Caring for One Another

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Transcript:

All right, we’re going to be in Romans chapter 12 this morning. Romans chapter 12. When I was in school, I heard a story in psychology class about an experiment that supposedly took place in the 1940s where they put a number of babies in an institution.

And half of these, they were put all together in two different groups, I guess kind of like a big, two big hospital nursery type things. And they did an experiment where they made sure these babies were well cared for. You know, they were fed, they were changed, all that.

But one group of babies was shown affection and attention. And the other group in this other room, they were cared for and they were fed and they were cleaned. All their needs were met, except the researchers that worked with them were under strict instructions not to make eye contact with them, not to talk to them, not to really show them any affection or handle them more than was absolutely necessary to care for their basic needs.

And the idea behind this experiment was to see the effects of a lack of care and a lack of affection on a child. And according to the story, they had to call off the experiment early because in the group of babies that was not interacted with, partway through the study, half of them had died for no physiological reason. And then there were some that once the experiment had stopped, they had still already just given up.

And by the time they were adopted out, they died anyway, a few of them. It was a heart-wrenching story to hear about that. And then to read about it recently, I read a I will mention of it online that jogged my memory about it, but I haven’t been able to find any definitive evidence that it actually happened.

I’m not saying it didn’t happen, but I haven’t been able to find a written case study where anybody was willing to admit that they did it, and I’m sure, you know, all sorts of nasty studies were run in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. They tested drugs on people. They tested mind control.

It’s not out of the realm of possibility that has happened, but I just haven’t seen any definitive evidence that the story actually happened. However, there are a lot of similar cases where people have observed they didn’t do it on purpose is the main difference, but people have observed that sort of thing happening when they’ve gone to orphanages and children who might have been cared for otherwise but weren’t really shown any affection because the workers didn’t have time. They had to care for all these children, and so they weren’t shown affection, and the researchers found that when children weren’t shown any care or affection in their formative years, they didn’t thrive the way kids do if they’re shown attention and affection.

And there have been all sorts of studies that, again, the difference between that and between those and the study I was talking, the supposed study I’m talking about from the 1940s, is that that one they supposedly did it on purpose. But even if it wasn’t done on purpose, they can still tell that there’s a difference. There’s something that happens to you when you are not cared for, when you do not have a connection to other people.

Because we are, we’re not animals, but if we were animals, I’d say we’re herd animals. You know, we’re pack animals. We were meant to run together.

We talked about this some last week. God designed us to work together. God designed us to be together.

And we are better when we’re together. And I know some people say, I don’t want to be around other people. A lot of times they say that because they’ve been hurt by being around other people.

And sometimes, at least in my experience, those who protest the most that I don’t need anybody are the ones that are most hungry for somebody to come along and show them some care and show them some affection. We were designed to do this. We were designed to be together, as we saw in God’s Word last week.

Now, as we’re coming toward the close, next week will be the last one, but as we’re coming toward the close of this series on reasons why people want nothing to do with the church, want nothing to do with Christianity, one of the reasons that I would hear over and over again is, nobody cares whether I’m there or not. Nobody cares whether I’m there or not. And part of me thought, well, what churches have you been at?

Most of the, not all, but most of the churches I’ve ever been a part of were the kind of churches like this one, where if somebody new walks in the door, we know they’re new, and people tend to sort of attack them in a friendly way, attack them with friendliness. I’ve seen churches that just go overboard with this, and it’s almost like love bombing. This church, I think, is friendly without maybe overwhelming people.

But there are churches out there where you can walk in the door, sit down, occupy your pew, go through the service, and walk out without anybody ever knowing you’re there. You know what, let’s go a step further, and some of that is because of the size of the churches. Let’s go a step further, though.

There are churches that you can walk in, and it’s small enough that everybody knows you’re there, but nobody shows you any care that you’re there. Nobody shows that they even notice you. And that can happen in small churches as well as it can in big churches.

It can happen if you’re a first-time visitor that you walk in and you feel like nobody cares that you’re there or that you’re part of the group. It can happen if you’ve gone to that church for 30 years that you can feel like nobody cares if I’m here or not. It’s not supposed to be that way.

