Foundations: The Holy Spirit

Foundations:  The Holy Spirit

There seems to be confusion and misunderstanding about the Holy Spirit.  Everybody understands God the Father and God the Son but the Holy Spirit gets sort of lost in the shuffle sometimes.  Sometimes He’s called an “it” or it’s a “cosmic force” that is the power of God that moves and we forget that He is a person.  He’s the third person of the trinity.   The way the Father, Son and Holy Spirit interact is very, very personal.  In fact, in Matthew 3, when Jesus was being baptized by John, the Spirit of God descended like a dove and stayed on Him and the heavens broke and a voice spoke, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased”.  That’s a picture of the 3 of them in a very personal, intimate way.   Last year in March I had the opportunity to go to the National Elders’ Conference where all of the pastors from the different churches under Lifelink come together.  It was my first time there.  There was a guest speaker there from Argentina.  The theme for the whole week was the Holy Spirit.  He was going to talk about the Holy Spirit.  He was struggling to come up with a theological definition for the Holy Spirit when what he wanted to do was to introduce the Holy Spirit as his friend.  He began to weep.  The whole atmosphere in that room changed.  He began to share part of his testimony that he had walked through some very, very dark times.  In fact he was at his death-bed.  He was afflicted in such a way that he was about to meet the Lord.   In the middle of those dark times he felt the comfort and the presence of the Holy Spirit in his life encouraging him to begin to declare and prophesy truth over his life.   He did and he was supernaturally healed.  It was such a wonderful picture for me to see that sometimes we get too theological about things.  It something to have information and head knowledge but it’s the heart response and it’s an experience with the person of the Holy Spirit that bore witness in a very powerful way.  It is my prayer that as we talk about this today that it’s not just information, that at the end of this time there is a desire to draw closer to the person of the Holy Spirit.

There are 3 key points:  Who is the Holy Spirit?  What does He do?  What is our responsibility?     There are several names in the Bible that refer to the Holy Spirit.  Names have a way to describe or add perspective to who He is and what He does.

• Breath of the Almighty, Lifegiver.  Reminds me of Genesis when God created Adam and Eve and breathed in the Breath of God through their nostrils and life was given.
• Counselor.
• Comforter.
• Spirit of Counsel.  We’re going through some very complex times.  There are some forks in the road where you don’t know which way is up or which way is down.  We need the Spirit of Counsel in our lives.
• Eternal Spirit.
• Good Spirit.
• The Holy Spirit.
• Power of the Highest.
• Spirit of Might.  The Spirit that raised Christ from the dead.
• Spirit of Adoption.
• Spirit of Burning.  That’s the purification, sanctification, the burning away the deeds of the flesh and the junk in our lives.
• Spirit of Judgment.
• Spirit of Christ.
• Spirit of Glory.  The Holy Spirit is always giving glory to Christ.

What is the work of the Holy Spirit?  “The work of the Holy Spirit is to manifest the active presence of God in the world and especially in the church.”  Wayne Grudem Systematic Theology   There’s the presence of God.  God is present all over.  The Holy Spirit’s job is to activate and manifest it so that we as human beings can see it.  We can evidence it.  We can touch it.  In the Old Testament the presence of God was many times manifested in the glory of God, the Shekinah Glory of God.  When Solomon finished building the temple and he was bringing the Levites, all the elders, all the priests and the Ark of the Covenant and I Kings 8 describes that scene.  When the Ark was finally behind the Holy of Holies, the thick cloud presence of the Shekinah Glory of God entered.  It describes that the priests couldn’t even function, couldn’t even do their role in the service because they were overcome by the Glory of God.   Sometimes  I pray that the Shekinah Glory of God would enter and just make the facemasks to come off and that we would be real, that we need the Spirit of God to overwhelm us with His goodness.   It’s also called Theophany, the manifestation of God’s glory to a human being, ie the burning bush, the pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night.  After Jesus ascended into Heaven and continuing during the church age here, the Holy Spirit now is the primary manifestation of the presence of the Trinity among us.   From the very beginning when you look at the Bible and you look at the big broad view, we get a clear indication that the Spirit’s work is to complete and to sustain that which the Father planned and the Son started.  It’s the Spirit’s job to sustain it and to finish it.   In the Old Testament you had activity of the Holy Spirit but by in large it was not the fuller expression of it.  There were plenty of Old Testament prophecies that were talking about a future time when that would come.  One of them is in Ezekiel 36: 26-27  ²⁶ I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. ²⁷ And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Isn’t that awesome?  That it’s not about us?  He who began a good work will complete it until the day of Christ.   Joel 2:28 And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.  Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions”.  Those prophecies took a while, about 300 or 400 years to get fulfilled until Jesus hit the scene and then we see Acts 2, the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit did a grand major entrance into this planet.

In what specific ways does the Holy Spirit bring God’s blessing?  This is the work of the Holy Spirit.

• The Holy Spirit empowers.  He gives power.  First of all, in the natural He gives life.  He sustains life.  In Psalm 104: 27  All creatures look to you to give them their food at the proper time.  When you give it to them they gather it up; when you open your hand they are satisfied with good things.  When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust.  When you send your Spirit, they are created and you renew the face of the ground.  The Holy Spirit has the power to give life in the natural and sustain it and the same in the spirit.  He gives spiritual life, the regeneration part of it.  The Bible describes people as dead in our trespasses.  We can’t save ourselves.  We’re dead but the Holy Spirit brings conviction and He, Himself, regenerates you and gives you life when you hear the Gospel so you can respond to it and then be born again.  That’s a gift from the Holy Spirit.  He gives life in the natural and life in the spirit.  That’s why Jesus was telling Nicodemus, a religious expert, that he had to be born again.  It’s not intellectual knowledge that will get you there.  It’s the born again experience by the Spirit that will get you there.  The Holy Spirit also gives power for service.  In the Old Testament, He came upon particular people at particular times to do a job.  Gideon for leadership in Judges 6.  Samson for strength in Judges 15.   Bezalel who did work on the Tabernacle because He gave Bezalel His Spirit so that he could be creative in the workings of gold and silver and stone and wood.   Power for service in Isaiah in prophecy.  The Old Testament does speak about some people such as Joshua, Ezekiel, Daniel and others that the Spirit was in them.  For the most part, the Spirit would come upon someone for a particular task or job that needed to be done.  In the New Testament, the empowering work of the Holy Spirit is seen first and most fully in the Spirit’s anointing and empowering of Jesus as Messiah, as Savior.  When Jesus in Luke 3, when He went to be baptized by John and the Holy Spirit descended on Him and the Father spoke.  That was an evidence of the Spirit with Him.  After the baptism, Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  The Bible describes that moment as He entered the wilderness “full” of the Holy Spirit.   Jesus went fasting.  When we are weak, He is strong.  Jesus went in the might of the Holy Spirit, in the power of the Holy Spirit, and He used the Word of God to defeat the enemy, the temptation.  He declared it.  Hear me, that’s the model for us in our spiritual warfare.  After the desert scene, Jesus went to preach in Nazareth in the synagogue.  He began to read Isaiah 61:1-2  ¹ The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me  to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners,^[a] to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor  and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn”  Jesus then said, “Today as I have read this, this prophecy was fulfilled right before your eyes”.  They wanted to stone Him.  The empowerment of the Holy Spirit was so evident after that He went on to minister in the miracles and the things that He did was just incredible.  Other areas or people that the Holy Spirit empowers are the disciples for various ministries.  There is an account in Luke 10 when Jesus sent out the 72 disciples.  They came back and gave a report that even the devils submit to us in Your name.  Do you remember what Jesus’ response was?  It’s like don’t be happy about that, just rejoice in the fact that your name is written in the Lamb’s book of life.  The Holy Spirit empowered the Gospel message.  Acts 1:8  You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  We all know that after Pentecost tongues of fire over the disciples, people thought they were drunk and Peter gets up and said they weren’t drunk, that they were full of the Holy Spirit.  Peter began to tell the Gospel to the people that the Messiah that came and was unrecognized was the One.  He resurrected.  They saw Him.  They were eye witnesses that Jesus rose from the dead.   Peter was just going off bold like a lion in the Holy Spirit.  He said repent all of you and be baptized in the Name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will be given the gift of the Holy Spirit.  That was the Gospel right there and at that moment 3000 people got saved!  The Holy Spirit empowered the Gospel message.  He empowers the reading and teaching of Scripture.  Hebrews 3:7 says,  “So the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts’”.  The Word needs to be taught and preached.  It’s active and its speaking today.   The Holy Spirit empowers prayer making it effective to overcome spiritual opposition to the preaching of the Gospel and God’s work in people’s lives.  The prayer of a righteous man availeth much.  Pray for people.  Pray for family members.  Pray for when things seem to go completely the opposite keep praying and believe. 
• The Holy Spirit purifies.  He’s called the “Holy” Spirit.  His primary activity is to cleanse us from sin and to sanctify us or make us more holy in the actual conduct of life.  The Bible says in II Corinthians 3 that we are continually being changed into His likeness from one degree of glory to another.  Even in the life of unbelievers, when I look back before I was a Christian I don’t know how I got out of situations.  I should have been dead or something.  You can even see the restraining and the influence of the Holy Spirit even in the lives of unbelievers.  The Holy Spirit purifies.  It is the Spirit through Him and by Him that we are able to put the deeds of the flesh down and grow in personal holiness.  It is the Spirit that gives the fruit of the Spirit within us, the love, joy, patience, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness.  Those are the qualities that reflect the character of God, the fruit versus the gift.  A lot of people are enamored with the gift.  The gift can only take you somewhere but the fruit, the character of God in your life, will keep you there.  To the effect, to the level that you cooperate with the Holy Spirit and allow change in you, less of you and more of Him in you and the character of God begins to grow in you that will even affect in even greater measure the gifts that He has given you. 
• The Holy Spirit reveals.  This is very important because its relevant to our growth as believers.  I Corinthians 2:-126   ⁶ We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. ⁷ No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. ⁸ None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. ⁹ However, as it is written: “What no eye has seen,  what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived”^[b]—  the things God has prepared for those who love him— ¹⁰ these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.   The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. ¹¹ For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. ¹² What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. We need the wisdom and the Spirit to understand what He has given us.  That’s why sometimes we want to understand God with our own intellect and we’re limited.  We need that revelation by the Spirit of God in our lives by the Word of God to receive and then respond to that.  The Apostle Paul talks about in Philippians 3:10¹⁰ For my determined purpose is that I may know Him that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly, You want wisdom?  Know Christ.  Paul wrote the book of Philippians at the end of his life when he was in jail.  The key about this is there is an interplay between the object of the revelation, which is Christ, the Word of God, the Holy Spirit and you and me.  There is an interplay.  The rulers of the age that this Scripture is talking about, they didn’t get it.  They killed Christ which was the plan of God but they didn’t get it.  They could have.  They could have gone to the Torah or the Tanakh, which is the Jewish name for the Old Testament.  The Messianic prophecies were there from Isaiah and Psalms.  The revelation that was hidden was available but they didn’t go there.  It was revealed to believers that had the Holy Spirit in them.  Simeon, had been revealed by the Holy Spirit that he would not die until he saw the Messiah, saw baby Jesus in the temple.  There’s an interplay between the Word of God, the Spirit of God, that brings about revelation into your life.  What do you do with that revelation?  Do you obey it?  Or, do you reject it?  Because if you want more revelation you need to be obedient with what He reveals to you first.  That is so important.  The Holy Spirit not only reveals but He guides God’s people.  He gives you impressions.  God gives you His desires in your heart.  Sometimes there’s something in you that you just sense that the Holy Spirit is asking you to obey.  Take a risk.  Go ahead.  Go for it.  You will be blown away.
• The Holy Spirit unifies.  In John 17:11 Jesus prayed for the disciples that they may be one as He and the Father are one.  In Ephesians 4: 3-6, Paul pleaded with the early Christians about unity:  ³ Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. ⁴ There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; ⁵ one Lord, one faith, one baptism; ⁶ one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. The strategy of the enemy is always the same, divide and conquer.  The book The Bait of Satan, talks about offense.  The Bait is offense.  You get offended.   Your response determines your future.  If you harbor offense and bitterness, its going to harm you.  It’s going to make you prisoner.   That’s why Jesus says if you come to the alter with a gift but you have something going on with somebody, leave the gift and the alter and go back and fix it.  I’m paraphrasing Puerto Rican style.   The enemy wants to divide the church.  The enemy wants to divide your family.  The enemy wants to divide you from others but when you’re walking in the power of the Holy Spirit, when there’s joy, when there’s patience, when there’s kindness, when there’s gentleness, when there’s self control and someone crosses you, because trust me, we’re imperfect, but when you extend the grace that was extended to you, that’s the Holy Spirit empowering unity in the body of Christ. 
• The Holy Spirit gets stronger or weaker evidence of the presence of God according to our response.  That’s something that we need to consider.  Many examples in both the Old Testament and the New Testament it indicates that the Holy Spirit will bring or withdraw blessings according to whether or not He’s pleased with the situation He is seeing.  The Bible talks a lot about not grieving the Holy Spirit, not quenching the Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is a person and He is sensitive.  The Holy Spirit can be grieved and can be quenched and as a result of that could cease bringing a blessing to your life.  In Galatians 5, Paul contrasts 2 different motivations for life, the sinful nature or the Spirit.  The sinful nature, sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; ²⁰idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions ²¹ and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like, versus the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness.  The Holy Spirit wants us to come to know that settling for the temporary pleasure is going to affect the blessing.  It’s going to affect and disconnect a whole bunch of things.  If there’s a stronghold we can pray about it.  There’s a renewal of the mind that needs to happen in that area.  You need to feed yourself with the truth to break the stronghold of the wrong thinking in that particular area.  We can do it in the name of Jesus Christ.  Jesus has come to set us free.  Period.  There are no ifs or buts.  We can overcome sin.  Do we do it perfectly?  No.  Do I slip and fall?  Yeah.  But the thing is not to take that as self-condemnation.  Christ’s forgiveness is full.   Confess it and move on.  Use that experience as a stepping stone to  build for the next time.  Don’t surrender to it.  It’s a process.   It’s important in our Christian life to depend on the Holy Spirit.  Our responsibility is not to grieve the Holy Spirit. 

