A Simple Life (Romans 12:1) Part 3

Romans, Chapter 12. You will remember that we are preaching a series of sermons that I have called horizontal sermons referring to those simple, daily life practices, not very sensational but that are part of a blessed and healthy life. It is the second Sunday and we have not really entered the most practical part of all yet. We have stayed in the prelude where there in Chapter 12, the first two verses Paul calls us, and it is like the fundamental text. Those first two verses are the basis of what he will later develop in the next few verses.

It tells us about presenting our lives to the Lord as a sacrifice which constitutes true worship. The adoration that truly pleases the Lord is the life given to Him, the life penetrated by His principles, the life in obedience, the life that reflects the lordship of Jesus Christ, and Paul calls us not to conform to the customs of society and of the culture in which we live but to live a life of transformation through the perpetual renewal of the mind and understanding, of thoughts. In this way he says you will be able to experience the good will of God, the intentions that God has for you, you will prove and experience them as you surrender your lives and refuse to conform to the way the world lives life.

I always think of the Book of Jeremiah where the Lord says to the captives in Babylon "because I know the thoughts I have for you, thoughts of good and not of evil to give you the end you expect." Those are the Lord's intentions, He says I know what they are, don't tell me what they are. Some of us live in guilt, we live in expectation of disaster, we live feeling like God doesn't love us, we live trying to always do something to make God love us. God already loves you. He says I know the thoughts I have for you, they are thoughts of good. Don't worry, I'm going to take you where you want to go and even further because my wishes are good for you.

And Paul says, if you want to prove that in your life, give your life to the Lord and surrender to the Lord. We have been stopping in one way or another in these verses and circling like a plane trying to land, but that is good because the word of the Lord is so deep that one can stop at it and it always brings out something different.

Verse 3 says: “I say therefore, by the grace that is given to me, to each one among you that he should not have a higher opinion of himself than he should have, but should think of himself wisely, according to the measure of faith that God distributed to each one. Because in the way that in a body we have many members but not all the members have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ and all members one of another. So that having different gifts according to the grace that is given to us, if that of prophecy, use it according to the measure of faith; or if of service, in serving; or the one who teaches, in teaching; he who exhorts, in exhortation; the one who distributes, with liberality;, the one who resides, with solicitude; he who shows mercy, with joy.”

We're going to leave it there in verse 8. I don't know if I'm going to get to all of that but we're going to break it down as much as possible. I think we touched on some of this last Sunday but I want to do it now in a systematic way. Paul says: "I say then, by the grace that is given to me." That expression of Paul is revealing, significant because it has to do with what he is going to continue developing later, when he says: "by the grace that is given to me" the word that grace here is charisma or caritas, from where comes the word charity. By grace, by the gift, by the gift, by the provision that I have received from God, that is to say, Paul even recognizes that what he is saying and his ministry, his function as an Apostle, as an exhortator, by exhorting to the Romans he is doing it with the energy that God has provided him, with the gift of spirituality that God had provided him.

Paul always knew that what he had did not come from him but was a gift from God, a provision from God. What's more, he felt undeserving of the high place he occupied in the Kingdom of God and he spoke that he was the greatest sinner of all. He was the most undeserving because he persecuted the church and it always hurt Paul to remember that one day he persecuted the church and still Christ called him and he felt undeserving of what he had received.

This concept of grace, of caritas, is so important in the Christian life because everything we have, everything we are, we have received from the Lord and we always have to manage the gifts and positions we occupy with that sense of debt to with the Lord that we have it because it has pleased God that it be so. And that is going to play a very important role in everything that Paul develops in the rest of that text. In fact I would call this sermon “Serving with simplicity”. Serve the Lord with simplicity, with humility. All of that is there.

When he says by the grace that is given to me, I say to you, serve and relate to each other in the same way, also with that sense of gratitude to the Lord. To everyone who is among you, that is, it is you and me, all of us who are here, he is referring to Christians, to the community of faith, to the Christian community. "Whoever is among you who does not have a higher opinion of himself than what he should have."

