From Valley to Victory, Part 17

Words in the pages of Romans have changed the world by igniting the Reformation, sparking revivals, and impacting countless individual lives. Well, get ready to dig further into the truth found in Paul's words with Dr. Michael Youssef on this episode of Leading the Way Audio. Words to consider so that you and I don't stop being a light in the darkness of the world.

In Romans 12, we saw the Apostle Paul saying that a genuine Bible believing Christian is a person who exhibits the love of Christ that has been poured into his and her heart. And we saw eight different expressions of genuine love. Let me remind you, love hates evil. Love gives honor. Love is passionate about God. Love hopes and perseveres in prayer. Love loves to give. Love feels deeply with others.

Love refuses to get even. And love reverses the cultural norms. Now, he immediately moves from this to Romans 13 and is really continuing that same theme, the genuine love theme. And he says genuine love on part of the believer is going to make him or her willingly obey the law of the land and pay their taxes. And secondly, love for God makes us pay our debts.

Why? Because genuine love fulfills the law and redeems the time. Look at verses 1 to 7. Paul, he was living under the most horrendous, horrendous dictatorship of his day.

It was the most vile dictatorship. He is saying that part of the believer's witness is to obey the law of the land and pay taxes. Jesus in Matthew 22, 21, he said, give to Caesars what belongs to Caesar.

That's the taxes. And give to God what belongs to God. So here we see that love, genuine love for God, obeys the law of the land. In fact, the only time it was permissible for the first century believers, the first church, the only time it was permissible for them to disobey the law of the land and to disobey the government is when Caesar demanded worship. At that point, they said, no, God above Caesar.

And they were willing to pay the consequences. Verses 1 to 7, Romans 13 tells us that we are basically foreigners in this land. If you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you are a foreigner. You are the citizen of where?

You see, we are representing our home country here on earth. Listen to me, beloved. Here's my understanding. Had Paul lived in western democracy, he would have said the following. Do you understand what privileged people you are? Do you understand that God gave you a unique opportunity to put people in power? Do you comprehend what an exquisite responsibility to have to be able to choose your government? Therefore, don't squander it. Therefore, don't take it for granted. And therefore, don't abuse it by not getting involved.

Can I get a witness? Now, I personally believe it is a sin not to vote. It is a sin not to participate in one of the greatest privileges that God gave us as citizens in this democracy. Study the candidates. Find out where they're staying.

Ask them questions and then vote intelligently. Genuine love always obeys the law of the land. Genuine love must only be indebted. Oh, indebtedness. He said indebtedness is not good, but he is in indebtedness that is really good. Indebtedness to God and to others. I'm going to make a statement. I know it's going to startle some of you.

Listen carefully. A genuine Bible-believing Christian lives in a state of perpetual, spiritual indebtedness. A genuine Bible-believing Christian lives in perpetual, spiritual indebtedness.

I'm going to explain that. What is that indebtedness? It's an indebtedness to God. It's an indebtedness to God.

And it prompts us to love him with all of our hearts and keep on loving him and then as his love keeps pouring into us, we love our neighbors as ourselves. But if you try to pay this debt yourself, listen to me, I've tried it and failed miserably. If you say, I'm going to love God with all, I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this, you will only make few payments and then you become bankrupt. Now in the financial world, there are some who work long and hard just to make debt payment. Some pay the only minimum payment on their credit cards and to the point where it becomes impossible to pay their debt. But when it comes to our debt to God, when it comes to our debt to the Lord Jesus Christ and our debt to loving others, only God can give you the resources by which you can pay that debt to God.

Isn't that amazing? He pours his resources into us. He loves through us so that we can love others. And here it is, the more you love God and others, the more God pours it into you. And the more he pours it into you, the more you pay it. The more he pours it into you, the more you pay it. It's like a silo. The more you take wheat or grain from that silo, the more God pours it from the top.

The moment you think that you can pay that debt yourself, that you can love God with your own strength, without his help, without his pouring his love into you on a regular basis, on a daily basis, trust me. The picture is not very pretty because at that moment, love will become less authentic. It will be fake. We see it all over the place. The definition of the world is love. You know, people talk about love, when you discover love, you're going to be power.

Here's the problem that I've seen in the years, through the years. There are some who confuse people pleasing with genuine, authentic, biblical love. People pleasers knock themselves out to please others. You see it in preachers.

You see it in ministries even. You see it when they're knocking themselves out to please people. You just want to make them happy. They want to please them.

