Faith Community Bible Church: Recent Episodes
Faith Community Bible Church
Community: What Is A Healthy Church CommunityEphesians 4:1-16 • FCBC • 01/14/24Good morning church, it is a privilege to be worshipping with you this morning. If you arevisiting with us for the first time my name is Ryan and I am a pastor and one of the elders hereat FCBC and I have the privilege of continuing in our series this morning entitled “Our church,it’s purpose: who is FCBC and where is she going?” We’ve been answering that question bygoing word by word through the name of our church, Faith. Community. Bible. Church. Lastweek Trent introduced this series to us by looking at that first word in our churches name“Faith.” And he anchored that word to the gospel of Jesus Christ in Romans 3:21-26. We lookedat the good news that God in Christ saves sinners through His propitiatory death (that is a deathor sacrifice that satisfied God’s righteous wrath against our sin rebellion and treason), hisglorious resurrection, and his ascension to the right hand of the father where he is reigning andruling as King of Kings and Lord of Lords until he comes back to earth visibly and personally tojudge both the living and the dead and establishes his eternal reign on earth in fellowship withHis people forever! We are saved by Faith in His name and by no other way! We are a Faithpeople or to say it another way, we are a gospel people, a redeemed people, a holy people, apeople of the king. In other words, as Trent reminded us from our doctrinal statement, we are apeople who hold to:• “The gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ died a substitutionary andpropitiatory death as the once for all sacrifice to God for our sins and overcame death byrising again to life. This sacrifice satisfies the demands of God’s holy justice, appeases Hisholy wrath, demonstrates His mysterious love, and reveals His amazing grace. This freegift of salvation is provided by grace alone, through faith alone, because of Christ alone,for the glory of God alone."But our doctrinal statement goes on to say that we are also:• We are a community of faith (that is to say, a Faith Community). That is, a group ofbelievers that have been saved by the grace of God in Jesus Christ. We are believers whogather.• And we gather to proclaim this glorious hope we call the gospel.So we see that this Faith in Jesus Christ, this belief, this giving ourselves to the gospel that hassaved us leads us into community. And our goal this morning is to answer the question what isa healthy church community? If we are going to identify as a community of Faith or again, FaithCommunity, then what is a healthy church community?This morning we are going to look to the book of Ephesians and the apostle Paul to help usanswer that question, so I’d invite you to turn to your bibles to Ephesians 4 and were going toread verses 1-16 together. Let’s read this and see what the apostle Paul has to say to and abouta local church Faith Community. (Read passage)This is in part a bit of a distinctives series and part of the purpose of this series is to get youacquainted with who we are, what we believe, what our name actually means to us, what ourdoctrinal statement says about us. Our doctrinal statement says this about what a church is:• There is one universal Church, composed of all who in every time and place are chosen inChrist and united to Him through faith by the Spirit in one Body with Christ Himself as theall-sustaining and all-authoritative Head. We believe that the ultimate purpose of theChurch is to glorify God forever.• It is God’s will that the universal Church find expression in local churches in whichbelievers gather to hear the Word of God proclaimed, to engage in corporate worship, tobaptize new believers, and partake in Lord’s Supper. Each member of the body is calledto exercise his/her spiritual gifts in building one another's faith by encouraging, loving,exhorting, discipling one another, and engaging in evangelism of the lost. Key Texts:Acts 1:8; 2:42; 1 Cor 12:4-11; Eph 2:19-22; Col 1:18; 3:16-17; Heb 10:23-25.And these are the very things Paul helps lay out for us in our text this morning. He gives us theways in which a healthy church community ought to be defined, established, and maintained.God’s blueprint for the church is beautiful. It reflects the very unity, diversity, and fellowshipthat happens within the Trinity.Recently we went through the book of Ephesians and saw God’s glorious plan of redemption ondisplay! In Ephesians 1 we see God’s eternal plan is “to bring unity to all things in heaven andon earth under Christ” (1:10), so that “through this triumphant centerpiece called the church,the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in theheavenly realms” (3:10 word for word). The church is a heavenly hope played out in an earthlyreality where congregations of God’s people continue gathering people from all nations underthe rule of Christ to share in his holiness.So to summarize this thought, Ephesians 1–3 celebrates God’s eternal plan: to gather all thingsin heaven and on earth together under Christ (chapter 1), through the death and resurrectionof Christ, which reconciles us to God and to each other (chapter 2), to manifest the triumphantwisdom of his gospel mystery to the spiritual realms through his church (chapter 3).So we come to chapter 4 and Paul explains how his readers and therefore how we must live asa church or a COMMUNITY committed to gathering people under Christ. He does this byoutlining three basic principles for us in our text this morning and those are:1. In Unity2. Through Ministry3. For MaturityYou see a healthy church community is going to reflect these things. They’ll be unified in thegospel, promoting a using of gifts which we’re going to talk about here in a bit, for thematuring, holiness, and purity of a church that glorifies God and looks like it’s head, JesusChrist.We’ll start with this first principle, UNITY, here in verses 1-6 where Paul encourages his readersto walk in manner worthy of the gospel. In other words, if you are a Faith Community thenyou’ll walk like this. And in verse 2 he gives 3 attitudes crucial for accomplishing this type ofunity that supports a healthy church community, and 7 glorious motives for pursuing it.The three attitudes necessary to nourish this sort of community are:1. Humility2. Gentleness3. Patience.If you’re truly eager to maintain a spirit of unity in the bond of peace as he says in verse 3, you’llonly accomplish that by bearing with one another in love with all humility, gentleness, andpatience. And he’s saying that ought to be something that you are eager to do. That word eagerin the Greek means your zealous for this kind of unity, you hasten to see it happen. It’s notpassive, it’s active, it’s a verb it’s something you do. In other words, the eagerness leads toaction.But if you’re like me, that feels like a tall order and can quickly become discouraging. You seehumility, gentleness, and kindness don’t come easy to us in our sin nature. We by nature arethe very opposite of these three attitudes. Instead of humble we are arrogant or self-interestedand promoting. Instead of gentle we’re harsh, brash, unkind, brutal, and even violent. Andinstead of patient we are short fused, easily irritable, demanding, and rude. And there is not asingle one of us in this room this morning that escapes that indictment because that’s theindictment levied against us from the Word of God. We just learned from 2 Timothy that peopleapart from Christ in their natural state are lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant,abusive, disobedient, ungrateful, and unholy. You might think to yourself, “Well I’m not reallylike that. I don’t treat people like that on the outside or to their face at least. I actually tend tobe softer, less combative, even conflict averse.” And I wouldn’t deny you that. Certainly, someare more predisposed to being softer than others by nature and therefore maybe more gentleor patient and come off more humble. But there is this tricky little thing called the heart.Remember, God told Samuel in 1 Samuel 16:7, “I don’t see as man sees, for man looks on theoutward appearance but the Lord looks on the heart.” I think we could prove that case if therewas a running tape of our head and heart that was accessible at any given moment. Perhaps atrush hour on Eagle Rd, or Ustick rd, or Fairview, or in the In n out line, or in conflict with yourspouse or children, or simply in the deep recesses of our hearts and what we actually think ofpeople, and the list goes on and on. What’s on the inside of us IS what is true of us, in any givenmoment.But, I don’t want to leave you discouraged! You see a healthy church community is really asupernatural community because Paul says it ought to be driven by an eager desire to maintainunity through the very attitudes that we aren’t naturally geared or predisposed towards. Whichis why it is a Faith Community. Because, through Faith or through the gospel of Jesus Christ wehave obtained new natures. That is part of what takes place in the heart transplant ofregeneration, we get new life and therefore completely new natures. And with those newnatures comes new desires and therefore new ways of living! So it is possible to actually walk ina manner worthy of the gospel with all humility, gentleness, and patience bearing with oneanother and even eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace… BUT ONLY INUNION WITH CHRIST AND THEREFORE THROUGH THE POWER OF THE SPIRIT THAT RESIDES INYOU AS A RESULT OF RECEIVING THE GOSPEL, OR FAITH. We have 3 chapters of rich doctrinesaying this is not of your own doing it is a gift of God not of works so that you cannot boast.That’s not only a power to save but a power to keep and sanctify and eventually complete goodwork started in us and to bring us home to heaven.So Paul, gives 7 motivations for the new natured man or women to encourage this kind of livingand they all begin with the word ONE:1. One body2. One Spirit3. One hope4. One Lord5. One Faith6. One baptism7. One God and FatherAnother way we could say it is we have one “Spirit” who’s called us into the one “body” of thechurch (because this is who Paul is writing to, the gathered church or churches in Ephesus as hesays in chapter 1) through the one “hope” of eternal life in the gospel of Christ. One “Lord”,Jesus, is proclaimed in the one gospel “faith” in Scripture, symbolized in our shared “baptism”in the Holy Spirit when we were born again (represented in the ceremony of baptism thatsymbolizes this cleansing in Christ). One “God and Father” who’s the origin, ruler and sustainingpresence of everything and everyone in the universe (one God and Father of all, who is over all,and through all and in all).Talk about a motivation! A new family to live with you, a spirit to live in you, a hope to preserveyou, a Lord who claims you, a faith that saves you, a baptism to identify you, and a God andFather to love, lead, and encompass all of you! And all of this perfectly ordered in unity for theglory of the triune God. Richard Coeken put it like this,• Since God is himself a unity of persons who are different but equal and ordered in lovefor each other, every church he gathers under Christ is to be a unity of different but equalpersons ordered in sacrificially loving roles, serving each other. How exciting to realizethat our church community reflects our Creator!I heard this example one time that might help us solidify this point. In a sense, each local churchis like a symphony orchestra. The different musicians skillfully combine their talents to makebeautiful music. But imagine if the string section becomes competitive and starts showing offby playing faster than everyone else, so the brass section gets aggressive and plays so loudlythat they totally dominate, and you can’t hear anyone else. Then the wind section gets so upsetwith all the conflict that they stop playing entirely, and the percussion section overreacts andstarts throwing their drumsticks at the rest of the orchestra! Their music would sound dreadful,and the conductor would have to rebuke them, or the audience would quickly leave.Church, far too often, God’s people have been characterized by self-centeredness, sharptongues, and an appetite for conflict. People have left their local church never to return and theglory of God gets eclipsed in the eye of those beholding this kind of community.A fighting orchestra would surely be told: “Stop fighting—you’re incredibly privileged to havebeen chosen and assembled in this orchestra to play Mozart so play nicely!” And the apostlePaul wants to remind us: Stop arguing, stop living in disunity—you’re incredibly privileged tohave been chosen and gathered into your local church to co-operate in God’s stunninglybeautiful plan to gather people under Christ. So be humble, gentle and patient, and play nicely!Would God give us the mercy to embody that kind of culture and the good news is that throughthe gospel we can in UNITY.So a healthy church community happens in unity and THROUGH MINISTRY which is the secondprinciple Paul draws out in verses 7-12. So Paul says one of the ways we preserve unity in thebond of peace is through the gifts given to the church for the work of the ministry and thosegifts are the gifts of people who were Christ’s gift upon his glorious resurrection from the deadand ascension into heaven. Look at verse 7 (read). What is the measure of Christ’s gift?• Paul tells us back in Ephesians 1:18-22 and it’s the glorious inheritance in the saints,immeasurable greatness and power (which just like that inheritance, is ours in Christ)and all authority, power, and dominion, a name that is above every name, andultimately a redeemed people called the church whom he is head over for all time!• Paul then quotes Psalm 68:18 in verse 8 and says that host of captives once enslaved tosin are now his to enlist and repurpose back into kingdom work for the advance of thegospel!• He says the one that ascended to heaven ie Christ was also the one who descended asJosiah talked about a few weeks ago from Philippians 2 to the earth and even to deathand the very hell that was God’s wrath at calvary (and as an aside there are a lot ofinterpretations as to what Paul means here in terms of “lower regions” that we don’thave time to get into this morning) but suffice it to say experienced the brutal andhellish pain of that descending but didn’t stay dead or in that descended state, butrather ascended far above all heavens, that he might fulfill all things!• The check cleared, the payment paid in full, the sacrifice acceptable to God and Christthe rightful head over the church and therefore it’s his gift to give, he earned it and healone!• And that’s what he does, he received in order to give, and he earned in order to bestow.And he gives the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, and the shepherd teachers inorder to equip the saints for the work of the ministry or in other words to see to it thatthe priesthood of all believers was being exhorted and admonished to use their gifts.o And we already see this at this point in time of the church. Christ gave the earlychurch apostles, 12 men plus Paul who were charter witnesses of Christ’sresurrection and rendered life long and church wide authority over life anddoctrine, who penned the New Testament into cannon under the inspiration ofthe Spirit of God.o He gave prophets like Agubus in Acts 11 and Paul said in Ephesians 2:20 “Thatthe church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets”o He gives evangelists like Philip designated in Acts 21:8o And he gives teachers and shepherds or as we might understand it in this contextelders, or ministers of local congregations, overseers to shepherd the flock ofGod among them as charged to them by the Holy Spirit himself.• And why does he give the church these kind of people? Verse 12 answers that for us,“To equip the saints for the work of the ministry and for the building up of the body ofChrist.” In other words these gifts to the church aren’t meant to be the only gifts of thechurch, but rather gifts that keep on giving. The sequential nature of Paul’s line ofthought here seems to indicate that the immediate purpose of Christ’s gifts is theministry to be rendered by the entire flock. So, the church bodies ultimate purpose isthe building up of the body of Christ, the church. William Hendrickson in hiscommentary on this passage says,o Using our gifts is necessary, for when the church recognizes its unity and strivesmore and more to preserve it, each member co-operating with all the others, thegospel will move mightily forward among the nations, the church itself rejoice,Satan tremble, and the name of God be glorified.• That’s a pretty epic picture but I don’t think Christ died for anything less glorious thanthat. He goes on to say:o And what’s more, is that this unity makes allowance for diversity of gifts amongthe many members of the one body. In fact, this very diversity, far fromdestroying the unity, will, if properly used, promote it.• Listen, Paul the apostle is his own best commentary on this in 1 Corinthians 12. Listen towhat Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:4-7:o “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties ofservice, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is thesame God who empowers them all in everyone.7 To each is given themanifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”• I think one man summed it up really well when he said,o “the real comfort and glorious lesson for everyone must ever be: I have receivedmy gift, be it great or small, from Christ himself. I must use it, therefore, as herequires. The giver will not fail me when I use my gift for the benefit of all as Heintended.”Now, there is a lot we could say about the types of gifts and how they are distributed, and whattheir purpose is, and on and on. Paul certainly spends A LOT of time correcting people that havea distorted or disorderly view and function of their gift. I mean isn’t it so much like us ashumans to take our gift and make it about us. But we aren’t going to get into all of that unlessyou want me to take us until 4 pm which I’m assuming you don’t.But I would like to address one thing I feel like the Lord has put on my heart as it pertains toserving and using your gift in this local body and I have a few examples I’d love to share. Often,when the question comes, how can I get involved here at this local church I’m afraid we’remisinterpreting the nature of the question. What I’ve grown to understand is what’s oftenmeant by that is, “How do I get involved in formal ministries of the church organization.” That’snot a bad question! We need musicians who love Christ to serve skillfully and sincerely to leadour body in sung worship every Sunday. We need children’s ministry volunteers and SundaySchool teachers to give our students the nourishment of the Word and gospel in tandem withyou as their parent’s week in and week out. We need ushers and greeters to serve our bodywith the gift of hospitality, we need people to help with women’s ministries and men’sministries events and studies and programs, we need life group leaders to lead life groups andoffer shepherding care that way, we need people gifted with helping those under intensesuffering or sin to help provide Biblical counseling in our counseling ministry. Church, the listgoes on and on, but there are a lot of us here. I’d say there are more of us than there are formalneeds of FCBC. So what if by some miracle every formal need was met and the body washelping the church to meet it’s needs functionally on a week to week basis. Does ministryopportunity or our call to use our gifts stop? Do the needs stop? NO, and that’s because the giftof Christ isn’t the building, the programs, the scheduled ministries that are really good things,the gift of Christ IS PEOPLE. PEOPLE ARE THE CHURCH and PEOPLE ARE HER GIFT from Christwho purchased that gift, ransomed that gift, redeemed that gift to give back to the church! Soyou might come here, attend here, heck even serve in one of the formal ministries I just listedand not be doing the actual work of the ministry because the actual work of the ministry resultsin the building up of the body in love. So, here’s a really helpful and vulnerable question as itpertains to your meaningful involvement at FCBC, who do you know and who knows you!?Listen we were meant to be covenanted together in union with Christ and therefore in unionwith one another. Brother sister you are responsible one to another just as I am responsible toyou as one of your elders and pastors. I know I’ve said stuff like this before, but if you want todo something meaningful for the church, you want to be meaningfully involved in serving thechurch and using your gift, be a Christian and therefore thoroughly invested into the building upof one another in love. Let me give some practical examples of how I see this happening in ourchurch in ways you may not even be aware of:• Andy book studies, Abrie Church incredibly gifted musician who started this ministrycalled BTB scripture memory to song, Mitchell’s adoption support, other foster caresupport groups, worship nights hosted by the Steins, people committing to get togetherand pray once a week, study God’s Word once a week, and so many other things.• Listen, instead of asking yourself how am I being used at FCBC in a formal sense, start byasking yourself whose life am I meaningfully involved in and who’s meaningfullyinvolved in mine?• Listen serving the church in a formal way is a glorious thing and we need all the help wecan get but ministry is so much more than that.And this is what is so beautiful about the local church. All of these types of one another’shappen within a group of believers called a local church a gathered expression of God’suniversally gathered church, a microcosm of what he intends for all eternity.And what happens when we are committed to walking in unity, using our gifts through ministry,it results in our 3rd and final principle OUR MATURITY. Look with me briefly at verses 13-16(read).Church what’s the goal of Christ in our lives from beginning to end? Christlikeness. Looking likeJesus. Becoming like the one we love and behold. He is shaping and fashioning us into hislikeness so that we can live with him for eternity and one day he’ll complete that work hebegan in us for even when we are faithless, he remains faithful for he cannot and will not denyhimself. I love how Greg Gilbert puts it in his book “What is The Gospel” when he says:• "Do you want to see what the kingdom of God looks like, at least before it is madeperfect? Do you want to see the life of the kingdom lived out in this age? Look at thechurch. That's where God's wisdom is displayed, where people who were formerlyalienated are reconciled and united because of Jesus, and where God's Holy Spirit is atwork remaking and rebuilding human lives. It's where God's people learn to love oneanother, to bear one another's burdens and sorrow, to weep together and rejoicetogether, and to hold one another accountable. Of course it's not perfect, but the churchis where the life of the kingdom is lived and showcased to a world desperately in need ofsalvation."What does a healthy church community look like? Well quite simply, Jesus. A Faith Communityis a people committed to one another’s maturity, to see one another look like Jesus, so that wecan build each other up in love, maintaining unity, though the gift of the church and ministry,for maturity because we actually think the lamb is worth the reward of His suffering. He iscertainly worth this community called Faith Community Bible Church.
Ephesians 6.5-9 Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, 6 not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, 7 rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, 8 knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free. 9 Masters, do the same to them, and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him. Introduction If you’ve been here for the last few Sundays, you’re probably getting the idea that submission is really important to God. Going back to the start of the context in Ephesians 5:21, we are to submit “to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Wives submit to your own husbands, husbands submit to Christ in how you love your wife and children submit to your parents. And today is bondservants and masters. These commands from God for submission would have been massively disruptive to a first-century church in the Roman Empire. Because as Nate said a few weeks ago, of course wives should submit to husbands, but the shocking message would have been the corresponding command for husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the church. And, sure, children obey your parents, but it would have been stunning to hear “fathers don’t provoke your children to anger.” And it’s the same with bondservants and masters. Slaves obeying was a given, but masters commanded to treat bondservants with respect and not threaten them? That was unheard of. There are also some extremes in this passage. At one end of the spectrum, bondservants are to submit to earthly masters as to Christ. And Peter even clarifies with “not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust.” At the other end of the spectrum there’s the blessing of God’s pleasure and eternal reward for those who obey. And although there definitely isn’t a one-to-one connection between bondservants and masters compared to workers and bosses since in our country workers have a lot of rights and we can quit when necessary, there are a lot of parallels. This passage will challenge us to submit because the majority of us probably think of jobs as something we do, not a reflection of who we are. Whether you are a worker or a boss or both, this passage calls for authentic submission. When we die, God’s not going to ask to see our resume. He won’t care that you faithfully worked for the same company for 40 years and had continual upward career progression. He won’t care that you finished your big project on time and under budget. God’s delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the legs of a man, but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love. 1 God will be pleased if we submitted to the authorities He put in our lives, and if we used the authority He gave us with humility. Too often we derive a sense of worth from our jobs and whether we are successful or not; whether we did something significant or what our title was. For my generation, jobs were mostly a means to an end and a source of social status. You worked hard, got promoted so that you could live the American Dream. My generation tends to be motivated by loyalty to the company, hard work and responsibility. But Millenials and Gen Z want work-life balance, diversity and individuality. “Bringing your authentic self” to work wasn’t a thing when I started working. And “Do what you love,” wasn’t even a consideration. There was no “do what you love” it was “Do what you’re told.” That’s what I grew up with. Our view of jobs and bosses changes from generation to generation, but all of these shifting values are like a honey bee just looking for the next flower to land on. They’re a distraction to what God says is the true purpose of work. Our jobs are a means to serve Jesus because we work directly for Him. The purpose of work whether you are a bondservant or a master is not identity, financial security, power or notoriety. It’s to work with a sincere heart as to the Lord. How many of you have ever had a terrible boss, someone who handled their authority badly? Haven’t we all? I’ve had bosses take credit for my work, or focus an annual review on one thing I did poorly instead of five things I did well, and threaten me with some consequence they dreamed up. Years ago I turned down a job offer and they threatened me with, “I’ll make sure you never get another job in this city!” First, thanks for confirming my decision, and second I was living in LA at the time and found that a little far-fetched. But it’s true that some bosses want to serve up a threat like a perfect mic-drop. There are also times that I have been a poor bondservant, very early in my career I wrote an email to my boss pointing out that they were late on a project, and I CC'd a bunch of other people. One time early in my college days I had a job at Der Wienerschnitzel. My very first shift at the restaurant was six hours and I spent the majority of that time filling soda cups. At the end of my six hours I left the restaurant, went back to my apartment and the next morning called my boss to say I was quitting. Didn’t give any notice, I don’t remember even giving a reason. I just quit. The cringe moments on my resume didn’t stop there. I’m still very much in process with these five verses. As we explore these verses I’d like you to keep a destination in mind, and that is answering the question, “Whose eyes?” Whose eyes are you working for? Whose eyes do you want approval from? Whose eyes assess your “performance?” Who do you really work for? Because, if we get to that destination, then this passage will make a lot more sense and you might even stop dreading Mondays. 2 A brief background on work First, let’s lay some groundwork for work. What is it, what’s its purpose? I don’t think it’s any big revelation that work is hard. Work is something for most people that falls in the category of have to do instead of get to do. And this goes all the way back to Genesis 3 when part of the curse for fallen people is that work will be hard, and not just if you choose a career path in agriculture. Gen 3.17 “cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you” The curse isn’t that being a farmer will be hard. The curse is that however you provide for yourself and your family, to put food on the table, it will be painful all the days of your life. But notice it’s the ground that’s under the curse, not work itself. Work is good and God Himself works. Work is a blessing and the gift of being able to work allows us to provide for ourselves and our families. And not only for our provision, but as 4.28 says, that we “may have something to share with anyone in need.” Doing work and earning provision allows us to save for times when work is scarce or when we can no longer work. It also helps us avoid idleness. So, work is good, but work is painful. I was googling for job data, and I’m not sure if this indicates everyone who uses Google or my own search history, but when I typed, “how many people hate” the top reply was “their jobs” followed by “school” and “math.” The data suggests that somewhere between 50 and 85% of people hate their jobs. One fairly recent Gallup poll reported that 70% of people in the US hated their job, and the number one reason was that they hated their boss. Other reasons include time spent commuting and the ever-increasing pressure to be available. We have a more difficult time than ever being offline from our work. Work is a painful task. And although a lot of memes on Linked In say that what I really need is to believe in myself, I’m guessing it’s more than that. We have a fundamental problem with how we view jobs and bosses. That’s because jobs and bosses are hard for external and internal reasons. Things that happen outside of us and things that happen inside of us. Some of the external factors line up with Genesis 3. Work itself is just hard sometimes. Things go wrong, deals fall through, equipment breaks or technology fails us. We live in a broken world. There are times when other people in your own company will undermine you. I’ve had multiple times in my career when I was responsible for a project and another team started a competing project and intentionally undermined what I had been doing. I’ve heard multiple stories of employees going out of their way to make someone else look bad. It’s not uncommon. Work is also hard for internal reasons. Things happening in our own hearts, whether we are aware of them or not, cause us to be discontent in our work. Maybe you’ve worked hard on a task, done it well and then someone above you changed their mind and you did all that work 3 for nothing. It can feel demoralizing. Or you work for a large tech company and there’s the constant worry and fear of the next re-org that will put you out of a job. Or maybe your job is just boring and doesn’t provide job satisfaction or growth opportunities. Whatever it is, these five verses will point us to the only true satisfaction in our work and also provide us with hope and peace for the journey. So, let’s jump into this very relevant passage. Bondservants We can understand from this passage that the early church had both bondservants and masters as members of the same body. It’s mentioned in Colossians, Philemon and here in Ephesians. Slavery was pervasive in the first-century Roman Empire. Most bondservants were captured in battle or bought elsewhere and brought to Rome. It was also sadly not uncommon for impoverished parents to sell their own children into slavery. It was a harsh system where slaves were legal property and could be treated in any manner the owner desired. According to Aristotle, a human bondservant was nothing more than a tool and had the same rights as a shovel or an ox. One small hope for bondservants was the ability to earn their freedom, but even this would have required money that was hard to come by for them. Broadly speaking, slavery in the Roman Empire was despicable and unbiblical, just as it was in our own country’s history. Any practice based on human trafficking and forced labor is contrary to God’s will. 1 Timothy 1.8-10 Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, 9 understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, 10 the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine Slavery is contrary to the gospel of the glory of God. So why doesn’t God just say, “Stop it.” To the Corinthians He does say take advantage of your options, but again doesn’t directly condemn the practice. 1 Corinthians 7.20 Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called. 21 Were you a bondservant when called? Do not be concerned about it. (But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity.) 22 For he who was called in the Lord as a bondservant is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a bondservant of Christ. 23 You were bought with a price; do not become bondservants of men. 24 So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God. If you’re a bondservant and you can get your freedom, do it. If you’re not a bondservant, don't become one. But God doesn’t say, “Masters, give all your bondservants their freedom” and I believe the reason is that the goal of the gospel is not social change, but heart change. Tim Keller said it like this, 4 “I am struck by the simple fact that cultural change is always a by-product, not the main goal. The main goal is always loving service. If we love and serve our neighbors, city, and Lord, it will definitely mean social changes, but Christians must not seek to take over and control society as an end in itself.” Whose eyes matter to us? The eyes of society and culture change as often as hair styles. The eyes of our masters and bosses can change quickly too. I’m sure we’ve all had a boss that didn’t know what they wanted except that it’s not what you just gave them. The only eyes that matter are Christ’s. And we see this in Ephesians 6 with phrases that describe how we should submit to our bosses “as you obey Christ” and “as slaves of Christ” and “as to the Lord.” The first of these three commands in verse 5, “Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ” I’d guess that a lot of us have some sort of earthly master, and God says to give them your respect with a sincere heart as you would Jesus Himself. This doesn’t mean that if you’re a cook you prepare a meal as if Jesus were going to eat it. You could do that with a totally self-righteous heart. It means that if the chef told you how to cook the meal, and to use ingredients you didn’t like and serve it in a way that you disagreed with, that you obeyed with all respect and sincerity as if Jesus Himself gave you those directions. There is no room for complaining or grumbling or eye-rolling here, even though I’ve done all of those things in the not too distant past. Would you talk bad about Jesus behind His back? No. Would you make veiled comments about how Jesus isn’t as smart as He thinks He is? No, never. Treat your earthly master in the same way. That’s what “fear and trembling with a sincere heart” means. However, this doesn’t mean we become people who agree with anything our bosses ask and never raise questions. There is a way to respect your earthly master and still make an appeal for a different course of action. Joseph makes an appeal to Pharoah via the cupbearer to be released from the dungeon. Daniel makes an appeal to the chief of the eunuchs not to eat the king’s food. He gets told no, and then appeals again with a plan that removes any responsibility from the chief, and gains approval. Paul also, in Acts 16, refuses the decision of his earthly masters to release him from prison in secret. Basically, he says, “Oh, you want to release Roman citizens that you publicly beat, in secret to save face? No. You need to do it the right way.” That was bold! But there was a lot at stake and Paul made a valid appeal. The next example in verse six is, “not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ” This verse is the heart of the passage, and where the question, “whose eyes” comes from. There is a humility here that says, as a Christian I submit to my one true Master and I don’t want to do anything for anyone’s approval unless it also pleases Him. We are bondservants of 5 Christ and only His eyes matter. We can humbly resist the temptation to fake looking good to our boss or anyone else by remembering whose eyes matter most. You know how this happens. Jiggle the mouse every few minutes so that your online status stays green. Send a Slack or email after 10:00pm to show you’re dedicated. Mention how late you were up the night before meeting with another region. Drop hints about how busy you are. I recently heard someone at work say that they, “had to decline a meeting because they were already double-booked.” And someone followed it up with, “Oh, you’re only double-booked?” Why say that unless you’re trying to impress people? I don’t think Jesus is impressed by a full calendar. I’ve even seen this taken to some dangerous levels. I was meeting with a woman who was struggling with some issues in her marriage, and one situation was while they were driving her husband would ask her to hold the steering wheel so that he could respond to work messages on his phone. What value was he placing on his wife and kids in the car? It seems likely that looking good to the boss was more important than his family’s safety. The question of whose eyes shows up in many ways in our bondservant roles. For example, how do you feel when someone takes credit for your idea or work? Maybe you do some work then hear that your boss passed it off as their own. Or how many of you have had this experience? You’re in a meeting and make a suggestion or share an idea and it gets overlooked. Five minutes later, someone else shares pretty much the exact same thing and everyone can’t believe how great the idea is. If we weren’t so concerned about the eyes of people, I don’t think this would bother us so much. We are bondservants of Christ and His eyes see everything perfectly. Whose eyes really matter to us? The next section says, “doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man” I worked with a person once that went on a business trip and turned in their hotel receipt to get reimbursed. But then it came to light that they contacted the hotel and said that they meant to use loyalty points for their stay, then got a refund and pocketed the cash. Can I just say that’s not rendering service with a good will? That is using the company to serve yourself. I once worked with a sales guy who visited a client that wanted to golf, so he bought himself a new set of clubs and turned in the receipt as if it were a legitimate business expense. That’s not doing the will of God from the heart. That’s like the last verse in the book of Judges, “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” What we do in our jobs should be from the heart, actually from the soul. The phrase translated “rendering service with a good will” is literally “with benevolence serve as a slave to Christ and not man.” God’s will is that we work in our jobs with kindness in servitude. Not serving ourselves, not asserting our own rights. 6 I’ve had employees who didn’t get the raise they thought they deserved or they were asked to do more than they wanted, and for the next several months they were disengaged and not working to their potential. We now have phrases in our vocabulary for this like Quiet Quitting and Act Your Wage. There was a reputable survey recently about quiet quitting, counting workers who reported being neither engaged nor actively disengaged at work. They found that quiet quitters make up at least half of the U.S. workforce. This is not the will of God. God wants us to respect our masters, work as if only God were watching and do His will by rendering service as unto Him. 1 Peter 2:18-21 Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust. For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. Our jobs and our earthly masters give opportunities to follow the example of Christ. And it’s not without reward. Look at verse eight in Ephesians. “knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free” Honestly, it ought to be enough of a reward that we can please Christ in how we submit to our masters. We don’t work for ourselves and our advancement, or so that people would think well of us, we work in a way that simply follows in His steps. That should be enough, but God does more for us. This is the hope of working for His eyes. He sees the heart, He sees the submission as bondservants, He sees the injustice and says whatever good we do, we will receive back from Him. This is why the question, Whose eyes, matters. If we work with a “What’s In It For Me” attitude, we have our reward in full. But if we work as to the Lord and not to man, God sees and rewards. Jobs are hard. If that weren’t true I wouldn’t get emails so often offering the freedom of being self employed. Be your own boss! Yeah, because that is so much easier. Or all those credible emails from a NASA Scientist or a Harvard professor with easy ways to make money that will SHOCK me. The point isn’t to make work easier, it’s to submit and work as to the Lord. Masters Paul then turns to masters in verse 9 and says, “Masters, do the same to them, and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him.” 7 How do you treat people under your authority? This isn’t just formal employer-employee relationships. Americans employ servants much the same way that early Romans did, but instead of a house-servant that does a lot of tasks, we farm them out to a whole cadre of people. We go out to eat and effectively are hiring cooks and servers to take care of us. We employ people to clean our houses, cut our hair, mow our lawns. We employ hotel staff and contractors and financial advisors and mechanics and childcare. We are earthly masters very much in the way that Ephesians 6 means. How do we treat the people we employ? Are we demanding, hard to please, threatening not to pay, leaving bad Yelp reviews? Paul says masters “do the same to them.” Meaning the same way that bondservants should treat masters with respect, authenticity in our work and kind service is how masters should treat bondservants as well. Earthly masters are nothing special, they have the same temptations as bondservants to look good in front of other people. We all want that. I had a boss once that would use a lot more corporate-speak and a manager tone whenever a peer or superior was in the same meeting. Jesus says, don’t do that. Masters also should obey with a sincere heart, as servants of Christ, with a good will in the same way as bondservants. And in addition to that, masters, stop threatening. Stop abusing your power because you also have a Master. Several weeks ago I was traveling in Melbourne and needed to rent a car. Can I just say that renting a car is my least favorite part of traveling? Why do they have to treat their customers like marks in an elaborate con? As I was standing at the counter for twenty minutes saying no to all of the upsell, I overheard the conversation of the couple next to me. They wanted a special deal that they saw online, although mysteriously they couldn’t find it to show the rental agent, who was very polite and patient throughout the barrage of demands. Finally the couple left in a huff and said on their way out, “I will be leaving multiple bad reviews.” That is someone in an employer role threatening the worker. I work for a software company and part of the role is in Tech Support. We get threats and called awful things on a somewhat regular basis. Some customers believe that since they bring the money they are the boss. Threats like, “Do you even know what you’re doing? If this isn’t fixed today I’m demanding a refund.” Making threats reveals an abuse of power, even if it’s only perceived power. If you’re a boss, use your power with humility because God is not impressed, there’s no partiality with Him. God will measure the slave and the free in the exact same way. It does not matter at all to God if you are a master or a bondservant. There is no partiality with Him. So, how do you treat the people that serve you, the people you employ to take care of tasks in your life? Do you see them as creatures made in the image of a loving God? Do you see them as people who in many ways very likely have a harder life than yours, and they should get respect and kindness even if they botched your haircut? 8 We shouldn’t underestimate the impact we have on those who work for us, and how much this matters to Jesus. About six months before Linda and I were married her father, George, died suddenly in his mid fifties. He was a hard worker, super smart and an exemplary husband and father to seven. He’s one of those men that I wish I could have had more time to get to know. After he died multiple people that worked for him wrote letters to Linda’s family. Here’s one of them. Dear Mrs. Haugland and Family, This is just a note to express a small portion of the loss we feel. George treated everyone -- his managers, peers, and inferiors (and all of us were his inferiors!), with kindness, courtesy and respect. We were never made to feel stupid for asking questions or advice. His door was always open to help us. His fine character and talent were an inspiration to us. His work was always done correctly and on time. He gave clear, written instructions. We enjoyed his quick wit and keen sense of humor. He was a leader, and he led by example. His life was an anthem of praise to God. We miss him and will never forget him. Another person that worked for him said, “Although I am not a dedicated Christian, George has made me respect the faith and study it, since a man with his intelligence and integrity would not believe in a faith of weak foundations.” George was a nuclear engineer working on power plants for General Electric. Pretty heady stuff, but he didn’t let it go to his head. He was a faithful earthly master who worked with a sincere heart as to the Lord and was known for kindness, courtesy and respect. Whose Eyes? How can you tell whose eyes you’re working for? One of the best ways for me is to step back and look at my thoughts and emotions when I don’t get the recognition or approval I feel I’m owed. You know the feeling. A little bit frustrated, disappointed, angry. For example, my last year of work has been super challenging in multiple ways. Our team lost a person to cancer, we had two people resign and another on maternity leave for seven months. My company also went through its first cyber security exploit and breach of our product. It was a hard year and I had lots of long days to keep everything moving in a good direction. A week and a half ago I had my annual review and got a ‘performing’ rating. One of my first thoughts was that I could have worked half as hard and gotten the same rating. That is factually true, but it’s also 100% caring about my boss’s eyes instead of God’s. God sees everything right down to the deepest thoughts of our souls. If I did anything good, He saw it and I will receive back from Him. What triggers you to be tempted to disrespect your boss or at the other end of the pendulum, do a little kissing up? Times when you’re either miffed you didn’t get their approval, or when you’re trying too hard to get it. Those are the times when God’s eyes matter too little. Maybe one good application is in the last phrase in verse 7, “rendering service with a good will as to 9 the Lord and not to man.” Find something you can do to serve your boss or someone who works for you, and don’t let anyone know. Do something with benevolent kindness that only God’s eyes can see. This will be a good test whose eyes are important to you, and whose bondservant you really are. There’s a value in today’s culture to speak truth to power, be a whistleblower, don’t let your employer take advantage of you. Our entitled American minds don’t like the extremes of what is being said here. Jesus is telling us to submit to our earthly master because He is our ultimate Master who has allowed authorities to be placed in our lives, and it pleases Him when we submit to them. This week ask yourself, whose eyes matter? Who am I really working for?
Husbands love your wives – Ephesians 5:25-33 Introduction So last week in his introduction Benj told us how he was surprised to be assigned a tiny little portion to preach on. The email only had two verses 22-23. That’s a little short he thought. It takes a long winded preacher to make a long sermon out of a short text. So, he took the liberty to add an extra verse, to at least complete the thought. Before the final song is ended, Steve’s over here, and come to find out the tens digit was off by one. Instead of going one more verse, he should have gone 11 more! And today was already slotted for ______ to do children obey your parents.
The husbands almost got off scot-free. Can you imagine the imbalance and injustice if this section had somehow slipped through the cracks? PRAY
In the modern world, the shocking and hard statement of this whole section is what Benj addressed last week in v.22, “wives submit to your husband.” I wouldn’t be surprised if some among us still have a hard time with it. But, in the ancient world, verse 22 is nothing. No one would have raised an eyebrow when Paul tells women to be subject to their husbands. Men dominated their homes and a woman lived to the benefit of her man: served his meals, met his needs, and reared his children. The men owned everything, ruled everything, and commanded everything to his benefit and his pleasure. So, imagine some men of the ancient world listening to this section [picture in ppt]. The hard and shocking statement 2000 years ago is not 22. The statement that would have made his ears tingle, is verse 25 “Husbands love your wives.” Paul still keeps the hierarchical model of the day, but revolutionizes the way it should be lived out. I am almost certain that some men would have sneered or taken issue with this. I can give her the love I want, but what you’re saying is ridiculous. So Paul needs to make a pretty good case, and he supports his statement from three sources: 1. The illustration of Christ’s sacrificial love for the church, v.25-27 2. The illustration of a man’s natural care of his own body, v.28-30 3. The illustration of the unbreakable bond found in the creation mandate of Genesis 2, v.31-33
How many of you women thought last week, “we have to submit and be respectful and honor our husbands. Those are visible, tangible, and difficult things to live out. The man on the other hand has this vague command - love. How is he ever held accountable to this? My guess is every man in this room would be able to say, “Well yes, of course I love my wife. (I can prove it – raise your hand if you don’t) We don’t always get along, but I don’t hit her… I work like a dog to provide for her and my family, and we go out to dinner regularly.” From his perspective and everyone else’s perspective, things are normal. And yet, in so many marriages, there is a grand canyon chasm between what the husband thinks he’s giving as love and the reality of what the wife is receiving in her heart and life as love. Let’s start with v.25 The illustration of Christ’s sacrificial love for the church v.25-27 “Husbands love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her Greek has a richer vocabulary for the word love than English does. You’ll remember in John 21, Jesus asks Peter, do you love me more than these? And Peter says, you know that I love you. [Imagine a frustrated wife asking her husband, do you love me? And he would say, yes, you know that I love you (I told you that when we got married)] But there are two Greek words in this interchange. Jesus has used the verb form agapao and Peter had answered with the verb form phileo. Jesus had asked him, do you love me unconditionally, independent of anything I might do for you? And Peter said, yes of course we’re friends, we do things together, you’re like a brother to me. Greek has another word for Love: Eros (noun form), which refers to the physical touching of sensual love, which we have it in English as erotic. All of that is just wrapped up in our general English term. So we can say, God loves me , She loves her friend and they talk on the phone all the time, Vegas is the city of love, … or I love sushi and corndogs. Can you guess what Paul uses in verse 25 of our passage? Husbands “agapate tais gunaikas (for you Greek nerds)” just like Christ “egapesen ten ekklesian.” So, this word selection is extremely important. This love - is a decision of the will. It’s volitional. It’s something that you choose to give, irrespective of whether the recipient deserves it. It isn’t based on a feeling the giver at the moment, nor on the possibility of it being reciprocated. That is why I imagine this would have been difficult to the original ears. The weight of it is heavy. Incidentally, Peter never does get to the point of being able to say, “I love you lord in this way.” He’s probably gunshy and afraid to commit to this, knowing that he had just denied even knowing Jesus a few weeks before. [PPT] Love is: the intention to seek the highest good in the one loved, regardless of cost to you or the worthiness of the recipient. Re-read it by inserting the word wife. [So now let’s ask the question again without any of us raising our hands, how many of us don’t love our wives?] More than one commentator vouches that this is never asked of a husband anywhere in ancient literature. Hoehner writes in his commentary, “The exhortation to husbands to love their wives is unique. It is not found in the OT1, rabbinic literature, or in the household codes of the Greco-Roman era. Although the hierarchical model of the home is maintained, it is ameliorated by this revolutionary exhortation that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church.” There’s no parallels to this in the ancient world. God, in His wisdom, asks the husband/leader to be the unconditional lover of his wife. The key action of this kind of love is seen when Christ gave himself up for the Church. Philippians expands, “Though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant (2:6-7).” Husbands towards wives: give of yourself, empty yourself for her. The main takeaway here is not that husbands should be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. That sounds like macho heroism, or self-martyrdom. All those stupid songs, I’ll take a bullet for you, I’ll step in front of a train for you. No, we need to live for our wives, not die for them. So why not start by something simple. We can fool everyone but God and our wife. What is the hard thing, the self sacrificial thing we need to do in our marriage? It’s not much of a sacrifice for a rich man to buy his wife a new car. He gives a better gift to her than anyone can (and it costs him nothing really). His sacrifice is to say no to work on Saturday because she asked if they could talk through the family summer schedule (he’s like - how pathetic). You remember old DC Talk years ago, “Love is a verb.” You bet it’s a verb, and I would add it’s an action verb. It has to be manifested in deed. Loving our wives is a sacrificial love. Let’s look at a few biblical examples of great husbands. Mmmm... Abraham (man of faith), Ahab, Solomon (man of wisdom) … there really are no model husbands and there’s never been a model marriage. In the end our only example is Jesus’ love for the Church. When a husband begins to show love like Jesus for the benefit of his wife, miracles begin to take place. This is the greatest power a man can wield in his life, marriage, and family. [Purpose clause – why did Jesus do this?] Notice His 3-fold purpose. Read 26-27. Twice in this book Paul uses this exact phrase “holy and blameless (here and 1:4).” In both places, where this phrase is used, we have individuals standing before Jesus who are “holy and blameless.” In chapter one it’s very personal. He knows each and every individual who would someday stand before him holy and blameless. In our chapter we see a corporate picture, the body of Christ, which Jesus presents to himself, holy and blameless. This isn’t just a metaphorical picture of living our lives before Jesus, this is a very specific event in the Bible. Since before creation, this was the great plan of God. Revelation 19 describes this moment, it’s the pinnacle of history. “Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder crying out Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure – for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.” Jesus had in mind the climax of the redemptive story when he chose every individual before the foundations of the world. And again, Jesus had in mind the climax of the redemptive story when he gave himself up on the cross. A radiant bride standing before him in all her glory, sanctified, washed, and cleansed. That’s exactly what our passage teaches us, “That he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.” His sanctification process is the word washing through us over a lifetime. [Illust] I was walking past the woodpile and noticed an old towel laying in the dirt. It had been there forever drenched in the rain, baked in the sun, full of mud and used many times to wipe off some oil, by this point stiff as a piece of wood. I thought of this. When Christ saves us, he places this dirty thing in the river and sets a stone on one corner of it. Little by little as water washes through the threads, it begins to soften, and little particles start to wash away. That water flowing through the towel is the word of God flowing through our minds and hearts. Do you know what Jesus does after all this? “Then comes the end, when he [Jesus] delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power… When all things are subjected to him, then the son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all” 1 Cor 15:24,28. What a glorious future we have ahead of us.
How far does the analogy of Christ go in this relationship? Jesus does the dying, the sanctifying, and the cleansing. I have heard the statements, “men, we should be washing our wives in the word daily.” I don’t know... I’m not so sure that all wives are too excited about the prospects of sitting under the tutelage of their fallen husbands - or being wet all the time. But, there’s definitely a headship model where husbands do have the spiritual responsibility of creating a God-honoring environment in their own home, before their wife and children. The illustration of a man’s natural care for his own body v.28-30 For a second time Paul exhorts husbands to love their wives. And just in case someone might try a fast excuse, “I don’t know how to love sacrificially like Jesus,” he provides us with the most simple and concrete example anyone can relate to. “In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. No one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church.” The most natural instinct we possess is to protect ourselves, and care for our own needs. No one had to teach us that. We turn off the world when we’re tired, feed ourselves good food, and lavish on ourselves social and emotional comforts. If you don’t do this you’re not normal, and friendly people start coming around with name tags around their necks to guide you around. We pull our hands out of harms way when the door slams, and quickly find tweezers when something’s inflamed. Do we do that on behalf of our wives? Do our wives feel like we are caring for their well-being like we’re caring for our own? [I’m horrible at this] If something doesn’t bother me, my only thought is “why does it bother you? Let it go let’s get back to business?” What I should have done is said is, “ok let’s talk about this same thing again for hours and hours 😊.” If we said this statement in reverse, the implications are frightening. He who doesn’t love his wife is hurting himself and is on a path of self-destruction. Doctors use to think centuries ago that leprosy was the horrible disease that ate away at your body. Your nose and ears would get destroyed, all your extremities were disfigured, fingers fell off, toes fell off. Come to find out, leprosy is simply the numbing of physical pain. It’s like being on morphine 24/7. A human that doesn’t feel pain anymore, ultimately self-destructs. [Read the fascinating book, The gift of pain Yancey and Brand]. If we didn’t recoil instantly at the fireplace, our hand would linger a few seconds too long until we smelled something weird. A man who doesn’t love his wife, is like a leper who drops a bowling ball on his toe. Nothing changes, he goes to work the next day walking on it completely swollen and inflamed, and his only reaction is frustration that he’s being slowed down. How long can one keep going in a self-destructive manner before the final lethal blow. [picture of a man in front of looming danger] But nourishes and cherishes it. This is huge. Loving our wives is a tender love. Both of these words are nurturing in nature, this is where a woman thrives, holding a small child. Women want to receive this tenderness as well. This might not always be our strong point, but it sure wouldn’t hurt to get better at it. This week, towards the end of the day, a little root about 8 inches long fell into the roadmix I had just raked out and leveled. If I had jumped out and thrown it aside, it would have been 15 seconds, but I was too tired and didn’t want to move. Instead, I fiddled around for 10 minutes with a big bucket and a hydraulic thumb trying to pick up this little thing. It kept falling out, the teeth went through the roadmix, messing up the area, and eventually I lightly grabbed it and broke it in half anyway. I mean I barely touched it. I actually was laughing in the cab when I was thinking of this. What a useless machine when it comes to being soft and nimble. And guess what, sometimes a man can be like this – all power and no tenderness. Mike Tyson is great as a bodyguard, but when he got hauled in for domestic abuse, I remember him saying on TV, “I barely touched her.” It’s not every man’s gift to be tender, nourishing and cherishing to his wife, but every man knows how to do it to himself. Nourish her, cherish her. The illustration of the unbreakable bond found in the creation mandate of Genesis two
The final illustration goes back to creation. That beautiful picture before it was destroyed by sin. God fashioning a perfect help mate for the man so that he wouldn’t be alone. He leads her to the man. And the man exclaims “at last!” At last a suitable partner, bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. She’s not just another beautiful creature, this is my life partner. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This the marriage mandate – one flesh, one body, a joining of two people into a new creation. But, then we get one last shocker. “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” What? That was unexpected. This is the marriage passage. Did he just hijack it and make it about Christ and the Church? The clue is found at the beginning of the verse, this mystery is profound. The NT has numerous revelations that it calls mysteries, once hidden, and now revealed. • Gentiles are fellow heirs (3:5-6) • The indwelling of the Holy Spirit (col 1, Rom 8) • The partial hardening of Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles have come in (Rom 11) • Judgments at the end of the age (Rev. 15-18)
And now another mystery finally revealed. Christ’s love for his bride is not modeled after marriage. It seems like that to us because Jesus comes after Genesis 2. But, since before time began, his master plan was a redeemed people that he would call to himself one at a time, and then someday, display them in splendor to the praise of His glory. His foresight and His union to that body of redeemed humanity, his bride was first. That’s the reality! That’s the model from which marriage is patterned. So, when God brought Eve to Adam He already saw His work, and he created marriage to reflect Him. He hadn’t revealed it all to the earlier generations, but he established it in a picture of what He would do someday. The marriage pattern works, because God set it up to reflect His activities. Suddenly marriage isn’t up for grabs, for debate, for change. Culture doesn’t have anything to say to us about what marriage is, to redefine it, to say who gets to get married, what are the rules, and what it's meant to represent. Everything comes as a package: it’s one man, one woman, headship, love, submission, sacrifice. There’s no picking out the pieces we like, adjusting the model to fit changing times. This is the authority and it's immutable. “However, let each of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” The only thing new here is that he jumps back to the wives and asks them to respect their husbands. There are so many women in the church that would say, "how can I respect him? What am I suppose to respect?" That is a difficult position and I’ve personally sat with many of the women in this body who have the same difficult story. The text doesn’t qualify this and say, “respect him only if he’s respectable.” It doesn’t give the man that option either, love your wife if she’s loveable. The only thing we can do is plead with the husbands. Are you hindering your wife from being able to fulfill what she’s been called to? Conclusion There’s been one blaring omission this entire time. Can you guess it? Everything we’ve just read, in the last section, in this section and the next is impossible to do. No woman can submit to her husband in joy and respect him when he’s not respectable. No man can love his wife sacrificially day in and day out, whether she returns the love or takes advantage of him. None of us can do it without the Lord’s help. That’s what preceded this, “Be filled with the spirit, giving thanks always…”
“The bad news: your love problems are bigger than you think because love problems are God problems. The good news: the solution is bigger than you think because God cares and is involved. Having more love in your marriage means having more of God in your marriage. Having trouble loving is evidence either that you don’t know God or that something is interfering in your relationship with God.” Marriage Matters, Winston Smith. It’s no small thing that one of the mysteries Jesus left for us was the Holy Spirit. We can be tough and just try to muscle through it and it will always end in disappointment and frustration. The women are asked to do a hard thing. The men are asked to do an incredibly hard thing. Both are prone to failure, both are prone to swings and extremes. Men will go from domineering on one hand to total passivity on the other. Both of these are common and both of them are crushing to a wife.
We’re not leaving here with our heads hanging. The conviction of the spirit is a good thing. In all of this I haven’t said one thing personal about marriage yet. I’m full of the same exact shortcomings as any other man. I blow it all the time, and so does Michelle (me a lot more). But let me just say one thing personal about marriage. I use to tell my students I was in agreement with most of the Bible. That was a setup for the obvious question, “what don’t you like?” The truth is I love marriage so much and believe in it, that I don't like the two passages in the gospels where Jesus says after the resurrection there is no marriage. Some people are like, “Are you kidding, that’s my favorite verse.” Seriously, I’m like what no more marriage relationship in heaven? This is all just a temporal thing for procreation, raising a family, and putting on display the amazing glory of our Lord. Someday all our relationships are going to be perfect the way they are suppose to be and marriage won’t even matter. I still don’t have it totally figured out if I see some guy on side of the golden streets who I haven’t seen in decades, and then the woman I was married to my entire life is on the other side of the street. Do I just wave to both and say “What have you been up to?” I'll leave that one to Jesus.
Single people listen to me for a second. You're not married now. You can't know everything about your future spouse, or how it will turn out. But the stakes are high. There’s a balance between being paralyzed with finding the perfect person (which doesn’t exist) and just going for it willy nilly without a little wisdom. Here’s what matters: How passionately are they pursuing the Lord? How committed are they to God’s word, and how willing are they to change when confronted with convicting things in the word? It’s a death nail to go out and marry a non-believer because what do you have in common? So, young ladies, what kind of man is a true catch? Is it the one who is fast, good looking, strong, and holds a lot of economical promise for the future? The qualities of the best man for a lifetime of marriage, is the one who says, “I love and believe in marriage as God designed it, and my goal in marriage is to be the husband that God has called me to be.” May God give us strength.
Introduction • A few months ago I got an interesting text from Steve Walker. He said, “Hey, we’re going to be going through Ephesians, and we want to know if you’ll be up to preach.”
• So I was like, “Yeah!” Texted him back. Absolutely. o I love Ephesians. I’ve been to Ephesus a couple times, maybe I’ll be able to talk about some of the harbor there and the multinational city and the impact that had on the believers there. o Riot in the theater in Acts 19 and tie that into the book. The goddess Artemis. o Or maybe I’ll get to say something about Apollos. I did a really cool study once on Apollos and Alexandria. Favorite. Acts 18 mentions that he was a Jew who grew up in Egypt and went to Ephesus to preach the gospel. It’s really cool since that’s where the Jewish philosopher Philo grew up. He was into rhetoric and there were a number of erudite schools in Alexandria. Apollos may have learned some of his rhetoric from Philo and taken it to Ephesus. Maybe I’ll get to talk about that a bit! o Or maybe I can talk about Jews and Gentiles. Ephesians is all about unity between the two. My wife is Jewish, I’m not. I lived and taught in Israel for years…maybe I’ll get to talk about that.
• I got all excited, went home, turned to my passage in Eph 5:22 to see what I get to preach on. And these are the words I read: “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.” o OK, there goes Apollos, the theater, Jews/Gentile…“Wait that’s the passage you give me?” o It’s not exactly my first choice. 😊 o Well at least I know Paul talks quite at length about how husbands are to love their wives…so I kept reading Eph 5:23–24. o At this point I look back at my text and I see that this is all I’m supposed to preach on. o Turns out I don’t even get to talk about the men!
• It might not have happened exactly like that, but I think you get the point. If I were a guest preacher, this would probably not be the first passage I’d turn to and give a message one. It’s a bit controversial!
• In fact, I did a little thought experiment after I read through today’s passage. I asked myself: “If I was selected to appear on ABC’s “The View” to talk about this passage, what would my reception be like?” o How do you think these women would respond to Paul’s command for wives to be submissive to their own husbands in everything? o Do you think you think you would see heads bobbing up and down, and the women on the show saying, “Yes, we totally agree. Paul got that right. One problem that we have today is that women just aren’t submissive to their husbands!” o I mean I haven’t asked them, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what I’d encounter.
• I think that this is a good illustration of the fact that our society, does not like to hear this topic. What makes it hard, is there has been abuse throughout history. We don’t condone that or indorse it in any way, but we also can’t ignore God’s commands because of past sin.
• So I kind of have to thread the needle on a fairly controversial topic. I was praying that God would give me the right, even tone of voice, as I talk about a topic that in today’s culture just doesn’t fly.
• The main idea of what I’m going to say is actually really easy to comprehend, but it’s a topic that our society doesn’t like to hear. So that’s why I titled it: “The Forbidden Word (Submit).”
• But here’s my main point: submitting to your husband is an act of submission to God. o I’m going to unpack that. o Guys don’t get a free pass, even in this message. Men have a responsibility.
• So let’s roll up our sleeves and have a look at what the verses are actually saying.
A. What Are the Verses Actually Saying? • We’ve been calling our series on Ephesians “The Master’s Plan”. • You can see this fairly complicated chart: • Two main parts to Ephesians: (1) Beliefs, and (2) Behavior: o Beliefs: chapters 1–3 focuses on what God did for us through Jesus: “You were dead in your sins...but you were made alive” (2:1,4) o Behavior: chapters 4–6 talk about how to live as believers: “Walk in a manner worth of the calling to which you were called” (4:1) • Only two commands in chapters 1–3, over 60 in chapters 4–6.
• In this next section Paul talks about three sets of relationships: wife/husband, children/parents, and slaves/masters. o Martin Luther called these instructions “the household code”, or “rules for the household.” o These commands occur in 4 other places in the NT (chart). • So Paul and Peter both address these in the NT. Our passage unique because Paul spends a lot of time on the men, more than anywhere else by far. o 41 Greek words for the women o 115 Greek words for the men. • So if you feel like the men are getting a free pass––they don’t. Come back next week for your whoopin’.
1) VOLUNTARY SUBMISSION: “WIVES SUBMIT TO YOUR OWN HUSBANDS AS TO THE LORD” • The verb upotasso basically means “to be subject, subordinate.” • Occurs quite a number of times in the NT. o 1 Cor 15:27 all things are subjected to God o Rom 13:1 we are to be subject to the governing authorities. o 1 Peter 5:5 we are to be subject to our elders • Put in simple language, Paul is saying that wives need to obey and listen to their husbands.
• The interesting thing about this verb is that it occurs in a form (present middle) that indicates the submission is not a forced submission. o So if you had a dictator, you submit to his rule, but it’s a forced submission. o He raises his hand and says, “Lean back!” and you lean back. Are you “submitting” in that instance? In one sense yes, but it’s not voluntary.
o Here it is. Look at Eph 5:24 says “As the church submits to Christ, so wives should submit in everything to their husbands.” We don’t begrudgingly obey Jesus. If we do that, then we’ve missed it. You could probably spit off ten verses that say that external “works” are not enough. It’s the heart that counts. • Go to church because you have to. • Give because you have to. • Patient because you have to. • …you’ve missed it. We submit to Christ with JOY!
• Wives, that should be how you submit to your husbands––voluntarily, with joy.
• Now submitting to your husband doesn’t mean that you don’t have a voice. o New Car. Let’s say you really want a new car. Work hard, you want it. You can talk to your husband. If you talk and your husband says, “We’re almost there, trying to pay off debt. Not right now.” Loggerheads: someone has to make a decision. Paul would say you have to listen to your husband.
o Job. The opposite could happen. Let’s say you’ve been working at a job and it’s just been killing you. You come home exhausted, can’t fulfill your role in the family. Want to get a new job. Husband: we’re saving for a car, don’t quit now. You can explain––look, I’m seriously drained. Husband loves his wife, might realize the loving thing is to put the saving on pause and for your sake, you go get another job.
• The point is, do you recognize that God has appointed the husband to be the leader, or are you continually fighting for that position and going off to do as you please?
• Does “as to the Lord” mean that the wife submits to her husband to the same degree as she does to Jesus? o No. o The NT never calls for submission to another human being to the same degree as to the Lord. Everything that Jesus says is perfect and holy. He’s God in the flesh and sinless. o You’ve probably realized by now that your husband is not.
• What Paul is talking about here are the roles of marriage in a normal household. o And in that context, the idea is that when the wife submits to her husband, she is actually submitting to the Lord. o “In submitting to my husband, I’m submitting to the Lord.” o Because you love the Lord, you submit to your husband. Submitting to the Lord and submitting to your husband are inseparable.
• Time out: abuse? Husband making you do something illegal? Sinful? Say something! Call the police? Do so. Talk to the elders? Do so. If you want to do it confidentially, please email me, any of the elders, anybody up here. We love women, we value women, and we do not condone abuse in any way. Paul is not saying you submit if you are in an abusive relationship. So if that is the situation you are in right now, please tell someone.
• Women are mentioned the Greek and Roman literature as well in Paul’s day. o In Greek literature the woman is said to be inferior in all things (Arius Didymus 149.7). o That’s also what Josephus says: “The woman, says the Law, is in all things inferior to the man. Let her accordingly be submissive…that she may be directed” (Contra Apion 2.201) o Other literature in Paul’s day says that slaves have no thinking capacity and are stupid • That’s not what the Bible says. Having been married 20 years (this year), I certainly know that there are lot of things that my wife is better than me at. • The NT does not criticize or demean those who are being submissive. In the NT it’s a voluntary submission, out of love.
Objection: What if the shoe were on the other foot? • Objection: yeah, easy for Paul to say that––he’s a man in a patriarchal society!
• So when I went back and reviewed the events surrounding the book of Ephesians I found something that I though was kind of interesting.
• Paul is writing to the believers in Ephesus (cf. 1:1), even though many scholars today don’t believe this. o Here’s where Ephesus is. o Paul spent three years here on his third missionary journey: Acts 20:31 Rents a lecture hall (Tyrannus) there and reasons boldly and daily with the Ephesian Jews and Greeks Thers’s a riot there eventually. Everybody gathers into the theater and for two hours call out, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”. Paul wants to go in, but they tell him not to since they’ll lynch him if he does. Paul continues on to Macedonia, then down to Corinth, then retraces his steps through Greece toward Jerusalem.
On his way back to Jerusalem, and he has one final meeting with the elders of Ephesus at Miletus (Acts 20:17). • The elders come to him, Paul gives a pretty long speech to the Ephesian elders. • And then the very last words he says to the elders in Ephesus is, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). He’s quoting what Jesus had said.
o When I re-read that account, I thought that was interesting because Paul really lived that out. Remember Paul was trained by the best rabbis of the day (Gamaliel). He was “advancing in Judaism beyond his contemporaries” (Gal 1:14). But rather than take on a life of prestige as a member of the Sanhedrin, he submitted to Jesus’s call to preach the gospel to the Gentiles and ultimately gave his life for him.
o Paul lived a life of submission to Christ. He’s not giving instruction for wives to be submissive to their husbands from the position of a privileged man who is demanding that women be subservient.
o The last thing he tells the Ephesian elders is, “It’s better to give than to receive.” He truly believed that. Remember he’s writing from prison in Rome. o I think if we all remembered Jesus’s words that it’s “better to give than to receive,” it’d make it much easier for us to obey him. That’s what submission is: give of yourself for others.
2) TO YOUR HUSBANDS • Important to note that Paul is talking about husbands and wives in these verses. He’s not saying women are to submit to all men.
• I think this is where abuse has come in. o Men have historically taken advantage of women. They’re stronger than women, so they have felt like they can control them. o Women have been oppressed, denied education, not allowed to vote, not allowed to leave the home, and forced into servitude. That’s all wrong. The Bible doesn’t support that. o That’s what makes this message hard. There certainly has been abuse in the past, but an incorrect treatment of women can’t trump what the scriptures say about the role of men and women in a marriage.
• Not: o Not to a boyfriend. If you’re thinking of getting married, “Can I submit to this guy?” o Not to all men in the church. o We do submit to our elders, our parents, the Christ. o Not: I’m not married, so I don’t submit to anyone. o What’s your attitude? Is it one of general submission or total autonomy?
• Paul says in Eph 5:23 that the husband is the head of his wife. o There’s been a bit of debate as to what that means. It seems that it means “preeminence” or “prominence.” The same word is used in Eph 1:22 where Paul says Christ is the head of the church. o He’s the leader. He’s the one who ultimately is responsible for making the decisions.
• In Paul’s day, usually a father had power over his son until the father died, or voluntarily gave up that power. This was called pater potestas. If he still had power over his son when that son married, the father also had authority over his daughter in law. This was called sine manus, which continued as long as he lived. o So when Paul says that the wife is to submit to her husband as the head of the family, he’s confronting the Roman family structure of that day. o The husband, not he father, is the head of the family, and he has authority over his wife (Hoener, p. 741).
• Paul says this elsewhere: 1 Cor 11:3
• This doesn’t mean that there is any qualitative difference between husbands and wives. o Paul says in Gal 3:28 that there is no slave/free, Jew/Gentile, Male/Female…all are one). o All are equal before God. But this does not exclude lines of authority. o There is no difference in worth, but in the family there must be leadership, and that responsibility is given to the husband and father.
• Trinity. A great example of this is God himself. God is three in one. o All three persons are qualitatively equal, but the Son is subordinated to the Father (1 Cor 15:28), the HS to the Father, and the HS to the Son. o Subordination does not imply a qualitative difference.
• Football. Let me give you another example you might be able to relate to a little easier: who are the top 5 greatest 4th quarter quarterbacks of all times? o Depends on how you calculate the stats. o Top 5 I found were: #5 John Elway, #4 Tom Brady, #3 Peyton Manning, #2 Dan Marino, and #1…the legend…Joe Montana o Doesn’t matter how good a QB you are, you can’t do it on your own. You need every single person on the team. Each can be fired, each can get hurt, each has a role to play. o A good QB is one who says, “We’re down by 15 with 5 minutes on the clock, but we’re gonna win. Jerry Rice, you’re gonna run down the side, cut in, and when you look up I’m going to put the ball right in your hands and you’re gonna run it into the endzone.” o A QB like that…people want to follow him. He’s the head of the team, but in a sense nobody really thinks about it. They want to follow him. He’s out in the trenches leading, he’s got a plan, he’s got the entire team’s best interest in mind, and everybody’s pumped about following him.
• In our society today, when people hear: “the husband is the head,” they head “dictator.” But that’s not all what the Bible implies. Just come back next week and you’ll see Paul is really going to lay into the husbands. o In fact in this section 41 Greek words are aimed at the wives and 116 words are directed to the husbands. o Paul definitely will have a lot to say to the husbands. We’re supposed to love our wives as Christ loves the Church. That’s to the point of death.
3) IN EVERYTHING • Eph 5:24
• Honestly, when I first read this, it was kind of hard to get my head around. • My first thought was, are there exceptions? o Obviously not submit to husband in something that is contrary to commands of God. One needs to obey God more than humans (Acts 5:29). Sinful Abuse – if they are abused; call for help. Don’t hide. Talk to someone!!
• But outside of sin or abuse, we can’t minimize what Paul is saying. The Church submits to Christ in everything. This is the analogy he gives to wives.
• I like how one commentator put it: “In everything obviously can’t mean blind obedience when it means contradicting God’s commands.” On the other hand, it’s inappropriate to compile a list of exemptions and thereby prove that “in everything” actually means “not in everything.”
• Submit “in everything” means “in every area of life”. Not: o I’ll listen to my husband when it comes to finances, vacations, …when it comes to my career – ain’t nobody telling me what I can and can’t do. o Friends – I’m with the kids all the time, I want to have friends over, but my husband doesn’t. Well he can just go to his room and shut the door. Friends are my time. • All things. Get ready: here is the hard part: o No indication that a wife’s submission to her husband is based on the degree to which her husband demonstrates his love. The more he shows love, the more you can submit Doesn’t seem to be the case. 1 Peter 3:1 – wives be subject so that you can win over your husbands.
Analogy: • 1 Peter 2:13 – be subject to every human institution. The point is not that you need to be subject only if the human institution is kind and loving. • Rom 13:1 – your to be subject to the governing authorities. Nero is the emperor at the time. He certainly wasn’t loving.
o Is that any different from anything else in the Bible? Christian behavior is never dependent on how the other side reacts. Love your neighbor as yourself…so long as your neighbor is loving. Honor your father and mother (10 commands)…so long as your father and mother give you want and behave how you want them to behave. Don’t bear false witness against your neighbor…unless your neighbor does that to you, then you can lie about your neighbor too. Don’t covet your neighbor’s house/wife…unless of course your neighbor’s a spoiled brat, absolute jerk and doesn’t deserve what he just inherited and didn’t work for. If that’s the case, then it’s OK to covet. Paul doesn’t give a pass to the husbands either: love your wives…only if your wife is loving back. • Women can be hard to love sometimes too!
o God’s expectations of how we are to live don’t get watered down if the other side isn’t living up to his expectations. In fact the opposite seems to be true. In the world you respond in kind. Somebody’s a jerk to you, you can be a jerk back. He deserves it. In Jesus’s kingdom: if someone hits you on the cheek, you turn the other cheek (Matt 5:38–42).
o And I wrote down in my notes here “YIKES”….that’s not easy!
• Not easy: society doesn’t like this, and there is abuse in the church and in the world!
• So because it is controversial, some think it’s outdated, oppressive, etc., what some people do is water down the passage. They make it a bit more 2023 friendly. Here are four ways that I found. B. How to Water Down the Passage 1. THE OLD CLASSIC: IT’S AN ADDITION! (NOT ORIGINALLY PART OF THE BIBLE) • This is similar to early 1900s German higher critical approach to the Bible. • Today, this is a feminist point of view and it goes something like this: o In the first three chapters the author (certainly not Paul) has been advocated equality between Jew and Gentile. o The book is all about unity. Think of Eph 2:11–13 “Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh…were separated from Christ…having no hope and without God. But now in Christ Jesus you who were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” Christ reconciled Jew and Gentile into one body and abolished the hostility (Eph 2:16). o So since the book is about unity, Eph 5:22–6:9 is an addition by a later writer since it suggests a hierarchy. It’s out of character with the rest of the book.
• I won’t spend any time on that. There’s no evidence that this wasn’t part of the book originally, and hierarchy doesn’t deny equality to begin with.
- NEWER VERSION: THE SAD SOCIAL REALITY OF PAUL’S DAY. • The more common way of diluting the passage is to argue that this actually is not a timeless command. Paul is just addressing the sad social reality of the day, and therefore gives sort of a temporary fix for a bad situation.
• This is the more common way of making the Bible a bit more modern. I see this all the time. o So for example, when the NT condemns homosexuality as sin (e.g., Rom 1; 1 Tim 1:8–11; 1 Cor 6:9–10; etc.), people argue––unbiblically I think––that it’s not condemning the act, but the harsh social reality of the day. o In Paul’s day, homosexual acts were connected to idol worship, or they were unloving relationships. o It’s those social realities that the Bible condemns, not the act itself.
• So the argument here would go something like this: o The headship of the man and the submission of the woman is, sadly, how society functioned in the NT world. o Paul is not giving a timeless theological command. He’s simply trying to teach Christians how to live at peace with one another in the fallen 1st century world. o So, Paul is saying: Do it for peace right now. Submit to your husbands now in this broken first century world, but that’s not the way God intended it to be. And then commentators can say, “Look, we live in an emancipated society today, so women don’t actually need to submit to their husbands anymore. It’s not a theological command.” We don’t have slaves today, and we don’t have submissive wives today.
• The problem with this view, is that Paul actually is giving a theological instruction. o Paul says wives are supposed to submit to their husbands, and husbands are supposed to love their wives. o There are two sides to what Paul is saying. You can’t have one without the other.
o If God’s design never really was that wives aren’t supposed to submit to their husbands, then God’s design never really was that husbands should love their wives.
- MUTUAL SUBMISSION • The third way to make the passage say something else, is to argue that it’s actually just speaking about mutual submission to one another. o Eph 5:21 says we are all to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. This is mutual submission, so this is true for the rest of the passage. So, according to this view, husbands and wives are to mutually submit to one another. The man doesn’t actually have any sort of authority in the family.
o But Paul it talking lines of authority in this passage. If you go with the mutual submission view, then that would have to carry down to the other relationships Paul mentions. There’s no indication that: Christ submits to the church Parents submit to their children Masters submit to slaves
o Analogy: we all are commanded to love one another, but within the household, husbands are commanded to love their wives in a special more particular way. I don’t love everybody in the same way that I love my wife. In other words, I don’t water down the command to love my wife based on the fact that Eph 5:2 says we should all walk in love, or Jesus says in John 13:34 to love one another. 4. SEMANTICS • If all else fails: just go the semantic route. o One author: Kroeger: “Submit” doesn’t mean submit. Best way to do this is to quote some Greek. Say something like: “the Greek word is hupotasso and has many meanings, and in this context it actually means “to attach one thing to another, or to identify one person or thing with another.” • The wife leaves her family to attach herself to her husband. • So really, Paul’s saying that she’s just identifying herself with him. And then you point to a text nobody’s ever heard of like Polybius (3.36.6–7; 38.4; 18.15.4) and another text or two in the NT for good measure. o None of those texts support such an interpretation though, and if you look at 1 Peter 3:1–2, the point is that the quiet submission of the woman is what wins over the man. Submission, Peter says, can be an act of evangelism. “1Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, 2when they see your respectful and pure conduct” (1 Peter 3:1–2).
• Truth is, you can’t water it down, the passage actually says: “wives submit to your husbands in everything.”
• It’s not the slip of the pen either. Paul was nodding off… o “Wives be submissive to your husbands” occurs 4 times in the NT. o Eph 5:22–24; Col 3:18; 1 Peter 3:1–2; Titus 2:3–5
• So you can’t water the passage down, and it’s not the slip of the pen. Paul really is saying: submitting to your husband is an act of submission to God.
C. Why Is This So Hard? PRIDE • Let me just get a quick show of hands from the men here. How many of you would say you like it when someone does this to you [finger]. It’s not easy when people tell you what to do.
• Submitting is hard for all of us, but is something that all of us are called to do at one level or another. None of us actually get a free pass of total independence. But we want it.
• In Gen 3:4–5 the serpent tells Eve: you won’t die if you eat of the fruit from the garden. Instead, God knows that when you eat the fruit you will be like God, knowing good and evil. o Oh wow, we can be like God? o Yeah, who’s God anyway to tell us what we can and can’t do? o So Adam and Eve eat the fruit. They wanted their independence. They know better than God.
o And then interestingly, part of the curse is that there is going to have a hard time with the order God put in place: “To the woman he said, ‘I will multiply your pain in childbearing…your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you’” (Gen 3:16). o The woman was created to be the man’s helpmate (Gen 2:18, 23–24). Man and woman were meant to compliment each other. o In the fall, though, that order is disrupted and the woman desires a different role.
• In short, pride and sin make it hard for women––and men––to be submissive. And this goes way back in time. It’s not a new struggle.
• So be aware of that: our pride is just going to naturally tell us that we don’t want to be submissive––both men and women. It’s going to be a fight. • Our society doesn’t help in the least either. CULTURE • Our culture is so against anyone telling us anything. Examples: o If a girl says she’s a boy, it’s engrained in us to say, “Who am I to say that she’s not a boy?” o A boy wants to marry a boy: who am I to say he can’t? o A man wants to divorce his wife: how can I say it’s wrong? o How can anybody tell me what to do with my body? If I want to kill my baby, that’s my choice.
• Our society trumpets total emancipation…not in a good way. It trumpets emancipation from morals, biology, advice, family…and ultimately God. o Society says: we’re way beyond all that. o I’m my own person, totally independent. Who are you tell me anything?
• One of the difficulties about this message, is at the back of our minds we all know women have been oppressed in history. And women have gained a lot of rights and freedoms through the feminist movement.
• Broadly speaking, there’ve been about 4 waves: o 1848–1920: women’s suffrage. Decades-long fight to win the right to vote for women. o 1920–1980s: the fight to end sex discrimination and traditional gender roles in society. Really the rise of feminism. Equal pay, reproductive freedom, Roe v. Wade, etc. Women don’t need to be at home with the kids o 1990s–?: sexual harassment in the workplace. o Today: holding powerful men accountable for actions. #MeToo movement, embraced the concept of intersectionality, and is trying to get society to embrace women regardless of sexuality, race, class, or gender.
• What makes this a difficult topic is that as believers we actually agree and identify with some of these goals. Of course women should be able to vote, not be victims of abuse, and have equal rights, equal pay.
• But as believers, we can’t just buy into the feminist movement hook line and sinker. You have to eat the meat and spit out the fat.
• Women are not exactly the same as men. Men are not exactly the same as women. The two are complimentary. o In Jesus’s kingdom there are different roles that God has ordained. o The Bible says women need to submit to their husbands, and husbands need to love their wives sacrificially. • But you’re not going to hear that in today’s society. HUSBANDS ARE LOSERS • Another difficulty is that a lot of time we men are losers. We don’t make it easy for our wives to be submissive. • We’re not the Joe Montanas with the plan, the tactic, the energy, the fervor, and the vision to lead our families. We many times are faithfully submitting to Christ. We don’t have our wives best interest in mind. We don’t love them as Christ loves the church.
• That’s wrong!
• So husbands, if that’s you––you need to repent. As you’ll see next week, you have just as high a bar to achieve in the following verses. We are called to love our wives as Christ loves the church.
• So while these three things make submitting difficult, neither pride/sin, culture, nor your imperfect husband are excuses to ignore God’s command to submit to your husband.
THE SECRET SAUCE • So how do we do it? How do wives submit to their husbands, and all of us submit to Christ?
• The secret sauce is actually in Eph 5:18. You need to be filled with the Holy Spirit (v. 18). You actually do need God’s help. Paul says that when you’re filled with the HS four things happen: o You address one another in hymns (5:19) – so you interact properly with one another o You sing to the Lord (5:20) – you’re thankful to God o You give thanks (5:20) – you’re appreciative o You submit to one another (5:21)
• God’s Holy Spirit is the secret sauce to living out your faith in humble submission!
So, if Paul is commanding us to walk in wisdom, how do we do that? The answer to our question is that the Spirit empowers us to walk in wisdom. In verses 15-17, Paul lifts up “making the best use of the time” and “understanding the will of the Lord” as examples of wise, Spirit empowered living. To me, both of these things sound nearly impossible. How in the world am I supposed to make the best use of the time in such an evil day, and how does one know the will of the Lord? Here’s what we need to understand about this passage. As Paul is contrasting wise living with foolish living, he is giving us specific examples of what it looks like to live wisely - making the best use of the time and understanding the will of the Lord. To do those things, is wise. To not do those things is foolish. So to understand Paul’s commands here, we need to understand some of Paul’s thoughts about true wisdom. I think that it is abundantly clear that Paul teaches that true wisdom is found in Jesus Christ. Colossians 2:3 says that, “Christ, (is the one) 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. In the Son are hidden ALL of the treasures of wisdom. True wisdom is seeing all of life from God’s perspective, and we know the Father through the Son. In Ephesians 1, Paul prays earnestly to God that those reading his letter would be given “the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of (God the Father).” It is through the revelation of God in Jesus Christ - God the Son incarnate - by the power of the Spirit, that we can know true wisdom. In contrast to the true wisdom revealed in Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit, foolishness is revealed in the fleshly living of those who do not know Christ. 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 says, “18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” 20 Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 4 These verses reveal that the wisdom of all the earth is not sufficient on its own to cause anyone to truly see God, and because of this the wisdom of the world is really no wisdom at all. As people, we either have wisdom in Christ or we do not have true wisdom. This walk in true wisdom that Paul calls us to in verses 15-17 is only possible for those who are sealed and empowered by the Holy Spirit. For those of us who are followers of Christ, we used to walk in this world as those who were blind to the wisdom of Christ. Though we could see with our earthly eyes, our spiritual eyes were unenlightened by the powerfully, piercing light of the gospel. But, through faith in Jesus Christ our eyes have been opened to the glories of gospel truth, and we can now walk in true wisdom. If you are here today, and you do not know Christ, our collective prayer is that the Holy Spirit would open your eyes to the true hope that we have in Jesus. Please believe in the Christ who died on the cross, defeated sin and death in His resurrection from the dead, and ascended on high in order to carry out this glorious exchange - blindness for sight, foolishness for wisdom. Application: To those of us who believe, how do we make the best use of our time in this evil day? We, in the power of the Spirit, continue to drink more deeply of the gospel of Jesus Christ. How do we know the will of the Lord? We, in the power of the Spirit, follow the way of Christ. How do we walk wisely? We walk wisely in the power of the Spirit who unites us to Jesus Christ. For some of us, walking wisely will look like taking opportunities to evangelize at the playground with the other moms. For others, walking wisely will look like mowing the grass of a widow in our church. Boys and girls who are in here, what do you think it could mean for you to walk wisely? Maybe for you, it would be something as simple as putting away your toys the first time that your parents ask. 5 For all of us, though, walking wisely will look like obeying the commands of Christ through the power of the Spirit in whatever opportunities lie before us. As we move to verse 18, we’re going to see that not only is the believer’s walk in wisdom empowered by the Spirit but we will also see that the believer’s walk is empowered by the fullness of the Spirit. In verse 18, Paul lays out one of the most crucial commands of the book of Ephesians when he says, “be filled with the Spirit.” Because the fullness of the Spirit empowers our growth in holiness, we dare not live the Christian life without dwelling deeply on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. As we seek to follow all of the commands of Scripture, it is the fullness of the Spirit that enables us to grow in obedience. As we examine this command in verse 18 to be filled with the Spirit, I’m not going to spend much time on the prohibition of drunkenness. While it’s a sin to be drunk, and I would sternly condemn drunkenness, Paul’s main priority in this prohibition is to contrast drunkenness with the filling of the Spirit as his central command. So, unlike the hyper fundamentalist churches that I grew up in, who usually only focused on condemning alcohol with this passage, I’m going to spend the majority of my time with this passage focusing on what it means to be filled with the Spirit. There are thousands of things that we should not be filled with, but the emphasis here is that we should be filled with the Holy Spirit. When we come to the command to be filled with the Spirit, there are several questions to answer to grasp the topic of filling with the Spirit. The first question that we must answer is “what is fullness with the Spirit?” Because every believer is indwelled by the Spirit at conversion, we must first understand that the fullness of the Spirit is not the initial indwelling of the Spirit. While the Spirit certainly intends to fill the vessel that he indwells, the command to continue to seek the fullness of the Spirit indicates that we are speaking of further growth in the Spirit beyond the initial indwelling of the Spirit. 6 Along the same lines, we must realize that Paul is assuming that the believers he is writing to in Ephesians already have the Spirit, and that they are sealed by the same Spirit. Paul’s use of the phrase “filled with the Spirit” is different from the sealing or indwelling of the Spirit. Throughout Scripture, the filling of the Spirit can be explained in three broad categories. I’m drawing from John Stott’s wonderful little booklet, Baptism and Fullness as I explain this to you. If you can, get this booklet to help as you seek to engage more thoroughly with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Of the three broad Scriptural categories for the filling of the Spirit, the first is that, in Scripture, the fullness of the Spirit is used to refer to the normal characteristic of every dedicated Christian. We see one example of this in Acts 6:3 as the Apostles were choosing deacons. It says, “Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty.” It’s clear here that these men were to be characterized as being full of the Spirit before they were ever chosen for service as deacons. Certainly, fullness of the Spirit should be normal for the growing, faithful Christian. Secondly, the fullness of the Spirit refers to a special foundation for a particular ministry or office. An example of this would be in reference to John the Baptist from Luke 1:15 which says, “15 for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb.” Even in the womb, John the Baptist was filled with the Spirit for his special ministry of being the forerunner of Christ. Thirdly, there are occasions when the fullness of the Spirit is given to equip people not so much for special, lifelong ministry as for an immediate task. An example for this comes from the martyrdom of Stephen in Acts 7:55 which says, “55 But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.” As Stephen was martyred, the Spirit filled him to be able to boldly proclaim Christ and to endure suffering. So, what is the fullness of the Spirit? I believe that in the context of this passage and the broader categories of Scripture that fullness of the Spirit refers to the characteristic pattern of the believer’s walk being strongly influenced by the Spirit rather than being strongly influenced by the flesh. 7 In contrast to the way that being drunk causes one to be so influenced by the alcohol that they turn to all kinds of uncontrollable actions, being filled with the Spirit means that a believer is so strongly influenced by the Spirit that their life results in the controlled actions of the fruit of the Spirit. The second question that we must answer when it comes to the filling of the Spirit is “how can I be filled with the Spirit?” To answer this question, in the clearest way, I think that we must turn to the teachings of Jesus. In Luke 11:13, Jesus says, “13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” Fullness of the Holy Spirit is something that we must relentlessly and humbly ask the Father for. The Father’s desire is for His children to know the fullness of the Holy Spirit, yet so often we do not ask our Father for the fullness of the Spirit. Why don’t we ask the Father for the fullness of the Spirit? For some it's because we’ve never understood what the fullness of the Spirit even is. For others, it’s because we’re afraid of the dangerous excess and lack of Scriptural foundation of some strains of modern day Pentecostalism. For most of us, though, we do not ask the Father for the fullness of the Spirit because we do not believe in the urgency of the spiritual battle that we are in Christian brothers and sisters, we are at war! While victory is guaranteed through the work of Christ on the cross, Satan still has a foothold in our flesh, and our self-sufficient, proud hearts are all too eager to turn away from the battle for holiness. We must battle this incredible tension that we experience in this age of the “already but not yet - this time between the inauguration and consummation of Christ’s kingdom - by the fullness of the Spirit! Because of the constant war with our flesh that we face as believers, it is only through the filling of the Spirit that we can see true, lasting, increasing victory over sin and holiness in our lives. 8 Do you want to conquer sin through the fullness of the Spirit? Ask God to fill you with his Spirit. It is through this empowering work of the Spirit that we can see true victory as we live in obedience to the commands of God. The second teaching of Jesus that helps us to answer our question “how can I be filled with the Spirit” is found in Luke 7. Verses 37-39 say this, “37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ ” 39 Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” In this passage, Jesus stands up and paints a picture of one who thirsts in a way that only Jesus can satisfy. Those who are separated from Jesus are parched, dry, and panting for water, and Jesus bids them come to Him so that He can quench their thirst. Only those who drink of Jesus will have the thirst quenching satisfaction of a mighty river of living water. But what is this living water? Verse 39 tells us that the rivers of living water are the Holy Spirit. Fullness with the water that is supplied by Jesus is fullness with the Spirit. Application: If you desire to be full of the Spirit, you must drink deeply of the waters that flow from Jesus Himself. Savor Him. Worship Him. Fill your mind with His Words. Oh church, may we never tire of Jesus. May we go to Him time and time again for the rivers of living water, and in doing so, Lord, may we be filled with your Spirit anew. As we move on to the next verses in our passage, we can see that they answer the question “what are the marks of being filled with the Spirit,” and the answer is that fullness with the Spirit empowers the believer’s walk in worship. One of the primary identifiers of one who is filled with the Spirit is that they participate in true worship. Verses 19-21 are some of the most powerful verses on worship in the New Testament because they are so deeply connected to the role of the Holy Spirit in empowering our worship. As we look at these verses, we must note that these verses clearly highlight the Godward as well as the corporate aspects of worship in the church. Verses 19 and 21 address the corporate aspects of our worship as Christians. 9 It’s no mistake that Paul notes one of the first marks of being filled with the Holy Spirit is addressing or speaking to one another in a way that propels our worship. Now, when Paul says that we ought to address one another in “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs,” he is not implying that being filled with the Spirit means that we can only sing at each other as our primary means of communication, even though, as a church family, we often do encourage one another through our sung worship. What Paul is trying to press home here is that the content of our communication, our addressing of one another, whether sung or otherwise, should be filled with the same mingling of truth and emotion that is found in the greatest songs of the Christian faith. What makes great Christian music such an important part of the historic Church? It is the unique blending together of emotion and truth that binds our hearts to each other and to God in singing. Just as our music ought to convey both emotion and biblical truth, so too should all of our conversations with each other cause emotional, truthful worship to be taking place. The second corporate aspect of worship that Paul addresses in these verses as a mark of being filled with the Spirit is found in verse 21. Paul says that we should be submitting to one another. I believe that local churches are the greatest, most tangible displays of the gospel in our world, and I believe that a church that truly grasps living together in mutual submission provides one of the greatest apologetics for Christ in our present day. In a time of polarization due to politics and in a day where genuine connection with others is lacking due to the commonality of online interactions, a church that lives in the unity and connection that comes from mutual submission to each other will help the world to see what true worship looks like. Additionally, there’s nothing that inflames the worship of a church more than unity in the gospel manifested in mutual submission. In verses 19 and 20, Paul also addresses the marks of fullness in the Spirit that are displayed in Godward worship. 10 One of these marks is the giving of thanks to God always and for everything in the name of Jesus Christ. The giving of thanks in everything is a God glorifying act of worship, because it is a right response to the truth about our sovereign King. What could be more God glorifying than responding to God’s self revelation in His sovereignty over all things with true, heartfelt thanks? While there’s genuine evil in this broken, sinful world, and we must not be ones to call evil good and good evil, we can rest confidently in the fact that only in Christ Jesus can “…all things work together for good…” Application: Cling to this promise my dear brothers and sisters and let this promise propel you to give thanks to God in everything as an evidence of the fullness of the Spirit in your life. The final mark of the fullness of the Spirit that Paul mentions here is singing that is directed to the Lord and is done with the whole heart. As I mentioned earlier, the combination of emotion and truth in singing is something that has united the church for centuries, and we get to join in this chorus of all ages when we sing here at church, in our homes, and on our ways to work. While many of us do not have the greatest of voices, I hope that you know what it means to engage in singing with all of your heart for the glory of God alone. Sing out church, because in doing so we are offering pleasing sacrifices to the Lord himself. As God’s new covenant people, we are, as it says in 1 Peter 2:5, “a holy priesthood, to offer sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” Application: In our singing, we offer, as a body, acceptable worship to God. And, each and every one of us has a part in that. Our worship team should never be the primary worshippers of Faith Community Bible Church on a Sunday morning. Our elders should not be the primary sacrifice offerers. The guitars and drums should not be the primary instruments of praise. The primary worshippers of FCBC on a Sunday morning should be you, the priesthood of believers, using the instrument of your voice to lift praises to God in Christ Jesus with all of your heart. 11 That is evidence of the fullness of the Spirit empowering your walk in worship. Conclusion: If you remember the story about being lost that I told you at the beginning of this message, well, obviously we eventually found the path. The problem, though, was that we still had a ton of miles left to walk even after we had spent all that time wandering in the woods. Eventually we made it to the end of the hike, though, and it felt so good to reach our final destination. Finally, we could rest! The Christian life is a lot like this arduous hike. It’s no short jaunt. It’s a long walk of obedience in the power of the Holy Spirit. Because of this, I believe that it is incredibly important that each of us leave here today with a deep understanding that our walk as believers is empowered by the Holy Spirit. In all that comes in life, let us, as followers of Jesus, seek the fullness of the Holy Spirit which empowers our walk. In the parenting of a stubborn teenager, only the Spirit’s power can cause you to speak words that He carries to their heart. In the death of your dearly loved ones, only the Spirit’s power can enable you to see the hand of a good God at work in every aspect of their life and death. In all of the transitions and changes that our church has experienced, only the Spirit’s power can keep us worshiping with white hot passion that displays God’s glorious gospel to the rest of the world. In the words of Psalm 95, and in earnest desire for the filling of the Holy Spirit, I say to you Faith Community Bible Church, “Oh come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods…Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts…”
IMITATORS OF GOD: LOVE, SEX, AND THE GLORY OF CHRIST Ephesians 5:1-14 • FCBC • 07/23/23 Good morning church, it is a privilege to be worshipping with you this morning. If you are visiting with us for the first time my name is Ryan and I am the pastor for worship and counseling and one of the elders here at FCBC and I have the privilege of opening up the Word to us this morning. I want to start by simply reading our passage and then we’ll jump right in. This morning we’re going to be looking at Paul’s exhortation to us to be imitators of God in love, sexual integrity. And the temptation I fought this week was just jumping right into what that might look like for us as believers this practically (to just go right for the implications and applications of this text). But I want to pause pretty significantly to unpack that term “Be imitators of God.” What in the world does it even mean to be imitators of God? I wrestled with this exhortation from Paul all week and I think if you can read right over that and go directly to the application and the “how” behind this call to imitate God without even a second thought (or a small mental breakdown), I want to gently but honestly tell you, you have WAY TO HIGH A VIEW OF YOUR SPIRITUAL CAPACITIES AND ABILITIES. Let’s go backwards for a bit. We’ve spent the last five weeks going through the imperatives of chapter 4. As Steve mentioned at the beginning of the book, Ephesians is really broken up into two parts; chapters 1-3 where Paul puts on display the glorious realities of the of the gospel. This is what we’ve referred to as the indicatives (declarations) that are so predominate in the first 3 chapters of Ephesians. And chapters 4-6 are what a life lived under those glorious realities looks like. We’ve referred to these as the imperatives or the commands that are so predominate in the last 3 chapters of the book. And so, before we move on, I just want to jog our memory for a moment and go backwards because I think that will serve us well as we get into the 5th chapter of this book. In chapter 1 Paul breaks down the fact that it takes a work of the entire trinity to bring us to God. The Father chooses a people for himself before the foundation of the world according to the good purpose of His will which brings Him glory and promises that remnant of people to the Son. He then commissions the Son on a rescue mission to save and redeem those people through His own blood giving us the forgiveness of our trespasses and the riches of His grace as an inheritance which Paul says He lavishes upon us (in other words he’s not stingy with His blessing of salvation). And then the son commissions the Spirit which we see in Ephesians 1:13-14 as promised in John 14:16 and John 15:26 to seal or secure this promised hope of a people that will one day live with their God forever. The Father makes the promise, the Son makes the provision, and the Spirit guarantees our hope until redemptions done until we join in endless praise to God the three in one… and why does Paul say He does this!? It’s as we sing “to the praise of His glory, to the praise of His mercy and grace, to the praise of His glory YOU are the God that saves!” If you’ve come in here this morning and are wondering, “Why am I here? Why have I come? I am overwhelmed by my sin and have grown weary of doing good, what could possibly happen this morning that would change my life, my outlook, or my circumstances?” It’s this, you are beloved! In love he predestined you to adoption as sons and daughters through the blood of Jesus Christ, in love he has called you and given you the forgiveness of your sins and the lavish riches of His grace, in love he has blessed you and called you beloved, in love he is making known to you the mystery of His will which is this great gospel that is making all thing new and right again, in love he has sealed you for the day of redemption despite your ever challenging growth and sanctification he will PERSONALLY see it through!!! That’s why you’re here this morning because Christ loves you and has called you to Himself! And that’s just chapter 1 of the book. Chapter 2 Paul goes on to describe our condition and what we’ve been called from and called to. We who were sons of disobedience walking according to the passions of our flesh have been saved by grace. Not saved by our own hard work but saved by grace having been given faith as a gift to believe in God. This is not a result of our own doing rather as Paul says it is a gift of God, not of works so that our only boast is in Christ ALONE! This gospel of grace that levels the playing field for all of us, gives us a unity as one body so that you can’t look over to your neighbor and say I was more acceptable than you were, more lovable, less dirty, just flat out better. It’s so that in Paul’s day the Jews couldn’t look at the gentiles whom they despised and say “You have no place in this family” rather “this same gift of grace we’ve received as God’s special people has been extended to you through the blood of Jesus, so that you are now as Ephesians 3:6 says, ‘fellow heirs, members of this same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel’.” Over and over and over Paul is hammering away at this simple truth, you were saved by God, for God, and to God. To put it another way from one of Paul’s other New Testament letter’s “to live is Christ and to die is gain!” This is the most important thing about you, your identity in Christ, because that is what you were created for; to dwell with, fellowship with, and worship your creator! So why do I bring all this up again? Well, as we said at the beginning, we've spent the last five weeks going through these imperatives or these commands that Paul is totally unapologetic about. He's saying if your life has truly been transformed by the gospel it should look like this: 1. Don’t lie rather tell the truth 2. Don’t sin with anger rather be angry and don’t sin 3. Don’t steal rather labor with honest work so you have something to share 4. Don’t speak corruptly rather use your words for building up and giving grace These are all good things and should definitely characterize the life and living of a Christian! I mean who doesn’t want an honest, gentle, hardworking, generous, and encouraging person in their life? I’d even say even non-Christians would consider this type of person to be generally good for their communities, businesses, and society in general. But I want us to consider something before moving on to our passage which contains another (what feels like) weightier imperative waiting for us in the very first verse of Ephesians 5. Consider this: • There are plenty of honest, gentle, hardworking, generous, and encouraging people in the world who haven't been transformed by the power of the gospel. This begs the question, “What’s the difference between a non Christian who’s life can be characterized by these virtues, values, and imperatives and a Christian who obeys these commands from Paul and bears fruit?” o The power by which you accomplish these good works and… o The purpose for which you accomplish these good works § And that’s going to be so important as we look at this next imperative • You see the power by which the unregenerate person seeks to be a decent person ultimately rests in and relies on SELF and the ultimate purpose for which they seek to accomplish these virtues is FOR SELF • But the power by which the Christian can bear fruit of this nature is his/her UNION in CHRIST and the purpose for which the Christian bears fruit is FOR the GLORY of CHRIST The reason why this distinction is SO important is because we get to Ephesians 5:1 and we see this command “Therefore be imitators of God.” That’s almost seems like an incredulous statement. “Really Paul, imitate God!? You might as well ask me to swim across the Pacific Ocean or jump to mars.” God is holy, God is perfect in wisdom, love knowledge, and power. He does all things well. He is perfect in justice; he upholds the universe with the Word of His power. He never sins. And yet Paul seems still to implore us to this anyway and I think this is why he can do this Paul summarizes three chapters of indicatives (or declarations regarding your identity) and it’s in the three words in the rest of that verse, “As Beloved Children!” You see, if we aren’t saturated in the gospel realities of Ephesians 1-3, if we don’t have a robust view of our identity in Christ, then we’re going to read right over the phrase “As beloved Children” and not believe that imitating God, as Paul is understanding it, is possible. You see this is why Paul spends so much time unpacking the glorious realities of the gospel for us in Ephesians 1-3. He realizes the only power by which someone can imitate God is by the power of the gospel. And we throw that word around here a lot; the gospel, the power of the gospel, applying the gospel to our lives, gospel, gospel, gospel. It can almost become white noise. So, when I say that Paul realizes the only power by which someone can imitate God is by the power of the gospel what I am saying is “Christ’s life and righteousness working in and through you, applied to you through the blood of Jesus Christ shed on the cross, and working in you by the power of the Holy Spirit!” • You see the Greek word for “imitator” of God in verse 1 comes from the root word: μιμεομαι (mimeomai) this is a verb and noun form from where we get our word mimic. • But the actual word used here specifically in Ephesians 5:1 is the word: μιμητής (mimites) which is actually primarily a noun form. • You might be wondering, “Why does that matter, and it matters because if we’re going to stay consistent with Paul’s line of thought through this whole book, we have to understand that being an imitator of God is not some impossible thing to be accomplished but rather a position in Christ to be assumed that yields fruit! I love how Calvin put it, he said: o This principle is followed out and enforced by the consideration that children ought to be like their father. He reminds us that we are the children of God, and therefore bear a resemblance to God just as an earthly son bears a resemblance to his earthly father. o You see this is as much about resemblance through identity as it is about bearing fruit through action o And that is really good news for us as Paul is about to implore us to do this is primarily in two ways in the text: by imitating Christ’s love, and in our sexual integrity So, with all that in mind: let’s look at this first way in which we bear a resemblance as children of God and that’s through: • Imitating Christ’s love • Bears the question what does the love look like that I am supposed to imitate • And how did Christ love us? Well, Paul tells us in verse 2 by giving himself up for us sacrificially. o Twice in this book Paul describes the love of Christ as a giving up of himself to the point of death. He says it again in verse 25 giving husbands an example of how they ought to love their wives. He says “as Christ loved the church and gave himself up” for her. He says something similar again in Philippians 2 talking about Christ’s humbling himself to come to His creation and giving himself up for us in obedience to the point of death, even death on a cross. 1 Timothy 2:6, Paul says he gave himself up as a ransom for all. Or Galatians 2:20 where Paul says, “and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” o Paul seems to narrow in often throughout his epistles on this unique nature of Christ’s love which is that of utter and total selflessness in a spirit of “giving himself up” in sacrificial love for his own people, for sinners like you and me. o And of course he focuses on this, this is at the very core of the gospel. In this act of giving himself up we see Christ’s truest display of love which was sacrificing his own life for His enemies. He gave himself up for you and for me. And Paul says to us here in Ephesians 5:2 imitate that. And guess what, you actually can. You can die to self, and live to Christ and sacrifice for others, and give and live selflessly for the good of those around you and even towards your enemy because remember; You are a child of God, you bear His resemblance and the resemblance of Christ. You share the same DNA. Paul says it this way in Romans 8:11: § the same spirit that raised Jesus Christ from the dead (and that is the Spirit of God) dwells in you and is right now giving life to your mortal body § And that is not only power to be saved but also the power to look like Jesus in the ways that he loves. It’s power to change you more and more into the image of God. o God had Jesus give himself up for you so that through his sacrifice you might be able to give yourself in sacrificial love to others resembling the love of Christ. You see, you can’t give what you haven’t received but for those who have received the love of God, He has made them children of God who can live and act in the light of His love • He also calls us to imitate God in our sexual integrity: o Verse 3 says not to let any immorality, impurity, or covetousness be even named among you. o Your Bible might say fornication but the Greek word for sexual immorality is πορνεία (porneia) where we get our word pornography and came to mean all forms of sexual immorality including but not limited to incest, prostitution, polygamy, adultery, and any other form of sexual gratification outside of God’s good design o Something interesting to note about the word porneia, In the Septuagint, the term refers specifically to adultery and, metaphorically, to Israel’s idolatrous betrayal of her marriage to God. I think this is significant because it speaks to the very nature of our sin which manifests in many ways but at it’s root is idolatry o And Paul distinguishes sexual immorality from impurity which is the Greek word ἀκαθαρσίᾳ (akatharsia) this is the idea of general uncleanness, or filthiness. It’s the idea of loving something dirty or corrupted from it’s original state of beauty. Paul uses this word over and over in the New Testament and it’s often preceded by the word ἐπὶ (epi) which denotes aim or intention. In other words the intention is viewed as the basis for whatever act of impurity Paul is referencing. It’s not just careless or thoughtless falling into uncleanness but rather an intention, pursuit, a trajectory driven by motive and desire. o And then he says covetousness which is not a word we use often in this day and age. It’s the Greek word πλεονεξία (Pleonexia) which his often interchangeable with the word greed. As a matter of fact Paul uses this same word in Ephesians 4:19 but there it is translated greed and not covetousness. And yet even in that passage was tied closely to sensuality. It’s the idea this intense desire for something that’s not yours and you’ll stop at nothing to get it. It’s this insatiable lust that tricks you into thinking you should have something that God never intended you to have, and you’ll do whatever it takes to get it. o Paul is saying let none of this be a part of you don’t even let it be named among you. He says in verse 4 don’t even joke about or talk about it or take it lightly. o And then he says God is so serious about His holiness that anyone who is sexually immoral, impure, or covetous (which is ultimately idolatry) has NO INHERITANCE IN THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST AND GOD. NOW HOLD ON A MINUTE!!! Let’s get really honest, you might be asking yourself and rightly so, Ryan, what does this say about me and my condition. I’ve been sexually immoral. I’ve been impure or unclean. I’ve coveted and lusted after things or people that aren’t mine. Maybe the scarier thing is, if I’m honest my flesh still does at times!? I struggle. I’m a sinner. I’ve looked at porn or am currently looking at porn. I find myself as the psalmist says devising evil or ungodliness in my heart. There are moments in the idleness of time I find myself drawn to sin in my thinking, wanting, and lusting. What does this mean for me! That’s makes sense! • We’ll look at two ways which we might be tempted to interpret this passage that we ought not to and one way in which I think we have an answer from Paul: o Ignore it: We might be tempted to make light of this warning and say, “God is benevolent and would never actually intentionally reject someone from his kingdom who sins like this. Who in the world could stand, everyone is a sinner which means no one would have access to his kingdom and his fellowship.” And while I understand why we as sinners feeling the weight of our guilt and shame might be tempted to think that; I don’t think Paul is lightening up here in regards to sin. He’s not apologetic over God’s standard and holiness. This isn’t the first time Paul has said this in regards to these sorts of sins. He gives a similar list and warning in Romans 1, I Corinthians 5, 1 Corinthians 6, Galatians 5, Colossians 3, 1 Thessalonians 4, 1 Timothy 1, 2 Timothy 3, and Titus 3. He obviously is trying to make a point about who inherits the kingdom of God and who God’s people are throughout the majority of the New Testament. God doesn’t capitulate with sin. You don’t brutally kill your only son in order to make a deal with the devil. No, God sent His Son to die not to make amends with sin but to destroy it once and for all, defeating Satan and his enemies, overturning the fall and to establish a people and a kingdom where righteousness, love, and holiness is the very air we breathe. Let’s not think Paul doesn’t mean what he says here because he obviously does as does God who inspired Him to write it. o Earn It: The other thing we may be tempted to think (and some certainly have pressed into) is that this is some beckon call to perfection and that any struggle with sexual immorality, impurity, or covetousness (especially in seasons of intense struggle with sin) is evidence of disqualification from the kingdom of God and Christ. Oh church how we have such a limited view of our sin and depravity. We are so quick to measure our holiness by how much we are or aren’t actively sinning but we forget that Christ didn’t just die to atone for sinful acts, he died to atone for sinful natures. Inevitably in a body this size there are degrees to which some are wrestling with sin. Just because you aren’t in the heat of the battle regarding sexual sin or perhaps other sins doesn’t mean you are any less in need of a Savior than those who are. If that’s the case for you praise God that He by His grace is giving you victory in certain areas of your life, He promised he’d continue shaping you into His image. But don’t be deceived sin is deceptive and our enemy is smart and knows how to gain a foothold in our affections so take heed lest you fall. Continue to see that your nature is always in need of a Savior. But perhaps you are in here and struggling with sexual sin and temptation and are in the heat of the battle right now. § And listen just as an aside, let’s not just reduce our sexual brokenness down to pornography only. Yes, that is a massive issue in our culture and not just in our culture but in the church. But there are so many other ways in which we fight against sexual brokenness in our lives. Remember Satan’s strategy always is to take God’s good gifts and distort them by telling us that there is a better way to enjoy what God intended; and there is no limit to that line of reasoning. He is crafty, he is a liar, and he’ll say and do whatever is takes to convince you otherwise that God is good, His ways are good, and He is to be trusted. Marriages are broken sexually, single people are broken sexually, our children are broken sexually, the way men view women and women view men is often distorted and fueled by the enemies tactics. So, let’s not kid ourselves. Yes, our sexual sin isn’t less than pornography but we are complex beings so it is certainly more than that as well. o So you might be in the heat of the battle as we speak and saying “what is wrong with me, why can’t I just stop!” I read my Bible and pray but it doesn’t seem to be working. Listen don’t stop reading your Bible and certainly don’t stop praying because those means of grace will eventually bear you fruit, but you aren’t alone in that feeling of failure. Listen to these words from Romans 7:21-25: § [21] So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. [22] For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, [23] but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. [24] Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? [25] Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. o This is Paul talking here, the very person writing this letter to the Ephesians and giving this very warning. He seems to be well acquainted with the deep struggle against sin and he’s honest about it. He says “my sin is so intense it seems like there are two natures at war inside of me and that’s because there is.” We often say that God has saved us from the power of sin through the cross but he’s left us in sin’s affect here on earth until he comes again eradicating the very presence of sin and Paul’s just honest enough to call that reality out. He says I want to obey the law of God with my mind but often I end up serving the law of sin with my flesh!? o And notice, he doesn’t say, therefore I’m going to do better and try harder and fix myself. He literally just throws up a cry to Heaven in verse 24 of Romans 7 “O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death!?” And he has an answer to that question which will lead us to our final point today. If the answer to our question of, “What do we do with this warning from Paul regarding our future hope and inheritance” isn’t just ignore it and live with our sin and the answer isn’t we have to earn our spot in the kingdom of God and Christ by waging war on our sin and doing better and trying harder than what are we left with!? • Expose it: This would be terrifying if it weren’t for the nature of our relationship to God in the gospel! This is why we spent SOOO much time in understanding our union with Christ before we jumped into this passage. Remember Paul’s words “As beloved children?” Because you are a child of God you’ve been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the beloved Son where you have redemption and the forgiveness or your sins. And you might say “yea but I still struggle with my sins…” and I’d say “I know and so does everyone else in here this morning who has a pulse.” But, you’ve been transferred from darkness into light. You’ve been given the forgiveness of your sins not the absence of them, at least not yet. Look at what Paul says in the following verses. The wrath of God (which is the rejection of those identified by their immorality, and impurity, and covetousness into His kingdom as we’ve just talked about) comes on the sons of disobedience, those still living in darkness and rejecting Christ and his reign completely. But he says to these Ephesian believers and he is saying to you today, that’s not your identity anymore! You no longer walk in darkness. At one time you were darkness but you are now light and get to walk as children of the light. What does this mean? It means you no longer have to hide your sins from the wrath of God but instead you get to expose your sins in the light of His love and watch Him forgive you of your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. The vehicle we have through the work of Christ that continually draws us to Christ is repentance. Yea but Ryan, what if I sin again today, repent! What if I sin again tomorrow, repent! What if I keep struggling with this sin, then keep repenting! Repent to God, give your sin to Christ and confess your sin to one another! Exposing your sin to God isn’t cause to run away from God, it’s cause for God to draw near to you and cleanse you from all impurity. Don’t get me wrong you can spurn and quench the Holy Spirit and create distance in your fellowship with him but only by not repenting of your sin. God didn’t kill his own son for sin to create distance between you and Him rather He killed his own son so that you could have an advocate to the father despite your sin and that advocate is the man Jesus Christ! This is the beauty of the gospel, the beauty of your union in Christ, and the beauty of the Pauline epistles, you can be free from sin because you are free from sin because you belong to the family of God, through the grace of Christ, and the wok of the Holy Spirit in you and that’s where Paul started this whole book and where we started our message today. Be imitators of God in imitating the love of Christ and in your sexual integrity not in order to be children of God but “As Beloved Children of God.” The kingdom of God and Christ is made up of those who resemble the Father and look like Jesus and they resemble the father not by not struggling with immorality, impurity, and covetousness, but by repenting of their immorality, impurity, and covetousness and repenting often! • In other words the kingdom of God is made up of repentant people because repentant people reflect His holiness and want God. Unrepentant people don’t care if they resemble God because God and an eternity with Him in His kingdom is not what their hearts truly long for! • Church can we start normalizing our sin nature? Not normalizing sin but normalizing the fact that we are all in the same battle the apostle Paul was in wherein two natures diametrically opposed to one another are waging war over our affections. BUT, through the work of Christ and the gift of repentance we can walk alongside each other and encourage each other to be imitators of God. That means we can’t gasp in disbelief when one of our brothers or sisters confesses sin to us as though we can’t believe that their first father and mother were Adam and Eve like the rest of us. But instead, gently yet unapologetically come alongside one another and say, “Hey you’re a beloved child, a child of the light, you can take that sin right to the cross of Christ and be freed from it right now. So, let me help you in your growth and fight to kill that sin or idol.” And Lord willing they’ll do the same for you! • This requires us to be honest about our sin and to be vulnerable. Church, listen I am one of your elders and pastors and I am constantly fighting against my flesh. I have to fight the sin of sexual immorality with the help of my amazing, wise, and Godly wife in our marriage and with brothers who care for my soul. I have to fight the sin of impurity and carelessness over uncleanness. I have to fight the sin of covetousness and idolatry lusting after and wanting what I don’t have. I have a great need for a Savior but I have a great Savior for my need and so do you and I’d rather you know that and glory in a God who saves then pretend that’s not true for some false sense of piety. There are three things we can do this morning and today as we close: 1. So often I hear the question how do I get involved in ministry at FCBC. We’ll I’m going to give you an answer. Look at the person next to you or around you and commit to saying, “Hi, I’m so and so and I am committed to your growth in Christ and would love to get coffee this week and ask you how I can pray for you and where you’re struggling and how I can encourage you in your repentance. And then say, “Would you do the same for me?” There are roughly 1200 of us here at FCBC and there are 9 elders. Could you imagine if our entire church bought into the idea that each of us are responsible for and to each other as a family, could you imagine the affect? That’s doing ministry in the local church, that’s always what “doing ministry” in the local church has looked like! 2. Tonight we’ll be coming back to continue the conversation on how we fight for sexual integrity in this church. If all we do tonight is encourage the conversation towards what God intended for sex and sexuality in His good design and how we so often fall short of it but have an avenue to freedom and joy despite our brokenness, then it will have been a success. 3. Start now. We are going to close with singing “O Come To the Alter” and while it is a beautiful song of repentance and salvation we want it to move from our heads to our hearts and act on it. So I’m going to ask you to do something a little uncomfortable and say, “If you’re hurting and broken within, overwhelmed by the weight of your sin, Jesus is calling” so come up front during this next song and pray with someone. We’ll have members from our sexual integrity ministry as well as members from our prayer team up here who would love to pray with you and minister the gospel of repentance and redemption to your soul. Maybe you’ve realized this morning I’m not bothered by my sin. Or maybe you’ve discovered that the power and purpose by which you try to live your life is ultimately self and not Christ. Then come, repent of your sins, confess Christ as Lord, become an imitator of God “As a beloved child” and find true and ultimate freedom from your sin in a Savior who loved you and gave himself up for you! Paul’s final words to us this morning: a. Ephesians 5:14: for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” b. Listen, do you want the warmth of the light of Christ to shine upon you, come, repent, and believe
HOW TO BE GOOD...AND MAD! Ephesians 4:26-27 • FCBC • 6/25/23 Intro: We live in a polarized world. Put a Democrat and a Republican together and you’ll likely see an argument or a fight. Post anything remotely controversial on Facebook and you’ll probably get called a name or have your motives impugned. Even in your car you’d better buckle up because if you go any distance with any traffic there’s a better than even chance someone may anger you or you may anger them. We’re fast losing civility in our civilization. And it gives all of us a great opportunity to grow and highlight the transformation God is working in us. And in fact, if anyone ought to be distinctive in their attitudes, reactions and behavior, it ought to be people who say they know the Living and gracious God. We should think differently, and see things differently, and behave differently, than if we had never put our lives and futures in Jesus’ hands. Remember the [insight] about those who know God? “You are not the person you once were, so you must no longer live as you once lived.” Salvation isn’t merely adding something new to your old life, but becoming someone new, replacing an old life with a new one. •So, precisely what should change in my life? Paul doesn’t leave anything to the imagination: he points out five critical exchanges. Last week we were first challenged to replace all forms of lying & deception w/truth. (So how did Truth Week go? Catch yourself in any lies? I hope we all have a stronger hold on the truth as a result of Truth Week.) •This week we’re about to hear a second challenge: When God wants to expose areas that distinguish our new lives in Christ from how we once acted/reacted, He also points to our temper, and commands that we replace sinful with righteous anger: NB: (4:26-27). “Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.” •“Wait a minute! Are you saying I can be angry? I thought Bible taught us NOT to be angry at all? Isn’t anger a sin?” This is one of the more misunderstood & mishandled areas of our lives—how we think about and deal with our anger. So: I. [WHAT IS ANGER?] [A. It is an internal emotion:] Websters: “a strong feeling of annoyance, displeasure or hostility.” Want a clearer picture? OT/Hebrew word for anger literally means, “to get red in the face” or “to see nostrils flare”. It’s an accurate picture because physiologically, when we become angry, adrenalin pumps into our bloodstream (we feel a rush); our blood pressure rises & our pulse accelerates; our pupils dilate & our muscles tense. It happens whether we like it or not/whether we want it to or not. It’s an emotion. We feel angry. How we respond may also be seen as anger: [B. It is an external reaction] We respond in anger—and here is where we can have some control over our anger—in its expression. “But I can’t help it–when I get mad, I react.” Really? Have you ever been mad and the phone rings, and you answer it and say sweetly, “Hello?” Apparently, you do have some control. • The OT Hebrew language doesn’t distinguish between kinds of anger—good and bad; just pictures it. But the NT Greek language is far more specific; it IDs 3 kinds of anger: II. [WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?] [A. There is a slow–burning anger]: (vs. 26a) (“anger”/orgh) the most common term for anger can be described as getting hot under collar, we set our jaw, our eyes ablaze, fuming. Interestingly, it can describe both sinful OR righteous anger. But it’s not the only kind: [B. There is a seething anger]: (vs. 26b) (parorgismoß) This is the deep-seated, unforgiving, unrelenting resentment. It is anger that has been nursed, fueled, and coddled over a period of time. It’s always sinful. [C. There is an explosive anger]: Never used of the righteous human anger. You’ve known people with hair-trigger temper. Like Mt. St Helens erupting, or a bomb exploding—you blow up. If you were in terrible 2s, we’d call it temper tantrum. It’s translated in vs. 31 as “wrath” (ESV) or “rage” (NIV). So: III. [IS ANGER ALWAYS WRONG?] Not at all. God created you with the capacity to get mad. It’s as legitimate as your capacity to laugh/cry. Need to ask yourself, “Is anger an emotion designed by God, or it is a sinful short-circuit in our emotional system? Check out: [A. A Few Examples:] [1. God does get angry] [Exodus 34:6-7/x] (repeated 9x). God doesn’t anger quickly, but in time, if a matter is not resolved, his anger can be great as Moses predicts: [Deut. 29:28/x]! The Bible never blushes to portray God’s anger; but his anger is not the result of his being touchy or bad tempered; it is the expression of his holiness and righteousness, and directed toward evil in his creation: [Rom. 1:18] God is angry with anyone who suppresses the truth about Himself. [God] does get angry. But what about Jesus? [2. Jesus became angry], even though never sinned! He was angry at people who sold the right to worship [Jn 2:13-16]. Yet he was never explosive nor out of control. NB it took him a while to make the whip of cords. Not an emotional, spontaneous outburst, but a controlled, careful and determined response to a situation. He was angry at men in the synagogue [Mk 3:1, 5]: they were using a handicapped man as bait to catch Jesus! [x] And what about us? [3. Believers should get angry!] Bible never forbids anger, just qualifies it. NB vs. 26: “Be angry and do not sin” — it is assuming you will and even should get angry at times. Anger not always wrong, like lying or casual sex; rather, it depends upon why you’re angry, & how you respond when you are angry. EG David: [Ps. 119:53/x] In face of blatant evil, we should be indignant rather than tolerant; angry, not apathetic. What other reaction can wickedness be expected to provoke in those who love God? [Beecher/x] So how do I know if my anger is right or wrong? [B. A CLOSE COMPARISON]: [Chart: Sinful vs. Righteous Anger] •Anger is sinful when it’s [selfish]: when our desires, our needs, ambitions are frustrated; when our demands not met, our expectations not realized, our well-being threatened, our selfesteem questioned, when we’re embarrassed, inconvenienced. (e.g “you’re in my way, bothering me, hurt me...); but it’s all about me. That anger is sinful, defensive, full of pride, resentful of what happened to you. But righteous anger is [unselfish]: Can be angry in behalf of God: angry at unbelief, at dishonoring God, at warping the truth, or hurting others. •Anger is sinful when it [controls us]; it causes us to say/do things to hurt another. Looking back on our anger, we realize had we been in control, we never would have said/done that! You had a bad day, kids getting wild, bills thick and wallet thin; and you explode at the person you love most/closest to. If you lose control, it’s not righteous. But righteous anger is always [controlled]; it never short-circuits a person’s thinking or blinds a person to the truth; it never makes a person do what God would never want him to do. •Anger is sinful when it seeks [revenge], when it breeds malice, resentment. Righteous anger seeks [resolution]. Righteous anger vanishes when a person really repents; or when justice is done. You don’t make a person pay at your hands to your satisfaction. It has limits how long it lasts. [C. A Key Insight]: (Pr. 22:24-25) [Anger is a learned response] Which means, however you learned to be angry, you can unlearn it. What you have seen modeled/been exposed to is probably what you’ve picked up. With God’s help, you can learn the respond better, differently! So: IV. [HOW CAN I HANDLE MY ANGER?] How can I be good & mad at the same time? 2 unbiblical, unhealthy ways of dealing with our anger: [A. Don’t:] [1. Blow up] (Prov. 29:11/x): Slow down! Don’tlet loose. When you blow up, it’s usually destructive. The energy of your emotions is released not toward the problem, but toward another person. The classic example is in sports—e.g. hockey fights, baseball umps & managers. Some psychologists have advocated unrestrained expression of anger; they encourage angry person to fully ventilate the anger against a punching bag, or a pillow, or golf ball. Not wise because you’re cultivating a learned response. What you may be doing is encouraging a spirit of murder in your heart; all you need now is an opportunity. Not to mention that merely expressing anger doesn’t get rid of it; in fact, anger breeds anger (Pr. 29:22)— apparently not only in you, but in others around you; angry people make people angry. AND it clouds your judgment, making you less able to respond clearly, thoughtfully. You’re increasingly enslaved to your own responses. (So don’t blow up. On the other hand, you don’t want to just:) [2. Clam up]: We clam up for a couple of reasons: We may be trying to: 1) deny our anger. When I see anger, I point it out (“you seem angry”). Common response: “NOT angry. I’m concerned, I’m hurt, I’m upset, I’m disappointed.” Uh huh (you’re angry!) Even those who come to admit their anger sometimes try to do 2nd thing: 2) we may try to suppress our anger. We bottle it up (“keep a lid on it”) You let it simmerinside. When clam up, like a can of pop shaken up–when opened, spews out all over. People become angry, bottle it up, then go home and yell at kids, or snarl at wife, snap at others. Makes person irritable, sullen, tense, miserable, even depressed. Best way to ensure that when you do get angry, it will be a blow up. •EG: Boy Scouts/snow camp. Tenderfoot dropped can of corn into fire. Wearing poncho, sat on log shivering, waiting for dinner. I heard “shotgun” blast,ran over to noise; found blackened pit where once was fire, kid on his back, dazed, and splattered with million niblets of corn. Toss the can of your anger on the fire, & when it blows, it won’t be pretty. So what’s the alternative? B. [Do:] [1. Face it.] (vs. 26): “Be angry.” Don’t deny it. Admit you’re angry and accept full responsibility for it. Not “you make me angry!” Just say, “I am feeling angry when you said/did that.” No blaming, no sarcasm or put downs; just the honest statement of fact. Me: “Honey, I’m feeling angry & touchy right now. Not even sure why. I don’t like it when I feel like this, but I am. Amazing how quickly anger is diffused when you admit it. [2. Evaluate it.] “...do not sin.” Idea isn’t to count to ten before getting angry; if you have to do that, probably already are angry! Now you’re simply deciding if and how you’ll express it! Instead, think. Are you certain you know the facts? Some people get angry over a perceived but unreal situation (Prov. 18:17/x). Getting the whole story might change your feelings. Then, consider your motives. Righteous anger rarely spontaneous: requires you to examine the cause before choosing to express it. What has set you off? Is it selfish or is it something that hurts you because it hurts God? Make certain anger isn’t from injured pride, malice, revenge, resentment, self-righteousness. Need to know if it’s right or wrong so you can deal appropriately with it. May help to take time out or do something physical. Anger releases all kinds of adrenalin in bloodstream, so good walk may be effective in reducing the initial tension of anger. Yet if problem isn’t dealt with, only temporary. More you think about it, it may increasing the churning inside. But whatever you do, ponder, & evaluate before speak! James’ advice is very good: [James 1:19-20] Anger may be short-circuiting your ability to hear what God is telling you; and even if you are angry over something legitimate, you still have to ponder your response, because simply being angry isn’t enough. Just being angry won’t accomplish what God desires. Have to do something more. {Then] [3. Deal with it]: vs. 27: “Do not let the sun go down on your anger.” Don’t let it fester. Don’t nurse it. It’s never safe to let it smolder. No anger (righteous or otherwise) must be allowed to continue. Deal with it, ASAP. The limit is one day. Terminal point is bedtime. The same day you get angry is the day you deal with it. The sun which rises to mark a new day must not be a witness to yesterday’s outburst. Left-over anger sours in a person. (So I should deal with my anger. Precisely how do you suggest I do that?) •[You can overlook the offense] (Pr. 12:16, 19:11/x) Just drop the matter. Not man’s glory to win, but to overlook an offense! •[You can short-circuit the anger:] [Pr. 15:1, 18/x] You shortcircuit anger through a gentle answer or through patiently trying to understand. The other person may be well-intentioned, or spoke/acted out of mood, or was completely oblivious to the fact he hurt you. •At the theater, we were watching a particularly tense movie, when the guy in front of me turned around and said, “If you touch the back of my chair again, I’ll take you out and kick your behind.” (But he didn’t say, “behind.”) Shocked, my immediate response was...like to see you try it, bub. Instead, I took a breath, realized I might in fact have been kicking his chair (& who likes that?); so I leaned over to his side and whispered, “I’m really sorry. I didn’t even know I was doing it. I’ll be more careful.” After the movie we all stood, he turned to me, apologized, embarrassed, and told me he had had a very bad day. Then he asked me, “What do you do for a living?” (*!) •[You can confess it to another.] One of the very dark memories I can’t forget is when my daughter was trying to help her frustrated father with his computer, and he got angry, snapped and said something brutally unkind to her. She quietly left, teary. Somebody once pointed out, “Temper is what gets us into trouble; Pride is what keeps us there.” I instantly knew I had stepped in it, and knew what I needed to do. I went down to her room. I felt like I had lead feet & a swollen tongue, but when I began to apologize, the anger evaporated. God says there is one way you can be sure to always have the last word when you’re angry: Just say, “I’m sorry. I was wrong. Will you forgive me?” •[You can confront the underlying problem.] (Prov. 24:26/x) Express your wishes openly. What do I want? Do I want to be treated right? Or shown respect? or loved? Or to be listened to? Say it plainly. “Sweetheart, I would like you to turn the TV off and talk with me about your day...throw your own clothes into the dirty hamper...kiss me and take a few minutes for me as soon as you get home... (Many wives furiously writing...) Jimmy, when you use my coffee cup for your earthworm collection, I really have tough time drinking out of it. How about if we get a jar for you to use?” You may be tired, troubled, or worried; need to pray. •(Wait! What if I can’t resolve everything quickly? What if the person isn’t sorry, or won’t reconcile, or situation is beyond my reach? Do I have to forgive and forget before sundown? No. Lifeisn’t a half-hoursitcom that resolves neatly from episode to episode. But God forbids your angers to continue...So—) [4. Let go of it]: “...give no opportunity to the devil.” (4:27) •Negatively: Anger can give Satan an opportunity—lit. a foothold in your life. Don’t help him by staying angry. If we follow these instructions, Satan would have no room to maneuver, no way to leverage our anger against us. Satan knows there is a fine line between righteous & unrighteous anger. Knows we have difficulty finding that line, and do poor job of responsibly handling anger for very long. What might start off as righteous anger may quickly degenerate into unrighteous resentment, or self-righteous pride. (If I keep it, Satan uses it; but how do I let it go, to whom? •Positively: [Rom. 12:18-19/x] Entrust to God your hurt. Let Him be the Judge. He’s a whole lot smarter, wiser, righteous. What if you don’t? Cherish and coddle your anger and it will someday consume you [Buechner]. Concl: 2300 years ago, Aristotle rightly observed, [quote/x] But the Master clearly points the way (4:26-27). “Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.”
SLIDE ONE:Living for Something Larger Ephesians 3:1-13Faith Community Bible Church 5/21/2023 Pastor Dave GibsonSLIDE TWO:Eph 2:1-10. God deals with our alienation from Him.Eph 2:11-22. God deals with our alienation from others.SLIDE THREE:Eph 3:1-13. Paul gets sidetracked—to explain his ministry/calling.SLIDE FOUR:Listen! Three pilots focused on one little light on the dash while their plane…SLIDE FIVE:For this reason (v1): Because Jew and Gentile are one new man. SLIDE SIX:Parenthetical Interlude(vv2-13)—Paul interrupts himself to say: SLIDE SEVEN:1.He had been given a stewardship of God’s mystery (vv 2-6):…accountable for the resources of Another.SLIDE EIGHT:2.He had been made a minister of the Gospel (v 7):…one who serves others for their good.SLIDE NINE:3.He had been given grace for this work in order to (vv 8-12):…unmerited favor and ability to carry out his work.SLIDE TEN:4.Because of all this, “You Ephesians take courage! (v 13)”“Everything is unfolding exactly according to God’s plan.”SLIDE ELEVEN:Core Idea of Eph 3:1-14: Like Paul, we are all ambassadors of Christ—same Gospel, same stewardship, same ministry, same grace SLIDE TWELVE:So, what should we do? Give serious prayer and diligence to our calling as Ambassadors of Christ!God’s message is not a feel-good story! It is critical truth!SLIDE THIRTEEN:So, what else should we do? Because of God’s plan, His revelation, His Gospel, and His everything, “You Idahoans take courage!” God is wringing His hands in heaven about nothing!!!
The People you Love to Hate – Ephesians 2:11-22Eph 2:1-10. God deals with our alienation from Him.Eph 2:11-22. God deals with our alienation from others.The Cycle of Conflict: A. Disagreement/Tension. B. Role Dilemma/Who does he think he is? C. Collecting of injustices, real or imagined. D. Confrontation/Fight lever. E. Reset/Rinse/Repeat or Genuine Resolution.Alienation is the enduring pandemic. Hatred is the resistant virus. Hostility is the unbreakable habit. Differences run deep!Therefore (v11): Because you have been wonderfully rescued:Remember who you were (vv11, 12):Remember who you are now (v13):Remember what Jesus has done (vv14-18):Remember who we are now, together (vv19-22):Core Idea of Ephesians 2:11-22: Enmity and hostility are only fully defeated…when two people both come to faith in Christ AND THEN REMEMBER WHO THEY ARE.So, what should we do? Remember who you were and who you are in Christ and God’s oceanic grace and who we are together.So, what else should we do? Thank God continually.So, what else should we do? Live in our new identity incessantly.Faith Community Bible Church 5/14/23 Pastor Dave GibsonThe People you Love to Hate – Ephesians 2:11-22Eph 2:1-10. God deals with our alienation from Him.Eph 2:11-22. God deals with our alienation from others.The Cycle of Conflict: A. Disagreement/Tension. B. Role Dilemma/Who does he think he is? C. Collecting of injustices, real or imagined. D. Confrontation/Fight lever. E. Reset/Rinse/Repeat or Genuine Resolution.Alienation is the enduring pandemic. Hatred is the resistant virus. Hostility is the unbreakable habit. Differences run deep!Therefore (v11): Because you have been wonderfully rescued:Remember who you were (vv11, 12):Remember who you are now (v13):Remember what Jesus has done (vv14-18):Remember who we are now, together (vv19-22):Core Idea of Ephesians 2:11-22: Enmity and hostility are only fully defeated…when two people both come to faith in Christ AND THEN REMEMBER WHO THEY ARE.So, what should we do? Remember who you were and who you are in Christ and God’s oceanic grace and who we are together.So, what else should we do? Thank God continually.So, what else should we do? Live in our new identity incessantly.
YOUR REAL SPIRITUAL BIOGRAPHYThe Master’s Plan • Ephesians 2:1-10 (p. 917) • Redeemer’s • 5/11&12/19Intro: I have a confession. Sometimes I get nervous when I hear Christians speak of being saved or having salvation. Don’t get me wrong: I think we need to be saved. I like the word. But I don’t think most people have the right idea. Christians often think of it simply as being forgiven—and that’s barely the beginning. And non-Christians normally interpret “save” to mean preserve or collect—like saving leftovers for later, or saving bottles for the dime deposit. Sometimes we use it in its rawest meaning of to rescue or deliver, as a doctor saves a patient having a heart-attack, or a firefighter saves a home from being burnt down. But when the normal person outside of the church thinks of saved in the religious sense, they wrongly picture emotionalism, or unthinking televangelists buttonholing their audience with the Q, Are ya saved? •I’d like to try to restore the word today, because it describes perfectly what has happened to us as believers in Christ. (But you might object: “uh, rescued doesn’t really describe my spiritual story…”) •If you were to ask how Barb and I feel in love, how we met and eventually married, you probably would hear two different versions of the story. Apparently I am under the mistaken notion that I sought and courted her; but she insists that long before I knew she existed, she went after me. Same thing with believers: Ask many of us how we became Christians, and you’ll likely hear a story that doesn’t sound anything like how God tells it in the passage we’re going to look at today: We’d say something like, initially we heard or read about Jesus, or knew someone whom we respected as a Christian—a friend or co-worker or mom or dad; we grew to understand what God had done for us and at some point, began to believe it. He loved us, and offered forgiveness to us, so whether motivated by a desire to know God, or to settle the issue of our guilt, or because we wanted what our friends or family had, or simply because we thought it the right thing to do, we decided to believe in Jesus and accept His forgiveness. But whatever the motivation, we decided. We did it. It was our choice. We could have decided to reject Him and His offer, but we thought better of it. It was all pretty much up to us. That’s our story, and we’re sticking to it. But it hardly sounds like a rescue—which what being saved really means. And when God tells your story, your real spiritual biography, from His viewpoint, it sounds very different. Something very different happened: it wasn’t a pretty picture of a person thoughtfully and independently and objectively weighing factors and then giving some reasonable assent to Christ; instead, the picture was initially shocking and repulsive, and a miracle occurred to change everything. NB when God tells the story, there is Then (vss. 1-3) and a Now (vss. 4-10):I. [THEN: THE BREATHING DEAD] (vss. 1-3) This describes our past condition. NB were…once walked…once lived…were… The divine diagnosis could be summarized in 3 statements:A. You were dead!” (vs. 1): It’s figurative, but pregnant with meaning! When God described our condition as dead, it implies you were:1) Unable to help yourself. Spiritually speaking, how badly off were we? Picture salvation as a person falling off a cliff. What do we need from God? Some think a person just needs God’s motivation and encouragement to climb back up (“You can do it!”). Others think that in the fall, we were hurt, and so now we need God’s help back up. God must assist us as we make our way back up the cliff. But God says when we fell, we broke our neck and died. We’re lifeless. Lying at the bottom of the cliff, we can’t do anything, because we’re dead.2) Unresponsive. Ever have a good conversation with a corpse? They don’t talk much, do they? One of the signs of death is the inability to respond to stimuli. They don’t respond to light (pupils are fixed), or to sounds (a clap), or to pain (prick a toe); they don’t react at all. Completely unresponsive to God. Spiritual zombies. Alive but dead. One of the first funerals I did as a young pastor was for Dwayne, a 21 year old drug dealer who had been murdered. At the funeral, his girlfriend overcome with grief approached the casket, stood frozen, reached out to touch him, caressed him, and when he didn’t respond, began to cry, and loudly call to him, and grip him, and shake him, until she attempted to crawl into the casket with him. But no amount of love, or concern, or touching or prodding can make a dead person respond. And you were that dead person.3) Separated: When someone dies, they’re gone. The body may be lying before you, but you’re separated from the person who once inhabited that body. So spiritual death means a person separated from God. In fact, the Bible tells us that if a person remains in that dead condition and dies physically, they stay separated from God forever. [Is 59:1-2/x]Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that He does not hear.” •So what killed us? trespasses and sins. trespasses are those things we do knowingly; we know where the boundary is, where the line has been drawn, where the forbidden field is, and we cross over anyway, intentionally. But sins refer to our passive failures—a failure to measure up, to meet God’s standards. We do things God told us not to do, and we have failed to do what He has instructed us to do. Together, these two terms represent the whole range of human evil. [John Stott: Before God we are both rebels and failures.”] The poison that killed us spiritually was our rebellion against God, our disobedience to God. And our condition was complicated by this:[B. You were enslaved!] (vss. 2-3a) NB three controlling influences:1) The World: (vs. 2a): We drifted along the stream of this world’s ideas and values (like a current in the river: do nothing and the flow will take you to where you might not wish to go.) It involves peer pressure, and the no-so-subtle temptation to do and think along the same lines as everyone else. Be a part of the “in” crowd. I speak up about evolution because there is real pressure not to criticize the theory or investigate alternatives. “We are accidents, there is no unseen God in the universe, and that’s that. That’ scientific.” Or the world tells us no one has any right to judge our sexual preferences, or our gender, or whether one religion is better than any other. They’re all right and nothing is wrong. Unless of course you think one is wrong, and then you’re wrong. But behind the world is a personality controlling it, giving it direction and leadership. To this tyrant we once were enslaved:2) The Devil: (vs. 3b-3a) He’s a created but fallen angelic being, elsewhere known as Satan (adversary), or the devil (accuser or slanderer), the one who opposes God. And his kingdom is that of the air—not the atmosphere (as opposed to land/earth), but rather the sphere under heaven. EG you have Heaven (the place of God), Earth (the home of men), and the air (the realm of unseen spiritual beings, usually evil). So he operates in the unseen dimension of life. And he does as he wills; and he intends to work in/influence people disconnected from God, prompting them to disobey and rebel against God. So if that weren’t bad enough to feel the squeeze from outward influences, inwardly we were self-destructive, and trapped by our own nature and desires:3) The Flesh: (vs. 3b) There’s nothing wrong with bodily desires for food, and drink and sex and sleep; but when they become paramount in our lives, they tend to take over, so we become enslaved to our physical appetites—obese, and alcoholic, and lustful, and slothful. And flesh doesn’t just mean bodily; [Gal. 5:19-21] flesh refers to living on a single plane—just life lived apart from God. There’s attitudes of the mind that can enslave us too: the desire to always be right, pride, ambition, comparisons, anger, revenge, self-consuming self-centeredness. No matter how it appeared from the outside, inside us the spiritual connection with God was dead. And we were enslaved. Because of that:C. You were condemned! (vs. 3b) NB by nature: i.e. we naturally did wrong things. You don’t have to be told to do them, don’t have to be instructed or trained in Evil 101, or Advanced Selfishness; How to be critical and judgmental.” Don’t have to instruct kids how to throw a tantrum. (Without much trying, we’d all get A’s.) We naturally do things that arouse God’s anger. It’s part of being part of the fallen human race. Result?•children of wrath: It doesn’t mean God hates little kids. It’s a figure of speech meaning worthy of wrath; i.e. if we got what we deserved, we get objects of God’s judgment. And His wrath is not his losing his temper and flying off the handle. It’s never arbitrary, but it is His determined response to human evil and rebellion. [Stott: “It is God’s personal, righteous, constant hostility to evil; his settled refusal to compromise with it; and his resolve instead to condemn it.”]•Summary: It’s a bleak picture. God regards all who are not following Christ as being spiritually dead, morally enslaved and divinely condemned. This is God’s diagnosis of every person without Jesus. Even a nice guy who is religious, and is a faithful spouse and loving parent still needs someone to rescue him from his condition as much as a serial killer or child molester does. The popular notion today is that everyone is a child of God, though some are sinners, and some are saints: [graphic]. But the Bible only makes two distinctions: [dead/alive/x] If you haven’t pass into the upper circle, by default you’re in the lower. No exceptions. How can we read such words without our hearts being gripped with new concern for those who don’t know Jesus? They’re spiritually dead. Enslaved. Condemned. With such a condition, it would take nothing short of a miracle of God to rescue people from such a living death! Exactly!II. [NOW: LIVING MASTERPIECES (2:4-10) One of the most beautiful and relieving words in the entire passage is this: BUT… What we’ve read isn’t the whole story. BUT:[A. Who initiated this?] (vs. 4a) [God did] He intervened for us! Your story is a story about God![B. What motivated Him? (vs. 4b) [great love] That’s pretty amazing considering what we were like. We were exactly the opposite of what God wanted. No corpse is attractive. Yet God not only felt pity for us, but he had surpassing love for us! And if he loved us when we were corpses, how much more does He now love us since we are living? And if His love didn’t depend upon our performance then, how could it now?[C. What exactly did He do?] People who don’t understand the problem ought not to prescribe the prescription: like a band-aid for an aneurism, or an aspirin for cancer, or a tourniquet for a sore throat. People who don’t understand what our condition prescribe more rules or laws or legislation, harsher punishment, no punishment, universal education, mandated tolerance, less expectations, working together, doint your own thing, trying harder, sincerity, church attendance. But NB what God did: (vss. 5-6)[1. For the dead: “…made us alive”] Not only a new start, but a new life. We are spiritually reborn![2. For the enslaved: “…raised us up”] He freed you, and empowered you with the Holy Spirit.[3. For the condemned: “…seated us with Him”] Instead of being under judgment and an outcast, you take our place next to Jesus in the seat reserved for you, and a place of acceptance. •So salvation is far more than being forgiven. It is being made alive, it is being delivered from evil’s power and control; it is being rescued from deserved wrath. Now can you understand why in the midst of describing what God has done for us, Paul had to keep emphasizing that we are rescued by grace? Grace means getting what we don’t deserve and couldn’t earn. We didn’t initiate it; we were dead. We contributed nothing, except our sin and guilt. We didn’t deserve it—what we deserved was to be judged.[D. What purpose did He have? (vs. 7)] [to display His glorious grace] (cf. 1:6) kindness is love in tender action. So today you are demonstration, a picture of his amazing grace. In the near and distant future, when He wants to illustrate His love and mercy, and His gracious nature of being the God who gives what isn’t deserved, he’ll point to you and me.[E. How did He pull it off?] (vss. 8-9) BTW—these are our memory verses for this series. …this is not your own doing. What’s this? Refers to the entire rescue/salvation![1. The Necessity of Grace: it’s why we can be saved] If we were to be rescued or saved, it had to be by grace. We can better understand grace by pointing out what can’t coexist with grace. [Robert Farrar Capon: “Grace cannot prevail…until our lifelong certainty that someone is keeping score has runout of steam and collapsed.”] EG:•Fear: When we understand grace, that God forgives completely in X without strings attached, we are no longer worried. It’s done, taken care of. It was freely given. •Debt: in terms of a payoff or payback—grace means gift or freely, not “bargain” or “payment plan.” You couldn’t pay it back if you tried. It’s one thing to respond with such gratitude that you forever are changed by the gift; it’s another to try to work off the debt—something that would wound His heart.•Pride (of human accomplishment): How can we be proud of what we didn’t do? Christians who boast or think of themselves as better than others either don’t understand what they were then, what they are now, or how they got there. Grace.[2. The Importance of Faith: it’s how we receive salvation] through faith: Faith isn’t something we pat ourselves on the back for having. It’s nothing more than a response, entrusting yourself to the truth. It is a means by which we receive and experience salvation. What satisfies your thirst—the drink or the straw through which you sip the drink? Faith is important, but it doesn’t earn anything; it receives what God offers. [3. The Place of Works:] (vss. 9-10) [not the basis, but the outcome of salvation] NB we once walked taking our cue from the world (vs. 2), but now we walk looking for and fulfilling the divine opportunities that God before has prepared for us! In fact, workmanship is a word to describe a work of art, craftsmanship, even a masterpiece. One of the evidences of our salvation is our changed life! We do things that serve Him and others not to earn His favor, or try to be saved or stay saved; we live out love and gratitude for all He has done for us in saving us and including us and using us. Amazing Grace! How sweet the sound—that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost…but now am found…was blind…but now, but now, but now…I see. Do you see?
