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Romans 9-16

Applying Righteousness: Towards Others/Eternity

Josh Yates · Sunday, 16 November 2025 · Romans 13:11-14 · 44:51 · 7,317 words

Romans S30 · 13:11-14 Lake Orion

There is no public page for this message yet — the transcript below is the whole of it.

Josh Yates preaches that biblical love as defined in Romans and 1 Corinthians contrasts God's definition with cultural ideas. He calls listeners to love their neighbors, including those who are different or hostile, by embodying Christ's sacrificial love. The message also urges waking up from spiritual sleep, putting on Christ, and refusing to make provision for the flesh. It challenges listeners to choose Christ over sin and live in light of His return.

What this sermon is about

Ranked by keyness against every other sermon in the corpus. Each one is a word this sermon actually said — nothing here was written by a model.

love 121 neighbor 21 wake 20 definition 15 samaritan 8 patient 8 fornication 4 drunkenness 6 sexual 8 belt 4 robbers 4 endure 7

Topics

Sin 5 Faith 3 Prayer 3 The Law 2 The Flesh 2 Righteousness 1 Government & Authority 1 Salvation 1 The Gospel 1

Scripture referenced 19

Verified against the transcript. A reference the recording does not support is never listed here.

Romans 12 5:45 Romans 14 5:45 Romans 13 6:05 Romans 13 6:08 Romans 13 6:27 Romans 13:8-14 6:31 1 Corinthians 13 8:27 1 Corinthians 13 8:27 Romans 13:4 8:53 Romans 13 14:17 Romans 13:8 14:20 Romans 13:9 16:13 1 Corinthians 13 18:16 Luke 10 18:36 Luke 10:25-37 18:55 Romans 13 26:07 Romans 1 26:53 1 Thessalonians 5:5-8 34:40 Ephesians 5:1-16 36:24

Transcript

Every word, as spoken, with the second it was said. Each word links to its own entry in the index.

Pre-service announcement — 10 lines, 0:35. Excluded from every count and search on this site, kept here so nothing is hidden.

Hey everyone, my name is Keaton.

Thanks for checking out one of our sermons today.

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Thanks again for joining us.

We hope you're blessed by today's message.

Good morning, everybody.

Good to be in the house of the Lord today.

My name is Josh Yates.

I'm the location pastor here at the River Church Lake Orion, and it's just great to be able to be together and worship the name of Jesus and also learn more about him together.

Those little white things that are floating around, snow, here we go, here we go, means Thanksgiving is coming, Christmas is coming, it's good stuff.

Well, before I get into the message today, I just had something I wanted to make sure that you're aware of.

We're announcing this at all nine of our locations.

We know that at the end of the year, people begin to start thinking about end-of-year giving.

And I did want to make sure you knew that every month, we do send out a monthly stewardship and giving update via email.

But today, we want to let you know about a specific need that we have here at the church.

As of this week and over this year, giving has been down.

Times have been tough.

We understand that.

But at the River Church overall, at all nine locations, we have a giving deficit.

A deficit of $175,000 to the 2025 budget spending plan.

Many locations are down in giving, and that's true even here at Lake Orion.

Though attendance is up, we are down 6% year over year in giving in this year.

And so, in order to be able to understand what's going on at the church, we want to make sure that you have all the information to know how things have been going, at least when it comes to giving as well.

So, in light of this shortfall, we're presenting a challenge at the end.

At the end of this year of 2025, they'll attempt to make some of that deficit up.

So, last week, across all of our locations, we actually had right around a little bit over 5,000 people in attendance at all nine locations, including our online attendees.

And so, in view of that, we are asking that 20% of that attendance, 1,000 people, with a challenge to give $100 as a one-time end-of-the-year gift.

You can do the math.

That equals $100,000 by the end of the year.

There you go.

This would make an impact on our giving, and in order to make sure that it impacts the actual budget, we're asking that this is over and above your normal giving that you typically give.

If you'd like to commit to more than that, and God's leading you to do that, that is totally up to you.