Why? Because they want to receive their applause. They do it because they want to gain praise of people. But godly love is different because it is not emotional surface type of love. Godly love loves to serve without recognition. Godly love loves to exhort and warn. Godly love is willing to risk misunderstanding, being misunderstood. Godly love is always telling the truth even when you know the person doesn't want to hear it. Godly love is fearless of criticism because godly love has only one source of strength and that's God the Holy Spirit. And when you are constantly receiving a continuous supply of love from the Lord that is poured into you, when you allow God to love through you, when you are constantly opening yourself up to the pouring out of the love of the Holy Spirit in your life, you will never ask foolish questions like are the Ten Commandments relevant for today or only for the Old Testament.

You'll never ask a foolish question like that. Look at verse 10 of Romans 13. The love of God that is poured into our hearts will empower us to live, you notice I said not obey, but to live the Ten Commandments.

Not perfectly because only one will get them all perfectly. It's the Lord Jesus Christ. So the question is irrelevant to ask, can I keep the Ten Commandments, are the Ten Commandments relevant or not? Listen to what Jeremiah said. When Jeremiah prophesied about the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, when that day come he said, I will write my commandments on their hearts. They're not just going to memorize them and mimic them just like the Pharisees of old.

It's going to be written on their hearts. So they won't ask those silly questions whether I should obey them or not because you're living them. When you love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself, you are living the Ten Commandments. I want to show you from the Word of God. When the love of God is poured into you and you love him with all of your heart, with all of your mind, with all of your strength, when you do that, you are not going to go out willy-nilly breaking the first five commandments.

When you love God with all your heart, listen to me, you're not going to try to worship other gods, all these dead gods, you're not going to do that. You're not going to keep idols in your life and place them above the Lord Jesus Christ who redeemed you with his blood. You're not going to misuse or abuse the name of the Lord. I love the name of the Lord. I proclaim the name of the Lord. As well as say, hallowed be thy name is the first sentence after our Father.

You're not going to abuse or misuse. You will take a day in which you focus on God. You're not going to dishonor the Sabbath. That's the day of worship. And you will honor your father and mother.

Of course you will. See, you're living them. But then as God's love pours into you, he will enable you. As he fills you to overflowing, he'll enable you to love even the unlovable. When the love of God is going through you.

When he is loving them through you. And as a result, you're going to keep the second five commandments. You're not going to say, I've got to keep this one, I've got to keep that one.

Now you're living it. You're not going to go around coveting people things. You say, well, you know, Ten Commandments, well, we don't have donkeys, we don't covet donkeys.

Well sure, that was a possession at the time. Have you covered somebody's wife or somebody's husband or somebody's possession, somebody's blessing that God gave them? You love God. You will love what God loves. When you love God, you're going to want to please God.

When you love God, you'll want what God wants. And at that point, when that is taking place, you're not going to be asking or even thinking, are the Ten Commandments relevant for today? Can we ditch the Ten Commandments now?

This is people pleasing. This is not biblical truth. Because living and loving your neighbor as yourself. You see, love fulfills all the commandments. It completes the commandments. Just like Jeremiah said, it's written on our hearts.

We live them. Now as you look in the next couple of verses, and before I start into them, I want to confess to you. Those who are close to me, my family know this. I've always had a sense of urgency in my life.

I cannot explain it. Why is that sense of urgency? Ever since I was a boy, since I came to Christ, there's a sense of urgency in my life. I always felt that time is a precious commodity, not to be wasted and not to be squandered. That is why you'll understand when I tell you that I can truly identify with Romans 13 verses 11 and 12.

I truly identify with these two verses. As I said, I always had this sense of urgency and it's inexplicable. Many times, this sense of urgency has caused me to be less patient than I should have been.

I know that. I'm not proud of that. That sense of urgency, I wanted to conform to the character of Christ. That sense of urgency wanted me to reflect obedience to Christ and sometimes I went about it in a hurried way, in a wrong way. But I always had been as urgent in loving and seeking the lost.

That's always been a burden of my heart. I've always been an urgent in encouraging and exalting believers to live a holy life and to conform to the image of Christ. I've always been urgent in redeeming the moments and the opportunities that God has given me.

Sadly, we live in a time when Christians have lost this sense of urgency. Now the word time here, redeeming the time, is not talking about chronological time. That's not what word means. The word means a period of time. Your time, your time, my time. This period of time in which we live, these opportunities that God presents to us that are so uniquely to each individual.

That's what the word time here means. Each of us must understand our time and redeem the time and redeem the opportunities that God presents to us in this time. Each of us must comprehend the uniqueness of the time and the opportunities in our lives that God presents us with. Each of us must seize the uniqueness of the time and the opportunities that he presents you. 1 Chronicles chapter 12 verse 32.

