Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

Uh the sermon text for today is Romans 12:3-8. And the topic will be affirming one another for our gifts, strengths, and abilities. Romans 12:3-8. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. For I say through the grace given to me, everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we being many are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another, having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us.

Let us use them. If prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our strength. Or ministry, let us use it in our ministering. He who teaches in teaching, he who exhorts in exhortation, he who gives with liberality, he who leads with diligence, he who shows mercy with cheerfulness. Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this text. We thank you, Father, for the blessing of peace that we just sang about residing upon your people.

We thank you that your peace means a correct ordering of things including very importantly the ordering of ourselves in the body of Christ. Bless us now as we consider how to affirm one another, preparing for sermons on serving one another and sharing with one another. Bless us today, Lord God, again with a knowledge of the importance, the central significance of affirming one another in the context of the body of Christ.

In Jesus name we ask it. Amen. Please be seated.

Danger. I won’t say “Danger, Will Robinson” because I know many of you hate that movie. But you know, we don’t think about this, but you know, when you come to hear a sermon or when you come to worship God, both activities—when you come to worship you are engaging in a very dangerous activity and particularly when hearing the word of God. And you hear it throughout our service, but particularly in hearing the word of God preached, you do realize I hope that puts you under greater culpability over the truths that are preached, right? You know, if you don’t have knowledge of something you have less culpability before God. But when his word comes and is presented to you from the scriptures, this is what we have to do. Then we’re in obligation to do it. Otherwise we’re like the foolish man who builds his house in the sand—hearing but not doing what God says.

Now I know we all know that at one level, but I think it’s really important as we try to talk about basics in kingdom building activity in light of the present distress, these basics in community building activities and practices—what we’re trying to say here is so significant I think to what we are as the representation of Christ in the world.

The new aeon, the new creation has arrived in Jesus Christ and we’re connected to that. In fact, we’re his body. We’re his presence in the world. We are the new humanity. We’re the new civilization. We’re the new culture. And this culture is to show the Adamic culture the way it’s supposed to be done. And we call them to repent of Adamic culture building activities and into the kingdom of God that is now present.

We’re a picture of what the future is, what the future will be in the renewed heavens and earth. That’s what we’re to be. In order to do that, we have to engage in these basic truths that the scriptures teach us. That’s what the epistles are primarily about—is teaching us how to live out lives in relationship, particularly to one another and also to the world.

So last week we talked about affirming each other for our relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ. We looked at Romans 12:10, which we’ll look at here again in a couple of minutes as context for 3-8. But it used two family terms, right? It used brotherly love, Philadelphia, and then it used another word being kindly affectioned that was a word specifically used in the Greek about family relationships, your commitment to family. And understand that in the Roman culture, family was everything.

At least in its origins. It deteriorated of course, but family was so significant. And so Paul uses that term of commitment to your family members and your affection toward family members. That’s the kind of love that C.S. Lewis talks about in the four loves that God is using in relationship to the body of Christ. We’re a family. We really are a family. And in fact, one can make the point that the church of God trumps the family.

Now, families are very important and God is in the business of building godly families. But ultimately, you know, Jesus said it was those who heard and obeyed him that were his true brothers and sisters, right? We have one father. Now, that’s a truth and it’s a truth that isn’t new hopefully to any of us, but it’s a truth that we don’t always act upon. How well did the liturgy work for you this last week?

How was your response to the preaching of the word of God last week when we talked about this truth that we need to affirm one another simply because we’re members of the same family of God with one father in this particular church? Yeah, we can talk about other churches and how it relates to everything else, but let’s start here. What Paul did addressing these congregations? Let’s start here. Was your life any different this last week?

Did the forgiveness of God at the beginning of the service and him affirming your forgiveness and empowering you for work, did that result in you affirming other people because they’ve been forgiven by God as well? They’re part of the group that you corporately repented with. Did his affirming of you flow into your affirming of your brothers and sisters? All of them here, right? We don’t—we’re not a club.

We don’t get to, you know, select people out in terms of who we want to be here. We don’t, as Martin Lloyd-Jones talked about in his church when they grabbed a hold of this truth, truth. They stopped auditioning people, right? Am I going to have relationship with them or not? No. If you’re in the church, we’re going to have relationship with one another. We’re brothers and sisters. Okay? We’re members of the same family.

And so, did you do that in relationship to the people at our church that you maybe haven’t done much of that to? Did you affirm them simply because you’re part of the same family? And did you change how you interacted with them? Now, I’m not saying you didn’t know that before and you weren’t doing it before, but the word of God matures and sanctifies it. Right. So, did the liturgy work? Did the preaching of the word work for you?

Did you leave with more of a commitment to honor, to affirm, to give glory, weight, and value, and preciousness to other members of this church, maybe the ones that you’re not particularly getting along with right now? Did you understand that the beginning of how you’re going to work that out is affirming them? Right? So, that’s a question and it’s a question that we’ll have again next week about this sermon.

