Meadowbrooke Church

Impartial Faith

I want to piggyback off the final two verses from the first chapter in James that we looked at last week, which states: “If anyone thinks himself to be religious, yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this person’s religion is worthless. Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world” (1:26-27).  From these two verses, I have two questions that help us make more sense of the verses that follow in James 2:1-13.  The first question we need to ask is this: What makes faith worthless?  The person who says that he/she believes and follows Jesus yet has not bridled their tongue.  The second question is this: If undefiled religion is to visit orphans and widows in their distress, what is defiled religion? It is a person of faith who claims to follow Jesus but ignores the most vulnerable of society: Widows and orphans. 
 
In the first century, widows and orphans were vulnerable.  Widows faced economic hardships without a male in the home to provide.  Orphans lacked the protection of a father. Widows without children were at times isolated and ostracized.  Orphans often were without the tender care of their mothers.  In many ways, widows and orphans were marginalized in society.  For the first century church, the care of widows and orphans was a social justice issue that the first century church understood needed to be address as we are all commanded to address: “Learn to do good; seek justice, rebuke the oppressor, obtain justice for the orphan, plead for the widow’s case” (Isa. 1:17).  Because the needs of the widows and orphans grew, and were beginning to be overlooked, the leaders in the first century church charged a group of men with the task of looking after such people (see Acts 6:1-6).
 
So why is this important when our text this morning is James 2:1-13?  Because a faith that rests in Jesus is one that responds to the needs of the marginalized.  When a person goes from spiritual death to spiritual life and is born again, there are two levels of love that begin to flow through the spiritual veins of the one who is now a living and breathing child of God, and that is a love for God and a love for one’s neighbor.  When you are born again your new love for God begins to flow to the point of overflowing to the point that it is expressed in the Christian’s horizontal relationships.  This is why when Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, He said: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment” (Matt. 22:37).  However, Jesus did not stop there, He continued: “The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Upon these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets”
 
James was no doubt aware of Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees’ question concerning the greatest commandment.  The first four commandments concern our love and relationship with God and the final six commandments concern our love and relationship with our neighbors.  Jesus begins with the greatest commandment because how we treat our neighbor reflects the condition of our relationship with God.  This is why James wrote in verse 10, “For whoever keeps the whole Law, yet stumbles in one point, has become guilty of all.”  The NLT translates this verse in a way that ought to help you get the point James is making: “For the person who keeps all of the laws except one is as guilty as a person who has broken all of God’s laws.” In other words each of the Ten Commandments are inter-connected.   It is not segmented or impartial just like genuine and saving faith is not impartial. 
 
Impartial Faith is Gracious (vv. 1-5)
I am not sure what was going on in these churches of the Christians James was writing to, but it seems that something was off relationally concerning how they treated one another. Apparently, the rich were treated with some level of favoritism over the poor.  We know this because of what James writes in verses 1, “My brothers and sisters, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism.”  James did not write this to keep these Christians from showing favoritism but was forbidding them from doing what they already were doing.  If you are a Christian, then you are a “bond-servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 1). 
 
To be a bond-servant is to be a slave of Christ; the bond-servant of Jesus means that you are neither free nor hired, but property of your Master.  Don’t think of slavery to Jesus as something degrading, for in slavery to Jesus is where true freedom is known.  However, to be a bond-servant of Christ and to show favoritism by treating one person more valuable than the other is a contradiction – especially the kind of favoritism James was addressing related to the way the rich were treated over the poor.  We know this because of the verses that follow:
For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and is dressed in bright clothes, and a poor man in dirty clothes also comes in, and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the bright clothes, and say, “You sit here in a good place,” and you say to the poor man, “You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives? (vv. 2-4)
 
The gold ring on a person’s finger was worn by the upper-level Roman “equestrian” class. Those with a gold-ring were not only wealthy, but were highly influential.  Now think of what it would have been like if you were a marginalized Christian Jew, who had an upper-level Roman citizen walk into your church service who also claimed to be a brother or sister in Christ?  You might be tempted to think that if you could just get close to this person, that may help in your standing in society!  Surely close friendship with the person who wore the gold-ring would be a better use of your time than friendship with another poor and marginalized Christian.  To treat one person with more honor than the other because of their social status in this world is to discount the fact that regardless of their social standing, all people bear the image of God and should be treated as such.
 
What made the situation even more grievous is that this kind of favoritism was going on among Christians whose salvation had nothing to do with their standing in society.  The apostle Paul addressed some of the same issues within the Corinthian church when he wrote the following:
For consider your calling, brothers and sisters, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the insignificant things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no human may boast before God.
 
So in response to this kind of favoritism, James admonished these Christians: “Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters: did God not choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him?” In other words, the rich and the poor, the weak and the strong, all have the same thing in common from the moment of birth: We are all born alienated from God and are by nature dead in our sins.  Yet, Jesus found us and died for us, and it is through His redeeming work that regardless of your social status, your tribe, or what part of the world you were born in or currently live... He died for sinners such as us! 
 
Impartial Faith is Loving (vv. 5-9)
The same grace the rich are in dire need to receive, is the same grace available to the poor.  The same grace that is available to the Jew is also available to the Gentile!  The thing that the apostle Peter had a difficult time wrapping his mind around initially was that salvation was equally made available to Gentiles, and that Jesus is equally the Lamb of God, the Lion of Judah, and the Messiah to the Jew as He is to those who grew up eating ham sandwiches, peperoni pizza, Italian hoagies, fried shrimp, and even pork feet.  A Jew would not even go into the home of a Gentile because they were considered “unclean.”  Peter was one such Jew until God rebuked him and told him not to label unclean what God has made clean (see Acts 10:9ff).  After Peter was sent into the home of a Gentile and witnessed God’s saving work in the entire household of Cornelious, he responded: “Opening his mouth, Peter said: “I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the one who fears Him and does what is right is acceptable to Him” (Acts 10:34-35).
 
Peter’s issue was that he could not see how the God of the Hebrews could love and save unclean Gentiles.  Peter’s sin was really not that different than the favoritism that was shown for the rich over the poor in the churches James wrote his epistle to.  It is nothing new that the poor are marginalized or forgotten in the world.  Consider the Netflix documentary titled Gone Girls; Rex Heuermann was able to murder scores of prostitutes because they were not treated with the same value as other women.  It is estimated that 50 million people live in slavery in our world on this very day. Consider the following statistics related to the 50 million slaves that exist in our world today:
6 million victims of human trafficking worldwide.
23% of these victims (roughly 6.3 million people)are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation.
78% of those trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation are women and girls and 22% are men and boys.
92% of sex trafficking victims are adults, and 8% are children. 
 
Add to this that in 2024, there was an estimated 1.14 million abortions in the United States alone!  We live in a world that that does not value human life.  Regarding the partialism that James addressed, he was not surprised that it was happening in a fallen world, he was heartbroken that it was happening among those who claimed to follow Jesus.   Why?  Because of all people, we who are the redeemed of the Lord Jesus, ought to understand that we bear the image of the living God.  To dehumanize a person based on their social or economic status is not only evil, but such behavior blasphemes the Name of the God whose image we reflect (v. 7-8).
 
You can say that you love God all that you want, but according to James 2:9, if you show partiality, you are committing sin by violating the commandments concerning the way we must love our neighbor.  In James’ view (as is true in the rest of the Bible), if you do not love your neighbor, can you really say that you love the God who sent His son to die for that person?  Can James be any clearer: “But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the Law as violators” (v. 9).  
 
Impartial Faith is Merciful (vv. 10-13)
Christian, we are a people who have received mercy, and it was not ordinary mercy you received. The mercy you received is not like the mercy a police officer may have shown you by refraining from writing you the ticket you deserved.  The apostle Paul described the kind of mercy you received in this way: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)...”  The mercy we have received is “rich” and it is a mercy we did not deserve, nor could we earn. 
 
Now, just so you know, verse 10 was written within the context of dehumanizing, ignoring, or treating as less important the “poor” because they do not have the influence that the “wealthy” have.  I have and will continue to use verse 10 when I share the gospel with others, which states: “For whoever keeps the whole Law, yet stumbles in one point, has become guilty of all.”  In other words, if you are feeling good about not violating the first and second commandments because you do not bow down to any idol in worship and claim to worship God alone, but break any of the other commandments, you are guilty of being a commandment breaker. 
 
What does it mean to break any one of God’s commandments?  James tells us in verse 11, “For He who said, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ also said, ‘Do not murder.’ Now if you do not commit adultery, but do murder, you have become a violator of the Law.” Jesus said that if you look at another woman with lust, you are guilty of adultery (see Matt. 5:27-28), and He also said that if you hate or verbally abuse another person, you are also guilty of murder (see Matt. 5:21-22).  What’s the point?  The point is that we have sinned, still sin, and will sin; it is for all our sins that Jesus was crucified, bled, and slaughtered.  The prophet Isaiah wrote of Jesus: “But He was pierced for our offenses, He was crushed for our wrongdoings; the punishment for our well-being was laid upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed” (Isa. 53:5); the apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 3:13, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a Tree...’” We have been forgiven of so much, and the price paid upon His cross was, is, and will always be enough!  Because of the rich mercy we continue to receive, James issues a command in verses 12-13, “So speak, and so act, as those who are to be judged by the law of freedom.  For judgment will be merciless to the one who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.” What is the law of freedom?  It is the royal law of love!  Why did you receive mercy?  You received mercy and now you are born again Christian, “...because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ” (Eph. 2:5).
 
Conclusion
Because of the mercy we have received, the fruit of our faith is to be saturated by the grace, love, and mercy we received in the way we treat our neighbors.  In case you are not clear on what that looks like, Jesus could not have made it any clearer: “I am giving you a new commandment, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all people will know that you are My disciples: if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).
 
The sin of partiality is not only in how we treat the wealthy over the poor.  The sin of partiality comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes.  It can come in how we value a person based on the color of their skin or ethnicity. It can also come in how we rightfully stand against abortion while remaining silent regarding the sexual exploitation of children.  We ought not to be surprised when the sin of partiality is present in our world, but it ought to grieve our hearts when it finds its way into Christ’s church.  We who have received the grace, love, and mercy of God through Jesus Christ ought to be known as a people whose words and actions embody the essence of the grace, love, and mercy we freely received.

Tangible Faith

What we know of James is that he and his brothers did not believe that his half-brother and the oldest of his siblings was all that He claimed to be (John 7:5).  It most likely was not until after Jesus’ resurrection that James finally did believe. However, based on what we read in these verses, I am curious if James was present when Jesus preached His sermon on the mount?  James seems to be the sermon on the mount applied to life.
 
I can’t prove it, but I believe James 1:19-27 is the first four beatitudes applied to life.  Think about the first four beatitudes (Matt. 5:3-6):
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
“Blessed are the gentle, for they will inherit the earth.”
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.”
 
Permit me to share some of my initial takeaways from James 1:19-27 and then share how the first four beatitudes fit into these verses.
Each of us live with a nature that we wish we did not have to contend with. For some, it is lust. For others, it is anger.  If it is not lust or anger, it is something else.  When it came to lust and anger, Jesus told us in His Sermon on the Mount to take radical action to fight against such sins that come from within (see Matt. 5:21-30).  The apostle John wrote of our struggle with sin: “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous, so that He will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:8-9).  It would really be great if we didn’t have to wrestle and contend with our sin though!
 
God’s Word promises us that our fight with sin can be won with the Word of God. In fact, the battle with sin is first won or lost in the mind; listen to 2 Corinthains 10:3-5, “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not wage battle according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying arguments and all arrogance raised against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” James states, “ridding yourselves of all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls” (James 1:21).  You cannot win against your sin apart from the Word of God.
 
To believe the Bible to be the Word of God is good, but you cannot progress and grow in your relationship with God if you do not act upon His Word as it is contained in the Bible. The only way to move forward in your faith as a Christian is to hear the Word of God and then act upon the Word of God by doing what it tells you to do.  In the case of James 1:26-27, you have not really heard the Word of God if it has not affected your speech (v. 26).  You have not really heard the Word of God is you are not looking for ways to love others.  It is not enough to believe what the Bible says about the damage your words can do, the only way you will be able to start addressing the problem of your tongue is to, in the words of James, “bridle his tongue” (v. 26).
 
