Promises, Promises

SERMON: 2016-01-03--mt01c16--promises-promises-part-3 SOURCE DURATION: 00:44:57.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: The recording begins with theological exposition about the covenant with Abraham (Segment [0]) and concludes with pastoral application and exhortation regarding faith and God's promises (Segment [503]). Both are core sermon material. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Well, as you know, we've been seeing in recent weeks that when the Lord entered into covenant with Abraham, way back in the book of Genesis, He promised Abraham four things. He promised him a land. He promised him a mighty nation as numerous as the stars in the sky in the sand on the seashore. He promised him a blessing, and he promised him that he would be a blessing. Roll all of those together as we have seen, as does the Apostle Paul in the book of Romans. And God promises to Abraham that he and his offspring are going to inherit the earth. Everything all the human race fights to own, desires to have in terms of its needs, in terms of its happiness, in terms of its blessedness, God promises to Abraham, and He promises to give it to him by faith. Now, we've also seen that if you want to see what that looks like in history, you get a glimpse of this by looking at the rule of King David, and later on the glory of his son Solomon. David was a man after God's own heart. David rescued his people from the enemies all around them. He consolidated the land. He organized the nation, and they prospered, and he made sure that the worship of God was at the center because he understood that the covenant blessings of God flow out of our relationship with him. And then we saw together that that historical fulfillment of which we get glimpses in David's life ultimately is realized in the person of Jesus because according to the genealogy, he is not only the son of David, but he is also the son of Abraham. And that means, of course, that all the promises that God made to Abraham about inheriting the world, if you will, have been realized in the person of Jesus Christ. He is the offspring to whom the promise was made. Galatians 3.16 puts it this way. The promises were spoken to Abraham and his seed. The scripture does not say, "and two seeds," meaning many people, but to your seed, meaning one person who is Christ. So what Paul is saying there, the covenant promise that God made to Abraham that he and his descendants would inherit the earth finds its ultimate fulfillment in the person of Jesus Christ. And that is where it becomes explosively powerful for you and for me because it means biblically that if we are joined to Jesus by faith, we are now included in Abraham's seed or offspring and the promises made to Abraham now apply to you and me. Paul elaborates upon that. Galatians 3.26, he says, "You are all sons of God." This is speaking to Gentiles now, just like you and I mostly would have been non-Jewish. "You are all sons of God," it is to say, remember, "sons inherit." Has nothing to do with male or female. It has everything to do with being the heir. "You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ." Now listen, "There is neither Jew nor Greek slave nor free, male nor female, for you were all one in Christ Jesus." And verse 29 really drives it home, "If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to his promise." If you are belonging to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. What was the promise? You're going to inherit the earth. Everything the human race wants needs to do life and to do it abundantly and fights for and wages war for. God says, "I will give it to Abraham and to his seed in Christ. You and I are his seed." We are due to inherit the whole world and all that that represents. And while the ultimate fulfillment of that, of course, is in the age to come, when every tear will be wiped away and every heart that is broken will be fully mended, we have the first fruits of that, we have the down payment, we have the pledge, we have the foretaste through the Holy Spirit. Listen again to this verse you've heard me quoted many times, but it is incredibly powerful. And you want to read it in its context as it is written, "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived." I like that. "No mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him." Let your imagination flow wide as to what you think would be the most delightful life that you could possibly have. When you dream for the coming year, think of what you think would make you happy. Well, you haven't even begun to imagine what God has prepared for you in glory. But now listen to the rest of that verse, "God has revealed it to us by his Spirit." You know what that means? That means that if you're in Christ, there will be those moments when God gives you a spirit of wisdom and revelation where in the midst of all the struggles, the battles, and the difficulties of life, suddenly you see afresh the glory of God in the face of Jesus and what the blessings in Christ are that God's going to give you not only in the future, but that you can actually lay hold of today. Because you have the down payment, you have the pledge, you have the first fruits. And through the Spirit, there will be those moments when we experience the glory of the age that is to come. And if that's totally foreign to you as for a lot of us it is sometimes, then pray that prayer that Paul prays in Ephesians for a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of himself. God is more anxious to open our eyes to this than we are willing to receive it because God wants us to understand what the riches are that we have in Christ Jesus our Lord. Now all of that being true, that has tremendously practical implications for how you and I live. And in the time that remains this morning, I want to try to give you four practical implications of what it is that in Christ we are the seed of Abraham and we are heir to the promises that God has made to him. Number one, nothing is more important than coming to faith in Jesus Christ. I'll say it again, nothing in all of the universe is more important than for an individual to be joined to Jesus by faith in him. Why? Well, it makes sense, doesn't it? If Jesus is the seed to whom the promises