So, this is dangerous territory hearing the word of God. God will hold you accountable for how you respond to the word. Now, if you think I’m preaching wrong, fine. We’ll have a Q&A period afterwards to talk about it. But if I’m preaching consistent with the word of God, the spirit of God is speaking to you through his word. And the spirit of God will evaluate your performance relative to your response to this term.

Young kids, same thing with you. We talked about you in Q&A last week. I don’t know if you know it or not, you little ones or you younger ones. How well do you affirm the adults in the church when you see them in the hallways? Do you just not pay attention? If they say hello to you, do you respond? So all of us, right, this is a one another thing and it means that we all have this obligation. We read this verse last week.

Therefore, receive one another just as Christ also received us to the glory of God. How do I glorify God? Well, you receive one another. You affirm each other not for who you are first and foremost, but at the foundational level is that we’re part of the same family. We’re part of this new humanity, this new culture, this new civilization. And unlike the old one that was so bonded to family that it produced racism, right?

Tribalism in a bad sense of the term, classism, elitism, all that stuff. That’s the way the old Adamic world works. It’s the way it rolls. We don’t. The church is an example of the new civilization. And those things are to be done away with. Now, the reason for this is that we serve a trinitarian God. We serve a God that is unity and diversity in the Trinity itself who shares and loves each other within that body.

And so, within the body of the Trinity. And so, that’s a trinitarian godlike attribute that we share when we go about obediently affirming one another.

One other comment before we get going with—uh, we’ll talk about affirmation, what that word means, and then we’ll talk about Romans 12. Then we’ll look at a couple more verses and make some application at the end. But before we do that, one other kind of corrective I was recommended to listen to a book called, I think it’s called Misreading the Scriptures with Western Eyes.

And Chris W. preached a sermon a couple of months ago saying some of the same stuff. One of the ways we misread the scriptures as Americans is to read a radical individualism into all this stuff. But in the Bible, in the culture the Bible is written to, and actually if we read the Bible correctly, the collective—the group in this case in terms of church, the body—this has a tremendous importance. So we tend to—we’re tempted to not deliberately but inadvertently misread the scriptures just because we live in such an individualistic society and it’s gotten worse, right? I mean, we’re an “I” world now. Everything’s about “I”—I got my iPhone, my iPad.

I’m in my own. You know, our houses, our houses are big enough now to hide in. You know, when you had a little, you know, two-room shack and you raised four kids in it, you had community whether you liked it or not. But now you have big houses. One child goes to this room with their device, the other one goes over there, mom goes there, dad goes there. And so we live in this highly individualistic world and we’re prone to read the Bible with those kind of individual eyes.

So this is a corrective to that. This is bottom line building community practices that we’re talking about here.

Affirm. What does this word mean? Affirm. Well, you can hear in the English word right there in the word, right? Affirm. Affirm means to make somebody firm. It’s to strengthen them. It’s to build them up. So, if that’s true, what happens if affirmation is not going on to everyone in the church? The people that are not getting affirmed, what are they being?

They’re being weakened, right? They’re certainly not being strengthened the way they should be. Now, the Lord has got his own ways of dealing with our sins sinlessly, but nonetheless, that’s what it means. What we’re talking about in these three sermons on affirm is how to strengthen to build each other up. You know, the Bible says that if we’re not built up, then we’re prone to be carried about by every wind of doctrine.

We’re prone to believe the deceitful lies of men. Right now, because of the present distress, it’s revealing that all kinds of Christians are just immature and they are, you know, prey to the wolves of the arguments that say, “Did God really say homosexuality is a sin,” for instance, right? Well, in part, if they’re people that came out from us, then in part, we can say, “Well, we should have worked harder at strengthening them, at affirming them, right?

We should have done this sort of thing to affirm, to serve, and to share with one another. So affirmation means to make firm and there’s all kinds of in the Bible there’s all kinds of admonitions to strengthen one another. Right? In the Old Testament, New Testament, Psalm 119:28, my soul is weary with sorrow. Strengthen me according to your word. So we are to cry out that God would strengthen us when we feel weak.

God is in the business of strengthening people. In Isaiah 35, strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way. And you’ll know if you know your Bible that’s picked up in Hebrews, I think, in relationship to the church again, that we’re to strengthen the shaky hands in our congregation. We’re to build up the feeble so that they could walk back in the way. We have an obligation to strengthen one another.

God says in that same section of Isaiah, be strong. Do not fear. Your God will come. So, we’re in the middle of times that shake people up. We had a nice uh thing Friday night out at the Cones house, fire pit, etc. And you know, it’s obvious that particularly with the young people, with some of the older people, the young people—what we’re going through is shaking them up as they see friends go wobbly on this issue.

And how do they respond to that? They need strength. And they need strength from affirmation from you and I, right? Affirming is to strengthen them the way that God says they should be strong. Uh, Luke 22: Jesus tells Peter, “I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” So Peter, you know, had this obligation and we all do to strengthen one another.

This word for strengthen, the Greek word is stizo. That’s the root word of various forms of strengthening which is kind of related to steroids, right? So, steroids can make you strong. Well, you get the positive benefits of steroids in affirming one another without all the negative stuff going on. But it’s that kind of thing. We are called to affirm, to strengthen each other. Not just to strengthen the people we like.

