Open your Bibles to the book of Romans 16.
We’ve come to the last chapter.
Many of you are familiar with Norman Vincent Peale’s book, The Power of Positive Living.
It’s a good book.
It won’t get you to heaven, but it will really help you approach life with the right kind of outlook. Dr. Vance Havner was asked one time to compare the writings of Norman Vincent Peale
with the writings of the Apostle Paul.
Apparently he didn’t like Dr. Peale too much, because this was his classic reply.
He said, “I find Peale to be appalling,
but I find Paul to be appealing.”
Today we want to appeal to the Apostle Paul and learn some things.
The book of Romans was his greatest work.
What the Sistine Chapel was to Michelangelo, what the Mona Lisa was to da Vinci,
what the Ninth Symphony was to Beethoven,
the book of Romans is to the Apostle Paul.
He goes higher and deeper than any other
of his writings.
As I told you last Sunday, we came to the end of the letter, and what chapter 16 is, is a postscript.
He’s just talking about some of his friends, sharing a few little thoughts here.
I want to remind you
that every word of the Bible is inspired.
We can learn so much from the Apostle Paul and about the Christian life
in just reading these personal comments.
Now, in verses 1-20, we’re going to learn,
first of all, about how to treat our Christian family, our friends and then we’re going to learn how to deal with our foes.
How To Cherish Your Spiritual Family
The first thing I want to talk to you about is
how to cherish your spiritual family.
Now, cherish is the word that I use to describe
all the feelings I have hiding here inside
for all the believers in Christ.
And the Apostle Paul also had this kind of love and compassion for the Christians there at Rome. He makes all these personal remarks.
How do you cherish your spiritual family?
Two ways.
First of all, you need to learn to
1) share positive affirmations about them
Share positive comments about them.
That’s what Paul does in verses 1-15.
We need to be sharing positive affirmations
about our friends, our spiritual family.
How often do you make a point to say good things about those who are in the body of Christ? Not only speaking to them,
“I appreciate you, I love you.”
How often do you say good things about others to someone else?
Because that’s what Paul’s doing.
He’s saying, I’m going to say this good thing
to all those who are in the church there.
It’s a good thing for all of us to do,
the power of positive encouraging.
So the first thing is to share positive affirmations.
There’s another thing you can do to show how
you cherish your spiritual family, and it is to
2) Show personal affection
Would you please look at verse 16?
Romans 16:16. “Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ send greetings.”
Some of you are already nervous.
Do you know what we’ve done?
We’ve looked at verse 16 of Romans 16.
By the way that same command appears
not once, not twice, not three times,
not four times, but five times in the epistles
we are told to greet one another with a holy kiss.
You know what we do?
We explain it away.
We gloss over it.
We’ve substituted the holy handshake.
Because have you ever heard anybody say,
“Well, that was the common custom in the day to greet each other with kisses.
And today in our culture, we just don’t do that. We greet each other with handshakes.”
So we just said, “Oh, okay.”
Folks, that’s not the truth.
If you research the customs of the people of that day…are you ready for this?
It was not the cultural custom of the day
to greet people with a kiss.
It was not part of the Hellenistic Greek culture. They were influenced by stoicism.
In stoicism, it was considered wholly inappropriate to show any emotion in any situation.
The truth is, in Rome and in Greece, they seldom even would touch a stranger or a newcomer.
If it were someone they knew,
they certainly wouldn’t hug and kiss them. You’ve seen enough of those Romans movies,
haven’t you?
You know what they did when they greeted somebody?
They would say, “Greetings,” and grab forearms. By the way, do you know where the custom of
handshaking came from, if you care to study it?
It is an ancient custom that a man would put out
his hand to show that he’s not holding a dagger. And the other person would take his hand to
show that I’m not holding a dagger either, and basically it was a sign that says,
“I’m not going to slit your throat.”
That’s where it came from.
Unfortunately, there are people today who will shake your hand, but will stab you in the back when you’re back is turned.
What am I trying to say to you?
You study the culture of the Bible days
in which this was written, and that’s what you have to do to understand the Bible,
study the culture in which it was written.
And it was NOT the common custom
to hug or much less kiss someone.
The only place it was ever done was in the immediate family.
Obviously:
• Mothers did it to children,
• children did it to parents,
• husbands did it to wives,
• parents did it to children,
• and grandchildren did it to grandparents.
It was a show of family intimacy.
This is what Paul’s trying to say.
