Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: “Affirm, Share, Serve – Serving One Another Through Accountability”

Romans 15:14 | August 30, 2015 | Pastor Dennis R. Tuuri

Put this into practice. How shall a young man cleanse his way? Let him with care. Thy word observe. Young people today particularly observe with care, paying attention to what’s said from God’s word today with the view to observing it, doing it in your life this week. And those of us who are older as well. This is a piece of scripture that we just sang and read that shows us the centrality of God’s word in moving us ahead and in our praise to God.

May we attend to God’s word. Today’s sermon text is Romans 15:14 and the topic will be serving one another through accountability. Please stand for reading of God’s word. Romans 15:14 in which Paul says, “Now I myself am confident concerning you, my brethren, that you also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another.” Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you for this text. Help us to understand the meaning of it and then to make application to us. We pray, Lord God, that this church already characterized by goodness and by truth would continue to grow and mature in those elements and each of us individually so that we may indeed be competent to counsel each other, to hold each other accountable, to bring to mind to one another your word that we all might walk in it. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated.

Accountability. That’s the text today. Accountability. You know, I can make a topical political reference here. Why is Donald Trump so popular? Because of the seeming total lack of accountability at the federal level of our government in various degrees with various culprits. People are so tired of the lack of accountability that they’re willing to perhaps look at a candidate who shows no evidence really of being held accountable for anything. But that’s where you go. Accountability is a critical factor in our lives.

And as we move into the last three of the “one another” sets, the community building practices, we’re moving into serving one another in these last three elements. And today serving through accountability. And those two terms seem oxymoronic to some—service and accountability to one of the other—but that’s what we’re going to be talking about. Steven Covey said accountability breeds responsibility and we could say apart from that a lack of accountability makes irresponsibility maybe not inevitable but far more likely.

Another person said that accountability is the glue that ties commitments to results. Every Lord’s day, we are called to respond to the great gospel of Jesus Christ with commitments to follow our savior. And accountability will help us move that commitment to results Monday through Saturday. And again, without accountability, it’s hard to move from commitment to results. Another quote, this by a French playwright: it’s not only what we do, but also what we do not do for which we are accountable. And of course, we as Christians understand sins of commission, sins of omission. That’s how we would say it. Things we do wrong, we’re to be held accountable not to do that. And things that we fail to do or to be held accountable to do them.

This text today is such an area. We’re to hold each other accountable to hold each other accountable. That’s another way to say what the implications of that quote from the French playwright are.

Final quote on accountability: When it comes to privacy and accountability, listen, people always demand the former—that is privacy for themselves—and the latter—accountability for everyone else. That’s so true. We want privacy, but we want you to be accountable. So, accountability is a tough gig. It’s a hard thing to accomplish. Always has been harder. Now, you children that are coloring the coloring sheets, there’s some a big word in here, but if you look at that sheet, so Paul addresses them, the Romans, as my brethren. You might want to underline that. It’s important. And then the next word I would underline would be goodness. He says something about their goodness. The third word I would underline would be knowledge. He says something about what they know. And finally, that prepares them to admonish one another. Big word, you know, but admonish. Your parents or brother and sister can help you underline that word. That’s really the point of today’s sermon is that admonishing.

And the text today that we touched on briefly last week tells us some component elements that are necessary for us to develop to be truly competent to hold others accountable to admonish each other to counsel. Now, we talked about this word that’s translated admonish on the coloring sheet or accountability. Hold each other accountable. Put people to mind. We talked about this last week. There’s an old song by a group called The Band. You know, I can’t hardly go a Sunday anymore without some well-dated reference to popular culture, which is no longer popular. There was a song called “Stage Fright.” I love the song because I identified with it so much. And it talks about a singer and he gets up, see the man with the stage fright, just trying to gather all of his might. He got caught in the spotlight and when he gets to the end, he wants to start all over again.

That’s the way it is in public. Performers frequently. You’re frightened. When he says that he’s afraid, the lyrics says, “Take him at his word.” But for the price that the poor boy has paid, he gets to sing just like a bird. Punch through the fear. Do the song, the sermon, whatever it is, and you’ll be okay. But you know what? At the end of your performance, you want to start all over again. Why? Because you know you could do it better.

Every week, I’m like that. You know, every week, oh, I should have done this. I should have done that. I want to start even though it’s fearful to get up in front of people and talk at the end of it. I want to start all over again. I can do that better, Lord. Well, God has sort of given me an opportunity today to do that because really this verse was mentioned last week as a central verse for Jay Adams and his book *Competent to Counsel*. And this is the verse we talked about last week in terms of sharing our spirituality with other people. Which tells you that this word—this admonish, put into mind, war, born, exhort—all these are acceptable translations. That this word is pretty flexible. It has the idea that we’ve got knowledge and goodness today’s text that we’re going to bring to other people. So, it has the idea of sharing our spirituality, but it has this edge to it as well that we’re really sharing it with people because they’re goofing up somehow. They’re not being good or they’re not applying their knowledge.

So, we’re admonishing one another. Each other. We’re sharing our spirituality but also holding one another accountable, right? And so by holding on each other accountable, we bring to them, well, this hasn’t been done right, this isn’t going right, you’re not doing this, you’re not going to church, you’re not, you know, loving your wife, whatever it is, we have that obligation to hold each other accountable. And if you believe the verses I just read, pretty important element of the “one anothers” and well worthy of sort of two weeks on the same topic here, at least to some extent.