CAN’T YOU SEE?The Master’s Plan • Ephesians 1:15-23 • Faith Community • 4/30/23Intro: Christmas hadn’t been all that spectacular for Joseph Heer. He’d been all alone. No presents to open, no friends to celebrate with. Whether by desire or because of his getting along in years, Joseph, at age 89, pretty much kept to himself. He lived alone in a small two-story brick house, near the downtown area in Washington, Pennsylvania. Apparently not a man of means, he lived by scrimping and sacrificing. In his whole house, there was only one working electric light bulb—not much to keep the bitterly cold December air at bay. And this night the mercury dropped especially low. And Joseph seemed to grow especially drowsy as the cold creeped through the walls of his home. It seemed to settle into his bones, and soon began to numb his mind. All he could think of was sleeping. Two years earlier, to save money, he had called the gas company to turn off his gas, so he had no heat, except from a small electric space heater which he had unplugged to save a few more pennies. Soon, Joe drifted off to a deep sleep, never again to awaken. On New Year’s eve, two days later, someone found Joe and called the county coroner, Farrell Jackson. When Jackson examined Joseph, it was apparent that he died of hypothermia: “It was so cold in that house, I couldn’t stand it,” Jackson said. He was upset that a man could freeze to death in his own house just because he couldn’t pay his bills. But as he and the police secured the residence before leaving, they made a shocking discovery: In Joseph’s bedroom, they found an unlocked safe, a steel box under the bed, and another steel box bolted to a table a few feet from the bed—altogether containing $188,545.99. Further, they found his bank account book with a balance of over $400,000. Joseph Heer died rich. You think, something was wrong with that guy! You’re telling me! It’s almost as if he never made the connection between what he had and what he could do with it; maybe he thought of money as something you hoard, not something you spend. All those resources available, but hardly a cent affected his life. He lived as though he had nothing, even though he could have had nearly anything he wanted. •Couldn’t he see? Answer is, no, he couldn’t. We shake our heads in disbelief over this recluse and think that we’d never be so blind; yet I wonder if sometimes God doesn’t react to us just like we react to Joe. We hear that God has already blessed us with every conceivable spiritual blessing in Christ (1:3), and we yawn and blink and somehow it barely registers what difference it could or ought to make in our lives. We’re still confused about our purpose and direction in life; we wonder if we matter at all to God; we struggle with a lack of power to change our thoughts or break habits or react in a godly manner. Yet, the Bible points out that we have a clear calling from God, an inheritance beyond imagination, and power beyond belief. What’s wrong with us? Can’t we see? And the answer is, no, by ourselves we can’t. The truth is, many of us right this moment fail to grasp who we are and all God has done for us. Spiritually, we are more like Joseph Heer who lived poor and died rich. So what should I do as a pastor? Teach more? Apply more? Yell more? Answer is startling: believe it or not, our ability to understand and accept and apply spiritual truth, and see things as they really are depends in large measure on God working in us. And God’s continued working in us depends upon our praying for one another. Really. NB: I. [GOD IS CLEARLY AT WORK IN YOU!] After his outburst of praise for all that God has done for us as believers (vss. 3-14), Paul turns his attention to us, the readers, and tells us that he is thankful that we display the marks of God’s work in our lives (1:15-16). 15 For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, 16 I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers…NB two marks—[A. Where do we see God working?][1. In whom we trust: faith in the Lord Jesus] You know that God has worked in a person's life when he stops trusting himself and his own performance and goodness to earn God's favor; but confesses his complete inability to please God & cries out for mercy, and then trusts Christ's sacrifice as the basis for the forgiveness of all his own sins. "Was what Christ did enough?" Person who answers "yes" & really rests on it as a forgiven person—in that person God is working![2. In how we treat others: love toward all the saints] A 2nd evidence that God is at work in a person's life is the existence of his unselfish, sacrificial concern that he has—not just to a significant other, nor yet to some of his own family, nor even to few close friends, but to everyone. You get in her way & she’ll love you! If a person indiscriminately loves those who know the Savior, it's conclusive evidence that his life has been a divine construction zone. (Wait! How do you know that faith & love are signs of God's wkg?)[B. Whom are we to thank?] NB that Paul gives thanks…but to whom? God! It implies that God is responsible for what Paul sees in their lives. EG if I gave you $100 bill, and you turned to Bob and said, Oh thank you, Bob, thank you! I might be a little upset. I gave you that money, not Bob. You don't thank a person who isn't involved or responsible for thing you're grateful for! Follow the thanks, and you'll find the person responsible! So Paul doesn't say, "Thank you for your faith and love!" He says, "I thank God"—because God has been at work to bring them to that point! •Do you realize that your faith in X and love for others is evidence that God is at work in your life? You can be sure God has worked in the person who believes in Jesus and loves other believers.II. [BUT GOD MUST KEEP WORKING IN YOU!] That requires:[A. We must pray!] (vs. 16b) 16bremembering you in my prayers…From this point forward to the end of the chapter is a prayer, asking God to do what Paul as a pastor and teacher could not do; if fact, if God didn’t do what Paul is asking, these Christians would be no better off spiritually than Joseph Heer was financially: having it all, yet living as though they had nothing. •Many of us wrongly interpret, “I pray…” to mean “I wish, I hope, I think good thoughts about…” No. Far from it! Prayer is asking God to do what only He can do, what we are incapable of doing. Every time we pray, it is an exercise in faith, in believing that God hears us, & that He will answer and reward those who seek Him. So what is Paul asking for?[B. Our prayers should include two requests]:[1. To know Him better] (vs. 17) 17that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him…•What is it that Paul keeps asking God to give them? the Spirit of wisdom and revelation…Some have thought this can’t refer to the Holy Spirit because God already gave every believer the Spirit the moment we believed in Christ. Also, spirit can mean attitude or mindset as it does later in 4:23 (to be renewed in the spirit/attitude of your minds). But I think it is indeed the Spirit. It’s one thing to have the Holy Spirit in your life, but another to have Him at work in your life. I fear that for many believers, the Spirit is dormant in their lives. And actually, only the Holy Spirit Himself can open our eyes and give us a spirit of insight and perception, so we have the ability to grasp "wisdom/revelation." Wisdom takes what God has revealed (revelation), and makes it practical so we live it out in life. Why do we need to see this? in the knowledge of Him •Knowledge here refers to knowing experientially. Not just the facts about who God is (which wouldn't hurt), but rather the intimate and experiential knowledge that results from getting to know, love, appreciate, interact with a person in a relationship. What he’s asking God to do is to enable us to know Him better by making us receptive to His revelation of Himself and applying that to our experience of Him.•EG: Does God love the world? (Of course.) Does he love you? (I think so.) This past week, at that precise moment when you failed miserably, did He still love you? Hmmm. •OR is God infinite? Sure—in time, space, power, knowledge. But when you pray, do you believe it? ("God, you prob haven't ever seen anything like this, might not be able to do anything about it, but let me fill you in on the details, and maybe you could send someone to look into it.") •OR is God sovereign? "Sure!" Is he in control of your life? "I think so." Do you see Him providentially at work in your life for your good/His glory? ("Not often.") Getting to really know God depends upon His giving us a mentality to personalize what He reveals about Himself! Further, we're dependent upon God's work in our lives not only to know him, but also:[2.To see His blessings] (vs. 18a): 18ahaving the eyes of your hearts enlightened…•the eyes of your heart is a figure of speech: Cut open my chest with a scalpel, you won’t find the heart muscle with two eyeballs embedded in it. When we speak of one’s heart, we mean the innermost center of a person, where he thinks and feels and makes decisions. We’d say, “deep down inside, in the core of who you really are.” And eyes are figurative for perception. We say "Ahhh, I see!" when we mean "I get it! I understand!" So, eyes of heart having been enlightened means that deep down inside a light_has turned on, and you understand clearly, you grasp the truth and really believe it for yourself!•If you are a believer, you first experienced that “aha” experience with the Gospel. And now Paul asks that God continue to make you spiritually receptive so you can grasp for yourself the truth of what God has really done for you. (Like?)[C. We need to see that…][1. …we are not directionless!] (vs. 18b) 18bthat you may know what is the hope to which He has called you…•We often think of hope as something uncertain; sort of a wish (“Gee, I hope that happens"); but in the NT hope is more substantial; it has the idea of certainty or expectation. And the hope of his calling means that God has given us a reason to get up in the morning; we typically default to thinking a calling is something we have to do, like a to do list; and absolutely, there are things he wants us to do now (part of His mission is sharing the Gospel with others). But our calling isn’t just something to do; it’s also someone to become. You are not just to do something, you are to become someone—a certain kind of person. Every day we moving toward being more like the person God calls us to be, or away from His calling. So we should never be directionless! He's laid out for us in Scripture the end game; but we need His help to see it clearly, and not be shortsighted. In the past when God called us, He set the course for our lives, so now we should never be groping in uncertainty and confusion about what God expects.[2. …we are not worthless!] (18c) 18cwhat are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints…•In the end, when all the dust settles, we will be reigning in glory with Jesus! We’ll have a share of an inheritance which goes beyond anything we can now imagine. It will be so wonderful and amazing that Paul can only describe it as riches and glorious—i.e. more than we could imagine or expect, certainly more than we need or deserve, all awaiting us when this short, trouble-ridden life is over. All this Paul has already said (1:11); but here he goes further. NB not our inheritance, but His/God’s inheritance in the saints. Hold on to your seats: I think Paul is saying that you and I are God’s inheritance. When all is summed up in Christ, we belong to Him and He wants us! We are His treasure. Crazy. God values you as a priceless inheritance! Can you see it? We need God’s help to grasp not only what He calls us to, but who we are to Him and what awaits us in the future. So what about right now?[3.…we are not powerless!] (vs. 19a) 19aand what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe…•We need to see that God is working in and through us, right now, and that there’s no power shortage with Him. He has the ability to handle anything we’re facing. Q is, “do we see that?” (“Yeah, but you don’t know the problems I face. Not sure God’s up to dealing with it. I’m sure not.”) OK, so what’s His power like?[D. How great is God’s power?1.His power available to us is immeasurable! (vs. 19)19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His great might…•God’s power is immeasurably great (so great you can’t assess or measure it!). In Ephesus, there were a lot of gods and goddesses worshiped, and they all claimed greatness—to the point that in Acts 19, belief in the Lord Jesus was undermining the worship of the goddess Artemis. A huge crowd gathered to protest, and chant “great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” —as though somehow that would bolster and protect the goddess’ power and greatness. So Paul piles on the descriptive words here to probe God’s power, his potential, his supernatural abilities, His energizing working, His greatness, His capability to overcome any obstacle and fulfill any end that He so desires. God’s power is immeasurably great—you can’t compare it with anything or anyone! So where do I see God power like this? You should focus on Christ, because:[2. God’s power is centered in Christ] (20a) 20athat He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead… i.e.•Jesus was raised from the dead: This shows the extent of God's power—He is able to reverse the irreversible. Nothing is stronger, or more inevitable than death. At best you can postpone it, but not prevent it. When death approaches, nothing can escape its clutches. But when it smothered X, God's power broke its neck, and raised His Son from the grave. That's the kind of power that God has for you, the kind that can reverse the irreversible! (God not only exercises power over death, but also over evil): (vss. 20b-21). 20band seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, 21far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.•Jesus was exalted over all rivals: rule, authority, power, dominion are terms that refer to either human or demonic powers. And it demonstrates the magnitude of God’s power. He has exalted the Lord Jesus over every evil angelic being working against Him and us; and He has authority that overrides every other natural and supernatural power, both now and forever. In Ephesus, the common belief that love, health, success and good fortune were controlled by spiritual powers and influences; so many used magic, amulets, charms, and astrology to manipulate fate and get what they wanted. Paul wanted them (and us) to know that regardless of the power (spiritual, political), they are not ultimately in control. God is. •In the first century, power exuded from three sources: 1) the immoral current of the culture2) the oppressive overreach of the government3) the hostility of evil spiritual forces•Paul knew exactly what he was saying when he asserted that Christ has no rivals in power. Whether human, angelic or demonic, all power is subject to Jesus. And it’s no contest. So:•Jesus was declared sovereign: (vs. 22a) 22aAnd He (God) put all things under His (Jesus’) feet… •This reveals the completeness of his power. God has given to Jesus the power to judge and to control everything. He has the right to call the shots in the universe, and everyone/everything will ultimately answer to Him. •Jesus is appointed as Head of the Church (vss. 22b-23) 22band gave Him (Jesus) as head over all things to the church, 23which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.•What is the ultimate demonstration of God’s power? Not that He created the universe (He did!), or that He trampled the opposition (He did!), but that He has taken men and women controlled by the Evil One, bent toward unrighteousness, and He has called us, adopted us, redeemed us, and made us members of His family and inheritors of His kingdom. He exercises His vast power to make us blameless and holy before Him in love. What a God!•How powerful is He? His power is strongest in the universe. Nothing else matches it; words fail to completely exhaust it. If God's power is unequalled, and if Jesus reigns with that power at his disposal, what does it say about our ability to trust in him? Any problem too large? Any habit too strong? Any temptation too alluring? Any handicap too paralyzing that His power cannot work in, through, and for us to accomplish His glory? [x]Conclusion: In the over 43 years I've been a pastor, I've taught well over 5000 times. ("Phew, I figured this guy blabbed a lot, but never knew how much!) I admit, I work hard on understanding, communicating clearly, accurately and motivationally the truth. Yet, every time I teach I am faced with the realization that there are some things I just can't do. I can't make you see. Sometimes I look into your eyes, and I see that you see. But sometimes I see haziness; sometimes it is apathy; sometimes it’s as if a spirit of stupor has set in us. I quietly stand back and pray. When beginning to teach, sometimes I’m startled to watch the light go on, and I realize God must be at work. God must work in our lives; His Spirit must work to give us wisdom and revelation to know Him better; HE must enlighten the eyes of our hearts or none of us will get it.•The difference between a church where people believe in the greatness and glory and power of God, and love others indiscriminately, who see clearly all that God has done for us and can do in and through us, and a church where people come once a week to sit, and sing, and can’t wait to get out of the parking lot is God working in their eyes. And for us to see as God wants us to see, to have our blinders torn off and our vision cleared is praying for one another. •Make no mistake: our ability to believe and grasp the truth of who we are, and who God is for us, is not merely an intellectual exercise, but a moral and spiritual one: the battle for your life today depends not merely on what is said, but on what is prayed. •What if we began to pray earnestly for one another, that we see who God really is, what He’s really like; we pray that we get to know Him more intimately and personally, and grasp all that He has for us, wouldn’t it revolutionize our lives? God does not want you to be like Joseph Heer who had so much and used so little…Can you see?
FUEL FOR PRAISE!The Master’s Plan • Ephesians 1:3-8 • Faith Community • 4/23/23Intro: I think people today aren’t too different from people 2000 years ago. Sure, we drive cars, fly in airplanes, take antibiotics, soon to enjoy In-N-Out burgers, are glued to our cell phones, Google information from Wikipedia, and a thousand other fantastic innovations that people in Paul’s day couldn’t have imagined. But in some very deep ways, we are just like them. Every person who draws a breath shares with everyone else the same very deep needs whether they can articulate them or not. Let me put them into the form of three disturbing questions:[1) Do I belong?] i.e. am I wanted? Believe it or not, that’s why we identify with teams, and create cliques with innies & outies, and even befriend each other on Facebook. We don’t want to be left out or passed over. And we never want to be the last person on the playground to be chosen when teams divide up. Who are my people, my family? Do I belong? (Here?) We want to be wanted.[2) Do I Matter] Why am I here? What’s the point? We want to be a part of something that matters. We want to be significant, to do something that is important, that lasts. We try to find it in our jobs, and in the causes we pursue (in politics or social issues), and even in our recreational pursuits—to be a great golfer, or to visit every major league baseball stadium. It’s why some people will pursue significance by trying to be somebody, to be popular—or least well known—even if means shooting innocent people for 5 minutes of fame. What we don’t want is to come to the end of our life and realize it really wouldn’t have mattered had we never been born. We need to matter.[3) Am I secure?] Life is uncertain, and there are plenty of fears that face us—fear of rejection, of getting hurt or sick, or the granddaddy of them all—dying. Which all of us will do. Eventually. Then what? Our need for security sometimes moves us to earn lots of money, or reduce physical risks, or avoid commitments to others. But life is terribly uncertain, and you can’t count on much of anything except that as long as you are alive, you’re vulnerable. •We shouldn’t be surprised that in our generation, these needs are inflamed. After all, think about what we have been taught:[√You are a freak accident of chance.] From earliest time, we are indoctrinated with the story that we all are a product of evolutionary processes which began accidentally, and as a result of a very long time + nearly infinite chances, the human animal developed into what we are today. There was no reason it happened, no guiding mind behind the process—we’re all just freak accidents. As a result:[√There is no reason or purpose for your life.] Kind of difficult to find purpose in your life when you realize that there is no design or reason for anything. If life means nothing, your life won’t mean much. Even if you dream up some sort of personal purpose, it’s all taste and preference; you’re here today, buried tomorrow, and eventually forgotten forever. (Who was Miss America 1937?) I don’t know. Who cares? Nobody remembers. Because it doesn’t matter. Nobody and nothing really matters. Esp because:[√History is going nowhere.] History is just the recap of what’s happened, but there’s no order or scheme to it, no purpose or plan. There’s no goal, no arrival, or intended end. It is what it was. You can’t read into it any greater design. Human history may die out with a sigh or end with the sun exploding, but there’s no difference either way. We’ll all vanish from the universe, and it won’t have mattered that we ever existed anyway. (Wow. That’s a pleasant thought.) •What we’ve been taught inflames and exacerbates these deep human needs to belong, to matter, and to experience some sense of security. We all have these needs, these deep longings. Every person. Even you & me. And God is going to address these needs in such a way that you’ll praise and thank Him like never before. But first, you have to understand what he has done.WHAT HAS GOD EVER DONE FOR ME??? Glad you asked…•1:3-14 are a single sentence in the original text (in fact one of the longest in the NT!)—The ESV broke it up into 6 sentences, the NIV into 8! But Paul wrote it as one long outburst of praise, without even taking a breath for all God has done for us! It explodes with excitement and gratitude. Grammatically, it reads like a plate of spaghetti, and it’s nearly impossible to cleanly separate all the parts—they run from one thought into another, as though Paul’s pen couldn’t keep up with his racing mind. And NB what he says:➡What? We should speak well of God (vs. 3a): Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ…•Blessed sounds like one of those religious words that don’t mean much. But the word in Gk is euloghtoß—we get the word “eulogy” from it; and it means to speak well of, to honor and praise. Usually includes expressing gratitude for a person or things he has done to enrich your life. EG your boss gives you a bonus just to encourage you; your friends unexpectedly invite you out for dinner and pick up the check; someone in your Life Group sends you a note of encouragement at precisely the right moment, saying exactly what you need to hear. It all moves you to say, thank you! and you speak well of the person. How well you speak of God depends on how well you grasp all that He has given to you. You have to realize what God has done, and you have to believe it’s really true. And that will fuel your praise and worship of Him. So we bless or praise or speak well of God…why? Why? There is nothing He has to give that He hasn't already given to us in Christ! (vs. 3b): …who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, ➡You might be thinking, “Oh great—just what I need: a few more blessings in heaven. How about something here and now?” But this is not saying that all the good stuff that will enrich our lives is locked up in heaven and you’ll have to die to get it. Rather, in the heavenly places refers to nothing more/less than the unseen realm of spiritual reality all around us. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or doesn’t affect you. Heavenly places doesn’t mean “up” or “later,” but “not limited to what we see; eternal and supernatural.” So he’s not referring to cars and boats and houses and new golf clubs—he’s saying that the stuff that really matters, the things that are eternal and really important in life, all those things have been already given to us. NB:•with every spiritual blessing—i.e. you’ve got it all. See what this is saying? God hasn’t scrimped with us. He has given us not a few, not some, not adequate, not many, but every, all blessings. There are some groups that teach at salvation we get some, but not all blessings that God has to offer—the better ones of power and gifting come later to the initiated and committed. But Paul contradicts that: there is no missing ingredient for you to put your life together. So you don’t need to try to get something you don’t now have, but rather you need to realize and use what you’ve already been given in Christ. It’s hard to grasp—but there is no good spiritual blessing remaining that He hasn’t given to you. If it is good, and good for you, He has already given it. (Gee, maybe He missed me.) Nope. Not possible. If you are in X, a believer, you are the favored recipient of every blessing He has to give. Remember in Christ refers to what accompanies a relationship with Jesus. It’s a package deal! •So now do you get it? Your excitement, your praise and worship, your speaking well of God to others and to Him depends on how well you understand and believe all that He’s done for you! Now, before we get specific, let me give the rest of this passage (vss. 4-14) the once-over. This is what God has done for you:1.God has chosen you (vss. 4-8a). So you belong!. You are not a nobody. You are not an outsider. You are wanted by God. You are therefore not insignificant, but special. 2.God is including you (vss. 8b-12). So you matter! He is taking you into His confidence and including you in His plans and purposes; you are not directionless or purposeless or meaningless. 3.God will protect you (vss. 13-14). So you are secure! He guarantees your future and promises to bring you to Himself where you will be with Him forever.•It’s no coincidence that when Paul bursts into praise to God for all His blessings lavished on us believers, he addresses these 3 deep, universal human needs that God Himself has met in Christ. And as we go through this, you’ll notice that the Father is focused in the first, the Son in the second, and the Holy Spirit in the third—the Triune God is bent on enriching your life as a believer in Christ! Also, the first concerns our past, the second our present, and the third our future. So His blessings affect our whole existence, not just someday or forever. So let’s dive in (but understand I’ll only be able to scratch the surface of all that God has done for us.) •Here are three incredible blessings God has given to us:#1. GOD HAS CHOSEN US!A. Three Staggering Thoughts (1:4) even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him…1.What? “He chose us” Sometimes we’re tempted to think that God doesn’t care or doesn’t know about my life. He’s got a million problems to deal with—floods and earthquakes and other disasters; the general deterioration of sane thoughts about what’s true—male and female are different, or a baby fresh out of the womb ought not to be put to death; or the twisting of what He’s like or the disbelief of what’s He’s done; His hands are full, and has no time for little o me. I’m just one of a blob of billions of nameless, faceless others who happen to cash in on the His somewhat generous offer of whoever believes will be saved (John 3:16). I sneaked in on the whoever. When I see God face to face, He’ll ask, “Gabriel, who’s this?” To which Gabriel will answer, “Oh, he’s just one of those whoevers.” Nothing could be farther from the truth. He chose us. Not only that, but He chose us! •We often picture it as the reverse: we chose Him. But actually the reverse is true. When the Bible speaks of who chose whom, it always has God as its subject and man as its object. Nowhere does it say that God was passive and we sought Him out and chose Him. NO, we responded to His call through believing the Gospel, the Good News: [Acts 13:48; 1 Thess. 1:4; 2 Thess. 2:13-14] That brings us a lot of questions, but don’t let all the questions obscure what is clear so you miss the point: God chose you. He wanted you! That fact is underscored by the next phrase:2.When? “before the foundation of the world” or as NIV: before the creation of the world. In other words, He chose us before we had the mental faculties to understand or even say God. Even more: You weren’t even alive when God chose you. So that clearly prevents any human qualities to intrude in God’s choice as if God chose us because He saw in us some great potential. So why did He choose me/you? I have no idea; but again, I do know what He didn’t base His choice on—on goodness/merit on our part. NB:3.Why? “that we should be holy and blameless before Him” He chose us warts and all. [J. Sidlow Baxter: He did not choose us because we were holy, but to be holy…!”/x] We were chosen when in fact we were NOT holy; but we were chosen to become holy and blameless. So He chooses to be involved in our lives both now, and in the outcome. He didn’t choose you just so that someday you’d arrive in Heaven, but to purify your life and fit you for heaven now. He’s not intending to provide an entrance ticket to forever but a complete overhaul of your life right now.•This is remarkably comforting and humbling. The fact that HE did the choosing is humbling because we didn’t contribute anything; but it’s also comforting because it assumes He knew what He was getting—a pretty broken and imperfect group of people. So nothing really surprises Him now that we’re His. He saw it all long ago, and still wanted us. It’s a mind-blowing thought: God knew all about you, and chose you in eternity past before you ever existed to live with Him forever without a single defect or blemish. This is so startling that Paul uses two pictures to help us understand the truth of God’s choice for us: His choice is like an adoption (vss. 5-6) and like a redemption (vss. 7-8). B.Two Profound Pictures1.Adoption (vs. 4c-5a): In love He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ…predestine—lit. to mark out or decide beforehand a specific course of action. (Only God can do this with any certainty.) And what God decided long ago would happen to us is that we’d be chosen for His family. Paul says God’s choice is a lot like adoption in civil law: According to Roman law, a man could adopt a child as his own. However, if he did so, there could be no second class citizens: an adopted child would be placed into the family with all the rights, privileges and responsibilities of that family, with a new heritage and future, a new standing in the community, in effect, a whole new life! The ties to his old life would be severed, and he would assume the identity of a member of that family.•So God walked through the dormitory of human history, looking at spiritual orphans, for some reasons unknown to us, chose us to be adopted into His family, with full privileges and responsibilities as members of His household, and freed from all ties and obligations to our former lives. And because adoption illustrates God’s choice, there are no unwanted or surprise-kids in His family. Adopted means chosen, wanted. He chose & wanted you.•“…but I just can’t get over why He would want to adopt ME?” Look, I don’t know why He’d want you either…but He does! (vss. 5b-6) …according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has blessed us in the Beloved. All I know is that His choice of you is something that pleases and delights his heart. NB: purpose might sound dispassionate and clinical, but isn’t. NLT captures the idea in vs. 5: This is what He wanted to do, and it gave Him great pleasure./x It pleased Him to do so, and it will be to the praise of His amazing and glorious grace!•But God’s choice goes further than merely adoption, because even though it clearly reveals His desire and choice, parents who adopt cannot change the fundamental nature of a child, or change his/her past, or impart their nature. So Paul uses a second profound picture to illustrate God’s choice—that of:2.Redemption: (vss. 7-8a) In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished upon us…Redemption always assumes the person is in some bondage—some forced slavery from which they cannot escape. In Paul’s mind, you are kind of like a slave. In NT times, the Roman empire had more slaves than citizens—6 million of them. And buying and selling them was a major business. If someone wanted to free a slave, he’d have to pay the purchase price, buying the enslaved person for himself, then grant him freedom by presenting him with a written certificate of deliverance. The payment and the process was called redemption. Don’t miss the point: unless someone greater paid the price, it was hopeless for the slave. No one ever redeemed himself. [Ps. 59:7-9, 15/x] God’s choice of you was like a redemption because He purchased you for Himself. He chose you when you were bankrupt/unable to pay. You were enslaved to your sins and trespasses, & sentenced to death. If God were to pay that penalty, He’d have to forfeit a life for your life. And He did. God paid that penalty; it cost Jesus His own life. His choice of you was very, very expensive. And to Him, you are that valuable. You cost that much. He was willing to pay that much for you. Don’t ask me why.•And how much? You received forgiveness according the riches of His grace (7b)—i.e. not that He has just enough to cover your sins, but instead, He has more than enough. Riches means to have everything you need and so much more. As terrible and as dark and troubling as your intentional sins are, far-far greater is His grace. He has freely given to you more grace and forgiveness than you need or will ever be able to use. And all this—His forgiveness and unearned love—even though it was expensive and cost Him His Son’s life—He lavished on all of us (vs. 8a).•This is not the picture of someone who gives meagerly and begrudgingly, just enough, counting the exact change to the penny; no, this is One who thinks nothing of the cost for the joy that He has in choosing you, wanting you, rescuing you, forgiving you. Remember what happens after the Super Bowl or the World Series, in the locker room, when all the players are handed bottles of expensive champagne—not to drink, but to spray around as an act of extravagant celebration?! That’s the picture. That’s how lavishly God has given you His grace and mercy and forgiveness. Don’t ask me why. But He has.#2. GOD IS NOW INCLUDING US!How? (vss. 8b-10) …in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of His will according to His purpose, which He set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth…1. In His Confidence It’s one thing to be chosen, but entirely another to be included. A while back I had a plumbing problem, and I called a plumber. As he was bent over, tending to the leak, I was observing. I’m naturally curious, so I asked Qs: “So what’s that? A pipe wrench. (Silence.) Will it be hard to fix? Nope. See any problems? (Turns, stares right me and says) Yep. Obviously, I was annoying. But God isn’t like that. His desire is to include us is what He’s doing. Not like a father who impatiently pushes his son away and snaps, “Go play or do something. I’m working. Don’t bother me. I need to get stuff done.” Instead, God patiently explains what He’s doing, and how He wants us to help Him. And one of the blessings we have is that God has told us the secret of what He intends to do. He unrolls the blueprint for human history and patiently explains to us His plans. And it includes:[•The “Mystery”: Something once hidden, now revealed] mystery doesn’t mean what we usually think—something hard to understand, or cloaked in secrecy until the final few pages. Instead, it’s a word used to explain what people once didn’t understand but now has been revealed to us: God is telling us where He’s taking human history! He wants us to be in the know. He’s confiding in us in ways he didn’t to Abraham, or Moses, or David, or even Isaiah! NB:[•The Unseen Hand: God is at work directing history] It’s not all random. History is headed somewhere. NB: God purposes (vs. 9), and predestines/predetermines (vs. 5, 11). Like pieces of a puzzle, events are falling into place and in the end, when the time is right, God will accomplish what He’s been working on all along. EG:[•The Outcome: Jesus will reign supreme to His glory] (vs. 10b) to unite all things in Him…What awaits the end of human history is a King, and Kingdom, where all opposition will be subdued. Everything will be made new and made right. Jesus will no longer be an afterthought to anyone, and He will have no rivals. Nothing will dishonor Him, and all will worship and obey Him. •So God wants us to know what He’s up to, and wants us to see the big picture. We who know how it will all turn out should see life differently now. We know people matter. We know God wants us to love Him. We know sharing the Good News and helping others come to know and love Jesus is what counts. Little else someday will seem very significant. Our tendency is to get so wrapped up in our daily lives and problems that we fail to see that we are the primary actors on the stage of history; God is writing the script and directing the play. Your neighbors, your family, your job, your friends, your opportunities are all part of the means to bring all things to bow willingly before Him in love. We are never to be purposeless, or directionless; we are part of the grand scheme of things. And that’s not all—God includes you in a share of the end product, the Kingdom of His Son! When God gathers everything together in Christ, there are two groups of people who will be included…[2. In His Inheritance] (vss. 11-13a) In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory. In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in Him… Wait![•Who? both believing Jews and Gentiles]vs. 11: “we (believing Jews) who were the first to hope in Christ”: they had heard about the promised Messiah, the coming Christ, the unique one in all the history of the world who would begin to set all things right; they looked—even longed for His coming. Those who accepted Jesus as the Christ will be included.vs. 13a: “you” (believing Gentiles/non-Jews); we were included when we responded to the Gospel/Good News—that Jesus died in our place for our guilt, and was raised from the dead as our Lord. If you trust what He did as enough to make you right with God, you’ll receive forgiveness, and a new life in following Him! At the very moment you believe, you are included in Christ—and all the blessings become yours![•What? a share in His wonderful Kingdom] It’s an inheritance! (You say, Wait! I’m included in the will? I’m named as an heir? YEP!) What is it? It can’t be spiritual resources, because God says we already have all He has to give (vs. 3). Honestly, I don’t know, except that it will be beyond description! [1Cor. 2:9;1Peter 1:4/x] Whatever it is, if we were to see it right now, it’d make the highest standard of living, all the money and toys, the most adventuresome lifestyle seem like suffering with the flu, or living in the a backward 3rd world slum. Hard to imagine. But that is what is waiting for you as part of His kingdom. [Theologian Oprah Winfrey/x]When God gathers everything together in Christ, we know for certain that we will belong, we will have a place, we will obtain an inheritance. How can we be sure? Because the Holy Spirit given to us fulfills 2 roles in us:[#3: GOD WILL PROTECT US!] We know ourselves too well. We’ve tried and failed, but tried again and again failed, and now we try, but cynically wonder if we even should try. Why bother? We know we’ll probably screw it up. If it depends on us, we’re completely dependable…to be undependable. So we long for something sure and certain that will bring comfort and assurance, something greater than our own puny efforts. And God responds by giving us His Holy Spirit:[1. With a seal of ownership] (vs. 13) In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit… The seal refers to a signet ring you depress into wax, or a small cylinder you roll over wax, creating an impressed image or writing. Two purposes for the seal: to claim ownership (the Roman govt. on a document, or a letter from its sender); and to protect it from anyone unauthorized tampering with it. It was a capital offense to open an officially sealed item. Many seals had the name and image of its owner; so in this case, Jesus marks his own image and name with the Holy Spirit on our lives when we believe in Him! It’s His way of showing that we are safe until we arrive at our destination. We are secure in Him until that day. I understand that no one else can tamper with my salvation, but what if God Himself has second thoughts/changes His mind about me? NB the second illustration of His protection:[2. With a down payment] (vs. 14) (the promised Holy Spirit) who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of His glory. •guarantee is a word that’s used in modern Greek for engagement ring! You give the ring to show how serious you are. But in the NT, the word referred to the down payment or first installment of the purchase price that secured the legal claim on the item. But what if He breaks the engagement or refused to take delivery? He won’t. The greater the down payment, the more certain you are He’s serious. To assure us of His certainty, God gives us part of Himself as the down payment. That’s like giving my son/daughter as a down payment to assure that I’ll take delivery for a house or car; not to do so would mean I’d forfeit my son/daughter. That’s crazy! Same with God. He’s giving you His Word, His most solemn promise, He’s assuring you that what He started by forgiving you all your sins at great cost, and starting you on the new path of life as a member of His family, He will finish by completely redeeming your life and bringing you into His Kingdom as one of the named heirs. He will do this, because He has given you His Spirit who will never leave you. [x]What if it’s all true? Paul is writing this under house arrest in Rome, awaiting trial before the infamous Caesar Nero, the Hitler of the Century One. But his mind is not on his circumstances, but instead thinks back to before the foundation of the world when he was chosen, and forward to the consummation of all things when Jesus Christ will reign supreme as Lord over the universe; and he smiles and bursts into praise to God. That’s perspective!•Do you really believe it? You’re wanted by the Living God of the universe. He has already given you all that’s eternally worth having. He draws you into His plan, and will use you to accomplish it. When all the dust settles, He promises you, assures you of your place in His Kingdom. How well you grasp and believe that will determine how well you speak of God—what will move you to worship Him and speak well of Him to others. Pray
IntroductionJames 5-1 Peter 1Well today is three things. It’s 1. Easter Sunday, it’s 2. the last message in the book of James and it’s 3. my last message as preaching pastor here at FCBC. This is a hard message for me to preach.Because on the one hand I have deep, deep, deep sorrow that this is my last Sunday with you all in this way.I mean my heart is bleeding on the inside.I was talking to my dad this week about what I was experiencing. I was like, “Dad, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” And he said, “I know what’s wrong with you; you’re grieving.”He’s not wrong. I am. There’s tremendous loss in my soul. 17 years of my life is invested here. So many relationships, so many fun times together in God’s Word, so many great times of worship, so much truth discovered.And so I’m bleeding out on the inside.This is not exactly what I would call a "formula for joy."Half of me is like, “Are you kidding? You’re in no condition to preach this Sunday!”But then over here, there’s this incredible love for resurrection Sunday which has always been the high point of the Christian calendar and it’s always been my favorite Sunday of the year. I just absolutely love Resurrection Sunday.Because the resurrection is the central point in Christian theology,It’s the evidence that we are freed from the power of sin,It’s the proof that the penalty of sin has been erased,It’s the great hope that every Christian has as he approaches death and the grave.The resurrection IS THE defining cornerstone event in all Christian history and the hope of the world.So all that over here says: It’s time to celebrate.And so all week long, I’ve been witness to a war. These are two very strong armies. What’s a man to do about this?I suppose nothing because this has a way of making everything that is said this morning a bit more real. This internal battle of mine is really just a metaphor for the internal battle that all of us experience by virtue of the fact that this world is broken. What do we do about it? Can we celebrate in sorrow? Can we celebrate in the midst of a broken world?If your best friend has been taken from you by death, can your rejoice?If you are suffering deeply as a result of someone cheating you, taking advantage of your kindness, or sinning against you can you rejoice?If you are in misery because of an illness that won’t leave you alone, can you be grateful?If the brokenness you experience is literally unfixable and there is no hope that you will ever experience freedom in this life, can you still sing praise?Suffering presents us with a decision. Suffering is a fork in the road. This path goes East and this path goes West. The two forks lead in opposite directions and I must choose. Warning: life is too short to make a mistake.Here’s the fork: does my suffering interpret the goodness of God or does goodness of God interpret my suffering? Is my suffering evidence that God is not in control, is not good, and that he does not love me. Or is the fact that God is in control, God is good and God loves me the very TRUTH needed to properly interpret my suffering.Here’s what every preacher of the Gospel has been sent to proclaim: OUR EXPERIENCE, as hard as it may be, does not change the GOSPEL TRUTH. It’s the other way around. This GOSPEL TRUTH, changes our EXPERIENCE of suffering.Can we sing praise in suffering? You want to know what the answer is? You bet we can. Can we rejoice in our affliction? Absolutely we can. Yes. Because there is a GOSPEL TRUTH that changes everything. Yes, life is difficult. Yes, we all suffer.But JESUS CHRIST HAS RISEN FROM THE DEAD. AND BECAUSE THAT IS TRUE, EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED. That objective truth exists beyond and above your experience, it exists outside your experience. It is real and solid and has shaping power. And because it’s real, it can change you.Listen, this might sound obvious but just let it land: For something to change your life it has to be real.ReviewIf you were with us last week, we were in the book of James chapter 5 and we reviewed this incredible scene from the top of Mt Carmel, this showdown betweenon the one side: 850 prophets of Baal and Ashera VSthe other side: the one prophet of God Elijah.And the contest was established to determine which God was God of the storm. And here were the rules:Elijah said, “We each get a bull. We each get wood. We each get an altar. but neither of us gets fire.” The God who answers by fire, he is the true God.And we watched as the prophets of Baal danced and raved. We watched as they screamed and cried out. We watched as they demonstrated their sincerity by inflicting pain upon themselves and cutting themselves. On and on they went for 8 hours. And yet their god did not answer them. And we asked, why? Why was it that Baal did not answer?Was it for lack of effort? No, they exerted maximum effort. Hurculean effort.Was it for lack of personal sacrifice? No their personal sacrifice was extreme. They cut themselves and the text said that blood came gushing out of them.Was it for lack of belief? No, they fully believed. They were all in. They were completely invested.Was it for lack of devoted followers? No they had a tremendous following. 450 prophets and thousands of worshipers.But Baal was not answering. Why did their god not answer? Answer: Because their god wasn’t real.And because he was not real he could not care. And because he was not real he had no control of anything.Truth is harsh. It just doesn’t care about your sincerity. The truth doesn’t care about your creative passion. The truth isn’t even a thing that it could care. The truth just is. However much you deny the truth, the truth just goes on existing. And if you don’t align your life with the truth the truth will break you.We speak of sinners breaking the law; but is not better to say that the law breaks the sinner? The law just is. God just is. Truth just is.So again, we do that review to make this obvious but needed point: For something to change your life it has to be real.If you hair is messy, you need a real comb to get the tangles out.If your car is low on oil, you need real oil to lubricate the engine.If your stomach is empty you need real food to fill your belly.And listen carefully. We have two very REAL problems. Sin has destroyed our soul. And death will destroy our life. And to fix those two very real problems we need a REAL Savior.Resurrection TRUTHChristianity is not an tradition, idea, a philosophy or a political agenda.Christianity has traditions.It contains ideas.Philosophies arise from it.Certain political ideas are favored because of it.But most certainly, none of these things get at what it is. Christianity is at it’s very core a TRUTH-CLAIM. It’s an appeal to REASON to align your life with TRUE events that happened in HISTORY. Christianity tries to get men and women to grapple with the implications of the historical claim that Jesus Christ really was God, really did die, and really did rise from the grave. And because that is REAL:it has tremendous power to save you if regarded, andtremendous power to destroy you if ignored.Christianity is a TRUTH-claim that hinges on ONE THING - the REALITY of the resurrection, if the resurrection is true, it’s all true. If it’s false, it’s all false. There’s nothing in between. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, if Christ did not raise from the dead then we are still in our sins, everyone who died is still dead and we are of all men most to be pitied.Everything hinges on the resurrection.So this morning we are going to establish three implications of the resurrection and then we’ll close by looking at the last 2 verses of the book of James.So let’s start with the resurrection implications. If the resurrection is true, if the gospel accounts are HISTORY, here’s what that means for us.If Jesus is alive that means that you can’t go to his grave. You can’t find his body. That means that his existence did not come to an end. It means right now, he’s alive. I want you to get your mind around the significance of a claim like this and what it means for the Christian faith and what it means for.Let me give you an illustration. Let’s say your spouse goes for a drive and then goes missing for some reason. And of course your worried sick and the days turn to weeks which turn to months which turns to years. And you’ve nearly given up but then, one day, a mysterious letter shows up. It appears it’s written by your spouse. The very evidence of the letter gives this very strong evidence that they are alive. Your heart would leap: is it real? But then you look at it more closely and the doubts arise.You question the authenticity of the handwriting.You might question the sentence structure. I can’t recall them forming sentences like that.Maybe even a detail or two seems like it might not be entirely true.And pretty soon you are seriously doubting it’s authenticityBut then you get a knock on the door and standing before you in flesh in blood is your spouse!Suddenly, all the questions vaporize. Let me ask, "Why do the questions disappear?" There was never resolution on the handwriting or grammar question. But you don’t need it, because the REAL presence of the person resolves every other question. You know the questions are answerable because you have standing before you the one who contains all answers. They are the answer.When we talk about the place of the resurrection of Jesus Christ in the Christian faith we are talking about the same sort of argument-silencing absolute authority. If the resurrection is true, it’s all true.What about the textual accuracy of the OT and the NT?What about polygamy or slavery in the OT?What about the age of the earth and how that goes together with science?What about bad things happening to good people?What about…There’s a certain posture behind those questions: “If you can’t answer me these question, then I can’t believe in God.”Those are all really good questions. They are all fair questions. But if Jesus Christ rose from the dead, well, you have your answer.It’s similar to turning off a basketball game at halftime when your favorite team is down by 30 at half. And you think it’s over. And then later you look at the final score and see that they won. You think, there’s no possible way. How did they do that? Because you didn’t watch the game you don’t know HOW but because you see the final score, you know THAT THEY DID.The resurrected Christ is like that final winning score. I’ve got a lot of questions, I don’t know HOW this works, but if the resurrection is true, there IS an answer. He obviously has answers. He contains the answers. He is the answer.The only thing that matters at that point is submission. The only thing is to sit down, shut up and see what he has to say. Let his mouth speak and answer your questions.Answer Us With FireThe resurrection is God’s answer. The people of Israel asked the question, “How do we know which God is true? Is it YHWH or Baal?” So they setup a contest.YHWH of the OT answered Elijah with fire.We have a NT equivalent of this: On the cross we have a showdown between all the forces of evil of the universe, all the darkness of sin, the horror of death, Satan himself. All those forces of evil press in upon Jesus. That’s the side of evil.And then you have over here Jesus, alone, by himself. And here’s the rules of the contest.Whoever can rise from the dead, he is God. God in the person of Jesus Christ, answers with the lightning of resurrection.Whoever can live forever and overcome our greatest enemy, death itself. That person is God! Jesus Christ has done it. Jesus is Alive! It’s the decisive, irrefutable evidence that what Jesus claims is true. He’s the LIVING God.PrayerSo there is an apologetic use of the resurrection. You know what else it means if Jesus Christ is ALIVE? You can talk to him.If you have ever had someone you love die, you can visit their grave, you can talk to them but you know they are not there. There’s no response. You are talking to the air. They aren’t there. And they certainly can’t do anything for you.But if Jesus Christ rose from the dead, if he’s alive, that means you can talk to him. He can actually do something.In the context of the book of James, why did James take us back to Mt Carmel. Why did he take us back to that showdown between Baal and YHWH? Because he wanted to remind us that there is a God who listens to the righteous. You can pray like Elijah, and Jesus because he’s ALIVE will listen to you.Let me illustrate the implication of the resurrection. Pray with me: Jesus Christ, God very God, we pray to you this Easter Sunday and we praise you. We praise you for your victory over death. We praise you that you love us. We worship you. We give our lives to you. We love you!Thank you Jesus. That is not play acting. Jesus Christ, the resurrected Lord, hears our prayers, he’s listening to us now. He sees us. He understands us. You can have a personal relationship with the God of the Universe because he is alive.So that’s the first thing the resurrection demonstrates. Here’s the second. If Jesus Christ is Alive that MEANS that:Now listen, very few of us understand the seriousness of the sin problem? Why? Because it’s all we’ve ever known. It’s like a man or woman born blind wondering what they are missing out on.But just because you do not know how handicapped you are, does not mean you are not handicapped. Sin has mamed us.Sin has consequence. As surely as you cannot leap out of a building without consequence, we cannot sin without consequence. And the consequence of sin is every form of brokenness we experience on the earth.The brokenness of every relationship is a result of sinThe selfishness that destroys marriageThe lustful looks of infidelity is the result of sinDeath itself, we are told in the Bible is the result of sin.We started this message by reminding ourselves of evil and suffering? Why is there even such a thing as evil? When we are young and protected in our parents homes the world seems so safe. But as we grow older, wooden swords turn to real swords, pretend bullets turn to real bullets, we see real death, real suffering. We see just how cold and empty people really are. We see people drowning in lonliness. We see how cruel the world is.And the response of the heart is, “This all seems so unjust.” In fact, this is the number one reason people reject the Christian faith. It’s the number one reason. Why do bad things happen to good people?Listen, the Bible has an answer for that.The first thing to say is that your sense of justice is from God. That’s a right response. If it could be demonstrated that bad things happen to good people then you would be justified in dismissing the Christian faith.But you want to know something. Bad things don’t happen to good people? Bad things happen to bad people. There’s only bad people.This is what the Bible teaches:Romans 3Now if you want to be outraged at injustice, let your outrage focus on Jesus the Christ. There was one good person. And bad things did happen to him.We read about on good Friday.Here is Jesus, in anticipation of calvary, amazed at the cup of suffering that awaited. He held that cup in his trembling hands, his soul sorrowful even unto death. Is there no other way?There is no other way. So here the perfect lamb of God is nailed to a tree, hoisted into the air to suffer.Here the perfect lamb of God hangs in a buzzing cloud of flies. His flayed back pressed against the tree, the suffering of suffocation as His body droops, the repeated torture of dislocated sockets, the raw wounds the only lever upon which to lift himself to gain breath. Here is the lamb of God plunged into the abyss of anguish. Forgive us Lord for ever coming to this moment with dry eyes.You want to talk about not fair. You want to talk about injustice. That is unjust. You want to talk about bad things happening to good people. What did he ever do to deserve this? There was only one good person and bad things did happen to him but here’s the difference: he volunteered. Why?1 Peter 3He volunteered to endure this suffering to bear the sins of the world for those who would believe in Him. Jesus died to take away our sins.He died so that he might BRING US TO GOD.What does that mean? Here’s what it means. It means that life is ours:What is the greatest philosophical question that has ever been asked? And by the way this is not even slightly debated. All philosophers agree that this is THE great philosophical question. It doesn’t matter if you are athestic or theistic. It doesn’t matter if you are hindu, muslim, Christian, anamist. It doesn’t matter your culture, your family background, your race, gender, anything.Every single person that has ever been born has asked this question?Statistically speaking, we spend the most time thinking about this question.Almost all, if not all, of our decisions are based on our answer to this question.In other words, what is the best possible way to live that brings us the highest level of fulfillment? In other word, how can I be happy? How can I find satisfaction? What is the good life?What binds every human on planet earth together is we are all in constant pursuit of the good life.Here’s what’s interesting about our culture: We live in a society which has completely jettisoned the idea that there is an ABSOLUTE answer to this question. We have just untethered ourselves from absolutes. The thinking goes like this: the good life could be different for you than it is for me.The good life is something internal to you. It’s subjective. And you might be wired such that the good life could be experienced this way. And I might be wired such that the good life is experienced this other way. And so who am I to tell YOU how to achieve that inner sense of well-being? We live in a culture in which not only our good life experience but even our identities are defined by personal choice. Anything that comes from the outside and tries to impose upon either my identity or my happiness is a threat to the good life.And so life is one giant experiment where we hope we can stumble into happiness.Let’s not experiment. Let’s use reason. There’s not multiple ways to solve the problem of being thirsty. To a thirsty person we don’t say, “Well, the solution to your thirst problem might be different for you than it is for me.” Why? Because we are biologically made to solve the thirst problem with water. If your thirsty you need water.And in a similar way, there are not multiple ways to solve our spiritual thirst. We are spiritually made to solve our spiritual thirst problem with Jesus Christ. Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” THAT IS THE GOOD LIFE. You want life? Jesus says, “Then come to me.”God tells us over and over again in his Word, death this way; life this way. All the commands of God in the Bible are fences to protect you from death and keep you on the path of joy.Do you see why we are mad as a culture? Do you see why we have just absolutely lost our mind?We have people changing their gender thinking it will make them happy, dressing up as furries, self-identifying in a thousand ways thinking that this will save them. But they have untethered themselves from reality.Full STOP. Let’s stop it. Life is being offered to us. Take it!The Christian message is this, both eternal physical life and eternal soul life, the only TRUE good life, IS found through Jesus Christ.The TRUTH we are here to celebrate is that there is truth.The ConclusionWhat does all this mean for you and I? You might not like the fact there is objective truth. In fact, nobody likes it. Truth is like a blade that cuts if your in it’s path. Truth grates against you. But before you reject it out of hand, simply because it is uncomfortable, think about the implications of rejecting truth.TRUTH just exists. It’s like gravity. You can’t change it. It exists outside of you. It doesn’t care if you exist in the same way that gravity doesn’t care. It will do what it will do regardless of whether you are here or not here. It will act upon you whether you think it applies to you are not. It just is.If the gospel is truth we can’t change it. It’s not ours to change. It’s not ours to tinker with. We don’t own it.Don’t say, "I could never submit to a God who sends people to hell.." Let me ask you, “Would you use that same logic with a semi truck on the freeway.” I could never submit to a semi-truck that kill people that are in it’s way. I refuse to move off the freeway. Do you see the insanity of that reasoning. The question is this: is it real? Is it true? Will it destroy me or not? Does it offer life or not?To try to change the gospel is trying to argue with a steaming locamotive. We don’t break the laws of God, the laws of God break us. We are the breakable things.What if there is a truth that either SHATTERS your LIFE or HEALS your LIFE?Now all that was setup for our closing two verses in the book of James. These are the most unlikely of all verses for Easter. I doubt an Easter message in the history of the Christian religion has focused on these two verses. But we are going to go for it. What are you going to do, “Fire me?”James is going to close the book out on a little bit of a cliffhanger. And to point out the cliffhanger I’m going to get just slightly technical for a second. The last sentence of the book is written with subjunctive verbs. What is a subjunctive verb? It’s a verb that has to do with something that could be real, but isn’t yet real. It has to do with an action that has not yet occurred. It has to do with a future possibility but as it stands now it’s an unreality.The future for the wandering sinner is hanging right here in the balance. What will happen to this wandering sinner? That’s the question.Listen, there are many in the room here who have wandered from the truth. And what is the consequence of wandering from the truth both according to this text and also according to logic? Answer: You die.Are you miserable? Do you feel lost? Do you feel unsatisfied? You have wandered from the truth. You have wandered from Jesus Christ, the WAY THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE. That’s why you are dying. You’ve cut yourself off from the vine. You cut yourself off from the source of life.But guess what? Today, you’re coming back. Today you are going stop the pursuit of other gods. Your going to give up. And your going to come back to Jesus Christ, the WAY THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE. You’re coming back to the fountain of Life. You’re coming back to the God who loves you and cares for you and has given his very life for you. Your coming back. All of us. Everyone in this room is coming back to the truth, the truth that changes everything.This place is a place of rescue. Jesus Christ has brought you here today to rescue you. To give you the Truth in the person of Jesus Christ. This is a place of healing.Revival starts today by beholding JESUS CHRIST.Do you see him. Do you see that he demonstrated his love for you dying for you? Do you see that you can be free of the power of sin.You want to know what LIFE is?Life is knowing that nothing can separate you from the Love of God.Life is living for something that lasts.Life is being part of a mission that cannot fail.Life is being part of a movement that will change the world. You want to know why you will change the world? Because you have seen the Lord.Let’s stop trying to do it on our own.You cannot save your marriage,save your kids,transform your church,repair your family,overcome your sin patters,absolve your guilt or condemenation,resolve your loneliness ordeliver yourself from evil.Turn to the fountain of life. Come thirsty. Drink deeply. There are stories. And then there are true stories. There is fiction and then there is non-fiction. This is REAL. This changes everything.And maybe all this feels like a dream. It feels too good. Frankly your scared to believe it because if it’s not true it would undo you completely.That’s understandable. It’s understandable to fear being fooled. Counterfeits are everywhere. But don’t let your fear of counterfeits prevent you from drinking from the fountain of everlasting life.The degree to which we will be happy is the degree to which we align ourselves with the Truth. And the truth is Jesus Christ has died to set you free of your sins and give you life.Let’s let the Scriptures reduce this down to it’s absolute most simple form. John 3:16.John 3Here’s what you need to do. You just need to respond to Christ today. You might say to yourself, "I don’t know how to do that?" Of course you don’t. Nobody does. I don’t know how to move toward God. I don’t even know where he is. Of course you don’t. But he knows where you are. God is saving you.The key isn’t to do just the exact right religious motions in the exact right sequence. Life begins when you discover that you ACTUALLY want the resurrection life that Jesus is offering. Faith has already begun if you WANT to believe. To want to believe is evidence that life has already started inside you. If you sense you want this, friend, you are beings saved.Jesus is already beginning the resurrection in you. In our natural condition, none of us will never seek the Lord, so if we find ourselves wanting it, he’s working. Think of it. The living God… working in us, even now.Listen, life is being offered to all of us in the room. And it’s the greatest life of all. I have been a pastor for many years now and watched a lot of people die. I have never personally seen or ever heard of a dying person who, on his death bed, regretted he was a christian. You want to know why? Because nobody regrets being satisfied.Can’t you see what is being offered. Life! Life! Life! Take your Bible and read the book of John. Read of Jesus. Behold him and drink. Live.If God is working in your heart right now and you want to respond then come up here and pray with the prayer team. Maybe you feel you want to pray with those who are responding. Then come down here. Come down here and pray!Maybe your scared and saying, I want to come but I don’t know what to do. Of course you don’t. Nobody does. Who cares. How can you loose if you have the creator of the Universe ready to embrace you. How can you loose if you have the Great Shepherd just ready to take your hand and walk with you and love you. You can’t loose.
r this message is available IntroductionJames 5We are in our penultimate study of the book of James. One more to go after this. We end the book of James next week on Easter Sunday.Now if you were with us last time, we looked at the beginning of this concluding paragraph of James. James is concluding his letter with a call for prayer. Why?Because in a letter that is all about giving us evidences of faith, he closes with the greatest evidence. He closes with the slam dunk. What is it? It is prayer. There is no greater evidence. And that’s not just homiletical hype. It’s just a fact.Suppose a man’s boat is sinking at sea. That man needs a power outside of himself, an outside entity like the coast guard to come save him. What would be the evidence of that? He would get on the radio and call for help. That would be the irrefutable evidence of the location of his greatest source of hope.And so James concludes his letter by saying, you want to know how to tell if you have faith in God? You want to know where your true hope lies. Do you trust in self-repair? Do you trust in your ability to bail water faster than it is coming in? Do you trust in your dingy of self-effort? Or do you trust in the life-saving power of the God of the Universe?The evidence that you trust in God will be prayer. Prayer, prayer, prayer.So last week, James said:If you are suffering, here’s what I want you to do: pray.If you are rejoicing, here’s what I want you to do: pray.If you are physically sick or spiritually weak, here’s what I want you to do: pray.And last week we closed with the first half of verse 16.The exhortation was to pray. Now today what James is going to do is inspire us that this is not just a spiritual exercise without a point. There can be tremendous power in prayer.“The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”And today we are going to see what it is that makes prayer powerful. Now to instruct us, he gives us an example.Now here’s what we are going to do. Let’s first just tell tell the story that James is referencing. Then at the very end, we’ll re-read James and I think the application will just drop right in place. So the story of Elijah and the 450 prophets of Baal comes from 1 Kings 17-18.A little background. When we open up chapter 17, it’s been about one hundred years since the united monarchy. The kingdom is now divided between Israel in the North and Judah in the South.Ahab is King along with his lovely wife, Jezebel. Ahab and Jezebel, together, were on a campaign to try to and make Israel religiously tolerant. They have torn down many of the altars to YHWH. They have replaced them with idols to Baal who was a great rain god, a storm god. And Baal worship and Ashera worship was horribly immoral on so many levels.And of course God is not happy about this. God wants to turn the hearts of his people back to him. So what does God do? Well, God’s leading prophet at the time is Elijah.So the Lord sends his prophet Elijah to Ahab and Jezebel and in verse 1 we read,1 Kings 17Now why does God cause a drought? Because it’s God’s way of challenging the slick and shiny new god Baal that had become so popular. Baal is the god of the storm, the god of rain. So really he’s saying, “Go ahead and pray for rain. Pray to Baal all you want. Pray it up. We’ll see who’s the Lord of the storm.”Because god is God, Elijah says, you can pray all day long and it will do ZERO because Baal does not give rain. YHWH does. And YHWH, BECAUSE HE IS REAL, has decreed ZERO rain until I give the word.Now if you know anything about the climate of Israel you know that a drought of that magnitude never happens. Israel is a desert climate and there have always been droughts but it always rains some. I pulled the weather data for Israel for the last hundred years.The least amount of rain they ever received in the last 100 years was 7 inches (by comparison we get about 12 here).So here we are told in the text that they would receive neither dew nor rain unless Elijah spoke the word. That would truly be a miracle.Israel is sitting right off the Mediteranian sea. You have this monster body of water and all that moisture just right there. Your going to get some rain.And yet ZERO. NADA. And they wait. So the rest of chapter 17 is Elijah along with the rest of Israel suffering this out. This where you get to story of Elijah being fed by the ravens and staying with the Widow and raising her son and all that.1 Kings 18Three years. This is way serious. So Elijah is sent to Ahab to put an an end to all this. God is going to send rain and demonstrate that he is the God of the storm, not Baal. Now watch how this interaction goes down between Elijah and Ahab. A time is arranged for the two of them to meet and we read in verse 17:Ahab sees Elijah and sticks out his bony finger. You! You troubler of Israel. Elijah says, “Ha you think I’m the problem?!” No sir. You are the problem.You have drug the name of YHWH through the mud. You have scorned his commands. You have worshiped other Gods. And you think I’m the problem? You’re abandonment of God has caused this drought, not me. I am just the messenger. I am the Postal worker handing you a letter.Now if you pause for a second, what you have here are two interpretations of the same event. We both agree there is no rain. Why? Ahab’s interpretation is, it’s because of Elijah. Elijah’s interpretation is it’s because of Ahab. Whose right?Let’s setup a little experiment which both parties agree would be ultimately conclusive. So here’s what Elijah suggests.The question that is being asked is this, “Who controls the weather?” That is not a trivia question. They are all suffering. Deeply suffering. Animals are dying. People are dying. Crops are dying. This is not an inconsequential moment.It’s not a question of who controls the rain. It’s a question of whose God can bring us salvation? Which God is real? Which God has power? Which God cares?Let’s setup an experiment to see.Now everyone is here knowing this is a contest. And Elijah confronts them before the contest starts. How long will you go limping between two opinions? Here’s what Elijah is saying: There are only two positions, Israel. You can’t logically stay neutral.Either the claim of YHWH is true or the claim of YHWH is false. "Either YHWH is the one and only God or he is not. Which is it? Either there is one god or many. You are either for God or against him. You either believe his claims or you don’t. Decide.To be neutral, to not take a stand, is delusional. To stand in the swmapy middle is to get the benefit of neither and to get the scorn of both.You can’t limp between two opinions. C.S. Lewis once said, “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”Choose. Elijah is really pressing on this point. And apparently the logic silences the people. They see they are in checkmate. We can’t say we believe in YHWH because if we believe in YHWH, then we need to do what YHWH says and YHWH says we are supposed to destroy the Baals and we like the Baals. So they stay silent.The nation of Israel has become comfortable with a logical inconsistency. They have come to the point where they have said, “No, YHWH, he’s a great God. We like YHWH. We will totally sacrifice to him. We also like Baal. We also like Asherah." And Elijah forces them to this uncomfortable point, "If you say you love YHWH then you must hate Baal and Asherah. There is no other option.” They have no answer.Elijah takes their silence as permission to proceed with the showdown.So for starters that’s not very good odds. Don’t forget there’s also 400 prophets of Asherah present. So we have 850:1. Not good odds. But this is the pattern of God. God goes out of the way to create these sorts of moments. He loves when the weak things of the world shame the wise.So now we get the rules. Here’s the contest rules. Here’s how we compare in a fair and equitable way.In other words, we both get an altar. We both get wood. We both get a bull. But neither of us gets fire. The God who provides the fire is the real God. Who can deny that this would be the great evidence of which God is real? I mean, that would pretty much seal the deal, right? Who could deny it?You guys are many. You should be able to do this a bit quicker than me. You guys go first.After four hours of screaming and wailing they are answered with silence. Nothing. And so Elijah interjects and begins to help them interpret the silence. He says, maybe the problem is your lack earnestness and sincerity. I think you need to turn up the volume. And so Elijah who has a PhD in sarcasm, begins to mock them.And I imagine Elijah’s sarcasm really just screwing down their resolve. Mockery has a way of shoveling coal into the engine that protects our pride. And they work themselves into a frothing, foaming mess.What a graphic picture. And how sad!The gushing blood of self-destruction. This is the graphic end of all idol worship, self-destruction. It could be the worship of money, sex, power, image, acceptance, whatever…. You give and you give and you give yourself to your god and the price becomes steeper and steeper and so you give more and more. You give your sweat your tears, you give your blood, you give your life, you sacrifice everything and because it is no god at all, it will not answer you and will not deliver you and will not satisfy you. And you lay on the ground panting and dying and without life.Look at the scene. Here they are after the full day is spent and still thirsty. They are cut open and dying. The sun is out baking their exhausted frames. And there is nothing. Why? Lack of sincerity? Lack of zeal? No. It’s because Baal isn’t real. At the end of the day, is not this the only question that matters? What’s real?Sincerity apart from truth equals destruction.So just silence. Blood all over the ground. Bodies passed out from exhaustion. Panting weak frames. No attention. No response. No answer. Just deafening silence.So Elijah steps forward. Have you had enough?Man, that’s a statement. You see this altar you ordered to be tore down, Ahab. That was a mistake. Perhaps you have abandoned the very thing that could have saved you? Your discernment of what has worth is a bit off, Ahab.And you can imagine Elijah, the sole prophet surrounded by thousands of people. And the sound of those stones clanking one against another.So let’s just consider the odds:You have 850 prophets versus 1You have dry wood versus soaked wood.You have a dry bull versus soaked bull.And no trench of water versus full trench of water.Elijah is in this incredible position of weakness and honestly foolishness. Why? You want to know why? So God can flex. God’s gonna flex. It’s a statement, "I want to show you just how in control of this whole thing I am. I want to demonstrate that nothing that happens is accidental. I want to demonstrate that at my word creation leaps into obedience.God loves weakness. He loves to use weak. Who among us feels weak right now? Who feels drug down by life? Who feels like a failure and absolutely unable to do anything for God’s kingdom. Well then you are perfect material. That’s exactly who God loves to use.The PrayerIt’s now Elijah’s turn. All eyes were on him. I’m sure the Baal worshipers are licking their jobs. There are some people sharpening their spears. And I’m sure Elijah is thinking, “I hope this works.”The other prophets danced. They screamed. It was a frenzy. There was potions and screaming and cutting. It would have been chaos to watch.By contrast. One prophet. And Elijah does no ritual. He just talks conversationally to God. And here is what he prays:Next comes the most explicit purpose statement in all the story. We’ll come back to it but just read it for now.So that’s the prayer. The prayer is TWO SENTENCES. I just love that. TWO SENTENCES. The prophets of Baal have been at it for FOUR HOURS and Elijah prays TWO SENTENCES. And now it’s just quiet.Now, I want you to think about what everyone at this point is likely expecting. Why did they setup this contest? They are wanting what? They are wanting rain. And so they said, “He who answers by fire is the true God.”So what do you think they were expecting? Or to say it another way, in what form do you think they expected the fire to come? Lighting, right. I think they would have expected the clouds to slowly build. Okay the clouds are rolling in. They are getting thicker and thicker.That’s what everyone wants. We want the gods to break the drought. Now let’s just say the clouds start rolling in. Everyone gets excited, “One of them is answering.” But the question is, “Which God is causing this to happen? That’s the great question, right? Whose the God of the rain?”And so the lighting is going to answer. Strike the altar of Baal. He’s God. Strike the altar of Elijah, YHWH’S God. That’s what everybody is expecting. Who knows, maybe even Elijah is expecting this.But God wants it to be totally clear. I don’t want this to be a guessing game or maybe that this is some rando accidental stray lighting bolt.After Elijah’s two sentence prayer out of the CLEAR BLUE SKY…The bull. The wood. The water. The stones — even the stones. Consumed in a flash.You can kind of imagine the shock, the surprise, the terror. Can you imagine the freakin scene? You have all these prophets and their knees turn to jelly and they fall with their face in the sand.Just zoom out and observe the the dual:Over here you have the side of Baal. You have the prophets pealing their faces off the dirt with mouths wide open. They have blood dripping down their arms. You have the altar with this giant bull and the blood is dried on his fur and his tongue is just hanging out of his mouth and there are flies just buzzing around. That’s Baal.And then you have the side of YHWH. And there’s just a smoldering hole in the earth where the soaked animal, on the soaked wood on the soaked stones once stood.And there’s one man, Elijah, with fire in his eyes. Dang. That would leave an impression.Now what was the purpose of this whole deal? We said we’d come back to verse 37: There are two purposes for this miracle.Purpose #1. YHWH is God.YHWH is not an idea.YHWH is not folk tradition or a memory.YHWH is not a figurehead of some religion.YHWH is not something that exists only in the imagination.YHWH is not a cultural expression of a particular people group.YHWH is not a force. He’s not a symbol.YHWH is GOD — the living, active, fire-sending, sin-hating, idolatry-destroying, prayer-hearing, personal God.“when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, The LORD, he is God”Purpose #1 accomplished. There was a second purpose. Purpose #2 was that “that this people may know that you have turned their hearts back.”Cause the people of Israel to know that God did it. Let’s make a really clear distinction between what they did and what God did. Here’s what they did.Their hearts ran after the Baals and Asheroths.Their hearts betrayed God.Their hearts Spurned God.Their hearts Belittled God.Their hearts loved other things more than God.Their hearts had Devalued God. That’s what they didAnd here’s what God did. God intervened. He showed his power. He flexed. He turned them back. God saved. God rescued. God did it.That’s the point of the story. Hang on to that as we come back to James.Now the prophets of Baal are rounded up an executed. Even though it is not explicitly stated in the text, my guess is that this was a pre-agreed upon arrangement. The prophets of the losing god die.Whose doing the seizing? Elijah was by himself, remember? Answer: the people whose hearts have been turned back! Part of repentance is destroying whatever God you had been worshiping. Now God had promised that their would be rain that day. And now we can almost taste it.God said it would rain. But just because God says something is ABSOLUTELY going to happen, doesn’t mean vehicles aren’t necessary to make it happen.I can decide to go to Costco, but I need a vehicle. Right? God says it will rain. He chooses to do it through the vehicle of Elijah’s prayer. Think about it: the OMNIPOTENT power of God is like a passenger who rides the vehicle of Elijah’s prayer. So here is Elijah, a normal man, a common man, a man with a nature like ours and it’s his prayer which becomes the vehicle that carries the power of the RAIN CREATING God of the universe. What?What a privilege.He’s dead serious. He’s desperate. He’s fervent. And he prays.Now why do you think he got up and had his messenger look? Because he thought his first prayer worked. And it didn’t. So what did he do? He prayed again. And why do you think he sent his messenger a second time? Because he thought, surely, now God will answer. It’s time. It’s past time. But it didn’t. So he prayed a third. Nothing. A fourth. Nothing. A fifth. Nothing. A sixth. Nothing. But then finally it happened.Okay, so that’s the story. We needed to do all that work (and it wasn’t really work; that was fun!). We did that review so we could apply our text today.So let’s go back to the book of James:Now what is James’ point here? James wants us to pray? You suffering? Pray. You joyful? Pray. You sick spiritually or physically? Pray.That’s what I want you to do.Now because we are weak humans, we need encouragement. Have you ever felt like your prayers were ineffective? Have you ever felt like your prayers were not answered in the way you hoped. You ever prayed once, twice, three, four, five times and felt like your prayers did nothing. Well James is here to inspire us and to remind us of the power of prayer.And you are asking the question, what do I need to do to make my prayers effective? James has an answer.I think this point comes as one of the greatest points of encouragement.It’s the same sort of encouragement a weekend golfer receives when he watches a PGA tour pro shank his drive straight into the pond. Okay, you are human. There’s a sort of sick delight that comes from that.It’s not actually encouraging to watch top-notch excellence all day long because none of us can relate. That’s not me.They are amazing. They can play the piano so fast I can’t see their fingers and they never make a mistake.Those basketball players are freaks of nature.That Musk guy can build a company that shoots rockets into space, while also managing a boring company and a solar company and a car company and a battery company. Wow. I can’t do that. I barely know how to change the battery in my smoke alarm.We look at excellence and we say, “I know that none of this is attainable for me.” I don’t have the genetics. I don’t have the money, the educational advantages, the connections, the skills. I wasn’t dealt that deck of cards. It doesn’t matter how much I train, how much I dedicate myself. I’m too far behind. I could never be that.They are amazing. I am a loser.But here we have this man, Elijah, and the first thing we are told is that the man Elijah had a nature just like you and I. There was absolutely nothing exceptional about Elijah. Here’s what Elijah was. He was human. If you are human you have everything necessary to experience the same world shaping power of prayer as Elijah experienced.Folks, that is encouraging. Elijah’s prayer accomplished much.We see this clearly in the text. He prayed fervently that it would not rain…We see it. Face between his knees. Once, twice, three four five times. What is the place of fervency? Clearly, fervency is important. Do you remember the story of the persistent neighbor. The story is of a man who comes to his neighbor at night asking for break. And the guy’s in the middle of his sleep and he’s all warm in his blankets and he says, "Dude, go back home." But he keeps asking. And eventually, he gives in, not because he’s a friend but because he’s annoyed and wants to sleep.Jesus commends persistence. He loves fervency. Why? It’s not that Jesus wants to be annoyed. He can’t be annoyed. The reason fervency honors the Lord is because it’s a confident assertion of where help really lies.It’s the great indicator that a “no” from God does not mean, “God has abandoned me, turn to other sources of help.” When we continue to pray we proclaim, “Nothing else can help me. I have nowhere else to turn. It’s the great proclamation.”The cry of a child to his parents, however annoying and disrespectful it may be, does say one thing loud and clear. You and you alone can help. I’m not going to go randomly ask some stranger on the sidewalk. I’m asking you mom, because I know you care. You want to know why kids at foster homes don’t cry? Because they’ve learned that these care workers won’t help me. It’s pointless to cry. My persistence does nothing. My fervency is ignored. Persistent prayer is an indicator of faith. Persistent prayer is trust in the love of caring father.It’s an indicator of faith.But persistent prayer by itself is not enough. Do you see the fervency of the Baal worshippers. They were fervent. They got nothing. Fervency must be coupled with righteousness.The effective prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much.I want to rescue this term from what I’m guessing you think it means. We use this term so improperly. We would describe a man as righteous and in doing so what comes to mind is law-abiding, a man who does good works, a man who abstains from evil. Its almost a synonym for moral. Disabuse your mind of that.That is not how the Bible uses the word. Righteous means, RIGHT WITH GOD. If you are righteous you are right with God and if you are unrighteous you are NOT RIGHT WITH GOD. That’s all the word means.So when we talk about being someone who is self-righteous, what we are saying is that this person is trying to get right with God by themselves. They are trying to make themselves right with God by their good works, by their performance, by their effort.The Bible says there is only one kind of righteous person. The only way to be righteous is to receive a righteousness that is not your own. The only way to be righteous is to let someone else make you righteous.You don’t work yourself into a froth like the Baal worshipers to make yourself acceptable to God. God said to Elijah, I am going to perform this great wonder so that they may know that they will know who I am and that I turned their hearts back to me. In Elijah’s day, that’s righteousness. Acknowledge what God has done. The sacrifice has been accepted. He is God.Today is Palm Sunday where we acknowledge Jesus Christ, the sacrifice, riding into Jerusalem to be nailed to a tree. What are we looking at here? God the father is saying, "I am going to perform this great wonder so that they may know that they will know who I am and that I turned their hearts back to me."We are approaching Easter where God breaks jaws of death. We approach Easter where resurrection life is realized through this great wonder of the cross. We come to Easter to receive a gift of life that is not achieved through the frothy foamy self-righteousness.Receive that gift and your prayer becomes a vehicle for the God of the universe.The prayer of that man, that man who has received a righteousness not his own, that prayer of that man is effective.
MEDITATION: The Choices that Determine Your FuturePASSAGE: Proverbs 2Our unfaithfulness is often the result of cultivating foolish desires in our hearts/minds rather than setting our hearts/minds on the Lord/his ways/purposes. So how can we live in order to avoid walking away from the Lord?The Clear Progression in Proverbs 2“IF” you prioritize God’s Word, 2:1-4 “THEN” you will understand the fear of the Lord and the proper way to live, 2:5, 9 AND this wisdom will deliver you from evil people and the road to death, 2:12, 16 “SO” you will live abundantly, 2:20The “IF” of 2:1-4 MUST BE present in our lives in order to experience the “THEN” of 2:5-19 so that we can experience the “SO” of 2:20-22.The Main Teaching PointProverbs 2 with an emphasis on 2:20-22 for the church:“So, IF YOU PAY CLOSE ATTENTION to the Lord and his word, THEN YOU WILL LIVE in the power of the Holy Spirit and keep your hands on the plow as you follow Jesus. For those who are transformed by the word of God will know rest in the midst of the difficulties of this world, and those who live out the truths they have been taught will know a peace that passes all understanding in the midst of the uncertainties of life. You will live the abundant life. But IF YOU DISREGARD the Lord and his word, THEN YOU WILL LIVE with worry, anxiety, idolatry, frustration, desperation, emptiness, and ultimately death. You will live a futile life.”“THEN…SO”—Two Possible Results 1)The Abundant Life2)The Futile LifeWhich “result” we experience is dependent on the choices we make. If you could choose between…1)faithfulness in following Jesus, rest, peace—abundant life!2)worry, anxiety, idolatry, frustration, desperation, emptiness—futile life……which would you choose? The result depends on a decision that you will have to make.“IF”—Two Possible Decisions 1)Follow the Lord and his word2)Disregard the Lord and his wordI.The Proper Focus on God’s Word, 2:1-4 2:1-4, Note each colorful, active, and intentional verb! This is more than “a verse a day keeps the devil away!”Deut 6:6-9, “shall be on your heart”Joshua 1:7-8, “meditate on it day and night”To use the words of Deuteronomy, we are “to know” certain truths, then “to remember” those truths, followed by the warning “to not forget” those truths. Exhortations to Focus on God’s Word (Deuteronomy)“know” – 10 times; “remember” – 16 times; “do not forget” – 14 times; OTHER WORDS: “be careful” – 30 times; “beware” – 9 times; “be diligent” – 2 times; “watch” – 6 times; “take heed” – 27 timesTHE POINTIt is essential for us to KNOW certain truths and then to REMEMBER what we know and then to NOT FORGET what we are supposed to “remember.”This means that it is possible to FORGET, no matter who you are or how long you have walked with the Lord. We need these truths to be CEMENTED and re-cemented in our hearts, so we LIVE these truths! If not, we may find ourselves living rebelliously/missing out on the abundant life that God so graciously wants to give us.APPL: This is why we have devotions, go to church, meet in small groups, attend Bible studies, etc. PROBLEM: The word of God can often be seen as simplistic. And we might find ourselves gravitating toward other options: a self-help book, a quick-fix seminar, commiserating with a friend, or bowing to any of the “created things” we look to for life or satisfaction or deliverance from our pain.We have heard/said: “Christians just use God’s word as a crutch” or “Don’t give me some kind of ‘God-talk’ answer!” BUT God’s word is exactly what we need. We may not drink deeply of the truths of God’s word or we might too quickly deflect reality with a quick chapter and verse…BUT we need God’s word. We may offer to someone a chapter/verse with bad timing…BUT what they need is God’s word.C. S. Lewis, “The process of living seems to consist in coming to realize certain truths so ancient and simple that, if stated, they sound like barren platitudes.” Ancient/simple truths…QUESTION: What can we do so that we know, remember, and not forget these truths?Meditation is the necessary practice that needs to be present in our lives so that we can “know,” then “remember,” and then “not forget.”PRINCIPLE: Meditation is reading the word of God over and over and over until it becomes who you are!Presupposition: We are all meditating or setting our hearts/minds on something, and that mindset or heart set has everything to do with the direction of our lives. (can’t say, “thinking ‘bout nothing”)II.The Results of a Proper Focus, 2:5-19 (SEE SLIDE)These verses capture the sense of Romans 12:1-2. The renewing of our mind by God’s word transforms us and helps us resist conforming to the world. First, it will transform us.RESULT #1: The Transformation to Wise Living, 2:5-11Note the Progression of Proverbs 2A commitment to God’s word will have an impact in your life. It transforms who you are into the person God redeemed you to be. You will know the source of wisdom. 2:5-8You will discern the fear of the Lord and discover the knowledge of God, 2:5HOW? 2:6-7 The Lord gives it.RESULT: 2:8, The Lord will protect us. You will live a life of wisdom, 2:9-11You will discern righteousness and justice and equity and every good course, 2:9RESULT: Wise choices will protect us.RESULT #2: The Deliverance from Foolish Living, 2:12-19Second, God’s word will help us resist conformity to this world. Your wisdom will deliver you from evil people and their evil ways, 2:12-15 Your wisdom will deliver you from foolishness and the death it brings, 2:16-19You will be delivered from all that opposes God, the “strange woman,” who seeks to lure you away from relationship with him. You will see evil for what it is. Foolishness is simply living as if God is NOT, but you will be delivered from that! III.The Abundant Life, 2:20-22The main focus is for the Mosaic Covenant Community: Your obedience will allow you to dwell in the Promised Land and not be cut off from it.For us…“So, IF YOU PAY CLOSE ATTENTION to the Lord and his word, THEN YOU WILL LIVE in the power of the Holy Spirit and keep your hands on the plow as you follow Jesus. For those who are transformed by the word of God will know rest in the midst of the difficulties of this world, and those who live out the truths they have been taught will know a peace that passes all understanding in the midst of the uncertainties of life. You will live the abundant life. But IF YOU DISREGARD the Lord and his word, THEN YOU WILL LIVE with worry, anxiety, idolatry, frustration, desperation, emptiness, and ultimately death. You will live a futile life.”So, remember the clear progression of Prov 2?LET’S FLIP IT: If we want the “then” of 2:5, 9 and the “deliver” of 2:12, 16 and the “so” of 2:20, we must be committed to the “if of 2:1-4. READ THEM again!Perhaps we learned the children’s song when we were young, “Read your Bible, pray every day, and you’ll grow, grow, grow…Neglect your Bible, forget to pray, and you’ll shrink, shrink, shrink….” (Sing the song!!)PRAYER: Let’s take a moment and commit ourselves to the Lord, asking that he would give us deepened desires to mediate on his word in a manner that leads to our personal transformation.
IntroductionJames 5Well, FCBC, after today we’ve got just a couple messages left in the book of James. The Lord has taught me a lot in this book. I’m pretty changed because of it. And today’s message is no exception.And the way things line up, we are going to actually end the messages of James on Easter Sunday which will also be the last Sunday I’m officially preaching here at FCBC. A lot of emotion in that for me. Maybe you come today with a lot of emotion about something. Well James is going to help us today.So today we enter into James’ final words. We know we are winding things down because we have this literary marker that lets us know we nearing the end. A lot of the NT epistles follow this pattern. Paul does a similar thing in his books. Finally brothers….and then he wraps things up. And here is James doing it. “But above all brothers….” He’s wrapping up his letter.Now what he says in his wrap up is pretty surprising to me. Before we reveal that, let’s think about everything James has said up to this point.We have said approximately 100 times that the entire book of James is a test for people to assess genuine saving faith. People can say anything. People can claim whatever they want. But just because you say it doesn’t make it true.And that is especially true when it comes to faith. People can say, "I am Christian." People can say, “I have saving faith.” But that doesn’t mean they do. How do you know if they have genuine faith? Forget other people, how do YOU know if you have genuine saving faith? You know because genuine faith works. Genuine faith produces genuine fruit.A certain type of root will always produce a certain type of fruit. And though you cannot see the root, you can know what kind of root it is by simply examining the fruit.So James is just systematically working through all these different fruits that are observable in the Christian life.What does genuine faith do under trials?Where does genuine faith turn for wisdom?How does genuine faith think about wealth and oppression?How does genuine faith speak?How does genuine faith think about the future?There’s a certain type of fruit that will grow in these environments. These are all micro-tests of saving faith. But the more of these tests you do, the more clear the pattern becomes. So that’s what we’ve been talking about at at thematic level.Now it’s interesting how he wraps things up. It’s not at all what I would expect. He begins the wrap up with a command not to make oaths.And I think its so interesting that this is how he chooses to close off a book that largely deals with having genuine faith. Don’t make oaths. Why would he do that? Why is that kind of like the summary capstone command that closes things out?Here’s a Bible interpretation hint that always helps me. Whenever you get stuck trying to understand something just zoom out and get the big picture. We know faith is the theme of the book, so you would expect that as he closes things out, he’s going to really zero in on the essence of faith.What’s he been saying in the near context? In the past 20 verses, James has been talking to us about suffering, trials, Job, the prophets… I mean there has been all this talk about trusting God in the midst of difficulty.Put your faith in God. Put your faith in God in the midst of difficulty instead of what? Instead of SELF.Placing faith in self is the opposite of placing faith in God.The SummarySo let’s now go back to it. Why does James close with this command to not make oaths? Why? How does that relate to faith.When we make an oath, we are making a claim about the future aren’t we. I promise you I will repay you this money in 6 months. And we are also making a claim about who is responsible to ensure that this future outcome is realized. Who is responsible, according to an oath, for making that future moment a reality?I am.There’s a bit of arrogance in that.Now this can’t possibly be a prohibition against all oaths. Because other parts of the Bible talks about making oaths and in those places there’s not a hint of a suggestion that it’s wrong. Presumably, there are times when making an oath is acceptable and other times when it is not. So what’s the deal?It’s a call for examination of why you are making the oath. It’s a call for an examination of where you are placing your faith. There’s a way to make an oath that tries to wrestle control away from God.Even this week, I caught myself. It was very humbling and at first seemed like such a small deal. I was trying to comfort someone with my words. They were in a hard spot and I was trying to comfort them. And in my effort to comfort them, I promised to them more than I could really promise. I said something like, “I’ll always be here for you.” It’s a small thing. But it’s not really true. There will be a day when I won’t be either because of my own faithlessness or because I’m just physically not there or because I’ve died.And you might just laugh at that and say, “That’s just a human expression.” But the more I thought about why I said it, the more I saw it as an evidence of trying to take control of something that is not mine to control. Why not instead of casting their future hope on my ability to ‘be there’ cast them on Christ.Weak faith tries to assure outcomes that only God controls.Weak faith tries to control the future.Weak faith tries to make promises where it cannot.Weak faith denies the reality of our frailty.James already warned us about this earlier in the book by teaching us to say, “If the Lord wills, then I will do such and such.”Now what’s the opposite then of trying to control the future, trying to promise and manipulate circumstances that are outside of our control?The opposite is to pray. And so the rest of the book of James just ends on this note of prayer. You want to know the true evidence of strong faith?Prayer. Prayer. Prayer. Prayer is THE evidence of strong faith. It’s THE great claim, I have no control. It’s the great claim of helplessness. Only you have control, Lord. It’s placing your vote of confidence in God. It’s hoping in God. It’s great evidence that you trust and believe in God and God alone.Now James give us three situations in which we can build faith through prayer. Here are three conditions in which we might find ourselves: general suffering, happiness, sickness. Let’s start with the first one. Suffering.Is anyone among you suffering?James gives us a way to approach suffering that will build faith.Suffering can take all sorts of forms.There’s psychological suffering.There’s financial suffering.There’s emotional suffering.The suffering of confusion.The suffering of worry and anxiety.The suffering of scars from the past.The suffering of sin and rebellion directed at you.The suffering of discrimination.The suffering of ridicule, scorn or neglect.Now there a lots of ways we can respond to suffering? We can wallow in self-pity. We can complain. We can gripe. We can whine. We can sulk. We can try to alter or fix the situation through dint of effort. All of these responses suffer from one major problems:These responses don’t work. These responses are doomed to fail from the beginning. It’s like trying to launch a rocket into space that is constructed of cardboard. Your demanding something of cardboard that cardboard just isn’t able to support. And similarly when we complain, sulk, gripe, we burn up. When we try to fix the problem through self-effort, we are incinerated. The weight of suffering is too large and too hot for our cardboard frames.We can’t fix suffering. We can’t really do anything. So what do we do instead?James says, if you are suffering, I want you to pray. Is anyone suffering, let him pray.The faith is NOT in the fixing the situation. The FAITH is in the sovereignty of Jesus. The HOPE is not in the suffering ending. The hope is in the 100% certainty that the purposes of God will be realized. So we can build faith by praying in suffering.So let me ask you, “Are you suffering? The instant next question, ‘are you praying?’” They go together. It needs to be instinct.Just picture putting your hand on a hot stove. It’s just reaction. Your hand just jerks back. Let that be the picture for you. You find yourself in the pain of suffering. The prayer of your spirit just leaps into heaven.When you suffer, the primary way in which you find help in that suffering is through prayer. And not just prayer by yourself. Pray with others. Ask others to pray for you. Ask others to come over and join in and pray for you.Pray, pray, pray. It’s the way we cast ourselves on the mercy of God.Let us pray.Is anyone among you rejoicing?Second he says, is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. James gives us a way to approach happiness that will build faith.Are you happy in life? That can be a faith building experience. Depending on your response that can either be a faith building or a faith wrecking experience.Let’s say you get a significant raise. Let’s say you close on a new home. Let’s say you get to go on a vacation. And you find yourself just so excited.That can either destroy your faith or build your faith depending on your response. If you credit God for that moment of joy, that’s a FAITH BUILDING experience? If you credit self for that moment of joy, that’s a FAITH DESTROYING experience.Because what you are doing is providing a feedback loop into your mind about where blessing is derived. If you credit self, then you destroy Faith. Essentially what you end up saying is, "Yeah, I know we all say that God is the giver of all good gifts, but let’s be honest, ’I made this happen through plain old fashioned hard work.’" That destroys faith.On the other hand, think about a common table prayer. God, this food is making me happy. But I am here to acknowledge that this food, even though it looks like it comes from my hard work and money in the bank account, it really, finally and ultimately, comes from you and you alone. Thank you God! That’s faith building.The blessing of God can build your faith. Think about that. You don’t have to feel guilty for being blessed. Are you happy? Then praise God. Do you have moments where you kids just make you sing for joy, then praise God! Do you have moments where you just overflow with happiness at God’s creation? Sing praise!Build your faith by being thankful. Every time you smile, let a prayer come out of your mouth. Here’s how I think about it. Literally, as the corner of your mouth goes up, praise goes up.Let us pray.Is anyone among you sick?Now the final condition he addresses is sickness. Sickness is really a subcategory of suffering mentioned in verse 14. Sickness is a particular form of suffering. And James has given us a way to approach sickness that will build faith.Now there are a lot of interpretive issues here. And these interpretive issues are important; we need to spend time on them. Most of the times we don’t spend very much time on interpretation because the interpretations are straight forward and so we choose instead to spend a lot of time on application but today’s text is not that way. Depending on the interpretation, your application might be pretty drastically different. So we need to think through the various possible interpretations and then give reasons why a particular interpretation is most likely so you can have confidence in the application.So we have three major interpretive issues here and I’ll put them in the form of three questions.What Does it Mean to Be Sick?Is anyone among you sick? This is not as straight forward in the Greek as it may appear in the English. Here’s the place in the text that gives rise to the question.The Greek word behind the ESV’s sick is astheneō, “to be weak.” This word is applied to all kinds of situations in the NT:It can refer to our human limitations (our human weakness) as in Romans 6.19Romans 6It can speak of our spiritual weakness.Romans 5It can refer to a weak conscience.1 Corinthians 8In can even refer to our physical appearance.2 Corinthians 10Because of the broad and varied usages, some commentators suggest that what is being referenced here is not physical illness but a spiritual weakness. So James would be saying, “Is anyone among you spiritually weak?” If that was the best understanding then the application would be for the spiritual leaders of the church to pray for this spiritually weak person so that his or her fervor for the Lord might be restored. An exhortation to pray for such a situation would fit very well at the end of a letter that has regularly chastised its readers for spiritual apathy.I certainly think this is appropriate and an excellent application of the text. I don’t think we should limit the concept of weakness to physical weakness. So let’s apply that. If you are feeling spiritually weak, if you lack zeal and fervor, if you feel spiritually sluggish, if you feel like a tissue paper that’s just ready to get engulfed in the next flame of temptation that blows your way, then call for prayer. Have the elders come pray for you.Now some go too far in my opinion. Some Bible interpreters insist astheneo means ONLY spiritual weakness. The concept of praying for supernatural healing makes some feel uncomfortable so we have to make the text say something else. I get that, but we have to stare at the text and ask, “What is God saying here?”To say that astheneo EXCLUSIVELY references spiritual weakness and has no application to physical illness goes way to far. Let me give you a few reasons why. Many have observed that the greatest influence on James’s vocabulary and theology comes from the gospels, and in the 12 times the word astheneo is used in the gospels, 12 times out of 12 ALWAYS denotes physical illness.Additionally, the closest parallel to this text occurs in Mark 9 where anointing with oil is connected with physical healing.Mark 6So to answer our first question, “What does James mean by sick?” He means spiritually sick or physically sick. If you are either of these, call the elders. Now that leads to our second key interpretive question. When the elders come, they are supposed to anoint you with oil and pray over you that you might be healed. What does it mean to anoint a person with oil?The practice is only mentioned one other time in the Mark 5 passage we just read and it doesn’t help any more than this passage. It’s a little bit mysterious. What does James think that the anointing will accomplish?There are really three possibilities here.A Practical Medicinal PurposeThere’s no question that oil was used medicinally all through the Roman empire during this time. You pressed out wounds. Along with wine, it’s a great antiseptic to clean and sterilize wounds.And while this is true, it’s kind of strange to suggest medicinal usage of olive oil as a blanket remedy for what could be myriads of types of physical sickness.It’s like a doctor having one rememdy no matter what your problem. Imagine going into the ER with a compound fracture sticking out your skin and the dr prescribes some olive oil. You might be a bit frustrated. Olive oil is great for somethings but it’s certainly not universal.Additionally, it’s kind of assumed that others in their care network would have already done this sort of thing. Why are the elders called upon to administer an antiseptic? A medicinal explanation doesn’t seem the most likely.It also has the least support lexically. There are two words for anoint in the NT. Neither word ever refers to oil used medicinally. We do have one instance where we know that oil is used medicinally in the NT. Do you know where it is? It’s the story of the good Sameritian. Remember the guy gets beat up by robbers and he has all these open wounds and left for dead. Along comes this Samaritian and the kind-hearted man binds up his wounds and pours out oil and wine on. In that case, the text doesn’t use the word anoint. It simply uses the verb to “put on.”In my view this is the least likely option.Sacramental/Symbolic Purpose.Some have taught that this is sacramental. A sacrament by definition is something that imparts grace. In a sacrament there is a visible and an invisible reality. So for example, when I hug my kids, the visible reality we see is the hug. The invisible reality is the love behind the hug. We cannot “see” the love the hug expresses.Later today we are going to take communion. In communion we have an outward expression, the bread, but we also have an invisible, very real, reality. The invisible reality we cannot “see” is God’s grace. When we take communion his grace is made known in fresh ways. The redemption we’ve received through the death and resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ is freshly experienced.Now some (primarily Roman catholics) have seen this administration of oil on the sick as a sacrament. So by anointing sick person with oil, we are imparting God’s grace in a special way to a person.The main reason we would not adopt this interpretation is because this is not something Jesus directly told us to do. Regarding communion, Jesus told us to “do this in remembrance of him.” So we do.Regarding baptism, Jesus told us to go into all the world and make disciples. How? By baptizing them. So we do.That’s where the sacraments come from. But Jesus does not say to us. Go into all the world and anoint the sick.Now a third possibility is closely related but distinct.SymbolicAnointing with oil frequently symbolizes the consecration of persons or things for God’s use and service in the OT.Exodus 28Priests would also anoint temple furniture. It was a way of physically demonstrating this is no ordinary chair. This is a temple chair. This is no ordinary candlestick. We concencrate it, we set it apart for special use.And this usage continues into the NT.The apostles were anointed for special service. Jesus was anointed for his ministry.So if James has this background in mind, then he would be recommending that the elders anoint the sick person in order vividly to show how that person is being set apart for God’s special attention and prayer.In affect, the oil is saying, “This is not a normal moment. This is a moment set apart for special prayer to the Lord.” It’s a physical way of demonstrating that what is going on here is a special event.We make these kind of distinctions all the time. When we graduate from school you wear strange hats with tassles and people wear strange robes. Why? You have clothes that are sanctified for that single usage. It makes that moment special. What we are doing here is not normal. This signifies something significant.I think that’s the best explanation of what is going on here. The oil is saying, this moment is special. This moment is no ordinary moment. You might feel a bit strange having oil put on you like you might feel strange wearing a gown with a tassel. That’s by design. We don’t do this everyday. We consecrate this moment for prayer.So I think that answers our second question. What is the purpose of the oil? To set apart the moment and set apart the person. This is a scared moment where all eyes are toward heaven in a moment of great need. Now there’s a third question that arises out of this text.The reason we ask this question is because the text, at bare minimum, implies this.So here’s this sick person (maybe spiritually sick; maybe physically sick). And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.The implication is that sin has caused the sickness; prayer and subsequent confession is necessary to be healed.Is this what is being taught? Here’s the million dollar question:Is my physical or spiritual sickness caused by my unconfessed sinfulness?You want to know what the answer is: Maybe. Maybe not.That is a very uncomfortable answer but that’s what the Bible teaches. On the one hand it’s wrong to suggest that all sickness is the result of sin.Certainly the book of Job, just last week, makes this point very strongly. Jesus also makes this point in John 9. Remember the disciples are approaching Jesus and they see this man born blind and they ask, "Who sinned that this man was born blind? Was it him or his parents?" And what was Jesus’ response? Neither. He was born blind to demonstrate the glory of God.So Job and Jesus both make it clear that drawing a direct relationship between illness and sin is impossible to do.So it’s wrong to claim that all people are sick because of sin. But it’s also wrong to claim that no people are sick because of sin. The Bible does teach that some people are sick because of sin.In our modern world we are so averse to thinking that any physical ailment has a spiritual connection. Physical disease has physical causes. You die of arsenic poisoning because you drank arsenic. Let’s not spiritualize things that don’t need to be spritualized. I agree. I don’t want to overspiritualize. But I also don’t want to underspritualize.There are a least two things to say here.First, the very modern medicine that we worship is now suggesting that much of the ailments that we suffer physically are results of internal emotional and spiritual issues. We can note the simple connections all the time. Stress creates ulcers, high blood pressure, stomach pain, brain fog... all of that can be caused by things going on in your mind. Who among us have not noticed physical decline that is associated with emotional and spiritual suffering? We are connected beings.So of course our spiritual condition affects our physical condition.But beyond that simple insight, here’s a second insight. The NT consistently teaches that some illnesses are, in fact, the disciplinary mercy of God:1 Corinthians 11So let that sit. Don’t move on too quickly. If you are sick, it’s okay to ask the question, are you sick because of sin. Just ask it. It’s okay. And just so you know, if that’s the case, you aren’t being punished. It’s a mercy of God to slow you down.It’s a mercy of God to alert you. Imagine living in a body that gave you no indicators of pain. You’d twist your ankle off a curb and then just keep walking on it and keep injuring it. Pretty soon all the ligaments in that angle would be absolutely destroyed. If you are living in sin and God halts you through sickness. That is a mercy. The most unloving thing in the world would be to allow you to continue in that self-destructive behavior.So ask the question.ApplicationNow here’s the big point. We are going to get lost in the weeds here and never make the important application necessary. The most dangerous possible outcome of today is you walk away and you go, I always wondered what that passage meant. Sweet. I like that interpretation. And then it just vanishes from any practical expression in your life! NO.Let me let you know how I think this should be applied right now. If you are suffering, what should you do? Pray. If you are happy, what should you do? pray and rejoice.And if you are seriously sick (either spiritually or physically) what should you do? Call for the elders, ask your self if, perhaps, it’s because of sin that you are sick, and have them come, anoint you with oil, set you apart for a special moment of prayer. This is not ordinary prayer. This is a special concecrated moment of prayer. This is the main job of the elders. Teach the word and pray.And what does the text say?“And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.”You want to know what I hear here? I hear an OATH by God. We were told not to make OATHS. But here God is making an oath to us. There are only two ways a being can make an oath.The first way you can make an oath is if something in the past already accomplished has implication in the future. For example. I might say to my son, when you get home, there will 20 dollars on the table waiting for you. I can promise that because that 20 dollars is already there. I put it there an hour ago and that past action will have future implications on my son. My son is saying, “Right dad, when have you ever done that.”Secondly, I can promise if I have some reasonable way of controlling the future. I could say, “I promise when I get home, I’ll clean the dishes.” That’s an event that in most cases is within my ability to control.Here Jesus is making an oath to us.Three promisesThe prayer of faith will save the one who is WEAK.The Lord will raise him up.If he has committed sin (NOTE: it’s not always a sin issue. So it’s conditional). IF he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.God will save them. That’s the promise.Those are all promises of God to those who pray. And they are based on the past action of Jesus Christ on the cross and they are based on Christ’s absolute control over the future. We do not know how a sick person will be saved. We do not know. Some are saved in death. Some are saved through healing. But they are all raised up eventually. The weakness is replaced with strength. We don’t know how the healing will come.But we do know how sins are forgiven. Sins are forgiven by what we come here to celebrate this morning in communion. Listen, the great theme of James is confession. Confess your sins this morning. Confess. The cause of so much suffering in the world is just plane old, run of the mill sin.Do you realize that all the suffering in the world could be instantly overcome if everyone just confessed their sin. Because if everyone did that God would be faithful and just to forgive that sin and cleanse them from all unrighteousness.Think of a wound filled with dirt. That’ the picture of sin. It’s deeply infected. It’s so sensitive when you touch it. That’s sin. We are all so deeply affected. All of us. All should be able to confess right now. All should be able to come to the table and confess. We are a room full of beggars coming to the table this morning to receive grace we don’t deserve.But how wonderful!CommunionChrist be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me. Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger. I bind unto myself the Name, The strong Name of the Trinity; By invocation of the same. The Three in One, and One in Three, Of Whom all nature hath creation, Eternal Father, Spirit, Word: Praise to the Lord of my salvation, Salvation is of Christ the Lord.A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, and it is in the capacity of man to reproduce such an instrument. A man with wings large enough and duly attached might learn
IntroductionJames 5I thought we’d begin this week with a bit of Trivia. You want to know what this is?This is considered the oldest known complaint in the world. It’s 4000 year old Akkadian cunieform tablet written by a man named Nanni who complains about a substandard ingot of copper he received by the hand of his servant and in the letter he demands a refund.Complaining, as it turns out, is one of the oldest art forms in history.We can complain about anything from a copper ingots to cold weather to people cutting in line, to poor customer service, our unreasonable boss to a boring movie to an overpopulated city and it’s traffic, and the worst of all, not being able to connect to wifi.But sometimes out complaints center on things that are much less trivial. Sometimes are complaints arise out of deep suffering. When we are pinned down in an uncomfortable situation, we complain by demanding and answer to the why question? Why am I suffering? Why this betrayal? Why this death? Why this injustice? What this financial hardship? Why my marriage? Why my are my children like this? Why am I here? Lord, why don’t you change things?Last week James gave us three commands on how to be righteous in the face of suffering and not complain.Be patient, trust God and don’t complain.Now this week James is going to work that out through EXAMPLES. Examples are helpful because examples are simply commands applied in real life situations. He says, let me point you to some biblical examples of people who did a good job of being patient, trusting God and not complaining in their impossibly hard situations. So James give us the prophets and God’s servant, Job. So let’s start with the prophets.The ProphetsNow the prophets are amazing. The prophets have been given the most unrewarding of all possible jobs.Let’s first consider IsaiahIsaiahWhen we open up the book of Isaiah we see God’s assessment of the nation of Israel. God says, my people have not heeded any of my warnings. They don’t even know me.Isaiah 1And for the rest of chapter 1 and into the next chapters he outlines the many ways in which Israel has turned away. Now in Isaiah 6, the prophet Isaiah has a vision of God and it’s breathtaking. It really just knocks Isaiah on the carpet.And the Lord says, Isaiah, will you go to my people and preach who I am. Will you preach what you just saw.And he said by all means. Yes, I’ll go! Send me!But here’s where it gets interesting. Isaiah, I’m not sure your going to like your mission. I’m going to send you to preach the gospel to my people for the next 20 or 30 years and no one will listen, believe or respect you in any way. Ever. You will never see fruit in your ministry your entire life. You will live your entire life without witnessing a shred of evidence that anything you ever said or did mattered.I’m letting you know in advance that they will never respond no matter how much you beg and plead. They will persecute you, marginalize you and basically make your life miserable until you die.In fact your job is to harden hearts by speaking truth and being rejected.The more you try to show them truth the blinder they will become.The more you try to get their attention the heavier their eyes will become until they just fall asleep.The more you talk the more plugged up with wax their ears will become.Look at Isaiah 6.9Isaiah 6And Isaiah responded, “Well that doesn’t sound like much fun? How long do I have to do that Lord?”Preach the truth until everyone is judged. Preach until a foreign nation obliterates them and they are utterly destroyed. Okay, now get going. That’s hard.God, why? Why would you want me to do that? Why do you want me to beat my head against the wall with ZERO results? You want to talk about a job that might require a little patience. You want to talk about a situation in which you might be tempted to complain? Isaiah can relate.James says look at the prophets. What do you think was motivating Isaiah? What caused him to go year after year after year, watching the horrible hard-heartedness that led to destruction. What enabled him to keep going? What enabled him to keep preaching to this stiff-necked rebellious people?What was able to not complain and be patient?Think about it. CAN YOU GUESS WHAT IT IS?JeremiahConsider Jeremiah. Jeremiah preaches during the Babylonian invasion of Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar is steaming forward.Jeremiah, go tell Jehoiakim that I’m going to use Nebuchadnezzar as a rod to discipline the nation of Israel. You have disobeyed me; therefore you will be destroyed by him.Jehoiakim sees Babylon assembling for battle and they are scurrying about like ants trying to prepare for battle and God says, “Jeremiah, Go up to the king and here’s what I want you to tell him to his face.”Prophesy over him and tell him that he is going to lose this battle."Tell Jehoiakim, “the right thing to do is to surrender to Nebuchadnezzar and to submit to him.”Okay, that’s your job. Now go.Jeremiah argued to God. God I’m only a child; I don’t know how to speak to kings. But God says, “That excuse doesn’t work. I’ll give you the words. Get yourself ready!”Jeremiah says, "Are you kidding me? Everybody is going to think I’m a traitor! You really think he’s going to listen to this message: Hey, Jehoiakim, you know that pagan overloard, Nebuchadnezzar? Yeah, well, God wants you to Give up and let him take you into captivity. They’re going to think I’m a traitor."And that’s exactly what happened. They did think he was a traitor. In Jeremiah 11 we read of all the friends in his hometown (these are his elementary school classmates, those who group up together, they all assemble and say, we have to kill this guy. He’s spreading the language of sedition.We read of the temple prophets conspiring to kill him. Jeremiah discovers the plot to kill him and he complains to the Lord about his persecution and the Lord responds by telling him. “Oh, don’t worry, it’s going to get way worse.”And sure enough. Jeremiah is beaten and put in stocks. He is thrown into a cistern where he starts sinking in mud. They are starving him. We call Jeremiah the weeping prophet. He writes a book in our Bible called Lamentations. But he can’t stop speaking. He just keeps speaking.You want to talk about a job where you might be tempted to complain? How about Jeremiah? God why? James says, look at the prophets. What do you think was motivating Jeremiah? What caused him to sit in that muddy pit and trust God? What do you think motivated him to keep on speaking despite the terrible suffering and persecution?Think about it. CAN YOU GUESS WHAT IT IS?HoseaThen you have Hosea. God comes to Hosea, and he says, “Hosea, you’re never going to be any kind of prophet until you understand what the betrayal of the nation of Israel feels like to the heart of God. So here’s what I want you to do. I want you to marry a prostitute. I want you to marry a woman who will never be faithful to you. I’ve given her a fitting name, Gomer. You’re going to marry Gomer, and she’s going to continually be unfaithful to you.”God says, "She’s going to continually commit adultery. It’s going to just absolutely gut you. You are going to love her to death and she’s going to have affair after affair after affair. You’re going to have to continually forgive her and go get her and buy her back and carry her back to your home. And you are going to love her again even though she hurt you so badly. And you are going to have to go through that difficult process of rebuilding trust.That’s the training routine you are going to need to suffer in order to be a usable prophet in my hands. So I just want you to live that life on repeat for the next 30-40 years. Cool? You good with that?You want to talk about a job where you might be tempted to complain. I think Hosea can relate. God why? James says, look at the prophets. What do you think was motivating Hosea? What caused him to go year after year after year, watching the unfaithfulness of his wife. What enabled him to forgive time after time after time. I mean can you imagine the sorrow. Just horrible sorrow all the time.God says to all these prophets, “Get going.” Hosea. Get going. Jeremiah. Get going. Get going, Isaiah. Their lives were suffering. They never had answers. Nothing ever went right for them. God says, "I want you to obey me. Be patient and don’t complain.What do you think caused the prophets to be so patient? What do you think motivated them to keep serving the Lord despite terrible suffering and persecution?Think about it. CAN YOU GUESS WHAT IT IS?I’m baiting you aren’t I? You want to know. Be patient. I’m helping you practice patience.We are supposed to look at the prophets. The prophets are given as an example. But we are also supposed to look at Job.JobLet’s think about the patience of Job. Man, this is so good. Now to understand the lesson of Job you have to understand the structure of the book and the structure of the book of Job is a little odd. The story is found at the beginning and the end. In the middle you have these long speeches.When we open the book we read of the integrity and character of the man Job.He was a man who feared God and turned away from evil.He was an upright man.He was blameless in all his ways.He was a devout man, and he also was an extremely wealthy man.Now Satan comes and says, “I see this servant of yours, Job. I see how he’s kind of your poster child. He’s pretty hot stuff.” Well, he’s amazing for a reason. The dudes’ filthy rich. Job has learned not to bite the hand that feeds him. He’s wise. Does Job serve you for nothing? The only reason he’s serving you is because you’ve blessed him. In other words he doesn’t love you. He loves your blessing.Take away his cash and he’ll curse you. You can prove where his devotion lies by taking away his assets.So God allowed it. One day Job was standing in his home, and a messenger comes up and says,"I was herding your your donkeys and plowing with your oxen, and plunderers, those wretched Sabeans, well they came and attacked and took them all and killed the servants, and I alone have escaped to tell you." Well there goes his food supply.- And while the words were still in his mouth a second servant comes running up, and he says, "I was with your sheep, and lightning came down from the sky and destroyed all the sheep and all the servants, and I alone have escaped to tell you."And while the words were still in his mouth another comes and says the Chaldeans came and formed three bands and took all your camels and killed all your servants. This is basically the equivalent of saying your entire retirement portfolio has been wiped out. Your stocks gone. Your houses burned down and insurance won’t pay and even your bars of gold you buried in the ground were dug up and robbed. All of his earthy capital is gone. He’s financially ruined. He’s now poor. That’s a lot to absorb. - And while the words were still in his mouth another servant came up and said, I was in the home where all of your grown children were feasting and drinking wine together, and a wind came out of the wilderness and the house collapsed, and all of your children are dead, all ten, seven sons and three daughters, and I alone have escaped to tell you these things."Now after the first stroke from Satan, we are told that Job howls in sorrow. He rips his clothes, shaves his head, falls to the ground in ashes and says, “Naked I came into the world, and naked I will return. The Lord gives. The Lord takes. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing. That is pretty stinking impressive.Now that introduction and the initial commentary has caused many people to misunderstand the book. Some people use this as the interpretive key for the book. Okay, Job was a righteous man, blameless. Satan attacked him and he didn’t crack. So they read everything through that lens.True enough. Job was righteous. Job was blameless. There was not a better man on the earth. He was the top tier. He was the upper crust.But the story of the book of Job is that trials crush even the righteous. Trials wear you down. Trials cause even the finest poster children to crack. Trials are too much for all of us. All of us will crack eventually.There’s a saying in the Navy Seals about fear of water. “All men panic. It’s just a matter of when.”And so it is with trials. All men eventually doubt God. All men eventually sin. All men crack. It’s just a matter of when. Show me one who does not? At the first stroke, his self-control holds. Job hasn’t cracked, yet.So the pressure turns up.There was a second stroke of Satan. Now Satan attacks his health. We’re told he was afflicted with these running sores. He sat on an ash heap, and he scraped himself with pieces of pottery, scouring the puss off. It says he was afflicted with these sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. I mean that has got to just be terrible misery. I’ve run into poison ivy several times in my life and I just absolutely hate that stuff. It’s just so itchy. The sores just run for weeks. It’s so gross. From the top of the head to the sole of the foot. Head to toe. Can you imagine.Some people after funerals get consolation cards, meals cooked for them, phone calls. Job buries his 10 kids and loses his entire retirement portfolio and to boost his spirits he’s given head to toe bleeding sores.Now that’s bad. That’s really bad. But I think the absolute worst comes next. I think what made him crack was not:the loss of money.Not the loss of children.Not the loss of health.It was the loss of being believed by his closest friends.Along come four terrible counselors. The first was Job’s wife.She’s a piece of work. Here Job is suffering. He’s covered in sores and she looks at him and says, "Curse God and die!" Obviously this is an indication of where she’s at. She’s mad at God. She’s lost all her kids. She’s convinced God is evil. She’s cursing at God. And she wants her husband to do the same. She’s trying to drag him down with her.Look at his response. It’s remarkable. You see he is still barely holding on, but he is still holding on by the tips of his fingers. He says, "You are talking like a foolish woman." He doesn’t say, “You are a foolish woman." He says, "We’ve been around foolish women. You and I have both agreed what foolish behavior looks like. What your saying feels awful similar to that.” It’s a very kind response to someone who says to you, "Curse God and die!Next up were Job’s three friends: Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. Now Job’s friends come along and take a totally different approach. They say, “No, God’s not the problem. God can’t be the problem. God is perfect. God is holy. And that is like a breath of fresh air to Job.”Yes, I was just trying to tell my wife that. That’s so comforting to hear. Thank you for saying that. I agree, God can never be wrong. He is all wise! He’s always good."But what comes next is like a baseball bat to the knees. Job’s friend say, “So if God is good. If God is not to blame, the only one left is you. Job, you’re the problem." They say, "I’ve never seen an innocent man perish like you. Obviously, You’re to blame. God doesn’t judge the righteous.”Oh man, that hurts. That’s deep. He cries out. He yells. He screams.So Job’s wife says: “God’s the problem. God is to blame.”Job’s friends says: “Your the problem”And I think he cracks. Right there. And in his agony for 35 chapters he basically asks two questions:Why didn’t I die at birth?Why is God not answering me?He says, I am an innocent sufferer. I am righteous. I have done nothing to deserve this. This is senseless suffering. Why?Why won’t God talk to me? Why is the heavens as bronze? Why? In Job 23 he says, “If only I knew where to find him; if only I could go to his dwelling! I would state my case before him and fill my mouth with arguments. I would find out the reasons, and consider what he would say.”You see, Job is just like us. He’s asking, “why?” And what’s the answer? Silence. Be patient. He gets nothing. He gets silence as a response. Why are you allowing this to happen? It would be one thing if I could see a reason.If it was because I had sinned, that would make sense. Okay, this is punishment for my sin.Or there was some greater purpose. I could handle that. It would be one thing if I could discern a reason. This trial will accomplish this purpose. Okay, now I have a reason to suffer.But I am innocent and you are silent. Why? Why am I suffering?To be patient and not complain and live in great suffering is among the hardest places in the world to be. Wait. Trust me.Now, here’s what I want to point out. By the time we get to chapter 38, Job has officially cracked. Here the most righteous man on the face of the earth has cracked under suffering. He’s cracked. He’s doubting God. He’s angry. He’s questioning God.Everyone cracks. Listen, the prophets cracked too.You don’t think Isaac cracked when he watched innocent children being slaughtered because of the hard-heartedness of Israel? Of course he did!You don’t think Hosea cracked when he got the news that his wife was sleeping with another man? Of course he did!You don’t think Jeremiah cracked while his feet were sinking in the mud? Read Lamentations. That’s a poem written by a broken heart. Of course he did!And here is Job. Cracked!And yet James says, “Consider the prophets. Consider Job.”What does that mean? The lesson to learn from the prophets and Job is NOT how NOT to crack. It’s what to do when you do. Or even more accurately, the lesson is what God will do for you when you crack.We looked at Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea and asked what do you think motivated them to keep on serving God in their terrible suffering and persecution? What did they do? CAN YOU GUESS WHAT THEY DID? Here’s the answer: They did nothing. God did something.In all these cases, what happens is that his beloved children crack and God shows up and puts them back together. And how he shows up to do that is shocking.The RebukeSince we are in Job, let’s just keep going here. In Job chapter 38, near the end, God shows up. Job is not doing well. And God appears in this great storm and whirlwind. Job has been asking the why question for 35+ chapters. And finally God shows up and here’s how he answers.There are two things here that are just absolutely astonishing to me. First, God doesn’t give Job a reason. He doesn’t tell him why?We might have ideas as to what God is up to but he doesn’t say one thing about it to Job. Job has been asking for chapters and chapters why, and God says not a thing about it. He gives no explanation.So first, He doesn’t tell him why, but secondly, he doesn’t give him any comfort. We don’t read God saying, "Job, I’m so sorry for your loss. I’m so sorry that you lost your wealth and your children and I see those terrible painful sores. It must have been so terrible to go so long and not understand. I am so, so sorry. We get none of that.The absence of that language is so shocking to me that it almost makes me want to throw away the book. How cold can you be? It’s like God just has ice in his veins. Are you kidding?Not only does he not give Job comfort, he goes on the offensive. He goes on the attack. Over and over God says, “Who are you? Who do you think you are?”I mean the language is so harsh, I just shrink back.God says to Job,Job 38Surely, you know Job, Surely, you were there. You’re talking like you are so old. You’re talking like you are so wise.So surely, the lightning bolts report to you. They come to you and say, “Here we are. Which way would you like us to go, Job?” They do that for me, so surely that do that for you too, since you seem to have so much knowledge of the way things ought to be?Surely you understand how to make stars. That’s easy, right? Like billions of them, right?Surely, since you know so much about how your life should go and how it fits into my great plan of redemption, surely you know about these petty small little detail. Right?Oh you don’t know? You don’t have understanding about these things? Well, then maybe you should trust me.That feels like the opposite of compassion. And we think, God, what are you doing to this broken man? We feel like God is making a mistake here. But let’s not commit the same sin that Job just committed telling God how he should instruct his children. God you don’t know how to discipline your children. Your too harsh. You haven’t read the positive affirmation books at Barns and Noble.What God says totally works. Look what comes out of Jobs mouth. Job stammers out a first response. You know what comes out? Repentance. The great theme of the book of James. Repentance.Job was written NOT to tell you how to NOT crack. It was written to tell you what to do when you do crack. In fact, it was written to crack you and then put you back together. And how does Job help put us back together. Through the beautiful, wonderful work of repentance. What a gift. What a healing balm. To just repent. To just say, “I thought I knew what was best. What a fool, to ever question you. I repent, Lord.”Listen to Job’s repentance.Job 40And you think, man, okay, Job really learned his lesson. Okay God you can be done.Do you know what God says? “I’m not finished. I’ll tell you when I’m done.”"Job, you think I am unjust? Must I be condemned that you be justified?Is that how this should be. It doesn’t make sense to me, so I should be the one who is repenting to you? Does that make sense, Job?Either I am competent to judge God or God is competent to Judge me. Which is it?Job, you suffering is 1000 times worse simply because you assume you can understand all these things. How could that be? Were you there when I invented the molecular structure of the universe? Were you there when I invented snow? Were you there when I laid the foundations of the earth? Were you there when I said to trillions of stars, come forth? Job, you weren’t. How could YOU know? Who do you think you are to question me?Either I’m God or you are. Either I’m right or you are. Either I know what’s going on or you do. I’m appealing to you. Think.It’s not possible, Job, that you are wiser than me.You want justice, Job? You think this unfair. Try your own hand at justice, Job. Look at every proud man and bring him low. Crush the wicked where they stand. Bury them in the dust, and then I will concede that you are in a position to be the determiner of justice."Now all of this is too much for Job.Job 42Think about the phrase, don’t obscure my counsel without knowledge. When you throw up complaints against God, you want to know what that does. It obscures God’s wisdom. All of the sudden something that should never be questioned, comes into question. It’s like a thick fog descends and now all of the sudden that mountain range in the distance is no longer visible. I’m confused which way is north.You know this is no different than Isaaih. What happened to Isaiah. He’s brought into the the throneroom of the Lord of Hosts. And he sees the Lord high and lifted up and the cheribim on the throne screaming Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is filled with his Glory.And Isaiah smashes his face into the dirt and says, whoa is me for I am ruined. I am man of unclean lips. How dare I ever question the Lord. Who do I think I am?That turbulence inside Isaiah is put to rest when he sees God. The turbulence inside of Job is put to rest when he sees God.The anger goes away. That pride evaporates. They are changed men. They don’t have all the answers, but they have what they need to be content. To trust. To not complain or grumble.The thing that so upset me is it seemed like God came and did all the wrong things to Job, and yet, look?Sometimes God asks for trust without a reason. God asks for trust without compassion. Why? Because now the trust is complete. It’s the highest form. It’s the most complete form of love.Is that hard? Yeah, of course, it’s hard. When you have cancer or your spouse just left you or you lost everything, or whatever, we are just bawling our eyes out. We are cracked. We are laying on the ground, cracked in a million pieces. Can you listen to God in that moment?God is no more distant from you than he was from Job. God is not more distant from you than he was from Jesus was he cried out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me. Even Jesus asked the why question.”ConclusionRemember, Job and the prophets are not here to tell you how not to crack. They tell you what to do when you do.And what should you do? Run to Christ.That’s what Job did. At the very end of the book of Job, God commends Job. He says, "My servant Job did the right thing." Job had some pretty low days. He had some pretty ugly moments. He cursed the day he was born. He accused God of injustice. He ranted and raved. He was filled with self-pity. It was terrible. He cracked.But what did he do right? He repented of thinking he knew better than God. He went looking for the WHY. He never found it. But you want to know what he did find? He found the who. He found the who and that was enough. He was satisfied. He found someone he could trust with the why.Remember the cross. Those in Jesus day said, “THIS MAKES ZERO SENSE.” Why God? Why would you allow this? God what are you doing?I’m guessing many lost their faith when they watched Jesus hang on the cross. They said, “How in the world could this be?” And yet God turned that into the greatest act of mercy in the world. Can you trust him with the unknowns in your life knowing he has done that?