Not just to strengthen the ones that are already strong, but to strengthen particularly those that are weak or feeble or are prone to at this point having some degree of fear. I could go on. But you know, if you go throughout the book of Acts, it’s amazing how many times Paul says that his ministry and the ministry of the rest of the church was to strengthen the churches, to strengthen the disciples. Paul really—that was one way of kind of capsulizing what he did throughout the book of Acts—was to strengthen people.

So to affirm is to make people strong. All right, let’s look at our text Romans 12 and we’ll look at the context in a minute and then we’ll look at a couple other verses and move to application. But Romans 12.

“So for I say through the grace given to me.” Now that’s significant. He’s saying this not because he’s better but through the grace that’s given to him. That’s the basis for this. Last week the first level of affirmation is that we’re all recipients of God’s grace.

And any gifting, talents, gifts, abilities we have, those are graces to us. Right? If you read about spiritual gifts in the New Testament, the word gift is almost always charisma, right? So it’s it means grace. And so there are these special gifts, abilities that God gives to us and these are grace and that’s what Paul starts with as he’s going to talk about the importance of the body.

“For I through the grace given to me to everyone who is among you he tells him this. So again this is an every believer sort of thing. “Not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think but to think soberly.” So if we’re going to go about doing the affirmation thing, the beginning point of that, if we move through Romans, this section of Romans, is to understand God’s grace to us.

To not to think highly of ourselves because it’s all of God’s grace anyway. Not to think too highly of the giftings, abilities, and talents we have because he’s going to say in a minute that they’re all essential for the working of the body. So pride is the killer of affirmation of thinking too highly of yourselves. And he says, “But to think soberly.” So it’s not like you’re not supposed to think about yourself, but you’re supposed to think of yourself as the recipient of God’s grace and as one little member of the body of Christ.

So we start with grace. We get our minds straight on what this is because pride is the killer of affirmation of the rest of the body. “God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.” “For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function.” Okay. So, first thing he says is we’re one body. We’re all members of one body. Why? Because of grace. Because of our relationship to God through Christ and the Holy Spirit.

So again, he starts with what we talked about last week. The beginning affirmation level is because we’re part of the same body. Now, he says as part of the same body, we have different functions, which moves from last week’s sermon to today’s sermon. We’re to affirm each other because we’re members of the same body and we’re to affirm each other’s strengths, gifts, and abilities in the second half of that verse.

Do you see? So, there’s a sameness to us. We’re all members of the same body. And then there’s a diversity of giftings. And those are affirm—for who you are in Christ and in this body, this family, and affirm others for their giftings and ability. Now, you can’t do that if you haven’t done the prior. Because if you haven’t done the prior, you’re not going to know their giftings and abilities. I mean, you might, but how are you going to affirm them for their strengths, abilities, and giftings if you don’t know them?

And a lot of those strengths, giftings, and abilities are like internal organs. You don’t see them. You know, where are they? I don’t know. They’re in there somewhere. I guess I can see them on an X-ray. But so if you don’t get to know people by affirming them as part of the body, you probably are not going to be able to affirm their gifts and abilities either. So, Paul moves from unity of the body.

One other thing here: when he says you’re all members of the same body. We think of membership. So, we’re members of a club, we’re members of a team, we’re members of this, that or the other thing that’s pre-selected, auditioned, etc. That’s not this word. This word is specifically used in Greek to refer to body stuff, body parts. Okay? So, the language both—he’s saying it’s a body and he’s reaffirming that by his use of the term members, right? So, we’re a body together. We’re knit together as a body.

Right? This is not, you know, a metaphor only. This is really reality. We—one part of the body suffers, we all suffer. So he affirms the unity and then the diversity. He wants us to affirm for being part of the same body and then these different functions. So then he goes on and he does the same thing here in a minute. “So we being many are one body in Christ and individually members one of another having then gifts differing.”

So he’s just affirmed again the unity thing, right? So, he’s gone back to the first half. We being many are one body in Christ. So, he says affirm because we’re one body. We have different functions. And he goes back—affirm because we’re one body, but we have different functions. Right? Because in verse 6, he says, “having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them.”

And then he says, if you’ve got a gift or ability, use them. And if you know somebody has a gift or ability, affirm them in that. I felt guilty the other night listening to one young lady here saying that she had backed out of social media conversation and I was like, “Oh, you know, why didn’t I affirm her?” I mean, I read some of this stuff and I’m like, “Wow, that’s great stuff.” But, you know, in these battles, it’s difficult to know what you should or shouldn’t do on social media, right?

And maybe she chooses to not participate anyway, but I felt guilty because I didn’t affirm what I saw from her hand. There are people from this church who are really shining on social media right now. They’re doing it gracefully. They’re doing it respectfully, but they’re doing it with commitment and conviction. Okay? So, he tells them here, if you’ve got a gift, use it. And part of them being willing to use those gifts, abilities, and talents is us strengthening them to do it.

