Title: Please Your Neighbor
Contents
2006. 7. 2 Sunday Morning Worship Sermon
Bible: Romans 15:1-13
Title: Please Your Neighbor
Since Paul was specially called as a missionary for the Gentiles, he is trying to express the feelings of the saints who want to reflect God's mercy in the world of unbelief.
Verse 1 of this chapter says that we who are strong ought to bear the weakness of the weak and not please ourselves. Verse 2, in contrast, says that each of us should please our neighbor, but for good and for edification. We are encouraging our neighbors to lead a life of joy, not joy.
The level of community consciousness of the saints to be matured tells us that they should approach them as people of love, comfort and hope by cherishing God's mercy toward their neighbors.
The reason we should live a life that pleases our neighbors,
1. Because Christ Jesus Pleases Us
3 “Christ did not please Him, as it is written, The slander of those who slander You has come upon me.”
Christianity is, after all, a religion that resembles Christ Jesus.
5“Now the God of patience and comfort grants you to be like one another, imitating Christ Jesus.”
To imitate Christ Jesus means to follow the way of Jesus.
Anyone who knows Christianity as a religious culture or goes to church for so-called blessings has no reason to think that the core of Christian faith is being like Jesus.
If we look closely at the Bible, the salvation we have received is purely the grace of God, who had mercy on us and saved us through the sacrifice of his Son.
1 John 2:2 “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world.”
9 “That the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy, just as it is written, For this reason I will give thanks to the Lord among the nations, and I will praise His name.”
Romans 11:30 “You once disobeyed God, but now you have found mercy for your disobedience to Israel.”
Because of this, we believe that true believers live with a deep experience of God's mercy, and that the model of their life is to follow the traces of Christ Jesus.
To be like Christ is to resemble the person of the life that He came to this earth as the Son of God and sacrificed for sinners, rather than recalling the outward holy appearance of the Lord or simply emphasizing the scene of His crucifixion.
Philippians 2:4-5 “Each one should look at his own work, but also look at the work of others, so that my joy may be filled. 5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”
6-7 “He was in the form of God, but did not consider equality with God to be robbery, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and being made in the likeness of men.”
The evaluation of your faith in Jesus is not a measure of your faith's ability to perform miracles. In the Bible, it is said that power is in some cases pride and false prophets do (Matthew 7:21-, Matthew 24:24).
As a Christian, the believer's intellectual life attitude is to live with compassion toward neighbors. The reason Christians do not have the basic spirit of compassion for people is that they have not yet experienced the grace of God's mercy.
1 Corinthians 10:33 “Please, like me, in all things please everyone, not my own, but the good of many, that they may be saved.”
Life is pitiful and has many weaknesses no matter where you look. In order for our saints to become people of joy to them, we must have compassion on them, just like the sacrifice of Christ who loved us.
The Lord is equal to God in authority and perfect in power, but because God the Father sent him into this world to become a sacrifice, He did not live according to His will, but gave His body to us only for His will.
John 8:29 “He who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, because I always do what pleases him.”
2. Because believers are hopeful people, we must please our neighbors
4 “Whatever was written before was written for our instruction, that we may have hope, either with patience or the comfort of the Scriptures.”
13“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in faith, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
When we meet God, the greatest joy is knowing that we are beings who have been born with a life and now have the hope of living in heaven. The world is strictly hopeless.
In the midst of Satan's despair, souls are in a state of neglect, singing and being frustrated and ignoring the history of the afterlife. The world is actually full of sad things rather than joys. The history of sorrow and suffering continues every day.
To these people, or because we are weak in faith, we are human beings who are prone to setbacks, so even among believers, we should always share the joy of comforting and encouraging those who are strong in faith and introduce God's hope.
At the very least, the smile on the lips of the saints must be constant, the expectations of the neighbors must be maintained, and a positive attitude full of hope for a life that will be noticed by society should be maintained.
When a person living in a frustrated life sees a Christian, he must show a face full of hope enough to put hope on the outside. No, you must be full of hope in your heart.
We must preserve and deliver the wonderful image of overcoming the world while believing in God's grace for the afterlife and the future of reality and interpreting it with faith.
3. We must give joy because God has given a prophecy that will please all nations
10 And he said, "Rejoice, you nations, with the people of the Lord."
12"And Isaiah said, "There will be the root of Jesse, one who will rise to rule over the nations, and in him the nations will put their hope."
Therefore, when the apostles preached the gospel,
Acts 13:48 “When the Gentiles heard it, they rejoiced and praised the word of God, and all who were ordained to eternal life believed.”
In a world without joy, God wanted to bring joy to the Gentiles through the gospel. There is no true joy in the world because the god of death reigns.
Like the jokes of a comedy, being funny is not the same as being happy.
The funny thing is that you simply want to laugh at a person's feelings haha. But joy belongs to the philosophical element that causes joy and takes responsibility for the whole person happily in the heart.
It is not a quality of being funny or anything that makes you happy in the true meaning of life. The Lord never smiled once in his three years of public life, and these days he seems like a negligent man.
God wants to fill the world with joy through this good news through the gospel until the end of the earth.
In the close Christian community, we must first live a life that pleases others. It is wrong to believe that people who come to church pray only for their own well-being.
A person whose sense of community is unclear does not know how to pray for others.
Since we are said to be members of one body in Christ, it is natural to want to help those who deserve mercy more happily.
We do not live for ourselves, but as followers of Christ. A life that pleases your neighbor is not an option. The precepts were expressed as very obligatory.
In verse 1 of this chapter, when it says, “We who are strong ought to bear the weakness of the weak, and not to please themselves,” the word “should” is not a word of counsel, but is written in the form of must.
The word “ojfeivlw” is interpreted to mean that it must be so, like a debtor, like a debtor.
We have already considered the debt of love in chapter 13. In that context, the purpose of this chapter is also given in the sense that we should naturally live for the joy of our neighbors.
The Ten Commandments are not the only commandments written on stone tablets. In the New Testament, the text of love that believers must keep, centering on Christ, is the new commandment.
It is the natural sentiment of the saints, the attitude of life and the will. It is the degree of consciousness of the members and, in the end, it is also the way of life towards the world.
The fact that believers must live in order to please their neighbors is not a command that imposes burdens, but a response to the joyous salvation, mercy, and hope God has given us.
I pray that you and I will live happily with our neighbors.