Hickory Bible Church

Pulpit Curriculum PDF

Pulpit Curriculum DOCX

Pulpit Curriculum PDF

Pulpit Curriculum DOCX

View transcript

Sovereign  Discipline

Download transcript

Please turn in your Bibles to Proverbs chapter 3. We're finishing a series this morning that we started a couple weeks ago on the biblical theme of discipline. We have looked at self-discipline and the practicality of how we kind of set some guardrails and guides in our own lives to be the best that we can be. And truly a lot of that, though it's motivated from the inside for the glory of God. It is for our good. And we in some ways that might be the easiest one, even though it could be, in our minds the most difficult because we've tried and failed at it. But when you think about it, when it comes to some of those habits of self-discipline we talked about two weeks ago, they really are on you in the sense of you have the control to do them or not to do them. When we talked about being on time or keeping your word or whatever it might be, that just comes back to you. So to some degree, though difficult inaction to carry out, they rest on you. So of the things we're discussing, that might be the easiest. Then we looked last week at societal discipline, which was just a way to talk about the next kind of level of pushback we get. Difficulty, adversity around us could be from other people's feedback for us. And again, not easy to be told you're incorrect or being rebuked or you could do this or that better. But again, we can accept that because there is something we can do about it. We can receive that feedback and try to make some of those changes. Ask that person more questions so that we can again, be all that we can be for God's glory and our good. So again, difficult, but, um, the one we're going to talk about today might be the most difficult because it's the most outside of our hands. Self-discipline really entirely up to you in the sense of you're either going to do some of those things or you're not. Societal discipline, the feedback you get from people around you, are you teachable to receive what they're telling you? You do have some control over that. What we're going to talk about today when we think about think about sovereign discipline, about how God is in control of our lives, and he is the one who determines our path. We could devise our way. We could think we want to go a certain way. We think life's going to turn out a certain way, and we could even do the things we've talked about the prior weeks. We could have some self-discipline. We can receive feedback from people around us, and still God's going to do what he is going to do. And the question is, how do we receive it? How do we respond to it? And that's really the subject of sovereign discipline. It's the one that maybe is the most perplexing, most challenging of them all because we feel helpless at times. And so that's where we're going to start today in the book of Proverbs, chapter 3, with the concept very, very simple but not simplistic. And those aren't the same thing. It's two verses in Proverbs 3:11 and 12 that break it down to explain it. But it's not trivial by any means, because the moment we start talking about suffering, adversity, things outside of our control that are happening in our lives and we don't quite know why, there's nothing trivial about that. There's nothing easy about that. But the scriptures do explain it for us in a way that we could at least know what we need to know, to have the right categories for it to fall into, and ask the Lord to work in our hearts, to be able to work through it by his grace. So let's read Proverbs 3. I want to actually read 3:1 to 12, even though we're just going to look at 11 and 12, because 3:1 to 12 was another lecture by King Solomon to Prince Rehoboam, likely...one of his sons, a father to a son. Even you see the first two words, 'my son' and those typically in the first nine chapters of Proverbs we talked about this last week, are lectures a father's giving to his son, broadly speaking, on the Way of Wisdom and the Way of Folly, they cover different themes. They move about in different areas. But the main thing Solomon is wanting to instill in his son is you're on a path in life and there are voices on both sides. We saw this last week in chapter 9. The voice of wisdom is saying, come naive, come the one that doesn't know what life is really about yet. And there's more to learn come my way. And then folly is trying to say the same exact thing. No, it'll be better my way. And Solomon, in these lectures, in the first nine chapters of Proverbs, is trying to get through to his son, trying to help him understand some things. And we're going to see that in particular on the subject of discipline today. But we want to take the path to get there in this section of teaching in 1 to 12. SoI'll read it. You can follow along with me and hear the call to wisdom from Solomon to his son.
"My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments for length of days and years of life and peace, they will add to you. Do not let kindness and truth leave you. Bind them around your neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart. Soyou will find favor and good repute in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your body and refreshment to your bones. Honor the Lord from your wealth and from the first of all your produce. So your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will overflow with new wine. My son, do not reject the discipline of the Lord, or loathe his reproof, for whom the Lord loves he reproves even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights."
Our father, let us not ignore your truth today and soften the receptivity of our hearts to receive your correction and instruction, because we trust you. Amen.
Well, you just heard another call to wisdom different from last week in chapter 9, but evoking similar imagery of you, the listener, being on a path. You heard that language in verse 6 about...there's a path that you can follow called wisdom, that blessed by God will be a straight path, a good path, a one that actually will help you arrive at a destination. In verse 13, how blessed is the man who finds wisdom. We want to end up in the house of wisdom, not the lair of folly. And he's saying, the path that you're going to take through chapter 3 to get to verse 13 is going to have some check points on it, some mile markers. That's kind of the image I had in my mind as I was reading it this week and studying it, not just verse 11 and 12, but Solomon is giving you some check points along the way to get you there. Maybe you heard them. Verses 1 to 4 in chapter 3 is first the check point of are you listening to God's truth? Because right out of the gates he says, my son, do not forget my teaching. Let your heart keep my commandments. And in verse 3, don't let the kindness and truth I'm teaching you leave them. Bind them around your neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart. Meaning you need to be listening and learning from me. And here's the payoff. How Solomon writes these verses is you get an admonition in the first part, and then in the following verse you get the payoff. So the call to listen to God, the call is in verse 1 and in verse 3. That's the checkpoint. Are you listening to God on the path of life? Are you hearing him? Here's the payoff. Verse 2. Length of days and years of life and peace. They'll add to you. Verse 4. You'll find favor and good repute in the sight of God and man. I mean, that's wisdom 101. You're not going to get anywhere in the path of life trying to get to that blessed place of wisdom, if you are not listening to the Word of God, if you're not hearing his call. It's that simple. You don't pass go. You don't collect $200. You are stuck where you're at. If you're not listening, that's the first call on this path. Then you see in verses 5 and 6, you're not just to listen to God, you're to trust him. And again, those are coupled together 5 and 6. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. And do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him. That's the admonition. He's saying the same thing a few different ways. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Don't trust in yourself. In every way you can imagine acknowledge him, trust him that he's in control. And if you do, what's the payoff, verse 6? He will make your paths straight. You won't be twisting your ankle on the trail over some rut. You're not sliding off the side of some precipice, tumbling down into some canyon. I speak from experience. Point 2 on the path. Trust me. Trust God. Point 3 mile marker is fear the Lord. You see that in verse 7. Don't be wise in your own eyes, but fear the Lord and turn away from evil. And here's the promise if you fear the Lord, if you turn from evil, if you don't trust your own sight, it will be healing to your body and refreshment to your bones. I mean, he's just promising a life that look, this will come back to bless you if you fear the Lord. If you turn from sin, your body and your bones...He's saying all of you will be blessed, because what's great about the Proverbs is that he's not trying to always categorize your life into the physical and the spiritual like we do. Yeah. He's just saying, no. You are bound up as a being inside and out and the things on the outside of you affect the inside of you, and the things on the inside of you affect the outside of you. And he's saying, if you fear the Lord and turn from sin and don't trust yourself, the whole person, mind, body, soul, you'll be blessed. That's the third checkpoint. The fourth one is 9. Honor the Lord from your wealth and from the first of your produce. Oh! Command to honor the Lord. Serve him. Don't hold anything back from him. Why? Well, if he's the one that gave it to you in the first place, why would you then try to hoard it for yourself? And the promise when you follow that admonition is verse 10. So your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will overflow with new wine. There's a promise there of prosperity, Oh prosperity. But what would be the point of it? When he gives it to you in overflowing. It's so that you can pour it out to somebody else, not hoard it for yourself. If you trust him with the first of your wealth, the first of your produce. Again, we're in agrarian times in the writing of this. You'll have more than enough. And rather than keep stocking it up for yourself and building bigger silos, as Jesus talks about in a parable, and you're going to lose your life tonight and not do anything with it, I didn't give you that prosperity for you to just take it and hoard it. I wanted you to be a blessing and benefit to people around you. So honor the Lord first. So you get these four checkpoints along the path of wisdom. And I would imagine at this point, the average listener in the audience is going, you know, I'm down with those four things. Broadly speaking, if you say you're a follower of follower of Jesus Christ. I know I need to listen. I mean, that's like Christianity 101, The gospel. It's a call to repent. It's a call to follow Jesus. I got to listen to that. Okay, sign me up and trust God. Yeah. That's faith. So I'm going to listen to this call to repent and believe in him, but not have faith. Come on. Okay, good. I can trust him. Fear him? You know what? Yeah. I see as I grow in faith that sin is not better than God. So I'm down with that and then finally honor him. Okay, um, it might take a while for me to warm up to this because I feel like I need my own. But I'd like to be generous. I'd like to take what God gives me and share it. So I think most people could read Proverbs t3 so far and say, if those are the four checkpoints in the path to wisdom, this lecture that Solomon has given to his son. I'm good. I listen, I trust him, I fear him, I want to honor him, I do. And then the bottom falls out, verse 11 and 12. And in fact, he leans in again to his son. He calls him my son again. He's saying, listen up again. Now I want to tell you about this part of the path that you're really not going to like. My son, do not reject the discipline of the Lord or loathe his reproof. And that's where a lot of people are, like, I'm out. So that's built into the system? That when bad things happen to a good person, when I listen to him and I'm trusting him and I'm fearing him and honoring him, I might still face adversity. I just saw some prosperity. Let's go back to verse 10 and hang out there. And he says, hey, right before you get to that, verse 13, that blessed place, the man who finds wisdom and gains understanding, there's one more checkpoint along the line. And if you're on the path of life, if you're on the journey, if you're climbing through the hills and you mapped it out and you saw those first four checkpoints and you hit them. And then you round the bend and the sky grows dark and the mountain gets really big, and the terrain starts to go uphill. What happens next? That pack starts to feel really heavy, doesn't it? And your feet start to get sore and your legs start to give out and you want to turn back. Welcome to the mountain of God's discipline. And you didn't see it coming, usually. And you certainly didn't sign up for it. You were fine with the path as it was. Wasn't it supposed to be a straight path? Now I don't even know where I'm at. And this is just scary. And I don't like it. And I see no sign of the sun breaking through the cloud. What am I supposed to do? That's really what Solomon has brought you to. When you get to verse 11 and 12, it's all led up to this, if you so far, were willing to agree to those prior four checkpoints and say I'm down with that. Now he's saying, okay, I've got one last one and it's going to be an uphill climb. But do you still believe God is designing your path for his glory and your good? Because if you do, then listen close son. I've got a lesson to teach you about the discipline of God. What is the discipline of God? Before we jump into verse 11, here's a short definition. I put it together this week just so we have an operating idea. Because if the first thing is a warning against rejecting it, it'd be good to know what it is. So here's a short definition. What is God's discipline? It's his fatherly love in action towards his children meant to grow us in spiritual maturity through adversity. God's sovereign discipline is his fatherly love in action towards his children, meant to grow us in spiritual maturity through adversity. There's your operating definition.  
Now let's see the prohibition of rejecting it (discipline). Verse 11, my son, do not reject the fatherly love in action towards you his child meant to grow you spiritually through adversity. See how that works? He says don't reject it or loathe his reproof. Are those two sentences saying the same thing in verse 11? Different words and slightly different meanings. Sometimes in the Proverbs you just get a verse that says the same thing twice, and it's just meant to kind of punctuate a point. But here you get these two warnings of what not to do with the discipline of the Lord, his reproving, his correcting. One verse says don't reject it and then the next one in my version says loathe it. Yours might say resent it or grow weary from it. So I want to pause here and in this opening warning, this admonition not to reject or resent it kind of process that a little bit with you. The first one, don't reject the discipline of God. Your Bible might say despise or abhor. The literal meaning is to cast something away because you don't want it. It's used in Isaiah 31:7, in this realm where it's talking about the people of God who had created idols, and now they need to cast them away. Isaiah 31:7...in that day every man will cast away his silver idols and his gold idols. That's a good thing, but it's just a literal image of, I've got this thing that I shouldn't want anymore, and I'm just going to chuck it. And that's what Solomon is saying to his son. When the discipline of the Lord, when the chastisement comes, when the hardship and the suffering comes. Your first response should not be to just chuck it like a toddler. A mom puts the plate of carrots and he just chucks it. I don't want any of it and then stiffens the back or the mouth. And I won't let you put those carrots in there. That's essentially the language of this, because the discipline of the Lord is about his methods of child rearing us, his children beloved by him. And so he says, don't reject it. Don't stiffen your back and try to discipline your kid with the rod. Spank them, straightening the back. That's kind of the feel of this. It's really that you can see it in this rejection. And that's the first way he cautions you don't just right away become so obstinate and hard hearted against it and not going to going to happen and I'm chucking it. And then he, using this wisdom literature, proverbs style, he goes deeper into it in the next verse. He's trying to cover the whole gamut, he says, and don't loathe his reproof. And this word loathe is more of an inner feeling. It's a weariness of soul. It's growing weak with dread. So you match those up and you say, what's Solomon doing right here in trying to teach us about how we should respond to the discipline of the Lord. He's just giving you a holistic picture of yourself. You may be the rejector who when the going gets tough, you get hard and you just resist. You get stiff necked. Or you might be the person who is just gets really fainthearted and weary. And beyond that, giving up...loathes it. Just the attitude is there is nothing good here. And if you have children and they're different, you see those responses in them, don't you? Some just wilt at the littlest sight or site of difficulty. Others stiffen their neck. So you get resenters and you get rejecters. But either way, he says, don't do it. I remember doing a lot of hiking in my California days, and one time my brother and I and some friends had great ambitions to hike the high country of Yosemite. And if you've done Yosemite before, I've seen pictures of Half Dome. Everybody can get to Half Dome. Well, not everybody, but I mean, I remember the first time I went and you get to the part that's a real steep pitch, and there's just cables stuck in the ground and there's no guards, and you're just going up and you're going up one side and everybody coming down the other. And I was afraid at the bottom until I saw there were some octogenarians going up, and there were some people, like with the kid on their back going up. And I was in my 20s and like, okay, if they can do it, I can do it. And all that being said, everybody can get to there. But to go into the high country, you think you're high there and then you have to keep ascending up and the breathing, the air thins out. It's harder to breathe. Your pack is heavy because you packed in for a few days. And I remember a couple friends of mine. I remember the rejector and the resenter, what started out as a great hike and we're all ready to be, you know, the next Daniel Boone or whatever, discovering lands never seen. And there was a rejector who he just started to get mad. His boots hurt, his pack was too heavy, you know, he was throwing his stuff and he can't get his tent to get up. And he was rejecting the adversity that was coming, as if we didn't plan this thing out for weeks. And then there was the resenter, who just started to loathe it and complain about everything and every ten minutes just wanted to stop and lay on his pack on a rock and stare at the sky and question why he was alive. And adversity will do that, right? Suffering will do that. You just either get hard hearted or you or you just get weak to the point of resentment and loathing. And Solomon gives these back to backand just says, that's not to be your response, son. So the question any son would ask is why not? Where's the redeeming value in suffering? I have never met a person that's being honest, truly honest, and said, I love discipline, I love adversity, I love suffering, I eat it for breakfast. I say, no, you don't. You want to eat Froot Loops? You want donuts? We all do. Unless you understand the purpose behind it. Right? The principle in operation. So Solomon says, let me tell you the principle here. Let me show you the promise. The reason you don't reject it or loathe it is because of verse 12 For the son that the Lord loves, he reproves just as a father corrects the son in whom he delights. That's the principle of God's discipline...in verse 12. The operating principle that allows us to see, okay, this isn't an entire waste, or at least get angry that stiffening back or loathing my God doesn't care for me. I'm mad at him or I'm giving up on him. Whatever he says. No, you might think that way if you thought God didn't love you. That might be how you react. If you think God's against you, child. He says that's not the way God's working here, because the principle of God's discipline is this...the Lord loves those he reproves and just as a father corrects the son in whom he delights...delights, so it's love and delight we see from the outside. We turn that bend. We see mount discipline. It's dark. It's ominous. It's weary. We're tired. We resent it. And he's saying by faith you have to know that what runs inside the heart of that mountain that you can't see are rivers of love and delight in you. But you got to believe that by faith, even when you can't see anything other than the challenge. And if you give up now, you'll never experience the good God has on the other side. So he says, the principle is that God does love you. He hasn't forgotten about you. He hasn't turned his back on you. And he then goes from the greater to the lesser in the second part of verse 12. Let me just reason with you from an earthly standpoint, just as earthly fathers correct their kids. I mean, that's the operating principle for his discipline later on in Proverbs 13:24. He who withholds his rod hates his son, but he who loves his son disciplines him diligently. So justification for parents disciplining your kids, spanking their bottoms, is that you love them. And love without correction is not love because you're letting them take that path to folly that will be to their own destruction eventually. Likewise, correction without love isn't the solution. The exasperating father who doesn't do it in love but does it out of anger. Knee jerk. That's not the solution either. It's to be done...discipline is always to be administered in love. It's a heart of love. And even when we talk about that, like, make sure your discipline comes with love. And even saying that almost makes us sound like they're in separate categories like, here's daddy discipline over here, and here's Daddy love. And I got to get these guys to meet. No. Part of love is discipline because you care about them. You love them more than you love your own comfort of having to do it and the pain you know it causes. But you know it's for their good. That's the parenting advice Solomon gives in Proverbs. But it's rooted in our relationship with God, our Father. That's the principle. And he makes it very clear. And as I said before, just because it's clear and simple doesn't make it simplistic and trivial because of the pain behind it. Suffering, adversity underneath God's discipline is, I mean, when we just talk about some of the hardest things in life to deal with and even address, is that. Because we don't always have answers, and then when we come to answers, we may not like them, but the Bible refuses to lie to us. It's not going to be mirror, mirror on the wall. Just tell me something I want to hear. No, we come to it and it's actually a mirror. It says in James, one of us. It shows us who we really are. It reflects back to us and we see, okay, I've got to deal with me, but I have God's word to do it. So we get the principle of God's discipline. He loves us.
So now we move to its purpose. If the principle is I know I have a loving Father and as a Christian of all people. You're the only people that know absolutely for sure God loves you because why?...He sent his Son to die for you. He demonstrated his love for you while you were a sinner Christ died for you, Romans 5:8. I mean, that's what you get back to, isn't it? When everything else falls apart, you go I the things that are falling apart in my life, the walls closing in around me. That would make me wonder if God really loves me. What's the last theological thread my faith hangs on? It's the love of God for me in Christ. If he loved me enough to send His Son, his most beloved son, his only begotten son, to die for me, then I know I'm loved. I don't have the ability right now to see it around me, but I know that's true here. If you're not in Christ this morning, that's the starting point of the gospel. I mean, me talking about discipline, the discipline of God in your life. What's the point of it? Well, the point of it in your life up till now, if you're not in Christ, is to show you that you're dealing with somebody more powerful than you. Trust me. Have you learned that by now? You can kick against his goads. You can fight against his hand. You're not going to win. You can keep stiffening or you can loathe and resent, but it's not going to get you anywhere with him. And so he might keep bringing the difficulty and the suffering. Because he wants to show you...look, you may think this is bad. I've been through something far worse. I gave my Sonto die for you...the one kicking and fighting against me. What more could I do for you? And it breaks your heart. As in, it breaks down the sin, the hardness. When you hear the gospel and realize God would do that for me. He already did. You have to trust him. You have to trust his Son. You have to realize you're a sinner and need forgiven. And when we do that it totally removes the way in which we want to see the world centering around us, and then we see it center around God and His glory, and we're a part of that. And then now I have a new way to look at the hardships in my life. But you have to call out to him by faith this morning to forgive you and to change you from the inside. All of it is to call out to him, to trust him, to fear him. All the things we've covered already. But it starts with, do you really believe in his Son, Jesus? He's paid the penalty for your sin. So that's the love of God for his children. But what about the purpose in the discipline? Why? Why does he take me through it? What's he trying to do in me? I know it's motivated out of his love, but what's he trying to change in me? And I would say, fundamentally, what he's trying to do in you, in whatever means he employs it, is he's trying to grow your affection for him. And you say, that's weird. I get disciplined, and I'm supposed to love God more because of that? Well, what the discipline does is it pulls you away. It severs the connection you have with lesser loves called sin, called idols of the heart. Lesser desires, lusts, and desires you still have as a Christian because you're still in the flesh. And what God is doing in his discipline is he's severing the cords to those, because the human experience is we're going to hold on to things. We what? We're going to hold on to things we love. We're not going to give them up easy. And he wants all of your love for him. He does. That's what he wants. Because he knows that's what's best for you. And he's not going to settle for anything less than all of your love. So the purpose of his discipline in our lives can look a few different ways. First, he can discipline for our correction as Christians. Now there's three of these...correction, protection and instruction. We'll start with correction. And yes that does form the abbreviation CPI. So if you think about CPI Crime Prevention Incorporated you see those signs around town. The red sign that says warning mess with my house. Some robots going to talk to you. The dog sign works better for me, but I did think about that as I was thinking about God's discipline and its correction, its protection and its instruction. And so, you know, CPI isn't a bad thing to think about because it's warning you. Correction, protection and instruction in our lives in the discipline of God should warn us against something. You're going back to that thing you shouldn't love anymore. It's not good for you. I want your love for me. I'm a jealous God. Exodus 25 is the first time he calls himself a jealous God. We don't talk about the jealousy of God. We probably don't understand it in our human estimation. But we do know in Exodus 20:5, it's couched within the command to have no other gods before me, no idols, no nothing. Well, why would he then say, And I'm a jealous God? Because back to the point. Your heart will go after those things. God knows how we're wired. And I'm jealous for all of your affection for me. And it's the jealousy that's out of a heart that knows what's best for you. Not just what I want. Because we think of jealousy. Maybe why we don't talk about the jealousy of God is because it's petty. If you're a middle schooler. No offense. None taken. But we all were adults in here, and you all had a middle school crush, and you had a middle school crush who one day liked you, one day didn't. And then their affection. Affection went to somebody else. And you sat there and pouted or got mad and you were jealous. And it was a very shallow jealousy, millimeter thick. You thought you loved them and they loved you. After talking to them once at lunch, sharing a cupcake, and now you're mad at everybody, you're gonna throw that cupcake at the other boy or girl, whatever. That's petty jealousy, isn't it? There's no petty jealousy with God. It's the furthest thing from it, because it's your good he has in mind that he is willing to go to the extreme for your heart. There is nothing shallow in the least about that. Sowhat's he going to do for it? First, he'll discipline us for our correction. Chastisement for sin aims to correct us. And this is to God's children. You sin. There are times he will chastise you for that. But here's what you need to know that has no bearing on your eternal security. God's correcting chastisement of your life as a Christian is not about payment for your sin. Why? Who paid for it already? And how much did he pay? So there's nothing left for you to pay if you feel yourself under the hand of God, being disciplined, feeling his chastisement. You know what you've done. What you can't do is this is wonder...man am I paying for my own sin here? No, you're suffering a consequence. God's trying to correct you saying, don't do that anymore. Don't go back to that. Give your heart to me. But what he's not doing is saying, ah, yeah, you know, I don't know if you're gonna make it to heaven now. How do you make it to heaven? By the grace of Jesus Christ and the gospel. By his righteousness alone, not yours. So hear me loud and clear. First and foremost, out of the gates. The correction of God's discipline in your life as a Christian is not salvific. It's not meritorious. He took that out on his Son. Jesus took the wrath of God for you, and he took all of it. But he's still going to correct you to keep you from those lesser loves. You have to look no further than the example of David, a man after God's own heart. And when he sinned, God corrected him. You hear about that in multiple passages. We probably all think of Psalm 51 where he could say something like this. Let the bones that you have broken rejoice. As in, you were the one that did the breaking of them...broken inside. I want to rejoice again. Restore unto me the joy of your salvation. Notice he didn't say, restore to me my salvation for my sin. When I committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband murdered, he doesn't say, I need my salvation back. He says, restore to me the joy of it because I don't have it anymore. Sin has sucked it out. So maybe I need to correct it. Psalm 39:10-11 David says, remove your plague from me because of the opposition of your hand I am perishing. That's a Christian talking. Verse 11, with reproofs you chasten a man for iniquity. David is saying this. You reprove me, you discipline me. You chastise me for my iniquity. Why do you do it? Next part of verse 11 of Psalm 39. You consume as a moth what is precious to him. Imagery of a moth gets in your closet, eats the sweater. Hopefully I don't have any holes in it, but they just can chew up things. Now you just have a hole and it's gone like it was never there. But a moth can't chew through steel, can it? The answer is no. But it can chew through your sweater. Something perishing. Something light. Not something strong and impenetrable. So David says, your reproves chasten me for my sin. And like a moth, it'll eat up the things that they're precious to me. But they don't last. Do you see what God's trying to do for you in correcting you and disciplining you?...sometimes. Not all the time. God is not an exasperating father who spanks you for every single time you get out of line. You spill the milk. You spilled more milk trying to clean up the spilled milk. You put the thing in the wrong thing. Spank spankspank spank spank. That's an exasperating father. It's not the kind of Father God is. Because as Christians, many things we still do that disobey him. And it's not like the immediate I do the thing. I immediately feel the chastisement. Only in his all pervadingwisdom that he knows exactly when to bring the thing into my life, to get me back in line. And he says, don't reject it. Don't despise it. Receive it. God's corrective discipline. Life of David...you need to look no further than there. Second, God disciplines us for our protection. This is not corrective as in correlated to a sin we're committing, but it is preventative for a sin that we might be led into. Preventative discipline. Any teachers out there remember learning about this? Where do you put the kidyou know that's bad in class? Not next to the other bad kid. You know, because they'll do bad things together. They'll incite each other. So preventative discipline is, you know what? I'm gonna. I know my seating chart. I'm putting this guy there. I'm putting Aschoff right in front of me because he's always getting in trouble. I figured that out eventually. Why am I always the object of my teacher's affection right in front of their desk? Except when I had my dad, I was in the back of the room. I'm not dealing with that guy. But that's preventative discipline. You move the pieces on the board in advance to not end up in the place you don't want to be. And God does that with us. We see this in the life of Paul, don't we? You know, he was a bad dude before coming to Christ. Acts 7 and 8. He's killing Christians. The blood's on his hand. Acts 9. He is saved by grace. And then the rest of his life. These epistles we have. He seems to have a pretty great testimony. You can't find anything on him, can you? Except 2 Corinthians 12. And it takes a while for him to finally boast, because Paul knew he was a prideful man when he was so, so prideful of his righteousness. Sothe last thing Paul needs, and he knows this about himself, is something to boast in again. So he keeps a secret for 14 years. What was the secret? 2 Corinthians 12 I know a man in Christ doesn't even want to say it's him...it's him who, 14 years ago, whether in the in the body I don't know or out of the body I don't know. God knows.  Such a man was caught up to the third heaven, and I don't know how such a man, whether in the body or apart from the body, I don't know. He's making his point, guys. This is not about me. I don't know how this all went down. I don't know why I got taken up to the third heaven. I don't know how it all happened, but this is what happened. Verse 4 I was caught up into Paradise. I mean, would that change you the rest of your life if you had that experience? So he gets up into Paradise and he hears inexpressible words which a man is not permitted to speak. And sohe's had to zip it for 14 years, but he is being so critiqued and run out of town by these bad Corinthian false teachers. He's like, you know what? Okay, I will tell you a little something about myself, some of my apostolic authority and why I come where I come from is because I've seen some things and heard some things nobody else has. But I never wanted to tell anybody. But now you're forcing me to do it. And he says that I don't I don't want to boast in this, but I will boast in it to teach you something about a weakness of mine. So I got to see and hear all this, and I heard all this. But this was what God did to me. As a result, he lets me get this amazing experience. I hear whatever I heard up in Paradise, things I'm not allowed to express. And then he says this verse 7, because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, I wrote a book and profited by selling it for millions, saying that I got to go to heaven before everybody. Oh, no, he didn't say that. Just checking to see if you're with me. This is what Paul actually says because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations. For this reason, to keep me, prevent me, from exalting myself, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from exalting myself. So preventative discipline. He's not admitting even to pride there. He's not saying I came back and was so proud. God did this, he says, to keep me from even getting close to pride. God protected me by afflicting me, and I didn't necessarily want that affliction. Next verse. Concerning this, I ask. The Lord implored him three times that it might leave me. And God said, yeah, you can handle it, Paul. No, he said, my grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. That's God's response to Paul asking, take the thorn away. Take the affliction away. And he says, no, you'll learn to be okay with this weakness, and it'll actually produce more strength in you and more humility in you, because I'm protecting you from you and your pride.  All of us are susceptible to exalting ourselves, as Paul states, so God might discipline us to protect us from more pride in ourselves, to prevent us from that sin. A very awful thing to have purveyed in the heart of a believer. But you just have to get the principle out of this. It wasn't because Paul was proud that God did it. It was because God did it that Paul wasn't proud. Did you catch that? It wasn't God being reactionary to Paul's pride. It was to keep him from that pride. God sent that affliction. That's called preventative discipline. And God has the wisdom and right to send it our way, if he knows it's for his glory and our good. That's category number two. Category three of discipline. He disciplines for our instruction. And again, this isn't chastisement for a sin we're committing. This isn't prevention of a sin we might commit. What is it? God disciplining for our instruction is taking us through a trial, through suffering, through affliction. At the very least, to teach you something about him and something about yourself that you didn't know before. At the end of it, that's what you've gained. You know more of your God, and in knowing more of your God and His majesty and glory and righteousness and justice, suddenly you start to see yourself in a new light because he brought you through that affliction. You say, where do you see that in the Bible? Well, Job. Story of Job...a man who right out of the gates. Job 1:1, there was a man named Job. He was blameless, upright, fearing God and turning away from evil. Sounds like he was on that Proverbs path, right? Listening to God, honoring God, fearing God. And yet he's afflicted. God allows Satan to afflict him with the worst things we could imagine from the lesser, like losing his wealth and properties and then losing his health. Worst of all, losing family, losing loved ones, seeing his own children die. The only thing Satan wasn't allowed to do was take Job's life. And, in the midst of all this loss. And his wife says, why don't you curse God and die? And Job says in 2:10, should we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?  He nails it. God sends both. And it says twice in 1:22 and then 2:10...through all this, Job did not sin, nor did he blame God, nor did he sin with his lips. Soyou could take corrective discipline out of that, right? There's no evidence there was a sin. Even though you get into Job and his friends are insistent....Job, you're in sin. Clearly, because this is how God works. Bad stuff happens to you. You've sinned. So just repent of it already and you'll get out of it. That's also how God works. Like you would not dare let it linger one second longer if you just say, okay, I got all this sin. So it wasn't corrective. And as far as we could tell, we don't see any prevention in it. This was just discipline for the sake of instruction. God wanted Job to know more of him. Did it work? Read Job 42, his final confession. Job answers the Lord after everything God taught him about himself from 38 to 42. Job answers the Lord and said, I know that you can do all things. No purpose of yours can be thwarted. Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore, I have declared that which I did not understand things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. Hear, now, and I will speak. I will ask you, and you instruct me. How dare I say that? But this is what I did learn. Verse 5, Job 42...I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you. Therefore I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes. So what was it all for? Why did Job have to suffer unimaginable loss and inconsolable grief? Because at the end, he says, I thought I knew you and I didn't know you. And I thought I knew myself and I didn't know myself. So now the things I know of you I can worship. And the things I see in myself I can repent of. A clear example of discipline for the sake of a closer walk with God. And it came through adversity. Charles Bridges wrote about this. "Nowhere are our corruptions so evident, or our graces so shining as under the rod." Those corruptions we have in ourselves become a lot more evident when we go through adversity, don't they? The tendency in our hearts to resent the tendency in our backs to stiffen, our fists to clench. And we see that. And eventually we see that's not the way it should go. And then somehow, breaking through the darkness of the mountain is the glory of God in that. Most of all we see it in His Son. And we say, well, look at all that Christ went through for me. Look at all he endured for me. That's the drive of Hebrews 12. Isn't it? An expansion, if you want to study Hebrews 12 this week and expand upon what we learned in Proverbs 3:11 and 12. Read Hebrews 12:3 to 13. You think you're going through suffering? I want you to fix your eyes on Christ, and consider him who endured such hostility by sinners against himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. So fix your eyes on him. Now notice, I mean, this letter in Hebrews was written to some suffering Christians, some people that are questioning was it worth leaving what we had in Judaism to follow Jesus? And so, um, I think there's a good example in the writer of Hebrews that he doesn't poke them in the eye with chapter 12. Back in chapter 1, he teaches them of the of the glory and all surpassing wonder of Jesus Christ for 11 chapters to get to chapter 12 to say, yeah, you did get the better deal. Jesus is better than anything you had before in Judaism. He's worth it. So fix your eyes on him. And don't forget that in his humanity, he endured more than anybody could have endured. And then he jumps right into Proverbs 3. He  preachesfrom verses 5 on. He preaches a little sermon, seven verse sermon on Proverbs three because he quotes it, my son, don't regard lightly the discipline of the Lord. So this is all back to discipline for our instruction. Sometimes God's just trying to teach us there. Now you take correction from God and protection from God and instruction from God, and you can put them all together. And they're doing one main thing for you. They're preparing you for heaven. They're preparing you now to know God more. But ultimately, they're preparing you for glory. They're all tributaries into the same river of preparation. Now, the good works. He's prepared in advance for you, but also to come into heaven and say it was all worth it.
And that brings us to the end. The path in God's discipline. It's a path that in Hebrews 12 we're told not to take lightly. Verse 5, the start of the path is don't, don't take it lightly. If you're going to move any further ahead, Hebrews 12:5 says, don't forget the exhortation which was addressed to you as sons, my son, don't regard lightly the discipline of the Lord as in you're meant to take this discipline in and learn something from it. So even today, we're to we're to look at our lives and make an evaluation and say, what am I going through? What have I have I been through? Not to try to solve the unanswerable questions of why. But to understand more of the God that we know loves us, and to then maybe trace back to corrective discipline, or instructive or preventative and do kind of that, you know, evaluation of life and look back and say, when did God allow some affliction in my life that I could see now, prevented me from something, or corrected me for something, or just I went through it, and years later, the only thing I know that what I learned is I learned more about trusting God. It could be any of those things. And that's the exhortation of the preacher in Hebrews 12. Don't regard it lightly. Think on it. Why? What's that going to do? Go down to verse 11. It's going to train you. So perseverance and affliction isn't just for the sake of perseverance. It's to teach you and train you and build you up and strengthen you and yield the peaceful fruit of righteousness in your life. You're a different person now because of it. I mean, wouldn't it be sad and awful and a waste to go through adversity and suffering and to learn nothing? To go through it and have nothing on the other side too say...it is what it is. No it's not. That's to think lightly of the discipline of the Lord and not see that he was trying to teach you and train you and strengthen you and build you. And yes, he knows it hurts, but he loves you enough with the jealous love to win your affection to him.
I'll close with this from Charles Spurgeon on the jealous love of the Lord that goes to any length to keep our hearts close to him, he writes. "One of the most solemn truths in the Bible is the Lord thy God is a jealous God. Where there is an intense and an infinite love that glows in the heart of God. There will be and must be jealousy. Oh, how jealous God is of the hearts of his people. How determined he is to have all of their love. How I have known God to take away the objects of our attachments one after another, break our idols, and deprive us of our most precious vanities, all to get our hearts wholly to himself because he knew it would never be right with him while we have a divided heart."
Let's pray. Father, we know we are prone to wonder and prone to leave the God we love. So we may not understand your ways, unfathomable as they are, but we at least have some starting points today. The starting point of your love and delight in us as your children that we know is true. Because you sent your son to die for us. And he suffered, and he went through something more unimaginable than we could, and he did it for the joy set before him to win a bride, to win the redeemed. And so we are in the process of not redemption...our salvation is secure, but we are in the process of being remade, conformed into the image of your Son. And as Job said, shall we not see that prosperity and adversity are both from your hand? And you can use adversity particularly to shape us and mold us into the children you would like us to be. So help us today, just with a little more than we came in with the ability to receive it. And even as we go to song now, praise you for it. Amen.

