Our Huge Debt
(Romans 13:8-14)
1. What will happen to you if you get so badly in debt that you cannot pay your electric bill? You will experience the darkest days of your life!
2. We can make jokes about debt, but actual debt is no laughing matter.
3. Many folks seek to live within their means and not their credit limits. Others struggle long and hard to control their spending. Yet others give-in and buy what they cannot afford.
4. But no matter what your habits, if you are a believer, you have a huge debt. It is the debt to love others and to love and serve God. It is a debt we can never fully pay, but we are expected to make faithful installments. Sometimes we default.
5. Today’s text offers us some important direction about loving God and others.
MAIN IDEA: Biblical Love does not just happen; we can make choices that nurture it, and we can make choices that hinder it.
I. Debt INTERFERES with Loving People (8a)
A. How your handle your money is not just YOUR business, but God’s.
1. Part of why we work and are to be good stewards is so that we can be generous.
2. Ephesians 4:28, “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.”
3. When we are blessed with a windfall, we should think about giving a portion of it to God’s work, benevolence, or someone in need.
4. The tithe principle comes in handy
B. When we are in debt, we are STRESSED; our FOCUS becomes paying the bills on time.
Proverbs 22:7, “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.”
C. We need to be careful using the word NEED.
1. Many people, like Larry Burkett, Ron Blue, Chuck Bentley, Curt Hoeksema
2. Exception: some people truly are victims of circumstances, sickness, tragedy…
3. If you get a refund check, are in debt & buy a luxury item to treat yourself, you bad.
4. If you get a refund check & you think about paying down some bills, you are better.
5. If you get a refund check and leave it in the bank or invest it, you are best.
6. Whether you are in debt or not might say more about the way you think about money than it does about your income.
• Biblical Love does not just happen; it has to be nurtured.
II. We Have Life-long DEBTS/Obligations (8b-10).
A. The reflexive term “one another” suggests this is in the context of CHURCH family.
B. This is one of four DEBTS (obligations) in Romans:
• Ofeile’ths = one who owes a debt
1. To share the GOSPEL (1:14)
2. To live a HOLY life (8:12)
3. To pay TAXES (13:6-7)
4. To love one OTHERS in our church family (13:8)
C. The love God gives us is a TRUST we are to distribute responsibly.
D. The LOVE command summarizes the other commands (9-10).
When we choose to love others, it affects our feelings toward them. A minister named George Crane tells of a wife who came into his office full of hatred toward her husband. "I do not only want to get rid of him, I want to get even. Before I divorce him, I want to hurt him as much as he has me."
Dr. Crane suggested an ingenious plan "Go home and act as if you really love your husband. Tell him how much he means to you. Praise him for every decent trait. Go out of your way to be as kind, considerate, and generous as possible. Spare no efforts to please him, to enjoy him. Make him believe you love him. After you’ve convinced him of your undying love and that you cannot live without him, then drop the bomb. Tell him that your’re getting a divorce. That will really hurt him." With revenge in her eyes, she smiled and exclaimed, "Beautiful, beautiful. Will he ever be surprised!" And she did it with enthusiasm. Acting "as if." For two months she showed love, kindness, listening, giving, reinforcing, sharing. When she didn’t return, Crane called. "Are you ready now to go through with the divorce?"
"Divorce?" she exclaimed. "Never! I discovered I really do love him." Her actions had changed her feelings. Motion resulted in emotion. J. Allan Petersen.
E. The danger is to become SELF focused.
Charles Spurgeon put it this way:
“….One of the first works of the Holy Spirit is to make the man look at home, and to consider the condition of his own soul…there springs up a danger that such a man may say, ‘I shall henceforth keep myself to myself…to see after the righteousness of my own spirit and to keep myself prospering before the Lord. Other people must see to themselves, and I must see to myself.’
“The principle of individuality might be thus pushed to an extreme, till what at first was necessary grit in the spiritual constitution, making the man truly a man, may be so unduly increased that he becomes at last an unkind, ungenerous, cruel selfish thing, deprived of the best part of his humanity…No man can compass the ends of life by drawing a little line around himself upon the ground. No man can fulfil his calling as a Christian by seeking the welfare of his wife and family only, for these are only a sort of greater self. There are outgoing lines of life that bind us not only with some men, but, in fact, with all of humanity…it it is high time that we should awake out of sleep.” (Source: “The Treasury of the Bible, Volume 7,” Baker Book House, 1981 p 112)
• Biblical Love does not just happen; it has to be nurtured.
III. Loving God Is a DYNAMIC Process (11-14).
A. We can assume that we will experience both PEAKS and VALLEYS in our walk with God.
B. We become SLEEPY, BORED, and DISTRACTED or too familiar with the things of God.
C. Believers are called to be on constant ALERT until Jesus returns (11).
D. We are to forsake the night and put on the daylight, JESUS (12-14).
1. In the Greek culture, people would parade around to worship Bacchus, getting drunk and then participating in orgies and other sexual activity.
2. People who are not normally promiscuous might become so when they drink too much and lose inhibitions. You can see the connection here.
3. Christians converted from that background needed to be different.
4. Some college dorms can be this way…if your kids don’t get involved in either Cru or Inter-Varsity or Navigators or a college-ministry church, odds are poor…
5. This verse also describes our constant challenge.
6. To “put on Christ” means to give Him control of our decisions and lives, to be conscious of His presence, and to nurture our walk with Him; just as our clothing varies by size and style, so Christ wants to develop us each in our unique way; but however different we are, He wants a common attitude of surrender and joy in Him
7. Ray Steadman: “I had a friend who was a printer, and one day a man brought to him a pornographic card to be printed… for his personal use. He handed it to my friend, the printer, and he said, “I would like you to print this for me. I will pay you extra well for it.”
The man looked at the card… and handed it back, and said, “No, thank you. I don’t print this kind of stuff.”
The other fellow said, “Oh, come on now. Don’t try to pull this pious stuff with me. You know that you really enjoy this kind of thing. Just be honest.”
And the printer looked at him, and said, “You’re right. I do. I have a nature which likes to feed upon this kind of thing, but I don’t feed it!”
8. Making no provision for the flesh means don’t sabotage yourself, set yourself up for failure, but arrange to keep yourself out of tempting situations.
9. In the book, “Losing Control,” Roy Baumeister states that people who struggle controlling themselves “appear to seek out settings….that encourage the relinquishment of self-control.”
CONCLUSION
1. Biblical Love does not just happen; it has to be nurtured.
2. You will not grow in loving others and loving God if you are not intentional.
