So Romans chapter 13 verses 11 through 14 will be our focus last time. We looked at how law and love go together That if we really love God We will keep his commandments including the commandment to love others and We will be also if we really love others We will be keeping those commandments that have reference to them and that's what we saw in the earlier part of our text That's what sometimes it's called the second table of the law There's commandments that have to do with our relationship with others. Well if we love others We'll keep them because as we saw very clearly last time real love True love will fulfill God's law It will do what God says that is what real love looks like love is not just a feeling Love is not just doing whatever I want as our culture would say Real love has an objective reality that doesn't change. It has real tangible content a Disobedient unrighteous or sinful love is a contradiction It's like saying there's can be something that is a hot cold or a white black It's it can't possibly go together sinful love cannot exist As Christians it is our great calling and privilege to live lives of love towards all in fact only we can Only the Christian you have you ever thought of it can really live a life of love because only the Christian has a heart That's been changed by God. We don't love perfectly, but we can actually love and that's the difference Between a Christian and someone who hasn't been converted he can't have any real love in his heart And so this is our great calling. This is our great privilege to live lives of love towards all and this morning We're going to look at the motivation and the urgency to do that to live lives of love towards others our text gives us the incentive and the steps that show us how to live a Life of love towards our fellow man. Let's pray as we turn to God's word father We thank you so much for the salvation that we have and that salvation Lord is not the end But the beginning the beginning of our life that we would live to glorify you and to enjoy you forever and Lord that life is expressed as we live lives of love towards others real love biblical love Lord How we pray that your spirit would show us not only how that is what that is but that you would give us the Unshin to actually do it We cry out to you for this Lord be the strong Lord of our hearts this morning We pray in Jesus name amen You're now the word of the Lord. This is God's holy word from Romans chapter 13 beginning in verse 8 Oh, no one anything except to love one another For he who loves another has fulfilled the law For the commandments you shall not commit adultery you shall not murder you shall not steal you shall not bear false witness You shall not covet and if there is any other commandment Are all summed up in this saying namely you shall love your neighbor as yourself Love does no harm to a neighbor Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law and Do this knowing the time that now it is high time to awake out of sleep For now our salvation is nearer Then when we first believed the night is far spent the day is at hand Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armor of light Let us walk properly as in the day Not in revelry and drunkenness Not in ludeness and lust Not in strife and envy But put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh To fulfill its lusts Have the Lord establish this word in our hearts this morning. I pray I want you to notice First of all how our text begins with the phrase do this It could be translated as the ESV translates it beside Besides this or moreover, it's really an idiomatic phrase in the Greek language We don't want to bring it directly into English. It wouldn't make sense It's simply used to connect what went before With what came after that's why I added a few of those earlier verses So we get to see what went before and we saw the essence of what went before is what love one another Really and truly from the heart which means to keep God's commandments really and truly from the heart towards others So we could say obediently love one another or lovingly fulfill the law of God to combine those two things and Then we get that phrase so obediently love one another lovingly fulfill God's law and here are the reasons why you should And that's what that phrase is doing. It's connecting the second part and our part that we're going to look at this morning are the Reasons why we should the reasons why we should biblically lawfully and in fact the only way But you can actually love One another and I want you to notice the first reason is the nearness of our salvation Notice the nearness of our salvation verse 11 and do this knowing the time that now it is high time to awake out of sleep For now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed our Salvation is nearer. What do you think that means? Well, there are three ways in which the word salvation is used in scripture the first way is the past tense way And you'll see this a lot right you have been saved that's something that happened in the past that refers to our Regeneration our conversion when the Holy Spirit First convicted you of sin First gave you faith in repentance He before that he regenerated you and then in that moment when you were alive in Christ You suddenly saw that you were at center that you were sorry for your sins you trusted in Christ all of that that we call conversion That's what happened to you when you were saved. That's past tense That's that's done then there's a second way in which scripture speaks of salvation and that is the ongoing Present tense way sometimes you'll see Paul saying you are being saved. You are working out your salvation Salvation is something that's happening to you something you're participating in and that refers to our sanctification Right when when we are actually living the Christian life you've been saved Why so that you could now