In his sermon, "An Urgent Plea for the Culture of a Local Church," Scott Brown explores the teachings of Romans 11:33 to 12:21, emphasizing the importance of building a supernatural fellowship within the church. He highlights the deep wisdom and knowledge of God as the foundation for this fellowship, urging believers to present their bodies as living sacrifices and to be transformed by renewing their minds. The sermon underscores the need for humility, unity, and active participation in the church's life, where each member contributes their gifts for the benefit of all. Love is presented as the essential characteristic of the church community, setting it apart from secular society. Brown calls on believers to engage in brotherly love, honor one another, and serve with diligence while overcoming pride and responding to offenses with grace. The sermon's core message is that the church is a relational and organic community, distinct from the world's cultures, and requires active, intentional participation to foster a superior culture rooted in the gospel.

Slight modification to that. Turn to Romans 11 verse 33 as we pick up the flow of the thinking that is here. This is the inerrant, all-sufficient, sweeter-than-honey word of God. Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out. For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has become his counselor or who has first given to him and it shall be repaid to him for of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever amen and then chapter 12 verse 1 I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice wholly acceptable to God which is your reasonable service and Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

For I say that through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think 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 been gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them. If prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith.

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 love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good.

Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love. In honor, giving preference to one another, not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, Continuing steadfastly in prayer, distributing to the needs of the saints, given to hospitality. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep be of the same mind toward one another do not set your mind on high things but associate with the humble do not be wise in your own opinion repay no one evil for evil have regard for the good things in the sight of all men if it is possible as much as it depends on you live peaceably with all men Beloved do not avenge yourselves but rather give place to wrath for it is written vengeance is mine I will repay says the Lord.

Therefore if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a drink. For in so doing, you will heap coals of fire on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.

Let's pray. Lord, Lord, come and feed your sheep, equip the saints for the work of the ministry. We pray that you would you would chase off the works of the devil and the The threats of the the wolf among us that you would come and shape this church according to your own will To the beauty of your kingdom and your holiness Amen, please be seated This chapter is the beginning of a new section in Romans. Its foundation is in chapters 1 through 11 which explains justification by faith And in verses 33 through 36 of chapter 11 is a summary of what has come before. And it's also an introduction and really an apologetic.

The reason why all these things are necessary in the church. And here's what's happening here. The Apostle Paul is describing the culture of a true church. And he is explaining the relational fabric, the relational commands, and what it looks like for the people of God who are growing together, who are being sanctified by the Holy Spirit. And you notice that he begins with an urgent plea, I beseech you therefore brethren.

And we need to recognize that the Apostle Paul is regarding this as a very urgent matter. This is something that must be paid attention to. And so in these verses, what we find is the supernatural fellowship that exists in the Church of Jesus Christ. And this supernatural fellowship is characterized by people who take action. They take urgent action to do particular things in that church.

And you see your outline. First, they recognize the wisdom of God that governs the church. That's 11.33 through 36. Second, they present their bodies to God as a living sacrifice. Third, they function in the life of the church actively and beneficially.

And then fourth, there's a description of loving relationships with people in the church. That's verses 9 through 16. And then fifth, help for us, for our responding to people who have wronged us, and that's in verses 17 through 21. It's obvious that what we find here is that the culture of the church is a superior culture to all the cultures in the world. There's nothing better, There are no better commands than God for the shaping of the culture of the Church of Jesus Christ.

The Church of Jesus Christ is under the influence of the very best, the very most beneficial commands and principles. And it is in the church that you find the most helpful relational principles and it builds a superior culture than really anywhere else than any company or any culture or any nation state. And of course, it begins with the embracing of the gospel. That's chapters one through 11. And the work of the Holy Spirit is progressive.

So the apostle is speaking to a local church, and he's speaking about the culture of that local church. And so those admonitions are for us as well. And he makes it very clear that this is a progressive movement toward everything that is good. And that's why he says, I beseech you. He's talking to Christians.