We understand that, but we are challenging 1,000 people across all of our locations, including those that are attending online, to give $100 by the end of this year.

We're going to be giving updates to the church over the next few weeks.

How that's going, how many people have committed to that, how many people have done that.

And so, again, we want to keep you aware of what's happening at the church, and that includes sometimes a need that we have in order to shore up shortfalls.

If you'd like to give, you can go online, and you can give.

There's going to be a tab under giving.

You just click on 1,000 times 100.

It looks exactly like the graphic you see behind me.

If you go to the website, theriverchurch.cc slash endoftheyear, you can see all of that, and you can give that way.

If you'd like to give in person, you can do that.

The giving box in the lobby, you do that by making sure you get a giving envelope and writing on that envelope 1,000 times 100, and that'll be a gift toward this challenge at the end of the year.

As always, sometimes these kind of announcements can bring up questions.

I want you to know, please let me know if you have any questions.

You can grab me.

You can grab any one of our deacons and ask them that question, too.

They may have to direct you to me because they don't always have the same information.

But we want to be transparent.

We want to be transparent as to what's going on at our church as well.

So if you have any questions, please be sure to let me know.

All right?

So 1,000 giving 100 by the end of the year.

That's our challenge to help make up some of the budget for a shortfall.

We anticipate how God's going to move in that way.

Let me pray for us.

We'll dig into God's word this morning.

Dear Heavenly Father, I just thank you so much for your love for us.

I thank you that we have yet another opportunity to gather in your name and that, Lord, you provide for us so well.

You know, we present something like that.

There's maybe a little bit of consternation in our hearts, Lord, but we know that you provide, too.

And you provide through your people.

You provide in so many different ways.

And so, Lord, we anticipate how you're going to continue to provide for us here at the River Church.

And, Lord, this morning as we dig into your word, as we continue to look at the last part of Romans,

God, I pray that you'd open your hearts to what you have for us today.

That, God, we would continue to love well.

And that, Lord, for some of us here today, I really do pray that we would wake up to what it is you're calling us to do.

Lord, the times are dark.

There's a lot of hurting in our world around us.

And we carry the name of Jesus Christ everywhere we go.

And I pray this morning we'd be challenged to love our neighbors well and to carry your name everywhere we go.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Well, love, true love, is why we all gathered here today.

All right?

That is, of course, the princess bride, if you didn't know why I just said that.

The Bible talks a lot, a lot about love.

We are told to love well.

And, in fact, it's probably the most important thing, the number one thing that's been mentioned over the last three or four chapters,

from Romans 12 to Romans 14.

So what's love got to do with it?

I couldn't, what's love?

But it's got everything to do with it.

So we've got to stop in the name of love.

We've got to actually, okay, I'm done.

All right.

So the passage we're going to be studying is Romans chapter 13.

So if you have your Bibles, turn to Romans chapter 13.

Or.

Flip or click or whatever you're doing on your devices.

If you don't have a Bible on your device, you can download the River Church app.

And the Bible is in that app as well as directions to, or information about everything, including what we talked about this morning, our events, all of those things coming up at Christmas as well.

So Romans 13, I want to finish the chapter today.

It's verses 8 to 14.

I'm going to start off by reading it this morning, and we're going to dig in.

Owe no one anything except to love each other.

For the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.

For the commandments you shall not commit.

You shall not commit adultery.

You shall not murder.

You shall not steal.

You shall not covet.

And any other commandment are summed up in this word.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Love does no wrong to a neighbor.

Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

Besides this, you know the time that the hour has come for you to wake up from sleep.

For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.

The night is far gone.

The day is at hand.

So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness,

not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy,

but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.

There's a lot about love in there.

There's a lot about what it means to love, especially in the first part of that passage.

But there's also a lot of talk about what love is in our culture today too, isn't there?

There's a whole lot of talk about what love is.

And we have to understand that for most in our world today,

love is accepting whatever someone does as their choice and having nothing to say about it.

Love is continual support no matter what.

And I don't necessarily disagree with that, that it's continual support no matter what.

