Romans 1:8–15Scripture
Today we continue on in Romans.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, and we're in chapter 1. I want to back up a bit today. We're maybe looking a little bit closer at Romans 1:13 through 15, I believe, was our study this week.
Some of us began our study in small groups on Sunday last week, and some of us all the way through the week. We had some on Wednesday, what other days do we have? Thursdays. And so all of you have looked at the 13 through 15. And I really wrestled with this a little bit because I was trying to figure out how much I want to really drill down on these specific verses, and I do, and I will extrapolate some truth out of there, but I want to back up because I think that particularly 10 through 15, or maybe actually probably 8 through 15, I think we need to read this together in a section, mainly because this particular section here, all the way even into chapter, well, it would actually be verse 16, which we'll visit next week, is really talking about what Paul's service to the Lord was marked by. That's my kind of title the last couple of weeks, and we began last week to look at some of the things that mark Paul's service to the Lord.
And as we began to look at those, even last week, we see that many of the ways that Paul serves the Lord are very different than what we see in the church today. If you would compare maybe your life with the life of Paul, you would see some differences there, if you were really honest, right?
Introduction
Now I've been in the church. I was, I mean, you could have thought I was born in the church, like literally just in the church. Like, I was always in the church.
For many of you here today, you come from all different types of backgrounds. Many of you entered the church later on in life. Some of you here are here, this is your first week maybe in the church. Some of you, when you were a teenager, you were saved at youth camp, and the church became maybe a reality for you, and you began to understand the family of God and how that worked. I grew up in the church. I literally remember running down the hallways of the church when I was four, five years old. I remember falling asleep in hallways. My parents served and worked at the church a lot. Back in the day we would have, listen to this will blow your mind, we used to have Wednesday night service, we used to have a small group through the week, we'd have a Sunday morning service, and we'd have a Sunday night service, and you were expected to be at all of them. Like, that was the day that I grew up in. And so it was, I remember even our first years in ministry, I remember them talking about, at the church that we were serving at, we served at many of them, I remember them having visiting conversations in our denomination, we were a part of canceling Sunday night service. The boards got together, the committees got together, they talked about it, they argued about it, they talked about how busy the people were. I'll never forget the first Sunday that the church we were serving at decided not to do that. It was just weird, because I grew up being a part of the church. Actually, our life actually worked around church activities.
So days are a little different, aren't they, when we talk about service? You know, we might think of service in terms of, you know, greeting people at the door, or maybe we come and it's raining outside and we have a few little leaks in here, so maybe moving a bucket over, and that's our service on Sunday for an hour. But just even in our culture, service has changed, because it isn't like we're a part of a family where we contribute consistently and continually. In our family, it is kind of something we show up at an event and we have a badge and we serve for an hour.
So our service isn't marked by this family attitude, it's marked by obligation. Paul had this. So when he writes the letter to Rome, which is a church he did not start, it is a church that really no one really knows who started it or where exactly it launched from. There are a lot of opinions about it, and you can go do some research on it, but I think it's important for us today to just let that ride, because we have at the very beginning of this, in verse 8, we're going to read this, Paul thanking God for the work that God started in Rome, because ultimately God builds his church. Amen. Like, that's important.
So we see this attitude of thanks, thankfulness, and then we also see that although Paul has never been there, he considers them a part of the family, and also, although he's never been there, although he doesn't attend, although he's serving other churches that he's planted, it is, because it's a part of the family of God, they're children of God, he still wants to serve them. I think this is important, because oftentimes in the church we just think about how we can serve Echo Church, the organization. See, it's easy to serve an organization. It's hard to serve somebody that you do life with, because the more common you get with people, the harder it is to love them with longevity. Are you with me today? And I'll say this too, the more you get to know people, the harder it is to serve them, and I think that those are connected. If we serve out of love, and when we don't love, it affects how we serve. So we're going to get a peek at Paul's life, and I think everything, truly, all of his service, if we were to summarize all the things, I'm going to go back and talk about what I talked about last week, I'm going to give you two more points, but all of this service is truly marked by love. Like, we would just summarize it would just be: let your service be marked by love. I can't summarize it that way today in our culture, because love means a thousand different things to a hundred different people in here. Are you with me? So we look at Paul and we look at God, and we see what Paul's doing, and we see how he's thankful, and we see how he loves the church in Rome, and then we begin to extrapolate, what does a loving service look like? Right. All right, so let's read this. Verse 8 says this: "First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world." How humbling it would be to know that you were used mightily by God. Most of the New Testament is written by the apostle Paul. He is a church-planting machine, and the churches he's planted are not the one that's known through the whole world. Oh, this is humbling, isn't it? And I think it's healthy for us. It's healthy for us because when God builds his church, that creates a splash worth noticing. "For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit." Notice he's not saying God's Spirit, notice he's saying with my spirit. This literally translated means, in summary, Paul mentions it in another way with the same word: with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength, that we're wholly committed to him and we serve with this sort of attitude. "In the gospel of his Son, and without ceasing I mention you." Here he's talking about people that he hasn't truly really met. He mentions them often in his prayers. "Always in my prayers asking that somehow by God's will I may now at last succeed in coming to you." Somehow, by God's will. Notice, I just want to pause here for a second because some of us try to discover God's will through meditation, through thinking, through feelings, through goosebumps. You know how Paul discovers God's will?