What translates as higher self-concept is sofronein means with a mind that doesn't think of itself with a high, overly optimistic mind. It is so important, brothers, this idea that we see ourselves soberly, but that we think about whether sanely, sophronein means modestly, fairly, accurately, soberly, in a fair way, neither more nor less. God does not like people who have too high a concept of themselves but not too low either, don't sell yourself too low. False modesty is not good either, nor are inferiority complexes good. Pablo was a man who knew what he had, he was a man sure of himself.

I believe that to serve the Lord one has to have a healthy ego. How many say love to that. Some of us have it healthier than others. If you don't have a healthy ego, forget that people are going to take care of squeezing it and trampling it in a moment. But you need to know that you have a gift first. How can I stand here to be a pastor or to preach if I don't think I have anything to say. It would be a contradiction, it would be a lie, meaning that one must have a healthy ego. Never allow inferiority complexes to rule your life. Rebuke them and exorcise them from your life in the name of the Lord because you are worth something. Say: "I am worth something" "I am worth a lot".

If God created you, you are worth something. Someone has said that God does not create garbage, the things that God does are good and we all have something that validates us, gives us value as human beings and we have to think sanely. That threw me into a series of very important thoughts. One of the things that I take away from this is that we have to know ourselves. How important it is that we know ourselves!

On the Greek Areopagus there was a marble writing that said: “Know thyself”. Someone has said that the unexamined life is not worth living. It is important that we know ourselves, that we examine ourselves. I clearly see that personal lucidity is needed in life. People who don't know themselves will make many mistakes in life, and they will estimate themselves in a wrong way. How difficult it is brothers, to see a person behaving in a self-destructive way, destructive for his family, for himself, committing stumbling blocks left and right and you hear them talking as if they were spiritual giants and you say where is the capacity of this person to see himself.

A person who lives committing acts of injustice with others, oppressing, deceiving and says "I am a person of integrity", and one says "Where are the brains of this person? and how this person doesn't understand, he doesn't have lucidity, and no matter how much you talk to him, he has a loose cable in his mind that doesn't allow him to think sanely.

That is why I, brothers, encourage you in the name of Jesus to read the Bible. The Bible is a great source of wisdom and self-knowledge. By seeing all the mistakes that all the great men and women of God made, you can learn. There is a principle of life there that helps us to see ourselves objectively and little by little when reading the Bible, the word of God enters your mind and gives you that sanity that the Apostle Paul speaks of, then you can measure the human beings, life and himself with fairness, with precision, with accuracy. Read the Bible and there are texts in the Bible that are excellent. The Book of Proverbs is a wonderful Book that has a lot of simple and practical wisdom. The Book of Ecclesiastes is a wonderful book, the Book of Job is also beautiful, the Psalms are very important. The Bible is full of knowledge about yourself and there are good books written by men and women of God. In bookstores there are many of them on emotions, on human relationships, counseling, read psychology books. All these things help us to exercise in the art of discerning ourselves, of measuring our family past, how it affects us.

Many of us who live playing a recording that began in childhood, parents who abused us or did not love us, a boyfriend who left us, a girlfriend who betrayed us, a dream that did not come true, a project that failed and we already closed the door to vision and the desire to improve ourselves and we do not understand how these things are impacting us and how they affect our present, but when we ask the Lord for wisdom, understanding and exercise in the art of knowing ourselves and of read good readings that in passing renew our mind, tying that with the previous verse, and lead to personal transformation, then we are acquiring wisdom for life.

We have to know ourselves, our faults, our virtues, let's not be afraid to look at our family past with precision. It's something important too.

Our parents weren't perfect and they did the best they could. Sometimes they made terrible mistakes with us in our upbringing and we have to understand these things and at the same time look at our parents so that we can overcome them and be better than them in our behavior. Many of us do not allow ourselves to accurately see our parents in the good and the bad, because we are afraid of being disrespectful and irreverent. But that is not necessary, you can see your loved ones in a correct way, the more and the less, the good and the bad, and still continue to love them, venerate them, respect them, but that will help you understand How does that affect your marriage? How your dad treated your mom is maybe the way you treat your wife and the way you see your wife is maybe the way you saw your dad see your wife and your dad did it because he saw his grandfather or his father who is your grandfather, do the same. So those things are there unexamined and so we do certain things and have certain behaviors and we don't understand why we do it, because we think that's the way life is. No, it is simply that you are following the most immediate and most influential model that you received. But as you stop and look at it and analyze it, you can say: Wait, that's good but that's not, so I'm going to imitate this but I'm going to discard this and I'm going to go one step further.