Slideshow for this message is available IntroductionJames 5Well this is one of three messages left in the book of James. Then Palm Sunday and then Easter. One of the comments I’ve heard over and over through our study of James is this: “Man I love James because it’s so practical.” And it’s true. James talks about so many aspects of every day life, the tongue, money, trials, etc…Well if you like, practical, it doesn’t get any more practical than today.When we attend a funeral, perhaps one of the greatest compliments that can be said of a person during that funeral is something like: “Man, her life really counted. His life had an impact. That was a life well-lived.”We all want our life to count. We all want to matter. We all want to make an impact.So how do we do that? You want to know the recipe James gives for having a kingdom impact, to really making your life count, to really doing something with your life that has value?Be patient, trust God and don’t complain.What we are going to see today is that the heroic moments of the Christian life are actually forged in the mundane corners of everyday life. This is where character is hammered out. This is where the real stuff comes out. This is HEAVEN’S stage. Why? Because it’s easy to be a hero at work; it’s easy to be a hero when the spotlight is on you; it’s easy to be a hero on the screen. It’s hard to be a hero at home in the normal every day grind of life.Many of you are stuck in that grind right now. You are stuck in an unfulfilling job. You are bored. You want to pull you hair out from cleaninp up after toddlers, changing diapers and reading Dr. Sues Books. You are thinking, how does this even matter?James is showing us in the passage today that the big spiritual battles are not at dramatic, historical, spotlight kinds of moments. Today what we are going to see is that the big spiritual battles for your soul, the thing that’s going to shake the foundations of the kingdom of the enemy is to simply be patient, trust God and not complain.Let’s see how this works.ReviewRemember last week we began by noting that the primary focus of the Bible isn’t social reform. It doesn’t give us a style of government to address the economic disparity we see in the various classes of people.Rather, depending on where you find yourself in the social structure, God gives you commands on how to conduct yourself such that you will honor the Lord wherever you find yourself.Last week, James addressed the rich. And it was pretty harsh. His tone was unforgiving and contained precisely zero nuance. He was really serious about the danger of loving money and what that would do to our soul. Last week James was addressing the rich.But this week we get the other side of that. What if you find yourself not rich, but suffering under the rich. What if you find yourself oppressed in some way. Well, James has something to say to you this week as well. He talks about how we should conduct ourselves if we find ourselves in this situation.So let’s read verses 7-9 and keep in mind, the context is impending judgment for the rich. He’s going to begin with a ’THEREFORE.’ Knowing that God will judge the rich for their self-indulgence, AS A LOGICAL OUTFLOW OF KNOWING THAT THE JUDGE IS COMING, he now says to the poor who are suffering under the rich, ‘THEREFORE’So if verses 1-8 was addressing:how to be wealthy, powerful AND ALSO righteous, verses 7-9 tells ushow to be poor, powerless AND ALSO righteous.Again, no call for reforms here. No calls for social justice warriors to come swooping in to rescue the oppressed. Instead a call to glorify God by being godly and righteous.The three points of the outline come out of the three commands in the text.We need patience in any situation where we want our situation to change and it’s not changing according to our expectations.I’m hungry for dinner. What’s mom say? Be patient; it’s almost ready.I need this paint to dry so I can get on with my project. Be patient; you can’t make paint dry any faster.I’m dying to know the results of my test score or my interview. Be patient; they will get back with you tomorrow.Patience is the ability to be content when something you want to change, but it in fact, does not change. I’m still hungry. The paint is still wet. I still don’t have the information I want. Patience is CONTENTMENT with non-change.That’s the first command in the list here:Now in this passage, James is talking about a certain type of patience. James is talking about patient suffering. When we suffer, of course we want those circumstances to change and we want them to change now. The poor in this passage are being taken advantage of by the rich. They are suffering. The cry of the laborers goes up to the Lord and what does God say, “Be patient.”God wants them to hope in future deliverance. He wants them to trust that one day, it will be made right. But the timing of that is up to God. Be patient. You must be patient. And that patience might need to last your entire life. It very well could be that you have to be very, very, very patient. It very well could be that the justice you hope for won’t come until the last day, the judgment day, the day of slaughter.It’s hard to be patient, especially that patient. It’s really hard. We can all be patient for a while. It’s socially rude not to be. But after a while, it seems like, “Okay we’ve crossed a line here. We’ve crossed over from reasonable to unreasonable.” It’s one thing to be on an airplane and sit on the tarmac for 15 minutes because of a delay. It’s another thing entirely to sit on the tarmac for 6 hours. Okay, now I have a right to be upset. This is totally unreasonable. Heads are going to roll.The goal of today is to get us all to see that all impatience is a very serious spiritual issue. There’s a heart sin pretty deep down there. Let me try to show you how this very spiritual issue disguises itself as no big deal..- If I asked, “Do you think it’s reasonable to say you know better than God?”You have instant answers to those questions. Of course.If I asked you, “Do you think it’s reasonable to become impatient when sitting on the tarmac for four hours?”I mean, that’s understandable. It’s pretty normal to be impatient. To be impatient is part of being human.But you see to be impatient is nothing less than saying, “I know better than God.” God, I’m here to complain and let you know that your divine plan for these 6 hours is mistaken.If Satan can get you to think that being impatient in that moment is no big deal, then he has succeeded in getting you to relocate your trust, to distrust the God of the universe. If he can get you to simply be impatient and not even relate that impatience to a spiritual issue, he has succeeded in ripping Christ off the throne of your heart.If he can get you to think that a little grumbling or complaining about my situation is no big deal, he’s already won before the war even started because he’s tricked you as to where the real battle is taking place.The war is waged in the small attitudes of the heart, in the seemingly insignificant, invisible throw away moments of the day.The victory between heaven and hell is determined by the small choices that come from attitudes that happen every day, moment by moment, in the most mundane corners of life.Maybe you feel pretty good about yourself becaause you judge your holiness by the number of banks you’ve robbed, people you’ve killed, and affairs you’ve had you might be tempted to feel pretty good. I’ve not done these things. I’m a pretty good person.Or maybe you feel bad because you judge your success by how many Bible studies you lead, how many degrees you have, or how large of a business you lead. I don’t do these things, so I’m a loser.But God is informing us the real indicator of godliness is the patience and longsuffering you show in the difficult situations of life you have to endure.Listen, I just did a funeral last week for Bonnie Wallace who attended our church for several years. And I can’t get out of my mind the testimony of the daughters of this family. I asked them to share with me some memories of their mom. Here she was a single mom raising several kids. She had to work 2 and sometimes 3 jobs. She was dirt poor. She had nothing. But in the summer she would come home to feed her kids, put on sunscreen and then go back to work. Over and over again, she would make that sacrifice.I am quite certain she prayed over and over again, “Lord this is so difficult. Lord this is so hard to raise my kids by myself making minimum wage.” And the Lord said, “Be patient.” There was no stage. There was no lights. There was nobody cheering her on. She just trusted the Lord, did not complain and did what was right. And then she went to be with the Lord.But man that impacted me. What a mom. I was shattered by that. Do you see?She lived, her entire life, suffered and died never even knowing how that act of patient suffering impacted me. I didn’t even know about it till after her passing. And now here you are benefiting from it. An act of patient obedience, no complaining, in her life, invisible to everyone (or so it seemed) is now glorifying God after her death. The ways of God are mysterious.The biggest choices in life are the small ones. Heaven and hell is under every bush. It’s decisions to sacrifice self, choices to forgive, attitudes to endure and not complain and things like that that are going to determine who you really are and who you will become.As I said, the outline here comes from the three commands given in the text. The first command is to be patient. And the second command gives you resources to obey the first command. How am I supposed to be patient?Let’s look at the second command.ESTABLISH your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.We are ABLE to be patient because the coming of the Lord is at hand. The Judge who will execute justice, the judge who will deliver the oppressed, is coming. That is the certain, CRITICAL HOPE that transforms your perspective and gives you the ability to suffer well.The more certain the hope, the more established the point is in your heart, the more patient we can be.Consider the psychological difference between these two scenarios. Here’s the first scenario: Let’s say you are in a playing around in a pool and someone comes behind you and without warning, grabs you and forces your head underwater. Who is this? Am I being attacked? How long will this last? You’d be thrashing around. You’d panic. You’d be punching and doing everything in your power to free yourself. Totally understandable. And then after 60 eternal seconds the assailant lets you up and you come thrashing to the surface gasping for breath, choking, water in your lungs and you discover it was your friend playing a joke on you.Now compare that to if that same friend said, "Let’s see if you can do this. I’m going to hold you underwater for 60 seconds and then let you up. And he gives you a stopwatch. " That one sentence creates a totally different experience. You stayed underwater the exact same amount of time. The difference was you trusted that the suffering has an end. It’s just a matter of the clock. Your best bet is to just sit it out, to wait, to expend as little energy as possible.In the first situation you had no hope or reason to believe it would end so you had to save yourself. In the second situation, because you believed that salvation is coming, your strategy totally changes. My strategy is to wait. To just focus on that IMPENDING salvation moment instead of focusing on the suffering. There’s no point in trying to do anything when salvation is right around the corner.So what I’m really trying to point out here is the connection between our ability to be patient and our HOPE. Our ability to wait patiently is DIRECTLY CONNECTED to our future hope. HOPE makes PATIENT WAITING possible. No hope; no patience. Much Hope; much patience.Now that connection between PATIENCE and HOPE is found all through our Bibles, both OT and NT. GREAT HOPE; GREAT PATIENCE. I want to give you a blast of verses here. Here’s just 7. I literally could have given you 47. It’s everywhere in the Bible.Psalm 62Psalm 130Isaiah 8Galatians 5Romans 8GREAT HOPE = GREAT PATIENCE.God, as a loving father, cares that you suffer. We look up at our heavenly father with puppy dog eyes and say, “God why are you allowing us to suffer?”That’s the question we want answered. And God gives us some help with that. James 1. Well, trials refine us. the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.But God’s comfort in suffering rarely focuses on the why. God rarely answers the question we are asking, “Why am I suffering.” Instead, God almost always focuses on the who. Look at my eyes. I love you. Look at my eyes. Do you see that I love you. I have a reason. Trust me.And that is actually the main reason patience honors the Lord. There is no greater vote of confidence in the wisdom of God, the love of God the character of God then patient suffering.Because when you suffer patiently, here is what you are saying:God is too good to be unkind.He’s too loving to be uncaring.He’s too compassionate to be calloused or heartlessHe’s far too wise to be mistakenAnd so if he asking me to patiently suffer and I cannot understand his reason or trace his hand, then I must trust. I look at his love poured out for me on Calvary and that seals the deal. How could I ever question. If God did not spare his own Son, how will he not along with him give me every needed thing.That kind of fixed, established hope, honors the Lord and as it turns out, is also what is best for us. “When the time is right, he will act.”Perhaps the situation you are suffering and the patience required to endure it is teaching you something you could not learn any other way. Talk to a 1000 godly men or women who have gone before you and they will all tell you that it was not on the mountaintop that they met the Lord. It was in the valley. As hard as the valley was, they would not trade it for the world. It was not until they learned of the emptiness of everything else that they learned of the fullness of Christ.Patience is to trust in God’s great unseen purposes. When you suffer, you just lay your head on the pillow of God’s great love. You just lay your head down and rest in his goodness. You just close your eyes and let him take care of the details. I cannot see but I trust and I’m going to sleep right here. I’m just going to shut my eyes and rest and release my worry to him. It is not mine to manage.Sometimes in great trials you have to remind yourself of these big stabilizitng truths to help you control your feelings. You have to pull into focus things that at other points in your life were patently obvious but in this moment they are no longer clear and everything feels chaotic. Of course he loves me. I see him there on the cross. Of course he’s powerful. He created all things with a word. I will trust him.Keep the connection between this anchored, established hope and the ability to be patient anchored in your mind.To further cement that principle, James gives the illustration of the farmer. Consider how HOPE allows a farmer to be patient. Consider the ability to be patient is LINKED to the hope of the farmer.Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. 8 You also, be patient.The farmer prepares a field, sows seed, waters, and then he just sits there. His work is over. And he just waits. His ability to wait is anchored in his ESTABLISHED CONFIDENCE, in his sure and steady hope of the coming rains.The farmer can do nothing. He has to just wait for the right rain at the right time. In Israel, the way the geography is setup, you are basically just 100% dependent on rain. Rain is everything. The farmers all through the Bible are just absolutely dependent on the rains that came in late autumn and early spring. In the Bible, these rains are called the early and latter rains.And if you read the OT, every reference to “early and later rains” 100 percent of them are in a context affirming the faithfulness of the Lord (Deut. 11:14; Jer. 5:24; Hos. 6:3; Joel 2:23; Zech. 10:1).What we are really hoping in is the character of God. We are really establishing our hearts not in WHAT we know will happen but WHO controls the uncontrollable.The farmer sees with the eye of faith. He can’t see the crops grow. He stares and sees nothing, but he knows the invisible world of cell biology things are happening. Photosynthesis is happening. ATP. DNA strands are uncoiling, copying, proteins are folding, and this plant is growing. All that is way above my paygrade, but I know it’s happening. God is sending the rain and a crop is coming.Why is this suffering happening to me? I have no idea? That’s way above my pay grade. But I know that salvation is coming.When we trust the who, we can be patient with the how.3 commands and three points in our message.Grumbling is just the verbal expression of impatience. You feel impatient and you express that impatience by grumbling.How do you know when people sitting for four hours are becoming impatient? They begin to grumble. They begin to complain. And James in the text warns us against it.Do not grumble against one another, brothers, so that you may not be judged; behold, the Judge is standing at the door.Grumbling is very easy to do.Grumbling is complaining.Grumbling can come in the form of making sarcastic comments.Grumbling can happen when we cut someone down.Grumbling is griping.Grumbling is whining or always finding fault.Grumbling is nitpicking.Grumbling is verbal discontentJames says this is so serious because just like impatience, if Satan can get you to grumble and complain then he’s won. He’s succeeded in making you believe that the war for heaven and hell takes place on an entirely different front.Your try to ward off the schemes of the devil fighting by planting churches, doing social reform, political reform, starting schools, making Christian music and art, and you are so proud; we are so effective. Satan is nowhere to be seen. Satan is just laughing as he walks in the front door.James is reminding us: the spearhead of the entire battle for holiness happens in your ability to trust God, not complain or grumble.Grumbling is the seed of something terribly poisonous and toxic. It is so bad that he wants you to see the Judge will judge you for it. Do you remember the children of Israel getting swallowed up in holes in the ground, snakes attacking and biting them all because of some complaining.It seems so harsh until you step back and you realize the wicked spiritual condition of the complaining heart. Grumbling is just not trusting God. Grumbling is questioning God’s authority in your life. Grumbling is your vote that God doesn’t know what he’s doing and you do.And you have to agree, that is a pretty evil thing to say.And he warns that this kind of behavior is at the core of judgment. Setting self above God is at the very heart of the judgment seat of Christ.So he warns you, don’t do it. Don’t do it, not because I’m trying to destroy your fun. I’m trying to preserve your joy.Remember, God doesn’t condemn things because he knows they will make you happy and God is anti-happiness.He doesn’t condemn things because they are easy and he wants to make your life miserable through hard labor.He condemns things that hurt you.A doctor doesn’t forbid a patient from eating of snickers bars because they tastes good. He forbids the eating of snickers because too much sugar undermines health. That’s so important. Do you see that?Grumbling will kill you and everybody around you, eventually. It’s like the poison of sugar. It gets into your blood. It gets added like fat to your body.C.S. Lewis wrote A Preface to Paradise Lost. He says a vote for Satan is a vote for hell, and a vote for hell is a vote for an endless autobiography.What is hell? Hell is an endless monolog with self. Hell is living in your own head where you get to create reality and never be challenged as to what is good for you. There is nothing more miserable than not being able to get out of your own needs. That is all grumbling is. Hell is endless grumbling. Hell is the endless autobiography, the absolute self-absorption, the absolute concentration on nothing but you, and “Why aren’t you doing this for me? Why isn’t this happening for me?”God does not say, “Don’t grumble because I want to give you random commands to limit you.” He says,Grumbling will kill you because grumbling is cutting yourself off from the goodness of God.Grumbling is setting yourself up as Lord and master.Grumbling is the worship and trust of self over God.Grumbling is casting off the authority, care and love of the God of life and all good things.If you cut yourself off of the vine by grumbling you will die."There’s nothing more like hell than to be grumbling, always unhappy with the way things are for you.The way you can melt your heart down and start to become patient and radiant and loving with people who ordinarily would be irritating to you, the way you can do that, is to think about how much you’ve taxed God’s patience. You have to go back. You have to think about it.One of the great themes of the book of James is repentance. It’s much overlooked. James is very harsh but he’s not trying to get you to feel shamed. He’s not trying to put you in your place. He’s not trying to squash you beneath his thumb. He’s simply trying to get you to fall at the foot of the cross so you can receive mercy.You guys we are all a bunch of miserable sinners. I’m not up here telling you all that you are grumpy, impatient sinners as a way to make you feel shame. It is true, we are all bunch of grumpy, impatient sinners. True enough. It’s okay to say that. Let’s stop denying it. Let’s all just cast ourself at the foot of the cross where Jesus died to save us from that evil and receive his grace. Let’s cast ourself there to receive his love. Let’s fall on our faces with tears streaming down our face saying, "how could you love me so much despite my grumbling, quesitoning, complaining impatient heart."God you are so good. Thank you for absorbing in my place.Lord I love you!Do you see the irony of this thing? You can’t exhort yourself into patience. You can’t discipline yourself to be patient. You can’t beat yourself into not grumbling. You can’t say, “I really should be more patient,” and whip and beat yourself.You can only repent yourself into patience. You have to see who he is. You have to see that he loves you. You have to stare at his love and repent of your arrogance to ever question it. You have to repent and confess that he has always been so slow to anger with you. Until you repent and see how bad you are, you lack the engine for becoming a patient, gentle, evil-absorbing, loving person.Listen, trust God. He loves you. He cares for you. He is for you. If you are suffering, trust God. He loves you. He has your good in mind. I want to close by reading an extended quote from C.H. Spurgeon. This was so good. This wrecked me this week.ClosingBeliever, if your inheritance be a lowly one you should be satisfied with your earthly portion; for you may rest assured that it is the fittest for you.Unerring wisdom ordained your lot, and selected for you the safest and best condition.A ship of large tonnage is to be brought up the river; now, in one part of the stream there is a sandbank; should some one ask, “Why does the captain steer through the deep part of the channel and deviate so much from a straight line?” His answer would be, “Because I should not get my vessel into harbour at all if I did not keep to the deep channel.” So, it may be, you would run aground and suffer shipwreck, if your divine Captain did not steer you into the depths of affliction where waves of trouble follow each other in quick succession.Some plants die if they have too much sunshine. It may be that you are planted where you get but little, you are put there by the loving Husbandman, because only in that situation will you bring forth fruit unto perfection.Remember this, had any other condition been better for you than the one in which you are, divine love would have put you there. You are placed by God in the most suitable circumstances, and if you had the choosing of your lot, you would soon cry, “Lord, choose my inheritance for me, for by my self-will I am pierced through with many sorrows.”Be content with such things as you have, since the Lord has ordered all things for your good. Take up your own daily cross; it is the burden best suited for your shoulder, and will prove most effective to make you perfect in every good word and work to the glory of God. Down busy self, and proud impatience, it is not for you to choose, but for the Lord of Love!“Trials must and will befall- But with humble faith to see Love inscribed upon them all; This is happiness to me.”
ideshow for this message is available IntroductionJames 5Today the Bible is going to talk to us about money and our attitude toward acquiring it. In every modern society there have always been three classes of people: The poor, The middle class, and the wealthy.And for as long as those classes have existed people have bemoaned the economic disparity between these classes. Now, interestingly the Bible doesn’t comment very much about the systems which create the economic disparity. The Bible almost feels carelessly indifferent toward the harsh machinery that causes the massive wealth gaps. The Bible just seems to accept the fact that these classes will exist.The rich will exist.Render under to Ceaser that which is Ceasars. August Caesar died in 17 AD so Jesus grew up under this emperor. Did you know that August Caesar was the richest man that ever lived. He personally owned 1/5 of the wealth of the Roman empire. That’s like the equivalent of 4.6 trillion dollars. And Jesus just says, render under to Caesar that which is Caesars.“The poor you will always have.”To the Roman soldier he says, “Be content with your wages.”Paul says, “If you find yourself a slave,”Obey your master not only to the just but also to the unjust."If you are a master, he says, “Masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.”Instead of commenting on the system that creates these economic disparities, he just gives commands on how to honor the Lord in your station of life, wherever you find yourself.Because, after all, most slaves complain. Most rich people are selfish. Most middle class people complain about their pay. So if you can be different, the light of Christ will shine brightly.Now that doesn’t mean that the rich, middle class and poor are the same. These different classes will struggle differently. There are different temptations associated with those different social positions.So depending on where are in the Bible, you will have different commands to different social classes. today James wants to address the wealthy. He wants to address the rich.The rich are generally respected in the world, but James is reminding us that it is scary possible to be very wealthy and be very weak in faith or to have no faith at all. It is very common for those things to go together.And there’s a reason they go together. Consider a natural habitat like a jungle. Every natural habitat has it’s own unique species of plants or animals that thrive in that habitat. A jungle is perfectly suited to grow giant trees, giant spiders, fruit, jaguars, wild boars, etc. Jungle conditions are required for these things to survive. Well, the habitat of wealth, the environment of wealth is very conducive to self-indulgence. It just breeds it. It just cultivates it. It’s the perfect conditions for self-indulgence to thrive. And self-indulgence, 10 times out of 10, puts out the flame of faith.Now, wealth doesn’t guarantee self-indulgence. There are plenty of wealthy people who are not self indulgent. But talk to any one of those people and you will discover that to have wealth and not be self-indulgent takes constant weeding, constant maintenance, constant pruning to cut back that unwanted natural tendency.So let’s see what James has to say about wealth.So James, tell me what you really think. James is being quite direct.There are certain temptations associated with wealth and at the top of the list is self-indulgence. And James is warning you, if you succumb to that temptation, it will rot your soul.So what we are going to observe in the passage is four characteristics of this corrosive self-indulgence. To avoid self-indulgence, here four things you are going to have to constantly prune and weed and cut back. Here’s for characteristics of self-indulgence.The clear idea here in the first three verses is that this rich person whose core heart sin is self-indulgence has acquired more than he needed. At the end of verse 3 the ESV translates it, “you have laid up treasure in the last days.” But I like the way the NIV does, "You have hoarded wealth. You have hoarded treasure. It’s a better translation because hoarding is a negative term.So this becomes for us another test of genuine faith. Genuine faith does not hoard wealth. If your faith is weak, then you hoard. That’s what weak faith does.Now HOW hoarding and faith are related is important to see and we can easily illustrate this from the OT. Do you remember the children of Israel when they were out in the wilderness, the Bible says that God would provide for them manna every day. But they were only supposed to gather a days worth. They were not to gather any more than one days worth of manna. What was the purpose of that exercise?It was to teach them to trust that God would provide for them. He said to them, “I don’t want you to hoard. I only want you to gather what you need for that day. I don’t want you to gather into pantry a months worth of food because then you are going to forget about me. You will trust in your pantry instead of in me.”So he intentionally told them to trust in God BY NOT HOARDING. I will provide for your needs. Now very predictably we are told that some of them did not have faith. Well, I know God said this stuff will come tomorrow, but what if doesn’t. There’s plenty now and I don’t want to be hungry. And so they hoarded. They took more than than they needed for the day.And God made that food rot. Worms came pouring out of the manna. He graciously allowed the resource to fail them so that they would learn to trust not in the manna but in the God of the manna. To trust in Him instead of His gifts. Over time, as God proved himself faithful, again and again, every day there was the manna, they learned to trust and they stopped hoarding.So do you see how faith is related to hoarding? Genuine faith doesn’t hoard. Genuine faith doesn’t worry that it’s up to me to provide for tomorrow and I’ve got to worry, worry, worry because right now it’s pouring money and I’ve got to strike while the iron is hot, I’ve got to make hay while there’s sun, and who knows how long this season of plenty is going to last, and I’ve got to fill my barns because the drought might come. I’ve got to live like Joseph in the 7 years of plenty because famine is coming.I am in charge of my future security.I need to fortify myself against danger.I need to insulate myself with every conceivable financial advantage so that the unforeseen disasters of the world don’t destroy me.That’s faithless living folks. Genuine faith doesn’t think like that.Now it’s easy to get upset at this point, and perhaps you are upset right now, "What are you saying? Are you saying I’m not supposed to save. I’m not supposed to work hard. Should I just empty my 401k. Live paycheck to paycheck? Is that the idea?The easy way to answer that is by making a distinction between hoarding and saving.The Bible is pro-saving and anti-hoarding.In fact, there are plenty of places in the Bible where God rebukes those who do not save and do not work hard. God wants us to be like ants. Do you remember the Proverbs?Proverbs 6Some people hear, live by faith and they think, “Sweet, I never liked work anyway. I’m going to trust God.” That attitude is the attitude of the sluggard. Paul says, “You don’t work; you don’t eat.” The sluggard never thinks about tomorrow. They are buried in debt, paycheck to paycheck, reckless spending.If you know a rent payment is coming, then don’t go buy that new toy. Save for expenses you know will be present. Some day you will not be able to physically work so prepare. That’s a basic concept that the Bible approves of.The Bible is not against saving; it’s against hoarding.Now here’s where this gets real. When we hear this, everybody says, “Okay, I hear what you are saying, but this is so unclear. Where does it turn from necessary spending to greedy self-indulgence?”How do I distinguish between a need a want a luxury.If I buy a $5k car is that self-indulgence? What about $10k? What about $10,001?Is it okay to buy a 40" TV, 50“, 60” 70" See you are legalistic. All these decisions are so arbitrary.And in kicking up all this sand, in demanding precise answers to unanswerable questions, in demanding all this nuance, we nuance away the command.This is what is known in formal logic as the fallacy of the beard. The fallacy of the beard goes like this. How many hairs make a beard? Does one hair? no of course not. Does two? No. Does 10. Some JH boys think so. And so the reasoning goes, if you can’t tell me the exact number of hairs that make a beard, then I’ve caught you! beards don’t exist. Just because you can’t name a number, doesn’t mean that there isn’t a point where it becomes a beard.And just because you can’t easily define self-indulgence, just because you throw your hands up and say, “Well, who could possibly define that?” Doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.As soon as you start challenging the concept of self-indulgence, you are probably self-indulgent.The point is you need to draw a line. You better figure out between you and the Lord what that means in your life. If you haven’t drawn those lines, you will become it. Where’s the lifestyle cap? Where’s the limit where enough is enough.The more money you make, the greater a distance there ought to be between the lifestyle you live and the lifestyle you’re capable of living. No Christian should live as well as they’re capable of. Nobody. Why? Because, Christ commands us to give some away.Do you have a way of answering the question, “What is a necessity and what is a luxury?” If you don’t have a way to do that, then your lifestyle will eternally creep up with your income.If you have not created a cap, then there is no cap.At the peak of Rockefllers wealth he had 1% of the wealth of the U.S. economy. He had in today’s money the equivalent of around 300 billion dollars which makes our modern day billionares look like paupers. When asked how much is enough, his answer was, “A little bit more.”Corrosiveness of WealthNow why is James/God so concerned about acquiring too much? Is he trying to destroy our happiness. ON THE CONTRARY! He’s trying to protect it. He says, if you hoard wealth, it will rot you from the inside out.Look at the imagery here. He talks about the gold, the silver standing in judgment against them. He talks about that hoarded wealth corroding.Let me ask you, when do things corrode? Things corrode when they are not in use. If you take a brand new car, purchase it, park it in your driveway and come back in 30 years, it won’t start. It will be worthless. The engine will have ceased up. And everybody will look at that purchase and say “that was a waste?” Why? Can’t you do what you want with your money? No, we all know that money needs to be applied to noble, worth-while purposes.And you know what is a terrible purpose. Self-indulgence. Money spent on pampering self is a bad use of money. When that money just sits in the bank, unused for God’s purposes, it just has a corrosive effect on your heart. If you are not taking your money and using it to awakening people’s hearts to the glory of Christ, helping people, using it to undo the ugly effects of sin, helping the poor, if you’re not putting your money into people, using it to make a difference in the lives of people, it’s corroding.if you just take your talent and bury it in the ground, just sort of sit on it, the money will rot your soul like Gollum in the cave with his precious.But we can go even one step further. You know what that is really saying? It’s not so much cause and effect. It’s not so much, love money and it will cause your soul to rot. It’s more a statement of fact. It’s saying if you love money, I’m sorry to say, but your soul has already rotted. It saying if you sit on piles of money and have no plans to use that money for God and his people, it’s a sign your heart is dead. The only kind of flesh that rots is dead flesh. So if you see the vultures circling, there must be something dead. Here’s a test that never lies: When all you have to live for is money, you know your soul has died.Cheating OthersSo the first characteristic of the corrosive nature of self-indulgence is desiring more than we need. If you have wealth, that’s something you are going to have to constantly prune in your life.There’s a second thing he says here.Now notice what the text says here.When you love money, you have a tendency to take people for all they’re worth. You have a tendency to step on people for your own financial gain. People are tools. You treat people like tools. People are like drills. How do you think about drills?You think about a drill like this: I don’t want to use my precious fingernail to bore a hole into this beam. So I’ll abuse my drill instead. You toss it on the ground when you aren’t using it and let it get rained on.When you do need it:you just run them at max RPM,you ignore the horrible screeching sounds it’s making and you plow them into your project,you let them do all the hard work,you burn them out,and the poor thing is smoking hot, it’s burnt wires and you throw them aside and say, "this piece of junk burnt out in 2 years.They don’t make em like they used to.Oh well, there’s more where that came from."James is saying, “If you think of people like that, that’s criminal.” That’s the expression of self-indulgence.If you are boss, do you have a tendency to underpay people, to pay the minimum you can get away with. Or maybe the wage is fair, but you keep trying to extract more and more out of your employees. You under-appreciate. You demand more and more. Expectations for availability and response time increase.What is driving that? Is it, really at the end of the day, concern for self or is it concern for others? Is it concern for your bottom line and not theirs? That’s the corrosive self-indulgence James warns against.The opposite of self-indulgence is others-indulgent. So to indulge your employees is to pay more than they would normally get. You are indulging them in greater benefits than the competition. You are indulging them with more time off than other comparable jobs. Instead of asking more of your existing employees you hire at your expense.So that’s the second characteristic of self-indulgence that James points out. Here’s the third.Now we see this at two points in the text. Back up in verse one there’s this really interesting point.What’s up with that phrase, “In the last days.” You’ve stored up treasure ‘in the last days.’ It’s a really intriguing phrase.We see another hint of it in verse 5.You have lived in luxury ON EARTH. You have fattened your hearts in a ‘A DAY OF SLAUGHTER.’What is this last day and the day of slaughter he is referencing? How is that related to hording wealth?The imagery all through here is imagery of judgment. Notice in verse 4The Lord of hosts. In Hebrew the word host is literally the word for armies. And it’s used to describe God as this powerful leader of both earthly and heavenly armies.So James is saying, “In the name of the Lord Almighty, in the name of the God of the armies of Israel whom you have defied, in the name of the Lord of the heavenly hosts who you have defied…”REPENT before the day of judgment falls. This is a call to repent. God is holy, powerful and determined to judge those who infringe his commandments. And one his commands is to not love money.Here’s the entire point James is making. People who have too much concern for money or whose lifestyle is so important they are willing to sacrifice others, their eschatology isn’t straight.They are living for luxury ON EARTH. But that’s all going to end in a blink of an eye.To be greedy IN THIS LIFE is to accumulate indictments and charges against yourself in the day of judgment. All the self-indulgence of this life will be evidence of your love of money rather than your love of the Lord.That wasteful spending on self, or that wasteful saving without any purpose, will come back as a witness against you in the ‘last days’.James is making the point that the rich here, instead of acting to avoid that judgment, are, by their selfish indulgence, incurring greater guilt. They are like cattle being fattened for the kill.Think about the judgment day. Repent! Give, give, give it away. Many card games are setup like this. When the first person goes out, you count up your points. And all those cards left in your hand count against you.That’s how God wants you to think about your wealth. Sure you need those high face cards to make purchases, buy a house and car, but you have more than you need so give, spend, go out giving. Have nothing left in your hand.That’s the Bible’s view of money.James is basically saying, "If you hoard wealth,you’ve forgotten about the fact that Jesus Christ could come back any time and the curtain could come down.You’ve forgotten all of your gold and all of your silver will rust.You’ve forgotten those high face cards will be counted against you not for you.You’ve forgotten the distinction between temporal value and eternal value.Don’t be like the rich fool who spends his entire life investing in wealth to be stored. He put all his money in barns, realized he didn’t have big enough barns, so he tore down his barns to build bigger ones and then he died. What good is his money now?Every Christian ought to believe in prosperity theology. It’s just a question of timing. Do we prosper now or in heaven?Here’s the problem with this last verse. The translators here have made a decision for you and you can’t see it. So your understanding of the text is hijacked by a decision that a translator made for you. You didn’t even know there was translation decision to be made.When you read this you assume that the rich person used his power and influence to murder the poor, right? But there’s an alternate way of translating this text.Here’s a little Bible study tip. If ever you want to know the most literal possible translation of the Bible, open up a translation called the Young’s literal translation. Robert young translated this in 1862 for this exact purpose. He was pretty frustrated at the number of translation decisions that translators made for you.What this guy did was just literally translate word for word without any attempt at readability. So if you don’t know Greek, this is kind of the next best thing. It’s helpful sometimes to see the kinds of decisions translators have made in order to make the text more readable.Here’s YLT.Literally, in the Greek, this is what James says, “You have condemned and murdered the righteous One (singular) who does not oppose you. You have condemned and murdered the righteous One”The ‘righteous One’ is what it says, literally. “who does not oppose you.”You see, most of the translators say, “Well, in the context here, James must be talking about the rich person somehow killing the poor.”First of all that would be pretty extreme behavior going on in the church. There’s not really any evidence of this. But secondly, and more importantly, it doesn’t say that. It says you murder the righteous One."It doesn’t say you have murdered “the righteous ones.” plural.It doesn’t say you have murdered “the righteous poor.”It says you have murdered “the righteous One.”I would expect if he were talking about a poor man, it would say, you have murdered him and because he was poor he was not able to oppose you. But that’s not what it says. It says, “you have murdered the righteous one who does not oppose you.” It’s saying that righteous one who was murdered could have opposed you but chose not to. He voluntary did not oppose. I think this is a reference to Christ.So what is he saying? James says ultimately the reasonyou’re so concerned about money and the reasonyou’re grasping at ityou’re abusing your employees like drillsyou’re stepping on peopleyou’re fretting about moneyYou know why? Because you have forgotten the RIGHTEOUS One who was betrayed for 30 pieces of silver, but he didn’t resist. He voluntarily died for you. You have forgotten what he has done for you.Your behavior in self-indulgence is the behavior that put Jesus on the cross. Have you forgotten that it was self-indulgence that put him there?The GREAT sin, the greatest sin, the sin of sins is loving self. It’s indulging self. It’s making the world about self. It’s worship of self.You want to know what ultimately rots your soul? Loving yourself.Don’t forget what Jesus has done. Jesus died to save you from loving self. This whole deal about money is just a symptom at the very top. Get to the root. The root issue is that God wants you to look at that man hanging on a cross and see him bleeding, see the thorns. Stare at them. Look at the spear in the side. Fix your eyes on it. Jesus died that death to save you from the sin of self-indulgence. From the sin of thinking that you are the center of the universe and that all the wealth and money and riches of the world ought to be funneled to you to make you happy. Jesus died to save you from thinking that God gave you money to elevate and diefy self. That’s what he died for. He died for self-worshipers.Let that sink in. That’s why the bloodied Jesus hangs on the cross. Will you now, say “Thank you Lord for dying for my self-indulgence and then continue to use your money for self in a self-indulgent way?”Are we now just going to go about life thinking about how to pamper ourselves? Are we just going to lazily spend without a budget and not think about the RIGHTEOUS One who is worth more than all the gold and silver, who died and did not resist because he loves you.Take Responsibility.I want to end with a call to be courageous. What is courage? Courage is the ability to do something that is frightening.Here’s something that takes incredible courage. Stand up and speak the words, “I take full responsibility for my idolatrous heart. I am the self-indulgent sinner who nailed Christ to the cross. My credit card statements say so. My bank balances say so. Look at my receipts.”We need to take full responsibility for how we think/believe and act. You and I are not robots forced to respond to the stimuls around us. We are free-standing moral agents. And as free standing moral agents we have been given the ability to love differently.We have been given the ability to set our affections on things above, not on things that are on earth. - We have been given the ability to look not at the things which are seen but at the things which are unseen.We have been given freedom to love the Lord our God with all our hearts all our souls and all our minds and love our neighbor as ourselves….to not indulge self.So, as Americans, most of us are wealthy. Most of us need to prune, prune, prune, weed, weed and weed these ugly self-indulgent attitudes out of the heart. Let’s do that right now as we close.
We’ve been in the letter of James the last few months—a letter written to us to underscore the difference that faith makes. James is incredibly practical. He insists that faith is more than merely head-bobbing—something we confess we believe but otherwise makes little difference practically in our lives. Instead, James gets disturbingly real with us. He assumes we will face problems and won’t know what to do. But then he doesn’t tell us how to live trouble-free, but how to live when troubles come. Do we bitterly complain? Or do we use them as an opportunity for growth? It depends on our faith. He figures we’ll sweat out temptations that may often get the better of us. But our faith will expose the temptation and teach us better ways in the future. He knows we’ll say things we don’t mean and shouldn’t express, and likely will burn others with our tongues, but our faith will convict us of the evil and change our conversations to more constructive and healing interactions. He understands the pull of money and status and how it affects how we see and treat those who have it and those who lack it; but our faith redefines for us what matters most and reshapes how we see every other person who steps in front of us. Today we come to another way that real faith shapes us: it alters how we plan our lives. We all have plans. We live today, but we want to tinker with tomorrow. When tomorrow comes, we want to be ready––we want to shape our days to accomplish our dreams & goals. And there’s nothing wrong with that! If you don’t plan, you won’t get assignments done, or pay bills on time, or make & keep appointments. Without planning, your vacation might turn into a disaster, or your job might turn into a permanent vacation. It’s God who tells us to take one day in seven off—and if you don’t plan, you won’t even do that! Obviously, planning is important––probably more than we realize. James tells us that it is one of the places in our lives where our faith is most needed, and most tested. Your plans reveal more about you than you know: what you plan and how you’re planning reveals what you think about life, and ultimately what you think of God. [THE PROBLEM]4:13-14[A. We Make Plans] (vs. 13)13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—To get their attention, he begins abruptly: “Hey! Listen up!” At this time in century one, towns were springing up everywhere due to relative peace, a common language and good roads. Jews saw an opportunity to make money, so many traveled to growing cities, making deals and selling goods, and returned much richer in a year or two. The opportunities were like plump, ripe clusters of grapes on the vine. James is quoting the typical businessmen’s plans; lit. are saying—i.e. this is how they operate! They’ve got it all figured out:The Time: “Today or tomorrow” (their departure date);The Location: “This or that city”; The Duration: “spend a year there”;The Activity: “carry on business”;The Goal: “make money”––they’re confident in the outcome! Planning is not wrong, nor is making an honest living. In fact, planning for the future is admirable. One of my favorite cartoon strips is Zits—about the misadventures of 17 year old Jeremy Duncan. In one of them, Jeremy is talking with his fuddy-duddy dad. Good planning is a good idea. And there’s nothing wrong with what they were saying; But it’s what they didn’t say, what they failed to take into account that isn’t right.God plays no part in their thinking. They’re self-assertive in their travel plans, & self-confident in their time schedules, & self-centered in their goals. Operating as though God doesn’t exist or doesn’t care. This is part of the worldliness that James has spoken so forcefully against! But James says what we believe ought to make a difference in how we plan; our faith should practically affect our future. They should listen to King Solomon: [Prov. 27:1]. James corrects them: We make plans:[B. But life is unpredictable] (vs. 14a)14a yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. i.e.[1. The future is uncertain.] Do you know for sure what will happen tomorrow? “I’m getting up at 6 a.m., getting ready for school; I’ll go to this/that class, turn my homework in, eat lunch at MacDonald’s with my friends, flirt with that cute guy/girl, be home by 2:30...” Wait! Are you sure? Tomorrow will be the same as every other Monday: in to work, plow through the hours, take a lunch break—dig out from under the pile, get over the hump on Wednesday and look forward to next weekend when I can...” Wait! Tomorrow is promised no man. The future is a complex interaction of people, timing, events, and opportunities all controlled by (not us, but) God. A few summers ago, we were floating in kayaks on the Deschutes River; it was hot, and we weren’t moving very fast. Two large inflatable boats of teens, passed us––and we laughed and joked with them as they quickly slid by. Ten minutes later on an open stretch, we saw they were out of their boats, and jumping off a large rock next to a rope swing––it was about 30 feet up. I felt uncomfortable about it––but there was an adult on shore, so I kept quiet. About half an hour later we came to our port of exit, but as we pulled our kayaks in, we heard people crying and screaming. Apparently one of the teen boys jumping from the rock hit the water wrong, went under, came up for a moment, submerged again, and never again surfaced. He was found hours later drowned. As we had passed him by, none of us––not even he–-knew that he was living the last twenty minutes of his life. The heart of the problem is not that they had a faulty time-management technique, but that they possessed a faulty understanding of themselves. Not only is the future uncertain, my life is too: (vs. 14b)14b What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time then vanishes. [2. My life is fragile.] What’s our life like? When James searches for an apt picture of life, he pulls no punches: you are a fog, a mist, vapor. Something hardly substantial. Life isn’t solid, sure, secure, guaranteed; it’s fragile. Every day, we assume the one thing that we clearly cannot assume: that we will be alive tomorrow. The only certainty about life is that it will end sooner or later. And it may come at a time unexpected & in a manner unforeseen. We don’t know when or how we will die. Just that each of us will. So if the solidness of our lives is like a mist which so quickly dissipates—if weare like that, think how uncertain our plans really are! So does that mean we don’t plan? No. James’ offers a correction(vss. 15-16):15Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So here is: THE CORRECTION[A. Factor in God’s providential will] His what? His providential will. Providence? Q: What shapes your life? Coincidence or Providence? Before you answer, think about each of those ideas: [Coincidence is the occurrence of events that happen at the same time by accident, but seem to have some connection.]They really don’t. It just appears that way. But it’s actually just random. The connection is in your mind, but there’s no real purpose or reason or guiding hand behind it. The exact opposite of coincidence is Providence. Providence is divine guidance and care; God’s power directing and using every event in human history. God is in control, even when we’re not! James insists we should factor that into our plans. He isn’t discouraging or forbidding planning. In fact, he assumes we will: But instead of brashly and thoughtlessly saying, “we will leave and go here/there, do this/that...”, we should say, “if it is the Lord’s will…” In other words,[1. We should express our dependence on God.] What these planners lacked was a sense of God’s providence that rules our lives. James implies we don’t know for sure what the Lord’s will is. Theologians rightly divide God’s will into two aspects: [Deut. 29:29] his [secret (providential) will] which He always carries out, which no one can thwart. There are things that God allows or does that are His will—including things He won’t allow or do. So it’s secret in the sense that he doesn’t necessarily reveal why He is doing it or why he allows it, or why He isn’t doing it or allowing it. It is His, not ours, to know. But there are things He very much wants us to know—i.e. His [revealed will]—and it is found most clearly in the Bible. The Scriptures give us guidance and direction––and express God’s clear will for us. Do we always do it? No. Does God make us do it? No. But it is His desire/will for us. So there are things we do know and things we don’t know. And in fact, we don’t even know what we don’t know. It all should humble us. So James is doing more than just inserting the right words into our mouths: “if the Lord wills...” He’s trying to correct our perspective and shape our hearts. What we ought to say aloud sometimes, and whisper often, and never forget is that God’s providence rules our lives. We are dependent upon God for more than we think—even for our next breath. Paul’s awareness of the uncertainty of plans, but the certainty of God’s providence: [Acts 18:21, 1 Cor. 4:19, 16:7/x]. We ought not take for granted some very basic things: that the Lord is willing for this to happen (e.g. business trip, a vacation, even a trip to Costco), and that we will be alive, and that the Lord will order the opportunities and give us strength to take advantage of them. The key to avoiding sinful self-sufficiency is maintaining a godly perspective: that God is in the backdrop of every human life. But: [2. If we don’t, we cultivate arrogance.] Not taking God into account with our plans is both unrealistic & foolish. We can’t control all the variables of life. We can’t even be sure of life. But not figuring God into the picture is not only off the mark, it’s evil: The Apostle John warns us: [1 John 2:15-17]. The word pride here is the same word arrogance here. Does it mean being really full of yourself? A bragger with a big head? Maybe. But not necessarily. It could sound like this: “Look, I don’t really care what God says. I can do whatever I want. It’s my life. I’ve got plans. Nobody has the right to tell me what I can and can’t do, or what they think I should do.” That’s not only proud and wrong, it’s evil. But it doesn’t even have to sound that defiant. For it to be arrogant, all you need to do is say... 13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—(vs. 13), and mean it. Period. Nothing more, nothing less. And your thoughts may be god-less. Godless. But don’t picture God as some grump/control freak who doesn’t like anyone else to assert any control. eg “Hey Gabriel, you see that guy down there? He’s getting a little big for his pants. Let’s take him down a notch or two...” He then uses his providence to pull the rug right out from under us. NO! When we plan, factoring in God’s providence doesn’t mean that we’ve just got to take into account that God might thwart us. Instead, it puts a wonderful spin on anything that happens. We know God loves us and uses his providence to do good for us in every situation. So when something happens that we didn’t expect, or when what we did expect doesn’t happen—we can trust God’s providence to get us through. When we plan, and at the last second our plans fall apart, we know that God is working to do good for us, and we can rest. His timing may not be ours, and time and again we should ask ourselves, Where is God in all this? I’ve learned that there’s a reason. Even if we can’t figure it out. Factoring in God’s providence to our plans eases our disappointments, opens our eyes to a larger perspective, and comforts us with hope—God is at work even when circumstances take a turn we hadn’t seen coming. Not only should we take into account God’s providence which shapes our days, and someday calls us home, we should also focus on God’s revealed will:17So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. So: [2. Focus on God’s revealed will] (vs. 17) James points out that the sin isn’t just that we do something we are forbidden to do; but that we fail to do what we ought to do. And what ought we to do? What God has told us. i.e. all our planning, we ought to concentrate on God’s revealedwill for us, not just on our own schedules and goals and plans. Our focus should shift: We all have many plans that may or may not happen; but there are some things we ought to make certain do happen—those things which God clearly tells us to do in Scripture. If we don’t do what God has told us to do, we are sinning, even if we have planned to do a lot of other things that aren’t sinful. Like what? Like this: [Micah 6:8/x]. God does have plans for you and me. Point is to keep our focus always on what God has revealed for us, and to factor into all our plans what he hasn’t revealed—what He providentially will do with us. When the Jews were taken captive to Babylon, when their homes were destroyed and their land full of smoldering rubble, God spoke to them through the prophet Jeremiah. They saw their lives as having taken a terrible turn; they hadn’t planned to live out their lives in a foreign land. God counseled them to settle down and build houses & be a light to their Babylonian neighbors; and to focus on principles and promises in Scripture. Then he reminds them: [Jer. 29:11/x]. Factoring in God’s providential will gives you perspective & hope; focusing on God’s revealed will gives you guidance and direction.III. YOU HAVE A CHOICE In discussing the uncertainty of the future, my sixth grade teacher rammed the point home: “Nobody knows what tomorrow will bring. Some of you probably won’t live to be 40.” (which seemed to be an ancient age to me at that time). In fact, some of you might not live to graduate from high school. In fact, someone sitting in this classroom might not see 7th grade.” We all were looking at each other like deer caught in the headlights. (“Not me!?”) About a month later, the girl who sat next to me was returning from a neighborhood market on her bicycle. At dusk. In the fog. And because Gretchen lived in Ridgewood, she had to cross the country road. And in the twilight, and the fog, an oncoming car did not see her, and hit her—and she died. I’ll never forget that empty desk. It so unnerved us, the teacher finally moved it, leaving an empty space. The lesson we’re to learn is not an easy one. The point isn’t that we need to make a choice between living a self-sufficient life and a God-dependent one. Instead, the lesson is that we are not self-sufficient; that we in fact do live in dependence upon God, whether we are aware of it or not. Every person is at God’s mercy. His providence rules every life. In light of that, we ought to be humble, and factor that in to every dream, every decision, every plan, every schedule. And we ought to focus on God’s plan for our lives that he has made clear to us in the Scripture. “If it is the Lord’s will” should make us humble. And “Because it is the Lord’s Will” should shape our plans. We should plan to do God’s will. God providentially used that empty desk to bring me to Christ. It brought home to me how fragile life is. How badly I longed to have certainty about what happens after death. Over the years I’ve learned to plan to do God’s will. And if I don’t get to see the next decade, or next year, or even next month, it will be OK. Because I know I’ll see the One who has providentially shaped my life all the way through.(Pray) O God,My life is in your hands!You order my steps and determine my days, and someday, you will call me home.Help me see just how dependent I really am on you, and help me remember what you’ve clearly given me to do.I want to live my days to honor and glorify you.Amen
show for this message is available James 4Understanding Symptoms vs CauseFinding the root cause is important because if you aren’t treating the root cause you aren’t treating the problem. You’ll never get better.Now in this series we’ve probably said a dozen times or more now that James is giving us true tests of saving faith. What do you do if you fail the test? How do we interpret the test results? What does the failed test result say about us?What it says is that we lack faith. That’s the root cause. That’s the cause of the cause of the cause of the cause. If you fix that problem, you fix all the problems. Last week we talked about fighting and quarreling. That’s just the symptom at the very, very surface. The root cause is 20,000 leagues under the sea. The root cause is the weak faith way down in the deep chambers of your soul.It is your weak faith which causes God to feel very light in your thinking.which then causes you to be prideful and think highly of yourselfwhich then causes you to think low of someone elsewhich then causes you to think your desires are more important than their desireswhich then causes you to quarrel and fight.Your lack of faith is the root cause. So if lack of faith is the problem, why not just test for lack of faith instead of testing for these surface problems. That would be nice if such a test existed, but unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. You can’t go, "Okay, let me draw some blood and then put a few drops in this machine." Okay, clearly you have the faith. Or, nope, we didn’t detect any faith. It’s not possible to test for it directly in that way.We must test for it indirectly. We say, okay, we know saving faith will produce these fruits. And we know saving faith will do this. And it will also affect a person in this way. And so if we start to see a trend over all these areas, then the only logical conclusion is that we have true saving faith.Now the reason we start with this is because it’s SO EASY to treat symptoms. I failed the quarreling test. So I need to stop quarreling. That’s a bandaid. That’s a B12 vitamin. Where is the quarreling coming from?Today, maybe more than any other test James gives we are going to be tempted to treat symptoms and I’m just warning you. Get to the cause. This is so important. Get to the cause. If you walk away from the message with a resolve to “TRY HARDER” I’m going to cry. No, the prayer is this, "Lord, Increase our Faith."The OutlineToday James is going to test for genuine faith by looking at how we talk about difficult people. All of us have people in our life that are difficult - people who have hurt us, who are annoying, who disagree with us on some issue we care about. How do we talk about those people to others. He’s going to talk about the sin of gossip, the sin of slander, the sin of speaking evil of another person. "What does that gossip, that slander, that judgmental attitude say about you?"James has some incredible insights, but it’s going to take some work to understand. We only took two verses today, because there’s a lot here and it’s not very intuitive.So here’s our outline. We will start by acknowledging the symptom. We will identify the root problem. Then we will apply the cure.So let’s start with the symptoms. We only have to read the first sentence to find the symptom.The TextThe SYMPTOM of our sickness, the SYMPTOM of our weak faith is speaking evil of another person. Some translations translate this, "Do not slander one another." That’s a good translation, but it misses a key aspect of the word.A lot of people when they hear the word slander they think, “Okay, God doesn’t want us to tell lies about people.”Sure that’s true. That’s not the core idea. There’s another Greek word for telling lies. That’s not the word that’s being used here.Of course, we all know, we are not supposed to lie about each other. Sometimes the bigger issue is how you tell the truth about one another. We all know it’s possible to say true things in very evil ways.This word means to speak against. There’s two concepts at the core of this root of this word.ContentIntent.There can be words spoken that hurt someone else’s reputation that are spoken without intent to do that.Then there can be words that are true things, but they are spoken with INTENT to harm. There’s motive here.Sometimes it’s character deforming content, sometimes character deforming content with intent. sometimes it’s both. But in all cases it’s wrong.The Bible has a few helpful examples:This word is used when the people of God question legitimate authority, as when the people of Israel “spoke against God and against Moses” (Num. 21:5)They are grumbling about the their leadership. They are grumbling and complaining. The goal was not to help the situation. They weren’t trying to help their leaders. They were complaining, grumbling and tearing down. The goal was to destroy the people’s confidence in their leaders.And interestingly, the things they complained about, at times, were true things. The angry mom assembles and these ring leaders cry out, “Moses, what do you have to say for yourself? Who do you think you are? Have you taken us out into the wilderness to die?” Well, yes.The word is also used when talking about slandering someone in secret (Ps. 101:5)Psalm 101So again, the core idea it to speak against with intent to hurt. This is a practical example of the forest set on fire James finished telling us about in chapter 3. This is relational arson. There is a massive disparity between the effort required to light a fire and the damage of that fire.Think about the effort of the arson. It’s a super tiny thing. The arson just strikes a match and drops it. The amount of effort required to do that is almost none. It’s so easy. It’s actually kind of fun to do that. And so it is with a careless word, a little morsel of ‘did you know.’So the SYMPTOM of the sickness is dropping the match…speaking against. But I think, to be fair to the entirety of the Scriptures, we should expand the SYMPTOM not only to speaking against, but to listening against.In other words, it can be just as sinful to listen to gossip as it is to speak gossip or slander. Listening is passive in nature so it doesn’t feel like we are doing anything wrong. I didn’t say anything.Listening to gossip says something about your faith. If your faith is strong you’ll be a SOPPING WET fire break. You won’t listen. And that is a beautiful thing. If the listener stops the gossip, redirects the gossiper, confronts the gossiper, 9/10 times it will stop.But if the faith is weak,the gossiper is heard,there’s encouragement to keep sharing so your ‘hard situation can be understood’it then tempts the listener who has already demonstrated weak faith by listening to then spread it further.A weak faith listens because it’s flattered by the other persons trust.A weak faith loves being in the know. It loves having information on others. There’s power in that. And we sense that power. We never know when that might come in handy.A strong faith asks the unbearably awkward question,“Before you continue, can I ask, ‘is this gossip?’”“Do I really need to know this?”"Did he give you permission to tell me this?I want you to imagine a difficult person in your life. Imagine a person who has maybe hurt you or who really annoys you. What you say about that person to ‘safe people’ when that person is not present is a huge test of your faith and it’s a huge test of how far the gospel has penetrated into your heart.Listen, let me make this super clear, the strong faith associated with stopping gossip and slander is not a matter of being tight lipped so the information doesn’t spread. It’s a matter of never knowing the information because you stopped it before it got too far.We fail this test of James when we speak against them or listen against them when they aren’t present. That’s a symptom of sickness. That’s a symptom of weak faith and a poor understanding of the gospel.That’s the SYMPTOM.Now it’s at this very point that we would all be tempted to go, okay, yeah, I feel convicted. Speaking evil of another person is not good. Gossip is a bad deal. Let’s stop gossiping. That’s treating the symptom. Of course God wants us to stop speaking evil. But what’s the root problem?Where is that evil coming from? So let’s do that work.Now let’s look closely at that connection. The SYMPTOM is speaking evil against others. James says, that is evidence of weak faith.Okay, so let’s really think about the text here. What he’s trying to get us to see is that this surface behavior of slander is LINKED to a deep evil. What is the evil behind the evil? It’s the evil of arrogance.He says, "The one who speaks evil against his brother and judges his brother speaks evil against the law and judges the law."So it appear that the type of evil speech and the type of judgmental attitude that is being addressed, at it’s core, is an attitude that has contempt for the law of God.In other words, the law tells you not to speak in this way, but you say, that’s a stupid law. And you blaze forward. I don’t know of a single person who says, “God LOVES Gossip.” Everybody thinks gossip is wrong. But they still gossip with a clean conscience because, after all, in their situation, the law does not apply to them. They are somehow exempt. They give themselves a pass.And we see that this kind of arrogant law breaking in our speech is what James is targeting because the next sentence reads, "If you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge." What he’s observing is that if you knowingly break the law, you have mentally set yourself above it.You have justified it in your thinking.You actually see yourself as towering in a place of authority over the law.You see yourself as not being subject to it.James points out, there are two classes of beings in the world. There are makers of laws. They and they alone are tasked with creating the laws and evaluating whether or not the laws are good. They can make laws and make exceptions. Those are law makers.The other class of beings are the law obeyers. They have one job and one job only. OBEY.The first group of people, the law maker group, is a very small group. Like very small. God.The second group is a very large group. Everyone else.James says, if you FIND a person who speaks evil against his brother or slanders or judges his brother, then you have also FOUND a person looks with contempt on the law of God and sets himself up as the evaluator of God’s laws. He sees himself in that first group. He sees himself above them. He sees himself as an authority to determine if the law is a good one worth obeying or a poor one worth discarding.It’s arrogance.And I want to get really practical here. Everybody who slanders, everybody who gossips has a reason why there slander and gossip isn’t slander and gossip. And almost always the excuses revolve around close friendships. Because we feel, close with someone, because the trust is high, the sin feels justified.The excuses just come pouring out.I’m talking to a friend. I’m talking with my spouse for goodness sake. I know they won’t share it with anyone. James says, "The issue isn’t whether they share. The issue is you sharing.Well, I’m just processing so I can know how to help.I’m just sharing so you can pray.I’m counseling them and I need the details to help them.I’m creating a safe place.I’m empathizing.But James is saying, “Yeah, that’s great but here’s the problem: the law says don’t do that.” Those would all be great things if you weren’t breaking the law.You might be objecting, "Does that mean that I can never talk about someone else behind their back in any circumstance." No, not at all. There are two situations where this is acceptable.You can talk to others about a person if the person has given you their permission. And then all your talk needs to be as if that other person were present. There would be no surprises because what you’ve said directly to their face is what you are saying to another.The other situation is a Mt 18 situation. If a brother sins against you go to him directly. If he listens you’ve won your brother. But if that doesn’t work, well, you need go to another brother, you explain the situation to them and the both of you go and confront him.In any other case, it falls into the category of ‘speaking against.’Jesus, in the sermon on the mount associated speaking against with the root sin of murder. Jesus said, "You’ve heard it said, ‘You shall not murder, but I say if you call someone a fool, and if you call them a ’Raca,’ if you slander, if you accuse, if you swell with anger, if you defame that person, you’re also guilty of judgment?"Do you know what Raca means? It means you empty one. You nothing.Do you realize what Jesus is saying? He is saying when you slander, or speak evil, or call someone a fool or call them a nothing, it’s not a subheading under lying; all that evil speech is a subheading under murder.How was it possible for the Nazis to kill the Jews? They were able to kill the Jews because, for many years, they called them "nobodies." They looked down at them. They thought of these people as fools. They did that until they could kill them.Jesus says when you assume this position of moral superiority, you condemn, you write them off, that’s the seed form of murder. It’s the same arrogance that makes a murderer think he should be in the place to determine whether a person lives or dies. That’s God’s job, not ours.If you slander another, that same seed of murder is in your heart. I am justified in using this verbal knife even though God tells me not to.You have put yourself above God’s law. We would all wince at someone who said, “I know that murdering is bad, but this person deserves it.” And yet we are quite comfortable with the idea, “I know that slandering is evil but this person needs a verbal knife to put them in their place.” Slander is verbal punishment. It’s making someone pay. Slander is all about elevating self to judge. The central sin of slander is the elevation and centralization of self. It might feel like the central sin is tearing down someone else. But that’s the symptom. The core sin. The root sin is self-love, self-worship, self-elevation.That’s why gossip is the antithesis of Faith. Faith is God worship, God elevation, God love.So if the root cause of our gossip is our murderous, adulterous, self-loving hearts, what do we do about it?So what’s the cure? So here’s the final part. Here’s the solution.The reason we judge others is because we are arrogant. This is the root problem. We put ourselves above the judge of all the earth. We put ourselves in God’s place. We feel superior. And the conclusion here by James is a mocking rebuke? Who in the freakin’ world do you think you are? Who are you to judge your neighbor?And so presumably, the converse of that is also true. If we are humble, if when God asks, “who are do you think you are?” we answer, “I am a nobody just like the person I was calling a nobody.”Presumably, if that is our posture then we will not judge, slander or speak against.How do we get ourselves into that posture? You ready for it. Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God. Submit to the law and the judge.What would happen if you put yourself under the law instead of above the law? Can you see what happens? If you’re under the law, you find yourself guilty. You find little difference between yourself and the person you were just judging. You see that you are in need of a savior just like they are in need of a savior. There’s only one lawgiver. And there’s only one judge.And if you submit to that law giver, if you humble yourself under the judge, he will change you.Let’s give an example. You might think you’re pretty good at chess. You could boast about your chess abilities. But let’s just say, that in reality your really bad. You can only get better by beholding true goodness, by beholding a grand master. But you can never really behold a grand master until you allow yourself to be judged by him. You have to play him and get slaughtered. You have to have your best moves just get destroyed. You have to watch him belly laugh at your sophistication as he tips over your queen and then puts a knife to the throat of your King. When you play that grand master, in the same stroke you see both how amazing his mind is and how inferior you are. You see how much you have to learn.You have to submit yourself to master to ever know the master. You have to be judged by his beauty before you can be changed by it. You have to let his words of truth destroy you before his words of life can restore you.The CHOICEThis text is forcing us to make a choice. Will we submit to the judge of all the earth, to be judged by him, to see his white hot beauty and allow that beautiful judge to save us and by saving us change us.Or will we stand above God’s law. Will we resist his beauty by resisting his judgment and remain unchanged.Here’s what James is saying, "Oh dear. You failed the test. You are slandering. Oh dear. You know what this means, don’t you? You have set yourself up in the place of God. And you know what that means? You can never know goodness. You can never be changed by his goodness. You can never drawn near to God. You can never see the living God. And seeing the living God is what changes you.If you knew the real Lord of glory, you would never do this. You’d never be tricked like this, if you really saw Jesus."We cannot pretend that we will know God and not submit to him. When he says, “Do not slander. Do not speak against.” Those are laws given by the lawgiver. We are not the judge. We do not have the right to elevate ourself above them. We cannot say, “I am my own grand master.”The text make something very clear. Those two choices have to outcomes.Look at the text. What does this text say? As the judge of all the earth, he has the power to do two things. To those who will not submit to his laws, what does it say he will do? He will destroy.But to those who do submit to his laws, what will he do? He will save.Now, please, please, please don’t miss this. In both cases, both the rebel, and the submitter, they are both law breakers. Why do we say that? Because the one who submits to the law of God is saved. Someone who obeys the law doesn’t need saving. It’s the one who breaks the law who needs saving.The world is classified into two types of law breakers. Lawbreakers who allow themselves to be judged by the law and acknowledge their law breaking and then their is another class of lawbreakers. Lawbreakers who see themselves above the law and will not confess. A theoretical third category exists. The righteous. But the Bible tells us there are none who are righteous.It’s way too easy to just say, the reason you slander is because you’re a bad person. We are all bad people. James is not going to let us off with something that easy. It would actually be criminal to diagnosis it that way. There’s a reason your bad. There’s a cause behind the cause behind the cause of your badness.The cause is you have not let the judge of all the earth, judge you so he can save you.God destroys the proud and saves the humble. God destoys the self-righteous and saves the sinner. God destroys the law breakers who do not ackonwledge their law breaking and he saves the law breakers who do.That’s it. That’s the gospel, folks.The GospelThe gospel is that we have a judge that saves.How can a judge save? Here’s one thing for absolute sure: he can’t do it by refusing to judge. Any judge who says, "Well, I know you’re guilty, but oh well, I’ll turn a blind eye." What do you do with a judge that does not uphold the law? You toss that dude to the curb. The law of the judge, the one and only law, is to uphold the law. If he doesn’t do that, he’s a worthless judge.So if the judge does not save by overlooking, well how can a judge save? A judge that saves is one who puts on his robe, lets the gavel fall and condemns you. Next he takes off his robe, climbs off the judgment seat and serves the sentence he just decreed, in you place.The Judge of the universe cannot possibly stop judging to save. It’s on the cross, my friends, where Jesus Christ was able to save through judgment. This is how you get root access to those deep foundational structure of the heart. You must listen to the message of the cross.How can God be holy/just and loving/salvific at the same time? Only by punishing Jesus on the cross. Jesus Christ is the Judge who saved through judgment. He never stopped judging. He never stopped being just, the gavel fell. The sentence was read. And then he climbs down, crawls up on the alter, he stuck his own neck on the block and took the ax as it came down.He saved us through letting himself be judged.Now there’s a huge word here. THEREFORE. BECAUSE HE SAVED US THROUGH LETTING HIMSELF BE JUDGED, THEREFORE, he’s the only one who deserves to judge.How in the world can you possibly say that you are a better judge than Jesus? How can you say that you have a better sense of justice than that? How can you judge another person with slanderous words? Are you a judge like this?God was willing to do that for you and for the one you slander? That’s a beautiful being. Who do you think you are you that you would usurp this kind of judge?Do you think you get to do something even Jesus didn’t do? Jesus, when we sinned against him, absorbed it in himself and didn’t pay back. When someone sins against you, are you going to do the very thing even Jesus didn’t do? Jesus absorbed the sin and did not pay back. Are you now, if someone sins against you, are going to pay them back with slanderous words? Who do you think you are?”We are all under the law. We are all sinners saved by grace. Oh, could we be a church that never forgets this?This is not just the Judge; this is the Judge who saves through judgment. This is the Judge who was judged so he could save.
Slideshow for this message is available IntroductionJames 4ReviewSo we all have bucket lists, things we want to do before we die. For years, I had on my bucket list to race in the baja 1000. So not many of you know this but four years ago I actually did exactly that. I competed in the Baja 1000 in the class 3 division which is short bed lightweight truck category and after a grueling 23 hours I crossed the finish line in 4th place.Now what I just told you is complete fiction. I would like to have done that but I have never done anything of the sort. The reason I said that was only to give a real-time example of the difference between a claim and a reality. People can claim anything. That doesn’t make it true.We are in James chapter 4 where we are surveying tests of genuine faith.It’s one thing to claim you’re a Christian but words are cheap. The question is simply, “Are you?” And all through this epistle, James is giving us tests to distinguish between the mere claim and the real deal. The first test was how you respond to trials, chapter 1. And then there was how you react to the Word of God. Are you a doer of the Word or only a hearer? And then how you respond to people in need. Do you have the true religion that reaches out to the fatherless and the widows, or do you demonstrate, as chapter 2 outlined, partiality toward some people? - And then there was that great and comprehensive test of works in chapter 2, verse 14, where James says if your faith is real, it’ll prove itself in works, for faith without works is what? It’s dead. And then there was the tongue in chapter 3, and the tongue is a test of true salvation, it’s the heart that produces the vocabulary and the speech And then last week in chapter 3 there was the test of what kind of wisdom that you exhibit. Is it the wisdom that is from above or is it the wisdom that is not from above which is earthly and sensual and demoniacal?These are all tests. They are all methods of discerning genuine faith.Now we come to chapter four and we get yet another indicator of true saving faith: how you deal with conflict.James says, “Listen, the reason you fight and quarrel is because you desire evil things.”Your conflict on the outside is a result of evil desires on the inside. So presumably the solution to the outside problem is to resolve the inside problem.Right? That would make sense.Let me illustrate this INSIDE problem in a realm we can all easily understand. About two weeks ago, I got out of bed and went into the bathroom. And Lisa was in the bedroom. It was early in the morning and nobody was up so it was really quiet. And she heard me say in a very concerned voice, “Oh no.”And she kind of jumped up and said, “What’s wrong, Jason?” And I said “Oh nothing. I just stepped on the scale.”So years ago I set what I call the 911 weight and when I reach that weight, the rule is I have to drop 10 pounds. So for the past 20 days I’ve basically been miserable trying to shed some of that weight that I don’t want.Now how did that happen? The answer is I love evil foods. I have a desire for that which is not good for me. A giant slice of apple pie with a bowl of vanilla ice cream is literally a temptation created by the devil himself.The evil passions on the inside have evil expressions on the outside.And the only way to solve this outside problem is to solve the inside problem. My eating behavior on the outside is inextricably linked to my thinking behavior on the inside. To change the behavior one needs to change the desires. It’s the only way.No ExcusesSo knowing that our behavior comes from our desires, James begins by saying that the reason we fight and quarrel with one another is because of our evil desires. evil desires = evil behavior. Now he goes on further to describe those evil desires in further detail.What James is saying is pretty simple. What causes fights is you selfishly want something and you can’t have it. That’s like two year old theology. That’s pretty stinking simple.The Greek word there for desire is the word hedone from which we get our word hedonism. And the idea behind hedonism is that you want something to please yourself. Hedonism is living a life of self-pleasing. it’s about your comfort it’s about your convenienceThe core idea of hedonism is self pleasure. It is the number one goal. Everything else has to be sacrificed upon that alter. So in a 1000 little ways, I always put my comfort and MY convenience ahead of other people around me. And it’s that driving desire that is the source of our fighting.No ExcusesNow if that’s true, then the cause of your conflict is you. It’s not the other person’s fault. It’s your fault. The text won’t allow you to blame the other person. Remember the proverb? For lack of wood the fire goes out. Do you hear that? That’s Solomon’s way of saying, “Hey bro, it takes two to Tango.”If you are sinfully quarreling deeply with another person, that’s a guaranteed slam dunk indicator that you are at fault.Think about it. When we choose to eat the wrong foods, the problem isn’t in the food we eat. You can’t blame the food. If it wasn’t so delicious, I wouldn’t have eaten it. The food didn’t make you do anything. The problem is the six inches between our ears. It’s in us. The problem is we have unhealthy desires and we lost the internal war.And so it is with our relational conflicts. We want to say, “Man that other person baited me. If they weren’t like this, I wouldn’t have responded like that.” But it’s just not true. Every time we sin in conflict it is because we have evil desires. Nobody ever makes you be sinfully angry. Sinful anger or frustration happens when that unhealthy desire in your own soul boils out in an opportunity.Now as uncomfortable as that might be, James is still not done. It’s actually worse yet.Here’s what’s crazy. Ultimately, what he is saying and it’s so painful to admit. It’s so, so counterintuitive. The conflict is not between you and the other person. The conflict finally and ultimately is between you and God.Ultimately, all human conflict is the result of a divine conflict. James is really trying to point out that your human conflicts are just symptoms of this spiritual sickness. Your relationship with God is completely jacked up. That’s why your suffering on this horizontal level.Notice that the evil desire that is causing all this conflict is called out in verse 4 - HERE IT IS: friendship with the world. There is an evil desire to befriend the world - to value what the world values.And God makes it very clear that this is not okay. Friendship with the world is enmity with God. Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. And it’s not so much that you are an enemy of God but that God is an enemy of you!He says if you are a friend of the world, you are an adulterer. Spiritual adultery EQUALS friendship with the world which EQUALS loving the things the world loves. And so your problem with people is just symptomatic of your problem with God. How many of your conflicts really boil down to just wanting to be right? How many of your conflicts really boil down to this deep desire to be respected? How many of your conflicts really boil down to needing to prove yourself in some way or validate yourself or prove your worth in some way.That’s the desire that’s really driving, driving, driving. Listen that’s friendship with the world. That suddenly has very little to do with you and the other person. That’s about you and God.What this should do is cause us to step back a bit and evaluate how much the problems in our interpersonal relationships are really just evidence of our problems with God. This is one area where we suffer from severe blindness. Like very, very severe.Imagine blowing up and getting angry at your spouse or a family member or another person in the church and you gossip about them behind their back and God comes to you and says, “Why are you having an affair? How could you be so hurtful to me?” And you think back over the course of the last week and you’ve got nothing. You say to God, “What did I do? I thought we were good.And he says,”Do you remember that conflict you had with your spouse?" And you say, “What does that have to do with you?”And God looks you back, straght in the eye and says, “this has everything to do with you and I.”We are blind to how our personal offense relates to God. Big time. It’s the same blindness that a man has when he looks a pornography and tells his wife, “This has nothing to do with you.” Only a fool says that. It has everything to do with her.Having an argument with another person does not seem like it’s even remotely related to God. And yet God calls it’s at the very center, at the very core, spiritual adultery. He calls it friendship with the world. It has everything to do with God.Listen, it’s the same principal when David sinned with Bathsheba and murdered Uriah in his Psalm of repentance in Psalm 51, he said to God, "Against you and you only have I sinned."Now on the surface, that is downright insulting to Uriah. What do you mean? I sure as heck would call sleeping with my wife and murdering me a sin against me. And yet, on a spiritual level, it’s secondary. It’s a symptom. That sin is just overflow evidence of the greater sin. Bathsheba and Uriah were collateral damage in the same way that an innocent pedestrian is the collateral damage of a drunk driver. All horizontal sin is ultimately sin toward God at the end of the day.Think back on the conflicts you’ve had this week. Just apply this principle Any time you get into a sinful argument, just say to yourself, “This is evidence of idolatry in my heart. There’s something wrong in my relationship with God that allowed me to get to this point where those words came out of my mouth.” That’s very, very important.Can you imagine if all our conflict resolution started there?Now the solution that James points to is humility. And so here’s our two point outline.I have done a lot of study in my life on humility; In fact, let me just take a few minutes here to boast about how much study I’ve done on humility. Honestly, I just mention the amount of study I’ve done just because I’m surprised at how elusive this concept is. Despite all my study, I really learned so much this week about the Bible’s definition of the concept. It was almost like I had never even heard of the concept.When you think of a humble person, we think of somebody who is shy and maybe not very self-assertive. Somebody who kind of sits back in the shadows and doesn’t say much. Someone who doesn’t powerfully lead.That’s not the picture at all. Let me prove to you that this is not God’s picture of humility. Do you know who the Bible says is the most humble person who ever lived? Moses.Was Moses this little soft, weak person who never asserted or confronted in any way?I want you to think about what Moses did when he went to confront Pharaoh. Moses went before the most powerful leader in the world, the most powerful figure in the world, and said, “I want you to give up your entire free labor force, which is the cornerstone of your economic and military superiority, right now, without remuneration, unconditionally, and immediately.”That’s not the stereo type of humility is it? And you want to know what else is not very stereotypical? Do you know which book of the Bible says that Moses was the most humble man on earth? Deuteronomy. Do you know who wrote Deuteronomy? Doesn’t that just instantly disqualify you from even being in the running.What that tells me is we have the wrong concept of humility. Moses was not courageous and bold in spite of being humble. Moses was courageous and bold because he was humble. Do you know why? Because he REPENTED of sin and he DREW near to God. Show me your glory! He looked at all these people and he said, “I see my passion for God’s glory. I see how beautiful God is. I see how lovely he is and I look around and I can honestly say,”I just want him way more than anyone else here does."God’s solution to conflict in this passage is humility and here’s now he defines it. It’s just two points. Repent of sin and draw near to God. Humility that produces peace can be reduced to those two points. Let’s start with the first point.Notice the first thing James says about humility here. Humility = REPENTING of evil desire.Now the way this point is developed starts out on a very sad note. To the spiritually sensitive person this is a dagger to the chest.What this passage is saying is I am jealous for your heart. I am jealous to be in that number one place in your soul. I want you to stop loving the world, to stop having an affection for the things of the world and I want you to love me.Now what do you think of the fact that it says God is jealous for our affection. I’ll tell you what this says. It says that’s God’s love is unbelievable.Let me illustrate why this is so powerful. A wife does not want to be #6 in top ten most desirable women. She wants to be number one and she won’t settle for anything less. And rightly so. But let’s just say she discovers that her husband is having an affair, behind the scene.She has one of two choices. If she reveals her jealousy she instantly becomes extremely vulnerable. She’s, in a way, admitting that she’s inferior. She’s admitting that something else has beaten her out of that number one place, and she’s jealous. She wishes she were that person because she wants to be the object of her husbands affection. That’s a very risky thing to admit.She does have a chance. What she’s begging for is that if she displays her bleeding heart, her fierce jealousy, the idiot will come to his senses and come sobbing in repentance. And she says, "I think I can forgive." But it’s such a risky move because there’s another possibility. In exposing my jealousy, all it would take is one little word of comparison from her husband and it would just utterly destroy her. Utterly destroyed.So because that is so risky, she has another option open to her. She can also just close her heart off. I’m not jealous. Are you kidding. If he doesn’t love me, then he doesn’t deserve me. I’m out. You are dead to me, fool. Go set your affection on that goat. See if I care. I actually can’t stand the thought of you setting your affection on me. You have lost your chance, buddy. I’m gone.Do you see the choice?So here’s where I am going with this. The fact that God says that he is jealous of our affection, it sounds, on the surface almost weak. Isn’t he putting the power in our hands. By admitting jealousy, isn’t God putting in our hands the power to injure the omnipotent, all-powerful God?Yes. It’s really is an indication of his tremendous love for us. It’s very vulnerable of him to say this. Even though we have spurned him time and time again, He hasn’t closed himself off to us. Like a parent who continues to love their backtalking, snotty child, and willingly allows themself to continue to be injured, God is just extending his love, knowing full well that he could be injured, yet again.So lets now get real. When you have that sinful argument, when your anger comes out, James is tracing that back to a love affair you have with the world. It’s not about you and the other person. It’s about you and me. Come back to me. I am jealous of your affection. Stop loving that prostitute.Now what is our response to a God who puts himself in this position? Answer. Humble yourself under the might hand of God. HUMBLE YOURSELF. Repent of this evil adulterous relationship.Listen, no man can love his wife again, until he gives up that other. Until he entirely and completely purges that evil desire from his heart. He has to repent of it. He has to, in effect, destroy everything she is to him in his mind. The adulterous woman has to be dead to him. It’s the only way. She must die.That’s where humility begins. Everything the world means to me must die. If you love being respected, that must die. You must put away that mistress. A Christian wants God and God alone to be respected. If you love being powerful, if you want the freedom of riches, if you want to be beautiful so you can be the object of people’s affection. You are having an affair with the world. Put away that mistress. That’s God’s place.That must die. God must be first. There’s a spiritual adulteress that must be pout down. She must be dead to you. You can’t say to God, hey sure, I love these things but calm down, I love you too.You will either hate the one or love the other or you will be devoted to one and hate the other. A Christian can’t serve two masters. You can’t have to spouses. You can’t love God and money, God and power, God and respect. By saying, “Can’t I love both? That’s how people end up in hell.” God opposes the proud. God is an enemy of those kinds of people.You have to repent. Look at the language used here.I want you to look a the command words here. He doesn’t use any commands in chapter 4 until he gets here. I did a search on the commands in chapter 4And I’ll just show you this slide form my Bible software to illustrate this.These are all synonyms of repentance. God I mourn that I ever went after all these prostitutes. Forgive me. I weep when I see it. I mourn. That which used to bring me pleasure, now tears my heart out. I wail. I repent in dust and ashes.The path of peace with your neighbor is that kind of humility. Now the flip side of repentance is drawing near to God.The human machine must be pursuing something of beauty. You cannot abandon your current pursuit in exchange for nothing. You only abandon this one beautiful thing if you have something better to pursue. If you haven’t eaten in four days and your just absolutely starving and you are being offered McDonalds the only way you’d give that up is if someone offers you Red Robin.Humility is just accepting God’s invitation to find something better. Come to me. Taste and see that he Lord is Good. DRAW NEAR.Draw near to me and see what Moses saw. Draw near to me and be satisfied. Stop pouring your life into broken cisterns that hold no water. You just pour and pour and invest and and invest and it just slowly drains away and disappoints. Why do you keep doing that? I know you’re incredibly invested and it’s hard to abandon everything you’ve invested. Cut your losses.Drink from the spring of living water. When you Draw near to Christ, you see how beautiful he is. You see how lovely. You see how superior. Why would I ever go anywhere else when I have this?This is humility, to admit that you’ve been entirely and totally in pursuit of hte wrong thing your whole life. I’m a fool, but I’m happy to say that because now, finally I get the real thing. I get what I’ve been searching for my entire life!Psalm 70-71Psalm 122-123ApplicationWhat we’ve been trying to point out this whole time is that our human problems are really at the end of the day God problems. We’ve tried to to point out now for 40 minutes that all our human problems are just symptoms. The fighting and quarreling are symptoms.It’s obvious that this is James point because he starts out with our fighting and quaralling and then he goes on for 10 VERSES and doesn’t mention a single word about the other person. Doesn’t mention a shred about how you are supposed to treat them. No commands whatsoever directed toward mankind. EVERYTHING HE SAYS is about repenting of your adulterous relationship with the world so that you can get back to loving the Lord your God with all your heart soul and mind.At the root of all our relational problems is our ultimate relational problem with God himself.But what I want to do is kind of bring that full circle. What if you were not flirting with the world. What if God was number one in your life? How would that overflow in your relationships? Or to say it another way,How would the holy passions on the inside have holy expressions on the outside.What will that look like? Or to say it another way, what if you treated others the way God treated you?You see instead of being a hedonist who says, “It’s all about me." What if you were to instead say, "It’s all about God.” And I am going to show you God’s love by giving you my life for you the way he gave his life for me.Isn’t that what God has done for us? God comes to earth in the form of Jesus Christ. He leaves his glory behind.Romans 15There’s that Greek word again hedonism. Christ was not a hedonist. For even Christ did not please himself.That’s like the greatest understatement in the Bible; think about what Jesus did. He came to earth and he not only gave up his glory he gave up his power, and eventually he gave up his life for you, and he paid the penalty.How could I ever be like Jesus in this way? Look at verse 6. He gives more grace. What does that mean? Jesus lived out verses 6. He drew near to God like nobody else on earth. He humbled himself to the point of death, even death on the cross. Jesus lived out verse 7. He submitted to God. He resisted the Devil and the Devil fled from him.And God credits that righteousness to you on the cross. The plan, all along, was for God to humble himself so that we could be exalted. That’s grace. The more you understand that, the more secure you are in that, the more amazed your in that, the more you will be able to be like that for others.You will no longer be a hedonist who is trying to be happy by putting yourself first in this world. You are already happy in Christ and so are happy to be last like he was last. You’ll be like a mother is to her child.No child has ever received life without the laying down of his mother’s life for months in bearing and nourishing him. She had to lay down her life for the child year after year in caring for him and training him and providing for him. We live only because someone else has lived by this principle, this laying down of the life. The Bible says, “For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” So the last will be first, and the first will be last. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.
Slideshow for this message is available IntroductionJames 3We are in the book of James and we are on a journey to discover the nature of true saving faith. James has really opened our eyes and helped us to distinguish between CLAIMS of genuine faith and genuine faith itself.Just because someone claims something doesn’t make it true. It’s the difference between claiming that that an APPLE tree is an apple tree and claiming that a MAPLE tree is an apple tree.We need to evaluate all claims but especially our own.So how can you tell if a claim is a false claim or a true claim? Well here’s James’ whole point. Get to the source. Get to the bottom. Look to the root. But there is a problem with roots; you can’t see them. They are buried underground. The root is invisible. But for James, that’s no problem. In order to make an assessment about the invisible root all one has to do is look at the visible fruit. Depending on the type of root, you’ll get a certain type of fruit.And so James has been looking at all sorts of evidences, but the particular fruit that James is evaluating in chapter 3 is our speech. Genuine faith has an effect on our words. Our words should be evaluated as an evidence of what’s in our heart.The Speech ChallengeNow this week I was reading about a challenge of the words. And it really seemed simple enough. For an entire week, you just had to follow these six rules:Now, I would love for you to try this like I did. It’s super eye opening. Here’s what you will discover. You will discover how absolutely impossibly freaking hard this is. Here I am trying to write a sermon on this subject. I have lots of motivation to really do something about this whole positivity in speech buisness. And you know how long I lasted? 3 minutes. Here’s what happenedI come home and I see that the kids have dumped their backpack on the floor and they’ve basically just kicked off their shoes at random and as I looked around I just saw stuff tossed here and there I started feeling the annoyance meter rise; and I feel pretty justified in this feeling since Lisa and I have been working on this every day for approximately 22 years.And normally I would make some sort of cutting remark to remind them of their sloppy habits.But this time I said, okay, "I’m going to bit my tongue.I’m going to not say anything this time.I’m just going to encourage.I’m going to just take it in th chin.I’m going to redirect the conversation.I’m going to say something nice instead."But then right at that moment, I rounded the corner and saw them playing video games with drink cups out and tipped over.So I just blurted out, “Get off, right now and clean up your junk. I’ve told you 5 million times….”And then I just stopped and I just stood there amazed. I can’t believe I just said that. I told myself I wouldn’t say that. You see, you can’t tame the tongue. If the heart is evil, it’s going to come out. There are dragons in there and you are trying to keep them out with a cardboard gate. I mean, they are just going to burn that thing through like tissue paper against a blow torch.Even though I was consciously thinking about it, even though I told myself I wouldn’t do it, even though I’m writing a sermon about it, I made it three minutes. Is that not embarrassing? 3 minutes.And as I surveyed my speech throughout the week, I think I can honestly say, most of what I had to say fell into two categories: boasting or cursing. We are always trying to either build ourselves up or tearing others down.Now, today we will have totally and completely failed if you don’t walk away with a crystal clear understanding of WHY it is that we cannot tame the tongue. If you walk away with a resolve to ‘try harder to be more positive’ it would have been better for you to not have even come. I really mean that. What we need to come to grips with is WHY. Why do we just continue to fail, day after day, week after week with our speech?There is a REASON we are factories that churn out boasting and cursing.Jesus said, out of the overflow of the mouth the heart speaks. Rotten things stink. Eventually our words reveal what’s inside. We can’t help it. In the same way that a man is what he eats, a man is what he speaks. So what do we do about it?ReviewNow really this is just part two of a message Josiah preached last week.What we have in this passage, as Josiah so helpfully pointed out, is the reality that words are either either powerfully destructive like nuclear weapons or powerfully healing like medicine to the soul.Proverbs 12:18 There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.Those are the options: either POWERFUL blessing or POWERFUL cursing. Now I want you to understand why words are so powerful.The fact that we can speak is clearly one of the ways that we are like God; no other animal can speak; it’s one of the ways we are made in God’s image. Think about it. In the beginning was the Word. There was nothing and then God spoke, the WORD spoke, and suddenly, there was something. The word is what created.And in a similar way, our words create realities when we speak them. We can think to ourselves all we want but the second we speak those words, those ideas go out into the world and they create. They take on a life of their own.Just imagine a father who says, “Why can’t you get good grades like your brother.” Or to his two daughters, “Your not as pretty as your sister.”Those are not just sentences. Those words, when spoken, create, build and weave realities. Those spoken words create eternal identities. The creative moment when those words are released can never be undone.Maybe you still carry in your soul hurtful words your parents said to you, your best friend how he just stabbed you to the core. The taunts you received, even as a little kid.James compares those words to spark, just a little thing that slips out and it takes on a life of its own.But they can also be powerful agents of healing and life giving. Perhaps you can remember an encouraging word given to you in moments of deep despair. Perhaps you can remember a compliment that struck you and stuck with you for life. You’ll never forget it.Words are either POWERFUL swords or POWERFUL antiseptics.So of course the question we want to ask is this: if words are so powerful to destroy or give life, what do we do about the fact that so many of our words create and destroy rather than give life?And as we observed from last week, a lot of the focus of James’ writing is on diagnosis and not so much on remedies. So at first blush he’s not that helpful.James appears to be here to test not treat. A test tells you who you are. But here’s the thing: a test doesn’t tell you what to do about it.A pathology lab report just tells you THAT you have cancer. It doesn’t tell you WHAT to do about it. The book of James can sometimes feel like a cold, heartless, and even hopeless pathology lab report. James says your words reveal you have a terminal cancer of the heart. It’s the worst kind. It’s the deadly, lethal. No human being can tame the tongue. Okay, you copay portion is $500 please.It does feel hopeless. This is how the passage ended last week.Where’s the hope there? Nobody can tame the tongue. This is a terminal case. Is that where James intends to leave us? Today what I want to do is focus a bit on the solution to the problem.And the solution comes in the form of several analogies. In just a few verses we get four analogies all of which are helpful in GIVING US HOPE! What do we do about the cancer? Well the analogies he gives here contain the answer if we just spend a little time thinking about them.Now here’s the first analogy.So the principle here is pretty basic. The source determines what kind of water you end up drinking, right? This is pretty obvious in the physical world but not as obvious when it comes to our hearts and actions.James wants us to apply the analogy. If the supply of your words is filthy, then it’s no wonder your words are filthy?"If every time you turn on the faucet, you discover it’s black and filled with moss and gardia and you get horribly sick, you aren’t going to fix that problem by cleaning the cups in the cupboard or the outside of the faucet with dawn soap. The only solution to THAT problem, is change spring. Change the source. It’s always a question of source.And that principle is the key to understanding everything James has to say about the tongue. So here’s our outline based on the text.That’s where we are going. So, let’s start with the first point. The first thing to do is to confess.Now this text really opened up for me when I realized what James is really trying to say. In fact, I think I read this text incorrectly my entire life until just this week.When I would read these texts I would read them like this. Okay, God is comparing my mouth to a spring. And that spring spews out good things and then for some random reason it spews out bad things that hurt people. Goal - get that spring to be less bipolar. Speak more good. Speak less evil. Is that how you read it?But that’s not James’ point at all. James’ point is this. If there is a salty source mixing with a pure source, then the whole thing is salty. It’s ruined. What well produces half good and half bad? If there’s any bad, isn’t it true the whole thing is bad? The tendency is for us to look at the good things and think, "Okay, sure some of my speech was a little salty.Okay sure, I’ll grant that. Nobody’s perfect.But look there. That one was good.I said some nice things to my kids.My prayers were pretty commendable.My counsel over here was pretty epic.James is trying to get us to stop fooling ourselves. There is no such thing as a well that produces fresh and salt water. If there’s any salt water at all, then you have a salty spring contaminator. That’s evidence of the wrong source. Your kidding yourself if you think that your connected to a pure well.And that’s a problem because if there’s any salt, the whole thing is polluted.You see the same principle back up in verses 8 and 9.James 3:8-9, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.The tongue is being compared to deadly poison. Sometimes we bless people and sometimes we curse. And again, I used to read this as ok, do more blessing of God with my tongue and less cursing of men. But that’s not what he’s saying. WHAT IS THE DEADLY POISON? The deadly poison is the fact that both exist in the same tongue! In fact, that mixed reality is what makes it so deadly.Consider a guy whose trying to hunt deer. He walks around with a gun. Every time he sees a deer he tries to shoot it. What is that deer going to do? He’s going to run for his life. But what about the guy who puts a little feed out in his yard and the deer learns to trust him and then he brings the feed in a little closer and the deer learns to trust him. And then weeks later after the trust has been established, he pulls out a gun and shoots the deer at point blank range.Which of the two hunters was more deadly? You see the mixed nature of our words is absolutely lethal. We open up people’s hearts with our good words so we can stab them with our hurtful words.It doesn’t matter how many beautiful words you sing on Sunday. It doesn’t matter how many cool things you can say with your mouth in Bible study settings, it doesn’t matter how religiously sounding your Facebook posts are….if any of your words are polluted, the whole spring is polluted.And again, in some ways, the good words makes it way, way worse. All your good words are just bait, all the religious lingo is just luring in your victims so they open their heart up to you, they begin to trust you, so you can stab them.That’s why marriage hurts are the deepest. You trust, you let them in, you trust, you let them in further and then the knife!That’s also why sins like gossip are so, so incredibly damaging. With gossip you lure a person in through caring words. Concern. I just want to process with you about something… I don’t know what to do, maybe I can tell you about my situation and we can pray about it. And rather than confront the person directly, there’s all this indirect side conversations.Even though the Bible says as clear as day, “If someone has a complaint against his brother, go to him privately. If he repents, you’ve won your brother.”Even though the Bible says that you say, “I’m just going to get counsel from someone I respect” That whisper then goes out and destroys. I’ve seen so much damage from that seeming little sin.So what’s the solution? If you hear evil words come out of your mouth, confess. The first step is always, repentance. It’s just confessing. It’s just good old fashioned repentance.I think confessing that our language is evidence of an evil heart is one of the hardest things to do. That’s why there’s this second point.So many people try to apply this passage the way I tried to. Okay, let’s try and get the good words to outnumber the bad words.Let’s try turn up the positivity juice a bit.Let’s try and put some more smile sauce into our words.10 positive word challengeThat’s crazy talk. Imagine going into a restaurant and being given a glass of filthy, black water. It smells like sewer. You could see the settiment. You could even see bugs swimming around. And so in a pretty upset voice, you ask the waiter, “Do you expect me to drink this? This water is filthy.” And she said, “Oh, I’m so, so sorry. And she took out some fresh water and just topped off your glass.” That is almost an insult. That’s worse. Do you think that helps?You see, until we confess, we are just topping off glassess. Let’s sprinkle a little positivity on top of our poison. But confession pours out the cup. Confession is that magic of just purging and eliminating the evil and yucky things and letting Christ be the one who takes care of them. And then we let Christ fill our cup.1 John 1:9, If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.Do you see the cleansing part? Confession cleans the cup.Without confession, we are just topping off glasses. With confession, we clean the cup.That’s such an important distinction. I know you guys are thinking people. And because of that there’s something that is probably really bothering you. You might be thinking to yourself, "Self, how does this work? My speech is always mixed. My speech will always be both filled with CURSING and BLESSING. If mixed water is really not any different than bad water, in fact maybe even the worse kind of water, then I’m that guy, right? What does that say about me?Well here’s what it says about you. You can never be righteous through your words. So stop trying.The question is not, ‘do you have salty speech.’ Of course you do. Why? Because you have a salty heart. So yes, of course it’s mixed. The question is what do you do with it? Do you confess it or do you ignore it. There are two kinds of Christians. Those who speak fresh and salty water and confess it and those who don’t. That’s the only difference.Don’t think the Christian life is one-time repentance deal and then it fixes everything. The Christian life is a lifestyle of repentance. What is promised in this life is NOT the elimination of sin. What is promised in this life is FORGIVENESS when you do. The presence of sin remains. The power and penalty of sin has been removed. The corruption in us runs very deep and therefore will be surprisingly present even in our great moments.Listen, I want to remind you that you just how possible it can be to walk in the Spirit one moment and walking in the flesh the next. Do you remember Peter’s great confession. Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” Some say you are the great prophet. Some say Moses. Some say Elijah. Then Jesus turns to Peter and say, “But who do you say that I am?” You are the Christ, the son of the living God.Flesh and blood did not reveal that to you. Those WORDS came from God.Now the text continuesFrom that time Jesus Christ began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day.And Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You.”But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.” (Matt. 16:21-23 NAS)Now what I want to illustrate here is that in a span of two minutes Peter went from walking in the Spirit and speaking words of life to walking in the flesh and speaking words of death. He went words set on fire by heaven to words set on fire by hell itself.And does that not ring true in your experience? Wow that whiplash is sometimes so surprising. But here’s the real issue. What do you do about it?Now Peter has a choice. He either ignores that. He pretends like that didn’t happen and now he’s just topping glassess. Or he repents. And we have the promise, "if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Which means we can start over with a clean glass.yes, you can start clean, because of what Jesus did. You can dump it. You have to confess. You can’t just ignore. You haven’t dealt with the darkness. You have to receive Jesus’ forgiveness.So let’s do that. Confession is where we say, that speech was evil. That speech is what Christ died for. God please forgive me for saying that. We start by saying what David said in Psalm 51. Against you and you only have I sinned. And then you talk to the person who you spoke to… maybe they said hurtful things to you. Who cares. This is your confession. It’s not a 50/50. Will you forgive me for the evil that came out of my mouth.Right now, we need to do that.If you cut people down,if you constantly criticize,if you complain,if you argue every point,if you make excuses,if you have opened your mouth and spoken negatively about someone elseif you have spoken carelessly about someone’s bodyif you lie,if you bend the truth in your favor,if you conveniently leave facts out,if you nag,if you whine,if you try to win and explain how you are right.Don’t try to justify it. Don’t try to explain how the circumstances made you do it. Don’t try to point to the other good things you do. Don’t say, hey look at this fresh water over here. For some reason, it’s just so hard to repent of our words.If we lust, we usually blame ourselves.If we steal, we usually blame ourselves.If we overeat, we usually blame ourselves.But if we burst out in anger, if we say hurtful words, if we complain, if we blame others, if we share a little morsel, try to find sympathy for our situation with our words, we almost always find a way to absolve ourselves of our responsibility.When it comes to our words, it seems we can always find an explanation that exists outside of us. We dump the sin in the lap of someone else.Don’t forget when we talk about communication we are talking about not just words, but tone, non-verbal…all of it. Even the silent treatment.Just repent. Remember the God-like power we have with our words? When we speak those words do something to others but they also do something to us. When we confess, when we actually speak those words, it does something to us. WE, WE are changed.Do you know what confess means, literally, it means to say the same thing as. You use your mouth to say about yourself, the same thing that God says about you. You confess it. And what is God saying about us that we need to say? How does God’s speech about us need to match up with our own speech about us.We need to confess that without God we are evil. Without God, our hearts are so evil. We can’t do this ourselves. It’s just not possible.One of the things that sets the Christian message apart from all other messages in the world is our utter helplessness. The gospel message is not very flattering. On the surface it’s really crushing.Jeremiah 17, The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?This is what God says about us. Confession is just agreeing with it.Romans 3:10-14, as it is written: None is righteous, no, not one; 11 no one understands; no one seeks for God. 12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. 13 Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. 14 Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.Look at your speech. This is what God says about us. Confession is just agreeing with it.Romans 8:7, For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.This is what God says about us. Confession is just agreeing with it.Romans 7:18, For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.Do you see the point? We do not have the ability. The flesh, that part of you that exists without Christ, does not have the ability to do good with the lips. Confession, just admits that.The only way to clean the bowl is to let Christ do it. You have to confess. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it outI am like a lame man trying to tell his legs to move. I can’t do it.Beautiful words come from a different spring.I want to emphasize so strongly, that the solution is not try harder. Try to get a better percentage of good vs bad.So here’s where this message really boils down. Change the source. We need to change where we are rooted. So he drives home this principle again with a couple more analogies.Have you ever found yourself trying to apologize and instead of an apology out comes excuses? Can a fig tree produce olives? No. Because it’s a fig tree. It’s nature is to produce figs. Our words are terrible because we haven’t changed the source! Your just drawing from the SAME OLD stuff.Have you ever tried to apologize and then out comes a complaint that the other person hasn’t fully apologized so why should I apologize? Can a grapevine produce olives? No. It can only do what nature allows grapevines do. If your nature is bad, you need to change the nature. If your words are bad, you haven’t changed the source. Same old stuff.Have you ever tried to really work on your language, really just focus on being positive and changing those bad habits, and then just the smallest little trigger and bam, right back into it. Can a salt pond produce fresh water? In Israel, the obvious location of a salt pond is the dead sea. The dead sea is so incredibly salty. It’s almost like syrup it’s so thick with salt. Can you stick your head in the dead sea and drink up some fresh water? You can’t expect to get both. Why? Because the nature of salt water is that it will mix with all the other water around it. It’s nature does not allow separation. If you drink from the dead sea, your going to puke. If your words are salty you haven’t changed the source. Same old stuff.And so with all these powerful analogies that James provides for us, let me present to you his point.Now You have a tongue. And that tongue is connected to a heart. That heart has a nature. What kind of heart is it? Here’s where this whole message is heading. Your heart, apart from Christ is corrupt. It’s horribly corrupt. All you need to do is look at your words. As Jesus said, “Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.” What is that tongue producing? Is it producing poison?If so, what do you think the solution is? Switch springs. You know how to do that? You know how to sink your roots into a new spring? Use your lips to praise the Father.Notice that the dichotomy in the text is not bless men vs curse men. It’s bless God and curse men.Application: Walk in the Spirit.What God wants you to do with your tongue is praise him. Yes, you need to confess your sin by confessing who you are but you also need to confess who God is. You need to say about God what he says about himself.You see so much of our problems come from not confessing what God says is true. We need to say back to God what he says is true about himself and to us.This is what the Bible means by a sacrifice of praise. When we sin, we have this instinctual response to offer a sacrifice. And that’s good. But what kind of sacrifice? The Bible talks about offering a sacrifice of PRAISE.Hebrews 13:15, Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.We acknowledge, I can’t change the spring. You died for my salty spring. And now, because of that, I praise you. I rejoice. Remember when David sinned with Bathsheba, so many ugly words came out of his mouth. So many sinful words.And so he repents. He confesses. Toward the end of the Psalm he says this.Psalm 51:15-17, O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. 16 For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. 17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.In the temple system, Moses commanded Israel to offer sacrifices of thanksgiving. What are we thankful for?We are thankful that God made the way. We can’t do it. Jesus Christ is the Word we need. Yes, your sins are like scarlet. Yes, you have sinned with your mouth. Yes, you mouth is an open grave. But You are my beloved child. I love you. I died for you. You’re my treasure. I adore you. You’re my precious little one.That has the power to heal and overturn all of the things that have ever been said about you before. It can change you. It can heal you completely. It scatters the vultures that have been pecking away at your mind all these years, all those pecking thoughts, what your dad said, what your mom said, what your friends said, what you have said, all of those things that are haunting you. The Word, the Word comes in, the Word we need, the Word we have to have. And Jesus Christ says, “I love you.” And because he spoke to you, you speak back to him.Listen, FCBC, open your mouth. Let the words come out. Speak PRAISES back to God and others. Speak of his goodness. Speak of his character. Say it. If you don’t say it, the words have no power over you or over others. Don’t think it. Say it.Maybe you aren’t a man of many words. Maybe you don’t like to talk much. Well, that’s okay, but when this lands, you definitely have one thing to talk aobut. Just blurt out what God has done for you. Just speak. Just spill out your guts.When Jesus is in our guts, what spills out is beautiful. It’s life giving. The words heal. When Christ is inside, we discover that everyone around us is being edified by it.God has given you a mouth to sing. God has given you a mouth to praise. God has given you a mouth to shout out words. And those words have power of you and others. SAY IT. SING IT. That’s how we change the source.What the Spirit of God does is shows you the beauty of who Jesus is and what he has done for you. And that unglues the tongue. That gets you to praise God the Father. And that solves everything. That blesses everyone.So let’s get out of our chairs right now, let’s open our mouths, let’s loosen the tongue and let’s sing about the great, great beautiful love of Jesus Christ. Let’s let the fountain of living water come out of us.Now what worship leader doesn’t love that setup for a closing song.
Slideshow for this message is available IntroductionJames 2So we are in James chapter 2 looking very closely at this relationship between Faith and Works because, because, as we have come to discover, having a faith that works is in fact the only kind of faith. There is no other kind. A faith that doesn’t change a person, is in fact, no faith at all.James is looking for that change. He’s looking for that fruit, the evidence of that internal transformation. He’s poking, prodding, pushing. He’s trying to upset you a bit to see what spills out.Let me illustrate it this way. Let’s imagine I’m holding a coffee cup and you come up behind me and smash into me and my coffee goes flying all over the ground. Here’s the question, "Why did I spill coffee on the ground?" I might say, well obviously because you bumped me. But the question is more fundamental. The reason I spilled coffee on the ground is because I had coffee in the cup. If there were tea in the cup, then I would have spilled tea. If there was water in the cup I would have spilled water.James just wants to know, “What’s in your cup?”He’s testing for it. And so to get at that, last week we looked at three tests of saving faith. These are three historical tests of saving faith that came out of the reformation. And they are represented by three Latin words.We noted that true saving faith must have a knowledge of God. You must understand who God is. That is an act of the mind.We also noted that you must agree that those things are true. And when we agree with true things, there’s always an emotional response.But then we noted what James said, that it’s possible to have information about who God is (understand him with the mind), it’s possible to agree with who God is (assent to that information and feel), and still have achieved a rank no greater than a demon.Demons have notitia (mind) and they have assensus (emotion - shudder) but they do not have saving faith. In order to have saving faith there’s one key piece remaining. Fiducia.You must trust.And we used this analogy last week. You can understand the claim that this rocket can travel into space (you can have notitia). You can agree it’s true, you’ve watched other astronauts do it. You have listened to their eyewitness testimony. (you can have assensus). But you don’t have faith until what? Until you get on the rocket. In order for you to travel to space, the rocket must act on you. And you must place your life in that rocket. That’s trust. That’s fiducia. And until you do, you will never experience the wonder of space.And similarly, you and I can understand the claim of who God is, we can agree that God is who he says he is but God will always be outside of us until we trust him. Saving faith cannot exist apart from genuine trust.So these were the three tests of saving faith. We said last week that if you answered yes to all three of these questions, “Yes, I know, agree and trust God” then you possess genuine saving faith.Examples of FaithNow given the importance of question three, this key question that ultimately separates demons from Christians, let me ask you a question, “Did you pass the test?” Do you trust God? Are you willing to submit your entire life to him? Do you have fiducia?Here’s how an honest person answers that question, “I’m not sure.” Why is that an honest answer? Because this is not a test question that can be determined on paper. It’s a test question that has to be revealed in life. Only life can really reveal if a person trusts.For example, if I asked you a question, do you think you have the guts to jump out of an airplane with a parachute. I’m guessing a lot of you would answer, “I don’t know.” You’d have to actually be in the plane with the door open, and you’d have to just decide in that moment. You’d have to actually be in the situation. Can I do it? Only the real life pressure situation could reveal that.When it really came down to it, when you really had to assess the risk, when you had to explain to your spouse what you were planning on doing, would you do it. Only real life could test for that. The only way to test for that is to live it.Now your uncertainty becomes certainty, when what? When you jump. Now you’ve proved you can do it. The test revealed what you did not know.That is precisely why James says,If your claim to have great faith never reveals itself in works, you don’t have great faith. Here’s what he’s saying here. Don’t tell me you are brave enough to jump out of an airplane with a parachute by ticking a box on a multiple choice test. Don’t just talk. Show me you are a jumper by jumping. And in a similar way, show me that you are a Christian by Christianing. Any other test of faith is incomplete and incomplete tests aren’t very helpful. James is simply questioning the effectiveness of a written exam without a practical.A good test functions as a filter to separate those who have complete mastery of a subject from those who do not. So if a good test is able to discovers those with genuine mastery, what’s the definition of a worthless test? A worthless test is a test that an incompetent person can pass. James is simply saying, “Claiming to have faith without testing that faith by examining ones works is a worthless test. It’s a dead test.” Why? Because you can pass it and not be saved.Testing this way will give people false assurance that they are Christians.That’s why he says,It’s ridiculous to test a person based on claims alone. Let me ask you, "Would you board a plane and trust your life to a pilot who claimed they could fly plane but had never demonstrated that? Trust me. I can do it. That’s crazy.But listen guys, he’s pointing out something even more ludicrous then even that. He says faith APART from works is useless. He’s saying, faith WITHOUT works is dead. So the person has already demonstrated they have no works. They’ve already failed the works test.So to make the analogy parallel we would have to say that the person has already demonstrated that they have NO ABILITY to fly an airplane. They’ve crashed the plane over and over again. They actually have already demonstrated that they CANNOT do it. And yet they claim to be a pilot. Would you call that person a pilot? That’s insanity. That’s crazy.That’s what he’s saying.How foolish can you be? James says, stop calling them pilots. Your giving licenses to pilots who crash planes? Why would you do that? Do you know how many dangerous pilots you are going to let into the skies. Do you know how many people they are going to kill because you are giving them that title? Your insane. Your foolish. Your confusing everyone. That’s the definition of foolish. In the same way that calling people who don’t know how to fly planes, pilots is foolishness and insanity, so calling someone a Christian who has genuine faith but does not have any works that demonstrate that faith, that’s insanity.Your going to hurt people. Only a foolish person would believe someone’s words of faith without examining the test of life. People can say anything. Yes, for sure, we need them to say they have faith. But is it genuine faith? Examine the works!And that is what today’s passage is all about. It’s not the written exam. It’s not a multiple choice test. It’s the real life test of trust. It’s the jumping off a bridge. As Martin Luther said, “A genuine faith is faith that throws itself entirely on God.” You justify yourself as Christ clinger by clinging. You are justified by your works.So let’s look at the examples he gives of these real life tests. He starts with Abraham who did exactly that.Was not Abraham’s faith proven to be genuine faith when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? And the implied answer is yes. Yes of course he was.And so he’s saying it was not until Abraham raised the knife that we knew, ahh, there’s genuine faith. That’s what demonstrated it. That work justifed the claim. Could you have ever said, Abraham had great faith without that event. No knife, no faith. It’s that simple. Don’t try to separate Abraham’s faith from Abraham’s knife. It’s foolishnessNow why? Why was this act of raising the knife evidence of fiducia? We get incredible insight into why if we turn to Hebrews 11.Hebrews 11 is often called the hall of faith because we remember the events which revealed the great faith in men and women of old. Faith can have degrees, right. Not all faith is created equal. And these men and women had heroic degrees of faith. And Hebrews 11 remembers the key testing event which revealed that faith.Abraham is listed in this chapter for works he PERFORMED. He performed a feat of faith in the real world that revealed his faith and God records it in this hall of faith in Hebrews 11.Hebrews 11Now what God was doing here was testing his faith. He was testing it. Abraham, is your faith genuine? And so to determine that, He’s testing for that component of faith you can’t get to on paper. What makes faith, faith is the fiducia. Only real life can test for fiducia. That deep ultimate trust.And so here comes this test for Abraham. It’s the real life test. And of course, tests are no fun. Tests are terrible. Tests are like vices that squeeze you and whatever is inside comes out. They’re very unpleasant. Therefore, they’re effective.He’s squeezing Abraham and here’s what comes out. Three things come out.The first thing that comes out of Abraham in this test is obedience. But this is a type of obedience that can only come out in a vice-like squeeze. What makes this obedience different than the run of the mill everyday obedience is the “even though” component. He obeys, even though.Here’s what is meant by that. Look at how the NIV translates verse 18.You see it’s not faith to trust God when it seems reasonable to trust him. Faith, TRUST, Fiducia is all about the even though. I trust you EVEN THOUGH it seems like you shouldn’t be trusted.You see you have to be able to TRUST God when it doesn’t make sense. This didn’t make sense. Because on the one hand we have this promise: I’m going to bring out of Isaac a great nation and a messianic descendant through whom all the world will be blessed."And alongside that promise you have this command. Take out some rope. Bind your son. Lift a knife. Ignore his screams. Raise it up. Plunge it into his heart and and kill your son.Do you see how difficult this? Imagine what it would like to be Abraham? How do these two things go together? I don’t actually know. But I will obey EVEN THOUGH.Do you see what the EVEN THOUGH captures? You have a command to obey that seems to contradict the promise. In other words, a test happens when we find ourselves in a situation where to obey God looks like foolishness and possibly even wrong. The command to obey God flies in the face of reason, it flies in the face of common sense. But Faith doesn’t care. EVEN THOUGH my mind tells me, EVEN THOUGH my experience tell me, EVEN THOUGH my friends tell me, EVEN THOUGH my intuition tells me, EVEN THOUGH my fears are telling me, EVEN THOUGH EVERYTHING is telling me this a bad idea…..God I TRUST you above all of those things. And so I obey. That’s why it’s a test. Because it pits all other trust references against God. You have the all these voices in this ear chattering away. And you have God whispering in this ear. Who is it going to be? Me or them? The whole situation is setup so you are forced to make a decision.We are often put in situations like this all the time. We have these situations where it seems like the promises of God are at odds with our experience. God you say you love me. You promise you will never leave me or forsake me. You say that all things work together for good to those who love God.Then why is my son dying of a brain tumor. Why is my son or daughter being cut down in the flower of her youth? Why was my spouse taken from me? Why have I been so mistreated?That’s a test. It seems that to obey, to trust God in a situation like that, is leading you completely out of the path of blessing. I’ve been so abused, so mistreated, so hurt and now you are asking me to love my enemy? Can’t do it. How is that going to anything other than enable? It’s a test because God’s commands seem to contradict either your reason or his promises or both.Tests occur any time your feelings and your wisdom are pitted against God’s feelings and God’s wisdom. Which is going to win? That test will squeeze you and something will come out.What happens when you squeeze Abraham? He obeys. He obeys “even though.”So fiducia obeys. Here’s the second thing fiducia does.God asked Abraham to sacrifice not just his son, but his one and only son.Faith sacrificies EVEN the one and only.Now think about what is being asked here. The request of God was to offer up Isaac as a whole burnt offering. In the OT there were 5 different types of offerings. Some of those offerings were partly given to God and partly given to the worshiper. So for example in the peace offering you would give a portion to God, but you would eat a portion as well.But a whole burnt offering was not that way. In a whole burnt offering you give God the whole. You get nothing. You give it all away. I give it all to you without reservation. I give it all to you and I receive none. There is no remainder. It’s all consumed.So God here is asking Abraham to give him his one and only son. God you get it all. I get nothing. That’s a big ask. To give up any son would be difficult. To sacrifice a son on an altar with a knife and fire would be more difficult still. But to sacrifice this one and only son? That’s far beyond even that which is incomprehensible. Think about it. Abraham had waited and waited and waited for years for this son, because God had said, "I will give you a son through your wife Sarah who will be your heir." And finally, he came, in his gray-headed old age. This son represented the faithfulness of God to his promises. Isaac was literally the embodiment of God’s precious faithfulness. The son he’d waited for his entire life. The Son he thought he’d never get. The son that was an answer to his prayers. The son that was such a blessing to him and his wife. The beautiful, wonderful, blessed son.And now what does God say? Abraham, take your son and sacrifice him? No, it’s far more intimate. He says, “Take your son, YOUR ONLY SON, whom you LOVE, and offer him up as a burnt offering.”Fiducia gives God the one and only, the one that you love. Trusting God means giving him THAT ONE. And I want you to observe very closely that giving up Isaac was not the giving up of some secret sin. It was not the giving up of some evil thing we are withholding from God. Isaac was a good thing. Isaac was God’s gift. Isaac was a blessing.Some of the hardest things in life to give to God are not the evil things, but the good things. The blessings from God. Would you not agree that a weekend is a gift from God. After a hard work week, who doesn’t look forward to God’s gift of a weekend. But what if God wants you to give up my weekend? It’s my one and only weekend this month to do what I want? God you want me to give up my peace and quiet? It’s the one and only time in the day when I have time to just think and pray. I was going to read my Bible. God you want me to give up my extra money? It’s the only and only bit of money that’s not allocated.Giving up our one and onlies is tough.It’s hard to give up our one and onlies. But faith does it. Faith says, God, you are worth more to me than the sum total of the most pleasant blessings. When Abraham was squeezed, because he TRUSTED GOD, because he had fiducia, he did it. He obeyed “even though”. He sacrificed his “one and only” who he loved. Here’s the third thing it does. It accepts.Listen, when you read James, you realize, James is kind of a cynic. He’s a little jaded on people who talk, talk, talk talk. I’m tired of people talking.If Abraham were to come to James and say, “James, I fully trust God." James hears Abraham and says, "I used to say that too. Anybody can say anything. Justify that statement. Demonstrate that you trust God.” And Abraham raises the knife. Now I’m listening. Okay now you are putting your money where you mouth is. Abraham YOU TRUST God.How would you describe this type of fiducia? How would you describe this kind of trusting faith? Would you call it blind faith?I think that’s either helpful or very unhelpful depending on how you look at it.God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, EVEN THOUGH it seemed to contradict what he had said earlier. So did Abraham obey God blindly?Here’s the distinction I’m after. He could EXPLAIN with laser precision the character of God. He could EXPLAIN why God should be trusted. He could EXPLAIN what the promises of God were. He had a REASONED EXPLANATION for all that.But here’s what he could not explain. He could not explain how it would work out.He could see the who. But he was blind to the how. He knew who. He did not know how. It’s okay to NOT have the how if you have the who. That’s faith. That’s fiducia.And we read of his inability to see the how.Even though he didn’t know the how, he knew the who. He knew he could. God was ABLE, EVEN to raise him from the dead. I don’t know how God is going to pull this off. But let me go worse case. Let’s just say I kill him, I throw him up on the altar. His body is burned and consumed. Fine. God will not break his promise. I have come to trust him. I love him. I don’t know how he will do it. But if he has to raise him from the dead, if he has to reconstitute his body, so be it. I know is ABLE. He WILL do it. It’s not an option for God to break his promises to his children. PERIOD.God is faithful. That is fiducia, friends. That is trust.ApplicationNow let’s take a moment to apply this. I want you to realize something about the story of Abrham in this passage. Faith comes in degrees. The Bible talks about Christians as those who GROW in faith. That means that the faith you have now is smaller than the faith you will have when you grow older. It’s not a binary concept where you either have faith or you don’t. You learn to trust more over time as something proves to be trustworthy.You see the faith of Abraham was not always so strong. Abraham’s faith started out very weak. It was very small. And perhaps your faith is quite small. You look at your life, and all you see is failure. Listen, God, even now, may be using your failure to grow your weak faith.Consider the life of Abraham. If you feel like a failure, there’s plenty of failure here to relate to. The call of God to sacrifice Isaac on the altar was an event that happened when Abraham is like 100 years old. He’s ancient. This is his final exam. And he passed. But he wasn’t always such a great warrior of faith.Do you remember when he was traveling in the land of Cannan and the lord of the land saw his wife and thought she was beautiful. And so not once but TWICE he lied about Sarah being his sister because he didn’t trust God to protect him? He was a freakin coward. That’s not faith.God promised to give him a son and heir. But didn’t happen in the timing he thought and so he slept with his slave woman, Hagar, and had a son by her, and because of that, he created this giant familyl mess where all sorts of problems plagued him for the rest of the life. Now you’ve got this messed up polygomous marriage with infighting. It was a nightmare.But now he comes to the end of his life. After a string of failures. And here’s what he says," Every time I have tried to put my wisdom up against yours, I’ve lost. Every time I’ve thought I was wiser than you, I’ve screwed my life up. Every time I tried to save my life, I lost it.But on the other hand, Every time a trust you instead of me, I won. Every time I though you were wiser than me, my life got untangled and filled with joy. Every time I thought I was losing my life, I was in fact gaining life.I’ve found only joy by trusting you. I’m tired of trusting myself. YOU GOD are trustWORHTY. I will not be fooled again! This obedience, though it looks like death, will lead to a resurrection I cannot foresee.I want you to learn that phrase. God trusting you looks like death but I believe that it will lead to a resurrection I cannot foresee. That’s faith. That’s fiducia.That is TRUST. And you know what that did for Abraham and his relationship with God.What are all friendships built on. TRUST. God calls you a friend when you trust him. Do you want to be God’s friend. Trust him.Abraham was counted as righteous and called a friend of God because of what he did. He was able to say, “Makes no sense to me, but I’ll do it because you said so. I know your good. I know you will never leave me or forasake me. I know a resurrection is coming.”And the whole point here is that what proved he had faith was his works not his words. It was the squeeze. And the juice was worth the squeeze.That’s the context for verse 24.Abraham was justified by the juice. You have not been tested until you experience that critical moment where to obey God looks like it will lead to a kind of death and you have no idea how God will keep his promises. You have to give it all up. You have to surrender your one and only, your one and only that you love. You have to give it up EVEN THOUGH you cannot possibly understand how it will work out for good.Abraham was walking along and he was saying, “If I obey you, this will mean death. How in the world can death bring blessing? But I must obey which means, there is a resurrection I cannot forsee.” Whenever you get into one of these situations your being squeezed. Faith is being revealed. Faith is refined. Faith will grow.What comes out of these situations is always the same. Lord, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me. That’s fiducia. Even if I die, I believe that this will lead to a resurrection I cannot foresee.You see God doesn’t give you the blueprint in advance. Otherwise it wouldn’t be faith. Fiducia is casting yourself onto God without knowing the results in advance. You know the who, so you release the how.Listen, do you know where this event took place? Do you know where Abraham went to sacrifice his son Isaac? Where was that provision given so that Isaac would not need to die? It was Mount Moriah. Do you know what Mount Moriah is? It was the exact same place where the temple was built. And the temple was built right next to the place where Jesus himself, the ultimate lamb would be slain upon the altar.When Isaac asked, “Here’s the wood. And here’s the fire. But where is the sacrifice.” How did Abraham respond. Essentially he said, I don’t know the how, but I know the who. He said, “I don’t know how God will provide.* I just now that he will.” God will provide. And guess what. Centuries later, he did. Centuries later, God would walk up to those same mountains with his Son. Like Abraham, we see God putting the wood for his Son’s sacrifice on his back. Like Isaac, Jesus cried out to his Father. “Where’s the lamb? Father, if it be possible, take this cup from me.”But instead of saying, God will provide, he says to his son. You are the provision. You are the lamb that was promised from the beginning of time. You are the lamb of God who John the Baptist foretold, would take away the sin of the world.When Jesus cried out and said, "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" God kept going. There was nobody there to say to him, "Stop your hand. And the knife was raised. And the screams were ignored. " Because God offered up his firstborn as a sacrifice for sin, Abraham didn’t have to offer his. I don’t have to offer mine. None of us has to go up there.Listen this is why we can have faith. This is why we can board the rocket and entrust our entire lives to Christ without knowing the how. Because we know the who. "We know the God of promise. We know that God loves us because he did not withhold his Son, HIS ONE AND ONLY SON, who he LOVED. Even though we might not know how, THAT IS WHO. And that kind of God can be TRUSTED.Don’t say before I trust you, "I want the script. I want to know exactly what’s going to happen up there on the mountain. If I’m going to face death, I want to know how the resurrection is going to come. You want to know what Mt. Moriah means in Hebrew. It means, the place of instruction. It is in this very uncomfortable place where we trust the who without knowing the how. It is then and ONLY THEN, that our faith can grown. Mt Moriah, the place of instruction. In the mountain of the Lord, it will be revealed. In the mountain of the Lord, it will be provided.You have to go up to the mountain of obedience to get instruction. It’s only as you obey, not before you obey, that the wisdom comes. It’s only as you OBEY, EVEN THOUGH you don’t understand, that wisdom comes. It’s only as you OBEY and sacrifice the ONE AND ONLY who you love that wisdom comes. It’s only as you obey, not before you obey, that the resurrection happens. Don’t demand something that would destroy the test.That’s faith.
Slideshow for this message is available IntroductionJames 2Happy New Year, Faith Community Bible Church. Welcome to 2023. Today we return to the book of James and we are in James chapter 2 verse 14. So turn with me there.Now it’s been about a month since we’ve been in the book of James and today we come to the heart. Everything James is trying to say revolves around the hub of chapter 2 verses 14-26.There could hardly be a more important section of the Bible to understand if you are going to get your mind the doctrine of justification, the doctrine of how we are made right with God.Let’s review what James is trying to do. Remember the setup of the book of James. James was the brother of Jesus. He grew up with Jesus. He washed dishes along side of Jesus. He split wood and worked in the garden with Jesus. But he didn’t believe in Jesus till after the resurrection.The fact that this sort of unbelief was possible frightened him. Realizing that it was possible to be in this kind of proximity to the Lord of the universe without possessing genuine faith was eye opening to say the least. How could that be? He thought he had a faith. But upon examination, it’s pretty hard to say you have a genuine faith while simultaneously accusing the Messiah, God come in the flesh, of being a lunatic. That’s a pretty good indication your not on the right track.So it probably got James wondering, “How many people think they have saving faith but really don’t.” How many people think, “Oh yeah, I’m good with God.” And God saying to them, “I’m not good with you.”So the book of James was written as a test for the legitimacy of our faith. James is on a mission to make sure you and I are not deceived the way he was. Many people come to church, live moral lives and think because they do those things, they are Christians. But that does not make them Christians. So what does? James wants to tell us. He doesn’t want us to be deceived.Here’s the really, really scary thing about being deceived. By definition, you don’t know it. You are convinced you are not one of those poor deceived fellows. There’s not even a hint of doubt. I’m not deceived! But the reality is you are. When the reality finally lands, there is shock, surprise, maybe even horror.Let me give you an example. If I were to ask you, “Do you think you are good judge of people’s character?” You’d probably say, “Yes.” That’s how 99% of the human race answers that question. Let me ask you a second question, do you think that 99% of people are good judges of character? Not a chance in the world. In fact, most studies reveal that the people who are the worst at this are the most confident. They are the most blind.And you might think, there’s no way. I know I’m a good judge of character. But how do you know you’re not one of the people who is the most confident but in fact is the most blind? The only way to know for sure would be to take an objective test. To trust a test outside of our own perception.Well, that’s what James is doing here in regards to faith. He’s saying, “I actually don’t really care what you say. People can SAY and do SAY anything. I’m going to trust the objective test results.” He’s trying to push our confidence outside of our own perception to something objective. He’s trying to say, the whole problem with being deceived is that you are listening to the wrong source. You need other sources of truth. Your relying too heavily on your internal world. You need to locate your confidence on something objective outside of your internal world. And so he’s developing a series of objective tests to help us evaluate the genuineness of our faith.That’s what the book of James is all about. And we’ve seen many of these test thus far in the book. Genuine faith has joy in trials Genuine faith doesn’t seek the world’s approval Genuine faith is not characterized by anger. Genuine faith does not show favoritism.But today we come to the core principle at work in all tests. It’s the operating principle out of which the test questions come. And here is that principle: Genuine faith works. This is a two week series on verses 14-26. Today we are going to focus on the principle in verses 14-18 and then next week will focus on the examples he gives in verses 19-26.So let’s look at the principle here:Now every Christian who reads their Bible carefully, at some point in their life struggles with this text. Why? Because it appears on a surface reading to be in direct contraction to what Paul says about faith in Romans 3 and in Galatians 2. So keep in mind that James is saying faith without works is useless. In fact, he’s going to summarize it here in verse 24.That’s the summary point of this entire section. If you know anything about the reformation, you can almost hear Martin Luther and Zwingli and Calvin groaning right there. All the reformers would just be squirming in their chairs. All the reformers focused on Paul’s articulation of justification which, in fact, is the exact opposite of James.So get James’ articulation in your head. A person is justified by WORKS and not by faith alone. Now let’s read Paul. Paul is in a section in Romans 3 where he is talking about the hopeless condition of mankind in their sin. He’s saying we are all under sin. We are just sin machines. If you want to use works as a qualifier to enter heaven, we are all failures. None of us can be justified, can be made right with God on the basis of our works.Romans 3If that wasn’t clear enough he says it again in verse 28.And if that wasn’t clear enough listen to how he says it in Galatians 2. In Galatians 2 Paul is talking about the danger of trying to make distinctions among ourselves based on our works. He’s saying, “Listen, our works don’t make us right with God. God makes us right with God.” Listen how he says it.Galatians 2Now just to illustrate this in all it’s brilliant 3D color, let’s put Paul and James side by side, let’s put them in the boxing ring and let em fight it out:So what’s going on here. Is the Bible contradicting itself? If the Bible is contradicting itself, we all just need to go home because one of the most basic tenants of Christianity is that the Bible has internal consistency. There’s an integrity to it.Well, let me put an end to the suspense. The Bible is not contradicting itself.Let’s begin by saying, even within the book of James, there’s plenty of evidence that James agrees with Paul and the reformers. Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone apart from any works of the law. James would agree with that.Both Paul and James were at the Jerusalem counsel in Acts 15 where they all agreed salvation is for all people apart from works of the law.Earlier in chapter 2:5 James talks about Christians as being heirs of the kingdom. Think about what that implies regarding salvation. What is the difference between wages and an inheritance? Wages are given because of work performed. Inheritances are given because of who you are. Wages are related to effort. Inheritance is related to DNA. Wages are conditional upon performance. Inheritance is certain. Wages are deposited piece by piece according to merit. Inheritance is already in the bank.These are massively different concepts.For James to say that Christians are heirs to the kingdom means we are not earning our salvation; we are heirs of salvation. There’s no way James is saying, "You are heirs of the kingdom of God, now work to get your inheritance."James agrees with Paul. We are saved by grace.So why do Paul and James sound so different? Why do they sound like they are contradicting one another.The answer is simple. Paul is using the word justification differently than James.To illustrate this, let me ask you to interpret this sentence. Here’s the sentence:What do I mean? It can mean one of two things. If I just got in trouble with the law, then it almost certain means, I’m going to a lawyer and he is going to give me some advice. But grammatically it has another possible meaning.Let’s just paint a different context. Let’s say I was a successful well-known, seasoned lawyer who had been in the industry for 40 years and I changed my focus from practicing to consulting. Now what does that sentence mean? I’m going to go consult a lawyer.It’s literally the opposite meaning. Instead of going to receive advice, I’m going to go give advice. The word justification is similar in that it can have opposite meanings.James is using the word justified in a different way than Paul is using it.So let’s start by explaining the two possible different meanings: The word justified, δικαιόω, can mean to be made right. So, given that definition, if you have a debt, you justify yourself, you make yourself right, by paying the debt. When you make that payment you have become justified because now the debt has a zero BALANCE. Think about how we use the word in reference to our word processors. When we JUSTIFY the margins in our documents we are balancing the left and right sides of the document. Justified is to make everything balanced. So that’s one usage of the word. This is the way Paul is using the word.But the word justified has another possible meaning. It had another meaning then just as it has another meaning now. It can also mean, to prove yourself right?For example, I’m a tech nerd so I love clean energy. If you said to me, hey solar energy is bad for the environment, I’d say, "Can you justify that statement." How am I using the word justify there. I’m not saying, you’re in debt and you need to balance the books. Rather, I’m saying, demonstrate that this statement is a true statement. Demonstrate that the claim is legitimate. I’m saying, prove to me that what you said is true. Give me evidence for your claim.That’s exactly the difference between Paul and James. When Paul says we’re justified by faith, he means we cannot BALANCE the debt on our own. We cannot be made right with God except through the merits of Jesus Christ and the works of Jesus Christ. We can’t make ourselves right. It doesn’t matter how much we work. Our works will never balance the books. The only way to balance the books is for God to credit us his righteousness. The credit, the balancing is an act of the mercy of God apart from our works. That’s why he says, “by works of the law no one will be justified”James on the other hand is coming at it from the opposite perspective. You claim you’ve been justified apart from the works of the law. Great, demonstrate it. Prove to me that what you are saying is more than just words.Let me illustrate this way. Right now, it’s winter and all the leaves are off the trees so it’s hard to tell the variety. You come over to my house and you see these two trees in my back yard.And I make a claim, “This tree is an apple trees.” Paul and James would respond differently to that claim.Paul would say, I don’t care what you say. What makes an apple tree an apple tree is DNA. It’s genetics. No amount of spading the ground, fertilizing, watering will make an apple tree. No amount of talking. An apple tree has to be born of an apple seed. And an apple seed comes from God. God makes apple trees apart from the will of the apple tree or men. That’s Paul.James would listen to that same claim, “This tree is an apple tree.” And he would, "I don’t care what you say. How do I know those aren’t just words. Prove it. Let me see the shape of the leaf. If it’s an apple tree it will have a certain shape. If it’s an apple tree there will be a certain type of flower when it blossoms and then you will see the fruit. Give me some evidence that your claim is true. That’s JamesJames and Paul looking at Justifications from opposite sides of same coin. Paul is talking about cause. What’s caused you to become saved. James is talking about effect. If you have been saved, what effect will that have on your life. What effect does that salvation have on your living.Paul and James are concerned about different abuses. Paul says, “You think WORKS can get you into heaven. Ha! Your fooled.” James says, “You think WORDS can get you into heaven. Ha! Your fooled.” Paul is guarding against people who think they can TOIL their way into kingdom. James is guarding against people who think they can TALK their way into kingdom. When Paul says we’re justified WITHOUT works, he means it’s God’s mercy that MAKES us right with God. When James says we’re justify BY our works, he means it’s our works DEOMONSTRATE God’s work.Or as it has been famously articulated:I think you need quotes on the second faith in order to read it properly.So that’s how to understand the text.The ApplicationNow there’s a tremendous amount of satisfaction that comes in understanding the concept here. It feels good to have intellectual resolve. But we need to make sure we don’t miss the point. It is so important to not just understand how the test works but to actually take the test.It’s literally the difference between understanding how an MRI machine works and getting an MRI. Let’s not treat this like an academic exercise. James intends this test to land and confront us. He intends us to take the test and to have the test results come back. Don’t give this test to other people. Give it to yourself.Here’s how you take the test. There’s three questions on the test. So in order to pass the test you just have to check yes to three questions. It’s a very simple test. The test will answer this question: do I have saving faith?Historically, theologians have given saving faith three characteristics, and they’ve used three Latin words to describe these elements of saving faith.So the first question on the test is do you have notitia? Do you have the information of the gospel? The first “element” that saving faith entails is an intellectual understanding to the bare facts of the gospel. It’s the raw fact. It’s the data. It’s the information. You have to know what the gospel is or you cannot be a Christian — you must know that Jesus, the eternal Son of God took on flesh and was born of the virgin Mary. He was born under the Law and was obedient to God and then died on the cross for our sins and rose again all in fulfillment of the Scriptures. You have to know who God is. You have to know the facts. Being a Christian is not less than that.But James wants us to go beyond the intellect. Let’s get beyond the raw data. Now the way he illustrates the necessity of going beyond raw data is by giving us an example. It’s just absolutely startling example.What is he saying here. It’s not bad to know about God. You do well. But let me just remind you, it’a a lot more than knowledge. Be careful in being smug in your knowledge. Be careful in pointing to knowledge as the evidence that your faith is genuine. Knowledge is part of the equation but it’s not all of the equation. Could a demon write a systematic theology? Yes. What would a demon score on a quiz in seminary about the attributes of God. He would score 100%Do you see the point? Knowledge of God is great. But you can have perfect knowledge of God and still be nothing more than a demon. Perfect knowledge of God has elevated you no higher than rank of demon. That might surprise you. But it’s true.So what else do I need? How do I distinguish between true saving faith and the experience of demons? It must be related to something other than knowledge. Well there’s a second aspect. Here’s the second question on the test.Not only must there be an intellectual assent to the facts of the gospel, there must also be a conviction that these facts are true. When the facts land, an emotional response is created. There must be an emotional response.For example, I can tell you all the facts (information, the notitia) of the story of the Apollo missions and the landing on the moon. But you must believe that it is true. Some people have a knowledge of the facts of the lunar landing. But they believe the whole thing was a great big fabrication. They think it was all one big giant hoax and consequently they feel nothing. There’s no assensus.But if you do believe it’s true, if you watch the footage, you see the rocket taking off, you watch it land on the moon, it creates a feeling of awe. That’s amazing that they did that.Saving faith both understands the gospel facts and believes that those facts are true. But you know what? You still haven’t advanced beyond a demon.He says, “You believe God is one. Good! So do the demons. The demons believe and what? Shudder. There’s assensus.” Belief is a shorthand way of saying you have both notita and assensus. You see a demon has notitia (knowledge). He has knowledge that God is one. And he has assensus (believes) - he believes that God is one. And because he believes there is an emotional response. He shudders. There’s the emotional component. Believe me: a demon respects God.I think it’s probably quite accurate to say that a demon believes that God is one more than you or I believe God is one. Demons have been to the absolute greatest seminary in the universe. They’ve been to heaven. They have seen God. They know more about God than Paul, James, Moses combined. They both know and believe."Get all the knowledge you can about God. That’s wonderful. Be as precise and accurate as possible. Terrific. Then believe that these things are true. Terrific. But those two things by themselves still don’t qualify you to be anything more than a demon. You can be a demon and have that.So what is it. Your killing me. What separates demons from Christians?There’s a third aspect. He’s the third question on the test.It’s the trust. It’s a decision of the will to place my life under submission to what I know and believe.To return to the appollo rocket analogy. Faith is not just receiving the raw information that rockets made it to the moon. It’s not just agreement that this event happened. It’s also trust. It’s saying, “I’ll get on that rocket. I’ll believe it to the point where I will put my life in that rocket.”Faith is not merely a matter of the intellect, nor of the intellect and the emotions combined; it is also a matter of the will. It’s a determination of the soul to commit and entrust my life entirely to something.Without this act of the will, the object of belief - which in this case God - which remains outside of him. It cannot be part of him until he surrenders his will.God is able to help; he is willing to help. But if the sinner is unwilling to trust him, if he has no fiducia then God cannot help.Listen it is at this point where most ‘so called Christians’ are deceived. This is why James is so big on works. Because the works is the evidence that you have fiducia. The works is the evidence that your faith is genuine.It’s why he gives the example of helping the poor. How can you say, “I have genuine faith in God” when I’m not interested in what God tells me to be interested in. How can you say, “I’ve gone all in with God.” while not going all in with God? That’s not faith. That’s something else.Let’s take the book of James and apply it to TESLA stock, “If you came up to James and said, I have faith that TESLA stock will tripple this year." James would look at you and say, "Really? That’s great.” I’ve got one question for you: How much do you have invested?Well, Nothing. James would say: You have notitia. You have assensus. But you do not have fiducia. You don’t have trust. If you had faith, your investment would demonstrate your faith. But you no investment; therefore, you have no faith.James wants to know, “Are you a true Christian like you think you are? Are you invested? Does your life demonstrate that you actually believe these things? Have you actually entrusted yourself and all that you are into the hands of the God of truth.”This is why faith and repentance are always related. Those who put their faith in Christ turn from their sins. Investing in TESLA is a decision to not invest in everything else. Boarding the rocket is choosing to not stay on earth. And TRUSTING in Jesus Christ is a decision to NOT trust in anything else this world has to offer. It’s not trusting in money, it’s not trusting in people’s opinions, your ability, your talents, your status…Repentance is not faith and faith is not repentance. But the two are impossibly interconnected. The turn to God in saving faith causes true repentance of turning from sin.I think what James is really concerned about is just how scary possible it is to have notitia (knowledge) and (assensus) and not have the one key piece (fiducia).This happens at all levels of life. How many of you know that overeating is bad for you (notitia)? How many of you believe that overeating is bad for you (assensus)? How many of you still overeat? You lack the fiducia. You actually trust something else. No matter how unhealthy it is, I choose to submit to food, because I want what food gives me.Why would we do that? We are willfully ignorant of the consequences, in pursuit of our precious. We think that by stubbornly fighting, we can somehow alpha male our way through it.Oh it’s scary possible, friend. It’s scary possible to have information about something, agree with something but not ultimately submit to it.That’s why James uses demons as his primary demonstration of this phenomena.Demons don’t shake their fist at God. What do they do? They shudder! They run from him. They respect the greatness of God and therefore they are frightened. They know what he can do. And rather to submit to him, they move about in the shadows.Remember what the demons said to Jesus during his earthly ministry. Leave us alone. Depart from us Son of God. They know what he was capable of doing.This, my friend, is the greatest evidence that you who think you are a Christian, in fact are not a Christian at all. Is that how you live your life? Leave me alone God. Leave me to myself. Leave me to my own devices. I want to lurk here in the shadows.If that’s true, then you don’t have fudicia. You aren’t any different than a demon. It’s very possible for us to know God is great, to believe God is great and shudder. It’s possible to be scared of punishment, and to even alter your behavior and become a very moral person, even an incredibly moral person, even an incredibly religious person. But all of your religion and all of your morality is nothing but shuddering. It’s just religious fire insurance. I know there’s a God but I don’t want to submit to him. I’ll do just enough to keep him happy, to keep him off my back.The Gospel and How to Receive itSo what do you need to do? What is the one thing you need to do? You need entrust yourself to the God of the Universe. You need to go all in. That’s the ticket. That’s the key.How do you know if you have saving faith? It works. It evidences itself in the will being bent in a certain direction. Windows orphas, trials. all sorts of stuff. There’s an evidence in your life that you are all in with Jesus.The point for us is that all three of these characteristics must be present in faith or otherwise it is not saving faith.Let’s take a moment and pray and bend the will to God.Prayer of Submission
Slideshow for this message is available IntroductionLuke 2-3Merry Christmas, Church. Merry Christmas kids! It’s so good to see you all this morning.If you’ve been with us the last couple of weeks, you know we’ve been talking about this command issued three times in the Christmas Story: do not fear.The command was given to Mary. It was given to Joseph and it was given the shepherds.We noticed that every time the command was given to not fear a reason to not fear was given with it.We built on that last week. We said in order for those reasons to be effective in reducing fear, those reasons have to believed. You must have faith in the reasons presented. So Last week we looked at the fact that faith in the promises of God and fearless living are closely connected.But we never really stopped to ask the question, “Why were they afraid? What were the characters in the Christmas afraid of?” Here’s the answer: they were afraid of God! Why were they afraid of God? Well, it’s not that hard to imagine it.You see the characters in the Christmas story were much like us. They loved God. They worshiped God. They had a relationship with God of sorts. But, in a very real sense, God was distant. He was far off. I am here in flesh and blood and God is out there somewhere.But in the Christmas story all of the sudden, God is with us. All of the sudden, Immanuel. All of the sudden, he’s not far off. He shatters the peace and his presence is powerful and immediate. Somehow God takes on flesh and bone. The fear in the Christmas story is a fear of God because suddenly he was near.So we are going to look this morning at the shepherds because here’s an example of some men who truly trembled in fear of the Lord. They hit the dirt. But ironically, it was their experience of great fear that allowed them to not fear. It was the fear of Jesus as Lord that gave them peace with God.So let’s read this very familiar story. Luke 2 begins with the account of the census issues by Quirinius. We are told of the birth of Jesus happened in Bethlehem. And then the narrative continues like this:Now when you read that verse, it’s so tranquil. I think of flickering candle lights and nativity scenes. I think of Christmas pageants and cute kids in bathrobes. I think of Charlie Brown. I mean it’s such a peaceful setting. It’s nostalgic.But this is not a passage about tranquility. This is a passage about terror. Have you ever been really afraid? Have you ever thought you were about to die. I’ve had several moments in my life when my life flashed before my eyes. I’m tempted to tell you a story here, but my dad attends these services and I don’t want to get in trouble. If you’ve had an experience like that you think to yourself, "This is it. I’m a goner. There’s no escape from this situation. That’s the sort of thing that’s going on here. They are just expecting to get squashed like a bug. This is how it’s all going to end.Now pause this event. Rewind things 10 second before this bone-rattling fear seizes them. What would you see? It is all contained here in a single word. It was NIGHT. Here the shepherds are, watching their flocks by NIGHT. It’s pitch black. There is no electric lights. It’s NIGHT. It’s DARK.Now what is darkness? Darkness is not actually a thing. Let me give you some examples of what I mean by this.The vacuum of deep space is not a thing. A vacuum is just the absence of air. So a vacuum is just nothingness.Neither is Cold a thing. Cold is simply the absence of Heat. Cold is just what happens when you take away the heat.And in the exact same way, darkness is not a thing. Darkness is just the absence of light. Darkness is what you are left with when you take away light.The text begins that these shepherds were living in DARKNESS. Physically, of course they were in the dark. But as we are going to see, over and over again, the Bible uses this as a metaphor for our spiritual condition.Spiritually speaking, without the Lord, we are living in the dark. Darkness is frigid, miserable and chilling because it’s just the absence of all good things. It’s the absence of light and the subsequent warmth that comes from it. Spiritually speaking, without the Lord, we are living in darkness. We grope in darkness looking for something to give us bearings.Now watch this narrative unfold. Watch. The vaccuum of dark, cold spiritual emptiness is flooded with LIGHT. Let’s watch this explosion happen. Here the shepherds were, MINDING THEIR OWN BUSINESS.The reason the shepherds go from total tranquility to abject terror, the reason they go from chewing on a grass in boredom to peeing their pants in fear is because of this soul-penetrating change from darkness into light.There’s this revelation from the heavens. Whenever God appears, it’s always associated with light. Paul on his way to Damascus was struck down and blinded by a great light when Jesus met him. Moses when he came down from Sinai was glowing because of his exposure to such brilliant light.So the shepherds go from darkness into light. That seems like great news. Who wouldn’t want that? But going into the light isn’t always a good thing. Sometimes darkness can be a blessing. I remember when my kids were little, I used to joke with them. “Hey, watch me do rapid quick clean of our house. Watch me clean the house in one second.” And then I’d turn off the light. Presto. You can’t see . And that’s when the dad jokes began. And I’ve been on a roll ever since. I’ve got an entire dadabase of them. So darkness hides the filth.Light is bad news to people with filthy homes. If you want to become horrified at just how dirty your house really is, break out a 10,000 lumen flashlight and shine it on a surface you thought was clean. Suddenly you will see how much grime and filth was hidden by poor lighting.The paradox of light is that it both solves and creates a problem at the same time. It solves the problem of not being able to see. Oh, that’s wonderful. I’ve been groping in the darkness for years. I’ve wanted nothing more than to be able to see. Hallelujah, problem solved, I can see!But the seeing, itself, creates a problem. In fact the problem it creates is far worse than the problem it solves. Going from darkness into light, biblically speaking is going from the frying pan into the fire.Spiritually, speaking, what the light reveals is terrifying. The old KJV says, And an angel of the Lord appeared and they were SORE AFRAID. I love that translation. They were so afraid it hurt. It makes me think of the emotion of fear as a muscle that was contracting so violently that afterwards they were just sore.The way it reads in the Greek is interesting. The Greek word for fear is phobos. We get our English word phobia from that. And this passage in the original Greek literally says they were phobeo phobos. They weren’t just phobos; they were phobeo phobos. Literally it says, “When the glory of the Lord came upon them, they feared with a great fear.”The glory light of Christmas is not soothing; it’s startling because of what it REVEALS. It’s terrifying. What are men always scared of when God appears? They are scared of judgment. And they should be. The light reveals their sin. They feel naked. They feel exposed.Light has never reached that part of their life. They thought they had that stuff on lock down. They thought it was hidden and they got away with it. Sin is always done in the dark. In secret.Someone who is spending money the way they shouldn’t tries to make the paper trail disappear. They purchase in cash. They throw away the receipt. They lie. They are trying to find cover in darkness.Someone who is looking at sinful internet content they do it at a time when nobody is around. Where do they do their looking? In a place where nobody else can see. They delete their history. They cover their tracks so that what is done in the dark cannot be brought out into the light. Darkness is a sinners friend.But then Jesus Christ comes along and says, “I am the light of the world.” Imagine all the sin you’ve ever done, brought out into the full exposure of the light of the flawless beauty of Jesus Christ. Imagine having to watch a video of your most shameful failures sitting next to Jesus.Fear is always man’s response when he is confronted with the light of God’s presence. Always. Think about the Bibles examplesIsaiah. Here he has a vision of Christ in the temple. Immediately he is conscious of moral inferiority. Immediately. And he said: Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts! I’m going to be consumed. That’s always man’s problem when the glory of God appears.When Job got near God he said, “I despise myself. I see myself, and I repent in dust and ashes.”When Peter got near Jesus, he said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man.”That’s why these shepherds shake with fear. The angel, of course, knows that what’s going on in their minds and hearts and so his first words are words of comfort. Don’t fear, your not dying of judgment.The angel is no dummy. He’s seen this a thousand times. Every time mortal men get in contact with the divine, every time the light falls, they tremble like dead men. It happened with Isaiah, Moses, Ezekiel, Paul. These humans….sheesh. They can’t stay on their feet.The point in the Christmas passage here shows us that human beings live in fear of a near God. And if you don’t feel it now, well, just wait until he appears. Wait for your immanuel event. You’ll be terrified. Just wait till you get close to God, the fear that has always been there becomes revealed.Imagine an old bridge. That bridge might have all sorts of cracks and stress fractures. And cars drive across it all day long and there’s no problem. But then along comes a huge semi loaded down with 80 pound bags of concrete. And that semi drives across and suddenly the bridge explodes into pieces. The weakness was always; it wasn’t exposed until the pressure was applied.In the same way, the Bible says we all live in fear of God. It’s only when we get near to God and near to his truth that the fear is revealed.But we don’t have to be afraid. There’s a way to change fear into peace. The angel sees their condition and says, “Fear not.” And then he gives the reason not to fear.I have something to show you that will cause you to not fear. He says, “Behold! Which means,”Look at this!" He’s grabbing our attention. Don’t fear, look at this.I bring you good tidings of great joy. You want to know what that phrase good tidings means in the original languages? It’s the Greek word euangelion. It’s the word gospel. Don’t be afraid because I’m bringing you the gospel.The angel says, "I know you’re afraid. All human beings are afraid when they get into the light of God’s truth. Of course. But you don’t have to be afraid if you behold what I’m about to tell you, if you look at the truth I’m about to give you. There’s a gospel of joy that can rescue you from the terror you are experiencing.That’s the entire point of the Christmas story. But how can that be? How can we have peace with God when the very presence of God is reveals our sin in all its shameful 4k detail? How can the mortifying, treachery of our sin be openly replayed in the presence of the holy God of the universe, and yet we can exist in that light without fear. How is that possible?What, pray tell, is it that we need to behold? What is the thing we need to look at? What is the good news in the face of our terror?Listen, that’s the news. A SAVIOR is born who is Christ the Lord. The Savior SAVES us from that fear. How does he do that?Listen, do you know where the word fear first occurs in the Bible? It’s in the garden with Adam and Eve. It’s in association with the first sin.When you read the story of Adam and Eve in the garden, it’s the only example we have of humans walking with God in the brilliant light of his glory and being totally and completely at peace. They have no fear. They have ZERO anxiety. They are perfectly relaxed. It’s perfectly normal. It’s just bliss and joy to stand in the presence of this divine supernova of white hot, glory. Just completely relaxed. They are just soaking it in like a beautiful sunset.We are told they walked with God in the cool of the day. Just going on a stroll with the creator of all things like it’s not big deal. Being with God was the thing they wanted most because they just loved staring at his beautiful light. It’s the only example in the Bible we have of this.But then we are told that sin enters. Rather than obey God’s path for joy, they decided a path for themselves. On that day, when they decided to do that, everything changed. Everything.That next day, when the glory of God came upon them, when the light approached them, like it did every other day, guess what? They were SORE AFRAID. They hit the dirt. They ran. They jumped in the bushes to hide. They wanted darkness.Adam, where are you? Adam, like an innocent child says, “I’m hiding from you.” Why? Why are you hiding from me? What was his answer? I’m afraid. I’m SORE afraid.I have shame. I can’t let you know what I’ve done. I’m too ashamed. I’m too scared. I’m terrified. I’m embarrassed. I’m mortified. I’m shivering with terror at thought of you knowing what I’ve done. I cannot come into the light.He hides his nakedness. He feels vulnerable, and he jumps it in the bushes. He is SORE AFRAID.And it’s been that way from then until now. That’s why we are all so filled with fear. That’s why we are hiding. That’s why we are wrapping ourselves up with things that try to make us feel safe.We want great careers so people will look at our accomplishments and accept us based on what they SEE.We want to have impresses houses, cars, family, money so that we can be accepted based on what they SEE.We want people to look at how sweet we are, how kind we are to others, how moral and loving we are and we want to be accepted based on our external presentations of kindness.We want to look beautiful on the outside so we can be accepted based on what they SEEWe want so badly to be SEEN and accepted. That’s what we wrap ourselves in. These are just bushes and fig leaves we are using to cover our nakedness. The problem is, and we know it, we are naked. There’s shame. There’s so much of our hearts that are hidden.We are terrified of dragging that stuff into the light. No not that. Put that stuff on lock down. If that gets out, then for sure, I won’t be accepted.And that’s why God is so terrifying. He is the light. Nothing is hidden that will not be revealed.Romans 2What’s your secret. What’s the thing that nobody knows and you would die 10,000 deaths for it to be known. That’s why, beneath the surface for all of us, there is a lot of anxiety. There’s anxiety that we will lose our fig leaves and then we will discovered for who we really are and we will be rejected.You want to know what this fear is called? In psychology, this fear is called the imposter syndrome. It’s the fear that even though you look competent, you really aren’t and you are deathly afraid somebody is going to find you out.When will somebody find out you really aren’t any good at this?When will somebody look inside and see what you’re really like?I’ve got to keep performing to keep up the illusion.Some of us are afraid to get close to people because we’re afraid, "If they knew what I was really like, then I’m going to be rejected. I’m so tired of rejection, I can’t handle it. Keep people at an arms distance.It’s fig leaves.The Good NewsBut there’s a better way. We don’t have to actually be afraid. There’s a way for all that to come out into the light and not be afraid. Christmas is the reason we don’t have to fear anymore. Why? I bring you good news of great joy, today in the city of David a Savior is born who is Christ the Lord.A Savior is here to reveal what is in the darkness and then save you from the shame of what that light reveals.God as Savior wants to restore that GARDEN RELATIONSHIP. He wants to save you so you can once again be restored back into walking in the cool of the day, totally relaxed, just enjoying God without fear. And the only way to do that is to remove the guilt. To remove the shame. To wash away your sins. To remove them as far as the east is from the west. He doesn’t turn off the light. He turns on all the lights and says, let me enter in and clean this up.You see until that happens you can never be free of fear. Let me give you an analogy. Let’s say you get a bill in the mail for a credit card you own. And that credit is maxed out. And you have no money to pay it. What can you do about that problem?Well, one of the things you could do is just tear up the bill. That kind of feels like you are making it go away. You don’t have to look at it anymore. But deep down you know it’s there. You know there’s a debt that needs to be paid. You know that tearing it up is just kicking the can down the road. You know that by tearing that up, sure you’ve bought yourself some time, but the interest is growing.You see, by hiding our sin and living in darkness we can never be at peace. Because you are always wondering, “What’s going to happen when people find out who I really am.” We just tearing up bills.In order to have peace with God and peace with man, we have to pay bill. We have to reconcile the debt. Payment needs to be made. And that is what Jesus Christ, the Son of God has done for us. We didn’t have the money to pay, otherwise we would have. But we have no way to pay. But Jesus did. But believe me, it was costly. In order to pay our debt he had to live a perfect life and die a death for us, in our place, taking the punishment we deserved, doing the good deeds we needed to do, so that if we receive him as our Savior, all of his work would be credited to us, all of his work is transferred to us, and God accepts us for his sake.You want to know what a Savior does. He doesn’t ignore what the light reveals. He fixes it. He cleans it. He pays off the spiritual credit card debt at the cost of his own life. We are all afraid of rejection; we are afraid somebody will look inside and see what’s really there and we will no longer be loved. We are so used to this experience. But listen, friend, there’s some really good Christmas news here. God has already looked down and seen your deepest secrets and way more. You think you’ve seen the worst. You haven’t seen anything yet. He knows not only all you have done but all you will do. And you know what? He says, “I see that. I see it in all it’s horror. I’m rolling my sleeves up to fix it. I’m going to give my life so you can have life. So that you can be free of that guilt. So that we can walk in the garden again.”I want you to walk in the garden with me again.The terror of the Lord leads these shepherd to worship in awe of the Lord - to worship the Savior who is the Lord. We know that we ought to be consumed and then we watch as he is consumed in our place and we fall on our faces in worship. It causes us to explode in worship.2 Corinthians 4To know that we can be seen and loved by God causes us to worship him. It causes us to glorify him! We sing with the angels, glory to God in the highest. What does it mean to glorify God?Think about glorious music. What is glorious music like? Glorious music is the kind of music that makes your soul boil over. Do you know what I’m saying? You can’t really tell somebody else. You can’t walk down a street and say, “Here, let me explain to you why this music is so great.” It doesn’t seem to come, does it?" Why because it’s too large to be contained in mere words. Because that glorious thing is something that overflows the boundaries of words. It’s above. It’s beyond. To interact with the glory of God is to experience his immeasurable weight and significance.God has seen it all, and he says, “If you receive my Son as your Savior and Lord, you are forgiven. I love you and I accept you.”Can we all just stop and behold the message: Jesus Christ is born a Savior who is Christ the Lord.They were sore afraid, and we’re sore with our afraid, but the angel says, “Fear not. Get up. For, behold, the gospel of joy.” Let’s pray.