Video

The rider in the video is the Holy Spirit and we are the horse.  You can see the relationship between the rider and the horse.   Just light touches and talking and whispering and caressing, the gentleness of the Holy Spirit.  Isn’t that a beautiful illustration?  That’s what He wants.

 

Foundations: The Future

Listen to Pastor Andy Lawrence’s sermon on “The Future” along with his slide presentation!   Audio Sermon

 

Giving And The Tithe And Honoring God

This morning I’m going to talk a lot about honoring God.  Two weeks ago, Pastor Willems gave a sermon on tithes and he talked about the principle behind the tithe, how important that was.  This is going to be a continuation of that same topic.  This morning I called this particular talk “Giving and the Tithe and Honoring God”.

Here’s the first question of the morning, who owns it all anyway?  I mean, is my stuff mine?  I worked for it.  I work hard for it.  I bought it.  Isn’t it mine?  You know, it cost me something.  Here’s how I would answer that questions, for the non-Christian its yours.  Everything I saw this morning is going to be optional.  If you’re in that camp, fine, just sit back and relax.  For the Christian, however, even our very lives are not our own.  We were bought with a price.  Even if you go back to the Old Testament, Isaiah is talking about Israel’s only Savior.  It says in Isaiah 43:1  ¹ But now, this is what the LORD says—he who created you, Jacob, he who formed you, Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.  We belong to the Lord.   Paul says it also in the New Testament, I Corinthians 6:19-20  You are not your own; you were bought at a price. 

So why do we talk about this?  I want to make something clear up front.  The purpose of the tithe.  This might sound strange but God doesn’t need our money.  He doesn’t.  He owns it all.  He owns the cattle on a thousand hills.  He can and will and will continue to provide for our church.  Really, God is after your heart.  He wants to bless your household.  That’s what I want to talk about this morning.  Tithing is really a test.  It’s a test about where our heart is.  It asks the question, will you put God first?  Where is God in your priority?  It asks the question, does your money control you or do you control your money?  This is so important.  This is so critical.  If you can catch this part you catch the entire message.  You have the ability to put your whole financial house in order if you can get this particular area right.  Even so, there is a lot of controversy about tithing as we are living in New Testament times.  I’m going to touch on that as well.

The topic this morning if I were to give you a topic sentence is “Honoring God with our wealth, with our earnings, with our money.  Let’s start at the beginning.  What is the tithe anyway?  Simply put the tithe means the tenth.  It’s 10% of our gains, our earnings.  Today we would say it’s out of our salary, our bonus, our investments, our interest, our gains and our earnings.  It’s the first.  It’s 10% from our gross not our net.  Now again, that speaks to our priorities.  I often get asked that question, is this my take-home or is this my gross?  It’s your first.  That’s why we say the first fruits, not the 2^nd fruits or 3^rd fruits or 4^th fruits but the firstfruits.  Throughout the Bible when we talk about firstfruits and first-born it symbolizes the tithe.  Always the firstfruits belong to the Lord just as the tithe belongs to the Lord.  Let’s take a look at one particular verse out of Nehemiah 10:35-36.  Here the Levites are speaking and they’re talking about first fruits and first-born.  They say,  ³⁵ “We also assume responsibility for bringing to the house of the LORD each year the firstfruits of our crops and of every fruit tree. ³⁶ “As it is also written in the Law, we will bring the firstborn of our sons and of our cattle, of our herds and of our flocks to the house of our God, to the priests ministering there.   So again, the firstfruits and the first born, which symbolize the tithe always belong to the Lord.

I would like to stop for a moment and talk about honor.  I’m going to use the story of Cain and Abel just to talk about honor and illustrate how important the tithe is when we talk about honoring God.  I would like to speak about honoring God in this context.  One of the word pictures the Lord gave me is just thinking about honor is thinking about our military with our armed services.  I know that there are several of you who are veterans from the service.  I have always held such a deep respect for those who have been part of our armed services.   Let me tell you a story.  I have a colleague at work, a coworker, and he spent 20 years in the National Guard.  He has a family.  He has 3 boys.  He has a story written by one of his sons posted up in his office wall.  It’s on that big paper that you used perhaps in kindergarten with the big lines and the dash line in the middle so you could practice your printing.  It’s a story entitled  “The Best Day Ever”.  It’s the story about this son who went on a deer hunting trip with his father and his grandfather and how this was the best day ever.  How he got to ride in his grandfather’s truck and it was red and dirty but it was just the best day ever.  He explained the story about being with his father and his grandfather doing something together.  There was so much honor in this particular story.  If I can understand the honor with the military how much more should I be honoring our Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior.  How much more should I be honoring God?  I think of not only our Lord but His Bride the Church, our family, thinking about the respect and fear that I have for the Lord.  How being part of the body of believers is such an awesome thing.  The provision that the Lord provides.  I think of the duty and the principles involved just like we heard a couple of weeks back.  I think of the covenant and the promise of being part of the body, the discipline and the learning that’s involved.  The purpose and the calling that God has on our lives.  The relationship that we have with the rest of the body and with His Son, our Savior.  The awe of belonging to something that’s much bigger than ourselves.  That’s what I think of when I think of the term “honor”.   Honoring God, how important that is.  It is important that we honor God.

I want to jump back to the story of Cain and Abel.  An interesting story, one that’s familiar to many of us back in Genesis 4.  I would like us to read a number of verses here and talk about this particular story.  It says in Genesis 4:1-7 ¹ Adam^[a] made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain.^[b]She said, “With the help of the LORD I have brought forth^[c] a man.” ² Later she gave birth to his brother Abel.   Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. ³ In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the LORD. ⁴ And Abel also brought an offering—fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, ⁵ but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast. ⁶ Then the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? ⁷ If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”  Here are the key points.  Abel brought the “firstborn”, the fat portions, the best.  I used to think, “fat”, well I don’t want fat that’s not the good part, right?  It means the best, the fullest, the top.  He honored God.  It says about Cain, “in the course of time he brought some of the fruits of the soil” and he did not honor God.   You see, looking at this in a little more detail, I think Cain had this particular attitude.  He was saying I’ll give what I want when I want to give it.  Our attitude matters.  God did not accept Cain’s offering.  He did not look on it with favor.  I’ve even heard people say about the church, how dare the church tell me how much to bring and when I should give it.  I’ll bring what I want when I want to.  Now would you expect God to be honored by that attitude?  Would you expect Him to accept that offering?  You know, this is all about honoring God.  Where was the honor in Cain’s offering?  God said, “I don’t accept that”.  God knew at some time in the future He would be giving His Son, He would be giving His firstborn, His best for the forgiveness of our sins.  He knew what He would be doing for us.  You know, it says about Christ in 1 Corinthians, it talks about the fact that Christ has been indeed raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.  It continues in Colossians 1:15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  Again, just like we said earlier, what do the firstfruits and the firstborn represent?  They represent the tithe and if God gave us His best, if He gave us His first, how can we not also honor Him with our best and with our first?  It’s all about honoring God and our attitude.  It’s so important.

Early on in our marriage, Jodie and I were both committed to the tithe.  Actually we were both tithers before we got married.  It’s a decision we made and that we’ve kept up with because we’re completely committed to it and for us we see this as one of the ways we can honor Him.  As a result God has really blessed us.  We’re witnesses to His faithfulness and how He has blessed us through this tithe.  The question that’s easy for us to answer is, to what or to whom do we owe our blessing?  We know that it’s from the Lord.  We know its from His blessing.

Here’s the key verse for this morning:  Proverbs 3:9 Honor the LORD with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops.  The question is, are you willing to honor the Lord with what He finds honorable?  Again, with our tithe it means our first, our best.  That’s the attitude that the Lord finds honorable.

Many other questions arise.  Where are we to bring the tithe?  What are we supposed to do with it?  Again, the tithe goes to the local church, to the storehouses it says, to the church that you call home.  This comes right out of Malachi 3:6, He’s first covering the fact that the covenant the people had made has been broken, broken by withholding of the tithe.  It says in verse 6:  ⁶ “I the LORD do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. ⁷ Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the LORD Almighty.  “But you ask, ‘How are we to return?’ ⁸ “Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me.    “But you ask, ‘How are we robbing you?’   “In tithes and offerings. ⁹ You are under a curse—your whole nation—because you are robbing me. ¹⁰ Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. ¹¹ I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe,” says the LORD Almighty. ¹² “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the LORD Almighty.  It’s the 10%.  It’s the whole tithe as the verse says.   This passage is so plain.  Really, there’s no ambiguity.  If you look at it there are really 2 choices we have with the tithe.  It really is a simple situation, black and white.  We can either bring the whole tithe into the local church or as God says, we can rob Him.  We can steal it.  He says then you are under a curse.  There really is no 3^rd option.  This morning, one thing that I ask you, is please, don’t be under a curse.  You have a choice of being under God’s blessing.  It’s so important to allow God to bless you and to provide for you.

Another question I hear is, “Well, can I designate where my tithe goes?”  Well then you haven’t given it.  If you place conditions on it you haven’t given it freely.   Sometimes people talk about giving half to missions and half to the church.  Again, this passage talks about bringing the whole tithe into the storehouse.  It’s very clear.  Your offering, above and beyond the tithe, can be directed towards missions and towards designations.

So often we lose sight of priorities when we lose sight of this principle.  What happens with our priorities in terms of finances?  Many of us lose sight of this particular priority.  We should be giving first, saving for the future and living off the rest.  Giving first, that’s our tithes and our offerings.  That’s the first of our giving.  Returning the tithes to the Lord and giving above and beyond that for our offerings.  Saving for the future so that we have some margin that’s built into our lives and living off the rest.  In many cases we get our priorities out of whack.  We get to the point where we live and spend first.  We used to talk about the expressions “grabbing for the gusto”, that kind of mentality, and perhaps we would save some for later and then we would give if there’s anything left over, but really those priorities are out of whack.  Sometimes we have it backwards.  We end up with no margin and no blessing.  Under those situations then our provision is up to us.  We’re really up to ourselves to provide for ourselves.

