Catching the Right Bus

Sometimes we give evil our business card and invite it to call. Sometimes we log on to evil, and lust after evil, and plan for evil things. Sometimes we decide to meet evil someplace, sometime. We hide evil, and in our secret world we plan evil in our minds and play with evil in our hearts.

Maybe the first step in the pursuit of godliness today is to be real about yourself. We are inclined toward evil. How would you define your relationship with evil? Do you sometimes treat it like Stephen was describing?

Do you cling to it? Maybe cherish it a little bit and maybe make plans to have evil in your life? The Apostle Paul gives you a whole new perspective on your relationship with evil. He tells you to abhor what is evil. He tells you to cling to what is good. Welcome to Wisdom for the Heart. Today, Stephen Davey explains what Paul taught as he begins a series from Romans 12.

This message is called, Catching the Right Bus. According to the Apostle James, the declaration of faith is not nearly as important as the demonstration of faith. We could gather in this auditorium every day of the week and convince one another that we are saved. We could go out of here and put on the sandwich boards that say, Born again and have the bumper stickers that say the same.

And the world would cynically watch and wait. What we need are Christians who will say, I belong to God. Now watch, look, follow me around if you want. I am in pursuit of God-likeness. For I belong to God. That is another way of saying I am in pursuit of Godliness, which is God-likeness, right?

Just watch. But there is a problem with that, too. What is Godliness? Trying to define Godliness is a little like trying to define sanity.

Everybody has different definitions, right? I have uncovered, going back to the second century, different definitions of Godliness. This is Godly living. One man taught and was rather popular that believers should wear white clothing only as a statement that they are the bride of Christ.

Montanus had quite a following. There are those that believe even to this day that a Godly man would never shave, but grow his beard long and a Godly woman would never cut her hair. That would all be improving upon the creation of God. And yet we can go and find people who would say that if you're Godly, a man will shave. What does it mean to be Godly? Well, that's why Romans 12, 13, 14, the latter chapters are so important because we move from the declaration of Godly truth to the demonstration of authentic Godly truth. In Romans chapter 12, the latter paragraph there beginning with verse 9, Paul just sort of picks up his speed and he begins to pile one statement after another without hardly taking a breath.

I mean, just look at it. Let love be without hypocrisy, abhor what is evil, cling to what is good, be devoted to one another in brotherly love, give preference to one another in honor, not lagging behind in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, and on and on and on. Everybody that I read who studied and wrote on this text said, you can't outline this. It's simply one statement after another where Paul is exhorting the believer to pursue the transformed life.

Here's the list. Here's what godliness looks like. Here's how godliness acts. And you can't miss it. And in fact, as we work our way through this paragraph, our trouble will not be in believing any of it. Our trouble will be in obeying all of it, right? It's not hard. You really don't need me to stand up here for 30 minutes and explain it. It's read it.

It's there. It's obeying it. That will be our challenge as we pursue godliness. Now, in this first statement in verse 9, which is what we'll cover today, Paul delivers three rather short, staccato-like statements which begin his inspired thoughts. The first statement reveals the principle characteristic of godliness. He writes, let love be without hypocrisy. It's little wonder that Paul would begin with love.

You go to his letters and you find this formula. To the Corinthian believers, he begins by talking about the body, and he talks about the gifts, and then he talks about love. Here in Romans 12, he talks about the body, he talks about gifts, and now he talks about love. To the Corinthian church, he wrote, if I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, in other words, if I am an incredible orator, and I do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or clanging cymbal.

In other words, all I am is noise. If I have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, if I have all faith so as to remove the mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I deliver even my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. Then he goes on to describe the activity of love, and he ends that declaration by saying, but now abide faith, hope, love, these three, but the greatest of these is what? Love. Why is love the greatest?

What does he mean? Well, faith will one day be done away, right? Faith will be turned into sight.

Hope will one day be dissolved, but love will continue. And so, in Paul's list of actions that demonstrate authentic godly living, it would make sense then in Romans 12, verse 9, he begins with love. And would you notice Paul says love like this. He says love without hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy. That was a word that referenced the Greek actors. The theater, as you may know, in Paul's day did not have elaborate sets.

It didn't have curtains and customs. It was just simply an elevated platform out in the open normally, and they simply acted out their plays, and they would carry along sticks, and at the end of sticks, masks, which exist even to this day as icons of the world of drama. One would be the comical smile and the melodramatic expression and the tragic expression. And for the sake of the audience, the actor would, as he is delivering his lines periodically, hold the mask up before his face to tell the audience he is either the comic or the melodramatic or the tragic. So what Paul is in effect saying is don't put up a mask that says love. And yet our hands and our heart and our feet and our actions are anything but love. In effect, he says take down the mask and be for real. Don't be like the Christians who D.L. Moody used to say.

