Evangelical Free Church of Embarass

Teacher: Bob Jordan

Today we’re going to be looking at the next part of scripture in this series called The Transformed Life, Romans 12:17-21. This is a life that is to be a “reasonable act of service,” as Paul says in Romans 12:1, based on what God has accomplished on our behalf. In the first 11 chapters of Romans, Paul lays out the fact that all people are under the penalty of not living up to the standard of a holy and righteous God. The Jews stand condemned before God because they had the Mosaic Law; the Gentiles should have been able to look at creation and know that there was a God but also the law was written in their heart. As soon as you condemn someone else of doing wrong and then you do the same thing you stand condemned before God. So ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Every one is standing in need of God’s salvation. And starting half way through chapter 3, that’s exactly what you have – justification by faith. God is both just and the Justifier because He punished sin in the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross and He extends to us, then, grace if we’ll accept what Christ has done on our behalf. Then starting in chapter 5, you have the benefits of justification by faith. In chapter 5 it’s “No condemnation before God.” Chapter 6, “you’re freed from the burden of sin.” Not that you’re sinless but no longer does a believer HAVE to sin. They are no longer a slave to sin. In chapter 7, “You’re freed from the penalty of the law.” There’s a tremendous burden if you have to live up to the law, that sinless perfection. No one can live up to the law, and that would be a tremendous burden that we are freed from because of the grace of God. In chapter 8, we’re adopted into the family of God and “nothing can separate us from the love of God.” Chapters 9, 10, and 11, are kind of a parenthetical flow of logic of how God is going to be dealing with two different people groups – the Gentiles and the Jews. He is bringing them to Himself.

Then in chapter 12, verse 1, you have the application of all of that teaching. Therefore, he says, you need to “present yourself as a living sacrifice to God.” With the animal sacrifice, the animals were put on the altar, they were killed as an offering to God. We as believers, then, are to put ourselves on the altar and be a living sacrifice to God. And part of that, it says, is that you need to “renew your mind,” you need to concentrate your mind. As a friend of mine said, “you need to reprogram the computer.” You need to think differently. You need to have different priorities. You need to have different values and out of those values and priorities, then, come different kinds of actions. And that’s what he’s going to talk about the rest of chapter 12 and into 13, just practical Christianity. After you’re thinking differently with different priorities, with different core values, then this is how you ought to behave. And we’re ready now to look at verse 17 of chapter 12 and down to the end of the chapter.

“Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible as far as it depends upon you, live at peace with everybody. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath. For it is written, ‘It is Mine to avenge. I will repay.’ says the Lord. On the contrary, if you enemy is hungry feed him, if he is thirsty give him something to drink. In doing this you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.”

When Marlin asked me to keep on the same series that he’s been doing, I was really happy about that because I don’t know the needs of the congregation nearly as well as he does. It’s very difficult for me to pick a passage. Then I went home and looked at the passage and I said, “Oh my! I am not into retribution.” This passage that we are looking at today actually is tied back up to verse 14, which Marlin took last week. It said, “Bless those that persecute you. Bless and do not curse.” Well, I know very little about persecution. When Pat and I got home, we were talking about that. Marlin had a blank on the study sheet for us to write the name of a person that is persecuting us. Neither one of us could fill in that blank. She said, “You know, maybe when I was teaching and there was some first grade teachers that kind of snubbed me, it may have been because we had a Bible study going and they didn’t care for the Bible study.” But she wasn’t real sure. My only time when I know I was persecuted for being a believer happened 45 years ago, before most of you were born! I was in Korea and I was stationed with an outfit in the Technical Intelligence Corps if you can imagine such a thing. And we got a new Sergeant First Class. He was the highest non-commissioned officer we had in this little group and he actually hated me with a passion. It was because of my Christian testimony and he got me transferred to another unit. My friends tried to keep it from happening and they even went to the chaplain to see if they could keep it from happening, but he was dead-set. I was gone! The First Executive Officer came up to me and said, “Don’t worry about it, Son. I’m leaving this place just as soon as I can. I’ll get you transferred to where I’m going to.” So my persecution didn’t end up to be all that great. I did get transferred but after I got transferred I got 2 of the fastest promotions known to man from this other guy. He was the company commander.