What God Has Said is More Important Than Your Feelings (vv. 19-21)
We live in a world filled with people who are slow to hear, quick to speak, and at the flip of a switch... explode with anger.  We easily respond to the wounding of our pride with anger.  Ecclesiastes 7:9 says of angry people: “Do not be eager in your spirit to be angry, for anger resides in the heart of fools.”  If Ecclesiastes is true, and I believe that it is, then we live in a nation of fools.  There is a righteous anger that ought to be felt and at times expressed, when necessary, but the kind of anger we see all around us has more to do with feeling triggered, hurt feelings, and whatever entitlements we think belong to us.  We will look at James 4:14 later in this sermon series, but for now, we are told: “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.’ Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. For you are just a vapor that appears for a little while, and then vanishes away.”
 
What is uncomfortable about the epistle of James is that it forces us to consider the simple reality that all of us are here one moment and then we are gone.  You may have 76 years like Ozzy Ozborne or 71 years like Hulk Hogan, or... you may only have until tomorrow!  The question James wants us to ask and that he answers is this: What are you chasing after and why?  Why are you so slow to listen? Why are you so quick to speak? Why are you quick to get angry?
 
This is why Jesus started his sermon on the mount with the first step towards the life you were born to experience: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:3).  To be “poor in spirit” is to recognize just how far short you fall from being right before the only One who matters—namely God. To be “poor in spirit” is to recognize that you cannot help yourself. To be “poor in spirit” is to be fully aware that you need a righteousness that you cannot generate. 
 
If you are genuinely poor in spirit, you will mourn over the sin that offended a holy God, alienated you from Him, and is the reason for the mess that is your life.  There is no coming to God unless you see your sin for what it really is, and if you see it for what it is, then you will come to him with the very keen awareness that your only hope is outside of yourself. 
 
If you really do mourn over your sin while aware that you need God to do the saving, then you will be meek.  The choice of the NASB to translate “praus” to gentle in Matthew 5:5 was a poor discission by the translators.  Every other major version of the Bible translates this world “meek” or “humble.”  To be see yourself for what you really are, and if you see yourself for what you really are, you will not be too impressed with yourself. 
 
So, James states in verses 21, “Therefore, ridding yourselves of all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility [prautēs] receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls.” The word James uses in verse 21 for humility comes from the same root that Jesus used in His third beatitude! If you received the word, you received the gospel.  If you received the gospel, you have been born again and the power that raised Jesus from the grave, is the same power that now resides in you in the person of the Holy Spirit who indwells and seals you (see Eph. 1:13-14; 3:20-21). 
 
How do I address the filthiness and wickedness that remains in me?  Be quick to hear what the Word of God says about it, keep your mouth shut by accepting it, and instead of responding in anger, respond in humility.  Who cares about your feelings, what you ought to really care about is what has God said and why does it matter?      
 
What God Wants to Do in Your Life is Greater than What You Know (vv. 22-25)
If I understand the Christian life and how it is that God brings change in our lives, it seems to me that for God to accomplish what He needs to in my life, He must wound my ego by exposing my thoughts and the intentions of my heart.  James exhorts us in verse 22, “But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not just hearers who deceive themselves.”  The author of Hebrews said of the Word of God: “For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, even penetrating as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12).
 
What James states in verse 19 is primarily how it is that God uses His word in the lives of His people to live and finish well.  Why does God want this for your life?  Well, again, in verse 18, God used His word (the gospel) so that we can become born again, “so that we would be a kind of a first fruits among His creatures” (v. 18).  Here is the thing about first fruits: The Israelites were commanded to give God the first fruits of their crops which was the best of their crops.  If you are a Christian, you are God’s first fruits, which means you are of great value to Him, and what He wants for you is to thrive as His child! 
 
If you are a Christian, then it is true that you, at one time, arrived at the cross of Christ as one who was poor in spirit, one who mourned over your sin, and one who died to the any notion that you were able to save yourself by laying down your pride to embrace the cross of Christ as the only hope of your salvation and redemption.  So what has changed since then?  Not a thing! The evidence that the gospel has germinated and taken root in your life is that you are still poor in spirit, that you still mourn over your sin, and that you are still aware that it is only by the grace of God that you have been saved, are saved, and will be saved. 
 
In the mind of James, and every other person who contributed to the Bible, those who are poor in spirit, those who mourn over their sins, and those who let go of their pride come to Christ, it is not enough to only hear the word of God!  Why? Because when a person is born again, something happened that happens to all people who are alive: you are now hungry and thirsty.  But hungry and thirsty for what? Hungry and thirsty for the righteousness of God.  After the first, second, and third beatitude, Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied” (Matt. 5:6).
 
When you are hungry and when you are thirsty for the word of God, it is not enough to just listen to the word of God.  This is the point of verses 23-25, “For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.”
 
God uses His word to form and shape His people through the power of His Holy Spirit.  To listen to His word intently will mean that you must let God’s word challenge your assumptions about who He is, how you live your life, and the world you live in.  This is why we must be both slow to speak and slow to anger.  What does that mean?  Well, if you do not like what God’s word says because of what you would like God’s word to say, you must yield your life, heart, and soul to it.  When the word of God confronts you, when it challenges your assumptions, and when it calls you to action, your best course of action is to yield to it knowing that God wants to accomplish His good will in and through your life for your joy and His glory.  This is how you address, “...all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness” in your life; this is what it means to be a doer of the word, and not just a hearer who deceives his/herself.  This will not happen in your life if you are passive about His word.
 
God Wants to Change Your Heart for Your Joy and the Good of the World (vv. 26-27)
Think for a moment about your life. Are you satisfied and happy with what comes out of your mouth?  Are you content with the way things are now?  What kind of mark do you want to leave in this world when you are gone?  What are you doing now, Christian?  What is your “religion” really worth?  How much of the world has left or is leaving its mark on you? 
 
If you think that verses 26-27 are only about what comes out of your mouth or to what extent you help those in need, then you have completely missed the point!  James is taking something Jesus said and is showing us what that looks like in day-to-day life; here is what Jesus said: “But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person” (Matt. 15:18).  Against the backdrop of Matthew 15:18, think carefully about what James is addressing in verses 26-27, “If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”
 
So, how are you doing Christian?  What does your speech and how you treat others really say about your faith in Jesus?  When Jesus said what He said in Matthew 15:18, He said of the Pharisees of His day: “You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me...” (Matthew 15:7-8). If James was with us during our worship service today, I think he would ask what the Holy Spirit may be asking you right now, and that question is this: “How is your heart?” 
 
Conclusion
Listen to me now, the epistle of James is written to those who identify as Christians. James considered those to whom he wrote his letter as “brothers” and “sisters.”  What this means is that as a Christian, it is possible to have an unbridled tongue and to ignore orphans and widows for a season in your life as a Christian. The reason why James warns us of the dangers of being slow to listen, quick to speak, and easily angered is because those dangers exist for the one who has been born again. As a Christian, it is possible to be “carried away and enticed by your own lust resulting in your own sin” (v. 14). 
 
It is possible that although you are a Christian, that you have entered a season where your heart has grown far from God because you have been carried away by a desire to sin.  If that is you, then Joel 2:12-13 is for you, “‘Yet even now,” declares the Lord, ‘Return to Me with all your heart, And with fasting, weeping, and mourning; and tear your heart and not merely your garments.’ Now return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in mercy and relenting of catastrophe.”   
 
An outward expression of repentance in the Bible involved the tearing of one’s garment.  God is not interested in what you do on the outside as much as what you are doing about the inside.  To tear your heart is to allow the word of God to speak into your heart, and if there is anything there that needs to be addressed, to address it.  It is to take the mirror of God’s word before your heart and to do something about what is seen in the mirror.  Dear Christian, what is the mirror of God’s word telling you this morning?  What are you willing to do to address what the mirror of God’s word is showing you? 
 
It is not enough to only hear God’s word; you must do something about what it is exposing, because God is for your joy more than you can ever know.  The first step is to repent by bringing whatever it is that you see before God and to commit to turning from that sin. The next step is to assess how it is that you got where you are, and to change the pattern of your life to line your heart up more with the things that please the God who saved you.  Instead of standing and staring at the things that displease the Lord, turn from your sins to His Son. 

Tempered Faith

There are two quotes that have stuck with me that have helped me over the years: The first is from AW Tozer who said, “It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply.”  The second is from John Bunyan who said,
“Conversion is not the smooth, easy-going process some men seem to think... It is wounding work, this breaking of the hearts, but without wounding there is no saving... Where there is grafting there will always be a cutting, the graft must be let in with a wound; to stick it onto the outside or to tie it on with a string would be of no use. Heart must be set to heart and back to back or there will be no sap from root to branch. And this, I say, must be done by a wound, by a cut.”[1]
 
Throughout the Bible, I see the wisdom of Tozer and Bunyan’s counsel as it relates to the hard stuff we experience in life.  As much as God has used AW Tozer and John Bunyan, the real question is this: What has God said about the trials that will come and do we trust and believe Him enough to turn to Him even when we do not understand how He will work it out of our good?  It is to James that we now turn our attention to discover what God has said about it. 
 
God’s Will for the Christian’s Life is to Finish Well
God’s will for the life of the Christian is to receive the crown of life.  What is the crown of life you ask?  Ironically, it is a type of “victor’s crown” that the Christian will receive after he/she has died.  During the Isthmian games a crown in the form of a wreath would be awarded the victor who finished whatever event a Greek male athlete participated in. Like the Olympics of today, only the best of the best would compete after training harder than anything else in their lives in the hope that they could receive the coveted crown. Borrowing language from the games, Paul wrote of the Christian life: “Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. So they do it to obtain a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Therefore I run in such a way as not to run aimlessly; I box in such a way, as to avoid hitting air; but I strictly discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified” (1 Cor 9:25–27).  Just before he was executed, Paul wrote to Timothy: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing” (2 Tim. 4:7-8).  The crown of life is eternal life with Jesus.
 
At first glance, it sounds like James is telling us that in order to receive the crown of life, we have got to dig deep and persevere.  This makes our salvation sound like we have to work for our salvation.  This is not what James is saying at all, and we know this because of verse 18, which states: “In the exercise of His will He gave us birth by the word of truth...”  The “word of truth” is the gospel of Jesus Christ that saves.  It is of this gospel that Paul wrote in Romans, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes...” (Rom. 1:16).  It was because of God’s will that we went from spiritual death to spiritual life, and the evidence that we are now spiritually alive is with the life we are living today.  Listen to what Jesus said in John 1:12-13, “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 a man, but of God.”  In John 10:16, Jesus said that the evidence of those who belong to Him is in how they respond to Him: “And I have other sheep that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will listen to My voice; and they will become one flock, with one shepherd” (John 10:16). 
 
So here is the rub that is very important that you not only hear me say, but that you take it to heart.  The one who perseveres to the end... even under and through various trials, is the one who was truly born again when they heard the gospel of Jesus Christ; it was in the moment that you were born again that you went from being spiritually dead to being alive with Christ!  The crown of life is given not based on your merit, but because of your relationship with Jesus.  It was His sinless life, His sacrificial death, and His victory over death that secured, secures, and will secure your salvation.  The crown of life is awarded on the basis of your relationship with Jesus with the understanding that His merit is all that you need!  The crown of life is not given to those who have good intentions, it is not given to those who are religious, it is not given because of some prayer you said, it is not given because you started out well, for it is given because you have been born again!  Here is what the apostle John said of those who do not persevere until the end: “They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be evident that they all are not of us” (1 John 2:19). 
 
If you are wondering how you can know that you belong to Jesus and that you are indeed born again, James provides us with four words: “...those who love Him.”  The evidence that you have been born again besides the fact that you will persevere under trial, is that you love Him.  This is why Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, “If anyone does not love the Lord, he is to be accursed” (1 Cor. 16:22).   If you have heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and have been born again as a result, you will love Jesus... which is evidence that God first loved you (1 John 4:9-19).
 
Now, when it comes to the trials in life (v. 12) and the temptation(s) we all face, what purpose do they serve in the Christian life?  James seems to indicate that “trials” are both allowed and designed by God while temptation comes from within and is used by the devil and his demons.  What you cannot see in your English Bible is that the root of the Greek word for “trial” (peirasmos) and the root for “temptation” (peirazō) comes from the same Greek root and both words can be translated “test” or “tempt.”
 