There was a survey that was done not too long ago where they asked Christians how many of them tithe according to this standard, 10% off the top, undesignated to the local church.  I was surprised at the results.  They found from the survey that approximately 5 to 7% of Christians tithe according to this standard.  Yes, tithing is a test of our faith.  Bringing the tithe in really is for our provision.  Often we think its about providing for the church and that’s true.  It does provide for the church but that’s not its primary purpose.  It’s so that God can bless us.  Sometimes it’s difficult to understand this and I would like to use a passage that comes out of I Kings, the story of Elijah and the starving widow with her son.  Perhaps you’ve never thought about this particular passage this way, but let me set the stage for this.  This is back in 1 Kings 17.  This is a period of time when the northern kingdom of Israel is falling apart and the evil king Ahab, who was the king of Israel.  It says about King Ahab that he did more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any of those before him.  It said that he married Jezebel the daughter of the King of Sidon, that he served Baal, that he built an altar and a temple to Baal in their capital city of Samaria.  It said he also made an Asherah pole, again more idol worship.   At this point in the story, Elijah is talking about the great drought.  In fact he says there will be no rain except at his word.   The situation is not good.  We pick up the story just at the point where Elijah was fed by ravens.  Here God is providing for the man of God.  It says the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and in the evening.  I was thinking about that and wondering, how did they make the bread anyway?  Did they carry off a loaf that some baker made or did they take their wings and kind of beat together a little ball of dough and stretch it out?  I don’t know how they did it but the Lord provided for the Man of God.  He drank from a brook that was nearby.  Let’s pick this story up in I Kings 17 in the city of Zarephath.  Zarephath is a city between the 2 main cities of Tyre and Sidon for the Phoenicians.  This is modern day Lebanon.   Starting in verse 7:⁷ Sometime later the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land. ⁸ Then the word of the LORD came to him: ⁹ “Go at once to Zarephath in the region of Sidon and stay there. I have directed a widow there to supply you with food.” ¹⁰ So he went to Zarephath. When he came to the town gate, a widow was there gathering sticks. He called to her and asked, “Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink?” ¹¹ As she was going to get it, he called, “And bring me, please, a piece of bread.” Was this a good plan?  Now if I were planning this I would have sent Elijah to perhaps someone who was a little more well off, someone who had an abundance or extra because that would be relatively easy to provide him with some food but again, God has a better plan because His plan was really to provide for this widow.  Picking this up in verse 12:  ¹² “As surely as the LORD your God lives,” she replied, “I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.”  ¹³ Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid.  So often fear enters in, even in our own lives.  We’re fearful of what will happen next.  Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. ¹⁴ For this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the LORD sends rain on the land.’” Again, this is God’s blessing and His provision.  The symbolism is so clear in this story for us.  ¹⁵ She went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. ¹⁶ For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the LORD spoken by Elijah.  God keeps His promises.  All the time.  He keeps His promises.  Here’s the point, Elijah did not need provision from the widow.  Remember, the ravens were feeding him day and night?  The widow needed to give first and then her provision came from the Lord.  This whole passage is a lesson on our priorities, on the provision from the Lord.  Giving first and trusting in the Lord.  God sent Elijah to the women so that the woman could be provided for, her and her family.  God did not send Elijah to the woman so that she could provide for the Man of God, God was quite capable of taking care of him.  It really is an act of faith.  It was an act of faith on the part of the woman to give first but then she was blessed and provided for.   Simply put the tithe is a test.  It’s not a giving to get situation.  It’s a test that shows God where our priorities are.

A question I’m often asked is what does it say in the New Testament about tithing?  There is a passage that we often talk about.  It’s in the book of Matthew and Luke.  I’m going to read a portion from Matthew 23.  This is where Jesus is chastising the Pharisees again, one of the most common groups of people who were chastised by the Lord, probably because it was so necessary for them.  Let me say up front here, this passage really isn’t about tithing.  It mentions tithing but its really about character, justice, mercy and faithfulness; or on the case of the Pharisees the lack of these qualities.  Here in Matthew 23:23 ²³ “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.  This is where He’s reinforcing the rightness of the tithe but He is saying, again, law, justice, mercy, faithfulness, these are important characteristics.  If you remember back to Malachi it talks of bringing the whole tithe into the storehouse.  From that passage in Malachi to the New Testament, do you know how many verses there are in between these 2 passages?  Malachi is the last book of the Old Testament and here we’re picking this up in Matthew, but between the Old Testament and the New Testament there are just 12 verses between these 2 passages.  Why do I talk about this?  Because as pastors whenever we speak about tithing our job would be a lot easier if that passage in Malachi was just 12 verses further downstream and made it into the New Testament.  I’ve often thought about it.  Why God didn’t you put your message more clearly in the New Testament?  Whey didn’t You reinforce this more strongly?  Here’s the best explanation I’ve heard of this.  God put that passage exactly where He intended to put it, again because the tithing is a test for us.  It’s a test of whether or not we will honor God.  It’s a test of our willingness.  People often ask isn’t tithing from the Law?  Aren’t we freed from the Law?  Ty talked about this a couple of weeks ago.  Actually if you look at the history, tithing predated the Law by 400 years.  400 years before Moses, Abraham tithed to Melchizedek.  It’s much longer than that if we look at the example that I gave earlier of Cain and Abel.  Ty talked about the law versus the principle of God and how God’s principles do not change.  Again, we’re so glad that they do not change.  We are free from the law, it’s true but I hope that we are not free from God’s principles.  The principle of tithing existed well before the law.  We can look at the example of Cain and Abel.  We can look at Abraham and Melchizedek.  We can even look at Jacob promising to tithe to the Lord.  All of these were before the Law.  Jesus reconfirmed that the tithe was proper during His life.

I would like to talk about a couple of different types of giving.  I will call it “Giving 1.0” and “Giving 2.0”.  Giving 1.0, that’s the basic.  That’s the starting point for many in terms of faith.  It’s the basic level of giving.  It’s giving to a need, maybe based on a current appeal.  This is a good thing to do.  This is a right thing to do.  This is how we raise money for Jubilee, for mission trips that we go on, for the Thanksgiving Baskets.  We take offerings for this every fall.  For our Helping Hands Fund.   Our Helping Hands Fund is empty.  It’s empty because we have people that are in need, people that can’t make their basic bills.  Just an appeal to you, if you’re a giver, you already want to give to this.  I know what that feels like.  Even now perhaps your heart responds to this need to this particular appeal.  This is something that you love to do, that you’re wired to do.  It doesn’t matter even if you’re a Christian or not.  Many of us love to give to these kind of needs.  Why do we get such a response to these kind of appeals?  Because in many cases it is measurable.  Our impact is tangible.  It’s very quantitative.  One example we know if, some of the problems that have occurred in Haiti.  There’s a program where you can buy a goat for a village in Haiti.  It sounds very strange but if you think about what that goat can do for the village, for a $50 cost you can provide a goat for a village that provides them with mild and cheese.  For $100 you can buy a donkey for a village.  That donkey will do work.  It will haul supplies.  It will carry water.  Again, you can measure your impact by providing a goat or a donkey for a particular village.  It’s very easy to see what benefit giving to this particular need has.   That’s “Giving 1.0”.

However, there’s a higher level or a deeper level of giving.  We’ll call that “Giving 2.0”.  It’s not necessarily responding to an appeal but its building that giving right into our plans.  It’s right into our budgets.  This is where tithing comes in.  It’s that deeper sense of giving where every paycheck its automatic.  Every month those tithes are brought in.  It’s regular.  It’s right off the top.  It’s a higher level of giving.  It’s a planful giving and it does enable the church to do its job.  It does help meet the needs of the body.  We think about God saying, “Test me in this”.  Why is it such a challenge though?  Because in many cases our impact is very difficult to measure.  We’re not talking about a particular goat or a donkey for a village or a particular mission trip.  It’s hard to know what did my tithe accomplish?  I can’t really measure it directly.  Let me give you a couple of measures here.  Your tithes that are brought in help pay for generationchurch program, our youth program, that is so successful.  It pays for the facilities that help bring the Word and the sermon every week.  We talk about other special things that we do, whether its Jubilee or mission trips or Thanksgiving Baskets, or gc in the Park, the church supports all of these activities.  It pays for heating and air conditioning so we can be comfortable as we gather together.  It even helps support hosting a chili cook-off like we had the other week.   These are some examples of where our tithing goes and what it does.  Let me talk about a couple of resources that I can recommend.  Dave Ramsey is a writer and businessman who puts together different packages.  He has a program and a book called The Great Recovery.  He has another program called Financial Peace University.  If you’re having struggles getting your financial life in order you could do a lot worse than follow Financial Peace University.  Judy and Bob Grinsell have led several classes going through this particular program.  If you’re into podcasts like me, there is a series called “The Blessed Life” by Robert Morris.  Go to gatewaypeople.org and look up that series.  It’s the best explanation I’ve heard about this process on how our tithes are to honor God.

Now I know that some of you are probably thinking, Marty, Marty, Marty.  If I had more of this money that you’re talking about, I’d pay a little bit more attention to your sermon.  I would make it a priority if I had more.  I’m going to be real straight with you, real straightforward, with that thought process you never will.  You will never be given more until you can manage what you currently have.  This comes right out of Luke 16:10-12.  It says whoever can be trusted with very little can be also be trusted with much.  However is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.  So, if you’ve not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth who will trust you with true riches.  And if you’ve not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?   It’s very clear that God expects us to steward, to manage well what He’s provided for us and then we’ll be rewarded, but first we want to honor God with our wealth, with the firstfruits of all of our crops.

Maybe this is a particular area of struggle that you have.  Maybe it’s a stronghold.  Perhaps you want to tithe but you don’t know how to move forward.  Maybe your finances aren’t in a position where you can do that, they’re in a mess and you don’t know what to do next.  Perhaps you want to pray for your faith to be built up in this particular area.  Maybe you want God to show you what the next steps are.  Maybe you want to let go and let God be in charge of your finances and see how that works.  This is not something that you want to wait on.  This is something that you want to deal with at this point.  I pray also this week that you’re surrounded by testimonies by people who have seen what this has done for their lives.  That testimony after testimony after testimony will come to you.  There was a story about a man who was struggling with tithing.  He went to his pastor to pray for him.  That man said, “You know pastor, I used to make $500 a week and I would write my $50 tithe check but now I’ve been successful, now I make $5000 a week but I’m really struggling writing out that check for $500 every week.  The pastor prayed for this man.  He said, “Lord, let this man make $500 a week again so that he can tithe”.  Again, the point being honoring God is so important.  If this is an area that you want prayer for, this is so important, please email us at office@christchurchmn.org

What is Normal?

Do you ever ask today what is normal?  We have a great pressure to redefine humanity.  The pressure is on all of us redefining whether there is a hell, whether there is a heaven, redefining right and wrong, redefining humanity.  Humanism has prevailed and we know that for the last 30 years.  The issue is as soon as a bunch of humans do something we call that normal.  Now we need more government and more issues to prop up what we cal normal.   I’m not against government.  I just think the more we step out of what God says is normal the more we have to prop it up and the less we become efficient in what God made us to be.  We are less happy.  We’re less full of joy.  We have to work harder.  There is something about normal.  I’ve been sick before and I do know one thing, that when they take my temperature there is a normal.  Right?  They don’t find a bunch of sick people and change normal to the sick people.  They usually say, “No this is what normal is”.  The goal is to be normal again, right?  There is something about what God designed humans, I love it that He designed healing in our bodies to bring us back to normal.  I realize there are a lot of imperfections, but all of us we want to be well.  Don’t you?  A lot of church today is built on the consumer mentality.   There are basically 3 things.  We want to be wealthy.  We want to be saved.  We want to be well.  I say there’s so much more folks than just having money.  So much more than just going to heaven someday.  So much more than just having good health.  The issue is the grace of God is so big compared to the way its being taught about today.  It’s the power to do, not just the power to be.  There is something about Christianity where God placed His Holy Spirit, the presence of Jesus, in everyone who believes and receives and responds and says I want the Kingdom of God.  When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, YOUR kingdom come, YOUR will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  Right?  Now that’s not praying for what we think.  God created us in His image but now we’ve returned the favor.  We’re creating God in our image and it isn’t the God who is.  Although it might make us feel good, kind of like what happens when you get some narcotic when you’re in deep pain in a hospital, it doesn’t make us normal.  It just takes the pain away for a while.  I’m glad that it does that.  I’m not anti- medication, but let me tell you the goal is to be normal.

