Pastor Tim wraps up our series “Renewed” looking the call to live peaceably. (And yes, that includes some hot coals on peoples’ heads.)
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
Well, good evening and welcome to Steadfast. I am so glad to be here with you again as we wrap up our series Renewed. We’ve been thinking over the last weeks as we looked at 2 Corinthians 13 about the call to renewal, the call of the church to act like the church. The call to forgive one another, to comfort one another, to encourage one another. And in each step, we’ve also looked at how that affects the outside world. How are we showing God’s love to the world? And that’s going to be our focus tonight in the final one of the phrases we’re examining in that verse that Paul gives that instruction to the Corinthians. And as we think about that, how do we show Jesus’ love to the world? It’s a very tall order. It’s a challenging order, even an overwhelming command.
And so let’s come before our God because we need His strength and His guidance. We can’t do it on our own. So let’s come before Him right now. Father, would you guide our hearts tonight? Would you help us to see those areas that we aren’t showing your love very well? Would you strengthen us that we might show your love better? That we might stand more firmly rooted in your truth? That we might live with the confidence that you are the victor? You are the one who is in charge of everything, that we need not fear, but instead we are called to follow you with the confidence that you are making all things new. We pray this in the name of our Savior Jesus. Amen.
This last week has been sort of a delight. If you’ve been on social media at all, you have encountered the Bernie meme. The photoshopped pictures of Senator Sanders from the inauguration being placed all over the place, all over the world. Sometimes the galaxy. I saw one last night with him on the Death Star. I’ve seen him all kinds of places. And here on screen you see what our worship leader arranged, which was for Senator Sanders to join me during Steadfast. First time I’ve ever had a senator on our livestream. What a neat thing.
What’s been fun about this, I think what made it so delightful to me, is it didn’t matter if you were someone who would have eagerly voted for Senator Sanders or couldn’t imagine a worse future president than Senator Sanders. It really didn’t matter. We all were just delighting in it. It was just fun. We were just smiling at something that took away from the burden and the fear and the anger that has so permeated so much of our culture. For a moment, we could just be refreshed. It reminded me of the beginning of the pandemic, after things started to shut down when people started to make an effort to bring a smile to each other’s faces. Whether it was a goofy video online, or people putting up Christmas lights in March, whatever it might have been, different things that we would do to try to refresh each other.
How often it is that we need refreshment, and in this world, everyone is weary for different reasons, different things that we’ve faced, different burdens that we carry that we need refreshment from. When we think about what it means to show God’s love to the world, we’re called to be sort of like those examples of refreshment, whether it’s the silly meme on Facebook, or the Christmas lights in March, or whatever it might be, but so much more than that. Because we point to a God who is so much more than what we can ever be.
When we think about the world and people going through their lives in which they have no hope beyond this world, they have no hope other than to somehow try to make this life seem meaningful. What Christians are called to do is to show the way to the one who offers a true refreshment, a refreshment far greater than a wonderful photoshopped image. A refreshment that actually cuts us out of the darkness of this life and paces us into the grand renewal of the world that God has ahead. Now that’s true refreshment. And that’s what we find as we continue in 2 Corinthians 13, verse 11.
Paul says this, “Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another. But now this: live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.” The God of love and peace will be with you.
And he goes on then, if we jump over to Romans, he talks more about what he means here. He says, “Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” To do what’s honorable, to live peaceably—these are tall orders—but if we think about what does it mean to be God’s refreshment in the world, what does it mean to live in peace, this is the picture of it.
We are called to live honorably. What does that mean? What does it mean to live honorably? Not only amongst each other as believers but amongst all people. People who have some idea of who Jesus is, people who have no idea who Jesus is, people who think that what the Bible says is brilliant and wonderful and God’s eternal truth, and people who think that we’re just following some fairy tale.