 

Pulpit Curriculum PDF

Pulpit Curriculum DOCX

View transcript

Societal Discipline

Download transcript

Proverbs 9 continue in a series on discipline, which is always our favorite subject to talk about. Not a popular word, but a welcomed reality for any devoted disciple of Jesus Christ, because it's built into the idea of discipleship, of following someone else, of learning from them and being considered their student is some form of discipline. Because there's instruction, there's listening, there's learning, there's being corrected, and then there's following a pattern. And all of that can fight against our individualistic urges. You know, we just kind of want to be captain of our own ship. And so we just thought starting this new year off, spending a few weeks talking about the disciplines of a God centered life would be good for us. Last week we looked at self-discipline. We just drew a circle right around our own lives and talked about ten habits of a self-disciplined person that were very practical in nature, which is good. It's not like we want to create this idea in our Christian lives, that being uber practical from the Proverbs is in some way less spiritual than back in December, when we were studying the eternality of Jesus Christ in John chapter 1. And that, you know, there's, um, unequal proportion of the value of those they're all given for our good, all given for our instruction. All Scripture is God breathed. And even when we spend a few weeks now being very practical, we'll just call it down to earth shoe leather faith in the Proverbs there's much we learn about our heart by way of these verses. And so this morning we're going to look at the idea of societal discipline, generic term, just talking about no longer self-discipline, something I am enforcing on myself so that I can glorify God with my life and have experienced all the good he would have for me. Um, but this week we're talking about societal discipline. Let's move that concentric circle a little bit and say, how do I receive instruction from people around me? And that could be a preacher with a sermon. That could be a small group leader, that can be an accountability partner, that can be a spouse, that can be a parent, a child, any relationship we have in which somebody wants to offer us, not necessarily a piece of their mind, but a piece of God's mind. We want to qualify this. This is in the realm of God's heavenly wisdom coming down, not just a generic form of earthly wisdom, James 3 talks about...natural that anybody could come by. And not to say we shouldn't listen to our butcher when he recommends one cut of meat instead of the other, or our mechanic when he says, you know you need this thing as well as that thing. Earthly wisdom...natural...we're not really talking about that, though. We could say if our instinct is to just not listen to anybody and insist upon our own way, even to the mechanic, as if we know more about our car than he does. You know, you can sail down that path all you want, see how far you get. What we're talking about here today in Proverbs 9 is wisdom from above. It's that which has, if I may put it this way, eternal ramifications. Though we're going to see today earthly implications, as in yes, if you heed wisdom's call from those around you there will be earthly implications to that. Your life will take on two different forms. Oh, you know, if you're able to receive instruction in correction, in discipline, things will change down here. But ultimately we'll see the shape of this text goes towards eternal ramifications. Your destiny is bound up in your attitude towards discipline by way of God using other people in your life. And so we will see that in Proverbs 9. So just follow along with me as I read this chapter. It sits towards the end of the opening section of Proverbs. I know sometimes our impression of Proverbs might be that it's disconnected. Proverb a day keeps whatever away, and we read a chapter of Proverbs a day a month...because 31 days, 31 chapters. There is a form to Proverbs, as in these first nine chapters are what is called the prologue. Solomon is giving a series of lectures to his son in the widest realm of how the world works, set up between wisdom and folly. And sometimes he uses personification. Because if you think about Solomon, he's a king, and he's going to have a prince who's going to take over for him one day. He's a dad with a son. That's why I see my son so often in the first nine chapters. And there's a series of ten lectures that he's, in some ways, preparing his son to be king. But not just that, preparing his son to just live a wise life blessed by God. When you heed God's wisdom and you live skillfully under the sun. And that's where this is the end of that. Because when you get to Proverbs 10, you might even see in the subscript the Proverbs of Solomon. And that's where they do start to kind of be like, um, you know, a vending machine of axioms, you know, put your quarter in, get out this thing to chew on for a while. That's Proverbs ten and onward. Proverbs 1 to 9 sets the scene for that, as in everything he's going to teach from Proverbs 10 through the end, the rest of it single verses at a time, find their slot underneath these two big categories of the path that Lady Wisdom calls you to take, and the path that Dame Folly wants to woo you into. And really, that's the picture that is given in this final lecture in Proverbs 9, really an epilogue to the opening of this book. So follow with me. Proverbs 9:1.
"Wisdom has built her house. She has hewn out her seven pillars. She has prepared her food. She has mixed her wine. She has also set her table. She has sent out her maidens. She calls from the tops of the height of the city. Whoever is naive, let him turn in here. To him who lacks understanding, she says, come, eat of my food and drink of the wine I have mixed. Forsake your folly, and live and proceed in the way of understanding. He who corrects a scoffer gets dishonor for himself. And he who reproves a wicked man gets insults for himself. Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you. Reprove a wise man, and he will love you. Give instruction to a wise man, and he will still be wiser. Teach a righteous man, and he will increase his learning. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. For by me your days will be multiplied. And years of life will be added to you. If you are wise, you are wise for yourself. And if you scoff, you alone will bear it. The woman of folly is boisterous. She is naive and knows nothing. She sits at the doorway of her house on a seat by the high places of the city, calling to those who pass by, who are making their paths straight. Whoever is naive, let him turn in here. And to him who lacks understanding, she says, stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he does not know that the dead are there, and her guests are in the depths of Sheol." The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the wisdom of the Word of God lasts forever.  
Kurtis prayed earlier for our political leaders. President Trump being installed tomorrow for the second time. And, that got me thinking this week, knowing he was going to pray for that and reading what I'm reading that if I'm today, you or I go home, phone rings...unknown caller. Normally we are not going to answer it, but for whatever reason, um, we just say, yeah, I should try this one. This is Adam. This is the planner of the inauguration, so and so. Okay. We have a private jet waiting. Hickory regional airport, we've heard of you. Um, would you please come up and attend the inauguration? You get five minutes with the president before he goes out. He wants your advice. Would you take it? And if you would, what would you say? The president wanted your advice for the next four years. You're the last person he's going to listen to before he goes up and takes the oath. I thought about that this week and I said, lo and behold, I'd take him to the Book of Proverbs. I'd try to entice him at the beginning in Proverbs 1 by saying, you know, President Trump, Solomon, the son of David, King of Israel, was the wisest and wealthiest man that's ever lived. I would imagine that he would be interested in at least one of those...hopefully both. And I would say, you know, you may think that this might be below you to learn these things, but Proverbs was written not just for the common person, but for kings. Proverbs 8 says, counsel is mine and sound wisdom. I am understanding, power is mine, wisdom is speaking. And then listen to this, Proverbs 8:15. By me kings reign, and rulers decree justice. By me princes rule and nobles and all who judge rightly. President Trump, do you do you want to judge rightly? Do you want to decree justice? Then here's what you need to do. 8:17, wisdom says, I love those who love me, and those who diligently seek me will find me. So I'd say there it is. You wake up every day and you read a proverb. If you don't understand it, pray for wisdom. If you really don't understand it, you can call me anytime. Your people have my number, apparently. And then I would go out and I would. I would pray for him. Probably the exact thing Solomon prayed for that God would give him wisdom. It's too much for him, he said, to rule these people. Would you give me wisdom? See, that's the payoff of the proverbs. That there is a way to live in this world that will bless you, and it'll build up those people around you that matter most to you. And there's a foolish way to live in this world that will curse you. And it'll bring down those people that are around you. That's the path of wisdom and the path of folly. And what we see in 9, and what you just heard is not just a path. It's a scene that shifts from being on a path to two homes on each side of the path. And the hostess of one has built this house, and the hostess of the other has built her house. And when they call out to you, they both make it sound attractive. And you're the simple, you're the naive who stands in between the unlearned. The one that the Proverbs speaks of, the naive, the one who has an open mind and says, you know, they look the same and they sound the same. But what's the difference? When I can't see how the outcome is going to be, how can I discern it? That's this final lesson Solomon has to his son here for us today. And it's responding to Wisdom's call that doesn't just reveal our hearts in the way we respond to it, but it actually reveals your destiny, as in your destination, where you will end up. God promises you is in direct correspondence to your willingness to heed wisdom's call. That's what's at stake. So how does this chapter break out? If we're going to get what we need to get out of it.  
First we're going to look at the call of the two hosts or hostesses, I should say. And, they're divided out 1 to 6, you might have noticed is Lady Wisdom and 13 to 18 is Dame Folly. And then in the middle is this lesson. And so for us to walk through it isn't going to necessarily just be we start from beginning to end. I actually want to open up chapter 9, kind of one of those children's books, the pop-up books. I mean, that's really the picture he gives here. He bookends this chapter at the end of this opening prologue. Nine chapters of lessons for his son to learn this last chapter. It's like that pop-up book and imagine it's a scene in a story, and there's a road down the middle and you're on it. And on each side of the page are these two beautiful homes with beautiful women sitting outside. Pretend you're the prince and you're having to make your decision of which princess to choose. Maybe, uh, Little Mermaid, like, you know, Ariel. And then Ursula, who transforms herself into a beautiful young woman, and this Prince Eric has to decide and by appearances alone, what's he going to do? By appearances alone, by the call alone of these two women bookending this chapter, how can you know the difference? And you're standing in the middle. And Solomon has said, let me paint you the picture of the scene of these two homes you're going to live in that you're going to be a patron of. You're going to be tempted to go to one or the other throughout your life, son. And I want you to know what's really inside those houses. And then I'll give you down the spine of this pop-up book. I'll give you the lesson in the middle. So let's start with the two homes, the two hostesses, the two calls. First Lady wisdom has built her house. And notice the industry of this woman. It's pointing forward to Proverbs 31. A real woman that we know well in this book that is industrious, that does all of this work. You get it in short form here in picture form. Listen to the industry. She's built her house. She's hewn out her seven pillars, which is representative of completion. Perfection. This is no small little shanty. This is a house that would catch your eye. Seven pillars. A number of completion. Like the seven days of God's creation. And throughout the Old Testament when seven is used, there is an idea of totality to it. She has spared no detail in this home. She has worked hard to build it. She has laid the foundation and hewn out the seven pillars. But she doesn't stop there. It's not just a home that's going to provide you stability and strength. It's inviting. Look at the detail and intentionality in verse 2. She has prepared her food. She has mixed her wine. She has set her table. Every last detail of this wonderful banquet she invites you to, to take a seat at has been thought through and worked hard at beforehand. That's who Lady Wisdom is, and that's what wisdom is in the world. Nobody stumbles into wisdom. It is in Proverbs chapter 8, personified as someone who has been around since the beginning. Wisdom isn't a Johnny come lately who's just making it up as it goes along. Proverbs 8:22, the Lord possessed me wisdom at the beginning of his way, before his works of old, from everlasting I was established from the beginning, from the earliest times on earth. And now Solomon says, and that's what Lady Wisdom has built a beautiful house that took a lot of work. And now this wonderful meal she has prepared her food. That is a weak translation. It is...she has slaughtered her cattle in the Hebrew. Meaning, she had to go out and poke him. That's going to be a good one. Let's make some filets out of it. And she hacks the thing and drains it out and makes you this lavish meal. That's how much work it took. This wasn't a quick call to Bojangles on the fly. Though most of us would be like, what's wrong with Bojangles? I mean, it's a good meal. She's mixed her wine. Again, this isn't the last minute. I'm going to just run down to the ABC. No, she made it personally herself. Every last component of the wine. Mixed by her. Then she sets her table. It's a beautiful picture. There's organization to the last detail. But she doesn't just leave it at that. Makes this. Builds this home. Totality. Completion. Stability. Security. Invitation in comfort. Enjoyment. She sends out her maidens. She calls from the tops of the heights of the city. To be one who calls from the tops of the heights of a city. In this time is prestige. You've earned your right to be there. That's where the nobles are. It takes some work to get there. And she has achieved it. That's the house that wisdom builds. There is a cost to it. Remember this book. They look symmetrical, don't they?...these homes. Well, let's flip over to 13 and 14 and see how Dame Folly has built her home. Well, Dame Folly's invitation is, um, not so illustrious, is it? There's no indication of industry organization intentionality. The only thing Dame Folly is skilled at because the word wisdom in the book of Proverbs is a word for skill. The only thing she's skilled at is deception. Make it look and sound like the real thing. Highest form of flattery is what? Imitation. And this is all she has to offer. She's boisterous. Which has been the way that Solomon has warned his son from Proverbs 1 through 7 about the adulterous woman. She's boisterous. She's loud. She calls out to you. Sounds inviting, seems nice. Lures you in. And so this woman appears again. She's boisterous. She's naive. So she's the naive calling to the naive. She hasn't learned anything. She doesn't know what life is really about. But you know what? At first glance, looks pretty good. Seems pretty nice. What's the difference? She knows nothing. She is completely ignorant when it comes to the things that matter. No indication there's any effort to prepare her home. Great effort to organize an invite. What does she do to get people to come in? Sits at the doorway of her house. When nobody comes then she finds a seat by the high places of the city. What's that about? Well, like I said, to earn your spot in the high places of the city to call out is this form of nobility to be in the chair of that would be to be considered the voice of wisdom in the town. And she is so good at her deception, somehow she weasels her way into this seat in the highest place of the city. No wonder these naive simpletons are going to be suckers. She looks like the real thing. So we see the difference already between the two homes by the person on the inside, and how hard it is to build a house of wisdom. The effort it takes and how cheap of an imitation the other one could be. But notice the similarity. Verse 4 and verse 16...word for word. Whoever is naive, let him turn in here to him who lacks understanding. They both call out. What Solomon showing there? He's showing that though there is a great difference between these two hostesses and their homes, to the naive simpleton passing by, even in verse 15, one who's trying to make his path straight. You know, this is evocative of this young, naive man who he's actually trying to get somewhere. But he doesn't know what he needs to know yet to decide between which voice should I listen to? Because they're saying the same exact thing. They're both telling me I should come in and dine with them. Whoever's naive wisdom calls out, turn in here. Why? Because wisdom wants to bless you, wants to protect you, and wants to do good to you. But folly says whoever is naive turn in here and it wants to curse you, and it wants to ruin you, but it's going to deceive you. Young person, naive, simple...those aren't insults in the Bible, by the way. The naive in Proverbs is a figure of speech for a field with no fences...open boundaries...open minds. So what is extolled in our culture today? Be open minded, you know. Let your kids decide. Don't influence them, right? I mean, isn't that the cardinal virtue today?...open mindedness. Whereas in the book of Proverbs, closed mindedness is the virtue. But you can't do it for yourself. You need someone's help from the outside. You need someone to tell you, listen, you need to put up some fences there. Because beyond that pathway is danger. And you don't know it, but it's there. Just like when you have kids and you say, honey, great new house, first thing we need to do is what? Put up a fence in the yard. Why? Because our kid will run into the street, or our dog will run away. In the house. let's put up a gate so the kid doesn't fall down the stairs. Let's put those things in all the plugs so they don't zap themselves. You know, we're so eager and adamant to protect our kids physical well-being, but do we have that same approach, parents, to say it's not going to be a virtue for my kid to be open minded, I need to close it down with the truth of the Word of God so that they are protected from lies and can identify what the truth is. And long after they're with me, they'll be able to discern. And when you pass the buck on that, you have failed your child at the most foundational level. If you've bought the lie that it's your job to keep them open minded, let them explore. Let them experiment. Doesn't mean you become a hover parent helicopter. They can't go anywhere. Do anything. I'm tracking them 24 over seven. It's saying the thing that you are foundationally to do, mom and dad, raise your kid in the fear and instruction of the Lord. Period. You fail there, you fail. You may not be good at a lot of other things. You may not raise an MLB first round pick, a Nobel Prize winner, whatever. But you can raise a kid in the fear of the Lord. You can admonish them and instruct them and correct them so that they will be prepared for this moment that Solomon is making this very clear picture of the moment of both of these things are sounding the same seeming attractive. Which should I listen to? Well, you got to know what the invitation is about. Let's look at the differences. Lady wisdom, verse 5 says, come eat of my food and drink of the wine I have mixed. Forsake your folly and live and proceed in the way of understanding. Ah, so wisdom is going to call out and say, come, I have prepared all this for you. Come and eat of my food and drink of the wine I have mixed. This is a banquet, a feast of glory. But it's going to cost you. Right there in verse 6, it's going to cost you your own self-assuredness that you can figure out life on your own. You're going to ignore the description of every kid that comes into this world, no matter from what family, what background, you know, you flip that toy over, you buy for your kid made in China. You flip over the baby that God has blessed you with, made in folly, conceived in sin, sinner by nature, every single one of them. And the only way to get out of that is verse 6 to the naive. You need to forsake your folly. What does forsake mean? Completely abandon ship. Turn the other way. Go the other way. It's repentance. I don't know everything there is already out there and I need to turn. But look what the benefit is. You sell out, go all in, come into this home, you'll live and you'll proceed in the way of understanding. There is an eternal destiny that changes and there is an earthly prosperity. Sounds pretty good. Son, will you take it? Let me show you the alternative. Dame Folly says. Here's her allurement. Remember, she's only skilled at one thing...seduction, deception. The imitation of the real thing. Stolen water,  sweet. How do you steal water? Why would he pick that picture? Well, I think what he's trying to drive home is. Look, you know, what Folly, all it really offers you is just the enticement of doing something illicit. Right? You may not even love the sin it's calling you out to do. It's just the fact that you want to do the sin. Have you ever heard of Augustine, one of the early church fathers? In his confessions he talks about he was young and would steal pears from a neighbor's orchard, and he looks back and reflects on it after he's come to Christ and says, you know, I didn't even like the pear. I just wanted to steal something for the sake of stealing. That's the folly that's bound up in the heart of a child from the get. I mean, beyond just them saying, oh, I wondered, why did you do that? Sometimes they say, because so-and-so did this and that. Sometimes they say, you know, the parents. Why did you do that? I don't know, sometimes they just sin for the sake of sinning. And that's the allurement Dame Folly tries to come on just sin for the sake of sinning. There's going to be no consequence. Bread eaten in secret is pleasant. You won't get caught. Look at verse 18. But the naive does not know that the dead are there, and her guests are in the depths of Sheol. There's no cost to come in to Dame Folly’s house, but there's certainly one on the back end. She will charge you nothing to enter her house because it cost her nothing. But she will take your life. And there's nobody in the depths of Sheol to warn you of it, because they don't come back out. That's the end. That's the end game. That's where this all leads. The enticement of both...one leads to eternal life and earthly prosperity. One leads to eternal destruction and making a ruin of your life now. Lady Wisdom will require everything of you upfront, but cost you nothing in the end, Dame Folly will require of you nothing now, and take everything from you at the end. And that's why the simple fall for it. The path of what?...least resistance, most enticement, instant gratification. Everything the world wants to give you. That's why James 4 could say, friendship with the world is enmity towards God. You want what the world offers. You want the quick fix. You want the cheap out. You want the temporary passing pleasure of sin. You'll get it. But like a spider that catches you in its web, the moment you get in, it comes out and pulls you in and you're done. And Solomon paints this picture of these two homes and hostesses, and a place that will either be a banquet to God's glory and your good, or a banquet in the grave, and he wants you to sit there shocked. He wants you to see it in clear terms, HD. And he wants you to say right now, how can I avoid ending up in the one? And how could I find my way? Cut through all the misinformation and the lies and in the long game end up in the House of wisdom, because it's never just a one-time thing. The life of folly and the life of wisdom is not just, okay, I've reached my destination.  I'm there.  I'll never be. No life is the path in Proverbs. But there's places to stop along the way. Voices calling out turn in here, turn in here! And so Solomon wants his son to be sitting here. Say, dad, now explain to me the moral of the story. How do I ensure I pick the right house? You've told me the invitations. You've told me the destinations. Give me the wisdom I need to know to divide it out. Well, that's why he puts 7 to 12 in the middle. You've seen the picture. Now let's get to the point.  
Point number two. Today we've heard the two calls. Now the two responses. And this is what has to do with societal discipline. The response of these two hearts has everything to do with how we respond to correction in our life. And now he's going to give you the naive or the simple, revealing their heart by the way they respond to correction, to instruction and to discipline. So he first lays out the picture of a new person, the scoffer. This is what the naive has turned into when he turns into the House of folly. This is why he ended up there. This is what his heart was like, and he describes it in a cascade of stupidity. Verse 7, he who corrects a scoffer this is how this person responds. This is what tells on them. He who corrects a scoffer gets dishonor for himself. The first thing this ignorant, naive person does that lands him in Dame Folly's house to destruction is when you try to correct them, they ignore you, Verse 7a. And then he goes on to say, if that weren't bad enough, he who reproves a wicked man gets insults for himself or even the ESV. Your translation, I think, says might incur injury. So it moves from...they'll just flat out ignore your advice to they may insult you or even injure you in return. I mean, you ever get popped in the nose for giving somebody advice or rebuking them? Thankfully I haven't. But this is what's in the heart of the scoffer. And then it tells you why. Why are they so averse to this? Because of their heart. If you reprove a scoffer, he will hate you. And there it is. The descending order from I'm going to ignore you to I'll insult you in return to I hate you for trying to tell me how to live my life. And just like he did with the story of these two homes, then he, in a sense, takes this scoffer and turns him inside out and says, on the other hand, let me tell you about the opposite person that's going to end up in the House of wisdom. And let me show you how they respond to instruction. Second part of verse 8. If you reprove or rebuke a wise man, he will love you. Do you see the direct opposite to the beginning of verse 8? The one hates you, the other loves you. Why? The one's a scoffer. The one's wise. And then verse 9. Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser. Wisdom and being wise is a word for skillful living. Skillful living...I'm going to receive instruction, not try to punch you in the face for giving it to me, which is the opposite of the second thing the scoffer does. And then lastly, verse 9, teach a righteous man and he will increase his learning. What would be the opposite of a righteous man who wants to increase in learning? The beginning of verse 7. When you try to correct a scoffer, they ignore you, they dishonor you. You see how he just matches these things up? Solomon just wants to show you the great divide. At the very heart of a wise person you're loved, appreciated, valued, esteemed, adored. And then he contrasts that. And then with the Scoffer you're hated, you're despised. You want to live wise or you want to go around fighting everyone? That's the contrast. You want to grow in knowledge? Or do you want to harden in your own self perceived wisdom, which is another word for your ignorance? Which one do you want to be? Because they're right there next to each other to see. And it all hinges on are you teachable or unteachable? So Solomon has us sitting on the road with him. Which house are you going to end up in? Pivots on what you do with what I'm teaching you right now. Where are you in the story? That's where we start with the plank in our own eye before we look for the splinter in someone else's today. There's more that Proverbs says about the scoffer. And so at this point, I just was studying this week and thought maybe what would help is if we unpacked the scoffer a little bit more. One to say, create in me a clean heart, Oh, God. If there's any way I don't want to end up like the scoffer, do you? Trapped in a house that goes to Sheol. Because I didn't take the warning signs along the way. SoI did a little study of the scoffer this week and came up...since I know you love lists. Everybody told me last week. man, those ten marks. Adam, can you give us more lists. So I came up with six marks of a scoffer. So when you read about this person, you can be warned of those tendencies in your own heart and also to help you minister to people around you. So here's six marks of a scoffer to watch out for in myself or in others, but always in that order, right? Deal with my own heart, first, take the plank of my own eye so that I can help to take the splinter out of somebody else's.
So, mark, number one of a scoffer in the book of Proverbs, outside of this morality play in chapter nine is this. First mark of a scoffer. It's probably the easiest one to recognize, both in ourselves and other people is scoffers are opposed to seek wise counsel. Proverbs 15:12 A scoffer does not love one who reproves him. He will not go to the wise. That's entry level scoffing. Scoffers are opposed to seek on their own wise counsel. They will not go to the wise. A scoffer is known by his reputation to know everything already. So they don't need to go to anyone else to ask advice. Because they, What? They know everything. So if you're wondering if you or someone else is a scoffer, maybe just start scoffing 101. When's the last time I took the initiative to seek someone else's counsel for things of eternal matters?...My soul. The path I'm on. Not to say you shouldn't get advice, kids. You know, asking mom and dad. You know, what classes should I sign up for next semester?  Like we talked about last week, what are some good schedules habits, routines? Like I'm not dismissing that stuff. And you know that's a good just to say this. It's a good indicator of teachability. If young person or older person, you are inclined to just want to ask people like, hey, can you help me out, figure my car, my house, this thing's broken. I can't get it to start. Rather than like, I can just always do this on my own. So number one, scoffers are opposed to seek out wise counsel.
Number two, scoffers don't listen when wise counsel is given. Proverbs 13:1, a wise son accepts his father's discipline, but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke. Scoffers don't listen when wise counsel is given. A scoffer does not listen to rebuke. They resist reform. They reject advice. Back to Proverbs 12:1 last week. If you hate reproof, you are a beast. A brute is what Solomon said, because there's just no long game in mind. It's just instant gratification. And if you give me counsel, that stops me on the path to get the thing I want right now, right here, I respond like an animal would if it did the trick you told it was going to do, and then you say, no, I'm going to give you it tomorrow and they bite you...probably not. But notice the contrast in Proverbs 13:1, A wise son accepts his father's discipline. There's not just an acceptance of the discipline and instruction. There's an underlying respect for the authority. Whereas a fool, a scoffer has no respect for authority. I mean, parents, that's why you're called to discipline your kids from an early age. You're teaching them authority. You're teaching them authority from a very young age by the rod of discipline that comes from you, the person that they can see as an authority, because eventually you're trying to work yourself out of that job. You're actually every time you're disciplining them with the rod, telling them, listen, I want to teach you that sin has a consequence and it's painful. And I'm teaching you as an earthly authority. But God is your heavenly authority, and his discipline far exceeds mine, both in its loving intent and perfect administration, but also the permanence of it if you don't learn to correct your ways. And you need to correct your ways by the grace of mercy of God in Jesus Christ, and there you're at the gospel with this young person you're disciplining...your child. Parents sometimes ask, how do I present the gospel to my kid? I've never once sat with my child and presented the gospel through the Roman road. Hey four year old in whatever or you ever sin, you ever lie. Give him the ten commandments. I can't count how many times with five kids under the age of 12, I've had a chance to give them the gospel through discipline. Because that's the only way out for them. They have to come to the point they see the wickedness in their heart, and the only thing that can change it is not their dad and a rod. It's a Father in heaven who sent his Son, and how beautiful it is to present the gospel there. It will work. It will getin there. They'll see it. They'll see this guy's a temporary person in my life, but God is forever. And my heavenly Father, I need to listen to him. And that's why you do it. But scoffers don't listen when wise counsel is given. And that starts from the earliest age. What can it lead to?

Third mark of a scoffer...scoffers actually enjoy mocking wise counsel. Back to Proverbs 1. When Lady Wisdom first calls out in the streets and she says. Proverbs 1:22 how long, O naive, will you love being simple minded and scoffers delight themselves in scoffing. Scoffers are known to make a mockery of counsel they receive. It's out of ignorance they mock because God's wisdom is foreign to their free thinking, their open mind. So they mock it. But they're mocking what they are what?...ignorant of. They don't understand it. I mean, how many times have you been frustrated with the person who says, you know the Bible? And immediately when you hear that tone, you're like, oh, jeez, you know, Jesus was really about. And you're like, you don't understand the Bible or Jesus. And so they go on to scoff at some truth you're trying to invest in their life because they think they know better than you, and ultimately they think they know more than God. So a scoffer will mock wise counsel. So these first three are pretty, I think, easy to see.
Number four, scoffers will only seek wisdom to appear as if wise. This one you got to put a little thought into. Maybe take a little longer on this one. Scoffers will only seek wisdom to appear as if they're wise. Proverbs 14:6, a scoffer seeks wisdom in vain. But knowledge is easy for a man of understanding. Sothis is a pretty plain verse. That's what Proverbs tend to be. They're plain, but they make you stop and think for a little bit. And this one made me think the most this week because I read this and I go, well, a scoffer seeks wisdom in vain over here. And then how the proverbs work...there's always an antithesis. So if the scoffer seeks wisdom in vain, the wise man of understanding knowledge actually comes easy. So is it saying that this scoffer actually is sincere in seeking wisdom, but because they've just made such a life of rejecting it, closing their heart and ears towards it, even when they appear to want it, it's going to elude them. Could it be that? It could be, but it's such a plain verse, or it could just be that they will appear to want wisdom, but it's a it's a superficial thing. It's like in 2 Corinthians 7 when a person has worldly sorrow, not godly sorrow for their sin, they're just mad they got caught. And so they're willing to kind of. Oh, right. Tell me what I need to know and know and maybe even put on a show of repentance. But they don't really want to change. They're just kind of grinning and bearing it. I don't know. I wouldn't place all my money on either side of this. Is this scoffer seeking wisdom in vain because they've shut themselves off to it so much that even when they want to seek it, they can't find it. Or is it just all a facade? They just want to appear as if they're wise. I mean, we can admit both happen, right? You do know the person that sometimes just pretends because they got caught and they're temporarily sad? Um, but here's that first one I mentioned. The person that maybe they've for so long, mocked at wisdom and scoffed at it, then when the time finally comes that they're in a hard place, a really hard place, when they call out for it, they can't find it. Like Jesus said about the Pharisees, You know they have ears, but they can't hear. And they have eyes, but they can't see. And I say this because Proverbs 1, we were there already, right after Lady Wisdom says, how long will you delight in being simple and scoffers delight in scoffing, and fools hate knowledge. And here's the timer. The timer starts. You have an opportunity. You have a window. Turn to my reproof now. I will pour out my spirit on you. I'll make my words known to you. So the clock is ticking for the scoffer. And this Scoffer thinks they have. You know everything's good, right? I'm with my friends. We're going to ambush somebody. We're going to gain by violence. Like everything that Proverbs one already warned about. We're going to have our fill of fun. And she says, I called to you and you refused. I stretched out my hand, and none of you scoffers paid attention. You neglected all my counsel. You did not want my reproof. So time is up. I will laugh at your calamity. I will mock when your dread comes and your dread will come like a storm. Your calamity will come like a whirlwind. Meaning once it's there, it's too late. When distress and anguish come upon you then they will call on me, the scoffers. But I will not answer. They'll remain in an echo chamber of their own ignorance, because that's the path they've always picked. They call out and there's no response. They can't hear. Why? Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord. I would hate for that to be anybody in here. But you might be. There is the scoffer that seeks wisdom in vain. I don't know the motivation of a lot of you that come, especially if I've never met you. But here you are. And, um, this text was for you today. The clock is still ticking. And if something in your heart is telling you, that's me. I have mocked and scoffed and rejected and at times behind that person's back that tried to counsel me, laughed at them and slandered them. But here God is today, revealing your heart to you, and he's giving you a way out. Forsake your folly and live and proceed in the way of understanding. The way out is Christ. The way out is realizing wisdom has so far eluded you. And yet you sit here thinking you've had it all the time, and now the blinders are coming off and you're going look at the mess I've made. Look at the path I've been on. But look at the grace of God that his mercy hasn't run out as long as there's still time. Time might still be your friend rather than your enemy here. There's a parable in Matthew 25 of ten virgins who are like in Proverbs 9 servants, maidens, and five of them were prepared and five weren't. And when the master comes back, the ones that weren't prepared, they get locked out and it's too late. But it's not too late for you today because you're here and you're hearing the Word of God, and it's reading your life right in front of you just by revealing teachability something that seems so simple, so mundane, right? Because simple people the call is to just don't turn into folly, but turn to wisdom. Jesus is the wisdom of God. So whatever you think you've been chasing and trying to figure out on your own, you found it in Christ today. But will you heed his call to forsake your folly and turn to him and live? I pray you would.
Number 5 on the Scoffer list is at heart, they're the most arrogant people that exist. Not my words. Proverbs 21:24 describes the scoffer, not just describes...defines them. It's the only definition we get. Scoffers at heart are the most arrogant people that exist. Proverbs 21:24, Scoffer is the name of the arrogant, a haughty man who acts with arrogant pride. I mean, just that phrase alone is like a triple decker, right? The Scoffer is a haughty man who acts with arrogant pride. That's why I say it's not. I'm not embellishing to say scoffers at heart are the most arrogant people that exist, because Solomon has stacked up his words here. Haughty man who acts. It's not just on the inside, it's on the outside. And when it's on the outside, they're doubling down. It's not just they're prideful. They're arrogantly prideful. Does anybody want to be that person? No. But this is the scoffer. Egotistical, conceited, haughty, big headed, overconfident, narcissistic, you name it, he is it. He won't seek wisdom. He can't take wisdom. He can't find wisdom because in his own eyes. And here is the heart of his problem. He is wisdom. He is wisdom. That's why the Proverbs can say there's more hope for a fool than a man who is wise in his own eyes. Because if you think you're the source and fount of wisdom, and it's just all in you, you know, higher creation, you are reasonable and maybe you're more lost than a fool, Proverbs would say. You're the fool that's kind of tripping himself up along the path...the naive. You may have a really high IQ and a prestigious job, and you've worked it up. But if you're wise in your own eyes, you're worse off than the fool.
Number 6, last one. How to know a Scoffer when you see one. Scoffers will eventually find themselves rejected by those around them. Proverbs 24:9, scoffers will eventually find themselves rejected by those around them. The devising of folly is sin, and the scoffer is an abomination to men. It basically just says, look, this person's going to eventually look around themself in life one day and be in a lot of isolation, because the way that they act, the ignorance they act in, the scoffing towards rebuke, the rejection of any council. Eventually, even the people that love you the most will...you become an abomination as in what they stand for, you know, you're not just argumentative towards them. You insult them. You injure them. Eventually you will be by yourself. That's one of the built in consequences that we're going to see in verse 12. If you scoff, you alone will bear it. Eventually you will isolate yourself because the people around you will have enough. So that's the six marks of a scoffer that the Proverbs gives you.
The last thing I want to answer is how can I deal with them? How to deal with the scoffer. Came up with an acronym called C.A.L.L. on Proverbs.
C stands for Create Appropriate boundaries with scoffers. Proverbs 22:10 says, drive out the Scoffer and contention will go out. Even strife and dishonor will cease. So God gives a way out. If you recognize now we're moving from planks out of my own eye. Hopefully after those last six...splinter, I see someone else correctly. Walk like a duck. Talk like a duck. Must be a duck. So the first thing the proverb says is drive out the scoffer and the contention will go out. If you keep letting a scoffer who is a scoffer habitually characterized by this run and ruin your life, but you've never tried applying Proverbs 22:10. It's on you, not their sin, their sins on them, but you allowing that person to just wreak havoc in your life and you think you're going to turn them around. As the phrase, you know, when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. I didn't know where that came from, so I googled it this week and lo and behold, it's Oprah Winfrey hanging out with Maya Angelou in their jammies, talking about their problems in life. It was awesome, actually, because my Angelou just turns and goes Oprah, when someone shows you who they are, believe them. And Oprah is like. Ahhh, you know, so take that one for what it's worth. But it made me think about this. If somebody shows youthey're a Scoffer believe them. But the action you would take is create some appropriate boundaries. I had somebody come up in between services and say, I just experienced that over Christmas. And it was sad. A lovely family prodigal comes home at the holidays and just wreaked havoc, and they actually had to ask him to leave because there was so much contention, strife and dishonor and it pained them. And it's been weeks of crying because it hurts to do that when you love the person. But the contention is not going to go out. And if you're dealing with a scoffer, that's the advice here.
Avoid any prolonged company with the scoffer as far as it depends on you. Psalm 1:1, how blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, stand in the path of sinners, sit in the seat of scoffers. You know, sometimes you have to be in the company of a scoffer, a classmate, a coworker, a teammate. But as the saying goes, you know, you lay down with dogs, you wake up with fleas. If you're kind of just willing to linger around a scoffer more than you need to. Psalm 1 would say, don't do that. Don't sit in the seat with them. It's going to rub off on you. Avoid prolonged company with them. Parents, teach your kids to identify the scoffer at a young age in school, on a team. That young scoffer will eventually be more influential than you if you're not careful. Because it'll be enticing to your young person in your home. They'll think that kid's cool for getting in trouble in class. You've been a kid. You remember it. You know, the troublemaker. He kind of. There was something that you're like, as long as he's not making trouble for me, but other people, I'm kind of enticed by him. And you're called to actually when you're hearing your kid allude to how this kid behaves, but they're kind of strangely attracted. You got to shut that down. That's your job. They may not like it, but it's your job. Because what you teach them to do about making friends at a very young age will carry over until the most important friend they make, who they want to marry. And then suddenly you're going to flip on the switch and say, you know, you should be really, where were you the last ten years? Not teaching them how to make friends and what type of friends to avoid. It's built in. It's your job.
Let the scoffer know God will not be mocked. C.A.L.L., number three. Let the Scoffer know God will not be mocked, but he can save them. Proverbs 3:34. Though God scoffs at the scoffers, yet he gives grace to the afflicted. There's the hope of the gospel for the scoffer in your life. God will scoff at the scoffers. He won't be mocked. Galatians says, right? God will not be mocked. We will reap what we sow. But right there in that same verse, Proverbs 3:34 says, yet he gives grace to the afflicted. Yet to the humble he shows favor. So you can give the scoffer in your life the gospel. You can, because there's a chance. Time's not up.
Love them by praying for them to repent and fear God. The fourth or the fourth letter of call. Love them by praying for them to repent and fear God. And this takes us to 10 to 12. It's right there. How do you love them by praying for them? You pray this for them that they would know the fear of the Lord, the beginning of wisdom. After you've told them that they can be saved. Love them by praying for them to repent, to know the fear of the Lord and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. Jesus was identified in the Gospels as who?...the Holy One of God right there in Proverbs, and there's an eternal destiny that's shaped by this, but there's also earthly benefit. Look at 11 and 12. For by me, if you gain wisdom, if you live in the house of wisdom, your days will be multiplied, years of life be added to you. You can tell a person without trying to feel like you're some prosperity preacher. Listen, your life's in a ditch. You've been making the bad choices that are just sending you down to, you know, problem after problem. It's not just your eternal destiny changes when you give your life to Christ, when you trust in him, when you forsake your folly to live. I don't know how many days are going to be multiplied or years God's going to add to add to your life. But I promise you this. It's in the Bible, and there'll be more than if you don't, right? I mean, if you if you know a scoffer who's making bad decisions, jeopardizing their own health and well-being, there's a good chance that might come back around on them and end their life. We don't say that with any a note of gloating or anything. We're just saying that's the fact of life. And the proverb is saying, listen, it's not just eternal destiny, it's earthly prosperity. Last one, verse 12. And if you're wise, you're wise for yourself. It comes down to you. This isn't a decision someone else can make for you. If you're wise, you're wise for yourself. You'll get those blessings and benefits. But if you scoff, you alone will bear it. Your destiny is determined by what you do with the Holy One of God, and the quantity and quality of your life is determined by choices of wisdom that follow.
Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word this morning. Thank you for its clarity and power. Thank you that it just paints the paths in life very clearly, which we need, because we can easily think there's a lot of gray and fog. And Lord, you just clarify it so well for us. Two houses, two hostesses, two paths, two destinies. One choice. Forsake your folly and live. Lord, I just pray for the person in here that realizes they're the fool. They're the scoffer. But yet sees that there's mercy in you right now. And that they would come to you. And I pray for the rest of us who know you, Christ, as our Lord and Savior, the Holy One of God. But they're still folly bound up in us somewhere, some resistance to being teachable, to seeking counsel that we just repent of and give that to you so that we can live a life pleasing to you for your glory we pray. Amen.