are given and if we can share in those promises only by coming to faith in Jesus, then the single most important thing that anybody in the whole universe could do was bend their knee before Jesus and find life and salvation in him, Peter, a verse we've often quoted here, Acts chapter 4 verse 12, salvation is found in no one else. For there is no other name under heaven given to man by which we must be saved. It is Jesus and Jesus alone. Now why is that so important? Because we live in a time when Satan, well, let me backtrack and put it this way, we have an enemy and that enemy historically does not want to see people experience the salvation of God, both because he hates the human race and because he hates God. And so he is always trying to blind us to the glory of God in the face of Jesus. He tries to blind us to the uniqueness of Jesus, not only, but he's always trying to get us to buy in to other saviors or other ways in which we can receive the inheritance that we long for. Let me give you two quick examples to illustrate this. The Pope was in the news a while back, a couple of weeks back actually during the Advent season, and he made an extremely thought-provoking observation about the Jewish people. Now you've got to understand that historically there's been lots of tensions between the church and the Jews going back all the way to when the Jews used to be blamed for the crucifixion of Christ, which of course was never a very fair thing, but there's always been tension and the Pope was trying to diminish the tension, I suspect, but he made a most fascinating observation. He said that Jews should no longer be the object of Christian evangelism because according to the Old Testament they already had a covenant relationship with God and therefore did not need to come to faith in Jesus. Something thought, is it not? And again, I understand his sentiment, but theologically he couldn't be further from the mark because the Apostle Paul spent most of his ministry in the New Testament fighting that very notion that just because physically you are a Jew, that does not mean that you are a child of promise or that you receive the promises made to Abraham. In fact, he points it out very blatantly in the book of Romans, Romans chapter 9, these verses 6, 7, and 8, he says, "Not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham's children. On the contrary, it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." In other words, it is not the natural children who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring. Again, in other words, what are you saying? The promise that God made to Abraham that his descendants would receive the world as their inheritance, ultimate salvation if you will, does not apply to you just because you're physically a Jew. The promise was fulfilled in Christ, and so you must come to Christ because apart from Christ, you cannot be saved. And that is true for the Jewish people as it is for everybody else. One other quick example, the name Larisha Hawkins probably doesn't mean very much to you this morning, she has been a tenured professor at Wheaton College in Illinois. Now Wheaton, Illinois is sort of the Jerusalem of the evangelical church next to today Colorado Springs. It's a very highly esteemed Christian institution, and she got in the news during the season of Advent because she began wearing the traditional Islamic head covering. So that stirred up a little bit of interest as you can imagine. But then in defense of her position she went on and she posted this, I believe on Facebook. She said, "I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian are people of the book. And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God." Now isn't that interesting? Do you think Allah and Yahweh are the same God? Most evangelical Christians would vigorously disagree because Jesus said, and again point of blank in John 14 verse 6, he says, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me." There is salvation in no other. And we live in a day and age where people are trying to water down the uniqueness of the Gospel as if there are many paths to the inheritance. It is not true. There is one path only and that is Jesus. And practically speaking, you know what that means? Is that you and I have an obligation to make sure that family and friends all around us know that reality. And I'm not suggesting we hound them to death or pound them to death with Bibles, but please do understand the message of Scripture. The downside of the exclusivity of the claims of Jesus is that if you are outside of Jesus, there does not await you paradise, but rather the lake of fire. And that is true no matter how good or nice or proper you may think you have been. Only Jesus receives the inheritance, sobering, sobering. And you and I, if we don't want to be guilty of the blood of people around us, at least have to make that clear so that people can make their own choices as to whether or not they embrace Jesus and what he stands for. So first implication of all of this, practically speaking, is there is nothing more important than for a person to come to faith in Jesus Christ. Even if you have the whole world but don't have him, you're going to be lost at the end of time, which is a horrible thing to contemplate. Well, second implication of all of this then is that nothing is more important than cultivating our relationship with Jesus Christ. Nothing is more important than cultivating our relationship with Jesus. And again, that makes sense, doesn't it? If Jesus is the Heir, and if it is in Christ that we share the promised blessings of God both in time and in eternity, then the smartest thing that we can do in the whole world is to make sure that we walk closely with Jesus. But if we, because if we walk closely with Jesus and are in tune with him, we are in tune with the Father and the promised blessings of Abraham are granted to us. Listen to how Jesus puts it in the Sermon on the Mount, a verse that you know so well, Matthew 6 verse 33, "But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all of these things will be given to you as well." Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well. Think this through with me a little bit. Biblically speaking, from a worldly perspective, how do you regain Paradise Lost? I mean, you don't have to convince the world that it's a troubled place. And you don't have to convince the world that there is a better place. I mean, an enormous amount of energy is being expended by multitudes of people trying to get to a better and a happier place. And from the world's perspective, because God's outside of the picture, it pretty much depends on you and on the people around you. And so if you're born with a golden spoon or silver spoon in your mouth, proverbially, if you have a good family and you have good family support and you're smart and you're good looking and you're not afraid to work hard, then the chances are success will come your way. And the world's full of self-help material that is geared towards trying to encourage you to be the best person that you can be, so that you can be as successful as you can possibly be. Isn't that true? And that's not all wrong. There are good elements about that. But all of that is rooted in what the Bible calls work. That is to say, it depends on you and what you bring to the table. And the poor soul that doesn't come from a good background, the poor soul who was broken from birth, the poor soul who isn't very smart, the poor soul who isn't very good looking, the poor soul who doesn't have the motivation to make it happen, that poor soul just sort of sinks to the bottom as everybody else climbs over top in order to get the biggest piece of the pie. True? Come on, it happens every area of life. God's people are not excluded often. But now consider what the Bible says, the defining word in scripture is what? The word grace. That is to say, it doesn't depend on you. It doesn't depend on me. It doesn't depend on what we bring to the table. It depends on Jesus. He is the one who was perfect before God the Father. He is the one who was obedient even unto death and therefore was highly exalted given the name that is above every name. He is ruling at the Father's right hand. He has the name that is above every name. He is bigger and more powerful than anybody else in the universe, and He has reserved a throne in the new creation for you and me, His sons and His daughters. We are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. And we come into that not because we are so good looking. Some of you might get by on that. The rest of us, we kind of have to, not because you are so smart and not because you are so righteous, but because we have owned our scene and because we have claimed Jesus by faith. And so, what God the Father has given Jesus, He gives to you and to me. Paul, you might recall, talks about that in 1 Corinthians chapter 2 when he says, "Think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards. Not many were influential. Not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things and the things that are not to nullify the things that are so that no one may boast before Him. It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus who has become for us wisdom from God that is our righteousness, holiness, and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, 'Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.'" Now, that doesn't mean you can't be saved if you're good looking, or if you're rich, or if you're very talented and know how to climb the corporate ladder. It just means your status before God does not depend on any of the things that define success in the world. Your status before God is determined by your relationship with Jesus. Am I making sense here? Therefore if you're going to be a follower of Jesus, if you want to be successful in life, if you want to do well before God, then cultivating that relationship with God is simply the most important thing in all of the world because it is in union with Christ that the promised blessings of Abraham are ours by faith. Listen to how Jesus puts it himself again in John's Gospel, John chapter 15. He says, "I am the vine, you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit apart from me. You can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you will and it will be given to you." We have riches in Christ that we can't even begin to imagine, let alone lay hold of. But we move towards it by learning to cultivate our relationship with Jesus. And if you're looking for a New Year's resolution, that's the New Year's resolution that ought to take priority over everything else, no matter how many urgent things in life try to push that away from your center. Number three, closely tied into that, we must cultivate the spiritual disciplines. We must cultivate the spiritual disciplines. Spiritual disciplines are things that you and I can do to facilitate our growth in Christ. Now understand, we cannot make ourselves grow. We can only create the circumstances by which the seed of new life planted in us can in fact prosper and grow. It's like gardening. You cannot make a seed sprout. You cannot make a plant grow and you cannot make it bear fruit. But the difference between a good gardener and a bad gardener is miles apart. Because a good gardener can create the circumstances under which that seed can grow. You can give it the cultivation, the nutrients, the environment that it needs so that the life that is inherently present can flourish and become what it needs to be. And that is what's true in the Christian life. If Christ is in you and you are in Christ, you have been implanted by a seed from heaven. You've got to understand this. It's no longer you that live, but Christ that lives in you. That life of Christ in you is the very life of God. It has gone through death and hell. It has not been stopped by death and hell. It has flourished. It is seated at God's right hand. It has overcome everything. That life in Christ is in you. And it's in you whether you feel it or not, whether you experience it or not, or whether you see the evidence of it or not. But it's there. And the nature of seed is to sprout and bear fruit. And you and I can't make that happen, but we can cultivate an environment in which that can happen. And those are the spiritual disciplines. In your bulletin, you don't need to turn to it, but in your bulletin is an insert that outlines a number of spiritual disciplines as formulated originally by Richard Foster, who wrote a classic defining