Trials are Designed by God to Ultimately Bless the Christian (vv. 12-13)
So how do we make sense of these verses? Permit me to offer you an alternate translation of verse 13 that I think will open these verses up for you in a way that ought to help.  Here is what I think is a better and more helpful way to translate James 1:13,
No one is to say when he is tested, “I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone.”
 
How do we know that God does not tempt us?  We know because He is a God of love, we know because He is good, and we know because He is holy! Because God is infinitely good, James states in verse 17, “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.”  Not only is God good, but because He is God, He has not, does not, and will not change. 
 
Because God is good, every trial that God brings or allows into your life is designed to strengthen your faith... not destroy your it.  This is why James can say in verse 12 that when the trials do come, you can receive them knowing that such trials will ultimately serve for your blessing.  How do I know that?  For starters, it is the pattern we see with God in the way that He has always dealt with His people.
 
Consider Abraham as one example of how God will use and bring trials into the lives of His people to do the kind of thing that needs to happen in the life of the one who belongs to Him.  After Issac was born and old enough to know better, God told Abraham to take his only son and to offer him as a burnt offering (Gen. 22). What was the purpose of the testing? For starters, to show Abraham that his identity was not to be found in the son he and Sarah had longed for and prayed for their entire lives.  Did God make Abraham go through with the slaughtering of his only son?  Nope.  Abraham would have done it, but God stopped him and then said to him: “For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me” (v. 12).
 
For most of Abraham’s life, he struggled to trust God.  All throughout Abraham’s life God used the various trials in Abraham and Sarah’s lives that God brought, allowed, and even the trials Abraham brought upon himself to temper his faith to the point that by the time we come to Genesis 22, he knew he could trust God even when doing so did not make sense, such as God’s instructions to sacrifice Isaac.  How do I know this, besides the fact that Abraham was so committed to obeying God that God had to stop him from following through with sacrificing Isaac?  Here is how I know: When Abraham, Isaac, and his servants arrived at the mountain where Abraham was to follow through with God’s instructions, Abraham said to his servants something that reveals that something had changed in his heart; here is what he said: “Abraham said to his young men, ‘Stay here with the donkey, and I and the boy will go over there; and we will worship and return to you” (Gen. 22:5).  God told him to sacrifice Isaac, and the reason why Abraham was willing to go through with it was because over the years God was tempering Abraham’s faith to the point that he knew God well enough to know that the God who told him to kill his son was both good and able to raise the dead.  Abraham’s action was the evidence that his faith in God was not just lip service (see Jas. 2:20-23).
 
Temptation to Sin Comes from Within and Is Used by Satan to Destroy the Christian
When the trials come, the primary danger we face in such moments is from within.  Suffering can serve as a catalyst to deepen your relationship with God, or it can cause you to doubt the wisdom, goodness, and sovereignty of God.
 
To be tempted is not sin, but it is what you do with the temptation.  Notice what James says in verses 14-15, “But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it has run its course, brings forth death” (Jas. 1:14–15). 
 
God does not tempt, but He does test.  His testing often comes in the form of trials that serve to temper our faith for the purpose of making it stronger.  Sin comes from within us, and whatever forms the temptation is that we are faced gives birth to sin when we are “carried away and enticed” by our own sin nature.  Facing the temptation is not the sin, but giving into the temptation is.  James tells us that when temptation comes (and it will), the downward progression leading to the act of sinning begins with a decision that involves both the mind and the heart.  Giving into the temptation to sin begins when you decide to dwell on the temptation instead of run from it. The next step is to be “carried away and enticed” by your own lust (this is when both your heart and mind are lured by your own lust). Our lust comes from the sin nature that is within all of us, and when left unchecked... it gives birth to sin.  Robert Plummer put it this way in his commentary on James: “...just as conception leads naturally to childbirth, giving free rein to sinful inclinations naturally results in discrete moral transgressions. Just as water runs downhill, so evil desire, if allowed to pursue its “gravitational inclination,” runs down into sinful activity.”[2]  Where does unchecked sin inevitably lead?  It leads to death.
 
Listen, most of the temptation we face comes by way of our own doing because of our own lustful desires.  The devil is just one person and can only be at one place at a time.  His demons are many, but they are also limited by their number and ability.  However, Satan is also known as the “Tempter” for a reason.  He is real and he wants to use temptation as a way to destroy your faith. The greater threat you face through is not the devil but your own heart and passions.  To “follow your passion” is horrible advice if it is not tethered to the will of God for your life that you can only know and discern through His word and prayer.
 
Conclusion
Every time Abraham trusted his own heart or caved to his own fears, he was “carried away and enticed by his own lust.” The same can be said about Adam and Eve, the Hebrews in the wilderness, King David, and every other person we read about in the Bible. It wasn’t until Abraham trusted in a good and sovereign God to lead him that he experienced the blessing God wanted for him. For Abraham, that blessing did not come when he wanted, but arrived when God knew Abraham was ready for it.  All sin comes by way of trusting what you think is right, instead of believing God and trusting Him for what He has declared is right. 
 
So, how do we face the trials of life and at the same time resist the temptation to sin?  James offers us some help in verses 16-17.
Don’t be deceived. Instead of trusting in what you desire, trust in the goodness of God and what He had declared to be good. “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above...” (v. 17a), so trust the One who is good and wants good for you.
 
Focus on God’s unchanging character instead of your desires. James tells us that all that is good comes from, “the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow” (v. 17b). We change all the time, our emotions ebb and flow, what we think is right one day may change the next day, but God does not change! His character remains the same. Instead of being carried away by your sin, turn to the God who does not change and trust Him.
 
Trust God’s Word. It is because of His word that you have been born again when you heard the gospel. Tony Evens put it this way: “For many, the Bible is like the queen of England. It’s held in high esteem but wields no power over them personally. What Scripture accomplished for your salvation, though, it can accomplish for your sanctification.”[3]  When faced by temptation, Jesus used the Word of God to combat the devil; you can and ought to do the same.
 
Know that God loves you. God called you by the “word of truth,” and He did it because He loves you. According to James 1:18, God gave you a new birth for the purpose of being His “first fruits among His creatures.”  God instructed His people to give the first fruits of their possessions back to Him; for the Hebrew people, the first fruits were the best and first from their harvest. To be God’s first fruits among His creatures means that you are loved and treasured by Him! What He is doing in your life today, is for the purpose of something greater tomorrow that will ultimately lead to your sanctification and then glorification as His son/daughter.  His “no” from His Word is for your good, your joy, and ultimately your thriving.       
 
 
 
[1] John Piper, The Hidden Smile of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books; 2001), 65.
[2] Robert L. Plummer, “James,” in Hebrews–Revelation, ed. Iain M. Duguid, James M. Hamilton Jr., and Jay Sklar, vol. XII, ESV Expository Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 234.
[3] Tony Evans, The Tony Evans Bible Commentary (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2019), 1339.

Real Faith

Through every sentence and paragraph that makes up James’s epistle, it oozes with wisdom as to how the Christian can live out his/her faith.  The epistle helps us understand what faith looks like while suffering, how it responds to both poverty and wealth, how faith in Jesus impacts our speech, and how our faith as Christians helps us navigate life in our upside-down world. 
 
The group of Christians James addressed his letter to were Jewish Christians who understood what it meant to be a marginalized people, even before faith in Jesus; but after belief in Jesus as the promised Messiah, they were also ostracized by members of their community, and for some, their own family members. 
 
So, who was James? Let me begin by stating the two things that we know about the person who wrote this epistle: 1) James was the half-brother of Jesus, and 2) he did not believe in Jesus until he witnessed His resurrection.  Here is why I am mostly certain that James, the half-brother of Jesus (and not the apostle James) wrote this epistle:
The apostle James died by execution under Herod before this epistle was written (Acts 12:1-2), and the James mentioned in Galatians 2 and Acts 15 is the brother of Jesus who became a predominant leader in the Jerusalem church.
 
We are told in the gospels that Jesus had biological brothers who were born to Joseph and Mary after Jesus’ birth who did not fully believe in Jesus even though they grew up with Jesus (see Matt. 13:55; Mark 6:3; John 7:3-5).
 
Jesus appeared to his brother, James, and then to the rest of His brothers, after his resurrection (see 1 Cor. 15:6-7).
 
However, when James did finally believe in Jesus, he was all-in on who his older brother claimed to be, and his belief was backed up by his life, actions, and convictions.  Not only was James all-in when it came to Jesus, but how he introduced himself in his epistle tells us a lot about who he was as a man of God: “James, a bond-servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes who are dispersed abroad...” (v. 1).
 
James does not introduce himself as the half-brother of Jesus, but as a “bond-servant” of God.  The Greek word for “bond-servant” is doulos, and it literally means “slave.”  In other words, James’ authority as a leader does not come from his biological relationship to Jesus, but his submission to the Lordship of Christ, not as his older brother, but as the King of kings and Lord of lords.  The other thing to note here is that James places “God” and “the Lord Jesus” side-by-side, implying that Jesus’ words before James believed are the truth that he has since bowed his knee too (see John 10:30). 
 
I believe that James finally believed that his brother was the Messiah when Jesus appeared to him after He rose from the dead (1 Cor. 15:6-7), which is a good reminder right from the very beginning of James, that no one who has truly encountered the resurrected Christ can remain unchanged by an encounter with the living Christ.  James went from a doubter who grew up with Jesus to a believer who would identify himself as a slave to God, and held Jesus as the Lord over his life.   
 
The dispersed Christians James addressed his letter to most likely include hundreds of Christians who fled Jerusalem as a result of the stoning of Stephen and the great persecution Saul (before his conversion and was renamed “Paul”) and others brought upon the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem.  I think James originally addressed his letter to those we read about in Acts 8:1-3,
“Now Saul approved of putting Stephen to death. And on that day a great persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except for the apostles. Some devout men buried Stephen, and mourned loudly for him. But Saul began ravaging the church, entering house after house; and he would drag away men and women and put them in prison.”
 
It was to these Christians (and others), and now to us, that James’ letter addresses.  The two great themes that are repeated through this epistle are faith (a word used at least 14 times) and obedience to God as the fruit of genuine faith (there over 50 imperatives given throughout James regarding this).  This is the reason for the title of my sermon series: Faith and Works.  There were other titles I thought of while preparing for this sermon series that came to mind, such as: Faith-Acts, Faith-Works, but settled for Faith and Works.  If you are looking for a verse that encapsulates the theme of James, I submit to you James 2:17, “In the same way, faith also, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.”
 
With the time that I have left, I would like to direct your attention to three categories that James addresses in verses 2-11 that set the tone for the rest of the epistle: 1) suffering and joy (vv. 2-4), 2) wisdom and knowledge (vv. 5-8), and 3) poverty and wealth (vv. 9-11).
 
Suffering and Joy are Compatible (vv. 1-4)
Suffering and joy sound just as incompatible as water and oil do they not?  Whoever wanted to sign up for a healthy dose of suffering?  You might be thinking to yourself: “Jesus did.”  You are correct in thinking so, but do not forget that on the eve of His suffering, we are told our Lord prayed while in agony over what He was about to suffer: “And being in agony, He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground” (Luke 22:44).  Jesus even included in His prayer, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done” (22:42).
 
The world tends to look at joy and suffering as incomparable, but James gives us a different perspective, he informs these dispersed Jewish Christians who have lost their homes and loved ones, “Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials...” Notice that James does not use the word “some” but the word “all” when it comes to the level of joy that we should have over the “various trials” we will experience in life.  
 
Why should we consider it “all joy” when things get difficult in life? On the surface, it sounds like James is giving us the same advice Bobby McFerrin gave us in the late 80’s with his one-hit-wonder song, Don’t Worry, Be Happy. Some of you remember the song:
Here's a little song I wrote
You might want to sing it note for note
Don't worry, be happy
In every life we have some trouble
But when you worry you make it double
Don't worry, be happy
 
Ain't got no cash, ain't got no style
Ain't got no one to make you smile
Don't worry, be happy
Cos when you worry, your face will frown
And that will bring everybody down
So don't worry, be happy
 
Did you know that McFerrin’s song was number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for two weeks straight and that he received a Grammy for Song of the Year for that song?  If James told these Christians the same thing Bobby McFerrin wrote in his song, they would have assumed that James was out of touch at best, and crazy at worse!  Thankfully, James is not telling Christians who face the various trials that come our way to fake a smile and repeat to ourselves: “Don’t worry, be happy.”  That just will not work!  James also experienced the fear his dear brothers and sisters experienced when persecution came into their city, and he no doubt felt the loss of dear Stephen when he had his head and body crushed under a barrage of rocks that resulted in Stephen’s martyrdom (see Acts 7). 
 