 

Pulpit Curriculum PDF

Pulpit Curriculum DOCX

View transcript

Self Discipline

Download transcript

Turn in your Bibles to Proverbs chapter 12. We're going to start a mini-series for a few weeks on the subject...the matter of discipline. And in fact, a sweet Saint this morning just came up and saw as we emailed different, groups who serve here in advance what the sermon title/topic is for the week. And they saw it and they're like, you are in teacher mode. You've got ten things for us today. Indeed I do, only because a few weeks ago, when Lorin Bilhorn was preaching, one of the aspiring elders, he had like a 10 or 11 point sermon when I was out of town and I felt threatened that I've been going too easy on you guys with three point sermons, all you Baptists. And, you know, I needed to turn it up...my first sermon back. So here we go...ten things today. But, we're going to talk about the subject of discipline, not church discipline, just the broader subject matter of thinking about discipline in the Christian life, because I thought there could be no better way to discourage us all as we start a new year together. That's how I roll. This does come on the heels of just a wonderful two weeks of I was here for Kyle getting to preach. And then on the road when Kurtis was preaching last Sunday, coming back from up north. But both of those sermons were encouraging in their own right. Kyle's in particular, in 2 Peter chapter 1. If you missed it, I encourage you to go back and listen to be encouraged. Because his passion was evident in that sermon for you to pursue Christ and to know him more, and how that comes by means of growing in the strength that he provides, and the great goal for which our life exists, which is to know him more. And that was a great inspirational motivational sermon, because it does reset our thinking of what we're on planet Earth for, and it is to know Christ. And then Kurtis came in last week and came out of the gates with a means to that grace of knowing Christ more, which is being in the Word of God. And that was really the thrust of his sermon, the various ways in which we get access to the means of grace through the Word of God, the Word of Christ in our lives, and enhancing that. And so I was been thinking on those two things and just was on my heart then to say, you know, that that those are the great motivations and as in the great motivation is to know Christ more, as we heard a few weeks ago. And then, you know, you access that by okay, we know Word and prayer and fellowship get us there. But I'm coming at this from the same goal and motivation to know Christ as we start the new year together. But I guess to come at it from a different angle, which is what are the things that impede that. And that's why I say maybe this is a great, discouraging series, because a lack of discipline in our lives will impede or inhibit our progress in the faith. And it may not be that we lack motivation necessarily. We can all, as children of God and wanting to glorify God and live for Christ say like, yeah, I get that's my motivation. And I know that I need to be in the Word of God to do it. And sometimes those aren't the pieces that aren't in place. It's the thousand little things that we don't...I shouldn't say worry about, but pay attention to. The disciplines of life that actually can hold us back from achieving that great end is that we don't kind of take a circumspect view of our life and say, what are all those little things that add up to big hindrances? I guess Hebrews 12 would come to mind. You know those things that easily entangle us, that aren't always necessarily in the category of sin, but through a lack of discipline, they can lead to sin, for sure, or they can just slow us down in the race. And so what I'm getting at today, if you even want to just think about, Philippians 3:13 and 14, when Paul could say, brothers and sisters, I don't regard myself as laying hold of it yet, as in laying hold of Christ Jesus perfectly. But one thing I do, and just pausing on that thought and saying, wait a second, Paul, if I know anything about your life, you're doing a lot of things all the time. You're planting churches, you're raising up elders, you're preaching the gospel, you're getting beat down for the faith. You don't stop. So you read that and go, really? Your life's about one thing. Or for him to say, "one thing, I do". Well, he's saying I just have one great goal in life, and we have that one great goal. Going back to what Kyle talked about in 2 Peter 1. He says one thing I do forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead. I press on toward THE goal for THE prize of THE upward call of God in Christ Jesus. See? So you can have that one goal in mind as you start this new year. And people could look at your life and see you doing a lot of different things. But what we're trying to do coming out of the gates in 2025, going back a few weeks, and then last week and now today is in talking about discipline to say, though, you have that one goal in mind, that one thing Paul is saying, I have one thing I do, even though I'm doing 100 other things, and you could see them in my life and you, you know, the churches knew of all of that which Paul was doing, but they were sure that it was all pointing in that same direction, which is to press on toward the goal of the call of Christ, to live for him, and let nothing get in your way of that. And so this series is not saying, hey, having that great motivation of living for Christ is not the most compelling thing to live for or what Kurtis talked about Word and prayer, daily devotions. I'm not saying those aren't important. Hopefully those pieces got in place the last two weeks for you. Now I want to do like, let's get into the weeds of some of the stuff that holds us back. And today we'll start with a lack of self discipline. And I just want for our text to think on a little bit. And Proverbs are designed to make us think so in Proverbs 12:1 it reads, "whoever loves discipline loves knowledge. But he who hates reproof is stupid". I mean, that's why I'm saying I have the gift of discouragement to start our year with like, hey, thanks, pastor. Your opening line to me today is don't be a dummy. Don't be stupid, don't be an ignoramus. But there is, you know, when you stop and let this one roll around on your tongue a little bit and savor the truth here, this antithesis between the positive...if you love discipline, you love knowledge. But if you hate being reproved and corrected, you're stupid. Just let that sit with you for a little bit here. There's a foundational piece to live by. Really, to understand your human nature versus your animal instinct. That's what he's juxtaposing here...us being created in the image of God. And yet, when we reject correction and discipline in our lives, we have resorted to animal instincts. If you see someone around you who embraces correction, instruction, reproof, again, all the things we love, don't we? The wise or the fool don't necessarily say like, oh, come on, I eat correction for breakfast. It's just there's an attitude the wise has toward it that knows there's some good that's going to come out of it. If you see someone who embraces correction, you're looking at someone, verse 12, who loves insight, growth and improvement. Really, this person wants to be all that God has designed them to be created in his image, a higher life form. On the other hand, one who hates reproof, who rejects it, who ignores instruction, who despises discipline, is....the English translation says stupid, but I don't like that. Because it misses what in the Hebrew word is is really there, which is this person is a brut. Because when we hear is stupid, we may import into that our understanding of stupid being a low IQ, right? If somebody calls you stupid, you tend to take offense because you think they're saying, I have a low IQ. It's about intelligence. And that's not what this is about. This isn't about your intelligence. This is about your foolishness. This is about you acting like a brute or an animal when someone tries to correct you. And again, proverbs are designed to make us think. So let that sit on you for a little bit. How am I like an animal when I hate reproof, despise discipline, ignore instruction? Well, you need to think no further than your pets. I'm going to tread on some thin ice here because I'm not a fan of pets. I'm not big on anything other than the creatures that are in my house currently. The ones I want there...the five that are belonging to me. There's other creatures that I try to keep out of my house having dominion. Shannon and I have owned a dog and it was not because we wanted the dog. We were tricked into the dog. The former senior pastor here just hoodwinked us. I was new in town and he asked me to watch the dog while they went on vacation. And then he never came and got the dog. And only having been employed one month here, back in the summer of 2011, I didn't feel I had the...I hadn't proven myself enough to say, take your dog.

So just, you know, for those of you who feel like I'm about to go off on pets here, you can close your ears because you'll be offended by this. But your pet, no matter how brilliant, is not smart. The only tricks you teach it are those that appeal to what?...instant gratification. It will lay down, it will jump, it will flip and it will talk if you give it the biscuit. But if you said Fido. Milo, we got a Milo, right? A family that has a new dog named Milo. Milo, I have a deal for you. You could have this one treat right now. Or you could have ten treats tomorrow if you will do this thing for me. So, are you in or out? And he's going to just look at you with the look of a pet...a Look at a dog. He just wants that biscuit. And it's true in all the animal kingdom. I mean, no, as far as I know, there are no animals who have left a manifesto to their progeny. Hey, dogs, here's how we can take over the world. Our masters, they're the fools. They'll do anything for us. They'll even treat us like humans. Here's what we need to do to rise up and take over the world. No, they haven't done it yet. See, I've offended some of you. I'm okay with that. I'm just talking about truth. And here he's saying that the person who doesn't want correction because of the long term game of it. Because if I listen to instruction and discipline and I love it, I want the knowledge of God in my life, I want to live for his glory. If I reject that, what I'm doing is I'm acting like a brute animal who has no idea what good could lie ahead if I just listen in and submit myself to this correction right now. So that's why I'm coming out of the gates with this is is just to get this idea that our attitude towards discipline and instruction and correction is what marks us off as a higher life form created in the image of God. Nothing to do with our intelligence, our IQ, because really smart people can do what?...really dumb things. Proving the point here. They can act like animals. They can not hold themselves back from the immediate temptation and instant gratification that's going to ruin their life. That has nothing to do with somebody's IQ level. That's why I don't like the word stupid. That was a long walk for a short drink of water, he agrees. But our attitude towards discipline, instruction, correction reveals more than just habits. It reveals our heart. It reveals our desires. It reveals our motives. The motive of...do I really want to live in a world knowing more of myself and knowing more of God? And because of that, I'll love the discipline that's going to teach me that. Or am I going to like that animal be rebuffed by it?...be as stubborn as a mule, right? I was going to try to come up with another one, but I don't know any other analogies...thick headed as a rhino. Do rhinos have thick heads, Jameson? He knows about animals. Matthew Henry, famous Christian dead Puritan, says this about this verse. "He that hates reproof is not only foolish, but brutish, like the mule that has no understanding. Or the ox that kicks against the goads. Those that desire to live in loose societies, where they may be under no check, that stifle the convictions of their own consciences, and count those as enemies that tell them the truth are the brutish here meant."
So, for the next few weeks, I want to look at the disciplines of a God-centered life. We're going to move from drawing a circle just around yourself this morning. This is just for you. This is not for you to think...the ten things that you wish the person next to you would do. That's not self-discipline. This is about self. This is about you being disciplined and applying these things. Not to say that hopefully the person next to you isn't listening to. And then next week we'll talk about societal discipline, which is a step outside, a slightly wider discipline, which is what do I do with people that are trying to instruct or correct me? And we'll talk about that next week. And then lastly, we'll look at in two weeks from now, sovereign discipline. And that's the hardest one to understand...the circumstances in my life that I am not loving as this alludes to, that I don't quite understand what God is up to right now. Why am I going through this? That would be God's sovereign discipline or chastening in our lives. And so I want to work from, I guess, the lesser to the greater. And the lesser today is a very simple ten point sermon on self-discipline. So if you find yourself in the weeds today, I want to help us get out of them. When I say that, I mean it's just these are small things, ten traits of a self-disciplined life that I think if we can clear some of this away, then we can get to the big thing which is...living for the glory of God, right? Living for all out for Christ, that these little things can get in our way if we don't pay attention to them. And just one caveat. I want you to know, and some of you who live closer to me see this. Um, some sermons are born out of when I choose a topic, what I'm actually trying to work on in my own life. So I'm not giving you this today as if you followed me around for the next week these ten things...I've got nailed down and thereby I can lord them over you. They're actually things I'm presently in the New Year starting working on myself. So work in progress here, as we all are. That said, let's jump in.
First...#1 of ten traits of a self-disciplined life. Number 1 is to start small. And I think of a verse like Luke 16:10. Jesus is telling a parable about a shrewd manager, and he is not commending sin. He is not saying, be this, be this, cheat, this guy who cancels debts. This parable he tells in Luke 16:10. What he is commending comes in verse 10, where Jesus says, he who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much. And he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much. And in that Jesus teaches a very big lesson on discipleship with a principled word on stewardship. If you are going to be a faithful follower of Jesus and live for eternally valuable things, look around at the people who have nothing in eternity to live for. He's saying in this parable, look at the pagan. They at least try to be shrewd with their lives. More shrewd than a lot of you...disciples. And if you can't see the value in doing the small things well, how am I going to entrust you with something very large? And that's just this principle of starting small. What you're doing now, what you and I are doing right now with what we have, as little or as much as we have...the talents you have, what God has given you when it comes to giftedness, what he has given you when it comes to stewardship of finances or job. Whatever you're doing with it today, and sometimes in our prideful tendency, thinking we're just so bound for greater things that I'm just waiting around for the storehouses of heaven to open up and shower down on me and God saying no. Because actually, you have a lot around you right now you're not doing anything with. Why would I entrust you with more? It's just a simple idea Jesus brings out in Luke 16:10, faithful in a very little thing. Just take that in and roll that around in your mind. You who sit there and think you don't have much to be a steward of. Even a child in here today, a teenager who feels like you have no rights and responsibilities. No, you have been given much young person...the home that you're in, the parents that you've been given...that's a stewardship for you. And maybe you're getting in your teenage years and wish you would have way more freedoms. And you have to look at your life as a young person and say, what am I doing with what I have right now? The parents God gave me...am I taking and maximizing all I can from the wisdom they have to offer me? And so on and so forth. Wherever we are in life, no matter what age we're at, our tendency is to think small things are beneath us. That's why I mean the small things like the reading, the instructions on something. Loathed it growing up in school, I remember one time failing a test. It was a trick test. I remember my sixth grade teacher gave us because at the top where the instructions were, the last line was something about...and imagine this. I can't remember it today. But something about like, hey, actually, don't go and do any of the rest of the problems. Just go to the bottom and sign your name and turn it in right away. And that was the instruction to get the A. And of course I didn't read that. So I fill it all in and we all failed. It was it was like a start of a semester kind of thing, because we just want to blow by the simple and small things. But great things are built on small things. You don't look around and see anybody that achieves anything and does something great for God, and they just lucked into it. It just stumbled upon them. No, they got better one day at a time, one step at a time. That's happening in our home right now with instruments. We have attempted to move the needle in our home from sports, sports, sports to let's round them out with some, let's get a violin and we're getting there one note at a time...and a piano and a cajon.  And it's something right now.  But if I just expected Tchaikovsky to show up, you know, I paid for that violin. Come on, kid, get some skills. It's not going to happen. I've got to sit there and listen to the whatever sounds are being made and come in and be like, whoa, that was that was a violin. That wasn't a cat dying. Because it's one note at a time, one practice at a time. It's going to build and this is how life is. So, how about you right now? How's the small things in your life doing? I mean, even this sermon may be a good test. Maybe you came in expecting something super spiritual today, and you're like, I could have just listened to Tony Robbins this morning or Zig Ziglar. Adam, what happened to the expositor? Maybe it's this small thing, this practical sermon too little for you because you don't have small things to work on? You've got it all figured out. And maybe this is exactly what you needed. Point number one starting small.
Now, that's just the opening principle. Here's nine more things to actually zero that in. Number 2 make a schedule. Proverbs 21:5...second thing for a self-disciplined life. And again, this is just arranging the furniture in your life right now so that you can sit down and enjoy where you're at. Making a schedule, number two, Proverbs 21:5, the plans of the diligent lead surely to advantage. But everyone who is hasty comes surely to poverty. Um, this diligent person, it's a word that meant a in its literal form a sharp cutting instrument like a thresher. This person, this diligent person, is associated with someone who's very sharp, not in a negative way, sharp tongue. But like when you say, oh man, that guy, that gal's got it all together. They are sharp. They're on top of it. That's a diligent person, someone who's on top of it. And this diligent person has what?...preceding that...a plan. It doesn't say the diligent have the advantage. It's that this diligent person has a plan. Diligent people have plans. And those plans help get them to where they want to be, their successes. The antithesis of this is the hasty in the second part of the verse. Everyone who is hasty comes surely to poverty. Now the hasty person, interestingly enough, the hasty isn't equated with being lazy necessarily, because the hasty person who's trying to play catch up can appear to us on the outside as a very busy, busy, busy person, a hardworking guy. They had to stay late again, You know, I've learned a few things in the last 15 years of working, and it's that the guy that there's the latest isn't always the hardest worker, because he doesn't necessarily capitalize on the normal hours he's supposed to be working hard. And that's what this proverb is trying to teach. That when you're hasty, it's because maybe you came to work that day with no real plan of what, where your time was going to go and what you were going to do. And now all of a sudden, the urgency is here and you got to rush, rush, rush. So, if there is a word for the hasty person that's a hard worker, maybe it's that you're lazy in your planning. It's not that you're lazy in your work. You'll work hard, you'll stay late, you'll...but what are you doing in the hours actually allotted to your work? Are you diligent with them? Do you have a plan for where your time is going to go? Because it's not just the character quality in 21:5 that the Proverb is highlighting  It's that the diligent person has a plan and back to making a schedule one way to start having a plan in your life is to start small by making a schedule.  It's not hard.  There's these things called calendars.  And you can print them off...just type weekly calendar and Google will give you hundreds of options with all kinds of little things.  You can have them in different categories. It can look very planner like, but it's not hard to make a calendar these days. You don't even have to pay for it. You go to Barnes and Nobles. My mom calls it that. She adds the s, and you go there and they want to charge you 30 bucks for a nice, fancy calendar. You can print this. You can get a piece of paper and a ruler and draw one. Sometimes that tactile thing really gets the brainwaves going. Whatever it is, you can do it. You can have a calendar with a schedule, young person, even if it's just wake up, put clothes on, go to school, come home, do homework. Ta da! You've got a plan. May I just recommend first start with...if you've never tried this before, write down the stuff you have to do, like waking up and going to bed and the stuff you have to do in between. The HAVE TO and include in that as Kurtis' sermon mentioned last week, reading my Bible, that's a have to. And then whatever blank space you see in the in between is what you want to do. And that's simply how I run my life. I just make a schedule for my week of what I have to do, and anything that's blank is called what do you want to do? It simplifies it. It takes the guesswork out. And listen, all of this is just for us to be more useful to God, who gives us a set number of days. Psalm 90:12, so teach us to number our days. That's a form of organization, isn't it? I've taken account of the days you have. It's not numbering your days. He couldn't be meaning teach me to number my days. As in, I know when I'm going to die. So I've got to...no, bobody knows that day. He's saying the days you have. Are you counting them? Valuing them. Teach us to number our days. So that we may present to you a heart of wisdom. That's back to loving knowledge in Proverbs 12:1. My heart of wisdom is evidenced in the schedule that I keep because I'm not taking for granted I get anything that I'm not going to give an account for every single small thing in a schedule. An old proverb says, don't squander the minutes, and the hours will take care of themselves. I thought about this this past weekend in knowing, looking ahead, that we were going to get hit with a blizzard, and all of you people were going to freak out and steal all the milk and bread, and my kids are going to starve. No, you didn't do that. I mean, we all made it here today. Congratulations. But, you know, knowing the snow was coming, I knew in my "want to" category I want to have some time Friday afternoon and afternoon and evening and Saturday to sled ride. If I didn't squander the minutes Monday to Thursday when I knew the snow was coming, then I didn't have to worry about the hours when my kids said, dad, could you come sled ride? And I didn't have to say, oh, you know what? I've got a few other things I still got to finish right now. That's awful, because kids want dad to go sled ride with them. We get snow once in a million years here, and I'd have been stuck writing this ten point sermon. But when your minutes are accounted for, then you have those hours to say, God, what can I do with these? I have some freedom. So starting small, what's your schedule look like? Is there an order to your life?
If you start right now thinking that through, here's point number 3. It's actually the largest amount of time that you have to give to something every day and it's sleeping. Point number 3 plan your rest. Psalm 4:8, in peace I will lie down and sleep for you alone, O Lord, make me to dwell in safety. When you start thinking about planning your rest and getting a schedule and even thinking about scheduling when you go to bed and when you rise, know that there's a theology underneath that. And the theology underneath that is right there in Psalm 4:8 that I can lie down and sleep in peace, because while I am sleeping, God is not. Isaiah 40:8 talks about that...our God does not slumber nor sleep. He does not become weary or tired. The everlasting God...you know, I always think of everlasting God in the realm of, you know, Alpha and Omega beginning to end. But this week, as I was thinking about why that connects to, he does not become weary or tired. He's the everlasting God and in that Everlastingness that beginning to endness he's never gone down in the in the battery life of God...1% in his power and his ability. He's just perfectly powerful all the time while I get my eight hours rest. Our tendency again is to think that sleep is beneath us and that this is a small thing. But really, the principle behind it is that if you can maximize the time you're resting, you can maximize the time you're doing what?...living. If you can really figure out how to get the most out of your sleep, then it gives you two thirds of the rest of your day to really get after it. So again, starting with small things. If you today say, you know what, I don't remember the last time I've tried to work on my sleep habits. Well, now's the time to think about that. Two dangers to fall into when it comes to sleep. One is the sluggard life, the sin of laziness. And those warnings are all over the Proverbs. You've heard them many a times. They're often accompanied with that phrase, a little folding of the hands to rest, a little sleep, a little slumber. Proverbs 6, how long will you lie down Oh, sluggard. Parents, you ever think of just walking into your kid's room and opening with that line like, rather than walk in like, come on, hurry up. We got to get to school or church.  You know, just stand there and even in the darkness, don't even turn the light on. Just call out to your teenager. How long will you lie there, Oh, sluggard. I know that changes it up. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest. And here's the warning. Your poverty will come in like a vagabond. And your need like an armed man. What's he talking about? Like somebody jumping you in an alley, a dark alley. You don't see it coming. And he's saying if you have that sin of lethargy, laziness, just always hitting the snooze button, you'll never get out from behind it, and then something's going to happen that you weren't prepared for that day and you couldn't make that time up, and you're just working from behind the whole time. And eventually it'll catch up to you to a point. Proverbs is warning that end game is that poverty being in need will catch up to you. If you haven't honed the discipline of less sleep. And then the other side of that warning is the hyperactive not entrusting to the Lord your rest. You know, in some ways spurning the gift of sleep. If you just feel like, you know, I don't need it. I'm the Energizer bunny, you know. Listen to Psalm 127. It is in vain for you to rise up early, to retire late, to eat the bread of painful labors, because he gives to his beloved sleep. Do you realize if you think you're like Superman or Superwoman, I don't need as much sleep and I can just burn both ends of the candle? What you're doing there is you're spurning a gift God wants to give you, which is sleep. And he wants you to work hard in the time you're awake. But he says it's vain for you to keep going that hard. Um, because I want to give you a gift, and it's called rest. And it's called entrusting that I can run this planet, this universe, as I've been doing since the beginning, without your help for eight hours, I really can. So don't spurn the gift. Sleep is saying that, um. God, I trust you to whatever I think I need to stay up to do that it's okay. I can go to rest. D.A. Carson writing about this...he's a New Testament scholar, says...Sometimes the godliest thing you can do in the universe is to get a good night's sleep, not work all night, not pray all night, but go to bed. Enough said there...plan your rest.
Number 4. Keep your word. Ten traits of a self-disciplined life. Proverbs 22:1, Keep your word. A good name is more desirable than great wealth. Favor, better than silver and gold. Just two things. Again, I love the Proverbs because they just. We don't rush past them, but we let them. We let them roll around in our thinking. That's what they were designed for. And this isn't antithetical. This is synonymous parallelism. It's saying the same thing twice to really get it through to you. But there is one difference between the first part of Proverbs 22:1 and the second. In the first part, it's a good name, as in your reputation. And then in the second part, it's favor. It's not just your reputation, it's the way people are going to treat you based on how they see you. And both of those things are better than great wealth. How you build a good name and then how that builds favor with man. This proverb makes it clear, and we see it in life that you can obtain money without virtue, but you can't obtain a good reputation without it. And there's the great divide. There's the great difference. You don't need virtue to make a ton of money today. You could be a crook. You could be a cheat. And you could have no favor and no respect and no integrity amongst men. And Proverbs is saying all that wealth isn't worth as much as having what?...a good name, a reputation. I saw this in a weird place this past week. I was laid up, sick for a little bit and one of those kind that, even in wanting to read my brain, is just like, no. So, I'm going to violate a principle later on about, you know, entertainment. And I watched a game show, a new game show out there, the Beast games. And naming this isn't an endorsement. So that Mr. Beast guy, he's been on YouTube a while, he makes a ton of money, and he brought 1000 people in to win $5 million. I think the thing was. And so he just has all these ways to try to eliminate the contestants. And at one point, I forget how many people were left in the thing, but they were divided into teams of like 100 each or something. And they had been doing some competitions. And then he said, hey, I want you to pick a captain to come up here and who you think is the most trustworthy and will not sell you out for a large amount of money. And so each team picked their captain and they sent them up and behind on a screen, and they're standing up above all these people, and they're all in it for themselves. They're all wanting to win $5 million. So, you know, at the end of the day, it's greed that's still motivating. But...so these four captains are up there and he puts on a screen that every second it was going up, this amount of money was going up $2,000. And at any moment any of those four team captains could hit a button, take the money and run, their team would be eliminated, but they get to stay. But they just had given those teams their word that they wouldn't sell them out for any amount of money. And so, you know, the time's going up and you're watching, going, okay, 1000 bucks, 5000, 20,000. And I'm sitting there watching this going, you know, if this person's doing the math, I mean, the chances of them making it all the way to the end of this show and winning the 5 million are now down to one in 400, and now it's up to 100,000. And then it was up to 250,000, and then it was up to 500,000. And they start one guy, you know, they all were just like looking at and they didn't want to see the number. And then they kind of start to peek. And then it got up to a million bucks. And you're just sitting there going, man, these people that they just gave their word to, they've only known for a few days at most. And it was crazy. It was the reason that it intrigued me. I was like, this is a real social experiment. How much money was their word worth? And surprisingly enough, none of them did it. To which I was like, knucklehead, no, I'm kidding. But truthfully, they had just...these people were strangers 2 or 3 days earlier. I don't know how long the competition was going on. But I was watching this and thinking of that Proverbs 22:1 saying, and they interviewed each person afterwards and said, hey, I gave them my word I wouldn't hit the button. And so they didn't, even though they could have walked away $1 million richer and still been in the competition, while all the people that were mad at them would have been gone. Now, you might say and the rest of the people left over would also, I don't know, go after them with pitchforks and torches. I don't know, but either way, it was it was a picture of this. That what what are you worth? Keeping your word in the littlest thing. Because we said at the beginning, the small things lead up to the big things. And if you're sometimes groused and busted over, like, how come people don't trust me with big things? And maybe you've never been trusted with the small thing. Maybe you're the person that they know. You know, anytime I tell you even that small thing or you make that small promise, you break it. Why would I trust you with something very important?...very big. How can you grow in this? Let me give you three questions you could ask a loved one this week a spouse. Parents you could ask your kid this because we're pretty good at least I am. And I only know this because I say things that I forget and then my kids say, but dad, you said. And I'm like, okay, what year can we at least rein it in here? Was it four years ago I promised ice cream sandwiches, infinite amounts that you could just always draw from. I don't know. But here's three questions you could ask people close to you this week. Generally speaking, do I do what I say I'll do? And no comebacks. No qualifiers. Second, do I do it how I said it would be done. So not just am I doing the thing I said I would do? Do I do it exactly the way I said it was going to be done? And then third, do I do it when I said it'd be done by. And again, this is in small things. So husbands be ready for your wives to be like yeah, you know you get that project done. It's just been on back order for three years, but thanks for finishing it because it's the small thing. It's saying, hey, if I said I was going to get that done by that point in time, work on keeping my word.
Number 5 be on time. This relates to keeping your word, but it focuses more just on how you view time...particular other people's, not just yours. Proverbs 30:25 says the ants are not a strong people, but they do prepare their food in the summer.  I just thought about that because again you're supposed to think

about those ants. They're timely...those ants are. They just keep to a structure. They know what work needs to get done when...they're on time. When it's time to work, they're working, and they operate on this innate sense of time. They're never behind, they're always ahead. And it makes me think about punctuality. And, you know, because those ants aren't just working hard, storing up stuff for themselves. It's a group effort. They're taking care of the whole crew by being about what they should be should be doing. So I think there's somewhat of a good picture of...we were in Philippians earlier. I'll turn back there...Chapter two, verses 3 and 4. Paul's arguing for unity in the church, and he says, "do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, regard one another as more important than yourselves. Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others." Do you ever just get into the weeds of you being punctual with this verse, or is this verse reserved for really spiritual things? Or might you realize that when you're always showing up late for the meeting with that person, that you're not looking out for their interests above your own? If you struggle with being on time, I mean, the heart of it is you just think your time is more important than someone else's. And you know, they should just learn to adapt to your ways. But really, punctuality at its heart is about putting others preferences above yours. Because according to Philippians 2:3-4, as a Christian my time is no more important than yours. And if we all operated that way in that web of caring for others more than ourselves, I think we would all generally maybe not be as frustrated with the person that's always running late. And because it's just a hassle to keep telling that person, and most of us just eventually give up on it, or we eventually will write them off without probably telling them. But you just don't want to always be like, you know, I said I was going to disciple this person and they're not here. And you know, so think about being on time, because I think the theological lesson in it is it shows honor to God in redeeming the time he gives you and saying, I want to order my own little universe in a way that I can get to the place I need to be at when I'm supposed to be there by. And in some ways it's being created in God's image that you can order your own life just like God does with us. He's on time and everything happens in due season. It also shows honor to others in respecting the time they're giving to you, not just for the start of it, but also think about, again, if you're maybe you're the on time person, but do you honor the amount of time you said, as in you've kept that person longer than you might have led on to believe so that they can get to the next thing they need to get to. So again, back to point number four keeping your word. Point number five being on time. I think the only way to work on this and get the honest truth is to ask people around you, how am I at being on time? And again, I would say start in the home and then move into the church life. Life group leaders, you know, asking your people in your life group this question... life group members. Again, I'm sure your life group leader is loathe to be on top of you for showing up late for life group. I mean, the only one I'll not wade into is the person that just never leaves your life group and wants to hang out forever. I mean, because we love each other and there might be an exception to that rule, but, you know, just maybe be aware of that. So that's number five...be on time.
Number 6, clean up, clean up. Proverbs 24:30-32, I passed by the field of the sluggard and by the vineyard of the man lacking sense. And behold, it was completely overgrown with thistles. So it says at the end of this, in Proverbs 24:32...I passed by, I saw, I reflected on it, I looked, and I received instruction. You know, one thing to note from this is a wise man does pay attention and learn from the fool...the bad example of a fool. It commends us to look around and to look at people's lives, and not in judgment, but to learn a lesson from somebody's life who just seems to be in disarray. Note that when he says at the at the beginning of Proverbs 24:30, I passed by the field of the sluggard and by the vineyard of the man lacking sense. Notice the sluggard actually owns a field. The man lacking sense owns a vineyard. So this person the poverty hasn't come on them like a vagabond, yet jumping them in the alley.  For whatever reason, this person inherits it, or they had it and they've let it go to pot. But either way, it's now covered with nettles and thistles and the walls broken down. And the Proverbs says, I stopped and reflected on it, and I looked and received instruction. And the instruction is about somebody that doesn't keep their stuff in good shape. Somebody that's not a good steward of the possessions they have. And I think you can note this, that it's rare that a really successful individual has a home office, car, whatever, in disarray. Maybe there could be the exception to the rule for the nutty professor, the disheveled genius who probably has enough money to pay somebody to run their life. But maybe the rest of us just have to get back to this idea of having a schedule and, um, you know, the things you have to do. Put those in and then in those gaps at times, even start this week. What's that spot in your house or wherever your car that you're like, yeah, I just don't have time to clean it up. You have time. You just need to organize your life and say, you know what, I'm going to give it 15 minutes tomorrow, 15 minutes Tuesday, 15 minutes, if that's all you can. One of my favorite things to do. I shouldn't say favorite. It's a discipline...is in January, and I've already done it. It's my annual tradition where I begin January by cleaning my garage, and I clean it while I listen to a sermon on self-discipline. It kind of motivates me, and it's a mindless task to clean a garage. Even if you're like, but don't you have to organize all the screws into there? No I don't. They just go into this one big metal can because I don't fix stuff. You know, I don't know how to. So I can just put all the screws in one big metal can. But I organized my garage, so at least when somebody shows up, they're like, man, your garage is so organized. And I say, yeah, and the tools never get used, but yet somehow they get disorganized. Be discontent to live in the midst of a mess. You can make this one fun by maybe somebody in your life group...an accountability partner. Share this week. What's the one area in your life the place that needs cleaned up, and maybe be in a race to see who could do it faster. Who can get it done?
Seven. Finish the job. Colossians 3:23, whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men. Some of our lives just we look around and they're a string of unfinished projects. It's much easier to start something than it is to finish. It takes perseverance and passion to finish work. Or, as Angela Duckworth wrote in her book, It Takes Grit. This is a good book if you want to learn about what makes certain people successful. And it's not necessarily IQ. She did her master's work, and it ended up being the New York Times bestseller called "Grit". And it's the perseverance and passion that separates the good from the great. That when she just dedicated, starting by, um, she was reporting on the cadets who show up to West Point. The ones who finish the seven week training program called the Barrack Beast, was not predicted when they went back and looked at their SATs and high school achievements and objective performances, physically and mentally. Out of the 1200 students a year who get into West Point and they have to go through this seven week initial test, the hundred or so that were weeded out during the beast was not reflected on their innate talents. It was on the lack of grit, the scale that she came up with. And the lesson in that for us is that you getting things together right this year again, isn't going to be a matter of your intelligence. The finished project that you need to get finished with...the unfinished product I should say...it's probably just a matter of perseverance, determination and passion.
Number 8. One big thing that stands in the way of us finishing our work. Number 8 is limiting our entertainment. Psalm 119:37 writes, turn my eyes away from looking at vanity. And revive me in your ways. Psalm 119:37...limit your entertainment. Why? Because very few things in life make less of a contribution in contributing something to society, or doing something great than being entertained. I mean, you can learn an example from watching like I did this week, but that contributed very little. It was an illustration in a sermon. But I'm just saying looking at entertainment and not saying, it's sinful necessarily? I mean, that's maybe the easier question. What are you allowing your eyes to watch? But it's knowing that a constant connection to your phone, to the television, to the computer, to being entertained will contribute very little to achieving something of lasting effect. So, starting with your schedule. When you look at the things you have to do and the projects you need to finish, you can go back and then say, hey, where is it that I can fit in time to binge watch my favorite show, if that's what you like to call it. I mean, it's maybe difficult more now than ever because you have it at your fingertips, right? Whereas in days gone by, there's this idea that you actually had to be at your television a certain time of the week to watch the certain show, and then if you missed it and you didn't even have TiVo to record it, you waited five years for a rerun to come on. Um, those days are long gone. And so I think the temptation to be entertained constantly is all the more.
Number nine relates...practice self-control. Proverbs 25:28, a man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls...lacking self-control. In the big scheme of things, it may seem like a little self-discipline, but it opens you up to all kinds of dangers, like an ancient city in Bible times, not having strong walls to protect its people. So when we think about practicing self-control, cultivating self-discipline, think about it. Of course, in the physical realm, I mean, usually that goes back to the two big ideas of diet and exercise and how hard it can be to stay to that. But, you know, sometimes it is just a small thing you have to start with. Rather than try to think you need to commit yourself to some big new eating program. I remember a pastor just saying how he cultivates self-discipline in the eating category is, most of the time, he will get to nearing the end of a good meal and just not finish it when it's delicious, especially a dessert. And he would say, I'm just going to leave that last piece of the cake there because I want to tell my stomach it's not in control, I am. I bet you can do that today. I mean, yeah, you've got a got a good plate of nachos in front of you. You're going to be watching some football or whatever and just leave a few out there, even when you're still getting hungry to eat them, throw them in the trash. Tell your body you're not in charge. I am. And it's a little self-discipline like that, you know? Now, I'm not saying be wasteful. You know, you go to somebody's house and you take one bite and then...Sorry, self discipline. It's like, you know, that's where you don't want to be too harsh with these things. But it's just it's just a way to tell yourself something is in more in control of me than just my physical animal instincts. Going back all the way to Proverbs 12:1.
And last but not least, one of the reasons you want to do all this stuff weed your life, of all these different ideas is number 10...say yes to service. I Peter 4:10, as each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. One reason to try to get numbers 1 through 9 in order isn't so you lock yourself down into some rigid existence. It's so you can free yourself up to serve other people. That's really the great motivator to being a planned, scheduled person is to get the things done you have to so then you have this thing in your life called margin. And when you have that margin, then when people have a need, you can say yes to it because you're not the hasty person playing from behind. That's what I'm saying about it's a really fun and freeing way to live. If you'll do the self-discipline things that we just talked about, you can say yes to serving other people when they need help with something. That's one of the great goals of all this, is to have some margin and margin for me, my definition is it's the area in my life between my commitments and my capacity. So if you think of two boundaries, The inner boundary is my commitments. The things that I said I would do, that I should do, and then the next boundary outside of that is my capacity. What can I actually within my giftedness and time and ability, do? And if I don't have a schedule, if I don't have it locked in, that inner boundary gets pushed all the way to what?...the outer boundary, the capacity. And I don't have capacity to push that one further out without burning out. So what I'm trying to constantly do in life is let my capacity be what it is and just pull that commitment one in by doing those things, I have to do better. Because the gap in between those is the margin that I could then when somebody says, hey, Adam, could you come over and help me with this thing? And I could say, yeah, I actually can. What time? But when I'm pushing my commitments past my capacity, I'm probably having to say no a lot. And it's not because I want to say no because I'm so rigid with my time. It's just I really don't have time to be helpful, to be useful to others. So all this going back to even Kurtis talked about this last week, I Peter 4:7. Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. Because discipline is profitable, you know, for all things it says, not just the present life, but for the one to come. Verse 10, for this we labor and strive. So there's some effort in this, but listen to this ending in 1 Timothy 4:10, because we fixed our hope on the living God who is the Savior of all men, especially of all believers. Do you see where he took it? He took it to the highest extent. You know, I want to live a disciplined life for the purpose of godliness, because my hope is fixed on the living God. My life matters.
I want to wrap this all up by saying, if somebody in here today isn't in Christ, I mean, hopefully you got some principles that can help pull in some loose ends of your life. But the biggest thing you need to think about this morning is, is your hope in the living God, who's the Savior of all men? Because you can't save yourself by being the most disciplined person on planet Earth. You can't work your way to heaven. Discipline won't earn you salvation. Actually, it's quite the opposite. It's realizing you know what? As hard as I try and as good as I can be, there's only one person who's done life perfectly in every aspect. And it's the one that was just mentioned here. Jesus Christ, the living God, the Savior of the world. Have you trusted in him today? Maybe a sermon like this, if you're not in Christ this morning, actually is discouraging because you feel like, man, my life is a mess. Well, you know what? The first step to getting anywhere today for you would be to lay it all down and say, I need forgiven of my sin. The sin of even thinking I'm self-reliant. I can do it on my own. And actually casting myself upon the Savior who did it all for me. And I pray you would come to Christ today.
Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for today. We thank you for the opportunity to look at self-discipline, not as an end in and of itself, but all means to the great end of using our lives for your glory. I just pray however you want to use all ten of these things. A few of them. One of them to one, motivate and encourage all of us in here in various ways, to use our lives for your glory, because that's what they're for, and that we wouldn't get so boxed into a schedule and a discipline as to lose sight of that big picture that all of this is for you. It's not for us. It's not to us to have people look at our lives and say, oh, what a disciplined person. Lord, we would want people to look at our lives being salt and light and praise our Father who is in heaven. We know that this could easily turn prideful in us if it's about our own glory, but it's about yours. And so help us to be humble in our endeavors, even this week, to put some of this into practice. Not to us, but to your name be the glory we pray. Amen.