Because as you do this stuff, you’re going to get push back, right? So, so that’s what Romans 12 says. It says, you know, do this stuff that right—each member belongs to one another, he says in the text, right? We all belong to one another. And so there’s this unity that is important for us to recognize and then there’s this diversity. So we affirm by being part of the same body. We affirm for differing gifts, talents, and abilities that we have relative to one another.

You know, one of the metaphors that God uses for the church is a city set on a hill. Right? So, as I said earlier, repeating it here, we’re a body. We’re a church. We’re a city set on a hill. What does that mean? It means that our job is to portray to a darkened culture the light of Jesus Christ. We’re to be that new world order. Think that way. We’re to be the new reality. The new creation world has happened and it’s happening in our lives. And so, we’re to shine forth like that.

Now here the imagery used is body and it’s a very helpful image. Now a city set on a hill is too. I mean I can’t get into it, but cities are obviously connections of individual people bringing individual gifts and abilities to make the light shine literally, right? So cities are a microcosm of the body. But Paul says here bodies—very interesting language if you think about this, right? I mean, a body is, you know, I’ve got bad health in some ways.

Why? Because my body parts don’t cooperate, right? I mean, something goes wrong, something doesn’t do right. My retina doesn’t process, you know, food correctly or nutrients correctly. And so, I can’t see. My the rest of my eye then is hurt by that one little genetic flaw in my retina. Or, you know, I have digestive problems. So because my body—the digestive parts aren’t in function, my whole body isn’t really getting what it needs to get to function properly.

It’s a little thing in the lining of my colon, right? Why am I talking about my colon? Let me tell you about my colonoscopy. No, we did that at—at Ace’s birthday celebration at Children. You know, you’re in an older crowd and everybody starts talking about their colonoscopy experiences. In any event, I mean, back to the point. Point’s obvious, right? Think of it, though.

What’s one of the great killers today? It’s cancer. What’s cancer? Cancer is radicalized individualism from one perspective, right? One part of your body, one little cell, right? Or maybe a little cluster of cells. I don’t know the medicine that well, but one little cell or cluster of cells goes nuts and starts thinking it’s the only thing there is. And it—I mean, it’s really abundant life, right? But in the context of your body. I mean it really starts to live, but as a result of it going wild in its individualism the whole body dies.

What is death? Death is a coming apart of all the connectedness of the various parts of our body. It all falls away. Do you remember when I preached on Lamentations? Gosh, that was fun because remember that—really it’s about beauty decaying. And that’s what happens with death. That’s what happens to a church where not all doing what we’re supposed to do relative to the body—affirming one another. It decays.

Okay? And you might have light that’s the phosphorescence of decay and you take it for good light, but it might just be death going on, right? And so Lamentations, it was fun because—well, fun. How can you say Lamentations is fun? But the structure was beautiful because it starts out very structured in chapter 1 and over the course of those four chapters it completely falls apart, the structure. Everything goes away.

All the different devices, Hebrew devices used scatter. It’s a hard thing to see beauty decay. Well, that’s the way it is with us. If we don’t affirm one another for being members of the same body and for our functioning in the body, then the body starts to get cancer. And some people go wildly individual. Some people just wither on the vine because they’re not really being strengthened. And so this body imagery is quite helpful.

It’s quite helpful because it’s true. Tim Keller uses the imagery of a fabric, right? So, if you take a bunch of threads, he says, “Yeah, I could take 600 threads. I used to throw them here.” Now, they’re on top of each other. They’re sitting there together like we are at church today, right? But they’re not a fabric. They’re not beautiful. They’re not strong. They’re not useful. They just you pick them up and it’s a big glob of individual threads.

But when you make fabric out of it, what do you do? You take those threads and you interconnect them in thousands of ways to other threads, right? So that interconnectedness makes the fabric function. So you know, in terms of being this model of Christian civilization, the church is called to be, we’re called to be a beautiful, beautiful piece of interconnected strings—individuals who because of their interconnections are stronger as individuals and then more beautiful in the context of the world.

And if we don’t do that, if we don’t affirm, strengthen each other, you know, because of this or that. And over time, everybody gets sideways with everybody in a group of people, right? Well, maybe you’re too young to know that, but that’s what happens over 30, 35 years. You get dust ups with everybody over time. That’s the way it is in a fallen world. And the question is, are you going to let those dust ups stop the affirmation?

Are you going to let the material disintegrate into a bunch of threads or a threadbare piece of tapestry? That’s what the question is. Young people, you’re growing up at an age that is highly addicted to individuality. As I said earlier, think of yourself as a thread, as part of the fabric that is this church. And you’re called upon as part of the body, as part of the fabric to relate to one another in a way that makes us beautiful, strong, and useful for the king.

So Romans 12 has this illustration or more and that a reality that we’re a body and because of being a body, we recognize the significance of interconnectedness to every other part of the body. That’s the way bodies work. And if you don’t believe it yet, just wait till you start to get a little older and a little sicker and you’ll find out that is truth.

