Dale Partridge - Romans 12_9-13 Part 2 - Thirty Marks of a True Christian

00:00:00.000 Amen. Amen. Well, Romans chapter 12 is just a wonderful chapter. I've had actually a really

00:00:13.680 great time studying through it. As you know, we've shifted from orthodoxy to orthopraxy.

00:00:20.700 Chapters 1 through 11 were orthodoxy. It was about what is the gospel. It is the clarity

00:00:26.780 of gospel doctrine. And then chapters 12 through 16 are orthopraxy, which is straight practice.

00:00:33.840 You've actually heard the term probably orthodontist, right? That's where you get the

00:00:37.160 idea of straight teeth. And so the idea of orthodoxy is straight doctrine, and orthopraxy

00:00:45.100 is straight practice. We want to have practice that aligns with the doctrine that comes from

00:00:51.080 the scriptures. And so we don't want to have our behavior to be informed by false doctrine. No,

00:00:57.720 we want straight doctrine to have straight practice. And so Paul's epistles, if you notice,

00:01:03.960 he has kind of a pattern where he understands that belief informs behavior. Belief informs

00:01:11.480 behavior. And Paul opened this chapter with a few primary commands. Chapters 12 verses 1 through 2

00:01:19.480 are really beautiful, famous passages of Scripture, and they have a few primary commands,

00:01:25.480 and one of them was, do not conform to this world. That is, do not conform to this world's way or

00:01:31.300 this world's standards or this world's culture, and sacrifice and surrender your life for Christ.

00:01:38.560 That was the kind of preliminary thesis of chapter 12, and to do so was our reasonable

00:01:45.900 service to God. That is what you owe to God for the price of redemption that God has paid for

00:01:53.060 your soul in Christ. In verses three through eight, Paul told us that we have spiritual gifts.

00:01:59.880 So in the way that we serve and sacrifice, God has given us some spiritual gifts in the body

00:02:07.580 for his glory. But after chapter nine, or sorry, after verse nine, he shifts from gifts

00:02:16.280 to godliness. So the focus was on spiritual gifts, and now it's to behavior and actions

00:02:24.000 that should animate your life as a result of being a Christian.

00:02:29.600 now last week you know that we began a three or sorry a six-part series

00:02:36.740 on what i called the 30 marks of a true christian 30 marks of a true christian

00:02:43.940 now these marks are not things that make a person saved behavior is not what makes a person

00:02:51.900 saved. We know that behavior is a result of God saving you. The motive for your behavior

00:03:02.020 for these marks is not fear. It's not performance. It's not to save yourself,

00:03:07.780 to keep yourself saved. The motive for obeying Christ

00:03:13.260 is love and gratitude for the gospel that was given to you that is the focus whenever you mix

00:03:22.900 those two up whenever you start obeying and doing because you think that it contributes to your own

00:03:32.100 redemption you've become a legalist you become a pharisee you become everything that christ hates

00:03:37.780 Christ hates legalism because it's self-righteousness it's a lie the gospel is dependent on Christ and

00:03:48.480 we know that I've often said this it's a famous saying the gospel is not go do the gospel is done

00:03:55.000 it's all completed it's finished completely in Christ now if you recall I spoke to the placement

00:04:04.220 of, well, if you look back to verse 9 from last week, and verse 9, there was really three

00:04:13.220 statements on these 30 marks. The first three were, let love be genuine, abhor what is evil,

00:04:23.160 and cling to what is good. Those are the three things that Paul opens up on the first

00:04:29.560 set of behaviors, after all this talk about doctrine, he says, let love be genuine,

00:04:37.320 abhor what is evil, and cling to what is good.

00:04:42.760 Now, I just want you to remember that

00:04:45.640 Christ in his will, according to the Holy Spirit, according to the hand of Paul, put love first.