By whether or not God allows him to go there. And there are many times that he was prevented. Amen. You agree, prevented. So we see him moving out several times to go there because his heart wanted to go there, but God preventing him from getting there. This is how he discovers God's will. It's very different than how we're teaching people to discover God's will today. And I'll just pause for a second and say, movement. Nothing will get you into the will of God, or discovering the will of God, quicker than movement. Now, the goal of movement is not to force God to do something or to force him to talk to you, but some of us just sit around so much and really are apathetic and do nothing, and God can't redirect non-movement. So sometimes, if you're wanting to know what God's will is, just start moving and he'll redirect you. Jonah did it. Sometimes I would even propose to you that moving against and away from God, listen, might be better than not moving at all. Here we have Jonah going three years one direction, gets swallowed by a fish, taken three days back the other direction, because sometimes God can redirect movement. And if he wants you somewhere and it's his will for you to be somewhere, he's going to get you somewhere, because he's sovereign and he's all-powerful and he's God. He can do what he wants, right? "Always in my prayers asking that somehow by the will of, by God's will I may now at last succeed in coming to you." So he's tried and he hasn't succeeded, and that's how he's determined that it's not God's will yet for him to go. Now, we know that he's promised that he would go there. God told him he would go there, so he has a promise. We have a promise too, we have lots of them. He has a promise, and he determines whether or not it's time, or God's will yet, for him to go by trying and not succeeding. That's important. "For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you, that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine. I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you (but thus far have been prevented) in order that I may reap some harvest among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles. I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome." That's good. I love that. I want to do this. I want to pray real quick, and then I want to go and maybe remind us of some spiritual service and what our spiritual service would be marked by, what we talked about last week, and I'm going to give you two more points and then we will go to lunch. Lord, I love you very much. I'm thankful for your Word.
I'm thankful for the way that you speak to us, the way you counsel us. And, Lord, we pray now that your Word pierce our hearts, transform our lives, comfort our spirits, and empower us to walk the way you would like us to walk in this moment. In your precious and holy name we pray, amen. There was an old German artist by the name of Hoffman, and the story goes that he painted majestically, and many of his great works were actually hanging in the Royal Gallery of Dresden.
And periodically through the door would come the artist Hoffman. He had, like, this satchel kind of belt thing like carpenters wear where they can hang their tools and put their screws and nails and hang their, what is it, the ruler or the measuring tape and a hammer. But his were not filled with carpentry tools, but rather his were filled with paint and paintbrushes and different types of things that were necessary for what he was going to be doing. In his hand he would have a little pouch filled with paint, and paintbrushes around his waist, and he would spend a couple of days in the gallery of Dresden touching up masterpieces, maybe where the color had faded a little bit, he would touch that up, maybe where the paint had cracked a little bit, he would freshen that up, never changing the masterpiece, never making it different, simply freshening up the sun-faded, time-faded areas of the painting where it was worn a little bit, would have been infected and maybe touched a little too much by life, he would touch it up. And really, in a real sense, I believe that this morning this particular section of Scripture, I believe that's what it aims to do for us.
When God created you, he didn't really make an accident. He speaks very highly of you. He says he knit you together in your mother's womb, and he had a purpose for you. He had a purpose for you. He had a purpose. You don't have a purpose, he owns it, and he's working that purpose out through you. That's important today because we take anything spiritual and we apply it to ourself as if we own it.
Ladies and gentlemen, we own nothing and God owns everything, and he is working out his purposes through our lives.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 14:54
And when he looks at you, he doesn't just only see you for as you are, but he sees you for how he made you to be, and from his vision you're a masterpiece. Yes, you're broken by sin, yes, you have problems, yes, you've been hurt, yes, you carry baggage, yes, you have all of that, but as believers in Christ, those who are hidden in Christ, you are truly, when he sees you, he sees you in Christ, and you're a masterpiece. He has a purpose for you. And really the Scripture aims to really touch up some faded, rough, worn-out areas of our life. I believe that's what the Word of God is doing, and in a real sense I believe that's the purpose, perhaps, that's what the Lord Jesus Christ wants to do with us this morning.
It isn't that we don't understand, I think, the truth of what service is or what our life should be marked by. I think sometimes we get so busy trying to do things in our own power that we forget who he is. We just forget him in our busyness. You know, I think school is important, I think education is important. Paul submitted himself to the apostles and he was in training for a long time. I think we should, although he was extremely educated, he submitted himself, he continued to go back even to the apostles to resubmit himself to them, to make sure he was proclaiming the gospel the way he should. So I don't want to, I don't want to undermine education. I think education is extremely important, particularly in our culture. We should be more educated in regards to the Word and the things of God and those kinds of things. We need to be educated. We need to be seeking out understanding and knowledge in regards to who God is, you know, who the apostles were. We just need to know more stuff, right?
