Making It Personal

SERMON: 2013-03-31--easter13--making-it-personal SOURCE DURATION: 00:44:33.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: Candidate 14 is the final segment of sung/spoken material (likely a hymn or benediction) immediately preceding candidate 15, which is explicitly labeled as music and marks the transition out of sermon content. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:40:01.940-00:44:26.240 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- The drama that we watched this morning ends with that dramatic question. Will you make it personal? That is to say, will you apply the benefits of the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus to your own life? I was thinking about that question a little bit this past week as I was preparing for this morning's message, and it occurred to me that the question, "Will you make it personal?" very closely parallels a question asked by the Heidelberg Catechism many years ago. Words Day 17 puts it this way, "How does Christ's resurrection benefit us?" In other words, how do you make it personal? You see, these ancient events of many years ago are only relevant for us this many hundreds if not thousands of years later if we can in fact make it practical and if indeed it applies to our lives. And if the scriptures are to be believed, the events of Good Friday and the events of Easter many years ago are simply the most important event in history since the creation of the world. I say that because the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, the verses 3 and 4 puts it this way. He says, "For I deliver to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures." That would later on, in verse 17 of that passage, he says, "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, means useless. You are still in your sins." And then two verses further down, in verse 19, "If only for this life we have hope in Christ we are to be pitied more than all men. I delivered," he says, "as of first importance to you, that Christ died and was raised according to the scriptures." So let's take a little bit of time this Easter Sunday morning and talk about the benefits of Christ. What does it mean to make His resurrection personal? Well, the Catechism goes on to give us a three-fold answer to the question, how does Christ's resurrection benefit us? It says, first of all, by His resurrection He has overcome death so that He might make a share in the righteousness He won for us by His death. Second, by His power we too are already now resurrected to a new life. And third, Christ's resurrection is a guarantee of our glorious resurrection. So let's look at each of these in turn. First of all, the resurrection of Jesus makes me righteous before God. Notice it again to how the Catechism puts it, by His resurrection He has overcome death so that He might make a share in the righteousness He won for us by His death. Now we're accustomed to thinking that it is the death of Jesus on the cross that makes us righteous before God. And there is some truth to that. The death of Jesus on the cross paid the penalty for our sin. Second Corinthians 521 says, "God made Him who had no sin be sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." And 1 John 2, 2 echoes that same theme. It says concerning Jesus, "He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world." In His death on the cross, and we celebrated that on Good Friday, Jesus died to pay the penalty of all our sin. Our sins are forgiven. But understand with me this morning that having our sins forgiven does not make us righteous. If I've been a criminal and I have to be punished for my sins or my crimes and I serve my time, then my sins are forgiven. That doesn't mean that I'm righteous and it doesn't mean that you want me for your friend, does it? Because who knows, but I might revert back to my old ways. So there is a second side to becoming righteous and that is the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Listen very carefully to how Paul puts it in Romans 425. He says concerning Jesus, "He was delivered over to death for our sins," that's the forgiveness that we were talking about, "and He was raised to life for our justification." It is the resurrection of Jesus that justifies us. And the word "justifies" means just as if I'd never sinned. Jesus was without sin. That's why death could not hold Him in its grip. That's why we can sing, "Up from the grave He rose with a mighty triumph o'er His foes." When I by faith join to Jesus, I not only share in His death on my behalf, I also share in His resurrection. And so when I have confessed my sins, when I have come to Christ by faith, now the righteousness of Jesus has become my righteousness. And so by His resurrection, God declares me righteous. The word is the righteousness of Christ is imputed to me. That is to say it is charged to my account. We are justified by faith. The implications of that are enormous, far bigger than most of us can grasp most of the time because it means that I no longer have to try to be good. It means I no longer have to worry, "Am I good enough? Do my good deeds outweigh my bad deeds?" No, it means that in Christ I am as good and as righteous as ever I'm going to be. That's incredible good news because it means that my position before God is secured. As I said theologically, that's known as justification. That's the first benefit of the resurrection of Christ. If you're a Christian this morning, if you are in Christ, there is no condemnation. God looks at you and He says, "What sin? I don't see any. It is a legal position. You are a child of God." But there is a second benefit then of the resurrection of Christ and that is this. It helps me to live righteously before God. Just notice again how the catechism goes