Have you ever met a couple and they're just the greatest people on earth? They are so kind and so loving. They're so together. They never seem to argue or fight. In fact, they don't even disagree with each other. Until it comes time for the most difficult decision in a marriage. What are we eating for supper? They always agree. You ever met somebody like that? Don't you hate those people? Aye, aye, aye.

Maybe it's not a couple. Maybe you just have a friend who's just a great friend.

They're a good listener. They're there when you need them. They're just available all the time. And they're kind and they're merciful and all these things. And you think, I wish I could be more like that.

Guess what? You can. It's not against the law. They let you be more kind and more merciful. Now the question is whether you're willing to put in the work to do it. Society will tell you it's impossible. Some people are just born that way. They just have the magic gene. And maybe that's true. Some people are more.

They lean more to that way. But I think we can all do it. It's not impossible. It can be challenging, but it's not impossible.

In 1939, a graduate student named George Dantzig, I hope I'm saying that right, arrived late to a statistics class in UC Berkeley, and there were two problems on the board. And he dutifully copied them down in his notebook, assuming they were the homework, took notes, and went home and began to work on those two problems.

About a week later, he turned them into his professor Jerzy Neyman, who was a respected statistician of his time. And George was apologizing profusely for being late with the homework. “Sorry it took me longer than usual to get these done. I'm sorry.” And his professor didn't say anything. In fact, he was stunned into silence because those two problems were not the homework. They were two impossible problems that had stumped mathematicians for decades. Nobody knew how to solve them. And here his student had just solved both of them.

One of his solutions was published almost immediately. Later. George would say, if I'd had known the problems were impossible, I probably wouldn't even have tried, right?

See, sometimes the only thing standing between a person and the impossible is simply not being told it can't be done right. For most of human history, people couldn't fly until they could. We never thought we could put a man on the moon until we did. We could go on and on and on and on. Things are only impossible until they're not. And today we're going to be talking about something that seems impossible, but it's not.

Open your Bibles with me to Romans chapter 12. Romans 12 is such a great chapter. If you're like me, when you read the Bible, you read some good stuff and you remember it, right? You remember the Bible says this or it says that Jesus said this, and we remember these things. And then somebody says, where's that in the Bible? Could be Exodus, could be Revelation. Not really sure. Right. Anybody relate to that? A couple of us. I just have the worst time with that. I remember that it says it, but thank goodness for digital Bibles. It makes it a little easier to find the stuff again.

But recently when I was doing my Bible readings, I came across Romans 12. And Romans 12 is just like almost every sentence in Romans 12 could be a little sign at Hobby Lobby that you buy and hang in your house. Cute little sayings. It's just packed full of goodness, right? And there's a reason for that. And Pastor talked a little bit about this last week. If you missed his message, go back, check it out on our YouTube channel. This stuff's always up there on YouTube. We've got notes, we've got transcripts on our website. We even for those of you who are, English is a second language, the transcripts will go up on YouTube in Spanish and French. So now they're auto transcribed because I don't speak Spanish and French. But you know, they should be close.

Should be close. So, you know, if you want, you can follow along with the sermon and you can put up on YouTube the stuff in Spanish and French. That usually takes me a few days to get that done. So that's not up until the middle of the week, but it'll get there. But anyway, so you can go check that out, what Pastor was talking about last week.

Cause Romans 1 through 11 has a lot of good stuff in it. And Pastor talked about what some of that was. I'm gonna sum it up as this way. It's theology.

A lot of this is the basis of our Christian faith. It's good stuff, it's weighty stuff, some of it's hard stuff. And you gotta sit with it and think about it and chew on it and let it marinate, right? But it's good stuff. But that all changes in chapter 12.

What's the first word of Romans chapter 12? What'd you say? Yours says rejoice, therefore is what mine says. Romans chapter 12 says therefore.

Okay, what does the word Therefore, mean? If somebody's going along, they're saying something, they say, therefore, what's coming next?

This means, right? We're kind of summing up a little bit. Maybe this kind of means this is kind of the results of that. And what Paul's saying is, we got all this foundational Christianity stuff. And what does that mean?

