Genuine - October 27th, 2013 Sermon

By Pastor Greg


A couple's garage was piled high with duck decoys, fishing rods, hunting boots, waders and outdoor gear of all kinds.  Staring at the mess, the wife sighed, "I hope I die first so I don't have to get rid of all this." "Look on the bright side," the husband said, "If I go first, you can put an ad in the paper. When all the men come by to check out the gear, you can pick out a replacement for me."  Looking at the pile the wife said, "No, any guy who would want all this stuff would not be my type."

Ouch.  This is one of those couples that you meet from time to time.  There is obviously no love in the relationship.  And you wonder what they saw in one another in the first place.  If there is any love at all it must be a fake.  Love does not tear down.  Love does not belittle.  Love considers the feelings of others.  At least authentic love is like this.  But too often the world presents a love that is counterfeit; a poor copy of the real thing; a hypocritical love that pretends to be about the other person but is really self-focused and self-centered.  Sadly, even some Christians have bought into the world’s version of love and rejected God’s standard of love.
As the apostle Paul spoke about being transformed, he not only called his readers to be transformed in the way they loved God, but also in the way they loved one another (Read Romans 12:9-21).

Paul illuminates what genuine love looks like in this section; the kind of love seen in the person who has been transformed.  As Christians we must remember that our relationship with other people is just as important to God as our relationship with Him.  Most of the Ten Commandments speak about our relationship with others.  When asked which of the commandments was the greatest, Jesus responded by saying, “And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these” (Mark 12:30-31).  And Paul says that our love is to be genuine toward fellow believers (verses 9-16) and toward the people of this world (verses 17-21).  To really love someone is to be transformed into a person who sees others in this way.

Paul, in his great theological discourse known as Romans, elevates authentic love to equal importance with our authentic relationship with God.  “Therefore” says Paul at the beginning of this chapter.  “And so”, in light of all that God has done for us, a believer should give themselves as a living sacrifice.  As Sons of the Father we are to let no unwholesome word proceed from our mouth (compare Ephesians 4:29).  Our conduct toward other people, be they fellow Christians or our enemies, is so important in God’s eyes that we can even grieve the Holy Spirit by the way we treat one another (Ephesians 4:30).  Therefore, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:31-32). “Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony. And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful.  Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives. Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives. Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts. And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father” (Colossians 3:12-17).

There is a strong call in this section of Romans to be kind, considerate, and patient with fellow believers; something seldom seen nowadays.  What Christians today have forgotten is that by becoming a believer we are to be transformed.  We are to forfeit our freedom to behave like the rest of the world.  As authentic Christians who possess an authentic love, we no longer have the freedom to criticize, slander, lie, or speak a foul word to or about any another person.  We lost the freedom to criticize another believer behind their back.  We have no rights or privileges to speak slanderously about someone or to someone.  We lost that freedom when we called Jesus Lord.  At least we should have lost this freedom.  This is what should happen to the Christian who has allowed the Lord to transform them.

Sometimes it seems that we Christians take too lightly the Lord's command to love one another.  “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).  This is the one single thing that separates a Christian from the rest of the world.  Non-Christians feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the sick, work for peace, give to charities, and care for the environment.  So a Christian cannot point to these deeds as evidence of our faith, for those without faith do these as well.  But the one single thing that stands a believer apart from the world is the humble, loving way a believer treats those who hurt him, those who are against him, those who have wronged him, and those who are his enemies.  A believer is easily identified by a peaceful, forgiving spirit: one that keeps no record of wrongs and that makes allowances for other people's mistakes, and that understands people will have a bad day from time to time.

You can certainly tell when a husband and wife are not getting along by the way they treat one another, what they say about one another, and what they say to one another.  The same can be said about the Church.  What do you think this community might say about us as they observe the way we treat one another, or listen to what we say about one another?  Do you think the people in this community might see us as hypocrites?  Or do they see that we possess genuine love?

Transformed - October 20th, 2013 Sermon

By Pastor Greg

Once upon a time there was a shepherd tending his sheep at the edge of a country road. Suddenly a brand new Cadillac Escalade screeches to a halt next to him. The driver, a young man dressed in a fancy suit gets out and asks the shepherd, "If I can guess how many sheep you have, will you give me one of them?" The shepherd looks at the young man, then looks at the sprawling field of sheep and says, "Okay." So the young man connects his notebook and wireless modem, enters a NASA site, scans the ground using his GPS, opens a database filled with algorithms, and then prints a report on his high tech mini printer. When finished he turns to the shepherd and says, "You have exactly 1,586 sheep here." The shepherd answers, "That's correct! You can have your sheep." So the young man takes one of the animals and puts it in the back of his vehicle. However, the shepherd looks at him and asks, "If I guess your profession, will you pay me back in kind?" The young man answers, "Sure." So the shepherd says, "You’re a consultant." "That’s exactly right! How did you know?" asks the young man. "Oh, that’s simple," answers the shepherd. "First, you came here without being called. Second, you charged me a fee to tell me something I already knew. And third, you don't understand anything about my business . . . and I'd really like to have my dog back."