We're always talking cream, but living skim milk. Take it down and live in love for real. Now, the word love is the word agape.

Let me remind you of a few things. This word, of course, was spurned during Paul's day by secular writers as a boring, cold, unfeeling word. They used words that they pandered toward, words for love like eros or erotic, passionate or sexual love. They would use storge or philia or to love in that way, phileo, to love as a brother loves a brother. Epithomeia, affectionate, passion, but not agape. It was considered unfeeling.

And in a way it was. This was a word that said, I have made up my mind toward the object of my agape to live in its best interests. I have decided, basically is what it's saying. And only one word works for that, and that's the word agape. It means it is love for keeps.

And let me illustrate it this way. If a young man tells a young woman that he loves her, he will want her for a wife, not for a night. That would be eros. He says, this is the way you love. And it is the word God uses in expressing love for us. He commended his agape toward us and that while we were yet sinners, he decided to love us. This is the word used for husband and wife.

And now we find it. This is the word in the assembly toward one another. Sometimes when I perform weddings, I usually refer to this kind of love and contrast it to other Greek words. Here the bride and groom are standing before me in their beautiful regalia.

The tuxedos and all the grooms have been lined up and all the bridesmaids lined up and she and her beautiful gown. And they get in front of me and sometimes the first thing I say is, no, you need to understand that you're not here because you've fallen in love. They kind of look at me and look at each other and I go on to say, you know, in fact, this whole wedding has nothing to do with you falling in love with each other. And about then they're wondering why they asked me to do their wedding. But I quickly add, you've planned this wedding in this moment not because you've fallen anywhere, but because you have chosen to love.

You have made up your mind to love. There is no hypocrisy. There are no masks here.

This is for keeps. And in the church then it would beg the same definition. There is no faking.

There is no acting. Be careful when you use that word. We are to mean it. And we mean it by the way we demonstrated. So this isn't necessarily love defined as it is love demonstrated that the church is in need of in the world to watch. In fact, Jesus Christ said that same thing to his disciples. He said, listen, by this shall all men know that you are my disciples by the way that you love Agape one another. Do you know what Jesus Christ did there in that one phrase? He informed the disciples that the world now has the ability to evaluate whether or not they are living godly lives. By this shall all men out there know whether you are my disciples.

He just gave the world the test and they can now evaluate us on the basis of what? I'm in church, aren't I? I have a Bible, don't I? Do we love each other?

Did it work in the first century? As Jesus Christ trained his disciples and Paul would write to the Roman church, Manutius Felix, a Roman attorney living in the generation just after this one related here in the Roman church said this, they love each other even without being acquainted with each other. In other words, if you can imagine this, they don't know anything about each other, but once they find they both belong to Christ, they love each other. Have you found that to be true? Whether it's on an airplane or in a classroom, in a boardroom, in a hallway, in a neighborhood. You have a complete stranger you're introduced to and somewhere along the line it comes out that maybe you go to church and then you talk about maybe the Lord and then, hey, do you know the Lord personally?

Yes, I do. I've been saved now for four years. Really, I got saved when I was 13 years of age. And all of a sudden what happens? Kindred spirits. Let's talk. Sit down. That airplane ride just disappears.

It's over before it starts. A conversation. Things shared. All of a sudden you're sharing some troubles you're having. Who would you share those with? Family. You're sharing them with this person. Without knowing much about each other, just the fact that you both belong to Jesus Christ, suddenly you found out. You're related to one another. Julian the Apostate, who hated Christianity, he was the Roman emperor of the fourth century.

You would see these grandchildren alive. Said this in derision of Christianity, which to us is a badge of honor. As you hear it, you'll know it's true.

He said it this way, their teacher has implanted the belief in them that they are all related. The principal characteristic of godly pursuit, godlikeness, for God is love. Now, Paul gives us what I would call the price of godliness.

It's a two-sided coin. One side's negative, the other positive. He says here in the text, abhor what is evil. Abhor what is evil. The word abhor appears here in the New Testament only once, and it's here in this text.

It's a strong term, by the way, that can be translated hate. You say, well, wait a second, the believer isn't supposed to hate anything. Oh, these six things I hate, God said.

Yea, seven. And he goes on to list them. You remember in Proverbs?

I think it's chapter 16. We, like God, learn not only what to love, but what to hate. And he says here, hate, abhor evil. Martha translates it, regard evil with horror. Williams says you must always turn in horror from what is wrong. He translates it that way.