00:04:55.140 Out of all the behaviors that should animate your life after you've been saved,

00:04:59.560 let love be genuine. Now, we know that love that is not anchored to biblical truth

00:05:12.100 always gets perverted. I said last week that love, love must flow down. If we're talking

00:05:22.180 about love as a river, love must flow down the banks of truth. If you remove the banks,

00:05:31.820 the love starts to spill into areas where we begin to have affections for things that God says is not

00:05:39.940 good. Now, in the second part, Paul referenced this command to abhor evil. I spoke to several

00:05:52.300 of the 40 plus verses in the New Testament and the Old Testament that commanded God's people

00:05:57.460 to hate evil. There's over, there's actually about 50, but let's just be conservative because

00:06:05.060 some of them are implied, but there's about 40 solid verses that call Christians to condemn and

00:06:11.100 hate evil. And I spoke last week about kind of this recent tolerance to immorality within the 0.93

00:06:21.300 church from pastors and the body of Christ. Just this week, I posted a picture on social media

00:06:29.020 of a police officer from the 1920s. It was at a local beach, and this police officer was enforcing

00:06:36.440 modesty standards at the beach for women's bathing suits. He has like a ruler out, and you can tell,

00:06:46.040 you know, he's trying to measure the distance between her knee and where her bathing suit

00:06:49.120 starts. And I made the commentary, we used to enforce modesty at beaches, and now we're afraid

00:06:58.360 to enforce modesty at churches. Let that sink in for a second. That's how far, do you know the only

00:07:07.420 reason that we enforced modesty at beaches is because we enforced modesty at churches?

00:07:14.260 The culture, like Christless culture, that doesn't, they're not going to just all of a sudden come up

00:07:19.400 with the idea of modesty for the church or for the world. You're not going to all of a sudden

00:07:23.900 just have police officers out there trying to address the immodest culture of our beaches

00:07:30.460 because of their own intrinsic desire for high morality. No, the only reason they did that is

00:07:37.260 because the church demanded such a high standard of modesty during that generation. One woman 0.59

00:07:43.940 actually commented on my post and she said, that's not even the half of it. Families can't even go to

00:07:50.400 beaches anymore. The women are almost naked. I keep asking myself what happened to public 1.00

00:07:56.500 indecency laws, end quote. It's true. I can't even go to our community pool with my boys 0.85

00:08:05.300 because the standards have been dropped so low

00:08:09.120 and because the church has been so quiet on particular matters. As you know, we, our family

00:08:19.080 used to live in Oregon. In Oregon, there is no law to require somebody to wear clothing.

00:08:26.440 You can walk around completely without clothing in the state of Oregon. In fact, there were events

00:08:35.260 where nudity, people are walking around without clothes in our downtown. Recently, there was

00:08:43.020 an account of an officer being called to a man's house

00:08:49.000 because an older man without clothing

00:08:51.720 came and spoke to his very young son in their front yard.

00:08:57.300 And there was no charges to be pressed

00:09:00.600 because there was no law broken in the state of Oregon.

00:09:06.720 I also spoke last week to the church's responsibility

00:09:09.860 to speak out to these types of immoralities.

00:09:13.020 and these evils. If the church can't condemn this stuff, you can never expect the culture to.

00:09:20.580 If we're too afraid to speak up against the evils of immorality, you will never get a culture or a

00:09:28.000 politician or a ruler or a governor or a business to do so. The culture follows the church.

00:09:37.180 Truly, the culture follows the church. If you look back through any time in history,

00:09:41.980 The culture follows the church.

00:09:47.200 But Paul said that hating evil is not enough.

00:09:50.420 I spoke to Paul's third command, which was to cling to what is good.

00:09:54.580 That is that we are not to be those who condemn evil, but fail to offer righteous alternatives.

00:10:00.180 We need to do both.

00:10:02.200 We need to do both. 0.63

00:10:05.180 It's not just enough to hate public school, but to create Christian alternatives to education.

00:10:11.540 Today, we're going to cover five additional commands for the Christian life. 0.97

00:10:17.800 And again, obeying these commands are not what makes a person saved. 0.93

00:10:21.300 I just want to reiterate that.

00:10:23.120 But do you want to know how you can determine if somebody is saved?

00:10:31.020 It's by their works.

00:10:33.100 It's by their fruit. 0.99

00:10:36.320 Do you have a hollow Christian life? 0.87

00:10:39.660 or will these things be true of you? Do you have genuine love? Do you abhor evil? 0.80

00:10:49.040 Do you cling to what is good? If you want to know if you're saved, just look at your life.

