(#423) Romans 12 - Great Christians are HatersWelcome To BARAH MINISTRIES a Christian Church Rory Clark Pastor-Teacher
Good Morning!
Welcome to Barah Ministries…a Christian Church that makes a difference worldwide courtesy of the internet…Barah Ministries…a Christian Church that makes a difference locally by offering the gospel message and the Word of God to the Gilbert, Mesa, and Chandler, AZ communities. My name is Pastor Rory Clark. At Barah Ministries, our God is the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and we teach the Word of God from God’s perspective…not from man’s perspective.
TODAY’S BIBLE LESSON - Great Christians are Haters
We’re studying the fifth passage of Romans, Chapter 12…it begins at Verse 9…
ROMANS 12:9 Let unconditional love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil…cling to what is good.
I wonder if you have ever said to anyone close to you, “I can’t stand that person.” I have. Typically if I’m saying it to a friend, they have no reaction. But have you ever said to anyone close to you, “I HATE that person with a passion!” I have. And no matter whom I say it to, there is ALWAYS a severe reaction. “Hate? That’s a strong word, man. That’s a strong emotion. That’s harsh.” Well yes it is. Hatred is harsh. Hatred is real. Hatred is raw.
I played basketball once against a person I hate, and I have never played better. If I could have summoned that inspiration every time I touched a basketball I would be retired from the NBA right now. God recommends that we ABHOR EVIL. He is asking believers in Christ to HATE evil.
If you hated evil, what would change in your life?
Great Christians are “haters” … they hate evil…and in today’s lesson we’ll see why it is so important for Christians to get a grip on how sin affects both their advance and their serenity in the Christian Way of Living. Welcome to a place where you can learn God’s viewpoint on life matters.
OPENING PRAYER Let us pray...
Almighty God and Father…
Thank you for being faithful…than you for being our refuge and our strength…thank you for protecting us, both from evil and from the evil one…as we are assailed, moment by moment, with images…on television… on the internet…in books…in newspapers…in magazines…and on the radio…images that leave us vulnerable…images that tempt us to commit sins of every kind…thank you that we can count on Your faithfulness to provide us with mental and emotional and physical and spiritual protection…
Bring peace to our minds with Your simplicity, Father…free our minds from the seductions of the flesh…focus our minds on the Spirit of life and peace…remind us to not be conformed to this world, but to keep on being transformed as You renew our minds with Your Word…help us to be a reflection of what Your will is…that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
…we ask this through the power of God the Holy Spirit…in Christ’s name...Amen.
TODAY’S BIBLE LESSON - Great Christians are Haters
It was never God’s intent that His creatures would be tainted by sin. It was never God’s intent that the perfection He created in us would be perverted. Yet sin did just that…it tainted us…it perverted us. Great Christians hate sin and lawlessness. Through the Lord Jesus Christ’s sacrifice, the Cross, “there is a new creation” … the Lord has made us flawless. Our enemy, Satan, wants to convince us that we are anything but flawless. He can’t convince us those of us who are in union with Christ to move to his team, but he can steal our serenity. Here is the award winning group Mercy Me to sings one of their hit songs, reminding us believers in Christ that the Lord has made us FLAWLESS.
MUSIC AND REFLECTION Be Occupied with the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ Enjoy the Singing of His Praises
FLAWLESS MercyMe
TODAY’S BIBLE LESSON - Great Christians are Haters
We have begun our study of the fifth and final passage of Romans, Chapter 12…and it extends from Verse 9 to Verse 21. The passage is a series of short exhortations…a series of short commands…some of the do’s and don’ts of the Christian Way of Living…
ROMANS 12:9 Let unconditional love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil…cling to what is good.
ROMANS 12:10 Be devoted to one another in brotherly love…give preference to one another in honor…
ROMANS 12:11 …not lagging behind in diligence…fervent in spirit…serving the Lord…
ROMANS 12:12 …rejoicing in hope…persevering in tribulation…devoted to prayer…
ROMANS 12:13 …contributing to the needs of the saints…practicing hospitality.