I know very little about persecution. And really when you stop to think about it and look at church history and look at what’s going on around the world today, there’s not any of us that know very much about persecution. I mean, people may say some snide remarks either to your face or behind your back but just look what happened in the New Testament times. The man who wrote these words was in prison because of his faith – Paul. Cicero declared any new religions in the Roman Empire to be illegal, so the countries that they conquered, those religions were acceptable. They were authorized, but nothing new could come up. And the penalty for having a new religion was death. If you look at Acts 24, the Jews were making 3 charges against Paul. One, that he had desecrated the temple. The Romans wouldn’t have been too concerned about that one. The second one was that he was the leader of the Nazirite sect and that’s what they’re saying. He is the leader of a new, unauthorized religion. And that’s what he was on trial for. And then thirdly, that he was causing riots all over the world among the Jews. When you look at Acts, in fact Luke and Acts both were written to an individual, Theophilis. I believe that they were written to the person who was going to defend Paul before Nero, because it shows quite clearly in Luke and Acts that Christianity is not new. In fact, it is the fulfillment of Judaism. It’s where it was all headed. It’s just that the Jews rejected it. But it is, in fact, the goal of Judaism – the Messiah. And not only that, though there were riots everywhere Paul went, he was not instigating the riots. It was the Jews that were rioting against him, not he and Christians against the Jews. But he was in prison at that time. Christians had been killed at that time because of their faith. Stephen, before the Sanhedrin, is drug out and just stoned to death with rocks. One of the apostles was run through with a sword. None of us have been run through with a sword; none of us have been stoned and left for dead yet. When you look at the first 300 years of Christianity it was a bloodbath. The Roman persecution of Christians started with Nero. There was a big fire in Rome. Rome had 14 sections; 3 of them were totally destroyed. Only 3 were unscathed. The rest of Rome got extensive damage. The rumor was that Nero had caused the fire and that he didn’t care. So what he did, he turned the blame to the Christian community. The Christian community was suspect anyway because they were “eating the Lord Jesus Christ’s body and drinking His blood.” They were talking about communion. So they were looked on as cannibals to start with, having secret meetings, so they were very suspect. Then when they turned the wrath on them, there were 300 years of persecution of the early church. It peaked actually around 302 AD, where thousands and thousands of Christians gave their life. They either had to sacrifice to heathen gods or they went to their death, and a lot of them went to their death – they went to their death singing hymns and we’re talking about children as well as parents. Tremendous persecution and it wasn’t until the first Christian emperor, Constantine in 306 AD that that terrible persecution then lifted. We don’t know much about that kind of persecution.

So I looked at this passage and said, “What in the world am I going to talk about when it talks about, you know, persecution?” Then I looked at the length of it and I thought, “Oh my! I like big passages so you have a lot to talk about.” Marlin likes these little passages so he said, “Here, take this passage and talk about it.” So then I started looking at it and wondered how complicated is the passage because I really kind of like a complicated passage to begin to understand it and then explain it. There’s only 1 thing in this passage that is at all complicated and that’s “do good things so that there will be heaped burning coals on their head.” I thought, “Oh boy! What does that mean.” Then I started to think about the passage. The more I thought about the passage the more I got into it and the more I really like the passage. One thing I noticed in the passage, it’s almost poetic in the way it’s set up. It’s got a negative, a positive…a negative, a positive…a negative, a positive. If you look at the Psalms, Hebrew poetry is contrasting and parallel ideas. In the Psalms you’ll have a theme repeated and then the same theme repeated in different words. Or you’ll have the theme that’s stated and then the opposite will be stated. That’s what we have here. You’ve got a “Do not” and then a “Do,” and a “Do not” and a “Do,” and a “Do not” and a “Do.” Let’s look at it again. It’s kind of neat.