Some of you this morning may feel like nobody cares whether I’m here at Trinity or not. I hope that’s not the case. I hope you don’t feel that way.

And if you do feel that way, let me tell you in the strongest terms I know how, we care very much that you’re here. You are wanted here. You are loved here.

And if we are not doing a great job of showing it, then that’s something we need to work on. And I’d say that for any church. I’m not saying that this morning because I know of any problems or because I know of anybody who’s not caring for one another.

I just know that sometimes it’s difficult to always do everything we’re supposed to in terms of showing our care for one another. We get busy. We get distracted.

But God’s Word tells us that we are supposed to care for one another. As a church, the Bible numerous times describes us as the body of Christ. We’re described as a body because one part of the body matters to all the other parts of the body. Right now, the cedar trees are in bloom, which I can’t think of a time over the last year when they haven’t been in bloom.

Wednesday night, Brother Phil got here early and rang the doorbell, so I hoofed it up here to come let him in. And he asked me when I got to the door, he said, why are you so out of breath? Because I rushed up here, but I didn’t run.

And I thought to myself afterwards, I thought, that’s not normal that I should be out of breath. And then I realized all week, anytime I get up out of a chair, I’m out of breath. And I thought, have I put on that much weight?

What is happening here? And I finally looked at the pollen counts and saw the cedar was through the roof. And I said, that’s got to be it.

And I huffed and puffed all weekend. I’m still out of breath and kind of tired right now because of all the cedar. So the cedar’s in bloom, and my lungs are just fighting to get air because everything’s congested up here.

And it gives me sinus headaches. Some of y’all have those sinus headaches. Some of you have sinus pressure.

We all seem to get different variations on symptoms here. And here’s where I’m going with this. My feet do not have a cedar allergy.

My legs do not have a cedar allergy. But boy, my lungs are feeling the cedar and my head is feeling the cedar and none of my body feels good right now. Even though the cedar is not attacking my thighs and my leg muscles and all that, it’s not attacking my back, I still just don’t have the energy to do anything.

See, my body works together in being affected by the cedar. I knew there was a reason I was telling you that story. So if the lungs are under attack, the legs don’t feel great either.

Some of you have had that happen. You’ve had a back injury. Your back hurts tremendously, but it’s not like your head and your arms are saying, oh, I feel great today.

No, the body works together. And it would be strange, it would be strange for us if one part of our body was in severe pain and the other just felt like, oh, everything’s great and didn’t even notice. Got my hand chopped off and my feet don’t even notice.

That would be strange, wouldn’t it? Well, the body of Christ is supposed to be the same way. We’re supposed to care all the other members for one another.

And we’re all supposed to be attached to each other and care for one another. And so we look at Romans chapter 12 this morning, which is one of the many places that talks about this. And starting in verse 9, Paul writes, Let love be without dissimulation.

Abhor that which is evil and cleave to that which is good. And I went through and studied some of these words to get a deeper understanding of what they meant because there are words in here like dissimulation that we don’t use so much anymore in the English language. And I don’t want to just skip over them because they’re in there for a reason.

They have a meaning. But what he’s explaining is this idea of dissimulation is hypocrisy. And we talked a few weeks ago about what hypocrisy means.

It’s not, oh, I think I should be good and sometimes I’m bad. Sometimes I fail to live up to what my expectations are. Hypocrisy is about pretending and saying, oh, I’m perfect when I know I’m really not.

Or saying, oh, I feel great today when I know I really feel awful. Hypocrisy, hypocrisy is when somebody asks me, how are you doing today? I’m good.

And I know everything is falling apart in my life. And I’m talking about here at the church. I’m not saying somebody in line at Sonic asks you, how are you doing?

You’re supposed to spill your guts to them. But shouldn’t we be able, shouldn’t we be able as part of the church to bear each other’s burdens. But we feel like we’ve got to put the mask on.