Now, wait a second. Why would the Apostle Paul write the church, write the believing community, and tell them make sure you hate sin? The implication is what? We don't hate sin. Just because we came to faith in Jesus Christ doesn't mean that all of a sudden we're going to hate sin. We will struggle with, perhaps, approving sin.

In fact, one of the great challenges and traps for the Christian today is we're surrounded by so much evil. We're not horrified by it. We're not even shocked by it, much less troubled by it.

It might not even get a second glance in the newspaper or television. But what you're not horrified by, you may tolerate. And what you tolerate, you may accept.

And what you accept, you may embrace. The reason it's written here is, as Martin Luther wrote the Reformed monk in his little commentary on Romans, he said, the truth is that we are, even as believers, inclined to what is evil. Paul says, abhor evil. The truth is, by nature, we are inclined to evil. We pander to evil. We easily involve ourselves with evil. In fact, we tend to manage evil, not abhor it. We schedule time for evil and flirt with evil and see how close we can come to the flame. We don't want to offend evil or criticize evil.

We dialogue with it and talk it over. And we reassure evil that we're not being judgmental and we're really not different, that different from them. Sometimes we buy a ticket to see evil. We pay monthly dues to watch evil.

We applaud when evil wins the girl or when evil seduces the man or when evil gets away with its crimes. Sometimes we give evil our business card and invite it to call. Sometimes we log on to evil and lust after evil and plan for evil things. Sometimes we decide to meet evil someplace, sometime. Sometimes we walk through the doors of evil or subscribe to evil or sign up for evil. We sit with evil and laugh with its stories. We hide evil. And in our secret world, we plan evil in our minds and play with evil in our hearts. Maybe the first step in the pursuit of godliness today is to be real about yourself. We are inclined toward evil. That's what it means to be prone to catch the wrong bus, to travel along toward the wrong destination, and you're going to have to try and explain why you don't belong there.

And they may never believe you. Charles Spurgeon, the great pastor of yesteryear, confessed his own propensity toward evil in print, no less. He said, there are times when my imagination has taken me down to the sewers of earth. Sometimes when I feel the most devoted to God and the most earnest in prayer, it often happens that at that very moment the plague breaks out the worst. Part of the pursuit of godliness is in the process of thinking differently about sin. This is part of the process of becoming godlike. We learn to hate what God hates and love what God loves. We develop a horror and a distaste for sin. You know, I've had young believers in the past who I know it's coming sooner or later, and I just revel in it because I know how wonderful it is, and we as older believers long to live like that. To them it's fresh.

I've had them come to me and say, Stephen, there's a problem. What is it? Well, you know, I accepted Christ two weeks ago, and I can't believe how much I sin. Really? Yeah, the least little thing. I never noticed it before, but I notice it now.

What do I do? And I think, please help the church not to cure them. It happens to be one of the greatest protectors of sin is to hate it and to see it, to spot it, and to be abhorred in its presence. Let me give you a practical illustration of this. One mother did something very wise. Leslie Flynn tells the story of a mother who was peeling vegetables for a salad when her daughter, home from college, just sort of casually mentioned she was going to a rather questionable movie later that evening. Without saying anything, the mother picked up a handful of garbage and dropped it into the mixing bowl and just continued stirring. The shocked girl said, Mother, you're putting garbage in the salad. I know, mother replied, but I thought if you allowed a little garbage in your mind, you wouldn't mind a little in your stomach.

Try that sometime, would you? Just tuck that away and... what kind of evil do we allow? Do we sort of mix in?

You know, it's not that big of a deal, you know. What horrifies you? What are you afraid of? Someone on the road to godliness would say, I am afraid of sin, right? You see, this is the transformed mind. Where consequences or not, we learn to hate and be horrified by sin. And so we live lives differently, don't we? An early church leader said it this way, Yes, we call out to God to protect us from temptation and the waves of temptation, and we also row away from the rocks.

Well, let's turn over the coin. That's the negative. We could say, abhor what is evil. Now, the next phrase is cling to what is good. Cling to what is good.

This is present tense, these part of symbols. It means continue to abhor evil and continually cling to good. What's good? Well, again, it goes back to the beginning part of this chapter where we're told that as our minds are transformed, we are able to discern what is good and what is acceptable and what is pure. So the answer to the question, what is good and what do I cling to? Well, just cling to Chapter 12. Just go through that paragraph and say, Lord, make that stick in my life. May I cling to all of these phrases? There's a wonderful start.

Spend all the time you want at the last part of Chapter 12. It's everything you're reading here. Whatever is acceptable to God is pure. Whatever is pure is good. Whatever is good is that which you cling to. You pursue that.