And quite honestly, we don't need to, every time we go to the Word, we don't need to be necessarily counting on a YouTube video to tell us what it means. We need to grow in our understanding and capability of being able to handle God's Word rightly. Like, so education is important, but one of the things that happens in the process of education is that we begin to know what salvation is, but in the process of understanding salvation, we also begin to forget the Savior.
We focus so much on salvation that we don't consider the Savior, so that salvation almost seems like it's separate from Christ in the church today. But ladies and gentlemen, it's all about Christ. We talk about justice today, but we talk about justice separate from a just Judge. Are you with me? Are you tracking with me? So everybody's fighting for justice in the world, and although that is somewhat of a biblical principle, maybe not in the way that it's applied today, when we talk about social justice, we talk about justice, when you begin to remove justice from the Justifier or the just Judge, it begins to pervert what justice is. So today we have people that are fighting for what seems like biblical principles and biblical things void of God, and listen, people's service then begins to be marked by the way they see the things in the world. Are you with me? So the way that I go and I serve in a justice issue is not necessarily a godly way, because I've removed justice from God, and we fight and we serve, and I believe this even sometimes with what seems to be the right heart in the wrong place and the wrong way. Are you with me? Now, I'm trying not to dig down in this too hard, because I don't want to get caught in the social and cultural weeds and then get choked out and die in a field. But I think it's important that when we so much study what comes from God and we remove it from God, then we begin to serve in a way that our life is marked by our passion for what comes from God rather than God himself.
We see this in the church, don't we? Like, in a real sensible way, for anybody that's been in the church any amount of time, we have seen service move from being marked by a relationship with God, that we are a family of God, to now I'm simply serving because that's what you do if you're a good Christian.
So service then is independent of any relationship. Listen, it's independent of relationship with one another, it's independent of relationship with God. We simply do this. Guys, this is what pharisaism is. It's service. All of it is not bad. A lot of the Pharisees did a lot of good things, but it is service not marked by relationship. Matter of fact, the Pharisees did a lot of things God commanded them to do, just like today in the church. Listen, I know everybody in here is thinking about all the Pharisees at all the other churches, but ladies and gentlemen, every single person in here has a Pharisaical spirit in some dimension of their life, because for many of us, and all of us at some place in our life, our service is not marked 100 percent by our relationship with God, but rather by what we feel obligated to do because we're a Christian. I don't think obligation is bad, I just
Point 1Service flows from thankfulness, not obligation
Don't think it should start there. All right, so when we look at the life of Paul, we see his life being marked by thanksgiving for what God called him to be, a mighty pastor, that he's a powerful church planter. His service is marked by thanksgiving, not for all the things he's accomplished, but thanksgiving for God.
If you were to take inventory of your life and you were to ask this question, is a lot of my service marked simply by what I feel I should do or what gets me attention? Come on, listen to me. It's hard to evaluate, but so much of what we do often is so that we can get credit for something. You know where you get people, you run the risk of people getting mad and busting and dodging in a church, you know where that is, when they serve by themselves too long without either being noticed or without somebody helping. You know why? Because they're not serving out of their abundant and thankful relationship with God. The intention is wrong. That person's not a bad person. Amen. How many of us have all been guilty of that on some level? It's not that the person's bad, it's that we really, sometimes we don't start with God. We start with, that's what a Christian does, that's what so-and-so does, and so that's what I should do.
Also, a second point I think is important: we see Paul serving out of his thankfulness to God, and also we don't see Paul serving only when everything's perfect in his life and going just easy. Some of us hold off our service, or serving God out of thanksgiving, because we're depressed, overwhelmed, have anxiety, we're closing on our house, my kids are crazy. I'll have more time to serve and more emotional and mental bandwidth to actually give something if all that wasn't going on. People, have you read about Paul's life? It's kind of crazy. You don't need more mental bandwidth to serve God when you serve out of thanksgiving rather than obligation. Are you with me? Because when you serve out of obligation, you're not drawing from a well that continues to sustain. So Paul is drawing from some well that is much deeper than a lot of us draw from in regards to our serving, because many of us burn out pretty quick. What type of well is he digging down to that he could be beaten, stoned, thrown in prison, and all sorts of things happened to him, and he still continued to serve and do it thankfully to God? What is the difference between Paul and the people in church in America? What is the difference? He's drawing from a resource that goes deeper than the well we draw from, and ladies and gentlemen, it's relational. It's relational. Now, he's talking about two types of service. He's talking about a temporal, physical service, and he's talking about the spiritual service. And so when we look at Paul, we look at spiritual service that's marked by specific things. I'll summarize last week's three points.
They are this. Last week we said spiritual service is marked by thankfulness. First, he thanked God that God was doing his work in Rome without him. God chose to use him, but God didn't need him. That's important today because we love to be needed, but let me tell you, the deeper well is not loving to be needed, because as soon as someone stops needing you stop serving. Come on now, listen to me. Your service should not become dependent on someone needing you.
Our service cannot be dependent on someone needing you. It has to be dependent on God.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 25:40
They need God. They don't need you, they need God, and sometimes you need to get out so that they can meet God.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 25:52
Are you with me today?