ROMANS 12:14 Bless those who persecute you…bless and do not curse.
ROMANS 12:15 Rejoice with those who rejoice…and weep with those who weep.
ROMANS 12:16 Be of the same mind toward one another…do not be haughty in mind…but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation.
ROMANS 12:17 Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men.
ROMANS 12:18 If possible…so far as it depends on you…be at peace with all men.
ROMANS 12:19 Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord.
ROMANS 12:20 “But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink…for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.”
ROMANS 12:21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
So let’s continue our study of the first verse in the passage…Romans, Chapter 12, Verse 9…
ROMANS 12:9 Let unconditional love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil…cling to what is good.
We have looked at the first exhortation…let unconditional love be without hypocrisy. Christians are never to be voluntary residents in Satan’s hypocrisy pit. When we sin, we move to Satan’s pit. God exhorts us with the command that we let our unconditional love be like His…sincere…as the Romans would say it…let your love be sine cera…without wax…God does not want our love to contain a single impurity.
When you think of it, the Christian Way of Living is really simple. There are only two choices in this life. There is the choice Satan wants for you and there is the choice God wants for you. Satan, the enemy of God, deceives the whole world, and he introduces confusion to deceive…he offers a plethora of choices, all boiling down to one choice…“Worship me instead of God.”
Satan uses religion as his master deception, and he wants everyone to believe the lie that God is such a tyrant that we have to work incessantly to please Him. Think of the genius of religion. You work and work and work to please God…you work and work and work to get to heaven…and then it is unsure whether your work will pay off at all. And then when you are convinced that your work probably won’t pay off, Satan attributes this futility to God. Satan makes his failed program God’s fault. That’s brilliant.
Satan knows he can no longer snatch believers in Christ from God’s hands, so instead he deceives us into thinking we haven’t obtained this victory yet. Satan encourages believers in Christ to adopt his “strive program” … successfully I might add…getting us to think we have to work to please God…encouraging us, in fact, to work for a victory we already have.
Satan’s hatred for believers in Christ made him create a black hole lifestyle with a gravitational pull called “temptation” designed to suck us in. His hatred for hatred for believers in Christ is designed to lure us into a hypocrisy pit lifestyle, away from an unconditional love lifestyle, that is he uses to crush us…a life with no light…a life with no hope…a life from which we perceive we cannot escape…a prison of slavery. And for many of us, rather than questioning Satan’s bogus offer, rather than asking God to free us from the pit we have voluntarily dived into…we simply accept Satan’s isolationist approach to life, designed to rob us of freedom.
Now the second exhortation of the verse…Romans, Chapter 12, Verse 9…
ROMANS 12:9 Let unconditional love be without hypocrisy. ABHOR WHAT IS EVIL…cling to what is good.
What does it mean to abhor something?
ABHOR To regard something with extreme repugnance…to feel intense aversion to something…to utterly detest something…to loathe something…to consider something an abomination.
God abhors evil and He wants His believers to abhor evil as well. Why?
Evil keeps us immature. Let me clear something up from the last lesson. A carnal Christian is simply an immature Christian. First Corinthians, Chapter 3, Verse 1…
FIRST CORINTHIANS 3:1 And I (Paul), brethren, could not speak to you as I would speak to spiritual men…but I must speak to you as I speak to carnal men…as if I am speaking to men of the flesh…as if I am speaking to infants in union with Christ.
Sinning slows our advance in the Christian Way of Living. Sinning interferes with our maturity. We do well to abhor anything that hinders our advance.