So it basically means as I said, this word means a well-intentioned—here’s one author puts it—well-intentioned attempt to influence mind and disposition by apostolic instruction or by the word. So it’s a well-intentioned attempt to influence mind and disposition what you do as well. That’s what we’re to have to one another. That’s this community building practice that Paul speaks about out here. Maybe I could read a couple of verses that this same word is in them. Let’s see. We urge you, brethren, to recognize those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you. Okay, so you’re supposed to recognize the pastors of your church. By the way, this is why being a Christian without being attached to a local church, I don’t know what that means. Are you ever being personally admonished by, you know, watching the Tim Keller sermon or watching Mark Driscoll in the old days, whatever it is. I mean, you’re supposed to know the people in your midst in your local church, the men who do this for you. They admonish you. Okay, that’s part of the job of the pastor.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t go on and read verse 13, which says to esteem them very highly in love for their work’s sake. Be at peace among yourselves. You see how it connects that if you don’t appreciate reward you know, esteem people highly when they admonish you, you won’t have peace among yourselves. So, your peace as a congregation is tied to some estimation of the value of your pastors and elders who admonish you. See, so it kind of works that way, but it’s another verse with the same word.

And then he goes on in verse 14, we exhort you, brethren, warn those who are unruly, comfort the faint-hearted, uphold the weak, be patient with all. So to warn the ungodly, to admonish them. See, when they’re doing ungodly things, we’re to hold each other accountable in that particular way. Let’s see another verse maybe. And you’re familiar with this verse, but you may not see the admonition in it. 1 Corinthians 10:11, preparation for the table: Now all these things happened to them—the people in the wilderness, right?—judgments as examples. They were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come. So when we come to the table, there’s an admonishment of these examples of people that while they ate the sacrificial food and drank the sacrificial drink, nonetheless died in the wilderness. It’s an admonition to us.

Ephesians 6:4: “And you fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.” Guarded your job as a dad is to do what we’re talking about today to hold your children accountable to put them in mind to have influence their mind and disposition from a friendly attitude on your part serving them by holding them accountable.

So there are other scriptures but those—that’s the basic sense of this term that today’s verse is about and today’s verse will help us to see a little bit more preparation in terms of how to do that. So what we’re saying thing is that in our communities, you really can’t do this here. I mean, you can sort of do it here. When you sing songs, you’re sort of admonishing each other. We talked about that last week, but you can’t do it much here. You have to do it in community. If you don’t do it both because of your own sinfulness and your self-deception, you’re going to not mature like you should. You’re going to find yourself with besetting sins going on for years or a general lack of maturity. Never might happen anymore. You got to go to church faithfully every Sunday, do all that right stuff. Can’t happen here. What we’re talking about is what has to happen Monday through Saturday. You with each other, holding each other accountable.

One of the more important ways we have provided for that and I know I’m harping on this and I will continue to harp on the community groups. Here’s a small group of people that can hold you accountable, see you, you know, regularly at least once a month, sometimes once a week. And that could develop friendships that we will provide the ability to hold to serve each other through accountability. In order for that to happen, you have to be willing. You got to encourage people to do it. We’ll talk about this later, but it’s not an easy thing to do right. I mean, it’s an easy thing for some people to do to tell you what you’re doing wrong. But to go about it in the right way, it’s hard for most of us. Okay? It’s something we’re not going to want to do. And so, I think we kind of have an obligation to say, that we’re admonishable. It’s okay. You can tell me. And to encourage people to do that requires a degree of vulnerability. It requires that people can sort of see what’s going on in your life.

I can’t see that today. Nobody can see what’s going on in your life for the most part in formal Lord’s Day worship. But what goes on through the week, you see, we want some degree of visibility of that which can lead then to accountability. And that’s what we’re supposed to be doing. Whatever area of life it is for you. This morning we had a Sunday school class for the men. Next week it’ll be for women on sexuality and marriage. It’s called “Sexual Saints.” Big area where many men, some women struggle. And they struggle month after month, year after year for one primary reason. They’re not being held accountable. They’re not being held accountable.

And that may be through, you know, they just don’t want it. Or it could be through a sense of shame and guilt, not really fully appropriating the forgiveness of Jesus Christ for our sins. Maybe they don’t feel safe with your group enough to bring it up, but there it is. So, it’s the kind of thing that we’re talking about. We a community building practice is to serve each other with the right attitude by holding each other accountable. By implication from the text today, admonishing one another.

So, I admonished someone this morning to make sure that they filled in the blanks on the children’s sermon notes. So, I don’t want to just warn and not enable. I want to enable them to do it well. Today’s sermon is the last is like last week’s sermon. So, I’ve been making that point, right? Been doing it all over again. So, today’s sermon is like last week’s sermon. Both sermons are about our need to warn one another.

Good translation. Factious man, you know, I have nothing to do with him. After two admonitions, one or two admonitions, warnings. So sometimes that’s serving one another is by warning each other. Look what you’re doing. Don’t do this. It’s going to go badly for you. We bring things. So on the handouts, both sermons are about our need to warn one another. When we do that well, we are serving them, right? Serving them. That’s part of doing it well. And that’s kind of what this is all about today’s sermon.

We should want to be accountable. Big word, lots of letters in it. I’ll let your brother or sister or parent help you fill in if you don’t know it. But we should want to be held accountable. Why should we want to be held accountable? Because our purpose in life is to be followers of Jesus, disciples of Jesus. Our satisfaction in life, our joy in life, we profess with our mouths, we think in our minds, will be found fully in serving Jesus. And so if that’s really true, and sometimes it’s not, but if that’s really true, then we want to be held accountable, right? Because we want to grow and we don’t want to veer off the path. There’s dragons off the path. Okay? All right.