What does it mean, regardless of the background of the people around us, that as they see us live out the truth of God’s word, even if they don’t believe it, that they’re caught up in the wonder of what God is doing in our lives so much that they start to wonder if that God is real and should be followed? Because that’s what we’re called to do.
If you are such a person tonight that hasn’t believed the Bible yet and you’re watching tonight, I hope that’s the picture you see of Christians. But too often that’s not what we show. But this is what we are called to do, and this is what we’re trying to be as we seek to follow Jesus more fully. We’re called to consider every action in our lives, and not consider them in the sense of, okay, what do I want to do next? But more importantly, what is it that I’m going to do next as far as how it’s going to impact those around me?
What will it do to other people? What will it say to other people? Whatever I happen to say, whatever I think, whatever I do, wherever I am, the goal is to live peaceably or honorably amongst all people. Sometimes that’s really straightforward. There are a lot of things that maybe aren’t straightforward to do but are straightforward in what we should do. And these are the things where we shouldn’t lie, we shouldn’t lose our tempers, we shouldn’t be deceitful, we shouldn’t steal things. We should, in other words, live as pretty much every decent person in the world agrees is good. And even these things are hard at times. Even these things at times are going to challenge us.
But if we simply ask the question, what is the right thing to do? These are the straightforward things. And then there’s the challenges of thinking, well, here’s what I want to do, and here’s maybe even something good that God has set before me in my life to do. And I want to make sure that I protect it and I put all my strength towards it. And we start to think of the different shortcuts we could do, the different ways we could ensure the result we want. And some of those areas where we start to be challenged, maybe to compromise on our values, to compromise on what God has called us to do.
And of course, in those areas, once again, we’re called to live faithfully. Even when it’s challenging, even when it sounds easier to do something else. All this is still pretty straightforward stuff. If we’re used to reading the Bible, if we come before God’s word, even if we don’t know much about it, we know that God calls us to follow what He has in here. And so as we wrestle with it, we start to see these things, that these are the things that we are meant to do.
But how hard it is to do this? It’s hard to do when we’re doing it with other people who share our worldview. When we look at Christians, and we believe in the same God, we have the same Savior, we have, at least in many ways, the same set of beliefs, and yet it’s so hard to do it even with other believers. How much harder is it then when we’re dealing with people that have no interest in what the Bible says? When people look at us weird and think we’re delusional? When people actually think that instead of us living honorably, many of the things the Bible calls us to do are dishonorable? How hard is it then? How do we live out this call in the world when the world doesn’t necessarily value the things of God? What do we do?
Well, it might seem challenging to us, and I think part of that is because we’re used to living in what we might term at least a vaguely Christian society that’s increasingly less so. But for much of the Church, most believers have found themselves in societies that haven’t valued the things that God values, that haven’t sought after the ways of the Lord, and yet those Christians could still live in a way that would catch people’s attention, not in a negative sense but in how they were following after God. And that’s what we’re called to do, too.
An example that has often come to mind in this, and one that I think fits so well here, is one that goes back to a practice that was known in the Roman Empire as exposing. You see, back in the early Church’s days, as it dwelt primarily in the Roman Empire—that was not a Christian empire—the belief was that if parents of a child decided that child was not useful to them, they could simply take the baby out into the wilderness and leave it there to die. They didn’t have to do the unpleasantness of actually killing the child. They just let the elements take care of it. And this was actually legal to do. It was a permissible thing to do in the Roman society.
There’s a shocking letter I read earlier that is a letter from a Roman soldier to his wife. And it’s, in so many ways, a beautiful picture of this letter of this soldier who misses his family and loves them. He speaks of his love of his wife, he speaks of his love of their son, but apparently they’re expecting another child. And he tells his wife that if she gives birth while he’s away, that if the child is a son, that she should keep him and take care of him. And he was going to be sending additional funds to help with that. But if the child were a girl, she should expose her. She should take that child and allow her to die.
