Romans Part 6 Relationships: Chapter 12 - Chapter 13

I have two regrets about the teaching this week number one after every teaching I go through agony remembering what I meant to say and forgot to put in and especially with chapter 11 I forgot so much in chapter 11 and I'm sorry about that the other regret I have that I haven't been able to read the scripture to you because of the shortage of time I prefer reading the Bible to teaching it I loved reading it aloud and it makes so much sense when you read it aloud and I'm sorry that we haven't been able to read anything I'm going to read those first three verses of chapter 12 anyway just to say that we have read it therefore I urge you brothers in view of God's mercy to offer your bodies as living sacrifices holy and pleasing to God which is your spiritual worship do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind and then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is his good pleasing and perfect will that alone is worth reading well now we come to the section of Paul's letter to the Romans which deals with relationships and relationships are all in ortant in life and the first relationship we need to get right is our relationship with God we are justified we are right with God but there's an ongoing relationship with him that needs to be kept fresh and real now this whole section is full of two things do's and don'ts and almost every section tells us what to do and what not to do do you know that the Jews had 613 do's and don'ts in the law of Moses but in the New Covenant do you know how many we have over 1100 there are twice the number of Commandments in the New Covenant that there were in the old there are do's and don'ts for the Christian believer the difference is that the Christian believer full of the holy spirit wants to do the do and wants not to do the don't but there are do's and don'ts for the Christian life and in the second part of Paul's letter there are always practical do's and don'ts let's look first then at the do's and don'ts for our relationships with God and the first do is to sacrifice to God now the whole notion of sacrifice to us is quite strange we don't go to church on a Sunday morning carrying a little lamb or pigeon or some little creature that our pastor is going to cut the throat of in the front of the church and worship would be a bit of a bloodbath we're not into that because God has made them obsolete but if you'd come to worship God as you've been worshiping this morning in the Old Testament you'd have had to bring an animal or bird or a goat or something but that doesn't mean that sacrifice has ended God is asking now for a living sacrifice all the Old Testament ones were dead they were killed and then they were offered but in the New Covenant God requires living sacrifices and so he pleads with them I urge you by the mercies of God now I forgot yesterday to talk about the section at the end of chapter 11 which talks about the mercy of God I love that theme going to preach on it tonight but the mercy of God is a wonderful theme and in that last section of 11 God said he has imprisoned us in our disobedience chained us up in our disobedience chained up the Gentiles in disobedience chained up the Jews in disobedience in order that he might have mercy on all of them now you know what mercy is there was a well-known public carrot to have his portrait painted to hang in a public place and he said to the artist I hope this portrait will do me justice and the artist said it's not just as you need its mercy now you know what mercy is justice is what we deserve but mercy is what we don't deserve and that's how God wants the relationship between him and us to be it's on the mercies of God the undeserved grace of God the thing we never deserved and it's by that that poor will appeal now I'll tell you a little secret my wife can't start the day without a daily fix and the daily fix is a cup of tea and she has to have a cup of tea in the morning and so since we married I've got into the habit as well and if I wake up in the morning and I feel like a Christian first thing I make the tea if I don't feel like a Christian when I wake up she has to go and make it that's an arrangement we have I won't tell you what the ratio is between my making it and hare making it but if I make it I go down and I go out of the front door and pick up two bottles of milk because we get our milk delivered to the door and they're cold and frozen and then if it's the morning is cold - it's quite miserable to go out and pick up these gold things and I come in hugging them and I never forget one text in the book of lamentations as I come in and the text is your mercies are fresh every morning and as I carry them back in I thank God for His mercies yes I'm 84 but I'm still able to work for the Lord that's a mercy I don't deserve it we've got a little home of our own that were moving we started thinking that just two weeks ago and we're moving to a little retirement flat but to have a place that we can call our own that's a mercy I didn't deserve that so I've got health I've got work to do got a place to live every one of those things is undeserved and I count the mercies which are fresh every morning by those mercies of God he shut us up to our disobedience the first time you disobeyed God you locked yourself into a prison that God might have mercy on you and give you something you never deserved or could deserve by the mercies of God then give him a living sacrifice it's a physical one as all the other Old Testament sacrifices were physical but this time it's your body a living