Applying the Gospel - Pt. 3
Notes
Transcript
Sermon Tone Analysis
A
D
F
J
S
Emotion
A
C
T
Language
O
C
E
A
E
Social
Welcome this morning! I’m thrilled you’re here. Join me please in Philippians 1 and Romans 12.
We are in week 3 of a 4 week mini series we’ve entitled “Applying the Gospel.”
We began this journey defining what the Gospel is with 4 truths.
Can anyone tell me the 4 truths?
1. God is the Creator of everything – including humanity
Therefore He sets the parameters of life and we all will give an account of our lives to Him
2. Humanity has rebelled against the Creator and deserves eternal punishment
No one is exempt from the brokenness that resulted from the fall of Adam and Eve
3. Jesus came to give those who are dead in sin, life!
And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.
4. We are called to respond in repentance and faith
Repentance means to turn away from our rebellion against God.
It doesn’t mean that we bring an immediate end to our sinning, but that we’ll never again live at peace with our sins - because of it’s severity.
We are also to turn to God in faith.
Faith is reliance. It is a trust in the risen Jesus to save you from your sins.
We concluded the first week with the question: “How does the truth of the gospel apply to you?”
Are you living your life with a knowledge of the gospel, but never applying it to your own need?
Have you yet turned to your Creator in repentance and faith in His plan of Jesus?
Last week, we looked at the reality that the gospel is not only relegated to salvation, as simply a get-out-of-hell-free card, but how it applies to our sanctification.
(Easton Bible Dictionary) Sanctification - involves more than a mere moral reformation of character, brought about by the power of the truth:
Sanctification is the carrying on to perfection the work begun in regeneration, and it extends to the whole man
Sanctification refers then, to the process of gradual purification from sin and progressive spiritual growth that should mark the life of the believer
And as we saw last week, it begins with our minds.
Our desires dictate our direction.
If our affections are on things of the flesh, we will pursue the direction of our flesh.
If our affections are on things of the Spirit, we will pursue the direction of the Spirit.
The apostle John addressed our common issue in his first epistle:
This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.
If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.
But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.
Paul Tripp in his daily devotional “New Morning Mercies” highlights the logic of this passage:
1. SIN IS A BIG DEAL
Grace has brought us into personal communion with a God who is holy in every way. He dwells in eternal light. The darkness of our sin is what separates us from him.
The whole movement of history from the time of the fall announces to us that God takes sin so seriously that he wrote the story of history so that his Son would come and, through his life and death, deal with sin and bridge the gap between God and the creatures made in his image.
You cannot be serious about your relationship with God and not take sin seriously.
2. Because sin is a big deal, the cleansing blood of Jesus is our only hope.
Jesus came and lived and died because sin is so powerful, destructive, and comprehensive in its effects in us, that there is no way we could have ever escaped it or defeated it on our own.
3. Denying remaining sin is the height of self-deception.
You and I lay down so much daily empirical evidence of our struggle with sin that it takes a deep commitment to denial for us to convince ourselves that we are, in fact, okay.
Every time we excuse, minimize, rationalize, or point the finger of blame, we are participating in that system of denial.
4. God is always faithful to the promises of the cross of Jesus.
Your Savior loves to forgive. He really is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love!
5. Denying sin makes a liar out of God and denies the message of his Word.
Here’s the bottom line— either God, in his Word, is true when he says that you have a problem you can’t solve or you’re right, that you’re not so bad after all. It can’t be both ways.
Hodges puts it this way: The more holy a man is, the more humble, self-renouncing, self-abhorring, and the more sensitive to every sin he becomes, and the more closely he clings to Christ.
FAITH IN THE TRUTH OF THE GOSPEL DOES NOT ONLY SAVE US, BUT IT MATURES US.
Yes, it justifies us, but it also sanctifies us.
And this sanctification process is synergistic. God is at work within us, changing our affections through His Word and by His Spirit, and we too are involved as active participants as we humbly submit to that change.
It’s not God doing a work in robots.
Nor is it all about me figuring it out and trying a little harder each time until I eventually master life.
God is at work in believers, and He uses His Word and His Spirit to initiate change. Believers then respond in faith through humble submission to that initiating work.
Examples:
(negative) Sin - A believer reads a passage, the Spirit prompts us about our struggle, we then apply the passage to our situation
Because our new relationship with Jesus has changed how we relate to sin
(positive) Outflow of this new life in Christ - As we study His Word He reveals things (not just what shouldn’t be a part of our lives) but also what should be a part.
Not only should I stop doing some things as He prompts, but there are some things I should start.
But the Christian life is not only about what we do and don’t do.
It involves the manifestations of what we say we believe, but it is broader than that.
Theology - God teaches us how to dwell with Him in a personal relationship.
This relationship stems from what we know to be true about Him, what He reveals is true about us, and how we continually walk in adoration of His grace.
What you believe about God will dictate how you live your life.
If you believe, as the Bible teaches, that God is your Creator, Sustainer, and Savior you will live differently.
And this is the sanctification process. God is at work, initiating change, and we submit.
It’s about believing His Word, remaining sensitive to His promptings, and submitting our will to His.