Evil encourages us to ignore God’s advice. Sinning leads to death. For believers in Christ it does not separate us from God. We are in union with Christ so this definition I gave last week…death is separation from God…
DEATH Separation from God
…really applies to unbelievers. It connects to spiritual death. For believers in Christ, sin is disobedience. When we disobey God, we turn our backs on God’s advice. You’ve been in human relationships of this kind before. You’re “with” a person, but you don’t really value the person’s advice. With humans, it may be wise to ignore their advice. With God, it’s really not wise at all ever to ignore His advice. It’s tragic when we do.
What is evil? Let’s take a five-minute break. When we come back we’ll take the offering and then we’ll see why great Christians are haters!
BREAK Five Minutes
TODAY’S BIBLE LESSON - Great Christians are Haters
C. S. Lewis was a British novelist who held academic positions at both Oxford University and Cambridge University. He was an atheist early in his life, and described himself as being “quite angry at God for not existing.” He later became a Christian, and he had something powerful things to say about giving. One of the things he said was…
C. S. LEWIS ON GIVING
“Give until it hurts.”
Have you ever done that? Have you ever given until it hurts? The great thing about giving until it hurts is that it demonstrates your faith in God… who promises to return the bread of giving that you cast on the water in manifold ways. So give until it hurts…especially during the summer months when Barah Ministries needs your faithful giving the most.
Let’s welcome up Deacon Denny Goodall with this week’s offering message.
THE OFFERING Deacon Denny Goodall
OFFERING VERSE
JOHN 16:13 But when God the Holy Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth…for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak…and He will disclose to you what is to come.
OFFERING FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE Dave McClure, Instrumental
TODAY’S BIBLE LESSON - Great Christians are Haters
The one thing we know about God’s plans for Christians, is that everything in His plan is exceeding and abundantly beyond what we could ever ask or think. Those of you who have been with Barah Ministries for a long time may remember that I used to play a Christian rap song called, “Heaven Bound,” by a group known as DC Talk. What you may not know is that the artist who sung most of DC Talk’s songs is Toby McKeehan, now known as Toby Mac. Here’s one of Toby Mac’s hits…in it he reminds us that God’s plan for us goes way beyond…here is his song…BEYOND ME.
MUSIC AND REFLECTION Be Occupied with the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ Enjoy the Singing of His Praises
BEYOND ME Toby Mac
TODAY’S BIBLE LESSON - Great Christians are Haters
Romans, Chapter 12, Verse 9…
ROMANS 12:9 Let unconditional love be without hypocrisy. ABHOR WHAT IS EVIL…cling to what is good.
What is evil?
EVIL A mental approach with a sponsor, designed with an intention to get us to do what is harmful and injurious to ourselves, resulting in misfortune, or suffering that is not beneficial, or disaster…a desire to harm.
There are some things in this life that are not harmful in and of themselves…for example, tobacco…drugs…sex…alcohol. Yet when the sponsor of evil gets his hands on these things, he perverts them. When they are perverted, they become evil…designed with an intention to harm us and to get us to voluntarily do things that injure us.
Tobacco turns into cigarettes…a plant leave turned into a costly addiction and then sprayed with additive chemicals that kill us over time.
Drugs can heal us from illness…yet when they are perverted they turn into costly addictions…substances designed to get us out of touch with reality.
When perverted, sex, designed for intimacy between married couples…turns into an insatiable desire for recreational physical contact that makes sexuality an individual and meaningless experience.
Alcohol, described in First Timothy, Chapter 5, Verse 23 as medicinal…
FIRST TIMOTHY 5:23 No longer drink water exclusively…but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments.
…becomes another expensive way to take ourselves out of touch with reality.
Evil…and evil’s sponsor…Satan…the enemy of God…pervert everything good. Let’s look at evil and evil’s sponsor in the Garden of Eden…let’s take a new look at Satan’s approach to perversion. First, let’s see the good. God commands us to cling to what is good. Everything that comes from God is good. Let’s see what God has to say to Adam in Genesis, Chapter 2, Verses 16 and 17…
GENESIS 2:16 The Lord God commanded the man, Adam, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely…”
There were many trees in the garden. Adam and his wife had much delicious wonderfulness from which to choose. But they got bored with all the goodness, very much like we do.
