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Community: What Is A Healthy Church Community Ephesians 4:1-16 • FCBC • 01/14/24 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 a pastor and one of the elders here at 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 by going word by word through the name of our church, Faith. Community. Bible. Church. Last week 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 looked at the good news that God in Christ saves sinners through His propitiatory death (that is a death or sacrifice that satisfied God's righteous wrath against our sin rebellion and treason), his glorious resurrection, and his ascension to the right hand of the father where he is reigning and ruling as King of Kings and Lord of Lords until he comes back to earth visibly and personally to judge both the living and the dead and establishes his eternal reign on earth in fellowship with His people forever! We are saved by Faith in His name and by no other way! We are a Faith people or to say it another way, we are a gospel people, a redeemed people, a holy people, a people of the king. In other words, as Trent reminded us from our doctrinal statement, we are a people who hold to: • “The gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ died a substitutionary and propitiatory death as the once for all sacrifice to God for our sins and overcame death by rising again to life. This sacrifice satisfies the demands of God's holy justice, appeases His holy wrath, demonstrates His mysterious love, and reveals His amazing grace. This free gift 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 of believers that have been saved by the grace of God in Jesus Christ. We are believers who gather. • 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 has saved us leads us into community. And our goal this morning is to answer the question what is a healthy church community? If we are going to identify as a community of Faith or again, Faith Community, 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 us answer that question, so I'd invite you to turn to your bibles to Ephesians 4 and were going to read verses 1-16 together. Let's read this and see what the apostle Paul has to say to and about a 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 you acquainted with who we are, what we believe, what our name actually means to us, what our doctrinal 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 in Christ and united to Him through faith by the Spirit in one Body with Christ Himself as the all-sustaining and all-authoritative Head. We believe that the ultimate purpose of the Church is to glorify God forever. • It is God's will that the universal Church find expression in local churches in which believers gather to hear the Word of God proclaimed, to engage in corporate worship, to baptize new believers, and partake in Lord's Supper. Each member of the body is called to 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 the ways 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 fellowship that happens within the Trinity. Recently we went through the book of Ephesians and saw God's glorious plan of redemption on display! In Ephesians 1 we see God's eternal plan is “to bring unity to all things in heaven and on 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 the heavenly realms” (3:10 word for word). The church is a heavenly hope played out in an earthly reality where congregations of God's people continue gathering people from all nations under the rule of Christ to share in his holiness. So to summarize this thought, Ephesians 1–3 celebrates God's eternal plan: to gather all things in heaven and on earth together under Christ (chapter 1), through the death and resurrection of Christ, which reconciles us to God and to each other (chapter 2), to manifest the triumphant wisdom 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 as a church or a COMMUNITY committed to gathering people under Christ. He does this by outlining three basic principles for us in our text this morning and those are: 1. In Unity 2. Through Ministry 3. For Maturity You see a healthy church community is going to reflect these things. They'll be unified in the gospel, promoting a using of gifts which we're going to talk about here in a bit, for the maturing, holiness, and purity of a church that glorifies God and looks like it's head, Jesus Christ. We'll start with this first principle, UNITY, here in verses 1-6 where Paul encourages his readers to walk in manner worthy of the gospel. In other words, if you are a Faith Community then you'll walk like this. And in verse 2 he gives 3 attitudes crucial for accomplishing this type of unity 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. Humility 2. Gentleness 3. Patience. If you're truly eager to maintain a spirit of unity in the bond of peace as he says in verse 3, you'll only accomplish that by bearing with one another in love with all humility, gentleness, and patience. And he's saying that ought to be something that you are eager to do. That word eager in the Greek means your zealous for this kind of unity, you hasten to see it happen. It's not passive, it's active, it's a verb it's something you do. In other words, the eagerness leads to action. But if you're like me, that feels like a tall order and can quickly become discouraging. You see humility, gentleness, and kindness don't come easy to us in our sin nature. We by nature are the very opposite of these three attitudes. Instead of humble we are arrogant or self-interested and promoting. Instead of gentle we're harsh, brash, unkind, brutal, and even violent. And instead of patient we are short fused, easily irritable, demanding, and rude. And there is not a single one of us in this room this morning that escapes that indictment because that's the indictment levied against us from the Word of God. We just learned from 2 Timothy that people apart 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 really like that. I don't treat people like that on the outside or to their face at least. I actually tend to be softer, less combative, even conflict averse.” And I wouldn't deny you that. Certainly, some are