He's asking them to go further. He's asking them to excel still more. Don't sit on your hands, don't cruise, excel still more. I beseech you therefore brethren." Because the believer, while the power of sin and death has been broken, All sins have been forgiven. You have a new capability given by God.

At the same time, there's a continual transforming of the renewing of our minds and we have been forgiven. We have been made holy in the eyes of God, but there still is remaining sin. And all our life long we are walking out, walking our way out of the wilderness of sin. Paul has just been exalting in the wisdom of God. And so this is a this is a supernatural fellowship created by the power of the gospel in conversion and the filling of the Holy Spirit.

And that's what this is a picture of. So you have these these actions that are taken in a in a true church and the first is that this supernatural fellowship, this life is created by the wisdom and the knowledge of God. This is an overflow of the wisdom of God. That's why we read, oh, the depths of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out. For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has become his counselor, or who has first given to him, and it shall be repaid to him.

For of him and through him and to him are all things, to whom be glory forever and ever." So these principles, these ways of living are directly emanating out of the wisdom of God and It's very interesting How detailed these admonitions are I haven't counted them, but there are many I don't know if they're 20 or 30 really specific admonitions to the Church of Jesus Christ. All of them are urgently applied in the Church, or we ought to. We encounter also a phrase, it's a very common phrase in the New Testament, one another. There are 10 one another's in the book of Romans from chapter 12 to chapter 16. Three of the ten are here in this passage.

There are around 59 one-anothers in the New Testament, and all of them teach the church how they ought to treat one another. And they're applicable in the church, they're applicable in the home, and they're actually applicable all over the place. And so you encounter these three one-anothers in this section of Scripture from 12 through 16. But the Christian life actually creates a superior culture. At the same time, the church is in a state of war.

The devil is waging war against the church. The cultures of the world desire to defeat the beauty and the glory of Jesus Christ in the church. And so believers need to understand that when these commands are hard-pressed to obey, it's because of this holy war that we are involved in. And it really is this holy war is won by those who have been redeemed by those who have presented their bodies as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God. So Romans 12 through 16 is a pivotal section for the building of the culture of a church.

We'll be in here for a long time because there's so many details. He does say, I beseech you. And I think that we should recognize right off the bat that the church is the place of exhortation. Don't despise the exhortations from the Word of God because they're all life-giving. Often people despise preachers who beseech urgently the church to be a certain way, don't despise that.

In fact, your pastors are actually charged by God. We have a duty to exhort the church and so that's what we will always do. And so don't despise the strong exhortations of preaching. It's not really very popular for preachers to give strong exhortations. We kind of like the soft touch, but the Bible doesn't always do that and so don't be uncomfortable with pastors who call for radical devotion to the church because it's very important And I think that as we go through this entire section it will take a few months To ask ourselves is this how I treat the Church of Jesus Christ because this text brings us to a definition and the purpose and the behavior of our lives in the body and he explains why that you may prove what is that good and acceptable perfect will of God.

What does it mean to live life in the body of Jesus Christ? So I'm just gonna give you an overview of this entire passage. We're going to walk through every phrase until we get to the end of it. I want to cast a vision for where we're going in Romans 12 and then next Sunday I'm going to look back and we're going to talk about verses 1 & 2 and then we're going to dial in with the distinctive focus on 3 through 8 and the various sections all the way through to the end because there are particular things in these sections that really require unpacking in detail. So today is an overview, you'll get a vision for it and then we'll drop back in and drill down into these sections.

But this supernatural community is created by people who have presented their bodies as a living and holy sacrifice. The culture of a true church begins with people who have consecrated themselves to God. They have given themselves to God, not half Christians but full Christians who've given their entire lives to God and they do it by presenting their bodies as a living and holy sacrifice and they are the kind of people who are turning away from the conformity of the world. I used to be in manufacturing and often we would bring in injection molded parts. In injection molding, you melt down the plastic and then it's under high pressure injected into a mold.