That’s what I talked about with the study on hypocrisy, because that word for hypocrisy is the same Greek word that’s applied to an actor wearing a mask on the stage. And sometimes we wear masks in real life. So when he says, let love be without dissimulation, he’s saying love without hypocrisy.

And that word love, there are four Greek words for love. Three of them are used in the Bible. And this one is the word agape.

And if you’re familiar with the study of the words for love, that describes God’s kind of love. That is a selfless, unconditional, self-sacrificial love that only God really can show unless we let him love through us. And so this verse is telling us to love other people the way God loves them without pretending about it.

Don’t pretend you love people. Actually love people. I remember when I worked for the county, not here, but in Oklahoma City, I worked for Oklahoma County.

And the joke was, I would hear this all the time at church. I got tired of hearing it, but it’s kind of true. Do you know how many people work for Oklahoma County?

One out of four. You know what? There was some truth in that, maybe more so in the road crews.

But I would see people in my department and in other departments around just trying to look busy and pretending to work. And most of y’all know I’m pretty conservative, so I’m thinking, I’m sitting here being paid by the taxpayers for this. I need to be doing something, you know, because I need to be doing something to their benefit.

If we didn’t have people, I’d go clean up and organize in the records. Anyway, I would see people pretending to be busy, which, by the way, I’ve seen that other places I’ve worked as well, people pretending to work. And they put a lot of effort into it.

And I would think, why pretend to work and put in all that effort? Just actually do the work. It’s easier just to do the work than to look busy sometimes.

And the same thing goes for us. Instead of putting all the effort into pretending like we’re loving, just be loving. And I realize it’s a tall order to ask us, to ask you today, to love each other and to love others the way God loves because we can’t do that.

But see, we have the benefit of being able to ask God to love through us. And if you find yourself like I do having trouble with that and having trouble with loving the way that I should, we’re able to ask God and be honest with God. Take the mask off and say, I’m not the loving person I should be.

Would you love them through me? And God has an amazing way of making that happen. So we’re supposed to show God’s kind of love in a genuine way without pretending about it.

And he says to abhor that which is evil, to detest utterly that which is evil, Because that’s how God feels about it. And by the way, this is not saying, running around town saying, you’re doing wrong, I hate you, and I hate what you’re doing. This is not even saying, running around town and saying, I love you, but I hate what you’re doing.

This is about abhorring the evil within me. We’ve all heard the saying, love the sinner, hate the sin. I don’t think that’s untrue.

I think we are supposed to hate sin, and I believe we are supposed to love people. But when we tell the world, oh, I love you, but I hate your sin, What they hear is, I hate everything about you. The best approach for us to start with, I believe, is what I heard from a preacher on the radio several years ago, and it stuck with me.

Love the sinner, hate my own sin. That doesn’t call on us to compromise with evil and say that sin is okay. That says, I’ve got enough of my own sin that I need to deal with God about.

And when we find people who are in sin too, we can deal with them in a loving way and tell them what God’s Word says about it and tell them that God’s word calls them not only to repentance, but to reconciliation with God. But before I can hate anybody else’s sin, I need to hate my own. And I’m the first to testify.

I’ve got plenty of my own. You never get to a point in your Christian walk where you think, hey, I’m sinless. But some of the more worldly things that you may do, some of what we call the big things, maybe you started out as a drunk, maybe you started out as a womanizer, or maybe you started it, and you came to Christ, and he dealt with those big things, now you start to see what you thought were little things as big things.

I’ve been a Christian for over 25 years now, and I don’t deal with the same sins that I used to all the time, but now I see things where, you know, early on in your Christian life, you’re thinking, it’s all these behaviors, it’s all these things that I do, and now I look inside myself, and I see the attitudes, and I see the condition of my heart. And what we would say, oh, that’s little things. That’s just something you thought.

No, it bothers me. I hate it because I realize it’s a sin against God when I act that way. And so he calls us to love other people without hypocrisy and without pretense and to hate that which is evil.

But he says, cleave to that which is good. It’s not just about, oh, I hate my sin. I’m so awful.

He gives us something there to replace it with. He says, stick to that which is good. Cleave to that which is good.