more predisposed to being softer than others by nature and therefore maybe more gentle or 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 the outward appearance but the Lord looks on the heart.” I think we could prove that case if there was a running tape of our head and heart that was accessible at any given moment. Perhaps at rush hour on Eagle Rd, or Ustick rd, or Fairview, or in the In n out line, or in conflict with your spouse or children, or simply in the deep recesses of our hearts and what we actually think of people, and the list goes on and on. What's on the inside of us IS what is true of us, in any given moment. But, I don't want to leave you discouraged! You see a healthy church community is really a supernatural community because Paul says it ought to be driven by an eager desire to maintain unity through the very attitudes that we aren't naturally geared or predisposed towards. Which is why it is a Faith Community. Because, through Faith or through the gospel of Jesus Christ we have obtained new natures. That is part of what takes place in the heart transplant of regeneration, we get new life and therefore completely new natures. And with those new natures comes new desires and therefore new ways of living! So it is possible to actually walk in a manner worthy of the gospel with all humility, gentleness, and patience bearing with one another and even eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace… BUT ONLY IN UNION WITH CHRIST AND THEREFORE THROUGH THE POWER OF THE SPIRIT THAT RESIDES IN YOU AS A RESULT OF RECEIVING THE GOSPEL, OR FAITH. We have 3 chapters of rich doctrine saying 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 good work 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 living and they all begin with the word ONE: 1. One body 2. One Spirit 3. One hope 4. One Lord 5. One Faith 6. One baptism 7. One God and Father Another way we could say it is we have one “Spirit” who's called us into the one “body” of the church (because this is who Paul is writing to, the gathered church or churches in Ephesus as he says 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 that symbolizes this cleansing in Christ). One “God and Father” who's the origin, ruler and sustaining presence 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 preserve you, a Lord who claims you, a faith that saves you, a baptism to identify you, and a God and Father to love, lead, and encompass all of you! And all of this perfectly ordered in unity for the glory 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 love for each other, every church he gathers under Christ is to be a unity of different but equal persons ordered in sacrificially loving roles, serving each other. How exciting to realize that our church community reflects our Creator! I heard this example one time that might help us solidify this point. In a sense, each local church is like a symphony orchestra. The different musicians skillfully combine their talents to make beautiful music. But imagine if the string section becomes competitive and starts showing off by playing faster than everyone else, so the brass section gets aggressive and plays so loudly that they totally dominate, and you can't hear anyone else. Then the wind section gets so upset with all the conflict that they stop playing entirely, and the percussion section overreacts and starts 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, sharp tongues, and an appetite for conflict. People have left their local church never to return and the glory 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 have been chosen and assembled in this orchestra to play Mozart so play nicely!” And the apostle Paul wants to remind us: Stop arguing, stop living in disunity—you're incredibly privileged to have been chosen and gathered into your local church to co-operate in God's stunningly beautiful 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 through the gospel we can in UNITY. So a healthy church community happens in unity and THROUGH MINISTRY which is the second principle Paul draws out in verses 7-12. So Paul says one of the ways we preserve unity in the bond of peace is through the gifts given to the church for the work of the ministry and those gifts are the gifts of people who were Christ's gift upon his glorious resurrection from the dead and 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, and ultimately 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 to sin are now his to enlist and repurpose back into kingdom work for the advance of the gospel! • He says the one that ascended to heaven ie Christ was also the one who descended as Josiah talked about a few weeks ago from Philippians 2 to the earth and even to death and the very hell that was God's wrath at calvary (and as an aside there are a lot of interpretations as to what Paul means here in terms of “lower regions” that we don't have time to get into this morning) but suffice it to say experienced the brutal and hellish pain of that descending but didn't stay dead or in that descended state, but rather 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 Christ the rightful head over the church and therefore it's his gift to give, he earned it and he alone! • 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 in order to equip the saints for the work of the ministry or in other words to see to it that the 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 early church apostles, 12 men plus Paul who were charter witnesses of Christ's resurrection and rendered life long and church wide authority over life and doctrine, who penned the New Testament into cannon under the inspiration of the Spirit of God. o He gave prophets like Agubus in Acts 11 and Paul said in Ephesians 2:20 “That the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets” o He gives evangelists like Philip designated in Acts 21:8 o And he gives teachers and shepherds or as we might understand it in this context elders, or ministers of local congregations, overseers to shepherd the flock of God 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 of Christ.” In other words these gifts to the church aren't meant to be the only