 

Pulpit Curriculum PDF

View transcript

Be Disciplined in the Faith

Download transcript

Today, we're going to get a chance to look at those resolutions, particularly in the faith. But I want to encourage you to turn to 1 Timothy 4:7. And we'll use that as a launching point this morning for the message that really, I've entitled, be disciplined in the faith, be disciplined in the faith. Anything that you're going to work at that's meaningful, that's of value... it's going to take discipline. It's going to take devotion, dedication, commitment, all of these things. No matter what you pursue in life, it's going to take some degree of discipline. And as I just mentioned, many of us make New Year's resolutions. We look at our life and we analyze it, and we say, man, these are things that I can improve on. Yeah, I may have done it this way in 2024, but 2025 I want to enhance it by doing it this way, or I want to improve it by approaching this a little bit differently. And I think God, in his kindness, he gives us seasons of life to do that. Some people do it on a weekly basis, others every month they look back and they say, how can I improve in these areas of my life so that I can be all that God's called me to be? Uh, well, 2025, you get a chance to do that on a yearly basis. And, you know, but sometimes you start out with those New Year's resolutions and then a couple of weeks in, what happens? They fade away. There's actually a day called Quitters Day. Don't even know if you realize that. But it's an official day...Quitters Day. It's the second, uh, Friday of January, and it's a day that gets its name, because that's the day that most people fail to achieve their New Year's resolutions. So they made a day...Quitters day. Now, part of it is to let you know that it's when they fail. And then the other part is to try to encourage you to say, hey man, go beyond Quitters day. So some people make it to the third Friday in January, and then they quit because they just want to at least get past that that second Friday of January. But at the end of the day, New Year's resolutions can be broken in the beginning of the year if it doesn't take discipline. And I just pray that some of you have really made an effort to list out ways in which you want to improve your walk with Jesus Christ. And if you haven't, sometimes it could be a result of spiritual apathy. And there was a church that put on the website Five Signs of Spiritual Apathy, and I thought I just might share that with you. It isn't a, you know, always true, but out of these five, you might find yourself in one of those. One of them, they said, was familiarity. Familiarity can breed spiritual apathy when you're just familiar. And one theologian said, familiarity...it breeds contempt. You become so familiar and so routine that you're just like, man, why am I even doing this? And you realize that there are some people who are not in church today, because all they did was go through the routines as a child and all through their teenage years and through their young adult years, and now they're in their 30s and 40s, they're outside of church because it was just familiar to them. I just did it. And before you knew it, they became apathetic. And they went from apathy to, I don't even need this boredom. Sometimes boredom. That's the second thing they put breeds apathy. Just bored. They're in it. They're going through it. They want to be engaged. But then they have just. Oh, man, I'm just not into the Word. I'm just not into the, you know, hearing another sermon again. Getting kind of bored with just these same things. Uh, you know, there's no life and vitality to their faith. The third thing was mediocrity. Mediocrity. The question is, is, are you satisfied with five small minutes in the Word of God. Only so you can invest 15 hours at work in a given day.  Five minutes in the Word, so that you can spend 5 or 6 hours in leisure. And one writer said, mediocrity is the sum of all times we choose to take the easy path with our faith, just to go the easy road. Disconnection was the fourth, and the writer said here that we live in a world where you can have 500 friends and still feel isolated and abandoned. That's kind of in this digital age that we're in. And this is our strange 21st century paradox. We're connected to more people than ever, but we've never felt more alone. That's sad. And some people are a similar way in the church. You're on the fringes, on the outside. Uh, won't ever be connected to the life of the body. You stay that way. Because if you're connected, you'll be in a meaningful discipleship relationship. You'll be built up, you'll be challenged, you'll be encouraged. But people stayed disconnected and therefore spiritual apathy takes place. And then last is passivity. Passivity. They just say, man, I'm gonna just make a New Year's resolution every year just to make myself feel good, knowing that I never have an intention to be about it. In 2009, Kevin DeYoung wrote a book just aptly titled. It said Just Do Something. Just do something. And in it, he writes, some Christians need encouragement to think before they act. And he said others need encouragement to act while they think. He says, look, do something. Don't just stand around thinking about it and planning. Being in analysis paralysis is what we call it. You analyze it to the death. You know, like, man, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to do this, and I'm gonna do this. And before you know it, it's June and you haven't even got your to do list together, right? That's analysis paralysis. Well, you don't need that. You need to understand that it's discipline. It's saying these are the things that God has put in His Word for me to do. I'm going to get after it, and I'm going to give every effort to the Lord because he's worthy of it. Amen. He's worthy of your whole devotion. But whatever the reason is that's keeping you back from excelling in your faith, we want you to make a commitment today to listen to these spiritual disciplines that we're going to examine this morning and apply them to your life. But I want to read 1 Timothy 4:7, and then I'll pray. It says these words.
"But have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women. On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness."
Lord, I just thank you for this opportunity to be under the word. I ask that you would grant grace to the preacher. I need your help this morning that I might boldly proclaim the excellencies of Jesus Christ. And I ask that you would grant grace to the hearers. Lord, may we purpose in advance that we would not just hear the word, but that we would seek to obey it. Bring conviction where conviction is needed. And I pray that ultimately your truth would abound and that we all might be built up. And we ask this all in Jesus Christ's name. And all God's people said Amen.
Paul is writing to Timothy these words to help him to understand what his focus needs to be, and that is that a good minister has discipline. He understands sound teaching, but he says, have nothing to do with worldly fables. You know, he said, fit only for old women. This isn't a knock to older women, but it was just culturally, what happened back in the day is that older women would get together and they would just talk about, girl, let me tell you what happened about such and such and such and such. You know, that never happens today, right? Girl, let me tell you about such and such. Right? Never. That never happens today. Some of y'all are giggling. That's conviction bringing upon right now. Ain't even got too far into the Word yet. But what happened is they would sit around and just talk about things of the world, and it would be of no spiritual value. And he says, look, don't get and be involved in things that won't have eternal consequence. Be about the thing that has most substantial consequence, and that is those things that matter eternally. Those are the things. And then he says, on the other hand, discipline yourself. Discipline yourself. He says, harness those areas of your life, those things that you could do. You say, no, I should do this because I want to disciplined for the purpose of godliness. Don't be disciplined just so that you can show off your disciplines. Don't be disciplined so that you can look at other people and say, my life is better than yours. You should be disciplined, harnessing your life so that you will be more godly, that you will look more like Christ. And that's the whole reason...not being distracted by the things of the world, but doing it in such a way that you look more like Christ each and every day. And this morning we're going to look at three spiritual disciplines: scripture reading, meditation and prayer. Those are the three. But keep this in mind when it comes to spiritual disciplines. Spiritual disciplines are habits of devotion that help you grow spiritually in your walk towards Jesus Christ. That's what these are. They should be habits that lead you to a livelihood. But it starts with just being devoted to it. Some of it may seem more like a duty before it gets to a delight, till you get into your rhythm, but it's done for the purpose that you would be more holy. And then another thing to note about spiritual disciplines is that they're not attitudes. Spiritual disciplines aren't attitudes. You know, similar to like Galatians 5, the fruit or the character of the spirit love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. You know, those are attitudes, character, right? But spiritual disciplines are actually duties of the faith. It's things that God has commanded us to do that you're working out, not attitudes. They're actually practices. You can't say, yes, I'm a reader of God's Word and neglect to actually read the Word. Yes, I love to pray. And you pray more in public than you do in private. You know, that's not an attitude. It's actually a practice. And both Old and New Testament is filled with passages that emphasize these three disciplines that we're going to look at this morning.  
So, without further ado, let me go ahead and go into the first discipline that will help us to be disciplined in the faith. And that's be devoted to the Word, be devoted to the Word, not talking about just having a casual reading here and there, but it's being devoted to the Word of God. Many of you are devoted to hearing the word preached on Sunday morning, but you need to have a personal conviction that you're going to be in the word every day, not some of the days. Not when you're feeling holy. Like, man, I done got up and heard my favorite song. I'm feeling it today. Let me get into the Word. I'm talking about even in those days where it's difficult. You're struggling, getting up out of bed. Those are the moments where you need to be devoted to reading God's Word. You know, reading books and listening to sermons of your favorite preacher are fine, but that's no substitution for reading God's revealed Word. Gotta have it. There's a theologian, John Frame, that said this about God's Word. He said it is his powerful, authoritative self-expression. God has given. He's revealed himself. He's done it generally in creation, but he's done it specially in this special revelation in the scriptures. Such an  amazing...read. You see everything. You see men fail in life. You see them succeed. You see God's powerful hand at work. And then you see when he's not at work and when people are left to their own understanding. It's an amazing opportunity for you to see what God loves and what he hates. But it's all found in the Word of God. You think about it. The command to read Scripture was a command to people, even when they didn't own a personal copy of the Bible. How much more should we be reading the word? You know how many copies of the Bible is in the average home in America? Guess...I see them 3 to 4. 3 to 4 copies of the Bible in the average American home. And that's not even including what we have on our tablets and phones and all of those. We have access to God's Word. But the question for you is, are you reading it? Why don't we turn to Proverbs chapter 4, and I want to show you this, uh, what it means to have a pursuit of God's Word. Proverbs chapter 4. And we'll be turning quite a bit in the Scripture. So, get your thumbs ready. Proverbs... That's what happens when it's a selected text sermon. That just means that the preacher wants you to be all over the Bible, just all over the Bible. Some of y'all are going to be like, brother, I don't need to read the Word after this sermon, bro. I don't read it all today. This is. I'm good. New year's resolution, check. I done attended first service. Proverbs 4:20-22. I want to show you this. He says, my son, this is Solomon talking to his son, and he's giving him God's Word. He says, my son, give attention to my words. And where he says my words you could substitute that as God's words...give attention to them. He says, incline your ear to my sayings. Give attention to God's Word. Incline your ear. You know what that means? That means you got to have a posture of this saying, I want to understand what God says. Because some people approach the Word of God to where they just want to go and read it and get it off their to do list, I did it....New year's resolution. I'm on my way. I'm gonna make it through Quitter's day. That's it. But Solomon is telling his son. He says give attention. It needs to be a glaring warning sign. You need this that you're about to read. Need to incline your ear, cup it and say, man, nothing else will take place. And you know how that is. You've got to give full hearted attention to being in the Word because other things will come to mind. Seek to distract you. He goes on in verse 21, don't let them depart from your sight. In this case, some of them would write them down in the sand, write them down in the areas that they work. They would carve them out in pieces of wood. They would put them around them so that they would not forget the words of Yahweh. He says, don't let them depart from your sight. Keep them in the midst of your heart. Tuck them in. Like the psalmist that says your words I have hidden in my heart, so that I what?...won't sin against you. He says, that's what you need to be doing when you're reading the word. It's purposing in your heart that you're going to incline your ear towards obedience and that you're actually going to obey, that you're going to tuck them in your heart in the deep crevices there, that it may cleanse you for all righteousness sake. And he says in verse 22, the reason that you're going to do this is for they are life for those who find them, health for all their body. That's the benefit and the beauty of having the Word is that it's life to you. Is the Word truly life?  Because there's some things that you can't go this life without doing. One of them is eating right. You can't go without eating. But do you approach your day like that with the Word of God? Man, I can't approach my day without eating the Word of God. I gotta get this in my system so that my mind can be right, so that the trajectory of my day will go in a direction that honors the Lord, so that I would understand that I'm a pilgrim and I'm sojourning on this land, that this earth is isn't my home. That all comes from reading the Word of God. I love how Jeremiah 15:16 says, your words were found and I ate them. He said, I found them and I ate them up. I gobbled that word up, was full on the word, and he wasn't doing spiritual obesity by just reading only. He applied them. Almost like Ezra 7:10 when he says, I purposed in my heart that I was going to read your word. I was going to practice your word, and then I was going to proclaim your truth in all of Israel. Ezra 7:10, he was going to read it, practice, then preach...in that order. Don't be a spiritual glutton going in and reading all the Word of God and not having any desire to want to practice it out. Live it out. Work out that salvation that God has put in you by working out the word that you're reading. And see this was the indictment to the Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians, chapter 3. Those first couple of verses, Paul is is talking to the Corinthians there, and he's rebuking them, um, as he says, look, um, I'll start at verse one. He says, I could not speak to you as spiritual men, but as men of flesh. He said, I couldn't speak to you as if you were walking around spiritual. I had to speak to you just like regular men, men of flesh, as to just anybody who didn't even have Christ. He says, I had to speak to you as infants in Christ, babes. You had to be babies. He says, I gave you milk to drink and not solid food, for you were not even able to receive it. And he says, indeed, even now you're not able because you're still fleshly. They were still doing things that the world people do. He says, I couldn't speak to you that way. And realize when it comes down to the milk, the Word can either be milk or solid food, and it just depends on the person receiving it, but in this case it was nothing wrong with the Word. It was everything wrong with the believers because they couldn't have the deeper things of God. They were babes in Christ and they wanted to stay that way. And Paul had to rebuke them by saying, get ready to get to the solid food. Some of you, are you on the solid food of the Word of God, or are you still needing that Gerber diet from God's Word? He needs to smash up the basic principles of the faith. Some of you have been in Christ for years and you're still on Gerber Scripture. You got to graduate, get to the solid food, get to those areas to where you're thinking deeply so that you can live faithfully. That's the whole point in being in the Word of God. And again, these were babes in Christ. John MacArthur was making a statement about this in his book, The Keys to Spiritual Growth. He said, babies are wonderful to have around. Can I get an amen on that? Babies are wonderful to have around, he says, but they're not much help around the house. Can I get an amen to that? Babies can't cook. They can't clean. They can't do nothing. They're cute though. They're cute. They make you work, but they can't do nothing. But he says they're wonderful to have around, but they're not much help in the house, he says. Unfortunately, that could also be said of a lot of Christians. Their lack of spiritual maturity greatly reduces their usefulness to the cause of Jesus Christ. End quote. That's sad. Folks that have been in church for years, and their utility to build up the body of believers, to invest in others, to disciple, to engage, is right here. All because they're on the Gerber diet. They've just been reading a verse, you know, every week or so...maybe. Sometimes they skip a week and that's their diet. Brothers and sisters, I want to encourage you in 2025 to be devoted to the Word. Incline your ear towards it. Make your heart ready to receive it. I can't tell you how many times I've ran into men, women, couples, singles and there is an embarrassing deficiency in their Bible intake. Don't let that be true of you. Every single time you get, I ask questions about the text. When I'm reading through it, I want to ask these questions. What did I learn about God's Word? What did I learn about God? Because I'm not reading just for the sake of reading, I want to learn about God. We even do this as a family in our table when we're reading our family devotions. What did I learn about God? What did I learn about mankind in general? How he works, how he operates, how he thinks, how he sins. And then what did I learn about myself? Those three questions. When I'm engaged in the Word...what do I learn about God? What do I learn about mankind? What do I learn about myself? You ask our kids at the dinner table, we read a text. That's what they're going to do. What do you learn about God? What do I learn about mankind? What do I learn about myself? And when you do that, you'll have this devotion to the Word constantly. One of the places I saw the devotion to the Word on display is, is Nehemiah 8. And I want to share that with you before I get to another aspect of the word. Nehemiah 8...I was just amazed at that. You can go left in your Bible, Nehemiah 8. I can help you. It's on page 504...my Bible. That might help you out a little bit. I don't know. I don't know if that help you all out, but it's on page 504 in mine. I put it in my sermon notes so that I'd make sure I wouldn't be fumbling up here in the pulpit trying to find Nehemiah. I'm sorry. I know where it is. Ezra. Nehemiah. Esther. But Nehemiah chapter 8, look at this amazing depiction of what happened to people as they gathered together to hear the Word of God. Ezra had found the law. They had been gone for a good length of time, but they started to get back building the temple, found the law and look at verse 2. It says, then Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly of men and women and all who could understand and listen to the scriptures on the first day of the seventh month. And then he read it before them in the square which is in front of the water gate from early morning until midday. Look at that...early in the morning to midday. Let's just say he started at 8:00. That's from eight to noon. That's four hours in the Word. And he wasn't frustrated by that exercise, not trying to suggest that that should be your diet and how you should go about it. But they were just amazed at the Word of God. And he did that in the presence of men and women, those who could understand. And all the people were attentive to the book of the law. It said, Ezra stood in the wooden podium...that's a pulpit. And then down there in verse 5 it says, he opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was standing above the people. And when he opened it, guess what happened? All the people stood up. They stood up. They said, this is amazing because we're hearing the words of life. In verse six, then Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, Amen. Amen. And while lifting up their hands, they bowed low and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. That's a proper response to reading the Word. That's what you should do. Be so amazed that God has communicated about himself, that you should be in awe and in worship, and that should lead you to another discipline that we're going to get to in a moment, which is is meditation. But before I get there, just when you start thinking about the Word of God, not only should you be reading it on a consistent basis, you need to study the Word of God. Study it. I can show you a good place of studying. Listen to these words in Acts 17:11 really about the Bereans. You know about those. But it says these were more noble minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the Word with great eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see whether these things were so. There's a couple of features about these Bereans. It said first that they were noble minded. It meant that they tested the truth of Paul's messages against the scriptures. Now, I don't know about you, but I'm thinking to myself, like, if I'm listening to the Apostle Paul, this brother that wrote two thirds of the New Testament, I can tell you like this. If I hear the Apostle Paul teaching, I'm like this...hmm...go ahead. Just keep it going. But the Bereans were like, hold on what you say, Paul? Go ahead. They were examining with the Old Testament scriptures. They said, yes, I understand that he's anointed. He's God's spokesman. He's speaking with great authority. But Imma fact check, Paul. That's when you are noble minded, thinking about the words of life. How is your Bible study? Do you just go based on what your favorite preacher preaches and you say you're good. Or did you go back and say, let me own these scriptures myself? I know the preacher owned it before he preached it. Let me own it to make sure it's mine. That's what studying does. It said examining the scriptures daily. You see, what they did is they looked at the messages Paul was giving, and they compared it to Scripture rather than judging it through a political or a cultural lens. That's what they did. So I'm not going to add my own feelings to it. I'm not going to think about it from a political standpoint. That's not politically correct. No, no, they said, let me examine to see if it's what thus saith the Lord. And that's how your study should be. Is it what God said? And Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:15, be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth. Yes, I know he was a preacher, but that's a principle for all of us. You're going to be teaching your children. You're going to be making disciples with your neighbors. You're going to be proclaiming that Word in some kind of capacity. Some of y'all are in children's ministry. Some of you are student leaders, your life group leaders. You need to be accurately handling the Word, and you can't accurately handle it unless you faithfully study it. I would encourage you to get some commentaries, get some commentaries from some good theologians, and if you don't know any, send us an email. We'd love to point you in that direction. Uh, we have some available even in our bookstore, but go through the Bible and get a good commentary simultaneously. And as you walk through the scriptures in reading, accompany that with studying. And that's what it means to be in the Word of God. You'll also be hearing about men's and women's Bible study. I would encourage you if you've never done that before, study the Bible verse by verse. Sign up for one of those. But then after you walk away from the scripture, something that's very helpful to do is just to see how you can apply the truth to your life. Because again, at the end of the day, it's not just reading, it's about applying those truths. And I've got a slide here that'll help you to see how you can apply God's Word. It's going to be one of these four principles. When you read Scripture, it's either going to be a truth to believe, a command to obey, a deed to avoid, or an example to follow. You're going to either walk away from this word saying, I need to believe something more about God and worship and praise him as a result. Or maybe it's something that I just need to know and keep in my mind so that when some atheist comes along and tries to tell me otherwise, I'll have the truth to be able to come alongside that. Or it's a command that God specifically says, do this and you need to do it. Or maybe a deed that you need to avoid something that he says, don't do this. Or you see an example where God punished someone in the scriptures. You say, okay, I know what not to do. Sort of like how I did with my older brother. He did some things and he got in trouble. I'd be like, okay, I don't need to do that. I mean, that's what we do. We learn from Israel's mistakes, learn from the scriptures, learn from those who got judged deeds to avoid, and then also examples to follow. You see things that doesn't explicitly have a command associated with it. But you say Paul did it. God was honored. I need to probably do it. And there are all kind of benefits from reading the Word. But what you've got to be convinced in is that there's no way for you to grow in your affection for Christ...your affection for Christ can't be stirred if your information of Christ is stale. Some people got stale reading of God's Word. They riding on old biscuits that they read last year. You need to get some fresh bread livening up a bit. Read more truth. Understand, study the Word. And that's the first discipline in the faith is really understanding that you need to be devoted to the Word.
The second is this be dedicated to meditation. You know, be dedicated to meditation. That information should lead to meditation. After you've done all that work of digging to unpack the richness of truth in the Word of God, you need to spend some time dwelling on it, analyzing what's there. It'd be like mining in a diamond mine. Right? You're going in and you're doing all that work to dig it up. Once you get it, you want to analyze it. You don't want to just kind of go about your way, like, oh, yeah, I found a few diamonds. Move on about. You want to pick it up, and what do you do? You hold it to the light, and you look at the beauty and the splendor and the magnificence of that jewel. And the same is true of being in the Word of God. After you've done that hard work of studying,spend some time just meditating and analyzing what it is that you've learned. You know people, you know, the world's view of meditation is clearing your mind, emptying your mind, emptying your mind of all that's there to hopefully provide some clarity. But that doesn't make sense. That's the world's view of meditation, but the Biblical view of meditation is to fill your mind on truth. It's to place Biblical truth in your mind, not emptying everything else out. It's not the absence of everything. It's the presence of truth. And many people, they've memorized Joshua 1:9. Some of y'all probably know it by heart. Joshua 1:9....what does it say? I heard it, somebody scared. Be strong and courageous. Yeah, you've got that. Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. But do you know what Joshua 1:8 says? Turn to Joshua 1:8 and look and read and see what God says there in Joshua 1:8. After you get outside of the Torah, first five books, Joshua 1:8. It says, this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do all that is according to what is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success. The Lord says meditation day and night. That term meditation..it really can be described in two ways in the Old Testament. The first describes the ruminating stomach of animals. Those who like the cow that chews the cud, it chews it up in one section of the stomach, breaks it down, and then it puts it into another section of the stomach and it breaks it down even further in another section of the stomach. And it does that until it digests completely. That was the idea that came to mind in the Jews thinking when they heard the term meditate...ruminating stomach. There's another idea that came to their mind, and it means to murmur, to whisper quietly, you know, like the like they would do back in the day when they were doing some mindless tasks. They would be like, hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. And they would just meditate on what that truth meant to them. And that's what it means for you to meditate on the words of God. Read the Word, but then sit back and and chew on it for a little bit, even murmur out loud so that you can kind of ingrain those truths in your thinking. And what it does is it conforms your life into holiness. And look at what he says there in the text. There's two promises for those who meditate on the Word of God, and the first is that he will make your way prosperous. God promises prosperity, and it's not the prosperity that you hear on television today, which is that you're just going to get. You're going to be a millionaire. You keep trusting God, sending the preacher money. You're going to be a millionaire. That's not the prosperity that God is talking about. The prosperity is that God will give you an abundance of living. That means that he will guard you from trials? And even if he gives you trials, that he'll give you the scriptures that will help you to persevere in that trial. That's a prosperous life. He'll give you those resources that are necessary. In our church age we have His Holy Spirit living in us. That's prosperity. Being able to walk with him through a difficult time, all because we're meditating on the scriptures. And then it says you'll have good success. That good success is that God will make your path straight. You're in that Word and your path is going to be straight. Not it's going to be easy, but it'll be straight because you're doing it in obedience to God. You've meditated on it, you understood it, and you're going to have a successful life. Why? Because you're doing it God's way. Everybody else around you, I go back. There are times that I visit, you know, friends and family back home in little Rock, Arkansas. And I go back and it looks like some of them brothers, we graduated in high school together, but they look like they in their 60s, 70s and 80s. No offense to you in your 60s, 70s and 80s. It was like, brother, what you trying to say, I'm old? I'm just saying that the folks that I graduate that should be in their latter 40s, they feel like they've aged. And I'm looking at them, and it's because life has torn them up. They're like, brother, what are you doing, Kurtis? He said, man, it must be that clean living. And I'm like, you're exactly right. Living in accordance to God's Word, meditating on his truth, living in accordance with his law allows you to have a life of success. And it doesn't mean that it's going to be easy. But again, you're living in God's way. You have joy. You have peace overflowing in abundance because you're doing it the way God intended. That's meditating on His Word. There are various scriptures that help us to see the importance of meditating. Psalm 119:97, the psalmist says, oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation both day and night. He says, I love it so much. He even likened it to honey. Sweeter than honey to my taste. Honey was the sweetest thing that would that was there on the tongue back in the Old Testament time. You see, that's just because they didn't have refrigerators that they can have Blue Bell ice cream. Can I get a witness? That's the good stuff nowadays. So I wake up in the morning, I'm like, oh, Lord, how I love your law. It is sweeter than Blue Bell ice cream to my taste. I meditate on it day and night. But that's what the psalmist does because he says, I love God's truth. And brothers and sisters, if you've been in God's Word for decades, can't you sympathize with that truth that you love His Word? Your favorite times in the day is just to get up and just to be in God's Word because it's true. I remember when I first got saved, I said, Lord, I love this truth. And that hasn't changed even up to today. I preach the Word because I love God's truth. Walk in the word because I love God's truth. I see it on display. And you see people's lives that are in a wreck. You're like, man, they aren't living God's truth, and I want to just bring them to God's Word so that they too can say, oh, how I love God's Word. It's my meditation day and night. You see, their lives change. This is bigger than  a New Year's resolution. It should be our livelihood. The psalmist says, I will meditate on your precepts. I will regard your ways. I delight in your statutes. I shall not forget your word. That's the Psalm 119. And I would encourage you, if you're having troubles just thinking about the word and whether it's studying, reading or meditating, go to Psalm 119. It'll bless your soul just to see the importance of God's Word over and over and over again. And you'll see that word meditate, murmur. Continue to digest it over and over again. When I think about the relationship between reading and studying God's Word and meditation, I think of hiking, you know, no one goes through the great difficulty of getting up and hiking and going up a steep mountain, only so that you can kind of get up there and pull your pants up and just walk right back down again. Right? If you have been to Blue Ridge Parkway, wherever what mountain top you done got to. Once you've gone through that arduous task of getting up to the top, what do you want to do? You want to look out and check out the vista, the scenery. You want to gaze. You want to look back and see where you've come and just be amazed. That's what meditation is to the Word of God. You've done the hard work of studying and thinking about and turning on truth. Meditation is getting back and saying, let me look and see how amazing this God is. Let me dwell upon the riches of his glory. Let me think about what it would be if I applied these things to my life. That's what meditation does. It changes your perspective. It can help you break free from sin. All kinds of Advantages. But if you've never done this before, I got a slide here that just helps you to see what it would be like for you to actually...the application of meditation. Five principles I'd get for you. One just observe the Biblical text, observe it, figure out where you're going to land and sink your teeth into it. Then find the Biblical principle that's in that text. You know, if you're still there at Joshua 1:8, the book of the law shall not depart from your mouth. The Biblical principle is God's word should always be on my lips. I should always be thinking it through. That's a Biblical principle, and meditate on that. What would that look like for you? Another thing that you can say is think about why God wrote that particular truth. Meditate on that. Think about what this truth and how it relates to the gospel. Because all truth is pointing to the cross or back to the cross. And so you should be able to do that as you're meditating on that. And it helps you to amplify the gospel in your life, and then think about how you should apply this particular truth to your life, specifically. Those are the ways that you can meditate on it. So you're not just sitting out kind of carelessly thinking about Scripture. You've got some kind of focus to it. But the Lord promises in Jeremiah 29:13 he says, seek me and you will find me if you search for me with all your heart. If you do that and you meditate, God will reveal himself to you because he wants you to know him and spend that time with you.
Well, the last discipline I want to talk about this morning briefly before we close, is this. We've looked at what it means to be devoted to the Word and dedicated to meditation. The last one is be dependent in prayer. Be dependent in prayer. And I specifically said dependent. You need to pray not just before you eat, you know, not just a couple of seconds before you go to bed, but you need to pray as if your life depended upon it. The lives of others dependent upon it. And some people say you show them love spelled T I M E. Well, in this case, if God we show him love by the spelling it P R A Y. Pray...spending time communing with God himself.  Sweet communion with the Almighty. This is helping you grow more dependent in prayer. I thought I'd share the ABCs of prayer. The ABCs. These are my ABCs that I think about and it helps encourage me to pray all the more.

And the first thing is the A and that's the attitude of prayer. My attitude. The attitude of prayer is found in Colossians 4:2, and it helps me to see what it should be like for me when I'm devoted to praying more fervently.  In  Colossians 4:2, it says, be devoted and devote yourselves to prayer. It says devote yourselves to prayer. That term devote...it means that you have an attitude of desperation. It's committed. It means that I'm not wavering in it. And prayer is not optional. And when I have this attitude that I'm going to be devoted to prayer it also helps me to do the B part of that verse, which is keep alert with an attitude of thanksgiving. You not only do I have an attitude of devotion and dependence, but I'm having an attitude of thanksgiving. You know, I'm going to cry out and thank God in it...being diligent. You know what happens when you're on the alert? You're having perseverance and you're petitioning to God on behalf of all the saints. You know, you start prayer and, you know, you got to be diligent because sometimes you know how it is. You start praying, and before you know it, your mind start wondering, oh man, I wonder what the day is going to look like. And you go back and you start praying again. Then you'll be like, oh man, I wonder what I'm going to eat this next meal. And you start praying and then your mind continues to wonder. You have to be diligent and keep alert. It's almost like what Jesus was saying with the disciples when they were like, hey man, the body is weak. The spirit is willing. The body is weak. And Jesus is saying, can't you just pray? Can't you just pray? Be fervent in prayer. The hour of darkness is at hand and you're falling asleep. And some of us, we have that in our prayer life, it's cavalier. And we want to stoke the coals by praying and being alert. Alertness is a command for us to think about it. You know, you realize that this is warfare in prayer. Your flesh don't want to do it. The world system doesn't want you to be about it, and Satan is opposed to it. And we can't make excuses like, you know, I don't have time to pray. I don't have time. I'm too busy. Some people say they don't have time to pray, but then 45 minutes will go by on social media, or they'll binge watch 3 or 4 episodes of something on Netflix. I'm like, well, I just don't have I don't have time to pray. We make time for the things that are important to us. And I'm encouraging you need to make time to pray. The most prideful way you can live this life is to say, I can do it and not even ask for God's help. And I'm too busy. And some of y'all say, well, I'm busy doing kingdom work. Well, you know, I like Martin Luther when he said this. He says work, work from early until late. In fact, I have so much work to do that I will spend the first three hours in prayer. That's how devoted he was. He knew he had great things of God, but he knew he needed God in order to do it. So I would encourage you to be on your knees. Because, see, when we work, we work. But when you pray, God works. You want him to be working out those things for his kingdom. So have an attitude of prayer and thanksgiving. The B is for blessing. There's blessing associated with prayer. All kinds of blessings come. One is that we get a chance to talk to God. You realize when you pray, you're talking to Almighty God. Psalm 65:2 says, O you who hear prayer. He was just amazed that he is in the presence of Almighty God. Another blessing is that God answers prayers. James 5:16 says the effective prayer of a righteous man, what?...avails much. I heard availeth. Somebody done went King James on us. Availeth much. It accomplishes much. It does. It does great things. But that's a blessing of prayer. When you pray, you're in line with his will and his character. God blesses your prayers. He answers. And then it says, he who lacks wisdom. James 1:5-8, if you lack wisdom, let him ask of God who gives abundantly and won't make you feel bad in doing so. That's all blessings of prayer. It reorients our minds around Christ. It reinforced Biblical truth, and it trains us to do the things that God would have us. And then the last thing for prayer is the 'C'. And that's the content of your prayer. The content of your prayer. We should pray to give God thanks and adoration. We should also pray to really think about our spiritual leaders in supplication. Multiple times in 2 Thessalonians 3:1, we see Paul says, brethren, pray for us that the Word of God would spread. Pray for your leaders. Pray for those who are in charge of your souls. We also pray for one another, James 5:17. That should form the content of our prayers. And then 1 Timothy 2, pray for our civic leaders and even praying for your own lives. And that's confession and petition, all for the things in your life. One way that I'll give you this last principle of prayer is as an outline, and that's this. I use it in my evernote each day, and then I just pray accordingly. I start with adoration, praying, and giving God praise for who he is. And then I go to thanksgiving, giving him praise and thanksgiving for what he's done. After that, I go into confession for my own heart. Things that I've done, and then I pray for salvation for those around me. I pray for my family. I pray for the church, both the church locally as well as globally. And then I think about the city and the nation, and that forms the substance. And that's the content of my prayers. Right attitude. Think about the blessing. Make sure you got the right content. But I would say pick a time, choose a place. Have a plan. Prayer doesn't just happen. You've got to engage it, just like all of these other disciplines. But we've seen that this is what it means to be disciplined in the faith. Be  devoted to the Word, dedicated to meditation, and be dependent in prayer.
If you're here today and you're listening to these spiritual disciplines and you're saying to yourself, man, I can't even think about doing those at all because I don't really know where I stand with Jesus Christ. Well, the greatest thing you need today is not another resolution. You need a resignation. You need to resign from being the captain of your ship, from being the Lord of your own life. You need to do what Matthew 16:24 says that if you wish to come after me, you must deny yourself. Take up your cross and follow me. Come to Christ by repenting and turning to him, and that will begin your spiritual journey. But for the rest of us, let's be devoted to enhancing and excelling still more in our faith so that we can be disciplined in the Word and in prayer...all for the glory of Jesus Christ. Let's pray and ask his help in all of these things.
Gracious Father, we come before you now, just thanking you for the privilege of being in the Word. We thank you for the truth that is ours in Christ. And  I just pray right now that you would help us all to understand just how vital it is to work out this salvation that you've given us with fear and trembling before a holy God, knowing that you began a good work and you want to carry it out to completion. But that will take our partnership and cooperation with Heaven. Help us not to just make a resolution that will fizzle out after a few weeks in this month, but help us to make it our ambition that we'll be dedicated to looking more like Christ each and every day. By applying these disciplines and all others in the great faith. We ask this all in the blessed name of Jesus Christ and for his name's sake. Amen.

View transcript

The Nature of the Christian Life

Download transcript

We're going to be in 2 Peter 1. A passage that is near and dear to my heart, and especially as I was thinking about the end of the year and looking ahead into the new year, there comes up the question, what do we devote our lives to? What's it all about? And I can't help but go back to the nature of things. That we talk about human nature, that we are made for certain things. And we can see this very powerfully when people act according to their nature. For example, it's the nature of parents to be protective. In 2006, a woman in Quebec named Lydia Anjou attacked a polar bear, not the other way around. You see, Lydia pulled up to her son's hockey practice to pick him up, and she saw her seven year old son. I don't know why a seven year old's playing hockey. It's just what happened. He comes out and he's walking to the car with two of his friends, and a polar bear starts running toward them....Alaska. And so she does what every mother maybe wishes she had the gumption to do, and she jumps out of the car, runs, and places herself between her son and the rushing polar bear. Witnesses say that she started to kick and punch and shove the polar bear, and kept the bear from reaching her son. Eventually, one of these witnesses pulled out a gun and shot the bear four times, and they were amazed to find that Lydia was still alive. They took her to the hospital. She had some significant scratches and some trauma, but no major life-threatening damage. And some people think that these stories are just exclusive to mothers. My brother was telling me about a power lifter named Eddie Hall who set the deadlift world record. And it was deadlift world record of 500kg. That's over 1,000 pounds that he lifted by himself. And after he lifted it, it was so intense that once he finished, he dropped the weights and he passed out immediately. And blood was pouring out of his eyes and nose, they rushed him to the hospital. And they asked him, you know, how did you do this? The why you do this is already thrown out the window as too crazy to even bother with waiting for the answer. But how did you do this? And he said that all he could see whenever he was lifting that weight was his daughter trapped under a car. And in his mind, he was lifting it off of her to rescue her. It's a parent's nature to stand between their kids in danger. It's only natural for them to fight when everything within them says flight. And we see that the parent's nature is great. It gives great power. Great purpose and leads them in a great path. But how much greater is the Christian's nature? Maybe you haven't thought about it recently, but you should, because it's actually what we celebrated all the way throughout Christmas. In the advent of Jesus Christ, we learn not only the true nature of God, but also the true nature of man, what we were made to be, and the nature of the Christian life. We'll see this in 2 Peter chapter 1, that our nature is actually Christ's. And because that power of being united to Christ is ours if you are in Christ, we should make every effort to gain more of Christ. So let's turn to 2 Peter 1. I'm going to read verses one through 11, but focus on verses 3 through 11.

"Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption which is in the world because of sinful desire. For this very reason make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control and self-control, with steadfastness and steadfastness, with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities, you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."

My prayer for you this morning is that you will take to heart the phrase right there in the middle, the command from Peter to make every effort. And you wouldn't just make an effort to grow in Christ, but you'd make an effort to gain more of him, to know him and to love him more with your life. And to do this, we're going to look first at our power. And we start with our power because, as introduction showed, we're only as strong as the source of our strength. Parents can find great strength and determination from love for their children, but the Christian has an even greater source of strength. And it's right there in verse three that his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. He's given us everything we need for life and godliness, and it all comes from his divine power.