begin to live out that salvation you're living out the process as it were of Salvation you're being sanctified and scripture uses it that way Well, there's a third way in which the word salvation is used and that has to refer to what is entirely in the future What hasn't happened yet? And that's what Paul is doing here and this is often termed under our the phrase Consumption right the future Consumption of our salvation that hasn't happened yet You get a lot of verses that talk about this Romans 828 Paul spoke about this earlier when he said we who have right now We who have the first fruits of the spirit Even we ourselves grown within ourselves eagerly waiting for the adoption the redemption of our bodies Now normally when we use the word adoption Theologically we mean when God transferred us from the family of Satan into the family of God But here Paul actually uses it to refer to the future when we get new bodies that will not have any sin And he says we're waiting for that it hasn't happened yet That's the kind of salvation that we're waiting for Peter actually also says this in 1st Peter 1.5 He says he's writing to those who are kept by the power of God through faith For a salvation that's ready to be revealed in the last time See you're being kept right now for a salvation that hasn't happened yet a future salvation When you awake from the ground as it were when your body is raised again and you're given a new body that will never die again That's the future aspect and that's what Paul is saying here in our text right he's saying That if you're a Christian here today you've been saved You're living out in your salvation, but there is a future salvation that is coming that will certainly come and it's Nearer now that it was a little while ago. Well, that's because time keeps moving right of course it is But but that means what that means now is the time to live out your salvation Because that future time is coming. It's gonna come for all of us when Jesus returns or Most likely I would think when we die Because that's when we go to be with the Lord. That's when our souls go to be with the Lord All of your consciousness all of your mind your thoughts that not your body, but your soul Sometimes what we call the mind or the heart You're going to go and you're going to be with the Lord and you'll see him and you'll be without sin And you will begin to enjoy that future aspect of salvation which will be fully realized when Christ returns and the new heavens and the new earth The new bodies and so forth, but we're going to have that when we die or when Christ returns whichever comes first And Paul saying now's the time then because you don't know how much time that is We don't know when Jesus might call us home any one of us could be called home tomorrow You don't know how much time you have so now is the time to live out your faith Hurry up and live out your faith in a sense Because you don't know how much time you have left until you start that future Salvation there's an urgency to live out the gospel you find it all over the place in scripture I had a bunch of verses. I'm not going to I'm not going to share them with you because I'm just going to assume that you believe me at this point There's an urgency to live for Christ now to live for him today Live out your salvation. It's not an urgency of works Oh hurry up and do enough works so that you can earn salvation. No It's it's hurry up and live a life of love because you don't know how many days you get to do that You don't know how many days you're going to have to live for the Lord here in this world and what a great and Incredible privileged privilege it is To live out your faith To live for God To be lights in a world of darkness. We are in a world of darkness and God has made us lights To shine in the darkness for a short time and then you're called home So be a light. What are you waiting for in a sense be a light live out your faith? You don't know how long you get to glorify God in this world of darkness some day You'll be with them in heaven and this opportunity is gone then and so I think that's what Paul clearly is saying It's an urgency of living out our faith Because we don't have Tomorrow Promise to us. I think that's the point here in the scripture We're constantly Waiting for things. I want to pick this up a little bit later in the text, but There's no waiting for the Christian life If you're a converted person You're a Christian. There's nothing else to wait for Live out the Christian faith Don't wait for anything This is the first point the nearness Of our salvation tomorrow isn't promised you live out your faith today Secondly, I want you to notice the encroachment of darkness Notice the encroachment of darkness Look at verse 11 and do this knowing the time that now it is high time to awake out of sleep For now our salvation is near than when you first believe well wake up Paul says salvation is near It's time to get up. He starts to bring in this metaphor of being asleep It's time to get up Sleeping is for the night time Now it's time to awake look at the first part of verse 12 the night is far spent the day isn't hand I don't know. I'm one of those people that haven't really ever lived Within alarm clock except maybe briefly in college for the most part in my life It was my mom coming in the room saying buster it's time to get up Now it's Robin coming in the room Ray it's time to get up And I don't want to get up a lot of times right you don't want to get up But you know it's time and so you've got to get up you've got to make yourself do this thing Because sleeping is the time the thing that we do at night And now once the daylight comes you do the thing that you're supposed to do in the day I don't know this is really basic But I want you to think about it if you're a Christian here this morning You know what this means? It means that the dawn has broken