But there is a definition of love and it's not what our world says.

We hear a lot, love is love in our culture today.

Here's the thing, you can never define a term by the term.

That's a circular law.

That's a circular argument.

You'll never get to an actual definition.

So what is love?

Baby, don't hurt me.

Okay, all right.

1 Corinthians 13, we're going to go over a few more pages in 1 Corinthians 13.

And this is where we learn about what love actually is, all right?

So listen to this for a minute, all right?

Love is patient and kind.

How often is our love actually patient?

We can go ahead and leave it up.

We can go ahead and leave it up, each verse.

I'm going to go through each one, so verse 4 there.

Love is patient, it's kind.

Oh, did I put in the wrong verse?

Oh, there we go.

I think I may have put in too much.

Sorry, Madison.

I did my slides this morning because it has been a long weekend.

But love is patient and kind.

I think about the love that I say I have.

How patient am I really?

I jokingly say often, don't pray for patience because God will give you opportunities to become patient, right?

But yet we all need to learn it.

And it's kind.

Here's the thing.

Kindness is different than being nice.

Nice is something we talk about.

But nice is just like this making sure the other person is okay and we don't have any conflict and it's just being nice.

Being kind is something deeper.

Kindness requires action.

Kindness requires actually being in somebody else's life and loving them well.

So love is patient and kind.

It doesn't envy or boast.

We kind of see that in our culture.

The definition of love that we have in our culture is very boastful, right?

Love doesn't, it's not envious.

It doesn't boast.

It's not arrogant or rude.

Those of us that like to say we're posting what we post online because we love someone, but we're being very arrogant or rude about it.

It's not love, my friend.

It's wanting to be right.

There's a difference.

It doesn't insist on its own way.

We really think about that.

Love does not insist on its own way.

It's not irritable.

It's not resentful.

It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.

That's probably one of the most convicting things for our culture's definition of love today.

It does not rejoice in wrongdoing.

It never does.

Because true love points to the truth.

Love is sometimes difficult.

It's not always this lovey-dovey emotion.

It goes on.

Love bears all things.

That's when we kind of, once we hit that one, we're like, we like that one.

It's all about truth.

And then we go, love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all.

And then we go, love always endures.

Love never ends, right?

And that's kind of how we speed through it.

But no, love bears all things.

What does that mean?

That means even when you share the truth with someone and you are rejected, it still bears up under it, even rejection.

Because you love that person so much, you're not going to give up on them easily.

Love bears all things.

Then what does he say?

Believes all things, which means you believe God will always work.

It'll always work.

God will always work in that loved one that might be the prodigal.

Or that person that's your neighbor that you'd really disagree with politically, socially, whatever.

You always believe the best about the other person.

That's hard to do, huh?

Because sometimes you just feel like everybody's out to get you.

And you believe the lie of that.

And then this is the next thing.

It hopes all things.

Because what is this love based in?

It's based in God, not in us.

It's agape, unconditional love.

And it hopes.

All things.

It doesn't lose hope.

And it endures all things.

That's one of them I really don't like in the definition of love.

Because it endures all things.

That's carrying a weight.

It endures the struggle.

It endures the pain.

It endures you fill in the blank.

And then it says, love never ends.

And then Paul goes on and talks more about the rest of that passage.

Love never ends.

See, there's a different definition of love in God's word.

And that's not the definition that we use.

That's not the definition that we see in our culture.

Because if I love someone in our culture, I'm supposed to say, oh, everything is good.

Everything is fine.

Not a problem.

I'm not going to speak at all.

Where God's word continually says, if you truly love someone, you're going to tell them the truth, too.

It's not just about what people want to hear.

All the time.

And it's unconditional.

And so, so much of our culture now and so much of where we are, we talk about love.

And people will say, well, if God truly loved us, he wouldn't blank.

Or if you truly loved us, you wouldn't talk about blank.

We can't give up the definition of love.

We've got to go back and say, what's the actual definition of love here?

Because our definition of love has totally been morphed into something that's more like a teddy bear that we can snuggle up to.

