Moving on

SERMON: 2017-05-28--ac17173--moving-on-part-2 SOURCE DURATION: 00:43:58.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: The entire provided transcript is continuous sermon material, including exposition, review of scripture, and pastoral application. No non-sermon content was found at the edges. 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 --- For those of you who were not able to be with us last week, which was the holiday Sunday, we looked last week in some detail at two of three factors that were instrumental in Paul's decision to move on from his ministry in Ephesus and resume his third missionary journey. Very quick review. First of all, the first factor that motivated his move was the leading of the Holy Spirit. The apostle Paul was anxious to return to Jerusalem before Pentecost, we're told in verse 22 and 23 of chapter 20, speaking to the Ephesian elders, he says, "Compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem not knowing what will befall me there. I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. Sometimes you just know that it's time to move on because the Holy Spirit is prompting you. My experience is the stronger the prompting of the Holy Spirit, the more he wants to prepare us for trouble that might lie ahead, as was the case with Paul, so that we will not doubt in the dark what God has shown us in the light. The second factor that went into his decision then was, let me just back up here for a moment and show you this map once again so that you can understand what was happening. He was ministering in Ephesus, stayed there for almost three years, then continued his third missionary journey and traveled all the way to Corinth. His plan, as I put it out last week, was to sail from Corinth back to Syria, but he learned of a plot of the Jews and so he decided to backtrack all the way to Troas, which is where we find him in the next passage that we read here in Ephesians chapter 2. From there on he took this whole route and he traveled back eventually to Jerusalem where he wanted to arrive before Pentecost Sunday. So sometimes it's the leading of the Holy Spirit, sometimes though it is because our task is finished. If we can get that slide up, his work was finished. He says to the Ephesian elders in Acts chapter 20, the verses 26 and 27, "Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all of you, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole council of God." Very interesting phraseology. I did not shrink, he says, from declaring to you the whole council of God. He was in Ephesus for three years and in three years he gave them the whole shooting match. And Paul was an apostle, he was not a pastor. His job was to penetrate new territory, establish new churches, and then move on. And so after having established the church at Ephesus and having given them the whole council of God, that is to say, he gave them everything that he knew how to give them about the purposes and the plan and the will of God, then he moved on. Sometimes we just move on in life because our task is finished. What we have come to do, we have accomplished and we move on. And that brings us then to the third element that I introduced in passing last week. He could no longer work effectively. He was ready to leave before the riot because he thought his work was done, but after the riot he had to leave because the situation now was too toxic, it was too polarized. He could no longer accomplish anything effectively. And there's a principle here that we really need to understand about making life's decisions, and that is this. Sometimes it isn't the leading of the Holy Spirit that wants to make you move on. Sometimes it isn't because your task is completed. You move on because you are no longer able to labor effectively. And this can happen on multiple levels. Let me give you just a couple of examples. Can happen in work situations. One of the keys to a satisfactory work situation is that, first of all, your gifts fit your task. I talked briefly about that last week. There are two things that are frustrating in the marketplace. One is if your gifts are greater than the job that you have to do, you get bored. The second is when the job is bigger than what your gifts are, you get filled with anxiety and you may well have a nervous breakdown. A key to successful workplace is a fitting relationship between your gifting and your calling and the position that you occupy. Furthermore, for life to be satisfactory in a workplace, you need to be in an environment where your gifts are recognized, where they are encouraged, where you are allowed to rise to the level of your competency, and you need to be in a place where you are safely protected. The function of that rests on the shoulders of those who are your bosses, and we've all had good bosses, I hope, but we've probably also had some bad bosses, and the difference between the two are immeasurable because a good boss creates a good and safe environment. A bad boss creates an environment of backbiting and favoritism and dysfunction. Now here's the problem in the working world, and you'll find this wherever you go, not just the working world, there is a tendency for wounded people to rise into positions of leadership. Have you ever noticed that? Wounded people are people who have unprocessed desires and issues in their own lives, and they look to their job to find their security and their power, and because they're often hardworking and because they're often very smart and because they're often willing to step into situations, people like that often rise to the top. I cannot tell you how many horror stories over the years I have heard of people in this church who are working under managers or supervisors who should have never been in positions of leadership because they're selfish, they play favorites, they are just not good