Therefore, this is what your life is. If you've implemented this in your life, if you've internalized this and made this part of your life, therefore your life's going to look like this. Okay?

And so as he's going through chapter 12, you gotta remember that therefore is there. Because if you don't remember that therefore is there, it kind of reads like another list of commandments. Do this, do that, do this. Be sure to do that, do this.

How many of you like to be told what to do? Nobody raised their hand. Now, how many of us have had somebody bark at us at one point in our life to do some household chore? Right? Like, three of us, the only ones. Yeah. Some of us got both hands up. Right? Right. Do the dishes, take out the trash, mow the yard, dust, clean the bathrooms, pick up whatever it is. Now, do those things need to be done? Yes. But don't you hate it when somebody kind of barks at you and tells you to do it? You're kind of like, I don't want to. Right? My new series just dropped on Netflix. I'd much rather watch that. Or, I just got a new book I want to read, or I want to take a nap. Anything except do the dishes. Right? And sometimes we view those things as kind of punishment. But what if we looked at those things differently?

What if instead of looking at doing the dishes as punishment, we looked at it as, hey, my spouse worked hard on this food, cooking, everything. The least I can do is help a little bit and clean up. Now, doing the dishes looks completely different. It's the same task, but it looks completely different. It's a response. It's you showing your love for the person who cooked dinner. Amen.

Right. If I go out and mow the grass and help dad so he doesn't have to mow the grass because he worked hard today. That's a response. I'm showing some of my love for my dad. Or, I don't know, maybe your mom mows the lawn. I don't know. There's a guy I follow on YouTube and his wife wanted to mow the yard, and he said, absolutely, you cannot mow the grass. She goes, I want to mow the grass. It looks like fun. I'm not letting you mow the grass. She goes, I want to mow the grass. He goes, I will let you mow the grass if you go tell all of our neighbors that you wanted to mow the grass. And I didn't make you do it, right? So it can look like a little bit different if we want to do it. And it's not a list. Romans 12 is not another list of commandments. It's a list of, this is what your life is going to look like when you internalize some of this theology and you love Jesus, and all of a sudden it looks altogether different. All right, so let's look at what we're going to look at today, Romans.

[mic pop] Did we go away? No, we're still here.

Okay, Romans, chapter 12, verses 9 through 16. Okay? It says, love must be sincere. Hate what is evil, cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above your. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fever serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, Faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord's people who are in need. Practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.

Wow. Like I said, almost every single one of those could be a little sign in Hobby Lobby that you could hang right. Rejoice with those who rejoice.

That's a lot of stuff to remember. And we could spend a lot of time talking about all that. And we have. There have been sermons preached on these. But, you know, rejoicing with people, mourning with people. Don't lack in zeal. Be joyful, be patient, all this stuff. Be faithful in prayer. Great, great stuff.

But the one I want to highlight today is in verse 16. What does verse 16 say?

Live in harmony with each other. Oh, no. Not a lot of harmony in the world today. Sometimes, right? How am I supposed to live in harmony? Don't they know that my neighbor votes for the wrong political party? Every single time I vote for the right one, that yahoo votes for the wrong one. Don't they know that guy at work steals my work, takes credit for it, and he's getting the promotion that I deserved. How am I supposed to live in harmony with that jerk, right?

Don't they know that my mom or my dad did this to me, how am I supposed to be in harmony with them? And harmony seems to be hard to find. We seem to live in a world of you're either really for something or you're really against it. There doesn't seem to be a lot of middle ground. And I can only hang out with the people that are for what I'm for and against what I'm against. Your circle of friends gets smaller and smaller and smaller because it's hard to find somebody that thinks exactly like you do about everything.

So let's talk about harmony. And we're going to look at two examples in the Bible, and these are examples that we know. And so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the story, but what we can learn from the story.

And the first one is Abraham and lot in Genesis 12 and 13. Okay.

