Well, it's so good to give you all time to connect together and
talk together. It's such an important aspect of
life. And I know that your week can
just fly by and it's hard to recall and remember at times
that while God actually showed up, I was actually thankful for
something and get to share that with other people.
The amazing thing is about sharing our stories is that when
we share our story, your story becomes my story.
Like that's a story that I can share and talk about and reflect
on and consider the goodness of God in your own life.
And it influences the way I think and the way sometimes I
feel when I hear your story and I'm like, wow, I'm so grateful
God showed up. And then maybe on the flip side,
you're going, oh, I wish God had shown up in my life that way
this week. So different.
This is why in Christian community we talk a lot about
being able to mourn with those who mourn and to celebrate with
those who celebrate. Is that part of being a
spiritually mature community is that we enter in to a variety of
experiences as a body. We enter into a variety of
things that we feel deeply about.
And so if we've had lost, we feel deeply about it or we feel
disturbed in our soul or if we've had something great happen
in our life, we feel so good about it.
And we want in Christian community that you can share
both. The fear is that, oh, if I share
my loss, what a downer I'll be Debbie Downer who wants to hear
that? Or the fear is that while I know
my friends in that little circle are having a hard time, and if
they hear about my good time, then they'll be like, oh, you're
just spaz Dick Susie, you're just spazzing out on how God,
how good God has been to you. And both internal ways of
thinking are incorrect. It's really important that as
the church, we pay attention to how we are thinking.
As a person called by God, it's really important that you pay
attention to how you are thinking.
So we're going to do a little thing today in our service.
We're going to think about thinking.
They call it metacognition. You can turn to your neighbor
and say we're going to do it. Metacognition.
We're going to think about thinking.
And particularly the really surprising thing is that we're
going to think about thinking about yourself.
How do you think about yourself? God is very interested in that.
In fact, if we're interested in becoming disciples of Jesus
together, we're really interested in how are you
thinking about this? We might not ask you that.
In fact, parents who ask that question sometimes get a lot of
different responses from their kids.
But it is perhaps one of the most important questions a
parent asks their kid. You know, your parent shows up
and goes. What were you thinking?
Well, you know, that's usually not a good moment.
Have any of you been there? Any of you been there as
parents? What were you thinking?
I feel like when Mary and Joseph came to Jesus and found him like
four days after they missed him in the temple, it's sort of the
question, Jesus, what were you thinking?
And then Jesus answered the question.
Well, I was thinking I needed to be in my Father's house.
Why does this surprise you? His thinking was very important.
The way you and I think about ourselves is so important.
Some of you are like, you don't have to tell me that because I'm
thinking about myself all the time.
In fact, you may feel like you're sort of in a doom circle
spin of thinking about yourself at times.
We can just ruminate about our experiences and thinking about
ourselves and others of us. Particularly the extroverts
think out loud all the time. And the danger for the extrovert
thinking out loud is that 5 minute later they're thinking
something else and they're saying out loud and our friends
around them are thinking, well you just flip flop you.
You can't over hold a thought. They're like, I needed to think
out loud then announce it. I finally needed to do that
sometimes with some of my friends to be able to say, let
me think out loud for a moment. I'm processing something I'm
trying to arrive at, How do I really think about this matter?
It's one of the gifts we give to each other as the church, but
it's an essential part of living as a called person.
Do you know the passage we read earlier that had Peter in the
boat? He's the extrovert among them,
it seems, thinking out loud all the time, thinking with his
mouth. And so whatever Peter was
thinking, no filter seems to have come out.
Jesus says, put the Nets down on the other side of the boat.
Jesus is calling them out, but he calls them out for something
that their affections were very deep for.
He called them out for fishing for fish.
And Peter thinks out loud, Master, we've been fishing all
night. We're the ones working.
We worked all night trying to catch fish and there were no
fish. But because you say so, Yes,
Lord, because you've said it, I'm going to put the Nets down.
And what a surprise. And then he keeps thinking out
loud, Oh, Lord, go away from me. Like, get off my boat.
I'm a sinful man. I don't deserve you.
I don't deserve this. And Jesus says don't be afraid.
From now on you will catch fish. Jesus was calling out the called
in the book of Romans, the passage we're going to read.
Paul is doing the same thing. Paul is calling out the called.