Slideshow for this message is available IntroductionLuke 1-2So we are in advent and last week we talked about a command in the Christmas story issued three times, “Do not fear.”In our lives, there are all sorts of reasons to fear. Financial reasons, health reasons, relational reasons. Fear of losing something we love….The applications are numerous. We applied that to where we are as a church right now. Pastoral transitions can be hard and fear-inducing. What does the future hold? But God gives us this command: Do not fear. But he doesn’t just command away the emotion. He gives us a reason not to fear. It’s a command with reasons attached to it.But here’s the thing. In order for those reasons to change the way you actually feel, you have to believe them. You have to have faith that those things are true.For example, you could be fearing the loss of your hard earned retirement savings due to some uncertainty in the market. That could be causing all sorts of great fear.And I could give you a reason not to fear, “Don’t worry, Joe Bidden won’t let that happen.” I have given you a reason to not fear, but it is only as effective as your belief that the reason I’ve given you is true.So today we are going to build on last week’s message. God has given us these three reasons to not fear. But those reasons to not fear are only as effective as your faith that those things are true.So today we are going to talk about faith. There is a very tight relationship between Faith in the promises of God and Fearless living.If you’ve been with us in the book of James, we’ve seen that faith ought to have visible results in the way we live. True saving faith works. That is the main concern of James all throughout his writings. James says, the only faith that you should care about is a faith that works.Let me give you an example of what we mean by a faith that works. Let’s say someone comes to your door selling a cleaning product. It’s a brand new cleaning product just released into the market. It’s got a shiny bottle. The words on the packaging are really professionally typeset. The spray handle is ergonomically designed. How much do you care about these features? And this guy goes on and on and on about how cutting edge the packaging of the product is. It’s laser engraved. How much do you care about that? None. The only thing you care about is if the product works. If I spray it on this grease stain, I want it to lift the stain. That’s all I care about. I just want it to work. I want an effective product.Now in a similar way, James is not interested in flowery words and beautiful buildings. He’s not interested in platitudes and Christianeze. He doesn’t want a pretty religious presentation with ergonomically designed ministries. He’s interested in one thing and one thing only: life change. He’s interested in a faith that is transformational.What powerful, transformational faith does is it believes the promises of God. And when those things are truly believed, guess what happens. Transformation. It changes how you feel. Fear is exchanged for peace. It changes how you live. Living for self is exchanged for living for others. So how do we get this great faith that is so transformational?We are going to look to the example of Mary. Last week we briefly touched on Mary and her great faith. It really is remarkable. Here’s a woman, who had great faith, tremendous faith that God would work in her, through her to produce a great future apart from any of her doing. She would be acted on. She would be the passive receiver of God’s great blessing.The most remarkable aspect of any great faith - and it’s certainly true here with Mary - is the ability to distrust your eyes and to trust what you cannot see but are told is true.So our goal today is to get into Mary’s head. We want to get into the psychology of Mary? How did she approach the world? If we were to somehow record her inner thought life and play it back, what would we hear?What we are going to see today is three characteristics of great faith.Now we peeked at this last week, but there’s just loads here so let’s dive into the text.So here Mary is, MINDING her own business and this angel of the Lord, the angel Gabriel comes and visits here. In other words, God inserts his blender.- Everything comfortable about her life - gone.- Everything stable and knowable and predictable about her life - gone.- Everything secure, firm, anchored, solid - gone.Gabriel who stands in the presence of God is here with with a cosmic Kitchen Aid blender ready to make a mess of her organized, orderly, neat and tidy existence.Yeah, no kidding. Talk about being disoriented. What would you think if the archangel Gabriel knocked on your door, “Hello, my name is the angel Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God." What do you say to an angelic being, "How can I help you?” That doesn’t seem right. I doubt an archangel needs much help. Maybe I should say, “How can you help me?”Before she has time to formulate an intelligent response, Gabriel continues.Now there’s the promise. That’s the thing that must be believed. There’s the the thing that requires faith.So, I’m quite sure Mary is hearing this exactly the way the angel Gabriel intends it. You have been selected to be the mother of the Messiah, the promised deliverer that the nation of Israel has awaited.But instantly the “how” question begins to descend upon her. How will this be? Now interestingly, the way the grammar is constructed here, there’s ambiguity. Is he saying, “You are already pregnant” or is he saying, “you will become pregnant." The Greek grammar here could go either way. In English it’s like saying, "You are going to have a baby.” Does that mean you are already pregnant and are going to have a baby. Or you will become pregnant and then have a baby. It could go either way.Mary knows she has been sexually pure with her betrothed. BUT Mary is kind of picking up from this angel that she’s perhaps already pregnant. So how can this be? And so she ventures to ask the question. Maybe he’s referencing a future day after I get married with Joseph? Let me just clarify.So what the angel is saying here is that something will happen to you that has not happened to any human being since the beginning of time. There has literally been billions of women who have gotten pregnant since the beginning of time and not one of them ever got pregnant the way that is being predicted here. And I want you to believe that.It’s one thing to believe something that is statistically very unlikely. It’s another thing entirely to believe something that is actually impossible. This is impossible. This has never happened. This is ACTUALLY impossible.And the angel says, "Yeah, I know that’s impossible, but don’t worry, because nothing is impossible with God." That’s faith my friend. That’s faith. This is not possible. Faith is believing whatever God says, not because of it’s statistical likelihood but because of the power and trustworthiness of the one who said it.Faith is all about the character of the promise GIVER.And this is true for you and I as well. If God says it, no matter how impossible it seems, he wants you to believe it.Now it’s really important to get sharply in our minds what exactly is meant by ‘believing the impossible.’ Some people take this concept and they do violence to the text in this regard. They just absolutely murder God’s intent. They say something like this, “Well, God can do all things. All things are possible with God. My beloved family member is sick with cancer.” I just need to have faith that God can heal them. All things are possible. Nothing is impossible with God. And then their beloved friend dies. What? Was it my lack of faith?That is a horrible application. Why? Well, let’s think about it. Half of what they are saying is true. It’s very true that God COULD heal your beloved. That is definitely possible. All things are possible with God. So it’s perfectly okay to acknowledge that. But here’s the difference: God never told you that he has plans to do that. Did the angel Gabriel come to you and say, “I will heal your beloved family member. I know they are in stage 4 cancer, but all things are possible with God.” No. You see, faith is all about believing the promises of God. There’s no promise to believe.God simply asks us to pray and wait for his will to be revealed. Saying I have faith that God will do this great thing for me when God has not promised it is like saying, "I have great faith that the IRS will give me a 100,000 tax return. They certainly could do that, but why do you think they would? You have no REASON to believe that. You have no promise.Faith is belief in the PROMISES of God. So let me ask you, are there promises from God that apply to our hard circumstances? Are there promises of God we are asked to believe in the midst of our trials? Absolutely.For example, Romans 8:28.Romans 8All things. God may be asking you to believe that some horrible thing in your life is actually for your good. And it seems impossible. How? How can this possibly be for my good? How? Trust. Believe. That’s faith. That’s what God has told you and I to believe. Not because it is statistically likely. No. But because it is divinely decreed.That’s what Mary did. That’s why her faith is so commendable. Mary said, “Even though not a single human being has ever become impregnated this way, I believe. I believe because the Lord has spoken.”So Great faith Believes the impossible. That’s the first characteristic of Great faith. Here’s the second.In Mary’s case there was massive personal implication to what was about to go down. This was not going to be easy. You see, Mary would soon begin to show. Have any of you ever lived in a small town? If Mary is beginning to show she is pregnant, that means to everybody around is going to conclude one of two things: either she has been unfaithful to Joseph or Mary and Joseph have been unfaithful to God.If you’ve ever been in a small town, you know Mary’s life is ruined. It’s ruined! Small towns are like megaphones for scandal. They love it. They gobble up that news and then it spreads like wildfire. She will be socially marginalized forever. Her family - ruined; her social standing - destroyed. It doesn’t mean they will shun her necessarily, but she will always be on the outs, always on the outside. In a very real sense she will wear around her neck an undeserved scarlet letter.Mary knows it. And here’s what her great faith allows her to do. It allows her to accept it.Isn’t that amazing! Isn’t that great faith. My reputation is destroyed. My standing in the community - gone forever. My dignity and respect, vaporized. Let it be to me according to your word.We know the end of the story so it’s so easy for us to fill in pieces Mary did not yet possess. When Mary heard these words, and when she said, let it be to me according to your word, she most certainly without even the slightest doubt, was accepting the inevitable outcome of Joseph divorcing her.She no doubt loved Joseph. She no doubt was so excited for this future phase of her life. But she knew this would change all that. There’s no chance in the world that Joseph would believe her story. And that assumption is completely warranted based on what we read in the text. Joseph didn’t believe her. He did try to divorce her.So be it. Lord I accept it. Let it be to me according to your word. Even this thing I love most, even this most treasured beautiful relationship that I love more than anything else, if you want me to let it go, “let it be to me according to your word.” How amazing is that?! Oh that we could have great faith like that.What are you going through right now? What is really, really difficult for you?Maybe your marriage seems unbearable.Maybe your job is just a nightmare.Maybe you’ve been diagnosed with some horrific health condition and there’s just no escaping it.Maybe, like Mary, your reputation is getting drug through the mud from something you can’t control.Maybe you’ve run up against a financial crisis that is causing all sorts of troubles in your life.As a church we are in transition.Let it be to me according to your word. And you might be asking, “Well, that’s easy for Mary to say, because she literally has an angel telling her what God’s will is for her life. It’s easy for Mary to say,”God let it be to me according to your Word when an angel is revealing the whole deal. She knew that this particular hardship was God’s will." I’m not so fortunate.Well, I hate to break it to you but whatever is happening in your life right now - guess what - that’s God’s will for you. You don’t have to wonder. Whatever hard, difficult thing, self-caused, others-caused, nature-caused, fluke random freak caused, no matter what, that is God’s will for you. That’s the doctrine of the sovereignty of God at work.So just look at your life and say along with Mary, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word.”God has a plan dear child of God. Do you believe that? Can you accept that? God has a plan for this church. God has a plan for you! And it’s a good plan. It’s for your good. Do you believe that? Can you look into that unknown future and just see that. Trust that. Anchor your hope in that. Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word.Like it or not the implications were coming upon Mary quickly. Here they come. And they were very unpleasant. Very unpleasant.Now it seems, that she leaves quickly/immediately to go visit Elizabeth. That time marker is important, I think for reasons that we will explain in a moment. The text makes the point that she left immediately after hearing the angel’s message. Now think about this. At this point, from everyone else’s point of view she is just leaving to do what caring cousins do, she is going to help her cousin in pregnancy. She’s helping out with the chores. She’s making life more comfortable. Nobody knows what has happened to Mary.Nobody that is, except for Elizabeth. So Mary leaves and heads out to visit her cousin and when she arrives we have this very special moment.So there’s this joyful greeting. The Holy Spirit had revealed to Elizabeth this blessed immaculate conception and when they meet there’s this joyful acknowledgment. Their cheeks touch. They exchanging knowing smiles.Elizabeth exclaims how blessed she is to be able to be visited. But she also pronounces a blessing upon Mary. Here it is. It’s astounding:Think about this. Everything from the text indicates that Mary is not showing in any way. She is perhaps just a week or two pregnant at this time. And yet, she believes. She believes the impossible. She’s rejoicing as if it has already happened, even though she has no outward visible evidences of it. There’s no proof of it.Folks this is faith. To rejoice in a future day you have no proof exists other than God has said it. Are you rejoicing in the future day promised for you. Is that future day, large in your mind? Does it fill your horizon?Mary believes because of who said it. God never lies. God never goes back on his promise. I don’t have a shred of physical evidence, but I have a reason to believe that is more compelling than any amount of physical evidence. God said it.So she believes this impossible. But she also accepts the implications. What are those implications?We need to do a little harmonizing of the gospels here to really let this sink in and imagine it. Let’s bounce to Matthew just for a second. This is Matthew’s telling of the Christmas story. Matthew begins with Joseph.Matthew 1Now put the chronology of these two narratives together? The text says, before they came together SHE WAS FOUND to be with child…..When do you suppose that “she was found to be with child”? Okay, let’s pop back to Luke for a second.At the end of this section of the narrative we can grab another chronological marker.Mary left for Elziabeth’s house as she received Word from the angel Gabriel. She’s now been at her cousin Elizabeth for three months, she returns from her travels and now she has a lump. She has that undeniable, motherly shape.Now I want you to imagine what it would have felt like for Mary to walk into town. Imagine the anticipation. Half of her is so proud to be carrying the Messiah. The other half of her is just dying. There’s nothing she can do. She can’t hide it. Everyone runs up to give Mary a hug. Mary, we haven’t seen you in three months, and when they give her a hug they notice this little lump. What? Mary? I would have never thought? Mary?News quickly spreads and reaches the ears of Joseph. Joseph, bro, never in a million years would I think I’d have to be telling you this. But listen, Mary’s pregnant. Joseph puts two and two together. I know that wasn’t me. I haven’t seen her for three months. She’s pregnant. She hasn’t been visiting her cousin. No she wasn’t. She has a lover up North.Now here’s the point: when Mary left to go visit Elizabeth, she must have known that this future moment was inevitable. And yet she welcomed it. She believed. Elizabeth could say,She accepted the implications. Mary’s faith, like all great faith, shares a singular distinct quality - the ability to see the invisible future.Here’s a woman who could look past the voices of ridicule, and slander and let it bounce and deflect off her and she could see with perfect clarity God’s promised future.What is faith. Faith is looking past what you can see (all the reasons to fear) and looking at what you cannot see, the promise of God and simply resting in that.It doesn’t listen to the voices in the room. It listens to the voice of heaven.It doesn’t concentrate on the things it will loose. It concentrates on what it will gain.It doesn’t focus on the scary things the eye can see. It focuses on what the peace of the promise.And that is exactly what she does. She rests in the promise of God. She rejoices in it. And that’s the third evidence of great faith.Listen folks, there is blessing in believing the promises of God. There is blessing. Listen to the voice of faith.I can hardly believe my ears hear when I listen to the faith of Mary. All generations will call me blessed. She can look past the present into the future. She was looking to today, 2022. It is true. We call Mary, the blessed mother of Jesus. She was right.But that is not what her generation thought. Even into adulthood, this scandal, this stigma remained. As an adult Jesus was accused of being born of fornication. She never got rid of that stigma.She had to buy her groceries in the market and absorb the wagging heads.She had to live in the torturous day by day experience of watching her friends avoid eye contact with her.She had to ignore the mocking cat calls, the prejudice, the stigma.That’s what she knew was presently experiencing. And yet she could look into that future day and say, “All generations will call me blessed.” Mary believed God’s future promise. She was banking on the Mercy of God.And listen, we can do the same. We can look past our present circumstances and even though all the voices in the world might be jeering. Even though nobody understands us, even though our ears hear nothing but reason to despair, we can say along with Mary, “He who is mighty, has done great things for me, and holy is his name.”Now here’s the point. Yes, there is a future day of blessing. But he’s also merciful to me right now. He is rewarding me, right now. Not with temporal blessing. He’s not rewarding me with riches and wealth. He’s not rewarding me with social comfort or public recognition. He’s not rewarding me with the praises of men. Mary doesn’t get any of these things.But here’s what she does get: God is rewarding her with knowing Jesus Christ. Mary’s blessing is to know Jesus in a way no other human being ever will. Mary can say, “I am blessed in a way that is different than any human being.”His mercy is for those who fear him. Folks this is the blessing of faith. The great blessing of faith is knowing Jesus Christ.Mary can say, I see how this is not just a blessing to me, but a blessing to the entire world.She saw that in her own personal blessing, there was salvation for all people. All the nations would be blessed. This promise made long ago to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob would be realized. She saw that this day was coming. It was a certain as the rising sun. And she just rejoiced in it. She reveled in it.One of the really important concepts of faith is that the object of hope is realized passively. To understand what I mean by that, let’s contrast faith with vision.When you think about a great leader that has vision, what he’s doing is using his mind to imagine a future that does not yet exist. Maybe he has a seed idea for a new company. And even though that company does not yet exist, he looks into the future and he can see it. He can visualize all the steps necessary from getting from here to there. He sees something in his mind. Vision is the ability to imagine the future that will exist but does not yet exist.Faith is similar. A Christian who has faith also looks into the future and imagines a reality. It’s a future that will exist but does not yet exist. A Christian looks a their present circumstance and says this is not what has been promised to me. I see a bright future that is not this.So having vision and having faith are similar but there’s one very key difference. Who makes the imagined thing a reality?If someone has great vision for great future, it’s his job to make that thing materialize.If someone has great faith for a great future, it’s God’s job to make that thing materialize.It’s the difference between being that active doer vs the passive receiver. Faith is belief that you will be acted upon apart from your doing. That’s why Mary says, Behold, I am a servant of the Lord, let it be done to me according to your Word. That’s kind of a strange thing to say. What do servants do? Servants work. Servants serve. So you would expect, “I am a servant of the Lord. I will do for you whatever you say.” But that’s not what faith says. I am servant of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your word.She was watching this God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob work. She was watching the hero take center stage and destroy the enemy. She was watching him bring salvation for all peoples.And listen, we know how this happened.CommunionToday is communion Sunday. We know that Jesus came to die. We know that the reason Messiah was born was to hang upon a cross so that we could be saved.Mary had great faith to believe the impossible. But believe it or not, that was just a warm up for what she would be required to believe later in her life. You think now is tough to believe, Mary. You think what you are going to have to believe now is tough. There’s something coming that’s a hundred times worse.Do you remember when they dedicated the baby Jesus in the temple. Simeon prophesied that this baby That sword would pierce.Faith believes what is promised by God. Listen, God sent his Son to die a death on a cross to save you from your sins. That’s why he came.And the whole point of the gospel is to become a passive recipient of that blessing.It might seem like your sins keep you from God.It might seem like you’ve done such awful things that you cannot be accepted.Your eyes tell you, “I am ashamed of my life.”I am ashamed of my deeds.God says, that’s why I sent my son. I sent him to die for you. If you believe, that, “I will bless you.” And that is our only job. We are to be the passive receivers of God’s blessing. Lord, I am your servant. Be to be according to your Word. That is what salvation is. It’s receiving of the gift of God.We believe the impossible.We accept the implications.We receive the blessing.
The Assurance of Things Hoped For!Faith Community Bible Church 12/4/22 Dave GibsonThe Second Sunday in Advent: “Advent” is from a Latin word that means “coming” and refers to the coming of Jesus.The Latin word is a direct translation of the Greek word “parousia” and means “coming”—most often in the Bible applied to the coming of Jesus. Guess what? I’m planning on giving myself a heart ablation! (I don’t think so!)Some things we need come through diligence, perseverance, intellect, and hard work.TENSION: Some things that we need desperately we cannot personally obtain. A Primer on How to Pursue what we desperately need but cannot manufacture—in exact order:#1 Ask God or others. Matthew 7:7-11.#2 Trust God or others. Hebrews 11:1, 5/Ephesians 2:8, 9#3 Wait on God or others. Lamentations 3:22-26/Psalm 62:1, 2, 5/Psalm 131:1-3 We live between two great events of history:The First Advent: Isaiah 9:6, 7 and Luke 2:8-11The Second Advent: Revelation 22:7, 12, 17-21Question: What in your life needs a healthy, extended dose of asking, trusting, and waiting?My friends, this is not a rhetorical question! Write down your answer please. Then ask, trust, and wait. We need discernment about when to be diligent and when to ask, trust, and wait. SLIDE ONE:The Assurance of Things Hoped For!SLIDE TWO:The Second Sunday in Advent: “Advent” is from a Latin word that means “coming” and refers to the coming of Jesus.The Latin word is a direct translation of the Greek word “parousia” and means “coming”—most often in the Bible applied to the coming of JesusSLIDE THREE:Guess what? I’m planning on giving myself a heart ablation! (I don’t think so!)Some things we need come through diligence, perseverance, intellect, and hard work.SLIDE FOUR:TENSION: Some things that we need desperately we cannot personally obtain. SLIDE FIVE:A Primer on How to Pursue what we desperately need but cannot manufacture—in exact order:SLIDE SIX:#1 Ask God or others. Matthew 7:7-11.SLIDE SEVEN:#2 Trust God or others. Hebrews 11:1, 5/Ephesians 2:8, 9SLIDE EIGHT:#3 Wait on God or others. Lamentations 3:22-26/Psalm 62:1, 2, 5/Psalm 131:1-3SLIDE NINE:Question: What in your life needs a healthy, extended dose of asking, trusting, and waiting?SLIDE TEN:My friends, this is not a rhetorical question! Write down your answer please. Then ask, trust, and wait. We need discernment about when to be diligent and when to ask, trust, and wait.
Slideshow for this message is available IntroductionJames 1-2We are in James 2 and part two of a passage dealing with the sin of partiality. You will recall from last week that the literal translation of the word partiality is to “receive the face”.It’s the idea of looking merely on the outside. Man looks on the outward appearance. God looks on the heart. It’s a warning of being compromised by the superficial.Partiality has a positive and a negative aspect to it. Positively, it’s favoritism. It’s gravitating TOWARD someone on the basis of their looks, their wealth, their social status, their race or whatever else it might be. Favoring someone is treating them extra special.Negatively it’s discrimination. It’s gravitating AWAY from someone and withholding blessing. It’s a decision to bypass, a decision to overlook and move on, it’s an actual decision to restrain kindness toward someone because of some external feature. If favoritism is treating someone extra special, discrimination is treating someone extra worse.And God in this passage despises partiality on both fronts.Why? Because partiality compromises the very heart of the gospel. It eviscerates the power from the gospel. You know what the word eviscerates means? Point to your viscerals? It’s your guts. So to eviscerate the gospel is to take the guts out. To take the heart out and all you are left with is a lifeless shell.Here’s does being partial eviscerate the gospel? Here’s the reson: partiality is an evidence of being in love with the world. It’s an evidence that you love exactly what the world loves.Therefore, partiality only confirms to a watching world, that they are on the right track. It confirms that what really matters is money, power, talent, beauty and prestige, the very thing they are already worshiping.This is what James was getting at in verses 5-7 from last week. He says, as Christians we don’t value wealth and pride. We value poverty and humility.James says, “Why are you valuing earthly values instead of kingdom values?” God values the poor. Why are you valuing the rich?James here is accusing the church of being no different than the world. You so want to be loved by the world. You want to be so accepted, so applauded, so normal that you sell out. You shame your brother by cuddling up next to the very people who belittle and dishonor the name of your God.This is the same psychology that is experienced between the abuser and the abused. The abused goes back to the abuser because they have this deep, deep desire to be accepted.Is that not what the church does when they honor the world’s wealth? The church so wants to be seen as cool, intelligent, culturally relevant, the church so wants to be accepted that she sells out to the abuser, the very one who is mocking them, abusing them, dragging them into court.It’s insanity. Here’s what James is saying: offer him something different, something real, something that truly has life.You want to confuse a rich man? How do you baffle and fluster the wealthy? Show him a poor, powerless man who is truly happy. Or even more, show him a community where the poor and widows and powerless are honored and respected and revered; now that’s interesting.Any true seeker is coming to the church to find something different. That’s why they come. They are seeking something better than what they have. The rich already, have money, power, influence and it’s not working for them. So they come in seeking, "Perhaps there is something better." As soon as this rich person peeks his or her head in the door to see what’s going on and they see that they get the red carpet rolled out and the poor are marginalized they recognize in one second that the church is after the same thing the world is after they instantly loose interest in the church as an institution because, after all, the church is a terrible place to find money, power or influence.But on the other hand, the more foolish we become in the eyes of the world, the more interesting we become. The more we live according to God’s values instead of the world’s values the more likely we are to peak their curiosity.Our need to be seen as relevant must die. We are fools. We are weak. We are not cool. We have nothing to offer. It’s all about Christ. The marginalization that comes from being followers of Christ is not something to run from; it’s something to love and embrace. It’s the very thing we must embrace to even show them who Christ is. The reason Christ is so cool is that he takes people who are worth nothing and makes them something.We are supposed be the counterculture. So here’s the question that gets answered in the text today: What does that counterculture look like?There are three points in the outline today and the key word in all three points is all. ALL. What’s unique about the Christian, what’s particularly attractive about the Christian is the word ALL. Most people love some. Most people treat some people with respect. But to treat all people, all your neighbors as yourself, to love ALL people without discrimination according to the royal law, THAT is impossibly difficult. Why? Because PEOPLE are impossibly difficult. So to love ALL people means you must have some impossible power residing within. That’s what he’s saying.How do you tell if you are being impartial. Easy. You just have to love all people like you love yourself. Usually the poor love the poor and despise the rich. The rich usually love the rich and despise the poor. Impartial people love not just the poor, and not just the rich. They love ALL people.What does this look like. Loving other people has a lot to do with meeting their needs. And if we are supposed to meet other peoples needs the way we meet our own needs, then we need to ask the question, “how do we meet our own needs?”Our needs get priority don’t they. All sorts of pressures and obligations can be competing, but somehow our needs always get met. If we need to eat, if we need to go the bathroom, if we need sleep, if we are freezing cold, if we are bleeding we do something about it. Our needs don’t get ignored or forgotten. Even if we can’t tend to our needs immediately, there’s a plan to meet them. There’s always a conscious awareness. It’s a nagging, ticking awareness. We can’t shut it off. There’s almost a panic of those needs go unmet.Our painful needs are met at any expense. If you can’t afford a surgery on the appendix, but your appendix is bursting, what do you do? Break out the credit card, we’ll figure it out later. No price tag is too high to silence the pain of a bursting appendix.So to love your neighbor as yourself is to simply think about the needs of others the way you think about your own needs.To love according to the Royal Law is easy. Just ask yourself, “If I was exactly like that person, what would I need? What would I lack? And if I lacked those things, how would I like to be treated?”One of the reasons it’s so hard to fulfill the Royal Law is we spend so little time thinking about what it would like to be other people. I just keep thinking what it’s like to be me. In order to love others as you would love yourself, you have to imagine what it would be like to be them.Picture in your mind, someone who you have a hard time loving as yourself.Imagine being that person.What would it be like to look like them. If you did look like them, how would you like to be treated?Imagine being a person who was overweight and embarrassed and embarrassed by their acne, embarrassed because of a deformity or a handicap, embarrassed by their financial situation, how would you like to be treated?*Imagine being a refugee who went through just awful suffering to get to this country and then not speak English and have no friends? Nobody knows you or what you’ve been through. How would you like to be treated?What would it be like to be the opposite gender?What would it be like to be a different race?What would it like to be adopted?What would it be like to not have the schooling you have?How would you like to be treated>Imagine being a person who struggled picking up on social cues; what would it be like if you couldn’t do that? How would you like to be treated?If you struggled with basic math, or basic English skills, or basic life management skills, or basic computer skills, and you awkwardly fumbled in some way how would you feel and how would you like to be treated?If you struggled athletically and there was a social event that required those skills, how would you like to be treated? If you struggle jumping into social situations and you need people to draw you out, how would you like to be treated?If you were the minority race in a social setting, how would you like to be treated?Every Christian operates in some social group - a school, a neighborhood, a workplace. Those groups have values.And because of those values, when someone doesn’t measure up, the group doesn’t know what to do with them. They end up being social misfits - the ones who are looked down upon, ostracized or neglected. The Christian living according to the royal law is being asked to treat EVERYONE without partiality - period.Well what about the church. Imagine being a person who comes to church and doesn’t quite fit in.Imagine coming to church truly curious but you discover really quickly, you don’t fit in. You aren’t wearing the right clothes. You don’t know the right lingo.What if you weren’t sure about Christianity, how would you like to be treated?What would it be like to be a single person among a church with lots of families?What would it be like to have an eating disorder?What would it be like to be depressed or have a marriage that is falling apart?What would it be like to have kids who are not walking with the Lord?What would it be like to be struggling with pornography or SSA?What would it be like to walk around with the stigma of divorce in a Christian community?What would it be like to struggle with drugs or alcohol or tobacco and show up to church?Imagine it, how would you like to be treated. Now treat them that way!Most of the time what we do with the weak is we say, “Well, that person needs to get a grip. They need to figure it out if they are to be successful in our world. Get with the program or suffer the consequences.” Or we say, “Too bad for them, nothing I can do about it.” Is that loving your neighbor as yourself? What if that were you? How would you like to be treated?Here’s what I want you to do: Pick a person you are tempted to look down on. Pick a person who you’d be tempted to overlook. Spend 10 minutes writing down what it would be like being them. Literally write it down. Then go talk to them and see how it goes. I bet you will be amazed!It’s called the Royal Law because if you love this way, you’ve found the heart and essence of what our Royal King Jesus asks us to do. You’ve become like the Royal King. If you want to please the heart of God, love like this. To love your neighbor as yourself.A true counterculture begins by loving not some but ALL of God’s children. Secondly, it involves loving not some but ALL of God’s laws.A law is warning. Don’t do this or else there will be consequences. It is not less than that, but it it is more than that. Every warning is also an invitation into something better. If I say don’t eat too much turkey at thanksgiving, it’s a warning against the short and long term consequences of overeating but it’s also an invitation into the joy of being healthy.All of God’s commands are like this. The warning to not be partial is an invitation into the joy of selfless living. Self-centered living, having relationships that only benefit you, are, in the long run, soul destroying. But living for others, is soul-healing. In not showing partiality, you enter into the life of our King.So heeding ALL of God’s laws is really important. James has a pretty deep concern in verses 9-11. He detects that we don’t think this sin is of favoritism or discrimination is a very big deal. It’s almost like we don’t even think it matters. We are acting like, it’s not even a law. He’s going to crash right into how we justify our sins of partiality.What he’s trying to do is help us see that partiality is a big deal. Don’t gloss over it. It doesn’t deserve a Meh, emoji. It deserves panic, fear, terror. Most of us are blind to our impartiality and if we do see it, we barely see it and it doesn’t feel like a very big deal. We tend to justify it in some way. James is confronting that.He reminds us that God’s angry with lawbreakers. He’s angry with the wicked. He’s angry with the evildoers of this world. We hear that and we think, I didn’t kill nobody. I’ve didn’t commit no adultery. I didn’t break any major law.You see we are always so proud of the laws we didn’t break.We hear the law, don’t commit adultery. Don’t murder. And we puff our chest out and say, "They ain’t me." I don’t know who those fools are, but I’m glad I’m not like those sinners.What God is saying here through James is this: Murder is breaking the law. But so is partiality. “So what if you didn’t murder? If you commit partiality, you are a lawbreaker.” There’s not a no-big-deal list of laws that you can break where God is ‘understanding’ and winks and says, ‘that’s cool if you ignore that.’Jerry Bridges once wrote a book entitled "respectable sins." These are the sins we allow in the church. Self-pity, materialism, vanity, or not sharing your faith. These are the sins that are respectable and sometimes even get praised. Partiality is one of these kinds of respectable sins.James has us in his sights. Don’t think you can get away, friend. You can’t get away. Are you partial? Then repent. Don’t pride yourself in your selective law-keeping hoping that it will all kind of average out with your law breaking. You discriminate? You broken the law. You a racist? You broke the law. You can’t stand certain kinds of people? You’ve broken the law.You can’t stand those people who go those kinds of schools. You’ve broken the law.You can’t stand blacks or whites or asians or hispanics?You can’t stand CaliforniansYou can’t stand native IdahoansYou’ve broken the law.What’s your Pet Peeve. Can’t stand people who:talk too much, who come all disorganized,don’t ask questions,aren’t educated,don’t manage money well,can’t control their coffee or alcohol consumption,can’t control their eating,rely on others too much….You’ve broken the law. It’s a heart of superiority and arrogance that the Lord wants you to repent of. So what do we do when we’ve broken the law? We repent. I think the best passage to illustrate this is the parable of the two men who went up to the temple.In many ways this is a parable of partiality. It’s a parable of the one who doesn’t think that discrimination and a superiority complex is any big deal. He doesn’t even know he’s doing it.And the point of this parable, that if you break the law at any point, if you keep the law perfectly, but you have this one little area of prejudice in your heart, you can be assured of nothing. The condemnation of God hangs over your head.Luke 18:9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt:There it is. There’s the partiality. I can’t stand people like that. Prejudice. Discrimination. Treating others with contempt. So he told this parable to speak to people like this.And the first thing he does in speaking with those who are partial is to point out their self-righteousness. Notice the link between partiality and self-righteousness.“He told this parable to some who TRUSTED in themselves for their RIGHTEOUSNESS…” These he says are the same people who inevitably will treat others with contempt. Why? Because they reason, I worked hard for my righteous and they have not.Notice the partiality. Who are they treating with contempt? Others - other’s not like them. There are people like me who work hard, and then there are OTHERS. Those who do not deserve the title righteous. Here’s the parable.Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.Two men go up to the temple. They are socio-economically very different. PHarisees were educated. They were respected. They were known for their pious law-keeping. You could recognized a Pharisee a mile away from their purple robes and their fastidious law keeping.Then you had the tax collector. Known for his unashamed sell-out to Rome. Despised. He was disrespected.How did these two people approach God.The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’So what is he doing here? He’s making lists of reasons he has value. Here are all the reasons I’m so amazing. This is the sin of the self-righteous. We selectively compare ourselves to others.This person is lazy. I’m not like that.This person hurt me in this way. And I don’t do that kind of thing.This person loves money. I’m not like that.This person is arrogant. And I’m not like that.We have our list. So the Pharisee looks at all his lists and lists of law-keeping and finds his value in that. My lists prove that I am righteous. Now let’s see about this other guy.But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’The tax collector sees himself accurately. You know the tax collector realized, I have no worth. I look at all my righteousness and I see nothing that I can offer.Yeah, I may not be lazy like that person, but I’m greedy.I may not have hurt this person the way they hurt me. But I’ve hurt them other ways.I may not be arrogant like that. But I’m arrogant in my self-pity.So what’s he do? He beats his breast saying, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” I have nothing to offer.I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.The Pharisee “kept the law” at all points but one, partiality. And in failing in partiality, in failing at just one point, seeing himself superior to others because of his self made righteousness, he failed at all points.LISTEN CLOSELY: remember we said that partiality eviscerates the gospel. Here’s why. Partiality reveals that you trust in your own righteousness, not the righteousness given to you by Jesus Christ. It reveals that have trusted a false gospel of self-righteous.In saying, I have value over OTHERS BECAUSE OF MY PERFORMANCE, you have denied where our value comes from. And your “righteousness” becomes for you a noose upon which you will hang yourself. It’s evidence against you on the day of judgment.You don’t come to God with your lists of why you are better than other people. You come to come to God beating your breast saying, be merciful to me a sinner.God be merciful to me a sinner. That’s the mark of the counterculture. I may have kept some of your laws, but breaking even one makes guilty of breaking all. God be merciful.The world says, “Here’s all the reasons I have value and worth.” Here’s my resume of accomplishments. I’m so glad, I’m not like those people over there who have nothing to show. me. me. me. me. And the more that is on the list, the more honor and dignity we feel we deserve.The world says, build you resume. Build your list of accomplishments. Here’s the justification for my worth. Out comes the resume. Pages and pages of things you are proud of. Your degrees, your net worth, your athletic, musical accomplishments. And what do you do with that list. You use it to compare. You measure self against others and you compare and you justify your worth by comparison.But this man never stops to ask the question, “What does God think of my list?” God looks down and says, “All I see on your list is the basics of what I expect breathing humans to do. I see that you’ve kept my law in very narrow ways. That doesn’t earn you any points. That’s the bare minimum expectations I have for existing. That’s like asking for a raise because you showed up to work on time. I just expect that.”You get nothing, my friend, because I see partiality. I see ego. I see superiority. I see sass and pride. I see arrogance. I see favoritism and discrimination.You see that’s the problem with the self-righteous.But you ask a man of God why he or she has worth? What does he say? God be merciful to me a sinner. I’ve broken your law. I am partial. They beat their breast. I have no worth. I am so unworthy of the mercy of God because I sees so clearly that all of my accomplishments are as filthy rags. God be merciful to me, a sinner.This is why the third mark of of the counterculture is to be in AWE of God’s mercy. All of it. Look how it’s stated.Judgment is without mercy to those who show no mercy. In other words, if you treat others by the standard that merit is earned not received, then you will be treated by that standard. If you treat other people as inferior because they have not performed, then you will be judged on the basis of your performance and non-performance. Keep in mind that God is the judge, and if you fail at even one point, you are guilty of it all.If you don’t realize that mercy is the basis for anyone’s righteousness, then you don’t understand righteousness. You are still in your sins.How you treat others is an indicator of whether or not you get it. Again it’s a test. Those who are truly children of God have been changed by mercy. They get mercy. They get how God’s mercy relates to their justification.He says it another way. “Speak and act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty.” What is the law of liberty. What is a liberating law? I’ll give you an example of a LIBERATING law. I now decree a new law, everybody in the room, before you go to bed, you have to eat ice cream. A liberating law is a law you want to obey.So if we are being judged according to the law of liberty, we are really being judged in accordance with how much God’s law to love people parallels our own desire to love people. Is God’s law to love the very thing we want to do? Is the law of liberty, which is the same as the royal law - is that a wonderful thought or a hateful thought?That’s how you will be judged because it reveals how you see yourself. Do you want to love and serve all God’s children. Not just the poor and not just the rich. But all equally.Loving all people naturally will only be a automatic for us, if the gospel has rattled us.Do we have a sense of our own spiritual stench?Do we have a sense of how gracious God was to us in that state?Do you have a sense of how utterly spiritual homeless you were?Do you have a sense of how bad your breath was?Do you have a sense of how rotten your teeth were, how dirty your clothes were?Do you see and have a clear picture of this and do you beat your breast and say, “God have mercy on me a sinner.”And when you prayed that prayer, do you remember when Christ came and gave you a hug? Do you remember how long that embrace was? Do you remember how he smiled at you? Do you remember how he gave you new clothes and cleaned you? Do you remember how he cared for the wounds? Experiencing that rattles a person.It transforms. And because you’ve experienced it, you want to share it with everyone else. You wants to treat other people in that same way! For you, it becomes both the Royal Law and the Law of Liberty.It’s the royal law in that when we act like that we act royally, like our royal king Jesus. It’s the law of liberty in that nobody has to tell us to do that. No law is needed. We are doing exactly what we want to do.That’s the great test of how much mercy of God you have seen. This mercy has touched down in your heart. Or, as James says, it becomes implanted.This law of liberty, the royal law, becomes for us, in James words above, an “implanted word,” “written on the heart” which is able to save our souls.The word IMPLANTED is a hapax legomenon, which means it is the only place in the whole Bible where this particular Greek word is used. But there are lots of other examples in Greek literature of the first century so we can get a sense of how it’s used. And the word implanted always has the sense of something that is naturally there versus acquired. Something that’s planted is natural to you rather than acquired.So for example, let’s say I don’t know anything about identifying edible plants in the wilderness. And I go on an adventure with Bear Grylls, you know a survival expert. And he teaches me all about the bugs and plants you can eat. Which ones are safe and which ones will kill you.That’s acquired knowledge.And you might think, okay that makes sense. But tell me an example of something that isn’t acquired knowledge. Isn’t all knowledge acquired.No, some things are natural. Everybody naturally hates high pitched screechy noises. You don’t have to be taught that. That’s implanted. Everybody feels it’s wrong to kill other people. No school necessary. That’s implanted.So the claim is that when you become a Christian, the royal law, the law of liberty becomes implanted. That’s a startling claim. It’s something that’s NATURALLY there vs. ACQUIRED.When you become a Christian you are given a new nature. The Bible calls it a new heart. You are a new creation with new things that are implanted.For example, Before you’re a Christian, the Bible can be extremely interesting. It’s information. After you become a Christian, it’s food. It’s air. You relate to it, your system relates to it, the way a hungry person relates to food, the way a suffocating person relates to air, and the way a thirsty person relates to water. It’s not just intellectual anymore.It’s spiritual drink. That’s something new that’s been implanted.When it comes to people, what the gospel does it changes you from looking down on people to looking up to Christ. And when you look up to Christ, everything changes. In fact, all three of our points from the message become implanted.How you view self, how you view him, and how you view others. That desire to love all people becomes implanted. That desire to receive mercy from God and not find righteousness in self, that becomes implanted.Prayer of Repentance:
Slideshow for this message is available
Introduction James 1-2 The Passage is Confusing What is this passage teaching? Clearly it has something to say about inequality. The fact that we are told to minister to the orphans and widows who are clearly the poor and to not be partial toward the wealthy means there’s a sort of concern about inequality woven into the fabric of this passage. The rich have power and influence and the poor don’t. But what is the point? Is this passage teaching that God is against this sort of economic inequality? Is God against the wealthy?
What we are going to see today is that God is neither for it nor against it. God wants us to think about poverty and wealth, power and weakness in way that transcends any social solution man has yet dreamed up. And believe me, men have been dreaming for millennia. Introduction. When you look at the world, nobody will argue that there is inequality. We have the truly impoverished, the poor, the middle class, the rich and the ultra-rich. And everybody kind of sees that as less than ideal.
The best minds in the world have created political philosophies that address this inequality.
So for example. Capitalism begins with the core concept that your money is your own, and you can do with it what you want. That gives incredible ownership to people and that has created incredible wealth because you take care of the things you’ve worked hard to gain. Nobody will care for you money like you will. Now the downside of this is that the poor generally get overlooked because there’s no motivation in the system to take care of the poor. The rich get richer. The poor stay poor. It’s every man for himself.
Socialism tries to solve the problem from the other side. They see the failures of capitalism toward the poor and they say, "No, your money is not your own. Your money is the people’s, and you have to give it to the community. You have to be selfless and see your wealth as part of a greater system. And that’s great for taking care of the poor but the problem in socialism is there’s no ownership. And when there’s no ownership you lack motivation for being productive. It’s easy to take advantage of the system.
And so you have liberal and conservative approaches to politics that have surged down through the ages.
Recently, we’ve experienced incredible tension in our country, in our schools and even our churches regarding recent advances of critical theory which deconstructs some of these philosophies. In critical theory, society is divided up into two groups. You have the oppressors and the oppressed.
And the goal is to break down those dividing walls in wherever those intersections of power exist.
So you take power away from the dominant race and give it to the minority to address racial inequality. You take power away from the wealthy and give it to the poor. You take power away from men and give it to women. You take power away from families and give it to those who don’t have traditional families.
The goal of critical theory is to break down those power structures.
And this has made inroads into the church because on the surface it sounds a lot like justice.
Does God care about those who are oppressed by racism? Of course he does. Does God care about the poor and needy? Of course. Does God care about orphans and widows? Of course, we just read about it. Does God recognize that cultures can oppress people? Of course.
But the fundamental presuppositions of critical theory are completely incompatible with Christianity because the way the argument is framed you have to choose between one of two wrongheaded ideas.
Either you agree that your power, privilege and money is the problem which means that you also must agree that God hates your power, privilege and money. And if you say well that doesn’t feel right. I’m not sure it’s right to say that God hates my power, privilege and money then you are forced to admit that God must then hate generosity, equality and justice. Why? Because your power, privilege and money are the very things that are promoting injustice, poverty and inequality.
Do you see the problem? From God’s point of view, that’s all wrong. Completely wrong. Here’s why Christianity is so unique; here’s why it’s so transformational. A Christian realizes that the money he earns and the power he has been given are neither his nor the communities. Nothing we have is ours. It’s all God’s. Our time is his. Our gifts and abilities are his. Our kids are his. Our house is his. Everything is his.
Here’s where it’s so unique. Even though it’s all His, he gives us incredible amount of ownership in that we are a stewards. It’s like being a CEO of a large publicly traded company. That company is not yours but you have tons of decision making and responsibility and power. You have all sorts of freedom in how you manage that business. But you always have to manage it according to the values of the shareholders.
And so it is with God. He let’s you make all sorts of decisions about how you are going to use your time, how you invest your money, what you do with your influence, what you do with your privilege, what sorts of decisions you make. There’s all sorts of freedom. But just like that CEO you have to manage it according to not YOUR values but the values of HIS kingdom.
And one of God’s main kingdom values that we are going to discover in this passage is radical, impartial generosity. So here’s James point:
TRANSFORMED Christians will have OWNERSHIP in being PRODUCTIVE for the PURPOSE of being radically generous to those in need.
We are a conservative church. We have rejected the social justice movement and critical theory as incompatible with the gospel.
But one of the great dangers of conservative churches who have rejected the social justice movements of our day is to think that God doesn’t care about justice or generosity or giving. Oh, he cares. He cares way more than any social justice warrior cares. And today he shows us how to care. Review Let’s see how this works out in the text. Last week we observed three tests of genuine faith. In the same way we would test for a genuine gold bar by pouring acid on it, we test for genuine faith by applying the questions James gives us:
And here were the questions:
So everything from last week was moving toward that word TRANSFORMATION. Being transformed by the grace of God will evidence itself in transformed living. That’s the key word TRANSFORMATION. What kind of transformed living? Well he gives us some examples.
That’s how we ended last week. We are in James chapter 2 today. And let’s just begin by reminding ourselves that the chapter breaks we observe in our Bibles are not part of the original letter. James the author didn’t sign off on this chapter break. In fact, I think if he were to get his hands on this letter he would say, “Why in the world would you stick a chapter break right there? That’s right in the middle of my thought. Thanks a lot for confusing the human race.”
This whole business about caring for orphans and widows from last week is integrally connected with our text from this week and it will continue on all the way to verse 17 of chapter two
We absolutely need this week to understand last week. A sermon on care for orphans and windows without a sermon on the the sin of partiality would be a horribly incomplete handling of what James is trying to get at.
Now here’s the first point he’s making. Gospel TRANSFORMATION will have an effect on the way we judge one another. And here’s the first TRANSFORMATIONAL effect.
So the command is to show no partiality. Now what does he mean here? What is partiality? Some translations use the word favoritism. I like favoritism because it sounds more like something we do on the playground in JH. Why do I like that? Because adults are just JH boys and girls on the playground in old bodies. Nothing changes.
Here’s a working definition of favoritism. I just got this off the internet:
The Word favoritism in the Greek means literally to “receive the face” and this was a made up word literally rendering a Hebrew word for partiality.
So the idea is someone comes up to you and show you their face. And you say, wow, that’s a pretty looking person and you open your heart to them not knowing anything about their character and who they really are on the inside. You receive the face. That’s kind of dumb. Because we all know that beautiful faces can lie.
Don’t receive the face. Don’t just receive the external. Don’t receive the glitter on the outside.
One of the most illustrative Old Testament examples of this is the story of the anointing of David. God had rejected Saul as King and so he told Samuel the prophet to go and anoint a new king.
1 Samuel 16
So he goes to the house of Jesse and out come all the boys. And they parade in front of Samuel and Samuel lays his eyes on the firstborn and he’s gobsmacked. Wow, look at the talent. Look at the package. He’s got it all. He’s tall, dark, handsome. He’s wicked smart. He’s athletic. He’s artistic. He’s got mad people skills. He’s savvy. He’s got a silver tongue. What does this guy not have going for him?
Surely, this is the guy. What more could God want in a guy?
What he’s saying is this: Don’t apply value judgments to people based on the externals. Don’t “receive the face.”
We are so prone to receiving the face We are prone to prejudice We are prone to discrimination. We are partial. We play favorites. God says, "You want to know why Eliab is tall? Because I made him tall. That’s why? Do you think I am impressed by the fact that I gave him his height? God says, “You want to know why he’s handsome? Because I made him that way. Do you think I am impressed by the good looks that I gave him?”
What I’m looking for is a man who has taken the gifts that I HAVE GIVEN HIM and has stewarded them according to the values of my kingdom. That is my man. Only I can see that, and that is what matters to me.
Man looks on the outward appearance. Man looks on the face. Man receives the face. God looks on the heart. So here’s how James applies it specifically.
So the “gold ring” was an emblem of the upper-level Roman equestrian class. This is like the guy whose got the symbols of wealth. He’s got the watch, the shoes, he’s got the car, he’s got the mansion, he’s got the personal leer jet.
The warning is to not treat this person in some sort of special way because of their wealth. He says don’t make distinctions among yourself? Now practically what does that mean. We can’t help but notice that. What kind of distinction is he warning against? The word distinctions here can be translated divisions. Have you not made divisions within yourself….
And I think the idea is that he’s being tempted to be divided in his loyalty.
Does he care about God’s judgment or man’s? Does he agree with God’s assessment or man’s assessment. Does he want the smile of God or the smile of the man with the ring?
Don’t be divided. Don’t be phased by his power. Don’t try to impress the rich man and try to impress God. It won’t work. Don’t be divided. Here’s what James is saying:
Wealth in and of itself does not deserve honor. Power and beauty in and of itself does not deserve honor. Education in and of itself does not deserve honor. Owning businesses in and of itself does not deserve honor.
In our world it sure does. You can buy authority, leadership, status, but that has not place in the church. If you entertain that even for a second you are thinking evil thoughts. Don’t every attempt to combine the world’s standards for honor with faith in Jesus.
What deserves honor is men and women who use their wealth, power, skill, beauty and influence to magnify the name of the Lord. And what also deserves honor, perhaps more honor is men and women who use their lack of wealth, their lack of power, their lack of skill, their lack of beauty their lack of influence to magnify the name of the Lord.
We who hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, we don’t care about gifts or lack of gifts. We care about the Lord. The POINT is to live your life as if wealth and power are not the POINT.
God judges on the basis of how you live your life for him. That’s the basis for judgment. Nothing else. How are you living for Jesus?
If you are poor and not living for Jesus you will judged. If you are rich and not living for Jesus, you will be judged. If you are rich and living for Jesus you will be rewarded. If you are poor and living for Jesus, you will be rewarded.
That’s it. It’s not complicated. God rewards and judges impartially.
God built this into his justice system from the beginning. I don’t want wealth to bias justice. Don’t let it blind you. He asked the nation of Israel to disregard position, privilege, power, money when it comes to justice.
Leviticus 19
God wanted the judges of Israel to turn a blind eye to wealth. A rich man might try to say to the judge, “Man, listen, let me off the hook here. I am a man of influence. I am important and if you throw me behind bars, it’s going to have consequences.” That judge should look at him and say, "Who made you rich? God made you rich. God made you powerful." Do you think He’s impressed with the gifts He gave you. He’s not impressed. What He cares about is what you are doing with those gifts. And right now, you are failing.
God cares not so much about equality. What he cares about is stewardship.
It’s really important to realize that being fair does not mean equal in power. He will treat everyone fairly but he does not distribute wealth, power and privilege equally.
There’s a really interesting passage in Romans 2. In Romans 2 God is letting us know that judgment is coming on all people for their actions, both to reward and to condemn. And it will be completely fair judgment but not equal.
Romans 2
This is an interesting passage. He says, I will judge and reward both Jews and Gentiles without partiality, but to the Jew first. What does that mean? Isn’t the fact that God judges the Jew first, creating partiality? No. A Jew has more privilege so he will be judged according to that privilege.
A Jew can’t come to God and say, "Man, give me some special treatment. I am one of your people." God would look at him and say, "I made you a Jew." I am not impressed with that? What did you do with that blessing?
God is never impressed with the externals. Why? Because God is the giver of any external we have. That would be like giving your kid $3 and then your kid expecting to get out of chores because he or she is a person of influence.
God is never impressed with the externals. What he cares about is what you do with the gifts he’s given. Do you manage them according to he values of his kingdom or your kingdom.
So our first question is do we judge based on internals or externals.
Notice the connection between holding to our FAITH and the sin of partiality or favoritism. Those who hold to a proper faith will not play favorites;
Those who have been TRANSFORMED by the gospel have different eyes. They see the world differently. They see reality differently. They see reality through the eyes of faith. Through the eyes of the gospel.
Those who live by faith see wealthy differently. They have conversations with themselves. They say, “Even though my eye tells me this person is poor and my eyes tell me that because they are poor they have very little value, I see through the eye of faith that they are incredibly rich because of their profession of Jesus as Lord. They are heirs of the kingdom. And therefore they have incredible value in the eyes of Jesus Christ. This is child that he redeemed.”
Faith sees a different reality. Faith looks at the material world differently than the one without faith. Faith recognized that Jesus Christ is the giver of everything we have AND he owns everything he’s given.
Which means, no amount of privilege we enjoyed growing up, no matter what form that privilege took, stable family, race, gender, crime free neighborhood, was something we can take credit for. Which means the natural intellect you have was given to you and you can’t take credit for it. Which means your people skills, your ability to see people, your conflict resolution skills are a gifts of God and you can’t take credit for how those have propelled you forward in your career? Which means your business savvy is not something you can take credit for; it is a gift of God. Which means, no amount of money we earned was something we can take credit for.
To take credit for God’s stuff as if it were your stuff and make distinctions of superiority on the basis of that stuff is an abandonment of faith. You have stopped looking through the eyes of heaven. And you are only looking through the eyes of earth.
What James is saying here, is simply this: if you become enslaved to visible things, (in other words, if you are impressed by them), if you become enslaved to visible things it calls into question your faith in invisible things, things God has told you are true but you cannot see.
Enslavement to visible things like wealth and power calls into question our real faith in invisible things like heaven and our identity in Christ. Can we really say we value and trust God’s assessment of people while honoring people according to a standard that God rejects?
I was thinking about this a lot this week. I was really trying to think, “Why do we get this wrong so badly.” I was trying to nail down practices we have as Christians that create wrong ideas about money and power.
You know what I stumbled upon. I think we reinforce these worldly ideas in our prayers of thankfulness. This is thanksgiving season. Right? What do we do in our services?
We say, “Thank you God for all your wonderful gifts!” What could be more appropriate than that? Here’s how our prayers might go? “God thank you for the money you’ve given us. It’s only by your divine pleasure that you have given us anything. Thank you for the kids you’ve given us. Lord, they are gifts and we would have no kids without you. Thank you for the home you’ve given us. Lord, it’s so much more than we deserve!”
You might say, "How in the world could that be a bad prayer? That’s a beautiful prayer." It is. But it’s dangerously incomplete and it implies something dangerously incorrect. It correctly acknowledges that God is the source, but it incorrectly acknowledges ownership.
When God give us a home, do we then own it? Who actually owns the property, us or God? Does God give us the money and now we are free to do with it as we please? No strings attached. Or are there strings attached. Is it actually our money?
You see when we pray, “Thank you God for giving us a car or home.” The way we self-conceive of that prayer of thanksgiving is that the car or home is ours. It’s not ours. The deed is in his name. The more accurate prayer would be, “God thank you for allowing me to live in your home. Thank you for the privilege of stewarding your money and your house and your kids. Help me to take that stewardship seriously and to manage your kingdom resources according to your kingdom values. Help me never to think of your resources as my own.” That’s a VERY, VERY different prayer. I actually had a really hard time praying that this week. It revealed something pretty dangerous in my heart.
This is why FAITH and FAVORITISM are related. Our eyes tell us we own it. Our eyes tell us we can take credit for it. The world tells us that. The world tells us we have VALUE because it’s our stuff.
But FAITH tells us a different story. It was God. It is God’s. And if we can’t take credit for it, then that means that the guy in difficult situation could just have easily been us and we could have just as easily been him. So why am I not him? Why has God given me this position of privilege and power?
Well, the Bible tells us very clearly. If you are rich in power, rich in wealth, rich in influence? And most of us are… What are the rich to do?
1 Timothy 6
He doesn’t tell the rich to apologize for their richness. Neither does he tell the rich to gloat in their richness. It’s not their richness. It’s God’s wealth that he has distributed. Therefore, steward it according to the values of the kingdom. And what are the values of the kingdom? Radical generosity. Radical.
Take care of the orphan and widow. Notice what true religion is according chapter 1:27. True religion isn’t giving money to orphans and widows. It easy for a rich person to throw money at things. They make problems go away all the time by throwing money. True religion is visiting orphas and widows. True religion is giving your time. It’s caring. It’s using your position of influence to care. That may involve money (it probably will), but it’s mostly about time. It’s about caring.
So the key idea here is that living by faith means, placing value on what have been told is true but cannot see. That’s FAITH. Faith is living by what we know is true even though our eyes tell us something else.
Let me give you an example here. Let’s say you need to go in for surgery. And you need a heart transplant. And you are terrified. But you do your research and you find the best doctor in the world. He’s an incredibly skilled surgeon. He’s done 5000 transplants and never lost a patient. To him, a heart surgery is like tying a pair of shoes. No big deal.
So you rest assured in the evidence. The evidence is overwhelming. So you sign up for the surgery, and on the day of surgery, you get there, and you smell the antiseptic. You go into the hospital, and maybe you see a few surgical tools lying around. You see some bloody gloves lying on the table, and you panic. You chicken out and say, “I can’t do it.”
What has happened? You’ve lost your confidence. You lost your resolve not because you got new information. You lost your confidence because you switched from going by FAITH to going by SIGHT.
You’re now being controlled by what you see, not by what you know. You’re being controlled by appearances, not the facts. You’re being controlled by feelings instead of data and living testimony.
So when it comes to making judgments about people? Are you going to walk by faith or by sight? Are you going to say, that person matters because they are made in the image of God or because they have zeros on a paycheck? Are you going to walk by faith or sight?
Faith is not the opposite of thinking. Faith is thinking. Doubt happens when we stop thinking and start looking.
So if we walk by faith, we realize that our value only comes by being his child. Any amount of wealth, possessions, talents, gifts, all of them are the Lords. So our job is to then steward those gifts. How will we do that? That’s the final question.
There is a way to wield power and wealth that honors the Lord and cares for his children and there is a way to do it that dishonors the Lord and crushes his children.
Notice the criticism of James. He’s not criticizing the fact that power exists. He’s criticizing the abuse and misuse of it. And there’s two people he criticizes in the text.
The obvious one is the wealthy man. He critizes the wealthy and the way they treat this poor man. You wealthy people had power to bless this poor man, but instead you drug him into court and oppressed him. That’s evil.
But he’s also criticizing the way the church treated this poor man. He said, you as a usher in the church had power also. You had power to honor the poor but you used your power to dishonor him.
And instead you honored the one who should have been dishonored because the way he treated the poor. You, Mr. Usher, treated the poor the same way the rich did.
You either use your wealthy to oppress or to bless. You either oppress the poor or you bless the widow and orphan. This James’ point.
Transformed living wants to use power, privilege and wealthy to bless, to be like Jesus, who from the storehouses of heavenly blessing gave and gave to us who were orphans. He adopted us. He lavished on us the riches of glorious grace. He made us heirs of his kingdom.
You see, he’s not saying, get rid of all distinctions. Break down the walls of power. He’s not saying, the goal is to make you equal across all gender, social and economic levels. But he is saying to view your wealth like Jesus. Let’s pop back up to verse 5.
That’s an interesting verse. On the one hand, he is probably pointing out something that has been true throughout history; as a general rule, in the history of the world, revival starts with the poor.
The foolish things of the world shame the wise.
Most of the early Christians were poor. Most of the great revivals happened among the poor. Do you know why? Poor people very often can see the game.
When you’re playing these social games and you’re winning, you don’t see that it’s a game, and you don’t like anybody calling it a game. It’s when you’re losing you like to call it a game. You know how that is.
All of us can look back on JH and HS and see that there was a social game going on. When I was in JH, let me just say it kindly, I was losing that game. And because I was losing, it was easy for me to look on and say, “Those guys are just playing games. I don’t want to be part of it.” But if you were winning, you probably didn’t think of it as a game. You thought it very important. This all requires incredible concentration and observation. Great things were at stake.
The poor are rich because they can see this whole wealthy thing, is a game. They sense their need. That’s the real blessing. The poor see it. They aren’t in the game. Their dependence on God isn’t masked by money.
All human beings are poor, we are spiritually bankrupt and we are all dependent on Jesus Christ for EVERYTHING.
FAITH acknowledges that no matter what your station in life. So if you have been given much you steward it according to God’s kingdom values. And if you have been given little, that too is a position that needs to be stewarded according to God’s kingdom values.
The POINT is to live your life as if wealth and power are not the POINT.
So if you are rich or if you are poor, do you use your wealth or lack of wealth as an object lesson for the mercy and grace of God to the undeserving? To help people see that wealth is not the POINT.
That’s really the question.
Slideshow for this message is available
Introduction James 1-2 The Passage is Confusing What is this passage teaching? Clearly it has something to say about inequality. The fact that we are told to minister to the orphans and widows who are clearly the poor and to not be partial toward the wealthy means there’s a sort of concern about inequality woven into the fabric of this passage. The rich have power and influence and the poor don’t. But what is the point? Is this passage teaching that God is against this sort of economic inequality? Is God against the wealthy?
What we are going to see today is that God is neither for it nor against it. God wants us to think about poverty and wealth, power and weakness in way that transcends any social solution man has yet dreamed up. And believe me, men have been dreaming for millennia. Introduction. When you look at the world, nobody will argue that there is inequality. We have the truly impoverished, the poor, the middle class, the rich and the ultra-rich. And everybody kind of sees that as less than ideal.
The best minds in the world have created political philosophies that address this inequality.
So for example. Capitalism begins with the core concept that your money is your own, and you can do with it what you want. That gives incredible ownership to people and that has created incredible wealth because you take care of the things you’ve worked hard to gain. Nobody will care for you money like you will. Now the downside of this is that the poor generally get overlooked because there’s no motivation in the system to take care of the poor. The rich get richer. The poor stay poor. It’s every man for himself.
Socialism tries to solve the problem from the other side. They see the failures of capitalism toward the poor and they say, "No, your money is not your own. Your money is the people’s, and you have to give it to the community. You have to be selfless and see your wealth as part of a greater system. And that’s great for taking care of the poor but the problem in socialism is there’s no ownership. And when there’s no ownership you lack motivation for being productive. It’s easy to take advantage of the system.
And so you have liberal and conservative approaches to politics that have surged down through the ages.
Recently, we’ve experienced incredible tension in our country, in our schools and even our churches regarding recent advances of critical theory which deconstructs some of these philosophies. In critical theory, society is divided up into two groups. You have the oppressors and the oppressed.
And the goal is to break down those dividing walls in wherever those intersections of power exist.
So you take power away from the dominant race and give it to the minority to address racial inequality. You take power away from the wealthy and give it to the poor. You take power away from men and give it to women. You take power away from families and give it to those who don’t have traditional families.
The goal of critical theory is to break down those power structures.
And this has made inroads into the church because on the surface it sounds a lot like justice.
Does God care about those who are oppressed by racism? Of course he does. Does God care about the poor and needy? Of course. Does God care about orphans and widows? Of course, we just read about it. Does God recognize that cultures can oppress people? Of course.
But the fundamental presuppositions of critical theory are completely incompatible with Christianity because the way the argument is framed you have to choose between one of two wrongheaded ideas.
Either you agree that your power, privilege and money is the problem which means that you also must agree that God hates your power, privilege and money. And if you say well that doesn’t feel right. I’m not sure it’s right to say that God hates my power, privilege and money then you are forced to admit that God must then hate generosity, equality and justice. Why? Because your power, privilege and money are the very things that are promoting injustice, poverty and inequality.
Do you see the problem? From God’s point of view, that’s all wrong. Completely wrong. Here’s why Christianity is so unique; here’s why it’s so transformational. A Christian realizes that the money he earns and the power he has been given are neither his nor the communities. Nothing we have is ours. It’s all God’s. Our time is his. Our gifts and abilities are his. Our kids are his. Our house is his. Everything is his.
Here’s where it’s so unique. Even though it’s all His, he gives us incredible amount of ownership in that we are a stewards. It’s like being a CEO of a large publicly traded company. That company is not yours but you have tons of decision making and responsibility and power. You have all sorts of freedom in how you manage that business. But you always have to manage it according to the values of the shareholders.
And so it is with God. He let’s you make all sorts of decisions about how you are going to use your time, how you invest your money, what you do with your influence, what you do with your privilege, what sorts of decisions you make. There’s all sorts of freedom. But just like that CEO you have to manage it according to not YOUR values but the values of HIS kingdom.
And one of God’s main kingdom values that we are going to discover in this passage is radical, impartial generosity. So here’s James point:
TRANSFORMED Christians will have OWNERSHIP in being PRODUCTIVE for the PURPOSE of being radically generous to those in need.
We are a conservative church. We have rejected the social justice movement and critical theory as incompatible with the gospel.
But one of the great dangers of conservative churches who have rejected the social justice movements of our day is to think that God doesn’t care about justice or generosity or giving. Oh, he cares. He cares way more than any social justice warrior cares. And today he shows us how to care. Review Let’s see how this works out in the text. Last week we observed three tests of genuine faith. In the same way we would test for a genuine gold bar by pouring acid on it, we test for genuine faith by applying the questions James gives us:
And here were the questions:
So everything from last week was moving toward that word TRANSFORMATION. Being transformed by the grace of God will evidence itself in transformed living. That’s the key word TRANSFORMATION. What kind of transformed living? Well he gives us some examples.
That’s how we ended last week. We are in James chapter 2 today. And let’s just begin by reminding ourselves that the chapter breaks we observe in our Bibles are not part of the original letter. James the author didn’t sign off on this chapter break. In fact, I think if he were to get his hands on this letter he would say, “Why in the world would you stick a chapter break right there? That’s right in the middle of my thought. Thanks a lot for confusing the human race.”
This whole business about caring for orphans and widows from last week is integrally connected with our text from this week and it will continue on all the way to verse 17 of chapter two
We absolutely need this week to understand last week. A sermon on care for orphans and windows without a sermon on the the sin of partiality would be a horribly incomplete handling of what James is trying to get at.
Now here’s the first point he’s making. Gospel TRANSFORMATION will have an effect on the way we judge one another. And here’s the first TRANSFORMATIONAL effect.
So the command is to show no partiality. Now what does he mean here? What is partiality? Some translations use the word favoritism. I like favoritism because it sounds more like something we do on the playground in JH. Why do I like that? Because adults are just JH boys and girls on the playground in old bodies. Nothing changes.
Here’s a working definition of favoritism. I just got this off the internet:
The Word favoritism in the Greek means literally to “receive the face” and this was a made up word literally rendering a Hebrew word for partiality.
So the idea is someone comes up to you and show you their face. And you say, wow, that’s a pretty looking person and you open your heart to them not knowing anything about their character and who they really are on the inside. You receive the face. That’s kind of dumb. Because we all know that beautiful faces can lie.
Don’t receive the face. Don’t just receive the external. Don’t receive the glitter on the outside.
One of the most illustrative Old Testament examples of this is the story of the anointing of David. God had rejected Saul as King and so he told Samuel the prophet to go and anoint a new king.
1 Samuel 16
So he goes to the house of Jesse and out come all the boys. And they parade in front of Samuel and Samuel lays his eyes on the firstborn and he’s gobsmacked. Wow, look at the talent. Look at the package. He’s got it all. He’s tall, dark, handsome. He’s wicked smart. He’s athletic. He’s artistic. He’s got mad people skills. He’s savvy. He’s got a silver tongue. What does this guy not have going for him?
Surely, this is the guy. What more could God want in a guy?
What he’s saying is this: Don’t apply value judgments to people based on the externals. Don’t “receive the face.”
We are so prone to receiving the face We are prone to prejudice We are prone to discrimination. We are partial. We play favorites. God says, "You want to know why Eliab is tall? Because I made him tall. That’s why? Do you think I am impressed by the fact that I gave him his height? God says, “You want to know why he’s handsome? Because I made him that way. Do you think I am impressed by the good looks that I gave him?”
What I’m looking for is a man who has taken the gifts that I HAVE GIVEN HIM and has stewarded them according to the values of my kingdom. That is my man. Only I can see that, and that is what matters to me.
Man looks on the outward appearance. Man looks on the face. Man receives the face. God looks on the heart. So here’s how James applies it specifically.
So the “gold ring” was an emblem of the upper-level Roman equestrian class. This is like the guy whose got the symbols of wealth. He’s got the watch, the shoes, he’s got the car, he’s got the mansion, he’s got the personal leer jet.
The warning is to not treat this person in some sort of special way because of their wealth. He says don’t make distinctions among yourself? Now practically what does that mean. We can’t help but notice that. What kind of distinction is he warning against? The word distinctions here can be translated divisions. Have you not made divisions within yourself….
And I think the idea is that he’s being tempted to be divided in his loyalty.
Does he care about God’s judgment or man’s? Does he agree with God’s assessment or man’s assessment. Does he want the smile of God or the smile of the man with the ring?
Don’t be divided. Don’t be phased by his power. Don’t try to impress the rich man and try to impress God. It won’t work. Don’t be divided. Here’s what James is saying:
Wealth in and of itself does not deserve honor. Power and beauty in and of itself does not deserve honor. Education in and of itself does not deserve honor. Owning businesses in and of itself does not deserve honor.
In our world it sure does. You can buy authority, leadership, status, but that has not place in the church. If you entertain that even for a second you are thinking evil thoughts. Don’t every attempt to combine the world’s standards for honor with faith in Jesus.
What deserves honor is men and women who use their wealth, power, skill, beauty and influence to magnify the name of the Lord. And what also deserves honor, perhaps more honor is men and women who use their lack of wealth, their lack of power, their lack of skill, their lack of beauty their lack of influence to magnify the name of the Lord.
We who hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, we don’t care about gifts or lack of gifts. We care about the Lord. The POINT is to live your life as if wealth and power are not the POINT.
God judges on the basis of how you live your life for him. That’s the basis for judgment. Nothing else. How are you living for Jesus?
If you are poor and not living for Jesus you will judged. If you are rich and not living for Jesus, you will be judged. If you are rich and living for Jesus you will be rewarded. If you are poor and living for Jesus, you will be rewarded.
That’s it. It’s not complicated. God rewards and judges impartially.
God built this into his justice system from the beginning. I don’t want wealth to bias justice. Don’t let it blind you. He asked the nation of Israel to disregard position, privilege, power, money when it comes to justice.
Leviticus 19
God wanted the judges of Israel to turn a blind eye to wealth. A rich man might try to say to the judge, “Man, listen, let me off the hook here. I am a man of influence. I am important and if you throw me behind bars, it’s going to have consequences.” That judge should look at him and say, "Who made you rich? God made you rich. God made you powerful." Do you think He’s impressed with the gifts He gave you. He’s not impressed. What He cares about is what you are doing with those gifts. And right now, you are failing.
God cares not so much about equality. What he cares about is stewardship.
It’s really important to realize that being fair does not mean equal in power. He will treat everyone fairly but he does not distribute wealth, power and privilege equally.
There’s a really interesting passage in Romans 2. In Romans 2 God is letting us know that judgment is coming on all people for their actions, both to reward and to condemn. And it will be completely fair judgment but not equal.
Romans 2
This is an interesting passage. He says, I will judge and reward both Jews and Gentiles without partiality, but to the Jew first. What does that mean? Isn’t the fact that God judges the Jew first, creating partiality? No. A Jew has more privilege so he will be judged according to that privilege.
A Jew can’t come to God and say, "Man, give me some special treatment. I am one of your people." God would look at him and say, "I made you a Jew." I am not impressed with that? What did you do with that blessing?
God is never impressed with the externals. Why? Because God is the giver of any external we have. That would be like giving your kid $3 and then your kid expecting to get out of chores because he or she is a person of influence.
God is never impressed with the externals. What he cares about is what you do with the gifts he’s given. Do you manage them according to he values of his kingdom or your kingdom.
So our first question is do we judge based on internals or externals.
Notice the connection between holding to our FAITH and the sin of partiality or favoritism. Those who hold to a proper faith will not play favorites;
Those who have been TRANSFORMED by the gospel have different eyes. They see the world differently. They see reality differently. They see reality through the eyes of faith. Through the eyes of the gospel.
Those who live by faith see wealthy differently. They have conversations with themselves. They say, “Even though my eye tells me this person is poor and my eyes tell me that because they are poor they have very little value, I see through the eye of faith that they are incredibly rich because of their profession of Jesus as Lord. They are heirs of the kingdom. And therefore they have incredible value in the eyes of Jesus Christ. This is child that he redeemed.”
Faith sees a different reality. Faith looks at the material world differently than the one without faith. Faith recognized that Jesus Christ is the giver of everything we have AND he owns everything he’s given.
Which means, no amount of privilege we enjoyed growing up, no matter what form that privilege took, stable family, race, gender, crime free neighborhood, was something we can take credit for. Which means the natural intellect you have was given to you and you can’t take credit for it. Which means your people skills, your ability to see people, your conflict resolution skills are a gifts of God and you can’t take credit for how those have propelled you forward in your career? Which means your business savvy is not something you can take credit for; it is a gift of God. Which means, no amount of money we earned was something we can take credit for.
To take credit for God’s stuff as if it were your stuff and make distinctions of superiority on the basis of that stuff is an abandonment of faith. You have stopped looking through the eyes of heaven. And you are only looking through the eyes of earth.
What James is saying here, is simply this: if you become enslaved to visible things, (in other words, if you are impressed by them), if you become enslaved to visible things it calls into question your faith in invisible things, things God has told you are true but you cannot see.
Enslavement to visible things like wealth and power calls into question our real faith in invisible things like heaven and our identity in Christ. Can we really say we value and trust God’s assessment of people while honoring people according to a standard that God rejects?
I was thinking about this a lot this week. I was really trying to think, “Why do we get this wrong so badly.” I was trying to nail down practices we have as Christians that create wrong ideas about money and power.
You know what I stumbled upon. I think we reinforce these worldly ideas in our prayers of thankfulness. This is thanksgiving season. Right? What do we do in our services?
We say, “Thank you God for all your wonderful gifts!” What could be more appropriate than that? Here’s how our prayers might go? “God thank you for the money you’ve given us. It’s only by your divine pleasure that you have given us anything. Thank you for the kids you’ve given us. Lord, they are gifts and we would have no kids without you. Thank you for the home you’ve given us. Lord, it’s so much more than we deserve!”
You might say, "How in the world could that be a bad prayer? That’s a beautiful prayer." It is. But it’s dangerously incomplete and it implies something dangerously incorrect. It correctly acknowledges that God is the source, but it incorrectly acknowledges ownership.
When God give us a home, do we then own it? Who actually owns the property, us or God? Does God give us the money and now we are free to do with it as we please? No strings attached. Or are there strings attached. Is it actually our money?
You see when we pray, “Thank you God for giving us a car or home.” The way we self-conceive of that prayer of thanksgiving is that the car or home is ours. It’s not ours. The deed is in his name. The more accurate prayer would be, “God thank you for allowing me to live in your home. Thank you for the privilege of stewarding your money and your house and your kids. Help me to take that stewardship seriously and to manage your kingdom resources according to your kingdom values. Help me never to think of your resources as my own.” That’s a VERY, VERY different prayer. I actually had a really hard time praying that this week. It revealed something pretty dangerous in my heart.
This is why FAITH and FAVORITISM are related. Our eyes tell us we own it. Our eyes tell us we can take credit for it. The world tells us that. The world tells us we have VALUE because it’s our stuff.
But FAITH tells us a different story. It was God. It is God’s. And if we can’t take credit for it, then that means that the guy in difficult situation could just have easily been us and we could have just as easily been him. So why am I not him? Why has God given me this position of privilege and power?
Well, the Bible tells us very clearly. If you are rich in power, rich in wealth, rich in influence? And most of us are… What are the rich to do?
1 Timothy 6
He doesn’t tell the rich to apologize for their richness. Neither does he tell the rich to gloat in their richness. It’s not their richness. It’s God’s wealth that he has distributed. Therefore, steward it according to the values of the kingdom. And what are the values of the kingdom? Radical generosity. Radical.
Take care of the orphan and widow. Notice what true religion is according chapter 1:27. True religion isn’t giving money to orphans and widows. It easy for a rich person to throw money at things. They make problems go away all the time by throwing money. True religion is visiting orphas and widows. True religion is giving your time. It’s caring. It’s using your position of influence to care. That may involve money (it probably will), but it’s mostly about time. It’s about caring.
So the key idea here is that living by faith means, placing value on what have been told is true but cannot see. That’s FAITH. Faith is living by what we know is true even though our eyes tell us something else.
Let me give you an example here. Let’s say you need to go in for surgery. And you need a heart transplant. And you are terrified. But you do your research and you find the best doctor in the world. He’s an incredibly skilled surgeon. He’s done 5000 transplants and never lost a patient. To him, a heart surgery is like tying a pair of shoes. No big deal.
So you rest assured in the evidence. The evidence is overwhelming. So you sign up for the surgery, and on the day of surgery, you get there, and you smell the antiseptic. You go into the hospital, and maybe you see a few surgical tools lying around. You see some bloody gloves lying on the table, and you panic. You chicken out and say, “I can’t do it.”
What has happened? You’ve lost your confidence. You lost your resolve not because you got new information. You lost your confidence because you switched from going by FAITH to going by SIGHT.
You’re now being controlled by what you see, not by what you know. You’re being controlled by appearances, not the facts. You’re being controlled by feelings instead of data and living testimony.
So when it comes to making judgments about people? Are you going to walk by faith or by sight? Are you going to say, that person matters because they are made in the image of God or because they have zeros on a paycheck? Are you going to walk by faith or sight?
Faith is not the opposite of thinking. Faith is thinking. Doubt happens when we stop thinking and start looking.
So if we walk by faith, we realize that our value only comes by being his child. Any amount of wealth, possessions, talents, gifts, all of them are the Lords. So our job is to then steward those gifts. How will we do that? That’s the final question.
There is a way to wield power and wealth that honors the Lord and cares for his children and there is a way to do it that dishonors the Lord and crushes his children.
Notice the criticism of James. He’s not criticizing the fact that power exists. He’s criticizing the abuse and misuse of it. And there’s two people he criticizes in the text.
The obvious one is the wealthy man. He critizes the wealthy and the way they treat this poor man. You wealthy people had power to bless this poor man, but instead you drug him into court and oppressed him. That’s evil.
But he’s also criticizing the way the church treated this poor man. He said, you as a usher in the church had power also. You had power to honor the poor but you used your power to dishonor him.
And instead you honored the one who should have been dishonored because the way he treated the poor. You, Mr. Usher, treated the poor the same way the rich did.
You either use your wealthy to oppress or to bless. You either oppress the poor or you bless the widow and orphan. This James’ point.
Transformed living wants to use power, privilege and wealthy to bless, to be like Jesus, who from the storehouses of heavenly blessing gave and gave to us who were orphans. He adopted us. He lavished on us the riches of glorious grace. He made us heirs of his kingdom.
You see, he’s not saying, get rid of all distinctions. Break down the walls of power. He’s not saying, the goal is to make you equal across all gender, social and economic levels. But he is saying to view your wealth like Jesus. Let’s pop back up to verse 5.
That’s an interesting verse. On the one hand, he is probably pointing out something that has been true throughout history; as a general rule, in the history of the world, revival starts with the poor.
The foolish things of the world shame the wise.
Most of the early Christians were poor. Most of the great revivals happened among the poor. Do you know why? Poor people very often can see the game.
When you’re playing these social games and you’re winning, you don’t see that it’s a game, and you don’t like anybody calling it a game. It’s when you’re losing you like to call it a game. You know how that is.
All of us can look back on JH and HS and see that there was a social game going on. When I was in JH, let me just say it kindly, I was losing that game. And because I was losing, it was easy for me to look on and say, “Those guys are just playing games. I don’t want to be part of it.” But if you were winning, you probably didn’t think of it as a game. You thought it very important. This all requires incredible concentration and observation. Great things were at stake.
The poor are rich because they can see this whole wealthy thing, is a game. They sense their need. That’s the real blessing. The poor see it. They aren’t in the game. Their dependence on God isn’t masked by money.
All human beings are poor, we are spiritually bankrupt and we are all dependent on Jesus Christ for EVERYTHING.
FAITH acknowledges that no matter what your station in life. So if you have been given much you steward it according to God’s kingdom values. And if you have been given little, that too is a position that needs to be stewarded according to God’s kingdom values.
The POINT is to live your life as if wealth and power are not the POINT.
So if you are rich or if you are poor, do you use your wealth or lack of wealth as an object lesson for the mercy and grace of God to the undeserving? To help people see that wealth is not the POINT.
That’s really the question.
Introduction James 1-2 The Passage is Confusing What is this passage teaching? Clearly it has something to say about inequality. The fact that we are told to minister to the orphans and widows who are clearly the poor and to not be partial toward the wealthy means there’s a sort of concern about inequality woven into the fabric of this passage. The rich have power and influence and the poor don’t. But what is the point? Is this passage teaching that God is against this sort of economic inequality? Is God against the wealthy?
What we are going to see today is that God is neither for it nor against it. God wants us to think about poverty and wealth, power and weakness in way that transcends any social solution man has yet dreamed up. And believe me, men have been dreaming for millennia. Introduction. When you look at the world, nobody will argue that there is inequality. We have the truly impoverished, the poor, the middle class, the rich and the ultra-rich. And everybody kind of sees that as less than ideal.
The best minds in the world have created political philosophies that address this inequality.
So for example. Capitalism begins with the core concept that your money is your own, and you can do with it what you want. That gives incredible ownership to people and that has created incredible wealth because you take care of the things you’ve worked hard to gain. Nobody will care for you money like you will. Now the downside of this is that the poor generally get overlooked because there’s no motivation in the system to take care of the poor. The rich get richer. The poor stay poor. It’s every man for himself.
Socialism tries to solve the problem from the other side. They see the failures of capitalism toward the poor and they say, "No, your money is not your own. Your money is the people’s, and you have to give it to the community. You have to be selfless and see your wealth as part of a greater system. And that’s great for taking care of the poor but the problem in socialism is there’s no ownership. And when there’s no ownership you lack motivation for being productive. It’s easy to take advantage of the system.
And so you have liberal and conservative approaches to politics that have surged down through the ages.
Recently, we’ve experienced incredible tension in our country, in our schools and even our churches regarding recent advances of critical theory which deconstructs some of these philosophies. In critical theory, society is divided up into two groups. You have the oppressors and the oppressed.
And the goal is to break down those dividing walls in wherever those intersections of power exist.
So you take power away from the dominant race and give it to the minority to address racial inequality. You take power away from the wealthy and give it to the poor. You take power away from men and give it to women. You take power away from families and give it to those who don’t have traditional families.
The goal of critical theory is to break down those power structures.
And this has made inroads into the church because on the surface it sounds a lot like justice.
Does God care about those who are oppressed by racism? Of course he does. Does God care about the poor and needy? Of course. Does God care about orphans and widows? Of course, we just read about it. Does God recognize that cultures can oppress people? Of course.
But the fundamental presuppositions of critical theory are completely incompatible with Christianity because the way the argument is framed you have to choose between one of two wrongheaded ideas.
Either you agree that your power, privilege and money is the problem which means that you also must agree that God hates your power, privilege and money. And if you say well that doesn’t feel right. I’m not sure it’s right to say that God hates my power, privilege and money then you are forced to admit that God must then hate generosity, equality and justice. Why? Because your power, privilege and money are the very things that are promoting injustice, poverty and inequality.
Do you see the problem? From God’s point of view, that’s all wrong. Completely wrong. Here’s why Christianity is so unique; here’s why it’s so transformational. A Christian realizes that the money he earns and the power he has been given are neither his nor the communities. Nothing we have is ours. It’s all God’s. Our time is his. Our gifts and abilities are his. Our kids are his. Our house is his. Everything is his.
Here’s where it’s so unique. Even though it’s all His, he gives us incredible amount of ownership in that we are a stewards. It’s like being a CEO of a large publicly traded company. That company is not yours but you have tons of decision making and responsibility and power. You have all sorts of freedom in how you manage that business. But you always have to manage it according to the values of the shareholders.
And so it is with God. He let’s you make all sorts of decisions about how you are going to use your time, how you invest your money, what you do with your influence, what you do with your privilege, what sorts of decisions you make. There’s all sorts of freedom. But just like that CEO you have to manage it according to not YOUR values but the values of HIS kingdom.
And one of God’s main kingdom values that we are going to discover in this passage is radical, impartial generosity. So here’s James point:
TRANSFORMED Christians will have OWNERSHIP in being PRODUCTIVE for the PURPOSE of being radically generous to those in need.
We are a conservative church. We have rejected the social justice movement and critical theory as incompatible with the gospel.
But one of the great dangers of conservative churches who have rejected the social justice movements of our day is to think that God doesn’t care about justice or generosity or giving. Oh, he cares. He cares way more than any social justice warrior cares. And today he shows us how to care. Review Let’s see how this works out in the text. Last week we observed three tests of genuine faith. In the same way we would test for a genuine gold bar by pouring acid on it, we test for genuine faith by applying the questions James gives us:
And here were the questions:
So everything from last week was moving toward that word TRANSFORMATION. Being transformed by the grace of God will evidence itself in transformed living. That’s the key word TRANSFORMATION. What kind of transformed living? Well he gives us some examples.
That’s how we ended last week. We are in James chapter 2 today. And let’s just begin by reminding ourselves that the chapter breaks we observe in our Bibles are not part of the original letter. James the author didn’t sign off on this chapter break. In fact, I think if he were to get his hands on this letter he would say, “Why in the world would you stick a chapter break right there? That’s right in the middle of my thought. Thanks a lot for confusing the human race.”
This whole business about caring for orphans and widows from last week is integrally connected with our text from this week and it will continue on all the way to verse 17 of chapter two
We absolutely need this week to understand last week. A sermon on care for orphans and windows without a sermon on the the sin of partiality would be a horribly incomplete handling of what James is trying to get at.
Now here’s the first point he’s making. Gospel TRANSFORMATION will have an effect on the way we judge one another. And here’s the first TRANSFORMATIONAL effect.
So the command is to show no partiality. Now what does he mean here? What is partiality? Some translations use the word favoritism. I like favoritism because it sounds more like something we do on the playground in JH. Why do I like that? Because adults are just JH boys and girls on the playground in old bodies. Nothing changes.
Here’s a working definition of favoritism. I just got this off the internet:
The Word favoritism in the Greek means literally to “receive the face” and this was a made up word literally rendering a Hebrew word for partiality.
So the idea is someone comes up to you and show you their face. And you say, wow, that’s a pretty looking person and you open your heart to them not knowing anything about their character and who they really are on the inside. You receive the face. That’s kind of dumb. Because we all know that beautiful faces can lie.
Don’t receive the face. Don’t just receive the external. Don’t receive the glitter on the outside.
One of the most illustrative Old Testament examples of this is the story of the anointing of David. God had rejected Saul as King and so he told Samuel the prophet to go and anoint a new king.
1 Samuel 16
So he goes to the house of Jesse and out come all the boys. And they parade in front of Samuel and Samuel lays his eyes on the firstborn and he’s gobsmacked. Wow, look at the talent. Look at the package. He’s got it all. He’s tall, dark, handsome. He’s wicked smart. He’s athletic. He’s artistic. He’s got mad people skills. He’s savvy. He’s got a silver tongue. What does this guy not have going for him?
Surely, this is the guy. What more could God want in a guy?
What he’s saying is this: Don’t apply value judgments to people based on the externals. Don’t “receive the face.”
We are so prone to receiving the face We are prone to prejudice We are prone to discrimination. We are partial. We play favorites. God says, "You want to know why Eliab is tall? Because I made him tall. That’s why? Do you think I am impressed by the fact that I gave him his height? God says, “You want to know why he’s handsome? Because I made him that way. Do you think I am impressed by the good looks that I gave him?”
What I’m looking for is a man who has taken the gifts that I HAVE GIVEN HIM and has stewarded them according to the values of my kingdom. That is my man. Only I can see that, and that is what matters to me.
Man looks on the outward appearance. Man looks on the face. Man receives the face. God looks on the heart. So here’s how James applies it specifically.
So the “gold ring” was an emblem of the upper-level Roman equestrian class. This is like the guy whose got the symbols of wealth. He’s got the watch, the shoes, he’s got the car, he’s got the mansion, he’s got the personal leer jet.
The warning is to not treat this person in some sort of special way because of their wealth. He says don’t make distinctions among yourself? Now practically what does that mean. We can’t help but notice that. What kind of distinction is he warning against? The word distinctions here can be translated divisions. Have you not made divisions within yourself….
And I think the idea is that he’s being tempted to be divided in his loyalty.
Does he care about God’s judgment or man’s? Does he agree with God’s assessment or man’s assessment. Does he want the smile of God or the smile of the man with the ring?
Don’t be divided. Don’t be phased by his power. Don’t try to impress the rich man and try to impress God. It won’t work. Don’t be divided. Here’s what James is saying:
Wealth in and of itself does not deserve honor. Power and beauty in and of itself does not deserve honor. Education in and of itself does not deserve honor. Owning businesses in and of itself does not deserve honor.
In our world it sure does. You can buy authority, leadership, status, but that has not place in the church. If you entertain that even for a second you are thinking evil thoughts. Don’t every attempt to combine the world’s standards for honor with faith in Jesus.
What deserves honor is men and women who use their wealth, power, skill, beauty and influence to magnify the name of the Lord. And what also deserves honor, perhaps more honor is men and women who use their lack of wealth, their lack of power, their lack of skill, their lack of beauty their lack of influence to magnify the name of the Lord.
We who hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, we don’t care about gifts or lack of gifts. We care about the Lord. The POINT is to live your life as if wealth and power are not the POINT.
God judges on the basis of how you live your life for him. That’s the basis for judgment. Nothing else. How are you living for Jesus?
If you are poor and not living for Jesus you will judged. If you are rich and not living for Jesus, you will be judged. If you are rich and living for Jesus you will be rewarded. If you are poor and living for Jesus, you will be rewarded.
That’s it. It’s not complicated. God rewards and judges impartially.
God built this into his justice system from the beginning. I don’t want wealth to bias justice. Don’t let it blind you. He asked the nation of Israel to disregard position, privilege, power, money when it comes to justice.
Leviticus 19
God wanted the judges of Israel to turn a blind eye to wealth. A rich man might try to say to the judge, “Man, listen, let me off the hook here. I am a man of influence. I am important and if you throw me behind bars, it’s going to have consequences.” That judge should look at him and say, "Who made you rich? God made you rich. God made you powerful." Do you think He’s impressed with the gifts He gave you. He’s not impressed. What He cares about is what you are doing with those gifts. And right now, you are failing.
God cares not so much about equality. What he cares about is stewardship.
It’s really important to realize that being fair does not mean equal in power. He will treat everyone fairly but he does not distribute wealth, power and privilege equally.
There’s a really interesting passage in Romans 2. In Romans 2 God is letting us know that judgment is coming on all people for their actions, both to reward and to condemn. And it will be completely fair judgment but not equal.
Romans 2
This is an interesting passage. He says, I will judge and reward both Jews and Gentiles without partiality, but to the Jew first. What does that mean? Isn’t the fact that God judges the Jew first, creating partiality? No. A Jew has more privilege so he will be judged according to that privilege.
A Jew can’t come to God and say, "Man, give me some special treatment. I am one of your people." God would look at him and say, "I made you a Jew." I am not impressed with that? What did you do with that blessing?
God is never impressed with the externals. Why? Because God is the giver of any external we have. That would be like giving your kid $3 and then your kid expecting to get out of chores because he or she is a person of influence.
God is never impressed with the externals. What he cares about is what you do with the gifts he’s given. Do you manage them according to he values of his kingdom or your kingdom.
So our first question is do we judge based on internals or externals.
Notice the connection between holding to our FAITH and the sin of partiality or favoritism. Those who hold to a proper faith will not play favorites;
Those who have been TRANSFORMED by the gospel have different eyes. They see the world differently. They see reality differently. They see reality through the eyes of faith. Through the eyes of the gospel.
Those who live by faith see wealthy differently. They have conversations with themselves. They say, “Even though my eye tells me this person is poor and my eyes tell me that because they are poor they have very little value, I see through the eye of faith that they are incredibly rich because of their profession of Jesus as Lord. They are heirs of the kingdom. And therefore they have incredible value in the eyes of Jesus Christ. This is child that he redeemed.”
Faith sees a different reality. Faith looks at the material world differently than the one without faith. Faith recognized that Jesus Christ is the giver of everything we have AND he owns everything he’s given.
Which means, no amount of privilege we enjoyed growing up, no matter what form that privilege took, stable family, race, gender, crime free neighborhood, was something we can take credit for. Which means the natural intellect you have was given to you and you can’t take credit for it. Which means your people skills, your ability to see people, your conflict resolution skills are a gifts of God and you can’t take credit for how those have propelled you forward in your career? Which means your business savvy is not something you can take credit for; it is a gift of God. Which means, no amount of money we earned was something we can take credit for.
To take credit for God’s stuff as if it were your stuff and make distinctions of superiority on the basis of that stuff is an abandonment of faith. You have stopped looking through the eyes of heaven. And you are only looking through the eyes of earth.
What James is saying here, is simply this: if you become enslaved to visible things, (in other words, if you are impressed by them), if you become enslaved to visible things it calls into question your faith in invisible things, things God has told you are true but you cannot see.
Enslavement to visible things like wealth and power calls into question our real faith in invisible things like heaven and our identity in Christ. Can we really say we value and trust God’s assessment of people while honoring people according to a standard that God rejects?
I was thinking about this a lot this week. I was really trying to think, “Why do we get this wrong so badly.” I was trying to nail down practices we have as Christians that create wrong ideas about money and power.
You know what I stumbled upon. I think we reinforce these worldly ideas in our prayers of thankfulness. This is thanksgiving season. Right? What do we do in our services?
We say, “Thank you God for all your wonderful gifts!” What could be more appropriate than that? Here’s how our prayers might go? “God thank you for the money you’ve given us. It’s only by your divine pleasure that you have given us anything. Thank you for the kids you’ve given us. Lord, they are gifts and we would have no kids without you. Thank you for the home you’ve given us. Lord, it’s so much more than we deserve!”
You might say, "How in the world could that be a bad prayer? That’s a beautiful prayer." It is. But it’s dangerously incomplete and it implies something dangerously incorrect. It correctly acknowledges that God is the source, but it incorrectly acknowledges ownership.
When God give us a home, do we then own it? Who actually owns the property, us or God? Does God give us the money and now we are free to do with it as we please? No strings attached. Or are there strings attached. Is it actually our money?
You see when we pray, “Thank you God for giving us a car or home.” The way we self-conceive of that prayer of thanksgiving is that the car or home is ours. It’s not ours. The deed is in his name. The more accurate prayer would be, “God thank you for allowing me to live in your home. Thank you for the privilege of stewarding your money and your house and your kids. Help me to take that stewardship seriously and to manage your kingdom resources according to your kingdom values. Help me never to think of your resources as my own.” That’s a VERY, VERY different prayer. I actually had a really hard time praying that this week. It revealed something pretty dangerous in my heart.
This is why FAITH and FAVORITISM are related. Our eyes tell us we own it. Our eyes tell us we can take credit for it. The world tells us that. The world tells us we have VALUE because it’s our stuff.
But FAITH tells us a different story. It was God. It is God’s. And if we can’t take credit for it, then that means that the guy in difficult situation could just have easily been us and we could have just as easily been him. So why am I not him? Why has God given me this position of privilege and power?
Well, the Bible tells us very clearly. If you are rich in power, rich in wealth, rich in influence? And most of us are… What are the rich to do?
1 Timothy 6
He doesn’t tell the rich to apologize for their richness. Neither does he tell the rich to gloat in their richness. It’s not their richness. It’s God’s wealth that he has distributed. Therefore, steward it according to the values of the kingdom. And what are the values of the kingdom? Radical generosity. Radical.
Take care of the orphan and widow. Notice what true religion is according chapter 1:27. True religion isn’t giving money to orphans and widows. It easy for a rich person to throw money at things. They make problems go away all the time by throwing money. True religion is visiting orphas and widows. True religion is giving your time. It’s caring. It’s using your position of influence to care. That may involve money (it probably will), but it’s mostly about time. It’s about caring.
So the key idea here is that living by faith means, placing value on what have been told is true but cannot see. That’s FAITH. Faith is living by what we know is true even though our eyes tell us something else.
Let me give you an example here. Let’s say you need to go in for surgery. And you need a heart transplant. And you are terrified. But you do your research and you find the best doctor in the world. He’s an incredibly skilled surgeon. He’s done 5000 transplants and never lost a patient. To him, a heart surgery is like tying a pair of shoes. No big deal.
So you rest assured in the evidence. The evidence is overwhelming. So you sign up for the surgery, and on the day of surgery, you get there, and you smell the antiseptic. You go into the hospital, and maybe you see a few surgical tools lying around. You see some bloody gloves lying on the table, and you panic. You chicken out and say, “I can’t do it.”
What has happened? You’ve lost your confidence. You lost your resolve not because you got new information. You lost your confidence because you switched from going by FAITH to going by SIGHT.
You’re now being controlled by what you see, not by what you know. You’re being controlled by appearances, not the facts. You’re being controlled by feelings instead of data and living testimony.
So when it comes to making judgments about people? Are you going to walk by faith or by sight? Are you going to say, that person matters because they are made in the image of God or because they have zeros on a paycheck? Are you going to walk by faith or sight?
Faith is not the opposite of thinking. Faith is thinking. Doubt happens when we stop thinking and start looking.
So if we walk by faith, we realize that our value only comes by being his child. Any amount of wealth, possessions, talents, gifts, all of them are the Lords. So our job is to then steward those gifts. How will we do that? That’s the final question.
There is a way to wield power and wealth that honors the Lord and cares for his children and there is a way to do it that dishonors the Lord and crushes his children.
Notice the criticism of James. He’s not criticizing the fact that power exists. He’s criticizing the abuse and misuse of it. And there’s two people he criticizes in the text.
The obvious one is the wealthy man. He critizes the wealthy and the way they treat this poor man. You wealthy people had power to bless this poor man, but instead you drug him into court and oppressed him. That’s evil.
But he’s also criticizing the way the church treated this poor man. He said, you as a usher in the church had power also. You had power to honor the poor but you used your power to dishonor him.
And instead you honored the one who should have been dishonored because the way he treated the poor. You, Mr. Usher, treated the poor the same way the rich did.
You either use your wealthy to oppress or to bless. You either oppress the poor or you bless the widow and orphan. This James’ point.
Transformed living wants to use power, privilege and wealthy to bless, to be like Jesus, who from the storehouses of heavenly blessing gave and gave to us who were orphans. He adopted us. He lavished on us the riches of glorious grace. He made us heirs of his kingdom.
You see, he’s not saying, get rid of all distinctions. Break down the walls of power. He’s not saying, the goal is to make you equal across all gender, social and economic levels. But he is saying to view your wealth like Jesus. Let’s pop back up to verse 5.
That’s an interesting verse. On the one hand, he is probably pointing out something that has been true throughout history; as a general rule, in the history of the world, revival starts with the poor.
The foolish things of the world shame the wise.
Most of the early Christians were poor. Most of the great revivals happened among the poor. Do you know why? Poor people very often can see the game.
When you’re playing these social games and you’re winning, you don’t see that it’s a game, and you don’t like anybody calling it a game. It’s when you’re losing you like to call it a game. You know how that is.
All of us can look back on JH and HS and see that there was a social game going on. When I was in JH, let me just say it kindly, I was losing that game. And because I was losing, it was easy for me to look on and say, “Those guys are just playing games. I don’t want to be part of it.” But if you were winning, you probably didn’t think of it as a game. You thought it very important. This all requires incredible concentration and observation. Great things were at stake.
The poor are rich because they can see this whole wealthy thing, is a game. They sense their need. That’s the real blessing. The poor see it. They aren’t in the game. Their dependence on God isn’t masked by money.
All human beings are poor, we are spiritually bankrupt and we are all dependent on Jesus Christ for EVERYTHING.
FAITH acknowledges that no matter what your station in life. So if you have been given much you steward it according to God’s kingdom values. And if you have been given little, that too is a position that needs to be stewarded according to God’s kingdom values.
The POINT is to live your life as if wealth and power are not the POINT.
So if you are rich or if you are poor, do you use your wealth or lack of wealth as an object lesson for the mercy and grace of God to the undeserving? To help people see that wealth is not the POINT.
That’s really the question.
We are in the book of James chapter 1 this morning.
A few years ago I was looking for some lumber for a project I was working on and ran across an online auction that had this giant lot of goods plus the exact lumber I was looking for. But in order to get the lumber I had to buy everything. Even with buying everything, it was still way cheaper than buying the lumber new, so I went for it. And believe me, it was random. A microwave, a few dolls, a curling iron, some potting soil. Toward the end of rummaging through this junk there was a little box and I opened it up and I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was a little bar of gold inside. So I was so excited so I brought it to this gold and silver store and I said, “Hey, I’d like to trade this bar of gold for some cash.” And he looked at it for one second and said, “That’s not real.” And I said, “How do you know?” When you’ve been around the real thing long enough, you just know.
I said, can you prove it to me. He said sure, but it will destroy it. I said, I don’t care. So he did three tests. He pulled out a scale and weighed it. Now it actually passed that test. And I started getting all excited. He said, "Don’t get your hopes up." Then he scratched it with this tool and it looked like it was a coating of some sort. And just to confirm he pulled out some acid and poured it on the gold and sure enough, the coating just boiled right off.
Now here’s the point. I was trying to test for genuine gold. And no one test is perfect. It passed the first test. If I had left after having just weighed it, I would have been falsely assured. But in order for it to be genuine, it has to pass not just one test but all the tests. If it failed any of the tests it wasn’t genuine.
Well when it comes to examining faith, it’s a similar process. James is going to give us not one test but a series of tests that will help us differentiate between a genuine faith and a counterfeit faith. James is deeply concerned about making sure that the faith you hold is in fact true, genuine saving faith. He’s calling for self-examination. But just like that gold bar, there’s not a single test that’s a slam dunk. Rather, we are given a series of tests. And in order for the faith to be genuine it has to pass not just one test, but all the tests.
So let’s look at how this unfolds. Here’s the first test.
So we will pick up from last week where JP so helpfully led us.
Now this is not the test. This is setup for the test. James begins by calling out unrighteous behavior in our speech. Now, lest we miss a very key and important point, both genuine saving faith and counterfeit faith will exhibit unrighteous behavior. It’s not as if genuine faith doesn’t struggle and counterfeit faith does. No. Everyone struggles.
Genuine faith does not mean the extinction of anger. Genuine faith doesn’t mean the extinction of bad listening habits. He gives this admonition to EVERY PERSON, which implies, every person struggles with this.
So how do I not be angry? How do I become a good listener? There’s an answer and we can see it in the next verse. Just walk over this bridge word, THEREFORE and see it. How do you be quick to listen and slow to speak and slow to anger? Well, he says:
You have to put away all that bad behavior and RECEIVE the implanted word. SO THE TEST OF GENUINE FAITH IS WHAT YOU DO WHEN THE BAD BEHAVIOR IS POINTED OUT. There is a willingness to receive the word. There’s a willingness to abandon your current mode of behavior and receive the implanted word? That’s the test.
There is a disposition of a person of true saving faith regarding where he or she finds answers.
Do you instinctively go to the word of God as the answer book. Or do you go to your friend group. Or do you don’t seek out pop psychology. Or do you read endless internet articles. Now the reason we talk about this in terms of a disposition is because of the word that modifies how we are to receive. Notice the attitude associated with the reception. Meekness. That word has the idea of gentleness. So in this context the idea is that our hearts are usually hard and resistant to receiving feedback. We are prideful. We don’t like others telling us that we are wrong. So to receive with meekness is to receive with softness. In other words: teachable. To have a genuine interest. There’s a genuine leaning in.
For example, let’s say you are trying to learn piano. And you kind of plateau in your learning. And then you have a chance to spend four hours with the hall of fame prodigy, Stevie Wonder, one of the most famous blues and jazz piano players of all time. You have a posture toward that, right? You respect him. You would hang on his words? Your attitude would be one of rapt attention and respect. There would be a meekness. I don’t have the answers. He does.
So it starts with that. Humble reception. That’s the first test.
But notice something. It’s not enough. Because let’s observe that he doesn’t say that by receiving the implanted word with meekness it WILL save your soul. He simply says it’s merely ABLE to save your soul. There’s still more to do. There’s potential, but it’s not guaranteed.
You’ve made it past test #1, but there are still two more tests that have to be passed. Here’s the second test.
So in order to have true genuine saving faith you have to receive AND agree with the word of God. Now you might think these are one and the same, but they are very distinct.
You can imagine a situation in which you think you want the word, but then when the word is heard and understood, it’s offensive and ultimately not agreed with.
How many people do you know who say they read the Bible and want to obey it but ultimately just pick and choose what parts they like. We’ve all read the passage to love our enemy and pray for those who persecute you and kind of just ignored that part. That’s receiving the word but not agreeing with it.
Go back to the Stevie Wonder example. Let’s say you are super humble, super meek, super excited to meet this iconic piano player. You can’t wait to hear what kind of advice he gives you. And he listens to you play for a few minutes and he says. Tell you what. Here’s what you need to do. You need to go home and learn your scales. That’s not profound. That’s not what I was expecting him to say. That’s so uninspiring. That’s what my piano teacher has been saying for years. And you get angry and leave.
Do you see how these are two distinct steps? The first step is a step that acknowledges authority. The second step is a step that agrees with the assessment of that authority that you claimed to acknowledge.
Genuine faith hears the word AND agrees with the word. Genuine faith is willing to go to the word with the attitude that yes, it has the source of answers and yes, it’s judgment over me is true, no matter how offensive it is.
You see as Christians we have to be willing to accept the judgments of God’s Word on our life no matter how unflattering they are. We have to be willing to allow it to examine and evaluate. We have to be weighed by it. Poked and prodded. We have to allow it to cast its verdict upon us. We have to let it scratch off that coating and let the acid bubble off whatever veneer we project and claim, “that part of you is fake.” Yes we need to receive. But we also need to agree. It takes humility to do that. If you don’t have the humility, then it’s over. It all breaks down on step two.
This week I was reading a book by Johnathan Edwards on the New England Revival. Jonathan E. served in the mid part of the 18th century. One of the things that most frustrated him is he saw revivals start up, he saw great church growth, he saw people coming to faith in Christ, he saw communities begin to get transformed, and then he noticed how often, usually, the revival stopped. They stagnated. They petered out. Being the analytical person he was, he tried to figure this out. Why was this happening with such regularity. He studied all the cases, and he decided that it was pride that killed revivals. It’s pride that kills spiritual growth. It’s pride. No shocking revelation there.
Now here is something shocking. Even if you have enough humility to pass the first two tests.
You pass test #1. Receive the Word of God. Then you pass test #2. to accept the judgments of the Word of God, the text is shocking. That’s still not enough. Why?
Because you still have to do something about it.
You see, you could imagine this aspiring piano student who desires to break through that plateau, he’s ready to receive with meekness any word that Stevie Wonder has to say, he even agrees with his assessment and judgment of him. You’re right, Stevie, I reek at scales. If I have any hope of ever being proficient, I need to practice my scales.
But then he goes home and does nothing. He sits down and watches TV. That person is toast. He’ll never be anything.
You see as Christians we are guilty of this. Often times we sit beneath the conviction of God’s Word and we agree with the assessment but we do this one fatal mistake. We equate conviction with change. Admission is good. Confession is good. Those are incredible steps. But they are not the same things as Change. Change is what God is after. Until confession produces change, confession is not complete. We have deceived ourselves. We have become SELF-DECEIVED.
Self-deception is a VERY strange concept. It’s strange on two fronts: First, it’s strange in terms of motive:
Why would I trick myself? Why would I tell myself a lie? Why would I tell myself something I know isn’t true and serve it up in such a way that I would hope that it could be believed? Normally you deceive an enemy. You deceive someone you are about to take advantage of. Why would we deceive and take advantage of ourselves? So it’s strange in terms of motive.
But it’s also strange in terms of feasibility. How is deceiving self even possible? How can the one deceiving be deceived. Isn’t that kind of like playing hide and seek with yourself. If you are the one whose serving up the lie, won’t you know it’s a lie?
Well, it is possible. The motive in self-deception is fear of truth and love of self. We deceive ourselves only when we a scared of the truth and are trying to preserve our image.
And of course the behavior will never change because change in behavior is admission of guilt. The more we listen without being changed by it the less likely we will ever be changed by it because listening without change produces harder and harder hearts.
The ultimate evidence of something touching down in the heart and mind is a change of behavior. Genuine faith will produce genuine change.
Genuine faith must pass all three tests.
So let’s see how receiving, agreeing and obeying the word are related as found in the text. The third test is introduced here. Does the man act on what the word reveals?
Now the metaphor here is masterful. No surprise here, since God made the metaphor.
He begins with the concept of looking. He begins with the concept of seeing and SIGHT. Now the organ of sight is amazing. It helps us to look at the world and absorb a tremendous amount of information. And because we can see and evaluate, we are always making judgments of other people on the basis of that sight.
That person missed a spot when he tried to shave. Her hair is falling out of her bun. She’s gained a little weight. His little bald spot is growing. He’s got a smudge of cream cheese stuck in his beard And then all of the sudden a horrible thought descends upon us. I wonder if I am like that? But we can’t see. Of course it’s not our fault that we can’t see ourselves. The way our body is constructed, the entire seeing system is outward facing. It points away from us.
So in order for us to see ourselves accurately we need a device that can reflect our image back to our eyes so we can evaluate ourselves the way we evaluate everyone else.
We need a mirror. This metaphor of a mirror would have been especially powerful in James’ day since mirrors were very rare. They were very expensive and very hard to make and usually very small. So you can imagine the anticipation of stepping in front of a large polished mirror for the first time. What do I actually look like?
What happens when that image is not what you expect? You pictured yourself beautiful like that girl next door. Handsome like that guy at the gym. But instead, you’ve got splotchy skin, your teeth are all crooked and yellow, your nose is bent. You have a big zit. You’re double chinned. The mirror allows you to objectively evaluate self the way you’ve so carelessly evaluated others.
Can you imagine that feeling?
Here’s the meaning of the metaphor. The Word of God is that mirror. If we look at it carefully, we can see our own reflection. It will tell you if you are pridefully, greedy, angry, unloving, unkind, selfish. It will give you a perfect, undistorted reflection of self.
We have huge blind spots where we cannot see ourselves accurately. Everyone else can see us. Everyone else is seeing it. It’s the giant glob of cream cheese off the corner of the mouth. But we are perfectly ignorant.
So spiritually speaking we need the mirror of God’s Word to SEE what we can’t otherwise see. That’s what the word of God does. It reflects our image back so we can begin judging ourselves the way we so casually judge others.
And that first glimpse is a doozie. There’s a moment where you just stare. You just look and you think, is that really me? Is that really what other people see? Is that really what I look like? And for a moment you just absorb that image, knowing it’s true, and shutter in horror.
So it’s that moment of STARTING, that exact moment where we find ourselves in the text. We have, “a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror.” He’s looking with intensity, begging that what he is seeing isn’t true.
Oh my word. That’s a million times worse than I feared. He’s looking intently.
What is he going to do? He’s at a fork in the rode. What is he going to do with this nightmare?
Normally, we might try to wiggle our way out of it through our charm or social skills. But here’s the problem with mirrors. You can’t argue with them. You can’t negotiate with them. You can’t say, “Come on, that’s a little over the top don’t you think? Can’t you photoshop a bit of that away? You can’t do that.” Why? *Because a mirror is just serving up reality. It’s just a reflector of truth. It’s a mirror. It doesn’t lie.
So because you can’t argue or negotiate with it, you only have two options. Here’s the fork: You can either accept its verdict or you can do what this guy does.
What do you mean he forgets?
We don’t forget things that are important. Everyone remembers where they were during 9/11. You don’t forget that. Everyone remembers their wedding day. You remember things that are important.
You see this is not a forgetfulness, as in, I forgot to take out the trash. That’s not forgetfulness in the sense of, "Oh, I forgot my address from three houses ago." This is a willful forgetfulness. This is an intentional decision to look the other way. He doesn’t like what he sees and he banishes that image from his mind and turns away and distracts himself with other thoughts. It’s deliberate.
And this forgetfulness evidences itself in unchanged behavior. The mirror, the law of God, told him he was a sinner. But he didn’t change. Now there’s a contrast presented.
Now here’s where it’s so easy to get this wrong. It’s such the tendency of our heart at this very point to veer off into the weeds, crash burn and self-destruct.
Here’s how this theological meltdown goes goes. Okay, I don’t want to be that self-deceived hearer. I want to be a hearer who then becomes a doer of the word. So that means that if the mirror shows me something ugly about myself, I need to work really hard to fix that ugly thing. I don’t want to live in denial.
If the mirror shows me something that just horrifies me and appalls and disgusts me, the last thing I want to do is pretend that it doesn’t exist. I don’t want to be a hearer only who deceives himself. I’m going to be a doer. I’m going to WORK MY TAIL off to change what I see wrong with me.
I need to WORK super, super hard, harder than I’ve ever WORKED to get rid of that ugly thing in me. I need to discipline myself to get up earlier; I need increased accountability. I need to WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK. DO. DO. DO. DO.
Is that what James is encouraging here? Is that the appropriate application of what we are reading.
If the prophet Jeremiah were here, he would laugh at us. Jeremiah was speaking to the nation of Israel during a period of her history when God’s Word reflected back to them their heart-hearted rebellion. And Jeremiah is holding up the mirror of God’s Word. He’s pointing out their sin. Notice what he says:
Jeremiah 13 In other words, the kinds of things the mirror reveals are not things our human effort can change. These problems are not your garden variety uncombed hair.
You need different color skinned. You need to grow new teeth. You need to grow an eye. No amount of human effort can change that. The mirror reveals things about your soul you cannot change. It reveals not just that you do evil things, but that you are an evil person. That those evil things come from a heart that itself is evil. Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.
The mirror reveals not just that your act in angry and jealous ways, but that you are an angry and jealous person, that those actions come from a mind that is totally self-centered and wicked.
The rotten breath comes from a rotten stomach and no amount of toothpaste will solve that problem. That’s a terrifying thought.
We will do almost anything but accept that reflection. I mean if we even catch a wiff of our soul’s stench we panic.
We run to the bathroom and try to brush; we get new toothpaste; we get a new brand of flosser, an electric toothbrush. Brush, brush, brush.
Listen, your dying of stomach cancer and living in denial.
The greatest evidence of our denial is our excuses. When confronted with sin we are excuse factories. We just pump out excuses.
When we are sinfully lazy we make the excuse, “I am not feeling well; I had a really long day.” When we sinfully and rudely interrupt we make the excuse, “You interrupted first.” When we sinfully blow up in anger, we make the excuse, “You expect me to be happy?” When we verbally retaliate with every intention to hurt, we say, “I didn’t mean to hurt you; I was just trying to help you see what I was seeing.” When we feel superior to others and they sense it, we make the excuse, “I didn’t realize I was coming across like that.” When we come home late because we haven’t made home a priority we make the excuse, “Man, traffic was a nightmare.” Why can’t we admit the truth? Why can’t we say it? Because the truth is horribly embarrassing. It shatters our beloved self-image. It hurts. The mirror shocks us. We can’t handle the truth. The truth is, we are far, far worse that we fear.
The truth is that we are deeply angry people, horribly self-righteous and wickedly jealous. The truth is we are deeply insecure, grevously frightened, abominably lustful, greedy and petty. We are self-centered children. We are far worse that even our deepest fears.
How can you receive that horrible image that the mirror is serving up?
The text has something to say about that. Look carefully. The law initially condemns. And when it does, every instinct of your heart is to turn away. Every instinct of your heart is to run and willfully forget the horrible image that mirror serves up. Every stroke of the law is a verdict on just how imperfect you really are. Every sentence of the law so innocently written on the page, impersonally reflects back to your true spiritual condition.
But here’s the admonition: in that moment of difficulty, don’t stop looking.
You have to keep looking. You have to keep staring. You have to see. You have to PERSERVERE. Isn’t that an interesting word? If you want freedom, true freedom from everything you are feeling, what you have to do is gaze into that mirror and PERSEVERE. Which implies that looking at the image hurts. It’s pains you. It injures your soul, it slices at your pride.
But when you do, you will realize that this law that appeared to be death and slavery and chains is in fact the law of liberty. It’s the law that brings life.
How can the law which exposes my guilt and condemns me as a sinner, be for me a vehicle to life? How can perseverance in painfully staring at this mirror of truth produce life?
Communion You know where we can see this most clearly. We see it in the cross. The law of liberty is most clearly seen in the cross. It’s not easy to look at the cross, is it. We want to turn away. It’s a terrible sight.
What is the theological meaning of this? Why is this person hanging there? Why all the blood? Why the brutality? How do we RECEIVE this? How do we AGREE with this? We are going to have to persevere because this is not easy.
Here’s what you have to RECEIVE. Your sin is deserving of this. You know that angry speech that came out of your mouth this week? It deserves this. THAT IS WHAT THE LAW SAYS. You know your lustful thinking, your unforgiving heart, your bitterness, your greediness, your love of this world, all of that is deserving of this. That’s what the cross communicates. Do you AGREE with this? The ruthless law, the ruthless unbendable law, demand that our sin ends in death. Jesus is not hanging there without reason. He’s here for a reason. Do you RECEIVE AND AGREE?
Oh that hurts. We so want to turn away. But keep looking. Keep looking. Persevere in your looking. Because if you keep looking you’ll see something else that you have to RECEIVE and AGREE with. Jesus died that death for a reason. You have to realize that it’s not him that deserved that death. It’s you that did. So why is HE there? What is HE doing up there on that cross bleeding and suffering and in deep anguish?
He’s there because he loves you? He’s there because he has forgiven you. He is there because he wants to abolish sin, to destroy death, and to welcome you into his kingdom. Can you receive that?
The sentence has been served. The debt has been paid. The law has been fulfilled. Jesus came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. He lived a perfect life and died a perfect death why? In order that he might give his life to you? In order that your rags of sin would be placed on him and that his robes of righteousness would be given to you. Do you RECEIVE that? Do you see that he loves you. Do you AGREE that you have been forgiven? Do you AGREE that your sins have been removed as far as the East is from the West and that he will remember your sins no more? Do you agree that you have been given new robes, bright white robes? Do you RECEIVE AND AGREE?
You see when that moment happens, you WILL BE TRANSFORMED. There’s nothing You MUST DO to receive it, but there is most certianly something you will WANT TO Do when you have. Because a new heart has been give to you, you will want to be for others what he has been for you.
What has the gospel done for us? Have you received and agree?
COMMUNION
You’ll know the gospel has changed you when new fruit comes pouring out. When the righteousness of Jesus, not a righteousness of your own, comes pouring out of you. That’s when you will know.
Now what he’s doing here at the end is returning back to verse 19 where he spoke about controlling the tongue. He says, “If your religion doesn’t change you, you haven’t passed the test.” You don’t have genuine faith.
You know what he’s saying, "The real test if you have received the grace of God and believed the grace of God is that it transforms you and evidences itself in the most unglamorous normal ways in which you live your life." Hearts that have been transformed can’t help but issue forth transformed living. It’s unstoppable.
James says, I don’t look for that evidence of transformed living in your public image on Sunday morning or your controlled outward facing image that you put forward at work or online. I look for the evidence in your speech. I look for it in the way you care for the orphans and the widows, you know the ones who can’t repay you. I look for it in the way you talk to your wife or husband and kids, the way you share your faith, the way you do dishes, clean the house, change diapers, help your neighbor with joy. I look for it in the normal. Do people look at you and say, “That man has been changed by grace. That woman wears grace upon her sleeve. That woman is mercy embodied.”
If you don’t do that, then what does James say about you? Your self deceived
INTRO Good morning church family. As Jason said, my name is JP Denham and I normally have the joy of serving back there on the drums. Thank you to the elder team for their prayers and support. It is quite different back there where I can hide under a pair of big headphones. But I’m really thankful to serve in this way this morning and I’ll be our guide as we continue through the book of James.
OVERVIEW of the book of James As we get started, I’d like to begin by zooming out for a few minutes and taking a broad look at where we are in this book and where we have ventured thus far.
This book, perhaps more than any other book in the New Testament, resembles the book of Proverbs. In some ways it is the NT counterpart to Proverbs, in that it seems to hop from one topic to another to some degree without always a direct connection or flow of thought. The book of James was written to Christian Jews that had been scattered abroad and the book addresses many issues that were of particular importance to them, and now also to us.
It was written very much like the wisdom literature of the OT and covers many different topics including things like patience in trials, wisdom, faith, discussion of the rich & poor, obedience to God, and as we’ll cover today, guidance on how we think, speak, and act. And so as we proceed in James, we’ll also spend a significant portion today in the book of Proverbs, which will provide a deeper clarity of what the Lord has to say to us through James.
Furthermore, James references Jesus’ sermon on the mount many times. And in this way, much of what is written here should be read through the lens of Jesus’ great sermon. As you may recall, Jesus touched on many different aspects of the life of a Christian, ultimately providing us guidance in the process of sanctification, becoming more and more like Him.
RECAP Sanctification, this process of being shaped into HIS image, can be uncomfortable as we have been learning through this series. It has been described even as “surgery” for our hearts. The Lord continues to lovingly reshape our hearts and minds to make us more like Himself.
Let’s briefly review the last couple weeks.
Two weeks ago Jason spoke about theological “slow motion”, seeing in slow motion how sin can manifest in us over time. Recall that this process of sin involves several steps: 1. Invitation - we are invited to question God’s claims and promises to us 2. Deception - this is the “hook”. Satan does not fish with bare hooks, but disguises them in things that look appealing 3. Incubation - this is where sin grows in our minds. The seed of deception can having growing power in our minds as it lingers 4. Conception - This is where lies that have been incubating give birth to sin
And last week in James 1:17-18 we learned that “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above”. Let’s be reminded and not deceived - God is good ALWAYS. There is no variation or shadow due to change. And thus, all His gifts to us are GOOD, but they are only reflections of the giver.
Likewise, trials direct our eyes BACK to the source of all good- the Lord! Lets remember the instructions we received earlier: James 1:2 ~ Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. AND James 1:12 ~ Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.
Ultimately, these passages are given to us as proof of His goodness, and as God’s loving instructions and guidance in becoming more like His Son Jesus. This process of sanctification is a call to TRUE freedom.
PRAY Now we come to this next section of James, we’re going to be focusing on verses 19 and 20. As we begin, let’s go to the Lord in prayer.
Father, thank you for this time we have together this morning to worship you and to read and understand the words that you have given us in James. As we move forward in these passages, I ask that you provide us with a clear understanding of this section. Please speak through me this morning and help me to glorify You. For anyone here today that does not yet know You, I ask that You would reveal Yourself to them through these words You’ve given us. And for those here that know You as their Lord and Savior, would you please continue to refine us, shaping our character to be more and more like Jesus, for your purposes and your glory. In Jesus’ name, Amen
OVERVIEW of James 1:19-20 Let’s read verses 19 and 20 together this morning. They should be up on the screen. "Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God."
This verse gives us some instructions, but even more than that, we’re receiving a warning against several dangers here. Why quick to listen? Why slow to speak and slow to anger? What is at stake here? And what or who are we to be quickly listening to, and likewise to whom are we to be slow to speak?
At first glance, it may seem to us that this references our relationships with other people, and that is true, but not the whole picture. There is more to this than simply improving our communication with other people. This is also, and even more importantly, about humility and our submission to God.
These verses ultimately instruct our posture before God and others. As we look at this section today, we’re going to examine how these instructions direct us both in our relationships with other people, and also with God.
BREAKDOWN of JAMES 1:19-20
GET THIS Let’s break this passage down and examine it in its parts. James begins by calling the readers to “understand this”, that is GET THIS! He’s emphasizing what is to come by saying to everyone “pay close attention to this next part!”. And he draws them by his greeting. “My beloved brothers” - this is a reference to dearly loved, fellow brothers & sisters adopted in this family of God. James begins by warmly asking his readers to pay close attention to what is to come. This is James, the brother of Jesus, who came to believe in Jesus only AFTER His resurrection, now a pillar in the early church, calling us to pay close attention to what comes next.
QUICK TO LISTEN James says “let every person be quick to hear”. Other translations say “quick to listen”. What does it mean to hear or listen? At face value it may seem clear, but under the surface this is more than just talking about the speed of sound, or even our willingness to literally HEAR. The Greek word used in this case is the word akouō (ah-KOO-oh). This word means to hear, to comprehend, to understand, and to OBEY.
So with whom are we to be quick to listen, understand, or obey? Interpersonally, we must LISTEN to others in order to understand. An Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw, once said, “The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place”. How often do we determine to REALLY listen to others?
Proverbs 19:20 Listen to advice and accept instruction, that you may gain wisdom in the future.
Proverbs 12:15 The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice. We are clearly being led to both invite wise instruction into our lives, and also to really listen and understand. But there is more here. This instruction to be quick to listen emphasizes the need for submission to the Lord. We are not just told HEAR Him, but to obey.
To illustrate this idea, think about a parent and child. When we tell our children to listen, what we are really telling them is we are instructing them to obey. We’re not simply instructing them to HEAR what we’re saying, but to then follow through in obedience. Take a look at the following video which helps to illustrate this idea. My 3 year old must argue and debate everything!
This cute kid did not want to listen. The Bible says a great deal about LISTENING to God’s voice, but listening isn’t just HEARING, it is obeying. To hear is to obey. In a few verses ahead in verse 22, James explains: “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves”. And, even more importantly, Jesus instructs us several times on the importance of not just hearing but DOING.
Luke 8:21 - 'But he answered them, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.” ‘ He’s making it clear that those who He recognizes as His family are those who are submitted to God’s Lordship. And in Luke 11:28 '(Jesus) said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” ' We are promised a BLESSING here, that when we hear and obey, we will receive His blessing. What blessing are we talking about?
In Luke 6 Jesus describes this blessing. Luke 6:47-48 'Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. '
Jesus makes it clear that this blessing that comes from listening and doing is that of having a firm foundation, in Him, that cannot be shaken. So we can see that hearing and doing/obeying are two sides of the same coin. It is made clear in scripture that to hear and obey are really one and the same in God’s mind.
SLOW TO SPEAK This passage says “be slow to speak”. What does it mean to be slow to speak? Simply put, if you’re talking you aren’t listening. It’s about a balance. Which practice tips the scale, is it speaking or is listening?
How many in this room have ever been in a conversation during which you know the other person isn’t really listening to you? Rather than a back and forth exchange of ideas, you can SEE the wheels turning behind the eyes or body language of the other, showing you that what’s really happening is that the person is formulating THEIR next idea. The other is waiting for JUST a long enough pause to get started again. In a conversation like this, if you were to ask the other person to summarize what was said, often they’d be unable to do so.
Think of the path of communication like a pipeline. Whatever is flowing through that pipe can only go in one direction at a time. The direction of the flow ideas may switch back and forth, but cannot go both directions simultaneously. This is a picture of what we see in these instructions. Let’s again look at what some of the wisdom literature of the OT has to say about this:
Ecclesiastes 5:2 ' Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few. ' The greater emphasis of being slow to speak is really about having reverence before our God and King. Can we picture standing before a king? Not only would you wait to be spoken to, but your words would be few and carefully measured. These instructions continue in warning us to avoid sin in this:
Proverbs 10:19 ' When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent. '
Proverbs 13:3 ' Whoever guards his mouth preserves his life; he who opens wide his lips comes to ruin. '
We must put a gate on our speech in the timing, thought, and volume of speech. We should not only be slow to speak, but we should be careful to avoid wordiness, and we should not allow any speech that is uttered carelessly to escape our lips.
SLOW TO ANGER Moving along in the verse, James instructs “Let every person be slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God”. It is important to note here that not all anger is sinful. Paul wrote of this in Ephesians 4:26 “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger”. So there is a clear distinction. There IS such a thing as “righteous anger”. But in contrast, the anger that is being referred to here is unrighteous anger. Righteous anger is anger over things that oppose God, like evil, idolatry, and sin. It is to be GRIEVED by these things. But in contrast, unrighteous anger is typically rooted in feeling an attack on our own pride.
Let’s remember once again that this letter has been primarily written to the Jewish Christians of that time. A lack of self-controlled disposition in the form of “religious zeal” was unfortunately a trait of some of these Christians, who carried this tradition perhaps from the zeal of the religious elite, the pharisees. This is what we call misplaced zeal. What is zeal? Zeal is a great energy or enthusiasm for things. And religious zeal, a passion and enthusiasm for God, is wonderful. But I believe what James is getting at here is a wrath of anger that is thinly cloaked as religious zeal. This type of anger gets disguised, and does not glorify God or produce righteousness. Instead, in its worst forms it can manifest in things like persecution, hypocrisy, and violence.
James gives us warnings here that echo the primary focus of Jesus’ teaching in the sermon on the mount when Jesus referred to sins of the heart and mind. I want us to remain here in this section together for a few minutes. Think to yourself, what is this anger we’re referring to? Anger is an emotion, yes. Just like things like happiness, sadness, anxiety, it is something we can experience. But it is more than that. Unchecked, anger becomes a FRAMEWORK from which we are led further into sin. It is that “hook” that we learned about - an enticing lure into a mindset which only leads to brokenness, pain, or destruction. We see a great example of this in Genesis when Cain becomes angry with his brother Abel, and with God. Both brothers offer sacrifices. Abel’s offering to the Lord was accepted but Cain’s was not. And what happened? Let’s read in Genesis 4: 'In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.” ' Genesis 4:3-7 Sin crouches at the door. Like a lion in the grass, and you don’t even see it, but its desire is to CONSUME you.
JC RYLE was an Anglican Bishop in England, and prolific writer in the 1800’s. He wrote - “Of all the feelings that man’s heart experiences, there is none perhaps which so soon runs into sin as the feeling of anger. There is none which once excited seems less under control. There is none which leads on to so much evil. The length to which ill-temper, irritability, and passion, will carry even godly men, all must know. We may rest assured that there is no human feeling which needs so much cautious guarding as this. A sinless wrath is a very rare thing. The wrath of man is seldom for the glory of God.”
Proverbs 14:29 says “Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly”. Later in chapter 16 we’re told that control of our anger actually demonstrates great strength.
Proverbs 16:32 “Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.” How often have you seen anger used as a form of control? And yet we’re being told here instead, that control of our anger is true strength. When we are quick to anger we are engaging in an act of worship. Yet it is not God we’re worshiping, but the idols of comfort, riches, power, control, selfish desires, etc. Church, this is a universal problem. I stand here as a person who struggles with this, and I know you do too. How often have we justified various forms of anger? It was justified because it was true. But was it spoken in love? You see, anger begets more anger. But in
Proverbs 15:1 -- “A soft word turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” If this stings a bit, you’re not alone.
In Galatians 5 we see anger listed among many other sins including things you might imagine as “much worse”, such as idolatry, sorcery, or sexual immorality. This is an example of what it means to walk in the flesh. But instead, as the passage goes on to say, those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. And we instead would walk in the Spirit, experiencing the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
APPLICATION Church, we are called to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. What are we talking about here? This is about allowing the Holy Spirit to replace OUR perspective with His. Our thoughts for HIS thoughts. Our understanding for HIS.
So I want to pose a question to us today. What is the framework from which we think or think, speak, and act? In what do we trust? Is the framework simply our own thoughts? When we are quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger, we are submitting ourselves to the thoughts of God and adopting a POSTURE of humility before Him.
Proverbs 3:5-7 ' Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
ELIJAH I want to begin to wrap up by summarizing part of the story of Elijah found in the book of 1 Kings in the OT. Elijah was a prophet who had boldly confronted the worship of idols in Israel, all sanctioned by the poor leadership of King Ahab and his sinister wife Jezebel. In 1 Kings 18: 21 “Elijah came near to all the people and said ‘how long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, then follow him’. What proceeds is this ultimate fire sacrifice showdown, which is a great example of faith to us. Elijah proposes that both he and the prophets each set up a sacrifice to their respective god, and pray for an answer by fire. In short, the prophets of Baal hear no answer. And yet after dousing his own sacrifice with tons of water, the LORD answers Elijah and consumes the entire thing, even consuming all the rocks and water, the altar, and everything. These prophets of Baal are executed for their treachery, and Elijah goes up on the mountain to pray and ask the Lord to end the drought and famine, according to His promise. Elijah went up to the top of Mount Carmel to pray. And scripture tells us he bowed his head down and put his face between his knees. And he told his servant to look toward the sea. So he went up and looked, but said there was nothing. At that point, Elijah could have panicked, he could have doubted God, or could have been angry. But he waited. In his posture, he LISTENED. He sent the servant back seven times to look again, until the rain did in fact come.
Elijah didn’t trust in his own senses in that moment, but submitted to God’s promise - even over the interpretation of the physical reality. This is about us taking ALL of our own thoughts, perspectives, desires, and the very fabric of our beings, our identities, and submitting them to the Lord, so that HE can reshape us in HIS image, sanctifying us, according to His love and His purposes.
QUESTION & CLOSING As we close this morning, I want to pose the question to us all: have we instead been slow to listen, quick to speak, and quick to anger? Have you seen the destructive force of anger in your own speech, or have you been pierced by it? What do we do with our anger? Do we turn it on our families or friends? Do we turn it towards our enemies? Do we turn it towards ourselves in sin and shame? Do we turn it on God?
We must remember that the Lord Jesus is our example in this kind of humility1 s our high example, demonstrating what this looks like through his life, ministry, persecution, crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection. Submission of our listening/obedience, speech, and disposition to the Lord is what our God uses to bring us into an ever more complete reliance on Him.
CLOSING PRAYER Lord, thank you for Your word and your wisdom. God, we ask that you would guide us and humble us, showing us how to be quick to listen and obey You, and teaching us to control our speech and our anger. And where we have used anger to wound, or we have been wounded, I pray that You would lead us to repentance, and bring restoration and healing. Help us to not walk in the flesh by our own power, but instead to walk in the Spirit. We thank you for your love and kindness, and we worship You. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Slideshow for this message is available
Introduction James 1
We are in the book of James and he opens his book by talking about trials. And he dives straight in without any padding. He doesn’t sugar coat a thing. He starts his book by saying, “Life stinks. Life is hard.”