sacrifice which you present to him and the word present there is in the text in the Greek which means to do it once for all not to do it every day but once for all say Lord here's my body for you to use did you notice how often chapter 6 for example present your bodies as instruments of righteousness what you do with your body is very important it's why a former ask an - Ray William temple said that Christianity is the most materialistic religion in the whole world is to do with bodies physical things present your bodies then once for all waive your right to your own body just once and do it permanently that's the living sacrifice that God wants now and then to your astonishment he said that is your spiritual worship there was a young student in Cambridge who went to a missionary meeting and when the time came when they passed the playground for the collection he put his hand in his pocket and realized he left his wallet at home I didn't know what to do as the plate drew nearer and as it came to his row in the meeting he pulled out his pen and notebook and he wrote something on a piece of paper tore it out and put it in the collection it was not an IOU he simply wrote on the paper myself and he finished up as one of the best-known missionaries in India was the biggest thing put on the collection plate but he did is he is my body send it where you wish it's a big sacrifice to waive any right to your own body then he goes on and he wants your mind to and the moral of the next verse is this don't be a chameleon be a caterpillar that's the meaning meaning of the next verse do you know what a chameleon is it's an animal that put it on any color and it changes color according to its background and looking around us there are some dresses here that would kill a communion because if you put it on a lot of colors it bursts with the effort to change yes I'm sorry I saw your dress Fez don't be a chameleon don't take the color of your thinking from people around you or as JB Phillips translated it don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold but if we take all our thoughts from the TV and the internet and the other mass media that will color your thinking if you spend more time watching TV and reading your Bible which is going to color your thinking that's why you need to spend time with the Word of God until you think like God things until you feel like God feels until your mind has been transformed with from within and that's why he wants you to be a caterpillar caterpillars around rather ugly things when they start and then they become a chrysalis and that rather ugly chrysalis attached to a branch or flower is being changed from the inside until suddenly one day at birth and out comes a beautiful butterfly and all those colors were formed inside out of sight until they came out so don't be a chameleon be a caterpillar let the colors of your thinking come from the inside not the outside not from the people in the world but from the transformation within of your thinking these are the two things that God is waiting for from us a dedicated body and a decontaminated mind that is no longer contaminated by the world around when he's got that then he's prepared to guide you into his will for you after all why should he show you what his will is for you before he has your body in mind be pretty useless to guide you before he has those two things but when he's got them you will then a big test and approve his will for you so that's the path to guidance as far as I understand it make the sacrifice of your body first color your mind from within until your mind is his mind and then you will know what he wants you to do because then he can use you and you'll find that that will of his for you is perfect and pleasing it becomes just what you were made for and to get to the end of life and feel that you have known and done his will must be the most satisfying life to get to the end of life and wonder if you did that must be terrible to have no regrets when you reach the end of the road that will be because you made the sacrifice and he told you what to do with what you gave him well we've covered the first two verses already so let's move on quickly there's a don't in this as well and it's don't let what he gives you turn you into a religious snob we've always got to watch that when we know his will and do it don't be proud about it don't get big head of it headed about it stay humble measure your faith and of course our faith by which we live and work is given to us by God but it will be measured to us he knows how much faith we need and how much we we need to do his will so don't get big ideas according to the measure of your faith make a sober assessment of where you are in God's will don't get big ideas think soberly about how much faith is given you and how are you using it that's one factor that's considering yourself but in avoiding spiritual snobbery the second part is to realize that your only one gift among many and that all those gifts need each other if God gives you a gift of healing for other people it's not to make you a famous healer it's to fit you in with the other gifts in the body so that together as a multiple function the body operates and it doesn't matter if you're a visible part of the body or an invisible part of the body you just as important and if God has given you a gift don't get excited about it use it if your gift is teaching and teach if your gift is healing then heal and he lists a lot of gifts and says use those gifts don't treasure them don't shut them up and put them away but use them in the multiple function