Rather than a love that is actually transforming love.

And that's the love that Jesus has shown us through the cross of Jesus Christ.

So that's love.

Back over to Romans chapter 13.

In verse 8, he says,

So he says, look, he's just talked about how we interact and have relationships with our human government, right?

We talked about that last week.

This passage is immediately following that.

He says, don't owe anybody anything.

That's after he said, taxes to whom taxes are owed, honor to whom honor is owed.

All of those owing statements he just made right before that.

He says, pay those debts.

Don't owe them that.

Make sure you're paying those.

But here's the thing.

To every person you see, every single person you walk up to,

you should look at them and say, I owe you love.

Because God has given us love.

Think about it.

If you've borrowed 25 bucks from a friend,

what's probably the first thing you think of every time you see them?

Got to figure out, right?

That's the first thing we think about.

That's why we pay the debt off so we don't have to think about it anymore.

When it comes to love, that's how we should be with every single person.

As soon as I see that person, I don't care how annoying they are to you.

I don't care how much you disagree with them.

I don't care if you look at them and you know you're going to disagree with them.

We owe every single person love.

Why?

Because God first loved us.

And he gave himself up for us so that we can have a relationship with him.

We owe every single person a debt of love, no matter the context or the conditions.

There are no conditions.

It's never paid off.

Because when we love others, we actually fulfill the law.

We do what God has been calling us to do from the beginning of time,

to love each other well.

And then when he goes into verse 9 and he gives some of the law,

what Paul is really saying here is he's defining why these things aren't love.

And let's think about it for a second.

Adultery, it's not love because, number one, it violates God's commandment.

It doesn't love your spouse.

It expresses rebellion, lust, and selfishness.

Adultery is not love.

And if you're in a position right now where you're thinking about it

or you're online talking to an old flame or whatever,

and you're like, God wants me to be happy.

That's a lie from the pit of hell.

It is not love.

It's lust.

And that's why Paul says here in a few verses, wake, wake up.

How about murder?

Well, I think we can probably figure out that's not very loving.

I love you so much that I will kill you.

That only works in Romeo and Juliet or whatever, right, in Shakespeare.

You know, you're obviously not showing love to another person if you murder them.

Okay.

How about stealing?

That's about selfishness, but even the pin from your workplace.

Stealing says, I want what you have, and I'll take it no matter the cost.

And then he takes it a step further and he talks about coveting.

That coveting isn't loving either.

This isn't an expression of love for another person.

Rather than being happy for them that they have that thing

or have that kind of a marriage or have that house or whatever it looks like,

you aren't content with what God has given you.

And if you want another person's spouse, life, car, house, reputation, gifts,

or anything else, that is not love.

It's not love.

You're not happy for another person.

It's not showing love and deference to them.

And he says, love does no wrong to a neighbor.

No wrong to a neighbor.

No matter how many arguments you've had over the,

hide of the fence.

It does no wrong to a neighbor.

If you go back to 1 Corinthians 13, love is patient, kind, doesn't boast,

not arrogant, not rude.

All those things we owe to our neighbor.

And so I can hear some of you asking, well, just who is my neighbor?

Great question.

Because guess what?

Jesus talked about that too.

Let's go back to Luke.

Luke chapter 10.

He talked about this in a very epic and one of the probably most known parables

that he taught is the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Who is your neighbor?

Because a lawyer asked this question.

So let's read it.

Verses 25 to 37.

I want us to read it together.

It'll be on the screen.

And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying,

Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

He said to him, what is written in the law?

How do you read it?

And he answered, you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart,

with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind,

and your neighbor as yourself.

And he said to him, you have answered correctly.

Do this and you will live.

But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, and who is my neighbor?

Put the,

put the pin in that question, desiring to justify himself.

So Jesus replied, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho,

and he fell among robbers, which that path from Jerusalem to Jericho

is, was very, very laden with robbers and danger.

And if you took that path, it wasn't the best.

He fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed,

leaving him half dead.

Now, by chance, a priest was going down that road.

When he saw him, he passed by on the other side.