So, when we start with our power, we have to start with looking at God Himself and His own power. And we see it everywhere. We saw it this morning in first service. It was raining a whole lot louder during this time and there were some tornado warnings, not the tornado watch. That's the one where you actually see the tornado, if I'm not mistaken, there. But even if we did see the tornado, we still see the power of God is greater than the tornado, greater than the rain. He's the one who made the universe from nothing by the word of his power. He breathed life into dust and crafted the first man. He has healed the sick. He's raised the dead. He's stopped the sun in the middle of the day. That's the God whose divine power is given to us. Now, out of that power, he's given us everything we need for life and for godliness. And we know it's incredible to consider God's power in just making life and making everything that is. But even greater than that is making spiritual life. You've probably been impressed with this in the Christmas season, as you have family or friends that you know who are unbelieving and you talk to them about Jesus and you think, if I only had the best arguments, if I only could, you know, sit him down in a chair and maybe shake him real good they'd become a Christian, right? No, that's not how it works. There's no amount of effort we give that converts someone. We know it ultimately has to be the work of God. This is the message that is reinforced to us again and again and again throughout human history and throughout the Bible. Just consider the Old Testament. Starting with the great loss of life and godliness in the fall in Genesis 3. Adam and Eve sin and all the world after them are cast into sin and death. And then we see God again and again, teaching us that we can't recover life and godliness on our own. Can't do it in our own power. Glories of the Exodus...the Israelites see everything. They see the plagues. They see the Red sea split and walk across on dry land. They see God in a pillar of fire. You think if there's any religious experience that's going to, you know, convince them that they and they will have spiritual life and follow after Christ? Well, guess what...doesn't happen. They get to the Promised Land and Joshua gives them the pep up talk to end all pep up talks. Go and take the land. Be faithful to God. And they say, yes, we will do all of these things. And he says, no, you won't. And it's true...they don't. The blessings of the Promised land couldn't convert the hard hearts of Israel. The judgments of foreign kings couldn't. The wonders of the prophets and even the exile couldn't do it. No amount of discipline and providence could restore true worship to Israel. The only hope was God's promise of doing it himself. Like he promises. Like in Ezekiel 36, that I will give you a new heart. I will take away your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. Or in Deuteronomy 31 that I, the Lord, will circumcise your heart. You're not able to make yourself clean, but I will. And that's certainly the good news of the gospel. And that's the kind of power that God gives to us. It's not just powerful spiritual life, but power, for again, everything that leads to life and godliness. You think of in your own life the sins that you've struggled to put away, or maybe when you've given effort. I just got to tackle this one thing, and then I'll be all right. You know I'll finally be okay. Can be a good Christian. We know how hard it is to change our own lives, but yet God gives us everything not just to change and follow him, but to live a life of godliness. And how do we receive this power? Well, I think the greatness of the power is shown even in just how God gives it to us. Right here in these next phrases, let's pay attention to this grammar that he has given us everything for life and godliness. He's given it through the knowledge of him who has called us to his own glory and excellence. The means of God, of us gaining God's power is simply through knowing him. There are a lot of ways that you can get power. You wouldn't think it would just be through knowing the God who made everything. But yet that's all it is. God's power is so great we only have to know him and we learn we also gain his power through his precious and magnificent promises. So in verse 4, his power comes to us through his promises. That simply through the Word of God. That same word that spoke the world and the universe into being when spoken to us and received in faith, gives great power, gives us all we need for life and for godliness. And I think faith is a good indication of where the power really is, right? Because faith says I bring nothing to the table. I contribute nothing. But you are the one who has done everything. Faith simply receives the alien righteousness of Jesus Christ. And then what exactly is this power? Okay, so the divine power has given us everything pertaining to life and godliness. He tells us how it's given. That's given through knowing Christ through his promises. But then there's the result. It's so that...in verse four, through them you may become partakers of the divine nature. And this isn't a way that we're used to talking. It sounds kind of odd, but this is such a deep theme in the scriptures, such an ineffable mystery that scriptures explain it to us in a lot of different ways, that when we are saved, we are united to God in Christ, and so we're no longer the same person. That old sinful nature is put away what once was by nature, children of wrath is united to God to be his...a child of glory. And this is what we celebrate in Christmas, that this is even possible. That it's all through Jesus Christ. That Christ and the story of Christmas is when God, without ceasing to be God, became his creation so that we could be united to him, or as we confessed in the Chalcedonian Creed, that Christ is both of one substance with God regarding divinity and of one substance with us regarding humanity, so that as we are united to Christ, we are also united to God. The scriptures have many ways of talking about this, and this mystery is so wonderful. In Ephesians 3:16-17, says that Christ dwells in our hearts through faith. And he does this by His Holy Spirit in our inner being. In 1 Corinthians 12:27 it says that we are members of Christ's body, and we are connected to him as the body, to the head. In John 14:23, Jesus says, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Or Colossians 1:27 that salvation is Christ in you, the hope of glory. And so we're brought into a union that is vital, that is life giving, that is personal and that is real as our natures are changed from sinful to saved. Herman Bavinck in his book The Wonderful Works of God, this Dutch theologian says this, "The combination in Christ," which I think encapsulates this idea very, very well. "The combination in Christ occurs more than 150 times in the New Testament. It indicates that Christ is the constant source not only of the spiritual life, but that as such, he also immediately and directly dwells in the believer. The unity is as close as that between a cornerstone and a temple. A man and a woman. The head and the body, the vine and the branch. The believers are in Christ as all things, by virtue of creation and providence are in God. They live in him. As the fish lives in water, the bird in the air, the man in his vocation, the scholar in the study. Together with him they are crucified, dead and buried, are raised again, seated at the right hand of God and glorified. They have put him on assumed his form. They have shown in their body both the suffering and the life of Christ, and are perfected in him. In short, Christ is all and in all." The greatest reality of salvation is that we are united to Christ and we receive him. Everything else is a bonus. Justification...it's a bonus. Sanctification, it's a bonus. Glorification, it's a bonus. The real heart of salvation is that we have Christ, and that if you're in Christ, his life is in you. So, our power is not just a mere man...a good example out there. He's not some demigod, but God himself...in human flesh. Our Savior is our brother. It's a great line from a Christmas hymn, and it captures this well that in the Christian life, in this union with Christ, sinners are made sons, the damned are made daughters. God himself, in mortal flesh, united to us in the heights of our power is this...the glory and excellence, the virtue of Christ. That's our power. That's where the Christian life starts. That's what motivates everything that follows. Because in verse 5, there's one of the biggest throat clears in the Bible...for this very reason. Meaning, okay, you've heard everything that came before. Now let me tell you what this means for you. And he's about to hit you with quite the command. Make every effort. Make every effort. Labor intensely to supplement your faith with virtue. Virtue with knowledge. Knowledge with self-control. Self-control with steadfastness, steadfastness with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love. That's the path of the Christian life. And it's a path that starts first with faith. You see, faith is the starting point of our faith, the starting point of the Christian life. That's how we receive union with Christ. That's how we, as Romans 5:2 says, have our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand. Faith, and this is really incredible and should give you great encouragement, is what allows Peter to say this in verse 1. He starts off saying who he is...Simon Peter servant, apostle of Jesus Christ. That's a pretty great title. We think Peter, he's a great Christian. This is, you know, Simon Peter...Simon. He uses his Jewish name. He's one of the chosen people of God. He's Peter, he's the rock of the church. He's servant and apostle of Christ. Doesn't get much greater than that. The apostles, the foundation of the church. Then he writes to those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. You see one of the beauties of faith, because we are reconciled to God through the death of Jesus Christ, and that is only received in faith. There's no second class Christians. There's no first-class Christians. We're all on equal standing. We have faith that is as precious as the apostles. That is quite literally the same in honor. And how can this be? I mean, how can we dare to boast, to be at the same standing before God as the very apostles? Well, because Peter says it, but he grounds it in this. That's by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. And again, it goes back to our power. Our power to sustain the divine power of God sustains our faith, his righteousness, our foundation. And so, faith is the starting point. But faith also contains everything that follows, because by faith we have Christ. And so this passage works a lot like a Russian nesting doll with faith on the outside. And then the next phrase, if you have the NASB, it will bring out this grammar a little bit more clearly, where he says, in virtue or in faith, add virtue in virtue, add knowledge, or maybe with your virtue. But the idea is that each one is implicit in the one before. So the Russian nesting doll faith on the outside. You open it up virtue. You open up virtue knowledge and implied in knowledge...self-control, implied in self-control, steadfastness, and implied in that is, godliness, implied in that brotherly affection. And at the center, the beating heart of the Christian life is love. I hope this will be a very practical portion of the sermon as I go through each of these in turn, but I want you to maintain that big picture in your mind that it all starts with faith. It all starts with faith in Christ, and then he's the one who brings it all the way through to love. See, faith is great because it's by faith that we grasp the mysteries of God. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen, Hebrews 11:1 says, because faith, trust God. Sometimes we think about faith as just believing in things...statements. but primarily the Christian faith starts with believing a person. That God is and that he is a rewarder of all who seek him. And so starts the Christian faith that we know and love and trust our God. And that ought to lead to all these subsequent actions, because that's really where faith is demonstrated. For example, I was fishing with my son James, and I caught a bass. That's no credit to me. That's credit to my dad. He brought the fishing tackle. He gave me the lure. He told me cast over there. I did, and then pulled the fish in. That's not me. That's totally him. So if you're looking for fishing tips, just throwing that one out there...be a good guy to talk to. But I bring the fish in...bringing the bass to the boat. James is three. He's having a great time so far. He is, you know, casting his little toy fishing rod into the water and he's trying to throw trash overboard. I had to stop him on that. But then baskets in the boat. James loving it. And I said, James, touch the fish. And he's about to. And then the fish twitches and immediately he screams. He cries. He runs to the other side of the boat. He's terrified. And what did I tell him next? Did I explain to him the biology of the fish, how weak the fish was compared to him. Gave him all the specifics. No, I just told him. James, trust your daddy. Touch the fish. It'll be fine. That's all he needed to do. Sometimes in faith, we want all the answers. We want all the details. One of the beauties of faith is that we trust. And then we show that trust by acting and stepping out in faith. See, James really trusted me when he finally touched the fish. He didn't know that the fish didn't have, like, razor sharp teeth. He didn't know. He doesn't know what the bass is like. But he trusted me enough to step forward. And so it is with us. We start with faith, but then we step forward in action. As Calvin said, it is faith alone which justifies. And yet the faith which justifies is never alone. So supplement your faith with virtue. Not that faith is lacking, but it is immature. Faith needs to grow. See, even the smallest Christian, even the youngest Christian. You start with one thing, and that's faith. And you start with something even greater. And that faith is in the power of Jesus Christ. And that's what carries you through. So first we have virtue. The new American standard translates this word moral excellence. Virtue is doing what you do with excellence. For example, a piano virtuoso is someone who plays the piano quite well. You've heard Justin and Steve Kukla play piano for us. You know their skill and their talents. You might even call them virtuosos. But if you put one of them against me, and I know, contrary to what the Christmas video seemed to imply, I do not know how to play the piano and it sound well. I know how to make sounds with the piano, but that's very different from being a virtuoso. See, the virtuoso is one where we both sit down. We're both playing the piano, but the virtuoso plays the piano well. A bad pianist...myself plays the piano poorly. For someone to be virtuous, a virtuous human is someone who lives well. Everyone lives, but not everyone lives well. See, the great obsession of the greatest philosophers was that question. How do we live well? And that's a very important question for you. I think it should hit home that Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. It should hit home when Plato says, a life of virtue is its own reward. So they put great effort into considering the virtuous life because they knew that it mattered, and it was what it meant to live a good life. Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, and even most of your self-help books these days all trade on some basic truths. I want to give them to you in just a short form, and it's this. Good choices when repeated produce good habits which lead to virtue. Bad choices, when repeated, produce bad habits which lead to vices. Or as Scripture says in Romans 6:19, just as you once presented your members as slaves of lawlessness, leading to further lawlessness. So now present your members as slaves of righteousness, leading to sanctification. See, we make sinful choices. Sinful choices repeatedly lead to sinful habits, and from there it just keeps getting worse and worse. A life of vice. A life of villainy. But for the Christian, it ought to be that we make good, God honoring choices, and we do them repeatedly and produce good habits which lead to the life of virtue. What's amazing about this is that that's step one for the Christian, for Peter. You believe? Okay. Go live a good life. Go live well. You need a starting place? Well, start with Christ. Who else? Consider the virtues of Christ. Consider his humility. Consider his love. Consider his holiness. Or maybe very practically, for you, you should consider Galatians chapter 5, which gives two lists...the deeds of the flesh and the fruits of the spirit, or for the sake of some continuity here of language we could say a list of vices, and then a list of true Christian virtues. I'd recommend, maybe, as you're looking ahead to the new year and you want to grow in Christ likeness and make every effort to gain more of Christ, consider that list...first the vices, the deeds of the flesh, and consider which ones mark your life. What habits do they show themselves in? For example, you might look at your life and see a problem with gluttony and say, well, that's a vice, but then where does it show up? Maybe it shows up in getting the second and third cookie at dessert. Maybe it shows up in laziness in the workplace. And very specifically, it shows up at the beginning of your day where you start off your day by checking fantasy football, when you could have done that at home. Maybe it's gossip and that vice comes out whenever you're with certain people, and you want to talk about certain things and have something to say. Well, you've recognized the vice. You've recognized where it comes out. You've recognized that deed of the flesh. What's the way forward? A good way to start would be to consider the opposing virtue that maybe instead of gluttony, it would be self-control and consider for your own life. What choices or habits do you need to make to cultivate self-control in your life? That could be a good way to think about your New Year's resolutions. Go through those lists together. Maybe have someone a friend help you with that. I'm sure they would want to. But then going from virtue. That's not where Peter stops. He says, keep going. Grow in knowledge. And this word for knowledge, it's the most general word for knowledge in Greek. It's more general than the word for the knowledge of Christ in verse 3 and verse 2. And I think a good takeaway from this is that God wants us to know much more than just commands. He wants us to know much more than just how to live well. Much more than random facts about your favorite sports team or the intricacies of other people's social lives. Instead, he wants us to be learned in the things that matter most and in the things that matter for your life. One of the great glories of the Christian life is that whatever vocation you're in is a God given opportunity for you to honor him. You're called to be the best HVAC technician, the best salesperson, the best kindergarten teacher, the best doctor, lawyer, fireman. And for each of those professions, there's a certain base level of knowledge and competency that you should have to actually be good at your job and contributing to it. We should have that base level of knowledge. You're also called to certain offices as a father. You're called to be a good parent, leader. You're called to be a good friend, a good citizen. These all require certain knowledge. But even more than that, we are made for knowing Christ and the glories of him. And I think back in my own life, how sad it is for me to think of the years where I let the scriptures just sit closed like this on a bookshelf. And you should think about that for your life as you go into the new year. How can you prioritize gaining knowledge of God through His Word? Listening to other teachers explain the word, read some good books. We have a bookstore full of them, but a little word of advice on books. Life's too short to read the second best book on anything, so make sure you choose a good one. But this is God's plan for us that we would grow in wisdom and knowledge. Proverbs 4:7 says this at the beginning of wisdom is acquire wisdom, and in your acquiring gain understanding. And maybe you say, well, this is too hard, too difficult. There are some things that are just beyond my comprehension. Well, maybe be inspired. One of the great thinkers of the Christian faith, Thomas Aquinas, said this, that even the slightest knowledge of the highest things is more desirable than certain knowledge of lesser things. He said, I'd rather have the slightest knowledge of God and the heavenly secrets that understand all the intricacies of the universe. That's the kind of knowledge we should pursue. We should also pursue self-control. Self-control finds its opposite in losing control. Some of you maybe can relate to losing control. It's when you know the right thing to do and you just can't quite bring yourself to do it. You know, you should stop watching that. You know you should start working on that. You know, you should maybe make a list of things that you're supposed to do and shouldn't do just to motivate you a little bit more, but yet you lose control. You don't do what you know is right. You go back for the third cookie, even though you know you should have stopped two cookies earlier. But self-control is the exact opposite. It's knowing the right thing to do and then doing it despite your desires to do otherwise, despite the cost, despite the difficulty. You just do it. And I think this is a good reminder that what sets off the section is the command to make every effort. Self-control requires a lot of effort, but this kind of self-control is in many ways the pinnacle of a virtuous life. It's the last fruit of the spirit in Galatians 5. It's the greatest need of the watching world. In Acts chapter 24, when Paul is speaking to Festus, he talks to him about three things righteousness, judgment, and self-control. It's what the world wants but can't quite seem to have. And it's seen, I think, most vividly in the extremes. So ancient Christians lifted up two great examples of self-control, chastity, which is remaining faithful in marriage and pure outside of it, and martyrdom, having the fortitude to die for your faith. Seeing the cost and yet knowing this is what will please the Lord. I cannot and will not turn from my Savior. So, are you preparing yourself for that? Are you preparing yourself for martyrdom? It might sound extreme, but maybe a good one to think about. Think about for your kids. Are you preparing them to give it all for Christ? How are you cultivating self-control in your life? There are a few things you could do to practice this. One is by fasting, by saying no to food. Another way, maybe you want to practice some good fortitude of turning down what is fearful to you and go and share your faith. Maybe you need to resolve to share the gospel with that person at work this year that you know is a non-believer and you rub shoulders with them every day, but you haven't quite felt that it was right in the moment that maybe it'd be a little awkward if I brought up Jesus Christ now. Or maybe for you...you look around your life and you see, well, I don't really have non-believers around me. I'm terrified to go share the gospel. That's all the more reason to go out with the ambassadors this spring. Go knock on a stranger's door and share the gospel, because in doing so, you cultivate a heart of worship for God and self-control. That you will not let your lesser desires master you, that you will not settle for anything less than giving all for Jesus Christ. Trade the lesser goods of today for the greater goods of tomorrow. That's how you cultivate self-control. And then you have to add the next one, which is steadfastness or patience, or literally to endure under. You have to continue and persevere in your life, in your life, in Christ. You can't just make a habit and then throw it off the next day. We know this is true. Like New Year's resolutions are coming up, New Year's resolutions are only as good as your resolve to keep them. You all know it's true. And the canceled gym memberships. Or maybe you were unable to cancel them from last year. And so you've got that one lined up again as the resolution for this year. We know that it's hard to keep our commitments. We know it's hard to keep saying no and no and no and no again to ourselves and yes and yes and yes to the hard things. But we ought to add that steadfastness. And for the Christian whose living out your life and you feel like I have good habits in place. I'm seeking the Lord. I'm in his word daily. I pray I do all these things. Well, I'd say beware of falling into complacency, confusion and compromise, which leads to catastrophe. Maybe think about those...how those can be a stumbling block for you...complacency, confusion, compromise. And we all know those end in catastrophe. The goal is to cultivate godliness, which is next in the list. Literally, in Greek, be good worship. And every choice we make shows who or what we worship. Worship is not just singing here on Sunday, but it's how you live your life Monday through Saturday and even Sunday. Think about that with every choice you make, how you can bring the most worship to God. Sometimes we think first through oh, what I should or shouldn't do, what I want to do or what I don't want to do. Or maybe we think about the consequences of our actions, and those are all good things to consider. The good Christian will certainly consider what God has commanded and what God has not. But our heart's motivation...our starting point should be to worship God with everything. With the job you take, the friends you make, the wife you choose. So live well. Cultivate godliness. Live by the word. And if you want to add some specific direction to godliness, then go ahead. Look at the sermon on the Mount. Consider the great moral teachings of Christ and consider how you can honor him with your life. And then add to that brotherly affection. Love your sisters and brothers in Christ. The virtue of the Christian life can only be practiced in community. The fruits of the spirit can't exist in isolation. You can be as patient as you want when it's just yourself. But you have to have someone to be patient to. If you're wanting to work on anger this year, well, that's going to take a specific relationship, probably with someone who pushes your buttons. It doesn't mean avoiding them. Actually, it means dealing better with them in a Christ honoring and Christ exalting way. If you want to grow in love. it requires having someone near enough to you to love despite their flaws and despite your own. So add brotherly affection. Very practically, this can be done through joining a life group or if you're in one, be invested with the people there. Really seek them out. Have them over to your house. I'd even challenge you for this year. Consider having one night a week where you invite someone from the church over to your home and have them over for a meal. Just get to know them. I assure you, I know this from personal experience that you will be greatly encouraged, you'll be greatly challenged in your faith, and you will grow. And then eventually, you'll have a hard time imagining a time where you didn't have people over on that day. But most of all is to grow in love. The pinnacle of the Christian life is love. It's the engine of the Christian life...is love. At the center of this great Russian nesting doll that starts with faith. What's at the center? Well, it's love. And love is what turns them all. And love motivates them all. Love is the greatest commandment. And for that matter, the second greatest commandment. First commandment...we should love the Lord our God, and then that overflows in our love for others. You see, without love all these other things are useless. You can bring them all. You can do them all. You can make your to do list your resolutions. You can keep them. But if you don't have love, well let 1 Corinthians 13 speak. If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, and have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries so as to remove mountains, but have not love. I am nothing if I give away all that I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned and have not love, I gain nothing. You see, you can have all these virtues. You can have faith, you can have virtue, you can have knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection. But if you don't have love for Christ and you don't have real, genuine love for others, it's nothing...gains you nothing. At the heart of faith is a heart that loves God. So look to grow this way. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. And so you should try to grow in love this year. If you do one thing after this sermon, I pray that you would be resolved to grow in love. And well, how do you do that? Well, in a lot of ways you do it by focusing on everything that came before...returning back to the faith, returning back to the promises of Christ and of the gospel. Walk the Christian life, but pursue time with Christ. You see, we should pursue a relationship with Christ like a young person, like a young man does, pursuing his bride, taking every chance he can get to spend a little bit more time with her. C.S. Lewis famously wrote that love is a terrible master because it says better this...better suffering better...waking up early. Better...losing sleep. Better to sacrifice. Better to shun the world. Better anything than to be apart. So how can you give your time, your affection and your attention to Christ? Resolve this year to read the Bible, to memorize the scriptures, to take the truths of Christ with you. Pray fervently and often. And we do all these things. You might sound like this is a lot of work. My list is getting longer and longer with each of these qualities. Well, that's where we go back to our power. Our power is not our own, but it is Christ who works in us. And so, as one author wrote, do small things as if they were great because of the majesty of Christ, who does them in us and lives our life...and great things, as if they were small and easy because of his almighty power. Supplement your faith with virtue, your virtue with knowledge, your knowledge with self-control, self-control with steadfastness, steadfastness with brotherly love. Brotherly love with love. Love is in all these things. And as you continue on the path of faith, you'll find yourself growing more and more in love with your Savior because the path is worth it.

It leads to this final destination. Let's start in verse nine. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Or excuse me, sorry, verse eight. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Some of you hear that and you think, yes, that's what I want to be effective, fruitful. That's what everyone wants in their job...to be useful. People quit jobs, move their families because they don't feel fruitful in their work. But even more than that, this is a fruitfulness in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. That if you're growing in these qualities, they lead you again, closer and closer to Christ. And if you're not growing in them, well, there's the warning of verse 9, and maybe you listen to this list and you say, I don't want to give every effort. I don't want to strive. I don't want to work hard. I work hard enough already, don't I? Why do I need to work on this Christianity thing? Well, if that's your attitude, then we have to take verse 9 as a very strong warning that you have forgotten. You have forgotten the God of your salvation. You have forgotten that you're cleansed from your former sins. That you've forgotten the glories of Christ most magnificently displayed on the cross, who live for us, who died for our sin, and who rose again that we would have newness of life. If you listen to this sermon, you're like, I don't want to make this effort. I don't want to go into the new year and strive after Jesus Christ. Well, it's because you've lost the end of you. You're no longer looking ahead to the prize, which is Christ, and you've forgotten what's behind. You've forgotten the Christ of your salvation. You've forgotten what he did for you on Calvary. You've forgotten that he bore the punishment for your sin and freed you not only from its punishment and penalty, but from its power in your life. You've forgotten his power that resides in you. You've forgotten the glories of Christ...who is God and who is in you the hope of glory. So be diligent. Make every effort. Our labor does not undermine God's sovereign priority in calling or election, but its his appointed means for carrying it out. Verse 11 says that it is in this way. It is through you making every effort dear Christian, there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is God who brings us to the finish line. It is God who brings us through the path all the way to our purpose. And there can be no purpose higher then life, eternal with God. There is none greater, none higher, none more beautiful, none better. Jesus says it himself in John 17:3 that this is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. So let that motivate you. Let that motivate your effort. And perhaps no one understood this more than the missionary Adoniram Judson. Judson labored for 33 years in Burma in the 1800s. He and his wife Ann, they underwent intense training and then sailed for 16 months to get to Burma. It's a different age. And in Burma they would battle 108 degree heat, cholera, malaria, dysentery, imprisonment and death. Judson would bury Ann. He would marry a second wife and then bury her as well. He would also bury seven of his 13 children and many more of his co-laborers in the gospel. They kept trying to send help to Adoniram, and people would get there and they would either leave or the climate would take them. His ministry was lonely and for the most part unfruitful. And yet all the while he labored. He learned the native language. He wrote gospel tracts. He translated the Bible. He made disciples. He did all the public things, and he also did the private things. He sought Christ in the scriptures. He sought the Lord in prayer. He devoted himself to the Lord every day. But eventually it did get to him, the disappointments, the hardships. And so he went out into the woods. He dug his own grave and then prayed for God to take him. But little did he know, and in his words a year later, that there was a new spirit of inquiry in the land. You see, in the year after that moment, Judson gave out over 10,000 tracts explaining the gospel. He answered 6000 inquiries from natives who wanted to learn more about Christ, some of them traveling 2 to 3 months journey just to reach this man. And the only guidance they had to go by was going around and asking the question, where can we find Jesus Christ's man. And when they finally found him, they just asked for one thing. Tell us more about Jesus Christ. What could motivate such a life? Judson lived a hard life. He saw some of the fruit of his ministry, but he died soon after. When he died, his last words were. How few men there are who die so hard? What could motivate this? Well, I think that's best seen in Judson's letter to Ann's father asking for her hand in marriage, and he writes this to his potential future father-in-law. "I have now to ask whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next spring to see her no more in this world. Whether you can consent to her departure and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of missionary life. Whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of the ocean, to the fatal influence of the southern climate of India, to every kind of want and distress, to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps a violent death. Can you consent to all this for the sake of Him who left his heavenly home and died for her, and for you, for the sake of perishing immortal souls, for the sake of Zion and the glory of God? Can you consent to all this in hope of soon meeting your daughter in the world of glory with the crown of righteousness brightened with the acclamations of praise, which shall resound to her Savior from heathen saved through her means?" There's no greater motivation than to one day stand before Christ and to be with him forever. Where there is no more crying, no more tears, no more death. Life forever with our precious Savior. So, will you make every effort to gain more of Christ? Will you give your life freely and readily for him? Will you work to grow, to add to your faith virtue, virtue, knowledge, knowledge, self-control, self-control, steadfastness, steadfastness, godliness, godliness, brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love?

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that you are our power. You are the God Most High who made heaven and earth. And Lord, who makes in us new life the very life of your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is, Lord, our hope, our glory. And so I pray, Lord, that we would run, that we would lay aside every weight of sin that so easily entangles us. Lord, that we would press on with endurance. That we would fix our eyes on Christ who is in us, giving us the power to go forward, and who is the purpose and the final hope of our path. Lord, we pray that you would do all these things in us and through us for your glory. Amen.