And if anyone in the room doubts this:
Talk to any police officer, Talk to a hospital worker. Talk to a social worker. Just talk to anyone in the room.
Life is full of trials - full of them. James says, ok fine, what are you going to do about it? The choice is yours. Will it be a test that refines you or will it be a temptation that breaks you.
Trials are just the heat. The difficulties of life come down on some people, and they seem to make them soft and wise and tender. The same troubles come down on other people, and they seem to make them broken and bitter and brittle.
What’s the difference? The difference James says, is this: one is deceived and the other is not. Last week James warned us not to be deceived when temptation comes upon us or when difficult things come upon us. Make sure you are looking at trials and temptations through the proper lens.
When trials come upon us we are vulnerable to deception. We are all of the sudden open to start believing things that are quite absurd. In fact, if you just zoom out and think about it, what we end up believing when we sin is insanity to the max. It’s actually madness. It’s ludicrous and even comical.
When trials come here’s what we are deceived into believing: Sin is Good and God is Evil.
On the surface, that’s laughable. There’s so much evidence against that. That’s like trying to convince me that the earth is flat. Sure you can make an argument but the evidence to the contrary is just overwhelming.
And yet somehow the whispers over time becoming convincing. There this voice in your head:
You know the reason that God’s not healing you is because he doesn’t really care. That’s why he’s withholding. You know he could fix your marriage or kids. But he’s just messing with you. He likes to watch you squirm. You know the reason God makes all these rules is he’s trying to limit your joy. You know that right. He’s a cosmic kill-joy. He’s basically against having fun.
In the midst of trial or strong temptation that all seems believable. There is some incredibly skillful deception going on.
Now Christians are all about the ministry of unraveling that deception. We are about the ministry of pulling the bait off Satan’s hooks so that his schemes become obvious. No, it’s not that sin is good and God is evil. Actually, Sin is evil and God is good.
It’s no more complicated than that. We’ve just hacked the datacenter and decoded Satan’s diabolic master plan to undo the human race. It’s so obvious.
Last week we really focused on unravelling the deception of that first point. Sin is evil. It’s really evil. It’s far more evil than we suspect. It leads to death. The unapologetic message from last week was this: We need to be freaked out of sin because it will kill you.
But we ended last week by really encouraging you to look forward to this week because understanding the danger of sin is only half the equation.
Yes, you can be protected against temptation by being convinced of the DANGER of SIN but even more powerful is being convinced of the unchanging goodness of God. Yes Sin is Evil AND Yes, God is Good.
So let’s look again at our passage. We began today by noting that verse 16 serves as a summary of last week.
“Do not be deceived.” Sin is evil. But it also serves as an introduction to this week. Do not be deceived. God is good.
Notice how James makes this point.
If we want to be holy, if we want to be free of the death-clutches of sin, ultimately we have to be absolutely convinced, all of the time, God is really, really, beautifully good.
Now James builds his argument with a foundation maybe you don’t even realize you knew you needed.
Let’s ask this question, “If we are suffering, is it good news that God is good?” Yes, of course that’s good but it’s not good enough. We need more for it it be good news.
Because we could imagine a god who is really, really good, but also really weak. A god like that would want to help you but you would lack the power to do so. So what you need is someone both good and powerful.
And that’s what is claimed. But here’s the problem. In the face of suffering, the claim that God is good and powerful is not very believable, if he’s so good and powerful, then why doesn’t he save me? What do you need in that moment of doubt. You need proof. God knows that and gives it to us.
So here’s how the text is going to unravel today. We have the Claim that God is Good. We have the Claim that God is Powerful. We have the Proof that He’s both.
Let’s start with the claim that he’s good.
Every GOOD gift and every perfect gift is from above. Now what he does here - and it’s very masterful how he does it - is that he gets at the Goodness of God through the gifts of God.
C.S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity has a chapter on hope and he references this really common experience that we all have. There are moments in life when you run across something truly beautiful, truly amazing, truly wonderful. And your heart leaps at it.
It could be a beautiful piece of music, a masterful piece of art, a beautiful person, a piece of land on the beach or mountains.
And you just think, man if I could just have that I’d be so happy. That’s what I want. That’s what my soul has been searching for. And maybe you go on a mission to get it. And you build that home or you go on that vacation or you marry that person or you get that job or buy that piece of music.
Well, the inevitable experience is that there’s a fading of the euphoria. It fulfills but it’s brightness fades. It has some power to satisfy but not enough to ultimately do so. In fact the more you try to make it satisfy, the less it does.
God’s gifts are are truly beautiful, but the closer you try to draw them into your heart, the more you try to make them make you happy, the less beautiful they become and the more you realize that your asking something of them they were never intended to do.
What James is saying in this passage is that we were made to seek out goodness. Our antenna are tuned to that frequency and all of life we seek and hunt and search for it. We long for beauty. Our hearts crave it. And all these gifts are beautiful but they are not really the SOURCE of beauty. They are good but are not SOURCES of goodness. Goodness does not flow out of these things. That’s why they cannot ultimately satisfy. They are merely reflections.
Every good and perfect gift is from above. That’s the source is above. The father who is from above is the source.
Getting this mixed up is like somehow confusing the sun and the moon. The moon is always shifting. The moon is always changing its light because it doesn’t have any light in and of itself. It’s just reflecting the light of something else. Sometimes the moon is so bright a flashlight is totally unnecessary it’s shining so brightly. Other times you can’t see your hand in front of your face. It’s always changing. It’s shifting shadows.
But the sun. It’s got power. It’s got blinding light. It’s an eye watering nuclear reaction of almost infinite energy.
In the same way, the music, the campfire, the fishing or hunting trip, the romance, the seashore - these are all really good gifts. They really are good, but they actually don’t possess goodness itself. They are reflections of goodness.
Of course they don’t satisfy. They are just reflecting the source. You have to look to the source.
He’s not reflecting goodness. He is goodness. He’s not reflecting beauty, He is beauty. He’s not reflecting love, he is love.
He’s the source of all these things.
And James is saying, "Listen, I know what you want is goodness. Look at the gifts, look at the shifting shadow; now follow that beam clear back to the creator God, the actual source of Goodness.
That goodness does not fade. That goodness is ultimately fulfilling. That goodness lasts forever. It’s the difference between smelling ice cream and tasting it. It’s categorically different. When we deal with the creator God, we are dealing with source material - with goodness itself.
We get this confused, don’t we. One of the great blessings of trials is that it forces our our eyes off the gifts and redirects us to the giver of the gift. In fact, sometimes our trials are trials simply because we have our eyes on the wrong prize. When we loose the money, or the relationship doesn’t turn out how we hoped or the kids don’t turn out as we hoped or the job doesn’t satisfy like we hoped, we call it a trial. That’s not a trial. That’s a mercy.
God is his mercy is trying to get our eyes off the shadows. He’s trying to say, “The longing of your heart for beauty and goodness is right. You want light, and your puny little flashlight burnt out and your moping around in a cave. Lift your eyes. Your vision is too low. Look to the heavens! Look to the bright and morning star.”
Look to the source, not the reflection. Don’t you want the real thing?
Consider how different God’s goodness is, to say, human goodness. God is spontaneously good. And he overflows with generosity. It’s a disposition unlike anything we know. It’s a disposition without any mercenary motive. Not giving without reciprocation. Consistently goes beyond what the recipients deserve.
This week we were reading in our pastoral meeting the charge to elders in 1 Peter 5 to serve willingly and not under compulsion. There’s also verses in 2 Corinthians 9 that talks about giving without compulsion. We have to be told NOT to serve begrudgingly or to give begrudgingly because overflowing generosity is not in our character. It’s always God’s character.
Goodness just flows out of God. And that is such an encouragement. Apply that in your relationship with God. Because even the best of earthly fathers needs to be approached at the right moment. I want to go out with my friends, but dad’s in a bad mood. As children, we read the signs. We see the body language. I don’t think right now is the right time to ask him about this.
Do you realize there is no wrong time to approach God? You can’t catch him in an off moment. You can’t get him in a bad mood. He’s good and he’s always good. That disposition of goodness doesn’t change. He’s just the blazing sun, outputting unchanging goodness. That’s who God is.
That’s beauty. We don’t want to just see that. We want to be that. We want to enter into that.
James says when you get a good gift, you have to realize that there’s something behind it, namely, the Father of lights.
He’s the perfect light. He’s the ultimate light. He’s an unchanging light. He’s an unshifting light. He’s the sun, not the moon.
So the first claim is that God is good. The second claim is that he is powerful.
Now where do we see this in the text? Well, we are told that these good gifts are coming down from the father of lights or as some translations have it, The father of the heavenly lights.
Return to verses
Now what he’s doing there is linking the goodness of God with the power of God. It’s so causal the way he does it. There’s this little prepositional phrase that modifies Father. What kind of father do we have? The father lof lights. It’s just casually tossed in there as a side comment but its effect is tremendous. He’s saying all good gifts are served up from the hand of God. And who is this God? Answer: the same God who possess the power to create all the stars of the heaven with a single word. Therefore his ability to infuse goodness into the world, and into your life in particular, is at least equal to the power required to create all the heavenly lights.
Consider for a moment the power of which we are speaking. How much power is required to create the heavenly lights?
Well, let’s think. The most obvious heavenly light of course is the sun. Here’s a time lapse video from the Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Now I just love this video. That, my friends is a powerful object. And to get a sense of just how powerful, consider this. The sun is 93 million miles away from earth. So if the sun were a basketball the earth would be a tiny bead orbiting this basketball at a distance of about 75 feet away. The back of the sanctuary is almost exactly 75 feet from here. So here’s this sun emitting energy in all directions, only a very small percentage of the energy of the sun hits the earth that tiny bead on the back wall.
Like very small: 0000287%
So its hard to image just how much energy its putting out in all directions. Here’s one way to put it in perspective. Get in your mind the energy consumption of all the cities in the entire world that is consumed in a calendar year. All the heaters, all the factories, all the cars driving around, trains, planes flying, giant cargo ships. In one second the sun outputs about a million years worth of energy consumed by planet earth.
So James is saying you see that big light up there and all that power that comes streaming out of that thing… that is supposed to make you appreciate just how powerful God really is.
But notice that the text says, Every good and perfect gift is from above coming down from the Father of LIGHT(S) - plural.
Our sun is one star among many.
When you look out at the night sky on a perfect night you see about 3000 stars but you also see that bright band of light we call the milky way, it almost looks like a cloud. Here’s a nice time lapse of that.
That’s our galaxy. And of course we are in it. To visualize why our night sky appears to us the way it does, imagine camping in the woods and instead of starts, we have trees. The trees right next to you are all around you and appear far apart. The trees on the neighboring mountain are closely packed together. But if you were to zoom out from your camp spot you could see the trees next to you merge with the entire forest, it would be laid out like a green carpet. The same thing is happening when we look at the galaxy.
It’s hard for us to conceptualize the forest of stars that we are in. This is a computer generated video to help you visualize it:
All the stars we see with our naked eye in our night sky are like the trees around us when we are camping. But if we could zoom out, we would then be able to see the forest for the trees. We would then be able to see the entire milky way galaxy.
Our sun is just one of these stars. Now being in it gives us an advantage because can photograph our own galaxy up close. Here’s an actual photograph. You can go to ESO.org website and zoom in and out of this photo and if
This photograph is a very small slice of the milky way galaxy. It’s a 9 gigapixel image and has 85 million stars in it. This is one photograph. Every single one of those points of light is a star.
Now keep in mind that the milky way galaxy has something like 200-400 billion stars. So that means that this photograph containing 85 million stars is 1/2000’s of the stars that make up our milky way. Just so you can visualize this:
Here’s 2000 dots. So those 85 million stars are 1/2000th of the stars in our one galaxy.
Now, we live in a very, very, very privileged age to appreciate the wonders of what our milky way galaxy contains. I woke up my wife this last Christmas at 5:00am. And it wasn’t to get ready for Christmas. I wanted to watch this:
This is the launch of the Arian 5 rocket which was carrying the 10 billion dollar James Webb telescope a million miles into space to intersect lagrange 2 equilibrium point which is a special place that allows satellites to make small orbits in the shadow of the earth which is a perfect place to put a telescope. Now I was so excited because I had literally been following this project for the past 20 years.
And just this July, the first images from this telescope started pouring in. So here we are zooming into our milky way galaxy. This is that previous photo, but we are zooming into a very, very, very tiny portion of the night sky. And if we zoom in far enough, we see the crab nebula:
This is a really interesting formation because this is actually the remains of a star that was observed to explode in 1054 A.D. It was so bright it could be seen with the naked in broad daylight. The center of the Crab Nebula contains a rapidly rotating neutron star – or pulsar – that is apparently pumping enormous amounts of energy into the nebula in the form of high-energy particles and magnetic fields at the rate of 100,000 suns.
Check out this. This particular formation is known as the cosmic cliffs.
Just beauty beyond anything I could imagine. The tall peaks here are about 7 light years high.
Now keep in mind these photographs are just within our galaxy. This one is about 7600 light years away. All of this contained within our one galaxy. But our galaxy is not alone.
There are not just hundreds of galaxies, not just hundreds, not thousands, not just millions, not just billions but recent estimates say there are upwards of 2 trillion galaxies in the known universe.
NASA has a project called the SLOAN digital sky survey and the attempt of this project is to create a 3D map of as many galaxies and they can possibly do. And they’ve shared that data with the public. So if you could travel through space and tour a small portion of the galaxies that we can see from earth here’s what it would look like.
Keep in mind this is a scale model and every point of light is not a star but a galaxy. Each galaxy you see here contains billions of stars.
Totalling all that up. Trillions and Trillions and Trillions of star, each with planets orbiting, each with their own unique moons. Not a single human will visit, not a single human will document or observe 99.999999999 percent of them. The vastness.
Picture our first slide, with the sun, that one star pumping out a million years worth of earth’s energy in one second. And we have billions upon trillion upon quadrillions of these in our universe.
It’s a number so large that no matter how hard you try (and I’ve tried), your mind cannot contain it. Here’s probably the best way to barely try.
Here’s the best way for me to attempt it: Picture in your mind sand. Let me help you do that.
Try to get in your mind a number that approximates the amount of sand on these dunes. And not just this sand, but all the sand in the world. All the sand in every city, every country, every beach, every sand dune from breneau sand dunes here in Idaho to the great Sahara Dessert. Sand from every river, from every island in the pacific, on every continent. All of it. Scientist estimate that the earth has 7.5 sextillion grains of sand.
That’s a lot of sand. Now if you want to conservatively estimate how many stars there on the universe then you’d have to say that every single grain of sand on planet earth represents not one but 10,000 stars just like our sun.
Can you conceive of that?
Now we’ve toured the universe in our mind. We’ve tried to count the stars and given up. Our brains are fried. It’s amazing. Now as magnificent as these stars are, we must remember that these stars are just shadows. These are not the light. These merely reflect the light. These lights point us to the father of lights. The great giver of every light. The creator of light itself.
Now back out. We’ve tried to paint a picture for ourselves of the POWER of the God we serve. We’ve tried to paint a picture of his POWER. And why? To unravel any notion we might have that God is somehow like us.
To unravel any notion we might have that he is limited and because of that limitation is unable to help us.
In other words, “Do not be deceived, my beloved.”
Given what we just surveyed, do you think that God, is in any way limited by power? Do you think mentally, he’s gotten himself into a bind and doesn’t know the way out? Do you think he gets tired? Do you think he looses his ability to concentrate? Do you think he tires of handling so many needs? Do you think that whatever you ask of him in his ears sounds like a hard task? That it feels somehow emotionally draining? That he has to muster up some energy to listen to your whining? I’d love to help you, but I have to put up some boundaries here because you just keep on asking and there are so many needs in the world and I’m just going to get worn down if I’m not careful.
Of course not. He is GOOD. AND He is ABLE.
Those sextillion stars we surveyed are MERELY the MIDST that he EXHALES from his lungs on a COLD NIGHT.
That’s why Isaiah when speaking of the power of the Lord almost shames us into even remotely drawing comparisons between our power and His. Isaiah is speaking of the power of God to accomplish his purposes in all things.
Isaiah 40
I certainly won’t compare him to me. Forgive me Lord for doing so.
Is it that God lacks power that he cannot immediately come rushing in and save you from your problems. Let’s just nail this down once and for all. No. God has power. That’s why he points to the stars. Of course the father of lights has power to save. Can we just worship God right now with our proclamation.
God you are amazing.
So we have two claims. There’s the claim that he’s good and the claim that he’s powerful. But in trials it may not appear that God is what he claims. So we need proof of these truths and specifically of the claim that he is good. And here it is.
What is that crowing act of God’s powerful goodness. Here’s the answer from the text: spiritual new birth. The greatest proof of God’s powerful goodness, the greatest proof of his powerful love for you is that he has saved you.
Return to verses
“Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.”
That’s God’s good and perfect, powerful loving initiative toward you. He chose to give us birth. Let’s think about why that is such powerful proof.
Hands up if anyone in the room who wrote an email or maybe for some of us older generation, wrote a letter and asked your parents if you could be born. Everything that happened in physical birth, happens without any consent or conscious awareness of the child.
And so it is with our spiritual birth.
James points out that our spiritual birth is not something that we prompted God to do. The new birth is something God chose unpressured by our helplessness, unimpressed by our goodness, uncoerced by social pressure. He acted in his accordance with his free, uncompelled, sovereign goodness.
Now why is that such good news for us? HERE IT IS: Because this spiritual starts a spiritual chain reaction, a domino of forces, it’s the first link in long golden chain which demonstrates God’s unstoppable LOVE and GOODNESS that follows and pursues and relentlessly tracks you down for the rest of you life.
Listen to how Romans 8 says it.
Romans 8 also acknowledges the difficulty of life. It acknowledges trials. But it pulls us onto this perch and asks us to get some perspective.
Romans 8
So if you are suffering, if you are going through some very difficult trial then Paul wants to give you some encouragement. So just like James the claim is that God is good and powerful.
Now are you just supposed to believe those claims at face value? Praise the Lord if you do. But if you are struggling, he gives you help. You need some proof that God is in fact good when it seems like he’s not? No problem.
Here’s how Paul says it.
Notice this domino effect. Notice this golden chain of connected ideas. It’s starts long before we were born, before the foundations of the earth. We were predestined. And that sets off a chain of events. Justification. Glorification. And there’s a conclusion.
Listen to the argument here. It’s so powerful. He says, do not be deceived. To question my goodness, to question my love, because of a current trial or difficulty is the most irrational of all possible conclusions. God says to us. DO NOT BE DECEIVED. Please just open your eyes and review the facts.
Let me just remind you that I loved you before you even had conscious existence. I set my love upon you before you even breathed a word or had a single thought. Like a child, I took you when you were helpless. I bathed you, clothed you, cared for you, I nursed you into existence in every possible way. At any moment if I would have removed my sustaining care for you, you would have perished, but I loved you. I set my affections upon you. I breathed life into you and you were born. And I brought you forth by the word of my power, the same power that spun all the galaxies into existence. And you grew and became beautiful. I wanted a relationship with you. I care deeply for you and so I put up some rules to protect you from the sin that leads to death. But you rebelled against me, you flaunted my rules. And even though you hurt me so badly, I pursued you. And yet you bucked and resisted and you ignored my commands. And I pursued you. And I asked you trust me and you sinned against me and I pursued you. The reason I was so concerned and the reason I asked you to not do all those things is because the wages of sin is death. And I didn’t want you to die. But you had the sentence of death upon you. And so I sent my son, my one and only son, to the earth to take on flesh. And I sent him to the cross. And I put your robes of sin on him, and his robes of righteousness on you. And I poured out my wrath upon my son, that was reserved for you. And I did that to spare you so that you could live. And I’ve made a way so that you can live eternally with me in heaven. And I have gone to prepare a place for you that where I am you may also be And I cannot wait for you to see me for when you do you shall be like me. and all those trials that seem so hard and difficult, don’t worry because I will wipe away every tear from your face and there will be no more morning only laughing and dancing.
All that is true. Given all of that, do you think that a few small and momentary afflictions, a few trials, a few rules you don’t understand are evidence that God is not good?
Do not be deceived. God is Good. Do not be deceived. God is Powerful. Dl not be deceived. God has Saved you. So whatever is going on in your life, cling to these things. Run to them. If you are tempted to sin. If you are tempted to question God. Remember two things from James:
Sin is really bad - it leads to death. God is powerfully good. - He sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to die for you. - that leads to life.
DO NOT BE DECEIVED. No matter what it feels like, those two things are true.
Slideshow for this message is available
One form of video I really love is slow motion. And the reason it’s so cool is because it takes very ordinary things and slows down the motion so we can see what was previously unseeable. It breaks down lighting fast action so you can behold what’s really happening.
Take for example this video. This is a video at normal speed of some guys dropping some paintballs into a weedeater:
So not too dramatic. But a whole new world of understanding opens up to you when you slow things down:
Now the reason this is so helpful is because it allows us see something that was hidden by speed. It was there, it happened right before our eyes but the speed made it invisible to us.
Without slow motion, all we can see is the result. The key moments of impact are nothing but a blur. But if we slow the motion down, the miracle of sight is restored. Our brains can process. And we can see with a dimension of understanding that would otherwise never be possible.
Today we are going to be talking about the subject of temptation. And this is one of the areas where we need theological slow motion. Our experience of temptation is that it hits us out of nowhere. Everything is a blur. Out of the blue, all of the sudden there’s a temptation to burst out in an anger, a temptation to act on a lustful thought, a temptation to indulge in a covetous desire, a temptation to question God, a temptation to worry, a temptation to feed jealousy or bitterness. And that comes upon us so quickly, so suddenly. What just happened? It’s like trying to analyze a lighting strike.
Speed creates confusion because we don’t have time to process. And you can see this confusion in the body language of someone who is experiencing regret and remorse. The head goes into the hands and the hair goes back, and they say to themselves, "I don’t know what I was thinking." Why? It all just happened so fast. I didn’t even notice. I wasn’t aware anything was even happening till it was over.
Well listen. That’s why we have God’s Word. We are so blessed by James today because what he’s going to do is film your run of the mill average temptation. All he’s going to do is just film it for us at 4k, 10,000fps and then he’s going to play it back and we are going to watch. And I think you will be amazed. You are going to see things about temptation you’ve never seen. You are going to observe how simple it is. What appeared, fast, complex, confusing, disorienting will now in fact be slow, simple, obvious and clear.
What this slow motion insight into temptation is going to do is arm us with knowledge so we will not be deceived in times of temptation and it’s also going to give us gospel defenses against it.
Now as we read the text, keep in mind the context of trials. Did you know that all trials come with an associated temptation.
Financial difficulty can tempt us to question God’s providence in our lives. The death of a loved one can tempt us to question God’s love for us. The suffering of the righteous poor and the ease of the wicked rich can tempt us to question God’s justice.
How do we deal with not just these temptation but any temptation?
Let’s read the text:
Now we are going to closely observe this passage together and what we are going to see is that there is a pattern to temptation. Temptation follows a stupidly predictable pattern; however, it isn’t very obvious when it hits us at full speed. We experience it all too quickly. But James slows it down. He gives us a frame by frame. And this applies to any temptation of any variety because all temptation follows the exact same pattern. It always happens this way.
So here’s the first frame:
All temptation begins with some sort of invitation. There’s an initial attraction toward something. But there’s a warning bell associated with the attraction.
We sense this discrepancy between what we want to do and what we ought to do. There’s this tension between desire and conscience. The promise of happiness before our eyes is in conflict with the promise of happiness in God’s law. It’s like an itch we aren’t allowed to scratch.
So all temptation begins with an invitation to sin, an enticement to do something evil. Now importantly, James informs us that - JUST TO BE CLEAR - God’s not sending us this invitation. God’s not the one who’s tempting.
And his argument is that tempting someone to evil, is, in and of itself, evil, and so therefore, whatever temptation you are experience isn’t from God. God’s not capable of evil.
Now if your a student of the Bible and you hate unresolved tension, then what we just said isn’t sufficient. Because you say to yourself, “Okay, that’s perfectly logical. And if that’s all the Bible said about it, I’d be totally fine. But the Bible says other things that make this confusing. For example, if God doesn’t tempt anyone, and if tempting someone is evil, why does Jesus ask us to pray in the Lord’s prayer” Lead us not into temptation? Wouldn’t that be like praying, "God, I pray that you never lie to me." I mean, sure you can pray that, but why would you? He’s never going to. You may as well pray God please keep gravity on tonight.
So it would be logical to imply from the Lord’s prayer that God may in fact be capable of tempting; that’s why we are asking that he doesn’t. Taking it further, doesn’t it say in some places that God did tempt some people? Like for example, in Hebrews 11:17
Hebrews 11
Some translations here actually translated it tempted. Why? Because the word that is translated here “tested” is the same exact Greek word used in our passage in James 1 that is translated “tempted”.
The reason it’s the same word is because in Greek there is no word for tempted. The same Greek word can be translated tempted or tested. And you say to yourself, that’s a dumb language. Why not? And the reason is because the language comes out of a worldview which views trials and temptations differently then our western mind.
Let me explain. The Greek word is just the word peirazmo which again can be translated either tested or tempted. And the way you know which it is has to do with the context and the perspective from which you view it.
If we are viewing from the perspective of Satan and his HATRED of us then a difficult circumstance is viewed as a TEMPTATION because it is present to you with the intent to DESTROY. He’s trying to get you to FAIL. And he REJOICES in that failure.
But if we are viewing that same circumstances from the perspective of God and his love for us, it’s a not a temptation; it’s a TEST. And it is served up by God with the intent not to destroy but to REFINE. He’s trying not to get you to fail but to OVERCOME. And if you do fail he does not rejoice, he WEEPS.
Same word. Two different perspectives with two different motives on the same event. Satan hates so he tries to tempt and destroy. God loves so he tests and refines.
Put it in non-spiritual terms for a moment. Imagine going on a weight loss diet and then driving by a donut shop. Is that a test or a temptation? It depends? If you fail then it was a temptation. The consequences of that failure get added to your body. If you succeed then it was a test, your will was refined, your on a more stable heading, and you are stronger.
So temptation begins with this invitation. And specifically it begins with an invitation to question God’s claims.
There’s no better place to illustrate this then the temptation of Satan to Eve. You remember, Adam and Eve are in the garden. God graciously, freely provides for all their needs. And he tells them you can eat from any tree of the garden. But there’s one tree in the middle I would ask you not to eat of because in the day you eat of it, you will surely die.
Now the serpent comes and he tempts them. And the temptation is to question God’s claims.
Did God really say you couldn’t eat from any fruit of the garden? No, he said we could eat from any fruit just not this fruit in the middle? Why not? Ever thought about that? Are you sure God has your interest in mind? Yeah, I’m pretty sure. He said, if we ate of it we’d die. Look at this fruit. Doesn’t it look good? Why would he ask you not not eat something good? He must be hiding something from you. That’s the reason. Now look again? Are you still sure? Look how much it resembles other delicious fruit you’ve eaten. If you eat it, you will be like him. The real reason, the reason He’s not telling you, is He doesn’t want competition. Now, look again. Are you sure?
That’s the invitation. It’s causing us to question God’s plan for our happiness. That’s very important. All temptation is an invitation to question God’s plan for the good life. That’s the first frame in this slow motion replay. Here’s the second frame.
Now notice in verse 16 we have the phrase,
This is the closing summary statement of the entire section. Don’t be deceived. Temptation is all about deception. That’s why it works.
Notice that temptation is described in verse 14 as being lured (that is a fishing term). The whole goal of fishing is to trick the fish. Fisherman are deceivers. You’ll never find an honest fisherman. The whole lot of em are a bunch of unethical scoundrels.
Temptation is being lured, temptation is being enticed by the bait. We can’t see the hook. That’s deception.
Without DECEPTION, the INVITATION would be declined every time. There’s just no chance. Satan doesn’t fish with bare hooks.
Take it out of the spiritual realm. How successful would a lottery invitation be without the DECEPTION. What if every lottery ticket came with a mandatory disclosure illustrating the odds.
Before we allow you to make this horrible purchasing decision we are required to help you visualize the odds. And then they show you this picture.
In a typical railroad track there are 3000 railroad ties per mile. If each ties represents a ticket. You’d need a track to circle the earth four times to represent all the combinations. The fastest train in the world which travels 375mph would take ten 24 hour days to finish that track. One railroad tie wins. Okay, still want to purchase a ticket?
That’s fishing with bare hooks. That business goes bankrupt instantly. You have to hide the hook. You have to hide the truth to make it work? You don’t show the millions of people losing you show the one person winning.
And in the spiritual realm it’s no different. How successful would Satan have been if he said to Eve, "Hey, I know this looks really delicious. And it will open your eyes to some things but:
if you eat this, your beautiful perfect body is going to wilt and rot and sag you will be miserable and live with regret the rest of your life, you will have diabolical pain when you have a child and the entire human race will be plunged into utter ruin.
Sound like a plan?
So in order to make it attractive you have to hide the truth and make what is ACTUALLY horrible look TRULY beautiful. And Satan is a master at that. We are told in the Scriptures that Satan himself, the most horrible and ugly and hateful of all human beings is disguised as an angel of light. That’s a pretty good disguise. That’s like tricking you that a cow pie is in fact an in and out burger. You at least have to hand it to him that he’s good at his craft.
All sin operates on deception. Satan is like a master fly fisherman. He’s got 100,000 flies at his disposal hand tied for you. And what he’s trying to constantly do is trick you. He’s luring you with counterfeits. Satan knows his flies. He sees what’s hatching and what you might go for. He’s paying attention to your weakness. He’s paying attention to what you are biting on. He’s observing. He’s got your browser history, your phone history and he’s compiling all that and hand tying deceptions casting it right in front of you so innocently to lure you into sin.
Satan is a master deceiver. Don’t underestimate him.
Without the deception, it just doesn’t work. Without the DECEPTION the INVITATION would be declined 10 times out of 10.
And so one of the most fundamental ways in which the Christian fights temptation is to unravel the deception. The solution is to just expose the deception. The solution is to just look back to the truth. Expose the hook. I know that looks like a tasty chocolate chip cookie, but I don’t actually want a three inch treble hook through my cheek. So, no, that does not look attractive. You break the attraction by looking at the truth. You stare at the hook and shudder.
Imagine if the invitations to sin that we commonly experience were offered to us free of any deception.
I’m inviting you to experience some sexual sin for a few minutes. But full disclosure here, it will cost you.
It will totally destroy your marriage and shattering any trust your spouse might have. You create an impossible uphill battle for the rest of your life. You’ll live in constant regret, You’ll lose the respect of your kids and friends, You’ll ruin your sex life, and you’ll dehumanize and disrespect women?
Sound like a deal? Nobody would do that?
Or how about this one. Here’s another invitation. I’m inviting you to work really hard to gain a bunch of wealth. I promise it will feel really good to look at that big number at the end of your life.
Now in exchange for that you are going to have to miss a lot of key moments in your kids lives. And the ones you will be there for you’ll only be halfway present because your mind is going to wander off to the problems at work. When you try to be there you won’t have anything to say because your so uninvolved you have nothing to talk about. Your kids will probably resent you for that. Your marriage is really going to suffer because you are never going to have enough time for your wife and pretty soon she’s going to resent your job and money. And of course, you’ll be constantly frustrated because enough is never enough. You’ll always want more. Your also going to be miserable because as your estate grows it just consumes you. Your stuff all needs maintenance and management. Of course you will really start really worrying when the markets shift because you might loose everything you worked for so you’ll lose lots of sleep. And at the end of your life you will have wished you lived your life totally different.
Do you see why the slow motion is so helpful. It never feels this way. You don’t experience it this way. So slow it down. Remove the deception. Look at the barbed hook buried beneath that sin so attractively presented.
Now how do you do this? There’s one answer. Go to the Word of God. Do you realize that your mind is formed by the Word. This is why we preach. It’s not just information. This is not just a lecture. I am not a professor whose goal it is to give you data that you store in your brain. We sit beneath the word of God to have it shape and form our thinking.
Paul says in Romans 12:
Romans 12
There are two choices. You either conform to the world or you are transformed. Conforming to the world is the default. We either think like the world or we think like God. We have to be transformed to think like God and we do that by renewing the mind. Notice when the mind is transformed it can now discern. To sift and sort out the lies of Satan and the truth of God.
It’s the word of God that does it folks.
It’s the Word of God that is at work to open the eyes. It’s the Word of God that shapes the mind which then reaches the affections. The word has great impact. We are constantly engaged in a ministry of unraveling deception. A mature Christian is suspicious. He fears the craftiness of the devil. He fears the subtle tendencies of his own heart.
And so he flees, and runs and shelters in the Word of God.
Okay, we are going frame by frame. Invitation. Deception. Now if you don’t reveal the deception, if you don’t expose the lie, the next step is inevitable and unavoidable. The seed of deception will grow in the incubator of your mind.
Incubation of course refers to this silent growth that happens to fertilized eggs which are placed into warm, humid environments. The egg looks like any other egg. On the outside there’s really no perceptible difference. But on the inside there’s this transformation that is taking place.
There’s a theological version of that being referenced here in the text. When the seed of deception is planted in the mind, that seed idea begins to grow and multiply. At first there’s no perceptible difference. You just look at the dude on the outside and he’s a dude. But there’s a lie that’s incubating inside. And pretty soon an action is going to hatch out of it.
Notice the time element.
Deception always starts as a seed. A seed of an idea is planted in the mind. At first it’s just a whisper, a mere suggestion. It’s just food for thought. Your just rolling it around as a theoretical concept. I’m not committing to anything. I can always pull it back. But that whisper incubates. Then it’s entertained from a distance. Just observing. But it’s growing in attractiveness. Then it’s invited, Then it’s welcomed, Then it’s embraced. And then fully believed.
And when something is fully believed, it becomes loved. And when something is believed and loved that is when it conceives and gives birth to action.
This is why Jesus can say in the sermon on the mount that the only difference between a lustful thought and adultery is lies that have been incubated in the mind. The only difference between anger and murder is lies that have been incubated in the mind.
And it’s also why Robert Murray McCheyne can say: “I have discovered that the seed of every known sin is hidden in my heart.”
It’s merely a matter of how long the lie has been incubated in the mind.
What lie? We can get even more particular about the nature of this incubated deception. Let’s look at a key word at the end of verse 14 and the beginning of verse 15.
Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own DESIRE. Then that DESIRE conceives in verse 15.
The key word here is desire. Remember how we talked about in Greek you have one Greek word that can mean either temptation or trial depending on the context. Well, there’s another Greek word that’s just like this. It’s the word epithumia which can be translated either lust or desire. In fact let me illustrate this from verse 14.
For example, here’s a number of various translation of verse 14:
Some translations have desire and others have lust. Why? The Greek language doesn’t have a word for lust. Why? Because lust in their mind was just proper desire wrongly ordered, wrongly conceived. And that’s the Bible’s understanding as well. Good desires that become warped are lust. Good desires not submitted to God are lust.
If you have to sin to get what you want, desire has turned to lust. If you sin when you don’t get what you want, desire has turned to lust.
So the deception that was implanted in the previous step clearly has to do with that point where DESIRE TURNS TO LUST.
Do you realize that all sin is simply good desires allowed to grow such that they become disordered. So for example:
The good DESIRE for delicious food can become the sin of gluttony. And the way it transforms from healthy enjoyment to sin is by believing that I need to enjoy it in ways God forbids. The seed that is implanted is the belief that God’s commands to not overeat are actually limiting my joy instead of protecting it. Or let’s take another one. The desire to provide for ones family becomes the sin of greed. And the way it transforms from healthy productivity to sin is by believing that God’s command to prioritize your family over work and money is God limiting your joy not protecting it.
- The desire to have sex in marriage becomes the soul destroying sin of pornography and adultery. And the way it transforms from healthy sexual desire to sin is by believing that God’s command to have sex only in the context of marriage is God limiting your joy not protecting it.
Do you see how sin is nothing more than the photographic negative of good desire. It’s normal human desire not submitted to God.
And the more you are preoccupied with that desire, the larger and more powerful it becomes. The lie grows in its power and control over you.* The deception becomes large and increasingly weighty in your thinking.
Almost every time my kids are caught lying, failing to obey in someway, cheating, whatever sin they are caught doing I will say to them, "You can’t improve on God’s plan. You thought you were trying to get some joy that God was withholding from you. But God had a plan for you joy. And that plan can’t be improved upon. If you want maximum joy in life, you have to stay on that course. Don’t deviate a millimeter. Any deviation from that course is sucking the joy out of your otherwise beautiful life. You are choosing misery. It’s just a decision to rob yourself of joy.
So slow down the action down. What’s happening?
Invitation. Deception. Incubation. Well we’ve alluded to it already, but here’s the fourth frame in our slow motion frame by frame - conception.
When that improper desire incubates long enough it will lead to ACTION. It gives birth to sin. Sin is CONCEIVED.
Conceived sin is obvious. It comes out in our behavior. But in many ways, it’s way too late. The body is just acting out the transformation that has taken place in the mind. The mind is hatching an action.
The conception of sinful action merely reveals what took place long ago. There’s a phrase that says, “When a man falls into adultery, he doesn’t fall very far.” Which is to say, that there’s been weeks and months and years of incubating wrong beliefs and lustful desires."
And to illustrate what I mean by this, instead of an egg, let’s imagine a grenade.
Believing a lie about where happiness is to be found is like pulling a pin on grenade. At first nothing looks any different. What’s the big deal in toying around with this idea. Sure I have a thought life that is harboring bitterness, or harboring jealousy or harboring worry or harboring impure thoughts or lusting after money but what’s the big deal? Look at me. I’m normal. Everything basically looks and feels the same. But there’s a timer ticking. That grenade is going to explode. It’s just a matter of time.
And when it does you won’t even know what it hits you. So many men, young and old have come to me over the years with lives ripped apart by pornography and sexual sin. And every one of them has the same story. I was doing so good. Sure I struggled in the past but I felt pretty good. I felt like everything was going great. And then bam out of nowhere… what? A grenade exploded?
Of course. You never exposed the lie. The affection was never broken. The lies are all still being entertained. The music you listen to the movies you watch, the shallow repentance, all of that is just planting seeds that incubate. There’s no loathing for that sin. It’s a pin on a grenade. The lie needs to be broken such that it looses it’s attractiveness.
When we are not tempted, sinfulness is dormant. But lies believed are still incubating. Sometimes sinfulness is aroused but it has no opportunity. But when opportunity meets desire. Sin is conceived.
When lies are ingested and when the mind incubates them and when it conceives and gives birth to sin. When sin is practiced, then we get to the final step. Destruction. Death. Sin always leads to death.
Desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.
This is the pattern of temptation folks. Always. Always. You want to know where sin leads. Walk to a graveyard. Look in a casket. DEATH.
Romans 5
We talked about earlier that the best way to break the attraction of sin is to expose the hook. You have to see how ugly it is. You have to see the horror of it. Is lust worth it? Is anxiety worth it? Is greed worth it?
Do you want to die? Do you want to shrivel up? Do you want your soul to become a corpse? It’s not worth it. All sin leads to death.
Romans 6-7
Look at someone whose under the bondage of heroine or meth. You see the body decaying, you see all the normal joy sucked out of their soul. Do they look happy? They are slaves. They are chained. They have no freedom. When they heard the warning, “Don’t do drugs” they thought that was some big bad adult limiting their fun and freedom. I can handle it. But they became absolute slaves and their joy was robbed. And eventually it results in an overdose and death.
There’s a spiritual version of this as well. That’s why we are so careful. We need to be so, so afraid. Now I know I’m not that old, but I’m old enough to form an opinion on this as I listen to people talk. There is, in my opinion, an unbelievable naivity as it regards to indwelling sin. A willful stupidity. I just look at the lifestyles of so many people who are struggling - the movies they watch, the music they ingest, the humor they laugh at - they are dancing with grenades. Young men hanging around women who are inappropriately dressed.
Temptation almost always comes through the senses, mainly the eyes and the ears. So guard them.
It’s been my experience that when we try to get really serious about sin, even in the Christian culture, we get pushback. Why are you so uptight. Don’t be legalistic. And when you bring it up, the attitude is, "Listen, I’m good. It’s all going to be okay. I think, no it won’t.
" Listen, the narrow way isn’t a way that is discovered by chance. Holiness is not accidental.
Spiritually speaking sin equals death which equals no joy. I want more for my sons and daughter. I want more for you. Please, recreate in your heart a GREAT FEAR OF SIN. Satan is a master fisherman. No fish that was ever caught thought he was biting on a hook. He was deceived. And if you think you are immune to Satan’s deceptions, let me just say it frankly, you are a fool. Flee to Christ. You want to know what qualities a 28" trophy trout must possess? Suspicion and fear. So be afraid.
But that’s not all. Create in your heart a GREAT HUNGER FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS which is the path of joy. Look at the alternative 9 verses later.
Feast on the free gift. The free gift of God is life. This week was all about the fear. Next week will be all about the hunger for righteousness.
Because as we are going to see next week, you can be protected against temptation yes by being convinced of the DANGER of SIN but even more powerful is being convinced of the unchanging goodness of God.
Which is why James is going to go on the say, DO NOT BE DECEIVEED every good perfect gift is from above. What is the deception? The deception is God’s not good.
In the garden it’s not his word that is being called into question. Ultimately it’s his character. God’s not good. That’s why he’s withholding. That’s why this trial is upon you. That’s why you are suffering. If we want to be holy, if we want to be free of the death-clutches of sin, ultimately we have to be absolutely convinced all of the time, that God is good.
And how do we know that? Because he gave his son for us. That’s all next week. You only got half the equation this week so please come back. Let’s pray.
Slideshow for this message is available
Introduction James 1
Well we are in our study of James where all through the book we are given true evidences of saving faith. Remember the book was written by James, the brother of Jesus who we are told in the gospels didn’t believe in Jesus during his earthly ministry; and somehow he went from believing his brother was a raving lunatic who had completely lost his mind to worshiping Him and writing a book of the Bible that sounds exactly like Him and dying a martyr’s death for Him. So what actually changed Him? And the answer, we discovered, was the resurrection. He was given true saving faith, and wham, the light bulb turned on.
That’s pretty remarkable. Given James’ start, he is one of the most unlikely people to author a book of the NT. As you reflect on this, perhaps you are thinking to yourself, “I wonder what that would have been like to have been James? I wonder what it would have been like to live in the presence of Jesus, to grow up with Jesus, to do dishes along side of him, to behold someone so obviously from God, to behold a truth so clear and unquestionable, and yet not see it? How did James just gloss over the divinity of his brother? I mean wouldn’t that have been kind of obvious?” But the more you read the Scriptures the more you begin to see that this is the nature of spiritual blindness. Spiritual blindness is complete. Blind means blind.
Today we are going to be presented with a truth that I am guessing many in the room have glossed over and it’s a truth that is BLINDLINLY obvious in the Scriptures. There’s something here in the text today that is crystal clear, blisteringly evident and laser direct; and yet, I’m guessing so few have actually SEEN this. And the reason we don’t see is because there’s implications.
We don’t want this truth to land because it’s a threat to our comfort. We turn a blind eye to it. It’s a threat to us being in control. It’s invasive. It’s a truth that messes with our life and the way we want it.
So it’s my job today to just say that obvious thing and put it before us and let the Spirit of God do his work.
So I want you to prepare for being a bit unsettled - to realize there are some ways in which we are EXACTLY like James was. Prepare to get a little freaked out when you look in the mirror, but then prepare yourself to change. Don’t look in the mirror and see that terrible spectacle and then walk away. Do something about it. And pay attention to what that thing is your supposed to do because it probably isn’t what you think.
Let me introduce our topic this way:
In 1776 Adam Smith wrote the book, Wealth of Nations which is all about how a nation builds wealth. He talks about the division of labor, the origin and use of money, wages and it’s relationship to labor, etc. It was really the first book on macro economics. And America took that book and applied it with industry. This was the text book for our founding fathers as they tried to build our country. All the principals were implemented and as a result America has become a country with incredible financial wealth. America has 31% of the world’s wealth followed by China with 18% then Japan 5.5% and then Germany with 3.8% and it goes down from there. That’s impressive and staggering.
So just pause for a second and consider to who I am talking. Who are we? I’m talking today to people who live in the best period of history in the wealthiest country of the world in one of the best states in union in one of the best cities in the state and in some of the best neighborhoods in the city. Period.
Ding. Ding. Ding. That’s the prize bell. We won. America won. Idaho won. But here’s the problem.
Now listen carefully. Here’s the problem. We are scoring touchdowns in the wrong inzone. We are draining 3s on the wrong end of the court. Here’s what I mean. I’m guessing most people in this room firmly believe that life is about what Jesus tells us it is not about. Building wealth is not the goal. Listen to Jesus’ words on the sermon on the mount.
Matthew 6
How many times have you looked at this passage and gone, “Yeah, I can totally see how that’s a good idea to lay up treasures in heaven, and then go about your whole life with the goal of storing up treasures on earth?” Just ask yourself, "What’s your goal? Is your goal to retire and live a financially independent life?" You literally have the wrong goal. Sure we all need money to live.
Money is not evil. The love of money is.
How do you tell the difference? It’s all a matter of what you are shooting for, what’s the thing that motivates you, where are you investing, where are you pouring in your assets, where are you sacrificing so that in the future you will have plenty?
Investment betrays our belief in where future happiness lies. Our investments are like treasure maps that lead to what we believe are the ingredients of happiness.
That’s why we store it up. Sacrifice some amount of joy now because I want to store it up for the future. And you want to know what Jesus says, and what James says, “to store up treasure on earth, and not store up treasure in heaven, well, that’s foolish. That’s literally stupid.” Because not only does it evidence a heart that does not love the Lord as we should, it’s investing in a stock that is 100% certain to fail and ignoring another stock that’s 100% certain to succeed.
I mean just imagine you have $10,000 dollars to invest in the markets in the year 1995. And I give you two stock options. You only have two options. Amazon.com and AOL. If you didn’t live through that era and don’t know what AOL is, there’s a reason. It used to be the biggest name in internet.
Given what you know now, I mean, you’d be either worth millions of dollars many times over or have almost nothing. I mean if you had that knowledge, who in their right mind would invest in AOL.
That’s literally the difference between investing in this world or investing in the kingdom because God has given us future knowledge of the returns. Literally. Of course we have to invest some in this world to survive, but just know, every single penny you invest here will burn. Every penny invested here is a waste, it’s a drain on heavens returns. We are going to die.
Remember the parable in Luke 12.
Luke 12
As C.T. Studd so succinctly and beautifully once said, “Only one life, will soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last.” That quote will last because it’s done for Christ. None of us know what kind of clothes he wore, what brand of horse and buggy he drove, what kind of house he lived in and we don’t care. “Only one life, will soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last.”
Now that was all introduction to our subject today which is wealth. How does God view it? And I say all that to make the point that perhaps we are a lot more like James’ pre-converted brother than we realize. Do you see how easy it is to see and yet not see. To be blind? Perhaps we are standing right before divine truth which is as obvious as the sun, it’s grown up in our house so to speak, we are so familiar with it, and we are looking right past it.
Look in the mirror? Do you, like so many who do not know God, firmly believe that life is about what Jesus plainly tells us it is not about?
James is giving us evidences of truth saving faith. One of the evidences of faith is a proper view of wealth. Let’s look at it.
This is a complete inversion of the world’s values. James was clearly taking notes during the sermon on the mount. James is showing us the countercultural nature of the kingdom of God. He’s inverting the world’s values. To be poor is actually to be rich and to be rich is actually to be poor.
Now, right from the start we need to make it clear. This isn’t to say that being rich in and of itself is bad. Neither is it correct to say that being poor is in and of itself good. James isn’t trying to make the poor rich and the rich poor. He’s not trying to level the field with some sort of Judeo-Christian Marxism.
There are plenty of people who are poor and love money. There are plenty of people who are poor and are free from the love of money. Likewise. There are also plenty of people who are rich and are free from the love of money. There are also plenty of people who are rich and love of money.
Financial status is not what he’s talking about. What he’s talking about is our view of poverty and riches. How do we THINK about them? Because there is certainly a unique struggle and temptation associated with being rich and there is a unique struggle and temptation associated with being poor. The Scriptures teach that both are struggles but the struggles are not equal. It’s more dangerous to be rich.
Here’s the twin dangers:
Both are temptations.
In BOTH poverty and wealth the temptation is to view our financial circumstances through the world’s value system. James’ main point today is this: Instead of thinking about our circumstances economy or socially - think theologically. If God has given you wealth, why? If God has chosen to allow you to suffer in poverty, why?
It takes the wisdom of heaven to do that but it’s freely available for the taking so why not ask?
Let’s pray right now. This isn’t an obligatory part of the service. Let’ pray right now for perspective.
So Two Troubles with Treasure. Let’s start with the first one. In poverty we are tempted to doubt God.
This section on wealth is in the context of trials. So both wealth and poverty are trials. How does God want us to think about the trial of Poverty? He wants us to exalt. Count it as joy! He wants us to realize that even though the world says you have a low position, in reality, you actually have the highest of all possible positions because of Jesus Christ. That’s what we should do.
We should look at our sufferings as identifying with the suffering of Jesus. Was Jesus wealthy? No. Don’t you want to know what it was like to be Jesus? Jesus was poor. So if you are poor, you understand more of what it was like to be Jesus than someone who is rich. And since you love Jesus so much, anything you can do to understand who he was is of incredible value to you.
That’s what we should do.
But the temptation is to doubt God.
Why? Because it’s hard. Financial stress is a trial. This is pretty hard for us to envision, because most of the poverty in our area is pretty mild. Most of our financial woes have to do with our deep suffering associated with slow internet. 1st world problems.
Remember, James isn’t dealing with a culture that had a middle class. Very few of us will ever know poverty in the true sense of the word. In a society without a middle class, poverty is a prison. Go to India where there is a true class structure and you will see it as obvious as the noonday sun. There’s no upward mobility. Every day is a grind. The rules are setup for you to lose. Your fate was sealed the day you were born.
Poverty is a deep trial that lasts a lifetime. And it’s hard not just because of the financial burden and the poverty lifestyle - that’s hard enough - there’s also a social aspect to it. Because the poor in every society that has ever existed, are truly just less valuable.
If you’re poor, your opinion matters less. You voice doesn’t have weight in society. You can’t influence change. You are easily taken advantage of. You are not treated equally. You are often despised.
And because all of this is painful, it amounts to a trial. What do you do in the face of trial?
James has something to say to this trial and really all trials. There are really two options. When you face trials of any kind (health, relationships, or in this financial), it’s like being in a train station with two trains departing in opposite directions. We call them trial trains, because they are thoughts that are logically connected together like train cars, linked together in sequence. Both these start out with the same six cars. Both trains start out this way:
One train of thought goes like this:
How do I resolve that? I doubt the claims. Either he does not possess the power I thought or he does not possess the love I thought or both.
That’s the TRAIN OF DOUBT.
But here’s the other train that’s departing the same station in the opposite direction:
God claims to be all-powerful. God claims to be perfectly loving. I am suffering. God’s power COULD remove. God’s love SHOULD remove it. He does not.
How do I resolve it? I doubt my reason. I know that he is all-powerful and perfectly loving, and those things are fixed and certain; the only variable that can change is my assumption that God’s love necessitates the removal of suffering.
I must be wrong in believing that love means removal of all pain. Therefore, any pain God allows is good for me.
And if that is true, that means that the suffering I am experiencing is for my good. Therefore, exalt. Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation. Rejoice. The suffering is terrible. I’m not a masochist. I rejoice not in the suffering itself but the maturity it is creating in me.
These are two trains - these are two opposite responses. These are the difference between Job and Job’s wife. They both lost everything. Their portfolio dissolved over night. They were both standing at the train station and they boarded opposite trains. She said, God’s not good. Curse God and die. Job said, "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Job can say that because he trusts that God is who he claims. That’s why James can say that the lowly brother should rejoice in his exaltation. Don’t look at your circumstances the way the world does.
When we are poor there’s all sorts of temptation to feel insignificant, to feel as if you are missing out on life, to feel sorry for yourself and to focus on your powerless because frankly, the world judges a person on the basis of money and status. James says: take pride in your exalted status in the spiritual realm as one seated in the heavenlies with Jesus Christ himself. Rejoice in those riches.
It’s a matter of thinking properly. It’s a matter of wisdom. And that wisdom is available for the asking.
So in poverty we are tempted to doubt God. But wealth has a much greater danger.
If the poor are tempted to think to little of themselves the rich are tempted to think too much of themselves. Why? Because the world holds them in high esteem. The world is feeding them that message over and over and over again.
To the poor God comes and says, “Even though the world tells you are poor, if you have me you are rich.”
To the rich God comes and says, “Even though the world tells you are rich, without me you are poor.”
[RETURN TO TEXT]
Notice from the text that the rich man is supposed to boast in his HUMILIATION.
What’s the humiliation? Well, the humiliation is that he’s going to lose it all. In other words, it’s kind of embarrassing to lose a lot of wealth, to make a massive public investment that fails. If you advertise to the world that you went all in on some penny stock or cryptocurrency, and your stock shot up but then everyone sees it and in a second it’s wilted. That’s embarrassing. Your investment in this life is like that. It’s a flower that’s guaranteed to fade.
In other words, if you don’t have Jesus, or even if you have Jesus but you’ve never really invested in his kingdom, (never gone on a missions trip, never really given any money that could be labeled a sacrifice, never really got involved in ministry) if all you’ve done is invested in this life, then what is that?
All your earthly glory is stuffed into a bag with a hole in it and it’s draining out far faster than you can put it in.
James says: take pride not in your money or in your social position. These things are doomed to fade forever. Rather, exalt in your humble status as a person who will soon loose all the world’s wealth. Say to yourself, I can’t wait to loose it all because that’s when I will finally gain Jesus.
So few people can have money and think this way. Why? Because it just doesn’t seem real. It seems like our answers to life’s problems can be solved with money. Even though we have been told that money can’t buy us happiness, it sure seems like it can. It can buy us a boat.
Money is powerful and because that’s what’s before your eyes, it’s so easy to just focus on what that money can do for you. What possible danger could there be to having lots of money?
Well there is a danger. And it’s really significant.
The nation of Israel is a great place to turn to learn this lesson. Because they experienced both poverty and riches.
When Israel was out wandering in the desert, they were poor. At least when they were poor, they suffered, and their temptation was to doubt. That’s the whole grumbling bit. They doubted God. But at least it was obvious they were absolutely dependent on God in every way. The bread they ate came from heaven. The water they drank sprang out of the earth. We are even told the clothes they wore, never wore out. I mean God’s presence was right there among them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Their poverty pressed them into the presence of God.
Now God told them, there was a promise land coming, where poverty would no longer be an issue. God was going to bless them, materially. And it would be a genuine blessing. They would acquire vineyards they didn’t plant. There’s cities they didn’t build. But that wealth was dangerous:
Deuteronomy 8
Listen to how Hosea says this. This is God’s voice speaking to Israel and he says this:
Hosea 13
Notice the connection in both passages between the heart being lifted up and forgetting God. When we have wealth, we tell ourselves, okay, now I matter. Now I have significance. Now, I am something. This is the work of my hands. This is my doing.
Those thoughts are spiritual death.
The most dangerous aspect of wealth is the perception of power. It makes you feel like you possess power that you really don’t. It makes you feel like a demi-god.
Because the more money you have, the more opportunity is available to you. You get what you want, when you want it the way you want it. And the more of it you have the more people will kind of bow down to you and do what you tell them to you. You see the shows you want, you fly to the places you want, you have the nicest cars, the most beautiful homes, you sleep where you want in the nicest vacation rentals. Money buys you power.
And then you come to God and expect him to treat you like everyone else does. You kind of expect the red carpet rolled out. Oh it’s so nice to have YOU here. Wow, what an honor. But God doesn’t do that. He just kind of looks at you over the top of his newspaper with disinterest and says, “How can I help you?” And you say, “Well, I’d like to get into heaven. What’s the price? How much does it cost?" And he looks at you and says, "no, no.” It doesn’t work like that. I don’t want your money. But I do want you to get rid of it. First, go sell all that you have and then come back to me and we can talk. It’s hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Saint Bernard put it this way: “To see a man humble under prosperity is the greatest rarity in the world.”
By contrast the poor are always humble. Off in the distance are these streets of gold and the poor are just streaming in off the highways and byways. And why are they streaming in? Because it’s easy for a poor person to say, "Jesus help me. You are my only hope." The suffering of the poor man shapes his soul for his need for Jesus, which then gets him Jesus, which ends up being the greatest treasure of all. The rich just walk away. Fine, if that’s how it’s going to be, I’ll just take a vacation with my bags of riches. I’ll go make my own paradise.
Jesus warned us:
Matthew 6
Here’s another way of looking at this passage. What’s the number one trial in life? What’s the trial above all trials? James is saying the greatest trial of all is prosperity. The greatest trouble is to have no trouble. The greatest heavenly danger is to have no earthy danger.
Why? Because earthly ease is fertile ground for sinful independence to cultivate. The greatest spiritual danger is when you begin to believe you don’t need God.
Here’s what’s so bad about prosperity. You are happy. You think you’ve entered the promise land. And it’s true for a moment you have.
But that happiness blinds you from seeing the gaping mouth of your mortality waiting to swallow you whole. But that happiness is fleeting. When you love money, you have hitched your heart to something that fades. And when it fades, you fade with it. Your soul fades. Your joy fades.
For example, if you hitch your happiness to your physical appearance, what happens when you lose it? Your happiness goes with it. If you hitch your happiness to your job and you lose your job then your happiness goes with it.
Laying up treasure in heaven means hitching your happiness to Jesus because you never lose him and when you die you just get more of what you’ve always wanted.
The message of the book of James is not, if you apply wisdom, you will become rich. That’s what the world is saying, “If you do this, you become rich.”
The message of the book of James is the opposite. It’s this: If you put Jesus as first place in your life, you will realize you are already rich. Because you have something that will actually make you happy, and can never be taken away from you. Application What do we do about this?
If you remember clear back up to the beginning of the sermon, I said, that this might be a little unsettling. The main question we are asking ourselves is this: have you made life about what Jesus says it’s not about. It’s not about laying up treasures on earth.
Now the encouragement was to not just walk away. The encouragement was to do something about it. And if you remember, I said, what you are supposed to do is probably not what you think. Here’s what I meant by that.
If you look in the mirror and see that you are storing up treasure on earth, then obviously the solution would be to stop doing that. The thing, I need to do is START storing up treasure in heaven. True enough.
But as we work our way through the book we are going to see over and over again that its not works that produce faith. It’s the faith that produce works. James saw the resurrected Lord and then he believed, then he worked, then his actions finally reflected belief in God.
If you have bad works, then you have bad faith.
If you love money, it’s because you don’t love God. If you have wrong beliefs, you have wrong actions. If the root is bad the fruit is bad. Where your treasure is there will your heart be also.
Don’t ignore the cause. If you look at your life and you realize you aren’t living for God then there’s a reason:
You actually just believe the wrong things therefore you love the wrong things therefore you do the wrong things.
That’s the Bible’s equation.
Let’s illustrate this by go back to the analogy that I gave you earlier. It’s 1995; I give you $10,000 and a choice to invest between AOL and Amazon.com. And you know what you know now about the success and failure of those companies. But I tell you, “Trust me, put it all in AOL.” You’d say, “No way.” No chance. Why? Because you know that amazon is the better choice. You firmly believe it. Your actions flow from belief.
And what I’m trying to illustrate is that if you are investing in the world, you are merely doing what you believe. You are merely operating out of where you faith lies. You can’t just start investing in something you don’t believe in. You can’t invest in a spiritual stock you believe will fail.
And so here’s the Bible’s formula for changing what you belief. It’s two things: Obey
Let’s start with obedience. How does obedience change belief. Well, obedience is one of the best ways to question if what you have told yourself is true? Is there really a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow you are chasing? Everyone else told me that when I get to the top of the ladder, there’s nothing up there. Maybe you should believe it. Start questioning your beliefs.
And again, one of the best ways to question your beliefs is start living as if you believed something different. Fake it till you make it. It’s a way of saying, ‘I believe, help my unbelief.’
God will honor obedience done with that heart. He will give you his joy; he will give you sneak peaks into the kingdom. He actually wants you to experience joy in obedience so that you can have assurance that you are on the right path.
Let me give you an example, imagine loving soda but being horribly allergic to sugar and every time you drink a coke, you felt terrible. And the Dr says, “You need to stop drinking Dr Pepper." You realize that it wasn’t a Dr who invented that stuff. And you hear that as, "You need to stop enjoying life. You need to stop having fun.” That command sounds like the cruelest thing in the world. But he says to you, "Just try it." And you finally listen, even though you don’t believe it and you start feeling so much better. You experience life without the thing that is killing you.
And in the same way, God says, “Don’t love the world or the things in the world.” “Don’t love money.” And you hear that as stop enjoying life. But all God wants you to do is to experience life without the thing that is killing you.
God wants you to experience the world as he intended it with the proper love of things in the right order.
So obey with your tiny belief and praying, “I believe, help my unbelief.” So do that. Obey. Receive But here’s the second part. Receive.
Great faith is built by focusing on the great gospel. Why? Because when the gospel touches down we say, “Jesus I want to give to you because you have given to me.” It’s not about what I must do; it’s about what you have done. Jesus you died for me and shower me with grace. That’s the gospel. God gives. I receive and overflow.
So if your not overflowing, what do you? Saturate yourself in the gospel till you start overflowing. If your cup isn’t overflowing with generosity then you aren’t sitting under the waterfall of grace.
Start sitting in that grace until it just flows out of you. A good test of whether you are sitting in grace is just ask yourself, “Do you give regularly?” A good place to start is 10%. That’s what Moses told the people to give to support the work of the ministry. The average Christian in America, the richest country on earth, gives 3%. Look at your budget and ask the question, "If my investments in heaven were to be measured by my bank account, how much am I storing up?" Do you give more when you can?
And it’s not just money. It’s time. Do you give your time away? Do you give your things away? Do you offer up your home? Do you have people over?
And the reason its such a good question is because it’s an indicator of where you are sitting. If generosity isn’t overflowing, you aren’t sitting under the waterfall of God’s grace.
You’ve dried up so you feel like you need to guard and protect your resources. You are in danger of not having enough. If someone asks you for a drink of water in the desert and there’s no water in sight and you’ve only got one cup left in your water bottle, you’d think twice. What about my needs? But if you are standing underneath a waterfall, "Absolutely, take all you can drink and more." If you aren’t feeling generous it’s because you aren’t sitting in the right place. Sit beneath the mercy of God. Let his grace shower upon you. Let his love just flow and flow and flow so that your heart is just overflowing. And it’s from that position that we become like him in every way.
READ YOUR BIBLE. PRAY. GET INVOLVED IN A SMALL GROUP. LISTEN TO SERMONS. READ BOOKS.
Let’s pray.
Slideshow for this message is available
Introduction Well we are in a new series on the book of James. And if you remember from last week it is James, the brother of the Lord, who is the author of this book. And he’s writing this book about a decade after the resurrection to a group of persecuted believers who are scattered over the Roman empire.
And we thought a lot about James’ unique perspective in penning the book. According to John 7, he did not believe the claims of Jesus during his earthly ministry and according to Mark 3 he wanted to pull him off the streets believing his older brother to be out of his mind.
So how do you go from actively opposing your brother and writing him off as a lunatic to writing a NT book of the Bible and then dying a Martyrs death because you are unwilling to deny the divinity of your brother? Well the answer is the resurrection. According to 1 Cor 15, Jesus personally appeared to James in a post resurrection appearance.
And that resurrection life-changing experience gave James a message. James says, I thought I knew saving faith but I didn’t. My faith was worthless. So I want to tell you about true saving faith. True faith is a faith that works. True faith will betray itself. It will leave behind traces. The evidence of true faith is a certain kind of working. Let me show you what that faith looks like.
Last week we looked at one of these evidences. He said, one of the evidences of true saving faith is that you will mature in trials. Trials are inevitable. The fact that trials come upon us is a universal reality. Nobody escapes. But what is not universal is the type of response. Some people wilt and die and some people grow and flourish. The heat of the trial merely reveals what kind of faith was already there. Was it a saving faith that flies to Jesus or was it some sort of counterfeit faith that falls away.
Now today we are going to continue on in verses 5-8. And it’s really important, as we begin, to see that our passage this week is a continuation of last week and NOT something new. Here was last week. James 1:2 begins, James 1
So what’s the subject? Trials. Now drop down to verse 12.
Now what is the subject of verse 12? Trials. So just observe that this entire thing is one block of thought Verses 1-12 is a unit that is speaking about trials and what to do when you experience them.
Why do we point this out? Maybe you felt last week that, man, that’s a tough message. I’d like to believe that all this difficulty is for my good but, if I’m honest, I’m struggling with that. Well James isn’t done with his instruction.
So let’s read verses 5-8 and carefully remember the context of trials as we do. And then we read…
So notice right away this is not talking about wisdom in general. This is not talking about prayer in general. It’s not talking about faith and doubt in general. He’s talking about praying for wisdom in the midst of trials.
In other words, James is identifying our greatest need in suffering.
Maybe you are suffering right now in some horrific way. And someone comes along and asks you, “What is your greatest need?”
If you were suffering from cancer, you’d probably identify your greatest need as healing from cancer. If you were suffering financially, you’d probably identify your greatest need as more money. If your suffering from relational strain, then you’d probably say your greatest need is to work that stuff out.
But as many have pointed out, there is sometimes a very great distance between what we perceive as our greatest need and what is actually our greatest need.
James is trying to retrain our thought patterns. He’s saying, listen: when we suffer, our greatest need is not to remove the painful circumstances.
Our greatest need is wisdom. Because it’s wisdom that allows us to face suffering properly. It’s wisdom that allows us to see the hand of God in it. It’s wisdom that says, “Why would I want to remove something from my life that God says is for my good?” It’s wisdom that allows us to learn quickly so that the trial can have its full effect.
Trials teach us something we can never learn in times of prosperity. Let me just give you an insight into the self-centered way our hearts work. In prosperity we say, I made a lot of good decisions to get me to this point of success. We give ourselves the credit. Good job, me. We are like Nebuchadnezzar. “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?” That’s essentially what we say when stuff goes our way.
But if you are suffering, what do we say, “I can’t believe God would allow this to happen to me? How could God be good and allow this?”
If it’s blessing we get the credit. If it’s trials, it’s God’s fault.
That’s the opposite of wisdom. That’s foolish thinking. Because the truth is God was just as present in the success as he was present in the trial. Isn’t that what Job WISELY confesses. The Lord gives and the Lord takes. Blessed be the name of the Lord. I guarantee you that confession of Job was an answer to Job’s prayer for wisdom to perceive his trial correctly.
What did Job learn in his trial? He learned the same thing we learned in our study of Colossians. Jesus + nothing = everything.
Now let’s key in on the specific promise. There is a promise here in the text. A promise from God. And what is that promise?
God promises that if you ask, he will help you to see your trial appropriately. He will give you WISDOM to perceive it the way God does. Notice, it does not say, "If anyone is in a trial and he asks God to remove it, God will answer that prayer." That’s not what it says. It says, if anyone lacks wisdom, in other words, if anyone is struggling to believe that this trial is for my good, is struggling to believe that God could possibly work all things out for my good - if that describes you - you need to say, "God give me your eyes. Give me your perspective. Help me believe what you say is true." God will answer THAT prayer. Do you hear how cool that is?
God PROMISES to give you that perspective!
Now let’s summarize what that perspective is. When the light bulb comes on, what is realized? When all of the sudden God’s wisdom touches down in your mind, what will you now see?
Here it is: Beautiful Purpose.
Wisdom is understanding that our suffering has beautiful purpose. Having a perspective change like that gives great power to endure trials because it changes trials from swords that are killing us to scalpels that are curing. Purpose in pain changes everything.
That’s why the message is entitled Power to Endure Trials because so much of the reason trials are so difficult is because we don’t have wisdom. We truly believe that the trial has no meaning. This pain is without purpose. We lack wisdom. The trial is like a mosquito that buzzes around us and annoys the heck out of us and it’s only purpose is to stick it’s little stinger in our soul and suck the joy from our life. If that’s what you think, then of course trials are going to be torturous and terrible. Of course you can’t have joy. Foolish thinkers experience trials as infinitely more painful than wise thinkers.
Why because wisdom looks to purpose and purpose makes almost any amount of pain bearable.
Paul Brand writes a tremendous book in this regard called the gift of pain. He’s a medical doctor and he was talking about this phenomena that giving a suffering patient purpose is one of the most effective pain killers known in the medical industry. With a great enough sense of purpose, almost any pain can be tolerated. And to illustrate this, he pointed to several examples in WWII where soldiers heroically rushed into battle saved lives but were severely injured to the point where legs were amputated. But these wounded soldiers so believed in the cause, and they were so happy to help their fellow soldiers, and they were so proud of their accomplishments, that they experienced virtually no pain even when limbs had to be amputated without antiseptic. They looked on their injuries with pride. It just illustrates our need for meaning when we suffer and illustrates how purpose can change our experience of suffering.
Can you imagine if you could look on your trials in that way? Maybe you don’t think that way. Well, pray for it. God promises to answer it.
God, help me to become excited to see what you do with this trial. What great thing will be birthed in me or in our church? What disease in my heart are you trying to cut out such that I will be healthier in the end. Do it, Lord. I bear this scar with pride. As terrible as this is, zap these painful cancer cells. Destroy these painful viruses that are killing me.
You see, that kind of perspective gives pain meaning. This is not pointless. This isn’t random. This is surgical precision from the hand of a loving father who never takes a wrong stroke. That’s the wisdom for which we need to pray.
Now to illustrate how transformational this kind of thinking can become, let’s contrast a secular thinker, a pagan thinker, and a Christian. Secular Thinker Let’s start with the secularist:
If you are a secular thinker, and again, that means that you have factored God out of the equation, then what is the purpose of trials?
Trials cannot have purpose because purpose implies design. Purpose implies intelligent intent. If I show you a saw, and say what’s the purpose of this? Because there is a designer you can answer the question. It’s purpose is to cut.
But if there is no designer, then there cannot be objective purpose. Trials, for the secular thinker, can be nothing more than just random acts of bad luck. Genetic disease, the hurricane in Florida, COVID, the financial collapse of markets, these are all just meaningless bummers, buzzing mosquitos, and something that we need to work hard to try to remove. These things are just drains on our happiness. Trials do nothing but rob us of the joy that we would otherwise experience. Trials cannot have meaning.
And so what we see from the secular thinker is this frantic, desperate, attempt to make the universe SUBMIT to our will. There’s this worship of technology because it’s our only HOPE in reversing the ills of society.
And all of us are just infected with that secular thinking. If I have a desire to have kids but can’t have kids, then I’ll get some Dr. to do artificial insemination. Or conversely, we don’t want to have any more kids so we will use birth control to manipulate the natural order to fit my will. Now I’m not making moral assessments of those decisions. I’m talking about a way of thinking. We are infected by it. It so rarely even enters our mind that maybe the natural order is the order God wants and he’s using that trial to shape us. Pagan Thinking. So that’s secular thinking. By contrast, ancient cultures that were theistic in their thinking, approached the natural world and trials in completely opposite way. Instead of trying to make the universe SUBMIT to our will. They instead they tried to SUBMIT their will to the objective reality of the universe.
If it doesn’t rain, that’s not random. There’s a reason. The reason is the god of rain is angry at us. If the cows aren’t multiplying it’s because the fertility god isn’t pleased. Instead of making everything about being safe, we just accept that the world is dangerous and that God ultimately controls who gets injured and who escapes and he has purposes in that.
The instant assumption is we are out of alignment with God in some way and this trial is alerting us to that fact. We need to get back into alignment with God.
Do you see the difference.
The secular thinker and the pagan thinker, locate the problem of suffering in two different places.
IS the problem that:
The world is broken and the purpose is for us to restore the broken world. (secularism)
Or is the problem that:
We are broken and the purpose is for the broken world to restore us? (paganism)
Christianity is both.
A Christian can’t lose. God is using us to undo the sin and brokenness in the world, but he’s also using the brokenness in the world to undo the sin in us.
And what that does is create deep security. It’s a win-win. If we eliminate brokenness from the world, then we experience the kingdom as God intended it unstained by sin and pain, but if we can’t eliminate the brokenness, no big deal because God is using the brokenness to refine his children. Do you see how awesome it is to be a Christian? Do you see how much peace is available to you?
This totally changes your perspective.
I don’t need to change the difficulty in the world so that I feel better. I feel better when I accept that any difficulty I can’t remove is not a failure but a grace to change me. Do you believe that? I don’t need to change my circumstances so that I can finally be happy. I can be happy knowing that all my circumstances I can’t change are God’s grace to change me. I don’t need to change my difficult marriage, difficult kids, difficult relationships so that I can finally experience peace. I can experience peace by knowing that no matter how difficult or easy my relationships are, it’s God’s instrument of grace on my life.
If trials have no purpose then the goal is obvious. Remove trials because they are barriers to joy. But if trials have purpose then the goal is obvious in an inverse manner. Embrace trials because they are the gates through which we must enter to experience the fullness of God.
Do you see how different this is? This is Christian thinking. This is wisdom. What makes suffering bearable is what you believe about God. What you believe about yourself. What you believe about trials.
Let’s return now to the passage: “If you don’t have that perspective. If you don’t have that wisdom, pray for it. God promises it to you. It’s a promise. It’s yours. Just pray for it.”
I tried to think of really smart, winsome, compelling, intelligent ways to make that point but I can’t because it’s just stupid simple. If you don’t feel that way, then pray. God promises to answer that prayer. Done.
So why not just do it right now. Let’s just pray. This prayer has been prayed by so many through the ages, so I thought we could pray the prayer from the book Valley of Vision which is a collection of Puritan prayers. And this particular prayer is the prayer from which the book is named.
Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly, Thou has brought me to the valley of vision, where I live in the depths but see thee in the heights; hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold Thy glory.
Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up, that to be low is to be high, that the broken heart is the healed heart, that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit, that the repenting soul is the victorious soul, that to have nothing is to possess all, that to bear the cross is to wear the crown, that to give is to receive, that the valley is the place of vision.
Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells, deepest wells, and the deeper the wells the brighter Thy stars shine;
Let me find Thy light in my darkness, Thy life in my death, Thy joy in my sorrow, Thy grace in my sin, Thy riches in my poverty Thy glory in my valley. How We Get It? What do we need in suffering. We need wisdom. We need valley vision. Now how do we get that vision. How do we get this vision that we need?
We are told to pray, but we are to pray in a specific kind of way.
Now remember how we said James is kind of like stepping on a rake. It just hits you between the eyes when you aren’t expecting it. This is one of those times for me.
I mean let’s just be real about the flow of thought here. When I read this, it feels heartless. God is saying, “If you are struggling with your faith, if you are struggling to believe that this trial is for your good then I want you to ask me for wisdom.” But then he says… “Oh, and by the way, don’t even bother asking if you doubt, because I don’t honor flaky faith; don’t expect to receive anything, you double minded wimp.” In other words, the only way you can ask for faith is with faith that you don’t have.
Dang. That’s kind of harsh. Does anybody else kind of feel that way? That’s not really what he’s saying, but if you don’t understand what he means it can kind of feel that way.
Here’s how to simplify what is being said. There are really two prayers here.
1st prayer: Grant me wisdom Answer: Trials are for your good. 2nd prayer: Increase my faith
Here’s what he’s warning against.
1st prayer: Grant me wisdom Answer: Trials are for your good. 2nd prayer: I don’t trust you.
Do you see the difference? When the answer comes back, when the wisdom comes down from heaven and says, “Trials are for you good.” One runs to God and one runs from God.
Here’s another way to understand the heart of the double-minded man who does not ask in FAITH.
According to James, the prayer is IN FAITH. What is the Bible’s definition of faith according to Hebrews 11?
Hebrews 11
Key in on that last part. The conviction of things NOT SEEN.
So faith, by definition, is praying for A COMPLETE TRUST in something you can’t verify with your eyes. So, your in a trial and you are praying, “Lord, give me wisdom to understand how this trial can be used for good even though I can’t see it.”
The double minded man who is unstable being tossed like a wave in the ocean is someone who does not pray IN FAITH. That means that the only answer he will accept is a SIGHT answer. The only answer he will accept is something he can see and understand.
If you pray to God with that sort of demand, if you want an answer that makes sense to you. THAT MAN, should not expect to receive ANYTHING from the Lord. Because what he wants is his kingdom on his terms in his time and in his way. He doesn’t trust Jesus. He trusts himself. He’s after the wrong thing.
He’s double minded because he says, “I trust you God for an answer.” And then when the answer comes he says, “I don’t like that answer. I don’t trust you.” So your trust is contingent on your understanding which is not trust. That’s double-mindedness.
By contrast, the man who prays in FAITH is not asking for something to make sense. He’s asking for increased TRUST in a God to whom this trial makes sense. And that is enough. That’s the man, who should expect to receive something from the Lord. Do you see it? He would have thoughts like this:
Well you are an all-powerful God. I would expect that the God of the universe would probably understand things differently than I would. And well, you’ve definitely demonstrated your love to me. So it would be wrong of me to conclude that you have some bad motive in this. So even though it doesn’t go together in my mind, I believe.
Now I know of no better passage to illustrate this then Mark 9.
Now Mark 9 is so fascinating if you look at the way it unfolds. The entire chapter has to do with FAITH. It begins with the Mount of Transfiguration. Now at this point in the ministry of Jesus he’s talking a LOT about his death and this begins to shake the faith of his disciples. So they have this mountaintop experience. Jesus is transfigured before them and Moses and Elijah appears. It’s a bolstering of their faith.
Now Jesus comes down from the mountain and he finds this argument going on between the scribes and the crowds.
Mark 9
So they see Jesus and run to greet him.
And this father who has a demon possessed son steps forward and says,
So it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what they were arguing about. When you read this passage, what’s the main question you are asking yourself:
Why couldn’t they cast out the demon?
Of course. And I’m quite sure that is what they wondered too. I don’t why? But who cares, almost certainly this was the point of argument. And everyone had a different theory for why this was. And I can imagine them just bickering about it. They were using their interpretation of the events as ammunition with which to shoot at one another.
Jesus invades and says, “You FAITHLESS generation.” So presumably, everything that was going down, in JESUS’ eyes, was evidence of faithlessness.
Now he’s going to teach a lesson about FAITH. Now look what Jesus does.
So the father begs Jesus, if he can, to do something. Now look at Jesus’ response:
You can hear Jesus’ tone. IF!? If I can help you? Are you kidding? I am the God of the universe. If I can help you? Of course I can help you.
But just so you know there’s a prerequisite before that help can be received. FAITH. Anything is possible if you have FAITH.
Now zoom back out for a moment. We are in James not Mark 9. So why are we here? Because if we pay close attention this parallels very closely the apparent contradiction that is going on back in James. James says, if you lack wisdom (which is another way of saying if you lack FAITH that God is in control of your difficult circumstances), you need to ask God. But don’t bother asking if you don’t have faith because your a double minded wimp and you won’t get anything from God.
I need to ask for Faith with the Faith that I don’t have. Same problem.
Let’s examine this father’s faith. How strong is it? Well, in one sense, he certainly has some faith. The fact he is coming to Jesus is evidence of some faith. But there’s also some evidence of doubt. He’s not sure he has the power to heal. Maybe he can heal all the way. Maybe he can only help a little bit. If you can do anything I’d be appreciative. He’s like a beggar on the street. ANYTHING helps. And the whole thing is under the banner of “if.” He’s not even sure IF he can help at all.
He has some faith but his faith is weak and yet Jesus says, “All things are possible to the one who has faith.” I need to ask for Faith with the Faith that I don’t have. It’s the same problem we see in James. So what do you do in situations like that? Well the man’s answer is so instructive.
That’s honest, pure and beautiful in the eyes of God. Because what is he saying? I don’t know where else to turn. I’ve surveyed all the options and even though I wish I had more confidence, I don’t but I turn to you because I’ve gone all in with you. I don’t have anything else. I don’t have backup options. You are it, Jesus.
It’s like in John 6 when Jesus spoke the hard words and the crowds vanished and he turned to his disciples and said, “Are you going to leave too?” And they said, "To who else are we going to turn? You have the words of eternal life." In other words, yeah, that’s hard. Yeah, I don’t like those words or really even understand them. But where else do we go? If it’s not you, it’s nothing. Jesus, we are all in. Lord, I believe, because I know your God. Help my unbelief, because what’s in front of me is really hard.
Listen, that’s our prayer. Communion And here’s where all this is heading. You might be in a trial today that is far harder than you could have ever dreamed. And you don’t know what to do with it emotionally. And you might want to trust Jesus but how? How can I trust him?
You want to know how? Jesus has given us something we can do that helps us cast ourself at his feet and receive grace. It’s called communion. It’s our great way of saying, “I believe, help my unbelief.”
And here’s why communion is God’s grace to us right now. Our souls are shaped by this. Let me show you how communion shapes our perspective of suffering.
Trials/suffering tend to make us question God’s love. God this hurts bad. Why would you allow it? I know your powerful which means you could remove it. But you don’t. And that decision to let me suffer causes me to doubt your love.
But when we turn to the communion table we are forced to reckon with the legitimacy of the claim that God does not love us. Really? Given what you know about God sending his Son into the world, is it fair to say that God does not LOVE us.
John 15
John 10
1 John 3
Romans 5
John 3
1 John 4
As you look at the cross, can you really say that your trial is sufficient evidence to conclude that God does not love you? You know what communion does. It helps us go from the prayer of Mark 9, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.” to a new prayer: “I believe, forgive my unbelief.” How could we ever doubt his love? If God could turn this great evil, the greatest evil in all of history into the greatest good, then God can take my lesser evil and redeem it as well.
And so communion strengthens our FAITH. I believe you Lord. I believe you love me because you demonstrated it at the highest cost to yourself. I cannot see how this is for my good, but I believe it is.
“Lord I believe, forgive my unbelief.”
Slideshow for this message is available Welcome and Thanks
Introduction
James 1 Well we have finished the book of Colossians and what a great book? The church is built up by reading, studying and singing about God as revealed to us in his Word. We are a Bible church which means we believe that the primary way in which growth happens is by reading and studying the Bible. Why? Because the Bible contains the mind of God. That’s powerful. You want to know how God thinks. It’s right here. So Colossians, what a wonderful book! Well today begins a new series. Now if you paid attention closely, you may have heard the elders mention that we were going to do a church distinctives series following our Colossians study. We still want to do that but are pushing that out to the Spring so we can further define what that series is going to contain. Since I’ve been on sabbatical it was hard to sync up with the elders on that series. So that’s all still coming. So from now until March 24th we will be studying the book of James. And I am very, very excited about this book. James is a book that hits you hard. You read it and its like stepping on a rake; it just wacks you between the eyes when you least expect it. It has 108 verses. And in those 108 verses there are 54 commands. That’s way more dense in terms of command language than other NT books. In fact, I can show this to you visually. In Greek there’s a command verb form called the imperative. And if you just count those commands per book here’s what it looks like.
James has the most commands by a pretty wide margin even though it’s a relatively short book. So we could say that James wins the award for bossiest book of the Bible. James wants you to do something.
Is there snobbery and prejudice among you? You have evil motives. Knock it off. Are you in love with the world? Your self-serving spirit is killing your soul. Repent. Are you angry? That is filthy and wicked. Put off that sin that prevents righteousness. Are you proud? God opposes you. Submit to him.
James has something to say and he says it without padding. He’s not afraid to draw LOGICAL conclusions: “Listen,” he says, "If faith is what produces works and your works are no good then the only logical conclusion is that your faith is no good. Conversely if you have faith in the most beautiful risen Savior, Jesus Christ that faith will make a radical difference. He looks at our behavior to evaluate the quality of our faith. And the behavior he looks at is not how much Bible reading you have or how much prayer time you have - as important as those things are. He looks at things way more practical. Do you love money? Do you treat others with contempt? What about your words? Do they build up or tear down? Are you an angry person? Talk about practical. Talk about convicting. This book better change us. We all better walk away changed people. It would be a severe tragedy if, at the end of our study there was not some radical, quantifiable differences in the way you live your life. I hope that at the end of this book people who think they are saved but are actually not saved get saved and we have 20-30-40 more baptisms in 4 months. I hope that the Holy Spirit convicts of prejudice, unkind words and drops us to our knees. I hope that in four months our faith is exercised and that the fruits of the Spirit come pouring out of this newly energized faith toward one to another. Don’t walk in the door, listen to the message agree that your lifestyle in inconsistent with what you claim to be true, and then leave and do NOTHING. There could be nothing more dangerous than that. James the Preacher Now listen, James the pastor can issue this warning to be not just hearers of the word but doers in a more unique way than perhaps any other person who has ever lived. I think we can substantiate that. Who is this James who is writing? In Jesus’ day they didn’t have last names. And James was a pretty common name. James is the Greek equivalent of Jacob which would have been a common name in Jewish circles. So when two people get named James, you have to distiguish by some sort of tag line. And we see this in the Bible.
James, the son of Alpheaus, or James the son of Zebudee.
There’s even a - get this - James the lesser (bummer for him).
But here we just have James. James who? It doesn’t say. Why? Well, because this is THE James, Jesus’ brother. This is James the Brother of Jesus who, we are told by church history, also happened to pastor the church in Jerusalem. That’s whose writing the book. Now we have several references to James in the NT. We have of course this entire book, but we have a few mentions of his name in the book of Acts where he plays a prominent role functioning as the chairperson in the Jerusalem council. He’s also mentioned in a few of the other epistles. But I think the most interesting mention of him is actually a few indirect references in the gospels. The first is in Mark 3. Do you remember this? Jesus was performing miracles, healing the man with the withered hand, casting out demons. And his family hears of this. And in Mark 3:21 we read. Mark 3
James is in on this. James is here. James wants to seize Jesus and lock him up in an institution because he fully is convinced that his brother has completely lost his mind. Jesus you are living in a fiction of your own imagination. Jesus, it’s one thing to claim God spoke to you. It’s another thing entirely to claim you are God. Asylums are filled with people like that. Now we can add to Mark 3 an explicit statement from John 7. Jesus was increasingly hated by the religious leaders and was deliberating about heading up to the feast of booths and his brothers kind of chide him to go up and the text gives us the reason for their remarks. John 7
What didn’t they believe? His claims! You remember our study of John. Over and over and over again, Jesus clearly claimed to be God and James said, “No way. Not believing that for a second. Stop the games right now. You are embarrassing our family. Your out of your mind.” That’s our portrait of James in the gospels. And now look at verse 1. That same James writes this.
Whoa. That’s a change of tune. What happened? That word LORD is significant. Listen, A Jew would be the last person to call a mere mortal, LORD. Christians wouldn’t call Caesar Lord. Why? Because the Word LORD is shot through with connotations of deity. Here you have James, a JEWISH, CHRISTIAN calling his brother LORD. And to show how deep that conviction was seated in his soul, church tradition tells us that James was seized by an angry mob who drug him up to the top of the temple mount and demanded that he take back the claim. And he said no, and they pushed him off. And he landed on the pavement below but he didn’t die and so they finished him off by stones and a club. So here’s the question. How do you go from wanting to lock up Jesus in a mental institution to leading a church in his name and being martryed because you are unwilling to deny his deity? What happened? Here’s the answer: the resurrection. James watched the whole thing. He saw the bloodied, beaten body of his brother on the cross. He saw the lacerations, the crown of thorns, the spear. No doubt, he saw it all. If ever a man was not just mostly dead, but fully dead, it was Jesus. And then 3 days later, he rises from a sealed, guarded tomb. And the Bible specifically says that James had special treatment in the post resurrection appearances of Jesus. 1 Corinthians 15
That will shake a man. It’s actually one of the apologetic arguments for the deity of Christ. Even his BROTHERS believed. Because, let’s be real. It’s hard to convince your younger brother you are God. If anybody’s going to see who you really are in all your ugly splendor, it’s your little brother.
You treat your little brother like dirt. Your little brother is the object of your indifference and heartlessness. Your little brother sees all of your ego and your pride.
I’m the oldest and I’ve got two younger brothers and let’s just put it this way, they aren’t wondering. But James saw Jesus and was changed. And now he’s writing a book of the Bible where he begins by calling his brother LORD. Now think about how that experience of going from unbelieving to believing shapes the content of the book he’s writing. Think about it. James, according to most NT scholars is one of if not the earliest book written. This is written like 10 years after Jesus ascended into heaven. Somewhere in the 40s. So you are James. You are writing 10 years after the fact. You’ve gone from wanting to institutionalize Jesus to worship him and ready to die for him. And you are writing to Christians that are being persecuted and are fleeing for their life. What messages is he furiously scribbling after the light bulb turns on for him? What fire is now lit inside his soul that is engulfing his spirit in a spiritual thermal runaway? Here’s the answer. James says, “I want to tell you what true saving faith looks like.” Because here’s what James experienced.
I thought I was saved. I thought I knew what saving faith was. I thought I knew what it meant to serve God.
I thought I was a devout person. I would have called myself a follower of God. I had a list of reasons why I thought I was child of YHWH.
But, and here’s the scary part, I wasn’t. I looked at God come in the flesh, for crying out loud I lived with him, and found a way to explain him away - all the while going to synagogue and doing my temple worship. If that sort of false assurance is possible, that ought to make you pause and second guess yourself. And James is saying, I want you to see what I see. I want you to change from what I once was to what I now am. I want to give you some tests to see if you have the real thing, or if you only think you have the real thing. And folks that is what we need as well. Maybe you are here today and you think you know Jesus but you don’t really know him.
Maybe you think your a Christian because your parents are Christians. Or maybe you think your saved because you have a high moral standard and you’ve served a lot of people in your life.
Maybe you know a lot about God but you haven’t been living for God. Maybe you like the intellectual pursuit of God but you don’t give, you don’t treat others generously, your selfish, your mouth is hurting people, your anxious, your angry, your impatient.
James would say, “Well maybe, you don’t have true faith.” The book is a call to look inward. It’s a call to see if you have true saving faith. Because, and here’s the KEY CONCETPT ALL THROUGH THE BOOK, FAITH WORKS. It’s the name of the series. You don’t work to get faith. Your true faith will naturally, automatically work. Church, this is what we need. We need to have our faith fanned into flame so that our genuine faith will produce what it cannot help but produce. Trials Now you want to know what his first test of true saving faith? What happens to you after a trial. And for James and his readers this is not theoretical. After Stephen was Martyred, a great persecution arose and the church was scattered all throughout Europe and the Mediterranean Basin. He says, “Listen, I know you are being persecuted. But you want to know what happens to true saving faith in trials? It matures. It always does. Trials are God’s pathway to maturity.” So he says, with that in mind, knowing that that will be the result:
James is pointing out a cause and effect. The cause is trials the effect is maturity. And this cause and effect relationship is at minimum two things: It gives you both:
Let’s think about both of those. Test of True Faith Here’s how it’s a test: Take lump of wax and a lump of clay. Apply a little bit of heat. Apply a ton of heat. You pick the temperature. One melts and the other hardens. Why such different reactions? Answer: Because they are different materials. If you increase or decrease the heat, the same things happens to each material, only to a different degree. The direction of the reaction is determined by the fundamental composition of the material. Take a person with true saving faith and a person who only thinks they have faith. Apply the heat of a trial. One matures, the other falls away. Sometimes we think, “Oh man, that person fell away because the trial was just too intense and they broke. That’s wrong thinking. That’s not what the Bible says” The problems was not the intensity of the heat. The problem was their lack of saving faith. They didn’t have true faith. In terms of fundamental composition they were made of the wrong stuff. Do you remember Jesus’ parable of the various soils? The Word of God is pictured in that parable as a seed that is sown and it’s the same Word but there are different responses based on the fundamental compositions of the soil. On the surface the soil looks the same. But you can test the quality and type of soil by adding heat. Get out the scorching sun. When the intense heat of the sun hits you, is your soil rocky and you wilt or is that intense heat the catalyst for intense growth because those roots have sunk themselves deep into Christ. Have trials grown you closer to God or distanced you from God? Trials are a test of what’s inside. It’s a test of what kind of faith you have. So ask yourself, “What kind of soil ?”am I Have trials matured me or soured me? True Faith in the Test That’s how trials are a test of true faith they also give us true faith in the test. Let me illustrate this by contrasting KNOWING and FEELING. This passage wants you to KNOW something. Trials mature you. And you probably KNOW this from your experience. If you can look back over the course of your life and say, "I can totally see how tests have grown my faith in God. I KNOW that. Therefore, I KNOW that this current trial will grow my faith as well. I can KNOW the outcome and purpose in advance. That’s what God wants you to KNOW. And the reason this is so important is because trials always FEEL so terrible. We have to be careful about letting how we FEEL change what we KNOW. Because if you are in the middle of a trial right now you might FEEL pretty discouraged. You might FEEL like a soldier of Christ made of chocolate and I’m just melting into a puddle. I FEEL so weak. That’s to be expected. Trials always shake you. You always FEEL like your faith is coming unglued. If you felt, confident, assured, stable, well then it wouldn’t be a trial. To be stripped of those is the very definition of a trial. Because notice from the text WHEN the maturity comes. It comes AFTER the trial. You have to let the trial have its full effect BEFORE you experience the maturity. So you can never test yourself by looking at your current trial and especially how you FEEL in that trial. You have to look to what you KNOW is true based on God’s revealed truth. James is saying, “Listen, if you are a child of God and you have saving faith and you are in one of the soul-asphyxiating trials, it might FEEL like garbage and you might be questioning everything, and you might be on the harry edge of failure at any minute, but you can sit back and relax. Of course it’s not fun. Of course it’s horribly difficult. Who likes getting burned by fire? Everyone FEELS like they are on the harry edge of apostasy in the midst of a trial. But guess what? You can KNOW that on the other side of that trial is maturity. KNOW it. It’s a 100% guaranteed outcome. Because that’s what the heat of trials do to saving faith. Always. It’s what saving faith does. It’s a factor of the composition of faith.” It’s like wind on the wing of an airplane. The faster it blows the more lift is created. Why? Because that’s what wings do. It’s how they are shaped. And the shape of true saving is faith is that faster the hurricane of trouble comes at you, the higher the believer is lifted into the heavens. It’s just how faith is shaped. It’s nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with God has put in you. It’s the nature of it. Where there is faith there will ALWAYS be progress. Always. It’s a promise of God. And I want you to just revel in that for a while. If you are a child of God, the outcome is certain. That’s why you can count it all joy. You don’t need to know how it will all work for it to benefit you. We always want to know why? We always want to know how? Just relax. If you go into open heart surgery, you don’t have to know all the whys and hows for it to benefit you. All that is required in order for it to benefit you is that you trust, that you submit to it. At some point the doctor is just going to interrupt all your questions and saying, “Listen, this is above your paygrade. Stop trying to figure it all out. Let me simplify this whole thing for you.”
You need the surgery. It’s going to hurt like the dickens. It’s for your good.
Let’s just listen to the great physician and get through this. Can you do that? That’s how we need to look at the trials that OUR great physician allows into our life. His scalpel is perfect, never cuts more than is necessary and his success rate is 100%. Trust him. Remember our study of John. John 15
At trial is nothing more than the severe blade of the pruning knife cutting off that which is preventing you from bearing MUCH fruit. Trials are Certain And this can be an encouragement to every one of us in the room. Because guess what, trials are certain, because unproductive branches are certain. Trials are inevitable because sin is inevitable. Notice the text does not say, IF you experience trials which would imply for a select group of lucky people, trials will not be a part of your experience. It says WHEN - which means that trials are inevitable for every single one of us. And notice that the trials are various which means that they will come at you in every shape and size.
Are you suffering financially? That’s a trial to mature you. Are you suffering in your marriage? That’s a trial to mature your faith. Are you physically sick? That’s a trial to mature you faith. Have you lost someone in your life that you love? Are your kids difficult? Are your relationships difficult? Is your church difficult? Is your work situation difficult?
Is your garbage disposal difficult?
These are all trials to mature your faith. Do you see how relevant the Bible is? Folks, the junk that is happening in your life right now is NOT random. Some of you are in it right now and it’s awful. If we were to pass a sheet of paper around the room and ask you to list the various trials you are experiences, and if we all had courage to answer honestly, the pain would be palpable. Your in it. For others it’s coming. It’s a wave that’s on the horizon. And that wave when it hits won’t be for a day or for a week, but a long season of months and years and maybe your entire life. But here’s the encouragement? It’s allowed by the hand of a loving God to mature you. And the way to get through it is to keep your eye on the goal and purpose of trials - TO KEEP YOUR EYE ON WHAT YOU KNOW. Or as James says it, CONSIDER. That word means you’re supposed to look at what the troubles can get you, what the troubles can bring you. There’s a benefit on the other side you have never experienced. You have to realize what great things can happen in your life through suffering. You have to get a bigger picture. You have to CONSIDER that suffering can bring into your life other things that are not currently there. You’re incomplete now. Think of it this way: what if you went to your family doctor and you said, “Man, I’m really not feeling well.” And he did some bloodwork and an MRI and said, “Well the reason you are not feeling well is obvious. I’ve never seen anyone so bad. I can’t believe you are even functioning right now. You said you’ve felt like this your entire life? Wow. This is totally cureable with a surgery but you’ll be out for about a week. But I promise you, you’ll probably feel 50x better than you do now.” You’d probably jump on that surgery. Really? I’ve only known life with this sickness. 50x better than I feel now. Let’s do this! Do you not realize Christian, that every trial God allows in your life is not random acts of bad luck. It’s God’s precise stroke to cut out the immaturity in your soul - NO MATTER THE CAUSE. Natural cause, others caused, self caused. ALL THINGS work together for Good. Every trial is designed by God to make you stronger and healthier. Do you not realize that God is trying to make you 50x more happy, 50x more thankful, 50x more content, 50x more satisfied in the only thing that can satisfy and that is him! Do you not see it! Welcome it. Embrace it. Or in the words of James, count it all joy! Trials are part of Growth in every area of life. You see trials are the means by which this maturing happens. And, it really shouldn’t surprise us that this is one of the methods God uses to mature us. Take it out of the spiritual realm just for a minute. Let’s say you are training for a race. Physically. Or let’s say we are studying for a test. How do we learn? We learn by failing. We learn by thinking we are right and then discovering we are wrong. We learn by thinking we can do it and then realizing we can’t. That’s the process of growth in almost every area of life. So why would we think that the path to spiritual maturity is something entirely different than the path to maturity in every other area of life? In the end it’s not an intellectual objection. It’s an emotional objection. We agree that for other people, those trials have really helped them. And we even hear the testimony of the person who has endured trials and he says something like, “As hard as it has been, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.” And yet when the trial comes upon us, we cry out, “God why are you allowing this horrible thing to come upon me?” You know the answer. Because he loves you. He doesn’t want you to stay in baby faith mode. God says, “I am maturing your faith.” We need to have the goal in mind. God loves you. God is the author of life, not the taker of life. He only takes so that he can give. God leads us into life. So let’s all, right now, just stop believing the lie that we can get maturity without trials. Let’s just accept them. I want to read you an extended quote from A.W. Tozer. The fallow field is smug, contented, protected from the shock of the plow and the agitation of the harrow… Had it intelligence, it might take a lot of satisfaction in its reputation: it has stability; nature has adopted it; it can be counted upon to remain always the same…Safe and undisturbed, it sprawls lazily in the sunshine, the picture of sleepy contentment. But it is paying a terrible price for its tranquility; never does it feel the motions of mounting life, nor see the wonders of bursting seed, nor the beauty of ripening grain. Fruit it can never know, because it is afraid of the plow and the harrow. In direct opposite to this, the cultivated field has yielded itself to the adventure of living. The protecting fence has opened to admit the plow, and the plow has come as plows always come, practical, cruel, business-like and in a hurry. Peace has been shattered by the shouting farmer and the rattle of machinery. The field has felt the travail of change; it has been upset, turned over, bruised and broken. But its rewards come hard upon its labors. The seed shoots up into the daylight its miracle of life, curious, exploring the new world above it. All over the field, the hand of God is at work in the age-old and ever renewed service of creation. New things are born, to grow, mature, and consumate the grand prophecy latent in the seed when it entered the ground. Nature’s wonders follow the plow. Don’t you want that? Embrace the plow of trials. It’s not fun. But look forward to the growth that always follows close behind. Look Long You know the only way this is going to work is if you look long. You have to have your expectations in line with God’s timeline which might be a lot longer than yours. The plow of trials is brutal. It’s unfair. It’s unpredictable and often completely life-altaring and often never to return to normal - whatever that means. We are such a bunch of cry babies. When something doesn’t go our way, we complain about how unfair it is, we whine, we our so devastated. Why is that? One of the main reasons is that we’re swimming in a secular society. No matter how Christian you are, you are swimming in it and you are part of it and you are infected by it. And what this passage wants us to do is start thinking like Christians. Do you know what secular means. The word secular comes from the Latin word saeculum, which means now. If you don’t have eternity to look forward to, then what’s the only thing left? The NOW. That’s it. So if happiness is ever going to be experienced, you better experience it now. So…
If you get a terminal disease here on earth If anything goes wrong with your close relationships if anything goes wrong with your 401k
You’re out! You lost. Go to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. There is no other. There’s nothing else. You’re ruined! You’re destroyed! The Christian faith is so opposite of this. If you experience love here, that’s great, but it’s nothing compared to what’s coming and if you have to suffer a little bit along the way and people snub you and people treat you unfairly, no big deal because perfect love is on the way. If you suffer financially, if you loose that job opportunity and someone else got the job instead of you, you just shrug it off. I’m not living for these temporal riches. I’m living for the riches that last forever. Listen to Paul: So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. Okay, a trial has touched down in our life. Big deal. It amounts to the heat breaking in your hotel room. We are here today, gone tomorrow and we will soon be home. For a Christian this life is a small part of what we have. For a secular thinker, it’s all they have. That’s a pretty crazy difference. And if through this sermon you realize, I don’t think like that. I don’t have this sort of saving faith. Listen, it’s available to you right now. All you have to do is believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. And if you want to know more about what that means, there will be a team of people up here after the service who would love to help explain that to you and pray with you. Truths in Trials Now I want to leave us all with something I read from Andrew Murray. Andrew Murray was a great man of prayer and he had four things that he would remind himself of in trials and really this is just a summary of everything James is saying:
The Gospel Saves Us into True Friendships Colossians 4:7-18
Introduction Good morning, Church! My name is Trent Houck, and I am one of the Pastors here at FCBC. We are closing out our series on the book of Colossians with this 18th sermon on the book. Over the past weeks, we have heard the Gospel preached through: Steve Walker, Ryan Patterson, Billy Mogensen, Dave Gibson, David O'Hara, Javier Sepulveda/Ben Tyson, Josiah Gerbitz, and Benj Foreman. We have been meditating on the truth of God's word that:
1.Jesus is enough (Col. 1:1-8) 2.Jesus is the one we run to in prayer (Col. 1:9-14) 3.Jesus is enough because he is preeminent (Col. 1:15-20) 4.Jesus' sufficiency saves us from our insufficiency (Col. 1:21-23) 5.Jesus' presence in us is the hope of glory! (Col. 1:24-29) 6.Jesus is our treasure of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:1-5) 7.We receive Christ, and walk in him (Col. 2:6-7) 8.Jesus is captivating (Col. 2:8-15) 9.Jesus is the substance and fullness of God (Col. 2:16-19) 10. Man made rules keep us from Christ (Col. 2:20-23) 11.Jesus is a worthy object for our new minds (Col. 3:1-4) 12.Christians slay sin because Jesus is enough (Col. 3:5-11) 13.Christian Community is defined by love (Col. 3:12-17) 14.The Gospel determines family order (Col. 3:18-22) 15.Christ's Kingdom is worth working for (Col. 3:23-4:1) 16. Christians preach the Gospel! (Col. 4:2-5) 17. Christians are saved to preach the Gospel prayerfully, wisely, and graciously (Col. 4:2-6) 18.Finally: The Gospel saves us into true friendships (Col. 4:7-18)
All of this is to highlight our central theme: Rooted in Christ
6 Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him,7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
But, what does all this actually look like? It would be so easy for all of us to walk away from Colossians with better theology, more insight, and deeper interest in the person and work of Christ and to miss the connection to real people in real places.
The final section of Colossians means to show us that the Gospel saves us into true friendship. That is to say, that when you have been reconciled to God, that necessarily means that you are in right standing with your brothers and sisters in Jesus. In other words, when you come to Christ, when you become a friend of God, you inherit all of Jesus' friends also.
Illustration 1: (1st service just imagine) So, I would like to begin this section by illustration. I need 10 volunteers. (Count them out). Once I call you out, come on up and sit in a seat on the stage.
Each of you will represent one of the people mentioned in Colossians 4:7-18.
Let's hear God's word.
Read the Text 7 Tychicus will tell you all about my activities. He is a beloved brother and faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord.8 I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are and that he may encourage your hearts, (1)
9 and with him Onesimus, our faithful and beloved brother, who is one of you. They will tell you of everything that has taken place here. (2) (Ask Tychicus and Onesimus to go sit down) 10 Aristarchus my fellow prisoner greets you, (3) and Mark the cousin of Barnabas (concerning whom you have received instructions—if he comes to you, welcome him), (4) (Ask this group to stay) 11 and Jesus who is called Justus. These are the only men of the circumcision among my fellow workers for the kingdom of God, and they have been a comfort to me. (5) (Stay) 12 Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God. 13 For I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you and for those in Laodicea and in Hierapolis. (6) (Ask Epaphras to get into a prayer posture) 14 Luke the beloved physician greets you, (7) as does Demas. (8) (Ask to wave and look dignified) 15 Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea, (Left Side of the Sanctuary) (Ask congregation to say: "Greetings!") and to Nympha and the church in her house. (9) (Ask the congregation on the left side to say: "Hi Nympha!) 16 And when this letter has been read among you, have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans; and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea. (Ask the congregation to say: "You got it, Paul!") 17 And say to Archippus, “See that you fulfill the ministry that you have received in the Lord.” (10) (Ask the Congregation to say: "We'll tell him!") 18 I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you. (Self) (Ask the congregation to celebrate volunteers and the close of the letter). Prayer: Let's pray together.
Heavenly Father, we come before your word now in order to allow you to speak to our hearts. We recognize that this too is your word. In your sovereign plan, you chose to use these men and women to advance your Gospel. Help us to catch a vision of what this would look like for our own lives.
Jesus, we praise you for your perfect life. The Father sent you, and you went for the joy set before, even enduring the cross. We thank you for your atoning death, for drinking the cup of God's wrath against sin, so that we might have friendship with God and fellowship with one another. Thank you for your resurrection, for the fact that you are now seated at the right hand of the throne in heaven, making intercession for us, even as we gather before you.
Holy Spirit, give us a vision for Gospel-friendships and Gospel-partnerships here at FCBC. Give us the boldness, courage, and desire to lay down our lives for others, to trust each other, and to grow in maturity to the stature and fullness of Christ. We pray these things for the glory of God in Jesus' name, amen.
Exegetical Introduction The Gospel saves us into true friendship. You don't have to look past the first verse in Colossians to see that Paul was a man who loved friendship. He writes in Colossians 1:1-2, "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother. To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae…" Timothy was one of Paul's closest friends. Paul writes of Timothy in Philippians 2:20, "...I have no one like him[Timothy], who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare" and "...you know Timothy's proven worth, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel" (Phil. 2:22). Paul almost never worked alone, and when it came to writing his books, he gave credit to the co-author, Timothy. That's true friendship. Do you have these kinds of friends? Even a best friend? In many ways, the entire letter to the Colossians was an expression of friendship. We rarely write letters today, but the communication between Paul and Collosae was dripping with familial affection and love. Since Paul has come to know Epaphras, he has come to love him. And, a friend of Epaphras (who planted the church in Colossae, and wanted to plant more in the Lycus Valley) is a friend of Paul's. Paul loved to surround himself with friends. One author writes, “In the book of Acts there are more than 100 different Christians associated with Paul. He named sixteen different friends in Romans 16 alone! Here in Colossians he was true to form as he named ten people in closing.”[ Hughes, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon, 362. ] Why do you think that Paul had so many friends? Paul had friends because friendship is intrinsic to the Gospel. It's like pizza with cheese. You can't have pizza without the cheese. (I suppose, some of you can). Paul writes, "He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption the forgiveness of sins" (Colossians 1:14). You can't have the Gospel without the "us". That is, Jesus' decisive saving work in the life of the believer places you in a new kingdom. And, a friend of Jesus is a friend of mine, Paul says. In fact, Paul goes so far as to say that these relationships are brother/sister relationships. Because of Jesus' finished work, we are now family. Now, these new brothers and sisters are not only people who destroy your lego sets, leave their clothes out in your room, and savagely beat you at Monopoly. These are the kinds of brothers and sisters who get you presents at Christmas, help you with the dishes, and are people you'd like to emulate.[ Edit: Every isolated individual sipping Starbucks and reading their Bibles on Sundays thinking that they can have Jesus without the Church are sorely mistaken. Jesus without the Church, is Trent without Lauren. Jesus without the Church, is spirituality without realism. Jesus without the Church is not what Jesus died for. Jesus died for his bride. And, he calls Christians to live for her, to love her, to strengthen her. Because, after all, who hates his own body? ]
Main Question/Tension: So, here is the main question for us this morning: are we actively engaging with these kinds of friendships here at FCBC? Are you a good friend? Paul has already detailed for us that sin breaks friendships down in a few ways. He writes, "Here [that is, in the household of God] there is not Greek and Jew [that is, friendship on the basis of racial or ethnic background], circumcised and uncircumcised [that is, friend lines because of religious background], barbarian [that is, friend lines on the basis of social status], Scythian [geography or obscurity], slave [economic status], free [citizenry]; but Christ is all [that is, what matters most] and in all [that is, in all kinds of people]" (Col. 3:11). Paul says, "none of these things need to divide you." However, because we live in a fallen world, left to ourselves we do divide over all kinds of things. We feel alienated by people who are different than us, and we sometimes actively or accidentally alienate those who would otherwise befriend us.This happens within our church even as it happens in our world. People want to form groups around age, gender, married, single, kids, no kids, hobbies, school choice, background, and the like. We naturally drift toward people who are just like us. Raise your hand if you have ever felt lonely. Have you ever wondered why? What's the solution to this sin problem? The answer is the Gospel. The Gospel saves us into true friendships. Here's what this means. The Gospel saves us into at least six kinds of friendships. We need all the types. And, we need to learn to become all of them as well.[ What Paul details here in this list of friends is that the Gospel rescues us into active friendship with a variety of kinds of people. This is good news, because the Gospel is not reductionistic. God knows that we need close friends, weird friends, old friends, new friends, lost friends, found friends, and everywhere in between. ] This is the good news: when we become friends with Jesus through his death, burial and resurrection, we have a friend who will never leave us or forsake us, and Jesus brings you into friendship with his best friends.
Outline: The Gospel saves us into: 1.Commissioned Friendships (Colossians 4:7-9). a.These are friends we purposefully give away to others. 2.Comfort Friendships (Colossians 4:10-11). a.These are longtime childhood friends. 3.Commended Friendships (Colossians 4:12-13). a.These are respected friends that we look up. 4.Church Friendships (Colossians 4:15-16). a.These are friends that we'd only make because of the Gospel. 5.Collapsing Friendships (Colossians 4:17). a.These are friends who need support, struggling friends. 6.Current Friendships (Colossians 4:18). a.New Friends.[ Edit: a.What kinds of friends do you need? (Ask God for this) b.What kind of friend am you? (Ask your friends about this) c.What kinds of friends have you had in the past? (Praise God for this!) d.What kind of friend will you be in the future? (Ask God about this) e.What do I appreciate most about God's friendship with me? (Praise God for this!)]
Main Point: The Gospel saves us into true friendships.
Commissioned Friendships (Colossians 4:7-9) First, the Gospel saves us into commissioned friendships. We read,
7 Tychicus will tell you all about my activities. He is a beloved brother and faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord.8 I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are and that he may encourage your hearts,9 and with him Onesimus, our faithful and beloved brother, who is one of you. They will tell you of everything that has taken place here.
Tychicus and Onesimus are commissioned friends. Tychicus was a loyal friend. He was faithful. He was with Paul when Paul went through really hard times. Paul wrote:
"I was shipwrecked, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure" (2 Corinthians 11:25-27).
Tychicus was there for all that. Many left Paul behind, but Tychicus stuck by him. As the Colossian letter is being written in Rome, someone had to volunteer to take it back. Paul was probably scratching his chin, wondering: who should I send to take this back to the Colossians? Tychicus had internalized this beautiful passage from Romans, "How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed, Tychicus? And how are they to believe in him in whom they have never heard, Tychicus? And how are they to hear without someone preaching, Tychicus? And how are they to preach unless they are sent, Tychicus? As it is written, 'How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!'" (Romans 10:14-16). As the final pen strokes of Colossians are being laid, I imagine that Paul is asking: Who will go for us? Tychicus steps forward. "Send me, I'll go." More than likely, tears filled Paul's eyes, realizing what he was asking. "Yes, Tychicus, you will go, but not without Onesimus." Onesimus looked up surprised. "Me?" Onesimus is a runaway slave. Paul says, "Yes you, Onesimus. I have a letter for your master Philemon that you will carry as well."[ Meynell, Colossians For You, 169. ] Tears fill Onesimus's eyes for other reasons. "Remember, Onesimus, 'Here in the body of Christ there is no…' "Slave or Free." Onesimus says. "Okay, Paul. I will go." Onesimus was being commissioned to apply the Gospel to a broken friendship and partnership with Philemon. And, Onesimus was being sent to repair the breach because, "If two believers cannot be reconciled, then either both or one is not in fellowship with God."[ Hughes, 364. ] Tychicus went to deliver the letter. Onesimus went as the embodiment of the message. Gospel proclamation necessarily means this kind of Gospel friendship. These two depart on their 1000 mile journey to the Colossians with their letters in hand, and one more (likely Ephesians). Do you have friends like that? If you know Jesus, you have a friend who was sent to deliver you a message. If you know Jesus, you know someone like Onesimus too: Jesus was the message (John 1). Paul has friends that he is willing to commission so that the Gospel advances in the world. He trusts them. He leans on them. He sends them. Paul sends Tychicus and Onesimus. Paul has commissioned friends. But, doesn't that leave Paul lonely?
That leads us to our next point:
Comfort Friendships (Colossians 4:10-11) Second, the Gospel saves us into friendships that bring us comfort. When we lose friends, it's really important that we are not left alone. So, God provides other kinds of friends. Paul writes, 10 Aristarchus my fellow prisoner greets you, and Mark the cousin of Barnabas (concerning whom you have received instructions—if he comes to you, welcome him), 11 and Jesus who is called Justus. These are the only men of the circumcision among my fellow workers for the kingdom of God, and they have been a comfort to me So, Paul has three Jewish friends. These are friends who share heritage, upbringing, native language, and new life in Jesus. If you have been in foreign area for any length of time, you begin to hunger and thirst for your native language, culture, and norms.
God graciously provides these three men to:
a.Be in prison with him (Aristarchus) b.Be reconciled to him (Mark) c.Be with him (Jesus).
Now, Paul highlights these men for a few different reasons: 1.The Colossians care about Paul! They want to know how he is doing. They want to know that he's alive, and how God is providing for him. They desire to pray for him and help him in any way they can. They are not indifferent to him. 2.The Colossians wondered about Mark. If the Colossians are aware of Mark's departure from Paul in Acts 16, they'll need to know that things are good between them now. As you remember, there was a point when Mark bailed on Paul, and it hurt him pretty badly! But, Paul wants them to know that they are in good hands if Mark comes their way. They've reconciled. 3.The Colossians needed to know who was safe. We don't know almost anything about Jesus called Justus. But,I think that Paul mentions him here so that if the Colossians have developed an apprehension to Jewish teachers because of the Colossian heresy, they would know that Jesus called Justus comes recommended by Paul.
These are comfort, safe friends. They are people who continually encourage Paul's heart because they get him. These are friends with whom Paul would share inside jokes from his culture. They would know his native language. They would be able to speak in a unique way to the matters of his heart. But, doesn't Paul also need to be challenged? This leads us to our third point:
Commended Friendships (Colossians 4:12-14) Third, the Gospel saves us into commended friendships. These are friendships with people that we look up to in the faith, or at least those who are peers with us. Even Paul needed to see examples of faith. He needed to be encouraged by church planters and missionaries. He needed to be reminded of the Gospel.
He writes, 12 Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God. 13 For I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you and for those in Laodicea and in Hierapolis. This is quite a commendation! "Praise from the praiseworthy is above all rewards."[ Attributed to Tolkien. ] To have the hard-working, prayerful Paul say: "That guys is hard-working! That guy is prayerful!" is a deep commendation of Epaphras' spiritual fitness. This was encouraging to Paul. Paul didn't always have good days. There were times that Paul was really lonely, scared, fearful, and depressed, just like we would be if we were in his situation. We read in 2 Corinthians 1:8-9, 8 For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead (2 Corinthians 1:8-9). There were also times when Paul was anxious: 28 And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. 29 Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant? (2 Corinthians 11:28) Epaphras reminded Paul of why he was doing what he was doing. Epaphras was a church-planter, a missionary. Paul's own life was reflected in Epaphras. And, Jesus' life was reflected in both. So, Paul commends three things about Epaphras: 1.His prayer life. Epaphras prays often "...always struggling on your behalf…" He prays specifically "...that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God."[ Edit: We know that Epaphras was also in prison with Paul (Philemon 23). While being chained, Epaphras knew that the most effective work that he could do for the kingdom was through prayer. ] 2.His work ethic. "He has worked hard for you." Epaphras is not in this for self-glory, but for Gospel advancement. He hits his knees, preaches, teaches, and leads for the sake of the Gospel. This impresses Paul. 3.His vision. And if that isn't enough, Epaphras wants to see the Gospel advance. He has a heart "For those in Laodicea and Hierapolis." He's not concerned only for his hometown, but for the surrounding cities.
Paul mentions two more friends: 14 Luke the beloved physician greets you, as does Demas. You can read about Luke all throughout the book of Acts. He is the Author of Luke and Acts, and he is a key player in the Gospel advancing. He is the "beloved healer", probably extremely bright, intellectual, and competent. We don't know a ton about Demas. At the moment of the writing of Colossians, he is "a fellow worker with Paul"[ Philemon 1:24. ] Maybe that's all we need to know! Nonetheless, Paul needed commendable friends. Even so, Paul needs friends who will move the Gospel work forward. That leads us to our next point. Church Friendships (Colossians 4:15-16) Fourth, God saves us into Church friendships. These are friendships that develop around the mission of Christ, and that continue in the mission of Christ. 15 Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church in her house. 16 And when this letter has been read among you, have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans; and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea. Paul expected that the Colossians would pass along the things that he had said to the Laodiceans and to the Church in Nympha's house. Further, he expected that his letters would be read all over the Lycus Valley. The "letter from Laodicea" is probably Ephesians.[ Meynell, Colossians for You, 173. ] This means that his communication was intended to be read more broadly.[ Edit: In other words, the very words of Paul were to be taken not only as authoritative, but as the means through which other people would be converted to Christ. There were timeless, truths that have spanned beyond the Roman Empire into our day that were to be understood, applied, and lived out in the Church Age. ] Because the greetings spanned out across the Lycus Valley, we can also say, in a very indirect way, that Paul greets us from the first century through the letter to the Colossians. Pretty cool! Here is the key point: when you have deep, Gospel friendships, the relationships expand much further than just the individual. Illustration: The Gospel brings you into a sort of web of friendships. Whatever you do in one friendship affects all the rest. We can see this very clearly with Paul, but we usually don't consider the ways that we are at center-points of our web of friendships.
The Christian is called to have Jesus at the center of all of his or her friendships, and that necessarily connects you to the rest of the body of Christ.
That leads to our fifth point.
Collapsing Friendships (Colossians 4:17) Fifth, and briefly, Collapsing friends. These are people who are struggling in Christian ministry and are very tempted to give up. We are not to see these people as projects or as lost causes, but to follow Paul's examples in the following way: 17 And say to Archippus, “See that you fulfill the ministry that you have received in the Lord.” Maybe Archippus was just beginning in ministry (Phil. 1:2), or maybe there was a particular issue that was leading him to feel like he couldn't fulfill his ministry. Either way, Paul singled out this man and called the Colossian Church to reaffirm their desire for him to fulfill his ministry. Paul, at the end of his own life says this in 2 Timothy 4: 6 For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.8 Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. (2 Timothy 4:6-8). Paul knows that it is not how a minister starts his ministry that really matters, but how one finishes. All along the way, there will be people in your life who will struggle to finish well. We are called to encourage them. That leads us to our final point.
Current Friendships (Colossians 4:18) Sixth, and finally, Paul affirms his friendships with the Colossians. 18 I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you. Paul knows that his personal voice matters to the Colossians. He pulls back the curtain and says something to help the Colossians feel, know and believe that Paul is for them because God is for them.
Application: a.What kinds of friends do you need? (Ask God for this) b.What kind of friend are you? (Ask your friends about this) c.What kinds of friends have you had in the past? (Praise God for this!) d.What kind of friend will you be in the future? (Ask God about this) e.What do I appreciate most about God's friendship? (Praise God for this!)
Testimony & Baptism So ends the book of Colossians.
We are going to transition now into two things. 1.Testimony: We are going to show a short recap of testimonies from people who have been encouraged by the message of Colossians. Then, 2.Baptism: We are going to see a baptism together. Water baptism, intended for true believers who have been saved by the work of Christ, is an act of obedience and a visual demonstration of a person’s union with Christ in the likeness of His death and resurrection. It signifies that the power of sin is broken, vividly depicting a believer’s newness of life. Key Texts: Mt 28:19- 20; Acts 2:41; 8:34-39; Rom 6:3-11. a. The person being baptized will share their testimony, be baptized and then we will celebrate the end of this series with one final song of worship.
Let's join together in celebrating what God has done here at FCBC in the past 3-4 months.
Good morning, Church! Please turn with me in your Bibles to Colossians 4:2-6.
Before we read the text, I want you to write down three names.
Your name: _______________________. The name of someone within our church body: ___________________. The name of someone outside of our church. ______________________.
The purpose of this exercise is to remind us that:
You and I need to hear the Gospel afresh this morning. Someone else in our Church needs to hear the Gospel through you. There are those around us who are desperate for the Gospel.
The hope is that we would draw each of these people with us through this sermon in prayer. That we might even move toward them later this week as we gather ideas while listening, and seek to build them up after you have been built up by the word.
I will now read Colossians 4:2-6, and then we will pray together. This is our second-to-last sermon in Colossians. We are going to be focusing on verses 5-6, but we will also read and look at verses 2-4 because they are deeply connected to where we are going today.
Let's hear God's word.
2 Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. 3 At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison— 4 that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak.
5 Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time.6 Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.
Heavenly Father, we come before you in prayer this morning in order to express our gratitude to you. You created the heavens and earth and everything in them by the power and authority of your word. You sent Jesus as the Word so that you might be known (John 1:18), and even though we have never seen you, we love you (John 20:29) because your word has come alive in us. You breathed out the word in the Scriptures to make us wise for salvation (1 Tim. 3:14-15). All we want this morning is to gaze upon your beauty in the temple (Psalm 27:4). Thank you for giving us your word. We pray that you would make us more like Jesus through it. Use your word to accomplish your will in our hearts. We open our hearts to you now.
Jesus, thank you for being the complete and perfect embodiment of this text. You are not asking us to do anything that you have not already done in your life, death, burial and resurrection. We thank you that all obedience is a Gospel call to fellowship with the living Christ, who is seated at the right hand of the throne in heaven. Jesus you are wise. Gracious. And, true. Cause us to be obedient to you out of the overflow of our nearness to you in personal joy and admiration. Jesus, we love you.
Holy Spirit, we ask that you would give us the strength "...to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that we may be filled with all the fullness of God" (Ephesians 3:18-19). Impress upon us the weight and magnitude of knowing God. Change us from the inside out. Unite us in an ever-deepening fashion with the Person and Work of Jesus Christ. We pray this together in Jesus' name, amen.
I want to begin by stating this simple point: Jesus is prayerful, wise, and seasoned by grace. Do you agree? That would be very easy to prove by a quick read of the Gospels.
On the other hand, we are prayerless, graceless fools. Do you agree? It would take just a 24 hour walk through one of our days to prove this point.
Do we want to be devoted to prayer, to live wisely before outsiders, and season all our speech with grace? Then, we must look to Jesus.
I want to remind us of this very important truth: "...We come to know God best not by looking at God exclusively, but by looking at God and then looking at ourselves–then looking at God, and then again looking at ourselves." We must remember the Gospel:
God Saves Christians into Prayerful, Wise, and Seasoned Lives to the glory of God through the Person and Work of Jesus Christ.
The commands (as we will see in a moment) of the New Testament are an invitation to joyful obedience, not moralistic self-loathing. Jesus is not interested in beating you up to be better you, or in you beating anyone else up to be a better them. He is interested in saving and sanctifying sinners through the joyful experience of trusting him. This sermon is not about your improvement mainly, it's about God.
God saves sinners. God saves sinners from sin. And he saves sinners from sin and into his righteousness by grace through faith. Grace and faith are a free gift, but they also come with commands.
The aim of this sermon is to explain how three commands (to pray, be wise, and gracious) are inextricably linked in the Christian life to God himself. Once we see the connections, we will seek to weave them into our own Christian lives.
To briefly illustrate all three of these characteristics, Proverbs 24:30-34 depicts two men. One wise, the other foolish. The writer says,
I passed by the field of a sluggard,
by the vineyard of a man lacking sense,
and behold, it was all overgrown with thorns;
the ground was covered with nettles,
and its stone wall was broken down.
Then I saw and considered it;
I looked and received instruction.
A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest,
and poverty will come upon you like a robber,
and want like an armed man.
What a powerful image. One man is alert, awake, walking, meditating, praying, observing, thinking, and even composing riddles to make his insights memorable. He is leaning forward in his life. He has clear judgment, discernment, and he is open to reason. "He receives instruction." He has an open mind. He is wise. And, he captures his thinking for his own benefit as well as for generations to come. Well done.
The other man, the sluggard, is being lulled to sleep. He's drowsy and snoring.
He's dozing through life. Based on the status of his field, it seems obvious that this is a pattern. Each day he gets up to say, "I'll deal with this tomorrow, not today." Then, he watches YouTube videos until he falls asleep again. He settles into rest, hands folded. Slowly but surely, poverty climbs over his broken walls, into his unkempt field, and takes advantage of this sleeping sluggard like a robber.
His life is ripped from him with ease.
While this Proverb is applied to economic poverty, its principle is universal. Personal lazinessbrings about spiritual, emotional, psychological, and intellectual poverty. Because of sin, we are born into, and we perpetuate unkempt fields of unresolve, or places of poverty, all over our lives because, in our sinfulness, we would rather fold our hands than roll up our sleeves and walk with God.
We are all sluggardly. Jesus, on the other hand, is the sage. He is wise. He is gracious. He is prayerful.
Our lack of spiritual growth, depth with God, and connection to others is directly related to our own inability to wake up spiritually. Passing by your life and mine would be an exposition of spiritual poverty.
So, God rescues sinners into prayerful, wise, and seasoned lives to the glory of God. He does this through Jesus.
The sage in Proverbs 24 is open to grace. "He receives instruction" by grace. The posture of his heart is not moralistic, self-effort. It's the joyful welcoming of God's reality. He is inviting God to instruct him in a posture of humility.
The sluggard is found ignoring God. The wise man sees that God is missing. One author writes, "God is of all missing persons the most missed, except that [missing him] comes not as an ally of darkness but as its adversary, not as a symptom of darkness but as its antidote." By missing him, He is searching for him and acknowledging his reality. Another author writes, "Sin is trying to succeed by ignoring reality." Doesn't that sound like all of us?
We all want to coast with hands folded into an intimate relationship with God, others, and ourselves, but we are blocked by our own foolishness. We falter and fail in prayer. We slip and stumble in our relationships. We speak and say the wrong things at all the wrong times. "Who will rescue us from our bodies of death?" (Romans 7).
We are limping through life in weakness and wandering. Some of us as pilgrims are sleeping along the roadside. And yet, Jesus comes to us, and he is compelled to save us for his own glory.
Jesus shows us a better way. He alone is prayerful, wise, and seasoned by grace. And, he saves us into his life by commanding us to walk with him.
If you read the book of Colossians in one sitting, you can see that it is saturated with prayerful, wise, and seasoned words.
Paul models his prayer life by saying, "We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you…" (Col. 1:3), and "...we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding…" (Col. 1:9). Day and night, Paul is praying with a group of other people. Paul and Timothy are like the persistent widow in Luke 18, who will not let God go until he blesses the Colossians with wisdom. Paul is prayerful. Paul is wise.
Paul is wise because he knows that all true wisdom comes from God, and that Jesus is the embodiment of all that is wise. He says that in Christ, "...are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col. 2:3). So, the wisest thing a person can do is to: "walk in him [Jesus], rooted and built up in him and established in the faith…" (Col. 2:6-7).
The wisest thing we can do is believe Jesus.
Paul commends belief in Jesus, and calls the Colossians to pray and appropriate this wisdom from God by walking the Christian life. He writes, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him" (Colossians 3:16-17). We are called to sing to each other, not in frozen isolation but in a joyful, life-giving community.
The Christian life is an abundant, prayerful, wise, and seasoned life, indeed! Out of the overflow of the Christian life comes our approach to the world.
And yet, sin is crouching at the door, and its desire is to have the Colossians (and us!). Sin wants to make the Colossians like the sluggard in Proverbs 24, drowsy and dumb. They have been assaulted by spiritual seduction, nearly kidnapped by false teachers (Col. 2:8-15). They are at times distracted by regulations regarding food and the liturgical calendar (Col. 2:16-23). They are being lured by sex, idolatry, anger, lying, and all manner of worldliness as their flesh claws at their new life in Christ. They are struggling to worship as families, work as unto Christ, and live a life worthy of the Gospel (Col. 3:14-25).
Does this sound familiar? We are still struggling with sin, aren't we?
Paul concludes this letter by offering three exhortations:
Pray. Walk. Speak. Do all of this to the glory of God. Repeat.
I think the main issue that this text brings up for us is this: When we are prayerless, we stop walking with God in wisdom toward others. Instead, we normally begin to walk away from God and others simultaneously and grow in our own personal protectiveness. We put our walls up. When we grow prayerless, we go inward and insular. When we go prayerless, we isolate. We stop speaking boldly, clearly, and in a gracious way. We stop looking at God.
Prayerfulness, as we'll see, draws you into direct contact with the living God. When you come into contact with the living God, you realize that the Gospel is advancing in the whole world, and it is bearing fruit and increasing (Col. 1:6-7). The Gospel is the power of God (Romans 1:16), and wherever it goes, it bears fruit, both in our own personal lives and in the lives of those we speak to. God is not bound, and neither is the Gospel. This emboldens the Christian to live the Christian life.
So, while Sin causes us to go prayerless, to grow foolish, and to speak unseasonably.
Jesus saves us into a life of prayer, wisdom, and seasonable speech to the glory of God.
This draws us to our main points:
Christians are saved into prayerfulness (Col. 4:2-4). Christians are saved into wisdom (Col. 4:5) Christian are seasoned by grace (Col. 4:6).
First, Christians are saved into prayerfulness. We are saying that "Christians are saved into" a Christian life of prayerfulness because of everything that comes before Colossians 4:2-4. Christians are saved from sin and into a relationship with the living God. They are transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of God's beloved Son (Colossians 1:13). Every step of obedience is a step of deeper, joyful intimacy with God, a step of faith, belief, and trust in God's finished work. It's existence in a new domain.
So, when Paul says, "Continue steadfastly in prayer…" he implies that the new birth has occurred, that these Colossian believers are "saints" (Col. 1:2), and that they are like children learning to walk. They have been radically reborn by the miraculous work of God. They are spiritually alive. They have repented of sin and received the grace of God in the Gospel. They have been buried with Christ and raised from the dead to walk in open communion with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Col. 2:11-12). They know God and are known by God. As such, they have taken up their new native language: Prayer. They are calling God "Father" and their fellow Christian brothers and sisters "family."
So Paul writes,
2 Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.3 At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison— 4 that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak.
Benj Foreman helped us to see last week that preaching the Gospel is part and parcel of the Christian Life. It's a part of who we are. If we are not preaching the Gospel, we have to ask: do we know the Gospel? If we know the Gospel, what is standing in the way of our proclamation of it?
Paul's answer: Closed doors. So, he asks for prayer so that the door might open. And, that he might make the mystery clear. We need to realize that Paul's effectiveness in ministry, his razor sharp letters, his boldness in persecution came from his prayer life and the prayers of others.
Open doors and clarity of speech come from a steadfast practice of prayer.
Paul says that persuasiveness, clarity, beauty, elegance are all granted to you through prayer, not a school of rhetoric.
So, if you want God to throw the door of salvation open for someone, like the someone on the list you just created, pray that he does. If you want better preaching in this pulpit or the pulpit of your heart, start praying for it!
Prayer begets Gospel preaching. Prayerlessness stifles Gospel preaching.
There are three straightforward ways of applying this;
First, Sunday Prayer Meetings. Every Sunday morning, our prayer team simply devotes itself to prayer for the preaching of God's Word and the body. If you'd like a place to put this into practice, join this group on Sunday mornings at 8am. One author provocatively states, "You can tell how popular a preacher or evangelist is by who comes on Sunday morning…but you can tell how popular Jesus is by who comes to the prayer meeting." Or, more kindly: "Our pastors are as deeply encouraged by an eager and active participation in our prayer meetings as they are by our being present on Sunday mornings." And, "If you want a better pastor, you can get one by praying for the one you already have." Ha! Take the opportunity as often as you can to learn to pray by praying every Sunday at 8am.
Second, We are offering three events focused on prayer for the Women of FCBC. On Sept. 20th (Tuesday Morning), Oct. 22nd (Saturday Morning), and Nov. 12th (Saturday Morning), we are inviting the Women of FCBC to gather together to devote themselves to prayer. We believe that there is nothing better that the women of our church could devote themselves to than prayer. God is drawing us to our knees in prayer to seek God's face.
Third, read books on prayer. If you want to grow in your personal devotion to prayer, and maybe you can't pray with others at a meeting like this during this season, reading a book on prayer is a great way to grow. Consider getting a few friends together to grow in this area. You can also read others' prayers. As much as we should be seeking for our church to hire well, to run effective programs, to serve each other, there is a need for us to grow in prayer. We need to go to our prayer closets, shut the door, and find deeper intimacy with God in prayer both personally and collectively.
One author writes, "The true problem isn't God's absence from the world [or in the Church]. He is omnipresent. The real problem is our apathy to God's presence, which manifests itself through self-centeredness and self-concern."
Prayerlessness is a sign of self-centeredness.
This is an area that I'd like to personally grow as a pastor: I am personally convicted over how many times I check my email or texts compared to how many times we check-in with the living God. One author writes, "We check our smartphones about 81,500 times per year, or once every 4.3 minutes of our waking lives…" I am embarrassed how many times I seek to feed my soul with what's on my screen, over feeding my soul with the presence of God.
Church, this is not a new problem. And, the solution is still the same: through the Gospel, God saves us into conversation with himself. We respond in intimate obedience through prayer. God is interested in saving you, sanctifying you, and changing you to make him more like himself. We get there by making room for him and spending time with him in prayer.
Christians are saved to "...Continue steadfastly in prayer."
That leads us to our second point.
Second, Christians are Saved to Walk in Wisdom. Paul writes, "Now that you are all prayed up:"
5 Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time.
If you walk with God, you become a walking, speaking repository of God's grace in the world. Prayer emboldens you to live transparently toward others.
My kids and I were at the park recently, and they were compelled by these windup and go cars. You have all seen them. You pull them back to send them forward. In the same way, our prayer life is the backward motion through which we are wound and pointed toward others. No matter if you are an introvert, or extrovert, this is where your energy comes from for people: you are strengthened through consistent prayer to move toward people in wise, timely ways.
So pray, and then move toward others!
Paul says, this is decidedly missional. I think The Message captures the sense well as it paraphrases this passage,
5-6 Use your heads as you live and work among outsiders. Don’t miss a trick. Make the most of every opportunity. Be gracious in your speech. The goal is to bring out the best in others in a conversation, not put them down, not cut them out.
Now, this phrase "Walk in wisdom toward outsiders" certainly means "among outsiders." Christians are called to live and work with lives that are open, visible, and transparent. One commentator writes, “The phrase ‘the ones outside’ refers to those who are not members of the covenant community, who are predominantly Gentile, though a small group of unbelieving Jews would not be excluded”
But it means more than this. Christians are called to walk toward people who are not only unlike them, but decidedly not 'one of them,' that is: to walk toward non-Christians. In other words, get on your shoes, go outside, and interact with people who don't share your central beliefs or worldview. We are to live among them and toward them.
Now, in a place like Boise, ID, we might begin to grow uncomfortable with this. You might say, we just moved here to be away from 'outsiders.' Now, we get a Pastor who wants us to move back toward outsiders. That's it, we're moving to Avamore, where at least I know I'm free! This text challenges this tendency to move away.
In April of this year, the pastors and each of their spouses were sent to a Conference called T4G. At this conference, David Platt argued that there are basically three possible stances that Christians can have toward one another within the local church, especially as we relate together toward those around us, toward 'outsiders':
Facing inward, but disconnected. This is unwise because if you are disconnected, there is no way that you can walk wisely. No one grows in the Christian life in isolation. Maybe this is you. You are looking toward the Church, toward Christ, and toward Christian community, but you are not finding connection. You stand at an awkward distance. You are wondering if you are "in" or "out". You don't feel at home. So, you don't move toward 'outsiders.' You wonder if you are one.
Facing inward, yet connected. Maybe this is you at FCBC or in Christian community. You are well connected. You know some people in our body well. You are finding yourself to be at home, united in Christ, and enjoying fellowship with others. The danger of this is that you may be keeping others out, rather than letting them in.