You got to get the picture.

He's walking along this road.

A priest, go ahead and call it your pastor.

There's this guy bleeding, bruised, hurting, probably knocked out.

And I'm walking along and I'm like going on this side of the road.

And I'm like, that's what it looked like.

And I got to the other side of the road, so I didn't even have to get near him.

I don't want him to speak to me.

I don't want him to touch me, right?

That's what this priest does.

Then, likewise, a Levite, which is of the tribe of the priests,

when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side,

but a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was.

And when he saw him, he had compassion.

He went to him and bound him up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine.

Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him.

And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper,

saying, take care of him and whatever more you spend,

I will repay you when I come back.

Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man

who fell among the robbers?

He said, the one who showed him mercy.

And Jesus said, the one who showed him mercy.

Jesus said to him, you go and do likewise.

There's one more part of this story, this account,

this parable that you have to understand.

The Samaritans were hated by the Jews.

And the Samaritans hated the Jews.

Why? Because they were half-breeds.

It was racial tension.

They wanted nothing to do with the Samaritan.

And the feeling became mutual because of the abuse that went both directions.

The man laying in the road was a Jew.

You knew it because the Samaritans looked different.

The Samaritans looked different.

And yet, who was it that helped this Jew that he's supposed to hate?

Guys, we get separated over so many things.

Whether it's on social media,

whether it's a neighbor who won't cut back a tree,

or you fill in the blank.

It's over petty things.

We lose the opportunity to actually be Jesus to people

over things that don't matter.

We always stand for truth because, again,

the definition of love, we never rejoice in wrongdoing.

But your neighbor is even the one that you think you should hate.

We're called to love each person.

Listen to what preacher Alexander McLaren of Manchester, England,

he talks of Jesus' words and when Jesus said this, he says,

"When these words were spoken, the then known civilized Western world,

it was cleft, it was divided by great gulfs of separation,

like crevices in a glacier by the side of which, in other words,

compared to which our racial animosities and class differences are merely

superficial cracks on the surface."

What we think we see today, this was ingrained deep language,

religion, national animosities, differences of sex split the world into alien fragments.

A stranger and an enemy were expressed in one language by the same word.

The learned and the unlearned, the slave and his master, the barbarian and the Greek,

the man and the woman stood on opposite sides of this gulf, flinging hostility across.

Such was the world when Christ gave his commandment to love.

But as years sped by and the flame of Christianity spread around the Mediterranean,

the world witnessed something unheard of before this

time, because barbarian, Scythian, add each other, bond and free, male and female,

Jew and Greek, learned and ignorant, they clasped hands at one table and felt themselves all one in

Jesus Christ. They were ready to break all other bonds and to yield to the uniting forces that

stemmed out from his cross. There had never been anything like it in the following years after Jesus.

No wonder what the world, that the world

began to babble about sorcery and conspiracies in the church and complicity and in vices because

this looks so weird to them. They thought they were all high. Seriously, they thought they were

on something. It was only the disciples that were obeying the new commandment and they had this new

thing that had come into the world, a community held together by love and not by geographical

accidents or linguistic affinities or the iron fetters of the conqueror. It was altogether

different in the body of Christ.

And my friends, today, the church is absolutely resistible because we are known for what we're

against more than who we are for. And God is for every person on this earth that is breathing.

Why do I know that? Because he died on the cross for their sin to pay the debt. And if we would

just love, it might look like that, but we don't love. We allow the world to define us and divide

us all the time. Every person is a part of the world. We allow the world to define us and divide

us all the time. Every person needs a savior and his name is Jesus Christ. There is no other name

under heaven by which men and women must be saved. And we sit around more worried about politics and

finances than we do loving our neighbor. We've got to love well. We've got to love well. We should

look like that. The church, if it worked the way God intended it, would be irresistible. People

would walk in and go, man, I don't know about this Jesus thing, but the way you love each other,

that's weird. And I might want to figure out what's going on. And I might want to figure out what's

that looks like. Paul goes on back in Romans 13 and he says, look, you know, the time, you know,

the kind of days that we're living. And he's saying this to the Roman believers. And we heard

about the days Paul lived in last week. Just a quick clarification. I'm a little unclear as to

when Nero lost his mind. He might've lost his mind a little bit after Paul wrote it, but it's still