What is normal?  What has God done?  This isn’t a sermon to say try to be normal.  That would be the worse thing.  Christianity is the only religion literally on the face of the earth that talks about Jesus dwelling inside you.  A lot of people try to be gods and goddesses but they don’t mean the same thing.  This is the only religion that talks about Jesus in you.  I remember giving my daughter instruction on something she needed to do.  She was being disciplined.  After all that we talked about, I would say,  “This is what being a Munson is all about.  This behavior.”  Really, it was just being a Christian but back then she was my daughter, so you know, I was raising her, so was my wife.  I told her, “Honey, you know what the right thing to do is?”  She would share back what the right thing was.  Then I would look at her and she would get a puzzled look in her face.  I would say, “There’s no way you can do this.  But who lives inside you?”  She would look down and say, “Jesus”.  “Can He do this?”  “Yes”.  “Then you better ask Jesus to do it because you have not a clue on how to do this.  Right now, ask Jesus to do this through you.”  Galatians 2:20²⁰ I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.  Now the power is in Jesus even if we don’t feel spiritual.  Jesus doesn’t go in and out.  If you don’t feel spiritual today you can call on the power of God to live according to what normal is.  I’m going to read another passage from Colossians.  He’s talking about the mystery of God in Colossians 1:27:  To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.  What is glory?  Dignity and worth.  God did not make you to try to become like Him.  He put the DNA in you and that’s the mystery of Christianity versus any religion on the face of the earth.  Therefore, the power to do is in you.  It dwells there and His name is Jesus.  I want to say I do not believe in individualism.  Therefore it doesn’t mean that I have everything of Jesus in me.  It means that I have the deposit of Christ in me and when we get together like in a group the fullness of the grace of God shows up.  I might be red in the spectrum of light.  You might be yellow and someone else might be green but when you bring the colors together it creates the life of the full dimension of all that light is.  That’s why we worship together.  I’ve heard people say, “I worship God at home”.  Thank Jesus you do.  I hope you do but you will become less powerful as you retain only the image of what God has put in you, that’s why we need each other.  It’s called mutual encouragement.  It’s called the light of Jesus.  We need each other.   Realize that each of us are full length mirrors and if you look for Jesus in each other He’s there producing something really great.

Normal, therefore, is God dwelling inside a believer.  That is the truth whether you feel it or not.  You can accept it.  You can reject it but you cannot alter it.  That is the grace of God that dwells inside of you, not just for salvation but to live this thing out.  You can accept it.  You can reject it but cannot alter it.   What is this thing called normal?  I could go off into a lot of subjects here, because I could say God is in you and you’re armed and dangerous but all of you have been taught that grace is the basis we’re saved.  It’s called redemption.  The blood of Christ deals with guilt and sin and boy do we need to be reminded of that.  That’s why we take communion real often because we need to be reminded that we are guilt free and forgiven.  The grace is about the cross of Christ that deals with the power to deal with sin in the flesh and natural ways of thinking and that we no longer live under condemnation.   The ascension of Jesus, that He rose from the dead and ascended to heaven, the ascension is we also who have been crucified with Christ have been raised with Him and according to Ephesians dwell in the heavenly realms.  Our spirit soars.  It is just not earthbound.  Therefore, there is something about the dimension about of this that grace is so much bigger than salvation or getting to heaven or being forgiven of our sins.  It’s the power to live according to the commands of Jesus Christ.  Colossians  1:27, Christ in me.  Some of us need to just be aware of it, that’s all.  If I didn’t ask my daughter to pray Jesus through me, there was no hope of her doing it on her own power.  I don’t understand it.  It’s not magic but it works.  Have you ever going into a situation where you have to speak to somebody and you don’t know what to say?   That’s when you stop and say, “Well Jesus you better talk through me because there’s no hope of me saying anything”.  I don’t get it but something at that moment, like turning on a switch, the power source is no longer me but it’s coming from this Jesus who is dwelling in me.   Being Spirit filled does come with feelings and I do like those but it works when I do not feel it.  It’s not that I’m against feelings.  I’m saying they don’t rule me.  I pay attention to them but I call upon Jesus.  So, when I’m scared I just say, “Jesus you better be here”.  That’s so critical because He is and say no longer me but you Jesus take over.   I’ll give you an example.  You ever notice Billy Graham’s sermons?  I was always amazed.  He would preach the simplest of sermons or he would be on a talk show or something and there was something about the dimension of God that changed people’s ways of thinking when they were in his midst.  I remember one time I was not going to go to a Billy Graham meeting because I thought I’m already saved because I didn’t want to take a seat away, but then I decided to go.  When he came to the invitation I am bawling like a baby.  Why?  Because it was so good to capture the light in its full dimension of something I didn’t possess within me without his gifting added to mine.  We need each other people.  We need to hear the gospel again fresh from an evangelist.  We need to hear the prophetic straight teaching of God.  We need all the various gifts as was already shared.

Galatians 5:16-26 ¹⁶ So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. ¹⁷ For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever^[c] you want. ¹⁸ But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. ¹⁹ The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; ²⁰idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions ²¹ and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.  ²² But the fruit of the Spirit (Here’s what normal is) is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. ²⁴ Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. ²⁵ Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. ²⁶ Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.  There are ways to get out of the Spirit but the key is to be in the Spirit.  Got it?   How do I do that?  By just saying, “Jesus, I am yours.  Let’s go together.”  Is that a difficult thing?  Is it?  How long of a prayer was that?  Five seconds.  If it were more complex than that I would be honest with you.  I realize some of us struggle on certain things but the time-lapse between when we realize we’re struggling and we ask Jesus to take over is the definition of what spirituality is.  As that gets shorter and shorter we become more and more bearing the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, long-suffering, gentleness and the minute we turn it on it starts.  You don’t quite believe me do you?  Because you all have a life history.  So do I.  The devil is here to keep track of when you screw up and remind you of it so you don’t feel you’re deserving of what I’m saying.  The enemy isn’t all that powerful in the sense of control.  He just has to remind you of a few things and takes off and goes to somebody else.  The issue is, I want to remind you of what Jesus says, and this is what normal is, the Spirit of God dwells in you who love Jesus.  Do you love Jesus?  Do you want His kingdom to come?  Okay, then it’s as simple as saying, “Jesus would you now eat through me, talk through me, work through me, interact through me.”  My feelings may be angry but I can also continue to love despite those feelings when I just whisper the prayer, “We better go through this together Jesus”.  That creates immediately “normal”.  I was reading an old book by Watchman Nee and I waded through the book.  He’s quite a deep thinker.  He lived in the 1920s all through the Mao era and he was persecuted in the Chinese situation.  Here’s what Watchman Nee says on page 111 of The Normal Christian Life:  We have learned in China that when leading a soul to Christ we must be very thorough for there is no certainty when he will again have the help of other Christians.  We always seek to make it clear to a new believer that when he asks the Lord to forgive his sins and to come into his life, his heart has become the residence of a living person.  The Holy Spirit of God is now within him to open to him the Scriptures that he might find Christ there to direct his prayer, to govern his life and to produce in him the character of Jesus Christ.  There is no better message.  That’s it.

What will it produce? Love.  Not love that’s just feeling love but real loving actions.  It will produce love.  Agape love.  That kind of love that basically is the unconquerable benevolence to be generous.  It will produce joy.  When we have joy we begin to smile but again the joy may be remembering all the good things God has done but ultimately that joy is immediately available to us the minute we ask, “Jesus would you smile for me?  Would you smile at people through me?”  Peace.  The tranquil assurance of the soul of our savedness.  Long suffering.  Do you know you are already able to long suffer patience?  Did you know that?  Who lives in you?  Jesus.  Is He patient?  Yes.  Then you have the power of patience already within you.  But I’m not patient.  But Jesus is.  Just stop whatever you’re doing that is impatient and say, “I call upon you Jesus to live and walk through me right now.”  Your feelings will catch up and you will find yourself patient.  Kindness.  Do you know what kindness is?  Learning to live with less than perfect.  You don’t expect the pastor or anybody else here to be perfect.  You’re just kind.  You just appreciate people.  A high intolerance for the imperfections of others.  Goodness.  It’s the idea of an upright heart.  Faithfulness.  It’s the ability to have generosity of spirit.  To be faithful means to be real.  It means to be not fake.  People, don’t try to be cool.  It doesn’t mean you have to try to be ‘uncool’ because that’s just as bad as being cool.  When you get in a group and you find yourself trying to impress them, I especially am speaking to the younger group here, and you’re trying to impress them because you want acceptance, realize you have all the acceptance already in you and say, “Jesus, I’m just going to start talking now.”  If you have Jesus come out of you people are going to like you.  Only the evil people will hate you.  It will create a bridge to people that they warm up to in a way that makes them feel safe because we’re not trying to be cool. The goal isn’t to be cool by how I look or what I wear but to be a safe tree that others can come to and rest underneath. Gentleness.  Unbridled strength.  Self control.  II Peter 1:9 says this, “But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.  I love it he doesn’t say, “Hey guys try harder.  This is the way you ought to be.”

People, I pray God’s normal into you right now.  I pray God’s normal.  My favorite prayer in Ephesians 3:14-21:  ¹⁴ For this reason I kneel before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family^[a] in heaven and on earth derives its name. ¹⁶ I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. ²⁰ Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.

I bless you with that.  People try that one on for size.  Pray it for yourself.  Remember folks, no one of us has the full dimension.  We need each other.  It’s the reflection of Jesus I’m interested in, not just my understanding of Jesus.  Because Jesus is the head of the church, when the body comes together we’re connected to our Head and everything begins to function.

 

Honoring God

Honoring God.  Honoring God especially in our possessions.  The verse I’m quoting this morning is Proverbs 3:9  Honor the Lord with your possessions, and with the firstfruits of all your increase.  I know as soon as we look into that there are all kinds of church politics that go into honoring the Lord with our giving.  There are all kinds of beliefs.  I’ve heard some things even on the internet this last week that grieve my heart and so I want to come and I want you to have a grounded theology, to have thought through and prayed through what it means to honor God.  Even if I leave out all the rest and in fact the last part of that verse is this, Honor the Lord with your possessions and with the firstfruits of all your increase so your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will overflow with new wine.  That’s the last time you’re going to hear about that.  Personally I sometimes get grieved when our relationship with God is all about what we get and ultimately it is not about what we get.  We get lots.  I mean we can never escape the “getting” from God because He loves us and He is a giver by nature.  You know what?  There are some things and especially this thing about giving to the Lord, it should not be dependent on what we get back from God.  He has so many promises and so many things that He teaches us but I think we’re missing the full blessing if it is about we give so that we get.

What does it mean to honor God?  Just the first 3 words:  Honor the Lord.  Let’s concentrate on those for a bit this morning.   I want to talk about the difference between “Law” and “Principle”.  What is that?  This is the best definition for what I can give the “law” from Scripture is:  It is ceremonial and legal requirements that are commanded by rules that point and prepare God’s people to recognize the Christ and the need for a Savior.  I’m going to start picking on the Law because Jesus didn’t pick on the Law but what I am going to say is this:  It’s rules and regulations but why were they there?  They point something out and they point us to God, yes they point in that direction, and they also especially reveal to us how ultimately we fall flat and how we need so much more than the Law. We need a Savior because if we’re under the Law we all toast.  We’ve all had it.  None of us have a chance but the Law is good and necessary.  The Law was given by God.  In Romans 7:7 it says we would not have know what sin is unless the Law had instructed us in it.  The Law in itself is good.  There is a difference I want to bring out between Law and principle which I hope will bless us all this morning.  Let me give you an example.  There is a boat that recently is sinking off the shore in Italy.  Now I didn’t know it was a law, but apparently it is that the captain has to be last off.  Apparently that’s a law.  Now that’s a good law but what’s the principle?  I hope we care for the people in our charge.  The principle is are do you care for that which you have been given?  There is a principle that the law expresses but the law can only go so far.  The principle is the base and root from which the law springs from.  Principle.  Webster defines it as “the ultimate cause, origin or cause of something”.  I’m going to go with this definition:  Recognizing the nature of God in us from whence we derive our morality.  Principle is something in our souls that tells us this is right, this is good.  It doesn’t matter where you go, it doesn’t matter what the law are, most of humanity shares that same heart, that remnant from God the creator in us that says this is good or this is not good.  This is right or this is wrong.  “Thou shalt not kill”.  It’s a law.  “Thou shalt not steal”.  “Thou shalt not covet”.  “Honor God first”.  “Honor your parents”.  Are these laws?  Are these rules?  Yes but they also reflect something so much deeper.  The reveal the very heart and the very nature of a just and loving God.

