THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GOD’S HOUSEHOLD

ROMANS 2

SUNDAY BULLETIN INSERT, 7/22/07 Back to Articles

SIN, in God’s sight, begins as thought and attitude before it is deeds…

Proverbs 21:2

All deeds are right in the sight of the doer, but the LORD weighs the heart.

Matthew 15:19

“For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander.”

Matthew 5:28

“But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” 

James 4:17

Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin.

Romans 3:9

What then? Are we any better off? No, not at all; for we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin…

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GOD’S HOUSEHOLD

GOD SHOWS NO PARTIALITY (Romans 2:11), BUT EXPECTS MORE

FROM HIS OWN PEOPLE

Romans 3:1-2

Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much, in every way. For in the first place the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.

Luke 12:48

“But the one who did not know and did what deserved a beating will receive a light beating. From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.”

James 3:1

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.

1 Peter 4:17

For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God; if it begins with us, what will be the end for those who do not obey the gospel of God?

Matthew 18:6-7

“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks! Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling block comes!”

Hebrews 6:4-6

For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, since on their own they are crucifying again the Son of God and are holding him up to contempt.

Hebrews 10:26-29

For if we willfully persist in sin after having received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has violated the law of Moses dies without mercy “on the testimony of two or three witnesses.” How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by those who have spurned the Son of God, profaned the blood of the covenant by which they were sanctified, and outraged the Spirit of grace? 

Ezekiel 33:7-9 (also 3:17-21)

So you, mortal, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, “O wicked ones, you shall surely die,” and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from their ways, the wicked shall die in their iniquity, but their blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked to turn from their ways, and they do not turn from their ways, the wicked shall die in their iniquity, but you will have saved your life.

Matthew 7:3-5

“Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.”

UPDATES AFTER THE SUNDAY WORSHIP

FOLLOW-UP TO SUNDAY MESSAGE.

Paul’s long argument in Romans 1-3 is designed first to get people to understand that “all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin…”(Romans 3:9), and then to point to the remedy – Jesus Christ – that everyone needs. It is an opportunity for me to try in different ways to explain how sin works in our lives. Between Sunday mornings and Thursday nights, I have used a case study on Genesis 19 and Judges 19, an image of us on a mudslide to Hell, and a view at Romans 1 as listing symptoms in verses 28-32, some deeper causes in 23,24,26-27, and the root in verses 21 and 25.

You may have heard that in some cultures, a society might punish a thief, for example, by cutting off his hand. I realize that we don’t all agree on what makes people do wicked things, and what can stop it. But I have difficulty with the thought that one’s hand is what is really responsible for making this person steal. I would assume that if a person feels a need to steal something (for reasons that make perfect sense to them – and probably no one else), the fact that they have to use their left hand (or even their teeth) might make it a little harder to do, but would not stop them from doing it.

The Bible tells us that sin begins within. In addition to the scriptures on the insert, James 1:14-15 and 4:1-2 speak directly about this. Jesus says those harsh words in Matthew 5:29-30 about plucking out your right eye or cutting off your right hand IF IT CAUSES YOU TO SIN, but that is immediately after he says that looking at a woman with lust is committing adultery in his HEART (Matthew 5:28). So it would appear that we need HEART SURGERY.

I made a comment Sunday that I had prepared to say in more detail, but went on. I mentioned that Satan is probably the best fire-and-brimstone preacher out there. Satan’s role as accuser is outlined in Zechariah 3:1-5 and Revelation 12:10. And he will be truthful about sin, if it serves his purpose. The difference between his work and that of a truly good fire-and-brimstone preacher is that Satan is trying to tear us down (that voice that says, “you’ll never win, no point in even trying, you can’t be forgiven,” etc.), while the truly good preacher is calling us to a higher level of life.

But I believe the key for us in that passage of scripture, Matthew 7:1-5, that starts with “judge not, that ye be not judged,” but ends with the instruction, “first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.” I see two dominant forms of church out there today:

1 – the churches that are pointing out everyone else’s specks – don’t deal with the logs;

2 – the churches that avoid pointing out other’s specks, so that no one will come back to them about the logs – also don’t deal with the logs.

I suspect that all of us tend to one or the other, and some do both at different times – but still very few are dealing with the logs. I have heard so many people talk about this person or that preacher who “tells it like it is,” and my observation has been that almost everyone who has that reputation is good at “telling some of it like it is.” At my best, that’s probably true for me as well.

To be all that God in Christ has made us to be, neither the specks nor the logs are acceptable. So we need to first admit the logs, and admit that we cannot clear them without Christ taking over our lives. That’s the step we need to be willing to take if we want the best for ourselves and for our speckled community…

WHAT IS AN INVITATION TO CHURCH?

With these summer Sundays and vacations, we have seen new lows in our Sunday morning worship attendance. However, not in our overall Sunday morning attendance… with 25-30 persons slipping into the 8:30 breakfast, and a small number of them remaining for Sunday School, we are serving more than 60 people in the morning. Still, the rise in the number of breakfast eaters and those in Sunday School still leads many to ask, “why don’t they come to worship?”

I wasn’t quite expecting it when one person in breakfast asked about the Sunday services and when I told him, he asked, “can I come to those?” And when I told him yes, he said, “so this is an open church.” I don’t know what kind of experiences one has that would lead them to wonder whether anyone can come to church, but it does tell me not to assume everyone feels invited.

I got to thinking about what it takes to invite a person who doesn’t assume the church is open. When we talk to seeking persons, we want to bring them to Jesus, and we don’t our personality or denominational background to get in the way. But we sometimes forget that our personalities and our church family are among the gifts God has given to bring others to Him. So there is no shame is saying to someone, “Come to my church – because I’m here.” But there are even better things we can say or do. We can ask a person’s name (and write it down when they aren’t looking – or when they are – so that we don’t forget it), and we can ask them questions like, “what do you think is the most important thing in your life right now?” How many of you have had strangers talk to you who actually cared what you thought about things? You can be that caring person for someone else. Or there is the simple invitation like, “Come to my church – and sit with me.” Notice it’s a far more personal kind of invitation than simply saying “Come to my church some Sunday morning when you can.” And that personal invitation is much more meaningful and harder to refuse. Of course it does assume that you WANT them to sit with you and you are interested in getting to know them better – but if you ask enough people personally, odds are you will find it to be rewarding…

As the preacher, I don’t think many people would want to sit with me. But I think I’ll try something like “Come and meet me at worship. Be there for me and then I’ll take you out to eat afterward.” I wonder what kind of response I’d get.

With Vacation Bible School approaching fast, and a whole lot of “invitable” people around, I can tell you that there are far more interested people who would respond to a personal invitation than any of us realize. Not everyone is open to it, to be sure, but there are many. Almost too many, and some will assume that we can’t do it because we can’t take the time to get to know everybody. Well, we don’t have to get to know everybody, at least not right away. We cannot offer a quality personal invitation to everyone, but each of us can consider what is a good personal invitation we can offer to at least one person; to invite them into your life, and to your Lord.

Yours in Christ,