body of Christ which needs every gift working together with the others and all that will keep you in your place your gift is not so that you can be admired or become famous your gift is given for the body so use it with the others now having sorted out our relationship with God our continuing relationship he moves on to the relationships with people especially first with God's people the insiders and then with the outsiders relationships with both those groups are important to the believer if your relationship with God is right then there are other relationships that don't happen automatically you need to go on to get these right as well the first with the insiders the relationship is intended to be one of harmony so that all those inside the body of Christ are working harmoniously together the word peace of Shalom means harmony harmony with God harmony with yourself harmony with other people in harmony with nature but here he's talking about the harmony that should exist in the body of Christ and without harmony in the body of Christ the church cannot operate I went to one church and I thought what's wrong with this church I just can't get anywhere there's no response I won't tell you where it was in England but it was really quite depressing and I knew there was something seriously wrong and afterwards I was told that the church was divided totally into two halves and they even came into the church for worship through separate entrances and then sat on to thousands of the church I could hardly believe that such a state could exist but it each half was led by one of the leaders and the two leaders went on speaking terms but they met faithfully and there were a lot of people in that church little wonder that they were helpless as a body well that was an exaggerated case but it can be multiplied in a lesser degree in other churches so harmony is the objective of your relationship with everybody new local church I believe it's good the emphasis we've had this week on groups of Christians getting together in various walks of life in various public spheres however that's not Church because it's a group of people who've got already a good deal in common in their employment and probably in that personalities as well because of their position a church has a mixed variety of people and you relate to them all that's a very different group to relate to a local church where there are rich and poor cultured and uneducated whether black and white or people on me who have pink God is colorblind but we need to be in churches that are as mixed as possible because God's people are mixed for the purposes of evangelism and influence we may need to be in a more homogeneous group that have more in common and share the career an interest and that's good but we need to belong to a church which is a complete mixture of people where we'll have to associate with all possible different kinds of people the most flourishing churches in Britain at the moment are the so-called black churches and they really are flourishing they are filled with immigrants who have that in common from the West Indies from Nigeria particularly and these black churches are flourishing but they're very much made up of people who are already sharing an identity there are some of them who have a little smattering of white folk among them but they have an overwhelming majority of people who've got color in common I was thrilled when the first Jewish assembly started in London the first messianic fellowship in London started some years ago and they rang me up and said David would you consider becoming an elder of this fellowship I said I'm very touched that you ask because I magenta I'm a and they said but we don't want to be an exclusive Masonic fellowship I said logistically it's impossible for me to fulfill the duties of an elder to you I I live 50 miles away but I was touched that they wanted a in their eldership from the beginning that they didn't want to be an exclusive Jewish fellowship because again while they were worshipping the same Lord they would be an identified group the glory of the church is for anybody and everybody and happier you if you are in a church where there's a great and great variety of people with whom you can learn that harmony at this point Paul has a machine gun and he fires bullet after bullet after bullet at the people inside the church just reading them is enough to knock you down hate what is evil cling to what it's good be devoted to one another honor one another above yourself never be lacking in zeal keep your spiritual fervor serve the Lord be joyful in Hope patient in affliction faithful in prayer share with God's people who were in need practice hospitality rejoice with those who rejoice mourn with those who mourn live in harmony with one another boy each of those will make a good sermon and he fires those bullets at people inside church and say and many of them are concerned with others but quite a few of them are concerned with yourself when he says be joyful in Hope patient in affliction faithful in prayer that's for the individual in the church but every one of those things will help to bring harmony with all the others so were to live in harmony with one another but to be the kind of person ourselves who can be that and who will bring harmony to the fellowship rather than destroy it which brings me to the don't there is a false conceit that can come into a church whether it's social conceit or even spiritual conceit and so he says associate with people of low position if you're not careful you can associate in church with people of your own set your