James is not talking about putting a smile on your face or faking your joy after receiving news of a terminal illness, the loss of a job, or the death of a loved one.  He is reminding us that there is purpose behind our suffering even when it is brought to us by the hands of evil men or rouge cells in your body. Behind your suffering is a good God who does not waste your tears nor your hurts.  What James wants these Christians to understand, and what the Spirit of God wants us to know, is that the various trials you will experience are allowed into your life by design and with purpose.  Consider what two other apostles had to say about the purpose of suffering in the Christian life:
The Apostle Peter: “In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which perishes though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ...” (1 Pet. 1:6–7)
 
The Apostle Paul: “...but we also celebrate in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” (Rom. 5:3–5)
 
It is also important to note that James informs us that trials will come.  The question is not “if” they come, but “when” they come (v. 2). We will come back to the significance of verses 3-4 next week when we look at verse 12, but for now you should know that your trials are producing something in you dear Christian. What those trials are producing is the kind of endurance that is fueled by hope because what others mean for evil, or what the hard things in life will ultimately be used for is not your demise or destruction, but your good, because such trials are allowed for two purposes in your life: God’s glory and your good.  What else could verse 4 mean?  Such trials are wielded by the Almighty to bring about the following in your life: “...that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” 
 
Again, we will unpack this truth a bit more next week, but for now, think of “trials” as “trails” that God has purposed to use, to bring about verse 12 in your life: “Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.”
 
Wisdom for Life is Found in God (vv. 5-8)
When we walk through the various trials that will come, such painful experiences can throw us through a tailspin.  This is why some “deconstruct” their faith and walk away from the Christian faith and ask questions like: “How can a good God allow such and such into my life?”  You can look at your circumstances and draw from those things your own conclusions without any regard for how God intends to use such trials to produce something much more lasting and beautiful in your life. 
 
Think about how easy it is to walk through your suffering and the hard things of life with little regard to seek wisdom from the One who has called us to walk through such trials.  The point of verses 5-8 is that all of life requires a greater wisdom that can only come from the One whose knowledge and understanding of your life and the world is infinite.  The fact of the matter is that you really do not know what is coming in while you sit and listen to this sermon.  You do not know if there is some rogue cell in your body that threatens certain parts of your body.  On a Monday (June 30th) I was told that my uncle was in hospice and by Thursday morning (July 3rd) he was dead.  This is why Jesus said, “For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is life not more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the sky, that they do not sow, nor reap, nor gather crops into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more important than they” (Matt. 6:25–26)?  Jesus did not just tell us to not worry but provided the best way to fight and push back our anxiety: “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided to you” (Matt. 6::33).
 
Listen, when the trials come in the form of waves or even tsunamis, if your faith is not tethered to the One who is sovereign over such waves, you will be “driven and tossed by the wind” (Jas. 1:6).  The point James is making in verse 5 is that we do what Jesus told us to do: Don’t lean onto your own understanding in the midst of your trial but seek wisdom from the God who wants to use your trials to produce what is lacking in you.  Instead of asking, “Why me?”  You ought to ask: “Lord, please use this trial in a way that helps me know and understand you more so that I can live the life you have called me to live better.”  Instead of running to your own conclusions, seek wisdom from the One who sees the whole picture of your life.  Instead of running to whatever solution you think is best, run to Him who knows what is best!
 
Our Treasure is Not Earthly (vv. 9-11)
Finally, regardless of what you have in your bank account, your position and status before God has nothing to do with what the world thinks of you but what God thinks of you.  The real question is not how much you have of this world, but how much of your heart does the Lord have of you?  What is your so-called “faith”?  Is it just religion?  Where or who is your treasure?  Most of those to whom James was writing, were poor. With the persecution that came to Jerusalem, they had lost their income, property, and social status.  However, there were some who were wealthy. 
 
For those who are poor, it is easy to conclude that God has forgotten them.  For those who are wealthy, it is easy to forget God.  The danger for both groups of people is to become spiritually near-sighted to the point that you fail to set your eyes on what it is that you did not work for and cannot lose.  How can you experience joy in suffering?  Where does lasting wisdom really come from, wisdom that guides rather than blinds?  It comes from setting our eyes upon that which has been given and promised to those who have been truly saved by the grace of God through faith in His Son, to receive the gift of salvation that you cannot work for or earn. 
 
Those who share in James’ status as “bond-servants of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 1), are heirs of Him who spoke and owns the cattle on a thousand hills!  The poor are to glorify in their high position as those whose inheritance and status is found in the King of kings and Lord of lords! The rich person who also is a “bond-servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,” must hold his/her wealth with an open hand in a way that honors God and serves His people. Why? Well, in the words of the famous missionary, CT Studd: “Only one life, 'twill soon be past, only what's done for Christ will last.”
 
Let me leave you with this final thought: When you are going through the hard stuff, know that because of your identity as a Christian, that God is more interested in your good than you can ever wrap your mind around.  When the trials come, because you are a Christian this much is true: “You are more sinful than you know and more loved than you imagine.”

The Word, The Life, The Light

Reflections

In my journey as a Christian over 43 years, I have learned a lot of lessons about spiritual growth and maturity that I wish I had known decades ago.  Since my heart attack in March, I am more aware of my need to leave a legacy to the work God has done in my life.  I’m probably not going to write a book, as too many have been written already, so I would prefer to share some of my lessons learned through sermons like this one.  My desire is to make your spiritual journey a bit smoother than mine has been.
 
Secular/Spiritual Dichotomy
 
First of all, I would like to share with you the snare of tolerating in your life what I call a secular/spiritual dichotomy—the idea that our spiritual life is compartmentalized into certain religious activities and our secular lives are still lived pretty much as they always were. 
 
In 2001 or 2002, I was attending a Bible study with some men from Cheyenne Hills Church.  At the time, I was a 10-year veteran in the U.S. Probation Office in Cheyenne, and looking forward to retirement in another 10-plus years.  Somebody was asking a question about what we would do after we retired.  Well, I thought I had a pretty pious-sounding answer: that I wanted to become involved in full-time ministry.  Imagine my surprise when Roy Howell, a local real estate agent, said, “Huh, I like to think that I already am.”  I knew that Roy facilitated AA groups in the jail and elsewhere.  That simple statement proved to be life-changing for me.  I realized that I needed to rethink how I approached life as a disciple of Christ, and that my first priority was to be making disciples.  I wasn’t doing that.  In short order, I was facilitating a Bible-based 12-step group in Cheyenne and I continued that until COVID.
 
Colossians 3:17 says, “Whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.”
 
That word in the Greek for “everything” means…everything.  All, the whole, entire.
 
When we become Christians, we are now bondslaves of the Lord Jesus Christ.
 
I Corinthians 6:19-20 says
“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you have been bought for a price: therefore, glorify God in your body.”
 
Imagine walking around all day with this ministry shawl on.  I got it when I was commissioned as a minister last summer with Volunteers of America.  I feel self-conscious with it on – and maybe that’s the point!  When I have it on, I think differently, I react differently, and people see me differently.  But if I am constantly aware that my primary responsibility in life is to be a disciple of Christ and in the business of making other disciples, then I should be thinking and reacting to things all day long just as if I was wearing this ministry shawl even when I’m not.   
 
As blood-bought Christians, there are no longer any secular activities.  We don’t just go on mission trips—we live on a mission field all the time.  When we are doing regular activities like working, going to the grocery store, or the bank, or getting gas in the car, we remain aware that the Lord may use us in ministry at any given moment.  A person who needs gas; a woman crying in the parking lot; a neighbor who has medical problems; a coworker going through a divorce; a client who is suicidal.  For us, there is no more luck; no more coincidence; no more chance encounters.  We are now destined for divine appointments with people everywhere we go.  This is a startling realization, but one that greatly increases how the Lord can use us. 
 
Even our recreation changes.  For example, I love to hunt pheasants, and I did it for a long time just to enjoy pheasant hunting.  But I am more intentional now on helping introduce pheasant hunting to others and making it a blessing to them.  I took a disabled veteran out last fall to shoot his first pheasant and have introduced several men and their sons to pheasant hunting. I still go pheasant hunting but the emphasis has changed. 
 
 
Stimulus/Response Gap
 
Another really important realization the Lord gave me came from a book by Viktor Frankl, called “Man’s Search for Meaning.”  He was a Jewish psychologist who survived the German concentration camp at Auschwitz, and gained a lot of rich spiritual insight in the process.  He learned that the greatest of human freedoms was the ability to choose our attitude in any given set of circumstances.  He elaborated in other writings that there always exists a gap between stimulus and response.  If we know that, then we can use that gap to choose to respond appropriately. 
 
There is always a gap between stimulus and response.
 
Most people are oblivious of this gap.  They behave like Pavlov’s dogs: there is no conscious control over their response to provocation.  When Pavlov rang the bell, the dogs started drooling for food.  For people, if you insult them, they will respond in kind immediately. 
 
Even as Spirit-filled Christians, we will continue to behave as people of the world until we learn about the gap, and allow the Holy Spirit to rule that gap. This takes extreme diligence on our part.  If we are caught off-guard, almost surely, we will fail to let the Holy Spirit control our response and we will say or do something offensive. So, we must not be caught off guard!  Just as we learn to drive defensively—always anticipating other drivers to do something wrong—we learn to live defensively: always on guard for provocation, so it doesn’t blindside us and elicit a thoughtless response. 
 
When provoked, we will naturally be shocked, but if we have been anticipating that something like this might happen, we will likely have the presence of mind to beseech the Lord to help us.  In these situations, I have found that the assistance is immediate and effective as long as I continue to resist taking the provocation personally. 
 
 
 
This topic of provocation leads directly into a related discussion of anger in Ephesians chapter four.
 
In verse 26, Paul says, “Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity.”
 
In verse 31, he says, “All bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and slander must be removed from you, along with all malice.”
 
How much anger must be removed from you?  All.
 
So, is Paul contradicting himself from verse 26 to 31?  Actually, no.  There are two separate Greek words for anger used in these verses.  In verse 31, Paul uses the word Strongs G3709, Orge, which means to be angry or wrathful or vengeful.  It’s a word used commonly in Scripture to refer to the wrath of God.  That is reserved for Him, and is not an appropriate response from us.  He is God; we are not.
 
The word in verse 26 is Strongs G3710, Orgizo, and means to be provoked to anger.  So, we are subject to be provoked to anger, but we choose to not act on that provocation or we would run afoul of the commandment to remove all anger from us in verse 31. 
 
Let’s say we decide that is asking a bit too much of us.  Getting angry is natural, and a little bit is okay, we just don’t want to go to bed angry.  Let’s give ourselves just five seconds to indulge in anger and then put it away.  That seems reasonable, doesn’t it? 
 
What can happen in five seconds? 
 
In five seconds, an unrestrained tongue can cause severe emotional and mental trauma and ruin a relationship.  In five seconds, an unrestrained fist can cause a physical assault.  A person carrying a concealed weapon can draw and fire in less than two seconds.  If we are indulging even a few seconds of anger every time we are provoked, we will probably have no healthy relationships in our lives.  Many people in prison are there because they let their anger go unrestrained for a few seconds. 
 
How do we stop fleshly anger?
 
With one second and the Holy Spirit. 
 
Watch how Jesus handles provocation:
 
In John 8:39-44, in a discourse in which the Jews claimed Abraham was their father, Jesus disputed that.  In verse 41,
 
“They said to Him, “We were not born as a result of sexual immorality; we have one Father: God.’”
 
Now, this was a dig at Jesus because they all knew that His mother had been betrothed to Joseph at the time she became pregnant with Jesus, and Joseph was not Jesus’ father.  They were displaying the common Jewish belief that Jesus was illegitimate. 
 
So, how does Jesus respond?
 
Verse 42: “Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I came forth from God and am here; for I have not even come on My own, but He sent Me.”
 
Jesus completely ignored the insult, and did not let it distract Him from what He was trying to get them to understand. 
 
A bit later in Chapter 8, there is a similar situation. In verse 48, in response to Jesus’ statement that He is not a sinner and speaks truth, the Jews respond:
 
Verse 48: “The Jews answered and said to Him, “Do we not rightly say that You are a Samaritan, and You have a demon?’
 