the sun has breached the horizon And the first rays of light are shining into your life The dawn has come Therefore stop acting like it's still sleep time. That's what Paul's saying to us I remember when I in the summer after I finished college every summer seemed like I got These jobs with these construction companies and the first year I got a job with the roofing company And we would meet I remember going up to the job site This one house we were working on for a while And we would get up there at 4.30 in the morning And it was dark You know 4.30 in the morning but it was really quick before the sun just started to break through the light And as soon as the light came As soon as it started to have a little bit of daylight we started working as if it was high new We started working and doing everything that we normally did even though it was still pretty much dark But we knew the day had broken we knew the daylight was coming So we began to work and though as if it was fully day and that's exactly the thing that Paul was telling us here The dawn has come in your spiritual life Live as if it were full day because the day is it's only going to get more and more light So start living start living for the faith the darkness has been broken in your life Live as if it were full daylight That's the first metaphor that Paul was using stop sleeping get up. It's time to get up. It's time to get up spiritually speaking I like verse 12 the rest of it the night is far spent the day is at hand Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness. Let us put on the army of light You know in the Greek text this these are verbs that are used for getting dressed and getting undressed I mean the first one is is literally take off your sleeping clothes the works of darkness. That's your pajamas Get your spiritual pajamas off Those but works of the nights over now for you and put on your work clothes Put on the armor of Christ put it on Put on the armor of light later on he says put on the Lord Jesus Christ same verb put on your work clothes Put on your daytime clothes for because for you as a Christian daytime is come Now it's time to start living like it was daytime You know you and I are always I think waiting for things. I know Seems like that's been my struggle in life Now is the time to do deeds of righteousness deeds of life love spiritually speaking Don't fall into the habit that we do so often in our lives in our sort of natural lives But I think it breaches into our spiritual lives as well where we say oh you know as kids I mean what do you kids saying oh as soon as I graduate high school then I then my life begins, you know I Yesterday or no Friday at the RTCS commencement. I I sort of likened the high school years to preseason football You know preseason football being those games you play that don't matter It doesn't matter if you win or lose I remember the one year the Steelers lost all four the preseason games and they won the Super Bowl I mean who cares if you win the preseason games well that wasn't true. I was saying that tongue in cheek in the speech It our lot there is no preseason to your life If you're a Christian again everything that can happen to you has happened Until you die there's nothing to wait for there's absolutely nothing to wait for we think oh when I graduate high school Then my life begins or and then you get you know you graduate and then what oh when I'm 21 then I'm an adult Then I have my rights or you know Well when when I graduate college what do they say at college all the time? Well when you're in the real world remember at Penn State all the time we'd talk about that Well when we're out in the real world as if college wasn't the real world Now I know what that's getting at we haven't provided for ourselves yet We're still you know living under mom and dad's house and money for a certain, you know um Phase of our life. It's sort of that weird transition space. I know the truth. We're getting at But sometimes that mindset causes us to think that right now doesn't matter You know, oh, and then what is it? Well, then when you know when I get a job Then what is all then when I get married when I have kids when I retire When I die when's it time start living? spiritually speaking it's now as soon as you've been born again There's nothing else to wait for there is no waiting you say well I'm gonna go to seminary pastor and maybe I'm gonna be a ministry so I gotta you don't wait to live for Christ You live for Christ now as a seminary student And you do everything you can for him where you're at now there is no waiting Because there's another shift in the metaphor here Paul does it's not just about it's time to get up There's a more ominous a more menacing turnpulp makes in verse 12 the night is far spent The day is at hand therefore let us cast off the works of darkness and let us put on The armor of life martin Luther says Quote that spiritual sleep. This is what Paul is referring to that spiritual sleep in which the spirit the the human spirit as it were Is a sleep by living in sin. This is how you sleep spiritually by living in sin and being inactive in good works That's what Luther said this text is referring to That's spiritual sleep in which we're just Living in sin and we're not active in good works Do you know what's interesting about this text and I didn't do anything with it until this morning And I already written my sermon and I'd already gone through it And I was going to just say this but I thought I'll just check the other translations and sure enough Young's little translation agreed with me and some other one But I mean I knew it from the Greek so I didn't really need to do that But it's nice to see the confirmation The words the night is far spent you see it in your text the night is far spent the day is at hand Well, you know why the translators do that while the night is sort of ending and the