United, yet facing outward. Platt gave us a third image: united yet facing outward. This, he said, is what it means to walk in wisdom toward outsiders. This is the mature, Christian posture toward the world. And, it is the posture that we are called to have toward those who are 'outsiders.'
Application:
Consider your relationships. If you are disconnected from Christian community, you are not able to obey these commands because these are not singular commands, but plural ones. Paul assumes that you are working as a member of the team in the body of Christ. Consider your habits. Is your default to go inward, not outward with your Christian community? To clasp the hands of others, only if they are like you? Do you consistently choose a night in, over a night toward outsiders in your Life Group or otherwise? Do your Christian friendships or families have an outward focus? Consider the posture of your friendships. How do you need to turn outward to face and walk toward 'outsiders?' How can we help each other to do this? What resources do we need to begin doing this well as a church?
The next phrase is also very important: "Making the best use of the time." Literally, this means 'purchasing' or 'redeeming' time. In a corollary passage, Paul writes,
15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise,16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, 19 addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, 20 giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ (Ephesians 5:15-21).
We are including the full context here because this is not mainly a call for effective time management, though that is part of the equation. We might make the mistake of thinking that "making the most of the time" is talking about productivity at work, or improving our own work-life balance.
However, what Paul is referring to is effectiveness in walking toward outsiders for the sake of prayerful proclamation of the Gospel. He is advocating that every human interaction become charged with prayer for the sake of the of the Gospel. He says, "Don't be dumb!" Instead, "...address one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs…" (Eph. 5:17-20). Fuel up on the Spirit, not wine. Let your life become profoundly marked by gratitude. Then, in our passage, he says: "Let that wise life spill out into your relationships with other people."
This means that in Paul's view, that gathering together as believers is one of the most productive, wise, redemptive things that you can be engaged with. We 'gather' together so that we can 'scatter' together for the sake of the Gospel and the nations.
Illustration: Church, you have shown me illustrations of this:
Some of you walk toward outsiders through personal evangelism. Some of you are giving generously to the advance of the gospel through foreign missions. Some of you give your time, energy, and efforts to your neighbors. Some of you have adopted kids, giving us a living picture of the Gospel. Some of you are beautifully preaching the Gospel to your own children. (By the way! Next week, we are inviting all of our kids into service for our Family Worship Service.) Some of you lead, serve, and minister in countless ways that it's honestly hard to keep track.
Wise living and making the most of the time means moving toward others.
This is the kind life we are saved into. That leads us to our third point:
Third, Christians are saved to be seasoned by grace. Because we are in direct relationship with the living God, and we are walking wisely, making the most of every interaction, Christians become the most interesting of conversationalists.
6 Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.
The thrust of this text is to say that every Christian conversation is distinctively flavored and preserved by grace. Salt was used in the ancient world both as a preservative and a flavoring agent, as it is used today. Paul argues that if you understand the Gospel, and if you begin to assimilate grace into your life, your speech starts to taste good. It flavors every interaction. And, you start to see people for who they really are: unique image bearers. Rosaria Butterfield puts it this way, "The integrity of our relationships matters more than the boldness of our words." Integrity is salty.
In January of this past year, I lost my sense of taste and smell as I had COVID. All my food had was a bland sense of texture. All I could taste was the slight bitterness of my coffee from time to time. This is not the way that Christians speech should taste. Rather, it should be vibrantly and graciously seasoned. This has direct application to how we approach other people's souls.
Now, I am going to say something provocative. I think that gracious speech, and knowing "how you ought to answer each person," necessarily means that you get to know another person as they are. You meet them where they are. You move toward them, and not away from them. For some of us this causes fear because we are nervous about cultural assimilation. One author writes, "We in the church tend to be more fearful of the (perceived) sin in the world than of the sin in our own heart. Why is that? Here is what I think. I believe there is no greater enemy to vital life-breathing faith than cultural sameness."
From this passage, if you want to really get to know another person:
Pray for them. Walk toward them in wisdom. Speak graciously with them.
This takes work. Time. Effort and emotional energy. In a world of instant gratification, it will be discouraging! It will also necessarily require personal friendships!
I want to close by offering one quotation from J.I. Packer and then an invitation to respond to our series in Colossians by sharing your testimony:
J.I. Packer writes, "...personal evangelism needs normally to be founded on friendship. You are not usually justified in choosing the subject of conversation with another till you have already begun to give yourself to him in friendship and established a relationship with him in which he feels that you respect him, and are interested in him, and are treating him as a human being, and not just as some kind of 'case'. With some people, you may establish such a relationship in five minutes, whereas others it may take months. But the principle remains the same. The right to talk intimately with another person about the Lord Jesus has to be earned, and you earn it by convincing him that you are his friend, and that you really care about him. And therefore the indiscriminate buttonholding, the intrusive barging in to the privacy of other people's souls, the thick-skinned insistence on expounding the things of God to reluctant strangers who are longing to get away–these modes of behavior, in which strong and loquacious personalities have sometimes indulged in the name of personal evangelism, should be written off as a travesty of personal evangelism. Impersonal evangelism would be a better name for them!"
One great way to practice personal evangelism is by starting within the local Church. We learn to speaking the Gospel amongst our own selves. So, during 2nd & 3rd service, we are inviting you to come into my office to share a few words about how the book of Colossians has impacted you over the past 3-4 months. Our sound genius Stephen B. is over there to help you record a short clip of one way that Jesus has been enough for you as we have studied the book of Colossians. God Saves Christians into Prayerful, Wise, and Seasoned Lives to the glory of God. Let's pray.
Colossians 3:17, “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” Because Jesus is enough, everything that we do should be done in worshipful service towards God. “Behind the struggles (in your home) with poor communication, problem solving, or understanding the roles of husband and wife, there are struggles because of poor worship. Remember that we were designed to worship God and love him most. If he is not the focus of our worship, then something else will be. Idolatry did not work out so well for the nation of Israel, and it will not work out well for us either.” - Rob Green, Tying the Knot Colossians 3:18-22, “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.” Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Ephesians 5:24, “Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.” “To ‘submit’ is to recognize a relationship of order established by God. But submission to any human is always conditioned by the ultimate submission that each believer owes to God: in any hierarchy we can imagine, God stands at the ‘top of the chart.’ This means, then, that a wife will sometimes have to disobey a husband (even a Christian one) if that husband commands her to do something contrary to God’s will. Even as she disobeys, however, she can continue to ‘submit,’ in a sense, by recognizing that her husband remains her head-just not her ultimate head.” Paul teaches that… I. Because of the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ, our marriages are transformed. Colossians 3:18-22, “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.” Ephesians 5:25, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…” Read. Sing. Pray. Next, Paul teaches that… I. Because of the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ, our marriages are transformed. II. Because of the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ, our parent-child relationships are transformed. Colossians 3:18-22, “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.”
John 3:16, “For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” Colossians 3:18-22, “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.” Finally, Paul teaches that… I. Because of the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ, our marriages are transformed. II. Because of the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ, our parent-child relationships are transformed. III. Because of the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ, our working relationships are transformed. Colossians 3:18-22, “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord."
29 If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. Matthew 5:29-30 "Sin is any failure to conform to the moral law of God in act, attitude, or nature." Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology. "If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!" Matthew 7:11 Main Point: Christians Slay Sin Because Jesus is Enough Colossians 3:5-11
Subpoints:
Jesus is Better Than Sexual Sin (Col. 3:5-7) Jesus is Better Than Sins of Speech (Col. 3:8) Jesus is Better Than Sins of Deception (Col. 3:9-10) Jesus Shatters All Degrees of Separation (Col. 3:11). Colossians 3:5-11 Main Point: Christians Slay Sin Because Jesus is Enough Colossians 3:5-11 Subpoints: Jesus is Better Than Sexual Sin (Col. 3:5-7) Jesus is Better Than Sins of Speech (Col. 3:8) Jesus is Better Than Sins of Deception (Col. 3:9-10) Jesus Shatters All Degrees of Separation (Col. 3:11). Colossians 3:5-11 Subpoints: Jesus is Better Than Sexual Sin (Col. 3:5-7) Jesus is Better Than Sins of Speech (Col. 3:8) Jesus is Better Than Sins of Deception (Col. 3:9-10) Jesus Shatters All Degrees of Separation (Col. 3:11). Colossians 3:5-11 Subpoints: Jesus is Better Than Sexual Sin (Col. 3:5-7) Jesus is Better Than Sins of Speech (Col. 3:8) Jesus is Better Than Sins of Deception (Col. 3:9-10) Jesus Shatters All Degrees of Separation (Col. 3:11). Colossians 3:5-11 4 Look at the ships also: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. 5 So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! 6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. 7 For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, 8 but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. James 3 10 "Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor." Romans 12:10 Subpoints: Jesus is Better Than Sexual Sin (Col. 3:5-7) Jesus is Better Than Sins of Speech (Col. 3:8) Jesus is Better Than Sins of Deception (Col. 3:9-10) Jesus Shatters All Degrees of Separation (Col. 3:11).
Good morning Church! My name is Trent Houck, and it's my joy to be one of the Pastors here at FCBC. I want to invite you to turn in your Bibles to Colossians 3:1- 4 and have that open in front of you as we set this passage up. Here is my main point today: Jesus is the Focal Point of the Christian Life. Because Jesus is the focal point: God calls Christians to seek Christ, set the mind on Christ, and to see Christ. 1. Seek Christ (Colossians 3:1) 2. Set the Mind on Christ (Colossians 3:2-3) 3. See Christ (Colossians 3:4). Jesus saves us into a life of singular focus. Our argument today is set against the backdrop of the human condition. That is, living with multiple focal points. For example, we want flourishing families. So, we try to center our lives on family. We want flourishing bodies. So, we focus ourselves on happiness and health. We want financial stability. We want to be relieved of our stress. So, we adopt practices that minimize strain. We track our sleep, see a counselor, or become minimalists. Our hearts are crowded by the objects of desire. The more we want something, the more we focus on it. I want to begin this morning by asking a few simple questions: What do you want? What do you desire? What motivates your affections? What is the focus of your life? My argument this morning is that we want whatever it is that takes up the imaginative space of our hearts. It's what we think about when we have nothing else to think about. We want those things that we are sure to keep an eye on. We want those things to which we pay closest attention. Let me just illustrate this by the idea of a focal point. What is the focal point of this first image? The obvious answer is the single air balloon. Your eye is drawn to the center of this picture. You probably feel a sense of peace. The lake is serene and placid. The sky is monochromatic. The trees are all aligned. The horizon is linear. It's beautiful. This is what it's like to have a single focus. 2 However, if I show you a contrasting image. What is the focal point of this second image? The answer is debatable. There may be no focal point. Maybe it's the largest balloon. Maybe it's the nearest. Maybe it's the one in the center of the picture. Your eye moves around, rather than staying focused on a single point. You might feel a sense of stress, unease, or crowdedness. I am personally anxious about the balloons running into each other and seeing people fall from their wicker baskets. The Old Testament is a single story about competing focal points. God commands that his people "have no other gods before me", and he warns that those who construct idols, or take on false gods, become like them. This is not because God feels threatened, or wants to steal our joy, but precisely because he knows that he alone is the source of our highest joys. He proscribes a life of singularity. The Bible teaches that what we want, desire, or pursue eventually becomes the object of our affections. Our pleasures become our pressures. God knows that we are habitual creatures, and that whatever we take pleasure in becomes precious to us. This generation is characterized by the disembodied, absent presence of unchecked desires. We are walking zombies. If you were to ask a sociologist what this generation of people wanted more than anything, I think the sociologist's answer would be: "Everything and Nothing." We are a distracted people, holding hands with God, while engrossed in finding satisfaction in this world. We are everywhere and nowhere at once. Jesus addresses us as the Martha generation: "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary" (Luke 10:41-42). This is a dangerous way to live. Cal Newport warns that, "[If you] Spend enough time in a state of frenetic shallowness and you permanently reduce your capacity to perform deep [focused] work." This concept also applies to deep worship. Even Winnie the Pooh once 3 famously said, "Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart." Little things become focal points. So, what do you want? What is the focal point of your life? As a Pastor, I am constantly wrestling with multiple objects of desire. I want our church to be unified. I want ministries to be flourishing. I want to preach well. I want to write. I want to administrate. I want to persuade. I want friends. I want clarity and precision in my thinking. I want to read. I want to feel. I want my marriage to thrive. I want my kids to excel. I want to leave this place better than I found it. I want to be missed when I'm gone. Which of these will become the focus? Well, it depends on the time of day! The Christian life, however, is one of singular focus. We need to know, more than any other generation that we cannot have everything, do everything, experience everything, see everything, be everything, or maintain everything without losing something. Jesus famously said: 24 “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? (Matthew 16:24-26). Echoing Jesus, the American Missionary to Ecuador, Jim Elliot, once wrote, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” And, C.T. Studd, once wrote, "Only one life, 'twill soon be past. Only what's done for Christ will last." Or, to quote our very own Steve Walker: "In 70 years, none of this will matter." What do you want? What is the focus of your life? The Christian can only be about one thing. To say with the Psalmist, 4 One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple (Psalm 27:4). Are you ready to be about one thing? Do you want to be about one thing? We are learning that the Colossians were quite like us. They were at a spiritual set of crossroads. They were being tempted to engage in an infinite number of distractions that would cloud their vision and affection for Jesus. Their one life was threatened and assailed by "...philosophy and empty deceit" (Col. 2:8). Their lives were judged on the basis of what they ate and drank and how they organized their liturgical calendar (Col. 2:16-19). So, they were tempted to submit to regulations that were "...of no value in stopping the flesh" (Col. 2:20-23). The pressures were mounting. In short, they were being given a set of metrics to measure their sense of assurance or spiritual fitness. They were being tempted to regress to the spiritual shallows of multiple focal points. The false teachers were whispering, 'You can have it all!'" They were beginning to slide down the slope of self-righteousness. 'Holiness is this way. Follow us to Christ." Paul, having furiously warned of the dangers of succumbing to this kind of frenetic and chaotic life, now demonstrates in all of chapter three what the Christian life ought to be focused on. And, we can say plainly, that it ought to be focused on Christ alone. Jesus Christ is the single and solitary focal point of the Christian life. There is only one thing that should really matter to the Christian: Jesus Christ. Jesus is enough. There is only one road and only one way. So, we must ask: Why do other focal points crowd out our gaze on Christ? Isn't it astounding to think that Christians, who have come to know Jesus Christ, to 5 love "the glory of God in the face of Jesus" (2 Cor. 4:6), to be filled in Christ (Col. 2:8-10), to be born again to a living hope (1 Peter 1:3), could ever grow distracted by other things? Paul certainly thought so as he wrote to the Galatians, "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel…" (Galatians 1:6). Why does this happen? You might remember that last week David challenged us to reflect on why we make human-centered rules to maintain our sense of self-righteousness. He said, "The answers to the deeper 'why' questions will reveal a reward you are pursuing or a pain you're avoiding." We start making rules when we get our eyes off of Jesus. Why aren't we growing in Christ? Why are we discouraged, or stuck? Maybe the answer is that we've made our growth the focus of our gaze, instead of Jesus. We're still, in some small way, focused on ourselves! To our surprise, our relationship with God may be about us, and not God. Our Bible reading may have become a vendetta to get something from God, rather than be with God. The problem for the Colossians is the same problem for us. They were tempted to add to Jesus. Ever since the Garden of Eden, we get spiritually stuck when we add something to Jesus. The human-focused way to get unstuck is to adopt idols. New rules. But, that only deepens our ruts. Our hearts are 'idols factories' and ruleproducing. Jesus shows us a better way. God calls the Christian to seek Christ, Set the mind on Christ, and See Christ. 1. Seek Christ (Colossians 3:1) 2. Set the Mind on Christ (Colossians 3:2-3) 3. See Christ (Colossians 3:4). Heavenly Father, we come before you again and ask that you would magnify your name. We want to seek the one thing that really matters. Your words divide between soul and spirit, joint and marrow, and we would ask that you would use it 6 to cut through our defenses. Show us our disordered desires and the ways in which we are inclined to make something or someone else central to our lives. Jesus, thank you that you not only show us what it means to live with a singular focus, but for the joy set before you, you endured the Cross. Your perfect righteousness is now imputed to us by faith so that we stand before you righteous and not guilty. We can now stand before you totally focused on you alone. Holy Spirit, we ask that you would apply these truths directly to the areas of our hearts that we most need them today. Cause us to be open to your ministry, available to your Word, and attentive to your voice. Cause us to be able and willing to lay aside those things that are not central to our purpose in you. In Jesus' name, I pray, amen. First, the Christian is called to seek Christ. Paul writes, If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. The statement "If then you have been raised with Christ…" draws us back to the arguments that Paul was making in Colossians 2:8-15. He writes, "...you were raised with him[that is, Christ] through faith by the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead" (Col. 2:12). While in English, the conditional 'if' seems to indicate doubt, (i.e. if you really love me, you will do the dishes) in Greek, this is what is called a 'first class condition'. That is, something that is assumed for the sake of the argument. So, Paul is saying: "If [as it is the case that] you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is…" He is not contradicting what he said previously. He is showing a connection between the reality of our resurrected state and the command in the second part of the verse. Essentially, he is saying: because you were raised from the dead with Christ, you now exist in a new sphere. You have been transferred into a new dimension, a new kingdom. You are now participating in the new creation. The Kingdom has arrived in Jesus, and it is now being made evident through the work of the Holy Spirit. You have a new identity. A new self. 7 Resurrections happen as people believe the Gospel. We need to pause here and express a sense of wonder. When did this resurrection happen? Paul indicates that this is a past tense, completed action. You "have been raised with Christ." Furthermore, this is something that took place while we were in a state of deathly passivity. He wrote earlier in chapter 2 "When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ (Col. 2:13). Illustration: maybe you have personally witnessed the unresponsiveness of a dead body. They are cold to the touch, immovable, and no matter how loudly you might address the body, he or she would not respond. That is, unless God was speaking. Have you been raised? How would you know? The New Testament reframes the Old Testament idea of resurrection. If you read the gospels, the disciples are consistently confused about when the resurrection will happen. In Jewish tradition, resurrection only happens at the end of the age, if at all. The New Testament, however, teaches that there are different types of resurrection. In Luke 7, for example, the gospel writer shows a physical, material resurrection in the here and now: 11 Soon afterward, Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went along with him. 12 As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out—the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with her. 13 When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, “Don’t cry.” 14 Then he went up and touched the bier they were carrying him on, and the bearers stood still. He said, “Young man, I say to you, get up!” 15 The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother. So, there you go: dead people can hear Jesus. That's why if any of you are spiritually dead in this room right now, the second that Jesus wants to, he can say, "Young man, or young woman, I say to you, get up!" 8 But, physical, material resurrection is not what Paul has in mind here. The resurrection that Paul has in mind is a resurrection with Christ. That is, the resurrection here is one that happens through faith. Paul writes, "...you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead" (Col. 2:12). Jesus died on the cross and was buried in the tomb. On the third day, Jesus was raised from the dead. When he was raised, Paul says, you were also raised! This outward, objective, historical reality becomes spiritually significant for you as you believe. It happens within you through faith. That is, the evidence of a spiritual resurrection is not physical, material change but spiritual alertness and responsiveness. Paul writes elsewhere, "So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ" (Romans 10:17). When Jesus speaks, those who have faith respond. This is describing what theologians call regeneration. That is, the new birth. When God speaks, he acts. And, as that action takes place, God calls into being something that was not previously there. God does not perform CPR on a nearly dead heart. He creates a new one. That is why Paul says that when you are buried with Christ and raised to walk in newness of life. You are a new creation in Christ Jesus. If you are a Christian, you are a walking miracle. This should never cease to amaze you! So, now that you are spiritually alive by the power of God, what are you supposed to be up to now? Paul says, If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. The Christian is called to be continually seeking the priorities of God's throne room. It is, as it were, that we continually rap on heaven's door. We are continually placing the priorities of Jesus on our calendars. One author writes, the things that 9 are above, "…include his[Jesus'] character, his presence, his heavenly joys. We are not to be seeking heavenly geography, but the One who dwells there.” Illustration: If you are familiar with the film Free Solo, you know that rock climber, Alex Honnold gives us a great example of this. The central aim of his life was to free solo El Capitan in Yosemite, CA: a 3,000 climb up sheer granite wall without a rope. To "seek" this mountain peak meant to daily, monthly, and yearly training, planning and preparation to scale this wall. Seeking this peak involved careful planning, meticulous placement of hands, feet, fitness, and food intake. The cost for failure was extremely high. El Capitan set the agenda. Alex Honnold conformed his life, his fitness, and his focus to El Capitan. In the same way the Christian's seeking the things that are above defines the Christian life. We are always climbing further up and further into the Person and Work of Christ. Do you have this kind of exalted picture of the living Christ? Jesus is glorious and unreachable, invisibly seated at the right hand of God. Underlying this text is Psalm 110:1, The Lord says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” The Father says to the Son, "Take the throne." Hebrews also speaks of this throne room in this way: 3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4 having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. (Hebrews 1:3-4). To sit down at the right hand of God is to take up the kingly residence that the whole Old Testament anticipates. It is the highest place. Jesus is preeminent. There is no higher place with which to be preoccupied. 10 To the Christian, this text is saying: "Do that which you most enjoy, and never stop doing it." Seek Christ continually. Set your eyes on Christ. For the new creature in Christ, this is not drudgery. But, it requires total focus and devotion. It is upward and onward. Sermon Illustration: Shasta Fetching Illustration: we are blessed with an Australian Shepherd, Black Labrador Retriever who doesn't need to be told to "continually fetch a tennis ball." It's part of his nature. In fact, it's baked into his name as a retriever. However, if something compelling comes along as a distraction, like a squirrel, he does need to be reminded! In the same way Paul is reminding the Colossians to 'seek Christ.' How does the Christian do this? If Christ is high and exalted like this, how do we reach up to where he is? Those questions lead to the second point. Second, Christians are called to set their minds on Christ. The Christian is called to make their new creation lives about seeking Christ, and conforming your life to Christ is regulated by setting the mind on Christ. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Let me illustrate what this looks like first: Sermon Illustration 1: "Hold on!" Illustration: One of the keys to parenting is manufacturing fun things for your kids to do. We decided, when there was no snow, to take our kids sledding. One of the key commands in sledding is "Hold on!" Keep a tight grip on the sled. While my kids are clinging on for dear life, I am moving them forward. In the same way, the Christian advances in the Christian life by clinging to the cross, by keep our eyes fixed on the Gospel. Rather than advancing on the strength of our moral efforts, the Christian is pulled forward by the strength that the Spirit provides because we have already been seated as Sons and Daughters with Christ. 11 So, what does 'clinging' or 'setting' our minds on Christ look like? First, we need to be clear that the physiological brain and spiritual mind are not the same thing. When Jesus rebukes Peter for misunderstanding Jesus' purpose he says, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (Matthew 16:23). Jesus is not saying that Peter has made an intellectual error, though the intellect is a part of the mind. Jesus is not mainly saying, "You marked A instead of B; you failed the test!" He's saying, "The whole way you think about things is actually Satanic, Peter." Whoa. Your mind is framed with Satanic presuppositions. You don't have the right priorities. Further, when Paul uses this word in Philippians 2, "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus," Paul is not saying: "Have a single brain" though surely he wanted them to think about things similarly. In this text: 1. This is the new, resurrection 'mind'. This is the mind that has been raised from the dead. The mind that responds in faith, trust, and hope. The mind that is unified to Christ by the Holy Spirit. This is the mind that is powered by the Gospel. This is your whole way of thinking now that you are alive in Christ. It's not just the brain. That's why our application can't just be "Memorize Scripture, read your Bible, or Say your prayers." Scripture memory ninjas might have strong brains, but weak minds. 2. This new mind is yours. When a person becomes a Christian, God does not rob them of agency. You are not made less yourself when you become a Christian, but a new self in Christ Jesus. Everything you do, and everything 12 you are is now in relationship to the living Christ. So, the new you has a unique mind. Your God-centered perspective is still yours. 3. This mind makes choices. It is possible for the new mind in Christ to either be fixated on things above or things that are on the earth, but not both at the same time. a. Illustration: A few years ago, due to some health issues, I began eating gluten-free. This involved a change of mind, or a change of heart. I left the world of pizza, pasta, and sourdough bread for a world of rice, meat, and salads. Once I had tasted and seen the new world of new energy, new emotional stability, I didn't want to go back. a. Application: by setting our minds on things above, we are going with the grain of our newly created selves. Sin, for the Christian, is actually a weariness, not a joy. Following Jesus, empowered by the Spirit is the gravitational pull toward Christ and not away from him. b. Connection: this is what is so silly about adding rules to Christ. We don’t grow by making life harder on ourselves. We grow by taking on Christ’s easy yoke. The truth is that being singularly focused is surprisingly way easier than having multiple foci. So Paul says, 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. So, what is this new hidden life like? Illustration: we play hide and seek quite a bit in my house. When Sam is "hidden with Damaris in the closet", they are usually pretty loud and easy to find. On the 13 other hand, if I go play hide and seek in the Boise National Forest, the tragic headline might read: "Man lost, hidden with dog in the forest." Verse 3 is perplexing. It requires us to exercise our imaginations. Paul says, "Set your minds [that is, the new mind that is united to Christ's mind] on things that are above…FOR [reason] you [that is, the old mind and heart that was crucified with Christ] have died, and your life [the totality of your new selfhood] is hidden [invisible] with Christ in God. One commentator writes, “…[Christians'] lives are now securely hidden with Christ in God and thus belong to the invisible realm. Their sphere of being, action, and enjoyment is therefore now totally different from that of their former situation.” So, setting your minds on what is above is the natural outflow of your new nature. Do you see what this means? If you are a Christian, you already live in heaven. Hebrews 12 puts it this way: 22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. The Christian lives spiritually in the City of God. "Your life is hidden with Christ in God." So, your participation in the Kingdom of God is the natural outflow of your new citizenship in heaven. But, you might say, that's not mapping onto my experience. That leads us to our last point. 14 Third, are called to see Christ. Even though the Christian participates in all of this through faith now, they cannot yet see the things for which they hope. What we see is only partial. Though this is the true reality: "Your life is hidden with Christ in God," we live in the here and now where we are still learning how to put on our new selves. Hebrews puts it this way: 13 These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. 14 For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15 If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city (Hebrews 11:13-16). However, even though we cannot see all this yet, we are assured of a promise in this next verse: 4 When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. God has appointed a date for the return of Christ. It will certainly happen. As sure as we are that August 8th is coming, we can be sure that Christ will return. For the Christian, this is not a day to be fearful, but a day for which we long. This is good news for two reasons. First, Because Christ will appear, we will appear too. We need to rest assured that when he comes, we will see him. Whether we are living or dead, we will all see the living Christ when he comes. This is a moment planned in history. Illustration: The simultaneity, or singularity of this event is quite like when someone knocks on our door: the kids run to the door, the dog barks, the parents finish cleaning. It's a simultaneous event to which we all respond. We will not miss it! Second, Because Christ appears, we will appear in his glory. This verse is an invitation to meditate on heaven. 15 Activity: Look around you for a moment. How glorious does the person who is sitting next to you appear? Don't answer that. The truth is that if the person next to you is in Christ, they will one day be absolutely radiant. 1 John 3 says it this way, See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure (1 John 3:1-3). The Psalmist, anticipating this day says, As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness (Psalm 17:15). Romans 8:28-30 says, 28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good,[h] for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. Would you like to spend 30 minutes in heaven? Ladies and gentlemen, through faith you just did! One day, our faith will be sight. And, we will finally realize that our time in the Word, our fellowship with one another, our worship in this place was closest we ever came to heaven in this mortal life. To close, in C.S. Lewis' The Weight of Glory, he writes, “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light 16 of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” In 100 years, when this generation is dead and gone, what will really matter is Christ. He is, therefore, the only single focal point worth living for. Let us live for him! Let's be rooted in him. Summary: God calls Christians to seek Christ, set the mind on Christ, and to see Christ. 1. Seek Christ (Colossians 3:1) 2. Set the Mind on Christ (Colossians 3:2-3) 3. See Christ (Colossians 3:4). Because Jesus alone sought things above, set his mind on things above, he fulfilled the law. But for our sake he was treated as someone who failed to seek what is above, and to set his mind on things above, so that by his death, burial and resurrection, we might be counted as righteous before God. When he was raised, our justification, sanctification, and glorification were all assured by Christ. So, we are safe with Christ in God. This is good news! 1. Make a List. List your identities and rank them in order of their importance to you. How could the Gospel be applied to each identity? How would the Lord re-rank them? 2. Give. Give something [material, talent, time] away this week that takes your focus off of Christ. Instead of engaging with a distraction, pray. 3. Memorize. Memorize Colossians 3:1-4. Post it somewhere in your home. 4. Read. Read Richard Chin's Book Captivated by Christ with a few people in your Life Group. 17 5. Calendar. Schedule 30-45 minutes each day to read your Bible and pray. Instead of just checking the box: ask the Lord to increase your delight in Him. Focus on Jesus in your reading. 6. Teach. Teach some of the concepts in this text to your kids. Play hide and seek and explain how our true lives are invisible to us, but will be visible one day. Hide in a particularly hard spot and explain that the tension we feel when we can't find a person is a lot like when we can't see Christ right away. Even in the hard times, we can be assured that we will see him. 7. Purge. Sift through your possessions. Ask "Does this matter to Jesus? Or, just to me?" Give or throw away things that are distracting. 8. Plan and re-prioritize. If you knew the date of Jesus' return, or the endpoint of your life, what would take up time in your near-term schedule? 9. Pray and share the Gospel with someone using this resource. https://twowaystolive.com/ 10.Think Deeply. Watch Tim Keller and John Piper discuss the nature of sanctification. Why are we so inclined toward distractions? How can this happen? I think the answer has something to do the cross pressures that assail our identity. For example, by my count I have at least ten identities: I am a 1. Human Being 2. Christian 3. Husband 4. Father 5. Son 6. Brother (friend) 7. Pastor 8. Citizen of the US 9. Suburbanite (i.e. home owner, pet owner, car owner, etc.) 10.Student I would argue that we grow distracted because we can't keep our desires or our identities in proper order in relation to Christ. For me to grow in Christ, the Gospel must be applied to all ten of my competing identities. Everything must be seen in relationship to the single focal point. If you have to balance all these 18 identities, you can see why it might feel necessary to make rules and regulations to keep yourself in order! Sin splits our identities and disorders our priorities. Why is the human heart so inclined toward stagnation? The answer is: We get distracted by multiple focal points. We lose track of ultimate, eternal goals. We age. We grow accustomed to our shortcomings. We leave problems unaddressed. We settle into our self-knowledge, and we begin to repudiate change. We fall into ruts. We begin to make it about us. In short, we get our eyes off of Jesus. Illustration: My wife Lauren has planted sunflowers for the past two years in our backyard. They are now over 10 ft. tall. Imagine one day if I walked out into the backyard and said, "Lauren, why isn't this sunflower growing?" She would respond, "It is." "Oh," I might say, "I can't see it." Precisely. Our Christian growth cannot be measured in daily metrics, experiences, or moments but over a lifetime. In fact, in most cases, we cannot see it. The human tendency to measure things can only give an account for what's happening on the human plane. So, when it comes to spiritual growth (i.e. how much is your soul being stretched right now?), we can't answer those questions, except through the revealed word of God. The ultimate answer to this "Why?" questions are found just inside the gates of the Garden of Eden. In Genesis 3, Eve took of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge good and evil, which Adam had been commanded not to eat from "...and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate" (Genesis 3:6). Later, God's curse is grounded on the fact that "...You[Adam] listened to the voice of your wife…", implying that Adam had failed to listen to the one voice that truly mattered: God's voice. His gaze was distracted. He failed to stay focused. He took on two focal points: obedience to God and Eve. Jesus shows us a better way than Adam. John Piper writes that sin is to fail to recognize the centrality of God to our identity. He says that sin is, ● The glory of God not honored. 19 ● The holiness of God not reverenced. ● The greatness of God not admired. ● The power of God not praised. ● The truth of God not sought. ● The wisdom of God not esteemed. ● The beauty of God not treasured. ● The goodness of God not savored. ● The faithfulness of God not trusted. ● The promises of God not believed. ● The commandments of God not obeyed. ● The justice of God not respected. ● The wrath of God not feared. ● The grace of God not cherished. ● The presence of God not prized. ● The person of God not loved. The answers to the why questions of our rule making, the pressures of our responsibilities and identities reveal that our hearts are 'idols factories.' Why is the human heart so inclined toward stagnation? The answer is: We get distracted by multiple focal points. We lose track of ultimate, eternal goals. We age. We grow accustomed to our shortcomings. We leave problems unaddressed. We settle into our self-knowledge, and we begin to repudiate change. We fall into ruts. We begin to make it about us. In short, we get our eyes off of Jesus. The ultimate answer to this "Why?" questions are found just inside the gates of the Garden of Eden. In Genesis 3, Eve took of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge good and evil, which Adam had been commanded not to eat from "...and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate" (Genesis 3:6). Later, God's curse is grounded on the fact that "...You[Adam] listened to the voice of your wife…", implying that Adam had failed to listen to the one voice that truly mattered: God's voice. His gaze was distracted. He failed to stay focused. He took on two focal points: obedience to God and Eve. Jesus shows us a better way than Adam. God is calling us today to seek Christ, set our minds on Christ, and to see Christ. This is the key to reordering our lives around God and the Gospel, and not ourselves or our multiple identities.
Colossians 2:20-23 If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— 21 “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” 22 (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? 23 These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. Introduction Today we’re going to talk about rules. Earlier in Colossians we heard that we shouldn’t follow human traditions that are not in agreement with Christ. Then Paul warns us not to let others judge you about food and drink or special days. In our passage today, the focus is on not putting our trust in man-made rules no matter how good they look. Who here likes making rules for others? Based on the passage we just read this might be difficult to admit to, but some people are good at making rules that are a blessing to others. Good rules bring order and even fun. My wife, Linda, is one of these people. She made rules that were good and fun for our kids growing up. Rules like, if all of you finish your chores in fifteen minutes you can go swimming in your pajamas. I have no idea why kids would want to swim in their pajamas, but whatever. Or sometimes we’d be playing a family game and she’d make up a new, one-time rule that would make the game more exciting and interesting. When our kids were in college we agreed to pay for their classes, but we made the rule that we wouldn’t pay for anything lower than a “B.” One of our kids tested this rule and found out the hard way that we were actually very serious! Linda is really good at making rules that give our family identity and enjoyment. Who here likes following rules? Some people are amazing at following the rules, and as a parent or a school teacher or a boss, you love these people. People that like following the rules can be such an encouragement and even a protection for those around them. And who’s like me and doesn’t like making or following rules? I think rules are fine; rules are good. My problem is that I often just don’t agree with them. There are all kinds of rules in our lives, right? For simplicity, we could break this down into man-made rules and God-given rules. From Psalm 19 we see that all God-given rules are pure, right and perfect. And His rules are not just to be obeyed but loved and enjoyed. Psalm 119 says, “for I find my delight in your commandments, which I love. I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes.” So, all God-given rules are good, and many man-made rules are good too. They help us understand our surroundings and create a predictable order. Things like driving and shopping and playing baseball wouldn’t be possible without well defined rules. Can you imagine how impossible driving would be without stoplights or speed limits or lanes on the roads or any rules about where a car could go? It would be complete chaos. Several years ago I made my first visit to The Netherlands to meet our future son-in-law. One day we went for a bike ride, because that’s what everyone does in The Netherlands, and when we stopped for lunch I needed to use the restroom. I went to the back of the cafe and down some stairs, and I saw two doors. One with a “D” on it and one with an “H.” I didn’t know the rules of this country and had no idea which one to use, so I went back upstairs and asked, “Am I a D or an H?” Rules are part of life, both God-given and man-made. God makes rules to instruct us, to protect us and ultimately to show us our need for a Savior. God has made rules from the beginning. In fact, the very first thing recorded that God spoke to people was a rule. After God made Adam and placed him in the garden in Genesis 2, He said, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” The very first thing God said to Adam was a rule. In the book of Exodus, there are over 200 times when God says, “you shall” or “you shall not.” Rules given by God are good and for our good, and many man-made rules are good too. In Romans we are instructed to submit to the governing authorities, basically follow the man-made rules of your government. So, what’s so bad about the regulations that Paul is referring to? The problem with the rules that Paul is warning us about is that they are “according to human precepts and teachings” and they promote “self-made religion.” These rules pretend to be from God and claim to deliver spiritual reward, but as we’ll see, they are worthless. Paul’s main point in most of chapter two of Colossians is that the people there were minimizing Jesus. Up to this point we’ve seen Jesus as ● the image of the invisible God ● He is the creator of all things ● He is the head of the church ● in Jesus all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell ● He made peace by the blood of His cross ● He made us holy and blameless and above reproach before Him ● He is the riches of glory ● in Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge ● He is the head of all rule and authority ● and the whole body is nourished and knit together in Jesus And some people wanted to trade all that for some worthless, man-made regulations. They were making Jesus not enough. The Colossians were getting caught up in self-made religion. They struggled with the flesh, just like we all do, and some had listened to simplistic rules that actually made their problem worse. Because the rules do nothing for the actual spiritual problem, but instead puff up the pride in the appearance of wisdom and making big sacrifices. When we submit to this kind of human regulation we end up further from God, not closer to Him. It’s exactly like the man in the parable Jesus gives in Luke 18. “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” The Pharisee was saying, “I’m better than other people because I keep the rules.” Where in God’s rules does it even say to fast twice a week? It doesn’t. It was self-made religion. Someone at some point in time made up a rule that if you deny yourself food for two days a week, you’ll be more holy. When in reality you’ll likely just be more proud of yourself, more self-righteous. Like Jesus said, “apart from Me, you can do nothing, and If you love Me you will keep My commandments.” Loving Jesus produces obedience, but obedience to self-made rules produces white washed tombs. So, as Paul asks, why do we all do this? Why do we all, at times, replace the grace and truth of Jesus in our lives with ineffective, self-made religion? First let’s take a look at the whole passage here at the end of Colossians 2. Dying and Living Verse 20. “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world do you submit to regulations?” When a person becomes a believer in Jesus, they are crucified with Christ. It’s a spiritual death, a separation from a former way of life. This is why when we talk about baptism, we mention that it’s a symbol. Baptism is a symbol of dying to the flesh, going under the water, and being resurrected in the Spirit when we come back up. When the early Jews translated the Old Testament to Greek, they used the same exact word for die from this verse to describe God’s words to Adam that we read earlier. When God said, “you shall surely die” He was describing the separation that would happen. Adam ate of the tree, but didn’t physically die. He definitely died spiritually though. This is why Paul uses some pretty direct language. If you have died to the flesh, why are you trying to live as if you didn’t. It’s the same question he asked the Galatians, “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” This is serious stuff because we who have believed are fools to settle for something less than Jesus. Paul calls these rules and precepts “elemental spirits of the world.” They are basic, elementary rules that do nothing to get us approval from God or control our sinful flesh. If you step back and think about it, it makes no biblical sense why anyone would follow rules like this. I did a lot of research on what exactly the Colossians were practicing that related to Paul’s examples here of do not handle, do not taste, do not touch. I can tell you with complete confidence, no one knows. But it was most likely something similar to what we see in Galatians when even Peter was caught up in a group of people that returned to Jewish laws and held themselves aloof from the Gentiles. What if I said, “Since your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and you want to make your temple as welcoming as possible, and we all know we should buffet our bodies. Therefore to be godly you should be strictly vegan and arise at 3:30am every day and exercise vigorously for three hours. And don’t even touch meat or dairy ever. And then your temple will be cleansed and you will enjoy greater fellowship with the Holy Spirit.” Would anyone fall for that? I hope not, but that’s pretty much what was happening in Colossae. The rules became the religion. Human precepts and teachings So what is it that makes this type of rule so bad and yet look so wise? Verse 23, “These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.” We all make rules for others. I have a rule that no one should let their shopping cart block the aisle at Costco while they contemplate the differences between the five choices for an air fryer. I have a rule that if you’re walking through an airport, you must get out of the way if you want to stop and look at your phone. I had a rule for my kids growing up that they couldn’t make noises while I was driving. I don’t think these rules come from a great place in my heart, but they’re not the type of rules here. The type of rules mentioned in verse 23 are bad because they diminish the worth of Christ’s grace and replace it with human effort to keep hard rules. From my experience rules like this tend to take on a narrow focus. Things like how to raise your kids or how to manage your money or like here with things that perish with use. If you’ve been in some denominations or lived through different phases of the Church in America you know that playing cards or using dice have been viewed as sin. Because cards and dice are used in gambling and gambling promotes greed and greed is idolatry, therefore don’t even touch cards or dice. In my parents’ generation the phrase was, “we don’t drink, smoke or chew or go with girls who do.” Lots of people like rules for the gray areas of life. It makes things simpler. We like binary positions. It’s either on or off; you’re either right or wrong, good or bad. It’s so much simpler than justice and mercy and faithfulness. These rules start off with the appearance of wisdom. If they didn't, very few people would follow them. They look good and godly at the start. Just like when Jesus called out the Pharisees, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law.” You can probably see how they got there. God said to tithe, so to be more righteous let’s tithe on every little thing. Let’s make it really hard on ourselves and calculate what we will sacrifice for God, and then call ourselves good for doing what God didn’t ask us to do. This is a human problem; it’s not just in the Church. People want a system of rules so that they can be right and feel good about themselves. We love that as people. Several years ago my kids and I took a tour of Boyden Cave which is at the bottom of Kings Canyon in the Sierras. Before the tour the park service ranger gave us the explanation of the geology and the history of exploring the cave. Caves are super interesting. One point in his talk was a request not to touch the walls because the oils on our hands could damage the ecology of the cave. As we were coming up out of the depths of the cave, an elderly woman a few people ahead of me lost her balance and touched the wall to steady herself. It took about two seconds for the person immediately behind her to loudly scold her for breaking the rule. Here’s an older woman, who simply stumbled in a dark, damp cave with an uneven walking surface and the person behind her cared more about keeping the rules than for another person who needed some mercy instead. Without even realizing it, rules can become a moral divide. Just like the Pharisee in Luke 18, we start to think ourselves good because we keep the rules, and look down on those who don’t. How many of you would be on board if the rules for “do not eat” applied to broccoli and Brussel sprouts? And do not even touch lima beans. Lima beans are the worst. Kids, don’t try this at home, but when I was a kid my parents had a rule that I couldn’t leave the table until my plate was clean. So I’d stuff the things I didn’t want to eat in my pockets when they weren’t looking. Their rule did nothing for my rebellious heart. Rules and regulations and precepts can be useful tools, but they are of no value in stopping the sinful heart. A heart that wants to sin will find a way around the rules. When our son Andy was three years old, he lost a game of Candyland to his older sister, Jen. We had a rule that when you lose a game, you congratulate the winner. When we tried to enforce this rule, he obeyed and said, “Congratulations, boo-boo-face!” He obeyed the rule, but his heart was unchanged. Rules come and go because people get weary and frustrated and feel like failures, and because the rules don’t deliver on their promises. For a quick review: all of God’s rules are good and we should love them, many man-made rules are good and helpful, but there are some man-made rules that diminish Jesus’s works and His desire for our heart in all things. Just as the Law cannot save, rules cannot sanctify. Remember the example of the Pharisee in Luke 18. He congratulated himself and looked down on the tax collector. We all do this. I get good grades, I use money wisely, I pay my bills on time, I take care of myself, I recycle. Whatever it is, we make up rules in our own mind or we follow someone else’s and then we feel good about ourselves. And really all it comes down to is, we pick rules that line up with our God-given strengths, and then take credit for being good at what God made us good at, and then look down on others because they don’t have the same strengths. When this happens everything about Jesus in Colossians is diminished. Rules are a necessary part of life. But sometimes they go too far. They become the standard of being right and righteous. I’ve heard of churches that have strict rules for dress code. I have a friend that was a candidate to be a pastor, and everything was going great until he preached in the church without wearing a tie. That was literally the feedback they gave him when they delicined his being their pastor; he didn’t wear a tie in the pulpit. I’d guess they started off years before with good motives to provide guidance for appropriate dress, but over time they become legalistic. Christianity still has our fair share of self-made religion. We all fall prey to the lie that doing more, working harder, being better is the answer. But it’s not. William Barclay said, “The person who is meticulous in observance of special days, who keeps all the food laws and who practices ascetic abstinence is in very grave danger of thinking they’re specially good and of looking down on other people. Christian freedom comes not from restraining desires by rules and regulations, but from the death of evil desires and the springing to life of good desires.” Why do we do this Why do we fall prey to man-made religion? I think we all understand how these simple rules can take hold. And yet, they are a false hope for righteousness. They have no value in spiritual maturity. So, why do we let man-made religion become our satisfaction instead of Jesus? “Why” is one of the best questions in the world. It’s one of the things that sets us apart from other creatures. We are always asking, why. When a human tragedy happens, we ask why. When a person with a good life does something to ruin it all, we ask why. When a child is about three years old they start asking why a lot. This is good! It shows that we want to understand our world and how things work. We want to understand cause and effect. But as adults we have a surprisingly difficult time answering the why questions when they are directed at our own heart. Why did you get angry? Why did you get sarcastic and curt with that person? Why do you hide things from your spouse? Asking “Why” can help us get to the heart, to what motivates us. If you want to grow in Christ, then you need to get good at answering the “why” questions in your own life. We’re great at answering why someone else did something! But growth in Christ happens when we answer the why questions about ourselves. For example, maybe one question is, “Why do you put off doing hard things?” You know you should have that conversation with your teenager, but you put it off. Why? You think you should do something kind for that person that crossed your mind, but you talk yourself out of it. Why? If you are serious about growing in Christ, don’t stop at the easy answer to the why question. Keep pressing in. Because most of the time the answer to the deeper “why” question will reveal a reward you are pursuing or a pain you are avoiding. Asking ourselves why we want what we want is an important part of growing in Christ, and that’s what Paul is doing for the Colossians. There are always reasons why we do what we do. The people in Colossae didn’t want to follow regulations that were difficult for no reason. So Paul asks them why they submit to regulations that have no value in moving them toward Jesus. Verse 20, “why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to … human precepts and teachings?” Why, since we have the mind of Christ, would we submit to human precepts? Hopefully you already know this, but we’re not very wise or good. We are emotional, irrational and sinful people who are not wise enough or godly enough to consistently tell the difference between something that is actually wise and something that only has the appearance of wisdom. We are easily influenced by those around us and even by circumstances that play on our preferences and confirm our biases. We think we’re better than we are, smarter than we are, right more often than we are. We do something bad and then lie to ourselves that we did it for a good reason, as if that matters. Matthew 15:5-9 “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,” he need not honor his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” These traditions looked wise on the surface. In these people’s minds, they were making sacrifices to give their money to God. And isn’t God more important than parents? Why do we do this? Because people love keeping rules if it makes them feel good about themselves. Remember the Prodigal Son’s brother? This was him to a tee. His main complaint was, “I kept the rules and he didn’t. I deserve the reward and he doesn’t.” We do this too. We make rules for how to manage money, how to parent, how to honor the Sabbath, how to do church and then we look down on others who don’t keep our man-made rules. Why do we do this? Because we want an easier way to be good than humbling ourselves at the feet of Jesus. Because rules are easier than justice, mercy and humility. Because keeping the rules can make us look good to others and feel good about ourselves. Because we want to believe that we did it. We worked hard, we followed the rules and we get the credit. Because we don’t want to face our failings and sin and accept the mercy of a loving Savior. Bottom line, because we are self-righteous. This is what rules and regulations and self-made religion do. They make us self-righteous. That’s why these rules are worthless, and are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. Because they have no spiritual power over the human heart. Making sacrifices to keep self-made rules cannot save us nor can it sanctify us. Conclusion What do we do about this? I think the Colossians were on the right track. They wanted to stop the indulgence of the flesh. But no one can do that with rules, traditions and self-made religion. That will only lead to how Jesus described some of the religious leaders, “You look clean on the outside, but the inside is full of greed and self-indulgence.” Randy Alcorn put it this way, “Behavior modification that’s not empowered by God’s heart-changing grace is self-righteousness, as repugnant to God as the worst sins people gossip about.” The problem comes when we make spiritual rules about things that aren’t spiritual. When we make a rule for something that God doesn’t and imply or even promise that it will get us status, we are swerving from true righteousness. The rule sounds wise because it feels spiritually motivated and may even be biblically based. It gives the impression that the goal is holiness, obedience or dying to self. But in the end it’s just about keeping the rules. There’s a lot of applications we could derive from this passage, but let me suggest just one. This week try to catch yourself making rules for other people. And then think about how it makes you feel about that person when they break your rules. Then answer the “why do I do this” question. This should give some good insights into areas where this passage applies to you and where your self-righteousness wants to rule over you. How do we truly stop the indulgence of the flesh? Don’t miss the upcoming messages from Colossians 3! God speaking through Ezekiel says, I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and I will cleanse you from all your idols. And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. God is the only One capable of causing the heart change that we desperately need.
Background: Colossians 2:8-23 is in the section of the book dealing with “The Heresy of Christ + Something Else: Rejecting Spiritual Add-ons.”
Flagstaff, Arizona! A couple’s first date and she came to the date with her…
Tension: What if we are doing the same thing in regard to Jesus?
Six simple ways to shipwreck your spiritual life:
Submit to the final authority of someone other than Jesus. (v 16a) Decide that you are spiritually sanctified by what you do or don’t eat and drink. (v 16b) Decide that the timing of spiritual activity sanctifies or defiles you. (v 16c) Decide that self-abasement pleases God. (v 18a) Decide that worshiping anyone/anything besides God or in addition to God is good. (v 18b) Decide that visions or revelation outside the Bible are true and necessary. (v 18c)
Two simple ways to catalyze your spiritual life:
Be clear that Jesus Christ is the substance and all else is only shadow. (v 17) Hold fast to Jesus Who is the Head of the church, therefore the Head of each one of us. (v 19)
Core Idea of Colossians 2:16-19: Jesus alone is the Substance…and real life is found in Him. Period.
This reminds me of something I heard somewhere: “We exist to glorify God by pointing the affections of all peoples to the all-satisfying Person of Jesus Christ.”
And: “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” Jn 14:6
A spiritual exercise: A basic primer on how to hold fast to Jesus.
Good morning, Church! My name is Trent Houck, and I am one of the Staff Pastors here at FCBC. It's my joy to bring you to the word this morning. We will be looking at Colossians 2:8-15, but I wanted to begin with one of the New Testament's assumptions: All of the New Testament writers agree that we are in the midst of a spiritual conflict.
Christians must remain captive to Christ alone.
Paul writes to the Ephesians:
11 Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. 12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. 14 Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, 15 and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. 16 In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; 17 and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, 18 praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication (Ephesians 6:11-18).
All throughout our series on Colossians, we have been saying that Jesus is enough. A few weeks ago, I invited you to begin consistently praying: Jesus, you are more than enough for me each day. Far from being a mantra for peacetime, that phrase is for your spiritual protection against the enemy of your soul. It's a correction for your flesh. And, its an exhortation for your spirit as you stand apart from the culture's ways. Further, it may even protect our church's unity, as we gather around Jesus.
Today, we're going to be examining one of the enemy's key tactics called captivation. That is, seizing, snatching, stealing, hijacking, or enticing people into his traps.
But, more importantly, we're going to be examining how the Gospel protects believers from the devil's schemes. So, let's get to work!
In the 2008 film Taken, starring Liam Neeson, Brian Mill's teenage daughter Kim Mills, embarks on a trip to Europe from America with some friends. She is instructed to call her dad when she arrives so that he can be assured of her safety. After failing to do this, Brian calls Kim, only to find her watching as her friend is abducted by human traffickers in their hotel room.
She panics, watching from the bathroom window.
Brian slowly and carefully walks her through another set of instructions so that he can gather as much information as he can about the criminals. Over the phone, he says calmly, "They will take you, and when they do, shout out as much information about them as you can. Their hair color. Eye color. Scars. Anything." The viewer watches Brian, as a father, hearing his daughter scream while being taken into the hands of predators. It's horrific. I don't recommend it.
Brian Mill's packs his bags and sets out on a thrilling, heart-pumping, two hour journey to recapture his daughter from danger.
What's the point of the story?
Don't let yourself be overtaken by predators! See to it that no one takes you captive. Pay attention!
Kim fails to do this.
Kim believed that she was safe. That those kinds of things happen only to other people until the moment is upon her.
In the same way Epaphras rushes to Paul to find help in his time of need. The Colossians were being captivated by false teachers. What should he do?
Are we as a Church spiritually alert and awake, or are we floating down the Boise River of our spiritual lives, without a care in the world?
Where are you this morning?
Are you aware of your spiritual surroundings?
There are basically two kinds of Christians here this morning:
Those who are growing and experiencing rich, joyful, and enduring fellowship with the living God. Those who are safe in Christ. Those who are languishing and wilting in unbelief, falling into patterns of sin, and becoming captives to harmful snares.
Theologians throughout the centuries have described the process of sanctification, or growth in godliness, in this way:
While the overall trajectory of the Christian life is upward toward glorification and growth, there are rabbit trails and stuck points where we get lost. One of the ways that this can happen is by allowing ourselves to be captivated by false ideas of who Christ is. This can happen even in, and maybe even especially in, the local church.
So, to reset the stage a bit for Colossians, we are two chapters into this glorious letter. Epaphras, one of Paul's Gospel-workers, traveled to Paul, who was in a Roman Prison and reported that there were predators at Colossae that were placing barriers in front of the Colossians. There were people being taken captive, and seduced into snares.
Paul's central theme in the letter is the sufficiency of Christ. Jesus is enough. And, we continue to come back to this question: Enough for what?
Last week, we found that Jesus is enough for the entirety of the Christian life.
Paul writes,
6 Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving (Colossians 2:6-7).
Paul says, "There is only one way to stay spiritually safe: Stay fixed on Jesus. Pay attention to Jesus. Don't swerve from Jesus."
At this point, the Church at Colossae was ten years into their relationship with Christ, and they were being tempted, tested, and tried by the enemy of their souls. This took the form, not mainly of persecution, but the seductive force of false teaching.
So then, all of Paul's praying (Col. 1:3-14), theologizing (Colossians 1:15-20), explaining (Colossians 1:21-25), animating (Colossians 1:24-29), and exhorting (2:1-7) are the martial arts and defense against false teaching. His purpose is to move the Colossians out of danger into a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ, who alone is safe and can save.
So, in the next three sections of Colossians, Paul aims to show that Christ is enough by issuing three warnings:
"See to it that no one takes you captive" (2:8) "Let no one pass judgment on you…" (2:16) "Don't submit to regulations" on the basis of human tradition (2:20)
Paul reveals that there is nothing more compelling and seductive to humans than: false teaching, the opinion and praise of other men, and bodily regulations that provide proof of salvation. These are all barriers to the Christian's growth and can get them on side trails and dead ends.
In this particular section Paul warns against captivating philosophies by giving one negative command, providing at least five reasons for this command, and reminding the Colossians of the Gospel.
The Gospel, we find, is the antidote to spiritual kidnapping.
Before we begin unpacking our text, we need to pause and reflect. Are we facing the same danger of spiritual captivity today? I would argue that we are.
Consider our appetite for information, for teaching: Who among us is not listening to a constant stream of data through podcasts, articles, books, social media, blogs and the like? We are being exposed to more teachers, more philosophies, and opinions than previous generations could ever imagine. Jean Twenge cites that the average pre-covid, High School Senior in 2017 spent at least 6 hours a day on social media.
Could it be that we are even more susceptible to the diseases of false information, false doctrine, and false teaching precisely because we are so inundated with sheer volume of it?
Paul could likely have identified the false teachers by name. He could have detailed, even more acutely, what exactly they were teaching and why it was wrong. There was a definiteness and a concreteness to his world. He probably worked with Epaphras to be specific. He also worked with Timothy as a co-author (1:1). Paul was an expert in Judaism, and he was fluent in Greco-Roman pantheistic philosophy and cult religions of his day. He knew his world.
So, no matter where the threat came from, Paul could work through it.
But, we live in a new kind of world.
In our culture of expressive individualism, we are all experts, especially on ourselves. We appoint our own experts. We curate our own lists of gurus and teachers, with nearly endless options, if one should fail. And, we do all of this privately, with no sense of accountability or visibility.
And sometimes we wonder why we're at a spiritual stuck point in our sanctification.
While more information is not inherently problematic, the human desire for infinite knowledge and infinite autonomy with that knowledge stems all the way back to the garden. The serpent's lie in the garden was this: "You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3:4-5).
The very first lie that led to the Fall and the captivity of humanity was an invitation to the secret passageway of more, even infinite, knowledge. "You can know what God knows," says Satan. "I have a faster way to become like God. It's two, even three times, faster than what you're used to."
This is dangerous for humanity.
So, God said, "Don't take that road!" This is because only God can handle infinite information and knowledge.
Ever since that moment in the garden, enemies of God have been making similar claims, dressed up in new clothes for each succeeding generation. While the flowers of sin may look different, the seeds of sin remain the same.
So, here is the main personal question for us to ask: What captivates the attention of your heart? If you are not totally satisfied with the person and work of Jesus Christ, you will go into a season of being stuck.
Mature pastors, theologians, and church members know that they are not immune to this. For example, one of the ghosts in C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce, who should be most familiar with the things of God is afforded the opportunity to head to heaven. However, he remarks, "Bless my soul, I'd nearly forgotten. Of course I can't come with you [to heaven]. I have to be back next Friday to read a paper. We have a little Theological Society down there [that is, in Hell]."
Lewis' haunts us with the hell-bent theologian, who will not enter into true knowledge of God for fear that he would have to forsake knowledge about God. He needed his theology, not Jesus alone. What captivates the attention of your heart?
Here is our main point:
Christians must remain captive to Christ alone.
Not ideas about Christ. Not philosophies concerning Christ. Not religious ideals related to Christ. Not with religious culture.
But to Christ himself. He alone is the substance. And there is no replacement.
Paul will unpack this main point in the following four ways and we will try to follow him closely:
(Command) The Call to Be Captive to Christ Alone (Colossians 2:8) (Reasons) The Christian's Causes to Be Captive To Christ (Colossians 2:9-12) (Explains) The Christian's Canceled Debts at the Cross (Colossians 2:13-14) (Reminds) The Christian's Conquering King (Colossians 2:15)
Christians must remain captive to Christ alone.
Heavenly Father, we again come to you this morning to seek your face. You alone are our highest good. You are worthy of all our praise, adoration, study, and desires. We pray this morning that you would reveal yourself through your Word.
Jesus, thank you for being enough. Thank you for your perfect life, your atoning death, and for the resurrection that assures us and comforts us. Cause us to walk more deeply rooted in you as a result of being together this morning.
Holy Spirit, we pray that you would empower the preaching of your Word. That you would train us for godliness. Expose sin in our hearts. Show us how we are inclined to pursue enticing substitutes, rather than being fully satisfied with the Person and Work of Jesus. We pray that you would provide a real experience right here and right now of exactly what this text is talking about. We pray that you would do this for our good and for your glory, and we pray it in Christ's name, amen.
First, Paul issues a command that we be captive to Christ Alone. He writes,
8 See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
Paul says, "Watch out! Pay attention! See to it! Look both ways!" This is the negative command: "Don't let anyone take you captive." It's important to notice that this command is not issued at the level of moral behavior, ethical actions, or instructions (he will get to that in chapter 3). Rather, Paul wants the Colossians to think. There's a difference.
He's not saying, "Don't do that!" but rather, "Don't think that way!"
Paul is addressing a command to the Colossians' belief system, to the way that they construct their understanding of everything. Really, this is a command addressed to what psychologists call "metacognition." The way you think about the way you think. "See to it", is saying, "Pay attention to the way you think about the world."
While this command is negative, "Don't let anyone take you captive" the double negative at the end of the verse opens up the possibility of us stating it positively:
Don't be captive to anything, [that is] not according to Christ.
While in 2 Corinthians 10:5, he puts it positively,
"We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ…" (2 Corinthians 10:5)
So, what are the weapons of these predators that Paul warns us about?
There are two: Philosophy and empty deceit. 'Philosophy' and 'empty deceit' are both intellectual exercises. 'Philosophy' is literally, the 'love of wisdom.' "Empty deceit" is something that appears to be compelling, but it ends up being a road to nowhere. They are cheap tricks.
So, the key question here is this: What do you allow to captivate you at the level of the imagination? Some of us are held captive by cat videos, our email inboxes, our jobs, careers, vacations, or kids etc. If you want to know what you're captivated by, just ask someone close to you, they see where your eyes go. They see what causes your emotions to spike or your heart to race.
Human beings can be captivated at the level of the imagination, intellect, and reason. And, this is a beautiful human capacity. It's one of the ways that we are sanctified: Christians are to be captured by beautiful, glorious and penetrating thoughts of God. However, the pervasiveness of sin is such that it affects our reason and makes us susceptible to counterfeit gods.
And so, the mind can be compelled to fall back into old, empty ways.
So, then, Paul gives the Colossians two pieces of evidence to show why this philosophy is inferior.
First, he says that this philosophy comes from 'human tradition', or that it literally is 'handed down/given from men.' Second, he says that it proceeds from the 'elemental spirits' of the world. To define these two things within the context of the Colossian Church, we need to see the Colossians as Paul sees them.
The Colossians were not atheists, materialists, or individualists when they came to Christ. Prior to knowing Jesus, they were subject to the Greco-Roman pantheon of gods, rules of community life, and political views, etc. They were likely deeply superstitious, animistic, and spiritual. They were also probably very smart, philosophical and reflective. They were steeped in religious practices handed down by men, and believed that they were subject to the elemental spirits, that is, the spiritual forces of nature, or spiritual beings, that set the world in motion.
Why would the Colossians be tempted to go back there?
There are probably at least two reasons: first, these things made intellectual sense to them. Human tradition is a powerful persuader. It fit in their previous worldview.
To illustrate: you find when you get married that your spouse inherited a whole host of human traditions that come into conflict with your own traditions. This shows up in all kinds of ways from family vacations, to Christmas traditions, to how you organize your sock drawer. Why do you do things that way? It's just how we did it in my house. It's intuitive.
Second, the Colossians were tempted to regress because it made spiritual sense to them. They were tempted to practice their Christianity in line with their pantheistic upbringing.
To illustrate: we grew up in a materialistic, scientistic world that has emancipated itself from the need of God. So, what do you think is our default mode when we're under pressure? We tend to value what's measurable and manageable over the Spirit.
You see, the Colossians are being tempted in these ways because they are being called to follow Christ alone. When they come in contact with situations that seem to require more than Christ, they panic, and are susceptible to being taken captive.
They have abandoned a whole series of practices, ways of life, traditions, and experiences that feel so normal. So, when these false teachers come along and tell them, "It's okay, add something to Christ!" This would have come across like their native, heart language.
But, in the Gospel, Christians are given a new heart.
Paul wrote earlier: "God has delivered us from the domain of darkness [this is every spiritual culture that does not exalt Christ is King, including our own] and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins" (Colossians 1:13-14). In other words, Colossians, you no longer belong to human traditions or elemental spirits of the world, the domain of darkness. You belong to Christ alone.
And, Christ alone is sufficient. Paul writes, "He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation…For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things…" (Colossians 1:19-20). In other words, all attempts to order the universe by human tradition, or the spirits of the age are found wanting precisely because Jesus is the central figure to all things. Without Christ at the center, nothing makes sense in Christianity.
Don't let anyone take you captive.
Be captive to Christ alone.
So, what are the reasons that a Christian ought to stay captivated by Christ?
That leads us to our next point:
Second, Paul gives at least five causes or reasons to remain captive to Christ. This part of the sermon could get very technical with questions about baptism, the nature of salvation, faith, and circumcision. But, my hope for you as we read this section is that you will ask this question:
How could I be captivated by anything or anyone other than Jesus? He has given me everything that I could ever want or need in Himself!
If you are not a believer in Jesus, this could be a moment where God performs the very action he describes in this passage. We are praying that he does.
So, let your soul count the reasons for joy. Look at what God has done for you.
9 For in him[Christ] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, 10 and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. 11 In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, 12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.
The most important phrases that I want you to take from this section are these words: "In Him." Or, "in Christ" Or, "With Christ." These phrases are used around 165 times in Paul's letters.
Here, Paul gives us the logic of the Gospel. He says, what keeps you from being captivated by false teachers?
The Fullness of God dwells in Christ (Col. 2:9). You have been filled or completed in Christ (Col. 2:10) You were spiritually circumcised, or made alive in Christ (2:11). You were buried with Christ by baptism (2:12). You were raised with Christ through his resurrection (2:12).
So, with these five reasons, or causes Paul renders the empty deceit or philosophy completely powerless by comparison. Each of them is a source of joy for the Christian.
Notice though, what saves or sanctifies the Colossians is not a set of practical actions (i.e. do this). But a set of objective, concrete, past actions that were accomplished by God.
Paul says,
You have been filled in Christ.
You were circumcised in Christ.
You were buried with Christ.
You were raised with Christ.
So that means, the most important, transformative, and spiritually significant moments in the Christian life are those that took place through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's not about what we do, it's about what Christ has done.
See, if you want to encourage a moralist, you give them a set of to-dos by which they can save themselves. You give them a problem set and you show them the way to solve each one.
If you want to encourage a Christian, however, you remind her of what Christ has already accomplished on her behalf. That the Christian's main problem, sin, has been resolved at the Cross of Christ.
So, let's unpack why each of these five causes are so encouraging.
First, "In Christ" all the fullness of deity dwells bodily. The aim of this statement is to drive the Colossians away from two errors.
Jesus was partially God. The belief that you can find God outside of Christ is lethal. And, it will kill your joy. Knowing that you can only find God in Christ sends you soaring. Jesus was immaterial. The belief that Jesus was only a soul or a spirit makes him unable to accomplish the forgiveness of sins. So, Paul straightens these false teachers out.
"No," Paul says, "All the fullness of deity, or anything you want to know about God can be found in Christ, the incarnate Son of God."
Application:
First, You don't need to look further than Jesus to find God.
Second, the material universe, including our bodies, were designed and created as "very good." God incarnate, the fullness of God, comes to find us in the incarnate Jesus. This is good news!
Second, You have been filled in Him, who is the head of all rule and authority. This too, protects the Colossians from at least two errors.
Salvation is partial. No, Paul says, you were filled. There are no additional steps necessary to open yourself up to God. God has filled you in the Person and Work of Jesus Christ. For all of us who find Christianity lacking at times, we need to be reminded that Jesus didn't skimp on us. He poured himself out completely on the cross. Jesus' authority is derived. No, Paul says, Jesus is the head of every and all authority. So, there is no higher authority or power by which you can be filled than the Person of Jesus Christ.
Third, You were made spiritually sensitive, or alive, by the death of Christ. God accomplished a circumcision of the heart, that is a spiritual one, not by hands, through the Cross of Christ. That is to say, you were given a new heart, filled with new affections, and given a new spiritual vitality at the Cross. This protects the Christian from the errors that:
You need additional spiritual work to be saved. Nope! Christ has done it all. You can't make yourself more sensitive than God has already made you to himself. Your old self rules you. Nope! You are a new Creation in Christ Jesus. Even though we face Romans 7 kinds of moments with our flesh and sin, we know that Christ put the flesh to death at the Cross, we live alive to God.
Fourth, You were buried with Christ in Baptism. So, Jesus, having been laid in the tomb, was buried. Likewise, when the Christian undergoes baptism, they are visibly identifying with Christ's death and burial. The Christian doesn't fear death because he or she has already died. So, no practices of death-avoidance, whether that's aging creams, or plastic surgery, or diets will ever truly satisfy.
If you are in Christ, God sees Christ's burial as your own burial. You went through a spiritual graveside service.
Baptism Service: We do baptisms, which signify this transformation at least two times each year. If you have an interest in publicly declaring your allegiance to Jesus Christ, please talk to me after this service or sign up online!
Fifth, You were also raised with Christ in his resurrection. When Jesus was raised, you were also raised with him. This protects the Colossian Christians from falling into the error that:
Christ wasn't really raised. The empty tomb, the public appearances, the historically reliable proof all have massive implications for the Christian. Christ's resurrection doesn't matter. No way, when Christ was raised, Christians were raised with him. So, when he beat death, we beat death.
Now, this is not a series of five steps to become a Christian. Rather, when a Christian becomes a Christian all five of these things become real, clear, and apparent. They all happen simultaneously, seamlessly. And, God does it all from first to last, through an instrument called faith.
So, we have to come back to verse 12:
having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God…
God does all this when a person believes.
The way to stay safe from deceptive philosophies and empty myths is by rehearsing the Gospel, which saves sinners by faith. Staying safe in Christ is to be fully saturated in the blood-bought goodness of salvation by grace through faith.
That leads us to our third point:
Third, if that's not enough, God went ahead and canceled your debts past, present, and future. Christianity is not a get-well soon plan. It's not a series of steps or moral accomplishments. No, Christianity is a declaration that our debts have been canceled. Look with me at verse 13:
13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
This text is astounding. I want to focus on the middle of verse 13: "Having forgiven us all our tresspasses." That is, forgiveness without reference to time. This means that the total record of debt that you accrued, past, present, and future is nailed to the cross of Jesus Christ.
So then, three things should grow as we age: First, our awareness of God's moral perfection and holiness. Our salvation cost the death of his Son. Second, our sense of our own personal sinfulness. Our sin is still our greatest problem. Third, a growing awareness that the Cross of Jesus Christ bridges the gap from now to eternity.
2 Corinthians 5:21 says,
21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
So, how does this relate to our previous two points? How does this keep us from the seduction and captivity of false doctrine? These questions lead us to our final point. With this, we will bring this sermon to a close.
Finally, we remain captive to Christ because through the Cross Jesus became our Conquering King. Paul writes,
15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.
The image behind this text is that of the Roman Procession. One Author writes,
"The triumphal procession was a lavish parade conducted in Rome to celebrate great victories in significant military campaigns…
They were ostentatious celebrations, filled with valiant soldiers, the spoils of war, and the most theatrical pomp and circumstances Rome could muster.
Moreover, the triumphal procession demonstrated Rome’s prowess as the victor not only by parading the spoils of war, but also by leading in triumph the most important leaders and intimidating warriors of the enemy, now presented as conquered slaves.
The highest honor any Roman Caesar or general could receive would be to lead one of these parades. Conversely, to be led as a prisoner in such a triumphal procession signaled one’s utter defeat. . . .
[T]he role of those led in triumph was to reveal the glory of the one who had conquered them, ultimately through their public execution and death. . . .
At the end of the parade, the Romans publicly slaughtered as a sacrifice to their god(s) those prisoners who had been led in procession (or at least a representative sample thereof, selling the rest into slavery). Though a gruesome thought to us, what better way to magnify one’s victory, while at the same time offering a sacrifice of gratitude to the gods, than to kill publicly the leaders and the most valiant of the vanquished warriors as the final act of triumph over them?
To make this more contemporary, the Golden State Warriors had a parade in their own city to celebrate their 2022 championship against the Celtics.
When did God accomplish this? When were the authorities and rulers disarmed, and when did the triumphal procession happen? Doug Moo writes,
"…Paul insists that God, by sending Christ to the cross as the final and definitive means to take care of the sin problem, has removed any power that these evil spirits might have over us. This victory, celebrated and displayed in the resurrection and ascension of Christ, is what believers need to grasp as their own. Christ’s authority over the rulers and authorities (v. 10) has been decisively manifested; and “in him” believers share that authority."
So, the Colossians are called and commanded not to be captivated because their captors were already conquered. The fall prey to them was to reassign them power that had already been taken away.
Christian, don't go backward! Don't get taken captive! Remain captive to Christ. He alone is worthy.
In case you're wondering, at the end of the 2008 Film Taken, Liam Neeson's character, after defeating the enemies, returns his daughter home to the U.S. safe and sound. It is a triumphant and glorious reunion.
This is the hope of the Christian life: what God has done for us in Christ Jesus. It is also the hope of Christian Missions. It is the message that we preach so that nations might rejoice, with the same joy that we possess. We're going to end our message with a brief update and time of prayer for our Missions Team heading to Mongolia.
Is Jesus enough? Well, enough for what? Enough to help me get right with God, or understand life, or make it through the rough seasons of my years? Is he really enough? The Colossian Christians initially thought so, but had been recently challenged in that conviction by intellectuals and religious teachers who sounded Christian, but who had a very different picture of the person of Jesus. He was just a guy. And he didn't know it all. They were more enlightened and offered a better way, a more powerful experience of salvation; they had discovered the secrets of the universe, the higher principles of the unseen world. And if you only believed in Jesus, you would be limited in what you could understand and experience––and that simply wasn't enough.
•There are two very different pictures of Jesus––the Christian one and every other one. The non-Christian portrait of Jesus is, at best, a limited one. He was a good guy, an insightful teacher, a self-educated Jewish rabbi who spoke with authority and compassion. He certainly had a grasp on human nature and profound truths. For a first century Jew, he was remarkably in touch. He was special. But he was only human. So, as much as you like him, as much as you are drawn to his life, you can't see him much more than as a wonderful example to learn from and follow. And even then, you have to take what he said––and what others said about him––with a grain of salt.
•After all, he never traveled more than a couple of hundred miles from his home. He never saw a Toyota or drove a Subaru. Never flew in an airplane. Never used a cellphone. Never took an antibiotic. He never traveled outside of a few days’ walk of the Mediterranean. Never ate a hamburger or washed it down with a coke. He never held a printed book in his hand or ripped open a package of M&Ms or brewed a steaming mug of coffee. He never enjoyed a bowl of strawberry ice cream, or held in His hand an iPhone. As a citizen of Century One, he couldn't have known about bacteria, or Covid19, or atoms and quarks, or black holes and the actual size of the universe; he had to have been ignorant of electricity and certainly couldn't have foreseen the internet or OLED 4K Smart TVs or medical MRIs. The population of the entire earth at that time equaled the population of just our country––a little over 300 million––which is a fraction of the 7 billion people alive today; and whole movements of history, including the rise of the United States with its Constitution of freedom and responsibilities, were yet to happen. As just a Jewish rabbi, he couldn't have known. So, yes, he was wonderful. Engaging. Insightful. A great model to remember and imitate. But he was not enough––not for the Colossians then who lived in Roman society far from the Jewish world, and certainly not enough for us in our advanced, technological, complex world today. So take Jesus. But you're going to need other truth, other insights, other traditions, something more to make it through life and live successfully. That’s one view of Jesus.
•And then there's the Christian view of Jesus. Yes, he wore a robe and sandals. He ate kosher. He never had breakfast of bacon and eggs, never ordered a latte, never did a lot of things we take for granted. But there's a reason that guy who lived only a little over 3 decades and never travelled far from where he was born affected his world and all of human history since: He wasn't just a guy. Who was He? (Buckle up, because this could shake your back teeth.) Paul reminds them just who Jesus was, and is, and why He's enough. Paul believes (and he’s dead on), that [How we think about Jesus determines how we respond to Jesus.] So he gives us three disturbing snapshots. Before I show you them, let me point out a startling observation: one little word recurs: is (e.g. 15, 17, 18a, b). Paul is not saying that Jesus lived a few decades ago, and died, and all we are left with is memories. Paul insists that because of his resurrection, Jesus is. He is alive. He's as alive as you or I am--even more, because we're dying. He's not a dead guy in ancient history, but a person alive right now. So who is He?
[1. HE IS GOD AND REVEALS GOD] (vs. 15a) image is a very revealing word: it describes the imprint of a picture on a coin (e.g. Mk. 12:16––Jesus took a coin and in making his point asked, “so whose image is on this coin?” They all knew: Caesar’s); it’s also used as a description of a person in a legal document that identified the individual by his distinguishing marks and characteristics so you’d know you were dealing with the right person. But when Paul says that Jesus is the image of the invisible God, he is saying more than just Jesus reveals God, he’s asserting Jesus is God—that He is rightly identified as God! [JB Phillips: “Christ is the visible expression of the invisible God.”] This is the clear testimony of the New Testament: [John 1:1, 14; 1:18; 14:9; Heb. 1:3]. So Paul isn’t saying that Jesus is godly, or that Jesus is like God, or that God is sort of like Jesus––he is saying that Jesus is God come in the flesh. So the answer to the question, “How do you recognize the living and true God?” is: look at Jesus. (Wait. That can’t be. I can buy that God is in Jesus, or Jesus clearly reveals some of God’s traits, but not that Jesus is God. Because, that would mean that the guy in the robe and sandals born in Bethlehem...created the universe.) Exactly:
[2. HE IS THE CREATOR] Knowing that idea might pop off all our mental circuit breakers, Paul spends some ink on the startling implications:
[•He owns creation] (vs. 15b): In English, we assume firstborn to mean, “first one of a number of children born in a family.” If it meant that, it would mean that God created Jesus first, and then Jesus created everything else. He was the first created. (That’s how Jehovah Witnesses see Jesus.) But firstborn in a family was accorded rights and privileges that the other offspring weren’t given. He would be his father’s representative and would manage his household and eventually inherit the family property. The title described a position of rights and responsibilities––it wasn’t saying really anything about how he came into existence. The title was used of Hebrew kings, picturing God’s choice to entrust His kingdom to a ruler––and eventually came to refer to the Great Coming King, the Messiah: [Ps. 89:27 “And I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.”/x] So Paul says Jesus is the Father’s firstborn––not saying he was created, but that he inherits everything. All of creation is entrusted to Him to manage and belongs to Him. It’s no wonder:
[•He was the agent of creation] (vs. 16a): When did creation happen? People speculate: 10,000 years ago? 10 million? 13 billion? Whatever you surmise, Paul is saying that this Person we knew as Jesus was around prior to the universe existing; that he brought into existence not only life as we know it, but earth, our solar system, and our own Milky Way galaxy. (I want to take a moment to show you just how shocking this statement is. Suppose we were to board a rocket intending to cross our galaxy, and we could travel the speed of light (186,000 miles per second); how long would it take to cross it? Answer: 100,000 years). This is asserting that this person we know as Jesus created not only our massive galaxy, but also the over 100 billion other galaxies in our observable universe. He was the one who made everything seen and unseen––both elephants and people, microbes and subatomic quarks, the human eye in all its designed glory and the glory of the unseen angels. John: [1:3/x] All this exists because of Jesus. In fact:
[•The universe exists for Him] (vs. 16b) Everything exists not only because of Him, but for Him. So any purpose of life that doesn’t take into account Jesus, is shortsighted and false. You exist for Him. Only in Him will you find the reason why you exist, why you are in this life. And should you miss what Paul is asserting, or try to soften what he’s saying about Jesus, he presses home the point: (vs. 17a) i.e:
[•He existed before anything else] NB the repetition of all creation (vs. 15b); then all things (3x vs.16a,b, 17a). There was a time when nothing else existed except God. And Jesus. This is what John the apostle echoes: [John 1:1-2/x]
[•His will makes the universe predictable and purposeful] (vs. 17b) The point isn’t simply that everything would blow up and fly apart if Jesus took a vacation. To hold together is a term that describes something ordered; that it is intentionally composed of parts that contribute to a cohesive whole. It’s designed. [Heb. 1:3/x] So knowing that, we’d expect the universe to operate under predictable laws. And it does. Whether gravity or truth, whether the Law of thermodynamics or the Law of love, Jesus is the one by whose creative power they exist, and by whose providence they continue to be in effect.
•Jesus is the Creator, the God of the universe. Yet we know and love Him more for this third and increasingly personal picture: [3. HE IS THE LORD AND SAVIOR] (vs. 18a) i.e. [•He is the Head of the Church]: We use head to describe someone in charge: “he’s the head of the company,” or “the head of the government.” It implies authority and responsibility. But Paul is saying more than just Jesus is in charge of the church, that he’s the Lord and what he says should be authoritative. The picture is striking, because we’re in it. Everyone who has believed in Jesus and has received the Spirit of God is part of His Body, the church. Every person in every generation in every place. We all are connected by His Spirit, and empowered to act in line with the head. You are not part of an organization (“the church”) but a living part of an organism, His Body. We see things through His eyes. We speak his words. We take directions from His will and share His mind. As He was the visible manifestation of the invisible God on earth 2000 years ago, so we are the visible manifestation of Him (much less perfectly) in our generation. I’m not sure I’d want me, but He does. And He is the One: NB [•He is Lord of Life and Defeater of Death] (vs. 18b): the beginning is the word arch–-we get architect from it, and it means source––the whole church starts with Jesus. He’s the most important Person because of Him, the church exists. No Jesus, no church. He came back from the dead. And He gives life, eternal life to all who trust in Him. You know what awaits you and me because we belong to Jesus? A resurrection from the dead. And then our bodies will be glorious, eternal and with boundless energy. And we’ll enjoy life with God forevermore, as we have never ever to this day. This all came about not only because of who Jesus is, but what Jesus did: [•He is where God and creation is reconciled] (vss. 19-20) As God, as the just and holy one, God is offended by our disregard of Him and our disobedience to His Laws. That reconciliation was needed by all creation means that all creation was at odds with its creator. In fact, the ancient decree of death was the penalty for that rebellion against Him; yet, that same payment was made by God Himself in behalf of his creation! •It’s critical to see that Jesus was not only fully God, but fully human. It’s the only way he could take our penalty. Did he have fingers and toes? Did he smile or chuckle? When he walked on dusty paths, did his shoes make footprints? Did he have a pulse and did he ever burp? Did his body function as ours and did he ever feel weary, elated, frustrated or hurt? It is with this physical body, in his real self, he suffered and died. In submitting to execution by a cross, he paid the penalty, not for his sin, not even for one other’s, but for every human being who ever lived or would live. •At the cross, the place of execution on that dark afternoon in 33 AD, God in human form paid for the sins of all people, and made peace with God possible. The pivotal point in all human history is the cross. Everything turns on that single event. But what God did in Israel on that day long ago became very personal to each one of us through the message of the Gospel: Christ died in your place, for your guilt, as your Savior/your rescuer. He was raised from the dead as the Lord of life. He offers you forgiveness and new life if you repent and put your trust in Him. Conclusion: I don’t know if you noticed it, but these portraits of Jesus grow increasingly personal as they progress: from His identity as the eternal God, to His relationship to all creation, to the church in general throughout the ages, to each one of us as redeemed individuals right now. •In Christianity, you are not focusing on principles, nor commandments, nor a philosophy, nor even a way of life; all these are there, but unlike any other religion, Christianity (and we who embrace it) are obsessed with a person, on the Promised One, the Messiah, the Christ. And for very good reason. He alone is enough. •[How we think about Jesus determines how we respond to Jesus.] Jesus draws near to you, and approaches you as your God, your Creator, your Lord, your Savior.
If you want to encourage someone, tell them that you are praying for them. But if you want to really encourage them, tell them what you are praying for. But like for what? Most of our prayers revolve around three things:
1) Healing of physical problems: sickness, cancer, accidents, etc. Ask people for prayer requests, and without a doubt you’ll get requests for physical health. Most common request. I get it. If you’d have asked me for a prayer request when I was suffering with kidney stones, you could have guessed my response. A second common prayer:
2) Provision of perceived needs or wants: out of work, so need a job; need money to pay a upcoming bill; we want a husband/wife but you have no promising candidates on the horizon; want answers or guidance.
3) Reversal of circumstances: we don't like where we are or the situation we find ourselves in and we want it to change. We're having problem with our kids, and we want them to behave. We're struggling with weight and we want to lose it. We're frustrated with a person and we want him/her to change…or get lost.
Hear me well: praying and asking God for any of these is not wrong. (Well, maybe the last one.) You can find examples of people praying for each of these in the Bible. But it isn't necessarily what matters most. So what should we pray for? When we want to encourage others and pray specifically, what requests should be on our lips? What did Paul pray and ask God for in the lives of these Colossian Christians? What should we be asking God for, so that we are praying for what matters most? The amazing answer is in Paul’s prayer in Col. 1:9-14. A couple of observations on the front end:
1) As Paul penned this originally in Greek, these verses are a single sentence with clear progression. So what spills out of his mouth is not something he’s making up on the spot. He’s thought a lot about these requests and apparently has asked God for them more than a few times. This isn’t a disconnected & spontaneous list of random requests.
2) NB he begins “and so...” (vs. 9): And so what? Well, the Colossians are relatively healthy spiritually: NB [vs. 4-5]: they evidence a living and vibrant faith in Christ in their daily life, sacrificial and inclusive love for one another, and a certain hope of their future). Even so, they’re not done. They still have spiritual needs; they have room to grow. And [that] conviction is the basis for Paul’s prayer.
3) All the you’s are you-all’s. Unlike the heretics who were promoting philosophies that led to innies and outies, haves and have-nots, Paul prays for all of them inclusively. This prayer is for every believer. (And wherever you are in your life, this prayer will speak to you as well! It challenges me to pray, and to pray for what matters most.) So Paul begins by saying...
I’M PRAYING FOR YOU… (vs. 9a) Whenever they came to mind, he closed his eyes and bowed his knees and prayed. He’s a 1000 miles away, locked in a jail, with no resources to help them; do you really think praying would do them any good? He thought so. And, even more importantly, do you think so? Do your prayers make a difference? Well, God thinks so. So pray! And if you’re going to pray for what matters most, what should be on your lips? Two main requests: First,I’m praying for you…
...THAT YOU’D HAVE CLARITY ABOUT WHAT GOD WANTS FOR YOUR LIFE. [vs. 9b]
You might think, “Yeah, I’d like to know that—God’s will for my life: what college should I go to? What job should I take? Who should I marry? Should I buy this or that car?” That isn’t exactly what Paul has in mind when he prays that we’d be filled with the knowledge of God’s will. To be filled imagines a person as a glass or container into which God pours knowledge; yet not just any knowledge (e.g.general information, like math multiplication tables, or how to bake a cake or change a tire, or the size of the nearest galaxy; it’s not even biblical trivia, like memory verses or who Hezekiah was); but the knowledge of His will––the clarity and conviction of what God wants and desires for us in every area––in our thoughts, affections, purposes, priorities, activities, relationships, choices, plans. So to be filled with that implies there is no room remaining for stuff that isn‘t God’s will––no place for foolishness or deception or selfish desire or wrong thinking—all of which the Colossians were surrounded by. His will is further described by “all spiritual wisdom and understanding”: think of wisdom as seeing life from God’s point of view; it is a decidedly God-centered perspective on life. e.g. “there is a God. He created everything. We should take Him into account and listen to Him.” So we should pray that people see life from God’s perspective. But it’s one thing to see it, and another to translate that practically. So understanding is applying that wisdom/perspective to your situation at hand. One writer observed: “It is possible to be an expert in theology and a failure at living.” So Paul prays for them to have the certainty of knowing what God wants––for that to be crystal clear in their minds and lives, both in the big picture and the daily details. Believe me: God wants you to have this: he doesn’t want you to be in the dark, or be confused; but to be filled requires you to put yourself in situations where He can fill you: We should be praying for each other that we regularly place ourselves under good teaching; that we open our Bibles for ourselves; that we discuss the implications in small groups/Life Groups; that we pursue wisdom and bring our questions and problems to God for review in prayer. [Wm. Barclay: “We are trying not so much to make God listen to us as to make ourselves listen to Him; we are trying to not to persuade God to do what we want, but to find out what he wants us to do.” Then he adds: “The great challenge in life is not to know what to do, but to do it.”]. I often confess, “I know better than I live.” I came to Christ when I was 17—that means I’ve been a Christian for 50 years. And I still struggle with that gap that I constantly try to close. Once we know what God wants, we need to do what God directs. So, we should ask God for a 2nd request:
...THAT YOU’D LIVE A LIFE WORTHY OF CHRIST AND PLEASING TO GOD. (vs. 10a):
Paul pictures our daily life as a walk along a path. We are traveling through this world, and as we do, we move in a direction, and form habits, and learn skills, and make decisions. We could shape our lives around ourselves, our concerns, our desires and will; or we could remember all Christ has done for us, and therefore desire to please Him in everything and every way. What an amazing thought: your life can be worthy of the Lord. It means you live in line with who He is and what he has done for you. In fact, you can actually please Him with your days! Let me make an important distinction: Christ has made us acceptable to God through His death. You can’t add to it. You can’t subtract from it. It’s done. It is finished. But you can please Him. Or not. If you think I’m crazy, check this out:
[(2 Cor. 5:6-9) 6 So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, 7 for we walk by faith, not by sight. 8 Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9 So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please Him.] Or this:
[(1Thess. 4:1) 1 Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more.]
That’s one thing we should pray for—for ourselves and others, i.e. to be:
[NB] fully pleasing to Him (vs. 10b) We too often think it negatively—you mean I have to try to please God with my life? (as if that were a burdensome, troublesome, terrible thing.) Rather, what you do, how you life, can actually please God and delight His heart! That should be one of our most powerful motivations in life. What Christ wants should become paramount in our minds and hearts.
So when we pray for another (or for ourselves), we should pray that what they know of what God wants would affectthem; and that their greatest desire would be to honor Jesus and be pleasing to Him! But in Paul’s mind, a life worthy of Christ and pleasing to God isn’t foggy or undefined. It has hard edges and clear expectations. When he thinks and prays for them to develop such a life, he asks God for four things: This is how we please God—and how we ought to pray for others: 1st: [vs. 10b] “Bearing Fruit”: ...that you’d live a compelling life that makes a difference. Bearing fruit is present tense––implying it should be ongoing in our lives. So what’s the fruit? It’s the natural and expected outcome of an alive and healthy tree! At least it pictures the development of characteristics of Christ in us as we surrender to the Spirit of God on a daily basis: it is what he elsewhere calls, “the fruit of the Spirit”:
[(Gal. 5:22-23) 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.];
But fruit is not only who we are, but also involves what we do! We share our faith, and reproduce:
[(1:5-7): 5because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, 6 which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, 7 just as you learned it from Epaphras our beloved fellow servant…]
And we do stuff God wants us to do that makes a difference
[(Eph. 2:10) 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.] [x]
Ministries we get involved in, ways that we help others, small deeds that go unnoticed by everyone except the recipient and God––these please Him! God wants us to live a compelling life–-a life of faith that makes a practical difference, a compelling life! Such a life involves growth as well. Specifically: [vs. 10c] “Increasing”: ...that you’d grow in the knowledge of God. This includes both the awareness and acknowledgement of God’s character, as well as the experience of His presence and activity in your life. Does God really love you? Bring your fears to Him. Is He really sovereign? Trust Him with your cares and concerns. Is He infinite in power and wisdom? Bring your most difficult problem, your biggest headache, your darkest trouble. Paul prays that they’d know this is what God wants for them: to know Him better and better as the years pass, to experience His presence increasingly as we walk through life, to come to Him again and again with all that we are and recognize that He is enough!
[Wm. Barclay: “There is nothing is this world as practical as prayer. It is not escape from reality. Prayer and action go hand in hand. We pray not to escape life, but in order to be better able to meet it.”/x]:
So living a life worthy of Christ and pleasing to God requires a third request:
[vs.11] “Strengthened”: ...that you’d be empowered to joyfully endure. Paul’s prayer literally is: being empowered by all power according to the might of His glory! What kind of power is Paul thinking of? Certainly not just physical: Power is simply ability––it’s measured by what a person can do. Can I stop a speeding bullet? Can I jump over a tall building or lift a locomotive? That’s not what Paul is asking God to give them/us. Instead, it is divine ability to confront two very difficult challenges:
1) endurance: this is the ability to withstand hardship or stress. It refers to being able to bear up under circumstances that are bad or unwelcome. It’s the capacity to see things through, no matter how rough it gets. This is usually directed to crushing circumstances and trying situations that we’d never choose for ourselves. Do we need God’s help/power to do this? Seems like we do––when we find ourselves in situations that test us, that are painful or unwanted, that we’d never choose for ourselves, but we cannot get out of easily or righteously. If we have endurance, the circumstances won’t destroy us or drive us from God.
2) patience: lit. long-suffering; if endurance describes how we handle circumstances, patience pictures how we respond to people––people who trouble us, criticize us, pressure us, treat us wrongly or badly. We don’t strike back, or hate, or try to get even. We keep loving them, seeking their best despite what they say about us, or to us, or do to us.
Notice, Paul is praying for us to do all this with joy! What kind of power is needed to do that? To joyfully endure and show patience? You need something not equal to the challenge, but exceeding it. We need power according to His glorious might! Might is the term that describes controlling power or governing power; this is the power or authority a king has to command. But whom are you commanding? Yourself. In self-control you issue the command, and in faith you follow through. And God empowers you to do just that. So Paul is praying that the measure of that might isn’t just equal to the task at hand, but exceeds it––the measure will be not according the circumstances but according to God’s glory, i.e. His perfections, his infinite power. As we rely on God’s strengthening us to persevere and be patient, to be able to decide to do what He wills, and with Spirit-empowered self-control, do it, we live a life worthy of Him and please Him. Lastly: [vs. 12a] [“Giving Thanks”: ...that you’d be grateful for all God has done for us] The implication is that it is ongoing––it marks your life!
But what do we have to be thankful about? The crushing circumstances? The disappointing and nasty people around us? Not at all. When nothing else is going right, there are some things that won’t change, things that are settled facts, things that give you great perspective and for which you can be profoundly thankful to God! Like:
[He qualified us!] (vs. 12b): “giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.”
You is plural, and it included every Colossian Christian. There weren’t any he failed to qualify. That means you too. God, not you, gets the credit for your inclusion into the great things that are promised: His inheritance for all who belong to Him. You are entitled to share in His kingdom! It’s a done deal! You should be thankful! Wait! How did he do that?
[He delivered us!] (vs. 13a): “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness…”
The word pictures a dramatic rescue from a situation or condition or place from which you yourself could not escape! You were trapped. You were stuck. And God rescued you. Though the escape was made possible at the Cross with His death and resurrection, the actual rescue occurred at the moment you put your trust in Him as your Savior and Lord. He stormed the place in that dark kingdom where you were held captive, kept in ignorance, and guilt, and fear, and he carried you out! It was a domain that told you what to do and what to think and how to act–-and it damaged you and blinded you. And He saved you from that. You should be thankful & never forget that! But he didn’t then just leave you alone!
[He transferred us!] (vs. 13b) “…and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son…”
God transferred our citizenship into Christ’s Kingdom. The word for transfer actually describes relocating people to a new country. Yes, we still live in this dark world where ignorance reigns and people don’t know God or don’t listen to Him; they stumble through life and don’t see where they’re headed. But you no longer belong here; you belong to and represent another kingdom. As such, you are points of light in this world! You belong to the Kingdom of Light/Truth. You belong! NB what that took:
[He redeemed us!] (vs. 14): “…in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
We have right now, something that will never change––redemption! To be redeemed means to be bought and paid for. It pictured a slave being purchased and then set free. The cost of that redemption was the death of Jesus. His life for yours. His death paid for your guilt. The result is your sins have been completely paid for. They are forgiven/sent away. Nothing you have ever done will ever separate you from Him.
We should never forget all that God has done for us! His life-changing salvation should fill each one of us with thanksgiving, gratitude and daily joy!
So, go ahead and pray for anything that comes to mind: for healing, for provisions, for circumstances to change. Nothing wrong at all with that. But don’t forget to pray for what matters most—for yourself and others: that you’d have clarity about what God wants for your life...and that you’d have the determination to live a life worthy of Christ, and pleasing to God, as a deeply grateful person. Pray.
Intro: Heresy! In a world where everything is right and nothing is wrong, labeling something heresy causes most people to choke: How dare you call what they believe heresy? Who are you to determine whether someone is a heretic or not? I thought you religious people were supposed to be loving. How judgmental! Exactly. And apparently, judgment is what is required when confronted with the myriad of viewpoints and opinions and teachings in Ancient Roman Society, and in our society today. Listen to the writers of the NT: Mt. 7:15; Acts 20:29-30; 2Pet. 2:1
•The word heresy in its purest meaning, means just [something different from what is true, a departure from what is accepted]. If you think there is no truth, no right or wrong, then I suppose you can deny that anything is heretical. But if you believe in truth, in right/wrong, then identifying what isn’t the truth is important, even critical. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t allow for differences of opinions, or that we should go around and label people that disagree with us in the smallest detail as heretics; but some things are clearly wrong. Writers of the New Testament took that seriously. We should too.
•The year was AD 60––about three decades since the Christian movement began. Christians in the city of Colossae were exposed to the Covid of Heresies: and if infected, it threatened to spread and destroy what made them uniquely Christian. The question they were confronted with, the question that tests us as well is a simple one: “Is Jesus enough?” You say, “enough for what?” Enough to forgive us? Enough to bring us into a right relationship with God? Enough to get us started following Jesus on the path of life? OK. “Yes...but...”
•And that’s the problem: “but...” But introduces doubt that Jesus is enough to deal with life. You need something more. Sure––Jesus died on a cross for our sins and was raised from the dead. And we have to believe in Him, to trust what he did to forgive us. But that isn’t enough. You need more. Really? One writer said it this way: [Tchavidian quote]
•So, is Jesus enough? Or do you need more? It would be easy for us to answer with the right answer: “Oh yes. He’s enough.” And then live like He isn’t. As if it’s no big deal one way or the other. You see, too often, it is not that we do not know the truth, but that we do not understand the implications of the truth we know. And so, Paul took pen in hand, and wrote furiously. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me introduce you to this short letter in the NT we call, “Colossians.”
I. The Background
A. The Valley of Three Cities [map]
Three cities grew up near each other nestled in a spacious area called the Lycus Valley in the Roman province of Asia minor, what now is modern Turkey. The largest and most prosperous of the three cities was Laodicea, which became an economic powerhouse (Think Boise.) It was pretty impressive: NB a gate/a boulevard. The second city was Hieropolis, which was built near a number of hotsprings (see pics); it became a popular vacation spot and health resort. It’s hot baths and wide streets drew tourist from all over. (Think Couer d’Alene.) In the same valley, 10 miles to the east, at the opening of the pass through the mountains and on the southern banks of the Lycus River was the town of Colossae. Once as prominent as the other two, it fell into insignificance because as Rome constructed its system of roads and highways, it bypassed the city––not by much, but by enough that if you were going to Colossae, you had to go out of your way. It was easier to stop in Laodicea, where the roads went right through that city. You could get anything in Laodicea that you could get in Colossae, except more and better. Of all the cities mentioned in the New Testament, Colossae was the smallest, and least significant. (Think Kuna.) Then how did a church get started there and why did Paul write to them?
B. The Church’s Beginning:
During Paul’s third missionary journey, he settled in Ephesus, a strategic city in the region, and rented a school, and from there met with anyone interested, and taught about Christ: (Acts 19:8-10). Apparently, one of those living in Asia, in Colossae specifically, who had come to Ephesus, was a man by the name of Epaphras. Somehow, he heard Paul preach and was intrigued with this Jesus he proclaimed. He listened to this ex-Pharisee, now Christian teacher and soon believed in Jesus. It changed everything for him, so much so that when he returned to Colossae, he spoke up and shared about Christ with everyone he knew: (Col. 1:3-8). The fact is, Paul had never been to Colossae, though it was only 100 miles from Ephesus: (2:1-2). Yet, the church took root, and grew, and apparently was quite healthy for a number of years. They clearly evidence the three traits that mark healthy believers (1:4-5)––a solid faith/trust in the Lord Jesus, a sacrificial love for one another, and a certain hope of heaven. But, less than a decade later, around 60 AD, the church was in trouble:
C. The Church in Trouble: Heresy!
•Epaphras saw Christian brothers and sisters wavering in their faith. A popular teaching was sweeping the area and it was based in Colossae. It attacked the notion that just because someone believed in Jesus, that was enough. These teachers were smart, they espoused an inclusive philosophy that took from all sorts of religions and melded them into one. They were cooking the books—taking a little from Judaism, a little from Greek mythology, a little from Christianity, spiced up with superstitions and a healthy dose of religious passion; but what they ended up with was not Christianity, though it at times resembled it, and sounded a bit like it, but wasn’t at all—it. People espousing this new faith claimed to have visions and dreams and angelic visitations, which the average Christian normally didn’t experience. They had secret knowledge that they offered to share with the initiated, the insiders––knowledge that went beyond simple faith in Christ, and allowed the person to see and know things that would lift him to a higher sphere of existence. More power. More knowledge. More experience. More. More than Jesus.
•Epaphras in his bones knew something was really wrong with their teaching, but didn’t know how to answer them, but he knew who could. Paul. But Paul was sitting in a Roman prison awaiting trial before Caesar. So Epaphras packed his bags and set out for Rome––1000 miles away––to find Paul and ask for his help. That far, and requiring that much time and travel meant that Epaphras was really troubled. And when Paul heard the news, he took pen in hand, and went right to work. What we have in our hands is that letter:
II. The Letter
A. The Author: Paul (1:1) Like all letters in NT times, you began by identifying yourself, rather than by simply addressing the reader (e.g. “Dear Bob...” and you have to look at the end to find out who’s writing: “love, Steve.”) But notice this isn’t just any letter from just anyone: Paul claims to be an “apostle of the Christ, Jesus Himself.” Apostle is literally, “a sent one”––someone entrusted with a mission and the authority of the one sending him. Paul is claiming to speak and teach on behalf of Jesus, a mission that is God’s will for him to pursue; and this authoritative letter is part of that mission/ministry.
B. The Recipients: Colossians (1:2) The designation saints doesn’t mean that they’re perfect, or unusually good people; every believer in Christ is, according to the NT, a saint––someone set apart for God. In other words, you belong to God. You’re his. You’re a saint. AND, he calls them, “faithful”–-not just believers, but those who continue to believe in Christ.
•Paul then reminds them of what they have already received in Christ––and it’s his favorite way of starting letters: (1:2b) Because of God’s grace, we experience peace with God. We didn’t earn or deserve this. If anything we earned the opposite–-his anger and judgment. But because of Christ taking our judgment and paying for our guilt, God graciously forgives us and claims us, and loves us, and includes us; we experience peace with God in our souls. God will never be at war with us again.
•Looking through the letter, we can piece together what this once popular heresy taught:
III. The Message
A. The Heresy: Christ + Something Else = Spirituality
1. It diminished the person and work of Christ
•Because Paul so strongly affirms the deity of Christ, you can infer that they denied that Jesus was God. And because Paul insists that Jesus was a real person with a real body, you get the idea that they downplayed the humanity of Christ. In other words, these teachers attacked the notion that Jesus was really anyone special––perhaps a good teacher, but not the final word from God, and certainly not God come in human form. There’s some indication that they taught that the physical universe was evil, something you tried to rid yourself of; so if Jesus was someone special, he couldn’t have had a human body–-he was likely an angel who simply appeared human.
2. It focused on external rituals rather than internal character.
•It was all about looking good, appearing spiritual. You don’t just believe in Jesus and that’s it. You’ve got to do things, religious things, things that make you better, deeper, more in touch with unseen world. Like what?
√You need to restrict your diet (2:16a) There are certain things that make you dirty, that are therefore off the menu for spiritual people. And:
√You need to observe certain days/holidays (2:16b) This isn’t like observing Christmas or Easter; these are required observances with exacting rules about what you do and can’t do––rituals that you must perform at certain times in certain ways. And if you don’t comply the way they say you should, then they say you are less spiritual, even not acceptable to God. (We’ll learn a lot more about them later...)
√You should punish your body (it is bad and leads you to do bad things) (2:23)
•The fact is, these teachers turned a blind eye to the more ugly and internal sins (3:5, 8-9); all the while simply whitewashing the outside of the person through keeping religious rituals making the person appear wise when the real problem never was addressed (2:23)–the human heart.
3. It taught a philosophy of fate and superstitions (2:8)
•Elemental spirits were those things or spirit beings that controlled events—we might call it fate or the stars. So, according to these teachers, you needed to do certain things in certain ways to control fate. Otherwise bad things might happen to you, or good things might not. Why do ball players wear lucky socks, or people say they don’t want to jinx an event, so they do everything the same way they did it before, when a good outcome resulted? That’s the same thing. Then:
4. It confused spiritual experiences with spiritual maturity (2:18)
•If you have these experiences, it means that you are spiritually mature. Actually, nothing is further from the truth. Even today, in the church at large, people talk about special experiences that give them status––being slain in the spirit (an event that has no precedence in the Bible), or laughing uncontrollably, or even legitimate experiences like speaking in tongues–-and thinking that having the experience means I’m on a higher spiritual plane than others who haven’t. As we’ll see, not so. Further:
5. It was judgmental (NB: 2:8a, 16a, 18a)
•They looked down on, and even criticized and condemned people who didn’t submit to their teaching and expectations. It feels bad when someone pronounces that you are deficient, second-rate, or flawed. Especially spiritually. The pressure to be a part of the happening thing was heavy. Finally:
6. It promoted spiritual snobbery
It created haves and have-nots, a spiritual snobbery of innies and outies, of people who were spiritual and part of the chosen few and people who weren’t and wouldn’t ever be. To that, Paul makes his purpose plain: everyone (1:28).
So what’s the remedy?
B. The Remedy: Seeing that Jesus is Enough for All of Life
This in fact is the message of the whole letter: (See Chart)
Conclusion: [Quote WTB (p. 411)] It is a testimony to the effectiveness of Paul’s letter that this heresy is lost to the trashcan of history. Whatever hold it had initially on Christians in Colossae was loosened and destroyed by Paul’s teaching. From what we know, the church there grew and thrived, not only in Colossae but also in Laodicea and Hieropolis. What they didn’t know then, what they couldn’t have known was what was coming: two years later, an earthquake decimated the city and it never recovered. Today, it is simply a mound of ground that hasn’t even been excavated. [See pic.] Yet, Paul’s letter to that church there survives and still speaks volumes to us today. We very much need to hear and heed its message: Jesus is enough. So we need to be rooted in Him. And in the coming weeks, during this summer of simplicity, I pray we will.
•Challenge: Memorize 2:6-7!
A few years ago I picked up a book, a biography that captivated me with these words in its introduction:
[“...This is my attempt to show him as he was–a retelling of his life and a look at its meaning, a look at who he was as a man. It is commonplace now to see him as an ordinary man who did extraordinary things...But...he wasn’t ordinary at all. He wasn’t like other people. There was some kind of destiny playing out within him. So let me tell you about him. Let me tell you what hasn’t quite been said.”]
The writer of those words was Peggy Noonan, and her book was called, When Character Was King. It’s a book not about Jesus Christ, but about Ronald Reagan. The best biographies are written by people who were close to the individuals they wrote about. They may draw from interviews of co-workers and friends, but at heart, they speak and write as one who knew the person. What attracts me to these memoirs is my curiosity about what these important people were really like behind the scenes, when the cameras were turned off, when no one was looking. I love to read the anecdotes, the stories of private moments, and the reflections of those who actually knew these individuals. Usually the books written by insiders are motivated by a conviction that something more needs to be said in order to complete the picture so that history gets it right. The Gospel of John is that kind of memoir. It was written by an insider who, late in his life, felt compelled to say about Jesus what hadn’t yet been said. (Let me back up:)
[WHY FOUR GOSPELS?]
The NT starts with four Gospels—[“Gospel” means Great News!] At the core of the Bible is great news––news of the coming of a very important person. You cannot understand the Bible without understanding that in the ancient past, God promised that a rescuer, a deliverer, a Savior would come; that man’s sinfulness and self-destructiveness would only be solved not by laws, or more specific moral rules, not even by religious institutions or political governments, but ultimately only by a unique person: That promised one in Hebrew was called The Messiah, or in Greek, the Christ. And [The Gospels are about the Messiah, the Christ.] So Christ is not Jesus’ last name. Jesus Christ, Mary and Joseph Christ, with the Christ brothers…it’s a title of the Promised One. The Good News proclaimed by the NT is that Jesus is that person––the Christ. Shortly after the death and resurrection of Jesus, as the early church was born, the leaders commissioned Matthew, a ex-bookkeeper who had worked for the IRS of that day, but who left it all to follow Jesus and became one of the 12, to chronicle the teachings and miracles of Jesus. This was the first Gospel and served the young Jewish Christian church as it grew and spread (Acts 1-12). As the church made inroads into the Gentile world, Christians needed an account of Christ’s teachings and life that addressed the questions and concerns that Greeks and Romans had––and Paul commissioned Luke, a Greek Physician and Christian to research and write the Gospel that bears his name. This was the Gospel that served much of the non-Jewish church as seen in Acts 13-28. The third Gospel, Mark, is a compilation of Peter’s sermon notes which he used as he preached in Rome in the late 50s. All three of these accounts of Jesus share the same perspective and cover largely the same events and teachings: so: [The first three Gospels are called synoptics] (syn = same, optic = to see)—i.e. they have the same perspective. BUT the 4th Gospel is written much later, and makes a unique contribution. So who wrote it and why another?
[THE FOURTH GOSPEL]
[A. The author is John], the Apostle, although he never claims to be the author in the Gospel. But few doubt it. Irenaeus, an early church father who lived about 185 AD was a student of Polycarp, whose pastor was the Apostle John. And acc to Irenaeus, Polycarp said that John wrote that 4th Gospel late in his life, in the 90s. He had lived through the persecutions of the insane Caesar Nero who crucified Peter and beheaded Paul. He survived the persecutions of Domitian––the calculating and evil emperor who exiled him to the rocky island of Patmos. In the last decade of his life, he wrote what we know as the Gospel of John, the three letters of 1/2/3 John, and the Revelation.
But though John never identifies himself as the author of the Gospel, he does tip his hand. Five times he identifies himself as the one whom Jesus loved. At first, you might think that John was bragging, or saying Jesus loved him more than others. Not at all. As one person explained: [Quote: “It simply expresses with disarming honesty the wonder of this disciple over the fact that the Lord loved him.” —The MacArthur Bible Handbook/x] He never quite recovered the realization that Jesus really, deeply, truly loved him sacrificially and unconditionally. Nothing is more important to John. Or should be to us.
[B. His purpose is clear] (20:30-31):
30 “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.”
In short: He intended to secure from his readers a positive verdict about Jesus, and lead us to experience life—abundant, unending life with God, now and forever. To those ends, John submits and arranges his material so we will see and hear and come to a conclusion about Jesus—the only One who can offer the gift of life.
[C. His unique contributions]
[1) intimate encounters] To help us make our decision about Jesus, John shows how others struggled with Christ’s claims. As someone who saw behind the scenes, John described some intimate encounters to show how Jesus related to them: the sincere but confused religious seeker, Nicodemus; the cynical woman from Samaria who had had 6 husbands & had given up and was living with a significant other; the paraplegic at the pool, caught up in his own pitiful, limiting circumstances; the disheartened fisherman, Peter who smells the backwash of his own failures & wonders if God would ever want to use him again––these are the people Jesus meets, speaks to, & offers life to. Through them, he speaks to us.
[2) probing questions] Peppered throughout this Gospel are lots of questions––153 of them! People ask Jesus Qs, Jesus himself asks Qs, and often answers a Q with a Q. It’s as if John is saying, “It’s OK to ask! Investigate! Seek! But be aware––in the process, you may find yourself asking yourself some very penetrating Qs! And these questions will be the most important ones of your life!”
His Strategy: Let me show you how John presents his Gospel: [Chart] The Gospel begins not where the other three begin—with the birth of Christ or the beginning of His ministry, but in eternity past, with the Triune God communing together, creating all that exists, and determining to invade our world as one of us…
III. [ZEROING IN]
[A. Who is Jesus?]
[1. Public Perceptions] Coming to a conviction about Jesus is the most important thing anyone will ever do. It’s never really automatic for any of us, and it wasn’t for them either. NB the responses John records: [1:29, 3:2, 4:42, 7:12, 7:41, 7:46, 9:17, 10:20, 10:33, 19:6, 20:28]. Who was this man? We don’t have to rely on what others say about Him; we can to right to the horse’s mouth—you can listen to Jesus Himself:
[2. Seven Self-Identifying Statements: “I Am…”] (8:56-59): In the Old Testament, God claimed His name was, I Am—implying He is eternal, self-existent, always present, completely sovereign. So when God was sending Moses to Egypt to lead a rescue of the Jews, Moses asked God what His name was, and notice how God responded: [Ex. 3:13-14/x] So Jesus is saying, “I Am.” He is that God. No wonder they picked up stones. But that claim is the basis for His seven more specific claims—all impossible if He were just a guy, a normal person:
6:35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
Speaking to a hungry crowd, claimed to be the basic staple of life: the sustainer and satisfier: Claimed that he alone can meet the most basic & deepest needs of a person.
8:12 Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
To people lost in confusion, doubt, needing light. When we say, "you're blind"--we mean "you're confused, or ignorant, or unwilling or unable to understand. So to have light is to see, to understand, to grasp the truth. He was saying that by Him you see everything else. Apart from Him, everything is dark.
10:7-10 7 So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. 8 All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
To those turned off to tradition, often the victims of religion itself, He asserts that He is the door, the gate, the entrance to protection and pasture. Others might use you, prey upon you, but He will protect you, and provide for you, and give you life overflowing, life in abundance!
10:11-14 11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13 He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. 14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me…
To people who felt alone, unknown, unloved, uncared for--just another anonymous face in the crowd: He is not like those who care only as a job, a duty, only for profit; He is One who truly cares, who lays down His own life for us, in whom we can fully trust.
11:25-26 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
At the funeral of one of his closest friends, where all were grieving the loss: claims to be the answer to life's final question--death itself. Insists that what happens after death is bound up in a relationship with Him. (In fact, he says even more than that--)
14:6 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Asserts that He alone has the exclusive claim to life--whether new life, genuine life, or eternal life; and that knowing God, having a relationship with God is impossible apart from Him. (Still, he is not just some ticket to life; He is more:)
15:1, 5 1 "I am the true vine…5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”
Jesus claims to be the source of and sustainer of real life. Lots of people walking around dead inside--spiritually like "day of the living zombies." They are spiritually dead, just haven't caught up physically. But Jesus says that He can make my life fruitful...make it productive, full of meaning.
NB three common themes:
√Exclusiveness: Jesus allows no room for competition; no alternatives.
√Genuineness: sense of reality and clarity; doesn't sound like a madman for claiming these things, but frighteningly sane, rational.
√Perceptiveness: His words are penetrating. Hits nail on the head: the issue is as much quality of life as it is length of life. If life is short but full, we feel cheated. If long but empty we feel disillusioned. Must have both. He offers both. In the future, unending, undying life; and right, genuine, fruitful life. Both, he claims, are His alone to give.
[B. Why should I believe Him? Seven Confirming Signs]
(Look them up! 2:1-11, 4:43-54, 5:1-15, 6:1-15, 6:16-24, 9:1-41, 11:1-44) Among the many things Jesus did, John selects seven as signs––miracles that validate Jesus’ claims and teaching. (A sign is a visible proof of an otherwise unprovable claim.) To the degree that the claim is fantastic, to that degree the sign must equal the weight of the claim. You can’t say, “I am God” and then do a card trick. Big deal. But if you claim to be the light of the world, and then open the eyes of a man born blind––that makes me think. If you say you are the resurrection and life, and then stop a funeral by raising a corpse, it makes an impact. That is exactly what Jesus did. Jesus said things that no other man ever said, and proved them by doing things no other man has ever done.
26x John records that Jesus began a statement with, Truly, truly, I say to you. That should make us sit up and take notice. Jesus is not admitting that at other times he tends to stretch the truth, but that what he is about to say, we need to listen very carefully to and take very seriously, even if it seems unbelievable. He’s telling us the sober truth. (So?)
[C. What is He offering me? The gift of unending Life] (3:16)
34x in gospel the offer is defined, presented, and held out to us. What does Jesus offer to you? Life. Unending, undying life; full, fruitful, satisfying life; abundant life that will never be thwarted by people, or circumstances, or even death; life as God originally intended it to be lived: hand in hand with Him.
In the upper room during the few hours before Good Friday, John captures’ Jesus’ comfort and assurance to His confused disciples. In fact, what He says there is a glimpse of the rest of the NT in seed form—the indwelling and empowering of the Spirit, the command to love one another as X has loved us, the need for fellowship, the pattern of servanthood, the opposition by the world, the necessity of staying connected to God in obedient faith, and the promise of His return. This is the life. IF your life has been hard, jaded: take courage--Jesus offers you new life, a new start. Not just rearranging the old habits, rethinking the old sins and failures. He offers forgiveness. Restoration. New power. Being clean inside. Fresh purpose. Assurance, confidence, forever--with the promise that you'll never be judged. Instead, when you die, you'll be welcomed into His eternal kingdom. IF you are a Christian, then he offers you real life--fruitful, purposeful life with power for today, and hope for tomorrow. He offers you a relationship with Him in which you will increasingly marvel at his unconditional, and unbelievable love for you. He will work in you, and through you, and do more than you would ever believe possible around you. (What's the catch?)
[D. What does He want from me? To believe in Him] About 100x in John the sole requirement in John to receive life, the one thing Jesus asks--even demands from you--is to believe: i.e. to trust in, rely upon something or someone. We first must come the conviction that Jesus is who He said He was—that He was the truth and spoke the truth about Himself and us. hen we must believe that He actually did what He claimed to do: die for your sins and make the way open to God through forgiveness. Then you must trust Him with your life; must trust Him that He will give you real unending life if you believe in Him as your Savior. (Illust of The Chair)
The pivot-point in each person’s life is how one responds to Jesus, the Son of God. Do you believe in Him, acknowledging who He is and what He has done? Do you listen to Him and trust Him with your life? That’s what believing Jesus is. Once that faith exists, however small, we begin to experience life. We grow and develop as we learn more about Him, and our trust in Him spreads from not only our forgiveness and our promised destiny, but to every other area of our lives: our purpose, calling contentment, marriage, job, health, relationships, happiness...the fruitfulness of our lives will increase, like a healthy branch attached to a lifegiving vine as we abide or remain dependent upon and connected to Him who has loved us first.
Conclusion: This is the message, the promise, the offer of the Gospel of John. It is Great News. And it all centers on Jesus, the Christ, our Savior.
WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE A LOSERFaith Community • John 21:15-25Introduction:Last week we left Peter and the rest of the disciples standing around a charcoal fire with Jesus. It’s subdued because of the many things yet unspoken––the undiscussed failures, the unanswered questions, the unacknowledged elephant in the room—their abandoning Jesus at His arrest and Peter’s thrice denial of even knowing Him. But Jesus doesn’t rush, doesn’t command or rebuke them, or launch into a review of their failures; instead, he unhurriedly prepares, and cooks and serves them breakfast, and warms them with his fellowship and encouragement. He is taking the initiative to break the ice. Despite what they feel and fear, Jesus is not done with them. He has not washed his hands of them. He doesn’t think their failures are fatal––or write them off as no longer useful. If you don’t remember anything else from this week, I want you to remember this: The Lord lovesyou and wants to useyou despite your failures.He absolutely wantsto use you. He intendsto. But he won’t, he can’t, unless we are in a position spiritually to be used. There are some pre-conditions, some qualifications that in His mind make us usable to Him. Surprisingly, it isn’t education or extensive experience; it isn’t having a certain personality or work ethic; it isn’t even having a great track record or not having a failure-pockmarked past. Instead, Jesus looks at our hearts, and draws us into a conversation exposing the reason why we would want to be useful to Him. Though seven disciples are standing around the fire, the focus is on Peter who denied Jesus three times. In questioning Simon Peter, Jesus is also indirectly questioning each of the other disciples, including us who get to listen in. And as we watch this quiet interchange, we’ll see three things Jesus is looking for in those whom He wants to use: And the first is:1.THE RIGHT MOTIVE: LOVEFOR JESUS•The fire is smoldering and its warmth feels pleasant in the cool morning air. They have enjoyed baked bread and fish, and the warmth of the company of the Lord who has served them. There’s small talk and a few laughs about how quickly so many fish (153!) could have been netted––no one would believe this fish story! There’s a lull in the conversation, and glancing toward Peter, Jesus begins to probe. Listen again to the entire conversation, then we’ll focus in on the parts: 15 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.”16 He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.”17 He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. (vss. 15-17).Three simple but profoundly penetrating questions, followed by three humble answers. As Peter had denied even knowing Jesus 3x around a charcoal fire, now he is questioned 3x by the One he denied around a similar fire. I’m sure the moment surfaces fresh feelings of Peter’s failure; but Jesus won’t let him wallow there––he re-commissions him for usefulness. He wantsto use us. Despite our failures, we are not useless to Him. Let me make a few observations: 1. All three questions deal with love––but the questions and answers differ: In the first two Qs, Jesus uses a different word for love––a word often connected with faithfulness, commitment and unselfishness (agape); Peter answers with a term of affection, friendship and intimacy (philos). It is as if Peter doesn’t trust himself after his denials. The Phillips paraphrase of the New Testament brings out the meaning: “Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these?”“Yes, Lord…You know that I am Your friend.”“Simon, son of John, do you love Me?”“Yes, Lord…You know that I am Your friend.”“Simon, son of John, areyou My friend?”“Lord, You know everything. You know that I am Your friend.”John 21:15-17 (Phillips Version)Many scholars deny that the variation of terms between the two words for love are anything more than a stylistic variation. They mean the same thing. But I’m not so sure. Peter himself later uses the two words to describe two degrees of love in a list of Christian characteristics we’re to develop: 5 For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, 7 and godliness with brotherly affection (philadelphia), and brotherly affection with love (agape). (2Peter 1:5-7)The point is that Jesus seems to be poking Peter, testing his heart, probing his motivation. 2. The first Q is a comparison(vs. 15a): When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”More thanwhat? The fish and boats? Possibly. We should love Jesus more than we love our occupations or jobs or even our hobbies. Or it could mean, “more than you love these friends of yours?” And certainly we should love Jesus more than we love any other person––even our friends who might by example or pressure pull us away from following Jesus. But I don’t think either is what Jesus meant. Instead: “more than these other disciples”––remember what Peter boasted? 31 Then Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away because of me this night. For it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’ 32 But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.” 33 Peter answered him, “Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away.” 34 Jesus said to him, “Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.” 35 Peter said to him, “Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you!” And all the disciples said the same. (Mt. 26:31-35)He was so certain of his own loyalty & strength. A number of years back, Gordon MacDonald, the nationally known speaker & author of the book, Magnificent Marriage, stated in a radio interview with Focus on the Family, that the one area he would neverfail in was his marriage or family. Shortly after, he had an affair and nearly ruined his marriage, his testimony and his ministry. Later, he observed:“An unguarded strength and an unprepared heart is a double weakness.”—Gordon MacDonald, Rebuilding Your Broken WorldWhen you think you are so strong it could never happen to you, you are very vulnerable. And the failure that results often reveals just how wrong we were to trust in our own strength. That is how Peter felt. But now, on the other side of his betrayal, he does not address the comparison, but sticks only to himself: “You know that I love you.”3. Also, all three answers of Peter appeal to Jesus’ knowledge––”you know” (vss. 15, 16), and then “you know all things! You know...” (17). Once again, he doesn’t trust his own profession of loyalty––he looks to Jesus who knows him better than he knows himself. (You do know that Jesus knows you better than you know yourself, and loves you better than you love yourself...and wants to use you, to work in you and through you, don’t you?) Why is Jesus grilling Peter like this? What’s the point?•loveis a major (if not the primary) theme in John’s Gospel—the Father’s love for Christ (3:35), Christ’s love for his Father (14:31), God’s love for the world (3:16), Christ’s love for us (13:1; 34; 15:9), our love for Him (14:15), and our love for one another (13:34-35; 15:12). Love is the way; it’s why God has saved us, how He now responds to us, and how we are to respond to Him and how we are to treat everyone else.•And if you want to know how to increase your love for Him—ask John, the apostle, who penned this Gospel, but who never identified Himself by name, but rather by the phrase, the one whom Jesus loved.He never recovered from the fact that Jesus really, actually loved Him. Toward the end of his life, this disciple penned these words: We love because He first loved us. (1John 4:19.)You want to increase your love for Christ and for others? Fasten your thoughts on this: He…loves…you!•So Jesus wants all of us to serve Him out of love for Him, with the right heart and motive. It’s not enough to serve out of a desire for personal fulfillment, or achievement, or significance, or reward or even to unselfishly serve humanity. Only a deep love for Christ will take us through life and motivate us to continue to serve with the right heart. And if you want to know how to increase your love for him? Ponder his love for you. And if you do profess tolove Him––2.THE RIGHT ATTITUDE: WILLINGNESS TO SERVEOTHERSNotice that Jesus didn’t wait to commission Peter until the questioning was over. After each reply, he issues a command (15b, 16b, 17b): feed my lambs...shepherd my sheep...feed my sheep.This is no small thing: both Old and New Testaments describe leaders as shepherds––people who feed, lead, guard and guide flocks of sheep––some of the dumbest and dirtiest and most vulnerable of animals. Don’t believe me? Watch this video of dumb sheep: [Video] That’s us. But if that isn’t very flattering, notice what is: Jesus claims us as belonging to him––my lambs, mysheep, my sheep. He claims us. He wants us. We’re His––stupid and stinking as we might be. And he soberly is entrusting believers to Peter as a Shepherd/Pastor (same word in original!) I’m sure this shocked and surprised Peter. I would have expected a much more rigorous inquisition before restoring him. But Jesus saw more in Peter than Peter saw in Peter. He gives him the assignment of feeding (i.e. teaching) and tending/shepherding (i.e. leading, guarding and guiding), not only just new believers (lambs—the most vulnerable and needy) but the flock itself (the church). What Jesus said Peter never forgot: 5:1 So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: 2 shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; 3 not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. 4 And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. (1Peter 5:1-4)•What about us? Not everyone is meant to be a church leader; but everyone is meant to be useful to Him, to serve Him. If you dolove Him, it isn’t enough just to feel warm toward Him, or profess that you love him, or even sing and worship Him. He wants that love for Him to be expressed in serving Him. How, and when, and where is all between you and Him. Why–-is very clear: out of love and devotion to Him. You love Him? Serve Him by serving others who belong to Him. Some people quickly discount their getting involved more than just attending (which they do about half the time) because 1) “I’m busy,” “I’m tired,” “I’m retired”; 2) or “What could Ido anyway”? or 3) “There aren’t any appropriate places to serve or opportunities that match what I’m good at or want to do. That’s why I’m not serving right now.” •But for the one who really lovesJesus, he/she will find a way, a place, to be useful, to serve Him and those who follow Him. In fact, you don’t even need a formal place or position to serve Jesus by serving others. You can pray, “Show me Lord someone I can encourage with a word. Lead me to someone with a need that I can meet. Someone I can share the Good News with, or speak God’s Word to; or someone I can help or protect or give to. Because I love You. And I know you love them. So I love them too.•Jesus wants to use those who love Him to serve others...But Jesus knew that if He were to use Peter as He intended, Peter would not only need to have the right motive and attitude, but also the right commitment. We can say, “Use me, O Lord...I love you and want you to use me in serving others...but on my own terms: where I want, with whom I want, to whom I want, under the right conditions, and only on Sundays between 9:30 and 10:15.” Be prepared to be used by God very little, unless you have:3. THE RIGHT COMMITMENT: REGARDLESS... Wait. “Regardless?” ...Of what? A. Regardless of the cost to you (vs. 18-19): 18 Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.” 19 (This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.) And after saying this he said to him, “Follow me.”At the end of his life, Peter will be beaten, so much so that he won’t be able to dress himself; he’ll be taken against his will to a place where they will stretch out his hands. This is a prediction of crucifixion––the same brutal, horrible death that Jesus endured. Eusebius, the early church historian (325 AD) reported that Peter was crucified in Rome under the rampage of Nero (65 AD), about the same time that Paul the Apostle was beheaded. Jesus: “If I use you and you serve me, it may be costly.” Early Christians served others in costly ways: they were known to give so freely that Roman writers termed them financially stupid. They adopted unwanted, abandoned babies left to die by the walls of the city; they gave each other their time & encouragement, and shared their possessions and even risked their lives for each other. What might serving Him cost you? They really weren’t looking at the cost: they were too busy just following Jesus––taking their cue from His example, following the promptings of His Spirit, listening and responding to His Word. Follow Him––regardless of what it might cost or where it might lead. •I can’t leave this without pointing out that Jesus knew when and how Peter would die. Peter said Jesus knew everything.Does he? Do you realize he knows when and how you will die? That is both startling and comforting to me. I want for me/you what John says about Peter--that by Peter’s death, he would “glorify God.” Paul echoed that conviction: “...it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.”(Phil. 1:20)Jesus is wanting to use those who love Him enough to serve others regardless of the cost, and... B. Regardless of what others are doing: (vs. 20-23) 20 Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them, the one who also had leaned back against him during the supper and had said, “Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?” 21 When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about this man?” 22 Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!” 23 So the saying spread abroad among the brothers that this disciple was not to die; yet Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die, but, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?”NB Peter’s Q: “But what about...” (a terrible way to start any Q to God) ...what about Mr. Lovey-Dovey? The one that You love... What about him?What will he have to do? What will he have to give up or sacrifice?” Peter is straying into the same territory that got him in trouble before––comparing himself with others. Jesus pounces: “Peter––you just keep your eyes on me. Follow Me.” Clearly, Peter’s job is to follow Jesus, not compare himself to John or anyone else. •One writer observed: “The key to the Christian life is a simple one: each day, every day, moment by moment, follow Jesus. Don’t be distracted with what might happen if...or when...We mustn’t neglect what is plainly in front of us…Simple obedience to Jesus’ command, Follow Me, is the key issue in every Christian’s life.” (The Bible Knowledge Commentary)•The rebuke is misunderstood later by some who said that in John’s lifespan Jesus would return. John himself corrects that mistake and points out that Jesus didn’t say that––he said, “If...” and left it uncertain. What is certain is that Jesus would return; and that what Jesus has in store for John is no business of Peter’s.•And us? “What about so and so?” is one of the deeper ditches we can all fall into. Do you love Jesus enough to serve others regardless of what it might cost or what others are/are not doing? John Calvin expressed his determination this way: “Resolved: That all men should glorify God.Resolved second: Whether others do or not, I will.”Jesus doesn’t want you to focus on what others are doing, or not doing; it’s not about fairness, or equal sacrifice; it’s simply about following Jesus’ lead: “I’ll go wherever He takes me. I do what He gives me to do. I’ll stand up when He says so and speak up when He gives me opportunity. I want to be used by Him to serve others in whatever way I can. Why? Because I love him. Why? Because He so loved me first.”•Being useful to Jesus, serving Him begins with a single Q: Not what am I good at?Nor what are the opportunities?, nor even what’s the cost? But: “Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me?” John ends His Gospel with this:Conclusion: (vss. 24-25): 24 This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true. 25 Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.John has written all these things––not as a fanciful storybook, not as encouraging myths & legends, but as sober truth. He saw it. It all happened exactly as he reported it. You can stake your life on it. You can stake your destiny on it. But what John wrote isn’t exhaustive––it isn’t everything that Jesus was or did or said––but what John wrote is true. And what is absolutely true is that Jesus is the most amazing person who has ever lived. And no wonder: He is God with Skin. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He is grace & truth. Grace & Truth. Grace to be forgiven. Grace to be remade. Grace to start again. Grace to be useful. Grace to follow Him. Grace to live well and die in a way that glorifies God. As we end our time today, let this short video from the Skit Guys remind us of that grace that makes us love Jesus & serve Him all the more: (Watch The Skit Guys Video).
Slideshow for this message is available
Introduction John 20-21
Well we are in John chapter 20 where we come to the purpose statement of the book of John which we have referenced several dozen times in our preaching. The whole book of John was written for this reason.
Now in order to accomplish this purpose, John tells us that he has been incredibly selective in his writing. To give you an indicator of just how selective he has been, if you notice the time markers in the book of John, there are only 21 or maybe 22 days of the life of Jesus which have been recorded.
That’s not a biography. The gospels are not biographies. He’s chosen specific miracles, specific events so that in reading those events, they might persuade you to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God.
Now here’s what’s interesting. The last event chosen, the climatic one, the one he chooses to really drive home the point that Jesus is the Christ, is this story about Thomas who struggles with doubt. Jesus looks at Thomas and says, “Do not disbelieve but believe.”
Now I want to really press into this concept of doubt vs belief because not only does the book of John culminate with the call to believe, but the entire Christian faith culminates in it. The way you become a Christian is by believing! You are to believe the claim that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the living God. If you believe that, then you believe all the claims that go along with that and in believing that you are saved.
Maybe you are walking in here today with doubt. You are not so sure. Maybe you feel like Thomas. You need more evidence. You won’t believe unless certain conditions are met.
Maybe you need to see a miracle. Maybe you don’t understand the way science and the Bible go together. Maybe you don’t understand how God and evil go together.
You have some barrier in your mind that creates doubt. That’s okay. Let’s talk about that for a moment.
What is doubt? Doubt can be defined as a mental or emotional state in which the mind remains suspended between two contradictory propositions. In Thomas case and maybe in in your case there are two claims which logically can’t both be true.
The Bible’s claim: Jesus rose from the dead. The World’s claim: Jesus is still in the grave.
Which is it? The Christian claim is that Jesus rose from the dead. But experience tells you that dead people stay dead. Maybe for you that creates doubt.
Doubt is not bad. To question the reality that someone rose from the dead is an intelligent doubt. We aren’t supposed to believe everything we hear.
You’ve got to give me good reasons why I am supposed to believe something that seems very unbelievable. If I’m going to move from doubt to belief, or even from the position of belief to greater belief, you have to give me the freedom to continue asking questions until I find some reliable grounds to satisfy my reason.
Without healthy doubt there can be no healthy faith.
So given this understanding of belief, we might think that what Thomas is lacking is good reasons. We might think that what he is lacking is evidence?
But if we look carefully at the text, that is not the problem. Jesus kindly - but most definitely - rebukes Thomas in this passage. If it was reasonable for Thomas to ask for evidence, then it would be unreasonable for Jesus to rebuke. But Jesus rebuked. You should have believed without the evidence. And what that tells us is that what was preventing Thomas from believing the reports of the disciples was not lack of evidence. He claimed what he needed was evidence. But that’s not what he needed.
And that’s actually the case for millions and millions of people today. Millions of people think that what they need in order to become a follower of Jesus is more evidence. But just like Thomas, that’s not what they need. Let’s find out what Thomas needed, and maybe in so doing, we will find out what you need to become a follower of Jesus Christ or what you need to strengthen a weak faith in Jesus Christ.
Now the other disciples had seen the risen Lord and they were just ecstatic. They were out of their minds with excitement.
But their testimony was unconvincing in his ears. Thomas says to them, “Okay, so apparently you were all in a locked room and you all saw something that ‘resembled’ Jesus. Yeah, okay, all your testimonies agree. I’m sure you all saw something, but it wasn’t Jesus. That sounds more like a ghost story than like a Jesus sighting.”
And so Thomas obstinately demands evidence. What I need is more evidence. I won’t believe until…. and then he lays down his conditions.
Now what caused Thomas to doubt and demand this evidence? Some have conjectured that it was something in his disposition.
Thomas shows up in two other places in the gospels and in both places he seems to suffers from an Eore complex, a glass half empty complex. He seems to bear the burden of a pessimist.Maybe he doubts because of disposition. But maybe he doubts because of experience. In some translations, Thomas has the nickname dydimous. That’s just an untranslated Greek word. You can hear in it our English word diddo from. The ESV translation just translate the word dydimous which means twin. Thomas had a twin brother and I’m guessing an identical twin so perhaps Thomas had a unique perspective on mistaken identity. His entire life, he’d been mistaken for his brother. No I’m not Mark. Mark has the mole. I don’t have the mole. I’m Thomas. He’s been on the receiving end of mistaken identity his whole life. He knows just how possible this is.
So Thomas, pulling from his pessimism, pulling from his experience with mistaken identity says, “I’m sure this guy reminded you of Jesus but there’s no way it could be Jesus. I saw him die. I saw his stiffening, bloated body come off that tree. There’s no way I’ll believe it.”
But seeing the insistence in the other disciples he says, “Okay, actually, there’s one way. There’s one identification marker that nobody could fake and that’s the wounds. Unless I place my finger in the holes, I won’t believe.”
Thomas is the skeptic. Thomas is the doubter. We call him doubting Thomas. Now I always feel so bad for the guy. He gets this label slapped on him for the rest of history. You know if Thomas had a NT you know what verse I think would be highlighted, underlined and bolded in his Bible? Mark 16. Mark 16 is the parallel account of Jesus’ first appearance to the disciples when Thomas was at away.
Mark 16
Thomas is like, why did I get the label? Every single one of us doubted and because I happen to not be in the room, because I volunteered to go to Costco and buy groceries, I get the label, “Doubting Thomas.”
Well, Thomas, it’s a good point. We ought to have doubting Peter, doubting John, doubting Simon, doubting Andrew. They all did the same exact thing. They are all equally guilty.
Now let’s just push on this character assessment. What’s wrong with a guy that wants a little proof? It’s not like its exactly common for crucified people who have been embalmed in 70 pounds of spices and wrapped in linen clothes placed into sealed, guarded tombs to just get up and walk away. That’s not exactly usual. Not only is it unusual, but that’s kind of an important detail to nail down. It pretty much has a major impact on how these disciples are going to live out the rest of his life. What’s wrong with a guy that wants a little proof?
Now you can create a ton of clarity to these concepts if you add some adjectives. So instead of just talking about belief and doubt, let’s talk in terms of healthy belief, unhealthy belief, healthy doubt and unhealthy doubt. And in order to see this clearly, let’s look at this little diagram.
So we will start in the upper left.
A healthy belief is a belief that you hold for good reason. So for example, “I believe summer is coming.” You have scientific backing for that claim. You have experience to back the claim. You have history to back the claim. You are believing the right thing.
An unhealthy belief is a belief that you hold for no good reason. This is the person who believes everything. They are gullible. So for example, “I believe in Santa Claus.” If you are an adult and you still believe that, you might have reasons, but I hate to break it to you, but you have no good ones.
A healthy doubt is a doubt that is felt for good reasons. So it’s good of you to doubt the reality of Santa Claus. You disbelieve the right things.
An unhealthy doubt would be to question the reality of summer. You have no good reason to doubt that summer is coming. This is the person who disbelieves everything.
Now where does Thomas fit? And for that matter, where do all the disciples fit? They are living in unhealthy doubt. Why?
Because even though the claim is gigantic, “Jesus rose from the dead!” The reasons to believe that claim are also gigantic. Let me give you three.
First, they had quality eye-witnessess. Let me give you an example of what I mean by this.