That this is lost, y'all look at me like I'm a crazy person, I'm just saying it's important. Sometimes you get in the way of someone trusting in God because they put all their trust in you. Number two, so thanksgiving: we're thankful for God because God can do what we cannot do. He chooses to use us,
Point 2Wholehearted service keeps its eyes on Jesus
But he doesn't need us. Number two, spiritual service we see in Paul's life is marked by our spirit, or to summarize that, a wholehearted attitude of service, that we wholeheartedly serve. We're not like half in and half out. First John, we talked about John was a rough man. He was the disciple that Jesus loved. He reclined on Jesus' chest and he really told it like it was. You're either a son of the devil or you're a son of God, you can't be in the middle.
Really harsh. You ever think I'm harsh? Just read First John, you'll love me anyway. Number three, spiritual service is marked by proper worship.
Be careful what you fix your eyes on. That's why he tells us to fix your eyes on Jesus, who is the author and the perfecter of our faith.
Fix your eyes on him. A lot of times we get to serving and we start out serving with our eyes fixed on him, and we end up serving with our eyes fixed on us. We watched a sermon this week, or actually it was a conference seminar section of this conference for pastors, and Alistair Begg said in there, that humility appeals to my pride.
And I love that, because
Sometimes we start out worshiping God, and through our service we end up worshiping ourself.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 27:52
We would never say that, because we're told we're supposed to be humble, but then even some people wear humility as a badge to brag. I'm super humble. How many of you have ever heard somebody say, i'm super wise? Now, you're not the kind of wisdom that God talks about in the Bible. You don't get to self-declare what you are. Ladies and gentlemen, God gets to do that. Matter of fact, it would be best for you to stay quiet and let other people discern who you are through your life, not through your words. I feel like Paul was like this. Today I want to continue with two other points, and there that our life, our spiritual service, is marked by,
Point 3Submission is better than surrender
Number four, submission. We see here that Paul is willing, like, honestly, that's 90 percent of the battle, that you would just be willing to be used by God, right? I mean, that's a huge part of it. But there's two types of willingness, right? See, we have this. I posted a post this week I think is kind of interesting, and I'll just drop this bomb for you, but I said that submission is better than surrender, and that was troubling for people, and I get it, because we have a lot of songs in the church, and I'm not saying they're bad songs, that say "I surrender all, all to Jesus, I surrender, oh, to him I humbly come," or something like that, I don't know. "I surrender all, I surrender all." But the reason I think submission is better, and I think we see submission in the life of Paul, and the reason why we see submission rather than surrender is what happens when a little white flag goes up when an entire hill has been blown up by bombs and there's only 10 people left in the bunker and there's, you know, 20,000 dead people on the hill, and those 10 people are like, we surrender. They don't do it willingly, they do it because there's no other option. See, but Paul doesn't surrender, he submits. When Paul talks about marriage, he doesn't talk about mutual surrender. He talks, right, he didn't talk about surrendering. This is not a war that happens until somebody conquers and smashes the other person in the ground and now you will surrender because you have no other options. You know, like, that's not what a marriage is built on, like you will surrender, raise the white flag. I play this game called Clash of Clans, and it's really spiritual, and there's all these little different pieces and you play them, and every man or piece you play that walks across the board can be countered by another man. I love that. And so you keep playing and keep playing, and then there's this one, emoticons, there's all these emoticons, like somebody crying or somebody laughing, that's really offensive when you're getting killed a lot, like getting smashed in the ground, they're just like, keep laughing, I'm killing you know. It's like sometimes I really just have to set the phone down so I don't, I'm reliving it's really stressful when people are mean. But there's this one, like, an emoticon, is that right? An emote that comes up, that's a little hand that comes up with a white flag, and the white flag just waving in the air, like, oh, I'm dead, basically. You play that when you're just getting destroyed. So they're laughing at me and yawning, like, you're so easy, I'm killing you, and then I was putting a white flag out, like, I surrender, because there's nothing that can be done, and if I want to survive, I just got to give up and put the white flag out.
I don't, we don't see Paul's life marked by that. We don't see his service marked by that.
We see him submitting when there's many choices.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 31:54
See the difference?
See, that's why submission is beautiful, because you have all these choices before you, but you choose to submit to God anyway.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 32:06
It's saying, I can do all these other things in my life, but I choose you before I have to choose you. That's submission. Paul actually calls our marriage to be marked by this. He calls then our relationships with one another to be marked by mutual submission to one another, not mutual surrender, mutual submission.
Now, today this is important because we have seen a lot of abuses happening in the life of the church where you have one person lording themselves over another person to the degree that they force that person to surrender, and then we say that's spiritual. I want you to know that God calls us to submission, and you know what submission does?