day is sort of coming That's not what that word literally means it can mean that but it more literally means the night is advanced The night has progressed the night is More full and so you can see why the translators don't want to say well the night is more full and the day has broken They see it in congruity there, but I don't at all I think that's exactly the picture that scripture gives us of spiritual reality The night is darker than ever But the dawn has broken into your life so live for Christ Papal writes this in other places second Timothy chapter 3 verse 13 But evil men and imposter will grow worse and worse They'll get darker and darker darkness is increasing in the world of sin They'll grow worse and worse deceiving and being deceived Paul says, but you what You live for Christ you be a light And so I think this text would be more powerfully expressed the night has advanced and the day has come And you're the day is what Paul is saying The day is at hand even though the night is coming more harder than ever as it always continually tries to do But this these these works of darkness. What are they? Well, we know what they are Paul's going to go into them in verses 13 and 14 But I want you to notice it's of the darkness, right? That's when people do evil That's when we do Eve. That's when we hide our things right we we do things that nobody can see you think thoughts in your head If they were written on the wall when if all of our thoughts could be written for everyone to see I think we'd all be horrified and we'd be horrified in ourselves and if one another because we We sin in our minds. We We do evil in our in our minds and it's hidden and we don't worry about it because nobody can see it You know there are places in the city where you probably don't want to go at night Because in darkness, that's when people come and do the people that are intent on doing evil They wait until it's dark so that they can get away with it And that's what Paul was saying here. Let us cast off the works of darkness We are called to cast off these things. Why? Because apart from Our actively stirring up the grace of God. We will be doing them They just sort of keep coming on to us I was trying to think of a good metaphor for this and I thought you know spiritually speaking As converted people We're all like six-year-old boys in church Okay, maybe I don't know if we have any six-year-old boys in church Six-year-old boys in church in our church clothes Right what's a six-year-old boy in his church clothes going to do? Naturally He's going to get dirty That's what six-year-old boys in church clothes do unless his mother's voice is constantly telling him don't get dirty Because that's what we naturally do is six-year-old boys They're almost like magnets are just to attract this mental filings to themselves constantly It's unless someone's pushing it away and that's literally I think the picture that Paul's giving us here Let us cast off the works of darkness. Why? Because they keep coming They just keep coming. We got to keep throwing them off and if you don't throw them off You're going to be filthy Unless you're constantly, actively, diligently Throwing off the works of darkness and we have a way to do that Let us put on the armor of light To hopla-to-photos The hoplites, you know that those shock troops of the Greek forces. It can be translated in weapons. It's plural here The weapons. I like that better than the armors The weapons of light. It's translated that way many places in the New Testament Put on the weapon. Take up the weapons of light You know the metaphors that Paul is throwing at us here from sleeping to The spiritual darkness to warfare now and of course he does that in other places right? He talks about finishing the race about boxing About winning the contest test and in a sense what he's saying here is that The game has begun The whistle has blown They've already done the jump ball or the face-off or the kickoff or the first pitch has been thrown Whatever metaphor you want to throw at it. It's happened We're in the game But it's really not Games that Paul really goes to as his default metaphor. It's warfare and that's why he uses the weapons of light Because we're in a war We're in a mortal struggle to the death With sin and this is the only time we get to participate in it to find in it So take up the armor of light because the darkness is coming and you have been put there just for a short time to throw back the darkness And to glorify God and doing it Third day I want you to notice therefore the necessity of walking notice the necessity of walking. What do I mean? Look at verse 13 let us walk properly As in the day Paul doesn't say hey, let us walk and then oh and as we begin to walk let us walk properly He assumes we're going to walk here's another metaphor It's scripture uses this one a lot right life is a journey Life is walking down a path You know in the proverbs and in the Psalms don't turn to the left or to the right don't go off the path Don't go to where the where the stumbling stones are don't go into the thorns Stay on the path the path of light where God's word will keep you Well, that's what he's saying here let us walk properly you could translate it decently Uprightly Honestly that same concept not in darkness not hiding we don't go around in the Christian life right Skulking and hiding and and and walking in a way that we don't want people to see us. We should want people to see us You know, it's like when you do something well when your child does something well. He comes up and did you see me? And when he does something poorly I remember doing this like in the in the football game The few times I would get in you know towards the end of the game and like if I did something bad I'd look over and make sure hopefully dad wasn't looking at me when I when he saw me mess up But if I made a tack or something like