And then the mold is broken and there you have this molded object. The unbeliever is that molded object by the world. But by the power of Jesus Christ, and this never happens with plastic, but it happens with people, they're being transformed. They break out, They are like a cocoon that breaks out into a butterfly. And this is the power of God in the church.

It begins with people who've consecrated themselves to God, and they're part of now creating a supernatural community because supernatural life is created by a supernatural individual in the Church of Jesus Christ and it's all the natural outworking of the Holy Spirit. And all of these things are under one single banner, the word love. Love is the greatest manifestation of Jesus Christ in the church and as we as Jesus Christ said in John 13 33, by this all will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. Francis Schaeffer called it the final apologetic. The final apologetic to the church is that the that they love one another and this cannot be duplicated in secular society the same way that it's it's it can be seen in secular society.

Love can be plagiarized, it can be pirated, and it can be imitated in the flesh to a certain degree, but it cannot be duplicated, the spiritual work of love in the heart of a believer cannot be duplicated by your company's HR policy. The church is a supernatural community. It has something that the world does not have. It has something real. It has the Holy Spirit that works deep within the heart and then it comes out in everyday life.

And the believer is actually connected to something real, something eternal, something beautiful for all eternity. And that is the work of God through the power of the Holy Spirit. And so this is actually something real. It's not put on and it's not just based on policy. The Bible says that the Spirit gives life and that's what we find here.

And so you have this this jarring word it appears all over the Bible, therefore it announces a change in the message. The message has been, man is sinful, He's fallen short of the glory of God, but God is a God who justifies sinners. And so the whole section from one through 11 was about that doctrine of justification by faith. And now there's the application of the doctrine. It's a little bit like this.

You've gone to your doctrinal study. You've just graduated from your master's degree in theology. You've just learned the foundation of everything. Now take it to the streets. Put it into action.

Apply it to one another in the Church of Jesus Christ. And this, so that you would prove, in other words, that you would demonstrate what is that good and acceptable will of God. Now, there's much to say about these first two verses. We will elaborate on it in some depth next Sunday. Notice he's speaking to brethren.

He's talking to the people who are worshiping God in the local church that is in Rome. We are a local church that is in Wake Forest. All of this applies to us. And it's really founded upon presenting your body, your whole body to God. There's nothing that you're leaving, there's nothing that you're withholding from God.

You present your body and then the outflow of this living sacrifice is that you're not dead. In other words, it brings out a lifestyle. It's a way that you live, and you live that way in the church and on the street and everywhere else. So, it's based on transformation, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. In other words, this whole operating system of your life is shifted and there's a new power, there's a new authority in town and it's God.

And you're proving what is good, which is the will of God. And all of this is based on the mercies of God. That's verses one and two. And then he turns to the functioning in the life of the church in verses three through eight. I hope you're looking at your Bible because we're going to just walk through every verse in this section.

And here we find that the church is a body. The church is a collection of various kinds of people. You know, it's very interesting. Researchers in the human body are now telling us that it isn't just the brain that directs your life and your body. But that every single cell in your body communicates information to every other single cell in your body, and all of the communication of those billions of cells get rolled up and are categorized in the brain.

And you have this harmonious deployment of the human body by every cell in the body and the work of the brain. And lots of other stuff as well a little bit more to get into on that that we can't today but the church is like a body and by the way The church is not just a brain. The church is a living organism. It's a body. It's the body of Jesus Christ.

And then he starts out right away in verse three in dealing with probably one of the greatest problems in our lives, and what causes the greatest problems in churches. Pride, he's dealing with pride. For I say, this is verse three, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, he's talking to everybody in the church as I am today, 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. In this world, everywhere we look, we are being squeezed into the mold of I. I, I, I.

