The Letter to the Romans: Message #6 – Chapter 12

Now, this is Italy now. This is not some other undiscovered land far across the ocean hundreds of years from now. This is Italy. Think about it for a moment. Who would be those most apt to think of themselves as more important than others? Those who are able to read very definitely would think of themselves as having…I would run that chance. Who else? The rich would very definitely, and the successful businessman. I want to throw him in here, and he is a pain in the neck throughout all of church history, because he always feels that if I can get rich, that proves I have a superior intellect, and these people all listen to me because I have money, and I came up from the bootstraps. I pulled my way up, and there are a lot of Christians who play to the businessman and his success. Okay, we’ll get off of that one. Who else in this room might? Help me here quickly. The Jews may think of themselves more highly than they ought to think. Who else? The Greeks very definitely might feel more superior than others. Very definitely. Who else? The local Italians. The local Italians might really feel superior to these foreigners because they have Roman citizenship. They grew up in one of the cultural centers of the world and the most important city on earth. That is correct.

Who else might get this kind of conceit within himself or herself? Huh? Spiritual. Who? Spiritual. Those are peaks. Well, name me somebody, though. I don’t want just a general idea. Absolutely. Priscilla and Aquila are perfect candidates for feeling superior to others because they’ve run around with Paul, Barnabas, and Silas. Absolutely. Who else? (The Roman soldier) Absolutely. He has authority when he walks out there, and I see that he also has very sensitive feelings, too. The Roman soldier—very definitely, absolutely. Okay, who else? Rufus. I think Rufus has every right to feel superior. He comes from an incredible background. I agree with you. Herodion—absolutely, Herodion. He is the nephew, cousin, or brother of royalty and one of the outstanding personalities of this century. Absolutely, no question about it. Who else? Those who live in Caesar’s household very definitely could get conceited, and those who belong to Narcissus’ home, too, if he really is the counselor to Caesar, because, boy, they live in luxury, and they’re up where things are happening.

How about the first convert from Asia? The first convert from Asia has quite a remarkable testimony. He can tell you all about John the Baptist and how he followed him. He was before any of us. He was even before Simon Peter. He was before the Lord. Yeah, I think so. Who else? Who else? The twin sisters, why would they be proud? They’re the only twins here. Alright, fine, we’ve got to keep an eye on them. Yeah, and this couple, for the great sacrifice of opening their home to single brothers or whoever’s living there.

And who else might get real, real proud? Who? Phoebe, after the letter comes, absolutely. Phoebe looks like she’s in a class by herself, doesn’t she? She came across the ocean, and she carried that through thick and thin, through water and floods; two ships sank out from under her, and all that stuff. Well, I’m going to tell you some others. There is this brother who has been taking all this to heart, doing it all perfectly – everything that’s been told him, he does it. He gets up earlier than anybody, fast; he prays; he observes the days; he does this, he does that, and he is just feeling like he’s got it made where nobody else has. You know who he is? He is a young, dumb, single brother. You’ll probably see more of that kind of stuff sprouting out of the single brothers than in any other possible place.

Are you beginning to get an impression? What’s the impression? We’re all very, very, very, very vulnerable. And the unity of the church is really at stake here. Every one of us has a different disposition, and each of us has a real chance of feeling he’s just a little bit more important than most people. I find it very interesting that Paul left himself out of this list. I can’t comment on that, but he didn’t put himself in this list of functioning, and the only comment I can make about that is that he does not consider himself local anywhere, and he knows that these are the problems he has to handle, rather than being part of the problem, but there are people prepared to blame everything on him. Are you aware of that? All the problems eventually come home to roost in Paul.

Well, I just want to go very quickly through what Paul said to you, and that is: will you please stop thinking that you’re more important than the other brothers and sisters? Because you are in no way more important than others. Be sensible in figuring out who you are. Some of you are naturally prideful, and you will just always see yourself as a little bit more important than others. Brother, I would, if I were you, try to be just a little bit more sensible, and then just look at our body. You just look back here, and you start asking, which part would you give up? Which is the least important part of you? Which part would you give up? And you begin looking, and you see the little toe and the little finger, and you come to a simple conclusion: there’s not any of it I want to give up. Well, what would you keep at the end? Well, you’d keep your heart and your brain, if you had nothing else to keep, maybe an eye, but boy, you sure wouldn’t be much with all the other gone, would you? What if you just had one eye left, a heart and a brain, and then all the rest of it were tubes holding you together? Would you really feel very important then? Wouldn’t you miss the rest? Would you not? Oh, I would too. I think you ought to just really dwell on that for a moment. This book is irrelevant outside of the home of Priscilla and Aquila. You don’t even have a gift of import. You don’t have an important gift except as it’s in the body, contributing to the body. Remove the body, and you’re just an eyeball rolling around, of absolutely no value. You don’t even have a brain to go to, to say, “Look what I see.” You can’t even see. You are a thumb, just—yeah, a thumb hanging out. There you go, maybe trying to hitch a ride to a body that it recently lost.