book, The Celebration of Discipline, way back in 1978. And then a summary from Dallas Willard, who picked up on some of that. Take that home. Look at it. In the meantime, let me touch on just a couple of things that you already know. But knowing is not enough. It takes discipline to put it into action, because you see, the urgent always takes over from the important. And there are a thousand and one things that you and I in this crazy day and age are busy with from early morning to late at night. And as Jesus said to, was it to Martha? One thing is needful. No. To Mary? Who was it that complained in that story? Come on. Help me here. Was it Martha? Martha was upset because Mary wasn't helping her in the kitchen. Remember what Jesus said to her? One thing is needful. So what are some of the disciplines that you and I can and need and should be practicing? Well, one is the discipline of solitude. We live in a world where we are barraged with noise. One of the brothers here told me the other day, one of his disciplines of late has been that when he drives 20 minutes to work, he's learned to shut off the radio and just be with himself and with God. A lot of us have no idea what we are feeling or what lives on the inside, because we keep ourselves so plastered with noise from the outside, God couldn't get through if he was shouting. If you want God to speak to you and if you want him to get in touch with deep, hard places, then at least give him the courtesy of saying, "Okay, Lord, I'm going to shut up for a while and show me what I'm feeling. Show me what I'm thinking. Show me what my problems are. Show me what I need to be praying about." And that's, of course, another discipline is prayer, talking with God. And if you find yourself distracted, as many of us do, you know the little acronym ACTS, works wonderfully, adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. Bible reading, Scripture is categorical in, I can't see the verse here, Romans 10, 17. Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of God. Let me just unburden myself about this, because the knowledge of Bible is abysmal in this day and age, even among Christians. We're too busy. We read the Bible in little bits and pieces, and we often forget the big picture that God wants to show us. That's why we've been doing what we've been doing going through the covenant made with Abraham, the New Testament. It doesn't make any sense unless you know the Old Testament. And so, if you don't already have a habit of regular, consistent Bible reading, would you put yourself through that discipline? Heibels talks to his congregation about, "Find 15 minutes at the start of a day or whatever day, part of the day when you are at your best, and use it for reading and meditating upon Scripture. Use it for prayer. Use it to formulate in your whole being a Biblical world and life view." Because Scripture says, "My people perish for lack of knowledge." The values of the world that have invaded the church and that have colored God's people have power to do so to the degree to which we do not know the Scriptures. And that, nobody's going to do it for you. You've got to do it yourself. In fact, one thing that we've been talking about as staff and counsel, and we'd be interested in your feedback on this, is we're toying with running an eight week video series that takes us entirely through the Bible in an incredibly creative and constructive fashion. And we believe that if we were to do that, it could be a whole family venture to make sure that our kids as well as ourselves are rooted and grounded in Scripture. That decision hasn't been made yet. We still have to have some further discussions on it. But if you think that's a worthwhile thing for us to do, we'd be very interested in your feedback. So there's solitude, there's prayer, there's Bible reading, there's corporate worship. Scripture, of course, talks about that so clearly in Hebrews 10.25, "Let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another and all the more so as you see the day drawing near." Now one of the changes in today's culture, and we hear this everywhere we go, is that the priority of corporate worship for worshipers has dropped to a new low. That is to say, people are increasingly irregular in whether or not Sunday corporate worship is a priority. And we all understand that sometimes we're sick and sometimes we're on the move and we have family obligations. But understand, if you will, that a log on its own does not burn very well for very long. And if you want a good fire, you've got to be together with God's people and you've got to encourage one another in the faith. You need to be able to share your struggles. You need to be able to share your burdens. You need to be able to share your hopes and your dreams because it is in that context that God is present and pours out his life. And so I would plead with you to please, would you please come on time on Sunday mornings? Would you make an effort? I saw my son come in 20 minutes late this morning so I can address that. We'll shame him into being here on time. Being late is a habit and it's a lack of discipline and I don't want to be nasty about this, but it's disrespectful to people who are upfront, who are trying to lead you into corporate worship. Be here on time. Come with your heart open and the less you feel like being here, I've often said this, the more you need to be here because you don't know what God is going to do. The spiritual disciplines, as Larry Lee said many times ago about prayer, is like working for the power company. He says sometimes you dig holes, sometimes you plant poles, sometimes you string wires, but every so often God throws the switch and the power flows. Now God can speak to us anywhere at any time, but I'll tell you that if we're faithful in spiritual disciplines, we open up the opportunities for God to break through and to speak to us about the incredible inheritances that we have in Christ Jesus our Lord. Am I being fair to you? As we face the new year, let's resolve to ask God for the extra grace of discipline in our lives. The other thing that I would mention just in passing very quickly is we have to, of course, cultivate obedience. The Bible calls that walking after the Spirit. I say walk by the