You're on the road to that. That's godlikeness. Godliness.

The word cling, kolominoi, means to glue or cement together. To join firmly. And it's wonderful encouragement because the Bible doesn't just tell us a poor sin. Just stay away from that. It doesn't just tell us to not do something.

It tells us to do something. Cling to this. Glue yourself.

Cement together. Join firmly with good. This is the same word used by the Spirit of God who told Philip to go to Ethiopia and join himself to the chariot.

Remember where the Ethiopian was reading Isaiah, not understanding the truth. So Philip was going to go and cling to the chariot. What does that mean? That means he's going to go get in it. He's going to hop in it.

He's going to take a ride in it. They are the same. One and the same as it were as they move along.

That's the idea here. It's also the same verb you find in the Greek Old Testament. All the way back in the Genesis where we're told what a man will do when he takes a wife. He will leave his father and his mother and he will what? Cleave to his wife. That's the word cling. Same word.

Glue to cement together. Join firmly. This is the picture then of the believer and good. This is a passion.

This takes priority. Lord, I want good to be in my life above all others and everything else. Anything that is not good, please don't allow it to stick to me. But all that is good, please glue it to me.

The idea. It's funny, one of the ladies came to me afterwards. She said, you know, you were talking about good stuff sticking to you and all the bad stuff not. She said, I came up with an acrostic. So she gave it to me. She said, we should be Teflon. Maybe we ought to pray that we would be Teflon Christians. T-E-F-L-O-N. Tear everything filthy and loathsome off now. It's pretty good.

She doodled a little bit. Lost her train of thought there, but otherwise it was an excellent acrostic. Let me give you two more principles of application as we wrap this study up. This principle characteristic of godliness is not optional.

It is essential. Without love. Without love. You cannot demonstrate godliness to the world. Oh, wait a second, I have oratory. Big deal, God says. Oh, I've got faith.

I can move that mountain. And God says, so what? I'll give my body to be burned.

You're wasting your time. I'll give all of my possessions to the poor. So, without love, the mind that is made up for the things of God, it's meaningless. Second of all, the price of godliness is comprehensive.

You could render this if you amplified it for the sake of its tenses and original construction. Everything comprehensively that is evil, abhor. Everything that is comprehensively good, cling to it. What that means is you can't say to God, I am good except for the little thing over here.

No, it's comprehensive. Or, I know I've got this problem over here, but I am good. You know, we sing about it. We sing about that comprehensive truth. Love, so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my what? My all. Comprehensively, I pursue godliness.

With that kind of pursuit, you are on your way. Let me close by telling you a story that came out of 1902. Dale Hayes was in Haiti, and he heard a pastor illustrating to his congregation the need for a total pursuit of Christlikeness, the comprehensive lifestyle that's given over to God's character. And he told of a man he knew who wanted to sell his home. Now, this is back in 1902, so the prices are going to be different, and the lack of a contract, which doesn't make sense to us, was the way they operated then. He told of a man who wanted to sell his house for $2,000. Another man badly wanted it, but couldn't afford the price. After much haggling over the price, the owner agreed to sell the house for half the asking price, with one stipulation, that he could retain ownership of one small nail protruding above the front door.

And the buyer thought, well, that doesn't matter to me. And so the deal was struck, and he moved in. After several years, the original owner wanted the house back, but the other man refused. They had settled on a price, and he owned the house, all except for one nail. So the first owner went and found the carcass of a dead dog and hung it on that one single nail he still owned.

And within days, the house was uninhabitable, and the owner moved out, and the original owner moved in. The Haitian pastor went on to illustrate, giving ourselves to Christ must be comprehensive. We dare not leave one small nail for the enemy to control. And let me tell you, dear friends, if you want to pursue godliness, if you say to God, here's all of my life, I want godlikeness, don't leave one nail. What the enemy can do with that one nail is more than we can live with. Amen?

This is our comprehensive pursuit. We love without hypocrisy, we continually abhor evil, we continually cling to that which is good. You do that and you'll be riding along the road marked by a demonstration of godliness. If godliness is your goal, today's lesson provides a good framework to live by.

Abhor what is evil and cling to what is good. I'm glad you joined us today here on Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. With this message, Stephen begins a series entitled Grace Factor. It comes from the book of Romans and today's message was called Catching the Right Bus. We have this message and all of Stephen's teaching posted to our website which you'll find at wisdomonline.org. Those resources are available free of charge and on demand at wisdomonline.org. Tomorrow Stephen will bring you the second lesson in the series called Every Christian a Cheerleader. Join us tomorrow.