I say stick because I looked it up and that word means the same thing as to stick something with glue. So it’s not enough to say, oh, this is evil, stay away. Our approach to that is to look to the things that represent Jesus Christ and stick to those like glue.

Cleave to that which is good. We should run away from sin in our own lives and we should determine, we should decide that with God’s help, we’re going to do what’s right and we’re going to stick firmly to that decision. And he says in verse 10, be kindly affectioned to one another with brotherly love.

So this kindly affectioned is another kind of love that the Bible talks about, which is a familial love. We’re supposed to show familial love to one another with brotherly love. It uses that same kind of terminology twice, because what it’s telling us is the love that we’re supposed to show for our families is the same kind of love that we’re supposed to show for our brothers and sisters in Christ. Now I say supposed to because I know some Christians who unfortunately do not get along with their families.

So I say the kind of love that we’re supposed to. You know the perfect family that you see on TV or the Norman Rockwell paintings and everybody gets along and everybody’s children are clean and well-behaved and yes, yes sir, yes ma’am, it’s the Waltons, good night John boy. Everybody likes each other.

That’s not always reality for us but that’s what we’re supposed to be. That’s how we’re supposed to love each other. I’m not saying everybody’s ever going to be perfect, but we’re supposed to love each other and have that kind of affection.

So think about how we’re supposed to love our families, and the Bible says that we’re supposed to love one another in that same way. We as Christians are supposed to love one another in that same way. And before you think, well, that’s impossible.

Well, not with God, it’s not. Not with us being able to ask God, help me love them because they’re being difficult. But do you ever get into a spat with family members that you love?

I’m not talking about being ugly to those family members you don’t like. I’m talking about family members you love. Do you ever get sideways with them?

Or is that just me? I’m the only one in here who ever does that. I guess it’s just me.

My sister and I, I love my sister. I would fight anybody. I mean, probably with words.

I don’t know how. I’ve never been in a fist fight. I wouldn’t know how it works.

But I would fight somebody for my sister. Oh, but she irritates me. So we don’t always see eye to eye on stuff.

But we love each other. I love my mother. And my dad, too.

I talk to my mother just about every day. There are some times, though, that I’ve had to tell my mother just recently when we were having a disagreement about the kids, about my children and how I was raising them or disciplining them, that I’ve had to tell my mother, I’m going to get off the phone and call you back later before I say something I shouldn’t. We get sideways with each other.

That’s what families do. And then we’re supposed to come back and be reconciled and love each other. So if I’m letting you off the hook a little bit, I can tell you, you can still, sometimes you’re going to get sideways with people at church.

It doesn’t mean that we’re all just going to join hands and sing kumbaya and everybody’s going to get along and there’s going to be no problems. Part of being a family is that sometimes you rub each other the wrong way and you fight, but you’re still supposed to love each other through it and say we’re not walking away. God put us together, and we have a responsibility to stick together and work it out. That’s what families are supposed to do.

That’s what the church is supposed to do. We’re supposed to love each other in that way. Love your Christian brothers and sisters like you should love your actual brothers and sisters.

And he says, in honor, preferring one another. That word preferring means showing deference to. Showing deference to.

Oh, no, you first. I’ll let you go first. One of the things I love about Oklahoma, especially small towns is that most of the traffic jams other than the school most of the traffic jams i get involved in in the course of a regular day are four of us sitting at a four-way stop waving at each other no you go first no you go first no you go first no you go for i’m not moving i hope you’re prepared to die at this stop sign because i am you go first and that happens at least once a day. No, after you, we defer to each other. And that’s what it’s talking about here, preferring one another.

You’re really bothered by something? Okay, you know what? I’m going to defer to you.

And if what I’m doing bothers you, let’s do things your way. And we’re supposed to prefer one another, show deference to one another. We put others first. I mean, these are things that we learned in kindergarten, but somewhere along the way, we forget them.

Somewhere along the way, we get, I’m not talking about anybody else here in the room, but me. We get old and set in our ways. Y’all are laughing.