View transcript

The Excellency of Jesus Christ

Download transcript

Please turn in your Bibles to John 1. We will finish the prologue, verses 1 to 18 this morning, and finish our advent series by looking at the Excellency of Jesus Christ as presented in unparalleled splendor in verses 14 to 18. We have seen his eternality in the first few verses. We've talked about the enlightenment he brought to man being the light to came into the darkness. And we talked last week about his exclusivity, that he alone was able to give the right to those sinners who would believe in his name, the right to become children of God, born not of blood, not of the will of the flesh or the will of man, but of God. And this week we're going to look in closing at His Excellency. And a wonderful way to end, because now more than ever, it's perhaps easy to miss the excellency of Jesus Christ, his superiority, his supremacy, his preeminence, his perfection. I could go on all day. And yet words would fail me. Because who could say enough to exalt the name of Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God and Lord of Lords and King of Kings? He can't be explained by words, but what we do see of him and know of him we do want to say, because we have seen the light, whereas the world is the opposite. It says the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not what?...comprehend it, verse 5. It couldn't understand it. It was too much for the world. And so whatever the world sees of Jesus Christ, they miss who he truly is. They screw it up. They did it back then and they still do it till today. I present to you a recent article from the Wall Street Journal headline, it pays to have long hair in a beard in Utah. Jesus models are in demand. Bradley Olson wrote just a few days ago, Bob Sagers was walking around an indie music festival because that's where you would find a character like this. When a friendly stranger approached and asked for his number. Has anyone ever told you that you have a Jesus look to you?, the man asked. According to Sagers, a 25 year old who works as a cheesemonger at a grocery store. And those of you who don't know what a cheesemonger is, it is a merchant who specializes in...cheese. Good job. He said, I really didn't get that line a lot. Sagers, who is six foot 5 with dirty blonde shoulder length hair and a beard, he says gives him Irish and Scandinavian vibes. I mean, that's exactly what we would think of a Jew over in Old Testament times...somehow with dirty blond shoulder length hair and a beard that has Irish and Scandinavian vibes. And he's 6'5", so he says, I make a pretty tall Jesus. The article goes on to say that there is a growing demand for Jesus models in Utah. Parents want their kids to be able to have a picture of them with Jesus. One photographer, Michaela Avalos, just gives this one caveat. She said, if your kid doesn't like taking pictures on Santa's lap, he probably won't like this experience with Jesus either. Kids either love it and it's the best thing ever, or it's a terrifying moment and even traumatizing. Um, it's not just a challenge for these kids. It's also for these models. Jai Knighten, he is the good lookingguy in the blue, writes about some of the challenges he faces. He says portraying Jesus can be tricky. One person who hired him wanted him to be, quote, "the most Christ like person you can be. Or people will be able to tell through the photos that it's not real", right? If you don't appear to be the most Christ like person in the photos, then just a total scam. No chance this guy is actually Jesus. He said that he has tried to portray Jesus in a way that's similar to how he's depicted in The Chosen, a series that has gained a following among Mormons and other Christians that Pastor Adam has never watched. He bases his character on the lead actor, who is warm and jovial, often laughing with disciples. Quote, "stoic Jesus is intimidating. A Jesus who smiles and pats you on the back is much more relatable." And one other model, the man with the giant piece of wood on his back. Um, his name is Terry Holker, and he's been a model of this for decades. He's been doing it, but he says he doesn't charge anyone for the privilege, but he does sell reprints at gun shows to recoup some printing costs. So what a guy. Uh, his line really is a summation of all this when he talks about his life as a Jesus model. He says, "I don't know how many homes in the Utah Valley have a picture of me in their living room. If you look at a Jesus picture and you don't know the model, you might be like, whoa, it's Jesus. But if you know the person, it hits different. People are like, yeah, that's actually my neighbor." This, you know, is a sad summary of a world who does not know the excellency of Jesus Christ. The closest they can get to it and want to bring their family towards it, would be hiring a Jesus model and having their kids get pictures with him. But the truth is, if you don't know the Jesus of Scripture and have a mind to understand the excellency of Jesus Christ, how could one ever expect you to say what is true about him? To understand who he is as he is revealed in the Word of God. And so, as we bring our series to a close today, my prayer is that we will for a final time before Christmas holiday. Why we have focused here is because we do want our hearts to be lifted up in worship of the true Christ, the real Christ, the one who is blazing and blinding in his glory when seen through eyes of faith. So follow with me as I read verses 14 to 18 about the excellency of Jesus Christ.
"And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. John testified about him and cried out, saying, this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for he existed before me. For of his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten who is in the bosom of the father, he has explained him."
Father, we ask this morning that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened to know the hope of the calling that we have in the gospel, the glorious riches that we have as inheritance of Christ, and of course, the surpassing greatness of your power available to us who believe. We ask that we would see through eyes of faith the glory and excellency of Christ this morning. Amen.
So a few days away from Christmas, if someone were to ask you today, maybe that neighbor that you have invited to the Christmas Eve service, thinking that might be a good opportunity for them to come and learn more about Jesus. Maybe that neighbor would ask you, hey, by the way, you say you're really into this Jesus guy. What makes him so great? Why is he so excellent? You know, you seem to really believe that. What's so great about Him? How would you answer that person? What would you say? Where would you start? What about his life comes to mind that you would be able to answer the question, what makes Christ so excellent? Well, it's in our text today and it's rather clear and really simple. It's just in two parts. The greatest answer we could give if somebody is interested in Jesus Christ and what makes him so amazing is to tell them of the person and work of Jesus Christ...in those two clear and simple categories...to have those categories in your mind today as we look at those five verses. What makes Jesus Christ so great is who he was and what he did. To not feel like we have to fish around for answers and reach too far as to look to the Word of God. And even this morning, if we're going to talk about the excellency of Jesus Christ, it should jump off the page to us that he is the most glorious person who has ever lived. And I want to add, as we get into this study today, that if you have been invited here and we're thankful you're here, but you're somewhat of a skeptic to this whole idea of religion, you have your reasons for that and you're unconvinced of Christianity. I would just ask you, though I am a complete stranger and you have no reason to listen to me. But I would ask you to consider what do you have to lose by learning more about Jesus today, to maybe set a little bit of that skepticism aside, and maybe have more of a curiosity? What is it about the excellency of Jesus Christ that I should be amazed by, and give the Word of God a chance today in your curiosity, rather than leading with skepticism. Let the Word of God show you how wonderful Jesus Christ is.
So let's start with the excellency of the person of Jesus Christ. Again, who he is just in his nature. We'll look at his work later, but just start with this. If somebody wanted to know what makes him so great. First you would start with his person and it's right there in verse 14, the apex of His excellency in verse 14 is this...and the word became flesh. That God became man. And this exalts a particular aspect of the excellency of Jesus Christ we'll call his humility. Uh, that's what verse 14 is rich with...the condescension, the coming down. We last left off with this word and the word in verse one, where it says, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. Co-equality co-existence with the Creator God, that he is there and now he has come. And what humility for Jesus Christ...above us in every way as the eternal Son of God. It's hard for him. I mean, I guess it's hard for us to understand the humility of that because, you know, when we meet people and when we want to impress them with our credentials, if you were to meet somebody and they had any idea of self-awareness and modesty, they probably wouldn't start with boasting in how much greater they are than you, how different they are than you. That would be a turnoff. But not with Christ. Because to start with, the person of Christ starts with him being God. And there's no way for him to set that aside, to not talk about that. And we've seen that in the last 13 verses in the last few weeks we have been in John chapter one. We have seen that John makes it very clear from the beginning of this gospel that Jesus Christ, the pre eternal word equal with God, has come to the world, the light of the world, the life for the sinner. Life eternal that he is God and He alone can save. And yet we see his humility in verse 14...the word became flesh and dwelt among us. This is the first part of the excellency of Jesus Christ. It's in a category that we wouldn't associate with glory. It's the category of humility. J.I. Packer writes, "the Almighty came to earth as a helpless human baby, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as the truth of the incarnation." And think about just the opposites of something so amazing as is the Son of God coming to earth to be born of a woman, the word becoming flesh. Things like in Isaiah 6 we read Isaiah 6:3 that when the prophet sees the pre-incarnate Christ in his glory in the heavenlies, and all the angels are flying around him, crying out, Holy, holy, holy, the whole earth is full of his glory that can't be contained. And yet his glory that can fill the whole earth now is in the womb of Mary. Or at the end of Isaiah, Isaiah 66. The omnipotent and omnipresent and omniscient God says this about himself, "Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool". What, then is a house that you could build for me? And where is a place that I may rest? The answer...a Trough. You can't build a temple. Anything big enough to contain my glory. And yet I'll come in a manger. Do you see the juxtaposition of this glory of the Son of God coming in with the humility to our world? This is the excellency of Christ. And if you're giving consideration to Christianity this morning, maybe there could be a thing that doesn't add up for you. And it has nothing to do with Jesus, but it has everything to do with us as followers. Maybe some of the skepticism is derived in that you may have had an experience around Christians that left you saying, those people are anything but humble. You're right. We're nothing like our savior in that regard. We do not come close to his humility. How can any person in all history come close to that...God becoming man? The word becoming flesh. So you're right. Maybe there is a failure of Christians to exemplify the humility of Christ, but you can't put that on him. He is the perfect example of humility, and we see it there in verse 14. He became flesh and he did this. He dwelt among us. He didn't just do a high end by, you know, a quick appearance, you know, like famous people tend to do, important people tend to do...you get all pumped up to go to some autograph signing or see some celebrity or famous person and you get them for like five minutes. They sign a few things and they're out. That's not what Jesus came and did, is it? It says he dwelt among us, meaning he took up residence near us. That word for dwelt. It's a Greek noun meaning a tent, and John turns it into a verb. He says, he dwelt among us. He tented among us. He camped with us. For those of you Patagonia, people who love your camping. He came into that campsite as gross as it was and put up a tent right next to yours. I say that because I think of how gross camping can be...taking my kids each summer. This one, this past summer, Roan Mountain...we get there and in traditional North Carolina, unpredictable fashion. Within, I don't know, not moments, but definitely within a few hours of getting there, the thunderstorms come, the rain comes down and the floods go up, as the song says. And suddenly we're trying to dig trenches around our area so that the water doesn't come through the tent. And as gross as that is, not more than an hour later, even worse, two church vans pull up of a youth group and we have to sleep next to them. You know how bad camping can be. Pales in comparison to Christ coming to this world and dwelling among us. And it's not really, John thinking of camping as much as he uses this word, a tent, referring back to the tabernacle. That's where he wants your mind to go when you read this, that the tabernacling among us has the language of the Old Testament dripping from it, because this is what God did with his people, Israel. Go back to Exodus chapter 25 and you'll see the first mention of this. Israel has been freed from the oppression of Egypt, and they've been out a few months on their own in the wilderness. And God wants to give them a visual representation of that cloud that he led them with...fire by night, cloud by day. And maybe he could sense in them that they would get this idea that one day they would wake up and that would be gone. So what would be kind of the permanent fixture for them to know that he is with them. Well Exodus 25, if you're there now, tells you, and this is the language that John is borrowing from in our verse about him dwelling. This is what God has always done. Exodus 25:1, the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, tell the sons of Israel to raise a contribution for me. Take up an offering from every man whose heart moves him. You shall raise my contribution. And then in verses 3 to 7 he says all the things to give, because what I want you to do is build me something. Verse 8, let them construct a sanctuary for me. Why? He's the God who doesn't dwell in anything made by human hands. Well, it's for them. You do this for me, but it's really for you that I may dwell among them. That's why I want a tabernacle. That's why I want a tent. So that you would know that I am with you. Now, I'm not just going to come and go. I'm with you now. You are my people. And so he says, construct a tent, a sanctuary, a tabernacle, that I may dwell among them. And they do that. And then he gives them explicit commands for how to do this. And then if you go all the way to the end of Exodus, this is the dwelling of God with man in glorious form. Exodus 40, the end of the book, verse 34. Then the cloud, God's cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. So throughout all their journeys, when the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle, they would go out. But if the cloud was not taken up, they stayed. And that staying was God's proof that he has come to dwell with them. And this is the idea of what we see throughout the Old Testament God dwelling with his people, even when his people didn't want to dwell with him, even when they rejected him. And that's a sad picture, going all the way back to Genesis of what was lost when Adam and Eve sinned. At first they had perfect dwelling. Talk about a perfect place...Garden of Eden. All their needs met. But what made it the greatest place to be was that Adam could walk with God there. He could have perfect fellowship with God there.  But this was lost when Adam and Eve sinned, when they disobeyed and ate of the tree that they were not supposed to. And notice the sad picture of this fellowship being lost in verse 8 of Genesis 3, after they had sinned, but before they had been kicked out, they knew before God said anything to them that something was different in their fellowship with him. Listen to it in Genesis 3:8. They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, something that they would have been familiar with. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Sin does that. It distances us from God. And it's not just God being separate from the sinner. The sinner in his or her own conscience knows also there's something different. Nobody had to teach Adam and Eve that...that in that moment they knew they had to make their own way. That's why in verse 7, they knew that they were now naked and they were ashamed. They sewed fig leaves together to make a covering for themselves. And then they took cover from God rather than be drawn towards the presence of God. They hid themselves from him. That's what sin does. It pricks the conscience and poisons the heart to think God is no longer someone I should be near, but I should move away from. Rather than seek his presence, as is written in the Psalms. The nearness of God is my good. No, the nearness of God is not my good. This is the distance that has now been formed between God and His creation.  And the big story of the Bible...let's go back to John 1...is God providing a way back to fellowship with him. But it would not be like all the false religions out there that make it about you working your way back to God's presence. It's something you could never do on your own. It's God coming to the sinner. No other religion gives a hope that God would make a way for you back to him. Christianity is unique and it is God who comes to save us. And this is all the first reason that we have to be amazed by the excellency of Jesus Christ. It's in his humility coming in humanity to dwell among us. So there is his humility in part one of verse 14 that makes him so great. But look what it's married next to. Right after we see this out of this world display of humility for God to come to us, then we get out of this world with his glory. It's as if John puts the two most opposite things together...humility and glory. It's very hard for us as pride filled individuals and glory seeking individuals to see humility and glory in our own lives next to each other and make it work. Because what do we do the moment we taste some form of earthly glory?  We lose all what?...humility. They don't marry well together for us fallen people. But yet in verse 14, the excellency of Jesus Christ is those things are next to each other. They come together that because he came in humble human flesh and dwelt among us, then we could see his glory. And what kind of glory is it? It's glory as of the only begotten from the father, full of grace and truth. That's the most glorious thing about the person of Jesus Christ, is that he revealed to us out of his fullness these two qualities grace and truth. Jesus is the most glorious, gracious, and truthful person the world has ever known. It's not even close. And John says, we saw his glory. Well, what is the glory that John is speaking of? Well, John walked with him, and John talked with him...John the Apostle. He would have been with Jesus at his transfiguration. He would have seen but been taken back by that in just that moment, that the glory of God and Jesus Christ was showing around him, but couldn't stay near. No one can see that God. No one can see that glory and take it in. It was true in the Old Testament. It was true in the New Testament. If you go back to the Old Testament, back to Exodus again, there's only one person in the Old Testament that ever thought, hey, you know, it would be cool. I want to see the glory of God. I think God and I are on such good terms here. I'd like to see it. It was Moses. And it does say Moses was the most humble man that ever walked the earth. But he had this idea that, you know what I need to see? I need to see the glory of God. And so in Exodus 33, we read of Moses saying, I pray God, show me your glory. And this is God's response. I myself will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. So he says, okay, I'll do that. I'll make all my goodness pass before you. All my goodness is a summary way to talk about the glory of God. As in all the qualities of God that make him God, all of his goodness, every quality, every characteristic that you could think that makes God wonderful and worthy to be worshiped...comprises his glory. That word for glory in the Old Testament is a word for something weighty and worthy. And sowhen he says, I will make my goodness pass before you and proclaim my name, you will get to experience that. But look what he says in verse 20, you cannot see my face, for no man can see me and live. And in fact, there's a place by me, I'll put you there in that rock. And it will come about that when my glory is passing by I'll put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. That's the closest anybody can get...hidden in the cleft of a rock covered by anthropomorphic language, the hand of God. Until he passes by. And I will take my hand away. And you will see my back. But my face shall not be seen. But it wasn't just this glorious light so brilliant that Moses had to hide. It was the glorious truth that God wanted to reveal about himself. Listen to Exodus 34:5. The Lord descended in the cloud and stood there with Moses as he called upon the name of the Lord. And then the Lord passed by in front of him, and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loving kindness and truth. Now why did I take us all the way back there to get back to John 1? Because all of John 1:14 is full of this flashback, both in this idea in the Old Testament, that God would tabernacle amongst his people, and when his people wanted to see the glory of God revealed. It was not going to be revealed in the Incarnate Word. It was going to be revealed in the spoken word. God saying this about himself. What did he say about himself? Well, all these wonderful truths that make us want to praise him for who he is compassionate, gracious, slow to anger. And then these last two words in verse 6 of Exodus 34, he's abounding in loving kindness and truth. Now you say, well, how does that connect to our verse?...in Verse 14. Because the word lovingkindness, it's the best word in the Old Testament, because the lovingkindness of God, any time you see it brought up, is this gracious act of God to love the sinner, even when the sinner does not want to love him in return. Now, if you can come up with a better definition of the word grace, then go for it. Really, when you hear loving kindness in verse 6 of Exodus 34, you're hearing the word grace. And then he says, I abound in loving kindness or grace and truth. Go back to verse 14 of John 1. What kind of glory did we see when we beheld the glory of Jesus Christ? He was abounding or full of what? What two qualities?...grace and truth. What's John's whole thesis of this gospel. He wants to show you that Jesus Christ is God, so that you would believe and have life in his name. And so he connects you back to Exodus 34 at the high point of God revealing Himself and His glory to Moses. And you say, wait...those qualities revealed about God in Exodus 34:6 are the same exact qualities that make Jesus so glorious. So it throws aside some of the heresies of the early church that some extend to today that want to say, like Marcion did in the second century, that, oh, you know, the God of the Old Testament, he's this bad guy. But man, we love Jesus in the New Testament. So unhitch from your Old Testament, we can't learn anything about God there. Really?...sounds to me like that's the same God, the one who is overflowing and abounding in grace and truth to his people is the same one that John said, "We've seen his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the father..." Just like the father, the same loving kindness and truth. We know the father, we know it in the son. Then he goes on to say in verse 15, this is what John testified about, this fullness of grace and truth. John testified and said, this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me has a higher rank than I. For he has existed before me. John the Baptist's testimony the entirety of his existence, and I do mean the entirety of it. Life begins at conception. John the Baptist is in the womb of Elizabeth, his once barren mother, and in the womb...Luke 1:15 an angel says to Zacharias, your wife will have a child, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit while yet in his mother's womb. Why is that important? Because John the Baptist entire life was testifying to Jesus Christ as the Son of God, even in the womb, already full of the Spirit. How this stuff works itself out if you get caught on that detail, but you're okay with the incarnation, come on. Full of the Holy Spirit in his mother's womb, Mary, who now is carrying Jesus, goes to meet her cousin Elizabeth. Luke 1:41, and when Mary came into the house and greeted Elizabeth. Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting the baby, John the Baptist, leaped in her womb. Why did he leap? Well, we all know babies move around in there. I don't know this by experience, but I've been told. Why is it that John the Baptist is suddenly dancing a jig? Well, Elizabeth, full of the Holy Spirit, so we know we can trust what she's saying, says this verse 44, behold, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped in my womb for joy. It wasn't just kicking for the sake of kicking...Joy. John the Baptist, in the womb of his mother, was leaping for joy when Jesus comes in the room in the womb of his mother. I mean, all of this is, as Packer said before, something so miraculous and mysterious it blows our imagination. But it's true. And so back to John 1:15. He is saying every part of John's life he understood even before any person could understand something. He knew who Jesus Christ was. In fact, before he even saw Christ, he was testifying that what? I'm just the forerunner. I'm not the Christ. Look at down in verse 19 when they're asking him, who are you? And he says, I'm not the Christ. Then they said what do you say about yourself? Verse 23, he quotes Isaiah 40, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, "make straight the way of the Lord". Now he still hasn't met Christ...seen Christ. But then we read in verse 29, the next day he saw Jesus coming to him and said, look, behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. Every point in John's life he's giving testimony that Jesus Christ, who he is before he's even seen him do any work. He knows him that he is the Son of God. Further testimony to the excellency of both the humility and the glory of Jesus Christ. Somay I ask you this morning, just in the first part of this whole thing, as we're just exploring the humility and the glory of Jesus Christ in his person, are you amazed by him? There's no one like him, and we haven't even talked about any of his works yet. But just the testimony of the incarnation, the word becoming flesh and dwelling among us and revealing the glory of God to us, full of grace and truth. And that's just this person who he is.
But now John's going to tell us about his work. What work has he done that we are the glad recipients of?...Verse 16. What makes him so excellent in his work is the grace that we have received, and not just a small portion of it. How much grace we received. Verse 16...loads of it. Grace upon grace upon grace is what John is writing. I loved reading this in all different kind of translations this week, because it just reminded me of how wonderful the grace of God is to me in the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's not just a small thing, it's an unending thing. And the only way we get the unending supply of the grace upon grace of God is in his work for us, the sinner, at the cross. It's the greatest gift we could ever be given. That word grace means gift. And if we know the nature of a true gift, and we know the nature in the Bible of true grace. It's not something that you earn or deserve or somebody is obligated to give you. If somebody is going to truly give you a gift of grace...this wasn't that they were hoping to get something back from you. If it's with pure intentions, right? I mean, even think about this week. I know we would say, well, you know, the reason I'm giving people gifts this week is because it's Christmas. Is it though? I mean, by the calendar it is. But what really moves you and motivates you to rack up the credit card debt? It's your love for the person you're giving the gift to. It's because you truly love them. Now, you might feel obligated because okay, this is that certain time of year, but if it's really from the heart that you love this person you want to give this gift to. When Shannon opens up, you know, her gift in the driveway, the Tesla, you know, the new Cybertruck. It's the Hot Wheels version. She'll have to look hard to see it. But if you asked me. Oh, Adam, why did you get your wife the Cybertruck? I'd say it's my duty. It's Christmas. I have to. No, I'd say because I love her. Why did you get your kids those gifts? I love them. You know, and then they give me some great stuff back in return. And then I take it on the scales of Adam's justice. And I look at the price tags on it all. And if it comes out even that was a good Christmas. Is that what you do? Because it has to be all even stevens, doesn't it? No, that's not the way Grace works. And if it's what John is highlighting here about our receiving the grace, the fullness of the grace of God in Jesus Christ, there is no comparing it, is there? That's not how the gospel works. Romans 4:4, the one who works his wage is not credited as a favor, as what is due, but the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly. His faith is credited as righteousness. I hope you love that, believer, about the work of God for you in Jesus Christ this morning, that you owe him nothing. He gave you everything for your salvation. Now what you can do in return, out of gratitude for that great salvation is what? Love him. Live for him, serve him, worship him. But you're not earning anything in doing that. That grace that he's shown you. That grace upon grace or in some of the other translations out of his fullness we've received grace in place of grace already given that you say, oh, of course I want to...Whatever I can do for you, Lord, because I love you. Because you first did what? What does Romans 5 say? You demonstrated your love for me. You first loved me. And that's not a debt that you could ever pay God back for. You know that...you couldn't. You couldn't live the perfect life that would pay for you. He could though, and he did. And that's the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The excellency of his work is that when he came to die on the cross, his work on the cross was a sacrificial death in your place, his perfect love for you, his miraculous resurrection is the final proof that it went through. All of it's true, all the works of Christ that only he can do, that we could not. All are gifts we receive by faith, not by work. Sowhen you want to tell somebody about Jesus Christ and how great he is...you can't miss this point this morning that the greatest part of the work of Jesus Christ is what he did for you on the cross. His greatest work was not healing the sick, and it's not to give us perfect health. His greatest work was not helping the poor, and he didn't come to get you out of debt financially. His greatest work was not fighting the powerful elites so that you can stick it to the man. His greatest work was not inspiring people to achieve all their earthly dreams. We're just called to follow him. His greatest work was going to the cross, to die for sinners so that we could be forgiven of our sin. To know what makes Jesus Christ the Son of God, both in his person and in his work, so amazing is that he came to save. That in the gospel of Jesus Christ He provides total forgiveness of all sin for every sinner who believes the truth that Jesus Christ taught and receives the gift of his saving grace. Forgiveness that is so complete that it eternally removes all of your sin, all of your shame, all of your guilt, all of your punishment, and replaces it with the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. That then assures you that you will never be separated from the love of God forever. What else could he give that would top that? I mean, just add all that up in your heart right now. Sure, he was a healer and a helper and a fighter and an inspirer. He did those things, but they were all means to the one great end of why he came to be the Savior of the world. So you and I could be forgiven. That’s what allows you to worship him and exalt him and love him this Christmas more than anything else you could hope for. How do you know it's all true? Well, it's right there. It says of his fullness we have received grace upon grace, for the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. The truth of Christ. This is how we know it's true. Everything he said and did proved that it's true. I mean, who else could you depend on that would make it true? Verse 18, you would want to know the person that's been with God forever, who is the only person that's been with God forever? The Son of God, begotten of the Father, who is in the bosom of the Father. He has explained him. That's who you can trust. That's how you know it's true. Just like if you were to ask a grown adult about their parents and they were, you grew up with them. You were around them all the time. What's your dad like? What's your mom like? Well, I can tell you about mine from the beginning. And if somebody else came along and said something about them, I would say, you know, that's actually not that accurate. I was the closest to them. That's what John is saying here. If you want to depend on the truth, realize through Jesus Christ he only can explain the Father because he only has been with the Father forever. And he says he was in the bosom of the Father. This is just a picture of perfect love. There's no way that John can express a closer relationship. To show you that the only begotten Son, who fully and perfectly knew the Father now, can fully and perfectly make him known. That's the truth that you can depend on. Jesus message his whole life, the truth that he spoke. John 5:19, The Son could do nothing of himself unless he sees his Father doing it. Whatever the Father does, the things the Son also does, what is he saying there? Everything I do, I see the Father do. All my works, his works. John 7:16. My teaching is not mine, but his teaching who sent me. So not just everything I do, but everything I say. It's something that the Father said. That's how you can trust me. If that's not enough, if you just don't trust my works and my words. If you want to know about my will, where does it all come from? What drives me? John 5:30, I do nothing on my own. I do not seek my own will, but the will of him who sent me. Who else could explain God the Father to a dying world, but God the Son, who could say...all my works, all my words, right down to the will...all of it is from the Father. None of it...I'm coming up with myself. He has explained him. Knowing God and Jesus Christ is everything to us. It's so important. It's the first and last thing he prayed in John 17. If you want to look there. How important was it for us to know everything we can know about the Father? The first thing he prays as he opens his high priestly prayer in John 17. This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. Last thing he prays in Verse 25 and 26, O righteous Father, although the world is not known you yet, yet I have known you, and these have known you that you sent me, and I have made your name known to them. Why did he do it? What's behind it all? What's so great about the gift of knowing God and Jesus Christ? Here it is. It's his final words in this prayer. And I will make your name known so that the love with which you loved me may be in them. How good is that? That's why he came. So you can be forgiven to have eternal life. And what is eternal life?...to know God the Father. And what's so great about being known by God the Father? That you would know his love the same way his eternal Son knows it. Can anything compare with that? Can anything come close to that today? What could fill your heart with more hope, more joy and more love than to be loved by your creator and to know you can count on it, because he sent His Son to die on a cross to prove it to you. That's the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Are any of us worthy of a grace as amazing as eternal love and eternal joy? No, it's not something you earn. It's something that is given to you...grace upon grace upon grace. That's the beauty of this gospel message. Just when you think you can get to the end of the supply, it comes and hits you with another wave and another wave and another wave. And it overwhelms you. What's better than being overwhelmed by the love of God being poured out in your heart by the Holy Spirit?, Romans 5:5. I mean to know from the inside he knows everything about me. He's seen everything I've done, and he loves me still. It's the most precious truth any heart could have.
So I pray that the days remaining we have before Christmas celebrating our Savior in all of his excellence. You would see the excellence of his person and his work. And if you don't know him today. Honest question...What more do you need to know about him? What could be better to know about Jesus Christ than his love for you? I would say there isn't anything better than that. I know there's other things. There's grace upon grace. There's grace gifts he gives us in life beyond saving grace. There's things that we can look at with new eyes to see how good God has been to us. But it has to start with the most important thing that grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. He's revealed the Father to us. Trust him today. Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for your perfect Word. We thank you for its power to save. We thank you that you have the words of eternal life and can draw all men to yourself even right now. The person that is coming here feeling the farthest away from you, the most distant, like Adam and Eve, hiding from your presence. Now, in the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ, they would have eyes of faith to see for the first time you calling them to yourself to come to believe in him and be saved. Only you could do that work Spirit and we pray you do. Give life, give light, come to them Christ, we ask. Amen.

 

Pulpit Curriculum PDF

Pulpit Curriculum DOCX

View transcript

The Exclusivity of Jesus Christ

Download transcript

Please turn in your Bibles to John chapter 1. We'll be in verses 10 to 13 this morning, continuing our exaltation to Jesus Christ, as that is so fitting all the time, but particularly this time of year. And I'm thankful that just a service, whether in the song we could sing that just says, come, let us adore him, or a creed that we would recite together that, though, is unfamiliar, I'm sure to just maybe 1 or 2 of you. I know the rest of you memorize the Athanasian Creed. It's just always on your mind. But that. And then to open the Word of God to look to Christ is truly the best thing we could do with our time together. And it's really where we fill up our minds, where we set our minds on things above that we live out of the rest of the week. I was reminded of how hard that can be this week. Um, just when I went to take a walk through my neighborhood and I had been listening to a podcast of a preacher, and he was just talking about how with the, you know, advent of the internet and everything that comes with that, the information that comes at us so fast that we just get things in soundbites in small parts, and even our theology comes at us that way. That we just kind of, you know, take a little bit here and take a little bit there and just patchwork it together. But he said, you know, what it used to be is if you really wanted to know something, say about Christ, you would have to dig a little bit harder, a little bit deeper by going to a library or somewhere and getting a book and learning about that part of the character of Christ, his personal work in a larger context, whereas now we just kind of find it pretty quick and it's in our minds, and then it's gone. And so he used all this to talk about, hey, maybe this time of year it's good to meditate on Christ and just try to hold a thought together on something like his incarnation and that he is completely God and he is completely man. And I thought, I'm going to go walk through my neighborhood for a few minutes and do that. I can do that. And I couldn't do that. As in, I'm 30 seconds down the road and one of my new neighbors who I do want to get to know and, you know, invite the church and find out where he stands with the Lord. Uh, is out there looking at his new driveway and wants to tell me about his new driveway. When I, pious as I am, am trying to think on the glories of Christ and the incarnation, and now I'm talking about his driveway. So, okay, I move on from that and then round the corner to my next neighbor who was putting up his Christmas decorations. I think I'm going to cut through the woods where, you know, I can truly take in the glory of God and nature and not be interrupted. And sure enough, deer start flying across my path. They wouldn't even let me sustain a thought for five minutes on Christ and His person and work. I don't know where you need to go to get away to have time to do this. I just use it to say when it comes to our hearts being lifted up. I hope that this month, the theme of this month of trying to focus all our attention in the Gospel of John, verses 1 to 18 on the magnificence of Jesus Christ, his pre-incarnate glory. As we saw at the beginning of John in the first 3 verses, pre-existent before all creation, coexistent with God, and self-existent, not dependent on anyone outside of himself. And that those thoughts then, coupled with last week's in verses 6 to 9 of that, he didn't just stay far away, but he was the light that shone in the darkness, even though the darkness could not comprehend it. He sent a witness, John, and he testified about the light, the light to come into the world, to give it a knowledge of the truth of who Jesus is, that these thoughts, these glorious thoughts on Christ, wouldn't just be something that we feel like, okay, I'm good. I got it for the hour and a half I was here, and then we go off the rest of our way. No. The goal of this month. And why even we gave you the challenge to say, read through the Gospel of John while we're doing this, is so that these thoughts come back to you every day, and that they do bless you day and night as you meditate upon them, so that you would prosper and grow in all ways, and that God would want you to this month. I mean, that's the goal. I know reading a creed together... so outdated. Um, you know, so not relevant. Especially. Well, it is relevant. But that's just me being exaggerating. You know, when there's churches, I, a friend sends me a clip of a church that's doing, you know, of course, Christmas at the movies. And the pastor comes out of the stage. You know, I tried last week with Fred Rogers, so, you know, sue me. But this guy came out as John McClane from Die Hard and then preached a sermon on the spiritual lessons of Die Hard. And if you're like, okay, I know Die Hard and there are no spiritual lessons there, I'm with you. If you're like, what's Die Hard? Don't worry about it. It's a battery. You put it in your car, it charges, you run off of it. You know, we're reading something. Creeds that are thousands of years old. But what they're to do for us is to remind us that there is nothing, no one more important to get exactly right than the Lord Jesus Christ, because eternity hangs on what you believe about him. And not just believe about him, but he changes you and gives you new affections, and you follow him because you love him. You obey him because you love him. That's what's at stake with Christ. And so it is important for us, like we have done this month, to say, let's slow down, let's say a creed together. Let's be reminded of what happened when God became man. And so let's look to our text this morning, John 1:10 to 13. I will read the larger section all the way back to verse one. And that way we can see in its entirety what John is trying to teach us this morning, and then talk about the exclusivity of Jesus Christ, that he demands us to know him and come to him and receive him exactly the way that he is presented in the scriptures. Follow with me.  
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and apart from him nothing came into being that has come into being. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. There came a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify about the light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but he came to testify about the light. There was the true light, which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him. He came to his own, and those who his own did not receive him, but as many as received him. To them he gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." He who has ears to hear, Jesus said, listen up. Open our hearts and our ears and our eyes this morning we pray, Father, to see the wonderful truths about your Son this morning. Amen.  
Two years ago, Ligonier Ministries, founded by a trusted theologian, R.C. Sproul, now with the Lord, partnered with LifeWay and put out a survey that wanted to see what evangelicals believe, a state of our theology. And this was in 2022, and an evangelical was somebody on the front end who agreed to this, that we affirm that the Bible is inerrant and infallible. And also, we believe that Jesus' death on the cross is the way that sinners are forgiven. But when some of these questions were asked, they were surprising. Saddening, really, revealing that the exclusivity of Jesus Christ is the only way to God is not something that we can assume evangelicals believe anymore. When 56% of respondents agreed with the statement that God would accept worship from other religions Judaism, Islam. And if these surveys accurately represent evangelical views at large, then I am not assuming that even in our congregation this morning, those of us who would say, man, I'm at Hickory Bible Church because I affirm or I believe that the Bible is inerrant and infallible, and that Jesus death on the cross provides a way for sinners to heaven. There could still be some that say, you know what? I'm not sure we can be so dogmatic that ours is the only way you know, that God would accept worship from these other monotheistic religions. Well, that would be contradicting the claims of Jesus Christ, who says exclusively, no, I am the only way you come to God. You come through me or you don't come at all. That's an exclusive claim that may not fall on our Western ears when we are wired, if you will, to be told that exclusivity is the problem. We need inclusivity, you know. We don't want to leave anybody out. We don't want to offend anyone. But the problem is that Jesus Christ is not afraid of offending you. When he came, he wasn't afraid to offend his listeners, to tell his listeners radical things like this when it comes to the exclusivity of believing and following him, so much so that it would divide house and home. Listen to his words in Luke 12 verse 51. Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? And of course everyone's like, yeah, don't you know all the songs about peace on earth? Goodwill to men. Like we all just get along. He says, do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you no, but rather division. From now on, 5 members in one household will be divided. Three against two and two against three. Now, that happened yesterday in our house over the last piece of dessert. Much more important matters here. He's addressing the matters of following him. They will be divided father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother. Mother in law against daughter in law and daughter in law against mother in law. What is he saying there? That when I came, I divide humanity, I divide history. We know that just by looking at our calendars before Christ and A.D. Anno Domini in the year of our Lord. You know, I went to my arch nemesis, Google AI once again to see what Google had to say about, does all history pivot on Christ and Google AI even agreed that yes, before Christ BC stands for before Christ, AD for Anno Domini. But their explanation at the bottom of the page was about inclusivity, that some use BCE and CE rather than BC and AD, so as to be inclusive so that they won't offend people who don't consider Jesus to be Lord. Well, see, they softened it because it's not just about not considering that he's Lord, it's rejecting him outright. That's what divides all of history, in all of humanity into two camps. And it's not the camps of atheists and theists. Otherwise, that survey from LifeWay is fine, right? If it's just about atheists and theists, then we're okay with all the other monotheistic religions. As long as you believe in God, as long as you believe something, you're good. But Christ's own message is no, all of history and humanity divides on me, the Son of God, that everyone who exists is either in Christ or not in Christ. And the only way to be in Christ is to be born again, to receive me, to believe what I say about myself. The things we said and sang this morning. So that is how John brings us into advent. He doesn't bring us into it in the way that Matthew and Luke do that we read this morning at a manger scene where all is calm and all is bright. No, John's introduction into the person and work of Christ is where all is dark and all people are sinners. That's how the story of Jesus starts. And what we're going to see today in 10 to 13 is where all of his gospel, the story he's going to tell in 21 chapters, is really summarized here in these four verses, because these four verses divide out rather neatly ten and 11 into the rejecters and 12 and 13 into those who receive him. And why I say that's a summary of his gospel is because as soon as this prologue ends in verse 18, John 1:19 through the end of chapter 12, his three years of ministry really is a broader picture of this verse 10 and 11. He was in the world, but the world didn't know him. They didn't receive him. If you are reading in the reading, plan on your own about the life of Jesus in John right now, you should probably be around chapter somewhere between chapters 11 and 15 if you're trying to keep up this month. So you end on Christmas Eve taking in all of the Gospel of John. I hope you're doing it. I hope it's encouraging your faith. I hope it's drawing your eyes and those who are in your home with you to Christ. We were we were talking about it this week and we were in John 11 talking about Lazarus and him being resurrected. And we just go around and say after we read, what did you see? What's amazing about Jesus? And and one of our kids says, well, what's amazes me is on one hand Jesus can weep, and on the other hand, he can raise Lazarus from the dead. He gets the deity and humanity of Christ. That's why we do this. So our eyes and our kids eyes and friends eyes would be open to the glory of Christ. That's the purpose of it. So we would adore him for all of who he is. Well, the first 12 chapters of John, he is showing us in 10 and 11 that the majority of the people that were there when Jesus came into the world and came into his own, rejected him. The minority that receive him, we start seeing in John 13, in the upper room, he's down to his disciples, and they're with him all the way through the end to John chapter 21. So I wanted to just put that on the outset, because we'll be moving around through the Gospel of John today, because the parallels are so poignant when we take 10 and 11, as the Lord has come, but the world did not receive him. And that's the first 12 chapters of John. They did not receive him. They rejected him. But when you hit the pivot point, the hinge on which the Gospel of John turns is into chapter 13, the last few days of his life, where he's with his disciples. Those who received him believed in his name as verses 12 and 13 talk about.  
So let's first start with the joy to the world the Lord has come, and yet the world did not rejoice in his coming. Verse 10 he was in the world, and he's not in the world. And the way Pantheists say, God is in the world, he's in the trees and he's in the carpet and he's in my sweater. That's not what he's talking about. He was in the world. It means he came into the world as a man. God in human flesh. Romans 8:3, God sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. Or Philippians 2:7-8, he took the form of a bond servant made in the likeness of men, and was found in his appearance as a man, or Hebrews 2:14 therefore the children share in flesh and blood, children of man. And Jesus himself likewise also partook of the same. This was the consensus among the writers of the New Testament. Jesus, the Son of God, came into the world as a man. Why did he come into the world as a man? John says in John chapter 3 verse 17, God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Why did he come into the world? Jesus says about himself, I came to be the suffering servant. I didn't come to be served, but to serve and give my life as a ransom for many. Mark 10 says here in John 3:17 that the world might be saved through him. That's why he came. That the world would see their Savior, that the world would know their creator, that the creature would worship the creator. But verse 10 says, he was in the world, and the world was made through him. We already learned that back in John 1:3, everything came into being through him, and yet the world did not know him. And this is probably John speaking broadly to the Gentile world, the world of fallen humanity in the broadest terms. God comes into the world that he creates and the world doesn't...What's the word there in verse ten? Know him. That means they didn't recognize him. They didn't acknowledge him. Romans 1 talks about this, that the creature doesn't acknowledge its creator even though he's there and he's walking amongst them. The world didn't recognize him. And that's bad. The world's rejection of Christ. But what's worse is in the next verse, verse 11. Not just the world in general. The Gentile world. The fallen world of humanity. He came to his own. John goes further in. Now he gets specific. Who were Jesus's own? The nation of Israel, the lost sheep of Israel. The chosen people of God. If you know your Old Testament, you know the nation of Israel was God's chosen people throughout the Old Testament. He constantly is calling them his own, his possession, his people. Exodus 19. For instance, Moses is about to give the people the law. They've been delivered from oppression in Egypt. Exodus 19:3 Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the sons of Israel. Exodus 19:4 you yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagle’s wings, and brought you to myself. Now then, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be my own possession among all the peoples. For all the earth is mine. And you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. God wanted Israel to know that they were his possession. They were his people. And throughout the Old Testament we hear echoes of this. Psalm, chapter 50, verse 7, hear, O my people, and I will speak, O Israel, I will testify against you.

 