on to say, "By His power, we too are already now resurrected to a new life." Paul writing to the Corinthians says, "If anyone's in Christ, he's a new creation. The old is passed away, behold all things have become new." This righteousness of Christ that we've been talking about is not only imputed to me, it is also imparted to me. And the difference is huge. As I said earlier, to have the righteousness of Christ imputed to me is to have His righteousness charged to my account. He's paid the bill. I don't have to pay the bill anymore. To have the righteousness of Christ imparted to me means that He comes to live in me by the power of His resurrected life and He imparts righteousness to me and inside of me. Because the genius of the new covenant is that God not only tells me, "Here is the law. This is how I want you to live." Only for us to discover all the time, we can't measure up anyway. The genius of the new covenant is that Christ comes to live in me. And the power that enabled Him to overcome sin and death and hell is now the power that comes to be part of my life. That is New Testament, New Covenant Christianity. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And when Christ comes to live in me, the presence of His Holy Spirit empowers me to do two things. It enables me to recognize sin, begin to hate it, and begin to put it off. And secondly, it enables me to recognize righteousness, begin to love it, and then learn progressively how to put it on. And so Paul, writing to the Colossian church, expanding on the riches that we have in Christ, puts it this way. And these next two passages are fairly lengthy, but stick with them. Because they are so profound in the new life that we have in Christ. Colossians chapter 3, beginning at verse 5, Paul having talked about the fact that we're seated with Christ in heavenly places, our citizenship is up there. He says, "Because your citizenship is up there, learn to live for that creation, not for the present one," and so he says, "Put to death there for what belongs to your earthly nature. Sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways in the life you once lived, but now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these, anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its creator." Notice how in this passage he doesn't say, "Well, you know, try harder to be better." No, he says, "You are already better. You are already a citizen of the kingdom of God, and now because you are in Christ already a citizen of the kingdom of God, put off old behaviors." The example that I have sometimes used is when I was a youngster, we first came to this country after five years, we went to citizenship court, and we became naturalized Canadian citizens. It didn't mean that we spoke the language, ate the food, or behaved like bona fide Canadians, but it meant that now that we were citizens here, we would put off old practices, and we would now learn to put on new practices, and so Paul continues in this passage, "Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other, and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Live as the Lord forgave you, and over all these virtues put on love, which binds them together in perfect unity." In Christ, the power of sin that drives us has been nailed to the cross. In Christ, the power of His resurrection has been allotted to us. And as by faith we embrace Him, and as by faith we learn to listen to the voice and the power of the Holy Spirit, then the Holy Spirit inside us makes us recognize more and more what are the patterns of sin, gives us more and more a desire to be rid of these things, shows us what it is, the righteousness that God is looking for, and gives me a desire, gives me a desire to love God and to love my neighbor. And throughout life I grow then in this process that is known as sanctification. It's the test, by the way, of whether or not we really are in Christ, and I've come to believe over the years that the key to growth in Christ is a surrender to His Lordship. I was listening just the other day to a pastor from Dallas, Texas. The pastor is a church there called Gateway Church. His name is Robert Morris. He was telling the story of how as a youth he had grown up in a very dysfunctional family, but he had gone to church for most of his youth and believed in Christ intellectually and really wanted to get to know Him, but it just never, ever really clicked. It seemed, in fact, that his life was under a curse. And he tells the story of how he was part of a youth group, and they had a rather innovative youth pastor, and one of the things that they were supposed to do was one day he had made these little boats out of Dairy Queen banana split containers, you know, what they looked like, and he had put a candle, melted it in the bottom of these little boats, and lit the candles, and all the kids were supposed to launch these into the lake, and they would drift towards the cross on the other side of the lake. And this was an indication of their commitment to Christ that they wanted to serve Him. And so Robert, or yeah, Robert is his name, he let all the other kids go first because in the past his experience with this stuff hadn't been very good, but he really wanted his boat to get to the cross, and so he pushed it, and wouldn't you know, all the other boats were going straight, but his boat drifted off to the side like this. And that's how it kept on going and kept on going. And so this youth pastor is talking away to all these kids about giving their lives to Christ, and everybody's looking over his shoulder, all their boats are going in a straight line to the cross on the other end of the lake, and his boat is going off in an arc like this, and then he says, not a word of a lie, his candle fell over. His boat caught