked about that, that starting moment in faith, that we all have, this starting moment where we are meant to believe in our heart and proclaim with our lips what it means to be Christian. And that's how we begin and and I brought up, if you weren't here, last week, I made sourdough bread for the first time, right? And so I do have any sourdough bread makers out there. We got some at no one, no one. Does anyone want to make sourdough? And this is never you get a sourdough bread maker. That's great. Does anyone want to make sourdough? And is it never jumped in, okay? This is great. So we brought in Kaylee Harmon. She taught us how to make sourdough, gave us one of her two year starters, right? So we had this and and then I brought mine to worship. Now, when you bring it to worship, and you're supposed to do it in the morning. I basically did what's called over proofing, just and it just keeps on growing on its own, which was amazing. And so I got it home, and Kaylee sent us this video that showed her doing this last fold of the bread, and it looked amazing on the video, she's grabbing the sour dough, right? And it's this dough that has been growing overnight, and it's this perfect way, and she folds it over once, and it's beautiful, and she folds it over twice, and then she rolls it this way, and then she rolls it that way, and it's just, it's beautiful, like it's it's pure, like it looks like it looks perfect. And then she pulls it towards herself to kind of tighten that air in there, right? I'm like, this is beautiful. Mine would not come out of the bowl like I could not. I had to flip the bowl upside down and let gravity work while I reached up without even seeing it to kind of, and then it hit the granite counter and stuck to it like I couldn't. I couldn't even turn it over. I had to, like, peel it off the counter. And I was like, This is gonna be a disaster. And so, and here's the deal, it's after Sunday, so I'm exhausted, right? And I'm like, in between, like, passing out and waking up, and the timer goes off in 30 minutes, I gotta roll it again, right? And I gotta roll it again. And then I got my I didn't even know we had a Dutch oven. Apparently, we have a Dutch oven, just like, of course, we do. We've always had a Dutch oven. And I'm, like, 15 years, I've never known that we've had a Dutch oven. I say this is great, and so, and of course, it's right next to the toaster, which I pull out every day. There's the Dutch oven. Guess I never asked what that was. And so we have this in our pantry. And so I grabbed that, and I'm letting that heat up, and I spread and it stuck everywhere. This is gonna turn out horrible. And so I put it in there, and you gotta let it bake, right? Just let it bake for an hour. Bake for an hour. You put it. I had the parchment paper dropped in the Dutch oven, and I walked away, and I was like, let God deal, you know? I was like, God's gonna work this one out. I prayed over it as it went into the oven. I think it's gonna be great. And so, um, so I pulled it out an hour later, and it's one of those moments where you have the lid on it, like the lids on top of the Dutch oven and, like, there's this, like, it's exciting breads exciting. Like, I had this reveal moment I walked over. I was like, when I put it on top of the stove, and I was like, and then music started playing. Was really like, Haha. It was like, the mermaid song. And so I was like, oh. And I opened up, and this bread looked awesome. It was, I mean, it was, it was perfect. It had, like, the ridges on it. My bread was not good enough to score, even though I tried to score it like it was too sticky. So I tried to cut into and it didn't work. And so, but I opened it. Now, here's the deal. I can make bread in anything that I'll eat anything so, like, it was edible, right? That's what Jess says about most of my food. It's edible. And so I made it, and I was like, this is beautiful. Kayla came home and she goes, Hey, did you make your sourdough? And this is my 16 year old daughter. And I was like, Yeah, I made my sourdough. And she goes, Can I try a piece? And I was like, Yeah, you can. It's delicious. And she goes, I'll be the judge of that. She walked over, she grabs a bite, and I can. I'm not even looking. I don't even want to see her face, right? She grabs a bite, right? And I don't hear anything. Oh, man, one bite. That girl walked away. I was like, It's not good. Something doesn't matter, right? She comes and sits down next to me on the couch, and she has a plate of bread with butter, and she goes, this is delicious. I did it. I made bread. I made bread, which is amazing. So last week, if you didn't see last week's message. Is out on YouTube, Facebook. We talked about this identity of like a starter in faith. Like our identity of faith is that God is working into our lives, and that we have all these years of experience with God, and it's not meant to be held. It's meant to be shared, and that at any moment you feel lost with God, you can go back to the moment when you started with God, and you can begin there. This is this new reality, that we have this new transformation every single day, we have this reality. And so we talked about, what does it mean? And so we use that as an illustration, but it was a beautiful way to talk about what it doesn't mean to have faith and share it with others. And so now, when we're in the book of Romans, we're walking through the book of Romans, and it is truly in these last four chapters, right, that are in 12, 1314, and 15, right? It is talking about not the relationship with God to God's people now, but our relationship back to God. So there's a switch that happens in the book of Romans, and it's beautiful, because then it starts to say, Okay, who are we in relationship to God? Not