Are we free from the law as believers?  Yes.  We’re free from the law because if we were under the law it would kill us.  We’re all deserving of death.  Christ came to fulfill the law and to set us free from the consequences of sin and death.  We’ve been freed from that.  Thank God!  Are we free from the principle, nature and heart of God?  God forbid.  Jesus, Himself, unwraps this for us on the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:17-22 “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. ¹⁸ For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. ¹⁹ Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. ²⁰ For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. ²¹ “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder,^[a] and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.’ ²² But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause^[b] shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire.  There’s a law there, isn’t there?  He started exposing the very heart of God, the principle behind that law.  What is the principle behind that law?  God loves people.  He is the author of life and he loves it.  He loves you and He respects you.  He wants you to love and respect people.  Law and principle.  Are we set free from that law?  We’re set free from the consequences of the law and sin and death but are we set free from the heart of God which says He wants us to love people like I do?  No.  God forbid.  When I was younger I went to a few zombie movies.  Zombies are really in right now and cool.  This is not to bring conviction on all you zombie lovers out there.  This is for me.   Do you know how to kill a zombie?  You have to whack its head off or do something gruesome.  I went to a zombie movie one time and there was a lot of head whacking going on.  I mean a lot.  There was something in my soul which said something’s wrong here.  It wasn’t a law saying I can’t watch that stuff.  It wasn’t even something that was somebody saying I shouldn’t be watching that garbage.  It had nothing to do with anything.  It was something on the inside which said that people are made in the image of God and it grieved me that I was enjoying seeing God’s creation, people, being mutilated.  It convicted me that I was enjoying it.  Something tells us that its wrong.  Something tells us the heart of God and that He loves.  Matthew goes on to say:  ²⁷ “You have heard that it was said to those of old,^[c] ‘You shall not commit adultery.’^[d] 28But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.   What’s the principle?  The principle is this, the heart of God is faithful and loyal and He wants you to be faithful and loyal.  Is that bad?  Are we free from that?  No.   Continuing in Matthew:  ³¹ “Furthermore it has been said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ ³² But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality^[e] causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery.”   The heart of God, His very nature, He is a God who keeps his commitments and He wants us to keep our commitments.   Jesus went on in Matthew:  ³³ “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform your oaths to the Lord.’ ³⁴ But I say to you, do not swear at all: neither by heaven, for it is God’s throne; ³⁵ nor by the earth, for it is His footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. ³⁶ Nor shall you swear by your head, because you cannot make one hair white or black. ³⁷ But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one. The principle is our God is honest.  He will not lie to us.  His yes is yes and His no is a no.  God wants us to be honest.   Continuing in Matthew:   ³⁸ “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’^[f] 39 But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.  The principle is God is patient and He is kind and He is forgiving.  He wants you to be faithful and kind and forgiving.   Jesus went right past the incompleteness of the Law and revealed the Heart of God, the principle that the law so inadequately attempted to express.  Let’s get one thing straight.  Keeping the Law or even fulfilling all the principles will not save you.  You can be the best person on the face of the earth but it will not bring you salvation.  If anything the Law should point out, especially the Sermon on the Mount by Jesus, that you can’t do it.  When you think that you have it done, when you think you can fulfill all the rules, you’re going to fall flat on your face when you know the principles.  You don’t have a chance.  You need a savior.

We turn our attention to one simple verse, Proverbs 3:9:  Honor the Lord with your possessions and with the firstfruits of your increase.  Let’s look at this one verse.  What does it mean?   Let me ask you, “Honoring the Lord”, law or principle?  You tell me.  Principle?  If honoring the Lord is the principle, HOW do we do it?  A good way to look and say how we do it is we see what God says honors Him.  I’m going to sit at a table and I’m going to invite a very special guest to dinner.  I’m going to invite the Lord.  “Lord, I’m glad You’re here with us this morning.  I want to honor You by having you dine here.  Lord I’m so grateful for everything You’ve done.  I want You to know I’m a follower of Yours.  I want You to know that You’re first in my life.  I want You to know You are my Lord and my God.  Now would you please dine with me?  Lord, we’ll start with fruit salad”.  I serve myself first and the Lord last.   “Oh, Lord, you should try the watermelon!  Oh, I haven’t served You.  Okay, here Lord.  I’m so glad that You’re here.  Take some grapes.”  This is a simple demonstration.  What was wrong?  I served myself first.   I ate first.   I can list the laws for you all day long.  I can go into a list of Scriptures but something in our souls tells us that is not honoring God but dishonoring God.  Something in our souls says that’s wrong.  And yet, I hear many people today, even good Bible teachers, people that are popular and have large churches, still think it is honorable to sometimes serve God second, third, last or not at all when it comes to the increase that He’s given us.  You know, God’s not happy that we put Him in a place of second in any part of our lives.  God will be first.  If you want to be a follower of God, He will be first in your life or you know what’s going to happen?  He is going to shake your life until everything else has fallen off but Him, because by His mercy He is going to show you that He is first, that He is God, that He is our provider, that He is our supplier, that He is the master of our souls.  God expects to be first.  He won’t take anything else.  As a Pharisee said to Jesus in Matthew 22:  ³⁶“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” ³⁷ Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’^[d] 38 This is the first and great commandment.  What was the second commandment from the Old Testament?  You shall have no other gods before me.  What does this principle mean?  It means what it says.  The first part of our increase honors the Lord.  Is it a law to honor the Lord?  No.  It is a grace to honor the Lord.  You look in the New Testament, what happens?  The miracle of the feeding was done with the loaves and fishes when the child brought the first part to the Lord.  The first thing that happened when the church exploded in Acts when the Holy Spirit fell upon them, the first thing people did was coming and bringing their possessions and laying them at the apostles’ feet.  It was a natural thing.  They weren’t asked to do it.  They just did.  They were honoring the Lord.  I’ve have to ask.  There are many struggles in our lives and there may be many struggles in your life because you haven’t put God first.  It’s not just about giving and the tithes, it’s about all of our lives, every part, what part do you give first to God?  People come sometimes for counsel and they want out of a problem.  Many times it gets traced to something in their life that they put the Lord second, third, last or not at all.

I’m going to go back to the table.  Course number 2.  “I have chicken for you today Lord.  Oh yes.  Good chicken.  This chicken is the best Cub had to offer.  Now, Lord, I know I like dark meat.  The fact is if I was going to say something, oh no, let’s serve You first.  Let’s serve you first Lord.  I want to get it right.  Here, this breast, a lot of people like white meat.  Look at that.  That’s for You.  I love dark meat.  It’s my favorite. “  What’s wrong with this picture?  I didn’t even ask what He wanted.  I kept the best most desirable part for myself.  Who says that that’s the best part?  The Lord looks at our hearts.  He knows what’s your best part.  He’s knows the part that you’re keeping for yourself.  That’s the part that’s often best, isn’t it?  It’s the part that we say, “Lord I’ll give you lots in my life.  There are all these things I do for you but there are some things I really enjoy and I just can’t give that up into Your control, because I enjoy those things.  I enjoy my television time, so I’ll give you Sunday morning.  I enjoy going to the club.  I enjoy my video games.  I enjoy my money.”  What is the thing that is most important to you?  What is the thing that has value in your heart?  If you’ve determined and say there is a part that Lord you can’t have that, it’s putting a god above our God.  It could be anything.  So what do we give to God?  We give God the second best.  We give Him the third best.   Let’s go to Acts 5:  ¹ But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession. ² And he kept back part of the proceeds, his wife also being aware of it, and brought a certain part and laid it at the apostles’ feet. ³ But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself? ⁴ While it remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not in your own control? Why have you conceived this thing in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.”  You now what, it’s not what he gave that killed him, it’s what he held back.  They lied about it.  They proclaimed with their mouths, as I did when I sat here and honored the Lord with my mouth and did another thing with actions.  They claimed one thing and they gave another and it was the part that they kept back that killed them.  Isn’t it the same with us?  It’s what we keep from God that kills us.  It’s the part that we say is special to us.

One more time to the table.  “It’s dessert time.  I don’t want to make the same mistakes here.  We’re just going to take this dessert and cut this right down the middle.  There’s part for you Lord and I’ll serve You first and a part for me.  This chocolate cake looks pretty good.  God, I know that you’re God.  You can do anything.  You can make chocolate cake from scratch in the heavenly kitchens.  Now, chocolate cake for me is a rare treat and wonderful thing. “  I cut off a big piece of the Lord’s piece of cake.  He’s God.  He doesn’t need it.  He can do anything.  I can take that home and put it in a doggie bag and eat it later.  I’ll put it somewhere where I can use it later.  Is there a part that God says is His?  Is there a part that is holy to God?  You know, the part that is holy to God is the part that He says is holy to God.  From the beginning it was the tithe, the 10%, the first part of the increase.  It was from the beginning.  You say, “Oh that’s Law”.  No.  It’s principle.  With Cain and Abel it says He accepted Abel’s offering because he gave the firstfruits of the fat of the offering, which means he gave the first and the best and his offering was acceptable before God.  There was no law.  Let’s get this straight.  There was no law then.  There was no written code.  There were no rules and regulations.  There was something that was acted upon in principle from the very beginning.  Before the Law he made that offering.  Before the Law, Abraham and when he saw Melchizedek coming there was something Christ-like about Melchizedek and he probably was a incarnation of Christ in the Old Testament.  It says he had no beginning and no end, well I don’t know of any human that had no beginning, no parentage, no mother, no father, I don’t know of any human that had that qualification.  But it says that Abraham gave him a tenth.  I’m sorry folks, it was before the law.  There was no written code.  There were no rules or regulations about how much to give.  There was something that says You get the first, You get the best, You the first tenth part.  I don’t know where it was first taught.  I believe it came all the way back from the Garden of Eden.  Of course, there this Melchizedek talked about in the New Testament in Hebrews.  The interesting thing about Melchizedek was he had nothing to do with the law.  Do you realize he wasn’t even a Levite?  It says he didn’t come from the tribe of Levites.  We don’t even know if he was considered a Hebrew.  We just see that a tenth part, it’s talked about in the present tense, it’s says the tithes and offerings were given but they are still given as unto Melchizedek, this priesthood of Melchizedek, which is a representation of Christ.  You see the thing is what’s the principle?  I don’t want to place people under law but in all conscience as a teacher of the Word of God, I cannot tell you that God has nullified, has changed His mind that the first 10% of everything is no longer holy to Him.  In the fear of God I could never tell you that, that God says the first 10% isn’t holy anymore to Him.  It’s His heart.  He defined it but this is the principle of it.  Not only giving to God what’s God’s, putting Him first in our life, but the principle is this, we’re not limited to that.  We shouldn’t take that as a regulation, as a rule upon our neck.  We’re not limited to that.  We’re to live a life that is generous, to give over and above whenever we have that opportunity, whenever we have the ability.  The blessing is ours.   You know, my tithe is not an offering.  I can’t make a gift of God to the 10% that He already owns but I can give gifts and I can give offerings after what I’ve given to God what He said is holy to Him.

So, I hope I’ve presented honoring God in a little bit different light to bring it home to us.  We honor God with the first, with the best and with what He says is Holy to him.  I want you to be free from the law.  I don’t want you to be under the regulations.  I don’t want you to do anything unwillingly.  God doesn’t want you to give anything unwillingly or under compulsion, but you know what?  He also wants you to know His principle and to understand His heart and what He’s about.  He’s a generous God but He is a God who will be first in our lives.  He is the best in our lives and that He is our provider.

 

Foundations: Spiritual Gifts

I am here to preach a message of love and I’m going to teach on the doctrine of spiritual gifts.   I’m going to teach a couple of questions, very common questions, about spiritual gifts and answer them.  For exam, what are the spiritual gifts and why do we have them?  They are GIFTS, first of all.  We are a charismatic service.  What does that mean?  It comes from the word “charismata” and “charis” means grace, “ma” means gift and “ta” is the plural.  So, we are a service that operates in the grace gifts of God.  All of us.  Spiritual gifts are gifts from God in grace.  They show His love for us.  Grace.  That word is so complicated, so full, so loaded and even the spiritual gifts are gifts of grace.  They are given to us.  Now, we can accept gifts and like gifts in different ways.  I know for me, I still remember the Christmas when I received my Sega Genesis.  I was about 12 years old and I remember just thoroughly believing I was not going to get a Sega Genesis for Christmas.  I had my heart set on it and you know, as guys when we look at Christmas presents we pick them up and hope they are heavy and that’s the first thing we do.  We just look for the weight.  The weighty ones are the good ones.  So I remember going through them and I didn’t see it anywhere and sure enough I got it and I was ecstatic and it was awesome, but a few Christmases before that I remember receiving a gift and unwrapping it and it was light, so I knew something was bad, and I unwrapped it and it was long underwear, and I was 5 or 6, and I said, “No thank you” and I threw it back and went on to the next gift.  We don’t get that option with the spiritual gifts.  The spiritual gifts are given to us when we receive Christ because you cannot separate the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.  It’s important that we know about them, can receive them and use them.   The technical definition is this, “A spiritual gift is any ability that is empowered by the Holy Spirit and used in any ministry of the church”.  Let’s try to frame that and put it into the big picture.   As I said you can’t separate the Trinity at any moment or at any moment in time either.  So just like you can’t separate when we receive Christ, we receive the Holy Spirit you can’t separate them at any moment in time, that’s the Trinity.  From our perspective, as we are limited beings, it helps us to frame the big picture and this can help our understanding of why the Holy Spirit is so important to our immediate church and spiritual life.