fire and sank. And he said, you know, God really doesn't want me. And so he plunged deeper and deeper into sin until one day in an act of desperation, he had a motel room next to another man who shared the gospel with him, and Robert's response was, well, I've heard this gospel many times over, I've grown up in church, but it's not working for me. And the man said to him words that changed his life. The man said to him, it's not about just knowing it, it is about giving him control. Have you made it personal? Have you given him control? In the divine providence of God, obviously one of those divine moments, it caught. And he humbled himself before God and he said, God, I don't know how to change my life. I have tried, you know that I have tried, I surrender to you. And he says it was like the Lord Jesus, and this doesn't always happen in the same way for all of us, but it certainly did in his life. He said it was like the Lord Jesus reached down into his life, lifted him up, and he said to him, you are my child, changed his life. He's a powerful preacher to this day who tells the gospel of Christ. You see, the resurrection of Jesus makes me righteous before God. The resurrection of Jesus Christ gives me resurrection power so that I can at least begin living a new life, sanctification as you know, it's a lifelong process, nobody ever arrives fully, but by God's grace we can certainly bear fruit and become more and more like Jesus. But then thirdly, the resurrection of Christ gives me hope. The Catechism says Christ's resurrection is a guarantee of our glorious resurrection. If you've ever taken seriously the claims of Christ's discipleship, if you've ever taken seriously the biblical admonition to put off sin and to put on righteousness, then you will know that sometimes for all the grace that God gives us and promises, that journey can be incredibly difficult. Sometimes it feels as if you take one step forward and you take two steps back, isn't that true? One of the reasons for that of course is that the more we grow in Christ, the more we become aware of sin. Most of us were wonderfully ignorant of what sin was until we met Jesus, isn't that true? But when you get to know Jesus, it's like a light shining into a dark room through a pinhole in the blind, and what do you see? All the dust begins to show up. Another reason is that as we become more like Christ, we experience the opposition of the devil and the world and the flesh with increased ferocity. And so sometimes we become weary in well-doing. Aren't there days when you say to yourself, who needs this discipline? Who needs this loving my enemy? Who needs this loving God and trying to be good and to live his way? Let me just fall back into my old life because it was a lot easier. I think if we're truthful, sooner or later all of us find ourselves there. What's the antidote? The antidote is the hope of the resurrection. Peter put it this way. I love the way that he puts it. This is to a persecuted church, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and to an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading kept in heaven for you." What keeps God's people going is the realization that there is an end to the struggles. We're going to make it by God's grace and when we make it, the reward will far outweigh anything that we have ever experienced in the process of getting there. How do we know? Because Jesus was raised from the dead. For the joy that was said before him, he endured the suffering and the pain and the shame of the cross and today is exalted at God's right hand. I love the way Matt Redman puts it in a song that we sing periodically around here. The song is, "You never let go" and I can see a light that is coming for the heart that holds on, a glorious light beyond all compare and there will be an end to these troubles but until that day comes, we'll live to know you here on earth. It's very significant therefore that the Apostle Paul, after all his teaching in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 about the importance and the urgency and the significance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ ends with this incredibly practical pastoral word, 1 Corinthians 15 58, "Therefore," that is to say, "In light of everything that I have been saying about the centrality of the death and the resurrection of Jesus, therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain." What does the resurrection of Christ benefit us? It makes me righteous. As righteous as I will ever be, regardless of who I am, where I come from, how twisted I may have been put together or what my personal history may have been. God looks at me, he sees the righteousness of Christ. How does the resurrection of Christ benefit me? He gives me the power of a new life. I don't have to be defined by my past. I don't have to be limited by my heritage, by my genes, by my faults and flaws and character issues and by my history because in Christ I'm a new creation and God can make something beautiful out of ashes. How does Christ's resurrection benefit me? It gives me the hope that one day I'm going to make it. One day I'm going to shine like the stars of the heavens. One day my character will be fully transformed so that I am perfected in love, I will love God and I will love my neighbor and the power of death and hell and sin will no longer be able to tear me down. What a day that's going to be. And when that happens, I'm going to share with Christ in his new creation for all eternity. Now most of us know this. For any of you that have come to this church for any length of time, that's the gospel we preach Sunday after Sunday. The question is, can we make it personal? Have we been to the cross? Have we come to that place that says, you know, I thought I was pretty