My life, my feelings, my world, my truth. God is here to deliver you from yourself and from your pride. And frankly, one of the reasons that you find people who stay on the periphery of local church life is because of their pride and they do not think they don't have the ability to think well or patiently or graciously about other people but at the same time they think very highly of themselves. And so he addresses that right off the bat. If you're disappointed with your fellow believer, you might ask yourself if it has to do with pride.

And then he makes it very clear that we all in the church are very different, verses four and five. 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 we are an organic unity in that unity every member is a worker every member is a minister every minute Every member is like the cells of your body communicating truth and health to the other members of the body. When you come into the Church of Jesus Christ, that's what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to be an active, vigorous member of the body. And then he speaks about what this looks like and it really looks like springing into action in diligence, verses 6 through 8.

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 faith and then Ministering this is a term that means serving or Serving ministry. Let us use it in our ministry and then he addresses teaching There are teachers that are appointed in local churches. Teachers are to be diligent in their teaching. And then you have exhortation. This is a word that really bears witness to gracious and uplifting encouragement of the body.

He who exhorts in exhortation. And then giving, he who gives with liberality. And then he speaks of leadership, he who leads with diligence, and then he speaks about mercy, which is so often needed in every local church, he who shows mercy with cheerfulness. All of this to say, do you enter into the fellowship of the saints with the explicit and intentional and vigorous desire to serve one another? Notice this is not a programmatic kind of a thing.

This is very relational. The Church of Jesus Christ is a relational organism, not a programmatic, corporate kind of organism. And it's really dependent on people being filled with the Spirit. And verses three through eight Just show this vigorous, thriving, giving church where each member's faith contributes to another. If you ever want to know what you should do in this church, what is your ministry in the church?

What is your ministry in the church? Well, your ministry is the next person you meet That you fulfill your obligations to them. This is a command. This is a this is an urgent plea to exercise your gifts In other words when you come into the church who are you seeking out to encourage? Who have you designed to pray with and pray for?

Are there are there lonely people? There are people that are brokenhearted, they're going through difficult trials, are there people who are discouraged? There are people here that are discouraged today. Maybe you will find them and encourage them in some way. And these verses really urge the church to be intentional and to have a plan.

For what? To bring blessing. These people were created for a blessing. So you're there and what is your ministry? It's the next person you meet.

And notice this serving is according to the the faith and the grace Given by God will elaborate on that later on but you find in the church people relate to people in in different ways some people the picky the picky sort of eater in the church, in the food court of the church, says I like this, I don't like that. I like these people, I don't like those people. The lonely person says meet my needs. There's so many things that happen that contradict and actually defeat these things. And so Romans 12, three through eight presents this picture of vigorous church life.

And when you read these things, just notice how beautiful they are. Would you like to be in a church like that? Would you like to supply your part in a church like that? That's what he's saying. So then he elaborates in verses 9 through 16 And he gives more detail on loving relationships in the church.

And he begins with, let love be without hypocrisy. In other words, let it be real love, not fake. Of course, one must obey commands to be loving. There are certain ways that are loving and certain ways that are not loving, and often it's critical that we obey the commands and our hearts follow. But he says, let love be without hypocrisy.

And then he says, abhor what is evil, cling to what is good. The church of Jesus Christ is the church of the things that are good. She talks about what is good, she thinks about what is good. She screens everything by, is it good and acceptable to God and then there's this beautiful language about our inner man. Verse 10, be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love.

There's the first one another in Romans 12. Be kindly affectionate to one another. He's using the language here of brotherly love. It's the love of a brother. It's like the love that you would have for your own, someone in your own family, your own blood brother.

Treat the people in the church like your blood brothers and blood sisters. That's the way you should love them. Not distant, but like a family. Because the church is a family. Paul is not asking us just to be polite to one another.

He's asking us to consider that we are like blood relatives and we are with one another all our life long. You can't really separate yourself from your family. You might for a while and you shouldn't if you do for very long. But the truth is this is a brotherly love and it's an affection. It's kind affection.