So, now let’s talk about Romans 15:14. First, the context. This verse rather is dissimilar from the last couple of sermon verses we used. It’s in a different letter. So, you know, it wasn’t written to Romans. Generally, we call it Romans because it’s written to churches at Rome. Rome. But you think of Rome, right? It’s the big central part of the Roman Empire. That’s why it’s called the Roman Empire. Rome. And Rome, the church at Rome was not founded by Paul. He’d never visited it, but we can we can tell from his letter here. It’s quite long, right? Not like the shorter letters to other churches. And we can tell from his letter that Rome is a solid church.

You know, we talked last week about, you know, the week before about Galatia and then we talked about Colossae and there were a lot of divisions. Now, there’s always divisions in these New Testament epistles. I mean, in Romans, he still has to make sure Jews and Gentiles get along. He’s still going to emphasize unity and all that stuff, which is why he has this community building practice in verse 14 of chapter 15. He’s doing all that, but the general tenor of the epistle is far different. The church at Rome seems to be solid. It’s unlike the divided churches, which helps us to understand that even to a church that’s solid, which we would hope we would be or at least becoming here, RCC even at a church that is solid. Paul brings this statement that they are they are able to admonish one another both as an encouragement to do it but also saying you’re solid probably because you do this. If you do this, you’re going to be a solid church.

So there’s another answer to the children’s handout, the fill-in-the-blank one. Paul wrote the letter to the church at Rome and Rome, the church at Rome was solid.

Now uh this stage fright thing at the beginning of your outline and after point one I’ve got all this context again and I probably spent too much time on this last week so I want to be careful not to do that so maybe I’ll just let you read that in your home but believe you me you know one of the problems with preaching on sermon text a particular text is that it can become a pretext right you know we need these context places as we take these verses, put them up, there it is, and we think that’s it. But there’s a context to all of that. One more mention of misreading scripture through Western eyes. One of the men talks about a verse from Jeremiah, you know, that God has wonderful plans for your life. I know you have wonderful plans. And when he graduated from college, he got all these memorabilia, coffee cups and plaques and stuff with that verse on them. That’s the verse because it’s the big transition point from college to vocation and you want to know that God has wonderful plans for you, right? God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

But what the author’s point out is in the context that was being written not to people graduating from college, going into a nice career. It was written to people going into captivity in Babylon. Some of whom were killed, all of whom were, you know, greatly ashamed, carried off basically naked, planted in a foreign territory where the whole job of the Babylonian Empire to make Babylonians out of them. That’s the people and God told them they’re going to be there 70 years, but I’ve got a wonderful plan for your life. Now, it’s true generally. It’s true in time. But you see what we do is we rip these verses out of their context and think, “Oh, isn’t that a great verse? I’m going to have success next year in my career.” Well, 70 years, maybe not. Eventually, you’ll have success. I might preach on that verse. I’m not sure. I’m thinking about doing that because it’s so important to get this down. I’ll mention this again in a couple of minutes.

So, we tend to take these verses out of context and they can become moral lessons, right? Okay. Here’s what you do. What you do is you get full of goodness and then you get full of knowledge and then you’re going to be able you’re going to be competent to counsel each other and just do that. Okay? And so, you know, goodness, well, yeah, it’s a biblical definition. Knowledge, well, it’s the word of God. And we can make some general things. But if you look at the context, which we won’t do now, but I encourage you to later of the same basic message to the saints at Colossae and look at the movement of that book and what’s going on in that book. You know, at the center of the book is the key to everything that you’re supposed to understand its connection to these verses about admonishing each other.

At the center of the book of Colossians is the new man, Jesus Christ, death and resurrection, appropriation of the gospel. If we don’t keep in mind these kind of precursors here that I give you on your outline and just try to do this text this week, you know, well, there’ll be some success, some failure. But if we get an understanding that we cannot do this text apart from life and that the only source of life is the risen Lord Jesus Christ and our connection is through his gospel of grace, everything falls apart. We’re going to talk a little bit, maybe we’ll talk very soon. If I’m going to admonish you, if I don’t have humility. If I don’t have grace operating as the principle, the engine of my life and if I don’t have that, I’m not going to come across like that. Are you going to receive it? Maybe the spirit of God is not, you know, dependent just upon us. I preach sermons and sometimes people are greatly moved by them. And I know when I hear that, it’s got nothing to do with what I said. Well, it has something to do with it, but it’s got to do with the spirit of God working in that people. He can still use you, but usually not. Not.

So what’s going to enable us to have the kind of grace, compassion, empathy for the sinner that we’re trying to admonish about that particular sin in their life? Well, the center of Colossians, the great doctrinal dissertation or thesis that Paul lays out in the book of Romans precedes this. He’s given them a great exposition of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Death and life in Jesus, repenting and being forgiven of our sins and alive in Christ and all that stuff. That’s all gone before these verses. So, I have it on your outline. I encourage you to go through it a little bit in your homes, but it’s the necessary sort of stuff that enables us to go about fulfilling verse 14 of Romans 15 in a godly kind of a way, right?