That is important for us to examine the world sanely and to examine ourselves, to know ourselves. Knowing ourselves is a lifelong project. Skeletons will always come out of the closet and beings that you didn't even know you had inside. And that is part of the discovery, and a man or a woman who knows himself can conquer a nation. A man or a woman who knows himself is a gifted person, he is very powerful. You have to see yourself accurately, you have to see yourself modestly. There are many people who look taller, do not know each other and believe that they have more than they have and it is very important that we are always adding water to the soup to dilute things a bit. Because if you believe that you have more than what you have, that will lead you to distort the way you act. It is important that you see the world modestly and yourself modestly.

One of my most painful experiences in life but it helped me a lot as I saw myself right there with a certain degree of sanity and I still have a lot to learn. Years ago when I was a student, and that is the experience of almost every student who goes to a university like Harvard or Princetown, it is a very painful experience because students come to these great universities believing that they are super titans. You come from a school where you shone and stood out and everyone saw you as the big sensation of the last few years but you come to this university and you know that they are all super stars and many are better than you and many are athletes and renowned musicians and brains and already at the age of 20 or 18 have already reached where many 50-year-olds would like to go. And you move in that environment, you feel like a tadpole. I thought that I was the last coke in the desert and now I discover that I am one more. And it deflates your ego and many students get depressed because the contrast is so great. But it is a great lesson because you learn one thing that no matter how high you go there is always someone higher than you. And that, brothers, is very important that we understand so that we can live life sanely, not believing that we are more than necessary. As long as you know your defects and your virtues and that you see yourself with that equanimity, that balance.

There in the Book of Ecclesiastes, the Lord led me to a very important text in Chapter 5, verse 8 of Ecclesiastes, it says: “if you see oppression of the poor and perversion of law and justice in the province, do not marvel at it, because another higher one watches over the height and a higher one is over them, besides the benefit of the land is for all, the king himself is subject to the fields.”

That's why I tell you that the Bible has a lot of wisdom. It is so important, President Bush, one of the most powerful men on earth, has to know that there is someone who is even higher than Bush and the day that, God forbid, when he is getting off his plane he stumbles and someone he has to pick him up and grab his elbow to stabilize him, he has to know that there is someone taller than him. And every time he goes to the bathroom he has to know that there is someone taller than him too. We have to understand that in life, and that is true in the church and everywhere. We have to conduct ourselves with that humility, knowing ourselves, in what we have and in what we don't have, above and below. Because that helps us to live life with sobriety and simplicity of heart and it's not that we're humble, it's just that we're precise and we're honest. It is not even humility, it is simply that if you are going to see life sanely you know that you are not a great thing after all and that you are a fallible being like anyone else.

Another word says that time and opportunity happen to everyone. Everyone has their high time and their low time and that is part of life on earth. Ecclesiastes is a wonderful book in that sense, so remember that, know yourself honestly, with sanity, it is something very important.

There is something else that follows from this as well and it is important that we accept ourselves as we are. How important is it! Accept yourself as you are. If God made you short in stature, rejoice in that. Buy yourself some heels if you want but you better just move in your height. If God made you thinner and didn't give you Arnold Schwarzenegger-like fibers, that's fine, thank the Lord and learn to play the piano. Maybe you won't become a footballer but there are other things you can do. There are human beings who live life, brothers, bitter because they did not receive such a thing from the Creator and they are envying others who have that, and so they cannot enjoy what God has given them.

Brothers, do you know how many qualities make up a human being? Thousands of them, the color of the eyes, the size of the eyes, the shape of the eyes, the length of the eyelashes, just in the eyes there are like 50 different categories and if you multiply that by the nose and the mouth and the cheeks and all , how many thousands of traits does a human being have and some have some more good things and others, others, and those who do not have physique have brains, those who do not have brains have artistic talent, those who do not have artistic talent have sports talent, and there are so many ways that you can find something good that you have in there. Accept yourself. But what happens is, brothers, that we often focus on one thing, I want that, and we become like spoiled children who want that and then we lose the opportunity to see other beauties that God has placed in us and sometimes we don't we develop because we are fixed on that. Instead of accepting yourself, that's the idea of thinking about yourself sanely and in the context of the body of all the other talent in a community. If God did not give you great gifts, there are other things that you can do in a community.