Now interestingly even the word affectionate is a family kind of word. It's derived from Phylos and Storge and he's talking about family kind of love. And then he, the second one another is in verse 10 in honor giving preference to one another. Paul is not done talking about honor. In chapter 13 in the first few verses he speaks about honoring all authorities.

All authorities are given by God. This has to do with honoring one another in the Church of Jesus Christ. And it applies to honor in every relationship. It applies to, it really picks up the whole doctrine of the fifth commandment, honor your father and mother. That your days may be long.

In other words, If you don't honor your father and mother, you're going to bang your head against the wall for the rest of your life until you figure out how to honor your father and mother. And the same thing about honoring other authorities in the church, in the state, in the home. And whoever has been given authority, all authorities have been given by God. And the most pivotal thing that your children will ever learn is how to honor authority. And so he addresses this.

And how do you do it? With fervency, not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit. In other words, you have to work at it, okay? You have to go after it because you may lose the formula and then your motive is serving the Lord and why do you do it Because you're the kind of person who's rejoicing in hope. You actually believe that God blesses his commandments and if you keep them he'll bless you.

That's why you're rejoicing in hope. And then he speaks of dealing with troubles and he says be patient in tribulation because honoring authority sometimes means there's tribulation and it always requires prayer so he says continuing steadfastly in prayer. The Church of Jesus Christ is the place of prayer. Jesus said my house should be called the house of prayer. And so these governing dispositions are the things that really give life to the church.

It's very interesting that he speaks of not lagging in diligence but fervent in spirit. So the exhortation from God to the church in Wake Forest is have you been diligent? Have you been fervently diligent in all these things in this local church of Jesus Christ? And by extension, in your family and in your business and in the state that you live in. Here's one thing that this means, and you cannot miss this, the grace of God is no excuse for laziness in the Church of Jesus Christ.

And then verse 13, he speaks about the generosity that exists in the church. Distributing to the needs of the saints and then given to hospitality. That's the love of strangers. We'll probably end up doing a deep dive on what it means to give be given to hospitality. And then love treats enemies in a particular way.

Verse 14, bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse. What God has done with this church is he assembles saints that are being sanctified. They come right off the street. They come right in here with a lot of baggage. And some of that baggage is kind of stinky baggage.

Because they have formed a lot of bad habits. They did not learn how to treat one another in their homes. Maybe not even in their churches. And then they come in to the church and they misbehave. In the Church of Jesus Christ in Wake Forest, North Carolina, there will be some people here who will misbehave.

Okay, that's reality. Don't worry about it. This is God's church. He actually has people in the church to misbehave so that they'll learn how to behave. So praise the Lord if somebody ignores you or says something unseemly, if someone offends you, praise God.

I praise God when someone gets offended in this church because it gives an opportunity for them to learn these things that are required in the Church of Jesus Christ. That we would be the people who bless those who persecute us. We're not derailed by getting persecuted. You know, by the way, you don't want to be a church that gets derailed by persecution, okay? Because we're establishing a distinctive, unusual, separate society in the world, and we don't think like everybody else.

And as a result of that there will be persecution. And then verse 14 he elaborates on this matter and he moves into a whole kind of another area. On the one hand you have people who mistreat you in the church, but then you have people, you have two kinds of people, people who are rejoicing and people who are weeping. You always have that in a church. And what he's saying is modulate your life to people.

Weep with those who weep. Rejoice with those who rejoice. And then he says be of the same mind toward one another. There's another one another Be of the same mind to one another in our words. This has to do with compassion and the affection that creates compassion for people who are struggling people who are discouraged People who fallen into sin, you know we are a redemptive community and we do it through grace and compassion and truth.

We speak the truth in love in the church. And then he addresses a temptation and that is to just identify yourself with the rich and the powerful and the successful. Often those are the worst people to hang with and that's why he says do not set your mind on high things but associate with the humble. Wow what a great culture. Associate with the humble.