“DO NOT repay evil for evil. Be careful to DO what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it’s possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. DO NOT take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrat,h for it is written, ‘It is Mine to avenge. I will repay’ says the Lord. On the contrary, (here’s the positive) if your enemy is hungry feed him, if he is thirsty give him something to drink. In doing this you’ll heap burning coals on his head. DO NOT be overcome by evil, but rather overcome evil with good.” You know, the one thing that’s kind of difficult to explain there is treat everybody good. You know, don’t put yourself in the place of God. Don’t take on wrath. That’s not your place, that’s God’s place. Leave the wrath to God. Leave Him pouring out punishment. Don’t you attempt it. What you need to do is treat them nicely. Treat your enemy well and then you’ll heap burning coals on his head. When I read that I thought, you’re going to treat them really well and you’re going to set them up for the terrible wrath of God, because if they just treat you bad and you treat them good then they are more culpable, they’re more defenseless before God and He is really going to get them then. The problem with that interpretation is that it doesn’t fit. That’s not overcoming evil with good. That’s using good for the sake of evil. Not only that, it’s very hypocritical. I’m going to treat my enemies well so that they really “get it” when they stand before God.

Now, you go back and you look at that quote that’s in the passage. It’s a quote from Proverbs 25. (That’s the same chapter, by the way, that says it’s better to live on a corner of the housetop than it is to live with a quarrelsome wife. So if you need that, they’re both in the same place. They’re just a few verses apart.) This one is an exact quote except that when you look back at the Proverb, it adds one other little phrase after it. It says, “And the Lord will reward you.” Other than that, it’s the exact quote. So going back to Proverbs is not really all that helpful to interpret what is meant by it. Here’s what I think is meant by it. You treat your enemies well and they’re going to come under conviction. They’re going to come closer to the Lord, perhaps even to know the Lord. They’re going to become remorseful and it’s going to be like burning coals on their head, that conviction that they have from God, and indeed, by your actions you will overcome evil with good.

Apparently this was literal in Egypt and it may be that that’s where they got this picture. When an Egyptian was remorseful, when he was repenting, they would actually carry burning coals on their head. Ofelia’s frowning. It does not sound like a good thing to do. No, it doesn’t to me either. It would be like walking across fire or sleeping on a bed of nails, this type of thing. So it was to show your remorsefulness, your repentance. So it may be that that picture in the Proverbs is that Egyptian picture. But it makes sense, then, that it is conviction that they are coming under, not God’s wrath because you’re going to overcome evil with good.

When you go back to church history there’s an interesting example of an individual that overcame evil with good. Cambridge University in Cambridge, England had a core of young men who were believers. This was in 1882. They decided to invite Dwight L. Moody to come over and to preach in Cambridge. He was going to have a preaching service in the community during the day and at Cambridge University at night. Well, you’ll never be any smarter than you are as a college freshman. I mean, that’s just the height of intellect right there. Moody was not a university man. He was not British. He was not from the upper middle class, and that’s saying it a little bit kindly. Let me tell you a little bit about Moody so you can explain why they looked down on this man. Moody quit school at age 13 to go to work. He was born in Massachusetts and you’ll sometimes hear preachers say that Moody sold shoes. Well, at 17 years old he did work in a shoe store, but he moved to Chicago at 19 years old and became a traveling salesman and a very successful businessman. He didn’t have much formal education but he was very successful. What he did was, in the Jerusalem Church he rented 4 pews there. (I don’t know if you noticed that, but some of us have pews rented so you need to STAY OUT of our pews, by the way!!!! J [kidding] ) But he rented 4 pews and then he would go around to the hotels or the men on the street and he’d invite them into church. This is how Moody started. Can you just imagine the furor that must have caused in the Jerusalem Church? Here he goes out and gets street people and he fills up 4 pews. But he rented the pews so there wasn’t much they could say. He also started schools in Chicago. He started a girls school in Chicago called Northfield Seminary. He started Hebron’s Boys School in Chicago. So he was a real doer, but he did not become well known until he went to England 9 years before the Cambridge boys had asked him to come and he was there for 4 months and he spoke to 2-1/2 million people over that 4-month period. He wasn’t well known in this country up until that point but that’s what gave him fame in this country and it was after that that he started preaching to large groups in this country as well. But he was an unschooled man. In fact, when he was talking about Daniel to the Cambridge boys, he would pronounce it “Dannel” like Dannel Boone. They came in – 1700 college students came in complete in their academic gowns and mortarboards and they were there to have fun. When Sankie sang they would holler out, “Encore, Encore!” and when Moody would preach, they’d say, “Right on, brother. Right on!” They threw firecrackers. They built a pyramid out of chairs. They talked loudly. They would call up humorous questions from the audience. They were out to humiliate the man. One reason that they invited him was because there was a guy there who went by the initials, J.E.K. Stud. He was the captain of the Cricket team. He was well known there. His father had been converted under the preaching of Moody in an earlier visit. It was kind of interesting how it happened. They opened that service in prayer and this guy went on and on and on in prayer until finally Moody got up and said, “While our brother finishes his prayer, let’s sing hymn number ……” Well, the Stud brothers’ (there were 3 of these guys) father then, who had been a real worldly person said, “Anybody that can be that practical deserves to be listened to and he became a believer.” And all three of his sons became believers. Well, the captain of the cricket team (J.E.K. Stud) wrote a letter, after that night, to the school newspaper, the Cambridge Reporter. It was a very positive letter. He did not light into them. He simply said, “You’re probably unaware that Moody was a guest of some of your fellow students. We had invited him here. He is a guest in our country as well. And you have an opportunity to come back and to hear this man and to show that you are as least as gentlemanly as those at Oxford.” (He appealed a little bit to their pride.) And the attendance went way down. But by November 12th (it started on November 5th) there were 1800 students in that audience listening to every word that Moody said. It made a tremendous impact on English churches because a lot of these people were training for the ministry, both in Free Church (and free church does not mean Evangelical Free in England, it just mean non-Anglican) but also the Anglican church, and missions around the world. That series of messages made an impact in England for probably over 100 years all because one lad overcame evil with good.