Okay, calling a Jew a Samaritan was perhaps the ultimate put-down.  Jews despised Samaritans for historical reasons we won’t dive into here.  Not only that, but they accused Him of being demon-possessed. 
 
Here is Jesus’ response:
 
Verse 49: “Jesus answered, ‘I do not have a demon; on the contrary, I honor My Father, and you dishonor Me. But I am not seeking My glory…’”
 
Jesus matter-of-factly addresses the issue about being demon-possessed, but totally ignores the comment about being called a Samaritan.  How many times do we waste our breath defending ourselves from frivolous disrespect?  We need to learn to ignore disrespect, and move on to substantive matters.
 
Well, can a Christian be angry and not be in the flesh?  I believe they can.  We see Jesus, for instance, angry with religious hypocrites in Mark 3:5.
 
Christians, if under the influence of the Holy Spirit, will be provoked to anger by hypocrisy; oppression of the poor; racism; and a host of societal evils brought on by living in a fallen world.  But we will not become angry and hostile about personal insults. 
 
If we allow the Holy Spirit to rule the gap, then our response to provocation will be reasoned, calm, and convicting.  But if we run ahead of the Holy Spirit, we will respond with pettiness, defensiveness, and will invite truthful criticism of being a hypocrite. 
 
So, let God rule the gap!
 
III. Bearing Spiritual Fruit
This is a struggle for nearly all newer Christians! 
 
Galatians 5:22-23
 
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”
 
When we think about a verse like this, we know that as Christians we should be filled with these things.  So, we try to be patient, and loving and kind because, hey, that’s what we do!
 
We grow up in a society where hard work and persistence are trumpeted as the pathway to success.  Finish the sentence:
 
“If at first you don’t succeed…”
 
“Where there’s a will…”
 
“Quitters never…” 
 
“God helps those…”
 
You get the idea.
 
But trying these techniques to produce spiritual fruit will leave you stuck in the waste land of Romans Chapter 7.  You know:
 
“For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.  For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.” Romans 7: 18-19
 
I doubt there has ever been a Christian who has not felt this way, and frequently.  But I will tell you good news: Paul didn’t stay stuck here, and you and I don’t have to either. 
 
Paul calls this process of failure “the law of sin and death” in Romans 8:2, and he tells us that the “law of the Spirit of life” has set us free from it!  Past tense!  It’s done! 
 
What does the law of the Spirit of life do for you?
 
He tells us in verses 3 and 4: “For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, SO THAT THE REQUIREMENT OF THE LAW MIGHT BE FULFILLED IN US WHO DO NOT WALK ACCORDING TO THE FLESH BUT ACCORDING TO THE SPIRIT.”
 
So why don’t we experience practical victory in our spiritual lives?  Because we fail to apprehend how to practically walk “in the Spirit,” and instead walk “in the flesh” because we don’t know any better.
 
You see, being godly is the easiest task ever for God, and will always be impossible in our own strength.  The Gospel is not that suddenly you have a Holy Spirit Cheerleader rooting you on to be loving, kind, peaceful, joyful, patient, etc.  The harder you try to be godly, the more failure God will ensure that you experience. He will never enable you to manufacture His character through your own effort. 
 
Instead, He reminds you that you are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and it is just like falling off a log for Him to be humble, patient, joyful, loving, kind, and every other character attribute you can think of to describe God.
 
The secret to seeing godly character produced in our lives is not to try harder, but to yield more. 
 
Get out of God’s way, and let Him be Himself, through you.  It seems too simple, effortless really, and it truly is once we learn to let go of our stubborn desire to do everything.
 
Romans 7 is not the common experience of a mature Christian; it is the common experience of Christians who have not yet learned the fine art of yielding to the Holy Spirit. 
 
Well, there you go.  May God use these lessons that I’ve learned the hard way to make your spiritual journey a little easier.  And be sure to share the lessons you learn the hard way with others and me, because we all need to learn from each other.

The Christian Home

To BELIEVE in Jesus is to BE a Christian.  What I mean by “believe” is not agreeing that the Bible is true and Jesus is who He claimed to be.  What I mean by “believe” is that you are all in on what the Bible teaches and who and what Jesus claimed to be and do.  Genuine belief begins with your intellect, but it does not stop there.  Genuine belief affects your daily actions and life choices. 
 
So, to believe in Jesus is to live in a state of being as a Christian.  To “BE” is to “EXIST.”  You can believe certain things that do not affect your state of existence. An example of this is how I view the reality of math. I believe that math is both real and good, but my belief goes no further than my intellect. 
 
It is possible to “BELIEVE” in Jesus and not “BE” a Christian.  If you are a Christian, your Christianity is more than a religion or something you believe, but who you now are.  Think about what the apostle Paul wrote: “And you were dead in your offenses and sins, in which you previously walked according to the course of this world.... But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ...” (Eph. 2:1, 4-5).  If you are a Christian, you were once dead, but now you are alive with Jesus.  Because you are now alive with Jesus, Paul continued in Ephesians 2:10, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” 
 
To go from death to life requires a change in your DNA.  By the time Jesus arrived at Lazarus’ grave, he was dead and in his tomb for four days (John 11:17).  What that means is that decomposition had already started, his body was bloated, his bodily fluids were already seeping out of the orifices of his body, his internal organs were already breaking down, and because of the breakdown of the tissues of his body there was already an overwhelming stench that was present in the tomb.  When Jesus asked for the stone of the tomb to be removed, Lazarus’ sister, Martha, said to Jesus: “Lord, by this time there will be a stench, for he has been dead for four days” (v. 39).  For a dead Lazarus to become a living Lazarus, his body would have to go through a complete DNA change, and that is exactly what happened when Jesus raised him from the dead when He shouted: “Lazarus, come out” (v. 43)!  Lazarus’ body experienced an immediate DNA change, he then got up, and then he walked out of the tomb. 
 
Christian, you experienced spiritually what Lazarus experienced physically the day you heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and believed. This is why Paul was compelled to remind the Ephesian Christians who they were with these words: “I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, being diligent to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:1-3).  So, how do you do that?  Paul tells us: “So then, be careful how you walk, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil” (Eph. 5:15–16).  Okay, but what does that look like in the home?  It looks like husbands loving their wives in the same what Jesus loved His church and gave Himself up for her (Eph. 5:25-33).  It also looks like wives, subjecting themselves under the headship of their husbands (vv. 5:22-24).  Oh... but how does one walk in a manner worthy of our calling in the way we parent our children or in the way we respond to our parents?
 
I struggled if I should address parents and children in the reverse order than how the apostle Paul did it but decided to follow in the same order he chose. 
 
Responding to Our Parents in a Manner Worthy of Our Calling
Paul addresses children by reminding us of the fifth commandment: “Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be prolonged on the land which the Lord your God gives you” (Exod. 20:12).  For some parents, this commandment is abused; for some children, this commandment is ignored.  For a lot of people in the church, I suspect that the fifth commandment is confusing.  Just so you know, the first four commandments concern our relationship with God; the last six commandments concern our relationship with people. 
 
The first commandment states: “You are to have no other gods before Me” (Exod. 20:3). How you yield your mind, life, and heart to the first commandment will affect how your respond to idols, how you use the name of the Lord in what you say and do, and what kind of time you spend with the Lord in worship. Concerning the final six commandments, I suggest to you that how you yield your mind, life, and heart to the fifth commandment will affect how value your neighbor’s wife/husband, that which does not belong to you, your integrity, and what you think you need or do not need.  It all begins with what kind of relationship you have with God.
 
Show me how a young man or woman treats their mother or father, and I will show you what kind of husband or wife that person will most likely be.  If you cannot honor the person who is responsible for sheltering you, providing food, clothing, and an education for you... then when it comes to the other people in your life... you probably will not be a very honorable person (unless something changes, such as a spiritual DNA change). 
 
Now, for the big question many of you may be asking: “At what age does the fifth command expire?”  When you are eighteen?  Twenty? How about when you are on your own?  How about after you are married and have a family of your own?  The commandment doesn’t even indicate an age, but the word the apostle Paul uses is Ephesians 6:1 is “children.”  The Greek word for “children” is teknon and it means exactly the way every English translation translates the word, and that is “children.”  The point Paul is making is that if you are a child, then you have a command from God to obey, and that is to give your parents honor. 
 
Notice the order Paul address regarding the family.  He begins with wives, then moves on to husbands, then children before he addresses “fathers.”  Why?  Because if you are alive today, then you are a child of someone.  Not everyone is a parent, but everyone is a child.  In the context of Ephesians 6:1, Paul is speaking to non-adults, and the way they are to honor their parents is by obeying them.  However, this does not exempt every person who has a parent from honoring their parent(s).  So there are two things going on with Ephesians 6:1-3. First, for every non-adult in the room, if you are unwilling to obey your parents, then you are not walking in a manner worthy of your calling as a Christian.  Second, if you are a son or a daughter with a living parent, you are not walking in a manner worthy of your calling if you are not giving them honor. 
 
Let me help you understand what exactly is being said in these verses.  Walking in a manner worthy of your calling as a Christian as a non-adult means that you honor your parent(s) by obeying them so long as what is asked of you does not violate your primary obligation to obey Christ.  If a father or mother askes their Christ-following child to sin, then that child is obligated to respectfully disobey.  Honoring your parents by obeying them does not mean that you must endure sexual or physical abuse, nor require you to lie, cheat, or steal because your father or mother told you to do something immoral or wrong.  But when it comes to the things your parent(s) ask you do such as the rules of the house you live in, you are to honor your mother and father by obeying and respecting them. 
 
Non-adult children, listen to me.  Paul states that the fifth commandment has a promise tied to it: “Honor your father and mother (which is the first commandment with a promise), so that it may turn out well for you, and that you may live long on the earth.” Obeying your parents who want you to thrive and succeed will help protect you from the kind of friends and habits that could ruin or shorten your life.  The other way it will turn out well for non-adult children who honor their parents through obedience and respect for them, is that you will most likely develop honorable and healthy character traits. 
 
So, how old until you do not have to obey all the rules of the home your parents pay for?  Until you can pay rent and/or move out on your own.  However, when you do move out of the home of your parent(s), to does not mean you are no longer obligated to honor your parents. 
 
So, what about those of us who are adults?  The fifth command does not state “obey” although throughout the Bible, non-adult children are expected to be obedient.  The fifth commandment is also a principle to live by.  Notice what the commandment does not say.  It does not say “Love, admire, agree with, trust, or drop everything that you are doing for your parents.”  No, what the fifth commandment states is to “Honor your father and mother.”  The relationship I had with my sons when they were toddlers was very different then, than it is today.  How I relate to my 24-year-old son is very different than how I relate to my 14-year-old son.  If the day comes that they should ever get married, my relationship with them will be very different than it is today.  So what does it mean to honor my father and mother as an adult?  I am commanded to honor them no matter where they live, how old they are, what physical condition they are in, or how they feel about me.    
 
Tim Keller provides a clear answer that honors the tone of all of scripture when it comes to our parents: “Honor is a decision to treat your parents with dignity and with courtesy, and it’s also a decision to provide long-term loyalty to their best interests.”[1]  To walk in a manner worthy of my calling as a son or daughter must include seeing my father and mother as individuals created in the image of Almighty God, and that He entrusted my life into their care, and regardless of their sins and faults, I am to honor them by treating them with dignity and to do all that I am able to do to make sure that their best interests are provided for in a way that glorifies God and serves them well.  
 
Parenting Children in a Manner Worthy of Our Calling
Now to the parents in the room.  Paul is addressing dads, but moms are not exempt.  The word that Paul uses for discipline is the Greek word, “paideia” and it also includes instruction, teaching, and training.  The other word that is used is “instruction” which can also mean admonishing, warning, or even counseling.  To discipline your children is to enforce boundaries and to provide instruction is to bring your child along guiding and persuading into a person of character because you love them. 
 
To be honest with you, parenting is difficult!  It is especially difficult in the culture and day that we find ourselves in.  To raise your child in a way that protects them from the idols of both our culture and their own hearts is hard work and if it is done poorly or in a way that is heavy on law and light on grace... or heavy on grace and light on law... the consequences can be devastating to watch and experience as a parent.  The danger in striving to raise your child well with rules is to be overbearing where truth and the rules of the house leave little room to experience love and grace for your child.  This is how you can “provoke your children to anger...” 
 