own social standing it's particularly important that you associate in a church with those that others might not be willing to associate with it's good for you to and it's good for the whole body and above all again he mentions arrogance this is the enemy of harmony anybody who's proud anybody who's arrogant you cannot think highly of yourself without thinking lower about someone else you can't be proud without being arrogant and so it's important for the harmony of the fellowship that we don't allow any trace of pride or arrogance those bullets all find my heart I don't know about you but at some point one of those bullets will penetrate your heart and make you think what am i doing and what shouldn't I be doing now in relation to outsiders he's already slipped in one bullet already I don't if you noticed bless those who persecute you and do not curse I hope that refers to outsiders be tragic it referred to fellow Christians but I have to tell you that one of the hardest things to bear is opposition from Christians you don't expect it and it heads I'm going to tell you now why I chose the title for my autobiography the title is not as bad as the truth and I didn't choose that title God did and I'll tell you how and why by the way I thought anybody who wrote an autobiography was a supreme egg attest and the only reason I did was because of another publisher was approaching someone else to write my biography and I wasn't having anybody else write it so I wrote it myself in self-defense but the title not as better the truth some years ago someone in Wales I managed to track it down started circulating rumors about me and my ministry which were outright lies one was that I'd stopped reading my Bible since I've got filled with the spirit ludicrous I never read the Bible more than when I was filled with the spirit and there were three such lies which spread so rapidly do you know what the Christian bush Telegraph is like and these lies spread so quickly that I began to get letters canceling speaking engagements none of them would ever tell me what was wrong they just said we're very sorry to tell you that arrangements for your visit have fallen through that's all they would say I knew what was going on I knew why they were canceling and it was not only painful personally it was even more painful to my wife but more than that I said Lord it's affecting my ministry these lies are closing doors to me and I really complain to the Lord quite loudly and the Lord said to me David the worst they can say about you is not as bad as the truth and I bear laughing as I was thank God they don't know the truth and I work I went into the kitchen and told my wife and she fell on the floor laughing cuz wives know the worst as well well that's what the Lord said to me he did add later I know the worst and I still love you and use you that was good enough for me and it cured all reaction to criticism from then on but I determined then that if ever I had to write my life story it would be called not better the truth and that's how it came to me I don't know if it's on the bookstore but if it is you'll see the title well now we can expect hostility from outside and ought to be ready to have the right reaction to it you don't expect it from inside but I'm afraid it sometimes comes from inside people at last once pastors become professional they're subject to the temptation to be professional jealousy and then it can creep in he's got a bigger church than I have it's amazing how it can creep in if you're not careful but hostility you should expect it from the outsider we no longer fit with citizens of heaven now were misfits socially and spiritually with a world that's gone crazy and therefore you can expect that the better your church is in quality the more trouble you can expect from outside and I know I'm speaking to many in this room who know the truth of that government that can be against you society can be against you how do we deal with that well does that do and I don't I don't know which to take first I'm going to take the don't first and the don't is retaliation revenge don't try and get your own back leave it to God there's a thing called vengeance in God which is not a hateful thing but it's a very certain thing God will repay on the day when God settles accounts everybody who's been against the church will pay they will be faced with an account that God has kept so you don't need to retaliate you don't need to get your own back you don't need to do that God will do it and that's the secret of curing revenge it's instinctive in human nature to give as good as you get but leave it to God that's the do sorry that's the don't don't retaliate human revenge is not in place in the church divine vengeance it is my job says God it's safe in my hands I'll repay them in as much as you did it to the least of these my brethren you did it to me then leave it to him now the do is to work for reconciliation insofar as you lies you will fail with some to be reconciled to your enemies that's not your business you can't help that but insofar as you lies be at peace with all of them don't let any trace of bitterness or resentment get in be it peace with them and furthermore you can do more than that can heap coals of fire on their head that's something you can do and should make them feel thoroughly embarrassed and ashamed how do you do these things to your enemies you pray for those who curse you and you do good to those who do evil to you that's the reaction of churches under severe hostility that's the divine reaction that's the way to deal with your enemies pray for those