Selected Scriptures

April 9, 2017

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

Download the bulletin.

Download the Kids’ Korner.

The sermon starts at 14:25 in the audio file.

Or, How Not To Be So Stupid

I’m not going to teach Genesis 44 today. I’ll get to it, Lord willing, the Sunday after Easter—on which I’m planning to preach a resurrection message—and not leave us hanging in the middle of an acute conversation between Judah and Joseph that’s divided between chapters 44 and 45.

I’ve also been hearing some rumbling, maybe even more like grumbling, about being questioned or even confronted, or parents upset that their kids are being questioned or confronted by teachers or by some older people trying to serve them. It seemed like a good time for some reminders.

In the gospel we learn that Christ has done everything for us that we need to be saved. And though the gospel is offered freely and received freely, it costs us everything. Those who believe the gospel are also called to live worthy of it.

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ (Philippians 1:27)

Becoming like Christ is not only God’s plan, it is to be our pursuit. Those who are shepherds and those who are sheep are called to walk worthy of the Lord.

so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him (Colossians 1:10)

we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. (1 Thessalonians 2:12)

Walking is a figurative expression of a person’s conduct or pattern of life. Every believer is obligated to live and walk worthy of the gospel and worthy of Christ. The word worthy is an adverb which refers to a balanced scale, indicating things that are equal in worth. Therefore, the “worthy” walk is one that matches up, one that is proportionate to the life which the Lord Himself lead while on this earth and the truth of the gospel.

So we are responsible to live worthy of the gospel. We will answer for living worthy of Christ. For these things are are accountable.

Accountability has gotten much bad press. It is almost a dirty word. As I was looking around the internet doing research on accountability I saw one website that didn’t even want to spell the whole thing out, putting a dash after the A- and that was it. The little research I did confirmed that many professing evangelical Christians do not want to be held accountable to anything by anyone. Some are so extreme as to call any kind of accountability unbiblical.

You probably know the passage those people regularly point to: Matthew 7:1, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” But an actual reading of the passage shows that Jesus is not condemning judging, He’s condemning hypocritical judging. In the process of confronting sin in someone else, the problem is not confronting someone else’s sin, it is confronting someone else’s sin while you keep living in yours.

The conclusion of the paragraph is first deal with your sin and then you will see clearly enough to deal with your brother’s sin (verse 5). Jesus assumes that it is right to hold others accountable. But He also expects us to not be hypocrites in doing so.

It is true that hypocritical, impatient, unkind, judgmental, self-righteous, legalistic, prejudicial, and/or ignorant accountability is no good. Job’s friends were wrong as they held Job accountable, and got meaner as the story went on. But–and this is critical—accountability does not equal judgmentalism and those who hold others accountable are not by definition arrogant, overbearing, big-headed, spiritually abusive jerks.

We don’t like accountability because:

We are naturally self-centered. Love of ourselves is in our genes (2 Timothy 3:2).

We are proud. It is not only naturally to think about ourselves, but to think highly about ourselves. Proud people don’t like to be told they are wrong, they know they aren’t.

We are uncomfortable with authority, especiall[...]