00:10:53.640 Are those things true of you? And I'm going to give you five more to examine. It's verse 10

00:11:00.540 and it says, love one another with brotherly affection. This is number four of 30 and we're

00:11:07.060 going to be only going to 9 of 30 today, maybe even 8 of 30. Unfortunately, many Christians, 1.00

00:11:17.280 I just want you to look down again. Read this verse one more time. Love one another 1.00

00:11:21.280 with brotherly affection. Now, many Christians don't come from multi-generational, healthy, 0.97

00:11:29.740 biblical Christian families. That's unfortunate. That's unfortunate. And why is that unfortunate?

00:11:37.180 It's because many people were raised in broken homes, with divorced parents, with estranged

00:11:42.540 siblings, with no grasp or comprehension of what it means to have brotherly or sisterly affection

00:11:52.640 for one another. We think of loving someone with brotherly or sisterly affection, and we can't

00:12:02.840 actually grasp the gravity or the degree of that type of affection because we lack

00:12:09.920 the material example from our own lives.

00:12:15.360 Think about the relationship with your own siblings. I don't know, some of you guys might

00:12:19.800 have come from multi-generational Christian families where you had it really modeled for

00:12:23.740 you well. And praise God for that. But we live in a generation where you don't need to go back that

00:12:29.760 far to find out that your grandparents were pagan or your great-grandparents were pagan

00:12:37.400 or your Christians were cultural or your parents were cultural Christians. They went to church,

00:12:42.820 but they never came to Christ. They never lived it out. They never opened their Bible. They never 0.93

00:12:48.040 taught you anything. They never discipled you. They never catechized you. And all of a sudden

00:12:53.560 you find yourself in your twenties and you feel like you know nothing because you've been eating

00:12:58.540 milk your entire life. I remember when Veronica and I first saw several biblical multi-generational

00:13:09.600 Christian families where the kids were saved and they knew their doctrine and they loved the Lord

00:13:17.040 and the parents were saved and they preached and did family devotions and the grandparents were

00:13:23.160 saved and the doctrine was still intact and love was there and legacy was intact and

00:13:29.280 the great-grandparents were saved and it was just shocking to us.

00:13:35.980 it was sweet it was something that it was like walking into a garden fully bloomed

00:13:48.980 after living in a desert for 10 years

00:13:52.460 the beauty and abundance of these families starts to highlight your own barrenness

00:14:03.240 you start to feel like wow I think I was actually missing something

00:14:08.580 and if you're not careful you'll get bitter you'll get angry with your parents and with

00:14:17.320 your grandparents instead of being grateful for the mercy of God to come in and change

00:14:24.360 that trajectory with your own family and so Veronica and I saw these families and

00:14:30.380 and ten kids, and eight kids, and nine kids, and multiple sets of grandparents,

00:14:36.640 and beautiful, biblical, healthy families.

00:14:44.580 And it awakened in us a deep longing to cultivate what we never had.

00:14:49.820 Now maybe you had it, and maybe you just get to perpetuate that further.

00:14:54.560 But for many of us, maybe you're the first generation.

00:14:59.980 Maybe you're the second generation.

00:15:02.140 Maybe the first generation of your parents was shallow but still genuine.

00:15:06.440 And now it's our generation's work to take the torch and go deeper.

00:15:15.320 But in godly Christian houses, the love between physical brothers and sisters is unmatched.

00:15:24.120 It's a really beautiful thing.

00:15:26.100 I think of Joseph's forgiveness of his brothers despite their attempt to murder him and sell him

00:15:34.240 to slavery I think of Moses and Aaron's loyalty to him in the ministry as they fought and served

00:15:41.600 one another side by side to lead Israel out of Egypt I think of Naomi her familial love for Ruth

00:15:50.380 when she said, where you go, I will go.

00:15:55.120 Your people shall be my people and your God will be my God.

00:15:58.820 I think of Mary and Martha's love for their brother Lazarus

00:16:03.020 and how they ran to Christ in faith for comfort and healing.

00:16:08.720 We are to love those in your spiritual family

00:16:12.300 with the same affection you love your physical family.

00:16:16.040 And again, that's not helpful if you have a broken physical family.

00:16:25.400 But what I want you to know is that in a family that is healthy, we are to love one another to that same degree.

00:16:39.500 And the reason is because we share the same father.