It's such a beautiful thing. And then he talks about the tendency that we have to be so superior to one another. We think we're more holy. We think we're more wise. Maybe we're more rich.

Whatever it is, he says, do not be wise in your own opinion. Don't be pompous about your life. The Apostle said, what do you have that you did not receive? Everything came from God. And then this fifth category, he goes into detail in responding to people who have wronged us, and that's verses 17 through 21.

And basically saying love does not retaliate. Love does not grow cold. You know, Love does not ignore people who've wronged us. How about that? This is kind of against our nature, isn't it?

If somebody does something that we don't like or it harmed us, we're gonna stay away from them. You don't do that in the Church of Jesus Christ. Repay no one evil for evil, verse 17. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men. In the Church of Jesus Christ, you don't give people the silent treatment, you don't get even, you don't slander them, you don't say in the church, I'm done with you.

It's illegal by divine command to say, I'm done with you, in the Church of Jesus Christ. And you shouldn't say that to your parents or your children or anybody else and then he speaks really of something that's so important and every pastor encounters this verse 18 if it is possible as much as it depends on you live peaceably with all men now there's a lot and in that statement but let's just say there's a conflict that you have with someone. You can't fix them. You can't make them change. The only person you can make change is yourself.

You have to work on yourself. I hear stories all the time about how bad someone has been to them, but my focus is not that. I want to divert them from that. I want to direct them actually to themselves because you can't fix other people but you can fix yourself and what people end up doing is they get obsessed with the other person and they miss the sanctification that God designed for them in that conflict because they don't work on themselves. They wanna work on everybody else.

And then Paul continues to go even deeper verses 19 through 21. Beloved, do not avenge yourselves but rather give place to wrath for it is written, vengeance is mine I will repay says the Lord therefore if your enemy is hungry feed him if he is thirsty give him a drink for in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. And so here you have these circumstances in the church that do two things first of all They create the beauty of the Lord in the soul of a person which is manifested in love And it also helps the church deal with the relational problems People Some people are like sandpaper in the church. But it's your job to make them like velvet to you, to make them your friends. There are so many ways that you can repay.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. And that doesn't end this whole matter. The apostle really speaks about returning evil for evil in three places in this single chapter, verse 14, verse 17, and then finally in verse 21. The Apostle Paul assumes that there's going to be a bit of sandpaper in the church, and he tells you how to deal with it. So this chapter and the rest of the chapters are a diagnostic checkup for the Church of Jesus Christ that is in Wake Forest as it was in Rome.

And for us to, like every cell in the human body, to create a beautiful culture in the church, because there's no better culture than that is described right here for the Church of Jesus Christ. Also too, This chapter and the ones ahead are really a case study in the sufficiency of scripture about the relationships in the local church. That it is a relational, organic network of people who love one another the way that God prescribes. Here's what it does, it reverses a view of the church as an impersonal institution that you go and get entertained. It defeats the whole idea that a church is an entertainment center where people come and sit there like cabbages and listen to a talking head and they go have lunch.

It really restores the fellowship of the one and others in the Church of Jesus Christ instead of a gathering of strangers. It sees the church as a body, a body of Christ, and it happens to be a generational body. And it happens to be a body that can't relate to youth culture and senior citizen culture because it's a body and every member of the body is necessary even the crying babies even the getting crotchety old men you know and the church needs all of us A church that restores the regular principle of worship in verses one and two. A biblically ordered church, ordered by the head of the church, Jesus Christ. And there really is no greater blessing.

The, I'll end with this. The culture of a local church and the family Is something to get up in the morning for? It's really important Would you pray with me? Lord your ways are pleasant ways all your paths are peace You are a tree of life to those who embrace you. Oh Lord that in this season in these coming months That you would shape us up like we've never been before in your love.

Amen.