who's God in relationship to us? And all of a sudden we have this moment where God's faithfulness is now our faithfulness, and that's the switch that's happening. And so we take this moment, and we're going to be talking today about the marks of a true Christian. What does it mean to be truly Christian? And I think this is kind of hard, because I think a lot of people have a different identity of what it means to be Christian, and a lot of people say they're Christian, and you're like, oh, okay, but you also do this, right? And I'm over here going, Oh, I'm a Christian, but I also do this. And, like, I don't, I don't really believe that. And you're like, okay, but I believe 90% of what you believe. Does that make us both Christian, or are you a wrong Christian and I'm a right Christian? How many people have been there before, like, in Christian conversations? Okay, it's good. How many of you in loving relationships where you don't believe the same things, right? Can I just get an amen on that? Everyone has to say it. Otherwise, half of the relationship gets in trouble. So we're just going to try that again. Are you guys ready? 123, we don't all believe the same things, so we have to understand what this means. And I've been teaching this to the youth too on Wednesday nights. So Wednesday nights, we have like, 40 to 50 youth gathering here, right? And it's fifth through 12th grade. It's awesome. And we've been doing an I believe series. I believe in God, the Father, Jesus Christ, the Son of the Holy Spirit, and we're in Jesus right now. I believe in Jesus, and we're talking about what it means to believe, but I take them through these statements, right? That are going to for them to understand what is true and what is false, right? And sometimes what we believe and what we think is true, even though we think we've learned it at some point in our life, is not true, it's false. And so I've been taking them through what I call Joe's, believe it or not, on Sunday night. Do you guys want to hear a couple of these questions, just to kind of get us in the heart of true and false? Okay, so I'm gonna give a couple of these to you. We've done different, different groupings of them. We've done animals. We've done space on Wednesday night, we did the human right? So different things about the human and so here's a couple that I did, and get it ready for Liza, true or false. If you sneeze with your eyes open, they can pop out, true or false. See, like, people are like false, right? Here we go, Okay, how many think it's true, okay, all right, how many think it's false, right? Okay, it's 100% false. That's not a thing. Like, if you thought it was true, you've been engaged your whole life in the wrong way. Like, have you ever sneezed? Like, oh, my eyes never that's never happened. 1000s of times you've seen people sneeze and no one's eyeballs have popped out of their socket. If you have a condition, we're not gonna get into it. Okay, here we go. Just like fingerprints, you have unique toe prints. How many of you think that's true? How many of you think it's false? Okay, you know what's happening right now. Not everyone's participating, so we're gonna do that again. You can't sit and wait in it all right? So how many of you think that is true? You have unique toe prints? How many of you think it's false? Okay, it's totally true. That's totally true. We're just not gonna fingerprint someone's toes. You know, I'm saying that that's gross. Like, you have to get your shoes off, your socks off, you got stinky toes, and you gotta sit that on a scanner. Like, that's just not gonna happen. Just use your finger. That's why we don't do that. Okay, here we go. And so we got that one. Here's the next one. You have more bacteria in your human body than human cells. More bacteria than human cells. Okay. How many of you think it's true? Okay? How many of you think it's false? All right, it's true. Everyone go gross, yeah. How many of you like, I don't think that's true. Now you questioning my authority, right? Like so many of you are like, go look that up after this. Go ahead. I dare you. I dare you. Come back next to me and apologize to me. That's what you're gonna do. Okay, here we go. Next one you can breathe and swallow at the same time. Breathe and sweat. If you could be up here. When I say these things, this is what happens. And it's, it's one of those, are you? Like I did? I never, I I haven't thought about that before. Like I'm 42 years old, I've never okay. How many of you think it's true that you can breathe and swallow the same time? Okay? How many of you think it's false? Okay? How many of you have ever breathed and swallowed the same time before? No one. There's a reason it's false. You cannot breathe and swap Have you ever. Ever breathed and swallow it that you choke. That's what happens. Like one thing has to give way. You either can't breathe or you can't swallow. Whoever raised your hand and said that it was true. Nope. Okay, here we go. Okay, now here's here's the last one, and this one's hard. You got to do some math. The average person blinks 10,000 times per day. The average person blinks 10,000 times per day. How many of you think that's true? Okay? How many of you think it's false? Okay, false. It is false. We blink like, 100,000 times a day. So just like, little bit off, if you're like, of course, it's 10,000 Nope, you're off. That's 10% of what we blink, right? The reason I did this in youth is the same reason I'm bringing it here. Sometimes we get so comfortable in life that we don't engage ourselves in thinking about topics that are not presented right before us. We sit in a space where we say, Oh, I don't have to think about that, so I'm just not going to engage that that level of is it right or is it