people, and when you find yourself into a situation like that and nothing changes, then you need to ask yourself the question, "Do I want to stay in this job, in this place? Is it ever going to change? No job is worth an emotional breakdown." Interestingly, the book of Proverbs has some interesting things to say about this principle of the broken and the wounded coming into positions of power and the danger that they present when they're in that position. Listen to these verses from Proverbs 30, 21, 22, and 23. "Under three things the earth trembles, under four it cannot bear up." Now listen, "A servant who becomes a king, a fool who is full of food, an unloved woman who is married, and a maidservant who displaces her mistress." Isn't that interesting? Very counterintuitive because you would think that a slave, just keep that verse up for a few moments, you would think that a slave having experienced slavery when he comes into a position of power would have compassion for other people, would you know it? And would you not think that a fool who in this narrative is a person who is poor and hungry, that's the context, when he gets full of food, don't you think he would want to share that food with other people who are hungry because he has an understanding of other hungry people and an unloved woman who is married? Don't you think she'd be the happiest woman in the world? She finally got herself a husband or a maid who displaces her mistress. See, but what happens in each instance is that the deprivation of their lives has caused a wound that has not necessarily been healed. And now when I, out of my hunger, come into a position of power, my heart doesn't overflow with compassion or grace or wisdom, I use my power and my authority to oppress other people precisely in the same way in which I was oppressed before. You need to understand that. Henry Cloud, in his book that I referenced last week, Necessary Endings, talks about people who are wise and people who are foolish and people who are evil. And he says wise people will listen to advice, foolish people only learn the hard way, and evil people don't learn at all, and you've got to lawyer up, get your guns out, and be ready for it to cost a lot of money. Sometimes in a workplace, an atmosphere becomes toxic, and then you have to decide, is that a place where I want to remain? Now the same thing happens in areas of being a friend. Friendship is a very precious gift. Proverbs says in chapter 18, verse 24, there's a friend who sticks closer than a brother. And friendship comes in many different ways. As you can imagine, you have a progression from acquaintance to a casual friend to a close friend and to an intimate friend. Those are the four levels of friendship. And there are two things that we need to note about that. The first is that there is very often a progression from acquaintance to casual friends to close friends to intimate. That's how friendships grow. The second thing to note is that as we progress from acquaintance to intimate, the size of the group diminishes. You can have tons of acquaintances. You can have a number of very casual friends. You can have a number of close friends, but the number of really intimate friends is going to be much less. And what happens in this journey, and hear me well, is that for friendships to grow towards intimacy, both parties have to be able to process their stuff and grow in relationship. To give you an example, if you are my acquaintance and you cannot keep a secret, that's not going to bother me too much because I'm not going to trust you with my secrets. But if you are a close friend, or let alone an intimate friend, and I share my heart with you and you betray me, that is extremely destructive to my friendship. And so what happens in friendships is that as we go through life, we make new friends, but we lose old friends. The friends that last are friends that grow with us. Does that make sense? People we trust, people we can share our hearts with, people to whom we can entrust our secrets, that's all very much a part of growing. So what happens is that sometimes you will have a friend who starts off over here somewhere, and you discover that there are character issues in that person's life that they refuse to address. Perhaps you're a Christian, they're a non-Christian. You try to witness to them. You try to bring them to faith. They have no interest or no desire to come to faith. Your life moves on and you end up losing them behind. And so sometimes you give up on friendships because the friendship has gone as far as it can go, and it's not going to be recoverable. Now the same principle applies also in the area of ministry. We can take that off the screen for a moment. I don't know if you've ever noticed in scripture, it isn't only the Apostle Paul who runs into trouble in his ministry in Ephesus or in other places. Jesus does the same thing. See, it's easy to say, "Well, Paul, he was kind of a radical dude, but Jesus was all love and kindness, and it's no wonder people hated Paul, but everybody loved..." No, everybody didn't love Jesus, not by a long shot. In fact, I find it fascinating that when you look at the gospels and you look at the ministry of Jesus, how opposition to Jesus develops. At first, the religious leaders have sort of a bemused, detached view of this new prophet who has risen in Nazareth. And they come down from Jerusalem because they've heard about his miracle workings and his teachings, and they just sort of listen to him. And then as the story goes on, you see their resentment and their opposition to him increasing until you have a couple of instances that I call "the nail in the coffin" where they are determined, "This man is a danger to everything that we stand for. He must die." And of course, that's what they end up doing. And the same thing happens with Paul. He starts off here