who curse you do good to those who do evil to you I remember a young man in the forces when I was a chaplain with the Royal Air Force and one night on the first night he was in a barrack room with other people serving the forces and the first night he knelt down by his bed and the sergeant saw him praying and picked up his boots they're heavy hobnail boots and he threw a boot at this man which caught his ear and cut it and then he threw the other boot and that really hurt him badly but he went on praying the next morning the sergeant woke up and found the boots back at the foot of his bed polished by the Christian he didn't have to polish his own boots that morning the man he'd literally hurt with those boots the night before and polished them and put them back at his bare bunk that's what Paul is talking about and it had a profound effect on the sergeant it heaped coals of fire on his head lovely way to treat your enemies well that's the advice so we've dealt with our relationships with God and our relationships with other people and now thirdly poor moves on to the relationships of Christians with their governments church and state relationships are important and particularly in Rome the church was under the shadow of the imperial government and Rome was not a democracy it was more like an autocracy oh that's really government by one man I should have used the word oligarchy which is government by a group of men by the Senate in Rome's case and here was a new church in Rome itself under the shadow of an imperial government it was vital that Christians understand the right relationship with the state and so here we have one of the most political sections of the letter and Paul's clear not just advice but commands to Christians as to their attitude to the state whether it's a democratic or dictatorship that's important there is always a limit to our duty to the state and the limit is if the state ever tells us to do something that God has told us not to do or if the state tells us not to do something that God has told us to do then the text for that situation is found in acts we must obey God rather than man but that comes down the road after a lot of positive things Peter in his letter don't suffer for being a bad citizen suffer for the right reason don't suffer for being a criminal whatever you do that's bad witness bad testimony suffer for the good reason so there are two pressures on us from the state one is the pressure of the state's Authority and the other is if the pressure of the state's morality we are to accept the one and reject the other and I'm glad he includes both because the state has the morality as well as individuals and the state of Rome when it became an empire the morality of the state went rapidly downhill while it was still a republic it wasn't too bad but when it became an empire and the Roman governor B became an emperor from then on the state's morality when done of the first fifteen Roman emperors fourteen were openly homosexual for example to say nothing of the corruption that brought but let's look first at the authority of government and they are described whatever their nature as the ministers of God appointed by God that's what I call the civic dignity they are servants of God whether they know it or not God has appointed governments to prevent anarchy it is his gift to the world to give them governments who put limits on what citizens can do and they are therefore ministers of God when our queen is crowned she is given a Bible and told that this is the law for you this is the Royal law those the words used and she is reminded that this is the law for her and I thank God we have a queen who has understood that she told Billy Graham that she knows exactly what it is to be born again and over her annual Christmas broadcast you may have noticed she's become steadily more Christian in her Christmas broadcasts over the years recently and I'm grateful for that but supposing she wasn't and King Charles isn't oh when he becomes King Charles will have a king who isn't Christian he had the chance he was prepared for confirmation by John stopped whom I'm sure some of you know dead now but he was a chaplain to the royal family at the time and when Charles was a boy he went walkabout in Australia when he was sent to a school there and on one of his Sunday walkabouts he found himself outside a tin hut in which a Pentecostal Aboriginal congregation was meeting and he wandered in for the service and he wrote home to the Queen dear mother if this was early Christianity I can understand how its spread so he knows but then he got in with the South African mentor who muddled him up greatly and now he's advocating Islam but even so God appoints governments God has the casting vote in every election and the other gives us the government we deserve all the government we need depending on whether he votes in justice or mercy and I wish I had time to share with you how God revealed to me out in Israel that Margaret Thatcher would be his choice and I wrote and told her I want to be the first in the country to congratulate you on becoming prime minister because God has chosen you for the next election and she quoted from our letter in the first broadcast after her appointment and it gave me an open door to her not that God is conservative because when I was in Australia I saw a leading trade unionist photograph on a news agents book strong a man called Bob Hawke and as I looked at his photograph the Lord said he's my choice for Australia's Prime Minister and I began to ask churches to pray for Bob Hawke because he's going to be a prime