You are…I don’t mean to say that you are of no value in the sight of God, but I mean your gift is properly seen through the eyes of the Lord and His devotion to His church. You and I become totally insignificant outside the body and the functioning of the body. You find your significance in Christ and the church, and you don’t have it anywhere else, unless you go out, leave the church, and go start an organization, which is an abomination to all that the Lord Jesus lived and died for. He didn’t die for a Christian organization; He died for the church. He died for the church.

All right, I just want to tell you a very simple story that happened to me today, and it was very genuine. I’m not just passing to you an illustration; it was impressed upon me. About an hour and a half or two hours before the meeting, Helen started cooking my dinner, and she fixed a really nice dinner. Now, one of the things that’s always bothered me about dinner is that I can eat in ten minutes what it takes my wife two hours to fix. Does that ever bother you? Are you inconsiderate brothers? Never even thought about that, did you? You just figure those meals materialize out of nowhere, just like they do down at McDonald’s. Hamburgers still are. Yeah, Helen was in there for an hour and a half or two hours cooking my dinner; it was delicious. I, in turn, was doing final preparation on this message tonight. I don’t work very hard on a message; probably 40, 50, 60, 70 hours, anywhere from that to 30 to 40 years. They come really easy—no, I don’t perspire over them—but it takes something. I’m in there just trying to get my heart ready and to keep from being afraid, from being scared. You don’t think I get butterflies when I speak, do you? Well, I always get tense right before a meeting. In fact, I get very difficult to live with right before meeting. I think it starts easing up about the time I get to the front door, because then I’m either going to make a mess out of it or I’m going to do all right. I’m in there preparing a message for all of you people. And here I’m standing up in front of you, and the brothers—especially the single brothers—are very jealous of me.

They are. There is one or two of them saying, “Man, I wish they’d let me speak tonight. I got something to say.” And the rest of them are saying, “Boy, I want to be another Gene Edwards.” Which only proves that single brothers have no ambition whatsoever. I have had throughout my informal ministry, since I left the suit and tie—and I don’t do this anymore, I don’t think—and I did this without ever noticing it, coming into a meeting with my sleeves like this, and then I would, as I started to speak, I would just naturally do this. What I didn’t think…I didn’t even know what I was doing. And one day, one of the young brothers was asked to speak in a meeting, and he came up—I’m sorry—and I was in the meeting, and I was ashamed. I was sorry. I felt I had failed, brothers. I tried to speak to it, but I will tell you there will always be brothers who will imitate the big shots. Whether the man is a big shot or feels like he’s a big shot or not, there are those who dream of that. Now, I’m not going to get into humility here. Humility is not one of my strong points, but those of us who minister Christ are really nobody. And those…the higher you get up, the more nobody you get. Paul said that in his particular office, that’s the lowest you could get on the totem pole, that they were the most expendable and the least important—and that’s true. If a man knows his job and his heart, he is, because the most important thing is the church of Jesus Christ, the body.

Well, my dear wife doesn’t speak publicly. I was able to sit down and have a few minutes alone, which I needed, because Helen was fixing my dinner. It took her two hours to prepare that meal. Now, I am asking you…in fact, I asked her, “Which is more important, what you’re doing, sweetheart, or what I’m doing?” And she said to me, “What you’re doing is more important because it’s spiritual,” and I was very sad to hear my wife say that. I think the chances of my going into the kingdom of God before my wife are pretty close to zero. I really mean that. Now, was my task spiritual and hers carnal? Absolutely not—not in the eyes of the Lord. Her function was as spiritual as anything I have ever done. She fixed—she prepared—excuse me, you don’t know the word “fixed” up here, do you? She prepared a meal. We Texans—we’re fixing to fix something. She prepared a meal for me, which took her a lot longer to do than the final preparation I made for this. My wife is glorious in the sight of my God, and she was functioning within the body of Christ today, and she is as important as the most esteemed member. Can you possibly grasp that? Then can you honor the lowly the way you honor the high? Then you don’t realize who you will be honoring if you do this. Who will you be honoring? Oh no, I don’t mean to get religious here. I mean, who in this room will you be honoring? Am I missing the point? Who? Everybody. Everybody. Everybody. Or not old stinkweed. Yeah, even old stinkweed.

Well, you know, there may be someone here with an IQ of 90, and I don’t know if you think the 90 IQ is a high or low IQ, but that’s just a hair below average. He may just be working on one cylinder, and it may be that his elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top. Or maybe it does go to the top, but the doors are stuck. but he’s working at full capacity. Who do you think your God is—someone who can be impressed? He who knows the heart knows our physical limitations. You know, I’ve got an IQ that’s higher than 90, and I don’t know if I’m as good a steward as the brother or sister who has a very ordinary IQ and is just barely limping through. I can tell you this: we both belong to the body of Christ.

I’m telling you, this book and this list of gifts are irrelevant outside Priscilla and Aquila’s living room. Are you following me? I would encourage you not to think of yourself as so all-mindedly important, buddy, sister, and I would encourage you to start honoring other saints. Now, that doesn’t mean to start giving a hard time to those who seem to be more gifted than others. I don’t mean to leave that impression. “We’ll fix that, buddy, we’ll fix him. Alright, here.” No, that’s the whole point—that the position doesn’t matter, and each of us is just about serving to our capacities.