And it’s so stark, the contrast of this loving father that then turns and says, if I have a daughter, kill her. He doesn’t say it that way. So much like we often don’t say things in the starkest, harshest ways. But this was a common practice. This letter, as shocking as the content is, is not a shocking thing in the Roman Empire of that time.
How did Christians value life in the way that the Bible calls us to, that every single life is sacred before God, in a society that felt that way, that you could just dispose of children? Well, what they did, and then built a reputation for the church through, was they actually just went out and loved their neighbors, those babies that had been left out in the wilderness. Christians would go and they’d bring them back to monasteries or bring them into their homes if they were wealthy families and raise them up. They wouldn’t let these children die. And so even the people of the Roman Empire who thought this was a perfectly acceptable practice came to see the honorableness of the Christians’ actions. Yes, they were countercultural, but they were countercultural in a way that fit exactly with the proclamation of the gospel, that as they heard about these Christians who followed this man who had been crucified and they said had died for them, who was more than a man. He was God himself who would sacrifice himself for the sins of the world. They could see the sacrificial love that the Christians were demonstrating, and even if they didn’t think it was necessary, they thought it was honorable.
I love what Kirk Walden says in reflecting on that dark moment in the past of history. He says, “Changing culture started with Christians doing what Christians do.” You see, when we actually follow Jesus, when we actually do what Christians ought to do, culture changes in ways we could never accomplish by simply shouting and proclaiming to people that don’t yet care about God’s word what God’s word says. Because people see us actually living in accordance with God’s word. They may not know that at the time, but they say, “Well, why would you do this?” And they see Jesus’ love being demonstrated.
And that may not cause spectacular cultural change in a moment where we see just a massive sweep of the church, but what do we see? We see lives being changed one at a time as people encounter Jesus through the lives of believers. And as they do, then they become believers themselves. That’s what we’re called to do as Christians. That’s part of living peaceably by simply going into a world that is filled with discord that doesn’t live in genuine peace and living so truly according to God’s love that we usher in peace in places where it is missing.
What do we do as Christians? What is it that Christians should be doing that does change culture? It simply looks like following Jesus and living sacrificially. And that’s what Paul goes on to say as we turn back to Romans 12, verses 19 to 20. He says,
Now, I know we all want to jump into the burning coals part. That’s what always captures the attention in that passage that Paul’s quoting from Proverbs. But before we get to that, let’s think for a moment what it means that vengeance is the Lord’s. It means living in confidence. We don’t have to go and seek to avenge ourselves. We don’t have to defend ourselves. We don’t have to defend God. We don’t have to defend the church’s purposes or the values of the church. We don’t have to defend the church’s purposes or the values that the Bible espouses to the world in such a way that we have to somehow essentially conquer it. We know that God has already claimed the victory. He is already in control.
And because of that, because we know that God defends His purposes, we can show kindness to the world, even when it’s undeserved. God has shown us even though we don’t deserve it. You see, too often we get wrapped up in this need to somehow prove that people need to be put in their place, that they need to understand how inferior they are if they don’t follow God’s word, and how horrible they are for the things they do. And we forget that what they really need to hear is Jesus’ love. That’s what we really need, too.
The Roman Christians, as they went and they rescued these little babies that had been left to exposure, weren’t going and shouting in the face of the parents who had abandoned them quite legally. But rather, they were taking those innocent children and showing Jesus’ love to them. And that did so much more to transform the culture because you couldn’t help but be caught up in the love of Jesus, even if you didn’t know who Jesus was yet.
Jesus shows undeserved kindness to us. How often is it that we stray from what He calls us to do? We can turn to almost any page of scripture and find some way that we’re not living up to what God has called us to be and to do. And yet, what does He do? He shows us His kindness. That’s what we see as Jesus preaches the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, verse 44. He says,
God could withhold His Son. God could withhold rain from the people who are unjust, the people who are undeserving, and then there would be a dead planet where no one lived. Because none of us deserve His kindness. What does He do? He takes us, even when we’re unjust, even when we’re not following Him, even when we don’t yet know who He is, and He gives us the necessities of life that we can live our lives and come to know the living God.