gifts of the church, but rather gifts that keep on giving. The sequential nature of Paul's line of thought here seems to indicate that the immediate purpose of Christ's gifts is the ministry to be rendered by the entire flock. So, the church bodies ultimate purpose is the building up of the body of Christ, the church. William Hendrickson in his commentary on this passage says, o Using our gifts is necessary, for when the church recognizes its unity and strives more and more to preserve it, each member co-operating with all the others, the gospel 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 than that. He goes on to say: o And what's more, is that this unity makes allowance for diversity of gifts among the many members of the one body. In fact, this very diversity, far from destroying the unity, will, if properly used, promote it. • Listen, Paul the apostle is his own best commentary on this in 1 Corinthians 12. Listen to what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:4-7: o “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone.7 To each is given the manifestation 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 received my gift, be it great or small, from Christ himself. I must use it, therefore, as he requires. The giver will not fail me when I use my gift for the benefit of all as He intended.” Now, there is a lot we could say about the types of gifts and how they are distributed, and what their purpose is, and on and on. Paul certainly spends A LOT of time correcting people that have a distorted or disorderly view and function of their gift. I mean isn't it so much like us as humans to take our gift and make it about us. But we aren't going to get into all of that unless you 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 to serving 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're misinterpreting the nature of the question. What I've grown to understand is what's often meant by that is, “How do I get involved in formal ministries of the church organization.” That's not a bad question! We need musicians who love Christ to serve skillfully and sincerely to lead our body in sung worship every Sunday. We need children's ministry volunteers and Sunday School teachers to give our students the nourishment of the Word and gospel in tandem with you as their parent's week in and week out. We need ushers and greeters to serve our body with the gift of hospitality, we need people to help with women's ministries and men's ministries events and studies and programs, we need life group leaders to lead life groups and offer shepherding care that way, we need people gifted with helping those under intense suffering or sin to help provide Biblical counseling in our counseling ministry. Church, the list goes on and on, but there are a lot of us here. I'd say there are more of us than there are formal needs of FCBC. So what if by some miracle every formal need was met and the body was helping the church to meet it's needs functionally on a week to week basis. Does ministry opportunity or our call to use our gifts stop? Do the needs stop? NO, and that's because the gift of 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 Christ who purchased that gift, ransomed that gift, redeemed that gift to give back to the church! So you might come here, attend here, heck even serve in one of the formal ministries I just listed and not be doing the actual work of the ministry because the actual work of the ministry results in the building up of the body in love. So, here's a really helpful and vulnerable question as it pertains 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 union with one another. Brother sister you are responsible one to another just as I am responsible to you as one of your elders and pastors. I know I've said stuff like this before, but if you want to do something meaningful for the church, you want to be meaningfully involved in serving the church and using your gift, be a Christian and therefore thoroughly invested into the building up of one another in love. Let me give some practical examples of how I see this happening in our church in ways you may not even be aware of: • Andy book studies, Abrie Church incredibly gifted musician who started this ministry called BTB scripture memory to song, Mitchell's adoption support, other foster care support groups, worship nights hosted by the Steins, people committing to get together and 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 by asking yourself whose life am I meaningfully involved in and who's meaningfully involved in mine? • Listen serving the church in a formal way is a glorious thing and we need all the help we can 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's happen within a group of believers called a local church a gathered expression of God's universally 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 like Jesus. Becoming like the one we love and behold. He is shaping and fashioning us into his likeness so that we can live with him for eternity and one day he'll complete that work he began in us for even when we are faithless, he remains faithful for he cannot and will not deny himself. 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 made perfect? Do you want to see the life of the kingdom lived out in this age? Look at the church. That's where God's wisdom is displayed, where people who were formerly alienated are reconciled and united because of Jesus, and where God's Holy Spirit is at work remaking and rebuilding human lives. It's where God's people learn to love one another, to bear one another's burdens and sorrow, to weep together and rejoice together, and to hold one another accountable. Of course it's not perfect, but the church is where the life of the kingdom is lived and showcased to a world desperately in need of salvation." What does a healthy church community look like? Well quite simply, Jesus. A Faith Community is a people committed to one another's maturity, to see one another look like Jesus, so that we can 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 is certainly 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
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.