00:16:42.420 I think we often forget that Christ taught us how to pray and he says our father who is in heaven

00:16:51.960 he doesn't say my father who is in heaven he really shows this reality that we have a shared

00:16:58.700 father our father who is in heaven it's highlighting the familial nature of the church

00:17:05.600 If you're not in a church where you're deeply connected, in fact, I would even say equally, if not more connected with your spiritual family than you are with your physical family.

00:17:19.360 You're not experiencing the type of relational reality that Christ is talking about in the scriptures.

00:17:26.460 In fact, familial terms are used 869 times in the New Testament.

00:17:37.020 Isn't that amazing?

00:17:38.520 869 times.

00:17:40.260 Brothers, sisters, mothers, children, father, brethren.

00:17:46.700 It is over and over again.

00:17:50.000 i think we see this most clearly when christ was confronted with both his physical family

00:18:01.400 and his spiritual family matthew 12 46 through 50 i'm going to read it to you it says

00:18:04.880 while he was still speaking to the people behold his mother and his brothers stood outside

00:18:14.040 asking to speak with him.

00:18:18.180 But he replied to the man who told him,

00:18:21.060 Who is my mother and who are my brothers?

00:18:26.440 And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said,

00:18:30.360 Here are my brothers and my mother.

00:18:34.140 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven

00:18:36.660 is my brother and sister and mother.

00:18:40.080 now this isn't jesus saying just get rid of your family you don't need it

00:18:46.300 no your family's wonderful it's a good thing what he is saying is that these people are to be thought

00:18:54.620 of as equally in love as those in your physical family if you're a parent the love between

00:19:05.740 you and other Christians should reflect the same degree of love that you demand between your

00:19:13.580 children. Just think about that for a second. The same love that you demand between your own

00:19:21.120 children, you should have for one another. And what does that mean? What does it actually mean

00:19:29.520 when it hits the pavement. It means that you should not be easily offended. It means that you

00:19:36.320 are not to easily abandon one another. It means that you are to reconcile in conflict.

00:19:44.500 It means that you are to love and prefer one another.

00:19:49.340 We are to show brotherly and sisterly affection. Affection that is difficult to break.

00:19:55.360 I think many Christians struggle with the church because the church lacks the sense of family that is preached in the scriptures.

00:20:11.020 Like you read the Bible in your left hand and you're like, wow, that sounds like a bunch of really close, loving people.

00:20:17.420 And then you go to church and you have the exact opposite experience.

00:20:25.360 And you start to see the conflict and disparity between what you read and what you experience.

00:20:34.660 Let's not let that happen here.

00:20:37.900 And it starts with a small body.

00:20:40.760 If we can't do it here, we can't do it when we are 300 people here.

00:20:47.600 It really requires brotherly and sisterly affection.

00:20:55.360 The next verse says, outdo one another in showing honor.

00:21:00.600 Your translation might say, give preference to one another in honor.

00:21:04.820 The focus is twofold.

00:21:06.640 It's first, you're to maintain a practice of defaulting to another person's desire.

00:21:13.620 All right.

00:21:15.080 There is an impractical and an immoral way to do this, and there is a correct way to do this.

00:21:21.180 The point here of Paul is to eliminate selfishness.

00:21:25.360 and this is for children and for parents. Now, children, I just want to talk to you for a second,

00:21:31.080 so just look up here for a second, children. Many of your fights with your siblings

00:21:36.400 happen because you don't want to do what your brother or sister wants to do.

00:21:45.540 You don't want to watch the movie that your brother watches. You don't want to play the game

00:21:51.260 that your sister wants to play. Okay, Paul teaches that as long as it doesn't involve sin,

00:21:59.700 you should practice setting aside your own desires to follow the preference and desires of others.

00:22:09.180 You need to teach your children to do this. What this is, is having an agreeable spirit.

00:22:15.700 having an agreeable spirit

00:22:19.520 i don't know about you but it's challenging to be around people who are always

00:22:25.540 insisting on having their way and the problem is i'm one of those people

00:22:31.020 okay i don't know about you but i can easily be one of those people that wants to insist

00:22:36.860 on always having my way it's hard to be around people that way

00:22:41.800 and i think that we can all reflect that we've been that person and strive to be more agreeable

00:22:50.280 in our actions for the sake of christ second paul says that we ought to defer to one another in an

00:22:58.680 honorable way when we defer to someone but we do it at a visible frustration and we it's easy to

00:23:08.520 see this in kids because they say things like, fine, we'll watch your movie. But as adults,

00:23:13.900 we also do it. Fine, we'll go eat where you want to eat. Okay, that is not deferring

00:23:19.240 to the preference in an honorable way.