He's calling out those who've been called to Jesus as Lord in
the city of Rome who are part of different house churches, and
he's written them a letter that's going to be read by
Phoebe and each of those house churches.
Phoebe would come as the servant of the Lord, who would come as
one who was deeply familiar with the writings of Paul in this
letter. And she would read it to each
house church. And there would be moments where
they broke out in prayer. We read that prayer at the
beginning of our service, where Paul just erupts into this
doxology. All the depths of the riches of
the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable his judgments
and his paths beyond tracing out who has known the mind of the
Lord or who has been given his counsel, Who has ever given to
God that God should repay him for from him and through him and
for him are all things to him be the glory forever.
And the congregation said Amen. Can't you see, Phoebe maybe in
that house church and they've prayed.
Maybe some of them got down on their knees at that moment and
they all together said Amen. And then she said Paul wrote
more. Here it is.
Romans 12 is what we call it now.
It was just part of the letter. She would have kept reading to
this congregation meeting in a house.
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's
mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and
pleasing to God. This is your true and proper
worship. Do not conform any longer to the
pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of
your mind. Then you will be able to test
and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing and perfect
will. For by the grace given me, I say
to everyone of you, do not think of yourself more highly than you
ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgement in
accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.
For just as each of us has one body with many members, and
these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ
we though many form 1 body and each member belongs to all the
others. We have different gifts
according to the grace given to each of us.
If your gift is prophesying, then prophecy in accordance with
your faith. If it is serving, then serve.
If it is teaching, then teach. If it is to encourage, then give
encouragement. If it is giving, then give
generously. If it is to lead, do it
diligently. If it is to show mercy, do it
cheerfully. Love must be sincere.
Hate what is evil. Cling to what is good.
Be devoted to one another in love.
Honor one another above yourselves.
Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.
Share with the Lord's people who are in need.
Practice, hospitality, and the exhortations that Phoebe would
have had as she spoke to this church went on and on and on in
this passage. So finally at the end of it, of
this little passage, she says, do not be overcome by evil, but
overcome evil with good. Now in the middle of this sort
of gathering of Scripture, here in Paul's thought to the church
in Rome, there's this line. Let's read it together from
verse 3. 4 You ready? 4 By the grace given me, I say
to everyone of you, do not think of yourself more highly than you
ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgement in
accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.
Think of yourself. This is the surprising thing
buried in the middle of this. Think about yourself a little
bit, but take note of how you do think about yourself, because
the truth is, most of us are thinking about ourself.
When you line up to get pizza, you're thinking about yourself.
I really like this piece of pizza.
Oh, if I take this piece of pizza to her, she won't like it,
but she loves that one. So if I get that for her, then,
you know, things might go well the rest of the afternoon.
And so we're playing out this little thing in our head about
how we're thinking. And yeah, I'm thinking about the
other person, but I'm thinking about myself.
We naturally think about ourselves.
So it's sort of surprising that one of the spiritual exercises
in our life with Christ and as a body is that we think about
ourselves together. But note what Paul says about
how to think about ourselves. He says that we are to think
about ourselves. Well, first he says, don't think
this way. He starts with a negative,
doesn't he? Don't think about yourself more
highly than you ought. I wonder if that was a problem
in the church in Rome. Paul had never got gotten there.
He'd never been there at this point, but he knew the people
that were there. He knew some of the history of
things that were happening. And he knew that there was a a
little bit of conflict among the different churches and members
in Rome, that there was a group of Jewish people who were trying
to tell the Gentile Christians, you need to be more Jewish.
And there were also Gentile Christians who were saying you
need to be more free. Loosen up a little bit.
The Apostle Paul later in this letter speaks about the Jewish
and Gentile believers sharing life together.
And he says some of you are acting like you're the strong
ones, and others of you are acting a bit weak in your faith.
He wasn't tearing to tear them down, but he was trying to
address what he saw as a problem in the life of the church.
And I wonder if he'd already realized there was growing
arrogance on both sides. Those who were closer in
proximity to the covenant of God being expressed in the history
of Israel might have felt I have a true spiritual legacy.
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Moses, That's my legacy.