In the Old Testament, we see our choice to sin and thus be distanced from God. We then see the Father’s love demonstrated over and over again.  How much He cares for our hearts and what the state of our hearts means has ramifications to our lives, to our families and to our relationship with Him and nothing we could come up with was successful in getting us back in that relationship with God. We tried all sorts of things.  We even said, “God give us a king among us.  Give us a king that can connect us better with you.  Give us priests.  Give us judges.  Give us all these things.  Give us sacrifices to try to get back in a perfect relationship with you.”  Nothing we could come up with was successful.  Nothing we could do would bridge the gap.  And so we see the cycle of pain throughout the Old Testament.   Then, at last, in God’s perfect timing, the Word of God is fulfilled in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Now He was the perfect High Priest.  He was the Mediator.  He was the one who could bridge the gap and by receiving Him, we receive that bridged gap.  We receive the bridge so we can get back to relationship with God.  We don’t need anybody else.  We never need a man again to come between us and God.  He was perfect.  He died for our sins.  He was raised to heaven and He is still with us as our mediator between us and God.   Then Jesus tells His disciples to wait until the Spirit falls on them and when it does, when the Spirit of God falls on the disciples, thousands were saved.  Now think of what that means in the big picture.  Thousands were saved when the Spirit fell on the disciples, which means all of the separation, the moment the Spirit comes and empowers them, thousands more get to be relationship with God.  So those who accept Christ are blessed with the power of the Holy Spirit.

Now even that might be TOO big of a picture, so now we can try to narrow it down a little bit and talk about it in one man’s life.  Now think about one guy that had the normal amount of exposure to God and actually in today’s terms had way more exposure than we have as he studied the Scripture for the first 13 years of his life and not being a gifted student he became a fisherman.   It was then Jesus came to him and called him to follow.  He then began a personal relationship with Jesus, walking with Him, learning from Him.  He was constantly tested.  Even walking side by side with Christ he often failed.  Now the most dramatic test probably was when Jesus was actually performing a miracle and asked him to join Him, but looking at Him, even looking at Jesus performing the miracle, this guy went out and still failed.  He lost faith and failed.  I can only guess that the most painful failure for him came on the day when Jesus was arrested right in front of him and he denied Him three times.  With his own mouth he denied who He was three times.  I’m guessing most of you have figured out I’m talking about Simon Peter.  Even his name is important.  He was Simon until he was given one of the most important tests.  He was asked, “Who do you say I (Jesus) am?”  In Matthew 16:16, he answers saying, “You are the Christ, the son of the living God”.  Jesus not only replies, “Yes” but He names him Peter, the rock.  See, we can be given identities by our parents, our peers, our jobs, but He knows our God-given identity and the world now knows him as Peter, the rock.  He was still not fully functional as “the rock”.  The 3 denials came after his naming.  Have you ever read and studied the speech at Pentecost given by Peter?  It is awesome.  It is a clear, strong, bold, powerful telling of the Gospel message.  This is the same guy who denied Christ three times the day He was arrested.  The same guy.  What was different?  He was empowered by the Holy Spirit.  He was empowered.  He was called.  He was tested.  He was named and he was empowered.  That’s what we want to be.  It is the empowering that is given to equip the church and carry out its ministry until Christ returns.  Has He returned?  NO.  So we need the Holy Spirit.  We need the gifts of the Spirit to equip the church and carry out its ministry.

So have some gifts ceased?  Pastor Willems covered it a little bit last week and I just answered a big question as well, but I want to take it and actually break it apart by the Scripture that is used.  The most prominent Biblical argument on the cessation of gifts is quoted from I Corinthians 13:8:  Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.  So based on this, it is only logical then to look for the time and the reason why they did pass away, when this happened.  Now as good Biblical scholars the first place we look is the context the Scripture was taken from.  Whenever we do Bible doctrine we have to make sure the whole Bible agrees on a doctrine.  The first place we look is the actual context that the Scripture is in itself.  All we have to do is continue reading the Scripture, verses 9 and 10 say:  ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.  Now this was after the time of Jesus, so he is not taking about the perfect coming in the form of Jesus, he’s talking about the return of the perfect.  So all we have to do is look to the next verse and we know that these gifts are still around and still needed.  Now really if you zoom out even just a little further in this verse, you see the whole passage is trying to make us comprehend the awesomeness of love.  This passage really isn’t a discussion on spiritual gifts but rather trying to impress the superiority of love as it is the one thing that will be with us for all eternity.  God is love.  As we learn about the spiritual gifts we have to know that.  The spiritual gifts need to be operated in love.  They show His love.  They are His grace gifts to us.  Like I said, I’m bringing you a message of love.  This is even the passage that ends with , “So faith, hope and love abide but the greatest of these is love.”  We hear it at weddings all the time.  This is the key as we exposure our gifts, to explore them with love in mind.  It is with these gifts that we better show God’s love for the world.  Thinking that way, what sense would there be in God having them cease.  If we can show His love better, why would they cease before He comes again?

Now I want to move on but the other argument against prophecy and some of the miraculous gifts are that they challenge the sufficiency of Scripture.  That is, if we are still hearing and seeing the Word and acts of God, doesn’t that challenge that the Bible is complete?  Think about this, miracles authenticate the Gospel through the church age.  They give help to those in need, thereby demonstrating God’s mercy and love.  They equip people for ministry and they glorify God.  Do those sound like things that challenge the Bible and what it has taught?  No.

How many gifts are there?  That’s a very common question.  There are a lot.  I think we don’t actually know all of them, that we don’t actually have a full list of them.  Here are some lists of apostle, prophet, teacher, miracles, healing, helps, administration, tongues, word of wisdom, word of knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, discerning spirits, tongue interpretation, evangelist, pastor/teacher, prophecy, serving, teacher, encouraging, giving, leadership, mercy, marriage, celibacy, etc.  How do you make sense of that?  How many gifts are there?  What do we look into?  What do we learn?  How do we use them?   You can just boil it down, as Peter did, “Who speaks and whoever renders service”.  But what we’re going to use are the types of gifts, charismata.  We break them down into 3 categories, this is Bible-based.  This is not dogmatic doctrine that they are broken into these 3 sections.  This is a doctrine based on a Scripture that describes them as ministerial, motivational and manifestational.  Breaking them into these 3 categories can help us understand them, learn them and use them better.   Ministerial: “Diakonian” means to serve another person.  These are the ministerial gifts.  Motivational: ernogematon , which is the energy, the thing that pumps you up, the thing that moves you, that motivates you.  Manifestational:  phanerosis.  The root word of that is “phos”, which means light.  Light means to reveal, which is the manifestational gifts are those gifts that reveal God to people.

Ministerial gifts:  Apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, teacher.   The people in full-time ministry most likely have these as their primary gifts.

Motivational gifts:  These are the ones that you can really find out how to frame what you think, how you move, how you act, why you are attracted to some ministries and some you shy away from.  These are those gifts that really lead you to know who you are in Christ.  Prophecy:  Mitchell Grassman has a gifting in prophecy.   His vision is prophetic.  He has given words on the microphone before and say he has no idea what that means and walk off.  It is usually for someone else in the body to come alongside and interpret it or for people to pray about and interpret it themselves.  Teaching:  Ray Teichroew has been doing adult Sunday school downstairs.  I keep hearing about its an awesome teaching that’s happening downstairs.  Encouragement:  Jim Munson for those of you who know him.  For those of you who don’t, let me give you an example.  “Hi I’m Jim.  I don’t know you yet but I love you.  You’re a good man”.  That’s Jim.  The gift of encouragement.  My wife has the gift of encouragement as well.   Giving:  That’s an interesting one.  I know that there are a lot of anonymous givers in this church.  It’s really interesting and really awesome to see as I have come on here to see the anonymous givers and all of a sudden from this small congregation we are able to do amazing things because of the givers.  So I know you’re out there and one I know is Josiah Pinson.  Josiah has a gift of giving.   Leadership:  There are lots of leaders.  Leadership is often with a backslash to it and it is administration.  Leadership and administration actually go hand in hand.  These are people like Deb Chinander.  Deb has a gift of leadership in the church.  The administrating she does in that office for the pastors of the church is amazing.  The website is because of her gift of leadership and administration.  Mercy:  Zena Lawrence has the gift of mercy.  How many times has she encouraged you to come along to Marie Sandvik?  They need you.  That’s Zena.  Serving:  There are servers all over the church.  I’m going to highlight John Deutch.  John is awesome.  He is an awesome man of serving.  I was here on Thursday or Friday and he shows up with one of the Deutsch kids and starts checking the salt for the sidewalks, making sure we have salt in case there is a snowfall for the weekend.  That’s a heart of serving.  He just shows up and does stuff.  He built the little thing with the guys on Monday morning for our snowblower so that it looks nice on the property.  He has a heart of serving.  Hospitality:  Bari Mader who does the Laughs & Apps with Bernadette Doyle.  Hospitality:  Making you feel welcome.  Making you feel like you’re in a house that loves you and echoing the love of God.   The secondary list are called other motivational gifts because they are not found in Corinthians.  These are usually ones that are in the Old Testament but like I said when we look up Bible doctrine we need to pull from the whole Bible.  We see these in the Old Testament.  Craftsmanship:  Ben Kramer is a craftsman.  He comes and he’s worked on the church roof.  He’s worked on all sorts of things.  He has a craftsmanship gift.  He’ll say, “This is what I do for a living but I paint too.  Check out my paintings on my cellphone.”  He’s awesome.  He has a gift of craftsmanship.  Music:  How about John Wellvang.  He has a gift of music.  Intercession:  Neita Homerin.  She has a prayer list for people.  She has the Wednesday morning prayer.  She now has a fasting list.  People who are willing to fast at the drop of a hat if there is a need in the church to fast and pray.  Writing:  Kajsa McIntyre has the gift of writing.  I saw it in the internship.  When she found out that this was a spiritual gift she was so relieved!  Creative arts:  Bob Grinsell.  He has a passion for it.  He loves it.  He loves to make them a part of whatever we do, the creative arts.  Here are some of the motivational gifts.  Again, these are lists we have from the Bible but I don’t think they’re exhaustive.  Think about this, I’ve listed 12-15 spiritual gifts in the motivational part of things.  How many people are there on the planet?   7 billion people on the planet.  God does not make any 2 people the same.   So as many as we see these gifts that can look differently in people, there could be more out there that I’m just not thinking of because I didn’t have them in my doctrine study, it’s okay.  We need to be released in our spiritual gifting but we need to find out what they are because we all have it if we have received Christ.

The manifestational gifts:  These can confuse people, so I’m going to go through and actually describe them.  Word of wisdom:  A word of wisdom is a revelation of God that you receive that you can speak into a situation, that you know afterwards is like, “How did I know that?  How did I say that?  I don’t understand where that revelation…oh yeah, word of wisdom”.  It’s usually when you’re counseling somebody or speaking into somebody and you have a word of wisdom for them.  Word of knowledge:  Word of knowledge is interesting.  I think it is a fantastic gift and I’ve seen some people who’ve had it.  A word of knowledge is when you get a revelation about a specific word for somebody about their past or about them that you have no way of knowing.  Can you see the difference in word of wisdom and word of knowledge?  The word of knowledge is fact.  You walk up to someone and say, “I have a word for you.  You went to BlockBuster this week and you need to return that movie”.  That’s a word of knowledge.   A word of wisdom:  “You need to be patient in this scenario.  You need to be patient right now.  I’m telling you, I’m just feeling it.  I know you feel like you need to rush into things.  You need to be patient”.  That’s a word of wisdom.   Prophecy:  That is a word for the church.  A prophetic word for the church is going to reveal something, is going to be a word for people’s hearts, something that will get the church to a better place or to prepare them for what’s coming.   Healing:  Pretty straight forward.  Discernment:  That’s spiritual discernment.  We cannot forget we’re studying the doctrine of spiritual gifts, God’s grace, but there is a whole realm of spiritual things out there.  Discernment of spirits is that voice good or bad?  Is that voice something that you should be listening to or not?  There’s a presence in this room.  Is it angelic or not?  Is it God or not?  Discernment of spirits is a gift that can manifest itself in saying, “There’s an angel in this room right now, so we’re going to pray for God to send it somewhere” or something like that.  Tongues:  We’ve heard tongues in church.   My mom spoke out today and she has the gift of tongues.   When I would listen to my mom, my heart would leap because these manifestational gifts reveal God, shine a light that God is alive, that God is working, that the Holy Spirit is here.  Miracles:  Pretty self-explanatory.