good, I thought I could do it on my own, I thought I could change my own life, but I've discovered that I cannot and I don't know how Jesus can do it or is going to do it, but he is my only hope. And so I bend the knee and I give him my life and I trust that he will raise me up to live for his glory. Now to make that personal and to show you how that works in the real world, I've asked Penny and Paolo Slimans to come up this morning and I'm going to share with you just a little bit of their journey before we bring the service to a close this morning. Now Penny, some time back when you made Profession of Faith, you shared a little bit of how you came to this community. Review that for us if you please. I was having a lot of struggles in my life and I'd been brought up in a church and I just felt so much self-condemnation and Paolo and I, when we married, had decided to marry and always do what God wanted us to do, but the wheels fell off that way and we were both struggling. And I was struggling at that point spiritually and emotionally and I kept going by this church and I remember looking at the sign and I think it said something like, "God loves messy lives, God heals messy broken people," and I went by that sign. I don't know how many times, it must have been for months, and I kept praying to God. I hadn't stopped praying to God, but I had finished going to church because I was finished with, I could never be good enough. I was in so much shame and condemnation and I kept looking at that sign and one Sunday morning I woke up and it was like God took me by the scruff of my neck and said, "You are going to that church this morning." And I remember rolling over and Paolo said, "Where are you going?" And I said, "I'm going to Maranatha," and he didn't say a word. Pretty strong-minded. He just turned back over and went to sleep and off I went to church and tried to be ignored by everybody and sat in the back and I continued to come to this church and tried to be ignored and all the time praying most of my time through my struggles. And I'm sorry, I'm just emotional, it brings it all back to when you people first started to embrace me and love me and God started showing me differently. And I sat at the back of the church, it must have been for about three months and praying, "God, I don't know how I'm going to do this, I've never been able to do it properly, I'm such a big sinner and I am unworthy. And I just can't, I can't do church, I can't do it, I'll never be good enough." So half the time at night I was praying that I wouldn't wake up. My soul was in such struggle and half the time I was praying that I would wake up because I was afraid to die because I didn't really realize what the cross meant. I had not, I had not really got the message that I was already forgiven. So one morning I got up and I just said, "God, you've got to help me here, please, please help me." And I was about the middle of this middle section here and Pastor John made an altar call and he said, he was talking about broken people, broken lives and he said, "Just make your way down to the front right here." And he said, "We'll discuss it if you are finished with brokenness." And I stood there and I said to myself, I said to God, "God, please do not play just as I am." I was brought up in a Pentecostal church and I heard that song and I regaved my life to God so many times and I just did not want to hear that song. And wouldn't you know, I didn't hear it before that and I only hear it, well, I heard it last Sunday as affirmation or last Friday as affirmation that, "Yes, Penny, do this for me," which means being up here. And after the first three chords, I knew that song was playing and I felt sick to my stomach and I pondered and you know when the Holy Spirit is upon you, it's really hard not to do what it says. So grab me by the scruff of my neck again and down went my feet and I landed right there and I just waited there and Pastor John put his hand on mine and he said, "Let's talk this over. What's going on, Penny?" And I just broke down and cried. And then he gave me a book to read and said, "Call me when you're finished reading that." That was Super Bowl Sunday and I spent all day and all the next day reading it so that on Monday I called him good and early in the morning. He said, "If you identify with anything in this book, then you may need some help." And I had highlighted most of the book and I was really excited that there may be some hope for me. So we started, he called me in and we started some counseling and that was the first time I realized what the love of God could do for me. It was the first time I knew that God truly loved me and wanted to have a personal relationship with me and that I wasn't too broken to be fixed. And he started to work on my life and the scripture that always comes up for me and I have it written in the Bible and I saw it again on one of the songs this morning is Luke 19, 10 that the Son of God came to seek and save that which is lost and this is what was lost and he did come and save me. I just had to accept that that's what he had done on the cross. Thank you, how did that change your life, how did that affect your relationship with Powell because it wasn't all that easy as I recall. It made it worse for a while because then when I was a bit further along and knew that I was saved and nothing could take that from me, there was nothing I could do to make God love me more and there was nothing I could do to make God love me less. And I wanted to start to work on our marriage because Powell had had his hurts and he wasn't coming to church as many of you will remember, I was like the widow in the row without a husband and we decided to start to pray for Powell, for God to work in Powell's life. And then I started to pray