I am God, your God. It doesn't say that about any other peoples. My favorite latter prophets, minor Prophet Amos, chapter 3, verses 1 and 2, hear this word which the Lord has spoken against you sons of Israel, against the entire family which he brought up from the land of Egypt. Listen to what he says about them. You only have I chosen among all the families of the earth. So back to John 1:11. Jesus came to his own. The people that were looking for the Messiah, that should have known better. And what was their response to him? In summation, those who were his own did not receive him. Notice it's not the same word as in verse 10. The Gentile world just didn't recognize him, didn't acknowledge him, didn't know him. But it says Israel, they recognized, but they did not receive him. And that word received means it literally to grasp on to something being handed to you. The Messiah was being given to his people. And Acts says he was given over by them to be crucified. What a rejection. And so these two categories, whether it's for the Greco-Roman reading this in a world of many gods to learn that the true God, the true light, came into the world and the darkness didn't recognize it and receive it, and they would be convicted, or the Jew reads this and says, yes, he came to his own people. He had a particular reason to reach them. He was their long awaited Messiah, and they acknowledged they would have known him. But they said, no, you're not. We reject you. In fact, we want to crucify you for making yourself equal to God. So he has been rejected. And that is the first part of the book of John, those three years that he covers in the first 12 chapters. If you've been reading through it, you see that it's the majority of rejectors, not receivers. And what I want to do this morning was just take a few minutes here, kind of to get the most we can from this. When it comes to how does this change my life? What do I do with the information in verses 10 and 11? What can I learn from this that helps my own heart to diagnose where I stand with Christ today? Or if I stand in Christ today, how can I better reach the people around me? How can I understand what may be their condition that keeps them in the darkness? Now, generally speaking, what keeps people in the darkness is their unbelief. We can all agree to that. It's not believing in Jesus Christ. That's the goal of the Gospel of John, that you would believe that he is the Son of God and have life in his name. But there are examples, even just the first few chapters, of what people's particular reasons are or problems are that cause them to reject Christ. And so I just want to introduce you to some people as we walk through these chapters, we'll meet the first one in chapter 1 and just give you some categories for your thinking this morning of why people don't receive him, why they reject him. And the first category is this people reject Christ out of biblical ignorance. That would be maybe just step one to rejecting Christ. Biblical ignorance. People reject Jesus because they are ignorant of what the Word of God says about him. We meet a fellow like that in John chapter 1. We don't even have to go far. His name is Nathaniel. Jesus was starting to gather followers to himself. Verse 43 Philip was following him, and Philip wants to introduce his friend Nathaniel to Jesus and listen to what Philip says in his excitement. John 1:45 we have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets, wrote Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. So here Philip's excited, says to this guy, Nathaniel, hey, the Bible, the Word of God, the Old Testament is speaking clearly here. Moses and the law and the prophets. We found the Messiah. Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. And Nathaniel, if he knew his Bible, would have been like, what? That's amazing. What's his response in 46? Cynical. Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? There's a bit of biblical ignorance here, and it's revealed in what he says, particularly about Nazareth. He's showing that maybe in his mind, the Messiah had to be a somebody, not a nobody, because Nazareth was a nobody place. And if the King was going to come back to lead Israel out of their current oppression under Rome, and if he was going to be the one to bring in the kingdom of God, he couldn't be this lowly leader, this scorned Savior. Except if Nathaniel would have known Isaiah 53 to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Verse 2. For he grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of a parched ground. He had no stately form or majesty that we should look upon him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to him. He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and like one from whom men hide their face, he was despised, and we did not esteem him. So, Nathaniel, he just thinks, yeah, really? Some small town, some dot on the map our Messiah can't come from there. Is biblically ignorant of a premier passage in the Old Testament. The points that our Messiah wasn't going to be somebody that was going to cause headlines because of his prominence. Fortunately for Nathaniel, Jesus doesn't give up on him. Look at verse 47. Jesus saw Nathaniel coming to him and said to him, behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit. Nathaniel says to Jesus, how do you know me? And Jesus answered and said to him, Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you. Nathaniel answered back, Rabbi, teacher, you are the Son of God. You are the King of Israel. So happy ending to that story. All it took was Jesus ministering to this man who initially was cynical, doubtful, doesn't believe it because of biblical ignorance to a degree. Boom, pivots just like that. That's what understanding more of the Word of God can do for a person. Did the same thing for Nicodemus. Chapter 3. Look at verse 1. There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, who came to Jesus by night thinking, hey, Rabbi, teacher, we've got you pegged. We've seen the signs, we've heard about them. And you can't do those unless God is with you. Notice he doesn't say God is you. Jesus answered and said to him, truly I say to you, unless you're born again, you actually can't see the kingdom of God. Unless you're born again Nicodemus, teacher of the law. You have no idea what you're seeing. You're seeing signs. But you think because you have this partial knowledge of who the Messiah is and what the Kingdom of God is about, that you've got me pegged, but you're missing me entirely because you just think God is with me, just like he's been with everybody else. You're not saying that I am God. And in order to see this, you need to be born again. And this is where Jesus brings Nicodemus back to the Word of God to open his eyes. Look at verse 5. Truly I say to you, unless one is born of the water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the spirit is spirit. He's reciting Scripture. He's talking about Ezekiel 36. Nicodemus, like the rest of those Pharisees, thought it was the Mosaic law. It was the old covenant. It was you working your way to God, not God coming your way, not God coming to you, not God working in you, giving you a new heart. That's what Ezekiel 36 taught about the New Covenant. Listen to verse 25. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. For the moralist, the legalist, the Pharisee who thinks I just need to be more ethical, moral law keeping, a better person in order to make my way to God. Ezekiel 36 teaches the opposite. There is nothing you can do to impress a holy God. You need to be changed from within. You just don't need behavioral adjustment. Moral reform. You need to become a new creature entirely from the inside out. That's the new birth. But notice when he gives you his spirit. Ezekiel 36:27 I will put my spirit in you and cause you to walk in my statutes. There's the obedience God desires after he changes you from the Inside, not you trying to change yourself from the outside. So those who reject Christ out of biblical ignorance, whether Nathaniel or Nicodemus, who when you read on in the rest of the story of the gospel, he comes to be a man of faith. By the end of the story, he's there for Jesus to take him down off the cross. It's good news, in both cases for Nathaniel and Nicodemus that biblical ignorance can be overcome. Praise God for that. You don't have to stay in darkness by having the light of the Word of God in your life. In fact, many of your testimonies here this morning, I wouldn't be surprised if that's how you came to faith, because faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ, the Word of God. So I would say the I don't want to maybe say the vast majority, but a good amount of people in here would probably say if I was, hey, what's your testimony of becoming born again? Being a Christian? It was you sat under preaching or teaching or a study or a verse in the Bible, whatever it might be, like the testimony of Augustine, of just being told to take up the book and read and he opens to it, and he reads a passage of make no more provision for the flesh, don't walk by the flesh, but put on Jesus Christ. And that, boom, did it for him. It's probably done it for a lot of you in here. You understand? That's how God gives new life. So may I encourage some of you not to give up on that in your ministry to other people, in your evangelism, to other people. Just keep bringing the Word of God to them. It doesn't return void, friend. You just don't know when that return date is. But you bring them the Word of God because you trust it has the power to change them. And that's what we learn as we walk through the Gospel of John. Those who didn't reject him, those who received him like a Nathaniel or Nicodemus, it was through understanding more of the Word of God about Christ. First reason people reject him is when they're stuck in their biblical ignorance. Here's the second reason we find as we walk through this gospel, people reject Christ out of spiritual superficiality. I'd like you to meet the woman at the well. Moving from chapter 3, talking about Nicodemus to this Samaritan woman who meets Jesus at a well on a hot day, she would represent those who initially reject Christ because all they want to do is deal with their life at a skin deep level. They're spiritually superficial. They know some things. And when you read all of chapter 4, verse 7 to 29 about this woman's testimony, she knew enough about religion. Even in verse 9 when she meets Jesus, this Jew, to say, like, why would you even talk with me? Don't you know that there's a rift between us, our people? Down in verse 20 when she says, our fathers worshiped in this mountain. And you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men and women ought to worship. So she knows enough. She's spiritually superficial, and it's shown because when Jesus starts talking to her about eternal life, verse 13 and 14, everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water that I will give shall never thirst again, but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life. What's her shallow response? Okay, fill her up, sir, give me this water so I'll not be thirsty again. And I won't have to keep coming out to this. Well, you see, if you present the gospel in a shallow and superficial way, just about meeting your needs, the physical ones, it's all about you and your life being made better. Who's going to refuse that? I mean, it's all around us. Ran into a guy this week. You know who I've known for years, and he's into the word of faith. And name it and claim it. And I'm with my son and he we're talking and he turns and before he leaves, he says, hey, I want to ask you something. Okay. Go ahead. What are you believing on the Lord for right now? And you see my eyes rolling. So I am just like, what am I doing here? And my son just goes… heaven. And I was like, yes. Like, dude, you just got put in place by this kid. You think we were going to say like, yeah, like this 12 year old is going to go, yeah, I'm believing in the Lord for a new PlayStation or that I would, you know, be this great and famous. No, he just goes heaven. Amen. That's the point I've come to give eternal life. Guy didn't have a response. That's the superficial spirituality of somebody who just wants something to meet some immediate need. But they're not thinking about eternal life. And she wasn't thinking about eternal life. And what usually is the thing that keeps people at the surface level that they won't go deep is well, we learn it in John 3 verse 20. Everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. It's a person's reality being shaken that they're actually a sinner in practice, and not just in theory. And when that gets shattered, when that gets pierced through with the light, suddenly they see the Savior as not just, he can give me some of these things that I want, but actually he can meet my deepest need, I need saved. We see that in the life of the woman at the well when Jesus calls her out, he says, go tell your husband to come here. And the woman answers and says, I have no husband. And he says, you correctly have said, you have no husband. You've had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly. And she stopped because, okay, I perceive you're a prophet. I'm. I'm dealing with somebody different here, and it ends up leading her to go back and tell the city that she's from, that she has met the Christ. What breaks through the superficiality of a spiritual person is recognizing in themselves that they truly are separated from God because of their sin. That's my testimony. I mean, I knew the Bible, but it took a counselor at a summer camp saying, Adam, you know, you say you're this sinner who's trusted in the Lord Jesus, but can I, like, point out the sins in your life this week that you could give a rip about? And I was like, okay. And on that porch, he just told me. And it was the first time in my life where my eyes were open to see, oh, I'm not just a sinner in theory like the Bible tells me. I'm actually one in practice. And if that's my practice, 1 John would say, then you can't say you actually know God. And that's what the Lord used to save me, a superficial spiritualist. If I had to put a term on it, biblical ignorance wasn't my primary problem. It was not seeing myself rightly. But once you see yourself rightly as a sinner, then you know, okay, I need this savior. Francis Schaeffer was a Presbyterian pastor, evangelical theologian, cultural apologist. Maybe you heard of him. He lived in the 1900s, had the L'Abri fellowship over in Switzerland, you know, really suffering for the gospel over. No. I'm kidding. But he was brilliant. He was a C.S. Lewis type, and he was used by God in great ways to lead people to Christ who just had questions, especially in the turbulent times of the 60s and 70s as the world was changing around them. How relevant is Christ to the problems we face? And in a time where people were, you know, the culture is changing, morality is changing. You would have thought some people would have said, you know, the last thing you should tell people is that they're sinners. That'll push them away. But Schaeffer took the opposite approach. In one of his books he wrote. He wrote this about us understanding our true sinfulness. He wrote, A negative message is needed before anything positive can begin. There must first be the message of sin and judgment. There are times in ours are such times when we cannot expect a constructive revolution or a revival. If we begin by overemphasizing the positive message, people often say to me, what would you do if you met a modern man on a train and you had an hour to talk to him about the gospel? I would spend 45 minutes on the negative to show him his real dilemma, to show him that he is more dead than he even thinks he is. He is morally dead because he's separated from the God who exists. Then I would take 15 minutes to tell him the good news. Is that the way you think about evangelism, I mean, the culture wants to push on us to drop the sin thing, okay? Just speak to people's felt needs, you know, because otherwise they'll just immediately be offended. But if you really care about that person and they're living in a culture that the last thing is going to tell them is that they're the problem. You have to paint the picture dark, right, in order for the light to break through it. If you just paint the picture all bright and good and okay, then what's my problem? If God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life, is my intro into evangelism? Why do I need a Savior? If he already loves me and my life is just exactly the way he wants me to be, and I'm perfect the way I am, I don't need a Savior. But what Schaeffer went on to say is, I believe that much of our evangelistic work today is not clear, simply because we are too anxious to get the answer with having a man realize the real cause of his sickness, which is true moral guilt. So back to the second point. What you find with some people in the Gospel of John spiritual superficiality. The rich young ruler in the synoptic accounts who thinks he's pretty good at the surface, but he doesn't really see his sin is deep within. He loves his stuff, idols of the heart more than he loves his Savior. That's the second category. Good news about this woman. She changed. Third one, though, is the saddest of them all. People reject Christ. This is the last category and this is the broadly speaking. You know, the one that Jesus encountered the most, the religious narcissist. People reject Christ out of religious narcissism. Unsaved religious people seek their own glory instead of God's. They're self-deceived because they're self-loving. We read about this in John chapter 5. As you see, I'm just walking through this gospel, one chapter at a time, showing to you the type of people that back in verse 10 and 11, he came into the world and his own did not receive him, but rejected him. Here's another group of rejectors. Verse 18. The Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the Sabbath, but calling God His father, making himself equal with God. They're not listening to his words, even though he's saying the Father is the one showing me all these things, doing all these things. I'm just here on his behalf. He says the witness of John. Look at John 5:33. John was sent. He testified to this. You're not believing him. The witness of my works, verse 36, the works that the Father has given me to do, the very works I do testify about me. But you won't believe that. The witness of the Father who sent me, he testified of me. But you don't hear his voice at any time, because you don't have his word in you, because you don't believe him who he said. He keeps saying, you keep rejecting me. You think you have all the answers. Verse 39, you search the scriptures. You think that in them you have eternal life. And it's these scriptures that you religious Jews are the experts of that you don't see. All signs point to me. What's the heart of their problem? Verse 42, you do not have the love of God in yourselves. Verse 44. How can you believe? How can you have faith when you receive glory from one another? And you don't seek the glory that is from the one and only God? What he's saying here is the problem with these Jews is they weren't biblically ignorant and they weren't superficial. They were deep, but they were just turned in on themselves. They loved themselves. They loved the glory, the slapping each other on the back. Hey, you're the most holy man I know. No, no, no, no. You're the most holy man on earth. We're all the most holy men we know. And some people are in Christianity. Maybe don't talk that same way, but they're still in it for the same reasons that the Pharisees were. They're in it because of what it gives them. Some people are in Christianity because of the attention it gives them, The friendships it gives them. The influence it gives them. The authority it gives them. The sense that they're better than everyone else. They're in it for every reason other than the main one. They're not in it for the glory that goes to God and God alone when you love him with your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the sad part is, unlike those other categories, these people in chapter 5 did not turn. In fact, that's where this gospel turns from rejecters to receivers, because at the end of chapter 12 he says this about them. Many of the rulers John 12:42, they were saying they believed in him, but because of the Pharisees, they wouldn't confess him for fear of man, that they would be put out of the synagogue. Why? For they loved the approval of men rather than the approval of God. That'll keep a person from coming to Christ all the way. People that he would even say, yeah, I kind of agree with some of that Christianity stuff. It sounds pretty good, but they won't come all the way because they love the approval of man and what it would cost them to want to live for the approval of God more than the approval of man. You can't live for both at the same time. The gospel is an either /or. It's not a compromise. Matthew 6:33. You can seek first the kingdom of God, or you can seek first your own kingdom. Matthew 7:14. You can enter heaven by the narrow gate, or you can enter hell by the wide gate. Matthew 7:21. You can do the will of God the Father, or you can do your own will. Matthew 7:24. You can build your life on Christ's words and wisdom, or on your own words and wisdom. Mark 10:29 you can leave it all behind here for eternal life in heaven, or you can have it all here and lose heaven. Those are the parameters that Jesus paints. It's the approval of man. It's what you want for yourself. It's your own self-love and your inability to turn outward and say, no, I want to live for the Lord, I love him, I love his glory, not my own, not to me, not to me, but to your name be the glory. The religious narcissist can never get out of their own way, because everything they do, ultimately is to turn back, to give themselves glory. That's where we end in John 1:11. He came to his own, and his own did not receive him.
Now here's the good news this morning, verses 12 and 13, just like in John 12:50, then turns the hinge to John 13 and now he's with his disciples, and they're with him until the end, and he loves them until the end. They have received him. That's the story in the second half of John, the last few days of his life. And it's also the story in summary. Look at verse 12, no longer rejectors. These are the receivers. As many as received him. That same word that we talked about in verse 11, to be offered something and not grasp it to the ones who are offered Christ, and they hold on to him. To them he gave the right to become children of God. They took hold of the eternal life that was right in front of them. Did they have their doubts? They did. But John 21, they were with him to the end. They didn't turn back like in John 6 when many of the disciples turned back and Jesus turns to them and says, are you going to go with the rest of them? And what does Peter say in response? Where else would we go? You have the words of eternal life. Those are the ones who received him and them, he gave the right to become children of God, and then said in a different way to those who believe in his name, to receive him, to take hold of Christ, and to believe in his name, or talking about the same thing. Even though they're different phrases, both are biblical ways to talk about saving faith, trusting in Christ, and that trust is built on all of which we've already talked about. We've talked about you can't remain biblically ignorant and receive Christ. You have to know the true content of the faith and not just say it's true, but have a conviction that you would live for it, die for it, even because you love him, because he first loved you. That's what verse 12 is saying in summary. To become a child of God, then, is to realize that you first been loved by the Father, loved by the Son, born by the Spirit, because it's he who gives life. That's what John 3 taught us, wasn't it? That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the spirit is spirit. It's not something you can do to yourself. Verse 13 drives that point home. Just if you read verse 12 without 13, you might think, oh, it's all about me receiving Jesus. It's all about me believing in his name. I can do it. Verse 13 says, not so fast. How are you born again? Look at verse 13, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man. Three negatives to one positive. Here's how you're born again. You're born again of God. Salvation is all of God. Every category that you could try to think of. To say no. But it's I did something says it's not of blood. Meaning like the Jews who thought just because they were children of Abraham, they were in the family. That's how they got in. Modern day. My parents are Christians. My grandparents were Christians. My great grandparents were Christians. I'm a Christian. I was born into a Christian home. I've done Christian things my whole life. I'm a Christian. I've never not believed. It could be true. Could be true. God is the one who gives life. But if the only way you know how to describe your faith is to say, I was born into a Christian home, and I've always been going to church, and, you know, I'm a Christian. He says, well, you're not born of it's not born of blood. You know, some guy came up to me afterwards, first service and said, oh, the Billy Graham quote, you know, God has no grandchildren. You know, you don't get in just by family lineage. You have to be born again, no matter if every single person in your family history around you and you got better odds than anybody else, you still don't come in just because of the family you're born into. Okay? Pastor's kids, missionary kids, whatever kids here, you come by yourself. You got a great cloud of witnesses around you cheering ya. You put your faith in Christ, come to Christ, live for Christ, love Christ. But you've got to put your faith in him. It comes down to what you say about him, not what everybody else tells you about him, what you believe about Christ. That's how you're born again. Okay, maybe you don't think it's about the family you're from, but you think about. It's the things you do. I read my Bible, I go to church, I do all these external things. Well, he says right there, you're not born again by the will of the flesh, something external. So all the all the list of things you might list out and say, that's how I'm in the family of God. That's how I'm a Christian. John says. Nope, you don't will yourself in externally and you go, okay, right. It's internal. I gotta have that burning desire. Well, he says, you're not born of the will of man, as in man doesn't will himself into it. So it's not the blood and it's not the flesh. It's not external. It's not. What is it? You're born again of God. And you say that leaves me desperate. No chance on my own to come to Christ. Oh, yeah. Yeah. See, the moment you start seeing, I have no chance on my own. Now you're getting very close. Because you're completely helpless and hopeless about apart from what? Crying out to God save me, the sinner. Because everything else, the bad things that I can see myself doing and even the good things that I would think would make God want to save me. None of it counts. I'm desperate. Yes you are. What do I do next? Cry out to him. Lord, save me, the sinner. The world doesn't get that's how it works. They think it's got to be something else going around. I was reminded of that. I just was reading an article in the Guardian on how Notre Dame that burnt down in 2019 rebuilt. You've seen some of the pictures on the internet. It's beautiful. Listen to this writer's response to walking into this beautiful new cathedral. He writes. When the powerful and melodious organ starts up its 8000 pipes, carefully cleaned of the lead dust that came from the burning roof, the forms of their repeating vertical cylinders fortuitously echoing those of the bunched colonettes of the stone pillars. The whole building sonically and visually resonates the human voices of a choir joining this big sound machine from near the other extremity of the 128 meter long structure, make the cathedral into a musical instrument from end to end. I'm not religious, and I found 1 or 2 aspects of the mass I attended on Monday a touch creepy and the magnificence of the multi-sensory experience won't convert me, but it's impossible not to be moved. So this writer comes in there just seeing the beauty, maybe understanding in part why great cathedrals alike like this were built throughout the ages to exalt the glory of God, to make you look up. But when he wrote at the end, you know that magnificent multi-sensory experience won't convert me. Well, you're right, nothing will convert you outside of the grace of God in Christ. Nothing outside of being poor in spirit, broken in spirit will bring you into the kingdom of God. It's the only way you come. The only way that John says we are born again is by the work of God. And that is a miraculous work. Friends, we won't fully comprehend the teaching here about our inability to save ourselves, but we can't deny what John is saying. That this salvation is all of God. And yet he could still he could say this at the beginning and end in John 20:31 saying, I wrote you all this so that you would believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and that you would put your life in his hands, that you would trust him for eternal life. Changed from the inside, new affections, new loves for the Lord Jesus Christ above everything else. I pray that if you're not in Christ today, that you would see that there's only two categories for where you stand before him today. Now, you may be curious. You may want to know more. And that's what we're here for. You may have more questions to ask because you're going, I am biblically ignorant, I don't know, or I have been spiritually superficial. I've just been in church my whole life and never thought this deeply on my salvation. Well then, keep pressing in. If that light is piercing the darkness of whatever has been the fog in front of you for so long. But if right now there's nothing holding you back, you don't need any more answers to questions. You know you're a sinner. You know you need a Savior. Then call upon the Lord Jesus Christ now and be saved.
Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your grace to us in Christ this morning. Thank you for your kindness to us in him. Thank you for the amazing gospel according to John that just exalts you Christ, right from the beginning in your in your magnificence. Is God fully God, truly God, completely God, and then brings you down to earth man, truly man, completely man like us in every way except for sin, so that we can see that there has been a way made between God and man, one mediator between God and man, you, the Lord Jesus Christ. Give new life today. I pray and encourage the hearts of any here today who have been far from you. They know you are the way, the truth, and the life, but they haven't been looking to you. Renew their affections for you this morning we pray. Amen.

 

Pulpit Curriculum PDF

Pulpit Curriculum DOCX

View transcript

The Enlightenment from Jesus Christ

Download transcript

Please turn in your Bibles to John chapter 1. We will pick up where we left off last week in verse 5. Look at verses 5 to 9 this week as we continue our advent series post tenebras lux. The Latin phrase meaning after darkness, light, which was the rallying cry of the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. And in the time that was coined, it was due to the darkness that was pervading in the church through heresy, false teaching, and through debauchery...false living. And it needed exposed to the light of the glory of Jesus Christ then, as it does now, and in every generation of the church, for Christ to have that purified church, that pure bride that is spoken of in Ephesians chapter 5, that is purified and kept holy by the washing of the water of the Word of God. And so this month we are thinking of that theme of after darkness light, because of where we are in the Gospel of John when it comes to purifying our hearts and renewing us in our holiness and our Christ likeness. There is no better place to do that than looking at the person and work of Jesus Christ Himself. And as I said last week, we have done an advent series in some of the other gospel accounts, and this year we're in the Gospel of John. We started last week, and just looking at his pre-existence and coexistence with God and His self-existence that he always has been, and all things were created from him and through him and to him, which puts him in an exclusive category of being the great I am God, very God. As we already said this morning, God, truly God, and we are thankful for creeds that were worked out over the course of time amidst many false teachings for us to hold on to. We are also thankful for poets who take those wonderful ideas and turn them into songs that we can sing. And so even this morning, what a wonderful pairing together of saying the Chalcedonian Creed and then singing a beautiful song like Behold Him and hope we can have both of those things in our hearts and minds together, something so exalted and lifted up that we have to think hard while we say it together, and then something so natural and beautiful to express in our songs. And, we just pray that I preach 'inconfusedly' this morning is the thought on my mind. So you can pray that for me every week that Adam's preaching would be 'inconfusedly'. But back to our text in this advent season, thinking of the light that pierces through the darkness in John 1. That's where it all began. The great I am, the one who was in the beginning with God and always has been, is where it starts. And then this week, we're going to look at the light that has come into the world to enlighten every man. And after that, we'll look at the life that only Christ can bring. That eternal life is available only through him, not by the blood or the will of the flesh, or the will of man. Nothing in us, but it's all of God. And then finally, we'll see at the end of this chapter how he is the only way to God that grace and truth came through him. And so as even you try to hold this, I called it last week the entryway or the foyer into this wonderful Gospel of John. And hopefully you're also reading through it at the same time, because a lot of the themes and truths we get into today, if you've been reading in John already through the first 6 or 7 chapters, you'll have heard them already. They'll be familiar to you, and I think will only encourage and enrich what you're learning each Sunday. If you're new this week, we just gave the challenge for the month of December leading up to Christmas Day to read a chapter of John each day, so if you're behind, that's okay. You can do your best to catch up. But for the rest of us who maybe have been doing this, we see that these themes of the Word and light and life reoccur. John wants these images to be in the reader's mind. And as I was reflecting on them this week, my mind actually went to John 14:6, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. That's what John's gospel is trying to do. It's trying to point you to the Father, John 20:31, that you would believe that he's the Son of God and by believing in him, have life in his name. And as I was thinking on John 14:6, when Jesus makes a statement, I am. Just that statement in itself speaks of his godness, which is what we saw last week, did we not? If you want to summarize, what did we learn in verses 1 to 4 that Jesus is the great I am. Now I know in John 14:6 next he says, I am the truth. Well, or I am the way, the truth, and the life. We'll get to the way next, or at the end. We'll get to the truth today, and then we'll get to the life next week. So even as you want to try to hang your thoughts together on this wonderful introduction in the Gospel of John, these first 18 verses, maybe just in the margin or in your notes, jot down John 14:6 and those four things we see in that one simple verse, the great I am who says he's the way, the truth, and the life is actually right here in John 1:1-18. So today we're going to go into 5-9. I'll actually read one through nine just to catch us up to speed, but that we will see that he is that great morning star, the dawn of the light that came into a dark world that, apart from him, would not be able to find its way to God. That men stumble in the darkness looking for the light. And then, as we see in today's text, he is the light that is shined in the darkness. So, follow with me in John, as I read.
"In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and apart from him nothing came into being that has come into being. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. There came a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify about the light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but he came to testify about the light. There was the true light, which, coming into the world, enlightens every man."
Father, your word is a lamp unto our feet and a light into our path. And so enlighten the pathways of our hearts this morning to see the glory of Jesus Christ in this text, we pray. Amen.
Imagine driving through Hickory with no idea where you're going because of poorly labeled street names. Hard to imagine being confused by the very practical, methodical laying out of eight different 10th streets just in the northwest section alone. Okay, I'll try harder. So imagine your first time coming to Hickory and it's the dead of night...no street lights. The lights on your car aren't working, so you're driving in the dark. And then there are no names on any of the street names. And there's no names on any signage. There are signs, but there's no words. And you're trying to get to a destination. And on top of all that, there's no life. As in nobody is out. No doors to knock on. Nobody walking down the street. What are the chances of you getting to your destination? Remember, no light to guide the way. No words to give you any clue of where you are. Every building unique and yet without knowing what it is...don't know where to go. And then lastly, no life around that you could say, hey, can you tell me where you know the old whatever that building is was, as most Hickory people do. No words to read, no lights to see, no life to help would leave you...one word...hopeless, hopeless.  That's not far from the situation that John is describing in the prologue of his gospel. Apart from Jesus Christ, no revelation from God without his eternal word, Verses 1 to 4. Apart from Jesus Christ no illumination from God without his eternal light. And apart from Jesus Christ no regeneration from God without eternal life. All three of those ideas, titles, descriptions of the Lord Jesus Christ meanssomething when you put them against the backdrop of darkness. And not just darkness, but no signs, no reference points, and nobody to tell you the way to go. They could say, hey, you might not know the truth, but I can tell you about it. That's what John has set up here in the opening of this gospel. A world in darkness...no words, no lights, no life. And yet, when we get to the name Jesus Christ in verse 17, you see that he is the word made flesh who dwelt among us, and he gave life to all. And he is the light that has come into the world. And so word and light and life are all these prominent themes in the beginning of this. But they're not throwaway words. John is using them creatively to make you think just how vital the Lord Jesus Christ is to everything in existence. Because without him we have nothing and know nothing, and we have no way to find our way to God. Stumbling around trying to come up with our own ideas of him. One writer, Peter Leithart, captures the thoughts that would have been unimaginable to a Greek, you know, to this idea that the gods would want to stoop down to the men to become man, and even to the Jew that the great God of Israel would condescend and come down. He writes this, "The advent of the eternal Son broke sacred order. The sky God came to earth not as an elusive theophany, but in an everlasting union. A God from beyond the world entered the world, so that the beyond is also in. He who cannot be seen showed himself in the world, with appearances visible, tangible, audible, though he only can be truly seen by those who respond to a call to faith. Jesus sweeps away the graded ladder of being that connected earth to sky, humans to gods, leaving an infinite abyss between creator and creature that was bridged when the creator took up residence in creation as a creature" That is the glory of the incarnation, that is both the majesty and mystery and the mercy of the incarnation. It's majestic, isn't it? As the writer said that this sky God, as he calls him, this eternal sun, breaks from the world he lives in to come into the one he created. That's majestic. And it's mysterious at the same time...how it actually all works, you know? The best theologians in history have to use really big words that we sit here today and say that we just need an entire hour to kind of think upon. There's a mystery to it. And yet, if we have all that and yet can't see the mercy in it, despite what we don't understand about it, we can't understand that what an act of mercy for God to come. And we hold all those together in awe as we celebrate this advent season is right where God wants our hearts, that you would be in awe of the mercy and majesty of the God who came...Jesus Christ, the Son of God in flesh. So today we're going to talk about not his existence anymore. We covered that last week. We're going to talk about the enlightenment that he brought. As we saw in verse nine, he is the true light to come into the world to enlighten every man. And so we're going to just talk about this idea of enlightenment, this idea of having understanding, of coming to know the truth that you could not come at on your own apart from him.
So let's start in verse 5 with first the principle of enlightenment that is the overarching truth of this section 5 to 9. That you have to catch what's in verse 5. And it's not complicated or confusing. It's not meant to be. John in verse 5 just says something very self-evident in nature. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not comprehend it or overcome it or master it. And you get that when you look out into the night sky. Though, as vast as the universe is, and as dark as it is, all it takes is one star, however many light years away, to what?...pierce through that darkness. And once it is pierced through, invisible to you there visible, not invisible. There's nothing the darkness can do about it. That's the way light works. The darkness flees. The absence of light has now the presence of light and darkness can't do anything about it. That's just the simple principle going back to Genesis one, that maybe John, at its most basic level, there almost seems to be a planned ambiguity to verse 5. But for sure, because he started in John 1:1 with in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God all that. Well, Genesis started the same way in verse one. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And we saw last week, John, makes the connection here. The eternal word, the Son of God...Jesus, before he comes in bodily form, was there with God at the beginning in perfect harmony, perfect love, perfect joy. But listen to how Genesis 1:2-4 moves into where we start today, when it says, the light is there with the darkness. Genesis 1:2,the earth was formless and void. Another way to say there is absolutely nothing. And the darkness was over the surface of the deep and well, what else is there? And the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the water. Then God said, let there be light, and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. So of course, I think any reader, especially a Jewish reader to this gospel, would think first and foremost back to this account. And perhaps what John is trying to do is establish the connection between goodness and light. Not to say that we should immediately jump to the conclusion that the idea of darkness in the Bible is immediately evil, because sometimes it's just neutral, as in everything is created by him. And to God it's not to say that good and evil are the same, or truth and error are the same, but just this simple concept of light and darkness. Listen to Psalm 139:11-12. If I say, surely the darkness will overwhelm me and the light around me will be night. Even the darkness is not dark to you and the night is bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to you. Well, that just highlights, what?, about God's nature and character. He's omniscient. It doesn't matter if something's in darkness or light, physically speaking, because nothing is hidden from him. He knows all, sees all. So in the darkness, we, you know, yet in our humanity think well, criminals in particular. If I just do something in the dark, I get away with it. And we all know that's not true. God sees everything. He sees right through into our heart of hearts. He knows what's the darkness down there, too. So there's nothing hidden from him because he's God. Isaiah 45:5-7, I am the Lord, and there is no other. Besides me there is no God. I will gird you, though you have not known me. That men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun, that there is no one besides me. I am the Lord, and there is no other. The one forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity. I am the Lord who does all these. So in the Old Testament this imagery of light and darkness moves from just...God is the one who creates it all to even there in verse 7, if you heard in Isaiah 45 the one forming light and creating darkness, and then a poetic fashion in the next line, causing well-being and creating calamity. There you see a glimpse of the connection between light being something that is good, causing well-being, and darkness being something that is calamity. So back to our text when John is opening this next section to talk about Jesus as the light that comes into the world, I wouldn't put it past them that he's trying for us to move from just neutral categories of physical light and darkness and understanding the simple law that light penetrates through the darkness and the darkness can't do anything about it. To nowwhat it says in the next verse. The darkness does not or not the next verse, but the idea that the darkness doesn't comprehend it. Or your version might say master it or overcome it, that there is something more now. He wants to move from just this physical example to a spiritual lesson. Well, what is that relationship? Well, we know from the Gospel of John multiple times when he talks about light and darkness, it actually has a moral dimension to it. Listen to John 3:19. Jesus says, this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. That's John 3:19 and 20, and then 21. But he who practices the truth comes to the light. Do you hear the connection now?...that in the Gospel of John he writes this prologue just bringing back these two ideas of light and darkness, but he's building them on the teaching of Christ that he knew from the years he walked with Christ. And that when wethink of light as the hearers of this gospel, we think light is associated with truth and goodness, because that's what God is like, 1 John 1:5, God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. And at the same time, we're to associate darkness, at least in John's gospel, with the opposite of truth, error lies, and the opposite of goodness...evil. And this is the world into which Jesus came. And here's what he comes into this world doing. The darkness does not comprehend it, or the darkness does not overwhelm it or master it. That Jesus is this light that comes into the world, and the darkness cannot stop the good that he is going to do. And then throughout his gospel, he speaks of himself, as is the light that comes into the world on a mission. John 8:12, then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, I am the light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. All those ideas connected there in that one verse, John 8:12. Or John 9:5, while I am in the world, I am the light of the world. Or lastly, John 12:46, I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me will not remain in darkness. So back to our text. When we talk about the principle of enlightenment. Um, the main takeaway that we just understand on a basic level is that the light wins over the darkness. We know that on a natural level...a physical level. But we also can see in the rest of the gospel that that's true on the spiritual level. That Jesus Christ is the light that comes into the world, and whoever believes in him comes out of the darkness and into the light. And so that's a simple concept in verse 5 that John wants you as you come to know who Jesus is and what he came to do. He came to bring the truth. And that truth was just not facts, true or false, but it was goodness versus evil that he was coming to bring the righteousness that has been lost in a dark and decaying world back to humanity through his life. Now, all that is kind of out there in the ether. But what does it have for us today? What encouragement can you draw from verse 5? Well, if you just listen to everything Jesus said about himself being the light, and then he says, you who believe in me, you can walk in the light. You can practice the truth. I think you can draw a lot of encouragement from verse 5, just in this concept of learning that the darkness does not comprehend or overcome the light. How does that hit you today sitting in the pew? well, if you're a person of the truth, if you're a child of light and you're wondering this Christmas season, this advent season, you know, how am I going to make inroads into some of the people in my life, some of the coworkers, some of the relatives that will be over, some of the neighbors that they're unbelievers. And I just feel like I'm always fighting a losing battle. I think when you actually let verse 5 minister to your soul today and meditate on the truth, you're entirely wrong. You're not fighting a losing battle. That's what verse 5 teaches us. The darkness does not overcome the light. The light overcomes the darkness. Truth overcomes error. Error does not overcome truth, according to John. Now think about that on a practical level. I mean, the people that we interact with on a day to day level that might discourage us or frustrate us because they don't walk in the truth. They don't know the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. They may seem like there's more of them and less of us. And so we're fighting a losing battle. Just like you look out into the sky. And if you only see one star in the whole darkness of the night sky, you might think the stars, the light is losing. But with all that darkness out there, it can't do what? It can't cover up that single light. So maybe we don't have strength in numbers, but we do have it in the victory of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That the interactions you have you may not think they're going anywhere, but when you share the gospel with an unbeliever, when you take a stand for truth, you're actually winning, even though you may not see the immediate result. On the other hand, the error that that person is trying to, in a sense, maybe instruct you with, according to this verse, will not overcome the truth. If that person doesn't know the Lord Jesus Christ and they're trying to come up with arguments against what you believe. Know that they're arguing from error and take heart that that can never overcome the truth that you have. I mean, that's just foundational to understanding the difference between darkness and light, lies and truth, evil and goodness. In the end, the light wins. That's good news today, not just for this text, but for where you sit right now if you're in Jesus Christ. You won't end up on the losing side. We know ultimately at the end, Christ returns and he brings about truth and righteousness to reign forever. But you are actually a beneficiary of that right now. That word for comprehend...I think of that in the category of truth versus error. So it gives me courage to be strong in the Word of God, because that's where the victory is found. It's not found in my own ideas or your own ideas. Think about 1 John 2:14, especially for those of you who are young in the faith. The secret to your success of standing in the light and walking in the light and practicing the light against the darkness of the day around you, young person in Christ. And I don't mean physical age because when John is using these phrases, in his epistle 1 John 2:12-14, he talks about little children and fathers and young men. He's not talking about age of a person's physical life. He's talking about their maturity in the Lord. And so he could say to little children, you the one thing you do know, if you're a new Christian in here, your sins are forgiven because of the name and work of Jesus Christ. But what he says to young men, those who are maybe adolescents in the faith is this. I have written to you, young men, because you are strong and the Word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one. The one who is the evil one over the darkness, you overcome him.  However old you are in Christ, if you feel like you're an adolescent, you're not. You've moved on past the simple things. I know Jesus forgave my sins, but I may not be considered a father in the faith who knows him, who is from the beginning. If you're somewhere in your adolescence, spiritually speaking, you're standing firm against the evil one, and the darkness that's around you is directly correlated to how strong you are in the Word of God. And if it abides in you. Sowhen we say, hey, why not read the Gospel of John this month? Why not double down on the time you spend in the Word of God this month? We're not just saying that because we're supposed to. It will have an effect in your life. Whatever trials and temptations the evil one might want to send your way this month, do you know that your victory over them will be in correspondence to your time in the Word of God. because that's a promise right here in 1 John 2:14. You are strong and the Word of God abides. We love that word around here remains in you. It stays close to you, and you stay close to it. And the closer you stay to the Word of God, allowing it to work in your life. James 1...looking into it. It reflecting back to you a true picture of who you are. And as James 1 warns, don't just put it down and be like a person who gets himself ready in the mirror and then walks away in like three seconds is like, dude, I need to check my hair...every junior high boy ever. I just got a thumbs up from one. Thank you. I was that way. I forget what I look like. That's what James says is the person who reads the Word of God, and then just kind of lays it aside and doesn't apply it and just goes on their way. But if you're strong in the Word of God and it stays with you, it stays close to you. That's how you fight from victory. That's a message in the Epistle of John. But back to the Gospel of John. It's the whole principle of this first point of enlightenment. Darkness doesn't win over light. If you know the truth this advent season, I mean really know it and believe it and are taking it to heart. You are the most important person to the people around you because you have the truth that can save them, that can transform them. And that light, even though you're just one voice in that unbeliever's life amongst a chorus of people that they're listening to, that singular voice you have is not an exaggeration, infinitely more powerful because it's built on the eternal, unchanging, enduring Word of God. You have to believe that. And that helps give us courage this morning of overcoming the darkness. So that's the first point in verse 5, the principle of enlightenment that the light comes into the world is this the light succeeds, the light wins, the darkness doesn't.
So now let's move to his next idea about being an enlightened one of God, the people of enlightenment. What is our witness about, really? Well, he takes us to one of the greatest witnesses in the Bible, John the Baptist. And he's the theme of John's idea from verses 6 to 8. He wants to introduce you to John the Baptist, not the writer of this gospel. He refers to himself as the one whom Jesus loved towards the end of this letter. But when he's talking about John, it's not the John that wrote this. He's talking about John the Baptist. And this is what he says about him. There came a man sent from God whose name was John. Now, real quick, neat kind of thing. You don't see it in your English Bible, but it's there in the Greek. That word there came a man sent. That word sent is actually the same Greek verb that we saw in verse 3. Look above where it says all things, three words, came into being through him, and apart from him nothing came into being that has come into being. Those three 'came into being' are the same word for this sent. And so if we were just going to be literal about it, this is John the Baptist's summary of his life. There came a man who came into being from God.What does that do for us? Well, it reminds us, man, this guy had one mission while he was here. He was the man that came into being from God, sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness. That was the purpose of his life. That's the purpose of our lives in Christ. Why you have come into being as a born again believer of Jesus Christ is left here to be a witness, no matter what set of spiritual gifts you have. And they all differ. Every spiritual gift you have is to be focused in the same direction, which is to be a witness for Jesus Christ, a witness by your words you speak, and a witness by the works of your life, all of it giving testimony that you have been changed and transformed for his glory as a person of the enlightenment. Sothis example of John, he came as a witness to testify about the light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but he came to testify about the light. John knew that. John knew where he stood. Look at John chapter 3. It's maybe the best summary by story form of how John knew where he stood in relation to Jesus Christ, whom he came to proclaim. Turn just a few chapters over, verse 22. After these things, Jesus and his disciples came into the land of Judea, and there he was, spending time with them and baptizing. So what John is saying here in John chapter 3 is Jesus now has some followers, but John still has more followers, and he's baptizing them in verse 23, and people are coming and being baptized by John because he hadn't yet been thrown into prison and beheaded. So inevitably, there arises a discussion on the part of John's disciples because they're wondering about. Wait a second. Um, so we've been following you, but you've been telling us this other guy is the Lamb of God sent to save the world. So, more people are going to him. And should we stay with you or go to him? Verse 26, they came to John and said, Rabbi, he who is with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you have testified, behold, look. He's baptizing now, and everybody's going to him. If you remember the beginning of the gospel of Mark, chapter one, it says, everybody was coming to John. You know, we got, you know, in these guys minds a little Jets and Sharks kind of action going on...a little territory. Who's the guy John? And here's John's answer. A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven. So if you're going to be someone who has been given the light, understands where you stand before God with the message you have of the gospel. The first thing you realize is, what do I have that hasn't been given? Is what John says. I can get nothing unless it's been given to me from heaven. Every word I'm saying, the life I'm living, the purpose I'm here is a gift from God. Well, that's a good first step, isn't it? When you have a powerful message, like John the Baptist had, telling people to repent, for the kingdom is near. It could easily produce a prideful messenger. But a man of hubris would not pair well with a humble savior, would he? If John had some notion. Yeah. You know what? You guys stick with me. You know you've been following me. Don't bail out yet. No, he says, look, of course I don't have anything unless it was given from heaven. Verse 28, you yourselves are my witnesses that I have said and always will say, I am not the Christ, but I've been sent ahead of him. And like most preachers would, John was a great preacher. He stops here and he tells them the principle. I'm not the Messiah. I'm not the Savior. I'm just sent ahead of him. And then he gives an illustration of this in verse 29 that will stick with us. It's just like this at a wedding. The one who has the bride is the groom, but the friend of the bridegroom we'll call him the best man, he's a pretty important guy. He at least is entrusted with the ring. Right? And while the groom is getting ready to get all the other lackeys in line, you know that. Okay, come on, guys, hurry up. I've done a few weddings in my day as a pastor, and, you know, it's always the guys that you're trying to round up beforehand and, you know, doing stupid stuff out back. And, you know, they're in their suits and they're wrestling and you're like, stop it already. So the groom's best man has an important role to play. But if he understands anything by verse 29, he knows this. It's not about me. Even if we go wrestle out back and we come up to the stage and we're all grass stained and our ties are crooked, but the groom looks great. And of course, the bride in all of her beauty. I accomplished my mission. I was out of the way because the reality is. And I tried to do this...and I remind this to the wedding parties, usually at the rehearsal. None of tomorrow is about you. Everybody is looking at these two people. Everybody is here for these two people. Your name was not on the invitation and somebody said, oh, hey, that's the best man. I'm going to that wedding. They're coming to the wedding to celebrate these two people...bride and groom. It's all about them. And so usually when I'm doing a wedding at the rehearsal and I see everybody coming in and they're, you know, um, I just sense, like, okay, it's getting a little bit like somebody has some opinions here that need to be squashed. And the best way to do that, and I start it off on that Friday, is we're all here for them. Right. That's why you came in. That's why guys you bought that suit. Ladies, you bought that dress you'll never wear again. You spent money you didn't have. Especially the closer you are to college age to get here. You're broke because you love them. Let's keep it that way. Don't get in the way of what this is about tomorrow. And John the Baptist embodies that. When he says, look, I stand and hear him. I rejoice greatly because of his voice, and any joy I have is not in me becoming more. It's in me becoming less. Any person that's going to be a faithful witness and a fruitful witness for Jesus Christ...you this holiday season is when you stand back and are more amazed at the glory and behold Jesus Christ and just overflowing from that in your heart you want to talk to people about the Lord. Not when you feel like you're just on a mission with an agenda to tell all those atheist friends of yours how wrong they are. You might get in the way of that. What gets you out of the way is when you are so amazed, and you rejoice greatly because of the voice of Jesus in your life. Your joy is so full that you want him to increase in other people's lives. You want people to know more about him, less about you, and that's what any faithful messenger would do. It's not about them, it's about him. And when we get that, I think we can make a much greater difference this holiday season in the people around us when we are reinvigorated. One, if we feel down and out and worn out, we go back to what we learned in verse 5. The truth will win out over the error. The goodness will win out over the evil. So don't be in despair. And also, I just need to look to the light to encourage me to keep going. I don't need to look for a light from within. I was thinking of this as I was reading in Lord of the Rings. Don't hold it against me. I know some of you are big time Lord of the Rings fans. Others of you are like, this is the nerdiest movie...orcs and hobbits. Well, there's this beautiful scene in The Return of the King when Sam, who is, you know, some say he is the real hero in it, you know, um. He comes to rescue his friend, and he is worn out. He goes, Frodo, main character gets taken by the orcs. He's up in the tower. Sam comes to the rescue, gets him out of there, and he's just dragging him along because Frodo has got no power on his own. And, he gets him to a safe place, and his buddy falls asleep and Sam sitting there, and he's exhausted. And this is what Tolkien writes. "In the West, the night sky was dim and pale, and there, peeping among the cloud rack above a dark tower high up in the mountains, Sam saw a bright star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart. What a good word! As he looked up out of the forsaken land. And hope returned to him. For like a shaft clear and cold, the thought pierced him, that in the end the shadow is only a small and passing thing. There was a light and high beauty forever beyond its reach. His song in the tower had been defiance rather than hope. For then he was thinking of himself." Isn't that the problem with all of us that Tolkin perfectly captures in a story. You know, we really lose sight of it when we're thinking too much on ourself. And then in this picture, you see something that you say, yeah, the darkness and shadow is just a small and passing thing. There's a light and beauty forever beyond its reach. That was what John understood about Jesus, both the writer and the Baptist, that he was not the light, but he came to testify about the light. And anybody that's going to use their days to work while we have the light. John 9:4, Jesus admonishes followers of his that while we have the light, we need to work. We must work the works of him who sent me as long as it is day. Night is coming when no one can work. You know a faithful witness both understands the right relationship they stand to the Savior, but they also are motivated, knowing that we are on a clock. Our own life...we don't know how much longer we have. The lives of the people around us, we don't know how much longer they have. And that, I think, motivates us to any season in life to be at the task of sharing the gospel. And that's something that I mean, if I preach that every week, week by week, why? Because every week has opportunity within itself, just like, you know, the holiday season. It's always amazing to me. Each Christmas we get all revved up for it again and we bring out the same decorations and as if it's totally something new and it's not. We did the same thing, what, 12 months ago? And we're all pumped up and fired up for it.  And it's just repeating the thing we already did.  We know exactly the way it lays out. We know most of the events we're going to go to, most of the people we're going to see, and we just get all into it and all excited for it. And so it should be this season with Christ. To be excited for him when you look back not at the traditions and the trappings around Christmas, but the source of it all, the light behind it all, you know, the Lord Jesus Christ. And wouldn't it be wonderful for that person you love who bugs...to know him too? That's what it is to be a faithful witness, a person of the enlightenment. Your witness. Verses 6 to 8 shines.
Now where is that hope we have? That hope we spoke of in the life of Sam Gamgee, faithful friend of Frodo. What is the hope we have? It's there in verse nine, and it's our final section. It's the purpose of the enlightenment. It's why we come to the light. It's because we know our God, the true light, who came into the world enlightens every man. He's the one who does the work. Our God does save. The light works. It wins over the darkness. And it wins us to him. And then we win others to him. God saves. He's the light that came into the world to enlighten every man. Back to verse 7. Why were this witness? Why we testify is right there in verse 7. Really, this whole section hinges on that second part of verse 7. We do this so that all might believe through him. That's why we do it. That's why we're witnesses, because we really believe that our God saves, and that people that look at our life and are attracted by the way we live, the joy we have, particularly this season, will want to come to Christ themselves when they hear the good news preached. That's what keeps us motivated. The light comes for a reason, so that all might come to the knowledge of the truth and believe in Jesus. The reason God handpicks a man like John or any of us is to empower him and us in our lives for the purpose of testifying. Verse 7, so that others would come to the light. To let a Christmas season come and go, to celebrate the incarnation, to be in awe of it. God coming to us so we can come to him to have all this opportunity for the gospel right in front of us, brothers and sisters, and to not speak of Christ, to proclaim His excellencies with just this, this season would ring hollow. A jingle bell with no bell inside. I mean, it truly would. It would be a gift with no present inside. It's all there on the outside and the surface. But to leave Christ out of it, because it says there in verse 7, all of it, the light coming into the world is so others would believe in him. So my encouragement today is ending on this. If our God saves then be a soul winner this holiday. Be on the hunt for conversions. Listen to the words of C.H. Spurgeon. He equates it with a hunter looking for the hunted. He says, "The genuine soul winner has his inward directions and follows the guidance of the Spirit of God. Here, there, anywhere, everywhere he goes where the hope of conversions tempt him. When a sportsman goes after game, he does not know which way he will go. Neither does he bind himself in that matter. If he is deer stalking, he may have to go up the mountainside or down the glen, across the burn, or away among the bushes. Where his sport leads him he follows. And so it is with the genuine soul winner. He leaves himself free to follow his one object. He does not know where he is going all the time, but he does know what he is going after. He lays himself out for the winning of souls to Jesus." I hope this passage today, the encouragement to know that the darkness will not overcome the light, and that you can be a witness up there on the...truthfully, I, you know, left this out, but now that comes back to me. Matthew 11:11 you say, maybe you know, John the Baptist was this great guy and this really empowered prophet, you know, but I'm just me. No you're not. Jesus says in Matthew 11:11, truly I say to you, among those born of women there is not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist. Yet, the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. Huh? John the Baptist, who came after 400 years of silence, who came with an angelic messenger preceding him, who came to a mother who was barren. Jesus says there's not anybody up until this point that's been greater than him. All the prophets of old. What made him so much better? What made him so different? He didn't do the miracles that we saw done through Elijah or Moses. He wasn't as great of a king as David. Well, you got to think it's not about the messenger. It's about the message. And so John the Baptist comes along, and he's not just a prophet saying, here, this guy is coming. He actually is most blessed among those born because he actually gets to be right alongside of him. He didn't just get to say it. He saw it. And so his message is validated in a way that it never has been before. Here is the Messiah. Here is the Lamb of God taking away the sins of the world. That's what Jesus is saying here...among those born of women, so far, nobody's been greater than him because nobody has had the privilege and opportunity to both proclaim it and then say, and there he is right now go follow him. So you say, yeah, and I don't get to do that when I proclaim Christ. Well, you're the one who, least in the kingdom of heaven, is greater than he. Because with the arrival of Christ comes the kingdom of heaven amongst them. Now John the Baptist didn't get to see him go to the cross. You get to look into the gospel and see it and say it. He didn't have the testimony of Christ rising from the dead with his very own eyes to give an account for...you have it right here. He didn't get to see how the church was going to be that small mustard seed that grows into the what?...the largest tree in the whole forest. But you've seen it, haven't you? You've got 2000 years of church history to look back on and say, wow, look at everything that started when the Son of God came into the world. You are greater, though least in the kingdom of heaven, John the Baptist. You're greater than him. Do you believe that about the message you have? You get to tell the full gospel story to people in a way that John only had it in part. That's the point Christ is making here. You who think you're the least...Greater than him. And it's not about a prideful being greater. It's saying, I can't believe the message that I'm stewarded with. I don't care what age you are. 12 years old in here to 102. We got them all. You have the greatest message to tell people this Christmas season. Our God saves. It puts you in a category right up there with the greatest prophets of old. Do you feel that privilege? Does that get you excited? I hope it does.  
I do want to say this. If you are not in Christ this morning. You're not in a safe place staying in the dark, or thinking you're maybe hanging on the edges of it. Don't believe me, believe Jesus. John 12:35. He says this, Jesus said to this crowd for a little while longer, the light is among you. He was speaking of himself right then and there. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness will not overtake you. So there was people there that he was saying, look, this light isn't going to be around forever. And if you think you can hang on the fringes of unbelief, you know, kind of in the shadow. But maybe putting my toe into the light, he says, if you think the darkness, the evil, the evil one who comes to steal, kill, and destroy is just kind of sitting back passively watching your life go by, that's not the way it works. If you don't respond to the light while it's in front of you, while you're hearing it proclaimed, beware that that darkness can overtake you. As in, you're lost and you're lost for good. And you don't know when that shadow completely eclipses your life. You don't play with that. That's why the urgency is today is the day of salvation. Because the night is coming and those shadows can come completely. And it's a total blackout at that point. That's the stark warning Jesus has for anyone. Then in sitting here today, 2000 years later, that it's not okay to say, you know, I got these desires, I got this stuff I'm doing in my life. And I know that it's sin, but I don't want to give it up. So I'm just going to kind of dally a little bit longer. Young people sometimes say, I just want to live a little bit longer, enjoy what I want to enjoy, and then I'll come to Christ. And he says, beware that while the light is there, while you're sitting under the preaching of the gospel, even right now in your seat, that you don't wait a moment more where the darkness completely overcomes you and it's too late. You don't get to determine when that is because the enemy who comes for you, who comes around like a prowling lion seeking someone to devour. He has been plotting and scheming with his workers in Ephesians 6, and we don't want to be unaware of the enemy's schemes, 2 Corinthians. He has exactly his plan for when to overcome you with darkness, where you would never be able to get out, but you can't play around with when that time is. Just saying, I have this. I just kind of want to live for my sinful desires right now, before the sinful desires overwhelm you and you can never find your way out...but by the grace of God. And he brings the gospel to you this morning and says, come to me. And in fact, you who struggle with feeling like you have something really big to give up because you want to live your life the way you want to live it. You know what Jesus says to you? I have come to give life, life to the full, not life to the fool...the fool though that is true. He's saying life to the max, life to the fullness. Whatever it is you think is so great that you're into that you can't possibly turn away from to come to Christ. He has more. He has eternal life. Perfect love for you right where you are. Because you might. Maybe it's not the desire, it's the despair. You say, he couldn't forgive me. I'm too far gone. I could never be saved. I've sinned too much. And yet Christ says, he who comes to me, I will in no wise cast out. You may say, I don't feel like I want to even live anymore. It's that bad. Life's that hard. I just want to be done. And he says to you this morning, come to me, you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. What excuse would you have left after that? Every desire, any despair, even death itself. Christ says come to me and I'll give you life. Because I gave my life for you. What more could I give? What greater gift could I give to you than coming down out of heaven if that wasn't enough, and living a life that he knows every temptation and trial that we could possibly go through. Yet never sinned so that he could give you his perfect life and you could give him your sinful life. And by faith in him you can be born again. What would keep you back from giving your life to Christ today? Responding to his call. He's that good. He's that loving. He's that merciful. He's that majestic as we have seen. Come to Christ today. Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for your goodness to us in Jesus. We thank you that he is the light that has come into the world to save sinners, of whom we are all the worst. And only the light of your gospel penetrates the darkness of our hearts to show us just how bad we are, and if it was left to us, we'd have no hope. But in the darkness shines the light of the gospel, of the glory of Christ. That out of the darkness you say, there is the light, and we walk towards it. So any in here who don't know you, who hear you calling them to come to him, that they would not hesitate and give their life to you now as Savior and Lord of all. For any of us that are just in here discouraged today, may we be encouraged that the light is not overcome by darkness. There's no lie in our life that can't be overcome by the truth. There is no evil in our life that cannot be overcome by your goodness. We thank you as your children. We can hope in those promises today and even now sing with full hearts, thankful for the grace of the Gospel of Jesus. It's in his name we pray. Amen.