God's words and it still applies. Same emperor. But Paul says, you know, you know, these days,

they're not easy. And we know the days in which we live. It is dark in the world around us. We look

chapter one. If you go back and look at that, it is, it defines our culture today. We come up with

new ways of being evil before the Lord. The days are evil, but if we love in the middle of that,

the light shines brighter. Here's something. The next thing Paul tells us that we have to listen

to because our world continues to not just walk. It runs away from God. Paul says it is time to

wake up because our salvation is nearer to us than ever before. I get a ton of questions

about whether or not I believe that Jesus is coming soon. Am I going to see him? I'm

always wanting to talk about the end times and talk to the pastor. Hey, when's he coming? When's

he coming? He's coming. He's coming. You know, let me just tell you, if anybody predicts a day

that Jesus is coming, you can be sure that he's not coming on that day because Jesus said, no one

knows the time of the hour. What we've been given is to, Hey, don't be surprised. That's what God

says. Don't be surprised when I come. Cause I will come like a thief in the night. I don't care how

many cameras you have around your house. The thief can still get in. He will come when it's time to

come. There's many reasons to think it can be soon. Weather patterns are getting weirder and weirder.

But that's been happening for a while too. Wars and rumors of wars all over the news,

but people in world war one and world war, world war two and Vietnam and desert storm and COVID.

And you could say all this stuff. We've all wondered. It's definitely coming. We've all

wondered. It's okay to wonder people. I mean, sexual perversion is rampant around us. No one

respects each other, let alone loves each other. Political tensions. There's good reasons to long

for Jesus's return, but here's how I look at it. Every day is one day closer to Jesus's return

and in the meantime, we keep our eyes on him and we love well and we wake up. We wake up. The thing

that I know he is coming back and one day the clouds are going to open and Jesus is going to

return. And the question then is going to be, are you ready? Are you ready? If Jesus returns today,

what is he going to find you doing? Do you know Jesus Christ is your savior? If you've been playing

around with Jesus, my friend, it's time to wake up. Don't just play religion. This has nothing to do

with religion. This isn't about coming to church and get free. This is about coming to church and

feeling good and feeling like I've done the right thing because ain't none of us do the right thing.

The only good in any of us is Jesus. The only good in any of us is Jesus. And if we think we're doing

anything, we've got our brains, our belief system out of whack. Do you know Jesus is savior? Do you

believe that Jesus is the son of God? Have you confessed with your mouth that he's the son of

God? Do you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead? Because only then will you be

saved. It matters what you do with Jesus. He's not the big guy upstairs. He's the king of kings. He's

died on the cross for us. He paid for your sin. And all you have to do is call on the name of the

Lord and you'll be saved. Do you know him? Are you ready? Are you ready? Here's another question.

When Paul talks about what he talks about here, have you been waiting to give that secret sin to

God and seek his strength to overcome? If you have secret sin in your life, it's time to overcome.

Wake up. Wake up. Have you been waiting to restore that relationship and either give or ask for

forgiveness? It's time to go seek reconciliation. Have you been putting off talking to friends and

ones about who Jesus is and if they know him? Remember, being a jerk for Jesus, not a thing,

all right? But are you still waiting to actually have the conversation? Remember, love hopes all

things. It bears all things. It tells the truth. How can we say we love someone and believe what

we say we believe and not tell them? That would be like saying I have a cure to cancer and I'm

the only one that wants it. But this is worse. Cancer kills the body. Sin sins the soul, the person,

to a very real place called hell. Paul says the night is far gone. The day is at hand and we can

know and follow Jesus. So we put on the light. We put on Jesus. We're called to walk as we should

as followers of Jesus. How should we walk? We go through these things. He talks about orgies and

drunkenness, sexual immorality and sensuality, quarreling and jealousy. Those first two, we