into my husband's life that which I wasn't seeing and I just started praying that those things were already so and that I just say thank you for Powell coming to church, thank you for him being that godly husband, thank you for restoring our marriage and the wheel fell off again and I had to really, really have faith even though I wasn't seeing that, I kept praying and eventually, that's Powell's story, eventually Powell did start to come to this church with me. Talk a little bit about your marriage, Powell, from your perspective and how the wheels came off as Penny said because that was a very, very difficult stretch. Not only did the wheels fall off, the axles and the whole undercarriage and everything fell off, it was disastrous. I'd always been what I thought to be the man in the family to take control to drive the bus but that's not what God had intended for me. It was hard, life was not easy and the closer we got to God, got to Jesus, the more Satan would poke and pull at and tear apart. Only through his divine power can we be here today as husband and wife. What was the journey when your marriage came to its end? The gauntlet had been thrown down, I'd been given an ultimatum to, well it wasn't even really an ultimatum, it was get out and I did and I thought I'm gonna get as far away from this place as I can 'cause I do not feel loved, I do not feel accepted and I thought I jumped in my truck and I said I'm going south, I gotta get warm somewhere I don't know anybody. I was an hour and a half away ready to cross the border into the States and I heard this voice, I said go home, fight, fight for this. God said I'm not done with you yet, you get home, you fight. And at the same time I had decided it was over and to show you at a state where I was I had made the statement, the only when I threw him out I said the only thing that's gonna change when you leave is I'm gonna have to find someone to plow the snow. And I look back at that now and think I was not the godly wife, I was still having my struggles and so I told God my plans and I figured God would be okay with that because I was doing what I could, I was submitting to God I thought. And I said God this is what's happened, I've kicked Powell out now, what are you gonna do? And God said no, he said we are going to work on this together. And my heart just dropped, I thought I don't see how this is gonna happen, this can't be, this is not what I want, this is what we've got it figured out here, this is gone, we've just got to start anew but I do want to surrender to you God. And he said then we are gonna work it out, you're staying where you are and we are just gonna work this out together. And so we started to work it out together and I had always felt unloved and this is my third marriage and I always chose men that could prove to me that I was unloved and unworthy. And I kept thinking I knew what I wanted and I'd ask for it, this is what I need and then if I just had that then I would be happy. Well when Powell came home and he decided to be that loving godly husband, after about six months I realized I had everything, God had restored everything to me, he was a godly husband and I kept thanking him every morning for being my godly husband. But then I came face to face with the fact that now I had what I wanted and I didn't know what to do with it, that I wasn't loved. And so after thinking about it for a while I decided I had to be honest and I went one night and he was on the couch and I sat on his knee and I said, "Honey, I have to tell you something." I said, "I don't think I love you, in fact I don't think I can love anybody." And he looked at me and I remember he said, "That's okay honey, if God's brought us this far he'll let you fall in love with me again and only by God has he let me fall in love with the husband that I first married and restored everything and more. I couldn't have asked for a better husband than this and I couldn't ask for more than what God is doing in our life right now and it continues to be painful sometime. What he breaks down he makes new and it's better than it was in the first place. But it can be painful and totally worth it and I give all that glory to God for us being here. Amen, amen and amen. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:40:01.940; remove through 00:44:33.000] Amen. We are one with Him again. Come away, come away, come and rise upon the way. Christ is risen from the dead, we are one with Him again. Come away, come away, come and rise upon the way. Beneath the weight of all our sin, you bow to none but Heaven's will. No scheme of hell, no scoffers crown. Your burden break and hold you down in strength. You reign forever as your church broke away. Christ is risen from the dead, tripping over death by death. Come away, come away, come and rise upon the way. Christ is risen from the dead, we are one with Him again. Come away, come away, come and rise upon the way. Oh, death, where is your sting? Oh, hell, where is your victory? Oh, church, don't stand in the light. The glory of God has defeated the night. Singing oh, death, where is your sting? Oh, hell, where is your victory? Oh, church, don't stand in the light. Our God is not dead, He's alive, He's alive. Christ is risen from the dead, trampling over death by death. Come away, come away, come and rise up from the grave. Christ is risen from the dead, we are one with Him again. Come away, come away, come and rise up from the grave. Christ is risen from the dead, trampling over death by death. Come away, come away, come and rise up from the grave. Christ is risen from the dead, we are one with Him again. Come away, come away, come and rise up from the grave. (Music) [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:44:33.000; resume after this marked segment]