 

Pulpit Curriculum PDF

Pulpit Curriculum DOCX

View transcript

The Existence of Jesus Christ

Download transcript

We're in John 1, and we will look today at Jesus Christ, who we just sang of. There is no one more fascinating, wonderful, amazing to look at at any time. But in this particular time of year for us in this advent season as Ronald described the time of the arrival of the Messiah, the coming of the King God coming to earth to save sinners. It's common for all of us. We know it's that time of year to do an advent series in the church, and in the pastwe have looked at Christ from the Old Testament. We have looked at Christ in Matthew and Luke, the two most common places to go because of the genealogies, as well as the birth narrative and the manger scene. But we haven't looked in the Gospel of John. And so that's where we're going to spend the next four weeks, in what is called the prologue. John's gospel is really in four sections. In chapter one 1 to 18, commentators, scholars look at it and call it the prologue. It's the foyer that brings you into his account of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. You know a good foyer. It's the place you stand around and kind of you're told when you walk into the place, we're going to go here, or we can go up the stairs there. And really, that's what John does in these first 18 verses. He summarizes what is broken down over the rest of the gospel in the next 20 chapters. And then chapter 21 is the epilogue. It's the ending that leaves us standing there with the other disciples, particularly Peter, being told, now you follow me and go out. And John sets this whole gospel up, though with one sole purpose in mind, and that is for you to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, to have eternal life. That's right there from the start. He has a mission. We don't hear him say that until John 20:31. These things I have written so that you sitting there, Hickory, North Carolina, in that comfy seat of yours, with the coffee in hand, feeling those Christmas feels...that you would encounter Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the living God. God, very God, come in human flesh. He says that in John 20:31, I've written all these things. Every historical point I make in my gospel is for a theological reality that Jesus Christ is God, and that by believing in him you would have life in his name.
So I would love to welcome you if you're new here, if this is your first Sunday with us, that's awesome. Fantastic that you would visit us this month. Maybe you synched it up this way. This is when you wanted to come. Or maybe this is a one and done because you're just here from out of town. Either way, that you would just know right out of the gates the reason for this advent series is not just warm fuzzies. It's the greatest reality that you could encounter at any point in your life is for Jesus Christ to be revealed to you and to receive him who he is as Savior and Lord. And so, I would not want you to feel any bait and switch this morning. Hey, where's this guy going with all this stuff? Because John doesn't want you to. But what he is going to do, and what we're going to see in this prologue is instead of him saying as if, um, you know, because he would have known of the other gospels, the Synoptics, Matthew, Mark and Luke. They're called the synoptics, that word synopsis or summary, this idea of you can pull Matthew, Mark and Luke together and they give you a lot of the details, particularly get into the Old Testament prophecies about Jesus, and give you things that actually the vast majority of John is nowhere to be found in those others because John wrote his a few decades later, perhaps waiting, led by the Holy Spirit, finally to say, you know, I want to give you not just a historical picture of the life of Christ. I want you to see into his soul. I want you to see past the flesh. I want you to see his transcendence and his immanence, that he is God who is far away and now come near. He gives you a theology of Jesus Christ, and he does it right out of the gates in our text today. He says, I'm not going to go to the manger scene and the prophecies to prove his existence. I'm just going to talk about existence. That's why as we start today and you hear me read John 1:1-18, it sounds less like a history of Jesus and more like a philosophy of him. The terminology that you will hear in these 18 verses over the next few weeks describing his existence and his essence, his mission of enlightenment, what he provided for that only he could bring. You'll learn all these things in the weeks to come, but today we will just talk about his existence. Eternal Son of God, unchanging, self-existent, unlike anyone ever in all history. So,follow along with me as I read John 1, even though we'll only study the first four verses. I want to read the first 18 because John wrote them to be heard at one time, to set the table, if you will, to read the rest of his gospel.
John 1:1, "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and apart from him nothing came into being that has come into being. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. There came a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify about the light, so that all may believe in him. He was not the light, but he came to testify about the light. There was the true light, which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him. He came to his own, and those who were his own did not receive him. But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the father, full of grace and truth. John testified about him and cried out, saying, this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for he existed before me. For of his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the father, he has explained him."
Faith comes from hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ. So,speak, O Lord, your servants are listening. Show us your glory, we pray. Amen.
This series is called Post Tenebrus Lux, and that was a term coined in the Protestant Reformation that basically said after darkness, light. And that idea goes back to the beginning of Scripture. And even in our first point, the pre-existence of Jesus Christ, his eternality. And in the first phrase of John 1:1, "In the beginning was the word" in our minds should echo back to Genesis 1:1, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth". And the creation of the heavens and the earth, when it was formless and void, and darkness is over the face of the deep...the first action is God speaking light into existence. And so long before the Reformation at the beginning of time...the creation of time itself was light that came after darkness. But even though the earth was formless and void, no universe to speak of, there was the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the spirit. And here in John 1:1 he wants to start his account of the life of Jesus again, not with his arrival in the manger, but with his pre-existence, before anything else is there. Jesus never became. He has always been. And there is your first philosophical idea this morning to think about...pure being not becoming...always existent, never changing. Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever and sometimes we have to remove the image in our mind of Jesus in the manger and growing up to Jesus the boy, and then Jesus the man. No, no, before all of that...Jesus is the same in his character, in his essence. We're always becoming at some point in our lives, we have high hopes to become so much more. And then we hit that point where we realize this is the law of diminishing returns. I saw that evidenced to me at the Turkey Bowl this past Thursday morning that there were things I just could not do, that those young stallions galloping around the field were leaving this old horse in the dust. Literally, I was in the dirt trying to grab a kid's flag. Just went flat into it. Now we still were victors. I have a championship trophy somewhere around here. Kurtis took it and hid it. He didn't want you people to know. I want you to know I contributed zero to that victory. So you don't think I'm puffed up with pride. I was the reason for our defeat if we were to have lost. Not for victory, but seeing what I have become and now becoming was evident in the picture taken afterwards of all these young, strong men. And it hit me, and I showed my family.  I'm the old guy in the picture, now.  I grew up playing Thanksgiving football, and there was always the older guys. I thought they were really old. They were my age and I'm there in lots of sweats, just hunched over after the game, all the other men standing strong, and I'm hunched. And that's because I'm becoming. I'm going back to dust. But not Jesus Christ. And so right out of the gates, the pre-existence, the eternality of Jesus as he is in the beginning and he is the word. And maybe your question is, what's up with the word...Word? I don't see the name in the beginning was Jesus, and that's attributed to John wanting to write a profound prologue here. Not to say if he would have said in the beginning was Jesus, that would have been any less profound. But he wants to take you there by way of giving you these ideas of the word and life and light and darkness. And then verse 14, we start to get a hint of who he's talking about here when he says, this word became flesh. That is the incarnation. And he dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. So we get a description about this word who became flesh from heaven, from the Father, described as grace and truth. But we still don't get his name. And some of you that are new to Christianity are like, so where does this idea of Jesus come in? Well, look down at verse 17. Then he says this grace and truth that came from the Father, full of his glory, begotten, not made as we confessed earlier...he is full of grace and truth...the Lord Jesus Christ. Sothere it is. That's the connecting points in your Bible from verse one to verse 14 to verse 17. That's why we know who it is. It's Jesus.
And in this advent season, that's where we start with his pre-existence that this message series we're in, even starting in something so transcendent and seemingly removed about him, is to help raise our gaze in a holiday season that comes at us thick and fast with all the wonderful things we love about it, but completely lost on our culture today is not the imminence of Jesus, not the baby Jesus in the manger, that kind of thing, but just his transcendent glory. Evidence of that this week was when I was in Barnes and Noble hanging with my homies, and there was a dangerous moment a shark was eating a giant squid. That actually wasn't the most dangerous part. It was what they were selling next to my son. I saw advent getting hijacked by National Geographic, as in they took the name and just slapped it on as a label to get you, the parent, to buy a toy before you're going to give your kid more toys. And we all know, like the advent calendars, the chocolates they're to lead up to Christmas Day. But this thing has nothing to do with Jesus whatsoever. I searched the box like there wasn't like National Geographic was suddenly going to turn Christian on us and say, hey, all these experiments you're going to do is going to be to lead you to this grand discovery that Jesus is the Son of God. No, John didn't make this toy. This was just them putting, hey, it's advent and maybe some parent will think I need to keep my kid busy for the next 24 days so they can do science experiments in the basement. And I just saw this as a picture just to show us that in this season. And this isn't against materialism as much as even a sacred idea, a word like advent means nothing to our society. It's just a label to sell another toy. And what I want these four weeks to be. Even though this splash of cold water this morning might feel more like an entire bucket being dumped on you like, whoa! I love what I was walking into. I had my eggnog latte from the cart, and I wanted all the fun and joy of Jesus, baby manger glory in the highest angels. And we're talking about some abstract Greek concept of the word or the logos. Yes, we are, because that's how John wanted to start his story. He knew he had two audiences potentially reading this book. His Greek audience, his irreligious audience, would recognize the logos. That's the word in the Greek. And that had been around for centuries, going back to 600 BC. Philosopher Heraclitus was a guy who was writing about the logos being this rational thought or idea, this perfect truth or wisdom that exists outside of us that we can never attain to and throughout that time period with every Greek philosopher, that same term was used right up through Marcus Aurelius would write about the logos, the logos. It's this perfect self-expression of something greater than us. And we mere mortals are on this quest to find this truth. And they thought I could find it just by what?...wisdom. That's why when Paul writes about 1 Corinthians 1, the wisdom of man is foolishness to God because they thought they could find it on their own exploration. And even though it was staring them in the face and the person of Jesus Christ. That would have been this idea of the word. A sophisticated self-expression of the highest form in Greeks through the centuries used it. And so maybe he thought, hey, some Greek speaking philosopher is going to pick up this gospel and hear this and be intrigued. Hey, I've been reading about the great philosophers through the ages and this logos can never be found. And now you're telling me in the beginning was the logos, and the logos was with God? That's one way to look at it. Maybe you're that person here today, a secularist, a skeptic. I don't know what word would fit better than that. Maybe in the beginning was the truth. You know, because in our day and age, we don't know what to believe. You might not know what to believe because the truth has become a wax nose, moved around in the hands of whoever wants to claim it as speaking their truth. So that's a secularist point of view. But the religious point of view from the Jews would have been to hear in the beginning was the word. Well, that would have taken them back to Genesis. Genesis 1:3...that God spoke, let there be light. And then carried out throughout the rest of Genesis chapter 1. Any action of God's self-revelation in the universe was God saying, God's saying. And we have this children's book. It's actually for sale over in the bookstore. This wasn't meant to be a pitch, but it just came to my mind. The Big Story Bible and how they start that book is on page one with Genesis 1:1, and it's just words appearing in the sky like lights and the sun, or an animal name. And really, that's how it went down. There was nothing to work with. It was just God's ability to create before creation by the power of his word. Psalm 33:6, by the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host. So, to the Jews, using the word logos in chapter 1, verse 1 was not an abstract ideal, but a practical way God revealed himself to his people. And so, to the Jews and the Greeks hearing this opening line, they have to be reckoning with this idea of who Jesus is that they may have heard of before, existed before creation...His eternality. And throughout all history, the ability for man to try to find the truth about how it all began has continued to be elusive. I do my normal sleuthing on the internet and I typed in something related to....Ididn't want to go down the path of the Big Bang as much as I wanted to get kind of at the more the conceptual level, like what were the core components, Google of the universe, what had to be in its most broad terms for life to exist. And this was their answer from Google AI. "In physics, time, matter, and space refer to three fundamental components of the universe time, matter, and space. Where matter occupies space and its movement in existence are defined by time, and the relationship between them is described by the concept of space time." Now, unless you're Todd Jacobs, none of us really understand this. Okay, let's just put that out there. But it goes on to say, essentially meaning that space and time are interconnected and can be affected by the presence of matter, as explained by his theory of general relativity. Now I sit there and go, like I don't really make heads or tails of that, but it told me what I wanted to know about time, matter and space because it just confirms what the Bible already starts with. I like Genesis 1:1 version...in the beginning, time...God created the heavens...space and earth...matter. What Einstein couldn't find to complete what eluded him of the explanation for everything is right there from the beginning, isn't it? You have time. You have space, you have matter. But what the secularists can't find is who puts it all together, right? Who has this idea that he could take this and this and this and combine them and here we have everything we see around us in creation. What Einstein rejected was the simple, childlike faith that believes God at His Word. Towards the end of his life, he wrote in a letter to a friend...the word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses. I mean, this is one of the smartest men to ever live. And that's his summation of the word God. It's the expression of human weaknesses. And the Bible is a collection of honorable but still primitive legends, which are nevertheless pretty childish. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions in anincarnation of the most childish superstitions. Well, the thing he did get right by putting two words nearby each other at the end of that is to talk about a child and the incarnation. It does take childlike faith to believe, doesn't it? But yet the more we dive into it, even today, in just the first six words in our English Bibles, lifts our minds well above the plane of something being just a superstition. The explanation for how we see everything around us. Stephen Hawking, the great physicist, wrote in his book The Grand Design that physics brought the universe into existence. And he said, religion is a fairy tale for people afraid of the dark, to which an Oxford mathematician, a believer, John Lennox, replied, yes, and atheism is a fairy tale for people afraid of the light. It just depends on which side you see it from. You know, if you are afraid of the dark of what's next...the closer you get to studying religion, and the closer you get to the truth about God makes you more fearful if you're honest with yourself. Soit's easier to ignore it. And yet, on seeing it from the other way, if you want to hold to that atheism, that's the fairy tale for you. Not just wanting to come to the light because John says in John chapter 3. This is the judgment, verse 19, the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds were evil. And that's really what it starts with, is the pre-existence of Jesus, the one who could only say that he has come from God, and he knows in his eternality exactly who God is like. Maybe for you this morning, just the however you found yourself here, some of these truths, some of these ideas, or maybe some fresh beams of light coming in to your heart this morning. I pray they would be...to kind of loosen some of the bolts of your unbelief. Hopefully you'll stick with us this whole month and hear more about this Jesus, the Son of God, sent to save sinners, who can answer the questions that you've been looking for your whole life. Jesus Christ has existed forever, and the first light that breaks through the darkness is he has always existed. He's eternal.
The second one is the coexistence of Jesus with God the Father. Back in John 1. Second half of that verse...and the word was with God. That's his coexistence with God, not just his pre-existence before time itself, but his coexistence with God. And the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. You see, God brought into the conversation and repeated three times to show that it wasn't just this cold and vacuous universe with nothing there except for this concept of logos. This word was with God, and the word was God in the beginning with God. Jesus is there, the Son, God the Father is there. God the Spirit is there. We know that from the beginning of Genesis 1:2, the Spirit was hovering over the face of the water. And so what are these three members of the Godhead doing? Okay, that's a thought experiment for us this morning. I'm going to ask you to do something I haven't asked you to do before here. I want you to close your eyes and clear your mind. No. Just kidding. You're like. Actually, pastor, I am way ahead of you. My mind has been clear for about five minutes. I checked out the moment you started talking philosophical on me. But I want you to just try right now and think about nothing. I mean, that's where we are in John 1:1. Nothing is there...no images...nothing material, just one God as he exists in three persons...Father, Son and Spirit. What are they doing before they start doing something?...loving each other. And enjoying it to the greatest degree possible. And the mission that Jesus is sent on is to invite you, part of the creation, the only part of creation into that relationship of love, so that you could delight in God by enjoying his love for you forever. So are we so out in the ether. Were we so far gone already in the beginning of this account of the life of Jesus that I'm like, yeah, what's in this for me? What's in it for you is being invited into the eternal love that exists between the Father, Son and the Spirit. We know there was this love between the Father and Son because Jesus said it about himself. John 3:35, the Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand. He always wanted people to know, as he was speaking of his father, that there was a love relationship between them. He loved his Son. And in John 17 we hear the heights of this in his prayer in John 17:24. Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me be with me where I am, so that they may see my glory which you have given me. And was that glory that he's given him for no reason? No, it was to be invited into love. For you loved me before the foundation of the world. There is the pre-existence of Jesus the Son with the Father, but also the coexistence equal with God, enjoying a perfect love relationship before creation itself. And then when you read the Bible with these eyes awakened to see that this is who God is, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever. I'm sure many of us read that around the Thanksgiving table this past week. Why do we give thanks to the Lord? Because his steadfast love endures forever. Sometimes we just always think about that steadfast love, enduring forever from the point of our existence moving forward. But it exists forever, going backwards. I was reading Micah 7 and a sad chapter for this prophet who is waiting on the Lord, and he says in verse 8, I dwell in darkness. The Lord is a light for me. I will bear the indignation of the Lord. It's a sad way this Minor Prophet's book is coming to an end. And then you read this wonderful verse near the end. Verse 18, Micah 7... Who is a God like you, who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of his possession? He does not retain his anger forever. You say, what kind of God would do that? What's he like? Listen to the next line, because he delights in everlasting love, Micah 7:18. It's not just that this love exists between the Father, Son, and the Spirit to eternity past. They delight in the love that is between the three of them, and they invite you into that to experience that. That's what I wanted your mind to go to when you're thinking of nothing this morning, there's nothing to picture, no one to see. But at the heart of Jesus Christ's Eternality back in John 1, the word that was with God and was God, and was in the beginning with God, what is there other than love? A perfect relationship of love. And the last thing the enemy of our souls wants us to experience is that love. So, the initial way he got attacking that was to attack the person and work of Jesus Christ. At the time of John writing this, it's not surprising he had to write this in the prologue. He had to establish, because of the rise of Gnosticism, that spirits, good matters, evil and man needs delivered from the physical world in order to get to the spiritual world and the lies that were being propagated already within the church by 90 A.D. was that, you know, Jesus, if he was the Son of God, he couldn't really have taken on human flesh in the incarnation. But if he didn't do that, then we don't have what?...a perfect high priest who can sympathize with us in every way, who lived just as we lived in the flesh, that he was something other than that, and that destroys the gospel at its foundation, denying the truth about Jesus being truly God and truly man. I mean, that was the earliest and most frequent attack in the first three centuries on the gospel. That's why when we just recited this morning the Nicene Creed. What was the largest section of that dedicated to? It was dedicated to defending the deity of Jesus Christ, not just his deity, but also his humanity. And it still goes on throughout history. Even today, we defend the deity of Jesus Christ as coexistent and equal with God against Jehovah's Witnesses that teach that only Jehovah is God. They deny the Trinity, teach that Jesus was a created being, the Archangel Michael, who agreed to be placed in Mary's womb and is the first of created beings, not uncreated. I mean, we don't just say Nicene Creed together and talk about this stuff to fill the time. You'll run into people that want to call you brother or sister and say, we all believe in Jesus. There's just some minor details. The incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came into the world to save sinners equal with God. Coexistent with God is not a minor detail. It's really the whole thing. So you may have a really nice neighbor, a mormon, a Jehovah's Witness, a Jew. What do they have in common? They're all wrong about the person and work of Jesus Christ. What do you have to offer them?...the truth about Jesus Christ. And by offering that, you give them the chance to receive eternal life, which is the most loving thing you could do for a person to speak that truth in love. So that's what's happening here. But as I said before, it's not just an abstract intellectual game. It's as, Tim Keller wrote in his book, The Reason for God. "It's a dance to be invited into, one that completes our joy. It doesn't compete against it." Keller wrote this in his book to take the abstraction about the Trinity and what seems cold and and show that it's really about this relationship, beautiful to our hearts and useful to our theology. "The life of the Trinity is characterized not by self-centeredness, but by mutual, self-giving love. When we delight and serve someone else, we enter into dynamic orbit around him or her. We center on the interests and desires of the other person, which creates a dance, particularly if there are three persons, each of whom moves around the other two. So it is, the Bible tells us, each of the divine persons centers on the others." And we talk about that often, don't we? The Son wants to give glory to the Father. The Father wants to give glory to the Son. The Spirit wants to shine the light of of the gospel's good news on the person of Jesus Christ. So that what? So that at the end of the day, you accomplish John's mission, that you would believe...all three members of the Trinity a different function in your salvation, but all for the same aim for you to know Jesus Christ and to know of his everlasting love for you. Each person of the Trinity loves, adores, defers to, and rejoices in the others. That creates a dynamic, pulsating dance of joy and love. So maybe another truth that's breaking the darkness illuminating your life is to see It's not just about the pre-existence and winning some debate there. It's about the coexistence. It's about being invited into a relationship with God that is rooted and grounded in love, and is meant for you to delight in it. Just as the Son delights in the love of the Father, and the Father delights in the love of the Son.
Last, let's talk about the self-existence of Jesus, verses 3 and 4. We've talked about his pre-existence, coexistence with God. Now John wants you to know he is self-existent. We're not. He is. Verse three, all things came into being through him, and apart from him nothing came into being that has come into being. In him was life. We hear the same thing Jesus says about himself in John 5:26, just as the father has life in himself, even so, he gave to the son also to have life in himself. That's why he can offer it. That's the doctrine of the aseity of God. Now you're like, well, the what? The aseity of God. It's not a word we use a lot, but it's a good one. It's self-existence, independence. True independence, meaning I don't need anything else for my existence to continue, and that eliminates every single person ever from that category. We are dependent in every way on everything around us...the air we breathe, the food we eat, the people that help us into our old age. From our young age we're dependent creatures. You think you're independent. It's a lie. It's a lie that sometimes is staring you right in the face in your morning tea. It was for me this week. Now coffee is what speaks to me. I mean, coffee truly is in touch with my soul. But sometimes I get a little bit of coffee, tea theology or tea leaf theology. And this week it was on the little thing in front of my cup. It said, the universe is within you, bright and beautiful. Now, I did arrange that picture for you to see my Bible intentionally. So, you know, just the dedication that I have to the craft. Maybe make you jealous a little bit like this is what this guy does. He takes his tea and he. Well, it was just the phrase, the dumb thing that was on there that said, the universe is within me...bright and beautiful. First off, if you've watched any science fiction movie, the universe is a dark and dangerous and deadly place. You do not want to be out there. Everybody in those movies that goes out there gets stranded. It's an awful way to end. But yet the universe is within me, and it's bright and beautiful. Well, there's a lie...that's pantheism that the universe is in me and God is in the universe, and the universe is in God. And so, God is in me, and I am God. I am the force, and the force is in me...dumb. Eastern mystical mumbo jumbo that makes you feel good about yourself initially. But there's no truth in it. We're not gods. We're humans. God is eternal. We're dependent on him. You know, in that picture, he's the cup. We're the vapor that was disappearing above it, just there for a millisecond. James 1:14 tells us that your life is a vapor, a vanishing mist. And what John wants us to see right here is that the only way we're going to have eternal life and live forever is that if we experience the life that is offered from him who is life, who gives life. But to understand that, you need to know that it comes through the truth of Jesus Christ. That's why he moves in verse four from talking about life that is in Jesus, to the light that is given to men to see, and those two themes of life and light, you'll read all throughout the rest of this gospel, the constantly back and forth. These themes will emerge. The only theme, word or key word that you'll see more than life and light in this gospel is the word believe. Those things all work together. And here they are right out of the gates. He wants you to know that you came into being. You were a part of that all things. You are not the exception. Because apart from him, nothing exists if he didn't bring it into being. Colossians tells us this, verse 16...by Jesus, all things were created in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible thrones, dominions or rulers or authorities. All things have been created through him and for him. And here's his pre-existence. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. This is the testimony of Jesus Christ to the early church. It's the testimony to us today. We're here by him and through him and for him. We're not here by accident, through evolution, and for ourselves. That's the unholy trinity of atheism, Darwinism and hedonism. I'm here by accident, through evolution and for myself. But it's all around us in the culture. You know, we're the center of all things. Man is the measure of all things. How did I get here? I'm not sure, but science tells me I'm the highest in the chain of creation. It's not the message the Bible gives us that the only life I have that I've been given, initially born into this world, was determined by God, and the spiritual life is now given and received by me from Jesus Christ and Him alone. Verse 12, as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God. If you believe in his name, born not of anything you could do, not of any of your lineage, blood, or the will of flesh, but of God. Only Jesus can give life this morning.
And so, for some of you who might be new to church, new to the message of Jesus, new to the gospel, I know I might not have brought you into all the merry and bright of the manger scenes that we see in people's yards and all that. But I hope maybe it stops you in your tracks this morning to realize who you're dealing with when we talk about Jesus Christ. And sometimes when you finally see him rightly, it puts yourself in perspective towards him, and you see yourself rightly as the sinner that you are and the darkness that you've been in. And it's only in the light of the gospel of Jesus offered to you this morning that you could come to a knowledge of the truth. Now, maybe there's more of you. Maybe this is just the start for you. And you're you're curious and you want to know more. Well, we're going to get into more in the weeks to come, but I want to give everybody something to do as we get out of here this morning. An assignment for the month. I've done this before. I've done it with the Gospel of Luke 24 chapters starting on December 1st, because that is the official start of the Christmas season in the Ashoff household. In fact, one of my kids at school was like, dad, one of my teachers did something wrong. She was playing Christmas music or said something about Christmas starting. And this was like a week ago. I was like, hey, ease up, okay? For me and my household but we can't enforce this on everybody else. They're not heretics for putting Christmas music on a week early, but now it's December 1, let's go. But what I want to give you is an assignment, and it just comes out of a reading that I was doing this week in coming to the end of 2 Peter.  Where there was just a line that struck me in my personal devotional time. Verse 18, well, start in verse 17, you therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard. You know we're always to be ready and never to let our guard down. For what? That you're not carried away by the error of unprincipled men. There is an enemy that seeks to kill, steal, and destroy in a world system that wants to steal any attention, extra attention this season that we would give in looking to Jesus Christ. Are you with me? I mean, of all times of the year, he can't stop the idea that it's a holiday we celebrate so he can inundate us with so much extra to distract us...good, bad or indifferent. So he says, be on your guard, that you're not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness. As great as this month could be, it could be an awful month for some of you in the faith. I mean, there's stresses that come this time of year that we know. I even came across a publication from last year, that the holiday season can be both a happy and stressful time of year, in part due to expectations to spend time with family and friends. And I saw this graphic and I thought, this is going to be for our people on a Sunday, you know, playing Family Feud where they're like, I'll take all of those. Yep. That one, that one, that one that I experience all that stuff. But what stood out to me in this study is nine out of ten people say there is something, something about the holiday season that heightens the stress in my life, rather than this be a time of year where it goes down...all kind of different reasons. There's only one solution to it, and it's in 2 Peter 3:18. What would contribute to a fall in us or a discouragement? Listen to 2 Peter 3:18, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Did you catch that? The remedy to all those things you just read through and said, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm one of the nine in ten. I'm just coming down off the Thanksgiving stress ready to ramp up to the Christmas one. The answer is right in front of you. 2 Peter 3:18...here's how you fight it. Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. How do you do that? Well, here's one way I'd like to do that as a church. We're studying John this month. We'll keep coming back to these 18 verses, but I would love you to some of these themes of light and life and belief. Read through the Gospel of John one chapter a day between now and Christmas. You got 24 days. You got 21 chapters. John six, seven and eight are the three longest ones. Cut them in half. You'll get right there. I would challenge you to read for your personal devotional time by yourself in the morning. Don't so much make it this big, you know, elaborate Bible study as much as just meditate on what you're reading about the person and work of Christ, and pray through it and be amazed by him. But save some of those thoughts and bring them back later in the evening, you know, because blessed is the man and woman who meditates on the Word of God, day and night. Bring those same personal devotional thoughts. And if you do this as a family or a group of friends or a life group, bring them back in the evening to share and then teach out of that. Dads, you can find something in a chapter in John, that leads us to faith. It says, that's amazing and awesome about Jesus, don't you guys think? And if they're like, yeah, now you're on your feet trying to say, okay, uh, let's look at it together. Let's read it together. Do it personally by yourself in the morning. Do it collectively with a friend or a spouse or kids, or call a friend up and say, hey, I was in John 3 today. This is amazing. I didn't see it before. I wanted to share it with you. Text it to somebody. Why do I want to offer you this this month? Because I want you to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. So that when Christmas Day comes and I know it's just a date on a calendar, that really wasn't the date he came. But it's not like you were just trying to flip the switch, you know, December 23rd. Okay, now I'm going to get to the manger scene. No, you've been in the Gospel of John the whole month, searching the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ...Paul calls them. So many amazing thoughts to fill our imaginations and stir our hearts to greater affections that he's pre-existent of time. Just to meditate on that this morning, if there is a way to eternity, the pre-existent Jesus is going to be the only guide. He is co-existent with God. If there is a truth about a God that we cannot see. He alone would know it. He is self-existent in creation. If there is a quality of life that we can't give ourselves, he can give it. It sounds like all three of these aspects are what uniquely qualified him in John 14:6 than to say I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but me. But here's what's wonderful this morning for all of us. He wants you to come to him. He says I'm the way, the truth and the life. Good luck finding it. He says no, come to me. He tells you who he is, and then he invites you to himself. One of my favorite parts of John chapter 1. Just look over to verse 35. The next day, John was standing with his disciples, and he looks and sees Jesus walking. And he says, behold, the Lamb of God. And these two disciples of John hear him speak, and they turn and follow Jesus. And Jesus turns around and sees them following and says to them, what do you want? That's really what he said. What do you seek? It's this idea of what do you want? What do you desire? And they say to him, Rabbi, where are you staying? And he says to them, come, and you will see.
So what do you want from Christ this month? Do you want to know the way, the truth, and the life about him? He says to you, come and you'll see. Show up tomorrow morning with the coffee or the tea. Remember your own life as a vapor. And then come and see the eternal life that I have to offer you. And then pray that maybe the Lord would use it to encourage somebody else that day. Let's ask the Lord now to renew our affections for him as we enter in to a time of communion and remembering his life and death and resurrection.  
Let's pray. Father, we thank you this morning for your Word. We thank you this morning for our minds and hearts to be lifted up to beyond the heavens, outside of space and time and matter and everything that we hold our lives together with as much as we can when we look around us. And it's the explanation for so much. But yet we ventured into the place where it was just the Father, Son, and Spirit and eternal love delighting in one another. And thank you for inviting us into that delight today. May the height of that now be, as we turn our attention to the Lord's table, as we remember you came, lived a perfect life, died a death in our place, and rose again for our justification. And sohelp us to see that and celebrate that this morning we ask. Amen.