If you want to raise a resentful, frustrated, and angry child, make sure you leave little to no room for your child to experience the love that you have for him or her.  Creating rules and enforcing them is easy and important, but to do that and at the same time making space and time to pay attention to your child’s heart, to listen to your child, to be safe enough so that your child feels free to speak to you, to respect the way God put your child together in terms of their personality... takes time and energy.  Your children do not only need you be their parent, but they need you be present in their life.
 
However, Paul does not end with his charge to fathers not provoking their children to anger.  Our responsibility as parents is to, “bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”    
If you want to walk in a manner worthy of the calling in which you have been called, then you must bring up your child in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.  What does it look like to bring up your child, and what does it involve?  Check out what God instructed His people to do in order to pass on the faith of the parents to their children:
“Hear, Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. And you shall repeat them diligently to your sons and speak of them when you sit in your house, when you walk on the road, when you lie down, and when you get up. You shall also tie them as a sign to your hand, and they shall be as frontlets on your forehead. You shall also write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates.” (Deut. 6:4–8)
 
This passage in Deuteronomy is known as the Shema, and it was recited often as a prayer.  Orthodox Jews take the Shema literally in the sense that they literally tie the word of God onto their arms and their foreheads.  The scribes and Pharisees in Jesus’ time did the same thing, what they wore on their foreheads and arms were called phylacteries, and they made sure they were big enough so that everyone could see how religious they were.  Listen to what Jesus said about the scribes and Pharisees:
The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses. Therefore, whatever they tell you, do and comply with it all, but do not do as they do; for they say things and do not do them. And they tie up heavy burdens and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as their finger. And they do all their deeds to be noticed by other people; for they broaden their phylacteries and lengthen the tassels of their garments.” (Matt. 23:3–5)
 
Some of you grew up in homes with parents like this.  The scribes and Pharisees missed the entire point of the Shema! The point is not to look and act religious, but that what you say you believe in and your relationship to God is actually who you really are.  If you are really a Christian, then it should be who you really are when no one is looking, and especially in your home with those who know you better than anyone else.  So, when you are walking, when you are shopping, when you are mowing the lawn, and when it comes to the culture of your home... you really are who you say you are. 
 
When it comes to the rules in your home and the time you share with your child, and how you interact with the members of your family, consider what it means to love:
Love is patient, love is kind, it is not jealous; love does not brag, it is not arrogant. It does not act disgracefully, it does not seek its own benefit; it is not provoked, does not keep an account of a wrong suffered, it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; it keeps every confidence, it believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Cor. 13:4–7)
 
When it comes to the culture of your home, consider what the fruits of the Spirit are in the life of a Christian: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law” (Gal 5:22–23).
 
What does it look like to, “bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord”? It is the kind of disciple-making Jesus commanded us to be about, and it must begin in the home out of a love for God and a love for the closest neighbors you will ever have, namely the members of your own family.
 
[1] Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).

A God Above All Others

Thursday morning, while at Gold’s Gym, hours before news broke of Israel’s attack on Iran (ironically named “Rising Lion”), my thoughts were consumed by the crazy protests in Los Angeles and the posturing of California’s governor and our President against one another.  I also thought about the fragile state of our world, Putin’s unrelenting push to take Ukraine and Ukraine’s resolve to remain a sovereign state.  While on the Stair Climber at Gold’s gym, as I thought about the above current events, I typed the following on my “Notes” app on my phone: “The kings of the earth will mourn when Jesus returns because they do not want to give up what belongs to the King of kings.” 
 
We are promised by God’s Word: “Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him.”  Of His return to judge the nations, Jesus said: “And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the son of man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory” (Matt. 24:30).  When Jesus comes again, He will come with “power” and “great glory.”
 
Jesus is coming, He will judge the nations, and He will come with power and great glory!  I do not know when He will come and neither do you, but what I do know is that time is running out!  My dear brothers and sisters, the hour is late and His coming draws nigh (Luke 21:25-28)!  It is possible that you are here or watching the livestream, and as you do... you are still sleeping.  Men, it is possible that you are here, or you are watching the live stream, and you are currently suffering from an identity crisis.  Permit me to explain what I mean.
 
After God created all things, on the sixth day, He created man; more specifically, we are told that He said, “Let Us make mankind in Our image according to Our likeness...” (Gen. 1:26).  We are later told in Genesis that God put Adam in the Garden and before He formed Eve from His rib, God commissioned Adam as the first man to “cultivate it and tend it” (2:15). God also said of Adam as a man, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him” (v. 20).  The man and the woman were to complement each other, but the man was also responsible to cultivate and tend to his wife, or as the apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 5:25, Adam was to love his wife in such a way that would later be demonstrated upon a cross by our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. 
 
God Created You to Know and Enjoy Him (vv. 18-21)
Adam and Eve were to serve as His ambassadors in His creation; Adam was to serve as priest in his home in the way that he loved his wife and eventually parented his children alongside and with his wife.  All that was good in Adam’s home and the peace that he and his wife knew in the presence of God was vandalized by the first couple’s sin and Adam’s failure to shepherd his wife as a lover of her soul.  The serpent sought to destroy God’s image bearers bypassing Adam while targeting Eve.  Although Adam was right next to his wife while the serpent tempted and deceived her, the man did not provide, nor did he protect by refusing to protest the lies of the snake on behalf of his wife.  Eve believed the wicked serpent and ate of the fruit that God warned would bring death, and after Eve took the first bite, she then gave it to her husband, and he ate of the forbidden fruit. Both Adam and Eve were then filled with shame. 
 
I would like to suggest to you that I believe Adam bit into the fruit because he wanted glory and power that did not belong to him.  In fact, ever since Adam and Eve bit into the forbidden fruit, mankind has pursued a glory and a power that belongs only to the Creator.  I would like to suggest that the underlying motive of idol worship in whatever form it takes is a desire for power and glory.
 
What do I mean by “power and glory,” and how do they relate to idol worship?  What I mean by power is chasing after the thing, person, or experience that God has said you cannot have or that you cannot have on your terms, but on His. In the garden, God said no to the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but He provided every other fruit in the garden for their enjoyment.  Another example of how idol worship is really a pursuit of power is determining that you will go outside of God’s prescribed moral boundaries so that you can get, receive, or experience what you think is best for you.  When you do that, you make yourself to be “like” God in the same way Adam and Eve desired to be like God when they ignored His word to receive what they believed was best for themselves.  This is the point of Isaiah 45:18-21; for a moment let verse 18 settle on your soul: “For this is what the Lord says, He who created the heavens (He is the God who formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create it as a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited): ‘I am the Lord, and there is no one else.’” In other words: There is only one Creator, He is Yahweh, and you are not Him.  His creation that He made was designed with your living and thriving in mind within the way that He designed all of it.  When you make decisions or act in such a way that goes against what Yahweh has declared to be good or bad, you assume an authority that is not yours.  Idol worship is assuming the role of Yahweh and the power to determine what is right and wrong, apart from Him. 
 
What I mean by “glory” is by making yourself the center of Yahweh’s creation.  By default, because He was able to create all things, He is God.  There was no one before Him and before all things, He existed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Not three different forms at different times, not by three different titles, but as One God in Three Persons.  There is no God like Him!  The good news is that He is equally holy as He is good.  He is not like the idols we humans create that can only burden and crush those who worship them.  However, when we do bow down to idols, we do so because we have determined that they can give us what God cannot.  Anytime we make something ultimate in our lives (even the good things), we essentially have determined that the thing, the person, the experience, can give us what God cannot give.  When we do this, we become guilty of self-worship and have removed God from His rightful place in our lives and placed ourselves at the center of His universe. 
 
Listen, just as it is true that any idol you create is a god of your own creation that you must carry that will only burden you... so it is true that any idol you create and bow down to is self-worship. To do this is no different than those, “Who carry around their wooden idol and pray to a god who cannot save” (Isa. 45:20).  Your idols will lead you away from the life and joy the true God intends for you, not to it!  This is why in Isaiah 45:21, Yahweh calls to all under the crushing burden of their idols: “Declare and present your case; indeed, let them consult together. Who has announced this long ago? Who has long since declared it? Is it not I, the Lord? And there is no other God besides Me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none except Me.”  His call is one of mercy and grace that is motivated by love, but He will not share your heart with any of your idols!
 
God Provided a Way to Know and Enjoy Him (vv. 22-25)
There is a way to be free of your idols, there is a way that leads to life, there is a way to experience the kind of joy for which you were born, but it cannot be in and through any idol of your making!  This is why the Bible says, “There is a way which seems right to a person, but its end is the way of death” (Prov. 16:25).  Any way that you seek, that excludes God, to find and experience life, joy, your best life now... can only and will only lead to death because the kind of life and purpose you were born for can only be found in the One to Whom there is no comparison.  The God who made you, calls to you: “Turn to Me and be saved...” (v. 22).  Who can turn to Yahweh to be saved?  God tells us: “...all the ends of the earth.” On every continent and in every nation, God invites all to turn to Him for their salvation, and it must be on His terms alone!
 
You cannot come to Yahweh for salvation with your idols, for the only way to come to Him is by first laying your idols down before Him. We learn from Isaiah 45:19, that He is not far off and He is not hidden.  He is within reach because He alone is God and there is no other like Him!  In Isaiah 45 alone, it is repeated not twice, not three times, not even seven times, but ten times that there is no God like Yahweh.  Why is this repeated ten times?  There are 10 commandments that were given to Israel; the number ten symbolizes the divine law and the God who created mankind to know Him.  It is this God who not only has made Himself available to you and has invited you into a relationship with Him, but it is He who has pursued sinners who do not run to Him but from Him.  It is this God and no other who declares with the same power and glory that spoke creation into existence with just the word of His mouth: “I have sworn by Myself; the word had gone out from My mouth in righteousness and will not turn back, that to Me every knee will bow, and every tongue will swear allegiance” (v. 23). 
 
What does it mean to bow one knee and what does it mean for one to swear allegiance to Yahweh?  It means to come to Him in humility, contrite in spirit, and trembling at His word. 
To tremble at God’s word is to recognize that He is God and you are not, and that you have nothing to give Him but your broken self; to tremble at God’s word is also to come to Him as one who is poor in spirit.
 
To be contrite in spirit is to not only recognize and see your sin for what it is, but to grieve over your sin; to be contrite in spirit is also to be one who mourns over your sin.
 
To be humble before God is to recognize that to Him alone belongs all glory, honor and power (see Rev. 4:11); to be humble is to be meek.
 
We are all born into sin, and because of our sin nature... our hearts are idol factories from the moment we come out of the womb and take our first breath.  The verdict according to the Word of God is this: “There is no righteous person, not even one; there is no one who understands, there is no one who seeks out God...” (Rom. 3:10-11; Ps. 14:1-3).  However, God offers peace, and His offer of peace is not to be confused with an offer of truce.  A truce is an agreement between enemies to stop fighting or arguing for a season and it usually requires a compromise on both sides; this is NOT what Yahweh offers to anyone. What he offers is the unconditional surrender of sinners so that we can be saved from His wrath and experience a redemption only He can make possible: “Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other. I have sworn by Myself; the word had gone out from My mouth in righteousness and will not turn back, that to Me every knee will bow, and every tongue will swear allegiance” (Isa. 45:22-23).  Why? Because “only in Yahweh are righteousness and strength” (v. 24).
 
What Adam failed to do while the serpent tempted his wife, was to lead her away from the danger of the serpent to the safety of their Creator who alone is all powerful and to Whom belongs all glory.  Adam was called to tend and cultivate the heart and soul of his wife by leading her to Yahweh, but instead he led her to an enemy and to idols that can only, “steal, kill, and destroy” (John 10:10). 
 
After Adam and Eve sinned, God promised a deliverer who would crush the serpent’s head, but also would ultimately rid the world of idols.  Eight chapters later, in Isaiah 53, we discover that God’s terms of peace is a Person who would take upon Himself the sins we are all guilty of for the purpose of saving and redeeming sinners.  This Person would be afflicted, struck down, and humiliated (Isa. 53:4).  This Person would be pierced for our offenses, He would be crushed for our sins, He would be punished for good, and it would be through His wounded body, that sinners like us would find our healing (v. 5).  This Person would bear the sins of Adam’s race by being oppressed, afflicted, and ultimately crushed for the forgiveness of sins we committed for the purpose of our redemption (vv. 6-10). 
 