Now, let’s look at the immediate context of this by looking at the couple of verses before and after, like we did last week with chapter or verse 10. Okay. Sorry about that. I bought a new watch about 6 months ago and it immediately broke. So, I don’t know where to go to get one. Anyway, okay. So, look at verses 1 and 2 is buildup to this, right? Romans 12:1 and 2.

Very familiar verses. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God.” We got the grace thing going on again. “That you present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.”

Now, what does that mean? Well, it means lots of things. And we can talk about it as a worship verse, which is proper. But the immediate context, he starts this as a header to what he’s going to talk about. And what he’s going to talk about is what I’ve been talking about, affirmation of one another, both for being members of the same body and for gifts and abilities. For the diversity that exists. So this verse Romans 12:1 that is a life verse for many people—that our lives are to be focused on worshiping God sacrificially—takes on new meaning, right?

How do you do it? You do it by telling somebody good job. You do it by when you get here in the morning, not overlooking certain people that you get a little sideways with, but looking for them first to say, “Hey, good to see you here.” Shake their hand, give him a hug, whatever it is. We’re going to talk about physical affirmation next week with the holy kiss. So this is what Paul is getting at in Romans 12:1.

He’s setting them up for the way you worship God. The way you really—your reasonable service of worship—includes, in fact maybe prioritized to Paul by, how you affirm one another in the context of the church. He goes on and verse two, “do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may know, or prove rather, what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

So there’s two different words there, right? Conformed to the world is a cookie cutter image. It’s like a copy machine. You’re just like the world. No diversity really. You’re just sort of like everybody else. Transformed is a completely different word. Our transformation is not that we all look alike. We’re not carbon copy of the world. How does the world do community? Well, it divides up by bloodlines.

Thomas Wolfe in his newest—well, book came out a couple years ago, Back to Blood—with the disintegration of American community, which I would say is based on Christian community. What do we have? We’ve got people going back to Blood, reaffirming tribalism, whatever, radical familism through blood, etc. So, the world does community by self-selection. Okay? By picking and choosing by auditioning and interviewing people and usually in informal ways to find out who our community is going to be, who are we going to hang with, right?

That’s the way the world does it. And as a result of that, you know, we have breakdown between groups. We get increasing polarization which now has reached you know, incredibly incredible record in our country today. The polarization that’s going on in every direction when we’re not supposed to be like that. You know, how you go to work if you’re part of a corporate community or a big business. There are ways that the world has of forming those relationships. There are status marks, riches, where you live, where your kids go to school.

There’s all kinds of ways that people decide or interview you for whether you’re going to be friends with them or not. Right? Well, that’s the way community works in the world. And it’s very difficult. It takes effort for a man or a woman who is in the world working, which is fine. It’s good. You’re doing vocation for God. Great. But you’re going to be tempted to be conformed to that—is the point of this text.

So he’s saying, look, you got to do things differently in the church. It’s not a club. It’s not a business. It is the body of Christ. So don’t be conformed to the world in the way you see community being established. Be transformed by the word of God. And then he goes on to tell them what that transformation looks like. It looks like grace. It looks like humility. It looks like seeing each other, all people in the church here today, as members one of another.

Okay, that’s the deal. And so Paul is telling us how to avoid being conformed to the world. So significance is what Romans 12:1 tells us about this affirming and contradistinction to the world is what verse two says.

Now at the end of verse 8, we have verses 9 and 10. “Let love be without hypocrisy.” So here’s a warning, right? Okay. So pastor says, You know, I got to start saying hello to everybody. So, yeah. Oh, hi. How you doing? It’s great to see you. And then you go back to your buddies or your wife or your husband or whoever. That guy’s really a jerk. Boy, you see him. You see, that’s hypocrisy. It’s not enough just to, you know, greet people to affirm them with your words. You do it from your heart.

We all know people that are, you know, that are good salespeople and they like to be, you know, great and buddy up to everybody, but what they say about you in private is something else. Again, that’s not us. That’s the world again. Right? So, let this love that he’s just described affirming one another. Let it be from the heart. Let it be without hypocrisy. It’s not easy. It’s not good enough to change your actions.

Now, that’s real helpful because as some people have taught us in the book Desiring the Kingdom, our actions tend to form our desires in our heart. So, even if you don’t have a right heart attitude, don’t say, “Well, I’m not going to be a hypocrite. I’m not going to shake their hand.” Shake the hand and correct your heart. You know, shake the hand, say hello, affirm them for something good that you know that they’ve done, right? Or what an example they’ve been to you.

And and then change your heart. And when you’re tempted then, or when you actually sin against them in your heart or in your speech later, repent of that. It’s that simple. Don’t wait for the heart is what I’m saying. But it’s got to come ultimately from the heart. Don’t be hypocritical. “Be kindly affectioned to one another.” This is verse 10. We talked about this last week. So, you got the brotherly kindness stuff going on with brotherly love, “giving preference to one another.” You know, some ways to interpret the verses. The only kind of competition Paul really wants in the church is competing to see who can outaffirm the other guy, right?