Submission disarms the abuser.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 33:04
Not saying you should submit to an abuser and just let them keep abusing you. Well, what I'm saying is this is that it, that when we submit one to another, listen, when we live this kind of life, when our life is marked by mutual submission to each other, this pleases God. Paul submits. Paul's called. Paul knows God's will for his life, and it is his will, it's God's will, and it's his calling. Have you ever said, I want to know what my calling is? He has all that, and then what he does is, once God gives that to him, then he turns around and he submits it back to God and he says, whatever you want, thy will be done. Spiritual service is marked by submission. The true servant of God submits all his plans to God's will. He's not in the business of competing with God. Amen. That's important.
A submissive spirit. A submissive spirit. The apostle Paul says this, he says, by the will of God I want to come to you and I want to be with you and I want to be an instrument, but only if it's God's will. And he says the same thing at the end of the epistle in chapter 15, verse 32, he says this: "That I may come to you with joy by the will of God." In other words, though he was highly motivated, though he was thankful and concerned and he was willing, he was regulated by a commitment to the will of God. There were people in his circle that kept trying to tell him, they're going to tie you up and they're going to take you and they're going to kill you, and you need to stop going into these places and you stop doing this thing. And he had been telling them, according to the will of God, and he basically responded to them, kind of rebuked them, and he basically said to them, if God wants my life, I am willing to give it.
That's what he said. And then they just responded with his words back to him, that he's been preaching forever: well, God's will be done, then.
Like, they just gave up. Like, this guy will die doing God's will. I think that's a good question. Were you willing to give your life for God?
He gave his life for you. I think the Lord was his example. Actually, Jesus was the example, who said, "Not my will, but thy will be done." That is the way we are to pray as well. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, do not be so presumptuous to assume you know God's will.
I'm going to say it in our church, I'm going to say it in our church, and I'm going to say it to the masses that are out there, and I'm going to say it to all the Instagram videos that I see out there today, where everybody's trying to determine and trying to make statements about what God's will is for mankind, for America, and for the world. I want to know, I want to say something: you, I'm just, do not be so presumptuous as to assume you know his will in every area of your life. Let me put it this way, because you'll be okay with this: don't be so presumptuous to make a statement that you know when God's coming, and you give a date and a time, but when he's coming, because the Bible says you don't. You know, well, we know his will, Shawn, about a lot of things. Those theologians in here, right? You're trying to, we know his will about a lot of things. Listen, we do know his will about a lot of things, and we don't know his will about a lot of things, and I'm just here to tell you, it is it God's will for all people to be made well? Yes, but not on this side of the earth. Not on this side of the earth. You know why I know that? You know why I know that? Because not everybody's healed on this side of the earth, and if it was God's will, it would happen on the other side of the earth. He's going to make that happen. You know how he makes that happen? He gives you a new body with no tears, no pain, no sickness.
You're like, well, when I pray, I'm never going to pray thy will be done in regards to sickness, because it is always his will for me to be made well immediately. Don't be so presumptuous to assume that. Pray that his will be done. Listen, even Paul. So I'm just going to try to work on this a little bit. Even Paul was given a promise that he would go to Rome by God, but he still prayed for God's will because he didn't know how he was going to get there. He didn't know when he was going to get there. He had no idea how that would work out. As a matter of fact, he didn't spend all his time coming up and writing business plans that he might propose to people that he could go there. Somewhere in the midst of God's will, we have glimpses of promises, but we don't know in the fullness of what it is. So our prayer should be marked by a closing that says, thy will be done. Right? We release our will to his will.
We don't surrender it, we submit it.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 38:48
We submit it. We choose to say, God's will for us is better than my will for me. The reality, we choose to understand by looking at our children that we know that our children think they know what's best for them, but as a parent we kind of know in a lot of places what they think is good is not really good, and so we know better. And so if we can see that in our children, how much more should we be able to see that in our relationship with our heavenly Father? Ladies and gentlemen, we need to be children that can stand back and understand God's will for us is always better than our will. It's always better. It is time to submit to what he wants in this generation instead of revamping the Word to make it be and do what we want it to be and do. We've got a problem in our world today where we don't trust God to do his job well, so we try to redefine how he should do it, and we create theological positions that are not biblical that make us feel good and will make the house shout down the preacher. But at the end of the day, because I preached these kinds of sermons, we started the church like that. Actually, somebody went back, I think just to troll me, I do, I think they did, and it's okay, it's a fair troll, but somebody went back, not in here, they're not in here, they used to be in here, they're good people and I love them, and they're not here, it's not bad reasons they're not here, but they went back and they liked a sermon that contradicted everything that I'm preaching right now over the last three years. I almost had a heart attack. Listen to it, I wish I would have pulled it and played it. I'll post it again today on my Facebook page. I could not believe what was coming out of my mouth because we would rather make people happy than holy. And because we see people come hurting and we think God isn't really helping them, so we're going to preach a sermon that makes them feel good for an hour but not transformed for a lifetime, and we think we're serving God. We think we're stepping up in the gaps where he ain't doing his job right. So how many of you have ever said, well, I don't really understand why God's doing that, I have no clue, it doesn't make any sense to me, and I wouldn't do it that way?
Ladies and gentlemen, no, you wouldn't, because you're not God, and his ways are higher than your ways and his thoughts are higher than your thoughts, and you need to understand that his will is better than your will.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 41:13
Right? So this is, our prayers should be marked by that.