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 3:1-13 Faith Community Bible Church 5/21/2023 Pastor Dave Gibson SLIDE 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 2:11-22 Eph 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 Gibson The People you Love to Hate – Ephesians 2:11-22 Eph 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 BIOGRAPHY The Master's Plan • Ephesians 2:1-10 (p. 917) • Redeemer's • 5/11&12/19 Intro: 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 • 4/30/23 Intro: 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 culture 2) the oppressive overreach of the government 3) 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 • 4/23/23 Intro: 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 Pictures 1. 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
Introduction James 5-1 Peter 1 Well 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. Review If 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 between on the one side: 850 prophets of Baal and Ashera VS the 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 TRUTH Christianity 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, and tremendous 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 authenticity But 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 Fire The 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. Prayer So 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 sin The selfishness that destroys marriage The lustful looks of infidelity is the result of sin Death 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 3 Now 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 3 He 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 Conclusion What 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 or deliver 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 3 Here'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 Introduction James 5 We 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 17 Now 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 18 Three 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 1 You 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 Prayer It'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 did And 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 Future PASSAGE: Proverbs 2 Our 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, 2:20 The “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 Point Proverbs 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 Life 2)The Futile Life Which “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 word 2)Disregard the Lord and his word I.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 times THE POINT It 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, 2:5-11 Note the Progression of Proverbs 2 A 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. 2:5-8 You will discern the fear of the Lord and discover the knowledge of God, 2:5 HOW? 2:6-7 The Lord gives it. RESULT: 2:8, The Lord will protect us. You will live a life of wisdom, 2:9-11 You will discern righteousness and justice and equity and every good course, 2:9 RESULT: Wise choices will protect us. RESULT #2: The Deliverance from Foolish Living, 2:12-19 Second, 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, 2:16-19 You 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, 2:20-22 The 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.
Introduction James 5 Well, 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 Summary So 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 6.19 Romans 6 It can speak of our spiritual weakness. Romans 5 It can refer to a weak conscience. 1 Corinthians 8 In can even refer to our physical appearance. 2 Corinthians 10 Because 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 6 So 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 Purpose There'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. Symbolic Anointing with oil frequently symbolizes the consecration of persons or things for God's use and service in the OT. Exodus 28 Priests 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 11 So 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. Application Now 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 promises The 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! Communion Christ 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
I 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 cuneiform 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 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 its traffic, and the worst of all, not being able to connect to Wi-Fi. But sometimes our complaints center on things that are much less trivial. Sometimes our complaints arise out of deep suffering. When we are pinned down in an uncomfortable situation, we complain by demanding an answer to the why question? Why am I suffering? Why this betrayal? Why this death? Why this injustice? Why this financial hardship? Why my marriage? Why 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. Now the prophets are amazing. The prophets have been given the most unrewarding of all possible jobs. Let's first consider Isaiah. Isaiah When 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. And 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 you're 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 6:9 And 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 made him able to not complain and to be patient? Think about it. CAN YOU GUESS WHAT IT IS? Jeremiah Consider 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 overlord, 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 grew 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? Hosea Then 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. Job Let'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 dude's 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 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 pus 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 you're saying feels awfully 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 friends 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: "You're 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 are 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 Isaiah 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 Rebuke Since 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, “Surely, 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 they 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 details. 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. You're too harsh. You haven't read the positive affirmation books at Barnes and Noble. What God says totally works. Look what comes out of Job's 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. And 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're 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 is 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. Think 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 a sudden something that should never be questioned, comes into question. It's like a thick fog descends and now all of a 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 Isaiah. What happened to Isaiah? He's brought into the throne room of the Lord of Hosts. And he sees the Lord high and lifted up and the cherubim 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, woe is me for I am ruined. I am a 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 no more distant from you than he was from Jesus when he cried out, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" Even Jesus asked the why question. Conclusion Remember, 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?