That's always a verse that sticks in my spirit. It says, the men of Esakah, that's one of the tribes of Israel, the men of Esakah understood the times. They understood the opportunities. He understood that moment that God presents us so uniquely for that period of time and that period of life in our lives. Sadly, the Pharisees and the religious leaders in Jesus' day, they did not understand the times and the privileged times in which they lived, which they are seeing the Son of God with their own eyes. They did not understand the times. They did not comprehend the awesomeness of God's presence in their midst. They did not redeem the time and receive Jesus as their Messiah. They did not comprehend the times of the redemption that God has talked about in every book of the Old Testament.

And they remained in their spiritual blindness. Now, beloved, listen to me. For a period of time, God will speak to you.

And I'm talking about everyone of you, young or old, doesn't matter. For a period of time, God will speak to you. For a period of time, God is going to pursue you. For a period of time, God will present you with certain opportunities, with your name written all over it.

It's not for your neighbor, it's not for your friend, it's not for your brother or sister, it's for you. For a period of time, God will be calling upon you. For a period of time, God will open some doors just for you that no one can shut.

But if you persist, here's a warning. If you persist on going in your happy merry way, that door is going to shut. That voice is going to be so faint that you will not be able to hear it. It will be a whisper. And you're no longer hearing the voice of God.

And beloved, those opportunities will cease to exist. I've never made a secret of the fact that the cry of my heart, and it's a singular cry, is that I want to take as many people to heaven with me as I can. There are a lot of good things that needs to be done, a lot of good deeds that can be done.

But none more important in my life than the Great Commission of Jesus Christ. It is my daily cry to God to give me men and women, boys and girls, who discern the times we live in. It is the cry of my heart that God will give me men and women who are willing to redeem the times in which we live. Men and women who recognize the urgency for salvation and the opportunities for reaching the lost.

Men and women who walk with me through these open doors. Verse 11, Romans 13, it is time to wake up from this sleep. Night has almost gone and the day is at hand. The day of your meeting the Lord Jesus Christ in the cloud could be today. The clouds will be the moment you either go see Jesus or Jesus comes to meet all of us.

It doesn't matter. The day is going to come sooner or later. And the more you're prepared the better off you are. It could be today that some of you will go to heaven. It could be today that Jesus comes back from heaven.

Either way, how should you live? And what would you say to him when you see him face to face? What are you going to say to him? Are you going to say, Lord, I just didn't get around to doing what you asked me to do. Lord, you know my intentions were good.

Lord, I got so busy with life that I didn't get around witnessing to others. Have you ever seen people who are physically fully awake but they're really asleep? In the animal kingdom that is normal. In fact, I'm told that horses can nap and sleep while they're standing. There's a hippopotamus who sleeps as he floats in the water.

Or like the bats that nap hanging by their feet. The Bible tells us spiritual drowsiness will rule supreme just prior to the return of the Lord. Think about this.

Think about this. From what I'm seeing, I think Jesus' return must be really close. The Bible said that the signs of spiritual sleepiness are as follows. The love of many will grow cold. People won't be able to stand hearing the truth and they will run after people who tickle their ear.

They're not going to want to hear the truth because the truth convicts and they don't want to be convicted. Turning away from biblical truth will be rampant and fashionable at the end times. Getting so bogged down with world affairs, many will become spiritually numb. Here are the symptoms of spiritual sleep.

Listen carefully. Living for self, self-indulgence. Spiritual drunkenness with the world's wine. Little concern of what concerns the Lord. Dividing and creating doubt in believers' lives and sowing the seed of discontent. Loving in words only that have no depth.

Paying lip service to God and presuming upon his grace. Beloved, these are the deeds of darkness. These are the deeds of darkness. Remember, you belong to the day. Shake off the night time and the night sleep. You belong to the light.

Shake off the night life. You belong to watching and waiting. So open yourself up to the Holy Spirit. Do this with me.

This is a sign. Opening up to your Holy Spirit. Come on.

Say, I'm opening up to your Holy Spirit. Come. He will come.

Don't be surprised. The time is urgent. The word put on here says put on Christ. It's like you got up this morning and you put on your clothes, dress, suit, whatever you put on. And when you put on your clothes, when you go outside, wherever you go, your clothes go with you, right? I mean, I don't leave my clothes over there. They go with me. Wherever I walk, my clothes go with me. Whenever I drive, my clothes are driving with me. Wherever I am, my clothes go with me. That's what he means by putting on Christ because Christ is with you. Wherever you go, whatever circumstance you find yourself in, whatever situation you, whatever temptation you face, wherever you go, put on Christ.

That's what he really means here. Thanks for listening to Dr. Michael Youssef on this episode of Leading the Way Audio. Our prayer is that from valley to victory, that's the title of Dr. Youssef's teaching series, is growing a renewed understanding of your personal faith. Now, if you missed any episode in the series, or you simply want to share the content from Dr. Youssef with your family and friends, consider downloading the Leading the Way app. Information is available at ltw.org.

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