Competition and trying to affirm others and being non-competitive for your own purposes or desires, but trying to help the other person. Okay? So, that’s Romans 12.

Let’s look at a couple of other verses quickly. Ephesians 4, if you’ve got your Bibles, turn there. We could turn to just about any epistle, but Ephesians 4, the whole chapter really is sort of about this. Ephesians 4, “I, for the prisoner of the Lord beseech you to walk worthy of the calling.”

It’s like the beginning of 12 in Romans 12. So, this is your reasonable service. And he talks about how to affirm your brother. This is he says, “Walk worthy of your calling.” And then he’s going to tell them about how to affirm your brothers. Okay? So again, it ratchets up the importance of this. It’s always true that when you hear the word here and you walk into the week, it’s a dangerous thing for you because you’ve got to conform your lives to the preaching of God’s word through the sanctification of the spirit.

You’re going to be held accountable by God for what you hear. Okay? Or if you slept, you’re holding accountable for that, too. But if you heard something today, you’re going to be judged by God for it. And so this says to walk worthy of your calling is to enter into this stuff. And then he says the same thing, “with all loneliness and gentleness with long suffering, bearing with one another in love.”

See, it’s the same thing as Romans 12. This is important. And then he says the same thing with all loneliness and gentleness with long suffering, bearing with one another in love. See, it’s the same thing as Romans 12. Romans 12, this is important. And then he says have the right attitude. Don’t be prideful, but be have sober minded reflection on yourself. The same thing here. And then we’re to “endeavor to keep the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace.” Just like we said, last week. This is an activity that is supposed to be strenuous.

If we look at verse 11 in Romans 10, it talks about diligence, right? And being diligent. And so it has application to work, but it has immediate application to our work in affirming each other. This isn’t just something I kind of passively do. This is something I work at. Okay? This is something I work at. And that’s what he says here. How do you do it? “Loneliness, gentleness, patience, or longsuffering, bearing with one another,” right? You got to bear up, right? It’s not just a matter.

So those things, you got character qualities going on: loneliness, gentleness, patience, endurance, or bearing with one another. And then in love, the fifth and ultimate attribute here. So he says that for love, it’s like when Paul says, “Let love be without hypocrisy.” Here Paul is saying to be without hypocrisy, you need these character qualities going on in your life to affirm other people. You know, you’re going to find it. You’re going to be required to have loneliness, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another, and love ultimately, right?

So, he says the same thing. It’s kind of like a the same sort of topic going on. And then verse three, “endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.” Again, diligence in doing it. You have to endeavor to keep this unity, keep the body from disintegrating. God has given us unity. He’s given us a body. And it’s our job to make sure that we endeavor to keep that body living and not let it get weak and sick through lack of affirmation, sharing and service.

Then he goes on to talk about one body etc. And then he says in verse 7, “but to each of us grace was given.” So again he talks about the distinction of gifts and very importantly he talks about the ascension of Christ. Then and this is critical: when you thank someone or receive thanks for a gift, talent, ability, it’s what Jesus gave you. It’s what Jesus gave you. I mean, there are charismatic gifts, so to speak.

There are spirit-enabled gifts, but you also have what we would call natural talents or abilities. But where did they come from? Genes? No, those came from the providence of God, too. So, the whole thing, anything you do that’s helpful and useful in this world ultimately is a reflection of the helpfulness and goodness of the Lord Jesus Christ. He gave you those things.

Now, in context, he goes on to say that he’s given gifts to us to what end, right? Well, he goes on to say so that you all could be built up. I mentioned this earlier. So that you’re not blown about by every wind of doctrine. Maturity is the purpose. So again, this stresses Ephesians 4—stresses the significance and importance of affirmation in building a godly Christian community and keeping people from being blown about by all the nonsense that’s being shared what all in terms of the internet these days and people making various arguments. And he goes on to talk about character qualities as Ephesians 4 ends, but it’s an important verse.

Let me one other verse. James 5:8 and 9. “You also be patient, establish your hearts for the coming of the Lord is at hand. Do not grumble against one another.”

Don’t grumble against each other. Now, this word grumble means to go. It doesn’t mean to actually say things necessarily. It means to have exasperation, a sigh, to roll your eyes. You know, the way they are, you know, in the way Betty is. Wow. Well, there goes Bobby again. That’s grumbling against one another. That’s explicitly what we’re not supposed to do—is pigeonhole people. Nothing worse in the church, nothing worse for my body.

If I decide that doggone pancreas is a jerk, and I’m going to wall him off from the rest of the body, I’m going to disdain him and build up over a series of grumblings, rolling of eyes, and sighs, non-cooperation with the rest of the body. You know what’s going to happen? I’m dying, folks. I’m dying. So, you know, James, and of course, he’s going to go on to talk about class distinctions, right? Rich and poor, blah, blah, blah.

So, he’s warning against the same thing—self-selection and relationships ultimately. And what he says is, don’t even sigh against one another. That’s how important affirmation within the body of Christ is. Don’t even think about doing things that are going to disaffirm people in the body of Christ. All right, let’s talk about some applications.