If you catch this, you’ve learned something today. Paul is saying within the church,
we don’t treat each other
like strangers or newcomers;
we don’t treat each other the way people do
out there in the world.
We are a family, and we show affection to each other in the church just like a family would.
So I’ve got news for you today.
Are you ready for this?
You can write it down, ladies and gentlemen:
You MAY kiss the bride!
I’m giving you permission, because the Bible gives you permission to kiss the bride.
You say, what bride are you talking about?
The Bride of Christ, which is the church.
Now, what he’s saying is this.
“In the church, we ought to love each other
with such intimacy and affection
that when we come together,
it’s okay to hug and it’s okay to kiss.”
I doubt that they do that at the VFW Club or the Moose Lodge, but in the church of the Lord Jesus, he said it’s not only good to do, he said,
“I’m telling you to do it, to greet one another.”
Emphasis on holy.
You know when I meet some people in this church, it is the most natural and the most
supernatural thing for me to do to put my arms around that person, and sometimes,
mostly women of a certain age,
I will plant a kiss on their cheek.
You know why I do that?
Because I love them.
I love them in the Lord.
And I’m expressing affection to them.
One thing I like about SSBC is, praise God,
this is a hugging church.
And there ought to be a place,
and it ought to be the church
where people who are lonely
and need intimacy and affection
can come and receive a non-threatening hug.
I know some of you don’t like that.
You know why?
In your biological family growing up,
affection was not expressed physically.
Hugging was not part of growing up years.
And it’s real hard for you
to come into the church and do that.
This is what I’m saying.
We never force that on anybody.
You never just hug somebody
that doesn’t want to be hugged.
You only do that to those willing to give and receive that kind of physical affection in the Lord.
I often thought we ought to ask our ushers to treat people like in a restaurant.
You walk in the back door and the usher says, “Will that be hugging or non-hugging?
Kissing or non-kissing?”
Somebody says, “While you’re doing it, say, ‘Perfume or non-perfume?’”
Are you aware that some people
are allergic to perfume?
If you are uncomfortable being hugged,
let me help you.
When you see someone heading toward you
that you know is a hugger or kisser,
stick your hand out.
That will be the signal to the rest of us
that you are not comfortable doing that.
Can I give you a little thumbnail sketch of church history and tell how this idea of showing
affection has been defiled through the centuries? First of all, in the early church that Paul is
writing to here, this was an intimate group of Christians who loved each other, knew each other by name, they hugged and kissed each other; that’s how they greeted one another.
You know why?
Because they were persecuted.
But as the years went past, persecution waned, prosperity increased, and you remember after Constantine, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire.
And folks, they did not Christianize paganism, they paganized Christianity.
And we can study it in history.
What happened?
They stopped kissing each other in affection and it became a formal kiss on the forehead that was given after the communion service.
Later, it became nothing but a kiss on the
hand, and then after a few years,
there was no kiss at all.
Instead, they would kiss an object like a
cross or like the communion cup.
Or they would kiss a vestment
or some relic or icon.
Even in the time that we call the Dark Ages when the Bible was chained to the pulpit in the dead
language that only the priest could read,
but most of them didn’t.
The separation of intimacy became even deeper. They built an iron rail in the front of the people and said, “You can’t cross that rail, because beyond that rail only those professional Christians, the priests, can operate.
And you sit out there
and you watch what we do.”
And suddenly, church during the Dark Ages and
the Renaissance became nothing but a spectator event where you came and you sat and you watched what the professional Christians did. And can I just say to you folks that is a tremendous corruption
of the church that Jesus intended.
Jesus never intended the church
to be a spectator event.
You’re not spectators;
you’re participants in worship.
We’re brothers and sisters together.
There’s no separation between you and me.
We believe in the priesthood of all believers.
You know, the sad fact is, you come and you sit, and unless you turn your head around,
you probably don’t even know who’s on the pew
behind you or the pew behind them.
The sad thing is, we’ve lost that spirit of intimacy. Paul is saying it needs to be recovered.
Paul Tournier, who is a Christian psychologist, writes, “The most devastating malady of our day is loneliness.
There is no human condition
so acute and so universal.
Up and down the pews of every church
are lonely people who have a desperate need
to be loved and to show love in return.”
In her book entitled, Crowded Pews, Lonely People Harriet Jacobson wrote,
“Why does a person go to church?
There are many reasons.