And as I do that over and over again, overtime I am (as Romans 8 says)
For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.
So, the truth of the Gospel saves us, matures us, but it also keeps us to the end.
When was the last time you didn’t feel like believing the Gospel?
What was happening? Physical pain, emotional turmoil? Overwhelming odds?
These times bring to surface just how shallow our faith really is.
At times we lose the desire to trust and obey, because somewhere in our core we think that our devotion to God and abstinence from sin deserves an easy life. And if God doesn’t make good on that, that somehow we are betrayed and wonder whether the truth of Scripture is really true at all.
Thankfully, our perseverance in faith is not up to us.
We persevere in faith not because of our own power to believe, but because the gospel holds us to the end.
Now, when studying perseverance it’s important to understand what genuine faith is.
Genuine faith is not necessarily praying a prayer, or walking an isle, or getting dunked in water.
Many a Christian (me included) has used a term “Once saved, always saved” and there has stemmed from that statement this thought that behavior has no relevance for the Christian life. Because they have prayed a prayer, walked an isle, been baptized they can do whatever they want. In fact, a person may not even believe in Jesus anymore, but they’ve got the salvation issue taken care of just in case.
The bible is incredibly realistic about self deception.
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.
Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’
And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’
Now, does God want us to live in constant doubt? NO!
But there is the possibility that we are hoping in the wrong thing.
Matt Chandler wrote, “We might be masquerading as people of faith, only to come to the horrifying realization later that we had never been radically and dramatically seized by the gospel.”
Paul addressed it this way
Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you are disqualified.
The word translated disqualified was used to describe metals which, when tested, were found to be false.
So the Corinthians were either true believers, or they were disqualified by failure to pass the test of genuineness.
When it comes to the perseverance of saints, we must:
1. Examine the genuineness of our personal faith.
The faith of a relative isn’t enough for us.
We must individually and genuinely respond to Jesus by faith.
2. Rest in scriptural truth
I thank my God upon every remembrance of you,
always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy,
for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now,
being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;
Paul was confident that the Philippian believers would persevere in their faith because God had started a good work in them, and God always finishes what He starts.
Paul wrote of the scope of our salvation in Ephesians 2:8-10
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,
not of works, lest anyone should boast.
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
We have been save by grace through faith for good works. You can’t chop one of those parts off.
We see the relationship between the two in Philippians 2
Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;
Here we find the necessity to work at something continuously and unceasingly until it is accomplished, and read alone, verse 12 gives the impression that it is all up to us.
But read v. 13
for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.
Now, if you read v. 13 alone, it would seem that we are to simply take a lethargic approach to the Christian life.
But when you take the two verses together (with the rest of the Bible in view) we find that both God is at work and we are too.
So, we examine the genuineness of our faith,
we rest in the scriptural truth (that the God who initiated His work in us will continue what He started and:
3. Endure hardship by faith
Because we live in a world that is broken by sin, none of us are immune from suffering. From cancer to car accidents and all the hardships in between, bad things happen. Suffering is common to the whole human experience.
So the question is not if we will experience suffering, but how will we respond in the suffering.
Suffering reveals what we truly value.
Anyone can worship when there’s plenty of money in the bank, health is good, and our children are behaving.
But as Matt Chandler puts it, “suffering is the fire that burns away the fluff. It reveals the authenticity of what we claim to believe.”
For that reason, one of two things happens during trials:
either a person is pushed away from God
Or, a person is pushed deeper into God and the gospel
Consider Job
8 Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil?”
9 So Satan answered the Lord and said, “Does Job fear God for nothing?
10 Have You not made a hedge around him, around his household, and around all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land.
11 But now, stretch out Your hand and touch all that he has, and he will surely curse You to Your face!”
But it didn’t work. Job didn’t curse God in losing everything.
5 But stretch out Your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will surely curse You to Your face!”
Satan thought that circumstances were the only reason someone would remain faithful. When things are good, we worship. When things are bad we don’t. And for some this is the case.
But Job gives another perspective.
15 Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him. Even so, I will defend my own ways before Him.
Job endured through unimaginable suffering by trusting God.
At times our will to continue runs out, but thankfully God’s grace doesn’t. When we can’t hold on to Him, we know through His Word that He holds on to us.
28 And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.
29 My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand.
Not only does the gospel assure that God holds us, but that He continually loves us.
38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come,
39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Nothing will separate us from the Love that he initiated and will bring to full completion.
He loves you in spite of you, and He will continue to love you, in spite of you. If you are genuinely His, you are forever His.
You are saved by grace, and you are kept by grace.
We endure by faith in His continual grace, and we endure in faith believing that justice is coming.
9 Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good.
10 Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another;
11 Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord;
12 Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer;
13 Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality.
14 Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not.
15 Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.
16 Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits.
17 Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men.
18 If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.
19 Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
20 Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.
21 Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.
When we know that God will set all things right, we can be wholly love and cling to what is good because we know that justice is coming. The gospel reminds us that God is at work. And because he is, we endure in faith.
How do we persevere in our faith?
1. Examine the genuiness of your faith
2. Rest in scriptural truth
3. Endure hardship by faith
Knowing that God is at work. He is good and trustworthy. And that there is coming an end.