So I’ll just leave that as it is and go on to let’s see, you know, for instance, let me just before I pass it on, look at point six for instance on your outline. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom. Right? Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. So in the precursor stuff in last week’s sermon, that’s what we read. And what do we read today? We read that they’re rich in knowledge, filled with knowledge. You see, it connects up. It’s the same basic message in all these epistles to different contexts. But to be prepared, to be ready, To be competent to counsel means the word of Christ dwelling in us richly. In other words, all the riches are found in the word of Christ, his scriptures. And that’s going to fill us with knowledge.

Without that knowledge, without that word, beginning with the gospel and our own personal salvation, our own belief in the grace of God toward driving everything else. Without that word, we’re not competent to counsel. So, we can take this verse and say, “Oh, yeah, okay, great. This means And I sort of did this last week, but I did it in error. Yeah, we’re all competent to counsel. Not really. We all should be competent to counsel, but if you’re going to use this verse to talk about being competent to counsel, it means that the ones that are competent to counsel are filled with goodness and filled with knowledge. Is that you? For many of you, yeah, I think it is actually. I actually would say that generally that’s true. Others of you, not so much. Young people, probably very little. But you’re getting there. This is what we all should be attaining to are these sort of preconditions for being competent to counsel. Richness of God’s word to us.

Just so we don’t miss leave the children out again. Number seven on the handout: Alive in Christ, we stop lying and start singing. I just love that. Don’t you? I had to say it again this week. I wanted to say it again because that was the text last week. If you look at the structure of Colossians, we’re not supposed to lie. Put that off and you put on singing to one another. Right now, you don’t always sing. It’s not an opera. Sometimes if you came to my house, you would think it was an opera. Sometimes I do that, everybody gets irritated. But, you know, it’s supposed to be beautiful, our speech to one another, right? In church, this is exactly what we do. We’re not lying to anybody today in this hour and a half or whatever it is, two hours. What we are doing is singing with one another and singing to each other and giving thanks for God and thanks for the church. This is what we do. We’ve been moved from lying to singing.

Young people, commit yourself to that. Put away lying. Sing. Even if it’s a song of confession. People will forgive you. You’re among godly Christian folk. Don’t let your fear when you do wrong make you go off and hide like Adam and Eve. Heaven to the open. Sing. Maybe it’s a little sad song, but it’s a song nonetheless. We move from lying to singing.

The peace of Christ comes from the word of Christ. How important is that? I know people who are really troubled right now. And it’s real hard to break through and remind them, look, I know it’s hard, but the only peace you’re going to find isn’t from your circumstances. The only peace you’re going to find is in Christ. It’s in the word of God. Christ reflected in the word. And we saw that from last week, Colossians structure. And so it kind of gives us the ability then to have that peace by which we admonish one another and serve each other that way.

We need to work at being rich in the Bible. Kind of already made that point. The key to joy and peace is believing God’s word. So once more, word. All right.

So now we’re at B on the outline. The immediate context for our particular verse. The immediate context for our verse about goodness and knowledge and being competent to count. So in the immediate context first of all is verse 13 and this sort of sums up much of what I just said beautifully: “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace and believing that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Now I don’t know I didn’t study the Greek. I don’t know if this is the way the phrasing is quite right with the way the Greek words lay out or not. But if it is it’s a chiasm begins with God ends with the power of the spirit. God is the God of hope and we have hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. And at the middle, the source of this hope is that we’re filled with joy and peace in believing. Joy and peace in believing. So that’s at the center of this thing.

So as we get into then this is the preparation. This is the last verse before this verse. And it says a lot of what we just talked about what I said last week in terms of the buildup. The center that’s going to empower us. The engine, the gospel engine is in the words of the verse 13. joy and peace in believing. Believing what? The word of the gospel. And if we do that, God then will give us hope. And that hope is what we convey to others.

One of the most important things to tell people to admonish them about when they’re struggling is hope. You learn this in biblical counseling classes. By the time people get to you, they have either lost hope or gotten very close to losing all hope. And without hope, it’s really hard to do much work. So hope is what is here. Hope is the preparation then for the being competent to counsel in the life that produces that.

Verse 15 right after this it says: “Nevertheless brethren I have written more boldly to you on some points as reminding you because of the grace given to me by God.” So right after this he says I put you in mind and stuff. Doesn’t use the same word but he says I did that and I did it with boldness. What’s he doing? Well he’s doing a couple of things. He’s reminding them of apostolic authority, right? He’s got boldness because he’s a messenger of God. We have boldness to hold each other accountable because we’re messengers of God in a different but similar way.

Remember last week we went from Paul, you know, doing that stuff, the admonition to then the Colossians being called to do it, right? That was the big overarching structure of the text. We move from the special office to the general office. We move from the appointing of special officers in Romans to then all of us speak this word of truth together in community. So, so here it is as well. He’s reminding them of his special office, but that encourages us for our general office and he had put them in mind of something with boldness. So, we’re supposed to have a degree of boldness as well.

Now, that boldness of Paul in verse 15 is sort of balanced out by something he said in verse 14. Maybe you passed by it in our reading, but what does he say? “Now, I myself am confident concerning you, my brethren.” See, he does two things there. He praises them. We’ll talk about that in a minute. And then he calls them, “My brethren.” So he gets down on his knees. You know, if you got kids, you know the analogy. You get on their level. You’re my brethren. I’m with you. It’s a term of affection for them. It’s this family of God thing we’ve been talking about in this series on community. He gets at that level.