wrong? And then all of a sudden, what happens in our life is what we've never engaged before. Can you swallow and breathe at the same time? You're like, Oh, I've never thought about that, but before you have a chance to think about it, you're presented with it before you have a chance to think about it, it's in front of you, and people want to say, but what do you believe? What do you know about this? What is your education? And somehow, a conversation about, can I breathe and swallow reflects on how smart are you, and what was your education, and where did you learn this? And don't you have experience breathing, and also you're like, hold on, but I've never thought about it in this way, but you don't have time, and people don't allow us time to engage that conversation. How many of you feel like that? A lot in your faith, where you have these moments where you're like, I haven't thought about that, but now it's right in front of me, and you're asking me what I believe about it, and I haven't had time to talk with God about it. I have experience of it, but I haven't related that to my faith in this way before. And now you're saying, If I don't think this way, then I've never been a Christian, or I don't love people the right way, and I haven't even had time to, like, stop and pray over this, and yet you want me to tell you where I stand. Do you know how many times people have come to me as a pastor and say, I don't want a theological dissertation? I don't want you to open scripture with me. I just want you to tell me yes or no. Do you know how many times I get that when I'm in conversations with people where they just want a hard line answer of what I believe about something, and I say, Hey, that's not how my faith works. And they go, no, no, I just want a yes or no. I said, that's beautiful. I said, that's wonderful. I said, I just want a conversation. I said, it's great. Apparently, we're at an impasse, so we're going to have to a lot more coffee. It's going to be great. Part of this is to understand what does it mean to be Christian, and how do we engage that? And Paul talks about that in the book of Romans. So we're gonna go into Scripture. We're gonna open up in Romans, chapter 12, if you got the good book, we love Bibles in the church. Raise up Bibles if you got them, if you got a Bible, raise it up. Yes, yes. Love Bibles in the church. It's great if you don't have a Bible. We have Bible boxes. Now here's something really cool. So our Bible boxes are on the church they're the boxes on the wall. You can see Bibles in them. Next to that is what we call the TNC mailbox. That's where you can drop your just saying, Hi, card. It's that black box next to it. We put student Bibles in there, we put adult study Bibles in there. We put elementary Bibles in there, and we put kids Bibles in there, like preschool Bibles in there. Those Bibles are for you, right? There's a card in there that says, hey, read the Bible. And if you need a Bible, just fill that card out and drop it at the welcome desk, and we will get you a Bible within two weeks to have here at the church, because we want everyone to have Bible. Cool thing is that our Bibles are gone. Like they keep they're disappearing, which is great. I had the youth come to me on Wednesday like, Hey, we're looking for more student Bibles. And I was like, well, great, grab them and worship. They're like, there's no more in worship. What did I was like, awesome. Because that means people have the word in their hands, and that's what we're gaining for so if you don't have a Bible with you, that's alright. We're also on the Bible app, so you can jump in right now. There's a chair back card that says church apps. You can download the Bible app on there. If you scan that QR code, it'll take you right to the Bible app for today, our event. If you need to find it. Just go to the hamburger menu in the Bible app and choose events, and our neighborhood church will show up because it's geo located. So you can jump into that and follow along with Scripture and notes. So we're going to be in Romans chapter 12, bring in verses nine through 21 is where we're going to start. Nine through 21 and this admittedly is a longer section of Scripture, but I wanted you to hear it through the whole thing, so that way we could go back and break it down verse by verse. That's our goal today. It's kind of verse by verse of the marks of a church. And I'm going to give you six marks, six ways you can look at yourself and say, Okay, this is what it means to be a Christian out in the world, as we hear from Paul writing to the church in Rome. So let's begin now. This is Romans, chapter 12, verses nine through 21. Says this, let love be genuine. Hate what is evil. Hold fast to what is good. Love one another with mutual affection. Outdo one. Another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal. Be ardent in spirit. Serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope. Be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints. Extend hospitality to strangers. Whoo, take a breath. Everyone. Just take a breath. Whoo, if you go and read that again, you're like, Ooh, I can work on that for the rest of my life. That right there we're going to break that down. Well, let's go on and read 14 through 21 because it continues. 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. I love that word, hot tea. We need to use that more. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. But take thought for what is noble in the sight of all, if it is possible, so far as it depends on you. Live peaceably with all. 19 Divine Love, beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God. We're going to hit that one too. Don't worry, for it is written, Vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord. No, if your enemies are hungry, feed them. If they are thirsty, give them something to drink. For by doing this, you will heap burning coals on their heads. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. And all God's people said, marks of a true Christian. How do you guys feel? You're doing that's a lot. That's a lot over and over and over. If you want to go back into this daily and break it down and be like, Hey, how am I sitting in my relationship with God and being a Christian out in this world? You can go back over this again and again and again and realize not that we are failing in it, but that we are growing into it. I think we take a look at this, I'm like, Oh, I didn't hit that one, and I didn't hit that one, and I didn't hit that one, and that's not right. And that's not right. And now I'm over here, and you're like, I'm I'm not doing this well. And yet, what we are doing is we're talking about transformation with God. We're talking about moving into this and working through it. So I want to walk back through these. I want to walk back through that. I want you to hear them so we can kind of understand what is really being treaded about the marks of a true Christian, and I title this message fake Christians versus real Christians, because I think that's happening a lot in our society right now. Our society is kind of in a dualism, right? It's this identity where we're putting in us versus them. It's happening all over, and it's not just right now, I want to let you know that this happened back in Jesus' time, Jew and Gentile law and gospel, Heaven and Earth, disciples and not disciples. I mean, all of these things have been happening since the beginning of Scripture, when we've talked and we're living into it again. And so we have to understand what is our through line as a Christian, when it's not about an us versus them, we're about reconciling all people to God. So what does that mean when we go back out into the world? Well, it begins here, so let's walk back through it. Okay, we're gonna start in verse 10. We're gonna start in verse 10. Here's what it says in verse 10. One more time. Do not lag in zeal. Be ardent in spirit. Serve the Lord. Do not lag in zeal. Be ardent in spirit. Serve the Lord. Okay, how many of you love the word ardent and have no idea what that means? Right? You're like ardent. Be ardent in spirit. Do not lag in zeal. So there's an important thing that I wanted to give you. There's this identity that when I'm looking through scripture, if a word stops me, and I've said it all my life, but I just have no idea what it means. I really want to process that, and I want to look back through and says, Be ardent in spirit, and don't lag and zeal. What does this even mean? Right? We're truly sitting here in this one, so we're going to understand what that means. But in order to get to there, you have to understand verse 10. Listen to this. Verse 10 says, Love one another with mutual affection outdo one another in showing honor. How beautiful is that? Love one another with mutual affection outdo one another in showing honor. This word honor is very interesting in Scripture. It means to give value. That's what honor means, Love one another with mutual affection and outdo one another in giving each other value, which means when I see you, I should give you more value than me. I should raise up the values that I see in you and why you're important in my life. What ends up happening is that we let society tell us our worth before we ever get to the space with understanding our value comes from the cross of Christ. Christ, that there was a cross that paid for our value with Jesus Christ. And yet we come more often than not, and let society tell us how much we are worthy in society. How many of you feel that that your worth comes from society and people are happy to tell you how much you're worth in society? Does people feel that? Does people get a paycheck with how much they're worth in society and feel that they should make more for the work that they're doing? If you've ever felt like you should make more in what you're doing, society is telling you that you are not worth what's happening in your life and the amount of work that you put in, your worth has always come from the cross. Your value has always become because who God is in your life, our job and our Christian part of us, we should be the one sharing with everyone around us how much we value you, how we see you. And that's a note for today to go into the people that you love in their lives and say how much they are valued and why they are valued. And then it gets deeper. So going back to verse 11 says this, do not lag in zeal. Be ardent in spirit. Serve the Lord. Do not lack in zeal. I love this because really, as I'm thinking through what it means to be ardent, I looked up the word in Greek. It's really, really interesting. Ardent means to boil over. So let me read it for you again with the word boil over, right? It's the same look you had when I said, Can you swallow and breathe at the same time? That was the same look all of you just gave me. And so listen to this. Do not lag and zeal. Boil over in the spirit, serve the Lord, right? And what this means is that we don't want to be quick to anger, right? We want to be quick to obedience. As Christians, when it says, boil over in the spirit, do not lag and seal it says, Don't be lazy. Honor God, right? Be quick to honor God. And do that with a spirit that boils over, that flows over. Do it with a spirit that's on fire for God. And I want you to imagine if you've ever been cooking pasta, and you set it there, and you walk away for like, two seconds, and then all of the pasta foam boils over the pasta, and then goes into where the stove is at. And then, you