The Apostle Paul says in First Corinthians, Chapter 12 that the most insignificant organs and members are dressed with more dignity many times. There are little pieces of your body that are invisible, no one sees them, they are very small and yet if they are missing or if they work badly they will make your life miserable. In the ear there is a little bone so small and so hidden that you don't even know you have it, and yet if that little thing becomes unbalanced it gives rise to vertigo, dizziness, fainting, blows and accidents and a lot of things because that little bone plays a balance as a point of reference, a reference axis for the organism. So small, so hidden that you can't see it or feel it, and if it works well you don't even know it's there. Do you know when you know it's there? When it works wrong. But if it works well it goes unnoticed and so there are so many things in the human being that sometimes many of them are not very dignified, the intestines, I don't think there is nothing beautiful, I have not heard a poem about the intestine and yet what a function so important they play. There are poisons in the body that are necessary for the proper functioning of the body, there are poisonous substances that are necessary in very small amounts, even if they have a function. In the body, in society, in the world each one of us plays an important role in human ecology. If you are missing in the world, the world will be lame. The world will be lacking in something if you lack. God put you here, it is not an accident, it is not an excess. God knew that you played an important role.

One of my favorite movies is “It’s a wonderful life” with Jimmy Stewart made in the 50s I think it was, in black and white, but one of the great movies of American history. Jimmy Stweard is a man who decides to sacrifice his dreams of greatness to take care of his family and be faithful to his small town in the middle of America where he lives and Jimmy Stewart sees other of his friends have great successes, reach achievements and riches and arrive a time when everything seems to be going wrong for him and the time comes when he wants to commit suicide, and just before committing suicide he has an encounter. Through this encounter Jimmy Stewart discovers, because he is allowed to see his life, what the world would be like if he were not there, what his people would be like if he had not lived. And for the moment Jimmy Stewart, the character discovers that his life is absolutely essential because without him that town would have deteriorated and destroyed and so now he understands.

Many of us can't understand why we don't have the privilege that character has to see what the world would be like without us. But that would be interesting. God has given us children, I was saying that to a mother this week. You have played such an important role, your children are beautiful people, God is blessing them, they are becoming interesting, respectable, educated human beings, God's grace is reflected in them. You are a blessing to many people who look at you and who see in you an example, and see in you a person who adorns this church with his presence, and blesses and is an element of stability in this congregation but has never stood in the pulpit to give a testimony, nor preach, nor do evangelism, nor pray even in public. However, I know that this substance adds to this community with its presence. Thus there are many among you here, who are necessary and who play an important role. They have never spoken, perhaps, a single word but their presence blesses this community. And you guys have been a blessing in some way.

I'm having a memorial service here shortly. The only memorial service that will have been held here, I believe, for a Dominican man who is a person who had brain problems, a rather mentally retarded person, let's put it that way, and yet when he died in his small town in the Dominican Republic The whole town took to the streets and they tell me neither prominent citizens nor prominent politicians received the funeral that that man, simple and humble and mentally backward received. I was asking another person who knows him why? What was it he did? He says, well, I'm not sure, but he was a person who always had a humble relationship with people, who never extended himself to anyone, he was sweet, he was kind and I think that the genius of this man was to let himself be loved and to be a being who did not he asked a lot and didn't demand a lot and then people could connect with him without much threat, without much pretense. That awakened in people that capacity to love that a community needs. Love someone in a simple way.

That's a virtue, that's a gift. When we, human beings, become more mentally sophisticated and complex, the bitches come out in us and then people have to do it with a little care to hug us. Those who perhaps do not have such mental sophistication, have the ability to evoke in others a simple affection, without defenses and we instinctively appreciate that. I believe that man did not write a major philosophical treatise or do much except bless a community with his ability to evoke love from others, and not be too demanding. Look, as the Lord Jesus Christ said: look at the lilies of the field that neither spin nor work and yet Solomon did not dress as one of them. Look, the birds of the field do not have much, but God simply provides them with their food, and blesses them. How beautiful is a little bird!