Now, right after that, I got boldness because I’m an apostle of Christ. So, he has no problem, you know, seeing his I don’t know, we used to use the word functional superiority. He can’t use that anymore. It’s not politically correct and it doesn’t communicate correctly. But Paul has this office to fulfill and they and his is to speak and theirs is primarily to hear and to submit to the word he speaks. So he’s got that going on, but at the same time he stresses that he’s on the horizontal sphere. He’s a he’s only there, he’ll say later in the next few verses, he’s only an apostle by the grace of God. So the grace of God is what drives him to be able to do this.

What does tells us that is if we’re going to kind of be like Paul, we want to remember when we admonish one another, we’re bringing the word of God into their lives. We’re trying to put it into their minds. There’s an authority that the word has that we’re speaking to them that we can’t let go of, shouldn’t let go of, but we’re doing it as, you know, joints, the gift of life, the gracious gift of life. You know, in either one of those things, you can slide off. Too authoritative, too compassionate, not compassionate, a proper sense, but too kind of, you know, horizontal without saying the word of God says thus. We have a hard time hearing the word of God says thus. You have a hard time hearing it from me.

Now, I know I’m right because I talked to some of you. I know you have a hard time hearing it from me and you have an even harder time hearing it from, you know, the person in your community group. But here it we should. So, that’s the immediate context.

Now, the text. It’s pretty straightforward. Admonitions bracketed by affirmation. And here’s what I want to talk about this. As I said, how he begins it. I myself am confident concerning you. So, he’s got an affirmation going on here. Now, this is near the end of the letter, right? He’s kind of wrapping things up at this point. It’s only 16 chapters long. So, we’re almost at the end. And so, here at the end of the epistle, he commends them for the sort of church that they are. I know you’re full of goodness, full of full of the knowledge of God. You’re competent to counsel, he says. Okay. So he gives them glory. I would say affirmation. Remember the first three community building practices, affirmation. Well, here’s Paul doing it. He’s affirming them by saying, you know, I myself am confident concerning you that you’re X, Y, and Z that you’re solid.

I’m confident. He affirms them. And he did this at the beginning of the letter in verse chapter 1:8. He said, “First I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.” He commended them at the beginning, gave them affirmation. He commends them at the end even though he’s going to try to encourage them and exhort them throughout the letter, but he brings affirmation at either end.

Now, now that’s good. Some people call that a baloney sandwich. You know, I affirm you. I affirm you. By the way, you’re a jerk in the middle. It can be used that way. Anything that God gives us can be misused. But it’s the way of life. What do we go through every week at church? What’s the ritual we move through? We move through forgiveness of sins, the preaching of the word, life at the table in community. What is it? It is glory. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. It is knowledge through the preached word of Christ and other scriptures in the in the service. And it is life which means that the only life we have is connected to Jesus and connected to his people. Do you understand? That’s what this Lord’s supper means. It tells you that whether you believe it or not, we move through glory, knowledge, and life.

The point here is before we get to glory, God gives or before we get to knowledge, rather, he gives us glory. He forgives us our sins and says we’re his people and says that’s great. You’re good people. That’s what he does. He affirms us at the beginning of the service before bringing the word of admonition, bringing his word and making sure it’s in our mind. Okay. Now, that’s very important. That means as we speak to people, when we have a need to rebuke, warn, comfort, same kind of connotation, but bring to mind people, admonish them, hold them accountable for stuff. If we’re going to serve somebody in that way, what should we do at the beginning? We should commend them.

Anybody in this church that’s a member in a member of RCC, you better commend them when you talk to them. Don’t think down on them. Think down on what they might be engaged in. But you should have no problem commending them because the Lord Jesus Christ gave them glory. He gave them weight. He gave them affirmation Sunday morning. And that’s marching orders for us one to the other. We better have something commended, you know, commendation to say to one another. And if you understand what Paul is doing here and the way he does it to the Romans, it’s an example to us, right? They’re written for our example. This is what spurs is supposed to do as well.

Now, I want to distinguish and I can get in trouble in this. Okay. But glory and safety. I want to distinguish these two things. Okay. I made a years ago. I connected up the glory knowledge in life with a book called *Crucial Conversations* at which safety is the most important thing to get to the knowledge that’s shared by the group so you can make good decisions in your business or organization in every choice in life. It’s very similar. Well, why is why is that so? Because God is trinitarian. His ways just flow through the universe and people discover them and don’t make reference to God. And so, there’s just this relationship between glory and safety. And the Bible has a lot to say about safety, but the Bible doesn’t have much to say. I don’t think I could be wrong, but I think most of the verses that come to my mind about safety are assurances from God that we’re safe. Okay? It doesn’t mean he won’t sometimes put us in situations that feel very unsafe. Okay? So, Safety is a good thing to think about, but it’s not what I’m talking about with affirmation.

What I’m talking about with affirmation is glory. If we only will admonish somebody or put them in mind of something they need to hear to have a more flourishing life, if we only do that when that person has felt safe with us, that’s giving, you know, somebody a trump card that is not helpful for them. Not helpful at all. You just can’t do that. But you can give people glory that should encourage their sense of safety if they understand their relationship to Christ that you treat them as a dear beloved saint a brother a sister whatever it is that should have a consequence of producing a feeling of safety but the feeling of safety is not the same thing here it’s not you know I’m sure the church at Rome after maybe I don’t know I don’t know I don’t remember the order of the letters but when some of these churches got these epistles I don’t know how safe they felt I mean, you know, he would bring some pretty serious admonitions and rebukes in some of these letters.

