Community Reveals Human Weakness (Problems in the Church of Rome) #5

Alright, we have gathered here in Rome, Italy. Some of us are from Antioch. Some of us are from Jerusalem. Some of us may be from the churches in Judea and Galilee, but most of you who have any Christian experience previously have come out of a Gentile church—even if you’re Jewish—a Gentile church that has been greatly influenced by, or raised up by, Paul of Tarsus. Now, Paul is getting on in life, and if you will read the very closing words of this book, he says, “Pray for me. I’m going to Jerusalem and pray that God will rescue me from those people down there trying to kill me.” Paul has a deep, profound sense that he may not be alive three months from the penning of this letter. Everybody’s told him he’s facing almost certain death. So, this is his swan song.

Now, he doesn’t know that half the books he will write have not yet been written, but half of them have been. Most of the letters he’ll write after this, by the way, are quite brief. This is his great statement. This is the biggest, most complete statement he’ll ever make. Let me go a little bit further. Do we know what Paul preached when he went to those first Galatian churches? Do we have any idea what his message was? Tell me. Do we? Wouldn’t the book of Galatians tell you a little bit of what he preached? Absolutely not. No, absolutely not. That book’s covering stuff he left out. If he had said that, he wouldn’t have had to say it. He was not expecting Judaizers. Okay, First and Second Thessalonians; isn’t that what Paul had preached in Thessalonica? Absolutely no. They got off on a tangent about something he just mentioned one day, and he has to come back with two letters to get them straightened out. Somebody went off on a tangent on the Second Coming.

This is the other side of the coin. Someone said reading the epistles is like listening to one half of a telephone conversation, and trying to find out what Paul preached to churches is virtually impossible. It’s never recorded. And we always remember it… “Paul said this and that to the churches.” No, he didn’t. This is what he had to come back and say later because he left it out. If you’re going to find out what Paul said when he preached to the churches, you have to read the book of Romans, because this is to a group he may never see, and he’s seeking to deliver his message. Are you following? Now, maybe there are a couple of other books—but only a couple of other books in the New Testament—that are of the things Paul would have said in churches as he raised them up, but this is what he preached to a church about the Lord, salvation, and the Lord when he came in. This is a condensation of his ministry.

By the way, it’s very typical of all his letters. The first half is glory, and the second half is practical—and they don’t ever match. Boy, he’s telling you that you are unindictable. He opens with 1 Corinthians—you’re unindictable, you’re saints, you’re holy ones, you’re this, you’re that, and Romans 1 through 8—you know, God is for you, God is for you; you can’t be any better off than you are. Then he gets over into the practical realm. Philippians—just incredible. Now, at the bottom, he says to two sisters, “Please stop fighting with one another.” Ephesians: there’s nothing more glorious in the world, and then he has to come down to the end and say, “Children, for goodness’ sake, mind your mothers and daddies.” And that’s what the letter to the Romans is.

Now then, I want you to imagine this older gentleman. In fact, he’s just about my age, which means he’s got six years left—no, he’s got about ten years left to live. I don’t know how many I’ve got, but he will…if this is written in 56 A.D. and he has until 64 A.D. to live, how many years does he have left? He’s got eight more years to live. He doesn’t know that. He’s sitting there thinking about all those churches that he’s raised up. He’s in Corinth, which is a great pain in the neck, and all the ugly, terrible things that have happened between Christians fighting with one another—are you following me?—and then he thinks about all the ugly things he had to deal with in Thessalonica, and all the things that happened in the four churches in Galatia. He thinks about all the headaches he’s had in Antioch, and maybe Berea, and in Ephesus, and all the little churches there, and the ugly way Christians behave and what they do. I would like to just sit down beside Paul and say, “Yeah, amen, uh-huh. Doggone their hides. Well, they behave where we can get your work done, Lord.” But Christians are a pain. Ask Moses. Forty years—he’s going to go from here to here. Forty years. It should take forty days. This is how he got there: going in circles. Then he got there, and only two got across. Left with a million, and two made it. Yeah, Christians are a pain. Say amen. You live with them, you know they are a pain. Think about them; they are so ornery. Say amen again.