minister and you'll have to pray from then pray from now and I really got some stick from Christians they said how dare you ask us to pray for that womanizer I said but he's going to be your Prime Minister and they began to pray for many turned out to be a very much better Prime Minister than they expected I just tell you this because God isn't right-wing or left-wing and now you know Norah's he sent away no whatever that is but God has the casting vote in any election funny but we can in a dictatorship we find it easy to believe that God can change one man for another one man but in a general election we seem to lose that faith and think that he has no say in it I know he has from personal experience and therefore yes pray that he may vote in mercy and give you the government you need or he can vote in justice and give you the government you deserve but he can control a democratic election he's the god of history he's the god of nations not just of individuals and so get it clearer than whatever the government you are under that is God's establishment to restrain wickedness and to commend goodness those are the two functions of every government and God will hold them to account for whether they have commended goodness and condemned badness they are his servant his provision his protection for our good because God knows that anarchy will bring out the worst of sinful human nature no government at all is a good deal worse than the worst government the Bible is not in favor of democracy I've heard preachers say that Seth will be the mill said it in the opening of the film The Ten Commandments he said this film is about how democracy began democracy Sahni I never we are not made for a democracy we're not made to govern ourselves we are made to live in a kingdom but we don't want to live in a kingdom because there are so many bad kings and even the good ones become corrupt for negative power and so as Winston Churchill said democracy is the worst possible form of government except all the others and that's a profound remark because in a democracy at least the people of the power to get rid of the government every few years and that's a privilege we ought to value nevertheless as one great British politician said a general election is one lot of sinners out and another lot in and I'm afraid that is the truth but the government is God's provision for at least a limit on the bad things that citizens want to do it is by his establishment and therefore the punishment that is the sanction of all governments is of divine origin or as Paul puts it here he does not bear the sword in vain a government must use force against either a sword is not used to spank people it's used to kill them and this is God's sanction for the use of physical force by governments but how they use that they will answer to him for it and it's one of the church's functions to remind governments that they are accountable to God himself because he put them there whatever form they take so both the establishment and the punishment of the state is of divine origin and therefore civilian duty is laid on Christians and that Duty consists of two things submit and support they are God's authority in your country and therefore you submit to them as good citizens unless they are telling you to do something or not to do it that God has told you to do or not told you to do and it's at that point that you have to say with the early disciples we must obey God rather than man now that's the point at which a Christian does rebel I don't think a Christian joins in general rebellion or revolution because so often human revolutions produce something worse than there was before but it does mean there comes a point where a Christian will go to prison or die rather than disobey God happy will he be if the government recognized his conscience in this matter and some do but some don't and Christians are paying the price for that do you know that the record is such today that up to a quarter of a million Christians die for their faith every year I have to add that a great deal of that is in Muslim controlled countries but not exclusively we need to remember our brethren who are paying the supreme price for their disobedience to the state and their obedience to God but you got to go a long way up to that point in supporting the government and therefore let's just say one more thing about the submission Paul says don't submit out of cowardice submit out of conscience and what he means you can submit to the government out of fear of punishment take a simple example you can break the speed limit or you can keep it out of fear of being disqualified for driving that's good enough of the will but it's not good enough for the Christian the Christian does it out of conscience one of my best friends in the world is called Peter he's a second-hand car dealer or has been all his life in Australia and he's known in the whole of Australia as the only honest car dealer in Australia and if you want the right price for a second-hand car go to Peter and he sold a second-hand car every 90 seconds on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the hometown where he lives still in Australia and that man came to a Christian through my tape recordings and he distributed hundreds of thousands of those recordings all over Australia got them into Burma he just spread my word around the world because he wanted everybody to know the truth and I can tell you so many lovely stories but he has a very high-powered Mercedes car and when he drove me around Australia in it I couldn't help but notice that it only did 29 miles an