It’s very easy to be against something. It’s very easy to light into something. It’s very difficult to be proactive and to overcome evil with good. One of the evils we’ve got in our country right now is abortion. It would be extremely easy to take a placard, nail it to a post and go around protesting against abortion. It’s much more difficult, though, to overcome evil with good. To make sure that those mothers have a home to live in, to have the financial support to carry that baby, to help them raise that baby or put that baby up for adoption. There are groups that do both, but I think a lot of Christians have never really gotten rid of their anger. They just try to channel it into acceptable (acceptable to them) areas. It’s much easier to be against something than it is to be so proactive that you’re overcoming evil with good. The results, though, can be startling if you’re willing to make that kind of commitment to the Lord.

And that’s what this passage is talking about. It’s saying, as much as possible do the right thing before everybody. It’s not talking about just within the Christian community do the right thing, but do the right thing for everybody. Business right now has a little saying. It says, “Do the right thing right the first time.” Well, I think that ought to also be our saying. We do the right thing right the first time in front of everybody. That’s one of the requirements, by the way, of an elder of the church, that he has a good reputation with those without (talking about a good reputation before non-believers.) He’s doing a right thing. What is true for them is also true for us. We do the right thing right for everybody. In addition to that, it says “If possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” Sometimes it’s not possible. We’re only half the coin. If they want to carry a grudge, if they want to be angry with us, sometimes there’s not anything we can do about that. We can’t bridge the gulf. Sometimes perhaps there can’t be any peace there because of convictions that we hold that we feel are true that we’re not going to change because they are right, they’re part of our faith, and they take objections to those principles. Well then, we can’t be at peace because they’re not going to let us be at peace. But as much as it is possible be at peace with all men.