It would be through this Person that salvation would be made available to all people from every tribe, nation, and tongue.  The Person Isaiah prophesied about would not be any ordinary person, for over 100 years after Isaiah wrote those words, the prophet Jeremiah declared: “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, ‘When I will raise up for David a righteous Branch; and He will reign as king and act wisely and do justice and righteousness in the land.  In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will live securely; and this is His name by which He will be called, ‘The Lord Our Righteousness.’” (Jer. 23:5-6).  The person Jeremiah spoke of is Jesus. He is the righteous Branch of David and He is “The Lord our Righteousness” who was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our wrongdoings, and died for our sins.  He not only died, but after He was buried, He rose on the third day!  What motivates Yahweh to offer salvation to sinners everywhere?  Love! 
But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. (Rom. 5:8-10)
 
Of this Jesus, the apostle Paul wrote the following:
And being found in appearance as a man, He [Jesus] humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross. For this reason also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil. 2:8-11)
 
Do you see and understand what the apostle is saying here?  The One through Whom salvation will be made available to the nations and deliver us from our sins and rescue us from the crushing and weary weight of our idols is Jesus! It is to Him that every knee will bow, and every tongue will swear allegiance by confessing, “Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” 
 
Husbands, fathers, grandfathers, uncles, and every person in this room today... hear me: We are not called to chase after idols, for they will only lead to burdens that crush and ultimately steal, kill, and destroy.  Every part of you was made for a purpose to know and be known by the living God whose image you bear!  God’s terms of peace is Jesus, so if you have not done so already, run to Him before your time runs out. 
 
Husbands, fathers, and grandfathers, do not fall for the tempter’s lies like a fool; do not follow in the way of Adam!  The most loving thing you can do for your wife, your children, and your grandchildren is NOT to lead them to their idols, but to lead them to the idol crusher, Whom is Jesus Christ.  There is coming a day when the time God has allotted will run out, and every idol worshiper will one day stand before the King of kings and Lord of lords.  If you are leading your wife, your children, or your grandchildren to their idols... you are ultimately leading them to God as a Judge instead of a Father they could have known had you led them to Jesus instead of the idols of their hearts.  For it is only in and through Jesus we can sing these words: 
No fate I dread, I know I am forgiven
The future sure, the price, it has been paid
For Jesus bled and suffered for my pardon
And he was raised to over - throw the grave
To this I hold: my sin has been defeated
Jesus now and ever is my plea
Oh the chains are released, I can sing: I am free!
Yet not I but through Christ in me
 
Amen.

A God Like No Other

Last Sunday, I mentioned Solomon as an example of a life of faith that began so wonderfully but ended very tragically.  Solomon knew the scriptures well, we know this because of what he wrote in the book of Proverbs, and one such verse that he wrote was Proverbs 3:5, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.”  In fact, according to Proverbs, real wisdom is the Old Testament Law applied to all of life.  Yet, at some point, Solomon’s heart was turned away from God and foolishly pursued what God warned would lead to heartbreak, shame, and disaster. 
 
The thing that Solomon’s father, David, was known for was that he was a man of war (1 Chron. 28:3), which Solomon was not. Solomon was known as a man of peace.  The problem was that he pursued peace even if it meant that he ignored the very Law of God that influenced his writing of Proverbs.  One of the ways the kings of other nations would enter into a peace agreement or an alliance (i.e. covenant) was by marrying the daughter(s) of the king of that nation.  We are told that Solomon, “loved many foreign women” (1 Ki. 1-2).  The problem with this is multifaceted, but here is what God commanded in His word that Solomon ignored:
Be careful that you do not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land into which you are going, or it will become a snare in your midst. But rather, you are to tear down their altars and smash their memorial stones, and cut down their Asherim —for you shall not worship any other god, because the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God—otherwise you might make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they would prostitute themselves with their gods and sacrifice to their gods, and someone might invite you to eat of his sacrifice, and you might take some of his daughters for your sons, and his daughters might prostitute themselves with their gods and cause your sons also to prostitute themselves with their gods. You shall not make for yourself any gods cast in metal.” (Exod. 34:12–17)
 
Solomon, who had been known for his godly wisdom and the building of the Temple, “loved many foreign women” (1 Ki. 11:1-2).  So what happened?  Listen to what the Bible says about Solomon’s ending legacy:
So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and did not follow the Lord fully, as his father David had done. Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh, the abhorrent idol of Moab, on the mountain that is east of Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abhorrent idol of the sons of Ammon. He also did the same for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.” (1 Ki. 11:6–8)
 
 
 
What Solomon thought would bring peace, contentment, and success... created a crushing burden the wrecked his life and led to the dividing of the nation of Israel into the North and the South. 
 
After the death of Solomon, the divisive spirit Solomon was responsible for creating through his many compromises led to the splitting of the nation he loved.  The king of the northern kingdom (Jeroboam) established two alternative places to worship to keep those in the North from traveling to the Southern kingdom to worship Yahweh in the Temple that Solomon built.  King Jeroboam set up golden calves not unlike the one made by the Hebrews after Moses was up on the mountain receiving the commandments of God; Jeroboam then said to the people: “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem; behold your gods, Israel, that brought you up from the land of Egypt” (1 Ki. 12:28).  The Northen Kingdom in Israel was known for its rampant and evil idolatry that included child sacrifice and gross perversions of marriage and sex, all while promoting a worldview contrary to the one of their forefathers.  After many years of God warning the Northern Kingdom through His Word and His prophets to repent from their sins, and after many years of ignoring those warnings, God used the Asyrian Kingdom to judge, destroy, and exile many of the people.
 
The Southern Kingdom was initially led by Solomon’s son, Rehoboam.  In many respects, the Sothern Kingdom remained somewhat loyal to the faith and vision of their forefathers such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and David.  There were no doubt periods of idolatry, but there were also seasons of religious reform with an emphasis to return and maintain the worship of Yahweh at the Temple in Jerusalem.  Many in the Southern Kingdom believed that because they had Solomon’s Temple, that they had the presence of God.  Eventually the Southern Kingdom grew increasingly nominal in their faith to the point that God also sent them prophets to warn them of a similar fate that the Northern Kingdom suffered if they did not repent.  Because they had Solomon’s Temple, were more conservative, and were ‘not as bad’ as those in the Northern Kingdom, that they were safe.  Eventually the Southern Kingdom became known for their worship of the idols of the nation’s, instead of their worship of the God of Abraham, Moses, and David.
 
Both the Southern and Northern Kingdoms eventually experienced the crushing burden that their idols created.  But it was after the Northen Kingdom’s demise and God’s repeated warnings to the Sothern Kingdom to turn from their sins that Isaiah wrote what we read in 46:1-13.    
 
Creaturely Idols Create Crushing Burdens for those who Bow Before Them
Idols come in all shapes and sizes; they are not only physical creations made with human hands.  Idols include established gods worshiped by people groups and cultures, but they also come in the form of ideologies, things, or people that are made ultimate in the heart of their devotees.  Some of the ancient idols of long ago have taken different shapes or even cloaked in a different dress... but they are not new. 
 
In Isaiah 46, the prophet calls out the worship of the Babylonian gods known as Bel and Nebo about a century before we are introduced to Nebuchadnezzar in the book of Daniel.  Bel was the chief god worshiped by the Babylonians who was also known as Marduk and believed to be responsible for creation and worshiped as the supreme god.  Nebo, the son of Bel (Marduk), was worshiped as the the Babylonian god of wisdom, writing, and scribes. 
In Isaiah 46, Bel and Nebo are depicted as burdens pulled by cattle; the irony of the way they are depicted is that in the days of Isaiah, when a nation was conquered, because it was believed that their gods were unable to save, the victorious army would put on display in a parade the idols of the defeated people. At least the defeated worshipers of Bel and Nebo can move, but the gods the Babylonians attribute power and knowledge to are stooped over because they are powerless, motionless, and without life.  Like every other idol in the world, Bel and Nebo have no power to save or produce what they promise. 
 
The weight of Bel and Nebo is crushing even to the cattle forced to transport them.  Why?  Because according to verses 6-7, “Those who lavish gold from the bag and weigh silver on the scale, hire a goldsmith, and he makes it into a god; they bow down, indeed they worship it. They lift it on the shoulder, carry it, and set it in its place, and it stands there. It does not move from its place. Though one may shout to it, it cannot answer; it cannot save him from his distress” (Isa 46:6–7). 
 
Those who worshiped Bel and Nebo, essentially worship a god of their own creation.  All that the gods add to the lives of those who worship them is a “burden.”  The word for burden that is used (mǎś-śā) can be translated “weight.”  There is a universal fact about what people chose to worship: Anything we create to worship... will require its creator to carry it.  Idols always promise what they cannot give, and rob those who worship them the life, joy, and salvation that those idols offer.  The only thing that created idols offer is the crushing weight of their burden.
 
Unlike the idols of the world, there is only one God who created all things!  Because He is the Creator, all of His creation is dependent upon Him.  Because He is the Creator, He is the One who carries those who worship Him: “Even to your old age I will be the same, and even to your graying years I will carry you! I have done it, and I will bear you; and I will carry you and I will save you. ‘To whom would you liken Me And make Me equal, and compare Me, that we would be alike?’” (vv. 4–5).
 
The Uncreated God Powerfully and Purposefully Saves (vv. 8-13)
Just as He did with the gods of Egypt, the God of Abraham, Moses, and David promised to do the same with the gods of Babylon.  The reality and existence of Yahweh puts everything and anyone who would set themselves up to be more than what they are... to shame.  Lucifer attempted to usurp the God who made him, God cast Him out and Jesus said of that day: “I watched Satan fall from heaven like lightning” (Luke 10:18).  In Isaiah 14, we are given a glimpse into the heart and motives of Lucifer:
How you have fallen from heaven, you star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, you who defeated the nations! “But you said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit on the mount of assembly in the recesses of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’” (Isa. 14:12–14)
 
Because God is God, He declares the end from the beginning.  What does that mean?  It means what He wills, He not only does but accomplishes!  What else could verse 10 mean? It is God who is responsible for, “Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, ‘My plan will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure.’”  There is no room for luck, chance, or karma in a universe with a God who “declares the end from the beginning.” 
 
Because Yahweh is God, he does not need anything from us.  There is no deficiency in Him because He is complete; but not complete in the way we think of completion... no, He is infinitely and eternally complete.  Only six chapters earlier, we are reminded of how big and great our God really is:
Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, And are regarded as a speck of dust on the scales; Behold, He lifts up the islands like fine dust.... To whom then will you liken God? Or what likeness will you compare with Him? As for the idol, a craftsman casts it, A goldsmith plates it with gold, and a silversmith fashions chains of silver. He who is too impoverished for such an offering selects a tree that does not rot; he seeks out for himself a skillful craftsman to prepare an idol that will not totter. (Isa. 40:15, 18-20)
 
Think about the foolishness of worshiping something you create with your own hands.  Is it not just as foolish to bow down to idols of other shapes and sizes?  As great as Solomon’s Temple was, it ultimately became an idol to the people in that they became more concerned about the performance of worship than who they were worshiping.  In Isaiah 66, God reminded Judah why it was that He did not need anything they created: “This is what the Lord says: “Heaven is My throne and the earth is the footstool for My feet. Where then is a house you could build for Me? And where is a place that I may rest? ‘For My hand made all these things, So all these things came into being,” declares the Lord. But I will look to this one, at one who is humble and contrite in spirit, and who trembles at My word’” (Isa. 66:1–2). 
 
God does not dwell in temples, and He does not need anything from us.  Because there is not a God like Him, He does not need us to carry Him and His promises are not dependent upon our strength.  However, what He desires from us is our hearts and our devotion. 
 
Now here is the crazy thing about what we learn of God in Isaiah 46, and we see it in verses 12-13, “Listen to Me, you stubborn-minded, who are far from righteousness. ‘I bring near My righteousness, it is not far off; and My salvation will not delay. And I will grant salvation in Zion, And My glory for Israel’” (Isa. 46:12–13).  The God who has no equal and cannot be added to, is He who brings His righteousness to those who are far off!  If you are a Christian, you were once far off, but now you have brought near!  If you are not a Christian, you are still far off, but it doesn’t have stay that way!  Oh dear Christian, this is great news for you!  We have seen Isaiah 46:12-13 in another passage in the New Testament, and that place is in Ephesians: “But now in Christ Jesus you who previously were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Eph. 2:13). 
 