So, Paul thinks about all the things he’s seeing Christians mess up with, and he has this five-chapter exhortation—sorry, four-chapter exhortation—and I’ve inverted it to find out what it is he has faced throughout all his years. I’m going to tell you what Christians do, and this is what you people in Rome, Italy, either have done or are going to do. I don’t want to depress you, but we’re going to go through the whole thing. And then, by the way, tomorrow night I won’t be speaking. We have the night off, but I understand most of you will be back tomorrow night. Is that right? No, no? Just a few? Okay, something is happening here tomorrow night. It’s just for the privileged elites. You and I can’t come.

I’m going to have to do something tonight, you will rarely ever, ever see me do—I’m going to use notes. You are such terrible people that I cannot remember all the ugly things you do. I’ve had to take notes so I wouldn’t leave anything out. Isn’t that unbelievable? Now, some of you just got saved. “Gene, leave me alone. I just got here. I’m an Italian. I don’t know who these people are. I don’t know who Paul is. Leave me alone.” Others of you are supposed to be great Christians like Priscilla and Aquila, but I’m telling you, this letter is there to remind you of the frailties of human beings. This is reality. Here it is. This is hard reality among Christians living in community, and those of you who are sitting down in front of your little video machines (your computers or phones) right now—you see, when you get up on Sunday morning and dress your kids and go to church and sit there for an hour and come home, you don’t ever get to realize how bad all those people are sitting in a place in the church. They’ve got on perfume; it’s covering up their body odor. They all have on clean clothes that just came from the cleaners. You don’t know that what happened to you happened to everyone of them getting to church. Don’t you remember? “You kids get ready; we’re going to be late for church! Honey, why in the world didn’t you sweep out the car? The car’s so dirty, the kids are going to get dirty just getting in it. I can’t find my Bible!” “What do you mean you don’t want to go to Sunday school? You’re going to go to Sunday school or the devil will get you!” That’s what going to church is like. Good boy, when you hit the front door, it’s, “Praise God!”

And halfway through the sermon, you think, “Did I light the fire under the roast? Did I turn it up too high?” “Did I set the timer? Will I have a home when I get…” And those people have it so lucky; check in on Sunday, maybe if they’re really committed, check in on Wednesday. You’re living with one another, my goodness. You don’t bathe when you go to church on Sunday morning. There’s no perfume on you. Your clothes aren’t dressy, and from there it goes straight down. You know what it’s like. That’s church life. That’s the reality of it, and some of you are foolish enough to want it. You ought to have your head examined. This is where you discover the enormous weakness of mankind: in the fellowship of the body of Christ. It’s a place where most Christians cannot survive, and I’m not throwing flowers at you because I don’t know if you’re going to survive. Shoot, anybody can survive when they’re in their teens and twenties. Write me a letter when you hit fifty. Tell me if you’ve lived in church life until you’re fifty — I’ll send you a bouquet of roses. I will, I will. Well, you’ve got kids and grandkids, and tell me all about how you handled it.

Alright, Italians and those who have come from the ends of the Roman Empire, are you ready to hear either what you’ve done, what you’re doing, or what you’re going to do? Are you ready? These are the problems. The rest of the week, we’ll try to find some solutions. I hate to do this to people I love, especially at this wonderful meeting tonight, but here we go.

Some of you here in this room think that you are more important than you really are in the kingdom of God. And that’s not all; you let us know. You exude to the rest of us that you are better, are more important than the rest of us. You can put on that air, and you can make us know that that’s how you feel. Another one is that some of you in this room just over-function to the point that it is disconcerting. You are a member of the body of Christ, but you are doing a solo performance. You over-function in your place in the church. By the way, anytime any of you want to say amen, please do so. Now, I’m not here to condemn you; I’m just trying to get you ready for what to expect in the life of the church. This is not my stuff, and don’t any of you say, “Gee, Gene came to see us, and he talked about such gross things.” No, Paul of Tarsus did this. I didn’t do this. Hey, brother, I was born and raised in Ephesians, Colossians, and all those glorious places. This is Paul of Tarsus. Get provoked with him, not me. I’m just telling you what he said.

Okay, some of you, because you can prophesy, you overstep prophecy and get to meddling around in other areas. Some of you who serve think that because you’re doing such a great job of serving, that gives you some latitude with others, to get into their life and tell them what they should do. Some of you who teach do more than teach, and some of you who exhort go a little bit beyond exhorting. You have the gift to exhort, but you press the points. Now, some of you give, but you have begun to complain about giving. And some of you are in authority, but you’re doing it very sloppily, and you are not doing it with thoughtfulness for the other person. Some of you are very, very merciful, but you have been merciful so long that you have lost mercy, and now it’s just a show. Right?