All right. I had somebody recently, in a phone conversation, ask me, what is it like and what is required to plant a church from nothing? Like, literally, you didn't have somebody funding, like you went, found a building, set up a nonprofit, just from nothing. What is it like to build a church from nothing? And I told him, listen, I am not going to be so audacious as to tell you that I built this church.
God builds the church, period. God builds his church.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 41:55
Matter of fact, a lot of the things we did in the first five years I would not advise, because people are liking posts from the way I preached then, and I guarantee you the way that we function now ain't the same. It was very event-based, man. It was really cool when eggs dropped from the sky with helicopters, but let me tell you, let me tell you,
Easter isn't about helicopter egg drops, it's about family.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 42:29
Now, it's not cool when we pull away events and we begin telling people, get connected in community. But the Bible doesn't tell us to do egg drops and events, it tells us to meet in homes, break bread, and love one another, labor with one another, go through conflict with one another, endure one another, endure one another. I'm speaking as you have to endure me. Endure, labor, walk with one another, when someone annoys you, find something in them you love greater than what you're mad at. Like, honor one another. Some of us, some of us, you know what's great? Some of us, the longer we're together, the less we respect the words of someone because we've seen their life a little bit.
Listen, do not cut someone off by the words they speak because of an event or something they did, because you might miss nuggets of gold that will enrich your life.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 43:22
God is trying to help us get to a place where we love one another and we serve one another. We don't build the church.
And Brook said it this way. Brook said it this way the other day and I love it, so I quoted her, right? This is from Brook. She said, even though God gave Paul the mission, he still submits. Paul still submits his mission to God. Somehow or another we get a calling and we just go, thank you, and we just go about our way and just fulfill our calling our whole life. We don't even consider submitting it back to God for God to do what he wants.
Paul's life is marked by submission. In the fourth chapter of James, I think there's another good word. It says, verse 14, or verse 13, it says this: "Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit.'" In other words, we make our plans for the future. We're going to go do this and do that, and then you don't know what will be on the next day.
"For what is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes." It puffs and it's gone. He continues on: "Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.'" Listen, it's just that simple. He's saying, do not live the type of life where you're going to declare, I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that. You let that statement be marked by, if it's the Lord's will, we will do this and we will do that, but our life is a vapor and we might not even get to tomorrow. Let your life, in other words, be marked by God's will and not yours. Let your service be marked by submission to that will.
In other words, the limiting factor in everybody's life is the will of God.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 45:34
The true servant is totally submissive to God's will. So Paul submits himself. He was resigned to God's will and it didn't matter what it brought him, whether it brought him pain or pleasure. And listen, that's not fatalism. That's not this kind of theology that says that whatever is going to happen is going to happen and we can't control it, we can't change it anyway. That's not what I'm saying, that's not the attitude Paul had.
Fatalism's dangerous, you know. It is a little dangerous. It's determinism. I mean, God determines what is going to be in certain issues, and he determines it, and he's sovereign, he works that thing out to that end, but it isn't that we should throw up our hands. Paul didn't throw up his hands and say, well, whatever will be, because we see him several times trying to go to Rome but God preventing. He submits. He submits. Here's an example I read this week in some commentary. I really loved it, I thought it was fantastic, in regards to determinism versus fatalism. It is this, and we're going to talk about determinism. You can write it down. If you don't understand, if I didn't explain it well enough, you write down, go study it: determinism versus fatalism versus free will, right? So those are the three things that mark different denominations, and you can work your way through that, and we don't have time to do that this morning. Another thing that we're going to see, and he's beginning to lay the foundation of even now, is we've got predestination coming, and so here's a story that I think helps us maybe set up groundwork for that. Right, so it says this: "We will suppose the case of a man who loves violin music." This is what I read this week. "He has the means to buy for himself a very fine violin, and he also purchases the very best radio he can buy.
He builds a library of the great musical scores and he has them all on the shelf, so that he's able to take any piece that is announced on the radio, put it on the music stand, and play along with the orchestra on the radio. The announcer says that Mr. Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra are going to play Beethoven's Seventh Symphony.
The man in his home puts this symphony on his stand, tunes his violin with what he hears coming from the orchestra and the music that comes from the radio.
We might call it foreordained. Ormandy is going to follow the score just as Beethoven wrote it. The man in the living room starts to scratch away at the first violin part. He misses beats, he loses his place, he finds it again, he breaks a string. Oh, no!
He stops to fix it, but the music continues to go on and on. He finds his place again and plays on after his fashion till the symphony is ended. The announcer names the next work that is to be played and the fiddler puts the number on his rack, and day after day and week after week and month after month and year after year, he finds pleasure in scraping his fiddle along with the violins of the great orchestras. Their music is determined in advance.
What he must do is to learn to play in their tempo. He must submit to their tempo. He must submit to the measures that are to be played. He must play them in their key and follow the score as it has been written in advance. If he decides that he wants to play 'yankee Doodle' when they're playing Beethoven or Brahms, there's going to be some dissonance and discord in the man's house, but not in the Academy of Music. After some years of this, the man may be a rather credible violin player and may have learned to submit himself utterly to the scores that are written and follow the program as played. However, harmony and joy come from the submission and cooperation."