00:23:27.260 Honorable deference is to be expressed in joy from love. It's to do what others want to do,

00:23:35.980 not in a frustrated heart but in joy

00:23:40.320 in love and recognizes the value of another

00:23:44.780 person's preference and again as long as it doesn't require 0.92

00:23:48.900 you to sin or it's just a foolish preference 0.73

00:23:51.300 we can choose them over 0.81

00:23:56.860 ourselves. The next mark

00:24:00.700 is chapter, sorry it's in chapter 12 verse 11

00:24:04.680 and it's do not lag in diligence.

00:24:10.520 Okay, I'm going to hit the men on this a little bit.

00:24:15.060 I think this one is particularly interesting

00:24:17.100 because many Christians, men and women, 1.00

00:24:20.000 have become generally unproductive. 1.00

00:24:24.620 I think Christians are just generally unproductive people. 1.00

00:24:28.960 Now, I think that we have, you know, in the reformed community, 0.95

00:24:31.280 I think we have a little bit more productivity. 0.98

00:24:33.320 And what I mean by that is the Christian church, who has all logic, who has all truth, who has all wisdom, and all understanding and morality, seems to be average or even below average when it comes to impacting the world. 1.00

00:24:53.340 Now, historically, just pay attention with me for a second. 0.99

00:24:56.780 Historically, Christians were zealous and diligent.

00:25:01.980 Historically.

00:25:03.320 We were known for the best art.

00:25:06.560 We were known for the best music.

00:25:09.380 We were known for the best hospitals.

00:25:12.600 We were known for the best architecture.

00:25:16.160 We were known for the best universities, Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, Princeton, Yale.

00:25:24.040 We were known for the best books, for the best science.

00:25:29.800 Today, outside of Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby and maybe In-N-Out, 1.00

00:25:33.320 Christians are not influencing the culture much. 0.99

00:25:42.380 Pagans are outperforming us in diligence, in commerce, 0.86

00:25:47.300 in science, in medicine, in politics, in education.

00:25:56.320 Pagans. 0.90

00:25:57.040 these people have no foundational or fundamental understanding of truth whatsoever

00:26:04.280 yet they're out producing christians in almost every field

00:26:11.420 in a very real sense christianity has lost its reputation for excellence

00:26:18.680 you want to go back to old europe and look at all those beautiful buildings and those

00:26:23.660 beautiful cathedrals. You know what built that? Christian excellence. Today, the average church

00:26:34.240 building is a cinder block monstrosity, and we're so content with it. While we still travel back to

00:26:43.980 Europe and spend thousands of dollars just to go look at these beautiful buildings.

00:26:47.560 we have men who are underemployed they got a job a full-time job but they're underemployed

00:27:00.380 they have low ambition they're comfortable with a 40-hour work week and very you know

00:27:06.660 essentially leaving very little mark on the world and they use noble excuses hey you know it's more

00:27:12.560 time for family and i get that i think that's right there's a part of that that's true

00:27:16.400 I also blame social media and technology for our lack of focus.

00:27:27.760 I think social media has pacified us.

00:27:31.800 It's forced us to be extremely distracted.

00:27:35.840 A lot of us don't build something significant because we are filling our times with scrolling.

00:27:40.180 the word diligent means to have a moral earnestness toward your work a moral earnestness

00:27:51.420 toward your work it's the idea of working hard for the glory of god it's the foundation of

00:27:59.080 christian excellence we have this sense of entitlement today that we should have a certain

00:28:04.700 amount of rest and a certain amount of, you know, what does the Bible say? You have six days to do

00:28:11.420 your work. You know, we are content with five. In fact, we actually want the four-hour work week.

00:28:18.200 You know, we'd like to eliminate it so much that we don't work really at all.

00:28:23.060 You have six days to do your work, and then you have one day to worship and rest.