oh, I hope he saw me, you know Well, we should be like that spiritually speaking. We should we should walk in a way that we would want To be seen and we are going to walk She that's the thing we're going to either walk in darkness or we're going to walk in the light There is no not walking. There is no not taking sides. You're in the war You're either going to be fighting for the Lord. You're going to be fighting against the Lord That's why Paul says let us walk he knows we're going to walk Properly as in the day and he doesn't go into Details as to what this is what he does he goes into what it isn't in the second and we'll look at that But this is all referring to the sanctification process That you and I Would be walking in such a way That we would be being sanctified and that he's calling us here to act and be Not go you know not fall into this sleep like state All of these metaphors about it's high time to awake out of sleep The night is far spent the day has come don't keep sleeping in bed when it's time to wake up You know, it's interesting. I looked up in the words of Jesus. How many times he says wake up or be awake or be on the alert or watch all Similar words and it's more than 20 times in the gospel just from Jesus That he says a couple times in Revelation where he's dictating the letters. It's Jesus telling John the right You know, and he says to be awake But listen to the last words of Christ public ministry that mark records This is the last thing he says publicly mark 1335 Therefore and he's talking to his disciples now, right? therefore stay awake For you do not know when the master of the house will come in the evening or at midnight or when the rooster grows or in the morning Last he come and suddenly and finds you asleep And then Jesus says this last verse and mark that he speaks publicly And what I say to you I'll think about this what I say to you I say to all that's what he says What I say to you I say to all Stay awake and that's it Over and over again, and you know the interesting thing is in Luther brings this out in Calvin and Matthew Henry These words are to Christians These are not to unbelievers. These are not to those who are dead in their sins those who are asleep to righteousness These words of the Christians in fact every one of those times when Jesus says be on the alert be awake watch out wake up It's always to the Christians Because we are the only ones in a sense who can wake up and we are the only ones and whom Sleep is continually coming upon us we have to continually be active and pushing it back Put on the armor of light put on the Lord Jesus Christ these things are not referring to justification I think sometimes people do that to these verses and you destroy the whole thrust of the text Because the thrust of this text is the imperative It's a call to action Paul has given us justification in one to eight and I mean there's a lot of other stuff there too But that's where he had developed the gospel then he dealt with the problem of Israel then he's been applying the text and now he is Strenuously exerting his audience Christian people to live out their faith You know nothing is more deadly. I think to the Christian faith than to say well put on the armor of light put on the Lord Jesus Christ That's imputed righteousness you see and that's what we do when we're converted and so we did that and so now we're done This these verses can't be about that First of all we are never commanded to put on the righteousness of Christ when we believe God imputes that to us We don't do that God imputes it monogistically when you believed in Christ the moment you believe God counted Christ righteousness is yours You didn't do that You don't take part in that that's not a process that you do unless salvation is by works. Oh, I got to put on that righteousness again It was done can't be added to can't be taken away from That was something that happened
And Paul is writing not to unbelievers Be converted in a sense put on the righteousness of Christ. He's writing to Christians to Put on more and more the Lord Jesus Christ to put on more and more The armor of light Martin Luther said that it is a deadly error To apply these verses to justification and nobody's more of an expert on justification than Luther He says this about these verses we advance in sanctification. Here's this quote by serious effort Because we're constantly falling asleep We're constantly falling the moment we turn the moment we stop focusing the moment we stop thinking about it The moment we allow these things to happen we're going to go back to the old patterns to our default, you know my computer Oh, I just hate my computer. I hate my phone. Hate everything electronic. I'm going to become a lot. I think but My computer Kit popping up, you know windows 10 would you like to download windows 10? I kept saying no windows 10. No No, guess what happened on its own We just downloaded windows 10 for you now my mouse doesn't work half the time. It just quits working All kind of things are happening, you know, and they think that I need this you know I guess in some sense and now I can't get back to my default I have a new default and I hate it It keeps doing things that I don't want it to do Well our default as sinners is to always go back to sin. You may have been a Christian for 80 years Your default is to go back to the sinful ways And this is why we have to constantly be waking ourselves up be walking be focusing on what we're doing And that's because of these works of darkness. Let's look at them briefly verses 13 and 14 Let us walk properly is in the day not he doesn't tell us how To do it he tells us how not to do it Not in revelry and drunkenness Not in the ludeness and lust Not in strife and envy But put on the Lord Jesus Christ And make no provision for the flesh To fulfill to fulfill its lusts. How do we put on Christ? We put on what We