I was sitting in my house and a cardinal came and landed about 10 feet from me and I was dazzled and I blessed the Lord for that alone for the rest of the day. How beautiful a cardinal is, that red color with a spark that comes out at the moment and lights up the air. That delighted my eyes, that cardinal will not do much more, he will not preach a sermon, he will not illuminate the world with a philosophical concept, but he has a place and he blessed there for a moment and how many others will he bless.

I mean, brother, you have value. God has made you. If God takes care of the birds, he will not take care of you who are the pinnacle of creation. How wonderful a human being is, simply walking on the earth, says glory to God because there is nothing more sublime, more beautiful than a man or a woman walking on the earth, because that is a coordination of so many things at the same time. and something so complex that God says exists. And that only justifies its existence, so you have something to give, you are worth it, you are important, do not let anyone take away that sense of value, your value is not given by a husband, your value is not given by a boyfriend , a girlfriend, your value is not given to you even by a community, your value is given to you by God who created you. Therein lies your value. There are young girls who live looking for their value in a man who covers and loves them, and they go from man to man hoping for one who will cover them as Boaz covered Ruth and who will validate him. No man is going to value you, not even your children. It is God in you and you in God. It is that identity that God gave you, that is what makes you valuable or valuable. That see yourself in what you are precisely.

There are many people, brothers, who hurt themselves in life because they do not have that acceptance of themselves. They live looking for acceptance in something they do. For example, they think that if I acquire a position of prominence in the church or in society, that will kill this gnawing insecurity that I have within me, and so they go compulsively looking for a position and they kill and undo and betray and scheme and always live with a private agenda on the inside trying to achieve that. Because they think that with that they are going to kill the insecurity that is eating them up. Forget it, when you get it, this insecurity will rise again. It's like those mushrooms that are in the carpets that you clean but then they are below and come to the surface again after three days, because they are in the very structure of the thing. You can cover it on top with cosmetic, you can put a lot of deodorant on the meat but if you don't bathe well, well, the smell will come out sooner or later.

The important thing is that we heal our concept of ourselves and that we see ourselves accepted in God. That's why so many marriages fail because two insecure people meet and believe that one is going to satisfy the other's hunger for validation. Or an insecure person meets a fairly secure person and the insecure person wants that secure person to cover him and heal his wound and say: "You're worth it" and look through his eyes and bring him the slippers at the end of the day when he returns from work, and that he cooks his favorite food every day, and he wants to make that person his adorer because it is an insecurity that is killing him, because he does not accept himself.

For a couple to be happy, two healthy people are needed. There is talk of the concept of my better half, what is needed is two oranges that make juice together, complete. Because two orange halves, if you try to join them, no two oranges are made alike, if you try to join them you will see the joint. I believe that two healthy, whole oranges have to come to the marriage that bless each other in their health. Two oranges, a man and a woman secure in God, solid in God, with a healed ego, healthy of “I am as I am, that's the way God loves me that way. I am misshapen, maybe a little ugly, smaller than I would like or skinnier but God loves me”, and then with his health he blesses his wife and his wife blesses him.

We have to ask the Lord, Lord heal me emotionally. That I can accept myself as I am, with my virtues and my defects, with my past, with my mistakes, with my flaws, with the things they did to me, with my wounds and saying that is what makes a life. No one in this place can tell me that they have not had injuries in their life, that they have not been mistreated, that they have not made serious mistakes, that they have no physical, emotional or spiritual defects. We are all in the same situation and the only difference is that some find balance in it and others live distorted and unbalanced, because they have not found the ability to accept themselves as God accepts them. Therefore, many times our human relationships are always being hurt and distorted because an unbalanced and sick being damages everything it touches and that insecurity then leads us to, in any small offense or error of our friends, we immediately see something of unforgivable magnitude. , and we are hypersensitive. We are always hoping that they are going to put the knife in our back because that is our vision of people, and that makes the prophecy come true because sooner or later they do to us what we expect them to do to us. While when the person approaches relationships with ease, with health, with the expectation of blessing, naturally, people discover that there are many good things in others.