And we know the story, but let's just refresh real quick. Abraham's doing well. And God says, I want you to move. And Abraham says, where? And God says, over that way. I'll let you know when you get there. Now, can you imagine that discussion at the dinner table that night with your wife? Hey, honey, God wants us to move. Where to? Northeast. Well, when do we get there? He'll let us know. How many of your spouses are going to be thrilled with that? No. And it's not just Abraham and Sarah, but it's the herdsmen that work with him, his servants, the shepherds that he has. They've all got to make the same decision. And we don't know, but maybe some stayed, they didn't want to move, some moved with him, I don't know.

But we know that his nephew Lot throws in with him, and so they move, and they end up in the land that God would bring the Israelites back to many years later in Canaan. That's where Abraham kind of settles down with Lot. And they live on this beautiful plain, and God blesses, and their herds grow and grow and grow and grow and grow. And eventually their herdsmen are fighting over grass, pasture, and water. There's not enough resources to support the huge herds that they both have.

And so what does Abraham do? He says, listen, there's enough land here. One of us can live here in the plains, and one can move over here into where the great trees are. It must be kind of a hilly mountain area. There's some big trees there. So those were the two choices. And who does Abraham suggest should pick where they live? Who's going to live where? Lot. Right?

He says, Lot, why don't you choose? Should Lot have the first choice, or should Abraham have the first choice? What do you think? Do you think Lot should have the first choice? Okay, let's see. Who thinks Abraham should have made the first choice? Couple of us. Who thinks Lot should have made the first choice? Couple of us. Abraham should have made the first choice. By all social conventions of their time and ours, Abraham should have had first choice. He was the elder. He was responsible. He helped Lot. He brought Lot along. When Abraham said, Lot, you choose where you want to go first, Lot should have said, uh, ain't no way you. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, no. Ain't going to do it.

Abraham should have had the choice, but Abraham defaults that to Lot. Why?

Because Abraham is more concerned about harmony in the family than he is about who chooses first.

And we know that Lot chooses the plain where living is easy. They can get a little cottage in town, in the city, everything's great, and Abraham goes to live in the trees. And I don't know about you, but if I ever did something that forced my uncle to go live in the trees, in the tent, you know, no bueno, right?

Okay. But Abraham thinks of others first.

And this is the first thing we learn about living in harmony, about thinking of others first. And this is contrary to what the world tells you, because the world tells you, watch out for you. Nobody else is going to do it, buddy. Grab what you can grab. Get what you can get, right? But is that living in harmony, or is that just being selfish? Okay, now, there's always extremes, right? Let's stay out of the extremes for a moment. You know, there are times where you need to be careful and watch out for yourself, but. We always have ourselves to think about first. I'm in a hurry. I got to get this done. I'm busy. I'm tired.

I'm. This. I'm. That I'm disabled. Don't they know they should let me do this?

By the way, you know, our church has a little statistic section that keeps statistics on how many members we get and gain and this and all kinds of things. They published two interesting statistics this week, and that is that disabled people serve in the church at a slightly higher rate than. Than able bodied people, and disabled people attend church at a slightly higher rate than able bodied people. I don't know what you're.

[mic pop] I don't know why this mic doesn't like me,

and I don't know what you're gonna do with that piece of information, but, you know, you can keep that and some night you'll win trivia because you know that you know. No. No, you won't. But anyway, I have that piece of information. Okay? Random fact.

All right, so we learn about keeping others first.

The next story I want to talk about is David and Jonathan. And we know the story of David and Jonathan. They're best buds, right? David becomes king. Who's Jonathan? Who's his dad? Who's Jonathan's dad? King Saul. Now, if your dad is king, what does that mean for you? You're king next, right? You're a prince. You're next in line. You're the next one to be king, right? I agree with the words of the late Tom Petty. It's good to be king, right? It's good to be king. It's a joke in my house. Why do you get to do that? Because it's good to be king, right? How come you get to sit in that chair? It's good to be king. Right?

And Jonathan is in line to be king. And right after David kills Goliath in 1 Samuel 17, at the very top of 1 Samuel 18, we get this following exchange. This is 1st Samuel 18, verse 1, if you want to look it up later. It says, Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as Himself.