This is what Paul is laying out for us, and it begins here. God has predetermined some things, and it is not that we don't have free will, and it is not that we should enter into the attitude of fatalism, that, oh well, what will be, and just not be involved and just simply float and cascade through life. But at the end of the day, God is God. He is sovereign. He has determined some things, and if you're going to live your life with joy and harmony, you can either choose to get on his page or you can choose not to get on his page, but ain't nobody in here wants to hear "Yankee Doodle" when they're playing beethoven, and that kind of life does not bring glory to God. Are you with me today? And that is why he commissions, he calls, and he encourages us to understand this, because this is God's plan that he has determined. Ladies and gentlemen, when he sent Jesus, he wasn't making it up on the fly.
Jesus was crucified before the foundations of the world, and Jesus came and he submitted. He submitted himself to God's will, he submitted and didn't say anything that God didn't want him to say.
He played and spoke and did everything in harmony with what God had determined, and that was glorious, and that was when people beheld Jesus.
They actually said, "What sort of man is this?" This man plays to a different tune than the rest of the world.
Your greatest witness is understanding what he's determined and lining your life up with his Word.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 52:12
Barnhouse says this another way. Maybe this will help you. Maybe you're not a creative, maybe you're more academic. This is more of an academic approach, maybe more Type A way of understanding this. Barnhouse says it this way: "So it is with the plan of God. It is rolling towards us, unfolding day by day, and he has planned it before the foundation of the world. There are those who fight against it and ultimately are cast into outer darkness, because he will not have in heaven those who proudly resist him.
This cannot be tolerated any more than the authorities would permit a man to bring his own violin into the Academy of Music during a symphony and start playing a different tune when the program called for Bach. The score of God's plan is set forth in the Bible, and in the measure that I learn it, submit myself to it, and live and seek to live in accordance with it, I shall find myself in joy and in harmony with God and his plans.
If I set myself to fight against it or disagree with that which comes forth, there can be no peace in my heart and there will be no peace in my life.
My life will become no more than a clanging symbol and a banging gong, making noise to the world but never in harmony with my heavenly Father. If in my heart I seek to play a tune that is not the melody the Lord has for me, there will be nothing but dissonance. In prayer, albeit, prayer is listening to play the same tune that the eternal God plays, and to play it the way the eternal Composer wrote it and intends it to be played.
Maybe this helps you. In summary,
God's sovereignty puts out the foreordained tune to be played, and prayer is learning to play in tune.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 54:25
But even when we are out of tune, it doesn't mess up the celestial orchestra. They're still playing in time. It is you that are off. Fortunately, we hear them, but they just apparently don't hear us when we get out of line with his will." So number four, spiritual service is marked by submission
Point 4Spiritual service is marked by a loving spirit
To his predetermined will for our lives. Number two, number five, number two of today, number five total, and I'll close: spiritual service is marked by a loving spirit. So for the cause of clarification, today in a world where we understand love very differently, where we have not allowed God to define love but rather we have come up with many definitions ourselves, I will use this verse 11: "For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift." Everybody say gift.
"To the end you may be established." So Paul is saying, I want to come to you that I may give something to you, and notice here that the gift is mutual. As we go on and we read on in verse 12, 13, and 14, we hear that it's a mutual gift. He is coming to give that he may be encouraged by their faith and they may be encouraged by his faith. Listen, reciprocity is not always requisite for relationship. We see the evidence of that in Jesus Christ. Amen. And we are shaped by his image. So there are many times in our life where we give and there is no reciprocity, and that relationship cannot be determined on whether we get back or not, because we are like Christ. Now, there is something beautiful that happens in the family of God. Listen, in the family of God, I'm talking reciprocity can't be required when we're ministering and loving people that are outside the family who don't know God, because they cannot give what they do not have to give, and we are going to love them in a way that they cannot love in return, because they have not been enlightened and they have not been changed and they have not been transformed and they have not been given a new image. And let me tell you, their ways are not like our ways, and so our love is not like their love, I'm just telling you. But when someone, when the family of God, when you have two people who have been made in the image of God, who have been transformed, who are a new creation now, when they love with reciprocal love, and it's universal. So when I give, that giving comes back. This is why Jesus says, "Give, and it will be given to you. Pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap." Now, we can give out of selfishness, and guess what, that's not love, that's giving to get. That's what the world does. Come on now, listen to me. But biblical love gives, and there's reciprocity. They don't give to get, they give and they get, and it goes back and forth. It's kind of like an atom dancing back and forth, that's what keeps it alive and active. Love, true biblical love, is marked by giving. Well, Shawn, how do you know that? How do you know that? Well, here's what the Bible says. One of the most popular verses in the entire Bible: "For God so loved the world that he" what? Gave. In other words, love is always marked by giving. Now, some of you think I'm talking about time, and I'm not.
