THE MORNING AFTER A SHORT NIGHT
April 18, 1775 British troops arrived in Boston harbor by night. The plan was to cross the Charles river in small boats and attack the towns of Concord and Lexington. A young man, aware of the plan, grabbed his horse and rode through the streets shouting, ‘WAKE UP, WAKE UP, THE BRITISH ARE COMING, WAKE UP’. Paul Revere brought people out of their sleep and they prepared themselves for the battle upon them. We have an invisible war upon us and we need modern Paul Reveres to sound the alarms that we might respond to the aggression of the enemy.
Too many Christians are snuggled comfortably into their padded pews and sleeping away the day of harvest.
Vance Havner: ‘There is Anarchy in the world, apostasy in the church and apathy in the pew.’ An army in its bunks instead of in it’s bunker.
Average church(Gallup) 17% say they tithe but only 3% actually do. 40% will give nothing in a year. 91% say they make more money than they ever have in their life. 71% of pastors believe that church members have changed from stewards into consumers.
Alarm is going off: some people can actually sleep through loud alarms. Some alarms that begin quiet and increase in volume. How much louder can our alarm sound in our society today? Watch TV – rent a movie – read about school violence – listen to language of a group of teenagers – examine our political leaders – look at the failed marriages – the disfunctional homes – the dead churches. LOUD! The church is like Samson asleep in the lap of Delilah. Soon we will wake up and find that the philistines are upon us and it is too late.
(What happens when a person wakes up in their spiritual lives?)
Paul has shared about a proper attitude towards our government as citizens and now he directs it more toward our treatment of others and our own priorities which need to be set.
1. THEY PUT LOVE INTO THEIR LIVES (8) Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. (9) For this, ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself’. (10) Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law’.
a. Paul is writing to the capital city of the Roman Empire: love was that which was most lacking there. Cruel relentless Emperor, military machine, rampant slavery and immorality.
1) Writing from Corinth: city steeped in sexual immorality(wrong definition of love) abandoned to pleasure and self. Right understanding of loving others was a needed message.
b. What would happen in this world is people could be taught to really love?
1) Marriages back together
2) No wars to fight in
3) Absence of crime
4) No more prisons
5) Courts and police unneeded
6) Tax burden greatly lessened.
c. Love is actually the radical force that Jesus has turned loose upon the world by His resurrection. It is the power that we possess to radically impart the world.
d. When I come in contact with any person I need to realize that my first obligation is to love them. Owe nothing to anyone except to love them. Every day, every person.
Owe money to a person and see them. The first thing that comes to your mind is that I owe them and they think about it too.
e. There is no limit to whom I am to love: for he who loves his neighbor…
1) More than the person you live next door to. Person next to you when you shop, in your business, in your class at school, in traffic….YOU OWE THEM LOVE
f. Love takes you beyond the law: for he who loves has fulfilled the Law. Love is a step beyond the law.
1) Law often stops with a negative ‘Don’t … but love says ‘Do good to your neighbor…reach out to them… minister to them. How do you help your neighbor and help them at the same time?
2) LUKE 10:30-37 (36) Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man…
You shall not commit adultery…murder…steal…covet…
Summed up in this saying, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. You don’t have to worry about keeping the 10 commandments if you are walking in love. It just happens.
2. THEY PUT SIN OUT OF THEIR LIVES (11) Do this, knowing the time, that it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep; for now salvation is nearer to us than when we believed. (12) The night is almost gone, and the day is near. Therefore let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. (13) Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife in jealousy.
a. Time to look around and realize that the night surrounds us.
1) Something about the wicked age we live in that should compel, motivate and drive us to getting serious about our walk with Jesus and about loving others.
2) How many times in your life have you passed by opportunities to love people. Wrapped up in loving ourselves: my job, my family, my interest occupy our lives continually.
JN 9:4 ‘I must work the works of My Father while it is day. The night is coming when no man can work’
JN 9:5 ‘As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world’
3) Interesting that the Jewish Day began with the night and then the day. Gen 1: There was evening and there was morning, the ____ day.
4) We are living in the night. People are in the dark all around us while we have the Light of the World to offer them. This night has lasted almost 2000 years.
Phil 2:15 We Christians are to be lights shinning in the darkness of the night.
b. Time to look around us and realize the time is short.
1) Grey hairs throughout the room tonight. More on my head every day. If we are ever to love it better be now.
2) George Bernard Shaw ‘Youth is such a wonderful thing, it is a shame to waste it on the young’ It is a shame to waste any age but at any age we really don’t know for sure how much time we have left.
c. Time to look around and see what should not be in our lives. Therefore let us lay aside the deeds of darkness…
1) Things that are in your life that are incompatable with love and with Jesus. THREE CATAGORIES.
a) Three couplets carousing & drunkenness sexual promiscuity & sensuality strife & jealousy Three evidences of self-love and personal indulgence.
Someone has said that man is the only animal that can blush and the only one that needs to.
MT 12:30 He that is with Me gathers; but he that is against me scatters’ Can I measure my life by the effect I have on people? Do I gather them together? Harmonize the body of Christ? Or do I cause scattering: strife, division, separation?
3. THEY PUT JESUS ON IN THEIR LIVES and put on the armor of light. (14) But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.
Put clothes on this morning A physical act that took a certain amount of time. These clothes will be with me all this day. Where I go they go, what I do they do. Preach a sermon, watch a ballgame, share with someone, go through a meeting. Paul says we need to make sure that each day we put on two concerns:
a. The armor of light – Romans would understand the importance of armor. Their soldiers were the model for the world. Paul would one day sit in a Roman prison and describe this armor in greater detail: Eph 6 Belt of truth, breastplate of righteousness, helmet of salvation, shield of faith, sword of the Spirit, shoes, prayer….
b. Lord Jesus Christ – Put on Jesus, He is to go with us everywhere and everything we do is to be done with Him. We can call upon His resources and show love in every situation of life.
Phillip’s Let us be Christ’s men from head to foot, and give no chance to the flesh to have its fling.
1) Paul uses the entire name:
a) Lord - Put on His authority. It stands for His power to rule, His power to change and altar events, to control history. I can know that He hold all the circumstances of life in His hand as I seek to love others.
b) Jesus – Put on His capacity to love. Jesus in His earthly life spoke healing to lives, reached into every facet of society, treated all people the same, loved the drunk, the thief, the leper.
c) Christ – Put on His reason for life: His work, His power to deliver. Messiah…Anointed One. The one they have waited for that has the power to set people free. Us and them.
Augustine in 4th century was a wild, carousing young man with evil companions. One day he was with a friend in the garden walking up and down and bemoaning his inability to change, ‘O, tomorrow, tomorrow! How can I free myself from these terrible urges within me that drive me to the things that hurt me!’ Suddenly he heard what he thought was the voice of a child in the garden next door saying ‘Take and read, take and read’. No children games had had those words? The words stuck: he went back to the table and found lying there a copy of Paul’s letter to the Romans. He flipped it open and read, ‘Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourself with Lord Jesus Christ..’(13:13-14) At that moment he opened his life to Christ. He had known about him but had never surrendered to him. He felt the healing touch from Christ cleansing his life. He was never the same man again.
Little boy in bed: Father praying with him. Knelt down as boy began his prayer, ‘Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, if I should wake before I die, I…. Oh, daddy, I got all mixed up’ Mixed up words were actually great wisdom and a prayer that all of should pray. I deeply long that each of us might wake up before it is too late. Are you awake or are you sleeping?
Is it already the hour for you to awaken from sleep; for now salvation is nearer to us than when we believed.(11)