There is something the shepherd says in this story that really stands out to me, and that is the phrase, “Pay me back in kind”. Often we see the words “payback” in a negative way. The Bible teaches us to “Love our enemies”, “Never repay evil for evil, or “Pray for those who persecute you”. But what if we looked at this from a positive viewpoint. What about those who love us. What about those who are kind and merciful toward us. How should we repay them? How should we payback those who have done so much for us? Should we not “Pay them back in kind”?

I suspect many of us would agree that this is true. But what of God. How should we repay Him for all the blessings He has given us? How should we repay the greatest gift of love—the sacrifice of Jesus upon the cross? What can we give back to God for His gift of Salvation? Is there anything we can give Him for all that He has done for us? Now, although we might be tempted to say there is not, the Bible says that there certainly is.

There is a huge gap between knowing God and living as a godly person; a gap many Christians never seem to cross. Content to merely know, many never transition into the kind of Christian who puts their faith into practice. James has said “For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). Without action, all the faith in the world is useless (compare James 2:20). Paul talks about this as well in Romans 12 (read Romans 12:1-8).

It is good that we have accepted the fact that we are sinners in need of a Savior. And it is commendable that we have accepted the Man God sent to save. We have believed in our heart and confessed with our mouth that Jesus is Lord. And because of our conviction and confession, God accepts us as His child. We are reborn. Knowing this Paul says “and so” (or “therefore”), indicating that there should be a proper response to all we have learned. And he says that this knowledge should not just remain in our mind. We are to respond to this knowledge. And the proper response to this new birth is transformation; a transformation of the mind, heart, body, and soul.

Romans Chapter 12 talks about living in a way that honors the Lord. It does not talk about living in a way that earns God’s love or earns salvation. Paul has already dismissed the idea of a works-based salvation. But he does stress that as a believer the appropriate response to what God has done is to become His transformed servant; to give all of ourselves back to God.

Paul says that we are to give Him our bodies. They become a living sacrifice. And this is not just merely what we do to our bodies, but what we do with them. A genuine believer recognizes that God is worshiped not just by singing His praises but also in what we do. We submit to His standard of physical holiness, not to earn salvation, but to honor His name. Paul also says that we are to give God our minds. We are to transform the way we think, not just about God or about ourselves, but about other people. We are to see others as God sees them. We are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us so that that world might regard us as God’s children (Matthew 5:44-45). ‎If the world controls your thinking, you are a conformer; if God controls your thinking, you are a transformer. And finally Paul says we are to give Him our heart, or perhaps better described as “who we are as a person”. We each have different skills and passions. We all have unique talents. And Paul says that we are to take these and offer them back to God so they might be used to strengthen His Kingdom.

If our conversion has been genuine, there should be a noticeable difference in the way we live, in what we do, and how we serve the Lord. But as I said at the beginning, this is a transition that is quite rare nowadays. Far too often we will meet Christians who have only ever given God their soul. There is faith, but there is no transformation. And I sometimes wonder about the person who withholds so much of themselves from God. It just doesn’t seem to make sense to me. God gets so much and no more. And we are left to wonder if they do truly love God. I wonder if God will eventually cut them off because they bear no fruit (compare John 15:2). I wonder if these are the people who cry out “Lord, Lord”, but will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven (compare Matthew 7:21)? I don’t know for sure, but if this were me I would certainly take God’s warning seriously and start getting busy becoming a transformed Christian.

If your conversion has truly been genuine, you will want to give something back to God, thanking Him for all that He has done for you. Knowing that there is no condemnation from God, that nothing can separate you from God’s love, and that He has adopted you into His family even though you were an outsider, you are naturally going to feel affection for God. You will wonder how you can ever repay such blessings. Those who seem content to merely know the path might say that His is a gift you can never repay, so simply receive it with thanks. But those who have walked the path (those like Paul) will tell you that there is something you can do; something God does desire from you in response to these rich blessings. And that is to allow yourself to be transformed; to give Him not just your heart, but your mind, your talents, your gifts, and your bodies. What does God desire from those He has redeemed? He desires that we begin demonstrating our love for Him by giving back to Him in kind; that we offer ourselves as a living sacrifice, giving Him our heart, body, soul, and mind.