It’s like Jesus’s letters to the seven churches, which I’ll mention at the end of the sermon. You know, we think what a great thing to get a word from God. Well, maybe, but it’d be kind of fearful, too. But the word comes nonetheless. Paul affirmed them, wanted to help them feel biblically safe. We could say, have glory and wait, but then he admonished them whether they felt worried or Calgary. So in any event, the idea here is that Paul gives us this process. I won’t call it a technique, a process of affirming people before we admonish them.

So on the outline number 11, the kids outline to hold others accountable. We should start with what do we start with? Glory. That’s right. Was that Levi? No, probably wasn’t. Just kidding. Okay. We must also be deeply aware of God’s grace. I hope I have a number of letters there. I think I do. Deeply aware of God’s grace. If we don’t come affirming the other people, giving them glory. And if we don’t come with a sense of personal humility, the gospel is the engine that’s driving all this. We get it. We’re no different than them. You know, apart from the grace of God, here we go.

You know, if we don’t do that, our admonitions might work, but they’re going to be far less effective because we want to conform ourselves to the word of God. God. Okay. Number two, misinterpreting the affirmation. I already talked about that. No, I didn’t actually. Let’s bring it home just one more time. Misinterpreting the affirmation. So, Paul tells them they’re competent to counsel. And when we read the Bible, we’ve got this really bad pattern, at least in Western Christianity because, you know, with us, it’s all about me, right? Everything’s about me.

I remember, it’s funny because I heard about in this book again, but it reminded me back in my early Christian days, and I was convinced. One of the first books I read after the Bible when I returned to Christ was *The Late Great Planet Earth* and had these dreams about the second coming. And I realized after a few years how incredibly self-centered that was in me. I wasn’t reading that in the scriptures. I was reading the scriptures because I thought, well, of course, and I would never have said this to myself, of course, the second coming is going to come now. I’m not just going to die and the world go on. No, has to be in my lifetime. And this is the narcissism that the west sort of struggles with in our individualism. Everything’s about us right now, me and that’s it.

And so we can mistake these verses. Now there, you know, Jeremiah has application to the guy going off to find vocation after college. There’s application, but that’s not the meaning of the text. And the meaning of this text is not you are competent to counsel. The meaning of this text is you ought to become competent to counsel. And that being competent to counsel will be connected with you being filled with goodness which you may not be right now and you being filled with knowledge which you may not be right now. You see the difference?

Nothing wrong with a Bible study where we share what a text how it applies to my life. The problem is so often in Bible studies we share what the Bible verse means to me. Now it may sound semantic. There’s a big difference. The meaning of the text is determined by the context, the writer, the author, all that stuff. And only after we get that down really can we make proper application. What does it mean to me? Better way to say it, how does it apply to me? So, we don’t want to misinterpret this affirmation of Paul to the Romans. We may not be and many times will not be competent to counsel. We just won’t. All right.

Three. To serve one another with accountability requires a fullness of goodness. A fullness of goodness. And my second one will be a fullness of wordness. Sorry for the make-believe word, but I just thought it might be a way to remember a fullness of goodness. That’s good, right? Kind of fullness of goodness. Fullness of wordness. That’s the two things that are connected here with being competent to counsel.

What is goodness? Well, you sort of know what goodness is. You know what is morally good, practically good? It doesn’t just have to do with ideas. It really has the connotation more of doing good things for people, right? and sometimes we back off from that too. Well, how can I do anything good? There’s only one good, God. Well, that’s true at the ultimate sense, but it doesn’t mean the Bible doesn’t say, and it does repeatedly, that there are many good things that we’re to do. In fact, your whole life, like Jehoshaphat, the priest in the Old Testament, Gideon, there are verses that say their lives are characterized by their acts of goodness. Your life at the end of it, your obituary could say, “A man full of goodness did a lot of good things.”

Now, people can do good things without the engine of the gospel. They’re not really good. Then they’re selfish. But this is this don’t back off from this. Think good about other people in your group. Starts there, right? If you’re going to be full of goodness, you want to have good thoughts of the other person. You don’t want to let yourself be your characterization be filled with their sin for instance. Think well of each other and then act with goodness toward other people.

Now specifically today it’s serving others and goodness with accountability. That’s a good thing to give to somebody. God looks at that and he’s very happy if you’ve taken the courage to address a brother or sister about their sin. Offer to help hold them accountable. Put them in mind of the word of God. That’s a very good thing. But many other things are going to characterize our lives as being filled with goodness. You know, there’s been a list that came out from Hope 360. Those are good things to do, not hard. If you live in this area, you know, I know that the one of the community groups, they regularly, you know, weave at that place every month. That’s a good thing to do. And if you have a life, think about it. What’s it populated with right now?

And I know for young families, it’s populated with raising kids. And that’s a good thing, too. You’re being filled with goodness and doing it. But you know, as we mature, we develop a little more time apart from the family. They start to drift or we don’t spend all our time there and we start doing goodness in other directions. Even when you have little kids, I’ve talked about this before, but our political action as a church in terms of homeschooling that produced it was a good thing this church did. It was a good thing. And that goodness was done by people in this church who had little kids. So little kids isn’t the only good thing you can do at that stage of your life. But I understand it’s a good thing.