in Ephesus with the Jews in the synagogue, lasts for three months. Then opposition arises. He moves on. He ministers to the public in Ephesus for two and a half years, close to three years. Then he gets the riot and he moves on. And here's what we need to understand about what happens in these situations because my experience is that most Christians really don't get this very well. And the reason we don't get it very well is because we don't understand the kingdom dynamics that I want to talk about for just a moment. The kingdom dynamics are of such a nature that life changes when you come to Jesus. We all start off, as you well know, in this circle over here where we are alienated by nature from God, we're under Satan's power. We are selfish. We live in conflict with each other. Life is what you see happening in the natural, and it doesn't matter if you're a good person or a bad person. We are alienated from God. We are prone to hate him, and we're prone to hate our neighbor. And as that life goes on, you get the kind of conflict that we see in the world all around us. But then comes the gospel. Somehow or another, you get exposed to the message of Jesus. And you begin to understand that God in Christ has reached into the world in the person of Jesus Christ so that our sins can be forgiven, so we can be restored to God, so we can experience the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit, and you come to faith. And when you come to faith, you move positionally out of this world into the kingdom of God. Now here's what we need to understand. When this process first takes place, there isn't much difference between a new Christian and his old Christian life. Superficially, there may be some changes, but you're a baby in the faith. And these two circles, as you know, always overlap because we have one foot in the kingdom, and we're still very much living in this world. But now, if you truly are in Christ, have really been converted, and the Holy Spirit really lives in you, then it is inconceivable that your life is not going to change. You're going to grow in love for God, you're going to grow in a desire to serve Him, live for Him, obey Him, your eyes get opened, you're like a baby in the family, you get nurtured and comforted and looked after, and you grow up in Christ. That is the inevitable reality. The more you grow up, the greater the difference becomes between your life in Christ and your life in the world. Why do you think in our culture today there is such an ongoing conflict in terms of pro-life or pro-choice values? Why are so many Christians so committed to the preservation of life for all the complexities that that can provide? And why is our society drifting away into an ongoing polarization about issues that for some of us seem to be such no-brainers? Well, society becomes more and more alienated from God, even while Christians should become more and more like their Father who is in heaven. Now this dynamic is illustrated powerfully by Jesus in the parable of the wheat and the weeds. You may remember the story. Farmer sows a crop and then an enemy comes along and he sows weeds among the crop and the two are growing together and his laborers want to pull out the weeds and the master says no, you cannot because you may not be able to distinguish between the two of them. Wait until they become ripe and then you can separate the wheat from the weeds. Interesting thing about that story is the weeds there are thought to have been Darnell, which is also known as a false wheat. It's a form of ryegrass. And when it first grows among the wheat, you cannot distinguish the two. In fact, you cannot distinguish the two until they come to full seed. And the nature of the kingdom is that whatever is in God's people and whatever is in the world is never static. It continues to grow and the more it grows, the more distinguished it can be. And so what happens is that if you're a Christian and you're engaged in ministry or you're living in the world as we all do, then the question that arises is where is this process at and can I still work meaningfully in this particular situation? And it's really important to understand this because my experience is that by and large God's people are of two different opinions as to the relationship between the church and the world. There are those who are separatists in nature and who say the world is bad. We've got to pull out and we don't want to be polluted by the world, right? And then there were other people who say, well, yes, the world is bad, but Jesus wants us to be salt and white. And you see that historically, for example, in the conflict over public education and Christian education, there are those who say I want my kids raised in the Christian school because they don't want them polluted in the public system. And then there are others who say, no, if all the Christians pull out of the public system and goes down the tubes, we have a responsibility to stay and to be salt and white. Isn't that true? And then you get that conflict, who's right and who's wrong. The same thing with political parties, the same thing with all kinds of other issues. And what we need to understand here very clearly is that the question is, is this situation still redeemable? Is my work situation redeemable? Is my friendship redeemable? Is my participation in this particular organization or movement redeemable? Can I still minister effectively to people? Or has the opposition grown to such a point where I can no longer be heard? You understand what I'm trying to say here? Very important to understand this because it changes all the time. It changes all the time. There was a time in this country when the discussion about pro-life and pro-choice was a discussion that was on the table that could actually still be had and still be influenced. Today, there is no political party that