don't put on his deity We put on the character of Christ We put on the virtues of Christ We put on the new man Sometimes Paul will say put on the new man the new character put on the armor of God And he gives all of the things to do that so he doesn't go into that here But we know what that is but I'm gonna go where Paul goes which is the works of darkness and so the the fourth reason why We need The urgency to love one another is because of the lust of the flesh. That's my fourth point final point the lusts of the flesh We have a flesh That's not referring to our bodies. Don't think of the flesh as your physical body The flesh here refers to your sinful nature and we must not make provision for it because guess what it's always telling us what to do It's always Stirring us up to do sinful things and the only way we're going to defeat it is if we walk by the spirit We walk by the ways in which God has given us the armor of God putting on the Lord Jesus Christ. You can't do it Apart from these things When are we going to learn that we can't do it but by the grace of God and by the means of grace These things we don't need to go into them. It's really not proper to go into them that far But there's three groupings here revelry and drunken drunkenness excessive Feasting and drinking Sometimes it's called rioting partying What can I identify with this? This is what we live for in college before I was a converted person This is what you live for Partying and drunkenness whether drunkenness is getting high or or just overindulging in this the the appetites This is what the Christian is not to do And Paul again is writing to Christians guess what real Christians fall into this And we need to have compassion on one another when we do That we would repent from these things that we would help one another repent from these things because it's if you think you're beyond any of these Since this is why Paul is exhorting the church on these things revelry Riding living for the good time. We can do it in a very refined way, right? But you know the flesh has our bodies I should say have real needs and we are to satisfy them But we are not to overindulge in these things and that's what revelry and drunkenness refers to Lootness and lust the first word is where we get the word coitus from it's just it It's actually referring to the sexual acts that are sinful and the desire that Sinful before that now just like food and drink can be used and are good. They're from God So is sex and sexual desire? It's good. It's from God, but when we do it in a sinful way destroys us and Paul was saying again to Christians these are powerful desires that we have Don't allow them to go in a sinful way. Don't live this way This is the way the world lives and then not in strife and in envy boy This is another one Paul over and over again. I counted seven letters waste warrants Christians against strife a lot of times It's with words We're constantly picking and bickering with one another and and and divisions that are caused in disruptions and arguments He says quarrelings all these things are In the church this one's easily in the church and envy is in the heart, right? In fact in every one of these pairs the second one kind of refers more to the desire the first one to the act It's envy that causes strife and division and quarreling Paul says mark those people in the church if all they want to do is fight with you It's he says avoid them in other letters avoid those who just want to pick a fight all the time I'll never forget when I was a kid and we were at my aunts in Ohio my grandmother had her sisters. They were they were ten in my grandmother's family I remember right and there were a bunch of sisters and a couple of brothers and all of them were World War II vets and my uncle Ernie was a Marine and he fought in World War II he fought at Anzio in Europe and he was a tough old Marine and these These sisters of my grandmother there was constantly a quarrel They were they loved each other and they hated each other I don't know what it was but they were caught and there was there would be huge that would go on for years sometimes Where two of them would not talk to each other and be upset with each other And it was totally inappropriate and wrong and I remember one time my uncle Ernie because I was a little kid And they were my my one aunt it was a little bit more outspoken than the others and Elner was just Just tearing in there and And Ernie didn't respond back to her Didn't do anything And finally he get out he got up and he started to walk out and she said where are you going? He didn't answer and then she told him and she cussed right in front of me, you know go to blaze and she said And I'm a little kid and I'm like whoa what's my uncle Ernie going to do here, you know, you know what he did He smiled never even broke his stride He said that's where I'm going and he opened the door and he walked out the house And she was so mad when he did it But you know what? It's just like it's a little kid that so impressed me. I remember it to this day This tough Marine could have broken her now He refused to allow her to do that to him He just walked out the door and and and I never forgot that not even know if he was a Christian But I think he was practicing here what we're supposed to do Don't get caught up in these things How do we do it? Well, we have the means of grace We have fasting Luther says fasting is a most excellent weapon for the Christian I think it's great that Luther says that Because he was the one who over-indulged in fasting in the monastery and tried to do it as a work But he never got rid of it as a good discipline in his life And he recognized that when we fast what are we doing? We're denying the body's appetites And as you do that It's really similar to denying the body's appetite for sin and you're building up that ability to do that That's why fasting