Listen, there is only One who spoke all that exists by the word of His mouth in six days and rested on the seventh day (Exod. 20:11).  There is only One who reduced Pharoah and his gods to nothing with the Ten Plagues (Exod. 7:14-11:10).  There is only One who was able to part the Red Sea (Exod. 14).  There is only One who is able to make time stand still (Josh 10:13).  There is only One who is able to move kingdoms and empires to bring about the birth of His promised Son!  There is only One God and there is no other, and it is He who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – He is Yahweh!  Christian, it is He who brought you near through the blood of His Son!  It is He who made you “His Priesthood,” “His People,” and “His Treasured Possession.”  You who were once far off, have become the objects of His love, His mercy, His grace, and are now the apple of His eye! 
 
You who ran from Him, have been found by the One who said: “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is comfortable, and My burden is light” (Matt. 11:28–30). You who were weary and burdened, have found rest in Jesus. 
 
Conclusion
So here is the rub regarding what we read in Isaiah 46: If it is true that the God of the Bible is God and there is no other; if it is true that the God of Isaiah 46 is God and there is no one like Him, and because of God, that which He wills will come to pass, then don’t you think that it is foolish to make or treat anything in your life as equal or greater than He? 
 
Yet, there are all kinds of things, dreams, and people in your life competing for the greatest and most valuable place in your life.  This is nothing new, for it has always been the tension since the garden of Eden. Just because God found you, does not mean that you will not struggle with and fight against the pull and temptation to substitute God with something else.  Adam and Eve faced this struggle in the Garden, and they lost.  Abraham wrestled throughout his life with this same struggle.  King David struggled and lost on several occasions, the most notable was his desire for Bathsheba.  Judas struggled and lost, Ananias and Saphira struggled and lost, and you may be struggling and now you find yourself losing.  Anytime we place a thing, person, dream, or ideology above the God whose rightful place in your life in preeminence... you will find the burden to be crushing.
 
We will look at Isaiah 45:22-24, but for now, I want you to consider what it is saying:
Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other. “I have sworn by Myself; the word has gone out from My mouth in righteousness and will not turn back, that to Me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance. “They will say of Me, ‘Only in the Lord are righteousness and strength.’ People will come to Him, and all who were angry at Him will be put to shame.”
 
There is only one to whom all will bow, and there is no God like Him... and His name is Jesus:
And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross. For this reason also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil. 2:8–11)
 
What you need and what this country needs most is not for anything other than Jesus Christ to be great in your life.  He is the hope of the nations.

Be Watchful, Be Wise, Be Aware!

From the Pulpit of Keith Miller
Last fall, I preached a series of sermons on the armor of God as part of a series in the epistle to the Ephesians.  Today, I am not preaching any of those sermons.  I am preaching this sermon on a familiar passage out of a sense of urgency for all of us (me included). It might be because we are honoring six of our own from Meadowbrooke Church who have graduated from High School.  It may also be because of multiple examples we are given in the Bible of individuals who started well, but whose lives ended poorly; people like Solomon, Uzziah, Judas, and the two men Paul lists in 1 Timothy (Hymenaeus and Alexander) who did not do the things Paul urged Timothy to do, which was to, “...fight the good fight, keep the faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith” (1 Tim. 1:18–19).
 
Then there are the repeated admonitions throughout the New Testament; permit me to share some of those with you this morning:
“Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming.” (Matt. 24:42)
“Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.” (1 Cor. 16:13)
“For this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it.” (Heb. 2:1)
“So then, be careful how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil.” (Eph. 5:15-16)
“Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9 So resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brothers and sisters who are in the world.” (1 Pet. 5:8-9)
 
Aside from the multiple examples of the moral failure of key individuals in the Bible who started off strong spiritually and then ended badly, and the many appeals throughout the New Testament to “be careful,” to “pay attention,” to “be alert,” and to be “sober minded.” Over the past 18 years and nearly 180 hours I have spent in the book of Revelation, the thing I have seen and keep seeing is the repeated appeal throughout the book to persevere until the end:
“Be faithful until death...” (Rev. 2:10)
 
“The one who overcomes, and keeps My deeds until the end...” (2:26)
 
“Hold firmly to what you have...” (3:11)
 
“The one who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son.” (Rev. 21:7)  
 
The question is how do you finish well, stay alert, and endure until the end?  I believe Ephesians 6:10-18 provides us with that answer. 
 
The Enemy is Demonic and Real (v. 12)
We are specifically told that the struggle we face is both demonic and real.  We are told in Ephesians 6:10, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might.” The reason we are told to be strong in the Lord is because our struggle is with powerful forces that are demonic in nature: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12).  
 
The rulers, powers, world forces of darkness, and spiritual forces of wickedness are those angels who sided with Satan in his war against God.  Although Satan is only one demon who cannot be in more than one place at a time, he has authority over millions of demons who obey his every command. The rulers, authorities, powers, and spiritual forces of wickedness are different demons with various ranks and responsibilities; some influence governments and kings, others have a more global influence, and many focus their attacks on individual Christians. 
 
Now to be clear, we are told that when Jesus saved you and redeemed you through the life He lived, the sin-atoning death He died, and His victory over the grave... that He, “disarmed the rulers, powers, world forces, and spiritual forces of wickedness” and, “made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him [Jesus]” (Col. 2:13-15).  In his [1]book, The Warrior Savior, Owen Strachan wrote, “The crucifixion represented a real death, but not a real defeat.” 
 
Listen, the demonic powers have no claim or authority over you Christian except what you give to them.  Paul does not mince words here and leaves no room for confusion: “For our struggle...” our fight is not just a fight, but it is a wrestling match in the way that it is not off in the distance but in your face, around you, on you, and is only interested in choking you out!  And “our struggle” is not only with our flesh, but also with, “...the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”
Our enemy’s attacks come from afar and they come to us up close! The enemy brings his fight against us in all different way and techniques!  It comes in the form of slander, false teaching, and the temptation to sin.  Our fight can come in the form of doubt, depression, and deception.  The battle can come in the form of persecution from friends, family, or state authorities. Believe me when I say this: the enemy knows you better than you know you, and he is strategic, deceptive, and is set on silencing or sidling you in any way possible.  It is possible that you have already given the enemy ground, and you are trapped and not sure out to break free. There is One who is mightily greater than they!  
 
The Strength of the Lord is Necessary (vv. 10, 13-17)
There is no persevering, no conquering, and no victory apart from Jesus!  There is only one remedy against Satan, against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, and against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places... and that remedy is the One who disarmed them, “...having triumphed over them” (Col. 2:15).  There was only One capable of doing such a thing: “And when you were dead in your wrongdoings and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our wrongdoings, having canceled the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross” (Col. 2:13–14).
 
Listen, when it comes to the Christian life, when it comes to standing firm, when it comes to persevering, when it comes to being a Christian, you CANNOT do it apart from Jesus!  He alone is “the first and the last, and the living One; He was dead, and behold, He is alive forevermore, and it is He who holds the keys of death and Hades” (Rev. 1:17-18).  The One who died is the Lamb of God, and because He is the Lion of Judah, He conquered death when He got up on Sunday morning and because He is both the Lamb and the Lion, He alone is worthy, “to receive power, wealth, wisdom, might, honor, glory, and blessing” (Rev. 5:1-14). 
 
When it comes to living the Christian life, you cannot do it with Jesus at a distance, you cannot do it with Him being second, and you cannot do it out of your own strength!  You can only do it if He is your strength.  The biblical definition for the word “salvation” is not confined to a date when you believed and said some prayer.  No! The biblical definition for salvation includes the day you were saved but is only complete when you receive a resurrection and all things in creation are made new.  It is of this salvation that the great multitude in heaven that includes every nation, all the tribes, peoples, and languages who cry out at the top of their lungs: “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb” (Rev. 7:10).  The completion of your salvation in the biblical sense, cannot be done on your own, but ONLY in the strength and might of King Jesus (Eph. 6:10)! 
 
Okay, so how can you be strong in the strength and might of Jesus?  We are told that we do that by putting on the full armor of God (v. 11). What is the armor of God?  Let me first tell you what it includes:
The belt of truth, which is God’s truth.
The breastplate of righteousness, which is Christ’s righteousness.
The shoes of the gospel of peace, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ that that we stand firmly in.
The shield of faith is our hope in God that is saturated by the truth of God’s word.
The helmet of salvation, which is the security that we have in the assurance of our salvation.
The sword of the Spirit is the word of God as our offensive weapon in all the armor we are to put on.
 
For those of you who were here for the armor of God part of the Ephesian series, what I am about to say probably will not surprise you.  Each piece of the armor of God belongs to Jesus. Jesus is our belt of truth, Jesus is our breastplate of righteousness, Jesus is our peace, Jesus is our shield of faith, Jesus is our helmet of salvation, and Jesus is the Word of God.  I am convinced that the way one puts on the armor of God is by abiding in Jesus.  This is why the phrase “in Christ” or “in Him” or any other phrase related to “in Christ” is repeated about 36 times in the short six chapters that make up Ephesians.  The only way to put on the armor is by abiding in Jesus. 
 
What does it mean to abide in Jesus?  There are scores of passages we can turn to answer that question, but I will show you two: The first is in 1 John 3:24, and this is what the apostle John wrote: “The one who keeps His commandments remains in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He remains in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us” (1 John 3:24).  Listen, the only way you can know how to keep His commandments is if you know what His word says; His commandments are His words.  The second passage that unpacks what we just read in 1 John is found in the Gospel of John through the words of Jesus:
“Remain in Me, and I in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself but must remain in the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in Me.... If you remain in Me, and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.... If you keep My commandments, you will remain in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and remain in His love.” (John 15:4, 7, 10)
 
The word “remain” can also be translated “stand.” In John the Greek word that is used is abide, menō, which is a different word than the one used in Ephesians 6:10-11, (histēmi).  The point is the same though, there is no standing firmly against the devil’s schemes unless you are abiding in Jesus by keeping His Word and making it apart of you.  There is no taking up the armor of God if you are not remaining, abiding, or standing in fellowship with Jesus.  
 
The Power of Persistent Prayer is Needed (vv. 18ff.)
There are six pieces of the armor of God that are typically emphasized in sermons and in books, and I listed all six that are mentioned in the Bible, but there is one more that does not get the kind of attention that it deserves. 
In the Bible, certain numbers are important.  The number 3 signifies divine wholeness and perfection, the number 4 symbolizes completeness in relation to creation, the number 1,000 symbolizes an extended period of time or an indefinite but great amount of time, and the number 7 symbolizes completion, wholeness, and perfection.  The number 7 appears throughout the Bible over 700 times.  In six days, God created everything and on the seventh day, He rested, which marked the completion of creation. 
 
The belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit are only six pieces and do not complete the set!  Yet we are specifically told in Ephesians 6:11, “Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.” There is a seventh piece that completes the set and that seventh piece that belongs to the “whole armor of God” is how you know you have put on the armor of God and how you know that you are abiding in Jesus!  The seventh piece of the armor of God that completes the set is found in our dependance upon Jesus through prayer; look carefully at verse 18: “With every prayer and request, pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be alert with all perseverance and every request for all the saints...” 
   
How does one stay alert?  How can the Christian persevere?  By putting on the full armor of God?  How do I put on the full armor of God?  By standing in the One to whom six pieces of the armor belongs and by dependently going to Him, “With every prayer and request...”  How often ought we to pray?  We are to pray, “at all times in the Spirit...”
 
So important is prayer as a part of the full armor of God, that the apostle Paul asked that these Ephesian Christians also pray on his behalf that God would do the following four things in his life:
That God give Paul the words to say.
That God open Paul’s mouth.
That God embolden Paul in the opening of his mouth.
That God use Paul to clearly make known the mystery of the gospel.
 
What is the point?  The point is this: There is no persevering, no conquering, and no victory apart from Jesus! The only way to stay awake and watchful, the only way to keep yourself from falling into the foolishness of sin, the only way to be aware of the schemes of the devil is if you are, “strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might” (v. 10).  The only way you are going to do that is if you are abiding in the Lord by keeping His word, and the evidence you are abiding in Him is if you recognize that your only recourse against His schemes is to run to God in prayer.  
 
[1] Own Strachan, The Warrior Savior (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing; 2024), p. 21.