should not walk around all the time and wanting to have a good time and disturb the citizens of the

town. That's what those two orgies and drunkenness is talking about. Let me tell you something this

way. Drunkenness is always sin. You've given yourself over to a substance and you've gone too

far. Drunkenness in scripture is always sin. Got to tell you that today. These words used together

like this are meant to indicate that those people are rabble rousers. Those who rouse rabble. They

stumble around. They make fools of themselves. Drugs, alcohol. Then he talks about sexual

immorality and sensuality. The follower of Jesus cannot love people and live for sex. It's that

that I see in our culture today. There's so many things. But what I'm seeing in the church

is fornication. And let me tell you something this morning. Just because you're in your 50s

and looking to be married again because you were married before, spouse died, divorce, whatever.

Just because you're in your 50s, it doesn't say in the Bible that fornication only applies to

teenagers with raging hormones. If you are not married, sex outside of marriage is defined as

fornication and it is against God's word. Anything outside of the definition of fornication is

between a man and a woman is sexual immorality, including anyone at any age. Why? Because God wants

to give that as a gift to us, not have it enslave us. Because we see sex enslaving so many people

in our world. It's time to wake up. It's time to wake up. This here as far as is debauchery. It's

one of the ugliest words in the Greek language. It speaks to one that does these things and has

no shame about it. They don't even care.

Because here's the thing with sexual sin. The more you partake, the more your conscience is seared

and the more it becomes part of your identity, part of your identity. That's why Paul talked

about sexual sin as something, every other sin you commit outside your body, but this sin you

commit inside your body because it becomes part of who you are and how you define yourself.

Follower of Jesus does not live this way. Finally, not in quarreling or jealousy. This describes

someone that can't stand when they are passed over for a promotion and you hold grudges against

people when you're wronged. When someone else has success, there's a desire for more. And so you

make the other person feel it. That's not love. First Thessalonians 5, 5 to 8 says this, you are

all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. So let us not

sleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night and

those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put

on the breastplate of faith and love and for the helmet, the hope of salvation. God gives us

the antidote. It's putting on the armor of God, the breastplate of righteousness, the righteousness

of God. This is not your righteousness. It's God's righteousness saying, I'm going to take this on.

I'm going to live in God's righteousness and it protects my heart, which we have to protect.

It's very interesting that the belt is the belt of truth. You want to know the area that the

belt of truth covers? Here to here, truth in those parts. We just talked about sexual immorality.

That's the belt of truth, the helmet of salvation, protecting our mind.

God has the feet fitted with the gospel of peace to go and tell people about the gospel of Jesus

Christ. And this is something we put on every day. We have to put this on every day. It's not a one-time

thing. Most of us are showing up to the battle going, hey, let's get some suntan. We got some

truck. We got some swimsuits on. We got our umbrellas, got a little strip of suntan lotion

right down the nose. And we're like, let's go. That's how we show up to life when the arrows

are flying all around us. And we wonder why we're bleeding and broken because we don't look at our

as live for the Lord. We put on the armor of light. We had time this morning and I'm running

out of time today. We'd look at Ephesians 5, 1 to 16, where Paul just expounds on this idea

of what it means to wake up and how we're called to live for God. And see, some people who would

hear a message like this this morning, and maybe some of you here hear a message this morning, and

you know, man, that's so restrictive. But remember, true love doesn't rejoice in wrongdoing. It

probably does. And we probably do think that God is the cosmic killjoy. Because often we think our

parents are the cosmic killjoy. Man, I can't do what I want. Right? At least we used to think

that. Then we became a parent and made those rules. And our kids said the same thing to us,

at least at some point. Right? Why does a parent make the rules they make? If they're a good mom

or dad, protect their children. To help them be all that they can be. Because they love them and

would give their life for them. My friend, you have a God that gave his life for you. And is the

perfect father. He knows how he made you. He knows you. He knows how he knitted you. He knows how he

knitted you in your mother's womb. All his thoughts toward you are always good. His plans for you are

to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future. And so when God says

something in his word about human flourishing, about living for him, and what it means to be a

follower of Jesus, he's saying it because he wants the best for you. Not because he wants to take

anything away from you. It seems so oxymoronic for us. But God's guardrails are there for your

freedom. As we walk out today, we have to wake up and love others. We have to wake up and love

others. Louis Laws became the warden of Sing Sing Prison in 1920. The inmates existed in wretched

conditions that led him to introduce humanitarian reforms. He gave much of the credit to his wife,