They're my people. Read my word, do what I do, and
you'll be really close to God. They may have been getting a
little arrogant, thinking more highly of themselves than they
ought. And then on the other side, it's
not as if the gentiles were sort of free from this kind of
thinking. In fact, they had been able to
stay in Rome when the emperor kicked out all the Jewish
people. And they're like, we're closer
to the freedom that comes in Christ.
We now know what it is to be free.
We're free of the dietary laws. We're free of the need for
circumcision. We, you know, we can go hang out
with Caesar in his household and it's nobody's going to know.
Like we can be undercover Christians there.
You need to be free. You've never met anyone who was
proud of their spiritual life, have you?
I think I used to be that person.
I remember on occasion, I've shared this with you all, and
I've usually shared at the beginning of the term, but I was
with a group of friends and we were playing billiards together
and we were just talking. We were thinking out loud, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah, just talking.
And I said something, have no memory of it, but I remember
what happened next. My friend Martha Jane Yates
stood up quickly and she said, Craig O'Brien, you are so
self-righteous. And she screamed it.
And everyone around me went, you know, that moment I had been
called out. I had been called out for
myself, righteous attitude and thinking.
I was so embarrassed. I think I flushed from my toes
to my head. I turned red.
I put that pool cue down and I walked out.
I was so angry. And I got in the car and I drove
home to my apartment and on the way I complained to God.
She had no right to say that. That was so wrong.
What? What do you think about it, God?
And I sensed just the whisper of the Spirit in my heart and mind
saying, she's right, you know, she's right, you know, so
self-righteous. Hyperfrinno.
It's the word that Paul's using there.
Hyperfrinno. Thinking more highly of yourself
than you ought. Hyperfrinno.
It's a kind of megamind thinking.
It's like the double gulp. I thought the big gulp at 711
was big, but it's the double gulp that's humongous.
And some of us carry this kind of pride in our lives and and
others who experience this think you are just the most arrogant
person I've ever met. And you're like, I'm just
confident. I'm just confident.
I'm not asking you to not be confident.
Neither is Paul. But he's asking us to right size
ourselves. Do not be arrogant.
Arrogance conveys a sense of invincibility.
Arrogance will seek to manipulate God to always be on
our side. Arrogance will seek ultimately
to do things without God. And this is hard because most of
you arrived here with skills and part of the challenge in the
first weeks and the challenge of midterms is, Oh my goodness, I'm
not all I thought I was. And it's so hard.
And so we have to right size our thinking about ourselves.
Paul goes on here with a more positive word.
Do not think about yourself more highly than your ought, but
rather think of yourself with sober judgement.
This seems scary. Sober judgement, judgement.
Most of us would take that word judgement and say I'm already
too critical about myself. The secret about me is that I'm
very hard on myself and I'm very critical of myself and I have a
lot of internal self condemnation that accompanies
that self doubt. And so we hear the word
judgement here and we, we feel a little anxious, but the word
judgement here is just, it's another word about thinking.
That's another word of thinking. It's a more moderate thinking.
So think about yourselves moderately right size your
thinking. The word we grab here is the
word sober. Have you ever been with someone
who's not sober? That means they're drunk.
OK, there we go. All right, now, you know, so
there's, I find there's two ways that it often goes with people
I've been around who are drunk, who've had too much to drink.
And, and one, they are really gregarious and they, they have a
kind of sense about themselves where they're grandiose, they're
grandiose about themselves and they come out with big
statements. But then I also have another
group of people when they've had too much to drink or morose
gloom and doom and everything's bad, grandiose or morose.
That's not sober, sober thinking, the sober thinking
that Paul has. Notice he says think of
yourself. This is his third admonition
about thinking. Think about yourself.
Will you keep going? Just There we go.
Yeah, one more. Let's go to .3.
There we go. The the next way of thinking is
to really locate your thinking inside faith.
Think about yourself from where you stand in your faith in
accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.
Now on first reading of this, the temptation is to look and
go. Well, Jaden's got more faith
than me or, and maybe, well, maybe Jenny's got more faith.
God gave her a lot of faith. God didn't give me as much
faith. And so, you know, I can, I can
relieve myself from this conversation.
Actually the word here is is suggesting that God has taken
this mercy pool, this this great gift of belief in Christ, this
great gift of what Christ has done at the cross, this great
gift of who Jesus is for us. And if we have trusted him, he's
given us that faith. And so he's distributed that
faith to each of us in the body, Jew or Gentile, strong or weak.