Verse 3 says, and Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. Jonathan took off the robe he was wearing and gave it to David, along with his tunic and even his sword, his bow and his belt. So David and Jonathan become vast friends. We don't know how. We don't know how long this took. Probably some time. But, you know, after David kills Goliath, you're a bit of a national hero, right? And everybody knows who David is. And Jonathan and David kind of hook up and start becoming friends. Fast friends.

They're like brothers from other mothers, right? You've heard that saying.

And they become vast friends.

And we don't really know when Saul and Jonathan find out that David has already been anointed by Samuel to be king. The Bible's not very clear about that, but they do find out eventually. Maybe Jonathan just figures it out because he sees how much God is with David and. And he just kind of figures it out. I don't know.

But later on, we see Jonathan saying, don't be afraid. My father Saul will not lay a hand on you. You will be king over Israel, and I will be second to you. And even my father Saul knows this. Okay? So at some point, Saul and Jonathan know David's the next King. Now, what kind of friend do you have to be to say, I'm gonna give up being king so that my buddy can be king? That's a pretty good friend. That's a pretty good friend. Because, man, it's good to be king. You own everything, you get everything. You're rich, you get the women you want, you get the house you want, you get everything. And he says, you will be king, and I will be second in command. That's a good friend. That's a good friend. That's a good friend.

So what do we learn from that? Is that harmony brings selflessness and not jealousy. When you're living in harmony with other people, when you have love for other people, and it brings selflessness. Are you happy for your friend at work that got the promotion instead of you? Ooh, that's a hard one, isn't it?

And Saul gets more and more angry with David as God kind of pulls away. And remember, Saul wanted to keep David close, so he had. Saul wanted to keep David close. So Saul had David marry his daughter, Michal. Right? So David is married to the king's daughter, his best friend is the king's son, and Saul wants to kill him. You think your family is dysfunctional, Right? And both Michal and Jonathan helped David several times escape from Saul. And all kinds of stuff happens.

And we want to go into all that, but we see that harmony and loyalty overcome adversity. You are going to have adversity in your life. Maybe it will be a little, maybe it will be a lot, but it's going to come. It's going to happen. And harmony and loyalty will overcome that. When you've got friends, they'll circle around you and say, we're going to get through this. We'll make it through this.

That's good stuff. That's good stuff.

Later, when Saul and Jonathan are killed in battle, a grieving David writes a poem. It's in 2nd Samuel 1, verse 26 says, I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan. Very pleasant hast thou been unto me. Thy love to me was wonderful. Passing the love of a woman.

And he was hurting because his friend was killed. And true harmony is a choice and a commitment. See, the world tells you to quit when things get tough, quit. You don't need that in your life. Who needs that? Right?

Your marriage gets a little tough, get a divorce. Your friends don't treat you right, blow them off, find some new friends. Your boss doesn't treat you right, quit now. There may be times in life where that's the right thing to do. Again, there's extremes out there, but a lot of the time, maybe a little harmony; choosing to be committed and loyal and loving would fix some of those situations.

Okay, you can't make other people love you. But isn't that what Jesus did for us? What if Jesus had just said, oh, stupid people, tired of them, done, wipe them out, start over again. I'm glad he didn't do that. And that's our example, what we're supposed to do.

I have one story I want to tell you and I've been debating all week whether I want to tell you this story or not. Because up till now, I'm the only person that remembers this story. This happened a long time ago when I kind of first started here, very young, wet behind the ears still, you know, straight out of school, didn't know much. And I was on the church board because I was one of the young adult leaders. And one night at church board, somebody unloaded on me with both barrels, just, this is what's wrong with the church. These young people doing this and doing that. And at the time, we had just started singing with guitars in church, not because we were trying to be cool, but our piano player retired and moved away and we didn't have anybody to play the piano. So we could just sit there and look at it, hope that it would become a player piano and just start playing itself. Or we could play our guitars, right? So we started playing our guitars. And how many of you remember we had the old overhead transparency, right? The big screen. You had to get a kid to sit here and change the songs with the overhead transparencies. Well, that was an important job because if you didn't get the transparency up straight, everybody was standing there [head tilted] trying to read it, you know, this way.