Okay. But you want your life to be and as you get older, how what’s your life populated by? Entertainment, you know, just doing things and doing cool Portlandia scene. I mean, there’s nothing wrong to enjoying, you know, good food and the opera or symphony or a good concert. That’s all good stuff. It’s part of delight of life, enjoying God and what he’s provided. But what’s your life populated by? It’s not supposed to be filled with amusement. Not filled with. You don’t see that in here. Well, I know you Romans, you’re a great solid church. You’re filled with amusements. How ridiculous that sounds. And yet, think about young people and how often, unless they’ve got diligent adults holding them accountable, their lives start to be filled with video games.

I mean, so, so anyway, I don’t want to belabor the point I know I already have, but filled with goodness. Take an inventory of your life. If you’re to do this community building practice of serving one another through accountability. Understand the accounts. What goes along with that? Okay. And what goes along with that is being filled with goodness. Okay? That’s how Paul characterizes this Roman church. Isn’t how your life would be characterized? Are you doing good? We should be doers of good. I mentioned that book by Bennetts. Nobody even asked for it. That’s okay, I guess. Great book. I think I put it back in the library.

Right now *Beneficus* on the doing of good written by Cotton Mather as I recall do good. So morally upright character but more than that a disposition to serve people in practical helpful ways. Okay, so you got to do that. We should desire the good of other people. That’s number 13. Desire the good for them. Being filled with good said, “Including good thoughts about your neighbor in Christ.” 14. We should have lives marked by doing good things. They should be populated by goodness.

In addition to goodness, there must be wordness. So to serve one another with accountability requires a fullness of wordness, right? That’s what Paul says here. He says, “I know you were filled with all knowledge.” Now, what do we think he means by knowledge? We talked about this last week. We looked at some verses. Knowledge is knowledge of the gospel by means of the knowledge of God’s word. That’s what knowing things is all about. We move from affirmation to the gift of knowledge and the preaching of the word you can help understand the world around you based on the word of God. That’s knowledge is okay. It’s this working thing that involves a great deal a great deal of God’s word.

This is why in your community groups for instance, you know, you’re supposed to have some Bible going on whether it’s through a book about the Bible, whatever it is, and supposed to have a at least a nominal service project doing good for your community. And this is sort of what it’s about. If you don’t have a community group that’s growing in closeness and tight that isn’t having some degree of goodness and wordness, you’re probably not going to have accountability.

And so what that means is the people in your group will go on with the same sins year after year after year because they haven’t been brought to the table because they don’t feel, you know, like you’re going to really affirm them in it and they don’t feel you’re going to hold them accountable. That’s the other problem. You share something a problem in your life and nobody holds you accountable. Well, it’s over. Okay? So, you need a fullness of goodness and a fullness of wordness. And the beautiful thing is that the Roman church had them both together. He had both of them. Okay? That made him competent to counsel because they had both.

So often churches can focus on a fullness of wordness and get the doctrine right and not you know not really be all that involved in goodness and doing works or a church can be real goodness oriented but no doctrinal in fact it can be even despise well doctrine just divides doctrine you know so in what Paul says we want to become individually and as a church is with the fullness of both these crucial aspects that accompany the guy the man or the woman who is competent to counsel knowledge comes from God’s spirit and in God’s word. And so that’s what this element that accompanies goodness is.

To serve one another with accountability requires a commitment to reciprocity. Remember, these are “one another’s.” They go back and forth. If the only time in group that you hold somebody accountable or if the only time accountability is held when you’re doing somebody else and nobody’s holding you accountable, something’s wrong or at least conceivably it’s wrong. So, in order to do this, this accountability thing, it’s a “one another.” It’s a back and forth, a reciprocity at play in holding each other accountable.

And then number six, to serve one another with accountability requires courage. Courage both ways. James 5:16: “Confess your sins to one another.” That’s not easy. That requires courage, right? Tremendous benefit in life together. Bonhoeffer, I made this quote several months ago, but he said, “This a man who confesses his sins in the presence of a number excuse me in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself his experience the presence of God in the reality of the other person.”

So Bonhoeffer says when you confess your sins you come out of complete isolation and to do that it’s good but it requires courage both ways. It requires courage to give an admonition and it requires courage to hear the admonition. Right? But here we should. Hebrews 3:13 says this: “Exhort one another daily while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.”

One of the big reasons we got to do it is because sin is deceitful and we deceive ourselves. How you going to bust through self-deception? You’re not. Occasionally God can of course bust through it. But generally the way God works, he wants your community, he wants your group of Christian, you know, compatriots to help you bust through self-deception. Now, if you’re holding your own and you got a bunch of compatriots around you telling you something and you still think what you’re doing is right and everybody else thinks what you’re doing is wrong, you’re like that little Johnny. He’s doing he’s in the parade in the middle of the street playing his piccolo and he never sees that the whole band is going that way.

Well, if you find yourself in that position, brothers and sisters, consider self-deception. That is likely what’s happening. If a group of people in this church surrounds you and brings a single witness to you, you know, don’t cling on to your view of what you’re doing relative to the word of God. Consider that self-deception could be at play. So, so accountability requires courage to do that and it requires courage to hear it. Courage to think that maybe we’re not getting things right.

“One anothers” means back and forth. This takes courage. We are all to become competent to counsel. We get training for that in worship. But it doesn’t end here, right? Not going to happen here. We sing, we encourage and exhort one another through our songs, but it’s not going to happen here ultimately.

I have a couple more quotes as we move to closing. I can separate through the just a minute. Well, a couple of quotes. You have to hold people accountable. You’re not always going to be the most popular. If you want to win, sometimes you have to have a difficult conversation with people. You know, they are not going to like you, but you do it because you want what is best for the team. That was Carla Overbeck who was the former US women’s soccer national team captain.