know, later, you have to take off all the stove parts and clean. Does anyone have this happen in their life? Am I the only one sweet goodness? Am I the only one everyone's had this? Okay? This is the identity of the spirit. Your ardent and zeal should boil over. You shouldn't be quick to anger. You should truly be quick to obedience. And then it says, At the end of 11, when you get there, serve the Lord. And this should be done enthusiastically. This is not a moment where you're just quick to be obedient. This boiling over means you're on fire for God. It truly means that the mark of a Christian is to serve God obediently and enthusiastically. Right? That is the difference between one of my children coming to say, you have tourist today and I'm going and I'm going, I am so excited to do chores and a way to help this family, and I would love to go do those right now. I don't have anything else to do, and nothing is more important that is enthusiastically doing what you're obedient to. The way my kids respond is not biblical, and then we have unbiblical conversations. So then those moments now we understand the difference of what it means to respond obediently and enthusiastically. Now let's keep on going. Verse 12 says this, rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer one more time. Rejoice in hope. Be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer, there is something in our life about what it means to be patient in our suffering. I don't have to say that I believe that we've all suffered, because that is one thing as a pastor that I know is true at one time or another in our life, we have all suffered. And when I hear this scripture, and I know the families I've walked with, it becomes very difficult to say, Hey, be patient in your suffering. That's probably something you'll never hear sitting from me. Oh, this is hard right now. Be patient in your suffering. Be patient in your suffering, but I can lean back into the rejoice and hope, because it begins by saying, rejoice and hope. Be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. And what I believe this is saying is is as Christians, if we're overflowing with the Spirit, that we have to have joy in a promise. And that joy in the promise, it brings a patience to the present. If you're stuck in the present and you're finding it hard to be patient and hard to be faithful, and you're a little bit broken, we need to shift that that present moment. Understand that there is joy in a promise of eternity, of where things are not broken and when there is peace. And sometimes we forget to think about what Jesus promised us on the cross, and is preparing for us right now, because we get stuck in the present and it's hard to be patient. And I believe that the mark of a true Christian is to truly find joy in the promise to bring us patience in the present, and not just in suffering, but all things that we go through some. Times it's just a season of waiting. Sometimes it's a season of unexpected things that joy the promise, can teach you what it means to be Christian in that season. Now listen to what happens in the next verse in 13, one of my favorites, contribute to the needs of the saints, extend hospitality to strangers. This is going to be one of those points where I literally wrote in my notes hard word just meant. I'm just going to tell it to you straight. I'm going to give it to you. Cannot have relationship with God without sacrificing your time to serve our neighbors in need. If you do that, you are learning about what it means to be Christian, and you're sitting in Christianity, but you are not living out being a Christian. The mark of a true Christian is that you have relationship with God when you sacrifice your most valuable thing, which is your time. And it's time with family, it's time with loved ones. It's time at work, it's time in a hobby, it's time in personal care, everything. When you sacrifice that time to serve our neighbors in need, you will understand what it means to have relationship with God. It's a very true thing. And in fact, people who are really lost and really broken, the first thing I tell them to do when I meet with them, as I say, you need to find a place to serve someone who has a need, and they're like but I'm I'm broken. It's and I said, You need to find a place to serve someone who has need, because when we go out and serve, what do we do? It starts to work back into itself. And this is where the cyclical identity of what it means to be a Christian takes place. Is it goes back all the way into the beginning and outdo one another and showing honor. Show someone they have value. Show someone when you're broken, that you're going to value someone else, because you see it in them, and you're going to share with them what them what your Christian faith is. All of a sudden, each one of these start to play into each other, and we start to see what it means to be a Christian is that once you, once you go out and serve, you're valuing someone more than you are, and you're going to show them, and you're going to let love be genuine. And all of a sudden, these things start to come together, where the holistic side of you is being a Christian in community, not just in church. We get stuck being Christians in church, and we are always meant to be Christians in community. We should learn how to go back out and serve each other in this way, and yet it still goes on. Listen to verse 14, which is where we all fail. So let's just say this out loud, Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse them. How many of you have blessed the people that you find really hard relationships with? Have you nothing? Oh, we got southern charm here. I don't want to miss this, right? How many of you have ever said, bless