How do we seek and use spiritual gifts?  First of all pray.  First and foremost we need to pray.  We need to look at them and seek them out in prayer.  Maybe look back at your life and say, “Holy Spirit, search me, reveal something to me.  Is there something already going on, something that I’m already doing that you can reveal some or one spiritual gift?”  The best way is to serve.  Plug in somewhere.  Watch your spiritual gift come out when you’re serving the poor.  Watch your spiritual gift come out when you’re serving with your brothers and sisters.  As you see them use their spiritual gifting, watch them say, for example, “Man you’re really good at this.  I would never have thought of praying in this situation.  I thought we just needed to make a blueprint for something and start to work on it, but you want to pray first.  Okay, yeah, we should, absolutely, we should pray first”.  And those are the intercession people, people who are gifted in intercession.   Serve, plug in.  We’re looking to be empowered, so plug in.   There are a bunch of tests and ways that you can have people who have done studies try to reveal them to you.  Maybe you’re confused, what is this, how am I any of those things?  There are lots of tests because there are different people, different gifting and there are different ways to pull them out.  Not every test is 100% perfect, so its good to take a variety of them.  Another way, if you don’t know which test to take, or if you want someone to go with you, then find a brother or sister who is mature in their gifts, go alongside of them and say, “Can we look into this?  Can we dig this out?”  If you don’t know one of those, find a pastor.  Say, “Hey, Josh gave a word on Sunday and I have no idea what my spiritual gift is.  I’ve never moved in it.  I’ve never walked in it.  I’ve never had a manifestational gift happen and I’ve been a Christian for 25 years, so can you help me in this?  Can you walk me through this?”  And they’ll say, “Yes”.

It’s important to know that they all sound awesome.  Can you imagine someone who had all of these gifts?  Can you imagine that?  How awesome would their life be?  In any situation they would know when to pray, they know when to discern spirits, they know when to do this and do that.  No one has all of them.  No one is gifted primarily in all of them.  That doesn’t even make sense.  You know who is gifted in all of them?  Jesus or the Body of Christ, the Church.  We need each other’s gifts.  We need to know.  We need to function.  How awesome would your church life be to have everyone functioning in their gifts, to have all the gifts here.  God brought you here to serve alongside of your brothers and sisters, to be functioning in your gift.  When you pull out and you unplug we lose it, whatever tool you had we lost because you are unplugged.  We need everybody to be plugged in serving, growing, maturing and using their spiritual gifts.  Remember, though, just because you don’t give prophecies doesn’t make it your responsibility to give prophecies.  So as you’re looking into these things there are a couple of warnings.  That’s one side.  The other side is just because you are gifted in giving or you are not gifted in giving doesn’t mean you don’t have to tithe.  You can’t confuse responsibilities of a Christian with the gifts of a Christian.  There are responsibilities.  There are things laid down by God in the Bible.  Also don’t confuse these with a fruit of the Spirit or rewards.  These are not rewards.  Natural talents:  We are given natural talents at birth and we’re given spiritual gifts at our spiritual birth.  Skills that are earned.  Places of service:  That means if there is ministry going on and Zena says I need people this week.  I have nobody for Marie Sandvik and you say, “I don’t have the gift of mercy.  I’m prophetic. “  No, no, no.   WE still plug in. We still serve with each other. It will stretch you.  God actually says to ask, especially for wisdom.  Ask for other spiritual gifts.  Beth went to New Zealand and studied with Jodie Pierce and she spoke about how she always wanted the gift of healing.  That always bugged her that she didn’t have the gift of healing.  She saw people hurting around her, people getting into accidents.  She was around a lot of crazy youth so she would see people get hurt a lot.  She said she always wished she had the gift of healing.  So she prayed and she fasted.  It bugged her that she could not get the gift of healing.  One day she heard very strongly God say to her, “Jodie, when I want you to heal I’ll let you know”.   You are encouraged to pray for other spiritual gifts.  Knowing your spiritual gift will help you understand God’s will for your life and your ministry.  It will equip you with the tools that God designed you to use.  It will let you know where your gifting is not and you have to pay attention for where they are not so that if you are leading something and you know you don’t have a gifting in some areas, what do you do?  You can pray for them but what’s another way?  Ask the church body.  You’re surrounded by people with spiritual gifts.  You need to come along side people with spiritual gifts.  So if you know you don’t have a certain gift in a certain area, then you can ask a pastor or you can ask people that you know their spiritual gifts and you can ask them to be on your team.  I’m going to ask them to join this team.  It does build unity in the church.  We need each other.  “Therefore, I urge you in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.  This is your act of worship.” Romans 12:1-2  In all we do to give it over to Him by finding how we are spiritually gifted we can make worship out of anything.  We really can.  Our work, our careers, our families, our peers.  If you know your spiritual gifting you can then say, “Man I should be doing this with my friends.”  Or, “I can be doing this in my neighborhood”.  Or, “I could be doing this at work”.  Maybe you’re in a career flux or you’re going into something and you say, “Now I know my spiritual gift, maybe I should get a job that goes along with my spiritual gift so that I know I am functioning in my gift even in my workplace”.  “You were called to be free but do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature, rather serve one another in love.  Galatians 5:13  You were called and set free by Jesus Christ.  Now we’re called to serve.   To transform this world, to bring the Kingdom of heaven to earth and we do that through the Holy Spirit and the works of the Holy Spirit.  Know your gifting.   We were cursed by having some fruit and now we work to redeem.  Even the pain that we feel and the struggle we feel at work is part of that curse.  To know your spiritual gifting and to use it and walk in it will help to lift that.  Whoever serves is to do as one who is serving by the strength of God, which God supplies so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever.

Foundations: Church Government

Check out our latest sermon in our Foundations Series:  Church Government

Link

Foundations: The Church

Check out the next in our series:  Foundations:  The Church

http://www.sermon.net/christchurchminnesota/sermonid/119787974

Foundations: Conversion

We are continuing on the Foundations Series, looking at kind of a systematic theology, the doctrines of why we believe what we believe and what’s the supporting Scripture.  The topic today is conversion.  Now as I was preparing for this I was like, which way to go?  Conversion is a step in the salvation process.  So I thought, should I just go a little deeper on conversion or just step back and kind of have a quick glance at the whole order of salvation.   I think what I will do is try to provide a quick overview, as quickly as possible and then come back to conversion and make a couple of key points there.

There are a couple of key assumptions as we talk about the order of salvation, there are a couple of fundamental doctrines that this order of salvation rests upon.  One of them is the sovereignty of God.  God is sovereign.  God exercises power over His creation.  He is autonomous.  He is independent.  He is absolute.  His authority comes from His perfect and holy character.  He not only exercises power over His creation, He keeps His creation existing.  He is an engaging, sovereign God.  In the book of Colossians it says that “In Him all things are held together”.  Beyond that He cooperates with created things in every action.  He directs them to fulfill His purpose.  One pillar is the sovereignty of God.   Isaiah 46, it says “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times what is still to come and I say, my purpose will stand and I will do all that I please”.  In another scripture, Jeremiah 1 says, “The Lord said to me, You have seen correctly because I am watching to see that my Word is fulfilled”.  There is a sovereign God that is control.  He knows the end from the beginning and everything in between making sure that His purposes will stand and what the Word promises will come to pass.  That’s why as believers we are standing on His promises.  He is not a man that He should lie, so His word is sure.

The other pillar is man’s total depravity.  Without God we are unable to submit to God and do good.  We don’t have it in and of ourselves to reform ourselves.  People are by nature not inclined to follow God, to love Him with all their heart, mind and soul. We are not able to do that and we are not even able to submit to His rule and to His reign on our own.  Man’s human nature is inclined to serve their own will, their own desires and even reject the rule of God.  Some people says, “Well, you know I haven’t  killed anybody or haven’t robbed a bank.  Total depravity doesn’t mean that the fullness of our evil exists in a person or its operating in a person.  An example, let’s take a glass of wine and I put 5 drops of deadly poison inside of the glass of wine.  Not all of the liquid is poison but the liquid has been poisoned.  It’s the same concept.  Not all human nature is depraved but it is still totally affected by depravity by sin.  Even at our best there is a mixture of sin in it.  Even our philanthropic efforts, donating, doing good, there are self purposes, it’s pride, it’s selfishness, it’s broken, it’s not perfect, separated from God.  It’s a radical indictment on all human virtue that doesn’t flow from a humble heart that is bent to God and depends on His grace.

So, God is sovereign and man is totally depraved.  There are some scriptures that support that.  All of us have become like one who is unclean and all of our righteous acts are like filthy rags.  No one calls on your name or tries to lay a hold of you.  Even our best is like filthy rags before the Lord.  Ecclesiastes 7, “Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins”.   Jeremiah 13 is interesting.  “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots?  Neither can you do good who accustomed to doing evil”.   Apart from God we can’t do it on our own.  It reminds of me of an illustration, there’s a scorpion on one side of the river and he wants to get to the other side.  There is a frog hanging around the water and the scorpion says, “Hey come over here.  I need to get to the other side.  Can I just get on top of you and then you give me a ride to the other side?”  The frog said, “Are you crazy?  You’re a scorpion.”  The scorpion says, “Ah come on, I want to get to the other side.  I don’t want to die”.  The frog said, “All right”.  So the scorpion hops on top of the frog and they go and halfway through the river the frog feels the hot heavy sting to the back.  The frog looks up and says, “I thought you weren’t going to do anything?”  The scorpion said, “I can’t help it.  It’s in my nature” and they both died.   It’s an illustration that our nature is bent towards evil.   The last point on man’s depravity is that the Bible calls such a man spiritually dead.  That’s why when you verses like in I Corinthians, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved is the power of God”.  That’s why sometimes when you talk someone that does not know Jesus, it’s foolishness.  The cross, the message of the cross, Jesus dying, doesn’t make sense, doesn’t compute.  I Corinthians 2 also says, “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God” because they cannot discern, they don’t have the Spirit in them to discern the things of God.

Election:  God’s choice of people to be saved.  It’s an act of God before creation in which He chooses some people to be saved, not on account of any good they have done on their own merit but just because of the sovereign good pleasure.  This particular doctrine, divine election, has caused a lot of theological debates for centuries.   Let’s be clear.  The Bible teaches, the New Testament, teaches about predestination.  For instance, Ephesians 1:4-6 says ⁴ For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love ⁵ he^[b] predestined us for adoption to sonship^[c]  through  Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— ⁶ to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.”  Romans 8:28-30:  ²⁸ And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who^[i] have been called according to his purpose. ²⁹ For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. ³⁰ And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.”  Now the thing about this topic it seems unfair.  It’s hard to embrace that but at the end of the day and not that I know the fullness of this, but God didn’t have to save any of us to remain fair.  He didn’t have to.  Man chose sin, therefore there was a separation between God and mankind.  The Bible says the payment of sin is death, right?  So He didn’t have to do anything to remain fair.  Here’s the beautiful story, over 2000 years ago, in Calvary at a cross, there was a collision between judgment and grace.  Jesus Christ hung on the cross.  He took your sin and my sin, the sin of mankind and God unleashed His judgment.  Imagine the full unleashed fury of God upon sin.  He became sin who knew no sin so that we might become His righteousness.  So God is not mad at you and me anymore.  The payment of sin has been paid in Christ.  So after that a tsunami of grace manifested and grace of God traveled throughout history reaching out and saving people, touching people’s lives.  I tried to come up with an illustration that made sense, but let’s imagine that I have millions and I go to a room and there are 20 people in the room and I decide to give $100,000 to five of them.  I’m sure once the word gets around 15 of them are going to be upset.  Hey that’s not fair.  You know what?  It’s my money, nothing was owed to anybody, so I chose who to give it to.  That’s the sovereignty of God.  He chooses us.  There is a lot of debate on this.  Sometimes the Bible is not full.  Now we know in part what the Bible says but then we will know fully when we see Him face to face.  The issue is when the divine mouth shuts up on certain issues.  As believers we have to be careful when we try to understand things that are not fully understandable.  Let Scripture finalize this topic, Romans 9:14-24  ¹⁴ What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! ¹⁵ For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”^{[f]  16} It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. ¹⁷ For Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”^[g] 18 Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.   ¹⁹ One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” ²⁰ But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’”^[h] 21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?   ²² What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? ²³ What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory— ²⁴ even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? “  You know, it’s a mystery but that’s the sovereignty of God.