Why are so many people failing in human relationships? Because they expect to fail. Or because there is some insecurity in them that leads them to hurt and hurt themselves. While there are others who naturally approach life and treat others and get out of the worst situations unscathed because they are healthy inside of them, and they take life and knock it down and get up because they are made of rubber. They are like those strong little children who go in to play and nudge themselves, scratch their elbow but come back again, and go in again to jump homework because they are healthy.

Accept yourself, seek your health in God. Seek your validity in God, seek your value in the Lord. Accept yourself, think of yourself sanely, it is important that we accept ourselves as we are.

There's a lot more we could talk about but I don't want those two very important concepts to be lost, and we'll continue, God willing, next Sunday and we'll probably have to come back to this passage. How many know that the word of the Lord is good and you have to chew it and you have to savor it, and you have to go deep into it because it has practical value for life, it has many important teachings for us.

Brother, lower your head please, and I had forgotten something as important as the sacrament. Let's take a moment to remember the sacrifice of Jesus Christ this morning. Lower your head, think about what you have received this morning and ask the Lord, as I ask him every day, to give us sanity, to give us wisdom in the way we see ourselves, and to help us accept ourselves. just as we are, not to stay there but to go where God wants to take us. But you know that God has accepted you, and God has received you, and God is pleased with you. If you are in Christ and all enmity between you and God has already passed, all controversy has ceased.

Your father has told you, come now just as you are, I accept you, I love you, I receive you, I validate you and now you and I are going to work together to continue in that project that you are. That wonderful project until I form you as my son, according to the image of my son Jesus Christ. Ask the Lord to heal you for myself and myself and my brothers and my sisters. Lord we reveal before you, although you already know him, we confess our faults. I confess my faults, my sins, my defects, my weaknesses, my flaws, Lord, I put them before you. Forgive us for living with that secret agenda trying to serve others and for others to serve us, for others to heal us, for others to minister to us, when you are the only one who can fill that void that is in us, Lord. Help us focus on you, Father this morning. If someone has come with complexes, with wounds from the past, allow us to place them at your feet today, so that we do not live focusing on what life has done to us, what others have done to us, Lord, we can find freedom in Christ Jesus, in that new creature. that you have declared about us. Heal us Lord, heal our marriages, heal our church leadership, heal our social relationships. We adore you, Lord, we bless you. Our healing God, the one who heals all your ailments, the one who rescues your life from the hole, the one who crowns you with favors and mercy, the one who satisfies your mouth with goodness so that you rejuvenate like the eagle. That God tells you I love you, I accept you, I want to take you to another level. You are not perfect but that is precisely why I love you and that is why I am working on you. Lay down your weapons, lay down your agenda, let me take you in my time and in my way where I will take you. You don't want to do your business, your life, your prosperity, your happiness. I want to do it, if I do it it will be lasting and it will be much better than what you can elaborate. Thank you Lord you accept us.

I want to take advantage if there is someone this morning who wants to give their life to Jesus Christ in light of the word that has been preached, wants to give their life to Jesus, if they haven't done so before, I'd like to pray for you. God bless you brother. Someone else who wants to give their life to Jesus who wants to tell the Lord: Lord, I want to find that sense of validation in you, of belonging in you. Come to the altar.

Everything begins when you learn to see God as that benevolent being who remembers that you are dust, he says, as the father pities his children, Jehovah pities those who fear him because he knows our condition. He knows our condition, that is, God sees us with sanity, God sees us exactly as we are, He knows our condition and remembers that we are dust and that is why he loves us. He does not use that to despise us but quite the opposite, he uses it to love us. If there is anyone else who wants to find their meaning in Jesus Christ come here, if you haven't before. We are going to pray for you, we are going to bless your life. Thank you Parents, we adore you. I bless these men and this woman who have come forward here.

Say with me: Lord Jesus Christ I receive you as my Lord and savior. I give you my life, thank you for saving me and for dying on the cross for my sins. I confess my sins and I ask you to forgive me and cleanse me and make me your son. I renounce the works of evil and embrace the Kingdom of God. Thank you in the name of Jesus. Amen. Thank you Lord, we adore you, we bless you.