Clothed In Christ
Romans Series
CCCAG October 4th, 2020
Scripture- Romans 13:8-14
How many people here will ever admit to having a fashion disaster?
I admit I have very little concern or even time to care what the latest fashion is.
and I know everyone here is saying we know.
This didn't just start in my adult life. I'm going to take you back to one of the greatest decades that humanity has ever gone through- the 1980s.
If you were a teenager in the 80’s- everything was awesome. Cable, huge, huge projection TV, VCR's or if you were a nerd Betamax video machines, remote controls- remember when one of your jobs as a child was to be the remote control for your dad because he was too cheap to go buy one from the store? Or if you're really early 80s or maybe this is late 70s your job was to go and turn the dial on the antenna and outside your antenna would go around in a circle.
Anyone have one of those?
Fashion was a big thing in the 1980s. I'm not sure how much it hit here in rural America but in the cities any male over the age of 12 had to have a white blazer so he could look like Sonny Crockett on Miami Vice.
Here is another fad that hit for a little while- parachute pants. Does anyone remember parachute pants? Michael Jackson made them famous and a lot of his videos. If you don't remember they were kind of a plastic material that had all kinds of zippers on them. I think about 1984 all the kids wanted them to go back to school. I beg and beg and begged for my dad to buy me a pair, but he thought they were stupid. Finally, I convinced my step monster to buy me a pair as they were on clearance at Shopko.
There was a reason they were on clearance
They had gone out of style about a month before but I was so focused on wanting a pair of parachute pants I didn't even notice.
Monday I walk into my junior high school with a pair of parachute pants on and the reaction was visceral as everyone pointed and laughed at my fashion faux pas.
I don't think I ever wore them again. I tried to give them to my brother and he absolutely refused to take them, so they ended up in the goodwill bag that went to the thrift store.
This world can be pretty fickle about such things can't it?
When I was studying for ministry, I was going through the class on Genesis talking about how God had to kill an animal in order to give clothes to Adam and Eve. It occurs to me then that clothing itself is representative of our fall from grace.
You see it represented in the bible. In Zechariah chapter 3 when a man named Joshua, who was the high priest, is standing before the Lord in what we would consider a courtroom scene. It shows the angel of the LORD standing near Joshua defending him before God the Father, and satan being the prosecuting attorney. The garments that Joshua is wearing are all stained and tattered representing the effects of sin on our lives and satan is accusing him of all of his sin.
The father rebukes satan, and then the angel of the LORD speaks.
The Angel of the Lord, which in the Old Testament is Jesus prior to his incarnation here on earth, orders that new robes be given to Joshua saying, “I have taken away your sin”.
I thought that was pretty interesting.
He didn’t speak peace to him
He didn’t even declare him innocent of the crime.
He, Jesus, gave him new clothes.
When we read other accounts in the Old Testament where people were going to meet with God and were told to stop and wash their clothes before going in in meeting with God, even if it was on the side of a mountain.
Think about God telling you- “I’m sending you the highest mountain in the area to meet with me- make sure you wear your finest suit or outfit to climb the mountain!”
To me, a suit is the last thing I want to wear when climbing a mountain.
Because of these kinds of passages in the Old Testament, it became a tradition of putting on your best clothes to come to church.
There's nothing wrong with that, but I think it misses the major point when it comes to what we cover ourselves with.
No matter how much we spend, no matter whose name is on the label, or how good it looks today, any piece of clothing that we can buy here on this earth or eventually fade, fail, or deteriorate.
That's why here in Romans chapter 13, the Apostle Paul is taking our eyes off the earthly fashion and pointing us to the eternal and spiritual way we are to see ourselves and experience the fullness of God.
I’ll read Roman’s 13: 8-14 in its entirety and then break it down for us
Rom 13:8-14
8 Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, "Do not commit adultery," "Do not murder," "Do not steal," "Do not covet," and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: "Love your neighbor as yourself." 10 Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
11 And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. 12 The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.
13 Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. 14 Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.
Prayer
One of my favorite TV shows growing up was the show called The Greatest American Hero. The movie revolved around a schoolteacher who was given a superhero suit to wear that gave him incredible Superman like powers.
Unfortunately, he lost the instruction manual for how the suit works so much of the show is watching him fumble through trying to use the suit to help others.
Why do I bring this up?
You and I have been given a incredible superhero suit. It is not just something that gives us power when we put it on to do good in the world.
We actually get to not only develop supernatural strength, but wisdom knowledge and power, because the designer of all those things comes with it and his name is Jesus.
Verse 14 of Romans 13 tells us to clothe ourselves with Jesus. The preceding verses explain the power and the character That will become ours when we choose to do that.
Let's look at the first superpower
I. Love
8 Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, "Do not commit adultery," "Do not murder," "Do not steal," "Do not covet," and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: "Love your neighbor as yourself." 10 Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
The word for love there is the Greek word agape. Out of the four or five Greek words that are translated into the English word love, agape is the word to express the unselfish and overwhelming love that God showed us through Jesus. Jesus put aside His rights as God and taking upon Himself humanity and then dying a horrible death on a Roman cross to pay for our sins.
Apage love is the choice to prefer and serve other people’s needs over your own.
This is a superpower that many in our church have allowed Christ to do through them.