with prayer. It's got to be with prayer to the Lord When you do that you're you're walking more in that spiritual exercise You're denying yourself things that you need Guess what? It's a little bit easier to deny that temptation when it comes because you're building that up Luther Talks about that in his commentary on this also prayer That we would be in prayer crying out to God for strength We've got to do that as well But the last one and I think it's the most powerful one is the word of God Remember Paul began this whole section Romans 12 I besiege you brethren by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice Holy acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service So that would include loving others right and do not be conformed to this world But be transformed This is how you do it by the renewing of your mind. This is how you're putting on Christ putting on the armor of light That you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect rule of God. I want to leave you with a final story about a young man He was in his early thirties. I think most of you know this man And he was becoming Very well accomplished in his field. He was an academic. He was a teacher. He traveled the world He was wanted by heads of state to come and teach here and there And at the same time he's working through philosophies and trying to figure out what he believes You know And he had written off the Christian faith pretty early on is simple Even though his mother and father wanted him and tried to raise him as a Christian But he didn't listen and he walked away from it And he was so intelligent and such a scholar the teacher of rhetoric wherever he went And he dabbled a little bit in platenism and in manacheism Manacheanism he was you know the philosophies of the day trying to find out things and then he sat under this simple preacher named Ambrose in Milan And he heard him and he suddenly realized you know what there are some answers that the Christians have And they're not so dumb after all and it started to change his thinking a little bit and more and more He became convicted not only where they answers they were good answers And he saw Ambrose justifying the prophets and the Old Testament which these manacheans Keis and the neo-plaintants would make fun of you know that they're and he said no they actually have better answers And then he began to see that manacheanism was wrong And that neo-plaintantism was wrong and he got to the place where he was convinced that the Christian faith was true But guess what this young man loved Riot is living not in a in a refined sense not the kind that we think of like animal hoss or something a very refined person And he loved the company of women and he had certain affairs in different cities that he had Even he had a child out of wedlock and his mother the whole time praying for him And at one point as as he's convinced that the Christian faith is true, but he couldn't let go Of his promised sexual promiscuity especially he didn't want to give that up And he's sitting and he's weeping in a garden Of a friend of his and as he's sitting there and as he's weeping He hears children singing a song in a in a right over the hedges in a in a neighbor Neighbors field neighbors yard in the city And he hears the child's voice and he didn't know if it was a boy or a girl But the child kept singing the words Tola lege Tola lege because they're in the Roman Empire and Latin as what you speak And the little children are singing Tola lege and he says I never recalled a game where children would sing that phrase Before or after but for some reason that day they were singing that phrase And as he looked over at the table and he's weeping because he cannot come to the point where he would give his life to Christ He's weeping and he sees on the table a Bible when I was Pamplett's of Paul they didn't have Bibles like we have today and he picked them up and he just let it fall Because the child was saying take up and read don't ever do this by the way I shouldn't say ever since maybe the Lord might use it But it would be better probably most of the time ordinarily speaking to really know what you're doing But he opened his Bible just let it fall open and he read Not in rioting and drunkenness Not in sexual promiscuity and lasciviousness Not in strife and envying But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lust thereof And he writes in his book no further did I read nor did I need to For the light of God came into my heart With a confidence And suddenly I was alive The man's name as many of you know was a really a suggestion He was the man that was used by God to awaken people like Anselm, Thomas Aquinas Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk John Calvin in his writings at one point says all I have ever done Is just reproduce the works of that great man Maybe the greatest saint That the Christian faith has ever known since the clothes of the apostles And he was awakened by the scripture And he lived for Christ May God grant us that we would live for Christ. Let's pray father. We thank you so much But you urges on to live out our faith lord help us to do that Lord God if there was a greater saint than Augustin it was probably his mother Monaco prayed for him for years Even when he was becoming more and more engrossed in darkness. She continued to cry out that you would save him And you did beyond what she could imagine Lord God I pray for those saints and among us who will never be ministers or theologians But Lord God maybe they are doing much greater works with simple Silent prayers faithful prayers daily prayers And they are tearing down strongholds And light is shining in like a spotlight In the spiritual world father I pray that you would encourage us to live for you. We don't have much time to do it Help us to live for you That we would glorify you. We pray this in Jesus name