If you’ve read the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe there’s the scene where Lucy who is characteristically sweet has just returned from Narnia with Edmund who is known for being devious. When they rejoin the others Edmund claims that their journey was just a story Lucy made up. Susan and Peter don’t really understand why Lucy is telling stories about this mysterious place called Narnia, and they realize the issue is beyond them to fix. They turn to the Professor for some advice.
Susan’s and Peter’s can’t understand why Lucy has been telling lies about Narnia. The Professor asks how it is they know that Lucy’s story isn’t true. So he makes them think.
Lucy could be a liar. The Professor asks if Lucy or Edmund is generally the more truthful one. Both Peter and Susan agree the answer would typically be Lucy. Something could be wrong with Lucy (like madness). The Professor, however, quickly dismisses this as “one has only to look at her and talk to her to see that she is not mad.” Lucy is telling the truth- Susan and Peter are resistant to the idea that Lucy might be telling the truth because, in their minds, people don’t just find other countries lying in wardrobes. But the Professor points out that the details of Lucy’s story don’t seem to be the sort she could just make up and there is a great deal even he doesn’t know about the house. Thus, “for the moment then and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume that she is telling the truth.”
That’s exactly what’s happening here. Mary Magdalene, Salome and Mary the mother of James had all seen Jesus. And presumably they were not in the habit of lying, they were not mad, and much like the mysterious house, ‘there was a great deal they didn’t yet know about Jesus.’
So yes, the claim is gigantic, “Jesus rose from the dead!” but the reasons to believe that claim are also gigantic. 1. They had quality eye-witnessess. 2. They had seen extensive proof that Jesus was God.
Because they had lived with the Lord, I want you to picture in your mind’s eye what they had seen. Miracles of Jesus. 1.Water into wine at the wedding in Cana 2.Healing of the official’s son at Capernaum in Galilee 3.Jesus drives out an evil spirit from a man in Capernaum 4.Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law sick with fever 5.Jesus heals many sick and oppressed at evening 6.First miraculous catch of fish on Sea of Galilee 7.Jesus cleanses a man with leprosy 8.Jesus heals a centurion’s paralyzed servant in Capernaum 9.Jesus heals a paralytic who was let down from the roof 10. Jesus heals a man’s withered hand on the Sabbath 11. Jesus raises a widow’s son from the dead in Nain 12. Jesus calms a storm on the sea 13. Jesus casts demons into a herd of pigs 14. Jesus heals a woman in the crowd with an issue of blood 15. Jesus raises Jairus’ daughter back to life 16. Jesus heals two blind men 17. Jesus heals a man who was unable to speak 18. Jesus heals an invalid at Bethesda 19. Jesus feeds 5,000 plus women and children 20. Jesus walks on water 21. Jesus heals many sick in Gennesaret as they touch his garment 22. Jesus heals a gentile woman’s demon-possessed daughter 23. Jesus heals a deaf and dumb man 24. Jesus feeds 4,000 plus women and children 25. Jesus heals a blind man at Bethsaida 26. Jesus heals a man born blind by spitting in his eyes 27. Jesus heals a boy with an unclean spirit 28. Miraculous temple tax in a fish’s mouth 29. Jesus heals a blind, mute demoniac 30. Jesus heals a woman who had been crippled for 18 years 31. Jesus heals a man with dropsy on the sabbath 32. Jesus cleanses ten lepers on the way to Jerusalem 33. Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead in Bethany 34. Jesus restores sight to Bartimaeus in Jericho 35. Jesus withers the fig tree on the road from Bethany 36. Jesus heals a servant’s severed ear while he is being arrested
So yes, the claim is gigantic, “Jesus rose from the dead!” but the reasons to believe that claim are also gigantic. 1. They had quality eye-witnessess. 2. They had seen extensive proof that Jesus was God. 3. They had clear predictions that this very event would transpire.
On several different occasions that he would die and be raised again.
In Jn 2 he told his opponents, destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.
In Mt 12 he said, just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
You might say, well those are kind of cryptic references. Well, do you think this is cryptic?
Luke 18:31-33, And taking the twelve, he said to them, See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. 32 For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. 33 And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise.
Or how about a couple chapters later.
Luke 24:7, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.
That is not mysterious. I’m just saying. In fact, it was such common knowledge that even his enemies knew the plain interpretation of his words. After Jesus had died and was laid in the tomb we read,
Matthew 27
So let me ask you, “Did Thomas have good reason to doubt?” No.
So if he didn’t have good reason to doubt, then why did he doubt? Maybe you are here today with good reason to doubt. You haven’t done the research. You have good questions. Continue seeking. But maybe you are here today and you are like Thomas and you don’t realize that the reasons you are holding onto are not good reasons. You say you have good reasons to doubt, you say that you are needing certain specific pieces of evidence, but maybe it’s not an intellectual obstacle.
Let me introduce one more concept into our chart. Thomas used to be in this box.
Maybe that describes you. You grew up in church. You used to go to AWANA. You used to read your Bible and believe everything it said. You used to be sold out for the Lord. But then something happened. In Thomas’ case, it was shattered expectations and misunderstanding of God’s plan. He thought Jesus was going to bless him and instead he left him. Maybe that’s how you feel?
And Thomas couldn’t deal with it. So tragedy caused him to doubt. Tragedy shook him off his feet. When you move from belief to unbelief or from unbelief to belief, you cross over this line and we are going to call this line of doubt, the line of implications.
Think about it. For Thomas, he had to wrestle with the claim that Jesus was God. And the longer he lived, the more he believed that claim. With every miracle, his faith grew. But then Jesus died. And his world fell apart.
Any time you cross over that line. Whether from belief to unbelief or from unbelief to belief, you don’t do it without some pretty serious implications.
Crossing that line shatters a person. Because everything you’ve built your life upon falls crumbles like sand. It’s extremely unsettling. It’s extremely crushing. And in order to successfully cross the line, you have to have the emotional courage to deal with it. And many people don’t have the courage. They would rather continue living a lie then admit that their entire life has been spent building upon a foundation of sand in which their head is buried.
You see for Thomas, believing that Jesus had risen from the dead, in the end, was an emotional problem.
Thomas already crossed that line once. He was shattered. Emotionally he was destroyed and he was picking up the pieces. Everything he built his life upon was in ruins. He probably felt hurt, betrayed, wounded and what was once glowing love for Jesus was replaced with deep suspicion. He had deconstructed. He wasn’t about to go back there again.
Maybe that describes you. Something hurt you. You felt let down by a church leader, or God allowed something to happen in your life that you felt should never have happened. And that thing, whatever it was, shattered you.
And now your like Thomas. Your faith has been deconstructed and you feel fragmented and fractured. You feel duped. You felt like a kid who discovered Santa wasn’t real. And your whole world got turned upside down. And when you crossed over that line of implications you were wrecked.
And now you’ve been living on the other side of that line for a while now. And you are looking back over that line to where you used to be and you hear good arguments for the resurrection, you know that the argument of evolution doesn’t work, but you can’t emotionally bear the weight of crossing that line again. It’s too dangerous. You’ve got to protect your soul. You’ve got to make sure that soul injury doesn’t get repeated. Listen friend, Thomas can relate.
God has sympathy for how you feel. In Jude 1:20 we have instruction given to us on how to treat people who doubt.
Jude
Have mercy. It’s understandable why you feel this way. It’s a state that should evoke sympathy. We see this kind of mercy in Jesus as he approached Thomas.
Jesus comes under the same circumstances (closed doors) and with the same greeting of peace as before (20:19, 26).
This is definitely a mild, gentle, loving correction. He doesn’t say Thomas’ condition is acceptable. He doesn’t say, “Well, Thomas, I know you’re doubting, but that’s understandable, because I haven’t shown you the evidence.” He says, “Stop doubting” which means Thomas should have believed. He was not listening to the women who had seen him and he was not listening to the disciples. But most of all, he was not listening to Jesus himself who had demonstrated his power and predicted this moment.
Thomas wouldn’t believe. He says, “I won’t believe until I actually see him.” Well Jesus shows up, and he offers him the evidence, but you know what, the text is very careful to point out, he never takes up Jesus’ offer. He never actually gets up and puts his hands and fingers in the holes. You want to know why? Because that was never the issue. Evidence was never the issue.
The issue was he was too afraid. The issue was it was too good to be true and he didn’t want to get his hopes up only to be dashed to pieces. Maybe he felt abandoned by Jesus and there was fear of another abandonment.
And while that is sympathy inducing, it’s also a barrier to his joy. Here was an offer of absolute happiness and there was a defiance of that happiness. Can I ask, maybe that’s what’s preventing you from coming to Jesus? Well, notice what fixes the problem for Thomas. It’s simply seeing him. It’s simply being with him. It’s simply beholding him.
Thomas saw something great and it brought him back to Jesus. You need the same thing Thomas needed. You don’t need to see Jesus in the flesh. What you need is to see Jesus in the text, in his Words. You just need to read the book of John again. You need to read about who he claimed to be. Look at how he responded.
And you know what will happen. If you drop those fears of abandonment, and you say, what if that tragedy that pushed me away from God was actually the way God would help me see him for not who I wanted him to be but who he actually is?
Spend time in the Bible, friend. See Jesus and will discover, like millions who have gone before you, that in so doing, you will fall on your face and declare, “May Lord and my God.”
If you read the 8 miracles of Jesus in almost every instance, those who see the miracles in real life don’t believe. What kind of a miracle is that? Why would John choose these miracles? They didn’t have the right effect on those who watched them. Why would they have a greater effect on those who read them?
Remember the religious leaders in John 11. They watched Lazarus be raised from the dead. I mean that’s a legit miracle. But here was the response. So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the Council and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation... so from that day on they made plans to put him to death.
And after this they did. They killed the Son of God. Did miracles and signs and wonders cause them to believe? No.
Why didn’t they believe? Fear! The Pharisees were scared of giving up their precious - their place and their position. And that fear blinded them. They couldn’t see him.
And maybe that’s what’s preventing you coming to Jesus. It’s scary crossing that line of implication. It takes tremendous courage. It takes all kinds of bravery and fearlessness. But what if it’s true? Would you really want to fend of eternal joy your entire life for fear of being disappointed?
John is pointing us to something. We all need evidence. We don’t need less than that but we need more than that. Evidence alone will never save a person. God uses evidence but what you really need is Jesus himself. You need to behold him. You need to consider his claims. You need to interact with his person. It’s the person of Jesus that actually changes. It’s the person. In the end it’s not the evidence.
And you need to drop that fear that binds you.
But all who see, all who drop their fear, all who open their eyes and gaze, ALL, and I do mean ALL, are saved. ALL are saved who open their eyes and see Jesus. He is irresistible!
All fall on their face and say, “My Lord and My God!”
Slideshow for this message is available
Introduction John 20
Last week we celebrated the resurrection and one of the main things we tried to emphasize was that the resurrection as recorded in the New Testament is not just a story. It’s a true story.
This is super significant because. Because if we are to be saved from real dangers we need real saviors. A man with heart disease needs to be saved by a real surgeon not story about one.
Jesus Christ rose from the dead and that act of conquering death, because it actually happened, can in a very real way apply to our death problem. That was last week. But this week, we encounter something that takes it to the next level.
What we are going to see in the passage today is that this resurrection event was not just a point in time accomplishment that changed a real thing in history. It was a point in time event that has continuing implications to the present day. There is very real, ever changing, moment by moment significance for all who claim to be followers of Christ.
Consider the difference between these two scenrios:
Consider first a builder who frames, plumbs and drywalls your house 20 years ago, completed the project and has moved on. You’d be experiencing the effects of his real work but his real presence no longer affects you.
Compare that to living with that builder who lives in the home he built. You interact with him daily. He helps you with the dishes. He makes requests of you. He decides to remodel the house, adding on, asking if you could clear out a room because the flooring needs to be torn out or the kitchen needs updating. Being a Christian is uncomfortable because it’s constant submission to the master remodeler who is using you to accomplish his grand mission.
God did not just enter into this world, fix the death problem, and then move on. In the text, we see that God enters in and fills the house. The Spirit of God literally indewells us. The same God that conquered the grave is now on a mission to conquer the world by indwelling his followers.
You see Jesus could have lived, died and even rose from the grave. And he could have conquered death and moved on. In that case he would’ve been a wonderful teacher, a wonderful example, and we could’ve known him the way you know any great person. We’d benefit from his real accomplishments in history. He lives on in his teaching. He lives on in the stories we have of him. He lives on in our hearts. He lives on the way any great person did.
But in this passage we see that God doesn’t move on. He moves in. And because of that the relationship you should have with the God of the universe is qualitatively different.
Here’s what we are going to see in the text. We are going to see two gifts that are given us by Jesus and those two gifts change us in two ways.
Let’s see this in the text itself.
Now this is the disciples first view of the resurrected Jesus. We made the point last week that Mary just never suspected the resurrection. She comes and sees the stone rolled away and her thoughts didn’t go, “It’s true. He’s risen from the dead just as he said.” She thought the body had been taken away. Even when she saw two angels, her thought was, “Oh, I see, the angels must have taken him somewhere.”
And what this should illustrate is not the dullness or faithlessness of Mary but the just how foreign the concept of resurrection really was. 1st century Jews and Romans didn’t really believe in resurrection. They just didn’t. It wasn’t part of their worldview.
So Jesus Christ shows up in the room and it’s not so much that they don’t believe it, they aren’t able. They are missing the category. It’s too wild and fanciful.
Luke’s account tells us that when Jesus entered they were terrified.
He says, “You’re a ghost.” That’s their worldview. Remember we talked about Shades, Sheol, the Grave. Dead people get a one way ticket to the grave, the house of Spirits.
The disciples’ perception of Jesus as a ghost has nothing to do with Jesus’ appearance as if he was somehow translucent or something. It has everything to do with their assumptions. Since dead people stay dead, it’s their only explanation for what they are seeing. Even though he looks completely like a real human being, he must be a ghost.
Jesus shatters the paradigm. They had a paradigm that insisted resurrections don’t happen. So Jesus has to first prove that he’s human. He said, “You think I’m a ghost? Okay, give me a fish? He ate the fish, and he said,”Have you ever seen a ghost eat a fish?"
Now as a side note, many have noticed that these kinds of detail are such strong evidence of non-fiction writing. On the surface, it seems like the opposite. It seems so fanciful. What could be more fiction-esque than to have a ghost eat a fish.
But think about it. We’ve seen so many strokes of literary genius from John. He’s an amazing writer. There’s thick deep irony, rich metaphors. There have been several times in reading the book that I’ve shuttered in marvel as I’ve seen double and tripple layers of meaning in the telling.
Now given that kind of literary genius, ask yourself, honestly, what fiction writer would ever finish his account by having Jesus walking through a wall and eat a fish? It sounds so silly. After all this serious talk about Jesus as God, that’s the best conclusion you have? The only reason you’d write that down is if it actually happened.
A lot of discussion goes into the post resurrection appearances of Jesus and the nature of his body. And for good reason because the Bible says many times that our resurrected body will be like his so we have a vested interest in understanding it.
Philippians 3-4
It’s an interesting feature of the narrative accounts that in many of the post resurrection appearances, the disciples did not recognize Jesus. And many readers are troubled by this. In some cases the text says that Jesus intentionally hid it from their eyes. In other cases, it seems that they simply just didn’t recognize him. And that bothers us. Why didn’t they recognize him. The doubt that surfaces is maybe it wasn’t really Jesus? Maybe it was someone else? How could you not recognize someone you have spent the last 3.5 years with?
Now whose got the assumption problem? Think for a moment about the assumptions we bring to the table in a question like that. If I were to die today and then in two weeks time, I were to be raised with a new body, what you would expect me to look like? Like I do right now. But why should you expect that? What if I was 99 years old and on my death bed, how would you expect me to raise? What if I was 1 years old? You see the point is that the body is just the shell. The body houses who you really are which is a soul. The Bible clearly teaches that the resurrection body will be similar but different than what we have now. Isn’t that what we are hoping for?
I’m just saying, if my resurrected body looks and operates like my 45 year old body, I’m going to be a little disappointed.
The point is that Jesus was in his resurrected body, not his earthly body, and that resurrected body apparently shares many of the same similarities but in many ways, it is very different. It should be expected that the disciples struggle to recognize Jesus if he is in a body of a qualitatively different sort.
The Bible makes it clear that the soul is the same but that the bodies given to us now and the bodies given to us later share many of the same qualities but they are also different. Just two quick cross-references here on this point.
In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul is describing the resurrection body and he compares our current body as a seed you put into the ground.
1 Corinthians 15-16
And the point is that our resurrection body is related to our earthly body, it sprouts forth from it, but it’s different. And how is it different? He explains.
So Jesus is resurrected in a related but new body. That’s why they at first struggle to identify. And this too becomes for us an evidence of authenticity. Once again, if this is a made up narrative that you wanted people to believe was true, would you write a story in which you introduce doubt about the identity of the risen savior?
Now the first thing this resurrected Jesus says is “Peace be with you.” In fact, he says it twice. He gives the gift of peace. And that peace is going to change them.
You can see the change right here in the text. They start out frightened. Look at them! They are cowarding behind locked doors. They are fearful of death by crucifixion by association. They are scared of being imprisoned as co-conspirators. I’m sure there were rumblings of this sort. There were many examples in Roman history of putting down entire sects, entire divisions, entire families to make a strong point. I’d be scared too. They start out absolutely controlled by fear.
Here’s what Jesus shows them. Fear and anxiety have their antecdote in the resurrected person of Christ. And if we think about this carefully, there’s two reasons for this:
First, because the resurrection redeems suffering. Whatever you are worried about has it’s ultimate solution in the resurrection. What’s the worst thing that can happen to you? Just give me the thing you are worried about the very most? Death. On the scale of problems in the world, that’s a pretty big one. But Jesus just stands there and smiles.
Oh, that’s all you’re worried about? I thought you were worried about something significant! No problem. There’s a resurrection! You are totally good. Peace be to you. Peace to you friend. There’s an emphasis in the text on the wounds of the hands and side. Why are those wounds there? What do those wounds represent? Pain, suffering, tragedy, abuse, terror, abandonment, injury.
So the resurrection gives a new posture toward tragedy. The resurrection of Jesus allows them to look at difficulty, trial, all the fear and simply rest. If God can redeem that terrible injustice, that terrible trajedy, then certainly he can redeem my lesser suffering. Why? Because in the end the big problem is redeemed. The massive problem is solved. Whatever suffering you are experienced is resolved in the resurrection. (Health problem - solved. Relational problem - solved. Marital problem - solved).
Fear and anxiety have their anecdote in the resurrected person of Christ. We said there’s two reasons for this. First, the resurrection redeems suffering, but secondly, the resurrection gives us access to gladness.
You see it’s so much more than just eliminating the problem of suffering and our eventual death. Okay, great you are freed from the prison of suffering? But what are you being freed to? What is on the other side of those prison doors?
And I love the simple way it’s said, "The disciples were glad when they saw the Lord." Sometimes the Bible just surprises me in the simple way it says things. At first it seemed so understated to me. What do you mean, glad? How about ecstatic, overjoyed, elated, euphoric, delirious with joy? Glad? But the more I thought about it, the more appropriate it seemed. Sure, they were relieved when death had been defeated, but they were glad when they saw the Lord.
When are we glad? When the deep needs of our souls are met. When we are deeply satisfied. We are glad on the first beautiful warm day of spring after freezing all winter. There’s a gentle thawing of the earth that softly turns to gladness. We are glad to see a mother with her string of baby ducklings. We are glad to see the tulips pushing up through the soil and bloom. Jesus Christ makes our hearts glad. It’s not a satisfaction that comes on us from the outside but rather one that warms from within. We go from trouble, anxiety, fear to the peace of gladness of simply being in the presence of Christ.
Is that not how you generally experience the Lord? You open your Bible and maybe at first it’s a bit forced, a bit out of duty, but the gentle heat of the love of God warms your heart.
The preaching of his word, fills your hungry soul, the prayers that you pray satisfy your thirsty Spirit, the songs that you sing give wings to the feelings in your soul and you are glad.
The Psalms use this word over and over.
Psalm 16:8-9, I have set the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken. 9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices; my flesh also dwells secure.
Psalm 21:5-6 His glory is great through your salvation; splendor and majesty you bestow on him. 6 For you make him most blessed forever; you make him glad with the joy of your presence.
And there’s 35 more verses in the Psalms just like this.
So Jesus gives the first gift of peace which changes their posture from fear to gladness.
Now there’s a second gift given.
And that power comes in the form of the Holy Spirit.
Now before we get too far we have to address a pretty significant interpretation question here and maybe a lot of you are already asking this. If Jesus is breathing on them here and they are receiving the Holy Spirit here, what is Pentacost all about? I thought the Spirit was first given at Pentacost?
There are several views on this. More liberal scholars will say you can’t harmonize John and Acts and this is merely John’s telling of the giving of the Spirit.
Other people will make the point that there isn’t an article in front of the word Holy Spirit and so this isn’t talking about THE giving of the Holy Spirit but rather it’s some lesser giving of the Spirit. But I don’t think that view works very well for a variety of reasons. I think there’s a better answer.
I think this is a symbolic representation of what is about to come. Here’s why:
First, if we say that this is the predicted coming of the Spirit we would be encouraging an internal inconsistency with the book of John itself. Remember back in John 17, Jesus says that the Spirit would not come until AFTER Jesus’ ascension to the Father and subsequent glorification. So for the Spirit to come now, it would seem to be an internal inconsistency even with John. If this was the promised giving of the Spirit, it certainly doesn’t seem like it made much difference. 8 days later they are still behind locked doors. The disciples slide back to their own employment. They are back to fishing. They are still comparing themselves one to another. If this is the giving of the Spirit that was prophesied in the OT, that Jesus predicted, then quite frankly, the results are underwhelming and disappointing. We’d have to conclude that the promises of John 14–16 are grossly inflated. Compare this to the dramatic shift in disposition when the Spirit is given at Pentacost in Acts
Then what’s up with this breathing business?
The way it’s translated here in the ESV makes it sound like it was the breathing itself that imparted some sort of gift. But the Greek word is just the word breathe. There’s no phrase, “on them.” I read an article on how this word is used in the LXX which is the Greek translation of the OT and it seems like a slam dunk case to me. It seems almost certain that it should be translated and let me demonstrate………………………[breathe deeply before speaking it] “And with that he breathed, and said,”Receive the Holy Spirit." I tried to illustrate it there. The idea is that he filled his lungs deeply exhaled deeply as we do when we are filled with emotion and want to gain composure before making a significant statement. So we shouldn’t read that breathing as if it’s some sort of mystical imparting of the Spirit.
A better way to think of this is that he wants to link this impending gift with his resurrection appearance. He is readying them for something big about to happen.
A comparable analogy might be the washing of the disciples’ feet: Jesus said, ‘Unless I wash you, you have no part with me’ (13:8). We know that the foot washing itself points forward to the spiritual washing achieved by the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Jesus is anticipating what’s coming.
There’s other examples of this sort of thing in the book of John. Remember Jesus says during the last supper, “Now is the son glorified and God is glorified in Him.” That’s referencing the crucifixion that is imminent but not immediate.
Now however you slice it, there is a special empowering work of the Spirit being referenced here. There’s something new.
This helper that has been promised all through the book of John, and Jesus is letting them know that it is imminently upon you. Finally, Christians have available to them access to God himself which is necessary to do spiritual work.
And can I just say, we need the Spirit. We need Him. Oh how we need Him.
If we are honest, that need is pretty counter-intuitive. Sometimes our intuition is amazingly accurate. We have a gut feel that someone isn’t quite happy with us and we don’t know why? We have a sixth sense that something’s off in the way that guy is walking across the street. It doesn’t look right. Or it can be positive. Maybe an intuition about where to look for that missing ring, or an intuition about an investment. Our intuitions are amazing.
But there is one area where our intuition is completely broken. One area where it’s completely worthless. And that is our need for the Spirit of God.
Never trust the voice in your head that insists, “I pretty much got this." Our intuition tells us that basically we know enough to make the right decisions, we have adequate wisdom to figure things out. Never trust that voice that says, "I’m pretty good at self-assessing.”
I am pretty competent to run my life. We can probably do it on our own, but if God wants to come along and help us out, we’d sure be thankful. Occasionally, we might acknowledge some need in the big decisions or tough trials but we pretty much got this.
That’s what we believe. But that’s NOT the reality.
The reality is we are utterly helpless without him. We have no ability to open our blind eyes or the eyes of the blind people we minister to. We can’t change the smallest sin. We can’t confess the smallest weakness. We are completely dependent on him down to our slightest, smallest breath. We are in no way able to make good decisions. We lack perspective and wisdom.
Listen to this quote from Charles Spurgeon,
The Holy Spirit is the engine for spiritual change. Without this power, we can do nothing. Now there’s a reason this power is given.
In the same way that the gift of peace changes our posture from fear to gladness. The gift of power changes our purpose.
Now notice from the text what our purpose becomes. In verse 21 we see it.
So as the father sent the Son into the world on a mission so Jesus sends us into the world on a mission. And what is that mission? To proclaim the good news of the forgiveness of sins. To preach the gospel.
Now notice how he articulates our part in this gospel mission. It’s actually quite frightening:
So let’s get our minds around this.
Now the first thing to say here is obviously Jesus is not giving people the authority to save some and condemn others. Jesus is simply referencing the sharing of the gospel, which either brings men to repent as they hear of the ready forgiveness of God, or leaves them unresponsive to the forgiveness of God, and so they are left in their sins.
But, why is it said like this? Why is it put in this sort of terminology. The answer has to do with authority. This isn’t unique to this passage. Jesus has done this already on a couple other occasions. Remember Peter’s great confession? Peter says, you are the Christ, the son of the living God and Jesus replies.
After Peter’s great confession:
Matthew 16
It also is a bit reminiscent of the church discipline process described in Matthew 18.
Matthew 18
[RETURN TO TEXT]
Now in all three of these passages, what Jesus seems to be doing is transferring his authority to men. This was a huge light bulb moment for me even just recently. Remember what Pilate says to Jesus, “Why are you not speaking to me. Do you realize that I have the authority to release you and the authority to crucify you?" And Jesus says to Pilate, "You would have no authority unless it was given to you from God.”
He’s not disagreeing that Pilate has the authority to do that. But he’s reminding Pilate that his authority is a derived authority, an authority given to him by God. Meaning, Pilate has someone he’s accountable to.
In the great commission Jesus says, “All authority on heaven and earth has been given to me… Now, go. He’s delegating to us. He’s giving us authority to do something in the name of God who has all authority. Our authority to preach the gospel is a derived authority.”
Until very recently, I thought exercising authority was a sign of pride. I would say, “Who am I to think I know how to lead people? Whom am I to say that my idea is better than the next person’s idea?” And by the way, what is the answer to that question. Answer: I’m nobody. God has all authority.
But when God delegates his authority, then all of the sudden you do have the right. In fact, you now have responsibility.
It’s why Paul says to Timothy
Titus 2-3
Paul is saying, “Titus, your authority to be a pastor in the church is derived from God.” Use it to rebuke, exhort, preach, declare. Abuse of authority does not make authority a bad thing. All of us have a desire to be under good teachers, good coaches. None of us have any authority to do anything unless that authority is given to us. Who am I to stand up here and preach. I am nothing. But God has given pastors authority to speak for him. It’s scary. That’s why James says, that teachers will be held to a stricter judgment. More authority means more responsibility.
[RETURN TO TEXT]
The reason this is important is because it moves it out of the realm of request. In a submission relationship when someone gives you authority, you it’s not optional. You have a responsibility. Now you have to answer for it. Now if it’s not done, you are on the hook because you were given the authority.
If I tell my kids, you are in charge of your sister until we get home. I have delegated to them for a short period of time my authority and they don’t have a choice. Their responsibility to take up that authority flows out of our previously established relationship that I am the father and they are to submit to me as their children. I have authority I have over my children. And that authority to lead my home is an authority given to me by God. So if I abuse that authority or if I neglect my responsibility to be a father the way God has asked me to, I will answer to God for that.
Now let’s just at the outset say, this is uncomfortable. What this does is totally interrupt the course of our life. What this does is interfere and meddle with our plans.
The great commission of Jesus is a pretty significant plan interrupter. You might be saying, "
I have a career I’m needing to pursue. I have a relationship I’m involved in and I really don’t have time for that. My sports career is taking up all my time. Why do you think we moved to Boise? We wanted to get out of these nightmare situations. I want to get away from hard people and hard situations, not move toward them. I didn’t want that job. I was kind of interested in retiring on the beach. I kind of had my mind set on doing something a little more relaxing. That sounds like a lot of hard conversations and confrontation."
Listen, let me put this bluntly. If your reaction to the great commission is that’s good for some people, think again. You have been given the authority, which means you now have responsibility given to you by God and you will be asked to give an account as to what you did with that authority. If Jesus is your Lord, you don’t have the choice. It’s not like you can negotiate with God on this point. He’s the boss. He’s the King. If the resurrection is history, if this is real, then this commission is just as real.
You might say, “I like coming to church on Sunday but to make my entire life about this feels a little invasive. I thought about going into ministry at one point, but then I took a different path. People who choose to go into ministry are supposed to do that but not me. I didn’t choose that.”
That’s not true. If you choose to be a Christian, then you have chosen to submit to whatever he asks of you. Don’t come to God expecting him to change you and satisfying you if you won’t allow him to challenge you.
God is challenging everyone in this room right now to take up the great commission. When is the last time you shared your faith with someone? Jesus says here, "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld." You know one of the best ways to withhold forgiveness from someone. Don’t tell them how forgiveness can be experienced. That’s heavy. But can you argue?
Listen, you have been given the authority, which means you have been given the responsibility to preach the gospel. You might say, “Who am I? I could never do that?” True. But don’t hide beneath that humility. That’s what I’ve done for years in my life and I’m repenting of it. No the authority has been given. So take that authority and use it for the glory of God. You are an ambassador of the message of the king of Kings. Preach Jesus. Preach how wonderful he is. Preach how glorious!
Yes, you are weak and yes you are nothing. But that’s why you’ve been given the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will make your nothing words into something.
God might be calling you to do things you don’t want to do. So be it. God might be showing you things you don’t want to see. So be it. God might be telling you to believe things you don’t want to believe, fine.
That’s okay. Wouldn’t you expect that from a real God. Don’t you want a real God who changes you and others? Conclusion The Message of Jesus when he rises from the dead can me summarized in three words:
Peace. Power. Proclaim.
Christian, Jesus Christ is everything! Let us take up our responsibility. We have nothing to fear. We have the power of God in us. We have a message that is true and saves sinners. Let’s do this.
Slideshow for this message is available
Introduction John 20
There are stories. And then there are true stories. There is fiction and then there is non-fiction. Now here’s the claim this morning. What we are about to read is not fiction. It’s a narrative account describing something that took place in history.
A lot of us come in here this morning, consciously or even subconsciously, not terribly concerned about that point. Why? Because reading about the life of Jesus is just a good read. It is a good story. It inspires us the way a story inspires us. A good story has lots of drama, great character development, and unpredictable plot line, lots of irony, lots of tension and then there’s this resolve at the end and we love it. And what a happy ending, Jesus Christ rose from the dead!
We are addicted to that feeling of drama that resolves, of happy endings.
Think about great stories we all love:
Cinderella gets taken advantage of, marginalized, mistreated, but then in the end there’s justice, the slipper fits, and she marries the prince and we feel great. The White Witch in Narnia has her stranglehold and it’s always winter but never Christmas. And all these creatures are turned to stone. And there’s this deception. But then Aslan is on the move. And the land begins to melt. And the white which is defeated and we feel great.
But here’s the thing and I hate to break it to you: Cinderella is not a real person. There aren’t magical pumpkins. There is no such thing as a white witch. There is no actual lion named Aslan.
And in a way, who cares, because we don’t need the story to be real for it to be meaningful, to have a purpose, to move us, change us, exhilarate us, even shape and transform us.
But, here’s the point: a story does need to be real if it’s going to change what is real.
There’s a pretty big difference between writing a story in which you win a million dollars and actually winning a million dollars. Which would you choose?
You see in order to be helped in the physical realm, the helper must be real. He must exist.
if the building you are in is burning, you must be saved by a real fireman, not a story about a fireman. If the heart in your body is failing, you must be saved by a real heart surgeon, not a story about one.
So when we come to the Bible this morning, let me ask you a question, "Is this a story about a man who rose from the dead or did a man actually rise from the dead? Is this another happily ever after story the likes of Cinderella or is this history?
Listen, everything depends on it. EVERYTHING. The whole meaning of the Christian faith depends on the factual basis of this claim, that what we just read actually happened. That’s why Christianity if a faith that is concerned with apologetics - the historic defense of its claims.
If it’s not true, then the whole thing is worthless.
Who Jesus factually is the foundation for what he’s done.
In other words if Jesus is a great story, then he has done nothing about death. If Jesus was just a man, then he’s done nothing about death. But if Jesus was God come in the flesh, and he really did rise again, then death has been abolished and eternal life awaits all who place their faith in Him!
So today we are going to look at the REAL story. We have only two points today. We are going to listen to the story, the real story and then we are going to consider the implications of it.
Now let’s enter into the narrative. Last week we left off at John 19:42. Joseph of Aramithea along with Nathaniel, laid the body of Christ in a rich man’s tomb very unknowingly fulfilling the prophesy of Isaiah 53:9
Isaiah 53
So the Friday sun of Nissan 14 sets. And when the sun went down, hope went down with it.
That night as far as anyone saw, or could see, Christianity was dead.
It was utterly destroyed by the murder of its founder and sole leader. At that moment, as the stone was rolled shut, and silence filled the air, nothing could have seemed more abjectly weak, more pitifully hopeless, more absolutely doomed to scorn and extinction, and despair, than the Church which He had founded in his name.
Imagine how empty the words of Jesus would have rung in Peter’s ears, “Peter you are Cephas and upon this Rock I will built my church.” Look at what Jesus left.
It numbered a handful of weak followers. Peter, the most hopeful member in terms of boldness, had denied his Lord 3 times with lies and cursing; the most devoted had forsaken Him and fled.
They were poor, uneducated, ignorant, and frightened. They could not claim a single building. They didn’t have a single sword. They had no money. They possessed no notable skills. They wielded no political influence. They had no religious influence.
If they spoke Hebrew, their own language, it betrayed them by its mongrel dialect; If they spoke the current Greek of their region, it was despised as the uneducated version, the redneck version, the miserable, despised version.
Here you have an insignificant, weak band of Galilean fisherman wielding a cross of wood trying to overcome the world. But here’s the thing: they did.
I want you to think about this: The best selling book of all time is Don Quiote with 500 million copies printed. Do your realize that there have been over 5 billion copies of the Bible printed translated into more languages than any other book.
The Bible has been the NYTimes best seller every year since its inception. Every year, the Bible sells twice as many books as any book on the NYT best seller list. Last year over 26 million Bibles were sold in the U.S. alone.If you were to leaf through one of these 25 million copies, whose words would be highlighted in Red all throughout? The man who was whipped, nailed to a tree and laid in a tomb. But it ABSOLUTELY COULD not have been this way had Jesus stayed there.
How could it? Paul was preaching throughout the Roman world. He’s writing 1st Corinthians in A.D. 52. Even the most secular God-hating historian will grant you that fact. That’s 25 years after the event happened. Nobody who actually lived it would believe it, if Jesus was in the grave. There would have to have been hundreds who could personally testify to the resurrection. Otherwise, all you’d have to do is produce the body and the whole thing would be over.
How did this empire transforming message begin?
So let’s pick up the narrative in John chapter 20:1. It is early Sunday morning (still dark).
I’m not sure what you all have in your heads here. For a lot of year, in fact all the way up until college, I had a flannel graph picture in my head of a large boulder in front of the mouth of a cave that was pushed aside. Let me try to give you a better picture.
And inside the tomb it would would have looked something like this. There are many, many examples of this in archaeology.
So the body is placed upon that shelf for one year. And then after the body has decomposed the bones are gathered up and placed in these ossuaries or bone boxes.
So Mary comes to the tomb and she comes to anoint the body. The idea is that as the body decomposes, it’s going to smell. So to combat that odor, you put spices. The more wealthy, the more honored, the more perfume. She comes bearing whatever spices she had; it’s very early Sunday morning. It’s officially after Sabbath. She finds that the stone has been rolled away.
So Mary comes to the tomb. She probably has a desire to put some burial spices on Jesus. But when she arrives she sees the tomb is open. This frightens her so she runs back to tell Peter and John. John wins the footrace but doesn’t enter the tomb. Peter in characteristic brashness, doesn’t care if the tomb will defile him, he just plunges in headlong only to discover that the burial clothes of Jesus have been set aside. The head garment which we were already told was made of fine silk and was folded neatly by itself. This was certainly not the way a tomb raider would have dealt with that costly piece of cloth.
All throughout the text, there’s these little details that nobody would include, unless of course, it actually happened. In other words, it’s an appeal to go check. As and see what other say. See if the stories check out.
Mary stays back while Peter and John return to their homes. She is then the first to see Jesus. As many have noted, it’s highly significant that in a culture that did not honor women, Jesus first reveals himself to a woman.
It’s significant on a a couple of levels. First it’s significant because it’s obviously a choice. Jesus is always preferring the lowly, those who are trodden under foot, those who are overlooked. And he honors Mary in choosing to appear to her first.
But secondly, think about this from the standpoint of credibility. Put yourself in the shoes of an author who is trying to fabricate a mystery, and you wanted people to really believe this stuff, who would you put as an eye-witness to the resurrection? You’d pick some high posting official. You wouldn’t pick a woman, who in the Jewish context, couldn’t even testify in court because of her gender. The only reason you’d do that, is if in fact, it actually happened.
In seeing him, she falls to the ground grasps his feet and says Rabboni, which is an extended form of Rabbi.
In rabbinical Hebrew this expression is regularly applied to God. This may be Mary’s way of addressing her teacher as God.
Much has been written about Jesus’ statement, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father;” The Greek is very difficult and unusual here.
I think some of the confusion in this verse comes from the way we naturally read the phrase, “I am ascending.” Jesus says, stop clinging to me for I have not ascended to my Father as if to say that touching Christ in his pre-ascended state is not proper. Until then, stop clinging. But that would be a strange reading since Thomas is later asked to touch Jesus.
Here is the paraphrase that I think is most helpful, "Stop touching me for I have not yet ascended to my Father.
I am going to ascend but that time is not now, so stop acting like I’m going to immediately disappear! This is a time for joy and sharing the good news, not for clutching me. Stop clinging to me, but go and tell my disciples that I have risen. I promise I’ll still be here when you get back!
And so Mary obeyed and the message of the risen Savior began to spread. And just think about what has happened.
It went first to the Disciples, from the Disciples to the 500 from the 500 all around Jerusalem. From there it spread to all Judea and even the despised people of Samaria. From there it spread to the Aramaic-speaking peoples along the Mediterranean coast and also to the inland parts of the Roman Empire, and beyond that into the Parthian Empire Southern Indian coast By the latter half of the second century, the resurrection of Jesus had spread west throughout Media, Persia, Parthia, and Bactria In the fourth century it was Frumentius who brought Christianity to Ethiopia and it began spreading into Africa. Christianity spread to other great pre-modern states, including the Kingdom of Aksum where it became the state religion. Even the Germanic peoples gradually heard about the resurrection of Jesus and the claims of Christ and many became followers of this resurrected King.
And down through the corridors of history it continued to spread. We stand here today nearly 2000 years later as recipients of a message first spoken by the mouth of Mary, “He is risen from the dead.”
Now what are the implications of this? What does this mean? How do we interpret the claims?
Many think Christianity is just a philosophy. If Christianity is just a philosophy, you can reject it and there’s no problem, because philosophies are a dime a dozen. If that philosophy isn’t anchored in anything objective, well you have just as much of a right to develop your own philosophy as the next guy.
And that’s the level at which a lot of people reject the Christian faith. I’m glad you’ve found something that works for you. But you know, I personally don’t like this idea of submitting to a set of morals because it conflicts with what I think is good for me. I really don’t like the idea of a God who is angry at sin.
The only reason someone would feel the freedom to say that is if they thought Christianity was merely an idea. Nobody says this sort of thing as it relates to real things in a real world, things that demand your submission. If a forest fire is coming your way, you don’t say, “I won’t submit to a flame that destroys property. How cruel.” That’s insane. You just run for you life.
Why? Because the flame doesn’t care what you believe. It doesn’t care what you feel. It just is. It will just consume you if you are in the way. It will consume you because it is real and you are real.
Let the full weight of the Christian message come falling down upon you right now. Let me distill it to two points.
You will die. You will perish because you are finite and this real world destroys living things. There are not a lot of certainties in life, but that one’s pretty certain. No matter how many pushups you do, miles you run, one day you will be put into a box and buried in the ground. And as obvious as this is, it’s easy to forget. But Christ Jesus, because he rose, made a way for you to rise. Do you hear this?
This is not a philosophy like Buddhism or a set of philosophical social ideals like Marxism. This factors into the very fabric of reality like physics or time or space. The claim is that Jesus Christ has conquered death.
This is why the resurrection matters. This is why Paul says, “If Christ was not raised we are still in our sins and we are all of all men most to be pitied.” If the resurrection isn’t history, this whole thing is a joke.Ggo home.
But if it is true - and that is what we are claiming and what billions of people who have lived and died before us have claimed, then death has lost its sting. The fangs of death have been pulled out for those who believe. There’s no venom in it. There’s no fear. Death is safe for the believer. If Jesus Christ rose from the dead, then he holds the keys to eternal life as he claimed.
The main message of Christianity is that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. And because of that, death has been defeated. It’s what made Christianity so powerful in the first century.
Ben Myers who specializes in systematic theology and the history of ideas recounts the way this transformed the early church:
“Christians would assemble for prayer in tombs. They would worship Christ among the bones of the dead. Believers would raise the bodies of martyrs in the air and parade them through the streets like trophies. At funerals they would gaze lovingly on the dead and sing psalms of praise over their bodies. Such behavior shocked their pagan neighbors. According to Roman law, the dead had to be buried miles away from the city so that the living would not be contaminated. But Christians placed the dead right at the center of their public gatherings.”
And this was true of Christians up until very recently. For centuries the dead were buried right in the churchyard and you’d walk through the graveyard on the way to church to remind yourself that one day, you too will be there, but a resurrection is coming. Christ has overcome the grave.
A real God entered into real space to help real people from the very real problem of death. That’s the whole message of the book of John.
These things are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ the son of the living God and that by believing you might have life in his name. How Do You Receive Him? Now under what conditions does this eternal life apply to us? Or to say it another way, what is the difference between a Christian and non-Christian? Think about what kind of person it is that becomes a follower of Jesus.
Can we point to qualities that makes a person more likely to receive Jesus? It’s very hard to do.
You can find genius on both sides of the fence. There are hundreds of nobel laurretes who have claimed the name of Christ. You can also find hundreds of idiots. Genius and fools are on both sides of the fence. It has nothing to do with personality. Every enigram type is represented. It is a faith which appeals and equally repels all personality types. It has nothing to do with wealth or power. You have professional athletes on both sides, you have powerful CEO’s, politicians, you have window washers, fast food workers, mechanics, engineers making all amounts of money. You have wealthy and poor on both sides. You have famous and infamous on both sides. You have people who go through terrible tragedy and some harden themselves against God and some turn to God. It has nothing to do with cultural appetite as it has spread in every culture in every continent of all times. Let the statistics speak. You have an equal divide.
To some, God is discoverable everywhere; to others, nowhere. The same evidence, the same access to information, the same book being read. What’s the difference.
You know what a Christian is? A Christian is one who has found eternal life in Jesus.
The search for eternal life is not unique to Christians. Let’s just be clear, that search for eternal life that is RAGING in every single person who has ever been born and it’s not just a search for an eternally beating heart. We don’t just want to biologically live forever. Who wants to live forever hooked up to a life support machine. End the misery, please.
When we say we all want eternal life, what we are saying is that we want meaning, purpose, happiness, and satisfaction that lasts FOREVER. The search for eternal life is really the search for God. It’s the search for the ultimate.
What is your highest good? What is the thing you really live for? What is that thing that if, we give ourselves to it completely, will provide us with satisfaction, meaning, happiness.
We all have things we enjoy that give us life, things that are life-giving to us.
Jesus say, those things are only life giving because I made them. I am life. “I am the bread of life. I am living water. I am the true vine. I am the way the truth and the life. I am the resurrection and the life.” These are all fantastic, monstrous claims of joy. Jesus is claiming to satisfy!
But we’ve been duped so hard so many times in life, tricked, swindled, and taken advantage of that many of us choose to protect our hearts from the possibility of ever being hurt again by another swindler, that we push Jesus away and refuse to even entertain the possibility that this offer might be true.
The real answer for the reason people accept or reject the Christian faith is not an intellectual one, a social one, a factual one….it’s an emotional one. We all have a highly irrational love for that thing we BELIEVE will satisfy. It’s the same irrational connection that binds a drug addict to his drug.
Think about the devastation of addiction. Of course the initial hit is euphoric. But the problem is you need more and more of the addictive substance to get less and less of the satisfaction. That ends up destroying a person because there’s diminishing returns on joy.
It’s scary. The problem with addiction is that the addict is trying to be satisfied with something that cannot actually satisfy. It has some of what is needed for satisfaction but the substance itself lacks the necessary properties necessary to truly satisfy.
And while the addicts knows this, he also doesn’t know anything better and he is terrified of not having that thing that at least brings him some pleasure.
And so he will destroy his family to get it. He will destroy his health to get it. He will destroy his integrity and respect to get it.
And even though the LOGICAL answer to his satisfaction problem is to surrender his addiction, emotionally he can’t do it. There’s too much fear.
Believe it or not this is the exact same reason why so many can’t accept Christ.
We are all addicts. We are all trying to extract from this world, something this world was never meant to give us. And admittedly it isn’t perfect, but its something.
Some of us are getting a good bit of satisfaction from our appearance. People find us attractive and it feels good to be wanted. Some of us are addicted to respect, power, approval, comfort, control. It’s quite satisfying to have those things. Some of us are addicted to money. You can do so much with it. It feels great. Some of us try to find it in religious self-righteosusness, our morality, our family. We are very satisfied at our moral accomplishments.
How well is this really working? How long will it last? The longer you live the more you realize how shallow this is.
And there’s a reason it’s shallow. And to understand why it feels so shallow you have to understand what’s driving the addiction. What’s the craving? It’s the quest to have a reason to be loved. You see, we want so badly to be loved but we all have this haunting suspicion that we are not lovable. We know it at the core of who we are so we are working, working, working to silence the condemning voices in our heads.
We want people to look at our athletic accomplishments, work accomplishments, financial accomplishments and we want people to respect those accomplishments and love us because of it. Or We want people to look at our smashing beauty and love us for it. Or We want people to look at our well-behaved family and love us for it.
That’s the hit. That’s what feels so good. That’s the drug. The compliments that people give us are so satisfying. It’s so addicting. We love the praise, the words of affirmation. But just like a drug they diminish in their effectiveness over time. We need more and more. It never quite silences the voice of condemnation inside our souls.
But you know what the message of the cross is to the world. I can silence it once and for all. Because the reason Jesus Christ loves you has nothing to do with your performance. While you were yet sinners, Christ died for you.
Romans 5
Jesus comes to us and says, “I did not die for you because you were loveable.” I died for you because I chose to love what was not loveable. Stop believing that you need to do something to be loved.
And here’s the mystery of mysteries, it is that gaze of love that actually gives us value. Remember the story, beauty and the beast. The beast is hideous. He wants to be loved but he knows that he can never experience love because of who he is. And he can’t change that! And he’s destroyed by it. He’s terrified. He’s a monster because of it. But then the princess sets her gaze on him.
You want to know what the great lesson of Beauty and the Beast is? A thing must be loved before it is lovable.
And Jesus as Lord, Jesus as the ultimate good, Jesus as God, says, "I love you." Don’t try to extract your value from your performance, your talent, your looks, your accomplishments. Lay it down. Make your choice. You can’t have both. Lay down your money. Lay down your career. I demand it all. I demand total allegiance. Die to self. Give up everything and follow me. I am the resurrection and the life. I love you. I am that ultimate thing you’ve been searching for your entire life. Have the courage to give up your drugs of approval from men and follow me.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever belives in me should not perish but have everlasting life. PHYSICALLY AND SPRITUALLY.
You know how to have eternal life? Believe who he is. That Jesus Christ was real, that he was God and that he died for you. And then allow Christ to love you.
And if you do that, the whole gravitaitonal center of your life will shift. Because it’s not longer about trying to work hard to become loveable. You are made loveable by the love of God. In the same way that a stock shoot up in price becaause billionare sets his eye upon it, you become precious because God sets his love upon you.
FAITH COMMUNITY BIBLE CHURCH, JESUS CHRIST, THE KING OF KINGS LOVES YOU.
Receive that love. The next step is for you to be baptized, to identify yourself as a follower of Jesus Christ who is loved.
Slideshow for this message is available
Introduction
John 19-20 Last week we talked about the irony of the crucifixion. If you recall, irony is this powerful literary device where what appears to be the case on the surface is not actually the case. Where the characters in the story are enveloped in one understanding, but if there were a full understanding, if the reality was revealed to them, they would be astonished. Last week we looked at the crucifixion narrative itself. We looked at what happened, the trials, the mocking, the nails, the pain and torture, the wrath of the father poured out upon his Son and ended with the words, “It is finished.” Today we are going to be looking at what happened between the words, “It is finished” on Friday and “He has risen from the dead” on Sunday morning. And much like the crucifixion, what appears to be the case and what is actually the case are two completely different things. Today in the text we have this irony. You have the surface reading which is nothing more than biology. And then you have these deeper reading of theology.
Biologically, Men struck Jesus to end his life. That’s one judgment. The judgment of men. Theologically, God struck Jesus to redeem our life. That’s the judgment of God.
Picture with me that moment on the cross when Jesus bows his head and says, “It is finished.” I think, had you been standing there, you would literally feel a shutter run through nature. The other gospel writers fill in the white spaces between verse 30 where we ended last week and verse 31 where we begin this week. Matthew, Mark and Luke all record that the temple curtain was torn at this point. Do you remember Zechariah from the beginning of the book of Luke? He was chosen to enter into the holy of holies. This only occurred once a year, and according to Scripture, this had to occur on Nissan 14 at twilight. If you harmonize the time references in the gospels, this offering of incense for the sins of the people was probably taking place or about to take place exactly as Jesus speaks these words. So you can imagine the drama. Many priests are assembled to perform what undoubtedly in their minds is the most important priestly duty of the year. They are getting ready to send in the man who was chosen by lot to offer incense, they are tying some bells around his feet and rope around his waist in case he enters the temple unclean and is struck down by God, when suddenly the 60 foot wide 30 feet tall 8 inch thick curtain tears from top to bottom. I just imagine all the priest staring in silence at this gaping hole, looking at the holy of holies, and then one guy saying, “uh, now what do we do?” We also know that a great earthquake takes place and dead men rising from their tombs. Two extra-biblical sources also mention strange things happening during this time. For whatever its worth, Josephus who was a Jewish historian who lived around the time of Christ, records that there was a mysterious extinction of the center and prominent candle in the golden candlestick. Josephus as well as the Talmud both say that in connection with the earthquake, the two large gates of the temple were swung open. Luke also records that the Soldier who was guarding Jesus, who undoubtedly had witnessed many crucifixions, when he witnessed the supernatural events surrounding Jesus’ death concluded, “Surely this must have been the Son of God.” And there Jesus hangs.
Jesus died on a Friday. Sabbath was Saturday and since this was the Sabbath that also happened to be during the Passover week, it was extra special (hence the description, “high day.”) It was the normal practice of those who were crucified to be left on the cross for days long after they were dead. But this was not the case with Jesus. The Jews were pleading with Pilate on the basis of Deut 21 which says if you hang a man upon a tree, don’t leave him there overnight because everyone who hangs on a tree is cursed. So, again, the irony…. The Jews, who apparently did not think it a problem to inaugurate the Passover feast by murdering their Messiah, were seriously alarmed to see Jesus hanging on the cross as the sun began to set because they wanted to honor God by keeping his commandments. I’m sure God was honored by their obedient hearts. And so they asked Pilate to break the legs of Jesus so that he might be taken off the cross before Sabbath began. This practice was known as crucifragium. It’s hard to even imagine, but the idea is that the bones of the legs would be crushed with a hammer or mallet. Archeologist have uncovered some skeletons of crucified men with their bones broken as described here.
Because the legs were broken, the victims could no longer lift themselves up with their feet and so they either died of suffocation or from the pierce of the spear which was soon to follow. The breaking of the bones was viewed as a sort of increase of punishment to compensate for what would otherwise be a much slower death. Pilate must have agreed with the Jews, possibly wanting to just get this whole nightmare over with, and so he orders the breaking of the bones. We know from the other gospel writers that Jesus was crucified between the two other criminals and so the soldiers probably started from the outside and worked their way toward the middle. After breaking the legs of the criminals they arrive in the middle only to discover that Jesus is dead.
The soldier’s job was to insure that the victims were truly dead before taking them down. This was an essential element in the mind of Rome. The cross was designed to put down seditionist. Once on the cross, you would die. There was no chance of escaping. In fact, if a solider took down the body of a man prematurely, and that man so much as twitched, all the soldiers assigned to guard the cross would be themselves hung on crosses. So the Roman soldier standing next to Jesus, in an effort to ensure that Jesus was truly dead thrusts his spear into the side of Jesus. This was most certainly not a prick but a deep thrust which was designed to penetrate clear to the heart. When the soldier pulled out the spear, John goes out of his way to explain that from this wound flowed blood and water. What happened here medically is not certain. And when I say, not certain, I don’t mean that there are no explanations as to how these things can be so. There are many explanations, but they are not certain which particular explanation fits the narrative. The first theory says that when the solider pierced the side of Jesus the spear went through the lungs and into the heart. According to this theory the blood would have come from the heart and the water would have come from the pericardial sac. I say that like I’m an expert in pericardial sacs. Another doctor, A.F. Sava, disagrees. His theory is that blood and water was present just inside the rib cage between the pleura lining the chest and that lining of the lung. Severe chest injuries show that non-penetrating injuries of the chest are capable of producing an accumulation of fluid that had hemorrhaged in the space between the ribs and the lungs – it may amount to as much as two liters. He thinks that “the brutal scourging of Jesus several hours before his death upon the cross, was sufficient to produce a bloody accumulation with the chest, so that the settling by this fluid into layers and its ultimate evacuation by opening the chest below the level of separation must inevitably result in the ‘immediate’ flow of blood followed by water.” Ultimately, how exactly this happened matters very little. What does matter is the reason John included this detail. He included this detail to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus actually died. When John says that out of Jesus’ side flowed water he is more than likely referring to serum. Serum is part of blood and separates from blood when the heart stops beating. Or to say it another way, it is difficult to get serum when your heart is beating. The presence of water in the wound would be proof of death. So that is why this detail is included.
Normally, the bodies of the crucified victims were left to hang on the cross, and then their bodies were eaten by birds and dogs. The refusal of a proper burial was a feature of crucifixion, not an accident. It was a final denial of your dignity, your humanity. But in the case of Jesus, he was—as the Gospels are at pains to point out—buried. This is not what a first-century person would expect to have happened. The text goes on to say that Joseph of Arimathea mustered up courage and approached Pilate to ask him for the body of Jesus. Joseph of Arimathea was a member of the Sanhedrin, the same ruling body of people who had illegally conspired to kill Jesus the night before. So you can understand why this happened secretly. He was scared out of his mind that his peers might find out. It seems that the timidity and weakness of faith that had prevented him from sticking up from Jesus the night before grew and now emboldened him. Since he could no longer defend Jesus as His Messiah and Lord while he was alive, he would at least show him honor in giving him a proper burial in his death. The amount of stigma associated with this kind of act can hardly be felt. But watching the boldness of Joseph of Arimathea generated courage in the heart of Nicodemus who was also a member of the Sanhedrin to partake in the burial of Jesus. The text says that Nicodemus contributed about 75 pounds worth of burial spice. This was a ridiculously lavish amount. In the Talmud there was a man named Nakdimon Ben Gorion. If this man is the same Nicodemus as mentioned in the Bible, as it seems likely it is, then he was a man of enormous wealth.
And there you have it. There’s what happened on the physical level, the biological level. This is the human perspective. This is what people are seeing and thinking as they are looking at the dead body of Jesus. And there’s all this emotion associated with grappling with that reality. What does Mary the Mother of Jesus think? There is this incredible suffering that results in the human Spirit and these questions start surfacing. Why? Lord, why would you allow this terrible tragedy? How am I supposed to reconcile the idea that you are in control, that you have my best interest in mind, that you care for me when I’m staring into this terrible reality? How, Lord? Well we find the answer in theology.
Biologically, Jesus lived a life which started in the way ours start (with a birth) and ended in the way ours end (with a burial). From a womb to a tomb, and everything in between, he lived our life. It began as ours begin, and ended as ours ended. He took the human-train all the way to its final destination, the grave. And this was entirely necessary to fulfill a THEOLOGICAL point. Every biological point - the blood, the tomb, the piercing, the water flowing - is preparation for the theological point. Did you see the theological point in the passage we read? Everything was biological with the exception of these two fulfillment passages, one from Zechariah and one from the Psalms and Numbers.
John is connecting all this biology to theology. You see this man getting stabbed with a spear? You see that water and blood gushing out? That should ring a bell, you people of God. That should cause you stiffen in chair and shudder with realization. Something predicted long ago has just been accomplished. And he quotes Zechariah 12:10. Zechariah 12
In the context here, we are reading a prophecy, and God in speaking about a time yet future where the Gentile nations who have laid siege to Jerusalem will be defeated and God says, “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. *They shall look on me, on him whom they have pierced, and mourn for him as one mourns for an only child” Now notice something about the pronouns here. It’s really interesting:
Who is the I referring to? I will pour out… Who is the I referring to? God Who is the me referring to? They shall look on me. Who is the me? God. Now it changes from 1st person to 3rd person. They shall look on me, on him whom they have pierced.
So by looking on him, this servant of God, they are looking on God. God is pierced when his representative, the Shepherd is pierced. It is a really cool evidence of the trinity in OT prophesy. The coming Messiah, the coming servant, would be God himself. Now why a pierced Messiah? That was such a confusing concept. To many the idea of a pierced Messiah would be horrible. Why would the coming servant suffer? Why would the Messiah need to be pierced? That question is answered in the second prophesy that is mentioned in the text. When the soldiers came to break the legs of Jesus they found he was already dead and so they did not break his legs and the text says that this was to fulfill the words of Scripture: Not one of his bones will be broken. This is probably a reference to either Psalms 34:20, “he keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken” but more likely, you what this is referencing? Numbers 9:12 which states that the Passover lamb was to be prepared without breaking any of the bones. You see in the cross you have these massive themes culminating. Who is this Jesus? Who is this dead man hanging on the cross. Biologically, he died like any other man. The color drained from his skin as his heart stopped beating. He’s just a dead man. Ah, what appears to be the case and what is actually the case are two completely different things. This is not a normal man. This is God. That’s why John has made such an effort, time and time again, to demonstrate that this man who hangs upon the cross is in fact God. This man who hangs upon the cross is YHWH. You will look on me - on HIM whom you have pierced. And in this moment, for astute OT students, two streams of OT redemptive thought come colliding together. On the one hand you had this theme of sacrifice. That God would save through sacrifice. And on the other hand you had this theme that God would save by sending a Messiah (a Savior) who would save the people. And in these fulfillment prophesies the OT student would stand their with mouth wide open realizing that the Savior had become the sacrifice. Rewind back in your mind to John chapter 1. What did John the Baptist say when he first saw Jesus, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” You see it is the death of the Passover lamb that atoned for the sins of the people. God would pass over the sins of the people by offering a lamb, a spotless lamb, a lamb whose bones had not been broken, in place of the sinner. That was accomplished in the BODY of Jesus. Listen how Colossians 1 states it. Colossians 1
Do you see what the cross has done? You are reconciled. You are brought near to GOD by his death. Remember last week we talked about Jesus, when he said, it is finished was saying, I completed the mission, I completed the work. The telos of my life has been realized. What was that work? What was that work: RECONCILIATION. There was a chasm. There was a giant chasm. A massive chasm that existed between God and man. You were alienated one from another. There was an infinite distance. You want to know what the Bible calls that infinite distance. DEATH. Where does sin lead? Sin leads to death. And how can those in death, be with God? Do you see the chasm that must be bridged? Do you see the reconciliation work that must be accomplished? Now to illustrate this, it might be helpful to take a look at the apostles creed. Many of us have recited the Apostles Creed? This creed is very old. As a matter of fact it dates to about 130 AD. It was not written by the apostles but it was written to describe the doctrine of the apostles.
What is this whole idea of Jesus descending into hell. That makes a lot of people uncomfortable. What was he doing there? And yet from very early on, there was a historic confession among Christians that Jesus descended into hell. This is along side things like virgin birth, creator God, etc. So where does this idea of descending into hell come from? This word hell is important. However, as Inigo Montoya said in The Princess Bride, I do not think that word means what you think it means. In the New Testament there is a word which aligns with what we think of as “hell” - the place of separation from God, the place of eternal torment, weeping and nashing of teeth. All those horrible pictures. That’s the word Gehenna. But the word in the creed is the word that refers to Sheol, or Hades, which is, more broadly, the place dead people go. It’s like us saying, “he went to the grave.” We aren’t commenting on his eternal state of heaven or hell. It’s just the place of the dead. Let me give you just a small snippet of understanding of the Bible’s view of the afterlife. In the Bible you have three realms of possible existence: heaven, earth, and under the earth. Picture a house with three stories. To be in the house means you are one of those three levels. Heaven, earth, or under the earth. Hades, Sheol, the grave is the place under the earth. It is the place of the dead. What is this place like? When the Bible describes it, it almost has a feeling of hibernation for the souls. There’s maybe a small amount of consciousness but the souls are waiting until the next stage of redemptive history unfolds. And at the judgment, we are told that sheol is emptied. And everyone is resurrected, some to eternal life and some to eternal death. So it is to this place that Jesus went when he died. This is what the creed is saying. Jesus died, and as a result of being dead, he went to the place of the dead, to Hades. But as Acts 2:31 says, “he was not abandoned to Hades.” and as verse 24 says. Death could not hold him, and God raised him from among the dead. This is what we are on the cusp of celebrating in Easter: Jesus Christ returned from the dead. Do you know how rare that is? Death is a destination famous issuing one-way tickets. But Jesus Christ returns. And one of the things he does while in Hades is bring the blessing of his death to those who had died in faith before him. Have you ever wondered what happened to OT believers who died without knowing Jesus? Ephesians 4 has something to say about that. Ephesians 4
What this appears to be saying is that Jesus proclaimed to those who never had a chance to understand God’s redemptive plan, what had been accomplished. And they had a chance to hear it from the mouth of the Savior himself. It also seems from 1 Peter 3 that Jesus proclaimed to those who did not die in faith that a regime change had taken place. He let his enemies know that Satan had not prevailed. And he proclaimed to them that every knee shall bow, according to Philippians 2:10, “in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth” (Philippians 2:10)
Jesus now holds the keys to death and Hades (Revelation 1:17-18). The gates of Hades will not prevail over the church (Matt 16:8), because those gates have been smashed down by Jesus.
What Jesus has done is make death a safe and blessed place for all who now die in him. Death is safe. Do you hear that? In the Old Testament, death is never good. It is something always to be avoided, even by those who know God. But by the time of the New Testament, a person like Paul can declare that to die is “better by far” (Philippians 1:23). The book of Revelation says “blessed are those who die in the Lord from now on” (Revelation 14:13). Why the change? Because he has conquered the place of the dead. Those who die now, because they know Jesus, die with the conscious blessing of knowing that the resurrection is just around the corner. Listen to how Hebrews 2:14-15 says it. Hebrews 2
What appears to be happening in death, what is actually happening in death are two completely different things. What has happened to all people of all time in death, for the believer, is not happening. We have been delivered from the slavery of death. Praise God. Good Friday Introduction: Now we are on the cusp of resurrection Sunday. But in terms of the church calendar, between Palm Sunday and Resurrection Sunday stands Good Friday. Now for the last several months we’ve been in Good Friday in terms of our study of John. So we are well immersed in this theme! But here’s what we are going to do. We are going to have a very simple service. It’s going to have a stripped down feel. What we are going to do is read a harmonized version of all four gospels leading leading right up to just before the resurrection. And to show you what I mean let me give you a little snippet. Here’s what I mean by harmonized version.
Yellow is Mt, Red is Mark, Green is Luke and Blue is John. So as we read this, no detail will be left out. And it’s going to take us about 35 minutes to read it. We will take one break in that reading and do some singing. And then in the end we will take communion. It will be wonderful. So come back 7pm and let’s worship through the public reading of God’s Word, song and communion.
Slideshow for this message is available
Introduction John 19
Good morning. We are fast approaching Easter which is the high point of the Christian Calendar. And as you can probably foresee, the resurrection narrative in our study of the book of John is going to align with the Easter Calendar for this year. So we look forward to that!
One practical note regarding Easter, if this year is anything like last year’s Easter, we are not going to have space UNLESS a whole chunk of you move to first service. So in an effort to encourage that, we will have a children’s ministry program 1st service to accommodate as many of you moving there as possible. So please consider making that switch for this one Sunday and attend first service to free up space in the other services.
Resurrection Sunday is coming. But today we have a darker scene which made that day necessary. Today we come to the crucifixion narrative which is the climax of the book of John which is the climax of the gospels which is the climax of the NT which is the climax of the entire Bible.
You can’t get any more central to the Christian faith than the crucifixion.
If you compare religions, Christianity is the reverse of every other religion and really, every other biography you’ve ever read. A biography, by definition, focuses on the life of a man. The word biography comes from two Greek words. Bios means life and graphes means writing. So the idea would be something like writings about someone’s life. In your typical biography, how many pages focus on the death of a man? Maximum, maybe 5 pages out of 300. What’s there to say? He died. Everyone dies. The biography of Jesus’ life is quite different. It is the reverse. There is very little written about his life and everything focuses on his death. The focus of the gospels is on the giving of Jesus’ life rather than on the living of his life.
And in the words Jesus Christ speaks from the cross, we are going to see why this focus is so important. Background Now, our passage picks up today with Jesus being led to the cross after a final pronouncement by Pilate.
What makes this passage so intense is the irony that is felt as we read the text. The climax of the Bible is communicated to us through crackling IRONY.
What is irony? Irony is this powerful literary device where something, on the surface, appears to be one way, but in reality it is something entirely different. Irony is appearance vs reality. The surface meaning and the underlying meaning of what is said are two completely different things.
For example, last week we saw Pilate drag Jesus before the Jews and pronounce, “Behold, your King!” You could not have a more ironic statement.
Because on the human level, Pilate is mocking the Jews. He’s displaying the bloodied Jesus before the Jewish leaders and saying, “Does this man look like a kingly threat? This is what you woke me up at 7am to adjudicate?” Behold your King. He’s being sarcastic. The appearance is that Jesus is a weak kinglet who cannot save himself and is about to be crushed by Rome. But we as readers are shuddering because we know the reality. We know the terrifying, truthful gravity of his words. Before Pilate stood the lion of the tribe of Judah. The God who created the universe with a word. Pilate was ‘judging’ the Judge of the all the earth. Could there be a more true statement, “Behold your king!” The King of Kings and The Lord of Lords.
That’s irony. There’s this double audience. We as readers know something that the characters do not. Irony depends on this double-layer, these two-stories working in tandem.
Now there are so many ironies going on here but we are going to limit ourselves to just three:
The irony is that on the surface, to the common observer, it APPEARS that Jesus is GUILTY but in REALITY it is the Jewish leaders who are guilty. The verdict of the religious system of the Jews and the verdict of the judicial system of Rome is that Jesus is guilty, (that’s the appearance) but the verdict of heaven is the Jews and Romans are guilty (that’s the reality).
We see in the text that Jesus was [highlight it] delivered over to be crucified. That delivering over is a summary statement of six trials Jesus has endured - 3 religious trials by the hands of the Jews and three civil trials by the hands of the Romans and it culminates in the crucifixion. We don’t see all those trials in John’s record but if we put together all four gospels we see:
We know a ton about the legal process of both the Jews and the Romans. It is the basis for our legal process here in America. The Mishna has entire tractates written on the legal process. Based on that understanding, clearly the Jews either fudged the law or knowingly broke the law. For example: Illegalities of the Trials
No trials were to occur before the morning sacrifice. Why? Trials were to be public. Jesus was interviewed and tried by Annas and Ciaphas at night. The assumption of innocence until proven guilty was a hallmark of Jewish jurisprudence which meant that the accused person could not be mistreated. Jesus was mistreated before proof of guilt. An accused person could not testify against himself. And if he did testify, he could not be condemned on that testimony alone. Jesus was asked to do testify against himself and then condemned on that basis. There were to be at least two or three witnesses, and their testimony had to be in perfect agreement. The testimonies did not agree. In cases where the death penalty was issued, it required that the court begin with arguments for acquittal (the defense presenting the case for innocence), and then followed by arguments for conviction (the prosecutors presenting the case for guilt). In Christ’s case the record only records arguments for guilt; no arguments for innocence were presented. All the Sanhedrin judges could argue in favor of acquittal, but not all could argue in favor of guilt. When the charge was blasphemy, guilt could be established only when the defendant had actually pronounced the very name of God. Jesus had merely alluded to Psalm 110 and Daniel, although everyone present clearly understood His claim. Each witness in a capital case was to be questioned individually and not in the presence of other witnesses. In capital cases the trial and the verdict of guilt must not occur on the same day; therefore a verdict of guilt must be announced the following day. For this reason trials were not to be held on the eve of a Sabbath or other festival. Voting for the death penalty had to be conducted individually, beginning with the youngest, so the youngest would not be influenced by the voting of the older members.
Now let’s ask the question, “Who is guilty?” Do you see the irony?
Are the religious leaders innocent? Certainly they thought so. On the surface, they looked so pure. They tithed their spices. They refused to enter Pilate’s residence for fear of defiling themselves for Passover. Wow, you guys are so fastitious….so holy…so pure.
Here they are claiming loyalty to God in every way and yet crucifying God. They are claiming royalty to YHWH by keeping Passover with exacting precision.
You know how passover ends? It ens with a prayer. “From everlasting to everlasting, you are God; beside you we have no king, redeemer, or savior; no liberator, deliverer, provider. We have no King but you” (b. Pesahim 118a).
Oh we so admire your dedicated to God. And then just hours later those voices would be crucifiying God yelling, “We have no king but Caesar.”
This irony is so appropriate because it was the fact that he was innocent that made him the perfect sacrifice for guilty men. He who knew no sin, became sin that we might become the righteousness of God.
It was the judge of the all the earth who was judged so that we would not be.
Was it innocent men putting to death a guilty Christ? No it was an innocent Christ who was saving guilty men. The Story How that salvation narrative unfolds is brutal. Jesus is led away. Because of the Feast, many people were present and Rome relished the opportunity to strike terror into the heart of potential Jewish rebels by publicly crucifying Jesus along with at least two other criminals.
Jesus was forced to carry the cross member of his own cross which, according to the other gospel writers, proves physically impossible for him for understandable reasons. Jesus was terribly weakened at this point.
For days Jesus had struggled under violent internal agitation, an evening of deep, overwhelming emotion, and mental anguish where he sweat great drops of blood in anticipation. He had just endured a sleepless night of 6 trials, the interrogation by Annas, then by Caiaphas, the painful ridicules by the Sanhedrin, then by Herod’s bodyguard, the long exhausting scenes before Pilate, then from the Roman soldiers. He had been violently mistreated, spit upon, received open blows to the face, and sickening lacerations from the bone laden whip.
All of that severely weakened him so that he now totters under the weight of the timber. Simon the Cyrene is pressed into service to bear the cross, not out of sympathy for Jesus but in an effort to expedite the punishment.
They arrive at the place called Golgotha, the place of the skull where Jesus would be nailed to the Roman instrument of torture. The three crosses were laid on the ground, the sign Pilate had prepared was fixed to the top of the cross. He was then humiliatingly stripped of all his clothes. His shredded back was lain against that implement of torture. His arms were stretched along the crossbeam, and the point of a huge nail was placed into the palm of an open hand or in the wrist between the radius and ulna and was driven through the flesh and into the wood by the blow of a mallet. Then through each foot separately or possibly through both together, another nail tore its way through the quivering flesh.
To prevent the hands and feet from being torn out by the weight of the body which rested upon nothing but four open wounds, an unsatisfyingly slanted wooden seat supported a portion of the weight.
Now picture the cursed tree lifted with its human burden and dropped into a hole dug for that purpose. The cross lands solidly at the bottom of the hole and new flesh is torn. The feet were not far from the ground, and probably within reach of hands to strike him. He would hang for hours to be abused, outraged, and mocked.
The ever moving multitudes, with the blood sick curiosity, thronged to gaze at sight. And there in tortures which grew more and more unsupportable, more and more maddening as time flowed on, Jesus hung in a living death.
A death of crucifixion includes all that is loathsome and frightening about death - dizziness, cramping, starvation, sleepiness, fever, public shame, long continuance of torment, horror of anticipation and untended wounds.
The unnatural position made every movement painful, the lacerated veins and crushed tendons throbbed, the wounds inflamed by exposure, gradually becoming infected, the arteries especially of the head and stomach becoming swollen with blood.
The Pharisees looked upon Jesus and saw the sign that hung above his head.
Pilate, who was a Roman, and had undoubtedly written this sign to publicly scorn the Jews. Pilate was probably very happy to prod his detestable subjects. He knew it would irk them and he loved that fact. He probably meant that in one sense this was the King of the Jews, the most noble he had ever seen, the most dignified, the most respectable specimen of that undesirable race.
Pilate in some act of incredibly, unknowing irony likely thought to himself, these Jews are so despicable, so detestable they can’t even recognize that they are wanting to nail to a tree their most noble specimen.
The sign was a mockery of the Jewish leaders
Pilate refused and was happy to thwart the desires of those who had forced his hand that morning.
Then came the furious insults, “He saved others but can’t save himself,” Unrestrained by the sight of helpless anguish and the look of eyes that began to glaze in death, they stand beneath the cross congratulating one another with scornful wickedness, "Let this Christ, this King of Israel come off that cross. Then we will believe." Seeing the boldness of the Jewish leaders, the soldiers join in mocking.
And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads, and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.”
It is among the thickest irony of this narrative, then, that the people who jeered at him would insult him for his inability to save. They mock, "If you have power then demonstration that power by freeing yourself from the cross and bring about your own salvation. And therein lies the irony! The great demonstration of power is staying on the cross because it is through the cross that salvation is made possible, not for him but for you. The appearance vs the reality.
So there Jesus hangs, and, in the fading consciousness of the Son of God, he doesn’t hear a single word of gratitude, not one thank you, not even a whisper of appreciation or love. Instead what rang in his ear was blasphemy, spite, baseness, falsehood, savagery and stupidity. These were like polluted, muddy and miserable, putrid streams which boiled under the cross before the dying eyes of Jesus. There were a few there he loved.
Here we have this sweet exchange. Jesus was handing over his mother to be cared for by John. Even as he hung dying on a Roman cross, suffering as the Lamb of God, he took thought of and made provision for his mother, at the hour of his supreme devastation.
And now comes the thirst.
There is the appearance of the thirst and then there is the reality behind that thirst.
It was now noon. The sun was beating down in full strength, and of course he was thirsty.
But there is something much more significant going on. In a very real, display of spiritual judgment, God pulls a curtain of darkness over the entire earth. In an act of mercy on humankind, God shields our eyes from what he does next. Now God must deal with his Son. The jeers and taunts, and confident ridicules melt away in the spiritual darkness that envelopes the globe. The deathly, cold black air suffocates the city. For three hours, the wrath of God was violently released upon his beloved Son. In measured and very controlled judgment, the merciless, repeated blows fell upon Him - the slashing into the sinless lamb. He who knew no sin became sin for us. In the words of Ephesians 5:2, “Christ loved me and gave himself up for me a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
Jesus was draining the cup of judgment down to the last bitter dregs and as he does, he cries out, “I thirst.”
The irony does not escape us. Many observers would have seen this as a physical plea for water. And certainly, raging thirst was among the worst aspects of this form of death. But this cannot be all that is meant. Up until this point, Jesus hasn’t said a word about any kind of discomfort or pain at all. When offered the wine previously, he had refused.
Think about everything he’s been through. He hasn’t echoed a single word of complaint. Not one. They put a crown of thorns on him. They struck him in the face with a club. What does the text say? Over and over it says, “He did not open his mouth.” Do you think that now at the very end, finally now, he’s asking for some comfort for physical relief? Is he merely thirsty? Of course not. It even says so. [highlight] “That the Scriptures might be fulfilled.” In other words, this thirst, this parchment has been predicted from the prophets of Old.
It causes us to think about it a little more deeply. You see, all five times when the word thirst is used in the book of John, it refers to spiritual thirst. What was taking place on a physical level was also occurring on a much grander scale on the spiritual level.
All through the Bible, whether you are in Jeremiah, or Isaiah or the Psalms, thirst is used as a metaphor for spiritual need. And it’s a tremendous metaphor. There is something that your body needs just as much as water. And if you don’t have it in your soul, you’re going to shrivel up, you’re going to burn up, and you’re going to die. You need God.
What Jesus suffered on the cross those three hours for us and our salvation we cannot know. But we have a window into that suffering through the words he speaks, “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” There’s the thirst. This is a reference to Psalm 22. You don’t have chapter and verse in those days. You often reference texts by quoting the first line.
Psalm 22
And in this Psalm you have the experience of suffering as predicted by the Psalmist. Startling detail.
Why is Jesus Christ now crying out about his thirst? The spear, the the scourge, the whip, the nails, the crown of thorns, the clubbing in the face, the pulling of the beard, it all points to a spiritual reality. He was literally going through hell. **When he says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” is that hyperbole? When he says, “I thirst,” is he really, really just thirsty? Could that possibly be after all he has been through? No. Jesus was, in that mysterious dark and terrible hour, enduring on the cross the weight of the sin of the world.
But there was a physical reason that he may have asked for the wine as well. Not to receive comfort but to make a last and final statement. With the tongue stuck to the roof of the mouth he would hardly be able to speak. And he had one more thing that must be said.
And so finally after fully absorbing the wrath of God, Jesus bows his head upon his chest, his heart probably bursting at this point and utters his last words, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”
And Jesus died. And here we have the greatest irony of all.
The irony here is so thick. When the Pharisees hear these words we could imagine them dancing around the cross like jackals cackling in victory. There is a simple appearance of triumph. They have killed the Messiah.
But they are deprived of an important piece of information about the plot that surrounds them. This WAS the plan. It had been the plan all along.
You tried to foil God’s plan and you thought you thought you were an antagonist against Messiah but in reality - veiled to you - you were in service to him. Judas your kiss of betrayal was the advancement of God’s plan. You tried to humble him to the grave but you exalted him into the heavens. You tried to destroy his name but you magnified it. Your efforts produced the exact opposite result.
It is finished. There’s a lot to this phrase that doesn’t meet the eye. The Greek phrase behind this is pretty rich. It’s all one word in the Greek.
τετέλεσται (tetelestai) from the root telos.
This word is super rich in Greek philosophy. The philosopher Aristotle used the word all the time to describe the full potential or inherent purpose or objective of a person or thing.
The telos of war is victory. The telos of a race is the finish line. The telos of marriage is making a family. The telos of business is the creation of wealth. The telos of vacation is rest.
Telos is a word that ALWAYS 100% of the time, without exception means that there must be a design or plan.
So, when Jesus says, “It is finished,” what he’s not saying is “Something I didn’t like has happened to me but now it’s finished.” He’s doing what an artist does when he steps back from a canvas, “It is is finished.” The work I set out to accomplish is complete.
Remember just a few hours ago Jesus prayed that high priestly prayer in John 17. He said.
John 17
There’s the word again. That word accomplished comes from that same root, telos. A completed, finished, accomplished the work you gave me to do. Think about the implications of that.
The telos of Jesus’ life was this moment of death. That’s the whole reason I have come. The telos of every other life that has every lived has been thwarted by death but the telos of Jesus life is death.
Jesus is 1 Corinthians 5 is called the Passover lamb. Why? Because he must be killed at Passover. In Matthew 26.5 we read that the Jewish authorities wished to get rid of Jesus but had already determined, not during the Passover lest it cause an uproar. And yet here he is, hanging on the cross during Passover. It is finished. Mission accomplished.
He’s talking about something he has accomplished. What he’s saying, therefore, is I have finished the work I began. Mission accomplished. Goal reached. Plan fulfilled. Design realized.
Several places in the book of Acts when the disciples would go out into the world to preach the gospel, they would make this point explicitly. Jesus death was not an interruption of the plan. It was the plan.
Acts 2
Acts 3
Acts 4
The plan was that through death, that life would come. That’s the great irony. The greatest irony.
I have done all the work. And believe me, there was work to do. There was needed suffering. There was death. And that work is finished.
There was a chasm. There was work to do that you could have never done. Jesus is saying, “I have traversed the infinite distance between you and God, and there is not an inch left. I have done everything necessary to bring you right into his arms. There’s not one thing left for you to do. I’ve done it. I’ve done it completely. It is absolutely and utterly finished. There’s nothing else for you to do at all. Period.”
It is FINISHED. And he died.
The Crucified One is the true king, the kingliest king of all; because Jesus Christ is able to turn dreadful instrument of torture into a throne of glory and in so doing reign the universe from a tree.
“The groan of Calvary is mightier than the thunder of Zion.” Communion Well today, we could not do a service like this without serving communion.
What we celebrate in communion is nothing less than the FINISHED work of Christ. He accomplished everything necessary for you to be blindingly, brilliantly beautiful in God’s sight right now, the moment you accept what he has done.
If you could summarize Christianity into one word, it would be this one: “It is finished.”
Every other religion in the world says, “God has started the work now it’s up to you to finish the work.” The gospel says, “Don’t even think about working. Don’t you dare work. Receive the finished work.”
The telos of our life is to receive the finished work of Jesus Christ and you do that it opens up the fullness, the completeness, the immediate access into the blessings and totality of what God intends for you to have as a human being.
Let’s prepare our hearts: SING.
This was the plan all along:
1 Peter 3
The gospel is a long list of ironies.
Being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit. The righteous for the unrighteous. He died that we might have life. He was exalted through his humiliation The last are first The meek are blessed
The wonder of all wonders, however, is that God orchestrated the plan to crush Jesus (Acts 2:23). And this he was pleased to do (Isa 53:10) because Jesus’ death brings life to the world.
John 19:1-16
19 Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him. 2 And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe. 3 They came up to him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and struck him with their hands. 4 Pilate went out again and said to them, “See, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him.” 5 So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!” 6 When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.” 7 The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God.” 8 When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid. 9 He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. 10 So Pilate said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” 11 Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.”
12 From then on Pilate sought to release him, but the Jews cried out, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.” 13 So when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called The Stone Pavement, and in Aramaic Gabbatha. 14 Now it was the day of Preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, “Behold your King!” 15 They cried out, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” 16 So he delivered him over to them to be crucified.
Heavenly Father, Your word says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that is before his shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth…Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief” (Isaiah 53:6-7; 10). God, as we gaze on Christ this morning, and examine the sufferings of your Son together, cause us not to pass over the beauty displayed in this text. Help us to have a resolute focus on the beaming radiance of the glory of God in the face of Jesus, even in his sufferings (2 Cor. 4:6).
Jesus, we praise you, exalt you, and rejoice in you. At your name, “…every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:10-11). As we see you mocked, maligned, and misunderstood in this passage, we bow our knees and declare that you are King. We confess again this morning that you are Lord (Romans 10:9-13). We wish to say truly what is only said mockingly in this passage: Behold, Christ the King!
Holy Spirit, we pray together that you would empower the preaching of your word. Strengthen each of us in our inner beings to repent of our sin and to comprehend “…with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that [we] may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:18-19). Open our eyes to see the Suffering Servant as he really is. Expose our hearts of unbelief and cause us to trust you from an even deeper place in our hearts. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
Good morning Church, my name is Trent Houck, and it is my joy as one of your pastors to unfold God’s word with you this morning. Please turn in your Bible’s to John 19:1-16 with me if you are not already there. We will begin unpacking this text in a moment.
I want to begin by illustrating what I think this text is asking you to do today. In The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis describes the suffering and subsequent death of Aslan, the Great Lion. After his mane is shaved, his throat is cut, he is strapped to the Stone Table, and his life flees from him. Lucy and Susan initially hide, but then they run to Him. They nestle up near the lifeless body, seeking to comfort themselves in the wounds of their lost friend. This text is calling you to do the same thing with the sufferings of Christ. We are inclined in the Western World to run from suffering, to numb suffering, to ignore or distract ourselves from suffering, but today, this text is calling you to look head-on into the sufferings of Christ and to see your own suffering in his light. We are headed down the dark road to Calvary’s Cross.
Spoiler alert: Aslan is raised from the Dead. And so is Jesus. If you’re having a particularly rough day, just read the conclusion of the book of John this afternoon. Today, we’re going to seek to soak in the wounds of Christ. There is a heaviness to this text.
I am going to state my main point, explain my subpoints, and then we will unpack them together in the text.
Jesus Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate for you.
Jesus Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate for you.
This statement matters to the Church for three reasons:
Because of its historical reliability. As Benj Foreman helped us to see last week, Pilate was a real, historical figure. Caiaphas, also, lived and breathed and died. Jesus Christ is just as real as Pontius Pilate or Caiaphas, and even more so. I am not going to spend a lot of time proving that today.
For its theological significance. Jesus Christ, the God-man, God-incarnate, the Second Person of the Trinity suffered under Pontius Pilate. The reality of that suffering is theologically jarring. How can the eternal God die? How could it be that the Author of Life could suffer? We’ll spend most of our time here.
It’s relevance for us today. Jesus’ suffering transforms our own suffering.: Jesus Christ, this historically verifiable, theologically significant figure suffered for you. In your place. On your behalf. Every moment of Jesus’ earthly humiliation was a stroke on the canvas of your redemption. Every laceration from the Roman guards is an objective, historical, reliable evidence of the pulsing, never-stopping love of God for sinners. Each one of them is directed at your heart for the glory of God. This is where I hope your heart opens to God.
Jesus Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate for you. As a way to apply this, I want you, if you are a believer to say this out loud and insert your name in the blank:
“Jesus Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate for Trent Houck.”
This truth is central to the Gospel. It is central to the Christian life. We would not be and could not be saved without this truth.
So, we will unpack this main statement with five subpoints. Consider them as five courses in the most delightful meal. Or, five sunbeams, that radiate from the sun to shine on your soul. In these five statements, you are being invited to behold, to see, to taste, the beauty and glory of God in the person and work of Jesus Christ. You will be tempted all throughout this passage to look away. You will be tempted to engage in distracted thoughts, to plan, to feast on fantasy, but I would challenge you as we look at this passage to keep redirecting your gaze, your attention, to Christ. Let your heart be changed by the vision of Jesus in this text. Nestle in his wounds.
“Behold, the Man”: Jesus Christ suffered as the Man-God (John 19:1-5). Behold, “The Son of God”: Jesus Christ suffered as the God-Man (John 19:6-8).
Behold, Jesus suffered for sin (John 19:9-12).
“Behold, your King” (John 19:13-14). Behold, King Jesus: Christ Crucified (John 19:15-16).
All throughout the book of John, the spiritual sight [the spiritual ability to behold] of John’s audience is being engaged. From the early chapters describing light and darkness (John 1), to the scene about the man born blind (John 9), John is concerned with light and darkness because he is concerned about spiritual sight. You remember John 20:30-31,
30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Life implies spiritual sight. In fact, the culmination of the story of the man born blind is not the miracle of physical sight, but spiritual sight. “Spiritual sight” is belief in the Son of God. John writes,
35 Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 36 He answered, “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” 37 Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.” 38 He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him. 39 Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” (John 9:35-39)
Belief implies spiritual sight, which reveals a new heart. Earlier in John 2, it appears that Jesus sees something in human beings that humanity is blind to:
23 Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing [physical sight]. 24 But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people 25 and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man [sin…spiritual blindness].
What is in man from Jesus’ perspective?
In our passage today, we are going to see in flagrant clarity what is in man: sin. The utter depravity and weight of our sin is going to be pictured for us as Pilate speaks the truth blindly: “Behold, the King of the Jews.” He does not know what he’s saying. In fact, he says it to spite the Jews. He mocks his hearers, but he speaks what he does not know. The Spirit of God uses Pilate to speak truly. Pilate is cultural Christianity impersonated. He recites creeds with an empty heart. Seeing, he does not see.
Further, we are going to see sin’s central cry on the mouth of the Jewish Leaders: “We have not king but Caesar.” The Jewish leaders, standing before the nearly slain, sovereign God-man scream at him, “We have no king but Caesar.” The Jewish Leaders embrace full-scale paganism in order to put away threats to their self-conception. This to fulfill ancient Israel’s cry, “Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations” (1 Sam. 8:5). And, God’s indictment on human sinfulness: “…they have rejected me from being king over them” (1 Sam. 8:7).
There are themes that come to near explosive fulfillment all throughout this passage, in Pilate, in the Jewish Leaders, but even more so in the near-silent presence of Jesus. If you were to examine Jesus’ life in this passage, you would find us here: near the deepest stage of Jesus’ humiliation (Diagram 1).
So, before we start unpacking this passage: Do you see the sufferings of Christ for what they are? If you do, you will begin to see your own suffering differently. If you fail to see Jesus’ suffering rightly, the focus of your gaze in suffering will be on yourself.
Pilate suffered from deep, superstitious fear. That’s real suffering. But, it’s self-focused suffering. His own life was his main concern.
The Jewish Leaders suffered. They had been broken, beaten, and harassed by Rome, but they failed to see their own hearts as idol factories.
Only Jesus’ sufferings are meritorious, righteous before God. Only Jesus’ sufferings can save. His suffering accrues for you a righteousness that stands before God. God the Father approves of his suffering. Only if we see this can we understand our own sufferings accurately.
In fact, if we see Jesus’ sufferings rightly, our own suffering becomes a means by which we join Jesus in his own sufferings. Our pain, our loss, our mistreatments, abuses, and traumas can be a conduit through which we understand who Christ and what he suffered.
Because Jesus has accomplished something through his suffering for us, he can accomplish something in us through our sufferings.
So, let us turn to our first point:
“Behold, the Man”: Jesus Christ Suffered as the Man-God (John 19:1-5)
First, Jesus Christ suffered as the Man-God. Jesus did not evacuate his humanity, or take refuge in his deity as he suffered under Pontius Pilate. While we seek to escape our suffering through distractions, comforts, Chocolate, or fantasy, Jesus walks through his suffering with his eyes wide open. Jesus shivers through the night without a blanket. His physical body, and his human mind endure severe suffering. Roman torture was designed with scientific precision to maximize human agony. Jesus was slowly, moment-by-moment caused to suffocate under the weight of white hot pain. We read:
Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him. 2 And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe. 3 They came up to him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and struck him with their hands. 4 Pilate went out again and said to them, “See, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him.” 5 So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!”
Jesus here suffers on three accounts:
He suffers flogging. This is a hideous torture. Yet, this is flogging 1 of 2. Jesus is flogged here because Pilate wants to punish and release him. He wanted to publicly humiliate him, show that he is a weak, spineless threat. Immediately prior to the crucifixion, he will be flogged more severely. One theologian writes, “The Roman scourge consisted of a short wooden handle to which several thongs were attached, the ends equipped with pieces of lead or brass and with sharply pointed bits of bone. The stripes were laid especially (not always exclusively) on the victim’s back, bared and bent. The body was at times torn and lacerated to such an extent that deep-seated veins and arteries—sometimes even entrails and inner organs—were exposed. Such flogging, from which Roman citizens were exempt, often resulted in death. Or it preceded execution…” So, there Jesus stands, beaten and bruised. He suffers physical abuse. This is distinct from flogging, in the sense that the Roman guards “struck him with their hands.” It wasn’t enough that they beat him with rods, or whips, they used their own hands. They pressed a crown of thorns on his head, puncturing the skin around the scalp. And, they laid a robe on his battered body. He suffers public ridicule. Physically, Jesus is suffering. Emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically, Jesus’ physical sufferings are being interpreted by those around him as a joke. The guards say, “Hail, King of the Jews” (19:3). The literal word is Χαῖρε, which translates as “Rejoice!” Jesus had just recently used this word to encourage his disciples, “So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice and no one will take your joy from you” (John 16:22). Here, the guards use it as a taunt, a joke. Further, Jesus is publicly displayed with his mock crown, and purple robe: “Behold, the man” Pilate says.
All of this is meant not only to publicly shame Jesus, but to publicly shame the Jews for thinking, believing and considering Jesus to be a threat. John plainly puts it, “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (John 1:11). Pilate says, “Look at this man! What a danger! What a threat! He has no power, no soldiers, no physical strength to overcome Rome. Just like every other Jewish person.” You can nearly hear Pilate’s laughter.
And yet, there is a deeper laughter. Beneath the laughter, taunts, and sin of Pilate and Rome, God the Father “…sits in the heavens [and] laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, ‘As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill’…Now therefore, O Kings, be wise; be warned O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling” (Psalm 2:4-6; 10-11).
If you have suffered physical, emotional, or spiritual abuse, please see from this passage that:
Jesus understands. He underwent physical harm, emotional ridicule, and spiritual mockery. His spiritual ‘leaders’ used their spiritual authority to crush him. Jesus is acquainted with your suffering. God is not indifferent or silent. God is not sitting idly by watching evil unfold. God does not remove himself, or escape to cope. God is undeniably present in the person of Jesus by his Holy Spirit. While Jesus has been silent thus far in the passage, he is not absent. Formerly, Jesus declares their works to be judged: “And this is the judgment: the light has come in to the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light because their works were evil” (John 3:19). Jesus condemns the harsh abuses that you have experienced. He hates evil. He came as light to expose the works of darkness. He rages against abuse and abusers. And he will exact perfect justice either by faith in his perfect suffering, or by an eternity in hell.
Jesus, the Man-God, suffered in his human body, mind, and heart in his approach to the cross. But, what about the Son of God?
Behold, “the Son of God”: Jesus Christ Suffered as the God-Man (John 19:6-8)
Second, Jesus suffered as the God-man. Jesus suffers, not only in his humanity, his body, his mind, his heart, but Jesus suffers as the Second Person of the Trinity. Jesus, like a dam opening, allows a surge of suffering to be invited into the Godhead. The cup of God’s wrath, fury, and vengeance is being poured out on the Son. God felt pain. In the most excruciating sense, God’s finger got smashed in the door of human sinfulness. In fact, it was the will of the Father to crush him. God’s neck was placed in the stocks and under the blade of the guillotine. We read in verse 6:
6 When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.” 7 The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God.” 8 When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid.
The grammar in this passage is important to observe. The Jews are commanding Pilate to crucify Jesus. They are not asking. “Crucify him!” is in the imperative (command) second person singular. Added to the grammar is the sound of multiple voices in shrieking violence and fear. “Pilate, Crucify him!” Pilate still sees this whole exchange in a joking manner as he taunts the Jews: “Take him yourselves and crucify him, [oh wait, you have no authority to crucify him, ha!]. From the Roman perspective, he’s as innocent as you miserable people.” The Jewish leaders, seeking to exploit every linguistic breach, see this as an open door to trap Pilate. They move their castle one move closer to the king in this chess match. “No guilt?! No guilt?!”
“We have a law” they say, “and according to that law he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God.” To be clear, these is not a peaceful chess match. This is not a peaceful protest. The Jews are not sitting quietly, respecting the rules. The Jews are screaming out demands. Matthew records that “…a riot was beginning” (Matthew 27:24). And, Pilate, is not without his own streak of violence: Pilate, who mingled the blood of the Galileans with their sacrifices (Luke 13:1-2). Pilate, who will do anything to satisfy the crowd (Mark 15:15), and who will reconstruct ‘truth’ as political expedience (John 18:28-40). These interactions are about as stable as the feuds of rival gangs. The smallest straw is added and the camel’s back breaks. The straw here is the phrase, “The Son of God.”
We know that this phrase broke Pilate because of his reaction: “When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid” (John 19:8). One author notes, Pilate, like all Romans of his time, were deeply superstitious. One commentator notes, “The claim to be king of the Jews was a capital offense against Roman law; the claim to be the Son of God was a capital offence against Jewish law.” So, Pilate is thrown back into a deep confusion. Is this one of the sons of the gods, even the Jewish God?
Who is this person? As readers, we can see that the Jews speak accurately about Jesus, though they misjudge him. We can also see that Pilate, who once spoke accurately about him, is now not so sure about his identity.
Scripture shows us the true identity of Jesus: the Son of God, who suffers.
But, what is the purpose of his suffering?
That leads us to our third point:
Behold, Jesus Suffered for sin (John 19:9-12)
Third, Jesus suffers for sin. Jesus, not only suffers in his physical body, but he also suffers as the Second Person of the Trinity. While we can see this plainly as readers, Pilate’s eyes are blinded to who Jesus is. Because of this blindness, Pilate goes to further investigation. Through this investigation, we see that Jesus’ express purpose is to suffer and die for sin. We read in John 19:9-12,
9 He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, “Where are you from?” [what is your origin? Do you come from the gods, or the Jewish God?] But Jesus gave him no answer. 10 So Pilate said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you [what I’d rather do!] and authority to crucify you?” 11 Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.”
Here we see that Jesus is actually the one in control. He redirects Pilate’s attention from Jesus’ origin, “Where are you from?” to Pilate’s obsession with his own authority, which is at the heart of Pilate’s sin and fear. Jesus’ validates that Pilate has this authority, but he explains that it is derived authority. “Remember, Pilate, you are doing the will of God.” One author notes, “Judas, Caiaphas, and Pilate all acted under God’s sovereignty” But, Pilate, likely being a pagan relativist, polytheist would only interpret this phrase as non-threatening confirmation that Jesus’ issue was not with Rome or Pilate, but with the Jewish system who handed him over: “Therefore”, Jesus says, “he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.” (John 19:11).
Here though, Jesus draws our attention to a very important point: misunderstanding God always leads to the abuse or misuse of authority. Always. We cannot think for a moment that we are exempt from having a theology of God that leads to a proper understanding of authority. So, if we are in some position of authority, we would do well to reflect on that authority:
Fathers: Do you see your authority as derived from God? Do you see your main aim to reflect your Heavenly Father? Or, to enjoy the comforts of power? Mothers: Do you see your authority as derived from God? Do you understand your parenting as within the realm of God’s authority? Children: Do you see the authorities in your life as gifts from God? Pastors and Elders: Do you measure your authority by the word of God? Public Officials: Do you see your authority as serving to carry out God’s will? Teachers: Do you see your authority to instruct under God’s sovereign rule?
Jesus draws two things out with his comment “He who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.”
Pilate, you are sinning against God by washing your hands of responsibility. Your sins of omission will be held against you. Your passivity is allowing the death of the Son of God.
Similarly, the man or woman who passively watches the abuse of pornography is guilty of sin. The man or woman who passively allows his heart and mind to be drawn into fantasy, fornication, and folly is guilty of sin. The man or women who passively allows sin is sinning. Not doing something when something should be done is sin.
What are you allowing to slip through your fingers?
On the other hand, Jesus says, Pilate, the high-handed sins of the Jewish Leaders are greater. Active, initiative-taking sins of rebellion against God will be treated with greater blows.
The man or women who actively sets up the scene for pornography to take place is guilty of sin. The man or woman who plans, strategizes, and implements human trafficking is guilty of sin. The man or women who actively promotes and participates in rebellion against God is sinning.
In what ways are you clenching sin in your hands?
Jesus says, make no mistake, I am here on account of sin. Yours and theirs. I am here because one man, Adam, failed to receive God’s authority. This leads us to our fourth point:
“Behold, Your King” (John 19:13-14)
Fourth, Jesus is a Suffers his Kingly Enthronement. Again, the Jewish leaders are exposing their hearts: they are acting out of their spiritual blindness. Further, Pilate is carefully trying to carry out their appeasement. He is the ultimate people pleaser. He is trying to balance the Jewish Leaders, Rome, and you might even say Jesus himself, by letting him go free. So, we read:
12 From then on Pilate sought to release him, but the Jews cried out, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.” 13 So when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called The Stone Pavement, and in Aramaic Gabbatha. 14 Now it was the day of Preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, “Behold your King!”
Pilate is still in the taunting mode. He uses this opportunity, by sitting on the judgment seat, by presenting the bloodied Jesus to them, by crying out “Behold, your king” to ridicule the Jews into suppression. But, the Jews, being accustomed all throughout their history to this kind of malice, seem to be immune to Pilate’s insults. They have learned habits of deep, stiff-necked stubbornness, and they again move their castle nearer to the king. They say, “Pilate, please understand, by Son of God, we mean that Jesus has made himself a public threat to the empire. He has made himself to be a king. Won’t you deal with this? If you don’t you are subject to his conspiracy!”
“Okay,” Pilate says, “Let’s take a look at your ‘king.’” Again, Pilate’s laughter emerges. “This? This is your king? You can do better than this!”
Now, as readers, we have to take a step back. In this moment, it’s as if the sun shines at noon, the sixth hour. The brightest light of the day is beaming down to display with complete clarity that Israel’s God, Israel’s King is before them. John 1:5 says, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” and “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” (John 1:18). Also, this is the day of preparation of the Passover. John is a master of layered meanings. It is no mistake that at the moment of brightest light in the book of John, the sun’s rays delight in the Son of Man. It’s not a mistake that in the day, John the Baptist cries out, “Behold, the lamb of God” (John 1:36). The light of the world and the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world is standing ready to be slain. Even the Pagan high priest of Roman Rule declares the truth about Jesus: “Behold, Your King!” All the prophetic words, the writings, the Law, are summed up in these words: Israel, Behold your king! Look at the face of your God! Look at his glory in the face of Jesus!
Do you see him Israel? Will you reject your king? But, they can’t se him. They are blind.
That leads us to our final point:
King Jesus: Christ Crucified (John 19:15-16)
In the greatest of dramatic ironies,
15 They cried out, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” 16 So he delivered him over to them to be crucified.
This is the ultimate betrayal. The heart is exposed at noonday. Israel will take no king but Caesar. It is as if in the moment of visible, spiritual infidelity. In front of an onlooking husband, in broad daylight, the beloved wife says, “I have no husband but you” to her adulterous lover. Spiritually speaking, this is adultery: idolatry of the highest kind.
No matter how strategically Pilate tries to avoid it, he finally takes moral responsibility for being coerced to crucify Jesus, “Shall I crucify your king?” Here all of his sins of omission are shown for what they are: spineless people pleasing. No matter how strategically the Jewish Leaders try to avoid it, they finally expose what is in the heart of every man: idols. The willingness to commit spiritual adultery for whatever cause serve our highest pleasure. The endless pursuit of happiness of the restless heart who will not take a king over the self, the nation, the collective establishment of our own sovereignty.
So, Pilate agrees. And, in this, he participates in the greatest sin that humanity has ever committed: the crucifixion of the Son of God.
16 So he delivered him over to them to be crucified.
This brings us back to our main point:
Jesus Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate for you.
By now, our mouths should be open with awe at:
The gruesome reality of our depravity and sin. The beauty of Jesus’ sufferings The glory of God in placing Jesus here for us.
I think we can fold this into application to our own lives in the following five ways:
Jesus dignifies all of our human suffering by suffering in our place. On account of sin, we deserve death and hell. We deserve to suffer apart from Christ for all eternity, but because of what Jesus has done, our suffering does not mean that we are living under God’s wrath any longer. The book of Hebrews says, “Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted” (Hebrews 12:4). Your suffering is evidence, not of God’s wrath poured out, but of God’s Fatherly discipline. Nothing you experience is outside of God’s Fatherly care. Jesus suffered so that you might endure. Jesus can, therefore, speak directly to your suffering. We often fail to speak kind words to people’s suffering. Because we are so afraid of silence, we say silly, hurtful things to people who are in pain. We are often like Job’s friends.
Joni Eareckson Tada writes, when she realized her paralysis was permanent, “…inside, I died” but, she goes on, “…nothing is more freeing than knowing that God understands.” Jesus speaks words of true understanding. Mark Vroegop, in his book, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy describes the loss of his daughter before birth, “Our baby, only a few days from entering our lives, had died. The crashing waves of grief in that moment were overwhelming. But our journey was only beginning. A few hours later we checked into the hospital. I sat by my wife’s bed as she endured hours of labor. We prayed and cried together. About twenty-four hours after hearing the crushing news, I held the nine-pound body of my lifeless daughter, Sylvia. As I cradled her, swaddled her blanket, I longed for her to wake up. Her fully developed body looked so normal. But there was no breathing. She was beautiful but not alive.”
When we suffer, we long for presence, rather than words. When we say things like, "Something good will come of this. Or, you'll move on" we can unknowingly increase the pain of the one experiencing the loss."
The best thing that we can do is to provide space for a person to grieve.
Read someone else’s words, namely, the Psalms in a person’s grief. Remember what Jesus speaks to us in our grief and loss is: I am here. I know. I am with you. I am for you.
Let Jesus speak directly; our speech should be indirect and secondary.
Jesus exposes whether or not ‘our suffering’ is merely the result of our idolatry. An idol is,
“…an object of trust that takes the emotional and practical place of God.”
To quote Tim Keller, “It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart, imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give. A counterfeit God is anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worthy living.” Mark Vroegop writes, “When your culture or city or life falls apart, it can be revealing.”
Pilate’s idol of self was clear. The Jewish Leaders were exposed. Consider how our complaints, comments, and greatest concerns show our attachments to things that God’s word does not promise us. Our positions, power, money, health, homes, families, and lives are all subject to change. Our object of greatest joy is not. Consider how you would respond if:
Your relationships are strained by the intrusion of new friends. Boise continues to grow, creating market instability, flourishing for some, and dashed dreams for others.
We lose our pinterest-worthy suburban paradises, our hipster coffee shops, Patagonia goes out of business due to its approach to sustainability, and we can no longer cling to our comforts.
We lose our jobs, or are forced to relocate. We don’t have a clear source of material well-being. So, we have our lack of spiritual well-being exposed.
In this passage, Jesus shows us what true suffering is, and what it is not.
Jesus rescues us from ourselves through suffering. For believers, our suffering is not wrath, but it is rescuing.
In early January, I transitioned ministries, lost friends, was experiencing some seasonal and situational depression, got COVID, lost taste and smell and sensations of hot and cold in my body, and lost a sense of emotional connectedness to my family and kids and closest friends for a number of days. It was completely disorienting. I was also experiencing insomnia. For whatever reason, God allowed me to walk through a sort of ‘spiritual winter.’ My idols were being laid out before me, one by one. Quarantined at home, I reached out immediately to close friends and family, who supported me and loved me. I told my wife, who prayed for me. This experience did not begin to break until standing in front of the sink as I did the dishes after another tasteless meal, I listened to these lyrics that echo the Psalmists cries:
When the storm clouds rise And the sky is dark And I'm pressed with anxious care I've a safe retreat in the strong, high tower For no ill can harm me there
I'll hide in Your safe retreat Hide in Your safe retreat When the storm clouds fly 'Til they pass me by I will hide in Your safe retreat
When the lightnings flash And the thunders roar And the storms in fury beat When they seem so sure to engulf my soul Then I'll hide in Your safe retreat Soon the storms will pass And the sky will clear And my rest be calm and sweet I will trust and wait with no anxious fear For I'll hide in Your safe retreat.
I began to weep. My soul could still taste the truth in the music, even if nothing else seemed to feel right. I realized in that moment, that even if I never felt anything ever again, God would still be a safe place for me, even protecting me from myself. Christian, God will carry you. He will complete the work he started in you. You don’t have to be afraid. His promises are more sure than your suffering.
The Way through Suffering is to Nestle in Jesus’ Wounds, not your own. In the Lion King, Mufasa is crushed under a stampede after the betrayal of Scar, Mufasa’s brother. As Mufasa, the great king, lay dead in the ravine, Simba, Mufasa’s son comes and nestles his head under his great Father’s mighty paw. “Dad, wake up!” He cries. Something died in Simba that day. In a similar way, we are being called to follow Christ into his sufferings. We are being called to nestle in his wounds, not our own.
Paul writes, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).
And,
8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead (Philippians 3:8-11).
Because of the reality of Jesus’ sufferings, every bit of our suffering and loss will be undone. Our believing, lost loved ones will be restored to us. Our pain will end. Every tear will be wiped from our eyes. Let’s press past our sufferings into Christ!
Let’s pray. Father, as we close, we want to let our hearts marinate in this truth: Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate for us. As we reflect and pray, give us a deep joy in yourself. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Slideshow for this message is available
John 13-18 Introduction Jesus once asked Peter, “Do you know who I am?” Peter nailed the answer, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” The Holy Spirit revealed that to Peter. We call that Peter’s great confession. It was out of that great confession that Jesus renamed Peter “Cephas” which means rock and said, “Upon this rock I will build my church.” That’s quite the compliment. To be called a rock means you have strength, you are immovable, brave, not affected by storms that normally destroy weaker and lesser things.
Today we are going to observe Peter, Cephas, The Rock, the one who boldly confessed Jesus as his Lord, the Son of God, the Messiah, we are going to see this man crushed into particles as he denies before a slave girl what he confessed before the creator of the universe. Peter the rock, pulverized into a pile of sand. Peter, the sand pile.
There are two lessons that come out of today’s text. Lesson #1: We are far weaker than we imagine. If we don’t see ourselves (our denials of Christ) in Peter we are missing the point of this passage all together. In fact, we could even go further in saying, “If you don’t see yourself in Peter, you are Peter.” We are all weaker than we think.
But there’s a second lesson that comes out of the text as well. Lesson #2: Christ is far greater than we dreamed. Even though we are faithless, Christ is faithful for he cannot deny himself. However great you think Christ is, he is greater.
Let’s watch these two great truths unfold in the text. Review Let’s recall the big picture here? If you remember, the book of John is heavily weighted in terms of content to focus on the last week of Jesus’ life. And when I say, heavily weighted, I mean you have a mouse over here and an elephant over here. Like, heavily weighted. To put things in perspective, 5 months ago we started chapter 12 which is John’s record of the triumphal entry which happened on Sunday of the passion week. So in five months of preaching, we’ve gone Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And in three months, we’ve done nothing but sit in the upper room with Jesus listening to him talk to his disciples and pray for them. John 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17 are all part of this extended upper room discourse. It took us 5 months to preach through what took Jesus just a few hours. The Betrayal Prediction There’s one very particular scene in that upper room that we need to recall for the purpose of today’s message. Let’s roll back in our minds to John 13:
And the text says that when they heard this, it wasn’t obvious who it was.
This uncertainty says at least two things. First, it says Judas was an amazing con-artist. He fooled them all. None of them suspected Judas. But secondly, it implies that each of them were uncertain of even their own loyalty. An honest examination of their own heart revealed they were capable of it. They might be the one. So there’s the swirling uncertainty. Who is going to betray him?
So Peter motions to John to ask Jesus who it was. And Jesus identifies the betrayer as Judas. And you could almost imagine Peter reconvincing himself at this point, “That Judas guy might deny Jesus, but I will never deny him. I will follow him wherever he goes.” But then Jesus says this:
You can imagine Peter now, doubling down on his exaggerated confidence. “Can’t follow you? Bet me. You think I’m too weak to follow you? My devotion is greater than any man. I’ll prove it. Try me. He can’t possibly be questioning my devotion. I don’t understand.” So he asks a clarifying question:
“That wasn’t any help at all. What is he talking about? It almost sounds like he’s testing me to see if I’m willing to take this all the way. Well, I am!”
Peter felt so confident.
1 Corinthians 10:12, “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” Peter, Satan has demanded to sift you like wheat. You are matchsticks before Him. You ought be trembling not swaggering and beating your chest.
Now I review all that because that was months ago that we went through all that on Sunday morning, but in terms of how it unfolded, that evening it was just minutes ago. Let’s just put a time stamp on this. Let’s say this upper room conversation with Peter was at 9pm. In just a few hours, maybe 1am, Peter the rock is going to be playing sand in the hands of a slave girl. All that confidence and swagger exposed for what it truly was. Sand.
Lesson #1: We are far weaker than we imagined. Lesson #2: Christ is far greater than we dreamed. The Kidron Now in what way was Christ greater than we dreamed. We see part of the answer here.
Everything in the narrative is constructed to let you know that Jesus is in complete control. Nothing is happening to him. He is directing everything. Even the smallest detail points to this.
The disciples leave the upper room from which they just finished celebrating passover. Keep in mind that as Jesus eats that passover lamb he is anticipating that in just a few hours that lamb sacrificed would be his body. He was the ultimate lamb that would take away the sin of the world.
As they leave the western hill where the upper room was located and descend into the valley on his way to the garden he would step across that brook Kidron which at that time would have been running red with the blood of the tens of thousands of lambs that were slain. You see during Passover an incredible number of lambs were sacrificed. So many lambs were sacrificed that they build drainage channels under the temple mount to deal with the blood that was created from all this slaughter.
Josephus records a Passover celebration during his time in which he estimates that the participants who gathered in Jerusalem to perform the sacrifice in the year 65 C.E., were “not less than three millions” (Jos., Wars, 2:280). So even if there’s hyperbole mixed in, that’s a lot of lambs which means a lot of blood. And that blood all had to go somewhere.
It drained out the side of the temple mount and drained into the valley below. You can imagine how that would have just arrested his imagination. It would have frozen him in his tracks. All those sacrifices point to the great sacrifice. And so he steps across the brook Kidron as he steps toward the cross.
And all that anxiety gets bound up in his heart. Now between verses 1 and 2 in John we have the entire Gethsemane narrative. Mt, Mk and Lk record that as the disciples entered the garden Jesus gave specific instruction to wait and pray. He came back to find all the disciples sleeping. Can you blame them? They had had a very long day. During Passover, several hundred thousand people were in Jerusalem. There’s massive crowd fatigue. It would have been near impossible to sleep in. They had woken early, they had prepared for the Passover meal. I’m sure they were physically and emotionally drained. I certainly would have fallen asleep.
Even though all of the disciples fell asleep, Jesus singles out Peter and says: “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not stay awake and watch with me even one hour? Keep alert and pray that you might not enter into temptation. The Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.”
You know what Jesus is saying: We are far weaker than we ever imagined.
He is warning Peter. A few hours ago you told me that you would die for me. I believe that you meant that in your soul Peter. I believe that you felt that way. But you said those words within the safety of the castle walls. Will you say those words when you are alone on the battle field. The flesh is weaker than you think.
But Peter sleeps. His mind is sluggish, his spirit is unprepared, and he has no spiritual frame of reference.
Jesus on the other hand prays three times, begging the father to remove the cup. Jesus utterly alone staring in horror at the cup he must absorb, sweats great drops of blood in anticipation. And he says, “Not my will but yours be done.”
Lesson #1: We are far weaker than we imagined. Lesson #2: Christ is far greater than we dreamed.
You see, it’s all voluntary. John is making that point over and over. Jesus knows what he’s doing. Vs 4, “Jesus, knowing all that would happen to him….asks, who do you seek?” Now the fact that Jesus is in control is made even more dramatically in what happens next.
You know what Jesus is doing here? He’s just ever so slightly flexing…just a tiny, tiny bit. He’s just peeling back the tiniest corner of his divinity. Before he gives himself up, before he lays his glory aside, before he goes to the cross, he communicates in the strongest possible terms, “You are not taking me. I go on my own free will.” Even just a slice of glory through the chink in the wall is enough to knock an entire Roman legion flat.
Why do they get knocked flat? Because, quite simply, they are in the presence of something far greater than them. Any time we are in the presence of something far greater us, we are knocked off our feet. Imagine standing 100 feet away from a space X rocket as it takes off. The power of that would knock you flat. Try to stand against an avalanche, a tsunami wave, a tornado.
In all those examples, the sheer power, the weight of those forces barreling down upon you illustrates your feather-like composition. You’re nothing by comparison. You don’t tell it what to do. It tells you what to do.
The Bible says over and over again that in the presence of God nobody can keep their footing. Ezekial sees God and falls flat on his face. Isaiah sees the throneroom. Faceplant. In 2 Chronicles 5 the priests try to minister to the Lord and the shekinah glory fills the temple and they just melt.
Here is the Word made flesh. Here is Jesus, the God-man. And these tiny, insignificant, inconsequential, nothings step up and seek to arrest the living God. Jesus asks in utter irony, “Who do you seek?” And they answer, “Jesus of Nazareth.” And what is the reply of Jesus? In our English it says, “I am he.” But you want to know what it is in the Greek. It’s simply, “I AM.” This is like the ultimate climax of the I AM theme in the book of John.
Every other religious leader in the world points to a way outside of themselves. Let me guide you in the way. Are you hungry for spiritual food? I am the bread of life (6:35, 48, 51). Are you unable to see? I am the light of the world (8:12; 9:5). Are you looking for entrance into heaven? I am the door of the sheep (10:7, 9). Are you looking for a leader? I am the good shepherd (10:11, 14). Are you looking for life? I am the true vine. Are you looking to escape death? I am the resurrection and the life (11:25).
But all of these I AM statements point to the great I AM. Before Abraham was, I AM. Who are you looking for. I am it. I am everything. Who are you looking for? Jesus of Nazareth? It’s like the ultimate double meaning. Yes, I am he. But who is he? Jesus is the great, I AM. The I Am of Is 42. The I AM of Ex 3. I AM GOD.
Are men arresting God? Are men able bind the Lion of the tribe of Judah? Are men able to capture and crucify the Spirit of God? Nothing and nobody tells God what to do.
Lesson #1: We are far weaker than we imagined. Lesson #2: Christ is far greater than we dreamed.
Now imagine what it would have been like to experience this. If you were a disciple, this flex of Jesus would have been pretty ridiculously cool. This would have been the first display of power that was used not to heal people or help people, but as a weapon of defense. I can almost perfectly envision the flare of excitement and knotting of the stomach, especially in Peter. Peter sees the flex and he’s all emboldened. He thinks, “It’s showtime. Finally, now, it’s getting real. I’ve been waiting for this day my whole life. Time to prove my worth. Time to prove my loyalty.” He’s all in.
What? Are you serious? When power was there he was brave. It’s not hard to fight boldly when you know there is a guy standing next to you who can raise people from the dead. But now what? What happens now? Fear…in the absence of the direct evidence of the presence of God, his fears take over.
Peter confused walking in the Spirit with fleshly resolve. Mere natural strength and courage are of no avail in battling the prince of the powers of the air. Satan had demanded permission to sift Peter like wheat. And now his very soul was being shaken and blown away. What power does weak, emaciated human resolve have against the spiritual weapons of Satan? Did he really think that mere determination would enable him to withstand the attacks of the Evil One?
And suddenly, confusion sets in. And we get this contrast, this sharp, sharp contrast of the love of Christ for Peter with the love of Peter for Christ. Peter is all alone.
Annas was the high priest who had presided from AD 6-15. So even though he was not the current high priest he still wielded a lot of power. Caiaphas was the current high priest. So they first go to Annas, the former high priest.
Peter is all alone with his fear. So bold and so, so scared. So tiny. So small. So fragile. He’s slinking in the shadows. He has no plan. Peter wasn’t ready and because of that he fell - dropped by a door girl.
Gone were all of his heroic promises to Jesus, gone was all the courage in his heart, gone was all of his fleshly self-confidence. She asks him a simple question, “You are not also one of his disciples, are you?” No.
Jesus is objecting here to the midnight trial. Why are you doing all this under the cover of darkness? This is illegal. And they slap him.
What a chilling scene. Everyone is standing around the fire. Peter is frozen to the core of his being. He is improperly dressed, he is nodding off from weariness.
Comparing the other gospel writers, we find out that the servant girl had been going about telling others, “Certainly this was also one of his disciples.” There’s a witch hunt mentality beginning.
Then suddenly and unexpectedly, one man jabs at him, “Hey, you were one of his disciples. Your accent gives you away.” Peter says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The flicker of the firelight reveals his features. “Hey man, don’t try to hide it. It’s obvious. You’re a Galilean.”
Peter’s heart now starts to race. His mind is spinning a hundred miles an hour trying to figure out what he should say… what he should do? He’s a cornered animal.
Another chides, “Listen, I was in the garden and I saw you there.” Peter exclaims, “Seriously, knock it off. I don’t want to be associated with that guy. What more do I have to say, I know nothing of this man.”
At this point, Peter is so frantic he doesn’t notice that across the courtyard Jesus is emerging into the open. At this point maybe the servant of Malchus enters the scene and says, “I was standing right next to you. You are the one who cut off Malchus’ ear. I saw you. You were there. Admit it.”
And I picture Peter with wild eyes, darting back and forth, scared, on the verge of tears, frightened and confused standing up with heart pounding out of his chest screaming, “I swear to you, I don’t know the man. I never knew him!”
And I picture that scream so out of place and loud that it silences the courtyard for a moment. The echo of those words rattle around in the night sky. All eyes are on his including Jesus’ and the rooster crows. And you can only imagine what it felt like when Peter’s eyes met Jesus’ eyes.
Michael Card who wrote an excellent biography on the life of Peter entitled, The Fragile Stone: The Emotional Life of Simon Peter talks about this look.
“The understanding gaze of Jesus could not have been one of disdain or condemnation. That was not Jesus’ way. After all, Jesus would be condemned for Peter. I believe the only look that could have broken Simon as it did was one of love and forgiveness. Which is just what we would expect from the Savior. And just now, seeing Peter at his absolute worst, Jesus is willing to turn and go to the cross for Peter- and for you and me. After all, he sees us just the same way as he first did Peter. He gazes at us all with that understanding stare and sees all our potential, all our frailties and faults. And yet he was willing, even while we were still sinners, to take up that cross for us.”
Peter learned his lesson at the bitter rock bottom. Jesus let him fall and bounce a few times. And it hurt badly.
Imagine that moment. Standing in the courtyard. It is predawn. The fire flickers on the faces around you. All eyes are on you. The cursing, blasphemous word is in echoing through the courtyard and you see Jesus- blood running down his cheek, bound, and he looks at you with love and forgiveness.
And now it all snaps into focus. Back in the upper room, Peter was banging on his chest like King Kong. “I’m better than that Judas guy. Here’s why Christ ought to love me. I’ll die for you.” Will you, Peter?
All it takes is a little pressure, a little threat, and all of the sudden the white hot loyalty fades away. All of a sudden that fierce allegiance and devotion turns into a back-peddling, panic, and pathetic cowardice.
Lesson #1: We are far weaker than we imagined. Lesson #2: Christ is far greater than we dreamed.
Jesus came to save sinners, wicked, undeserving, Christ denying, God hating, selfish, lustful, lying sinners. And when God in his pleasure reaches down and saves us, his glory is put on display!
Do you remember Jesus high priestly prayer? “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you.” And what the nuclear core of the GLORY of God. The love of God. It’s happening before our eyes.
The pinnacle of the glory of God is the love of God and the pinnacle of the love of God is the cross of God. Here we have the stabbing injury of betrayal becoming for Peter and for us, a beacon of the love of Christ for sinners. Another reminder that NOTHING can separate us from the love of God. Communion Today is communion Sunday. What a note to celebrate communion!
Lesson #1: We are far weaker than we imagined. Lesson #2: Christ is far greater than we dreamed.
Or in the words of Paul to Timothy, “Even though we are faithless, he is faithful because he cannot deny himself.”
You see, in the end, it’s all about God and none about us. It’s not about our strength, our power, our belief, our good works, our righteousness. Peter’s biggest mistake was thinking he had something to offer.
And that’s not just Peter’s mistake. That’s every human’s mistake. Without us constantly reminding ourselves of the cross, without reminding ourselves that we are just like Peter, without us preaching to ourselves that we bring NOTHING, that it was WHILE WE WERE YET SINNERS, Christ died for us, we will very quickly revert to the belief that is faith plus works that is the basis of our salvation.
To go back to the age old question, “If you were to die today and God were to ask you, ‘Why should I let you into my kingdom?’ what would you say?” Formulate the answer to that in your head.
If your answer begins with the first person, you’ve committed the error of Peter. Because I left everything to follow you. Because I can do these great works. Because I believed. Because I have faith. Because I am committed when others aren’t. Because I am faithful. Because I have better theology. Because I have put in the work. Because I am senior around here. Because I am more humble than you.
“Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” (1 Cor. 10:12 ESV)
Learn the lesson of Peter without having to fail like Peter. We have done NOTHING to earn heaven. We aren’t faithful. We haven’t left everything to follow Christ. We love money. We are prideful. We can’t admit when we are wrong. We think too highly of ourselves. We are all cowards.
Why should God let us into HIS PERFECT, BEAUTIFUL, STAINLESS kingdom? The only answer that Christ accepts is a third person answer. Because HE! Because he died for my sins. I don’t know why I am here. I don’t belong in this place!
Do you realize, when you die and go to heaven one of the scenes you will see is the angels around throne screaming, “HOLY, HOLY, HOLY is the Lord God Almighty.” And you see the galaxy spinning power of YHWH with your own eyes and you see perfect holiness in all it’s splendor, you will only have a third person answer on your lips. You will recognize in a nano-second you don’t belong in this place. You will recognize in an instant that all your righteousness is like filthy rags. Why in the world am I here? How in the world am I here? Why do you I get to enter into this place? What’s the answer? Because the man on the cross, whose name is Jesus, said I could come. That’s it.
We are going to sing Rock of Ages and the third verse says this:
Naked, come to Thee for dress Helpless, look to Thee for grace Vile, I to the fountain fly Wash me, Savior, or I die
That is the cry of the man who knows his need for Jesus. We are far weaker than we imagined. But Christ is far greater than we dreamed.
Slideshow for this message is available
Introduction John 17 Prayer Holy Father we come to you today because we need unity. Father, our world is splintering. Our country is splintering. Lord we are not the united states. We are divided. There is division between police and citizens. Between races, socio-economic classes. Our churches are splintering. Even within this building, Father, relationships are splintered. Father, in your Word which you say is the very source of sanctifying power in our life, Jesus has prayed for us that we would be one as you are one so that the world might believe that you sent Jesus into to the world.
Father may we be one, as you are one, so that the world might behold your glory. May we be one, as you are one, so that we might experience the joy you experienced as you set your face to endure the cross and despise the shame. We want to be one as you are one to enjoy your design, to celebrate you love, to revel in your goodness.
Father, we confess we are not one. We confess that our own personal kingdoms matter more than your kingdom. We confess that the mission we care most about is not your mission. Sanctify us Lord. Set us apart unto that mission. May we see that there is nothing more glorious than your love and that there is nothing more meaningful than sharing that love with others. Unite our hearts that we might fear your name. Amen. Introduction Today we return to the high priestly prayer of Jesus which is the prayer that Jesus prays for his followers just hours before he is arrested, tried, and then crucified.
And last week we pointed out that the main point of the prayer was the glory of God. Jesus wants us to love the glory of the Father. To really love the glory of God, we need to understand the love of God which is the peak manifestation of that glory. To really understand the love of God, we need to understand the cross of God which is the peak manifestation of that love. That’s how the prayer begins.
So the goal of everything Christ is doing here is pointing to the glory of God. Now here’s the main point of today. There’s a byproduct of loving the glory of God: Christian unity. It’s our theme for the year.
To be unified is glorious. To be divided is disastrous. Why? Because something very important is lost.
This is what we look like when we lack unity. We are like a picture that has gone through a paper shredder. This is not unity. It used to be unified. When this was printed, the algorithm controlling the motors placed dots of ink on a page with brilliant precision and formed a beautiful image, but now all you have is chaos. This single piece of paper has been shredded and then cross shredded into tiny bits. And because it’s now completely out of order, even though all the pieces of the message are present, nothing can be communicated.
Here’s the point: when the unity is lost, the message is lost. And when the message is lost, the individual pieces become worthless. Throw it away. Use it as fire starter. What use is a little dot of paper out of context? The pieces only have value as they are connected to the whole.
I begin with this illustration because this is precisely the point Jesus is making in his high priestly prayer. Jesus is praying for unity, not because unity is more comfortable than disunity, not because unity promotes social health, but because the unity of his church communicates a very important message. When unity is lost the message is lost. And when the message is lost, what’s the value of the individual, shredded pieces?
The message of the gospel is connected to our unity with one another.
When we look at the church today, when we look at the Christian landscape, it probably looks to you like this ball of shredded paper. Sin has shredded and then cross-shredded the original design. Are we really unified? There’s schisms, relational fissures, and divisions. It’s so fragmented and chopped into pieces, we hardly believe it’s possible. There’s too much disunity. But that pessimism has no place in God’s church.
There is a design and it can be realized. Let’s see Jesus’ view on this matter. Defining Unity Let’s define the unity design because the type of unity Jesus has in mind is a kind of unity that cannot be known by the world. Let’s observe it in the text. You may remember this from last week.
Here’s my definition of unity that comes out of this text.
In other words, there are differences. And those differences serve a purpose. The differences are by design to advance the mission of God’s kingdom. So what we need is not to remove the differences but to reground ourselves in the truth and mission that binds us.
So rather than an outline today, we are going to take a look at each of the words in this definition of unity.
We are distinct and THAT is NOT a problem. We are different. That is good! Most solutions for division begin by trying to remove the distinctiveness of people. This way of thinking concludes that sameness equals unity. Because after all, if we were the same, then this problem wouldn’t exist, and so let’s implement things that make us more similar.
This is exactly the approach of critical race theory, marxism, facism, communism and many other philosophies that have tried to solve the problem of disunity. These theories share in common that the friction we experience in society is a result of our differences. So we find unity by removing differences. We make you all live in the same houses. We make you all have the same amount of money. We make you all get the same type of education. We make you have the same number of kids.
And the assumption is that if you remove the power differences that exist between people then you will create unity. It’s the belief that the problem is our differences in power, money, advantages, etc.
This is also the approach of feminism. Feminism says that the fundamental problem of oppression is that there should be no distinction between men and women in terms of roles, ways we function in society, opportunities, etc. It’s a belief that the problem is our differences. So there’s this pretty strong push to remove distinctions.
Now here’s why this never works. It never works. Because when is enough? If you focus on sameness in your relationships and sameness is your goal, then who gets to judge when it’s the same enough? History of Feminism Let’s take feminism as an example. You have first wave of feminism which was around the turn of the 20th century. And you have a giant push for sameness and equality in terms of voting. And eventually that was successful. But are things entirely the same? The answer of history is no. That’s not enough.
In 1963, Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, which argued that women were chafing against the confines of their roles as wives and mothers. And that began the second wave of feminsim. So there was a giant push for sameness in terms of working opportunities. And this too was largely successful but are things entirely the same? The answer is no. That’s not enough.
The third wave of feminism began in the 90’s and is characterized by embracing the spirit of rebellion instead of reform, third-wave feminists encouraged women to express their sexuality and individuality.
And that brings us today that some call the 4th wave where we are debating things like intersectionality, transgenderism, and a social media capable of fueling activism in things like the #metoo movement.
We could do something similar and chart the progression of racism throughout the last two centuries. And here’s why this is so confusing to people. Because clearly our culture needed to change. Clearly, the laws that founded America were racist and sexist in nature. No question. And then when the laws were changed, the culture was still systemically racist and sexist. But what’s the solution? Is the solution to achieve sameness? Who’s going to say, “Okay, we’ve come far enough.”
Where’s the equality and sameness finish line? The conversation has turned into a verbal war. We are rioting. We are verbally destroying one another. Is that the solution to our lack of unity?
Year’s ago there was a far side cartoon that I loved and I think this illustrates the problem better than anything I know.
The reason this is funny because it highlights the irony between our stated and functional missions. How can you intentionally destroy life, safely?
And in the same way, there’s an irony in the way our culture is trying to achieve unity. How can you intentionally destroy people and value them? We are using nuclear weapons that are going to destroy society to create unity? Is the path to unity through warheads? Where do we turn? How about to Jesus!
The Christian worldview comes at this from a completely different direction. The Bible isn’t trying to make men and women the same. Men and women are different by design. There is a purpose to the differences in gender. Personalites are different by design. Race is different by design. Cultures are different by design. God created the differences ON PURPOSE.
And so rather than try to eliminate the distinctions and distinctiveness, the Christian says, “Where do I fit into the canvas?” The Christian realizes that all these differences are intended to be stitched together to create a canvas that shouts the glory of God. That’s the design.
The problem is not our differences. Our differences are beautiful. Our differences are what makes the design. If every single bit of paper in this pile were exactly the same there would be no meaning. There would be no message. There could be no design.
The problem is not our differences. The problem is that we are not controlled by a single mission. Unity begins with a common mission.
We are different people going in the same direction. We are different people on the same mission and the differences are designed to achieve a purpose. The direction is what unifies.
You see, once you clarify the mission, then the differences can compliment and supplement one another. And that is why it works. Because the goal never changes. Instead of trying to make men like women or women like men, men act like men to the glory of God and women act like women to the glory of God according to their design. We speak uniquely from our platforms and instead of using our platform and power to bolster our own mission we use our platform and power to bolster the mission of God. And of course the mission of God is about highlighting the love of God for broken sinners. It’s about sharing that love with other people.
The focus has to shift away from sameness to a focus on what the gospel has done to unite our differing missions into one mission. Sameness is difficult to define because some people are always going to be more powerful in some ways and less powerful in others.
We need to focus not on tearing down our differences but instead on tearing down our personal kingdoms. We are all trying to build our kingdoms and that’s why there is conflict. Our problem is we are on different missions. There’s only one kingdom! There’s one mission. It’s the mission of the father.
That’s what Jesus is saying here.
If we don’t share a single goal, if we don’t share a target or destination, then we are all just going to do our own thing. When everyone is doing their own thing, of course it’s going to be a nightmare. Listen to an orchestra warming up:
Is that a beautiful sound? It’s terribly dissonant. What’s the problem? Is the problem that they are not all violins? Do the cellos need to become trumpets? Do the drums need to become french horns? Even if they were all violins, it would still sound like garbage. Why? Because each of them have gone their own way.
But when the conductor comes in and begins to lead them, when they are grounded in a mission (to compose a beautiful piece of music) which is grounded in TRUTH, objective notes on a page that exists outside of their own minds and when their eyes are on the conductor, what do you have? All of a sudden the individual parts become a glorious whole. Here’s that same orchestra united in one mission following a single conductor.
You can hear the violins compliment the cello which compliment the brass. Each in their own part at the right time, some backing down, others rising up. Some not playing at all in parts and then taking the lead elsewhere. All being controlled by the same purpose. That is unity. Unity is achieved with a shared mission.
Remember last week we talked about what it meant for Jesus to consecrate himself?
Jesus set himself apart from common activity to do the activity of the father. He was on the mission of the father. Here’s how Jesus is structuring his thought: I am not going to live for myself. I am consecrated, set-apart to do the will of my father.
So Jesus is on the mission of the father. That’s what creates unity. And how do we enter into that unity. By being on the same mission. We too have a conductor. We have a choirmaster. We have someone who is ORCHESTRATING our life. We are different in our roles but we are unified in our purpose.
Of course it’s going to be madness if everybody just does whatever they want in this world. Do you remember in the OT, the period of the judges? That time period without question was the low point of Israel’s history. I mean, people were sinning like banshees. It was crazy town. And you know how the Bible describes this sewer of Israel’s history?
Judges 17
There was not a shared mission. There was no common purpose. The king provides the purpose but without the king there can be no direction.
Imagine a bunch of balls scattered all over the table. But those balls are all connected by strings to a single point. You could imagine pulling up that point and all the balls come together. Those strings represent the shared mission given by the shared leader.
But notice what else is implied in the chaos that reigns during the period of the judges. Without external direction where does the direction reside? In themselves? In their own eyes? I’m finding direction internally and looking at the world through my eyes. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. Through my eyes, through my perspective, this makes sense. But what happens when another person views it from a different perspective, from a different set of eyes? Who is to judge between the two? Who is to say that one man’s perspective is better than another man’s perspective?
There can be no tiebreaker. And so it’s every man for himself. The only way to break the tie is to allow something from outside of us to come in and make a judgment. We have to submit to an authority outside of ourselves. You want to know what we call that force outside of ourselves? We call that truth.
Now in the text this is pretty obvious feature. Truth is right there in plain sight.
Sanctify them in truth. Your word is truth. If there is no truth there can be no legitimate unity. Why? Because only external forces can truly bind together individual.
You see, if it is true that we are individuals who all see the world differently through our own eyes then we have to agree to submit to something outside of us that overrules both our perspectives. We have to agree to surrender our individual will to a tie-breaker authority beyond either of our two perspectives. We have to say, even though I feel like my violin part ought to be really loud right here the conductor is telling me to be quiet and not play at all. I have to trust that what seems right in my own eyes, is not actually right.
We all operate on what we believe to be true and right in our own eyes. That’s understandable and logical. But you want to know what else is understandable and logical? Not everyone can be right. Just because you believe it to be true doesn’t mean it’s true.
We need to be more self suspecting. We need to be more willing to link the suffering and difficulties in our life to the terrible perspectives we house within our hearts. You see, when we start living our lives according to a lie, then all of a sudden, guess what? There will be consequences. Affairs make adulterers miserable. Lies make liars miserable. Selfishness makes selfish people miserable.
But every adulterer, liar, and selfish person is surprised when it doesn’t work out. We find ourselves surprised when we try to live according to our own truth (which is a lie) instead of God’s truth. We act as if of our belief in our lie ought to change reality. Should it? Of course not. Why should we be surprised?
Two years ago, I sprayed broad leaf killer on my grass to clean up this clover and dandelions that were destroying my lawn. So I got pretty aggressive and really soaked them. But turns out I grabbed the wrong bottle and it was round up. And of course these giant patches of my lawn got scorched. I murdered my lawn. Of course, I had the best of intentions. But what I believed to be true didn’t matter. Why? Because truth exists outside of whatever is going on in my thinking. It doesn’t matter what I think at the end of the day, truth is truth. What is true will be true regardless of what I want.
Truth will unite because it exists outside of who we are. Something beyond the individual has to organize and bind us together. Just think about it in the physical realm for a moment. I can only be bound to another person by a chain that exists outside both our bodies. I could never be bound to another person by my own arm. The other person could just shake me off or I could let go. And vice versa. Something outside of us has to connect us.