It may simply make him feel good,
nicely religious and respectable,
or he may be trying to fill up an emptiness that he feels, a longing to find meaning in life.
Or he may simply looking for profitable,
professional or business contacts—
that’s why some people come to church—
but if he is an authentic Christian,
he’s probably looking for Bible teaching and preaching, and he wants to worship God.
But it is safe to say that whatever other motives brought him to church, down underneath consciously or unconsciously,
he came to be with people, to be part of a group, to find fellowship with other human beings,
to make friends.
Seated in his pew that may be full,
he is surrounded by people.
But as he leaves the church, no matter how
the sermon or music may have impressed him, he leaves with a definite feeling of either having been made warm by a touch with his fellow worshipers or having been among many
but somehow alone.”
Isn’t it amazing that sometimes people can
go to a worship service and are here
with several people, but they’re still alone?
That will never happen in a church
where we are doing what the Bible says,
and we’re quick to show affection.
II. HOW TO COPE WITH SPIRITUAL FOES
Now, we turn the tables completely,
because we have been talking about
cherishing our spiritual family.
Let’s turn now, beginning in verse 17, let’s talk about this, “How to cope with spiritual foes.” Would you read verses 17-20 with me?
“Now I urge you, brethren, keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you learned,
and turn away from them.”
Now, can I just say in every church, in Rome,
in Ephesus, in Shady Shores Baptist Church,
in every church in Denton and Denton County, you’re going to find objectionable, obstreperous, knuckleheads, difficult people
who cause problems in the church,
and this verse tells us what to do with them.
“Keep away from them,” verse 17 says,
“For such men are slaves, not of our Lord Christ but of their own appetites;
and by their smooth and flattering speech
they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting.
For the report of your obedience has reached to all;” [that’s in Rome]
“therefore I am rejoicing over you,
but I want you to be wise in what is good,
and innocent in what is evil.”
I want you to be wise about what is good
and innocent about what is evil.”
Verse 20, is an amazing promise
that some people just blow through
when they are finishing the book.
“And the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.
The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.”
Paul said to…
Identify and avoid disruptive people
They’re always there, folks.
There are always people who want to argue
with you, want to complain about this,
complain about that, nit-pick about this,
and the Biblesays,
“Don’t kick them out of your church.”
It says, “Don’t be mean to them;
just don’t fellowship with them.”
They are the ones that you don’t give
that hug and that kiss of greeting to.
Look at Titus 3:9.
By the way,
Titus is a church operations manual.
Paul writes, “But shun foolish controversies and genealogies and strife and disputes about the Law; for they are unprofitable and worthless.”
Let me ask you.
Have you ever known people that that’s all they want to do in your Sunday School class or prayer group, they want to split theological hairs?
They want to argue about these little points of doctrine, trying to get you mad.
The Bible says don’t do it.
It is unprofitable, it is useless.
Then keep reading.
Here it is.
This is the word of God.
“Warn a divisive person once.”
Okay, let’s do that.
If you’re a divisive person,
we’re warning you one time.
Okay, that’s once.
Then it says,
“And then warn him a second time.”
There’s your second warning, okay?
“After that, have nothing to do with them.”
Ray Steadman was the pastor of Peninsula Bible Church in San Francisco for many years.
This is what he writes about this passage, please listen:
“Some people for the sake of their point of view would destroy the unity of your church.
How do you deal with them?
Avoid them.
We must keep our eye on them
and turn away from them.
In other words, we don’t listen to them.
We’re never obligated to hear a person out,
when what they’re saying
is not consistent with Christian speech.
If they are tearing down the church,
tearing down the pastor,
tearing down the leaders
or Sunday School teachers or any believer,
we should not listen.
Because even out of a misguided sense of courtesy, our listening to them
would make it seem that we agree,
while what we’re doing is giving them
another chance to vent their verbal poison.”
What do you do if somebody comes up to you and wants to say terrible disruptive things
about somebody in the church?
You say,
“Whoa, hold it right there!
Jesus said in Matthew 18,
‘If you’ve got something against somebody,
you go right to that person.
You don’t bring it to me,
and you go right to that person
and you talk to that person.
Listen, I’ll even help set up a meeting
between you and that person.’”
Most of the time, they say, “No thanks.”
That’s what the Bible says.
You identify and you avoid them.
Instead, we are to be a people
who spend our time building up one another.
Folks, Paul knew what he was talking about.
When you operate out of a heart of love,
God can do marvelous things.