00:28:28.200 Paul says do not lag or be sluggish in diligence

00:28:37.860 one theologian said Paul is warning us against the attitude which seeks

00:28:43.980 to get by with as little work as possible and inconvenience

00:28:49.560 which shrinks from dust and heat and resents the necessity for any exertion as a burden

00:28:56.180 and imposition, end quote. I want to offer just some practical application here. I know it's

00:29:02.180 going to take a century of faithfulness for this church community to change this town.

00:29:09.640 I think it'll take about a hundred years to really make a significant impact on this town.

00:29:19.180 I know that we probably won't even make a dent in this town for a decade.

00:29:26.180 I think in a decade, we'll start to see a little bit of impact from our faithfulness.

00:29:30.880 Whether we build a church, whether we build a school, whether we build a publishing house,

00:29:35.480 whether we buy real estate, whether we start a seminary,

00:29:39.760 whether we engage the culture in other particular ways.

00:29:44.980 But we can't do anything without Christian diligence, focus.

00:29:50.280 part of that diligence begins with personal faithfulness it begins with can you do it even

00:29:58.560 in your own life and your own home and your own health and your own ability

00:30:04.480 but it doesn't stop there it also means

00:30:08.400 being social engaging others

00:30:12.840 working hard starting your own business it means being well disciplined and organized with your

00:30:20.980 time it means making more money when the Lord gives opportunity that doesn't compromise your

00:30:25.740 family Charles Spurgeon offered a really good illustration to communicate Christian diligence

00:30:31.960 I'm going to read it to you he said imagine filling a box with cannonballs it seems full

00:30:39.660 But you can still add marbles into the gaps.

00:30:44.040 Then pour in BBs or pellets, and the box holds even more.

00:30:49.960 Even when it seems packed, sand can fill the tiniest spaces.

00:30:55.360 And then water can seep into what remains.

00:31:00.380 Likewise, a Christian's schedule may seem full with work, family, and personal devotion.

00:31:07.160 but there are still many moments or there are still many stray moments small gaps in time

00:31:13.380 that can be filled with countless little acts of usefulness over months and years these small

00:31:20.860 efforts though seemingly minor can yield blessings as significant as the larger works end quote

00:31:27.480 what i think he's saying there is that you could do more

00:31:32.980 you could do more

00:31:35.600 we could do more

00:31:39.300 we are not

00:31:40.240 an industrious generation

00:31:44.220 when it comes to the church

00:31:47.660 we could do more

00:31:50.460 the seventh mark

00:31:56.140 he says

00:31:57.000 is be fervent in spirit

00:31:59.460 his last two are a little bit shorter

00:32:02.320 Be fervent in spirit.

00:32:05.600 And I think diligence is connected to this.

00:32:08.940 Be fervent in spirit.

00:32:11.060 Apathy is the opposite of fervency.

00:32:15.700 It's a lack of interest or enthusiasm.

00:32:22.180 Paul tells us to be fervent in spirit.

00:32:24.020 We are to be a concerned people.

00:32:29.380 Concerned.

00:32:31.600 We are to be concerned for people's souls, the moral state of our home and cities,

00:32:36.020 for the training of our children, the health of our church.

00:32:39.780 We are to be concerned about it.

00:32:43.000 I think of Acts 18.25.

00:32:48.060 It's talking about Apollos.

00:32:51.400 And it says, this man had been instructed in the way of the Lord and being fervent in spirit.

00:32:57.880 He was speaking and teaching accurately the things concerning Jesus.

00:33:01.600 Now, Luke used the word fervent to describe Apollos.

00:33:11.080 If someone looked at your life, would they say that you're fervent?

00:33:20.000 Or would they say that you're distracted?

00:33:23.340 Or would they say that you're apathetic, checked out,

00:33:28.700 just getting by the word fervent in the greek is zeo

00:33:35.640 it means to be hot or boiling over that's what it means to be fervent

00:33:42.220 and so uh to be fervent is is to not be lukewarm to not be lukewarm jesus in revelation 3

00:33:55.720 speaks to the church at Laodicea about the lack of their

00:34:01.760 fervency. He says, I know your deeds, that you

00:34:05.780 are neither cold nor hot. I wish

00:34:09.920 you were either one or the other. So because you are

00:34:13.680 lukewarm, neither cold nor hot, I'm about to spit you out of 0.80

00:34:17.760 my mouth, end quote.

00:34:21.560 So the lesson here is care.

00:34:26.720 Care.