I thought it’d be nice to write a new song. I haven’t done it. There must be 50 ways to leave your lover. So, I thought it’d be good to have a song, There must be 50 ways to love your brother. Let me start with a way to affirm a congregation member. In terms of my application, I get this stuff I’m supposed to do and I got to work it in. So, and this is also a way to affirm Joan Jones.

There are these things up today around the church, I think. And I think a congregation member is going to make an announcement later on. There’s this run with love event coming up, a way to collect money or shoes to give to kids who are poor and who need shoes. And Joan Jones is head of Love, Inc., this is their deal. And Joan is a tremendous friend of this church. She used to be a member of this church years ago. Completely shares our distinctives, our view of things. We regularly talk on the phone and commiserate over, you know, current events. She’s a great lady. Praise God that she’s here in Oregon City to coordinate Love, Inc. for the whole county. She has strategic reasons for doing this event. You may have a natural inclination not to support it. She’s got strategic reasons. Affirm her. Get let the program do it.

A congregation member understands Joan’s strategic reasons. Now, here’s what Joan has done. She’s cooperated with DHS, Department of Human Services. But just like we did with Compassion Connect, she said, “No, we’re not going to distribute these shoes at the public schools. We’re going to do it at the churches.” So, she’s doing something to build relationship with DHS, but she’s doing it in a way that is distinctively Christian in the name of Christ, Love, Inc. So, we’re going to distribute the shoes through churches. This is a big deal. Very strategic thing on Joan’s part.

A congregation member is jazzed about it because of that. I’m jazzed about it because of it. You know, you can pray about this event coming up. You can actually, you know, run in this event when it comes up. Those of you that are runners, you can give money to this event, and you can donate shoes to this event, which a congregation member will talk about later on. But that’s a practical way to affirm a congregation member, to affirm Joan, and to be part of an event that’s being used by God to further love in the name of Christ and our particular communities.

Let me give you another practical thing. I should have mentioned this last week. Take your RCC directory when you go home sometime this week. Look at that thing probably sooner rather than later because you’re going to forget if you wait. Maybe do it tonight. You take that directory. You look through it. Who am I affirming? Who have I not affirmed? And who do I have particular problems with?

Who I’m kind of sideways with? Take those people that you’re particularly sideways with or just don’t feel like affirming. Circle their name. That’s your priority list. Those are the parts of the body that may well be becoming attenuated and not doing their function very well because they’re not being affirmed. I don’t know. Start with that though. How easy is that? You at least pray for the person and then think of one practical way you can affirm that particular person in this body of Christ here that you’ve circled in that directory.

Now, I’m going to ask you next. This isn’t the word of God. What I’m saying now is application, the word of God. So, you’re not going to be hauled up to church court if you don’t do this, but I’ll be very disappointed and you want me happy and I will ask you next Sunday morning and you’ll feel either bad that you didn’t do it or defiant. Either way, it won’t be good for you. Anyway, okay. So, it’s one idea, one idea.

RCC directory, look it over. Invite people over, right? We used to do this all the time. And we do. It’s not happening much anymore. You’re not going to know how to affirm somebody for their gifts and abilities if you don’t know them. One of the nice things about Friday night was Eric and Emilyn talking about who they were, how they met, how they got married, how she moved to the States, all this stuff.

And you could, you know, no direct questions, but you could see gifts and abilities in both of them that you then could affirm them for. You’re not going to know how to affirm people for their gifts, talents, and abilities if you don’t know them at all. And one way to do is to have them over. I’ve had people visit this church regularly, even become members of this church, and for a year or two maybe have one or two invites.

What’s that? That means I think we’re not working very good. You’re you’re like me. I’m diabetic. My circulatory system doesn’t work that well. My feet don’t get the blood they’re supposed to get. Right. Well, that’s the way it is. If we don’t do this stuff, things start, the whole body starts to wither and die. And particularly in a time in our current distress when the winds of opposition to Jesus, the Bible are so strong.

We need to strengthen one another, brothers and sisters. We need to do this stuff and we need to strengthen people that we wouldn’t normally have anything to do with, particularly those people, because then you’re going to learn how to live in the new creation. And we’re going to model that to the rest of culture, right? We should praise and celebrate each other for things they do. There are, you know, there are word gifts, deed gifts, and there are visible work going on here.

And us that are involved in visible work, we regularly get pretty good affirmation. So don’t, you know, take this and say, “Oh, I’m going to go affirm a church officer.” We get it more often than not. Okay? I tell you who doesn’t get much affirmation for incredible amounts of work. That’s the Sunday school teachers. Well, I suppose maybe the parents are thanking them, but you know, they’re sort of out of sight, out of mind over in that side of the building.

And so, you know, there’s an example. There’s all kinds of people doing things here. When we have worship team meetings, well, the list is quite long of people that are involved in putting together the worship day. All kinds of people are involved and we could affirm every one of them. We should affirm them, right? I’ll send out the list this week, worship team participants, and you can think about who you have and affirm.