hour in town and only 49 miles an hour when he was out in the bush when he was five hundred miles from the nearest policeman it would still only do 49 miles an hour and I couldn't help commenting because I knew the power of the engine in front of us and he simply said to me when I made a comment he said but David isn't that holiness he said how can I expect the angels to protect me when I'm breaking a law made for my protection now there was a man who kept the speed limit not out of fear of losing his license but out of conscience see the difference and Paul says don't keep the law out of fear of punishment from the law do it out of conscience do it because you're told from the inside that you should be keeping the law not from the outside so that's submitting to the authority of government now let's look at the matter of support and two things are mentioned number one revenue and that means taxes who was it said that the two certain things in life are death and taxes there must be tax it costs money to have a government they can't do anything without money from the public and now comes the rub Paul simply says Christian submits to the government by paying the tax no escaping that no evasion of tax however clever your accountant may be I remember going in Australia to speak to the government in the new capital of Canberra and the man who drove me to the airport in Melbourne was a pastor and he kept me so busy with questions all the way that he went slower and slower and slow and I said I'm going to miss that plane to Canberra and I'm speaking to the government tomorrow morning if you don't hurry up and he just said we'll have just a few more questions to ask you and he went slower and slower the result was I caught the plane but my luggage didn't and I arrived in Canberra to speak to the government in my old clothes that I travel in can you imagine anyway I spoke to the members of the both houses together which was a great privilege but I'll never forget one member of parliament who shook my hand at the doors he left and he just said David I'm going home to rewrite my income tax returns how old shall hallelu be that heaven was shouting because if one sinner repents heaven has a celebration I'm quoting Jesus but that was a man repenting really repenting were to fill out our income tax returns properly now this creates a real problem in some countries I was in one country not far from here I won't name it but everybody is on the fiddle their tax everybody and the government knows this and so they overcharged taxes to cover themselves against all the fiddling that is going on and thus if a Christian properly fills in their income tax they will have to pay far more than they should do you follow me because everybody fiddles and cuts it down and the government accepts that so that an honest citizen is going to have to pay for that deficit and I had Christian businessmen asking me the very deep question what should I do because I know the government is allowing for fiddling and he's going to charge me more than they should charge me and expect me to fiddle it and then they content with the level well I said I'm not going to tell you but you ask the Lord about it what you should do and there were businessmen who said I know if I pay the proper full tax that they ask our go out of business and he thankfully decided to do that and would rather go out of business which actually he didn't the Lord enabled him to make it up in amazing ways but that's the kind of tricky question you can get into when you're a Christian there is of course the difference between legitimate tax avoidance and tax evasion I'm aware of that difference but it's something of a blurred line between the two Paul clearly says a Christian pays his tax and supports the government financially and there's another way you support the government and that is as important as revenue and that is respect that's a very interesting point to put in one of the ways you can bring down the government is to ridicule them to kill respect and if there's one thing that is absent in current society in so many countries it's the absence of respect and I'm talking about the Western world as well as other countries all the 10 commandments are based on one thing respect respect your parents respect human life respect other people's properties respect the truth about other people the Ten Commandments are based on respect and they begin with respect for God for his name for his day it's all there God gave us those Commandments because he knows that as society collapses when respect is lost and in my country there's a generation growing up that has lost respect for parents for the police and for politicians they've been some wicked comic programs about politicians on our TV in which can constantly making fun of the powers that are over us has reduced their status in people lies so respect as well as revenue is due to whatever government is over you whether it's your party or not you are careful as a Christian not to destroy respect by ridicule well so much for the authority of the state and the answer is that up to a certain point conformity is the Christian duty up to that point no further but the state also has a morality for example our state government has now legislated for same-sex marriage at the moment churches are excused if they have a conscience about it but the day will follow when churches are made subject to that law and if we don't marry two women or two men together we shall face penalty the morality of the state is not to be conformed to the morality of the society that the state produces is