their heart, okay? Oh, bless their heart. Bless that I had a little bit of passive, or what I call pastor aggressiveness there. And I'd say, bless their little heart. Oh, tiny because you're so mean, right? But bless your heart. Bless your heart. There is something about blessing you cannot exist. And here, can we just say that being a Christian is hard because it's gonna be another hard you cannot be a Christian unless you Bless those who persecute you scriptural, which means that if you are struggling with someone and you're thinking of all the things that they've wronged you with, and how are you gonna talk to them about it and what they deserve and how they have to earn their way back to you, and you're like, Oh, but I love Jesus, and Jesus died on the cross for me and forgave me of my sins, even though I walk away constantly. But you, you gotta earn your way back to me every step. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them. I love that because it's like, I know it's gonna be trouble. But also, do not curse them. Like if you're throwing curses. We need to have another conversation, right? That'd be another level. But this blessing is very interesting. This blessing language that happens in here. Do you know what the word is in Greek? So cool. You know what the word is in Greek to bless? Eulogy, eulogy, which I think again, gives me two times one I'm like, Yeah, I'm gonna bless you because someone's gonna I'm gonna kill you, right? No, like, we all have that in us a little bit, right? But it's not what it means. I had some fun with that in my head. You know what it means? The word blessing and eulogy comes from two words it means to speak good things. So not only bless them, but what are you doing? I love when Scripture all comes together, you're valuing them more than yourself. Whoo. Do you see what being a Christian is? It permeates all of your life in a beautiful way. And so people, when they look at Christians. They can say, Why? Why would you? Why would you speak good things of them. Look what they did to you and how they treated you. But it's not about us. It's always been about God. When we make it about us, we don't want to bless, we want to persecute, we want to judge. We don't want to love, we want you to earn your way back. We. It's about God. We understand that's already been done for us. So we get the opportunity to love others, and that's our joy. Now listen to this last part, verses 1718, and 19. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all if it is possible, so far as it depends on you. Live peaceably with all Beloved. Never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God. For it is written, Vengeance is mine, and I will repay, says the Lord. If the Lord's vengeance is what's going to happen? If I love people, I'm good. If my my way to go back into community is to live peaceably with all as far as it depends on me. Do you know what I'm going to seek? I'm going to seek peace. When you seek peace, you are seeking the kingdom. Seek first, the kingdom of God and all these things will be added when you seek peace. You are seeking the Kingdom. It doesn't say, seek to live peaceably with all as far as it depends on the other people in your life. It says, as it depends upon you. Being a Christian means that we seek peace. It means that we bless our enemies. It means that we value people. It means that we serve our neighbors in need, even though we're lost and we need someone to serve us. Being a Christian is counter cultural, and it's beautiful. Being a Christian is what the world needs right now, I believe that the church is the best example of how the world should look, but it involves Christians going out into the world to share what it means to be a Christian. This is what Paul shared in the book of Romans, and these are the marks of what it means to be a Christian. So my question for you today, as you leave from this place, easy question, Who are you going to value today, and who are you going to share how you value them with as you go back into the world. The world needs your voice And all God's people said, Amen, let us pray, heavenly and gracious Father, we come before you today knowing that we are broken, that we are lost, that it takes time to seek you and know you and Lord as we come together, we know that we need to humble ourselves before you that's slow to anger, but quick to obedience. Ah, it's beautiful, but not just obedience, enthusiastic obedience. Lord, our heart is to know that when we love it is genuine, that we don't do things as the world does, because neither did you. You were in the world, but not of the world. And so Lord, I ask you to make that true in our heart also, that we come together in ways to know that we will watch over the people around us. We will lift them up. We will serve them. We will bless our enemies, and that in that Lord, we will be faithful, and that we will be known as Christians So Lord for the people in our lives that have hurt us, that we are struggling with right now, I ask that you would send the Spirit to watch over our heart and that we could have a moment where we lift them up in prayer. And for those who need to be served, I would ask that you would guide us to them, that we would know the words to say of what and how they need to be raised up to understand their relationship with you. But most of all, Lord, let us understand our relationship with you as we come to know you as our Lord and Savior, and we pray these things in your holy and precious name. And all God's people said, Amen. You guys enjoyed our series on Romans. So.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Pastor Joe Liles

Host
Head Shot

Pastor Tom Helmich

Host
Head Shot

Roseann Bowlin

Host
Head Shot

Tevo Christmann

Co-host