Spirit, do not gratify the desires of the flesh. If Christ is in you and you're cultivating a relationship with him, then he will propel your life from the inside out. You won't just need to be told from the outside what you need to do. It'll come from the inside and he'll convict you of sin, he'll convict you of righteousness. He'll show you that attitude was wrong, that behavior was wrong. This was right, this was good. As we learn to listen to that voice coming to us through scripture in the context of community and obey it, our lives change because we begin to bear the fruit of the Spirit. That's why that passage goes on to say the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other to prevent you from doing what you would. There's always two forces acting on our lives, the downward pull of sin and the upward flow of the wind of the Holy Spirit. Which one wins out is not unrelated to what we do with the revelation that God gives us. So number one, it's really important to be united to Christ. Number two, we need to cultivate our relationship with the Lord Jesus. And one of the ways in which we cultivate that relationship with the Lord Jesus is to learn to practice spiritual disciplines, find out what works for you, because that's different for everybody. Some people are morning people, some people are night people, some people are music people, some people are visual people. Find out what it is that feeds your soul and make it a priority because at the end of time it won't matter how successful you have been in the world by the world's standards, and I don't begrudge anybody their success because that's part of God's blessing. But if it's without Jesus, it will all be wasted. One more thing I want to mention because I want to draw this series to a close this morning because I have to be away next week, I think, to Whitby for a classical appointment. You can pray for me, that will be an experience considering our history. Fourth practical implication is this. We must trust God to keep His promises. We must trust God to keep His promises. Talked about that extensively at the New Year's Day service. Not all of you were there. If you weren't, may I encourage you to watch the service either online or get a DVD of the service because we talked about the importance of walking by faith. Let me use this opportunity for just a moment to point out to you a new feature on our website because as you know our services are streamed live, what some of you don't know is that they are recorded as they're being streamed live. And so immediately upon the conclusion of a service, the whole service is online. And to access that, if we can put up that picture, this is the front page of our website marinava-church.com, a lot of you have been there, but on below the main slider here, which changes from week to week, here is the button to watch live. If your connection will not sustain video, you can go to audio, but down here is a new button. It's been there for a couple of months now, but we've been wanting to work out all the bugs that will take you to service replay. If you click on that, you will end up with this screen, and over here you have the archives. They go back three months after that they get removed. It'll automatically default to the top one and it will come up as a splash screen like this. So bless and pray, pray, play, you know what I'm trying to say. And if your stream can sustain a video stream, this will play. And of course, if you don't know that already, this button over here enables you to go to full screen. Not all of you have computer connections, I realize that, but it is available or will be, it isn't yet, on DVD, and it talks extensively about the importance of faith. And if we're to be on the same page together, have the courage to lay hold of God's promises in this coming year, then do us all a favor and give that a listen because the January 1 message that I give to this community is almost always, I believe, a prophetic word that God wants to use to define our life together in the coming year. One of the very first verses in scripture that I ever memorized after I got to know the Lord in a real way is Numbers 23 verse 19. "God is not a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?" You only have to read the scriptures to know that God values faith. Not faith that is a mere human optimism, but a faith that is deeply rooted in the knowledge of God's character by faith, the men of old and the women of old laid hold of God's promises. And if God has promised us a land, if God has promised us to be a mighty nation, if God has promised to bless us so that we have enough not only for our own needs, but for the needs of the world all around us, then we need by faith to lay hold of those promised blessings come hell or high water. And please don't ever live under the illusion that just because God promises to bless us and to give us the inheritance of the world in the final analysis, that life will be smooth sailing for you, because that would not be true. In fact, rereading in recent weeks the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and all the promises that God makes, I'm struck by the fact that when God's people step out in faith, the devil, the world, and the flesh all try to tear us down. But those are the times to stand on the word of God until all hell yields its treasures and God's people can receive their inheritance. And for whatever it is that the Lord has for us as we go forward, I can tell you this much, it's going to take our collective faith to stand firm that we are the children of God, we're not under condemnation, God loves us, he has given us his spirit, his presence is with us, and individually and corporately, he will give us faith to speak to the mountains and to command them to move so that the enemy has to give up his treasures and God will have his people. That's our job and that's our calling and we need to do it together. So whatever your part is in that, embrace it and God will accomplish great and mighty [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:44:53.560; remove through 00:44:57.000] things even in the midst of a broken and a desperate world. [CUT] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:44:57.000; resume after this marked segment]