Many Christians have just a core value of anger in them that they protest against a number of things. I’ve even seen tracts against the Living Bible. They just have never dealt with what is at the very center of their core. And that’s what causes us to act the way we act. I’ve been helping count the money after the service. I usually help Tim Blomberg or Don Girard. Now, what would happen if Tim and I were going back to count the money and somebody stops him and talks him and I go in there by myself and I’ve got a crying need for money. I mean, I’m a single parent with 5 kids (perish the thought! J) I’ve got a real crying need. Now, here’s the opportunity. He’s not there. I’ve got the money and there’s a big wad of $20 bills there. I could take the $20 bills, put them in my pocket. No one would ever know. Now, there may be some $100 bills there but I’d always be afraid…(you see, I thought this out really well). I couldn’t take the $100 bill because Tim may have given the $100 bill, then he would know it’s not there. But there’s a lot of $20 bills in the offering plate. I could take 4 or 5 of those. No one would ever be the wiser.” And you say, “Well you’d be too guilty to do that.” Hey, we can rationalize away guilt like no one even thought about. “After all, I’m a single parent. I’ve got 5 kids. You should have been taking care of me anyway. It’s the church’s responsibility. Therefore I’m not stealing something that’s not my due.” And if that doesn’t work, “God told me to do it.” That always works! So we can get rid of the guilt. I’ve got the need. I’ve got the opportunity. What’s going to keep me from doing it or allow me to do it? It’s those core values that I have within me. If I am really a person of integrity, the opportunity and the need is not going to let me steal the money, because I hang onto that integrity. I value that integrity, and I’m not going to let that integrity be compromised.

Christians should have a core value that is a godly core value. What is really important to us, then, ought to dictate our actions. If we’re going to do the right thing before everyone, if we’re going to live at peace before everyone as much as possible when it depends upon us, if we’re going to be the kind of people that overcome evil with good, then we’re going to have to have specific core values. I think they’re probably the core values that we normally refer to as the fruit of the Spirit that’s in Galatians 5, starting with verse 16. “So I say, live by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.” Then he talks about the sinful nature. Skip down to verse 22, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified their sinful nature with its passions and its desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.” These are the types of core values I think that ought to drive our life, that indeed, we, at the very core of our being, ought to be a loving person, a joyful person, a faithful person, a gentle person, and a person with self-control. As I say, I think a lot of believers have never really stopped to take a look at the core values that they have. If we fly off the handle at a moments notice, these are not our core values. If we simply are looking for causes to be against rather than taking a proactive stand against that evil and turning it into a good, these are not our core values.

You know, when I started out looking at this passage, I thought, “Well, you know, one thing about this passage, it’s not going to be very convicting to me because I’m not into retribution. But boy, when you start looking at the values that drive our actions, then it becomes extremely convicting to all of us, I think. How do you do that? How do you incorporate these values so that you’ll have those actions? It simply says here, “Keep in step with the Spirit of God.” Kind of a neat picture, isn’t it. Marching along with the Holy Spirit of God. You’re in step with Him. What does it mean? I think it means following Him. I think it means that my desire is to do the will of God, no matter what the cost. If it’s to die or sacrifice to heathen idols, I’ll die, just like the early Christians. Hopefully, we could go in like they went in, singing psalms and hymns to our death. They must have had a lot more courage than some of us have.

Paul had that as a goal. In Philippians 3, he said, “I strive for the prize of the high calling found in God, the perfection of Christ. Not that I’ve already attained it…” And what he was picturing here was running a race and he was leaning forward to try to hit that finish line. And that finish line for him in his life was the perfection found in Christ. He said, “I haven’t attained it yet.” Certainly we haven’t attained it yet, but that was what he was striving for. That’s what we ought to strive for. We ought to take a good long look at what is really at our center core, what drives our actions, and see if they match up to perfection found in Christ, if we really are loving and kind, if we really are gentle, patient, if we really have self-control. Well, none of us ever are going to achieve it until we see Christ and He’s turned us into a perfect person, but then we still ought to have that as our goal, the perfections found in Christ. That ought to be our desire. We ought to keep in step with the Spirit, moving toward that goal. Why have a goal of something that you can’t attain in this life. I think there are several reasons, but one is, we have the power of the Holy Spirit moving us in that way. God is on our side. He is going to change us into the likeness of Jesus Christ. When we see Him, we indeed will be perfect. We’ll love God and enjoy Him forever. But, we are learning some things in this life here on earth that are not created, and I think one thing that we learn is the desire to do the will of God – keep in step with the Spirit.

Well, it’s a very simple passage, pretty easy to understand, and yet, I think for us, if we really look deep within ourselves, it has a lot of ramifications. Some of us look within ourselves way too much, some of us (like me) look within ourselves way too little. And I would just pray that those of us who look way too little would consider what’s really driving our motives, what’s really driving our actions. Are we being driven by the fruit of the Spirit?