Bread of Life Fellowship

Romans 12:16 which in the King James tells us to "be of the same mind toward one another" and in the ESV says "Live in harmony with one another" more letterally reads, "think the same things toward one another." This means that what we think both of ourselves and our fellow Christians will produce a harmony or sympathy with one another. But what is that thing we are to think of us both?

From Exodus 12 consider the purpose and practice of the first passover and its revealing of God, his judgment, his mercy, his salvation.

The Angel's sermon on Resurrection Sunday reveals that ours is a faith that rests in the garden and not in the graveyard.

Consider the endurance and generosity of a hope filled love from Romans 12:12-15

Consider the fire that should inflame our zeal and the service in zeal we are to offer to one another. "In zeal do not be hesitant, in the Spirit be boiling, serving the Lord."

From Romans 12:10 consider the love we are to have for one another as it expresses itself in the family of God. Consider also how such true love rushes in to give honor to others in a way that honors what Christ has done and is doing in them.

Most people begin life in such a circumstance where they are getting primed to love. We have to receive love before we can give love. Most babies come into the world and arrive in loving arms. That mother gets an extra measure of love stoked in her as that baby comes to her breast. She is giving herself in love and so from the start we humans are gaining something of the love we will return to the next generation after us. It is a common grace of homes all over the world that love is received and then given out and the cycle can go like that from generation to generation. What is true of this most basic element of human interaction... this glue of love that binds and stimulates anything healthy in any society... is supernaturally true of the Chrisitan life and community. We have to receive love in order to give love.

Is the gift of prophecy present today? Is the residual of this grace still active in the church? If so how are we to receive it?

Brothers and sisters before us in the text are three things that are to instruct and guide our lives together. Three things essential for life before one another in the church. 1st You must think of yourself rightly. You must think of yourself first before you think of others. 2nd You must then accept yourself among the others God has placed you. 3rd You must then apply yourself in the grace God has given you for the benefit of others.

In order to live morally you have to have words, words you can think about and consider and respond to. Words that direct you to God and his will and allow you in this moral sense to think God's thoughts after him. It is in this area of words and thoughts that our enemy has set up his battle lines against us. Satan's strategic battle is for the mind. He attacks us at the command center of our thoughts before he goes after our actions. If we would live morally congruent lives to the glory of God we must learn how to win the battle for the mind. The question for us today is how how do we win this battle?

Paul is brought to this exclamation of praise and adoration and wonder as he begins to see that God uses our sins teach us the value of his mercy. God knows all the details of information that can and would bear in upon your life. God wisely in keeping with his justice, holiness and love charts a way or a path to your life. To maximize the moment when you might come under the outpoured richness of His own life through mercy and grace.

A strange sacrifice God asks of us. Presenting our bodies? Consider up to this point in Romans 12:1 what Paul has told us of our bodies. Then consider the miracle of God as we present that body to him!

The simple words principally found in Romans 12:1 will show us the wonderful foundation for the Christian's ethic and moral practice…and our approach to our morals.

Here is the Mystery: God has a plan to bring his salvation upon all the nations, culminating in the final and full redemption of the nation of Israel. God will do this by bringing all under the conviction of their disobedience so that they will understand that a right standing before Him can only come through His mercy— it is not earned or gained by moral effort, it is only received by faith.

Judaism is at our roots. It is the ladder by which we are brought up into the promise of Jesus Christ. Don't neglect your Old Testament. Don't look down upon the Israel of God. Don't think you can stand in your Christianity apart from the undergirding and the promises God gave and will keep to all of Israel. The Gentile believers Paul was writing to could not trace the faithfulness of God through their own fathers who were pagans. And so, they may have felt as if they stood out as singly the people who have been birthed by God. Paul tells them, you are here because of God's faithfulness to the Jewish fathers and his promises to them. Don't boast over them be humble.

There is an incentive for Paul as an Apostle to the Gentiles to continue to seek to bring some of the Jews to Christ. They represent a bridge into God's salvation for the whole nation. And Paul knows the salvation of the nation as a whole will only increase the blessings of the World and the believing Gentiles as a whole. Israel's falling away has precipitated a movement of the Gospel upon the Gentile world and brought to them salvation and riches and reconciliation... This can only mean to Paul that their return will mean a fuller expression of that salvation, greater riches and a more enriched and vigorous experience of the abundance of life we have in Jesus Christ.

An interesting observation in the writings of the Prophets will reveal a cross current of love and hatred. The prophet will pray and plead for and with his nation to turn them back to the Lord and next he will be railing against them in their sins. He will be found in his prayers, defending them before the Lord in one turn and then in the next speaking of them with great disdain and anger

Simply consider what it means to obey the gospel. "But they have not all obeyed the gospel..."

Last week we spoke on the Urgency of our Prayer – "My hearts desire and prayer is for all of Israel to be saved." And we spoke on the centrality of our Proclamation "That if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you shall be saved." And now we must turn to embrace the Necessity of Evangelism as our Profession. the prayers and the proclamation that rise from this great hope... now lead us to a point of identity... we come to a point where our Profession is embraced.

Romans 10:1-13 brings us to the peak application of the book of Romans. Here Paul, led by the Holy Spirit, brings us into the culminating expressions of the Christian before the glory of the Gospel.