What this kind of life looks like is discussed in the rest of this chapter. We will explore this next week.

Adopted - October 6th, 2013 Sermon

By Pastor Greg

When the doctor asked Chuck about what he did yesterday, he told him about his day: "Well, yesterday afternoon, I waded across the edge of a lake, escaped from a bear in the woods, marched up and down a mountain, stood in a patch of poison ivy, crawled out of quicksand, and jumped away from an aggressive rattlesnake." Inspired by his story, the doctor exclaimed, "Chuck, you must be an awesome outdoorsman!" "No," Chuck replied, "I'm just a lousy golfer."

People have a tendency to draw the wrong conclusion about someone who is Jewish as well. They assume that since they are Jewish they must not be a believer. But this simply is not true. Most of the first Christians were Jewish. Peter and James and John and the Apostle Paul were quite Jewish. Barnabas was a Jewish Priest. Even today there are a large number of people who are Jewish (by birth) who are born again Christians. So just because someone has a Jewish heritage does not mean they are unbelievers. And neither has the Church replaced Israel. The promises God made to the nation of Israel have not been redirected to the Church because Israel refused to accept Jesus as the Messiah. This simply is not true as well. But it seems that some Christians in the Roman Church felt this was true, which is why Paul corrects their theology in Romans 11.

Corporately, Israel rejected their Messiah. As the Nation of Israel, Jesus was rejected as the promised Messiah. However, individually many Jews accepted Him. They were the Jewish believers who became part of the early Church. But because the Nation rejected Jesus as Messiah, God chose to dispense His grace to the other people in the world. He permitted Himself to be found by a people (Gentiles) who were not looking for Him. In other words, those individuals who believe in their hearts and confess with their mouth that Jesus is Lord will be adopted into the family of God. They don’t become a new family, but are adopted (or grafted in, as Paul describes it). The church does not replace Israel. God has declared this. “I am as likely to reject my people Israel as I am to abolish the laws of nature!” (Jeremiah 31:36).

Part of the problem here is that the Church then and even today has difficulty in understanding the difference between the promise to Israel as a nation, and the offer of grace to individuals. Israel is the nation of the covenant. We Gentiles are offered to become adopted into the covenant. We become part of the family of God because of our faith in Jesus. Don’t forget that you Gentiles used to be outsiders. You were called “uncircumcised heathens” by the Jews, who were proud of their circumcision, even though it affected only their bodies and not their hearts.  In those days you were living apart from Christ. You were excluded from citizenship among the people of Israel, and you did not know the covenant promises God had made to them. You lived in this world without God and without hope. But now you have been united with Christ Jesus. Once you were far away from God, but now you have been brought near to him through the blood of Christ (Ephesians 2:11-13).

The lesson we need to learn from this is one of humility. We Gentile Christians need to be grateful for the grace God has granted us through Christ. And we need to be respectful to our step sister – the nation of Israel. She is the child of the covenant. We, as the church, are the adopted ones. As Gentile Christians we possess an individual salvation. We have received promises from God on a personal level. But the nation of Israel alone is the only nation that God has promised never to abandon. The promise God made in 2 Chronicles 7:14 is for Israel alone. No other nation can claim, “Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land”. America, along with all the other nations of this world, will one day fall. Israel will not because this is what God has declared.

We might wish that God would give the same blessing to America that He has given to Israel, but He has not. He has extended His blessings to us. He has not written a new covenant for America. God established His covenant with Israel, and people like you and me can become part of that covenant by placing our faith in Christ. God’s covenant has not changed, only the way it is given has changed. In Old Testament times the covenant was written on two stone tablets. In New Testament times it is written on the hearts and minds of those who believe.

The relationship between God and the Gentiles and God and Israel is similar to the story of the Prodigal Son. It was the Prodigal who understood the Father’s love and grace. The older brother did not, and remained distant and aloof. Yet one day it seems Israel will see and believe what the Gentiles already know. When Christ returns, Israel will see their Savior. And this time they will believe. Then I will pour out a spirit of grace and prayer on the family of David and on the people of Jerusalem. They will look on me whom they have pierced and mourn for him as for an only son. They will grieve bitterly for him as for a firstborn son who has died (Zechariah 12:10). This is why the Church must never develop a sense of arrogant superiority over the nation of Israel simply because WE accepted Jesus as Lord and they did not. We must be grateful and humble and respectful toward the nation of Israel. The blessings and promises of God have been extended to us through her. And what we, the Church, know today, Israel will know tomorrow. The Older Son will learn tomorrow what the Prodigal learned yesterday.