is even willing to touch that particular issue because they do not believe that they can get elected in the culture and the climate of our day. So here's the question. How do you know, how do you know when you should push through in your work situation in the hope and the expectation that something is going to change? How do you know when you're walking with your friend that your friendship can survive this because your friend is going to make the changes that are necessary for the friendship to survive? Or if you're in a ministry-type situation, how do you know that you can push through the opposition and come out on the other end and have success after all? Because you see, it's easy to throw in the towel and they say, "Well, you know, I want to give up." But sometimes you've got to persevere, but you don't want to be a fool and persevere. You don't want to be banging your head against the wall because it feels so good when you stop banging, right? Two factors, now listen to me carefully because this is really important. Two factors, two questions that we need to know the answer to to decide whether it has become impossible for us to continue in a given situation and it's time to move on to more fertile grounds. The first question we need to ask is this, has the truth been clearly presented? That is to say, does your boss know about what's going on behind the scenes at work? Does he or she know what your frustrations are and what makes you anxious and troubled and what kind of turmoil this produces in the company? Does your friend know how her behavior impacts you and how troubling this is for the long-term nature of this relationship? I know husbands and wives who are in conflict with each other and neither one nor the other ever engages each other about the issue and then all of a sudden one is gone because the marriage is broken down, the other person has no idea what ever happened. And if you're part of an organization or part of a ministry situation, does your organization know what your frustrations are and what you perceive as the problems are? I don't think any of us, and this is a really important principle, ever have the right to walk away from covenant relationships without laying on the table what the issues are. So here's the first question, has the truth been told? Have you had honest conversations with whoever is in charge of the particular thing that you're struggling in? That's where it begins, doesn't end there. Because the next question is, has the truth been clearly rejected? And by the word clearly I mean deliberately and persistently rejected. Going back to Paul and Ephesus, why did he leave the synagogue? Well verse 9 of chapter 19 tells us, some of them, that is the Jews became obstinate, say it with me, they became obstinate, that is to say stubborn. They refused to believe and publicly maligned the way. So Paul left them. So notice they became obstinate, they refused to believe the gospel that he was presenting to them, and then they publicly maligned, that is to say they publicly spoke against the way of Jesus. And there you have a key. It's not enough for somebody to disagree with you, they must knowingly and publicly reject the truth and when they do, when they do, they move towards darkness and it becomes increasingly difficult to move away. If you look at the ministry of Jesus you'll see the same thing. Why did Jesus not do any mighty miracles in Nazareth? He could not, why could he not? Because they refused to believe. I've often said this, God is incredibly patient with our I cannot. He has mercy and grace and He will reach down to us a thousand times over in our places of brokenness, in our places of weakness, in our places of woundedness. He has no patient whatsoever with our I won't. When we knowingly and deliberately say no, and we do that persistently and we do that publicly over a period of time, then the curtain of grace begins to close. I want you to hear that. And when the curtain of grace begins to close, the chances of return become increasingly limited. Listen to how the book of Hebrews puts it. These are not pleasant words, folks, but we need to listen to scripture for ourselves and for those around us. Hebrews 6, 7 and 8, land that drinks in the rain, often falling on it, and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed, receives the blessing of God. But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end, it will be burned. Interesting argument from nature. And Jesus does the same thing in his parables, land is meant for growing crops. When rain comes on the land, the land ought to be producing good crop. If it doesn't produce a good crop, the land is not good. It is worthless. Whatever grows on it is going to be weeds and those weeds are going to be burned. And then to make sure that we understand what he means, the Apostle Paul puts it this way or the writer to the Hebrews puts it this way in chapter 10, 26 and 27. If we deliberately keep on sitting after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left. But only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God, sobering, isn't it? What scripture is saying there, when the truth has clearly been presented and clearly and deliberately been rejected, the curtain closes and the opportunity for repentance and for return and transformation diminishes. And so if you're in a work situation and you have done everything that you know how to do to change that situation and you don't ever see it changing, then maybe, just maybe it's time to move on. Or if you're in a friendship situation and you have done whatever you could to salvage this, to work it out and to move along, but the other party refuses to deal with the truth in order to be able to grow together, then maybe it's time to leave that friendship. And if you're part of an organization and they are increasingly secularized and