I got accused of turning the church into a movie theater because we put a screen up front and on and on and on it went. And nobody stopped him. Pastor didn't stop him, nobody else stopped him. And he just let loose.

I didn't say anything. And then board meeting went on. Afterwards, I got a lot of phone calls, people, that was not right, he shouldn't have done that. And I said, yeah, but you didn't stop him in the meeting, did you?

And for one time in my life, the Lord finally hit me hard enough with a two by four that I said, oh, let's do this. I just didn't do anything. I didn't say anything.

And your natural reaction is to react with, I want to get him. I'm going to show I'm. We're going to war, buddy. It's me or him. No, it's okay. See, because there were extenuating circumstances. This particular individual was nearing the end of their life, and they were very sick, and they were in pain, and it hurt. And they had been in surgery. And I think a medical professional will tell me this is not possible, but I witnessed it with my own eyes. So I don't know what to tell you, but that person went into surgery and came out of surgery and was a different person afterwards. It was not the same person. That person had been very kind to me before. But after that surgery, life was different. And it was the end of his life. And he was losing control and losing his life, and everything was hard, and he needed to unload. And I happened to be standing in front of the shotgun, and it was okay.

It was okay because that's what he needed to do. And it was okay.

He never once, till the day he died, said he was sorry. I don't even know if he remembered right. I mean, he was failing. But it was okay. It was okay to choose Harmony instead of revenge, instead of, I'm going to get him.

I'm going to show him. I'm going to go to war with him. Because if I had tried to go to war with him, I would have lost. He had more hours of service in this church than I had minutes. He had been in this church longer than I had been alive. I was not going to win that. I didn't want to.

That's the difference of choosing harmony over the way of the world. And up until I just told you this story, nobody remembers that story. I remember because it happened to me. Right? You think about the things that happened to you growing up. Maybe sometime your great embarrassment in high school or something. Chances are nobody remembers that but you. And nobody remembered that story but me. But it makes a point. One time in my life. Thank you, Lord. I got it right. I'll tell you there is a whole bunch of times I didn't. But this one time, we managed to get it right. And it was okay. It was okay.

And harmony helps us to grow and develop. And it's not always easy.

It's not always easy.

Are you willing to do the hard work of bringing harmony into your relationships? All of your relationships, the ones that seem like there's no way, this is not salvageable, the ones that have been broken for decades?

So here's what I want you to do this week. I think I need to get a new battery for this. All right.

Make a list of at least three areas in your life that need more harmony. That should be easy. That's the easy part. Pick one of them and begin the work of bringing harmony into this situation. Measure your progress. Now, that's going to be a little bit hard. That's a little bit subjective. It's not going to happen in one day. Chances are it's going to take a while. You're in this for the long haul. You may try to bring some harmony to a relationship and the other person may bite your head off. It's okay. You're not done bringing harmony yet. Okay. It's going to take a while. It's going to take a while. Are we in this for the long haul? Amen.

This is the work Jesus has called us to do. How are you going to reach that person for Jesus if you can't even talk to him? Jesus put those people in your life for a reason. And at the end of your life, someday we're going to stand before Jesus, going to say, hey, where's your friends? Where's your family?

Well, Lord, he was a jerk. I didn't like talking to him. That's not what I want to tell Jesus. Right. Harmony is hard work. Don't get me wrong. It's tough. But it's the work that Jesus has called us to because it's how we reach souls. And like I said, there's extreme cases. There's cases where sometimes you need to walk away. I get that. But we default to that too quickly sometimes and we're not willing to put in the work to try and save the relationship and to bring harmony sooner.

All right, let's bow our heads. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for these words that we have. Help us to understand the power of harmony, to understand what we need to do. Give us the wisdom to do the things to start bringing harmony into our relationships, to start showing people that we care, that we love them, that we are trying to be friends with them. Give us the fortitude to see that through. There may be some ups and downs in that process. Help us to be steadfast and continue to push forward. Help us to love in the way that you loved with care and compassion and understanding.

Be with us now in Jesus name. Amen.