Those with vegan tendencies and those with more let's eat meat
tendencies. And those who said I can drink
it if I give thanks. And those who say I'd better not
drink any at all. And those who say I'd better not
even walk past that idol factory.
And those who say, but I'm free, I want to take the gospel of
those people. God has distributed the faith of
Christ to every one of us, and that's the mystery he was
singing about in prayer. That's the mystery that he wants
us to think into when thinking about ourselves.
He goes on in that passage about three kinds of gifts.
The first gift is this gift of faith.
You've got it. Maybe you're, you're, you're
sitting there and you're thinking, I really haven't
trusted Jesus yet. I don't know.
Well then pay attention to your thinking about who Jesus is and
ask yourself why. Why have I not yet trusted
Jesus? But if you have trusted Jesus,
you have received a measure of faith into your life that he's
distributed to each of us. The second gift is that he's
included us in the body of Christ.
He goes on to say we are all members of a body and his word
choice here is so interesting because he uses a word that
would have created political friction in the empire.
He didn't use the word church, he used the word soma and it
would have meant to the Roman citizen who was listening to
that saying what? You have a competing body
politic? Yes, we have all become members
of another body, the body of Christ, and he wants our
thinking to be saturated with this.
I belong to this body. Remember, he says, you belong to
each other in this body. This thumb belongs to me.
It's not your thumb. Isn't that good?
That's good news. My thumb, not your thumb, but in
the body, we should be able to look around and say I've been
included in this body of Christ. I belong to these people.
These people belong with me. And it it will change our
thinking about life and the Kingdom of God.
The third gift is that he's actually given different grace
gifts. This gift of inclusion doesn't
mean we're all the same, nor does it mean we all do the same
things, but it means that we do different things according to
the gifts He gives to us in this season of life.
So in your mind, I want you to rehearse this.
God has given me gifts. God has given me good gifts.
God has given me the gift of faith in Christ.
God has given me the gift of inclusion in the body of Christ.
God has given me by His Spirit a gift so that I can function for
the good of the body of Christ. Don't be afraid.
The end game here is not that somehow you will look great and
glorious and be perfect. The end game here is that we
will all be able to love more sincerely.
The way you think about yourself either hinders your capacity to
love sincerely or amplifies the grace of God in your life and
our lives so that we can love sincerely, without deception,
without fakery, but with the truth.
That's the end game, as that we would love sincerely.
Love must be sincere. For those of you who journal and
for those of you who don't, I'd like to encourage you to journal
some this week. And I want you to stop and pause
and just ask the question over this past day.
How was I thinking about myself? What story was I telling myself
about the experiences, encounters I had this day and as
well take note of what words of condemnation did I use to
describe myself today? I know some of you do this.
You look in the mirror first thing in the morning and go,
hey, good looking, do you? OK, let me encourage you to do
that. Look in the mirror and say hey,
I see you and smile at yourself at least.
You all can't even look at me. You, some of you are like,
there's no way I could do that. And then just say, hey, you are
loved by God. You've been given faith in
Christ Jesus who died for you. Preach to yourself.
Hey, you have been included in the body of Christ.
You are not on this campus by yourself.
You are gathered and relating together to many, many, many
followers of Jesus. You are not alone.
Preach to yourself.
And then third, say you've got a gift that the world needs.
Can you say that to yourself? You have a gift that the world
needs? And then say, come on Holy
Spirit, help me love more. Let's pray together.
Lord Jesus, the way we think about ourselves is so important,
and it's really got to be based on thinking about you.
So come, Lord Jesus, come shape our thinking about you.
Help us now to remember to think once again on the extraordinary
gift of yourself to us, so that we might be drawn into your
communion. When we remember, we reconnect
ourselves as a member in the body of Christ, as ones for whom
the body of Christ was broken and blood poured out.
So Lord Jesus, as we come to your table today, we remember,
we reconnect with you in this moment.
As your people, we're going to serve each other.
So Lord, help us to look into the face of each person that we
serve as we pass these plates and this juice.
Help us to remember and reconnect with you as called out
once. My Jesus, let's stand together
those helping with the Lord's Supper, if you will come.