not to be conformed to so Paul now looks at the nonconformity and the first thing he mentions is debt I've been challenging congregations in England about debt according to my new testament to owe anybody anything is a sin and I've checked up with average evangelical congregations and I've asked them how many of you are in debt and the usual show of hands is 2/3 and their preachers have never told them that a Christian doesn't get into debt but then we live in a credit society and everybody so easily builds up a debt especially if they take out a mortgage for a house they really can't afford if the interest rates go up that's one of the easiest traps to get into debt now listen I make it absolutely clear that taking out a mortgage on your house is not a debt to get into debt with a mortgage is to get behind with your repayments that is debt there are two ways of stealing money one is to take money from people and the other is to withhold money that is due to them that they have every right to have from you and you withhold it because you haven't got it to pay that's dead so you can have a proper business arrangement of a loan and that's a valid business but if you get behind with repayments and therefore our preventing money that belongs to your creditor then you are in debt and because we are a credit Society now it's so easy for people to run into debt that it's 2/3 of Christian congregations in my country anyway Paul says oh no man anything my great-grandfather was a grocer in a town in the north of England in Yorkshire and every Saturday night he went down the street into the butcher into the baker into each shop paying off whatever money he owed them he became a byword a joke in the place where he lived the people could set their clocks by him there's Paulson off to pay his debts because he would not go to church on a Sunday to worship God with a debt hang things have changed a bit since then so oh no man anything that refers to monetary debts which you are behind in play in pain in repaying but we have a moral debt also we are to fill fulfill the law to be in debt is to steal and stealing it against the law of God and of men so no monetary debts and no moral debts we owe it to our society to fulfill our payment of all debts and the moral debt is to love them and love is the fulfilling of the law you don't steal from people if you love them you don't damage their reputation if you love them and love is the fulfilling of the law but not only does the Christian fulfill the law of the land and of the Lord at the same time by keeping out of debt but the other aspect that Paul concentrates on now is quite a big surprise and that is understanding the time it's a strange thing to say but in our attitudes to the state and society we are to understand the time that's going to help us enormous ly what time is it on God's clock where are we in god's history in God's purpose for history in what he's doing for the nations understand the time and in a very practical down-to-earth wave Paul says wake up it's time for Christians to wake up strange thing to say it was these next two verses that a child was reading aloud that was overheard by Saint Augustine that philosopher already with a mistress and an illegitimate son heard that wake-up call to understand the time and therefore to live by the time there's an alarm here wake up the night is far gone the day is at hand and that's the time clock that all Christians of all generations need to live by wake up time not sleepy time wake up and the next thing was and get dressed dress yourselves by putting off the deeds of darkness and by putting on the armor of light the two sides to getting dressed properly are to get some things off and other things put on and if Christians as citizens of the state understand the time that we are in the last human age of history that its wake up time and get dressed in the right way put on the armor of light it's a very spiritual ending to a very practical chapter but it fits you will be the best citizen of your country if you understand the time in which we live that earthly governments have a time limit on them that the world is passing away that gives you a healthy attitude to a government that's here today and gone tomorrow in a time of election or between elections there is still always this wake-up call and it's so hit Augustine as a young philosopher who'd gone astray quite badly that he became st. Augustine and Bishop of the church in North Africa just these verses of Romans it gives you an eternal perspective of things that are temporal and every government is temporary and it will change for another one way or another but it's the government of God that will not change it's the kingdom of God the kingdom of light the kingdom of the day and time and again Paul says this another letters too notably Thessalonians we are not as those who are sleepy of the night we are people of the day of the light we've woken up and we're getting dressed in the right way for a tennety and that gives you that essential eternal dimension to the way we behave even as citizens today in our contemporary world and I'm going to finish that come back next time for the last study in Romans I don't know how we got through really but you can read it we've still got three chapters to go 14 15 and 16 hope you read them last night see you the next session

Channel: David Pawson - Official

Views: 39,044

Rating: 4.6759777 out of 5

Keywords: David Pawson, Romans, New Testament, Christianity

Id: -mOvktvwYr4

Length: 76min 38sec (4598 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 15 2016