And as we look at the undeserved kindness that God shows us, we then show that kindness to others. Just as God gives us the rain and plants growing and everything else that we need that we might live, so, too, as we encounter people, even enemies, Jesus says, even those who oppose us, even those who persecute us, what are we called to do? We’re called to do the same towards them.
How can we preach to people about a God who shows undeserved mercy when we’re unwilling to show mercy? And yet, what do we do? When we do, we show Jesus’ love. If we encounter someone who has been cruel to us, who has been mean to us, but that person needs clothing, we clothe them. If they need a drink, we give them a drink.
This is very difficult. No doubt, that’s not what we want to do in our natural human hearts. That’s what we’re called to do through the power of the Holy Spirit. You see, our hearts want us to simply fall into the ways of the world, and if someone’s mean to us, we’re mean to them. If someone insults us, we insult them. If someone tries to put us in what they think is our place, we put them in their place.
But what does Jesus do? He shows us love even when we don’t deserve it. And the problem is, when we start to buy into what the world says is the way that we deal with these things, that it’s a dog-eat-dog world, and we have to make sure we’re the dog that’s doing the eating, we end up being conquered by the world. We end up being conquered by evil.
That’s what we see as we move on to verse 21. Paul says, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
That word overcome is the word for victory. There’s essentially a victor in this battle, and the victor can either be the evil of the world, as we start to do what the world does, as we seek to get what we deserve, and we seek to show vengeance when we should not, and we end up turning away from people who need mercy because they have not been merciful to us. We can do all those things. The world might even say it’s perfectly permissible. It’s a sensible thing to do. But we end up being conquered by the world.
And yet, as Christians, because we’re human beings, we want to play that game. We want to go that route because it feels like what we deserve. It feels like the thing that will allow us to protect what we care about, whether it’s our jobs, or our families, or our church, or the parts of our culture that we love. And yet that’s not how Jesus works.
Jesus doesn’t work by acting in ways that are evil to somehow accomplish good. Jesus claims victory over what is evil by doing good. See, evil seemed like it was triumphing as Jesus went to the cross. And indeed, those who sent Him there intended evil, but God would not allow that evil to triumph. Jesus didn’t go and say, “Okay, you’re going to try to crucify me; I’m going to just burn you to smithereens. I’m going to call down all kinds of fire upon you, and I’m going to make sure you die really, really painful, slow deaths.”
What did He do as He was being crucified? He prayed, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”
This is not the easier way, but it is the better way. And that leads us to a question that we need to ask about our actions throughout life. We need to ask, who is the victor of my actions? Is the victor of my actions the world? Because I’ve compromised, I’ve followed the ways of the world, I’m living like the world, I’m throwing insults like the world, I’m taking advantage of every shortcut I can make, even if it’s morally compromised like the world. Or am I living in a way that’s so different that even if the world doesn’t understand it, it says it’s honorable because it’s so filled with love?
Am I living like those early Christians that go and rescue those innocent babies that are just left out there to die? Or am I looking at my rights and what makes life easiest for me? It’s natural to look out for my own survival. And survival isn’t a bad thing. God wants us to live fruitful lives, joyful lives. But it’s not what we’re called to look out for.
When we’re living as faithful Christians, we do something else. We need to ask, what else do we look towards instead of what makes us happy or even just whatever we need to do to accomplish what we think are good ends? We need to ask what’s good in the moment, what’s following Jesus in the moment.
In preparing for this message, I was struck by a passage from an essay by C.S. Lewis. Lewis was writing in the wake of the first atomic bombs, and he wrote this over a half-century ago, reflecting on how people were willing to go to great lengths and to compromise all kinds of values to somehow try to protect survival. That the fear that not only they themselves and their families, but maybe all of human civilization could be wiped out was causing them to make huge compromises.