The Gospel call:  The second one, is going be the Gospel call, proclaiming the message of the Gospel.  Now here’s the definition of effective calling:  It’s an act of God the Father, speaking through the human proclamation of the Gospel, in which He summons people to Himself in such a way that they respond in faith.  A willing response.  So this is the external calling.  The proclamation of the Gospel that falls upon all people.  There’s an internal call generated by the Holy Spirit that actually brings in someone the willing response.  As believers we are called to be witnesses.  We’re encouraged to be witnesses.  Our life should be a walking epistle.  Our lives should be the declaring the message of the Gospel.  There comes a time where the Bible says that we are ready to give an answer.  We must be ready to give an answer as to the hope that lies within us.  So when someone asks what is it about you, what is it that in the midst of chaos you have peace?  Why is it that I knew you before as a habitual addict and now you are free?  What’s up with that?  What happened to you?  We have to be ready to respond and to share the good news that God so loved the world that He sent His Son.  Sin was a problem, separated mankind.  The payment of sin is death but God so loved the world that He sent His son, His only begotten Son, so whoever believes in Him, not in religion, but in Him will be saved and have eternal life.   The Gospel is external and its often rejected but the effective call, the one that God knows, when they hear the call and its time for them, that internal life by the Spirit comes in the inside of them and the internal call is always effective.  It always works.  So without the Gospel call no one can respond and be saved, that’s why we must declare the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  That’s why Paul endured all kinds of hardship for the sake of the elect.  He wanted to go places and declare the truth of Jesus Christ for the sake of the elect.

Regeneration:  Being born again.  God imparts spiritual life.  It’s the secret of God.  In John 11, you remember Lazarus?  The brother of Martha and Mary, who Jesus was told he was dying and He kind of delayed and when He got there he was already dead.  What percentage of contribution did Lazarus bring to the table in his coming back to life?  Zero.  So, it’s the same in the spirit.  We are passive on regeneration.  It’s done unto us.  In the natural, how much saying did you have in being born in the natural?  It was your parents business, but yet here you are.  It’s the same in the Spirit.  Ephesians 2:8 says “⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— “  If we’re dead the Spirit of God must regenerate us first so then we can hear the Gospel and through His grace by faith extend and grab it, a willing response.  So we must be regenerated by the Spirit of the Living God before we can even willingly respond to the call of the Gospel.  In Ezekiel 36, God says “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you.  I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.  I will put my  Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. “  Praise be to God for the Spirit of the Living God.

Conversion:  It’s a willing response as a result of regeneration, a willing response to the Gospel.  The 2 key points about conversion is saving faith and true repentance.  There is a difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow.   There are 2 dimensions, saving faith and true repentance.

So what is saving faith?  Knowledge alone is not enough.  The Bible says in James 2:19, “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder”.  So knowledge alone is not enough.  Knowledge about the facts of the Gospel is not enough,  Knowledge and approval are not enough.   For instance, Nicodemus in John 3 was a Pharisee, religious guy.  He was a member of the Jewish ruling council of the times, and he went to Jesus at night and he said in John 3:2 “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”  He knew that Jesus was from God because of the signs that He was doing, but Nicodemus did not have saving faith yet.  That’s when Jesus just cut the corner and said, “You have to be born again” and He went on to that conversation.  There are a couple of examples that I wanted to share about that because we know that the Grace of God reaches people that are evil and wicked but it also reaches people that have good character and are fearful of God.  In Acts 16:14 it says, “One of those listening was a woman from the city of Thyatira named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth. She was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message.”  It is very similar to Cornelius the Roman centurion in Acts 10 where it says,  “At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian Regiment. ² He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly.   One day at about three in the afternoon he had a vision. He distinctly saw an angel of God, who came to him and said, “Cornelius!”  The angel began to explain to him that he had to send someone to go get Peter and at that time Peter was having a vision on the roof of his house, a blanket with unclean food coming down and by the way there are going to be 2 people looking for you and you have to go.  That’s the sovereignty of God and that’s my Puerto Rican paraphrasing.   So then it all converged into when Peter was realizing what was happening he began to share Jesus.  The Bible says that the Spirit of God fell and all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit, all that heard the message.  The bottom line is that it’s not enough to worship God.  We must believe in Jesus Christ.  The Bible says in John 14:6 that “No one comes to the Father except through me”.  There are people that are very religious and love God and respect and tithe and all of that but the Bible is clear that God in His infinite sovereign mercy redirected them (Lydia and Cornelius) so that they could hear the Gospel.  So they could then develop a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  NO one goes to the Father but through Jesus.  That’s what the Word says.   Knowledge and approval are not enough, we must decide to depend on Jesus to save us personally.  It’s moving from an observer on the facts of salvation to a participant, to enter a new relationship with Jesus Christ.  I heard a story, not sure if it is true or not, this guy was a high-wire act going over the Niagara Falls.  This guy must have had a chair on his head going back and forth.  He told a guy, “If you think I can do it why you don’t sit on the chair and come with me.”  That’s trust.  It’s the difference between observing and getting your behind on the chair, invest in it, depend on it.  We walk by faith and not by sight regarding even our life and circumstances.  We’re depending on Jesus.   In fact, when Lydia heard the Gospel the Bible describes that she had joy immediately.  The Holy Spirit is so good because you might not know of God, you may not know Christ but let me tell you upon trusting your life to Him, there is something supernatural that storms your heart and soul and gives you peace.  It bypasses logic.  It’s something spiritual that you cannot explain but as you continue to walk this walk, learn about the Word of God, fellowship with believers, begin to see the testimony from the miracles of God in peoples’ life, the fact that a sovereign God is active in our life, He is moving, He’s doing things.  That takes growth, that trust in Him grows.  It’s like any relationship.  You trust someone who is worthy of your trust, that is able to keep His word and He who began a good work will complete it.

Secondly true repentance.  Let me read this scripture II Corinthians 7:9-10:  “ Yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. ¹⁰ Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.”  In essence sorrow or deep remorse alone with our sincere decision to forsake sin does not constitute genuine repentance.  Worldly sorrow, living in this world we are going to have losses, dashed hopes, dashed dreams, disappointments that creates sorrow, worldly sorrow, but it has nothing to do with considering sin, looking at your life, looking at sin of your life or considering the offenses and the transgressions that we have done towards God.  Worldly sorrow doesn’t consider all of those things.  It’s a superficial emotion with no spiritual impact whatsoever.  That’s worldly sorrow.  Godly sorrow, when we recognize that we are sinners, when we realize that I’m not good enough to save myself that I need the grace and mercy of God in my life, that I need Him, that I cry out to Him, that I realize that I’ve transgressed, that I’m a sinful person, that I need a Savior, that leads to repentance.  Conversion, that word, really doesn’t appear a lot in the Bible but it talks about a theological concept of turning.  So turn from sin to Christ.  It’s not a half turn.  It’s a full turn.  Turning from sin is repentance.  It’s making a decision to forsake it.  Making a decision to hate it.  Making a decision understanding what its done in my life and forsaking it and then saving faith to Christ.  Faith and repentance actually continue throughout our lives beyond that initial faith and repentance stage in conversion.

Justification:  Just as if I had never sinned.  It’s a legal act of God, right legal standing.  Once we are born again in our spirit, the Lord puts His spirit in us, from that moment it is legal.  We’re legally righteous before God at that moment.  He thinks of us as the great substitution.  We gave Jesus our sins, He gives us His righteousness.  God thinks of us with no sin.  We are redeemed and covered by the blood of Jesus and declares us to be righteous in His sight.

Sanctification:   We are 3 parts, spirit, soul and body.  Justification is a legal act.  Our spirit is renewed right before the Lord.  Sanctification is the soul.  It’s the right conduct.  It’s the progressive walk.  It’s walking out what’s already done in the heavens.  As you continue to grow and fruit comes, as you get into the Word, as you come to church, you learn and you pray, it’s less sin and more Christ in my life in that process.  The key thing about sanctification is the renewal of your mind.  We need to understand that sin has no dominion over us anymore.  Habitual patterns, sinful patterns, it’s a matter of renewing your mind, whatever programming you have before Christ, whatever situation that took you to a point of when temptations and certain things happen, you automatically respond, that software has to be replaced by the truth and the renewing of your mind.   Sin has no dominion over you anymore.  It’s interesting because as sinners we can destroy our lives fast enough but through sanctification God is preparing us for heaven and eternity.  It’s a preparation.

Adoption:  Membership in God’s family.   Here’s a scripture, “Yet to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.  Children born not of natural descent nor of human decision or a husband’s will but born of God.”

Perseverance:  Remaining a Christian.  God will keep you until the end of your life.  He who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.  Here’s the definition:  The perseverance of the saints means that all of those who are truly born again will be kept by God’s power and will persevere as Christians until the end of their lives and that only those who persevere until the end have been truly born again and that part of it needs to be explained.  There are people that when it comes to Jesus and salvation it’s like fire insurance.  I want salvation but I don’t want to live for You.  So at any point in your Christian life you can stop and ask yourself these 3 questions:  1.  Do I have a present trust in Christ for my salvation.  Do I presently know that my trust is in Christ alone for my eternal salvation?  2.  Is there evidence of a regenerating work of the Holy Spirit in my heart?  3.  Do I see a pattern of growth in my life.  I’m not where I was two weeks after I became a believer, I’m not where I should be but I’m on my way.  I can see progress in my life.

Death:  Going to be with the Lord.  It is the final outcome of living in a fallen world.  It’s not a punishment for Christians.  God uses the experience of death to complete our sanctification.

Glorification:  Receiving the resurrection body.  This is the final step in redemption.  It happens when Jesus comes back and He gives us our new body.

As we look at the order of salvation, the amazing grace, the sovereign God, the payment of Jesus Christ, it’s the grace that is available in and through Him.  Jesus as Savior and Lord.  It’s unbiblical to speak about the possibility of someone accepting Jesus Christ as Savior but not as Lord, which means simply that depending on Him for salvation and not committing to forsake sin.  I’m talking about direction because we sin, do we not?  We’re still sinners but before I became a believer I was not conflicted.  All of me was in agreement.  Let’s sin!  It’s so good.  There was no conflict whatsoever.  When I gave my life to the Lord and I sinned, there is a conflict in me.  It’s a sign that the Spirit of the living God is anchored in me and it’s beginning to persuade me.  Let’s begin to work this out.  Let’s apply truth to the lie that you are taking.  Work with Me and I will renew your mind.  Begin to memorize some scriptures that speak to this particular area in your life.  Let’s equip.  Let’s do this together.   Do I continue to sin?  Yes.  But praise be to God, it’s faith and repentance continually.  Lord Jesus I’m sorry.  I’ve sinned.  He’s faithful and just to forgive and let’s just keep on going.  The grace of God.  I always look at the cross.  My sins, past, present and future are on the cross.   Lord, thank you for your forgiveness.  I’m going to go with you.  I say that in here is where we miss it.  Worship is a radical departure from a dual life, a life of duality.  I know that as we become believers that we mature, but I tell you when you truly say Lord what I am and what I have I give to you.  No agenda.  Let Your agenda trump mine every time.  Do we fall short sometimes, yes, but the heart and the desire are there.  I want Your agenda for my life.  In the process of sanctification God is going to test your idols, what is that is near and dear to your heart, what is outside of God that you think you can’t do without.  For example, the young rich ruler, sell everything you have and give it to the poor, come and follow me.  What?  Talking to me?  What is your idol?  What is it that is standing in the way for you to commit totally, give yourself totally to the lordship of Jesus Christ?  Sometimes you discover that you lay it down or He will have you lay it down.  That’s why Abraham went immediately to the mountain with Isaac.  He was an old man and finally had a son, miraculously, and now take him up to the alter and I want you to kill him.  The next morning the Bible says that Abraham took off.  He didn’t get a second confirmation, he didn’t ask for a trumpet or an angel or another revelation, he just obeyed by faith.  I believe in total commitment when we go there is the channel for God’s blessings, power and presence in a believer.  If we don’t surrender totally to God we’re just nibbling.  We will never experience the full power, the full presence, the full anointing of God in our lives.

If you have heard of Jesus but you’ve never surrendered your life to Him, today is a great day to do that.   If you’ve been struggling and wrestling with the Lord on the Lordship part, Him being the Lord of your life, if its career, if its money, if its material possessions, what is it?  We pray that today is the day that you surrender.  That you say Lord what I am and what I have I give to you.

 

Foundations – Grace

Check out this great message by Pastor Marty Barris & Jodie Barris on Grace

http://www.sermon.net/christchurchminnesota/sermonid/119760597