00:34:28.880 Care about the gospel. 0.99

00:34:31.720 Don't fall into this checked out, quiet Christianity. 0.99

00:34:36.120 Too many Christian men are passive and they allow their wives to be the caring party in the marriage. 1.00

00:34:43.700 Stop that. 1.00

00:34:47.420 You cannot lead as a man if you don't have passion.

00:34:51.680 Plain and simple.

00:34:52.280 there's lots of men that don't have opinions on things

00:34:56.960 but they don't have opinions because they don't care

00:34:58.940 so who gets to care? mom

00:35:02.600 mom cares mom will care because dad doesn't

00:35:07.060 care because he has no fervency in spirit

00:35:09.360 Paul closes with a simple command he says

00:35:18.700 serve the Lord

00:35:20.760 i've said this many times but the most common word of the new testament to describe a christian

00:35:28.800 is the word doulos doulos now our modern translations have rendered that word servant

00:35:37.540 but if you go back to the early church that word is rendered slave

00:35:42.280 in fact the most common word to describe a christian is we are slaves to christ

00:35:53.020 we are slaves to christ this could actually be translated be a slave to the lord or slave

00:36:02.060 for the lord or slave away for the lord

00:36:04.160 it means that whatever you do your output ought to be to please your master

00:36:12.460 this is actually quite difficult because the desire of our flesh is to serve and be a slave to self

00:36:24.680 honestly examine and evaluate your own desires and ambitions

00:36:27.660 and find out if they are to self-serve or if they serve the lord

00:36:33.180 now there are realities right to have a good godly family and a good financial house and

00:36:39.720 a legacy and an inheritance for your children part of that will serve yourself but also it

00:36:43.940 serves the lord it's a good thing have categories think correctly i'm not saying to become you know

00:36:50.240 ditch your life and go move to india and all of a sudden become a missionary and live like a

00:36:54.140 impoverished life that you're a monk and that's the best way to serve your master no that's not

00:36:58.540 what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that whatever you do, do to the glory of God. If you build a

00:37:03.440 business, build it well to the glory of God. Be diligent, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.

00:37:09.760 Make sure that the output pleases your master. Essentially, Paul is trying to guard against the

00:37:16.640 untethered ambition of self. He's saying be diligent, be fervent, not for self, but diligent

00:37:25.500 and fervent for the Savior.

00:37:28.780 And I think we can walk away today 0.99

00:37:31.460 examining Christian productivity.

00:37:40.520 This church is made up of people. 0.94

00:37:43.640 Your lives are made up of your work,

00:37:45.660 your business. 1.00

00:37:48.600 Wives, be excellent homeschool moms. 1.00

00:37:53.000 Be excellent cooks. 1.00

00:37:54.320 build something significant, contribute.

00:37:58.700 Lord willing, when we get a school started,

00:38:01.740 we can have some of you teach

00:38:03.560 and train up these younger ones.

00:38:07.920 There's lots to do,

00:38:09.900 but none of it can happen without us to be diligent,

00:38:14.200 fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.

00:38:16.840 Amen?

00:38:17.940 Amen. Let's pray.

00:38:20.840 Father, we thank you,

00:38:21.900 Lord for these

00:38:23.740 simple proverbial truths

00:38:26.560 Lord that are good for us

00:38:29.380 Father we ask that you would give us ways

00:38:32.260 to think about these things that

00:38:33.580 help us to have practical application

00:38:36.220 for our lives

00:38:37.020 Lord we ask that you would

00:38:38.920 make it our ambition

00:38:41.520 to serve you

00:38:43.500 Lord that our diligence

00:38:45.800 and that our fervency would not be

00:38:47.940 wrapped up in pride or in personal desires

00:38:50.060 but desires that align with your will.

00:38:53.420 Father, we pray that you would change and convict us,

00:38:56.580 that you would help us and support us,

00:38:59.020 that you would give us humility to admit our faults,

00:39:02.540 Lord, that we would lead our lives in a way

00:39:05.560 that other Christians and the world would look upon us and say,

00:39:10.360 oh, how productive they are for Christ.

00:39:14.980 We ask these things in Jesus' name.

00:39:17.480 Amen.

00:39:20.060 You

Dale Partridge - December 04, 2024

Romans 12_9-13 Part 2 - Thirty Marks of a True Christian

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