So, we want to praise and celebrate what people do specifically and what their talents and gifts are. Gosh, I see you’re such an orderly person. That’s really great. And don’t take it as an affront to you that you’re not orderly. I mean, the whole point of the body is I’m no good at being a spleen if I’m a if I’m a kidney, right? I mean, so you don’t have competition. You don’t have envy for the other person’s goodness at the gift.

If you really understand that you’re all part of the same body, you got different functions. That kills envy. See, otherwise, we tend to envy people with the gifts that seem more obvious that we don’t simply don’t ever will never have. So, so think of their particular area and praise them for that. Talk to them. Explain to somebody how they inspired you to do something. You know, this happens all the time to me.

People inspire me in different ways. For a while, I used to go around saying instead of WWJD, I wanted to say WWR, what would Roger do? Or RWJD, what would Jesus do? And I changed it to what would Roger do? I’m never sure what Jesus would do in all situations because it was he had a unique ministry. But Roger is a guy that inspired me in particular ways. There are all kinds of people here that do that.

So one way to affirm him and embarrass him was to talk about what would Roger do. So but you know you can think about that—ways people have inspired you. Maybe you didn’t tell them. Maybe you didn’t affirm them. Do it. Now I know they’re not doing it for praise but it you they need to be strengthened. Or you know what, they’ll stop doing it. And not just pragmatically, though. Do it because it’s the right thing to do from your heart, right?

Without hypocrisy. I have this list of 58 ways to affirm others. And it’s funny because to show you a sign of the times, I had to go through a number of sites. I typed in, you know, how to affirm others. I actually put in the search term, but what it came up with first was a bunch of sites about how to affirm yourself, you know. Ways to affirm you. So, you know, it said redefine selfishness. I read this stuff.

It says me, you know, think of yourself more often. Do yourself a favor. You know, all this, you know, people are now—it’s all about ourselves. And of course, the scriptures. So, I had to go through a page or two of that stuff to get to this one that had 58 ways, you know, to affirm others. And so, I’m not going to read you the whole list, but it’s online. Some are good, some are not so good, but some of these are coming from that list.

And this inspiration thing came from that list. It was number three on the list. Talk up to people. Don’t talk down to people. That was his number four. Number seven, think of something that is normally not praised because it is simply expected. This is a big one. By the way, you know where you want to start doing this if you’re married with your spouse. You know, one of the reasons marriages get kind of funky over time is you stop doing that, right? You just expect it from one another.

The duties are so defined. Oh yeah, they know I love them. They know I—no, my, you know, my wife does so many things for me. I need to affirm her in those things, right? Otherwise, she’ll get tired. Same with me. So, you know, start in your own home this week. Make a commitment right now when you come forward and bring your offering. Make a commitment to say something to affirm your spouse for something they’re expected to do.

Okay? They’re expected to do and they do routinely. Affirm them for it. Praise him. Thank him for their faithfulness and doing that regularly. Number nine, quote someone positively in his presence like I just did with Roger. Well, I agree at the campfire the other night, right? Well, I agree with so and so. I think their position is pretty good. That’s a way to affirm them for their particular gift that they brought to the table, right?

So, praise them for something that they’ve done. Or something they’ve said in their presence, just—presence alone. I’ve known people in this church over the 35 years who’ve gone through very strong difficulties and you have too, you know, just and I talked to one of these people this week. Well, you know, a couple of people reached out to me in my difficult situation. They just came up and said, “We’re praying for you.

Love you.” And that was so refreshing. I remember the first time we did hospital visitation—Wilson and I and he said, “Well, I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to say.” I said, “You know, really, it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference.” The fact that we’re present with people in the hospital, that’s a big deal. That’s affirming them. That’s encouraging. I’m not—you think of something good to say, that’s great, too.

But if you wait around, you think, “What will I tell that person?” So, you never even give them a hug or greet them. Well, well, then see, you’ve done the opposite of affirming and you’ve done the opposite—it’s so easy in a way to strengthen people in a difficult spot. Now, can’t get rid of all their problems, but you can do things that are so appreciated by simply affirming them in their particular situation.

That’s probably enough. I’m going to run late otherwise. So, you know, there is a whole list of these things. I can send you the link if you’re interested. You can come up with your own list, though. Community groups should be kicking this around. What ways can we affirm each other? First, just generally, and secondly, for our particular strengths, abilities, and gifts. This is basic community building practices that God will use to demonstrate the new creation to this world.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for today. Thank you, Father, for the body, for the city that the church is. Thank you for the interdependence. Thank you for the beautiful piece of cloth that you’ve woven together. Bless us, Lord God, as we commit ourselves afresh, not to damage the body through either inactivity or going crazy, cancer on people. Help us not to damage each other by fraying the threads and by not having connectedness to people.

Help us, Lord God, to build on the wondrous unity you’ve given us in Jesus. Help us to maintain that. Lord God, bless this congregation as many of them will look over their directories today or tomorrow and look for people to affirm this week. Jesus name we pray. Amen.