I'm not talking specifically about that, guys. Some of the hardest things to give is not money or possessions. Sometimes the hardest thing to give is time. But see, when you submit your will to his will, then your time is not your time. Your time is his time. Are you with me? And so it's not hard to give the time when you've submitted. So let me tell you, it's easier to love biblically when you have first submitted your will to his, because then time is no longer yours, your possessions are no longer yours. Come on now, listen to me. Are you with me today? Like, that's a big deal. Like, so okay, so okay, I'm not saying this in a mean way, and I know, because we don't put our sermons online anymore because I'm cantankerous and people weren't coming there for a little bit, and so I started having a hissy fit and just didn't put them up there. It's like, come to church. But listen to me on something that I think is important. I grew up where my grandmother grew up with nothing, and my grandfather built a rock quarry and they came into money, and so they really stewarded what they had because they'd never had. So they cared a lot about the stuff they had, right, because they never had that. It's like, I want to take care of it, I want to keep it clean. Don't you think that's good? You keep it clean and do all that stuff. One of the things growing up, though, there was just certain rooms I couldn't even go in, man. Like, you ever see the TV shows where the grandma puts the plastic all over the couch, and so they didn't really get to enjoy the couch, and then they're sticking on it in the summer and peeling up. It's just this funny joke, because the mom doesn't want to get the couch dirty or the grandma won't get the couch dirty. But listen, and I'm not being critical on people that take care of their stuff. We should take care of our stuff. But I always kind of thought that was crazy about my grandma, but I'm a lot like that now. All of a sudden, like, I'll get something and we'll pay cash for it and I just want to take care of it. And then somebody had the idea that we'll host a small group in our house, you know, and listen, when you have 20 people coming into your house, it gets dirty. Now, the only thing I really have done is i've just asked people not to wear their shoes. Now, you know, in the future, you come in my house, you better take your shoes off or I'm going to, you know, take your shoes off. And we can do that, we can be good stewards, we can make sure we honor each other, but what I've begun to do, and what by reading through Paul, is understand my house is not my house. My house is the 15 to 20 people who come to my house. It's their house too.
It's not mine. Their name ain't on the deed, but it's just as much their house as it is my house. Are you with me today? Now, every once in a while I have to correct myself because, you know, something happened, somebody will spill something or something, and I'll go, and then I have to stop and then I have to go, wait a minute, this ain't mine, this is God's. Like, do you understand that if we submit ourselves to God, then everything that we have, from our time to our energy to our words to our attitudes to our thoughts, we submit our thoughts, take every thought captive and submit it. Notice, now listen, this will open up the Scripture for you, because what it is trying to do is set you free from you.
The Scripture is constantly trying to set you free from you.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 1:02:21
And if you would submit yourself not to God's agenda but to the God of the agenda, these things will not trouble you. People live tormented lives because they do not submit, and people are unloving, and we are not the example of Christ in the world because we care more about our stuff than the people who sit on our stuff. We want to, we come to conferences to try to figure out how to share the gospel with people. Let people sit on your couch and don't worry what it will do when they sit on their couch, on your couch. And that is sharing the gospel with people, because you're telling them you don't care about your stuff more than them. Are you with me today? Or maybe I'm just talking about me.
Everybody's going to make cracks at small group tonight. My groups tonight, everybody's going to make cracks at small group tonight, like, can I sit here? Because we're family, we're a family.
But God is trying to set us free of us. Listen, your number, we went to, I need to close. Whoa, I need to close. Listen, we went to we went to CVS this week, or yesterday, and we looked at the magazine section and it was "The Power of Positive Thinking,"
"The Importance of You Being Mindful," mindfulness, kindfulness, right? And this was all on, and then we went and we saw two Christian magazines.
We won't say who they are, and it had all that same stuff on there. You know what it is? It's a life marked by human will, by human effort, by human ingenuity, by human intellect, by human everything. It's all about us. It's about what we do, it's about what we focus on, it's about what we say. It's not about him. It's not about what he says, it's not about what he focuses on, it's not about what he cares about. If anything, we should be correcting some of the New Age stuff in the magazine section. It should be Christian articles, but the reality is we don't want God, we are god, and we only want ourself to be entertained and we want all the monkeys of the world to dance before us so that we can be entertained. And I'm just here to tell you, it don't work that way. We serve a God who is supreme.
Paul says this, and I'm closing, I'm way past time and there ain't no hook to get me off here, so I got two minutes and I'm going to do this. So he says, I want to come to you and I want to give to you because I love you.
Love makes us give. Love gives. It's love that gives. And Paul says, "I long to see you." The idea there is of great internal desire, and I want to give you a spiritual gift to see you established. That is a loving spirit. He wasn't saying, I want to broaden my reputation and be known to the whole world. He wasn't saying, I want to be verified on Twitter. He wasn't saying, if more people would pay attention to me, they'd be better off.
His desire wasn't for him, his desire was for them. That's so important.
See, because true love is always measured in what it gives, not in what it takes.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 1:06:21
Love would take anything, it would accept anything, and return only the highest good to the one who offended. That's what love would do. Love always gives back good. It always seeks the best, no matter how it is abused or wounded. And Paul says, I long for you, and I want to give you something. Love gives.
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