Yes, at 32, I feel like sometimes I’m old and set in my ways. I told Charlo once this week, I said, I am dangerously close to you kids get off my lawn territory here. And we want our way and we want it to be done just the way we want it.

And you know what? God tells us to put other people first. I don’t always want to get up from what I’m doing and go look at what Benjamin built with Legos because it’s the same thing he built yesterday with Legos. But then I hear God’s voice saying, preferring one another, okay, I’m going to get up and go look at the Legos.

Let’s have it your way. Sometimes, Charla wants something different for dinner than I do, and I’d rather pout and have my own way. But you know what?

If Charla wants Mexican food, let’s go eat Mexican food. I like Mexican food too, but sometimes I’d rather have something else. We’re supposed to put others first. I mean, I’m not going to belabor this point anymore because you understand what this is.

We understand this is something we’re supposed to do, but it’s difficult. And he says in verse 11, not slothful in business. Be diligent in carrying out your responsibilities.

That doesn’t just mean your work job. That means all the things that we are responsible for, we should be diligent about. Like I try to tell the kids all the time, don’t stop the job until it’s done or you run out of daylight.

Either one. Fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. We’re supposed to serve the Lord passionately.

As we serve the Lord, it’s not just, as we serve the Lord together as brothers and sisters in Christ, it’s not just something that we do because it’s an obligation. I’m supposed to be there. It’s Sunday.

It’s Sunday again. The Sundays, I don’t know where last week went or the week before. The Sundays are just sneaking up on me.

Don’t serve the Lord out of a sense of obligation because it’s Sunday. It’s where I’m supposed to be. I’m supposed to be teaching Sunday school today, so I guess I will.

I’m supposed to be dealing with the children today, so I guess I will. I’m supposed to preach a message today, so I guess I will. I’m supposed to go visit the sick.

Somebody needs to visit her, and I guess it’s me. Don’t do that. We’re called on to serve the Lord passionately.

Whatever you do for the Lord, do it with passion. Part of that, too, means finding what God has called you to do. Sometimes we get dissatisfied with the work we’re doing because we’re doing work that God called somebody else to do, and he didn’t call us to do that particular ministry, and we’re just doing it for the wrong reasons because nobody else will step up when God’s called somebody else to do that.

I’ve done ministry that I didn’t particularly care for before and after I was a pastor, and you know what? It’s really easy to get burnt out in those areas, but then you find the area that God’s called you to do and what God has wired you to do, and you do it with joy, and there’s something contagious about that. There’s something contagious about seeing somebody who serves the Lord and loves it.

I’ve seen older ladies in church who all that they could do really was pray, but we shouldn’t say it that way. All they could do is pray. That was their ministry.

They had trouble getting around, had trouble getting out of the house sometimes even, but my goodness, prayer warriors. And they love to pray. And they love to pray for other people.

And you could see it on their faces and you knew they prayed. And there was just something about it that made me want to be a better prayer. When you serve the Lord with passion, it’ll encourage other people and it’ll be a joy to you.

In verse 12, he says, rejoicing in hope. Now we have watered down that word hope to mean wishful thinking in our culture. That is not what hope means.

Oh, I hope it doesn’t rain today. In our case, I hope it rains today. I don’t know if it’s going to rain or not.

So for me to say, I hope it rains today is just empty, wishful thinking. I might as well say, I hope dollar bills start falling out of the sky for that matter. I have no reason to think dollar bills are going to fall out of the sky.

That word hope in the biblical sense is a different meaning. It is the earnest expectation of something that’s going to happen. It is the assurance that something is going to happen, that God is going to keep his promises.

And so for us to rejoice in hope means that we are able to rejoice. We are able to be joyful because we have confidence that Jesus will fulfill his promises. That no matter how difficult things get in this life, no matter how short this life may be, that Jesus has made us promises of forgiveness, of eternal salvation, of eternal life, and of a relationship with God the Father, and if Jesus promised it, you can take it to the bank and know that he’s going to fulfill his promises.