Catherine, who, however, she always treated the prisoners as human beings. She would often take

her three children and sit with the gangsters, the murderers, and the racketeers while they

played basketball and baseball. Then in 1937, Catherine was killed in a car accident.

The next day, her body lay in a casket in a house about a quarter of a mile from the institution

when the acting warden found hundreds of prisoners crowded around the main entrance.

He knew what they wanted. Opening the gate, he said, I'm going to trust you men. You can go to

the house and honor her. No count was taken. No guards were posted. Yet not one man was missing

that night back in the jail. Love for one who had loved them made them dependable. Paul said one final

thing here. He said, put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify his

desires. This is where we have to wake up. Stop opening the door. Make no provision for the flesh.

Put on Christ. Some of us have been living for ourselves in the darkness for way too long. It's

time to live for Jesus. Learn what it means to really follow him. Can I really challenge you

this morning? Stop making a plan to sin. Stop making a plan to sin and be like, oh, God's good.

He'll forgive me anyway. Commentator said it so well. He said, live in the power and the hope and

light. It's not just about being a good person. It's also about living as a Christ-centered person

out of our identity in Christ through communion with Christ. We pursue holiness. Reminds us that

we have power to say no to sin and yes to God. To make no provision for the flesh means to say no

to any thought that may lead you to sin. Avoid the desire for it. Do not plan to sin. Don't daydream

about sin. Don't seek comfort in sin. Don't flirt with sin. In light of this passage, don't entertain the

idea that a wild night of drunkenness or partying will cure your loneliness, sadness, or boredom.

As a married person, don't even entertain the idea that committing adultery will satisfy your

unfulfilled romantic desires. As a person frustrated with your current situation,

don't entertain the thought of growing jealousy of others. As a bitter person,

don't begin quarreling with others. Make no provision for the flesh. Jesus is better than

the sin of retaliation, better than the sin of dishonoring the government, the sin of falling to,

failing to love our neighbors, the sins of the flesh. Because one day Jesus is coming back and

every unfulfilled desire will be met in him. Live for that day. Live for that day. So let's enlarge

our definition of neighbor, not make it smaller. Let's enlarge our definition of neighbor and saying

my neighbor is not necessarily someone like me. It could be somebody completely opposite from me.

It could be somebody that even hates my guts. But you know what? Because Christ has loved me

and I know God can change anyone. God can change anyone. I'm going to love well.

How about we cultivate a sense of the time because we know the time is short. My friends,

time is short. Here's what I know. Jesus may come back tomorrow. He may come back from a thousand

years from now. But every single one of us, our time is short. Some of us have 40 or 50 years.

Some of us have five. Some of us only have days and don't even know it because we don't know.

What will you live for? Make any provision for the flesh. Let's put off these deeds of darkness.

Put on Jesus every single day. It's time to wake up and love well. Wake up. Don't do it in

your own strength. Jesus is the one who does it through you. This message is not a message to get

any of us to try harder or strive more. It's a message to say, choose. That's the choice. Choose

him above the sin that we've become so accustomed to, above the anger of whatever anger we have,

whether it's political, neighbors, whatever. We choose him. We choose him instead of fear and

struggle. Choose him. Wake up. Pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your love. We thank you for your

word that is sharper than any double-edged sword, divides between bone and marrow, and discerns the

thoughts and the intentions of the heart. It's alive and it's active. God, I pray your Holy

Spirit would apply it to our lives today. Help us to see you for who you are. Help us to choose you

over all the other things that we desire. Help us to wake up, to love well. In Jesus' name we pray.