A week of taking time out of your schedules to do repairs and painting at the Parsonage. that was agape love.
But even more recently than that, I saw agape love right here Last Sunday morning. If you weren't here last Sunday I spoke about the first part of Romans chapter 13, and how A Christian should be a good witness to the world by being obedient to the secular governing authorities unless they are telling us to do something against our faith.
After the message we had an informal discussion about if we wanted to continue to wear face masks in our church as many people really don't want to wear them anymore and don't see a large benefit to doing so.
We also have people in the church that desperately wants to remain healthy and frankly would benefit from everyone wearing a mask around them because of preexisting conditions they have that would make them more susceptible to getting sick.
Without me saying or prodding people to move in either direction the people who didn't want to wear mass decided that out of love for their Christian brothers and sisters they'd be more than happy to wear a mask in order to make them feel safe coming to church.
Not sure if this is the right way of putting it but I was incredibly proud of my church family for coming to that conclusion largely on their own.
Because there are other church’s in our area splitting over things like this as I speak this morning.
You as a church family put on the Lord Jesus Christ in that moment.
Another benefit to putting on Jesus during this time is-
II. Supernatural Understanding of the time we live in
One of the awesome things about Superman, is that evil doers really couldn't hide from him because he had the ability to see through walls And had super hearing to hear what they were talking about.
Through putting on Jesus Christ we have that, but even better.
Jesus knows every action, every thought, every evil plan, and exactly what the future holds for every one of us.
Paul said it like this-
11. And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. 12 The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.
When I was a newer Christian I loved Frank Peretti books. Two of his books that really got me thinking about the spiritual realm were “This Present Darkness and “Piercing the Darkness”.
They are fictional novels that take a lot of artistic license in how
they portray both what is going on in people's lives and the angelic and demonic work going on behind the scenes. It probably shaped a lot of my early ways of understanding God And the spiritual realm.
When I read a scripture that talks about putting on the armor of light, I could imagine myself walking into a dark place and demons fleeing from seeing me clothed with Jesus.
We actually see this in several examples in the Bible-
Jesus walking into town and having demon possessed people call him out and beg not to be tormented.
You might say- well, that was Jesus- of course demons would freak out around Him
But what about Paul? Luke, Paul’s personal physician, writes of this event in the book of Acts-
Acts 16:16-18
16 Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. 17 This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, "These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved." 18 She kept this up for many days. Finally, Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the spirit, "In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!" At that moment the spirit left her.
This is such an intriguing account from the book of Acts.
Because one of the things I always found amazing is that Paul put up with this for days. I don't know if this girl was saying it in a mocking way or constantly interfering with Paul actually trying to stand up and speak.
I suspect that Paul wanted to distance the gospel message from the spiritism that people followed during that time.
In other words, Paul didn't need the devil explaining who Jesus is because that was his job, and all this girl was doing is trying to take the attention from the message and put it on her.
In relation to what we are talking about this morning- think about whatever demonic spirit that inside this girl and how it reacted to seeing Paul clothed with Jesus Christ.
That spirit didn’t see Paul- it saw Christ.
That’s exactly how the world- both physical and spiritual, should see us.
You know one of the complaints that I hear from Christians is how they have to go to work and work in a situation that is very worldly, profane, and dishonoring to God.
Might I suggest that instead of complaining about the atmosphere at work or school is that you put on Jesus Christ and let His light change that atmosphere.
This is an extreme but funny example of this-
Pastor Crawford Loritts was talking about a time that God was impressing upon him to lose some weight and get in better shape for the days to come because they would require much more from him.
Pastor Lorrits bought a gym membership and hired one of their trainers to help get him in shape. The trainer was big on have his clients soak in a hot tub to help with the muscle aches after a workout. So, Pastor Lorrits would switch into a bathing suit and go to sit in the men’s locker room hot tub.
Unfortunately, the language and subject matter being talked about in the hot tub was very rough. It was really bothering him and he took it to God in prayer.
“God you wanted me to get into shape, but I don’t want to have to listen to that junk every day.”
God replied to him- take the authority I’ve given you, and change the atmosphere
So the next day he went to his workout, switched into swimming trunks and climbed in the hot tub. The conversation in the tub was particularly rough that morning, so he began to sing hymns. He’s got an awesome signing voice. The other conversation began to die down and they were all watching him sing to God.
The atmosphere began to change.
Pastor Lorrits decided to turn it up even more, and began to sign in tongues to God, and the hot tub quickly emptied leaving him alone to enjoy his soak and time with God.
He learned a lesson that is valuable to us this morning- instead of complaining about a lack of Godly atmosphere where you work-
Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and let His light change the hearts of the people around you.
Finally, Paul says
14 Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.
Paul is telling us that by putting on Jesus Christ that need or desire that we have sin and for rebellion will, by
having Jesus Christ living in US
upon us and
through us
we won't even want to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.
light can't have darkness in it or it's not light
Darkness can't have light in it or it's not darkness
This is a test each one of us has to take, because it reveals what and more importantly whose nature really exists in the deepest parts of our souls.
This side of eternity all of us will have a little bit of both. But the more we expose it to the light the more we can see it for what it is and allow the brilliance of Jesus to sterilize it and renew it so that we can reflect him to this world.
Conclusion
Altar Call