You see, it’s hard. It’s hard for elders, you know, to admonish because, you know, people aren’t going to like you. You’re not going to win the popularity contest. Even if you’re effective in reaching them, frequently they’re a little bit more hesitant to be your friend or to be around you much. Seems weird, but it’s true. Another quote: “Leaders must develop a lower threshold for alibis and becoming better communicators and enforcers of what they want done. If you’re more interested in being liked and popular than holding people accountable for results, you have a serious leadership weakness. It is not your job to make people happy. Your job is to get them better. Holding people accountable to high standards and results is nothing to apologize for. Failing to stretch them to their potential is.”

Boy, that’s great, isn’t it? Maybe you think it’s obvious. I suppose it is, but it’s still a great thing to say. Nothing to apologize for trying to get people to bump up their game or to meet the expectations that have been set in the word of God. For instance, what’s shameful is if we don’t do that to one another. You see, if all we care about is if all I care about is making Don happy and like me, that’s all I care about. That’s horrible. I’m a Judas priest. At that point in time, what I care about is getting Don better. And what he cares about is getting me better. That’s what we have to be like. And if we’re like that, that’s accountability. You see, then we’re going to try to keep each other pegged in that direction. And that’s the blessing of God in the context of who we are.

What would Jesus do? Oh, let me see. Do I have a couple more quotes here? Maybe I do. Okay, here’s a good quote: “If you are building a culture where honest expectations are communicated and peer accountability is the norm, then the group will address poor performance and attitudes.”

So, you see, if we’re building a culture where peer accountability is the norm, then the group itself, our community groups or groups of friends, whatever it is, they’ll address performance problems. And now you got the best of both worlds. As I said last week, don’t I see the pastor can do it? No. Pure accountability. These are mostly quotes from sports guys, by the way, who know how you’re going to have to win with teamwork and not with individual performance alone.

Another quote: “When your teammate looks you in the eye and holds you accountable, that’s the greatest kind of leadership there is.” Doug Collins, Philadelphia 76ers. When your teammate, he says, not your coach, the greatest kind of leadership in the church is when you look your brother or sister in the community group and say, “Brother, this is wrong. You need some help in this area. We’re going to try to hold you accountable.” That’s leadership. And that’s the sort of leadership that builds winning basketball teams. And that’s the sort of leadership that produces effective churches that will change the world.

Okay? Other if you don’t have that, nothing’s changing. You may have a level of satisfaction with group or with your friends and that’ll just, you know, play itself out of the next few years. Who knows what might happen? But I’m not I’m not interested in that. I want us moving forward. I want us advancing as a church. The only way that can happen is if we apply this community building practice of serving each other through accountability.

This guy’s name I can’t pronounce. Krukowski? Wilson will know. USA men’s basketball coach Mike Krzewski. What was that? Chicheski. Oh, completely wrong. Thank you. Well, he said you guys know it. So listen up. This is what he said: “In putting together your standards, remember that it is essential to involve your entire team. Standards are not rules issued by the boss. They are a collective identity. Remember, standards are the things that you do all the time and the things for which you hold one another accountable.”

See, that’s group dynamic and that’s what should be going on in the community groups, right? You develop standards and standards are things going to hold each other accountable for. And of course, that links back to the word of God and to what Paul told the Romans.

Two more quotes, short ones. Oh, Tom Brady. Very little bit of the air has been let out of this quote, but I’ll use it anyway. Coach Belichick holds us accountable every day. We appreciate when he’s tough on us. He gets the best out of us. See, that’s the idea. To get the best out of brothers and sisters in the Lord by holding each other accountable.

And one last one, Joe Dumars from the Pistons: “On good teams, coaches hold players accountable. On great teams, players hold players accountable.” Boy, that’s good. Good teams, coaches hold players accountable. Great teams, players hold players accountable.

What would Jesus do? Well, you read through the seven letters to the seven churches, and almost every one Jesus starts through affirmation. He tells them great things they’ve been doing. Then he says, “I got a few things against you.” He brings them in mind of some stuff. And then he holds out the hope that you I’ve got what you need to fix this particular problem. That’s what we’re supposed to do. What would Jesus do this week in your group?

He would do that. If you know someone struggling with a besetting sin, whatever it is, you would talk to him. I know you’re good. I know you’re doing a lot of good things in life. I see that. But here’s a few things that you got to attend to. And you know what? Jesus in his word tells me you have problems in this area. And Jesus in his word has all the solutions to that as well. That’s what Jesus does in these seven letters. Read them. The designation of who Jesus is at the each start of each letter. That’s the power for them to succeed at the particular difficulty he brings to them. Brings their awareness to rather.

So Jesus brings his rebuke or admonitions or warnings through us in the context of affirmation and we point people in those warnings to Jesus in his word and tell them you have great hope because Jesus’s word is true and he’s got all you need.

May the Lord God make us a great team. Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for your love for us. We thank you for the way you pastor us every Sunday and giving us the affirmation of the forgiveness of our sins and letting us sing your praises and receiving them and telling us how delighted you are to hear them. And then thank you, Lord God, for not just leaving us where we are, but each week calling us to move forward a little bit more, a few things we need to correct or do better, and then blessing us with the assurance of life at the conclusion of our service through the communion.

Father, may we do this in our homes. May we do this in our communities. May we do this husbands to wives, friends to friends, and within the context of our community groups as well. Make us, Father, a great team by players holding other players accountable. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.