Truth and mission are those two things. Here’s my favorite thing about truth. It just is. It just sits there. It’s unkillable. It’s unarguable. In a world of bickering, fighting, bullying, biting, yelling, screaming, petty opinions flying this way and that, people’s feelings getting hurt here and there, grudges, bitterness, anger, resentment: truth is like a giant titanium cube in the center of the town square. It just is. It’s unaffected. It doesn’t even exist in the domain of all the yelling and screaming. Try yelling at a giant cube of titanium truth and see if you can get a reaction. Truth just exists outside of us. It’s true whether you like it or not agree with it or not. It was, is, and will be. Time can’t change it. People can’t change it. Chance can’t change it. It just is.
Unity begins with a shared mission rooted in truth. Now here’s the reason that mission and that truth are in fact unifying. Because they originate from God himself. That’s the reason for the word divine.
You see the pieces have to be ordered and fit together if there is to be meaning.. If you just took a million pieces of shredded paper from across the world and tried to stitch them together there would be no way to do it because there has to be an original design. The differences would have no meaning.
But in the case of God’s children, there is meaning. There is an intended differences which create meaning in the design.
In the same way that the strokes of a paintbrush come from the mind of an artist and bind the painting together, the glue that binds us together in our differences originate in God himself. God, when he created us, has a masterpiece in mind. There’s a reason for the differences.
Now follow this because this is so key to the concept of Christian unity: in the same way that the Father and the Son share unity we are to share in that unity. See it in the text.
All true Christian unity patterns itself after the way the Father and Son relate to one another. You see it further in verse 22.
What is Jesus saying? Christians need to be unified in the same way that Father and son are unified. In other words, whatever unity exists among believers needs to be a replica of the unity that exists between father and son. And what kind of unity does the father and son share? Unity in mission rooted in truth. They were one in the mission of redemption. They played completely different roles, but were one in purpose. They were one in love for humanity. They were one in their love of glory. The Big Picture Now there’s a result of unity. There’s a message that is communicated in unity. And here it is.
The phrase ‘so that’ is a purpose phrase. It tells us the result of unity. God designed unity to communicate a message to a watching world.
Do you realize, that your witness, your testimony, your light, much of your gospel power comes from the way in which you relate to the community? Sure, you can share your personal testimony and you should but what will prove to a watching world that the father sent the son and what will prove to a watching world but the father loves them is the beauty of unity.
You want to know the portrait that is painted when the church lives together in unity? They see Christ. Christ is seen. Each Christian like an individual pixel on a screen that paints the beauty of the love of God. That they may become perfectly one, SO THAT the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.
Now in order to experience unity, what needs to change? Well, this might be obvious, but it’s our hearts.
Let’s get real…the thing that needs uniting is our heart. People don’t need uniting as if the problem is with the skin or shapes of bodies or preferred habits. What needs uniting is the heart.
You see the division on the outside is merely a symptom of division on the inside. The real division, the real schism, the real fissure is in the heart.
Now it might be helpful to show how these two concepts relate by looking at Psalm 86. So let’s look at this Psalm:
Psalm 86
Now what’s he saying? He’s saying this is how it ought to be. This is what a whole heart looks like, a complete heart, a unified heart. It’s what we talked about last week. He’s describing a complete heart that is committed to the glory of the Lord. And that’s what is expressed!
Now notice how TRUTH, GLORY, and UNITY relate here.
Teach me your way. Give me TRUTH. Sanctify me in truth. Your word is truth. Now look. What does that truth do? That truth unites my heart. The problem of disunity is that the heart is divided. We are fragmented creatures. The heart is disordered. We have conflicting impulses in us.
We aren’t whole. We aren’t on the same mission We aren’t singular in focus. But, when we are confronted with truth, that truth defrags our heart. The heart becomes united, and out of that unity of heart comes worship and we glorify the Lord.
This is a description of David’s personal experience but it perfectly maps onto our corporate experience of division, dissension and disunity.
When our individual hearts unite, we see the glory of God. The glory of God shines in us. And that collective shining is what unifies. And it is what communicates the message of the gospel. But without that, there can be no unity. You want to know what this ball of shredded paper is? It’s Van Gogh’s famous painting Starry Night.
This was painted in 1889. Van Gogh was increasingly disillusioned by institutionalized religion and he painted this picture to describe the deep state of despair in his soul. So you have in the painting a deep indigo sky which is representative of the infinite presence of God. The heavenly bodies are yellow which was van Gogh’s color for sacred love.
So the heavens are declaring the glory of God. Kind of like our introduction from last week from Psalm 19:1. Then you have the divine light of the heavens repeated in all the little buildings below.
But there’s one building with no light at all, it’s the church. Its darkness speaks of God’s judgment. It’s just icy, cold, and dead. It’s distorted in shape. That’s a sad picture.
Now what makes the church dead? What makes it cold? What causes the light to go out? You know what the answer is? The light does not originate in the people of the church. We simply reflect in our hearts, the glory of God. We as a people look to God, see God, revel in God, worship God, and then suddenly we become collectively BRIGHT. Why? Because we are all on the same mission to point people to the all-satisfying person of Jesus Christ. We are all on the same mission to glorify God.
The glory of the heavens shines in the people of the church and that collective GAZE creates UNITY. The light doesn’t come from the people. The unity doesn’t come from the people. It comes from the heavens. Application So how do we pursue unity? What are the practical steps we need to take in order to apply this passage?
Ask yourself the question: what mission am I on? Whose Kingdom am I trying to build? Are you transfixed and amazed at the glory of God? Is your focus on him? If so, you will find yourself in joyful lockstep with others who are marching in the same direction. And that joyful lockstep will be attractive. It will communicate something beautiful to a watching world.
Slideshow for this message is available
Introduction John 17
Today we get to eavesdrop on one of the greatest recorded prayers ever prayed. And we are going to tackle this great prayer in two sermons which feels to me like trying to eat an elephant in two bites.
Now, if you are a normal human being, your brain is going to rebel and resist some of the concepts in the message today. The concepts are not intuitive. What is supposed to be beautiful, attractive and deeply satisfying may not appear that way to you. In fact, you may even feel offended. You may just be confused or disoriented. But don’t trust that reaction. Just because something doesn’t initially look good doesn’t mean it isn’t good. Our feelings sometimes lie to us.
For example, when I first heard about the concept of sushi, I thought it was the most disgusting thought ever. Raw fish? Are you kidding. That’s gross. But people kept on telling me it was amazing. I kept looking at it from a distance wondering what I was missing. And once I finally dove in and was able to open my mind to it, it’s not just palatable, it’s now my favorite food.
What this passage does is teach us to love the glory of God. Maybe you already love it, or you are learning to love it, or maybe you looks at it from a distance like raw fish. Why would I want that? That’s okay because by default, our spiritual palate isn’t adjusted to it.
We say things like, “Isn’t that kind of arrogant of God to want his own glory? God is jealous for his own glory? What kind of monster says that?” Of maybe you say, “Well if we are allowed to talk like that, then if I’m honest, I kind of like it when I get glory. Can I be jealous for my own glory?””
But believe me, loving the glory of God is so much more delicious than loving your own glory.
And let me give you an example of how that can be. Just give me 3 minutes. Here’s a video of our sun. Every second of this video is one day of footage.
The sun is amazing. There’s so much power here, it just boggles the mind. It’s about the equivalent of 1,820,000,000 of the most power nuclear bombs ever invented every second. Temperatures inside the Sun can reach 15 million degrees Celsius. The sun generates this intense solar wind which is a stream of charged particles that travel around 450 km per second through the solar system. And of course the size! This one star is very large compared to our earth. About a million earth’s could fit inside the sun.
But it’s very small compared to other stars.
And of course that’s just one star in our galaxy that contains 200 billion stars.
And of course that’s just one galaxy in the estimated 200-400 billion galaxies.
A star is an amazing thing.
But what IS a star?
In C.S. Lewis’ story, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, there’s a conversation about the nature of stars. In C.S. Lewis’ world of Narnia stars are very different than the stars in our world. And so one of the characters named Eustace points this out. Eustace says, “In our world, a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.” And then there’s this powerful line, “Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of.”
What is a star? In other words, what is it for? What is its purpose? What is the meaning of a star? The Bible has an answer for this:
Psalm 19
A star is glory-beacon proclaiming the power of God. When I look at a star, I realize that there’s a massive God out there and it isn’t me. There is a being out there with serious glory.
When we look at a star and we think how massive and powerful that is and we think, “God made that?” Suddenly he has GLORY in our thinking. He has gravity in our mind. If God is that powerful, he matters. His opinion ought to heavily factor into my decision making. Right?
What is a star? It’s a glory-flashlight. It’s a glory-syringe to inject the towering majesty of God into our imagination. That’s what a star IS. That’s the design, purpose, meaning.
Now the reason I bring this up is because most of us can appreciate the glory of God, the WEIGHT of God by looking at stars. A star is a glory-beacon. That’s what it is. We like that kind of glory.
But at the end of the day, that’s what everything is. Why does anything exist? Why is anything the way it is? Why is there suffering? Why is there mountains? Why is there simplicity and complexity. Because in the end, it all brings God glory. The Bible teaches us that all of history, all of activity, our life, the birds, whales, our life, everything points to the glory of God, is about the glory of God. Passage Today Now the passage today teaches us this: The very pinnacle display of the glory of God, the very height, the towering peak of the glory of God is not stars or galaxies or supernovas or black holes as amazing as they are. It’s not whales or the human genome. The very pinnacle of the glory of God is the love of God. And the most GLORIOUS display of the love of God is the cross.
So, when we look to the cross, and see the supreme, ultimate love of Christ, we are beholding the most brilliant, blinding glory point in all the universe. The love of God for sinful men is like a giant star that shines forth the glory of God. It’s massive, bright, and eye-watering. It’s the loudest proclamation of the weight, splendor and GRAVITY of who God IS.
That’s what God IS. God IS LOVE and THAT is GLORIOUS. That’s the main point of the high priestly prayer. So first, it’s important that you just see that with your own eyes!
Now you can see the glory of God everywhere in this section.
But we need to see that the glory mentioned here is linked to the love of God for us via the cross. And the way to do that is to note something we pointed out clear back in the beginning of John. All through the book of John, Jesus’ life is threatened in some way or some sort of expectation is thrust upon him and Jesus keeps saying, “My hour has not yet come,” (2:4; 7:6; 7:8; 7:30; 8:20). And every time John uses this phrase, he’s referencing what? What’s the hour? The hour of death? The hour where he will be crucified.
But look at what he says here. Now what does he say? The hour has come. It’s time. The hour has come to what? To be glorified… So therefore, the hour of maximum glory is the hour he hangs in death because it’s through the cross that the love of God is manifest. The cross will be the stage upon which the glory-love of God is revealed.
Do you see that? The greatest evidence of God’s glory is his love and goodness to undeserving people. Has someone hurt you badly? Have you felt betrayed, injured? Think about how hard it is to forgive that person much less love them?! Much less die for them! That is GLORY my friends. GLORY!
I want to point out something you may have never noticed before. Do you remember in the OT when Moses was trying to lead a bunch of rebellious people? I mean these guys were outright criminals. And he needed some encouragement. Man, is this whole leading your people thing even worth it?
Exodus 33
What is the response to the request of Moses? God show me just how amazing you are. Show me your gravitas. Show us that thing about you that would just blow my mind. Show me the thing about you that makes you the most glorious being in the universe.
How does God respond? Does he give Moses a glimpse into the center of a star, the center of a galaxy? No, look at this.
You want to behold the glory of God? God says, “Look at my goodness. Look at my graciousness. Look at my mercy. You want to behold the glory of God? Then look at my love.” Moses asks for glory; God gives him just the trailing edge of his goodness.
We see the full splendor in the cross. It’s true. In some ways, we probably see more than Moses. Seeing and beholding and reveling in the glory of God is the entire point of history. In Habakkuk 2 when Habakkuk looks forward to a day of restoration, do you know how he describes this future kingdom day of joy? Habakkuk 2:14, “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.”
What does that mean? That means, the whole earth will know the height and depth and length and breadth of God’s love. They will see, according to this passage, the trinitarian love of God how the Son loves the Father and the Father in turn loves the Son. And they will see how the trinitarian love of God spills over into his love of humanity. And when we see that love, when we see that GLORY, we will worship.
Now until that day, Jesus is going to pray for his followers, 5 things. There’s 5 things for which Jesus petitions the Father.
Now the reason this protection is necessary is twofold. Jesus as their direct protector is going to be leaving the world. But more significantly, the world is going to hate them.
You see the world as defined by John is this domain that exists in open hostility to the kingdom of God. So the picture is you have two countries with their respective citizens living in them. And those countries are at absolute war with one another. It’s Ukraine and Russia. The tensions are building. All the guards are up. The propaganda of the one country teaches you to hate the citizens of the other country.
Now let’s say you are a citizen of Russia right now working in the highest level of Russia’s military headquarters. And then all of a sudden you flip allegiances. Uh, that’s a problem. You have gone from an important executive with power and respect to a traitor. Your actual life is at risk.
And that is exactly what happens when you become a follower of Jesus Christ. You are transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of the beloved Son in Christ Jesus. You are perceived as a traitor. Your loyalty is now with another. You are praising the King of another country. You follow his orders. You love their values.
And because of that you now become a threat to a way of life and everything valued in that country. Why would you desert our country? You too good for us? Let’s kill him. And so Jesus prays for our protection knowing the world will always be hostile to the message of the gospel.
Now, here’s just an aside. Ukraine and Russia are heavily in the news right now and we need to pray for them. But I want to instruct us how to pray.
We’ve supported Vladamir and Yulia Vlashenko. Years ago they were serving in Cremia in the southern part of Ukraine before it was Annexed by Russia. Now they are in Poltava which is close to the Eastern border with Russia. Recently we’ve received an update from Slavic Gospel Association that they are safe but things are changing hourly.
Now Bret Laird who is a good friend of mine was our connection to Ukraine. He served in a seminary there for 15 years. We visited him on several missions trips. He’s preached here at this church on several occasions.
So there’s very few people more qualified to comment on this and here’s what he says in a post from this week:
To understand what is happening and why, we need to look beyond the physical warfare which fills our screens to the spiritual warfare that is unseen.
Ephesians 6:12 reminds us: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”
When the Soviet Union collapsed, and with it the state-imposed atheism of the Communists, there was a great spiritual harvest. Millions came to faith in Christ. And while the Lord brought in a harvest from all over the former Soviet nations, by far the greatest number of conversions occurred in Ukraine.
Ukraine has always been the “Bread Basket” of eastern Europe, and that is true not only agriculturally, but spiritually. Ukraine is truly “The Bible Belt”–not only of the Slavic countries–but now of Europe itself. And beginning in the mid-2000’s, churches all across Ukraine began sending missionaries to the least-reached and hardest to reach peoples of the world. The Bread of Life is going forth from the fertile spiritual soil in Ukraine to every continent on earth.
THAT beloved, is what Satan is desperately trying to stop. THAT is the spiritual warfare behind the physical warfare. Satan’s primary strategies have always been to POLLUTE the message of the gospel or to PERSECUTE the messengers of the gospel.
But here’s the good news: The Word of God cannot be chained. As millions of Ukrainians flee the violence, there will be many born-again believers among them. And they–just like they did in the first Russian invasion in 2014–will carry the gospel of Jesus Christ with them wherever they go.
What men intend for evil, God will use for good.
I lived among these believers. I know them. I’ve seen how they respond to war and to life as refugees. I’ve seen their courage and their devotion to Christ firsthand. So I am confident–and praying–that they, like the refugees from the church in Jerusalem described in Acts 8:4, will take the gospel with them wherever they are scattered by this invasion.
“Those who had been scattered went about preaching the word.” -Acts 8:4
THAT is what GOD is doing.
What better way to apply the sermon that to pray for protection for these brothers and sisters. Let’s just take a second mid-sermon here to pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ in Ukraine. Jesus prays for protection. Let’s pray that for them.
Now I won’t say a lot about this now, because next week this is going to be the focus of the sermon. I told you this was a prayer broken into two sermon-sized bites and this point will be the second bite.
The one thing we will say today is that true Christian unity finds its power in the very nature of the Godhead and flows out of the love of God for us. That’s the nuclear core.
It’s so incredibly different than ANY other kind of unity. The power is there and we are praying for God to do this work among us as a body.
Now the word sanctify in English comes from the Latin word sanctus which means holy. So really it’s a word that means holify. And the word holy means to be separate or to set apart away from common use.
So take it out of the realm of religion for a moment. In our home we have a cupboard with all our cups. And they get used constantly. There are some plastic cups and some thick glass cups. They are strong, durable. They get kicked around.
But then when my daughter has a birthday party with her friends, out come the tea party cups. And these are super fragile, beautiful thin walled cups with ornate decorations. These cups are set apart. They are holy unto tea-parties. That’s what the word HOLY means. Set apart unto a very special purpose. There’s common use cups. And then there set apart, holy cups. Do you see the difference?
So God all through the Bible is called holy. In fact, that’s how Jesus addresses the Father at the beginning of the prayer, “Holy Father.” He’s set apart from humanity. There’s common man. And then there’s God. Totally different. Totally other.
You have common power. And then there’s God’s HOLY power. Separate and distinct and totally other.
You have common love. And then there’s God’s HOLY love. Separate and distinct and totally other.
And so Jesus here is praying that we would be sanctified, holified in truth. You see, the way this sanctification happens, the way this holification happens is through the truth, through the WORD OF GOD.
All through the Bible it is the Word of God which sanctifies his people: Joshua (Joshua 1:8–9), an Israelite king (Deuteronomy 17:18–20), and any faithful believer (Psalm 1:2).
But it is a very specific truth of the Word of God that ultimately SANCTIFIES us. And we can discover what Jesus is referencing specifically by asking ourselves this question: “What does Jesus mean here by sanctifying himself?”
You don’t see as obvious in the English translation. The translators tried to make this less confusing by using the word consecration. But it kind of masks an important concept.
Notice the ESV says consecrate (Jesus says, “For their sake I consecrate myself,”). But that’s not what the Greek says. The Greek word is sanctify.
So what does it mean that Jesus sanctifies himself? Obviously, it can’t mean to get rid of sin since Jesus had no sin to eliminate. No, instead what he means is that he sets himself apart from common activities of man to do his Father’s will, and his Father’s will alone — and that means he willingly, gladly goes to the cross, however repulsive and horrifying the prospect is. Do you see the idea?
If I sanctify myself for the purpose of the father, namely going to the cross, then it will be through my sanctification, that my followers will be sanctified. The obedience of Christ makes sinners holy.
Because unlike Jesus, we can never be sanctified, set apart for God, without Christ first setting himself apart to do the Father’s will.
That is the good news; that is the gospel; that is the truth. That truth is what truly sanctifies us.
This whole prayer is about us patterning ourselves after the Godhead. Do you see it? Christ’s sanctification mission becomes now becomes our mission. Because Christ set himself apart from common activities of the world to do the father’s activity, namely to save us, we now as saved people set ourselves apart from the common activities of the world to pursue the father’s activity of sharing the good news with others.
So what does that mean for you? You don’t do what the world does with your time or your money. Your time is sanctified, set apart for God. You don’t run your business like other people run their businesses. You don’t work for your boss like other people work for their bosses. Why? Because you are set apart. It’s redeemed for holy purposes. So take a look at what you do? How much of it is sanctified and how much of it is common? How much of it advances the mission of God? That’s the only question that, in the end, truly matters.
Jesus is here praying for our joy. That is wonderful. That is so encouraging. Do you feel like you lack joy right now? Jesus has prayed for you that the same joy that he experienced might be experienced in you.
Do you want to be as happy as Jesus? Jesus has prayed for you that it might be so. Now don’t think that means that you will be free of trials. Jesus praying for the disciples joy does not mean that they will be free of uncomfortable circumstances. Literally the verse before this prayer Jesus says, “In this world you will have tribulation.”
2 Timothy 3:12 says, “All those who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”
Persecution, suffering, trials does not equal joyless living. Do you believe that? Jesus is praying for the kind of joy he had. Was that circumstantial?
Hebrews 12
There has to be a lot of joy in front of a person to endure the cross. Don’t you think? What was his joy? His joy was the glory of the Father. The glory of the Father flooded his horizon so that was all he could see. Do you see how beautiful that is? Do you see how marvelous and glorious that is? And what is the ultimate glory of the Father? What is the most GLORIOUS attribute of the father? His Love. Jesus saw the LOVE of God and is praying that you too might see the Love of God and be transformed by it.
Is that not incredible?
Jesus’ own joy in doing his Father’s will was based on his ability to see the love of God for him. And that is where our joy comes from as well. As we see the glory of God which really is another way of saying, as we see the love of God, we are delighted and thrive regardless of circumstances. Even though the word joy isn’t used, look at verse 24. You can hear it just oozing out of the text.
Jesus just longs for his followers to see the love of God. That longing to be with the father, to do the will of the father who loves him so much. That is what he wants. This is the joy that Jesus prays for his disciples.
Fifthly and finally, Jesus prays that we would be with God forever in heaven. That we would have that eternal life that has been such a focus in the book of John.
Again, what is life? THIS is eternal life: that they KNOW the Father. This is the goal. This is the end. This is heaven. Knowing God. That’s it. There’s nothing better. There’s nothing more infinite.
If you’re picture of heaven is camping or sitting by a pool or enjoying great food, you are a million miles away. You are nowhere in the zipcode of heaven. What is life? What is eternal life? What is heaven? KNOWING GOD. Reveling and basking in the glory of God. That’s what it means to GLORIFY God, to simply recognize what is. To simply acknowledge his otherness, his separateness, his supreme attractiveness, his worth, his towering love, his infinite love, his life-giving, bitterness-melting, overflowing love. That is heaven.
That’s why everything is about glorifying God. We come back full circle to the glory of God. Look at the picture of the throneroom in Rev 4.
Revelation 4-5
And then he describes 24 thrones with elders and four living creatures who were praising God. And then you get this climactic scene at the end.
This is life: that they might know the father. This is eternal life: knowing that God. FCBC, this is life; there is no greater life. Jesus says, I am the way the truth and the life. Why is that? Because life is in the father. No man comes to the father except through me.
Thus the ultimate petition, the final petition, the mega-petition is to see the glory of God which is to say, that the final petition, the mega-petition is to see the love of God in sending his Son to be the Savior of the world. Application Now, I want to pause for a moment. I mean this kind of thinking is so lofty. It’s so grand. But just stop for a moment. Think about who Jesus is praying for. You know who these people are; you’ve been reading about them. All they ever do is quarrel. All they ever do is doubt. They gossip. They whisper in secret about whose better. All they ever do is scramble for preeminence. And worse still. They’re about to desert him and deny him within a matter of hours.
And for these people he’s praying for protection, unity, sanctification, joy, life. The disciples were a train wreck. They were a mess. In a strange sort of way, that is a tremendous comfort.
Because we are a mess. Who here comes without significant embarrassment in the dark corners of your life? Who here has it all together? Who here is free from sin? We are all a mess. If being broken and sinful describes you, welcome to the party. Jesus is praying for you. Jesus is interceding for you. Jesus is your advocate. Jesus is your defender. It is through Jesus that you will see the father and fall on your face and cry out HOLY, HOLY, HOLY!
You see at the end of the day, it’s not that you accept Jesus into your heart. Jesus places you into the Father. You did not choose me. I chose you. Jesus is doing the work. Do you not see, that no matter what goes down in your life, Jesus loves you. You can’t separate yourself from the love of God. And the glorious, brilliant, blinding, star-like nature of that divine, perfect love is going to gnaw at those places of rebellion and break it down and it’s going to grow and grow and grow until your entire horizon is filled with it and then it’s going to leak out of you and into others and the whole earth is filled with the knowledge of his Glory and the experience of his LOVE.
Slideshow for this message is available
Introduction John 14-17
Water is such a dynamic medium. If you spend a lot of time near a large body of water, you get the privilege of watching it go through all sorts of variation. There are times when the water gets so smooth, it’s like a mirror. It’s so smooth it almost feels like a crime to throw a stone in on it.
Then there are other times when the wind starts howling and skys darken and the waves just leap up off the water and crash down. It’s scary to be out on the water in those conditions.
Water is a good metaphor for the heart. When there’s a lot of stress and anxiety and pressure in life and the heart is stormy with worry, fear, unresolved tension, we call that troubled. But when all that tension melts away, and it’s a smooth, calm day and your toes are in the sand and there’s not even a ripple on the shore, we call that peace. Who wants some of that? Of course we do!
We all want peace. We crave it. Jesus in the passage today tells us how peace can be possible even in the midst of the storm. The kind of peace he’s offering isn’t environmental. It’s not a breathing technique or stress management tip. It’s a gift of the Spirit of God. Review We are in the end of John chapter 16 and we would benefit to recall that everything from John 13-17 takes place on Thursday night of the passion week, the night before Jesus dies. So these are his last words. Packed into these chapters is the summary of the most important things that Jesus wants his disciples to understand before he leaves this world.
Jesus knows that a great and terrible day of future suffering is coming for the disciples. He knows they aren’t prepared for it. What they need is this supernatural a heart-as-smooth-as-glass peace. Even though the world is raging, their hearts are still. How can the disciples experience peace in the midst of suffering? That is the focus of everything Jesus says. And the end of chapter 16 is a summary of how to get peace which really is a summary of the entire discourse.
Any offer of peace must contain three things. And without those three things it cannot be a true offer of peace.
Truth is a huge theme in the upper room discourse. We are in John 16 but if we jump back just a bit to John 14.
Truth, truth, truth. What you need for the coming suffering is truth believed but not yet seen. We call that faith. Why is this so important? Because in suffering your feelings will run in the opposite direction of truth. Your feelings are derived from what is seen.
Remember from last time we were in John? He uses that great analogy of childbearing. As a woman goes through labor and her entire horizon is filled with pain and she cries out. In that moment the suffering eclipses the reward.
In that moment what does she FEEL? This isn’t worth it! This is terrible. Her feelings focus only on what she can see - pain! But the truth is, it is worth it. When the baby finally comes, the reward far outstrips the suffering. She smiles and rejoices and gladly accepts the suffering.
Truth not seen, which we call faith, is able to regulate and stabilize the feelings that arise in suffering.
Now what he’s saying here is that this grounding truth is revealed progressively. What do we mean by progressive? In the eyeglass industry they offer us progressive lenses. Which means the prescription starts low and as you look up the prescription gradually increases.
In the same way, truth is progressive. Truth begins with a very low comprehension. In other words, we understand what the words mean but they have a very low impact. But as you look up, as history unfolds, as you grow in your faith, you see more and more clearly.
Now specifically for the disciples, he’s referencing the contrast between what is enigmatic or cryptic during the ministry of Jesus, and what becomes plain or clear after Jesus’ death, resurrection, glorification, and the giving of the Spirit.
Jesus says, right now you are living in a fog. Fog obscures reality. It’s all there. It’s all present, but the fog obscures it. It can’t be seen until that fog is lifted. No matter how hard you try to stare, it’s just a sheet of flat gray.
Jesus is saying, “Trust me; it will all make sense. Trust me; when the fog lifts you will see.” The truth will be there in plain sight. You will understand. It will no longer have to be understood through metaphors (ie. it’s like a woman in childbirth). It will be as obvious as the noon day sun.
What is this truth that they could not yet see? Suffering precedes glory. That in order to reign, Christ would first have to suffer. That in order to give us life, he’d have to give his life. That in order for the wall of separation to be torn down, his flesh would have to be torn. That in order to rise he would first have to fall. That God would have to be just and the justifier of all those who believe.
We now see this. The fog is lifted for us. The truth is glorious. We see through powerful progressive lenses. But they could not. Here’s why this is so important. BECAUSE, in SUFFERING, it FELT like the father had BETRAYED them. In suffering it felt like it was all a giant mistake.
THAT’S what it FELT like. That was not the TRUTH. The truth was, they were in a fog. After the resurrection, everything Jesus had said would come into focus. The words would loose their mysterious character. The fog would lift. And they would finally understand the nature of the Father. The Father had not betrayed them. The father had saved them. The Holy Spirit would bring to mind all that Jesus said and it would finally make sense. Do you remember the disciples on the road to Emmaus? After Jesus rose, Jesus appeared to them.
Luke 24
It was all making sense. Finally, the penny dropped.
Now the point of application for me and you: do not think that just because you have the truth in front of you, you apprehend everything that can be understood. We see through a glass dimmly. Whatever truth you relish, you relish in a mere 1/10th part of the reality at best.
How many of you have had the experience where you read a part of the Bible and even though you’ve read it a thousand times, something about it leaps off the page and you say to yourself, “How is it that I never saw that before?” I feel that way with the entire book of John. I’ve read the book of John so many times in my life, and yet this time through it’s like it’s all brand new!
And so the lesson is this: do not make decisions based on what you can see is true. Make decisions based on what you are told is true. Because there is always more than meets the eye. There is more to be seen.
Because suffering is coming. And that suffering will rock you back on your heels such that everything you ever thought was true no longer feels true. But it is true; so believe it.
That is faith. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for the conviction of things not yet seen. Faith is the assurance of truth not yet seen.
That truth believed makes for peace. Any offer of peace must contain three things. And without those three things it cannot be a true offer of peace.
Here’s the second point.
Here’s just a bedrock truth that will sustain you through any suffering. God loves you.
Again, this is a huge theme in the discourse. John 15:12-13, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”
Now this is a little clunky in our ears but here’s the point he’s making. Yes, you will ask in my name but don’t think that means that I have to petition this grumpy father who is resistant to helping you. That his natural inclination is against you and I have to go up there and change his mind.
That’s not it at all! Far from it: the Father himself loves you, and needs no prompting from the Son. God loves you. Why is this so important to recall? Because there is one question (and it’s always the same question) that arises in suffering. If God loves me, why is he allowing me to suffer?
The fact that we ever ask that question, proves we are in a fog. All I see is evil. All I feel is pain. And you are telling me that this suffering is for my good. How do I know that is true? It is true, but the fog obscures it.
We can’t possibly understand how evil, pain, suffering could work out to the glory of God. We try to make sense of it: if God claims to loves us, and if God claims to have the power to remove the suffering, but he chooses not to, then there are only three options.
God is not telling the truth: He does not love us God is not telling the truth: He lacks the power to remove the suffering The suffering is ultimately for good
That is why understanding the love of God is so important. If we really believe he loves us then we won’t question that suffering is for our good. It’s the only option where God is not a liar.
How it’s possible for God to use suffering for good can be seen if we stop for a moment and think about the relationship between truth and love. As much as we say we are for truth, none of us like truth when that truth is directed at us in unflattering ways. Our suspicion arises when someone stabs us with truth. It hurts. It feels malicious. Friends don’t hurt one another. You have stabbed me with truth for no apparent good reason.
For example, if out of the blue, someone smacks your neck from behind with with a rolled up newspaper just as you are ready to sip your coffee, you will likely erupt in anger. What in the world! Why did you do that? I spilled all over my freshly washed clothes. You will perceive it as an attack from an enemy. But if the person replies, “You had a giant black widow on your neck about ready to bite you,” then your perspective shifts. You realize it was for your good. Your perspective shifts because you now understand the reason.
If you had 100% confidence that only good was always intended, you would not react that way. You would instinctively look for the good even in the hurt. But since sin and malice and evil are so common, so woven into the fabric of our experience, so part and parcel of the air we breathe, we are programmed to conclude that all hurtful words are delivered from the mouths of unloving people.
Think about it, what’s the main reason conflicts go bad? What’s the main reason that people get hurt and angry and bitter one toward another? What’s the main reason that tensions rise and there cannot be resolve? Because we don’t believe that they are ultimately for us. We believe their hurtful words are delivered out of spite, jealousy, envy, retaliation, bitterness. We cannot receive truth because we don’t believe it is the truth because we don’t believe the other person loves us. And because we don’t believe the other person loves us we don’t believe they have our interest in mind when the truth injury thrust is inflicted. Instead we yell, “You are trying to hurt me and injure me!”
What Jesus is saying here is this, “I want you to understand that the Father loves you. I love you. And there will be a period of time when all you feel is the wack on the head with a rolled up newspaper and you won’t have an answer. You will have no explanation. Why in the world would God allow this to happen? In that moment, you will have no answer to console you. The only thing you will have is the belief that God loves you. Let that be enough.”
This has been the plan all along. This injury has been the plan from the beginning.
Many commentators see in this verse the summary of the entire ministry of Jesus. It’s hard to disagree. This is the summary of the redemptive plan of God which is to say, this is the summary of the love of God. It harkens back to John 3. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should have everlasting life. For God did not send his Son to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. This is the mission of God from the beginning. LOVE. Now, Jesus speaks all these things, and the disciples latch on thinking they get it.
No misunderstanding is more pathetic than the misunderstanding which insists there is not misunderstanding. That’s what is going on here. The disciples clearly DO NOT understand. They exclaim and pronounce understanding but they clearly do not get it.
They think that the time for speech without mystery is now. They think that the time for clarity that he’s referencing is the current moment just because he switched from a metaphor to an indicative statement. And we know that this is the proper interpretation because of how Jesus responds. Look at what Jesus says. Read this expression of Jesus with heavy exasperation, maybe even sarcasm.
You think you believe. You don’t believe. And the coming hour of testing will prove it. The coming hour of testing will find you all wanting in a very significant manner. Peter had already been warned of his future failure. But now it’s not just Peter. Every disciple is in the crosshairs. You are all going to deny me. Why? Because you don’t yet see. You don’t fully believe. You cannot comprehend the plan of God just yet.
One of the lessons of the Scriptures is to teach us self-doubt. You think you believe? You think you are doing it for the Lord? You think your motives are pure? You think you are strong. You think your theology is rich and powerful and pure. You think you can weather a storm with that bedrock belief of yours.
Say it to Jesus. What will he likely say back to you? Now you believe?! Nope. You really don’t. It seems so harsh. It seems so cruel to question the sincerity of my belief. Nothing is more insulting than to question the validity of someone’s feelings. It’s like the greatest insult. It seems like such a merciless, unnecessary thrust.
But here’s the thing. It’s true. Our belief is so small, so fickle, so temperamental, so conditioned upon our comfort and good circumstances. And Jesus exposes that. You believe as much as you can. But your belief is inadequate and I will make it adequate through suffering.
All through the gospels Jesus is in the business of dampening down the enthusiastic confessions of faith.
John 2 - Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. - But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.
John 6 - Lord to whom shall we turn? - You have the words of eternal life. - Did I not choose you and one of you is a devil?
Mark 8 - Who Do People say that I am? - You are the Christ, the son of the living God. - Three sentences later Jesus says to Peter, “Get behind me Satan. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”
Mark 10 - Peter says, “See Lord, we have left everything to follow you.” - Many who are first will be last and the last shall be first.
Mark 14 - Peter said to him, “Even though they all fall away, I will not.” - And Jesus said to him, “Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.” - But he said emphatically, “If I must die with you, I will not deny you.” And they all said the same.
What is the lesson? Our faith is week. Our sight is week. You might feel like you believe, but don’t trust those feelings. Do not trust that we who see the truth are strong but that the God who sees, will make you strong through truth. Do not trust that we have a strong love for God. Trust that a strong God has love for us.
The emphasis is on the God of truth and LOVE who helps us believe. In order to have peace we must have truth and love. But there’s a third thing needed in any offer of peace: power.
And here’s why? Because without power, all the love in the world cannot stop evil. In order to stop evil you must be stronger than it. We can stop a marble from rolling across the table because we can easily overcome it’s power. We can stop a caterpillar from inching his way across the floor because we are so much more powerful.
But there are so many things we can’t stop. Why can’t we stop a virus? Because we lack the power to operate in the realm of the invisible. Why can’t we stop volcanoes, tsunamis? We aren’t strong enough to stop the earth’s crust from moving. Why can’t we stop crime, corruption, rape? Because no person has power in the invisible realm of the human heart.
We can’t do it. We can wish that these catastrophes did not exists. But we lack the power to actually overcome it. You cannot overestimate how important the question of power is. Does God have sufficient power to overcome the evil? Is the suffering purposeful or mindless? Is it a product of chance or a product of design? Can it be controlled or not? Can it be stopped or not? Listen to the words of Jesus.
I have overcome the world. Whatever evil purpose exists. My purpose triumphs over it’s purpose. Hallelujah.
Notice that the text says, “In the world you will have tribulation.” That is a flat out guarantee. The God of perfect love and infinite power says that tribulation will be part of your life. Accept that.
The reason this is so important is that it challenges one of the most fundamental assumptions of the industrialized Western world.
Here is that assumption: if we are interested in maximizing the welfare of our citizens, the way to do that is to maximize individual freedom and eliminate suffering. Why? Because the more freedom we have and the less suffering we experience, the happier we will be. This, I think, is so deeply embedded in the water supply that it would never occur to anyone to even question it.
And yet, Jesus says here, “In the world you will have tribulation.” Why? Answer, because I love you and I want to give you peace.
How can that be? How can the prison of suffering that is inflicted by the hands of evil men be for my good and bring peace? Answer: Because I have overcome the evil. I am more powerful than the evil that produced the suffering; therefore, my purposes will ultimately succeed over evil’s purposes. I have overcome it all. There are sovereign purposes that you don’t yet see, but exist. Can you accept that?
This is powerful folks. Jesus is saying that the reason we can persevere is because of the triumph of Jesus: I have overcome the world (cf. 12:31; 1 Cor. 15:57; 1 Jn. 2:13–14; 4:4; 5:4–5).
What will enable us to ultimately prevail? The power of Jesus Christ.
The verb ‘overcome’ used here is a verb that indicates victory; Jesus has conquered the world. It speaks of the enemy raising up the white flag. It’s the word used to describe that moment when the enemy admits defeat. When the foreign king has been defeated and he is drug through town being led as a captor of war.
Victory. Jesus has defeated the prince of this world and he’s being drug behind in a line of captors with the spoils of war.
Jesus’ point is that by his death he has made the world’s opposition lame and beggarly. The decisive battle has been waged and won. The world may continue its wretched attacks, but those who are in Christ share the victory he has already won. It’s over. It’s done. It’s finished. The battle is over. Victory is ours.
Knowing this absolute reality, we take heart. We share in that peace.
Listen, this DECISIVE VICTORY of CHRIST is behind all the promises of the NT and we see it perhaps most strongly in Romans 8 in that climactic verse, if God, the VICTOR, the triumphant one is for us who can be against us? Nothing.
Play this out logically. If God is not for us, then what? Then everything is against us. Is that not true? If God is NOT for us, then the whole world is trying to get you. The UV rays of the sun are against you. They are breaking down the collagen in our skin and wrinkles begin to form. Time is against you. Every moment you live is one moment closer to the day you die. Every day you live one fewer day exists for us to experience our dreams. People are against you. People are using you. They are climbing on top of your back to make more money. Even your friends are not really friends. They are leeches trying to extract from you things they need. Everything is out to kill you. Criminals are trying to kill you. Wild animals are trying to kill you. Heck, even tiny, microscopic viruses are trying to kill you. And whatever doesn’t kill you, mutates and tries again!
But listen, if God is for you, then nothing can be against you. Why? Because Christ has overcome the world.
To live is Christ and to die is gain. There is not a bad option when the King of Kings is Lord of Lords. It’s a win - win. Conclusion Let’s conclude the service by reading the second part of Romans 8 together. It’s such an amazing passage. I want to read about 20 verses here. And there’s really very little commentary needed. It’s touching on this exact theme. Paul begins by talking about suffering. He’s talking about difficulty and hardship. He admits the reality of it. In this world you will have TRIBULATION. Paul agrees.
Romans 8-9
Does that not describe the suffering you feel. Do you feel the world broken? We do. Do you feel the shadows deepen? We do.
Do you see it there in Romans 8. Suffering. Are you groaning? Are you suffering? Do you wonder what all this senseless suffering will produce? There is an answer my friends. Christ has overcome the world. Listen to it in all its glory.
Friends, there is hope. There’s a truth that we cannot yet see but once we will see it, it will change everything! There is hope of future redemption in Jesus Christ because he has overcome the world. Amen?
Maybe your suffering is so significant that can’t even muster up the strength to hope. Even then, there’s hope, because the Spirit is there to pray on your behalf! The Spirit is our helper. Amen?
What is our hope? That God’s good purposes will be realized. Church, there is good coming. There are good purposes in our suffering. Amen?
Jesus is making us like him. Despite our sin. Despite our failure. Despite our weak faith, Jesus is doing the work. He, ACTIVELY is conforming us into the image of his son. Amen?
This is chain reaction of God’s promises being realized before our eyes. There is a future reality that awaits us. This domino reaction was started before the beginning of time, is being experienced now and will culminate in our glorified future. Amen?
Nothing can be against us. Church, nothing can be against us. Amen?
God has given us the most precious thing he possess, his one and only begotten Son. He cares for us. He will withhold no good thing from us. God loves us. Amen?
Jesus is our advocate. Jesus is in heaven demanding justice for the finished work on the cross on our behalf. We are justified. We are acquitted. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Amen? Because of that we are secure.
Church, we have a promise that we are eternally, powerfully secured with Christ’s love. Amen? That doesn’t remove suffering but it does change the outcome.
Jesus has overcome the world. Can I get an amen?
Amen? Is he worthy? Is he worthy? He is!
Slideshow for this message is available
Introduction John 16
There are certain diseases in life that can be deadly and yet on the surface they have no outward symptoms. Take for example heart disease. A doctor might take your blood pressure and check your cholesterol. His eyes narrow in concern as he looks at you. That’s not good. What’s wrong? I feel fine. Okay maybe you feel fine today, but that is not sustainable. That clamping down, that restriction, those stiff inflexible arteries are creating all this pressure that is going to result in a heart attack. You look fine on the OUTSIDE, but on the INSIDE there’s something desperately wrong.
Here’s another analogy. Take an engine that is slowly running out of oil. On the OUTSIDE, everything seems fine. But on the INSIDE there’s very serious problems. Because there’s no oil, friction is increasing. When friction increases, heat increases. When heat increases, the materials start expanding. When materials start expanding it creates more friction, which results in oil burning which creates more heat. And all you need to do is apply a slight bit of load, just a few more RPMS and it’s only a matter of time before the engine seizes up. You see what’s going on on the INSIDE can really affect how you are able to respond to pressure on the OUTSIDE.
Some of us are walking around with constricted spirits. Our hearts are filled with worry and clogging things up.And this spiritual heart disease, those constricted vessels, make it so that the heart can’t flush out that worry. Instead, there is all sort of mental and emotional friction. Sick hearts don’t respond well to pressure. The strain and pressures of life are serious business.
On the OUTSIDE, it doesn’t appear to be that serious. Everything seems fine. You might look fine on the outside. In a social setting, you laugh. You smile when you are supposed to. But there’s a sorrow. You are mourning on the inside. There’s something broken internally.
Maybe that describes you. You are running out of oil. The temperature is rising. The pressure is rising. There’s a sorrow you carry. There’s a heaviness you shoulder. There’s a discontent and an anxiety that just sits. There’s heavy unresolve you carry around in your spirit. It could be tension in your marriage. It could be concern about your children. It could be financial strain. It could be a feeling of insecurity. Things you care about are spinning out of control. Hope diminishes. Increasing and mounting disappointment. You’ve experienced loss after loss. Some are micro-losses but some are significant. And they add up like thousands of pebbles on a scale.And as far as you can see into the future, there’s just a non-stop conveyor belt of loss coming.
What are you going to do about that? There’s something in our passage today that will truly minister to you in your sorrow. It’s really important at this point to manage our expectations about what this passage promises. Here’s what it won’t do: it won’t change your circumstances. You will leave here today and your circumstances will be just as hard. Nothing outside of you will have changed at all. The load will still be there. The weight will all be there. The pressure will all be there. It won’t restore any of the things you’ve lost. But something inside will have changed. It will be like fresh, clean, slippery oil poured into the engine that will reduce the friction and the temperature falls, and it cause it to run smooth and clean and quiet.
You have to ask the question, “How is it that Paul sung in prison after having been flogged? How can Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stare into the throat of the furnace and welcome it’s flames to the glory of God. How can Jesus for the joy set before him endure the cross?“ That kind of pressure exceeds anything I’m experiencing right now by significant degrees and yet there’s a stability, a steadfastness, a certainty that I am certain I do not possess. What do they have that I do not? It has nothing to do with personality, gifting or ability. Here’s what they have: the Spirit of God. They have the promised Comforter lubricating the chambers of the heart.
We want to do something a bit different today. This week the elders had some new awareness of our need for prayer as a body. Here’s the plan for today: - Proclaim the Comfort (Reduced time of preaching) - Pray for the Comfort (Extended time of prayer. I’m going to pray a longer prayer that I have prepared) - Receive the Comfort (Give you a chance to take communion and then pray with the person next to you and really ask God to change) Review So just a paragraph of context here. You remember Jesus is preparing his disciples for coming persecution and his death and departure. They aren’t ready for it and worse still, they aren’t getting it. They are having are hard time swallowing what feels like a giant horse pill of bad news. They can’t get the message down. And so Jesus speaks. And then he speaks it again.
So you can see the confusion. You can see the bewilderment. They can’t comprehend. Those plain words don’t translate to their hearts. They don’t understand. Their spiritual senses are impaired which means they can’t actually perceive the obvious thing right in front of them. When the senses are impaired, the reality just can’t be perceived.
For example, a common and rather unique symptom of COVID is losing taste. I’m sure many of you had this distinct pleasure. When I had COVID I completely lost my smell and taste. It’s such a strange experience because you bite into a bar of Ghirardelli chocolate, fully expecting to get sent to paradise but instead there’s nothing. You might as well be eating cardboard. There’s all this flavor available to you but something is not working. The link between the tongue and the brain is broken.
And in this case of the disciples, the link between the head and the heart is broken. Jesus is saying to them and he’s saying to us, there’s truth here that would cause your eyes to roll back in your head with delight. There’s spiritual flavors available to you that would send you to another world in ecstasy. But the link is broken. The link is broken such that you can be in direct contact with world changing truth and perceive nothing.
Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t that scary? It causes you to wonder what you are missing? How is that one person so transformed by Jesus and yet it does nothing for me. Let that curiosity drive you. You are noticing something very important. Your becoming aware of your spiritually impaired senses. What this passage teaches is that the Spirit of God can restore that broken link. Look what Jesus does next. He notices that they can taste nothing. He notices they are completely unaffected, completely dull to the spiritual realities, so he says:
What he is referencing here is his death and resurrection. In a little while you will not see him. Why? Because he is going to die. He will be in tomb. And they will be crushed. Emotionally, they will be reduced to a heap of crumpled sackcloth. He’s going to die. But then again in a little while they will see him. He’s going to rise from the dead. And that will be the ultimate moment of celebration. There will be rejoicing, celebration, three shouts, and a heel click.
That is going to be some serious emotional whiplash. So Jesus again, in his mercy and grace is trying to prepare them to weather the sorrow that he knows is coming. He wants to get the heart healthy on the INSIDE so when the pressure comes on the OUTSIDE they are able to bear up under the pressure.
So we get this incredible analogy here. What Jesus is trying to illustrate is that the suffering they are about to experience will lead to an incredibly joy in the same way that the pain of childbirth leads to the joy of a child. So look to the joy. When you are in the middle of the heat, when the pressure is turned up, when you feel like you are going to crack in half, remember that joy is just about to dawn.
So this analogy of pregnancy gives birth to three points. Here’s the first.
Keep in mind that sorrow is coming. It’s a determined reality. There’s nothing you can do to stop it. It’s coming.
Jesus is telling his disciples, you WILL weep and lament. You WILL be sorrowful.
Now if the King of Kings tells you that sorrow is coming, then there’s no use fighting that point. Do not try to ESCAPE it. It’s like trying to fight the setting sun. Cry all you want, worry, and complain or you can accept that the night has a purpose and just crawl in bed and wait for morning.
We need to accept that suffering is part of life. Intellectually we may agree, of course, suffering is part of life, but emotionally we still might be miles away from actually accepting that. We hate pain and suffering. We will go to incredible lengths to make sure we never have to suffer.
Our core assumptions revolt, “What do you mean accept suffering?” As entitled Americans we firmly believe it’s our constitutional right to NOT suffer. And while this kind of aversion to suffering is understandable it is not always possible to remove it, and even more shocking than that, if we don’t suffer we will never experience certain types of joy. Suffering is a PREREQUISITE to some of the greatest joys of life.
Certain types of joy are only possible through the experience of pain. Here’s a few simple examples. Everyone likes a warm fire in the winter. Why? Because it’s cold. You have to get cold before the fire feels wonderful. I’m guessing the time you were most thankful for your bed was on the heels of a miserable night on a squeaky bed in a sketchy, dirty hotel. I’m guessing the time you were most refreshed by a glass of water, came on the heels of painful thirst.
Jesus is letting them know that the pain that is coming will result in some tremendous joy. The pain is the birth canal of the joy so don’t try to escape it. You see, when you realize that joy is coming and that pain is just part of the equation of that joy, you learn to look at the discomfort in a different way. You begin to associate the discomfort with the coming reward.
For example, when you are on a long run or hike or you have been slaving away in the yard all day long the body starts barking at you in pain, it’s almost possible to look at that pain as a barometer of you future pleasure. You can comfort yourself by the thought, “Man that shower is going to feel great. That double portion of spaghetti that I earned is going to taste amazing.” You don’t look for ways to escape the pain. You look through it knowing it’s part of the process. That’s the more mature version of suffering that Jesus is encouraging.
So long as we believe that suffering can be removed by our ingenuity, suffering will be nothing more than an infinitely thick brick wall than can never be demolished. And the more unable you are to remove it, the more painful it will become.
One of the greatest antiseptics to suffering is to accept the suffering. Accepting that it can’t be changed of course doesn’t remove it. But when you finally accept it, that wall of suffering becomes transparent and you can see right through it. In accepting that God has purposes in suffering, he gives you x-ray vision. You can see what’s on the other side and it makes it so much more bearable.
That’s what Jesus is doing here. The pain is necessary. But the joy is certain. Don’t try to escape it. It’s a package deal.
Every mother knows that the only way to have a baby is to go through the screams and agony of childbirth. We live in a day of epidurals, pain medication, and muscle relaxants so a lot of the edge is taken off, but for those of you who didn’t get that luxury, you can really appreciate this point.
There’s only one way and it’s through screaming bloody murder. Once this process begins, once the life starts growing, there are not multiple options. There’s one option. It’s the pain option. It’s the suffering option. It’s the screaming option.
Experienced mothers do this better because they know it can’t be debated. It can’t be overcome. No use whining. Let’s just get this over with. And in the same way if you make your goal in life to escape suffering, that’s the surest way to ensure you will never be happy. Jesus is encouraging his disciples to accept the suffering. It’s part of the package deal.
The hardship is just something to endure, not something that defines you.
There’s a second thing this analogy of childbirth teaches us.
During the solar eclipse here in Idaho, you had the moon perfectly block out the sun. That’s the picture. The reward, perfectly blocks out the sorrow, and you shout at the beauty of it. Here’s where we see this in the text:
When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.
Now, one of the things I love most about the Scriptures is that they don’t candy-coat life. They are often so raw. The suffering of real people is all through its pages. And in those moments of true, gut-wrenching suffering platitudes don’t work.
Serious suffering is all-consuming. All serious suffering takes up the entire horizon of your consciousness. All serious suffering will overhwelm and overshadow every true thing you know. In serious suffering you despair of life itself. Childbirth without antiseptic is that kind of torment. When a mother is in childbirth, she has lost sight of the reward. All she cares is that that the suffering go away. She just wants the pain to end. The pain is so intense that future motivations are stripped away. She’s blind with pain such that no previous conversation could prepare her for what she is enduring. She focuses on the work of that labor. She has forgotten about the joy. She is working. She is sweating. She is focusing on her breathing.
In all serious suffering - in harsh, cruel, and severe suffering - there will be moments when the suffering eclipses the reward; the reward vanishes and all that is left is the pain. Maybe that’s you. You can’t see the reward. That’s true but this is also true. There will be a moment when the reward will eclipse the suffering. When the suffering is completely forgotten and you will happily say, “It was worth it!”
There are many amazing things about the labor process, but by far and away the most amazing thing to me about labor is that a woman would ever choose to do it again. After watching my wife go through that, I thought, “I don’t even have to ask. We are a one-child family.” But you see the reward is great. The pain is eclipsed by the reward. During the suffering the reward is nowhere to be seen. But afterward, the reward is large and beautiful.
You will be persecuted for my name sake. You need to settle into the coming night. It won’t be easy. It won’t be fun. You are going to have to expend all your efforts and concentrate on endurance. You will be in pain that will blind you. But suffer well and I promise you, the pain will soon be forgotten. Do the work of suffering. Face into that blinding suffering with courage knowing it is something you must do. Why? Because the reward is great.
So what is this REWARD that eclipses the sorrow? Of course, this is Jesus himself. And one of the main reasons it is so delightful, so worth it is that it is eternal.
You can endure an awful lot if you know there is an end in sight. If you just knew how long, you can set the expectation. Suffering is hard, but it doesn’t last forever.
So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.
Do you hear that? The reward is there. An Olympic athlete who wins gold will always have that medal. He will always have those memories and those photos. That’s something that can never be taken from him.
The arrow of heavenly reward moves in a similar direction. It’s a one way street. There is something that is so beautiful that is coming on the backside of that reward and it will last forever. It’s eternal. We don’t see it now. We see through a glass darkly, but all the pages of the NT rustle with it. The wind of the Spirit blows its fragrance into our imagination.
Jesus himself in this text is the reward for the disciples. And Jesus is the reward for us. What will you care of the suffering 10,000 years into heaven’s rest? The suffering will only intensify the joy. Those who suffered most in battle have the greatest thankfulness. They have the best stories. They are the war’s most sung heroes. If suffering is the path to joy, it almost makes us long for a bit more suffering to intensify heaven’s joy. It almost makes us jealous for those who have gone before us and spent their life for Christ. Hebrews 11
You see, he was looking to the reward. He was looking beyond. We have this whole string of faithful witnesses, then later in verse 37 by faith,
It makes you realize, that there’s a reward of joy waiting for us. And the joy of heaven is Jesus, a joy that never diminishes. God cannot give us a joy apart from Himself because there is no such thing. And you can see this ultimate satisfaction bleeding through in the next verse.
In that day, in the day when the delivery is complete, you will ask nothing of me. Why? Because you have what you want. You have what you need. You will be perfectly content. A mother with her newly born baby resting on your chest wants nothing. She is so happy. Christian, that day is coming when we will be happy in Jesus Christ. Psalm 16:11, Psalm 16-17
But until then, until we are with Christ, we must ask. We must petition. And what are we asking for? For Christ! We must ask to see him. We must ask to have vision of who he is so that the problems of this world seem like light and momentary affliction.
Because the more we can see Christ, the more he is real, the deeper his person is pressed into the core of who we are, the more joy will bubble to the surface, the more we can accept the trials and difficulties are pathways to our satisfaction.
We don’t need to get through our suffering to finally get on with God’s plan for our life. This is God’s plan. And it is through that sorrow that joy will come.
If the God of the universe can cause the greatest tragedy of all of human history to be transformed into the greatest achievement blessing then he can certainly take our less significant burdens and redeem them for his good purposes. Communion And that mystery is what we are about to remember in communion.
What happens to us in communion is similar to what happens to a photo in a developing studio. In high school, I worked in a developing studio. There was all these steps in the process but my favorite step was at the end. You are in this darkroom and you pull out this piece of highly sensitive photographic paper. And you put it on a light table and expose it to light for just a brief moment. There’s just a flash of light across the paper. Now in that moment, that paper was transformed. It’s all there. The work is FINISHED.
But if you look at the paper there’s nothing on it. It’s invisible.
The change has happened but you can’t detect it. So what you do is you dunk that piece of paper in the chemical tank, and slosh it back and forth and slowly over time, the chemicals work on that paper and the image slowly appears over the course of a couple minutes. It was like magic. The chemicals don’t do anything but reveal the finished work of the light.
And that’s a metaphor for what we are about to do here in communion. We are about to celebrate the finished work of Christ’s death on the cross. That was a flash of divine light across history. In a moment, in an instant, the curtain was torn in two from top to bottom. That dark inner room of the Holy of Holies was exposed. That shockwave rippled through graveyards past present and future.
And that flash of divine love has burned its imprint upon our souls. But it needs to be developed. It needs to be brought out. We need to soak in truth. We need the Spirit to rock us back and forth and let that truth slosh over us so that we could see in us, what has already been accomplished.
That is what communion is. We are allowing the truth of the Spirit to slosh over our hearts to help us see the beauty of Christ, to help us to see the matchless perfection of Christ.
You see, who Christ is, what he has done, and what he has accomplished, it’s all there. It’s complete. The work is finished. The seed of that accomplishment will grow in us and one day it will mature and we will finally see Christ for who he is. And it is the Spirit of God, it is HE who will do that for us. Now I don’t want to talk about the Spirit of God as if he’s not here right now. He is here now. And it is absolutely right to pray for this vision. So I’m going to pray and extended prayer here.
Then we are going to prepare for communion. And then we are going to do a soft close to the service where you turn to your neighbor and you pray for these things. Prayer Father in heaven,
We are here this morning to confess our need for spiritual sensitivity and spiritual sight. We are like the blind man of John 9. We cannot see. We have so little spiritual understanding.
We could talk about these concepts all day long but until they land upon our hearts, UNTIL WE CAN SEE, we are wasting breath, time, and effort. Indeed, we have talked about these things for far too long without change. We need the light of your word to shine upon our shuttered hearts. We need it to penetrate. Lord we fear the condemnation of Isaiah:
We fear being a people who keep on hearing but never hear or perceive, who continue to see but never understand, who listen to but only hear the echo of our own voices. Save us. We fear the dullness of our heavy ears our our shaded lids. We fear the hard heart that comes from listening without change.
Jesus you came into the world for judgment that those who do not see may see and those who see may become blind. Lord, we confess we do not see. Make us see.
We ask that your Spirit speak to us so that we might be able to speak to you. We ask that your Spirit give us sight that we might see you. We ask that your Spirit open our ears so that we might hear you.
In every way we need you, Spirit, to awaken our dulled senses. We need to have our appetites awakened, our taste restored, our sight corrected, our hearts illumined.
And what do we need to see? In our blind and dulled state we can’t even know what spiritual resources we are missing. We cannot detect it. Show us what we cannot know or see. Override our resistance; sharpen our dullness.
We are not different than your disciples, there is much more you would love to speak to us but we cannot handle it. Lord make us well so we can handle it. Expand the capacity of our hearts. Increase our well of understanding. Break down the deflectors of pride and selfishness that prevents our ears from hearing.
Whatever we need, would you give it?
Lord, if it’s repentance that we need, we beg you for it.
Show us our ruined self! Reveal to us our pride and the bankruptcy of our self-righteousness. Show us that we turn to idols instead of you. Show us our pious perch that needs to be chopped to the ground. Help us repent of our intellectual snobbery. Rid us of the glory-stealing showmanship. Lord if there are relationships in the room that are not right, make them right through repentance. Lord, if there is self-pity and self-centeredness that is destroying progress in growth, bring repentance. If there is addiction, a love of sexual sin, substance abuse, drugs, alcohol, even addiction to media, Lord forgive us.
We have made ourselves large and you small. We have stolen your rightful place as Lord and king and sovereign to tell us what is good and best for us. Forgive us Lord. Cut the weeds of sin at the root. If it is our repentance we need to see, we beg that we might see our need for it.
If it’s your love we need to see, reveal it. Help us to see that no height or depth can separate us from it. That it is being offered to us daily, infinitely, helpfully. That though we struggle with anger, bitterness, and selfishness, you exist in perfect love with perfect peace.
And because you love us we leave our concerns, anxieties and cares with you. We cast them on your shoulders because they are broad and wide and because you care for us.
Lord may we setup our home near your green pastures because you care for us. Lord we confess by merely behold your love, standing in your presence, just that alone can make us holy, devout, strong and happy. May your love abide in us, gracious God.
If it’s your forgiveness we need to see then melt our frozen hearts. Help us to see that though our sins are many your mercy is more. Show us that your intercession on our behalf if perfectly effective.
Help us to see that though our sins and shortcomings present us with a list of accusations a million miles long; nevertheless they will not stand against us, because all have been laid on Christ. How can it be? Lord even though we are lukewarm and have so little love in our heart for you, you forgive us and love us still.
If it’s your power we need to see, help us see it. The patterns of sins are nothing before the power of your Spirit. You have parted seas, dropped armies, pulverized city walls with a word. What stronghold is too great for you? What problem cannot the Lord of hosts solve? None. You are greater than our problems. You bring order out of confusion. You bring victory out of defeat. You are greater than our false identities. Lord, save us from our unbelief and our mute, unasking tongues. You are powerful and we confess it. The Lord God omnipotent reigns.
If it’s a vision of eternity that we need, then help us see it. Our eyes are fixed on this narrow spectrum of time. Oh, if we could just look above the rim of this thimble full of days we call life and look into the sea of eternity, we would be changed.
If we could spend a day in heaven and gaze at your throne and the cherubim that cry out HOLY, HOLY, HOLY. If we could stare into the night sky and realize that the billions of galaxies invisible to the naked eye represent the tiniest fractional part of your eternal glory that we will one day behold.
Lord, humble us with your greatness and expand our vision of the being we are praying to right now.
Lord as we approach the table we remember your sacrifice where ETERNTITY, POWER, FORGIVENSS, LOVE, and RIGHTEOUSNES are all seen. Lord, open our eyes to see it afresh. Change us Holy Spirit. It is a scary thing to allow you to come closer than arms length, but we invite you now. Change us with a view of who you are.
Slideshow for this message is available
Introduction Today we are in John chapter 16. One of the great themes of the book of John is spiritual understanding. Some times it’s talked about in terms of light and darkness. Jesus is the light of the world. Other times it’s through the metaphor of blindness. We saw that in John 9 with the man born blind. We even saw it last week. Remember last week, we saw Jesus warning the disciples of impending persecution. And this persecution was ultimately a result of spiritual blindness on the part of the religious leaders.
So it was on that note of spiritual blindness that we ended last week. One of the unique differences between spiritual blindness and physical blindness is that a spiritually blind person does not recognize it. He doesn’t know he’s blind. In some ways spiritual blindness is akin to color blindness. Where they see some things but not everything. How many of you have taken one of these tests?
So in these tests, you are supposed to look at these circles and see the numbers contained in them. If you can’t see numbers in all these circles then that means your colorblind to certain frequencies of light.
So about 8% of the people are colorblind and I happen to fall into that category. Now I would never have known that had I not taken a color blind test like this. In fact, I went a good chunk of my life without realizing it. I felt like I could see just fine. I never ran into any problems. It seemed like I could operate with all the information I need.
But then all of a sudden this test gets put in front of me, and I see nothing. I’m confronted with my blindness. My wife tells me there’s a number in there. But I can’t see it. It’s honestly hard for me to believe there is something there. Are you playing a joke on me? You are telling me there’s a number in there. Really? It’s a very disconcerting sort of feeling.
Now the Bible talks about our spiritual condition in these sorts of terms. All of us, right now, are currently blind in some way. We are totally blind in some area of our life. We lack some awareness of reality. There’s information that is present yet we are unable to detect it. If we could put on a magical pair of spiritual glasses and see ourself accurately, see other people accurate, see God without distortion, we would be dumbstruck. Just absolutely amazed. Reality would no longer be distorted and so many things would snap into place. But because we don’t have those glasses on, we make poor decisions based on our jacked up view of self, God and the world.
But here’s the good news of the passage before us today: the blindness can be cured. Spiritual sight can be restored. You can put on a pair of spiritual glasses and your vision will be whole. And the way to do that is through the Holy Spirit. That’s what we are going to see today. Background Now let’s set up the scene. Jesus during the course of his ministry was certainly persecuted. He was always, for the most part, shielding the disciples from the brunt of it. He would shield them one last time in the garden of Gethsemane and then the opposition would turn on them directly. Persecution is coming for them. And in their current state, they aren’t ready for it. So Jesus is trying to prepare them. And in verses 4-6 he helps them to see this one thing they LACK. Now he’s referencing persecution and he says…
He begins here by saying, “You aren’t grasping a key spiritual reality that you must have firm in your minds.” You’re BLIND to it. You are spiritually BLIND. I’ve told you but you can’t see it. You are sorrowful because you are blind to a key truth.
Now you can see in the text what their blindness prevents them from seeing by observing what appears to be a blatant contradiction in the text. How many of you are picking up on a contradiction in this text? Let me point it out. Look at verse 5. Jesus is rebuking them, none of you asks me, “Where are you going?” Is that true? Have none of the disciples asked Jesus where he is going? Just 3 chapters earlier Peter asks Jesus this very question.
John 13-14
And then one chapter later we get this.
So both Peter and Thomas asked Jesus where he was going. It’s right there in the text. But then if we flip back…
Jesus says, “None of you asks me where I am going.” What’s the deal with that? It’s so interesting that when a liberal scholar looks at a problem in the text like that, the assumption is that the writer made a mistake. That this is evidence of textual corruption or something like that.
John is an amazing author! Do you think a writer of this caliber is going to put in a mistake this blatant into the text? Do you think he got sloppy and that slipped by him? Of course not. The problem is not with the writer. The problem is with the readers. We are too literal here. Let the language breath.
Yes, they did ask Jesus where he was going back in chapter 13 and 14. But what were they really asking? They heard that Jesus was about to depart and instantly they were filled with fear. They were anxious, worried, upset. So when they asked, “Jesus where are you going?” They weren’t really curious about the destination. They were anxiously complaining. They were objecting.
For example, when one of my kids was little, we were getting all set up for a birthday party. And I remember getting a call that I was needed for an emergency situation in the church. And I remember my son looking at me and saying, “Dad, where are you going?” Now in that question, he didn’t care about the destination. The question is a protest; the question behind the question is, “Why are you leaving me?”
The disciples are asking a question of this sort, “Jesus, where are you going? Why are you leaving us?” They are focused on their own loss not on Jesus’ destination. They are BLIND. They are spiritually blind. There is a reality right in front of them that would make all the difference if they could just see it but their eyes are not tuned to that spectrum.
Do you really want to know WHY I am leaving? Then ask me WHERE I am going. If you know the WHERE you will know the WHY. It’s right in front of you, but you are BLIND. None of you have REALLY asked me, ACTUALLY cared to listen, TRULY tried to understand WHERE I am going. I am going to the father. I am going to prepare a place for you. Listen to what I am saying. If you listened you would discover that my leaving you is actually for your good. And this reading makes PERFECT sense given then next verse.
So here again, we have the helper introduced. The paraclete we talked about from a few weeks ago. Now we talked about the primary ministry of The Spirit a few weeks ago which is advocacy. The Spirit advocates for you. Remember that message? Jesus isn’t in heaven begging God for mercy. He’s advocating for justice on your behalf. He’s advocating. It’s an incredible concept. But that’s not all the Spirit does. We see more here. Given the ministry of advocacy what we read next here might feel very confusing.
Now this is strange. In verse 7 we read that the Spirit has this ministry of advocacy and now we read that the Spirit has a ministry of conviction. Those are two opposite things! Are you a defense attorney or are you a prosecuting attorney? Make up your mind!
How does the ministry of conviction square with the ministry of advocacy?
You see, conviction is the EXACT OPPOSITE of defense. To convict someone is to get them on the witness stand and begin to ask a bunch of uncomfortable, confrontational questions, to get them to squirm in their seat, to poke holes in their logic and break apart their argument. To convict someone is to expose their guilt.
And that’s the word used to describe the ministry of the Spirit. He’s trying to CONVICT you. He’s trying to PROVE guilt. The word convict occurs 18 times in the NT.
It’s a word that in every case has to do with proving guilt. That’s the work of the Spirit. So that’s strange. How can the defense attorney prosecute? How can the prosecuting attorney, defend? Well, here’s the answer. In order to defend someone, they have to first admit they are guilty. C.S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity illustrates this point so well by saying this:
You cannot get comforted by the Holy Spirit without him first making you very uncomfortable.
The Bible tells us the only way for the Spirit to liberate us from the guilt and power of evil is to convince us of the guilt and power of evil. The scales from the eyes have to fall off. There’s a narrow spectrum of blindness that has to be cured. The spiritully color-blind man has to see his failure, his guilt, his desperate need. And THEN and ONLY THEN can the Spirit become his advocate.
So the comforter dismays. He wounds to heal. He slices to mend. He convicts the world of its sin, its righteousness, and its judgment. Let’s take a look at this eye-opening ministry of conviction one at a time.
We are going to look at the CONVICTION advantage: it’s an advantage to see. Right?
The first thing the Spirit helps us see is our sin. Let’s just be clear. This is not a fun experience. To be convicted, to hear the words, you are guilty. To have your sin exposed and pulled out into the light, to feel the warm shame run over your body. To squirm and writhe as your pride gets raked throught the coals. This is not fun, but this is necessary.
Why does the Spirit start here? Because before you can experience freedom you have to realize you are a slave. Before you can be healed you have to realize you’re sick. You will never ask for help if you don’t think you need it. In fact, any help offered will be received as insult. For example, imagine sitting at home and you were sitting down for a nice meal. You pick up your fork and one of your friend jumps to your side and said, “Wait let me help you with that!” And they cut up your steak and they put it on a fork and they started feeding you like you would a baby.
You’d look at them like they are crazy. “What are you doing? Do you think I’m unable to do this myself? What do I look like?” Help will never be perceived as help until the NEED is perceived. The degree to which you perceive that need is the degree to which you will be thankful when the help comes. Let me put it mathematical terms. Help minus need equals insult; conversely, help plus need equals salvation.
The first job of the Spirit is to CONVICT of SIN. We need help because of our sin.
Now we need to clear up a language problem here. I’ve very recently noticed that Christians use this word ‘convict’ incorrectly. We talk about conviction as if it’s a feeling of God prompting you in some way.
We say things like, “I really felt convicted that I should reach out to this person and write a note of encouragement.” “I feel convicted that I need to do a better job of organizing my closet.”
That kind of usage muddies the biblical concept. Conviction may result in a feeling, but conviction itself is definitely not a feeling. It’s a declaration. Conviction is the declaration that someone is guilty of a criminal offense. What do we call a person who has been convicted? A convict. A convict is someone who has been declared guilty. The word doesn’t speak to their feelings. Confession then is to agree with the conviction. And repentance would be to act in such a way that no further conviction is necessary. So far our feelings have nothing to do with this.
Take for example James 2:9,
James 2
The law doesn’t care how you feel. The law convicts. It’s an objective reality. The law convicts you.
Now here’s where feelings enter. The verdict, the conviction, the truth, the objective reality has been declared in heaven’s court. But has it been declared in your court? It can be true, but you can still be blind to it. You can think you are justified when you are in fact guilty.
And that is EXACTLY how all of us initially react to the verdict of the Scriptures. The Scriptures say, “We are all sinners. We are all guilty.”
The instinctive response is, “I’m not guilty. I’m a pretty good person.”
What needs to change in order for us to agree with heaven’s verdict? What piece of spiritual sight must be restored in order for our FEELINGS to match heaven’s conviction? Listen closely to the text. The Holy Spirit will convict CONCERNING SIN BECAUSE they do not believe in me.
The Holy Spirit convicts them concerning sin BECAUSE THEY DO NOT BELIEVE IN ME. There’s a huge hint here and it’s contained in the difference between a singular and plural. There’s a difference of being convicted of SINS verses being convicted of SIN. All sins come from one sin, and that is the SIN of unbelief.
You see it’s one thing to treat someone kindly because of some personal advantage and it’s another thing to treat someone kindly because Jesus is Lord. It’s one thing to overcome lust, anger, resentment, and jealousy because of benefits you receive and it’s another thing entirely to overcome lust, anger, resentment, and jealousy because you have Christ is your Master, Lord, King, and Sovereign. Remember back up in verse 3. Jesus was exposing their main problem.
You and I have many problems but our many problems stem from our one problem. Jesus says, “You don’t know me. You don’t know the father.” You don’t believe in who Jesus says he is. This is ultimately the conviction the Spirit is after. To agree with heaven in the grand offense. Our capital crime - the reason we are justly declared convicts - is treason. We have not loved, worshiped, and adored the crown. There are sins (plural) and then there is SIN (singular). To not worship Jesus Christ as Lord is the sin of sins, the sin behind all sins.
Now the Spirit’s job is to show, YES, that we are blind to our sin problem. But he’s also on a mission to show us our righteousness problem.
This is a negative use of the word righteousness. He’s using the word the way Paul does in Romans 10:3.
Romans 10
Paul is saying that all humans without exception, all matter of stripes, colors, languages, all try to find a way to make themselves presentable. We all have this insatiable quench to establish our own righteousness. We want to have reasons why we are worthy. But the Spirit’s job is to show the emptiness of these righteousness efforts.
The Spirit wants us to not merely be convicted of our sin; He wants us to be convicted of our righteousness. We need to agree with heaven’s verdict of our failures but also must agree with heaven’s verdict of our righteousness. What does heaven think of your good works? As the prophet Isaiah says, all our righteousness is filthy rags.
Now to make sure we really understand this, let’s look again at the logic of the text. The reason why the Paraclete convicts the world of its righteousness is because Jesus is going to the Father.
What does going to the Father have to do with it?
Well let’s imagine some hypothetical scenario in which you are offended at the suggestion that your righteous deeds are worthless in heaven’s court. You might disagree that your righteousness doesn’t count. No, I have been a good person. My self-sacrificial deeds should count. If you feel this way, congratulations, you are normal human being. You have a pulse. You are certainly not alone in this feeling. Everyone is offended when their offering to heaven is rejected.
Jesus challenged the righteousness offerings of the religious leaders in his day and they too were offended. They were livid. And they shook their fist at Jesus saying, “Who says my righteousness doesn’t count? Do you realize how hard I’ve worked? Who do you think you are to make such a claim? Who gets to pronounce a verdict on this question of ‘acceptable in God’s sight’?”
It’s a VERY FAIR question. How do we know heaven’s opinion? Is it just your opinion against mine?
What’s the only way to answer this question? Heaven has to answer. Remember in the days of Elijah in the OT? He came to the religious leaders of his day and said, “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.” Then Elijah proposes a test. Two bulls. Two altars. No fire. The God who answers by fire, he is God. Makes sense. How can you argue that? That’s heaven’s final verdict. The Mount Carmel showdown kind of ends the arguement.
Well this is the Mount of Olives showdown. Whose offering is going to be accepted? Pharisaical righteousness or Christ’s righteousness? Whose righteousenss will YHWH God receive up into heaven? He who ascends into heaven, it is he whose righteousness will be received.
Jesus goes to the Father. Yikes. How can you say that Jesus’ conception of righteousness is wrong when heaven receives him? How can you say that heaven rejects him when heaven opens up and says, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well-pleased?” How can you argue with any credibility at all?
There is only one type of righteousness that God accepts and THAT IS JESUS’ RIGHTEOUSNESS and Jesus has proved it by ascending to the Father. Summary of Points so Far Let’s summarize our first two points. We’ve seen that Spirit convicts both of SIN and RIGHTESOUSNESS. He convicts of sin. You are a sinner. What are you going to do about it? Either the nails go into your hands or his. Who’s going to pay? That’s the sin question. But there’s also the righteousness question. Your righteousness is worthless. What are you going to do about it? Either my works are displayed before God or Christ’s? Which will it be? Either my sin and righteousness are on my shoulders or they are on Christ’s shoulders.
How do we make ourselves presentable to a Holy God? The Spirit of God is telling all of us right now: TRUST CHRIST. Trust Christ and you do not have to be ashamed. Trust Christ and be free. Be released. Repent of your sin. Repent of your righteousness. Now, simply receive it.
There’s a third thing. You know another thing we are blind to? Judgment.
The final work of the Spirit is to convict of judgment. We don’t believe judgment is coming. We are like people standing on the beach taking video of a tsunami approaching us. Maybe you’ve seen videos like this. There’s this guy standing on the beach and he’s filming because he sees something significant approaching. He knows its unusual so he gets out his phone to capture it. He thinks it’s going to be entertaining. He thinks, “I can’t wait to capture this on film.” He senses this is rare. He’s seen a lot of waves, but never one like this. “There’s going to be all this destruction and I can’t wait to capture it and post it on Instagram.” And of course he firmly believes he is standing on safe ground. It never even crosses his mind that he’s in danger. The water has never EVER even came CLOSE to reaching this height. But in a second it overpowers him and he is swept away. He was blind to the danger.
And that is how many think of coming judgment. They fully acknowledge it is a force to be reckoned with. They get out their phones and they are prepared to watch it sweep away the Hitlers, and Pol Pots and Stalins of the world. And they firmly believe they are on safe ground. But judgment is coming for them. They will be swept away. They are blind.
You see we will never feel fear unless we can see danger. Those who are blind to judgment feel no fear. I’ve always been safe standing right here. You haven’t given me sufficient reason to believe that I’m in danger. I need better reasons. I need more information. Until you convince me that I’m in danger, I’m just going to lay my towel here out on the beach and get a tan.
A lot of people who are considering the Christian faith are convinced their problem is just not enough information and evidence. I would believe in God but I just don’t have enough evidence. And until you can convince me, until you can answer every question, I’m just going to lay out my towel and sunbathe. How could we ever be sure? I need more compelling facts.
Here’s a good question to think about. What kind of evidence would you need? “Man if I were just able to live in Jesus day, if I could have been one of the disciples and watch Jesus multiply the loaves and walk on water and heal the leg of the lame man and watch him raise Lazarus that rotting, stinking corpse out of the tomb, then man, that would be the evidence I need.” But have you ever considered that there was an entire generation of religious Jews who were there, who did see that evidence and they nailed Jesus to a cross. Insufficient information can be a problem. But be careful concluding that insufficient information is your problem.
The problem of the Pharisees was, in the end, spiritual blindness. Their problem was unbelief. That’s ultimately what prevented them and may be preventing you from submitting to Christ. It was not an evidence problem at all.
Do you remember the story of the rich man and Lazarus that Jesus tells in Luke chapter 16? Jesus describes two men: a rich man and a poor man whose name was Lazarus. Lazarus goes to heaven and the rich man goes to hell. And the rich man is in torment. He realizes how foolish he’s been. He realizes his folly. “I was blind! How could I have ignored the evidence of coming judgment?”
Now there’s a man in the story whose name is Abraham and he’s able to speak with this rich man in torment. And so the rich man cries out to Abraham, “It’s too late for me, but please, go back and warn my brothers. Please, if I can’t go back myself, at least send Lazarus back to my brothers house to warn them.” And we’ll pick up the story there. So this is the rich man speaking.
Luke 16-17
So you see his earnest plea. I really, really want my brothers to see the truth, to understand, to comprehend these spiritual realities that they do not see.
And he’s denied his request. Nope, they have what they need. But that’s unconvincing. The rich man protests. I had Moses and the Prophets but it wasn’t enough. I needed more convincing proof. I needed more evidence. I needed more information. I needed a miracle! So he says…
The problem is spiritual blindness.
Moses and the Prophets are enough. We have the NT. Can you see that the tsunami of God’s judgment is coming? Can you see that it’s coming for your sin and it’s coming for your righteousness?
Now here’s the amazing news. The Holy Spirit cures blindness. It helps you repent of sin, repent of righteousness and so that you can receive the righteousness of Christ and be blameless in the day of judgment. All you have to do is ask him.
Now there’s a fourth and final advantage, but it’s not really a fourth it’s a summary of all three.
We can see this summary in verses 8-11. Jesus is here talking to his disciples who, presuambly, have been transformed by the Spirit. The work of conviction has fallen upon the disciples so they can see sin accurately, understand the poverty of their righteouss and the reality of judgment. But their vision restoration is still incomplete. Their vision is still not whole.
What this should teach us is that there is further restoration available to all of us in the room. Until we allow the Spirit to show us and impart into us, true sight, complete vision, we limit ourselves from access to all that God wants to teach.
These are the prerequisites for entry into the fullness of truth. Think about what Jesus says. He’s right there with his disciples. “I would love to speak to you about even greater things, but I can’t.” Why? “Because you still haven’t completely seen the depth of what I’ve told you. You think your sin is bad, but you don’t really see it. You still love your righteousness. You really don’t think judgment is coming.”
Sometimes we make it too complicated. Do you feel like you are stale as a Christian? You know how to get infused with the power that comes from the vine? Repent of your sin, repent of your righteousness, and receive the righteousness of Christ.
Jesus says, “I need to tell you so much more but these are prerequisite truths. But here’s the great news. I’ve given you the Holy Spirit. He is coming. He’s going to reveal all things. He’s going to press these truths into your heart like coffee in a French press. He’s going to open your eyes to see just how amazing these truths are. The helper is coming. It’s all there, it just needs to be seen.” Salvation and Baptism Now I want to explain something that may have happened to you. Maybe you have been watching Jesus through the book of John. You’ve been observing over the weeks.
And today something unique is happening. Perhaps the Spirit of God is helping your right now to repent of your sin, to repent of your righteousenss and to trust in Jesus righteousness for the day of judgment. You know what has just happened. You have become a child of God. You have become a follower of Jesus Christ. You are no longer an observer of Jesus. You are a participant in his life. And if that describes you, your next step is baptism.
Worship and Baptism: Required class starts February 6!
This church exists to see new life in Jesus Christ, experienced, celebrated and proclaimed. Last week we mentioned that we would be having a missions night with Shekia and Haka, our missionaries from Mongolia.
So please mark your calendars for this evening. Mongolia is the 18th largest country in the world but it only has 3 million people in it. It’s a very nomadic people.
Let’s pray.
Slideshow for this message is available
John 15-16 Introduction So remember we are in John 15 which begins what is traditionally called the Olivet Discourse. You want to know why it’s called that? Remember how John 14 ended. Jesus said, “Arise, let us go from here.” Where were they arising from?They were in the upper room partaking in the Passover meal.Judas had already gone to betray him. And they arose and went into the garden of Gethsemane. The garden of Gethsemane was located near the Mount of Olives.And so on the way to Mount Olivet, Jesus spoke to them these words. Hence the Olivet Discourse.
Now do you remember the very specific point to this discourse? Jesus has warned them that he is going to go away. He is going to depart.He will no longer be with them. And of course that is creating all sorts of anxiety and fear in his disciples who were anticipating a coronation ceremony following the triumphal entry. And Jesus is providing them resources that will stabilize them in the coming storm. First he said, “I go to prepare a place for you.” In other words I’m leaving but I’m coming back. Second he said, “I am leaving you a helper. The Holy Spirit will come who will point a spotlight back on all that I said and did.” Third from last week, “That Spirit will empower you. If you stay connected with me as the vine, all the fruits of the Spirit are available to you.There is real power available to you to help you in this coming storm.” All this was intended to help comfort them and provide spiritual resources as they adjust to the impending departure of Jesus.
But they are going to need spiritual resources for something else: the impending persecution. Jesus introduces a concept here for the first time: I’m departing because people hate me and you are going to discover that people will also hate you. You can imagine a disciple asking the question, “Why would they hate us?” Jesus is going to answer that question in our passage today. Jesus says, “Let me give you four reasons why you will be hated.” Here’s the first:
What Jesus is saying is that you are collateral damage. You just happen to be in the line of fire.They weren’t shooting at you. They were aiming at me and you happen to be in the way. Their hatred of you is a derived hatred.
Jesus is describing the clashing of values. Value clashes always go both ways.The world doesn’t value what we do and we don’t value what the world does.It’s both ways.
And what is it that you accept? Well Christians accept the fact that Jesus is King. It’s right there in the text. We accept that Jesus is the master. What happens when the world discovers that this is what you believe? They hate you. Now of course, from a logical point of view this is a crazy response.
A Christian is simply living out of a belief that Jesus is the Master of All. That he is God. Like actually God.And so as God, he created the bizarre world of quantum physics.He created the awe inspiring world of molecular biology. Out of his being flows the trillions and trillions of petawatts of power that pulses through the universe. I mean, he’s God.
And so if that is true, well there are pretty significant implications that make sense for a Christian.Out of that basic premise, flows the very logical act of submission. By nature of who he is, I need to organize my life around the realities he creates. He gets to call the shots. He gets to make statements concerning what is good and evil. He gets to make absolute statements about meaning and design and purpose.
And so if this all-powerful, all-knowing God says for example, husbands love your wives, wives submit to your husbands, pornography is sin, marriage is designed to be between a man and a woman rather than between a man and a man or a woman and a woman, don’t love money… we do it. Who am I to contest that? The logical thing is to submit. It’s not my opinion.It’s not perhaps even the way I would want it.But given these realities. What does it matter what I want? If my premise is true, that Jesus is God then all my opinions must match his opinion.
It’s no different that submitting to a law of gravity.If I submit to gravity and kind of shy away from dangerous activities am I being hateful and unloving? Am I imposing on other people’s freedom? How dare you suggest that people who jump off bridges are doing something they should not do? Who do you think you are? Do you think you are better than me? What makes you think your perspective is any better than mine? You are so narrow minded and intolerant. You are so incredibly bigoted. And of course you are feeling falsely accused. “Why are you upset at me? I just think that living dangerously around cliffs will end up hurting me.” I’m just submitting to a law that is greater than I.
It’s the same irrational response that erupts out of entitled shoppers who takes out their frustration at checkout lady, “What do you mean you close in 10 minutes? Do you even want my business?What do you mean you don’t accept returns after 90 days?You are a crook.” The checkout dude doesn’t set the store hours. The store clerk doesn’t set the return policy. He literally has ZERO decision making influence. And yet the poor 19 year old kid has to absorb all the wrath as if he PERSONALLY made that rule.
That’s exactly what happens to us who identify with Jesus. Why are you blaming me? If you haven’t noticed these ideas kind of come in a package that has been around for several thousand years. It’s not like I personally came up with the idea of gender, sex, and marriage.It’s not like I was in the back room thinking up a new religion and invented a place called heaven and hell. I had nothing to do with these ideas.I’m just the clerk. I make $8.25/hr. Do you want to talk to the manager?
You see, we are guilty through association. Jesus says, “All these things they will do on account of my name.” You will bring trouble upon yourself by following King Jesus. So they will hate you for what you accept. There’s a second half of this.
They will also hate you because you don’t value what they value in the way they want you to. He says, “If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own.” But they can tell you don’t value what they value so they hate you. When the social pressure expects participation but you withdraw, there is disdain.
But don’t worry, that is to be expected because, “You have been chosen out of this world.” Your home is elsewhere. This is a common theme in the NT. Remember in 1 Peter 2 Paul calls the believers he’s addressing sojourners and exiles.
1 Peter 2
A sojourner, a stranger, an exile is someone who for some reason has been displaced from his homeland. He can’t enjoy the land because everything he loves isn’t there.
I’ve spent some time in the Middle East, Ukraine, India, and China and in all these countries I’ve had experiences where I’ve been the only one at a table who spoke English. And everyone is laughing and having a great time and speaking things I don’t understand. And I realize, I don’t belong here. This isn’t my home. This could never be my home. The music is different. I just can’t understand the music. It doesn’t sound pleasant to me. The food they eat is all so strange. My favorite meals are not there. They don’t speak the right language. I can just barely get by. None of the jokes make sense to me. The way they dress is so strange. I just doesn’t feel comfortable in their clothes.
Why? Because I’m a foreigner. I’m a sojourner in a land that is not my home.And is this not exactly what it is like for a believer?We live in the world, but we don’t value the same things as the world because this world is not our home. The palate of a Christian is entirely different. The music of heaven is different. The vocabulary and the language of heaven is different language. The joy and laughter of heaven is different. The clothing of heaven is different.
And when the world looks at us not laughing at their jokes, not dressing provacatively like they do, not loving money and power the way they do, not indulging in substance like they do, not speaking crassly like they do, they say, “Oh you think you are better than us? You think somehow the way you do things is better than the way we do things? You don’t belong here. Leave.”
Why do they hate? They hate what you reject. Jesus tells us to reject the world, “Do not love the world or the things in the world.” That is uncomfortable to someone who loves the world.
You see the problem? There’s a line being drawn in the sand. Is Jesus King? Is Jesus Lord? If you say yes, there are implications.Because that means anyone not with Jesus is a member of the society of rebels, and this society of rebels has a really hard time tolerating those who are in joyful allegiance to the king of kings to whom all loyalty is due.Period. That’s the problem.
So they will hate you because of what you accept. And they will hate you because of what you reject.
And what this should do for us is create in us a relief. There will always be places where our faith horribly clashes with the current set of moral standards. And we can take a deep breath because even though it feels like their hatred is directed toward us it really has nothing to do with us. That’s a very liberating concept.If they don’t like it, it’s not personal. That’s very comforting especially if you are people-pleasers by nature.
Those who preach Jesus’ gospel and live in progressive conformity to his own life and teaching will attract the same antagonism that he did. So they hate you because of me. And why do they hate me? Because of the law. I point to the law.
The Law condemns the unrighteous and therefore can be very uncomfortable. And Jesus points to the Law. Let’s see how he does that.
In other words, Jesus forces them to reckon with the law. You see the human tendency is to see the law and say, “Yeah, that guy over there should obey this.” We tend to think we are pretty decent law keepers.Or we hear the law and we find reasons why it doesn’t apply to us. We find excuses that justify our infractions. Have you ever checked out of the store and the clerk didn’t scan an item or didn’t charge you for something he should have? And what does your mind tend to do. “Well, that’s their fault for not making sure to charge me. They are a huge company and I give them tons of business.” But that’s breaking God’s law. That’s not loving your neighbor as yourself. That’s not thinking of others as more important than yourself. That’s dark thinking. Somehow we’ve rationalized it.
Or how about this - I’m risking something a bit sensitive here. Please know, I’m not trying to aggravate a deep hurt. I know there are some in the room here who have committed adultery. If that’s you, I want you to mentally raise your hand. Now keep in mind, Jesus says, “If you so much as look at a woman with lusting eyes you have committed adultery with her in your heart.” Okay, well if you are going to pull out that card, then I’ll answer yes with an asterisk. No. He’s not using hyperbole. That’s literally the definition of adultery to God.
You see by adding the asterisk we escape the law. But Jesus takes away the asterisk. In the presence of Jesus, we are condemned. We are exposed.
You see Jesus was the light.If the lights in the house are off you can’t be blamed for not cleaning the dirty floors.But as soon as the light comes on you have no excuse. He was the revealer of dirt. He was the exposer of excuses. The light scatters the roaches.
Remember the lawyer that came to Jesus and said, “What must I do to have eternal life?” And Jesus, knowing the game he was playing, said, “Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.” And what was his response, “All these things I have kept from my birth.” He really thought that. He believe that. He had a way of reading the law that approved him.
The law told him. Jesus showed him. “You claim to love God with all your heart. You don’t love God. You love money. Give it all away. See? You never loved me.”
Jesus was the very enfleshment of the law, the complete fulfillment of the law. You can avoid the confrontation of words on a page by simply not reading them or twisting them in your favor or both.But you can’t avoid a person. By looking at Jesus you now see what loving your father and mother really looks like. You see Jesus showing what it really looks like to not give false testimony. You watch him go back into the store and pay for what was overlooked. You really understand what a life lived without hate really looks like. And so by comparing his true love with your pathetic love you realize that what you thought was love was no love at all.
That’s what Jesus means when he says in verse 22, “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin.” In Christ was perfection. Christ was the law fulfilled.It was lived out in the most beautiful and startling way.The perfect blend of truth and grace. Perfect love. And when we see it, just by being in the presence of it, it creates in us a sense of guilt. Just seeing it aggravates that internal voice of condemnation.
For example, I find myself occasionally looking at somebody who is in far better shape then me. You look at them and they’ve got 7% body fat and the muscles are all toned and they can run a sub six minute mile without blinking. And just by being in the presence of that type of athlete, it condemns me. Their mere presence becomes a standard of comparison against which I fall short.It’s a mirror into my own lack of discipline.And so of course, what comes out of my heart? I find a way to judge and condemn. “Oh, all you ever do is just spend time in the gym. I bet you use steroids. You probably waste all your money on supplements. You are so vain. You are so into yourself.”
You see what I’m doing with those comments. I’m casting shade to avoid condemnation. I’m taking away the possibility of virtue. It’s character defamation. If I can destroy the character of the witness, I can destroy the power of his testimony.
But you know why they couldn’t destroy Jesus’ character? Because of the miracles. That’s what he references in verse 24. “If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father.” It would be nice to say this guy is a lunatic. It would be nice to condemn him as a liar. But since he performed miracles?! The only option left is that he is Lord.
And they hated him for it. They despised him for it. It’s not logical. It’s like blaming a mirror for reflecting light. How dare you show me who I am! How dare you suggest that a hair is out of place! How dare you reveal that my hair is a mess and make me feel bad about it. Jesus is a mirror and he’s hated for it. That’s why it says, “They hated me without cause.” And in quoting Psalm 69, which is a Messianic Psalm that anticipates the suffering of Messiah, they are condemned from their own book. So they hate you because of me. They hate me because of the law.
What did Jesus say, “I am the way, the TRUTH and the life.”
Some get a little confused as to why this section is dropped in here. But here’s what this verse addresses. Someone might be thinking, “Well if Jesus goes away, won’t the hatred of him go away with it? I mean if Jesus is not present then the object of their hatred will no longer be present to aggravate. Correct? Why will the hate continue if Jesus is the true object of their hate?” It’s a good question.
Here’s the answer. What’s at stake here is not a person, per se, but truth itself. And that truth will continue on in Jesus’ disciples. Truth, by its nature, can’t be destroyed. Try all you want, truth is like sword that is hard and sharp and it will slice anything that gets in its way. It’s not up for debate. You can’t negotiate with it. You can’t manipulate it.
For example, you can sneak a brownie so nobody knows. You can lie and tell everyone that it wasn’t you and get away with it. But guess what?You ate the brownie and those calories are going to make their way onto your body.The truth is going to be read back to you on the scale. The truth is that brownie is gone. The mirror will reflect back the truth and you can’t escape it. The proof is in the pudding.
And in this case, the proof is not in the pudding. The proof is in the disciples.The truth now resides in them.You can take Christ from the disciples but you can’t take Christ out of the disciples. The person of Jesus has so changed the disciples, His Spirit now resides in them, the reality of who he was has so infiltrated the very core of who they were, they now embody Christ. It’s in the name itself. The name Christian means little Christs.
That’s why this section on the Holy Spirit is dropped in here. The Spirit of Truth will bear witness about me through you. You will become my mouthpieces.You will become my witnesses.The truth of who I am now actually resides in you through my Spirit. And because it’s truth, it will continue to condemn all those who do not submit to it. Truth is always offensive to those who are unwilling to submit.
Truth is the ultimate judge, isn’t it. A witness in court stands before the jury and gives his testimony. A testimony is evidence. It’s then the job of the jury to determine whether or not it’s true.Does it makes sense.Does it add up? Is it coherent with the other evidence?
But truth is above any jury. Truth just is. Truth comes from God himself. Truth is God. He is the way the truth and the life.It comes from beyond this world, from outside the space/time continuum. And because of that you have to give up your right to judge whether it is right or not. You are not the judge over truth. The truth becomes judge over you.Truth is the ultimate verdict.You have no choice but to submit to it. You have to heed. You can’t question it.
So why does the world hate Jesus? They hate you because of me. They hate me because of the law. They hate the law because of truth. And finally:
You see all of this points to an intrinsic blindness. The ultimate problem here is spiritual blindness. They CANNOT SEE THE FATHER. They don’t know him. They have no relationship with him. That’s the problem beneath the problem.That’s the rotten root.There’s a severed optic nerve that connects the mind to the heart.
If suddenly they COULD see the outline here would instantly be inverted. If they knew the father, if they could see the father, well they would love his truth.And if they loved the truth well then they of course would love the law because the law is truth. And if they loved the law which is truth, well then of course they would love Jesus since he is the fulfillment of the law which is truth. And if they loved Jesus, well then they would love all his followers as well. The problem is spiritual blindness, inability to see the Father.
What is Jesus saying? Persecution is coming.You can’t escape it because they are blind.They are swinging wildly, thrashing and jabbing with a sword. They are like wolverine whose trapped in a barrel. You’d love to free the poor guy but if you do, it will come thrashing out of the barrel thinking you are the enemy. It doesn’t understand. It doesn’t understand that you are trying to help. It can’t see the true problem.
Yes, persecution will come. It always does. It reminds me of the passage in 2 Tim 3.
2 Timothy 3
This is the lot of all who desire to be followers of Jesus - lights, testimonies and witnesses. I want you to imagine being a disciple and hearing the words of Jesus. You want to talk about emotional whiplash. Sunday you thought you would be ruling on a throne with the most powerful political and spiritual leader in world history.Now Thursday and this same guy says he’s going to die and it’s very likely you will die a martyr’s death.
And here’s what he leaves you: “Take heart. I have overcome the world. I go to prepare a place for you. The helper will come. He will give you his power and fruit.”
When all comes crashing down, remember these truths.Do not fear. That was an adjustment. That’s the ammunition that the creator of the universe gave them to walk into martyrdom. These must be powerful truths. Don’t downplay it. Application Now what about us? America is not a hotspot for persecution but there are many areas of the world where active persecution is a very present reality. If you are not familiar with this website opendoor.com, I’d encourage you to spend some time here.
Some of the content from this site is actually on our missions wall outside in the foyer which we’d also encourage you to take some time and soak that in. On this site you will find a sort of heat map that describes the current countries in the world that experience the most persecution and it ranks them from most to least persecuted.
And this is important for us to think about. Hebrew 13:3 tells us, “Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.” (Heb. 13:3 ESV)
If you are not familiar, 11% of our church budget goes toward missions.And this year we were able to give tens of thousands of dollars away to help brothers and sisters around the world who are taking the gospel into persecuted areas.We support missionary families from four different parts of the world. All of these families are in persecuted areas.
But in addition as a church this year we’ve been able to give toward projects with trusted partners from all over the globe. And I thought it would just be encouraging for you to see where some of this money went.
We gave $7500 toward COVID relief in Bangalore, India as well as $2500 toward a church building project in southern India, $650 toward a education project, $65,000 toward the building of a seminary in Nagaland that will reach into those dark red countries of Nepal, Bhutan, Mynmar.
Here’s a progress report we just received from them.
It’s exciting to be part of several ministries in India that are all running full tilt.
In the Americas we were able to give $2500 toward some shade in a church plant in Mexico and $5000 toward a scholarship program for pastors in a Latin American seminary we have a partnership with.
We were also part of a cool translation project in China were we are able to give $5000 to translate a series of counseling works into Chinese:
In fact all these great biblical counseling resources for pastors who are laboring in underground churches:
We also gave some money toward a church planting project in Mongolia. You will get to meet our missionary to Mongolia, Sheika and his wife Haka in just a few weeks. He’s coming here to preach.
A rather unexpected relationship developed this year with pastors who were fleeing from Afghanistan into Pakistan. Afghanistan just this year surpassed North Korea in being the most persecuted country in the world.
We were able to help with pastoral training and accommodating some basic food, shelter from underground Christian churches who were taking in refugees.One of their biggest needs was for Bibles. And so we gave them $1500 to purchase many, many Bibles to hand out.
Here’s a full report of what we gave this year just in one time gifts:
This report details everything we just mentioned plus $12,000 we spent to over a dozen individuals to all over the world for short and long term trips, gifts to Mission Aviation Fellowship, local outreach here in the valley and more. So we say all this because we want to make the point that we stand in solidarity with those who are actively being persecuted even tortured and martyred for the name of Christ. These are our brothers and sisters and we pray for them. We pray that the Holy Spirit would minister to them as they carry forward the name of Christ and bear a unique hatred of the world. Closing Song Now we are going to close with a song that comes out of Psalm 146 . And Psalm 146 is my favorite Psalm.I’ve told some people that and they laugh at me.They kind of raise an eyebrow, saying there are better Psalms, in their opinion. Why is that your favorite Psalm? Well listen, I’m more in love with this Psalm that I was even two years ago. You are not going to budge me.
One of the main reasons I love this Psalm is that it doesn’t whitewash the hardships of life. Listen, the world is filled with sorrow. There is no promise of ease for the Christian. Persecution might be your lot. You will be hated. All those who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. There are consequences for being a follower of Jesus. The Psalm acknowledges that.
Listen to it. The Psalm begins with the Psalmist coming off the hook. I mean he is just coming unglued with Praise. There’s so much radiant heat from being confronted with the beauty of God, there’s this just this rolling boil of joyful worship.
Psalm 146
So there’s the rolling boil. There’s the worship just exploding off the pages. But it’s not because of people or circumstances. Because those can be taken away from you. He says, if you are happy today because you just got promoted or got some money or purchased your first house, or found that perfect match, be warned.Sorrow is just around the bend, because these things don’t last. They will be taken away.
Let’s put our hope in something solid. Something eternal. Something TRUE. Here it is.
This God, who calls the trillions of stars of the universe into existence with a WORD will actually come to minister to those who are hated by the world. He keeps faith forever. His promises NEVER fail. And what are those promises that that the persecuted can hold onto?
Isn’t that beautiful? So beautiful. Let’s stand and proclaim the praise of God!
Slideshow for this message is available
Introduction John 15 Introductory Analogy I have here a power strip. And I have here a light. Watch what happens when I plug it in. No surprises. Now here’s another power strip. Let me plug this one in. Nothing.
What’s the difference? On the outside they look very similar. Both plugs have the shape to fit into the outlet. They plug into the same source. Externally, they are indistinguishable. Yet one works and one doesn’t. Why?
What you can’t see is the FUNDAMENTAL difference in the essential composition of these two wires.This wire is made entirely of plastic.And of course, plastic is an insulator. It doesn’t have the copper conductor necessary to carry the electrical current. It’s connected to the source of power but can never experience any the effects of that power.
Now, let me ask this question: where does the fault lie? It’s not the fault of the power strip. This is charged with a couple thousand watts of power. The power strip is doing what it’s supposed to be doing. It’s not the fault of the light. The light will definitely light up when it receives the power. It too is doing what it is supposed to be doing. Is it the fault of the wire? Not really. The wire too is doing what it is supposed to be doing.
You see fault is introduced into the equation when we have wrong expectations about what ought happen..
So for example, if you connect the plastic wire and expect the light to come on, the fault is in the person expecting the plastic wire to do something it cannot do. The fault is not with the wire.
Or similarly if you don’t connect the wire to the outlet and complain that the light is not on, the fault lies with the person expecting the light to come on without connecting the wire. The fault is not with the light. Applying the Analogy Now today in the passage we are going to apply this principle to our growth as Christians. When we don’t grow as believers, where does the fault lie? Is the fault with God? Is the fault with other people? Is it our circumstance? It’s actually none of these things. No, the fault lies with us because we are expecting certain growth results that the spiritual properties of the universe cannot produce.
In our passage today, God is going to tell us the condition under which we will experience incredible growth and the conditions in which we will experience no growth. He is going to give us an powerful analogy to describe how change can be experienced. Instead of a power strip, we have a vine and instead of wires, we have branches and instead of a light, we have fruit.Jesus is going to teach about this cause and effect relationship between the vine, the branches and the fruit.If we want to be bright, effective, fruitful Christians, we need to be the right kind of branch plugged into the spiritual power source…the vine. And if that’s the case, fruit will be the automatic result. Conversely, if you don’t do that, don’t expect fruit.
That’s the basic message for today. Where do we get the power to be fruitful?
We will start with the sustaining root. Background He’s going to give this great analogy from the vineyard which would have meant something to the nation of Israel because God all through the OT pictured Israel as a vine.In Psalm 80 the Psalmist writes, “You brought a vine out of Egypt and planted it.” The Psalm goes on to describe how that vine was destroyed in captivity and they were awaiting the restoration of the vine. Well here comes Jesus with the final, “I am” statement.
So Jesus is the vine.Jesus is pictured as the root that draws up nutrients from the soil and sends that energy into the branches.And we then are pictured as the branches transport that transfer the energy and produce fruit.
Now there are two types of branches that are described in the analogy. Both types receive treatment from the father who is pictured here as the vineyard cultivator.
The first type of branch is the branch that produces no fruit. This is a branch that looks normal. It is cosmetically plugged into the vine, but not actually. From all the external appearances, it looks like it should produce fruit but for some reason it doesn’t. Why? Because there’s a composition problem with this branch.Like this plastic wire, it can’t conduct the life-giving power of Jesus.It’s actual properties insulate it from power. It takes energy from the vine without contributing. And the father sees that and takes out his cutting shears and slices it off and tosses it into the fire. This is a metaphor of the unbeliever. The physical properties of the heart of the unbeliever are such that the life giving words of Jesus do not penetrate. It hears the words of Jesus but it can’t do anything with them. The power of the words can’t be transported into action. It’s the heart of stone.
The second type of branch is the branch that produces fruit. This is the heart of flesh. This is the heart that hears the powerful words of Jesus and responds. The life-giving power of Christ’s words are rooted into his mind, pressed into his soul by the Holy Spirit and fruit is the result. This branch is ORGANICALLY connected and THEREFORE conducts the life-giving energy of the vine and produces that beautiful fruit that the gardener is after. But, the text is careful to say, the fruit can be improved by pruning. And so the father painfully cuts. But he cuts to grow. He injures to heal. He slices to mend.
His purposes are loving and his goal is that you might bear not some fruit, but MUCH fruit. Giant, plump, firm juicy grapes that just explode in your mouth. I mean, that’s a beautiful picture.
Now the main purpose of the metaphor is to make this point.You cannot produce fruit apart from being connected to the vine.In the same way that you cannot expect this light to turn on without it being connected to the outlet, the fruit cannot be produced without being connected to the vine.
Now it’s an obvious point with powerful implications. Apply it to our the common frustration of trying to break sin habits and trying to grow only to experience repeat failure. Here’s the exact words of Jesus, “As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. Apart from me you can do nothing.”
Are you expecting the light to turn on without plugging it in?Are you expecting the fruit of the Spirit without being connected to the Spirit?We can’t do anything without him.
So if for some reason you aren’t changing. You are struggling in sin. You are being strangled by your old habits. You are drowning in addiction. You are blinded by bitterness. And you just can’t change. Ask yourself the question: am I connected to the vine?
Imagine if I were to stand here and I just start whining and complaining that the light won’t turn on. It just won’t turn on! What’s the problem? And then I go through a cycle of self-pity. “It just seems like everyone else gets light. Why not me?” And then depression sets in. “What’s the point of even trying? I’ve lost all hope that I will ever experience light.” And then I begin experiencing consequences. Because I have no light I stumble and trip and hit my head on things and start to bleed. And then I start blaming God. “God if you loved me, you’d give me light.” You’d just stare at me dumbfounded. “Dude, you have issues. Just plug the light in.”
Now, I know you are asking, “How do we get connected? How do I plug it in” Patience, Daniel son. That’s the metaphor itself. That’s the sustaining root. Now let’s look at the resulting fruit.
Here it is.
Now, here’s the amazing thing that is being said. First he reiterates what happens to the branches that are unable to conduct the fruit-producing power of God. They are chopped off and thrown into the fire and they are burned.
But, look at what he says next. Next he describes the fruit itself. He says if you abide in me, if you are connected organically to the vine, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. Every 17 year old boy reads that and goes sweet, I can get a TESLA if I follow Jesus.
That’s not the idea at all. What is the Spirit offering you? The Spirit of God is offering you his fruit. The fruit of the Spirit according to Galatians 5 is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, self-control.So the picture is this giant bowl of various fruits that is being offered to you.The entire bowl is available to you. And if you are connected to the Spirit of God, he’s saying to you, “Take it.” The Spirit is offering you the entire bowl of fruit. Take whatever you want. Ask for any of it. As much as you want.”I have an entire orchard out there ripe with fruits just like these.You can’t exhaust my supply. Eat till your stuffed. I’m willing to give you as much as you want and whatever kind you want.”
You see, one of the things God wants to do in this passage is re-excite you about what is possible as a follower of Jesus. Maybe you are just convinced that fruit is not possible. No matter how hard you try, you just never experience fruit. But listen, it is SO possible. What stain cannot be lifted by the power of God? I am the Vine; you are the branches. What relationship is too hard for God? I am the Vine; you are the branches. What situation cannot be redeemed? I am the Vine; you are the branches. What habit is so entrenched it cannot be erased and reformed? I am the Vine; you are the branches.
Without him, well, of course, you can do nothing. But with him he says, “Whatever you want! Any kind of fruit you want. You want love? You want freedom from bitterness? You want joy? You want self-forgetfulness? You want peace? You want graphic spiritual insight? You want patience? You want total security? You want legendary kindness? You want stamina? You want gentleness You want self-control? Do you want any of these virtues? Ask me. I’m the vine.They are in me and all you have to do is ask and draw it out from me. Stop asking for small things. Stop asking me for pleasant weather and plump retirement and to do good on your spelling test. Ask me for the powerful fruits of the Spirit that I long to give.”
Do you see how fundamentally different this is than any of our other relationships? Most relationships are relationships of influence. My parents influence me. My friends influence me. My mentors influence me. But Jesus is a relationship of life. It’s a relationship of sustenance.Literally life flows from him to you and without that, you are toast.You can’t grow. You wither and die. No fruit. Apart from him you can do nothing. But again, with him, everything.
Now here’s the million dollar question. How do you do that? Well, he answers that question in a very, very clear way.It’s going to take some work to think about how to apply it, but how to do it is very clear. How do we connect ourselves to the vine? We have the sustaining root. We have the resulting fruit. But what’s the route? How do we plug into that power? Here it is.
Now there are going to be two things he asks us to do in order to plug into the vine. There are two things involved in this concept of ABIDING. See if you can notice them in the text itself. Hint: Jesus is the model.
So did you see the two things? There are two things he wants us to do: abide in the love of Jesus and keep his commandments. That’s exactly what Jesus did. But we can get even more specific. A person may ask, what is the commandment I am supposed to keep? He answers:
So here’s the two things we are supposed to do in order to stay connected to the vine.
First, we are supposed to ABIDE in the LOVE of Christ. We are supposed to receive his love. We are supposed to let that love flow into us. But we can’t plug it up there. We can’t put a stopper in our hearts. There’s a second thing we must do.
Second, we must let that love flow through us and out into our relationships. It has to flow through us and produce fruit in our RELATIONSHIPS. Notice that all the fruits of the Spirit involve relationships with other people.
So, we are to RECEIVE his love and GIVE his love.That’s what it means to abide. Now in very practical terms let’s walk that out. Let’s consider how these two necessary components of abiding are really experienced.
How do we receive the love? The first thing to say is that God’s love doesn’t grow. God loves you today as much as he did the day you first received Christ and as much as he will love you 10,000 years into heaven. It’s infinite. It’s complete. It’s perfect.But our awareness of that love does grow.So to abide in the love of God is to grow in your awareness of it. That’s how we receive it. We grow in awareness of what’s already there.
How do we do that? Answer (wait for it): read your Bible and pray. That’s the main way that we are made aware of God’s love. That’s abiding.Or to say it another way: We invite the Spirit of God to take the Word of God and press into our souls the Love of God.That’s abiding.
You see this book is about God wanting you to receive his LOVE. But the problem is we resist it. Every person is born into the world with sin and that sin creates guilt and that guilt creates in us the sense that we are unlovable people and that we need to EARN the love of Jesus by doing things that are lovable. And the whole message of the Bible is you can never become lovable by trying to be lovable.Jesus loves you not because you are lovable but because he is love. The whole point of the Bible is to get you to see that, yes, your intuition is correct.You are actually far, far more unlovable than you ever realized.But God loved you anyway. And he sent His Son to redeem you and make you lovable by applying his righteousness to your account. And now by virtue of his righteousness you have become lovable. So, the summary of the Bible in one sentence is this: Jesus loves you. Abide in that love.
And the work of the Spirit is to help you see it. Remember last week. What’s the job of the Spirit? To act as a spotlight to illuminate the person and work of Jesus.
So AGAIN, to abide in God’s love is to invite the Spirit of God to take the Word of God and press into our souls the Love of God. And there is no better passage in the Bible that articulates this than Ephesians chapter 3.Paul here is praying for Ephesian church and there’s this grand opening to the prayer. You know what a grand opening is…you have a giant banner and streamers and balloons and they are giving away free hot dogs. I mean it’s a big deal. And Paul has this grand opening to his prayer.
Ephesians 3
Now stop there. If you didn’t know what is coming in this passage what would you think Paul is getting ready to ask God for? This is a grand setup. Paul is cashing in all his heavenly coupons. I don’t often pray bold and big but I’m digging deep into the treasure storehouses of God because I’m about to pray something huge.You are going to need all the riches of heaven for this.You are going to have to be divinely strengthened with supernatural power for this.
His prayer is to invite the Spirit of God to take the Word of God and press into our souls the Love of God.
This verse is like a spiritual French press that’s used for brewing coffee. If you aren’t familiar with these little devices. The water in the press is like our hearts.And the word of God is like the coffee grounds that get sprinkled on top.And our hearts naturally resist it. The coffee just floats on top and it doesn’t really have all that much of an effect. But then there’s this plunger and it pushes those grounds deep into the water and it forces interaction. It forces them to blend and intermix. Spiritual reactions are going off like crazy because of that forced interaction.
That’s what the Spirit of God is doing when you read the word of God and pray.The fact that God loves you gets pressed deep into your heart and now you don’t just know intellectually that Jesus died for you sin.You feel it. You know it. You see it. That’s allowing, as Colossians 3:16 says it, to allow the Word of Christ to dwell in you richly.
To receive the love of God is to read God’s Word and go through that work of meditation, prayer, reflection, pondering.
If you aren’t doing this, you aren’t plugged in. Period. Can I just kind of make a point here? Would you allow me to do it? If you aren’t reading your Bible, you aren’t plugged into the vine. Apart from me you can do nothing. How did you expect to get power? How did you expect to bear fruit? How did you expect to overcome sin and change your affections? How did you expect to grow more in love with Christ? You’re not plugged in.
Reading your Bible is your spiritual food. You don’t ever outgrow your need for food. Sure, you can go a day or two or three without it, but if you do, you are nutrient deprived. You are unhealthy. You become lightheaded, famished, you don’t think clearly, you are low on energy.Why would you ever choose to do that?We need constant nourishment from God.
If you find yourself entrenched in sin, bad habits…apart from me you can do nothing. The Word of God is the main way. If you want an app to read your Bible, here’s my favorite: the Dwell app. And it goes like this:
But it can also be supplemented by other material. That nourishment can come in the form of listening to sermons, podcasts, reading books about the Bible. In fact, we have a few extra copies of a book in the foyer entitled Abide by Andrew Murray and it covers John 15. They are free. If you get out there quickly you can grab one and take it home.
Abide in the vine. Read God’s Word. When you read God’s Word, you give the Spirit material to work with to press into your heart.
Let the Spirit take those words. You chew on them. You ingest those words and digest them.You break them down into tiny pieces and infuse them into every part of your body to give you life. That’s why we take time to memorize God’s Word. To get it into your head so that the Spirit of God can do work with that all day long.
To abide in the love of Christ is to make the love of Christ part of who you are. So just figure out how to best do that for yourself. How are you going to receive his love? How are you going to remember that Christ loves you? How are you going to put this truth right in the front of your brain, how are you going to make this part of the air you inhale? How are you going to infuse this into every thought, so that is becomes muscle memory?
If you don’t do this, you are not connected to the vine you and none of these promises about great growth apply to you. You are not connected to the vine. Apart from him you can do nothing.
Receive his love. That’s the idea. That’s half of what it means to abide in the vine. Here’s the other half.
You receive his love but you also give his love.If a true Christian receives the love of God he will always give it.Why? By nature of who he is. That’s what living branches do. This is why the Bible uses fruit as evidence of a true Christian.
This wire cannot help but conduct electricity by nature of what it is. The second it touches power on this end, it instantly transmits it. It can’t help it. It’s a perfect test. And in the same way, a true Christian cannot but help to love others. When he has truly encountered to the love of God, he cannot help but give it away.
When a Christian is electrified by the love of God, when a Christian is energized by the love of God, when he’s charged and crackling and sparking with the love of God he’s just looking for a way to ground that energy. He’s just clamoring for an place to dump that current.
And God says, you want to know what would make me happy? If you love other people the way I love you. And when the Christian hears that, it’s just a joy to obey. It’s just an overflow. It represents release to transfer all that divine current, into others. There’s all this enthusiasm and excitement to love others.
John Newton once wrote in a hymn: To see the law by Christ fulfilled, And hear his pardoning voice Changes a slave into a child, And duty into choice.
That’s the voice of a man who is actually connected to the vine. Are you plugged in? Our theme for the year is unity in Christ.
Do you see how this becomes the basis for all Christian unity? Why do all grapes have the same basic shape? Why do they taste the same? Because they are all drawing from the same root. They are all being fed the same nourishing substance. We are all connected to the same vine which means we are all producing the same fruit (fruits of the Spirit and love for one another). We are all receive and give the love of Christ. That’s true Christian unity. So we have:
Now this last word is directed at some of you who might be tempted toward discouragement at this point in the sermon. Maybe you thought you were going to get a secret spiritual trick and all you told me to do was to read my Bible and pray. I’ve been doing that with minimal results. I don’t feel any massive spiritual change or energy. This is for you.
Do you hear what Jesus is saying?God is going to produce fruit in you. You are going to be fruitful not because of your faithfulness to God but because of his faithfulness to you.
Is that not encouraging, friend? This can be an incredible encouragement to us. Because there are times when it can get real discouraging.There can be times when it feels like you are doing everything right and still there is no fruit.It can seem like I am reading my Bible, I am praying and yet these trials are still thrust upon me. There all these difficulties.
In that case, you are connected to the vine, but guess what’s happening? God is pruning.
I remember one time driving out to Marsing. If you haven’t been out that direction, it’s a part of Idaho where there are lots of orchards and vineyards. And I remember driving by this vineyard and with my untrained eye it looked like a grapeyard massacre. There’s all these beautiful bright green leaves on the ground. The poor vines are just bleeding at hundreds of point from the steel blades that mercilessly sliced into their supple stems.Even small clusters of fruit that had not yet developed were sliced off.And it all seems so cruel. Imagine being that vine. The vine says, “Just when things were starting to get good, just as I was starting to produce fruit, just as I was starting to get the hang of it and get comfortable, you come along and slice me down.” And to the untrained eye, it looks like a catastrophe. But to the vinedresser, there’s not a single wasted stroke.It was all designed to strengthen, develop, grow.The loss is calculated and controlled for the purpose of growth. The only way to develop a vine is to hurt it.
Look at your life. You might be bleeding all over the place from the pruning of God. You might be look on the ground and see that giant sum of money he just lopped off. You might see that health you once enjoyed sliced off and it’s lying on the ground. You are looking at pictures of yourself from your youth and say what happened to my skin, what happened to my hair?All of this beauty just lopped off and thrown on the ground. All your athletic talent, lopped off. These key relationship in your life lopped off. And it hurts. You are bleeding.
And you can cry all you want and say, “Why does God cut off these beautiful parts of my life? Why does he cut me back like this?” But we know the answer.When you cut off the vine, it causes it draw from the vine in new and vigorous ways.It draws in desperate and dependent ways like it never has before.
Friends, the vinedresser knows what he is doing. Trust God’s timing. Trust his pruning schedule. Trust his agenda. Don’t question it. Don’t complain. He owns me. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. God’s goal is the fruit of the Spirit in your life.Look at your life through the lens of what God wants to produce in you.He wants you to experience life and experience it abundantly.
You know what will happen when you finally grow back? You will be incredibly strong. That growth process is incredibly slow.It’s almost invisible day by day, but the organic growth of seed can crack a granite bolder if given enough time.I am the vine. You are the branches. If you abide in me, you will bear much fruit. Communion. You know another way, you can draw from the vine. Through communion. Common union. We are literally sharing with Christ in his life giving power.
The Scriptures say that if you are part of the vine, drink deeply. Drink from the father. Take this gift as nourishment.But if you are not a Christian, if you are just cosmetically attached, this will do nothing for you. You are insulated from any benefit. And the great problem of every unfruitful branch is that according to this text God will one day cut it off and throw it into the fire. It does not need to be so. Come to Christ. Receive the life he wants to offer you. Accept his love and be baptized. We have a baptism service coming up in February and if you are wanting to place your faith in Christ. Repent. Believe and be baptized. Those are your next steps. Let’s pray.
Slideshow for this message is available
Introduction John 13-14 Review Introduction. I want to begin this morning by changing the lighting in the room. Where is your attention right now? It’s on the drums. Prior to the lighting change they were just kind of there. But now you see it. It really stands out. It’s obvious. But I want to point something out. What you probably didn’t pay much attention to is the light itself. I doubt very few of you said to yourself, “Nice PAR 25 LED spotlight. I bet the temperature of that light is that about 4200k?” The light is brilliant and yet it’s ignored? Why is that? Because the job of the light is not to call attention to itself. The job of the light is to reveal something. It’s to illuminate something and put on display something other than itself.
Now, today in our text we are going to be talking about the Holy Spirit and our demonstration here will serve us well because the main job of the Holy Spirit is to act like this spotlight. His role is to reveal the presence of God and particularly the person of Jesus. The primary role of the Holy Spirit is to take the very real but invisible presence of Jesus and make that presence known. Once you understand that, it’s like a key that just opens up this passage and really all that the Bible says about the person and work of the Holy Spirit. It’s really fascinating. And we are going to see that manifesting work of the Spirit in our passage today. Review Now as we do that, we might benefit from regaining our bearings as to where we are in the book. Recall that we are in the last week of Jesus’ life on earth.
The week started out with this triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. From every indication we have in the text the disciples interpreted this as REVOLUTION. They fully expected Jesus to politically begin his reign. That’s all recorded in chapter 12.
And then you have this startling SWING.
When we turn the page into John 13 and 14 now we are in the upper room four days later on Thursday evening of the passion week, the night before Jesus was crucified.
And in that upper room Jesus announces in very clear terms that he is not about to setup a kingdom. He’s about to go the cross. He talks about his body given for them. He speaks about his blood poured out for them. He’s telling them in plain terms that this whole march to Jerusalem would end in death.
Remember in John chapter 13
That sounds like you are going to die, Jesus? And we know the disciples are understanding at least in some measure what he is insinuating. Because Peter says a few verses later.
So there’s this haunting shadow of impending disappointment and disillusionment. There’s this great expectation upheaval. And of course that creates all sorts of emotional uncertainty and insecurity. There’s experiencing a crisis of vulnerability. This leader I have been following for three years that I thought was God come in the flesh to setup his kingdom is now talking about dying? What’s that all about?
And John 14 is written to address those feelings of fear, insecurity and isolation. Jesus looks and them and says, "I know that there will be moments in the immediate future when you will feel completely alone. There are moments coming when you feel like you have been totally abandoned, moments when you feel like God is nowhere to be seen. There are moments coming when you feel like this whole business of following me was a total sham and that you were somehow duped and you are all alone. You will feel forsaken, played, fearful, betrayed and your ears will be ringing with confusion.
Jesus says, those feelings are coming. And in chapter 14 he gives his disciples two truths to comfort them. First, he says, I’m leaving but I’m coming back.
“I go to prepare a place for you. In my father’s house are many dwelling places.” We covered that in a previous sermon. My absence is not permanent. I’m coming back. That’s the first truth.
But secondly he says, until then, I’m going to give you a helper. This is what Trent so helpfully covered last week. Yes, I’m going away, but (remember in verse 16),
Now there’s two things about this verse that need to be pointed out. First, notice that the text says, I will give you ANOTHER helper. That implies that there was already a Helper given. So this coming helper would be in addition to the helper already given. And from the context we can obviously deduce that the first helper is Jesus and the second helper is the Holy Spirit. So both Jesus and the Holy Spirit are called helpers which brings us to the second thing we need to point out.
The second thing we need to point out is the word Helper itself. In Greek it’s the word paraclete. There’s a lot packed into that original Greek word. You know how you can tell when you’ve run across something interesting in the Greek. By comparing your English Translations.
Any time you get lots of variety in the English, you know there is a rich word and there’s just too much meaning there to pack it into a single English word.
The Greek word paraclete is a compound word. So if you pull the two words apart you have “para” which means along side and “kaleo” which means to call out a word. So it means to call out a word along side someone. That’s the role of the paraclete. The image is someone who stands right beside you and speaks for you. It’s not someone who stands ahead of you or behind you. Someone who stands beside you intimately understands your situation, they can empathize with how you feel, they enters into the predicament and the emotional entanglement and speaks words in your defense.
That’s why the translators sometimes choose the word advocate. A lawyer is an advocate. Social workers are often advocates for the marginalized and powerless of society. They STAND BESIDE THEM and speak for them. That’s also why it’s translated helper or comforter. What is more helpful or comforting than someone coming to your defense and speaking words of power on your behalf.
Now Jesus was the first advocate, the first helper, the first paraclete. Why? Because all through the Bible Jesus is pictured as our High Priest. He is a high priest who can sympathize with our weakness. He advocates on our behalf before the Father. Jesus was the first paraclete, the first helper, the first advocate.
1 John 2
Same word. Paraclete. Jesus was the first advocate. And what does that first advocate do? He advocates when we sin. Now let’s thing carefully about the role of the paraclete.
If Jesus is your paraclete, that means two things. He knows your failures.
He knows about the lies, the string of broken promises and the pity-parties you’ve selfishly thrown for yourself. He knows about your jealousy and grumpiness. He knows about your bitter spirit. He stands right next to you. He sees all the evidence stacked up against you. That’s what lawyer does.
He says, if I’m going to be able to help you to stand in your defense, you’re going to have to come clean and be totally honest with me. That’s the first thing it means for Jesus to be your paraclete.
Secondly, it means he’s going to try to take that information and speak in your defense. What is his case? What is Jesus as the advocate going to do with all this incriminating evidence. It’s a giant record of debt? How is the paraclete going to speak in your defense?
Well in our court’s system, there’s only one thing you could do. We’d have to try to find a way to make some excuses. We’d hire some hire-powered attorney who, by exploiting loopholes in the system, could find a way to reduce the sentence by arousing sympathy for the extraordinarily stressful circumstances that led to this kind of behavior. You honor, he wasn’t in his right mind. Your honor, there was so many things stacked up against him. There were some exceptional circumstances.
Is that was Jesus is doing as advocate for us? “Father, here’s Jason Wolin. Yes, you’ve made it perfectly clear in your law what he ought to do. Yes, he owes you everything and he should worship you with heart, mind and spirit completely and love his neighbor as himself. Yes, he’s failed as a husband, father, pastor, friend. Yes, it’s a bit embarrassing all the failures if you string them together, but can we give him a break. After all, he’s been under a lot of stress lately. Can we really expect him to be perfect given the stress? Can you let him off for my sake this time?” I mean how long does that last before the judge is just sick of the repeat offenses?
That is not what Jesus is doing. Listen to Colossians 2
Colossians 2
“Jesus Christ canceled the record of debt. Those are accounting terms. The law says that if you sin you incur a debt. Death. Eternal death. That’s the LEGAL DEMAND. If you want to escape the penalty of sin you have to present blood. And Jesus as the advocate says,”Well, here it is. Here is my body. I died. I am presenting my blood. The law is just. I have paid it all. Full atonement."
And BECAUSE that is true, here’s the total thing that blows my mind. Jesus as your ADVOCATE is not up there asking for mercy. He’s not on his knees begging God to be merciful to Jason. Please be merciful to this man who needs full atonement. Father, please, can you muster up enough mercy? Can you bend the law and fudge just a bit so that we can excuse him this one last time?
The paraclete is up there demanding justice. I died for this one therefore there is no no condemnation. His sin is hidden in my righteousness. Just demands that he be treated as righteous.
1 John 1
No! He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. HOW can it be?! That’s what a advocate does. He demands justice for the one needing defense. That’s what Jesus, our first advocate did.
Now here’s why you need a second advocate. Here’s why you need two advocates.
You need an advocate on the outside (that’s Jesus) but you also need an advocate on the inside. You need someone who actually accomplishes the redemptive work (that’s Jesus). But then you need someone on the inside to convince you that the work has been done. One deals with the reality. The other deals with your emotional acceptance of that reality. The job of the second advocate is to throw a spotlight on the work of the first advocate. The job of the second advocate is to assure you that even though it may not feel like it, God is present among you, your sins are forgiven, and you are accepted in Christ. That’s the work of the Holy Spirit. To bring great assurance of the objective reality.
Here’s an analogy that might help. Imagine that your spouse was a POW for 5 years in some God-forsaken prison camp. And one day a Navy Seal team breaks in and rescues him. The objective work has been done but you don’t know about it. The advocate on the outside has done his work. Objectively, freedom has been accomplished. But now you still need the advocate on the inside. You need someone to communicate that truth to your heart. When you first hear it you are incredulous. Your heart won’t let you believe it. It’s too good to be true so you go into self-defense mode lest you be disappointed. But that advocate continues to reassure, no, they’ve been rescued. That’s the advocate on the inside.
Now that’s the relationship between the two advocates. The first advocate accomplishes the reality. The second advocate assures you of that reality. Now let’s see how this plays itself out in the text. Now the text begins with a question from Judas, not Iscariot, which is just a bummer of name. He says,
Now again, this question is coming from their misconception that the manifestation of Jesus, the revelation of Jesus would be through a political revolution, the setting up of a kingdom on earth. And if that’s your assumption then the question makes sense. How do you setup a kingdom on earth and the world not notice? How will you manifest yourself to us and not the world.
Now in typical Jesus style, he answers the question via a very circuitous route. He says you want to know how I will manifest myself to just you? It will be through this second helper - the HOLY SPIRIT. This second helper is on the inside. The HOLY SPIRIT is on the inside and he will manifest me to you, personally. It a subjective reality.
And then he lists four ways that the Spirit will manifest Jesus to his disciples in this personal way.
Now this is a great example of how crucial context is when reading the Bible.
Now if you didn’t have the context of this verse, it almost sounds like a proof-text for salvation by works. It almost sounds like a defense of works-based righteousness. How does a person come to be loved by God?
If anyone loves me, and if anyone keeps my word, then and only then will the father love him and make his home with him. If you had these verses without the context, how do you get saved? You had better get on the obedience train and start trying really hard.
But what’s the question Jesus is answering? He’s answering Judas (not Iscariot’s) question. Judas asks, “How will you manifest yourself to just us and not the world.” And here’s the answer to Judas:
I’m going to leave you. It will feel like I’ve abandoned you. You will feel all alone. But the Spirit is going to reveal the fact that you are not alone.And how will he do that?
The result of the Spirit’s work in your heart will be obedience. And the result of obedience will be assurance of the PRESENCE of CHRIST.
The Spirit will manifest Jesus Christ through obedience. In other words, the more you obey the more you will realize my presence. The HOLY SPIRIT is responsible for both the obedience and the subsequent feeling of assurance.
That is not intuitive at all but it’s totally true.
Do a quick experience test: when does God feel most near to you? When are you most convinced that he is real? Typically it’s when you are obeying the Lord, when you are reading his word, when you are deeply invested in other people in sacrificial ways. Conversely, when does God feel most distant? When you are sinning and rebellious.
Here’s one of the great mysteries of Christianity. As the Spirit changes us to want to obey, we discover the beauty of Christ. For example, many people will look at the way God talks about gender roles and they just roll their eyes.
The man is to lovingly lead his wife and the woman is to lovingly submit to her husband. What in the world? This is insane. It’s so incredibly out of step with our culture. You just can’t believe it.
But the Spirit begins to soften that resistance. After all he is God. Of course if that is true, my obedience is absolutely owed him, completely and entirely.
“What if I did obey?” What if I obeyed, entirely and completely never trying to question? What if I submitted to the fact that Jesus is greater than I and as designer knows what is best and I can’t improve on his design. And all of the sudden you experience incredible joy not because it removes problems but because THROUGH OBEDIENCE you now know God.
You experience the beauty of God’s design. You actually sense God’s presence through choices of obedience. All the hidden consequences of sin become blindingly obvious. The power of sin loosens. sores and scabs of sin are healed. And you say, “Of course, Jesus is right.” Of course, Jesus is who he says he is. Who else could have invented a system that works so perfectly, that brings such joy when obeyed. Only God himself could have done that! What a beautiful God I serve.
How will I reveal myself to you? Through your obedience. You will experience the love and care of God by obeying him. You begin to say what David did in Psalm 119. I love your statues and commandments and laws. They are like honey on my lips. I see them as the path to life. I see them as the loving rails of God to my happiness and joy. The Spirit helps us to love obedience and in loving obedience the person of Jesus is manifest.
Maybe you are struggling believing God is real? Maybe God feels distant. Here’s a question? Are you obeying him? Have you become accustom to patterns of sin that seem like no big deal to you. Have you totally ignored commands to share your faith, forgive your enemies and you are sinning by omission? The Spirit even now might be softening you to create desire to obey those commands. And guess what that will lead to? The experience of the presence of God. That’s what the Spirit does.
There’s a second way that the Spirit manifests itself to us.
Now look what he says.
Some people read this verse and reason that because the Spirit has this ministry of teaching us ALL things, we can just rely entirely on him to teach us. And the Bible takes a deep back seat to the Spirit because why would I read a book when I have the Spirit himself to teach me. That’s really dangerous. Why? Because that’s not what the verse is saying.
Remember, The second helper (the Spirit) shines lights and illuminates the work of the first helper (Jesus).
So when the text says, the SPIRIT will teach you all things and BRING to your REMEMBRANCE all that I have said to you. To teach in that context is to make it real to you. It’s a ministry of taking true things you intellectually understood by the mouth of Jesus and pressing that truth into your soul. That’s the role of the inner advocate. That’s the paraclete at work.
When I was young, I knew education was important. But even though I knew that, my dad would sometimes say, “Let me teach you why you need an education.” And then he’d hand me a shovel. And we’d dig a hole for gravel drain or work on building a garage or whatever." And after 8 hours I’d be exhausted. I knew something deeper at that moment. I needed that knowledge pressed deeper in. That’s the role of the Spirit.
Take a verse like this, Matthew 6:33, “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
I mean that verse makes intellectual sense. But live a few years and the more you live, the more you spend time with the Lord, the more that verse rings true. Every year it means more to me. Why? That’s the truth-pressing ministry of the Spirit. The Spirit is adds weight to truth so that it matters. Because the Spirit has pressed that truth deep into your soul, it influences how you make decisions. It stabilized your emotional reactions to situations outside of your control. It flattens out the highs and raises up the lows. There’s ballast.
Now there’s a third ministry of the spirit and a third way in which the spirit manifest Jesus subjectively to believers.
Look at what Jesus says here.
The idea here is once that truth is pressed into our hearts the result is peace. The result is that things that would normally shake us no longer have power to shake us because we are grounded by something with more mass. We are anchored by something that provides stability.
For example, let’s say someone wrongs you deeply. Let’s say you’ve been injured by someone in way that is really devastating.
Maybe your spouse cheated on you. Maybe he looked at pornography. Maybe your business partner frauded you. Maybe someone in your family stole money or didn’t give you your fair share of the inheritance.
You want to know what the inner advocate does. He comes inside, and he says, “I know you feel bitter, but how can you be bitter? Look at Jesus. Look at the first advocate. Look at what he has done for you. Look at how much he loves you. Look at how hurtful you were toward him and while you were an enemy he died for you. Look at his eyes there on the cross. Though you were shaking your fist at his face, his eyes were watering with mercy and love. Look at how he has forgiven you.” The more he shows you Christ, the more you’re melted and the more you are able to forgive.
That’s the role of the inner advocate. That’s the paraclete at work. That’s the inner advocate pointing to the outer advocate, pressing that truth into your life and you know what it creates? Peace. Total Peace.
Or perhaps you are worried about the future.
How am I going to pay my bills? What if inflation destroys our country? What if the cancer spreads? What if we never can afford a house? What if my kids never come to know the Lord? What if this problem in my life is never solved?
Anxious thoughts just start worming their way into your psyche. You cannot sleep.
The Holy Spirit comes and says, “Look at Jesus Christ. Look at all he has paid. Look at all he has done. Do you think he is going to do all of that and then abandon you in your moment of need? Of course not. Trust him!” And that inner advocate presses that truth upon you and you say, "What was I thiking. Of course. And you experience peace.
The Holy Spirit is the second advocate who tells you continually and constantly about the first. Look at Christ. Look at his power. Look at his glory. Look at his love. Now rest. Now just smile and rest. Peace.
Philippians 4
Don’t you love that? What’s the reasonableness in that text. How do you show other people your reasonableness. Reasonable people are people whose emotional reactions are in line with realities.
If you have 8 fire extinguishers, a charged fire hose, is it reasonable to freak out that your house is going to burn down when you light a candle. No. There’s peace because you have everything you need to protect you.
Now let me ask you. Is it reasonable to be freak out and be anxious and fearful when we have the all-powerful, loving God of the universe standing right by our side, protecting you? Be reasonable. God will protect you. Don’t freak out. Don’t fear. Don’t panic.
Peace.
One of the ministries of the Spirit is to help us accept loss. Look at what Jesus says:
Here’s what he’s saying. I am going away. And that is sorrowful. But it’s producing something good. And what the Spirit does is help us to accept that. The Spirit helps us deal with the incomplete information. I don’t exactly know how that is possible that you going away could be a good thing, but I accept it. I take the giant blocks of truth that the Spirit has pressed into my mind and heart and I allow those blocks of truth to stabilize my emotions that surface from my unanswered questions.
What are the blocks:
The Father is greater than I . God is sovereign. He knows all things. He loves me. And so this must be part of his plan.
I’m not a huge Christian bumper sticker fan but I do like the one that says He > I. He loves you. With those two giant blocks in place so much settles out. Given that, all sorts of things can be accepted. And it’s the ministry of the Spirit to press those into your life so you can accept what God has for you.
Even though it feels like evil, the devil has no claim on Jesus. This loss cannot be the devil winning.
Therefore, I accept the loss. I accept that if I knew everything God knew at the moment, I would be doing exactly what he’s doing. I accept that this is for the best. That’s the ministry of the Spirit at work.
So do you have loss in your life? Do you have unanswered questions that cause doubt? Does it feel like God is not present in your moment of loss? The ministry of the Spirit! To reveal that he is good. To reveal that God is there. To manifest the work of Christ. To give you confidence that even though you can’t see it, it’s true. To bring to bear Romans 8:28 that God causes all things to work together for good.