And when you realize, when you realize that Jesus has your life in the palm of his hand, and that Jesus is in control, and that Jesus loves you and keeps his promises, when you know all of that, it’s easy to have joy, even in difficult circumstances. So he tells us to rejoice in hope, to be patient in tribulation. I am not good at this one.

Be willing to stand on God’s promises. This word patience doesn’t just mean I’m going to put up with it. It’s a patient waiting in faith, knowing that God is going to take care of things.

To be patient in times of trial, be willing to stand on God’s promises even when you’re burdened with circumstances beyond your control. We are all going to struggle with difficulties in our lives. We’re all going to have times that just beat us down.

And one of two things will happen in those times of tribulation. We will either be driven closer to Jesus Christ or further away. As believers, those times of difficulty should drive us closer to Jesus Christ. To say, nothing else may be going right in my life, but I have Jesus.

And I’m going to dig in and I’m going to trust that he’s got something in mind and I’m going to be willing to trust him and stand here and do what I’m supposed to do. That’s patience in tribulation. To say that I’m going to turn to Jesus and trust him.

Continuing instant in prayer. To be instant in prayer means that we persevere. We don’t just give up after we’ve prayed once or twice or a few times and it didn’t happen the way we wanted it to.

We live in a microwave culture. We want it today. I’ve gotten real hooked on that two-day prime shipping at Amazon, and even then it’s not fast enough sometimes.

I want it today. I want the drones to drop it on my porch in an hour. That’s coming, by the way.

but we want it now. And so I think we get it in our minds that I’ll ask God for it one time, and he should, God, I prayed for this 15 minutes ago. Why aren’t you on it?

First of all, God’s not our errand boy. He doesn’t work for us. But second of all, sometimes we show our faith by persevering in prayer.

Sometimes, and my wife can attest to this, there’s a couple things that I’ve been praying for pretty diligently for about four or five years, and it still hadn’t happened. And sometimes I start to have a little pity party about it. That God hasn’t done everything that I’ve asked yet.

Although I look back, I had this little pity party yesterday and I was in the truck. We were getting ready to go somewhere and I told Charlie, I’m going out to the truck. I need to talk to God.

I’ll meet you out there. And she came out there and I had tears in my eyes because in that time I’d gone back in my mind through all the parts of this, of what I’ve been praying for, that God had done so much more than I deserved up until that time and here I am having a pity party because he didn’t do everything that I asked. And then I realized there are women that I have known that have prayed for their husband’s salvation for 50 years.

And some of them have gone on to be with the Lord before they saw it happen. Some of those men later came to the Lord, but there are women that I know and could name by name, but I won’t, who prayed for their husbands for 50 years, prayed for their children for decades before something happened. You know what?

God calls us to persevere in prayer because there’s something that happens in prayer for us. There’s something that happens when I pray that God doesn’t always change the situation, but God very often changes my heart about the situation. And it’s in those times of prayer that God softens my heart and brings it in line with his own.

So we should make it a habit to pray for one another and don’t give up quickly. When somebody in our midst has a need, We pray for them and we commit to make it, we commit that we’re going to pray for them regularly and we’re not going to stop praying until God answers one way or the other. And sometimes from God the answer will be yes, sometimes from God the answer will be no, sometimes from God the answer will be not yet.

But we’re called to persevere in prayer. If somebody has a need, we pray for them and we keep praying. If somebody’s sick, we pray for them and we keep praying.

Somebody’s got a family situation, we pray for them and we keep praying. We never stop lifting one another up in prayer. Because this is not just prayer about our stuff.

In the context of what he’s talking about here, being the body, we’re supposed to be praying for one another. He says, distributing to the necessity of the saints. He’s talking here about noticing the needs of your brothers and sisters around you and meeting those needs.

That we as the church are called on to meet those needs. He says, given to hospitality. This is in verse 13.

Given to hospitality. The word here for given to is the Greek word dioko, and I wrote that down in my notes. I didn’t write down all the Greek words, but I wrote that one down because in my class, I was having trouble remembering that word.

I kept getting it mixed up with the word for deaco