Well 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 everyday 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 everyday 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 your hair out from cleaning up after toddlers, changing diapers and reading Dr. Seuss 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. Review Remember 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 us - how 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 you want something 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 because 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 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. GREAT 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 heartless. - He's far too wise to be mistaken. And so if he is 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 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 stabilizing 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. Vs. 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 set up, you are basically just 100% dependent on rain. Rain is everything. The farmers all through the Bible were 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 in 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 pay grade, 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 discontent. James 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 taste 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 ashamed. 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 a bunch of grumpy, impatient sinners. True enough. It's okay to say that. Let's stop denying it. Let's all just cast ourselves at the foot of the cross where Jesus died to save us from that evil and receive his grace. Let's cast ourselves 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, questioning, 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. Closing “Believer, 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 someone 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."
Introduction - James 5 Today 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 unto Caesar that which is Caesar's. Augustus Caesar died in 17 AD so Jesus grew up under this emperor. Did you know that Augustus 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 unto Caesar that which is Caesar's. - "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 you 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 its 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. 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 are four things you are going to have to constantly prune and weed and cut back. Here's four 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 day's worth. They were not to gather any more than one day's 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 the pantry a month's 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 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? Some 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 Rockefeller's 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 billionaires look like paupers. When asked how much is enough, his answer was, "A little bit more." Corrosiveness of Wealth Now 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 seized 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, worthwhile 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's 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 Others So 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 DAY OF SLAUGHTER.' What is this last day and the day of slaughter he is referencing? How is that related to hoarding wealth? The imagery all through here is imagery of judgment. Notice in verse 4 The 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 of 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 set up 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 voluntarily did not oppose. I think this is a reference to Christ. So what is he saying? James says ultimately the reason - you're so concerned about money and the reason - you're grasping at it - you're abusing your employees like drills - you're stepping on people - you're fretting about money You 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 deify 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 stimulus 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
Finding 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 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 yourself - which then causes you to think low of someone else - which then causes you to think your desires are more important than their desires - which 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 Band-Aid. 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." Today 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 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 the root of this word. 1. Content 2. Intent 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 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 mob assembles, and these ringleaders 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 (Psalm 101:5) So again, the core idea is 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 person's 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 its 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 who 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 their 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. 1. 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. 2. The other situation is a Matthew 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 to 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 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 you're 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 the 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. This 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 be 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 ourselves above them. We cannot say, "I am my own grand master." The text makes something very clear. Those two choices have two 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 lawbreakers. 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 lawbreakers. Lawbreakers who allow themselves to be judged by the law and acknowledge their law breaking, and then there 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 you're 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 destroys the self-righteous and saves the sinner. God destroys the lawbreakers who do not acknowledge their law breaking, and he saves the lawbreakers who do. That's it. That's the gospel, folks. The 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 your 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 structures 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 altar, 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 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, 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 Introduction James 4 Review So 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 Excuses So 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 convenience The 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 Excuses Now 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 4 And 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 70-71 Psalm 122-123 Application What 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 15 There'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 Introduction James 3 We 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 Challenge Now 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 happened I 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? Review Now 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 challenge That'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 continues From 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 else if you have spoken carelessly about someone's body if 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 out I 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 Introduction James 2 So 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 Faith Now 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 foolishness Now 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 11 Now 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. Application Now 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 Introduction James 2 Happy 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 3 If 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 2 Now 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 James James 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 Application Now 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 it So 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 Introduction Luke 2-3 Merry 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 examples Isaiah. 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 SEE We 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 2 What'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 News But 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 4 To 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 Introduction Luke 1-2 So 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 8 All 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 1 Now 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. Communion Today 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 Gibson 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 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 2:8-11 The Second Advent: Revelation 22:7, 12, 17-21 Question: 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 Jesus SLIDE 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, 9 SLIDE EIGHT: #3 Wait on God or others. Lamentations 3:22-26/Psalm 62:1, 2, 5/Psalm 131:1-3 SLIDE 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 Introduction James 1-2 We 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 Californians You can't stand native Idahoans You'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:
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