GENESIS 2:17 …but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat…for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”
In the Hebrew…dying die…dying spiritually…you will eventually die physically…you will be spiritually dead…you will be separated from God. Now evil comes on the scene…Genesis, Chapter 3, Verses 1 to 7…
GENESIS 3:1 Now the serpent was craftier than any beast of the field that the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?”
Some things for you to notice…Satan is a SNAKE. Satan uses the bible, something the man and woman are comfortable with, to seduce them into error. God said…“From any tree of the garden you may eat freely…” Satan, the liar said, “Has God said, ‘You shall NOT eat from any tree of the garden’?” Satan, the liar and the one who keeps on fathering lies, knows what God has said and he perverts it. Satan is appealing to the rebel in Adam and Eve. “Did God give you a law?” God actually gave a gift…“From any tree of the garden you may eat freely…”
GENESIS 3:2 The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat…”
GENESIS 3:3 “…but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it OR TOUCH IT, or you will die.’”
Some things for you to notice…why is the woman speaking? Adam is there. Why isn’t he speaking up? He’s in charge. Like so many men today, Adam is passive. Second, why is the SNAKE speaking to the woman? Like all snakes, Satan is slithering in through the back door. Third, why did the woman distort what God said, changing it to something He clearly did not say?
GENESIS 3:4 The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die!” Some things for you to notice…Satan is calling God a liar. God says, “In the day that you eat from the tree in the middle of the garden, you will surely die.” Dying die. Dying spiritually…you will eventually die physically. Satan is saying God has given you a rule. (Break it). God is not telling the truth. (Don’t believe Him). Satan is overwhelming the emotional senses of the man and the woman.
GENESIS 3:5 “For God knows that in the day you eat from the tree in the middle of the garden, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Some things for you to notice…Satan wants Adam and Eve to be like him…you can “make yourselves like The Most High”…you can be like God…but God doesn’t want you to be like Him…He wants to keep you down! God is holding out on you.
GENESIS 3:6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate…and she gave also to her husband WHO WAS WITH HER, and he ate.
Some things for you to notice…I’ve always thought that Eve wandered away from her husband when the SNAKE accosted her. She was actually WITH her husband as this deception took place, and he allowed it to happen. He wasn’t on Eve’s side. What a wimp!
GENESIS 3:7 Then the eyes of both of them (Adam ad Eve) were opened…and they knew that they were naked…and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.
This is how evil works in our lives…our “eyes are opened”…but what are our eyes opened to? Our eyes are opened to evil, and we begin to crave it.
Evil influences. Evil seduces. Evil encourages Christians not to grow. Evil encourages Christians not to take God’s advice. Evil lies to Christians, telling us we are not victorious. Remember the words to the song, The Voice of Truth?
VOICE OF TRUTH
The waves are calling out my name And they laugh at me Reminding me of all the times I've tried before and failed
VOICE OF TRUTH
The waves they keep on telling me Time and time again. “Boy, you’ll never win!” “You’ll never win!”
And we believe it.
As Christians, we get to make a choice about how we handle evil and how we handle sin. God gives us a simple way to handle it…He says, “ABHOR EVIL.” Great Christians are haters of evil! What must we do instead? Philippians, Chapter 4, Verse 8…
PHILIPPIANS 4:8 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever things are right, whatsoever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good repute…if there is any excellence, and there is…and if there is anything worthy of praise, and there is…let you minds dwell on these things.
Abhor evil…cling to what is good!
GOD WANTS YOU! Make the Most Important Decision of Your Life
The closing moments of this study are for the benefit of anyone who does not have a personal relationship with the Sovereign God of the Universe, the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We want you to know that GOD WANTS YOU.
How often do you think about eternal matters?