they are refusing to bow to biblical truth, and the prospect of transformation is increasingly limited, then you need to recognize that maybe, just maybe, you could no longer be part of that situation. You are better off spending your time and energy elsewhere on land that is more fertile and that can still grow a good crop. You know what bothers me the most about the kind of legislation that we've been seeing in recent years in this country and in other places around the world as it deals with gender identity and sexual identity issues is the more we put into law principles that are in opposition to scripture, the more we are thumbing our noses at God, and the harder it is to turn the clock back, because the truth once having been presented and having been rejected means grace leaves and departs. The Senate has before it currently another bill, Bill C-16, which takes the whole issue of gender identity discrimination into law so that you cannot discriminate against a person on the basis of their self-identification of their gender. And what that means is that if I'm a man biologically but I present myself to you as a woman and I want you to call me Joni and address me as a woman and you refuse to do that, I can take you to the Human Rights Commission and you're going to get yourself in a lot of trouble. It's already happening and it's part and parcel of the culture in which we live. So what do we do? Just walk away from it all, throw up our hands in the air and hope for Jesus to return sooner rather than later? Well, that's not a bad idea. But I want to end with one of the parables of Jesus that I think really puts this whole business of when is it time to give up and when do we stay in proper perspective, and that is the parable of the fig tree that doesn't bear fruit, not the one that you usually think of in the context of Palm Sunday, but in the context of the parables in Matthew chapter 13. Let me read it with you and then comment on it briefly and then we'll be done. Jesus told this parable, "A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard and he went to look for fruit on it, but he did not find any." So he said to the man, "It took care of the vineyard for three years now. I have been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven't found any. Cut it down. Why should it use up the soil?" "Sir," the man replied, "leave it alone for one more year and I'll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine. If not, then cut it down." Allow me to point out a couple of very obvious things in that parable. First of all, the fig tree was intended to bear fruit. A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard. He went to look for fruit on it. It was a three-year-old tree. It should be bearing fruit. Problem was, there was no fruit. He didn't find any. So what does he do? Well, he says to the man who took care of the vineyard, "Cut it down." Why? Space is precious. If this tree is not going to bear fruit, get rid of it so we can plant another one there. Cut it down. Now, what does the orchardist do? Well, he runs interference. "Leave it alone for one more year and I'll dig around it and fertilize it. I'll dig around it and fertilize it." Why? There are two reasons this tree may not be bearing fruit hereby well. One is because it is under-nurtured. And if it would have enough nurturing, its potential will come to full expression and it will bear fruit. Or it's just a bad tree and it ain't going to bear fruit no matter how much time you spend on it. So one more year I will fertilize this tree because that will tell us will it bear fruit or will it not? And what happens if after this period of trial it doesn't bear fruit, then cut it down. And there you have a biblical balance on how much of ourselves we invest in a given situation or in a given person. We don't just walk away. We don't just walk away because people are frustrating. We don't just walk away because people are broken. We don't just walk away because people have gone in a bad direction. We do everything we can to extend grace and mercy for that extra year. We ask the question, have they heard the truth? Have they rejected the truth? Are they going to continue rejecting the truth? If so, they will never bear fruit. And it's time to step away and to spend our time and our energy in more productive situations, more productive relationships, more productive ministries. That is how God himself works because you never know. You never know ahead of time if that tree is going to bear fruit or not. But you will know if it's been fertilized, intended to, if it has potential it will show. If it doesn't show, it's not going to happen. And the church has expended an enormous amount of energy over the years trying to make dead trees come to life and ignoring hungry, broken trees that need the Lord and that will respond in grace if only somebody can speak the truth, wrap their arms around them and love them. I leave you this morning then with these words from Jesus, John chapter 15, "I am the true vine, my father is the gardener, he cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful." And let me apply this not only to other people in other situations but also to our own lives. It's helpful to ask the question, how many times have I heard the truth of the gospel? What have I done with that truth? Do I embrace it? Is my life bearing fruit? Do I look forward to the day when the Lord will send the harvesters, his angels into the harvest and gather his wheat into his barn even while he takes the weeds and he burns them in everlasting fire? [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:43:52.140; remove through 00:43:58.000] And that decision you and I make day by day when we take up our cross and we follow Jesus. [CUT] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:43:58.000; resume after this marked segment]