And as Lewis reflected on this, he noted that we needed to make sure to be looking to God and not to somehow thinking that we were the ones that were going to save the world. Because when we do, we start to value the wrong things. Note what he says here. He says, “Those who care for something else more than civilization are the only people by whom civilization is at all likely to be preserved. Those who want heaven must serve man best, must have served earth best. Those who love man less than God do the most.”
What’s our calling? Our calling is a calling of service. Our calling is a calling to love God. May we love God first and foremost. And when we do that, we’re not willing to make those compromises. We’re not willing to chase after things that are displeasing to God. You see, when we love God first and foremost, we look at those compromises that the world calls us to, those compromises that the world calls us to, those things that ultimately are dishonorable and displeasing to God.
And we realize we can’t do them because we love God, not the world. And even when it feels like it threatens the things that we want and the things that we love and the things that we think are going to fulfill our lives, we realize that we don’t need to worry about that. God is the one who is in control. What we need to do is follow the example of Jesus.
When we love God first and foremost, as Lewis speaks about here, through that, more may be renewed. More may enter the kingdom. That we can continue the work of the church by living at peace in this way. That the world may not understand why we live at peace. The world may still think our values are backward and confusing. But one thing the world can’t say is that we’re living dishonorably.
And when it has to wrestle with why we are willing to put up with difficulty and persecution, when we’re willing to be mocked and scorned and we don’t play into the game of the world, then those same people that ask that question have to wrestle with, and who is this Jesus that those Christians serve? When we love God best, what do we find? We find that we show love to our neighbors in ways that we can’t do on our own.
Let that be our prayer tonight. Will you pray with me? Father, thank you for your love. Thank you for loving us when we don’t deserve it. Lord, would you help us to do your will? Would you help us to love you when circumstances draw us away and we just want to defend what’s important to us? Or even those times that we feel like we’re loving you but we’re compromising the very things you’ve called us to because it somehow seems like it’s going to get to the end that we think that even you want.
Let us recognize that you never call us to conquer with evil, but you’ve sent us out as those who conquer evil with good through the power of your Spirit. Would you assure us when we’re fearful? Would you correct us when we’ve gone astray? Would you help us to live lives that don’t distract with our own foibles but instead point the light towards you that more would know Jesus, that more would have hope in him, and it is in His name that we pray. Amen.
Well, I hope this series has been encouraging to you as we’ve thought about what it means to be renewed, what it means to be forgiving to one another, comfort one another, to love one another in the church, and then, as we’ve looked at tonight, to love the world as well, to be people who bring that comfort to the world, refreshment to the world.
If this has been encouraging to you, I would so appreciate if you’d share this video. You can help us to reach more people with God’s comfort and His love and about who He is by simply sharing it. If you’re on YouTube or Facebook or any other platform that lets you, consider also giving it a like. These sorts of things actually do make a difference, and I’d be grateful if you’d help us get the word out through that.
If there’s any way I can be praying for you as you seek to be one who lives at peace with the world, I would love to hear from you. You can shoot me an email. If you have any comments or questions, you can send those an email as well or post them down below in the comments, and we can pray for each other and encourage each other because that’s how we do this. This is too hard for any one person to do, but through the power, the Spirit, and the gift of other people that God brings into our lives, we can do this and show His love to the world.
It can be, though, something where it feels like we just have a bunch of things we need to do, and so that’s why I’m really excited about next week’s series. That’s Delighted in God. We’re going to be turning to the very first Psalm and thinking about what it means to live a life in accord with Psalm 1. And what we find in the first Psalm is that we are called to be those who delight in God, even as we look at His commandments and what He calls us to do, that in that, they are meant to bring us delight and light.
And I hope that you’ll join me for that at 7 p.m. next Monday night. In the meantime, once again, I’d love to hear from you, and I hope you have a wonderful and blessed week. Thank you again for joining me tonight. I’ll see you again on Monday.