It’s easy for human beings to be deceived…to get sucked into the trap of thinking we are important. When things are going well for us, we seldom prepare for the time when things will not go well. The bible tells us that Satan, the enemy of God is the one who deceives us. First Peter, Chapter 5, Verse 8b says…
FIRST PETER 5:8b Be of sober spirit…be on the alert. Your adversary…the devil (Satan) prowls around like a roaring lion…seeking someone to devour.
Satan busies us with things that distract us from eternal matters. He diverts our attention to meaningless things like material wealth. The bible tells us the deception of material wealth pervaded the church at Laodicea. Revelation, Chapter 3, Verses 15 to 18…
REVELATION 3:15 “I (the Lord Jesus Christ) know your deeds…that you (like the water in you homes) are neither cold nor hot…I (the Lord Jesus Christ) wish that you were cold or hot.”
REVELATION 3:16 “So because you are lukewarm (like the water in you homes)…and neither hot nor cold…I will vomit you out of My mouth.”
The Lord loves commitment. The Lord abhors half-heartedness in all its forms…
REVELATION 3:17 “Because you say, ‘I am rich…and have become wealthy…and have need of nothing,’ and you do not know that you are (spiritually) wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked…”
REVELATION 3:18 “I (the Lord Jesus Christ) advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich…and white garments so that you may clothe yourself (not the black wool that made you rich)…so that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed…and I advise you to buy from Me eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.”
Material wealth often hides spiritual poverty. What is it that the Lord wants the wealthy to see? He wants them to see what He says in Matthew, Chapter 6, Verse 24…
MATTHEW 6:24 “No one can serve two masters…for either he will hate the one and love the other…or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”
The Lord wants the wealthy to see that there are only two ways to get to heaven. One way to get to heaven is to be perfect like God is perfect, because God demands perfection from us…not wealth. Many wealthy people think their wealth makes them perfect.
Once we sin, we are no longer perfect. James, Chapter 2, Verse 10…
JAMES 2:10 For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of breaking the whole law.
The other way to get to heaven is by means of God’s grace. God’s grace is free of charge. In John, Chapter 14, Verse 6, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself said…
JOHN 14:6 …to the doubting apostle, Thomas, “I am the way (to salvation), and I am the truth (through the Word of God…the gospel message), and I am the resurrection life…and no one comes to God the Father (in heaven) but through believing in Me.”
Believing in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation makes you perfect. Accepting the Lord Jesus Christ’s grace gift of eternal life offers salvation. As a result of the Lord’s work at the Cross, that paid for the sins of all mankind including yours, sin will never again be a barrier between you and God. Second Corinthians, Chapter 5, Verse 21 says…
SECOND CORINTHIANS 5:21 God the Father made Jesus Christ who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in union with Him.
So if you are imperfect, and you are, you can be made perfect by asking God to credit your account with spiritual wealth…His own righteousness…His own perfection...and that will make you wealthy…spiritually wealthy. God will honor your request, and you will be saved.
Acts, Chapter 16, Verse 31…
ACTS 16:31 “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and everyone in your household who also believes.”
John, Chapter 3, Verse 36…
JOHN 3:36 “He who believes in the Son has the resurrection life right at that moment… but he who does not obey the command to believe in the Son will not see the resurrection life…instead the wrath of God (the Lake of Fire) abides on him.”
John, Chapter 3, Verse 17…
JOHN 3:17 For God the Father did not send God the Son into the world to judge the world…but God the Father sent the Son into the world that the world might be saved through Him.
Take the free gift of eternal life right now! There’s no time to waste! God wants you. Real wealth happens when you know how much God loves you and when you decide to enter a relationship with Him.
Here’s a song June Murphy wrote to tell you all about God’s unconditional love for you, and it is sung from God’s perspective…the song is WHEN I SAY I LOVE YOU.
CLOSING SONG WHEN I SAY I LOVE YOU June Murphy
CLOSING PRAYER Let us pray...
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