(Post #100) Should the Church Welcome All? – 6/25/2017

WARNING PREACHY…

The Apostle Paul just told us that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because the righteous requirement of the Law has been met through Him.  With each thing he told us there was a caveat where something is required of us.  He writes that there is now no condemnation FOR THOSE WHO ARE IN CHRIST JESUS and that the righteous requirement of the Law has been met in us WHO WALK ACCORDING TO THE SPIRIT.

This begs the questions: are we in Christ and are we walking according to the Spirit?  Most of us shrug off such thoughts and assume that because we consider ourselves to be better people than we consider ourselves bad, that we are fine, and therefore we will be accepted by God when we meet Him face to face.  But Paul is not suggesting that we use some sort of self-determined and self-diagnosed moral scale with which to determine such things.  In versus five through eight Paul shows us how we should asses with a standard that we don’t get to make up on our own.

Romans 8:1-11

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. ² For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. ³ For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴ in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. ⁵ For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. ⁶ For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. ⁷ For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. ⁸ Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

⁹ You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. ¹⁰ But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. ¹¹ If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

Seeking His Righteousness…

There are two groups of people Paul is talking about in this passage; those who set their minds on the flesh, and those who set their minds on the Spirit.  Though I am simplifying the topic tremendously, I do think we can illustrate the point with just asking the question of who is seeking the Righteousness of God.

I often see signs in front of churches that state, “All are welcome here!”  Such signs are meant to be inviting but I wonder if such signs are really proper.  It seems to me that maybe all are not actually welcome in the house of God. 

Consider the fact that Jesus literally drove the Money Changers out of the Temple courts because they were defiling the House of God[1]: they certainly weren’t welcome.  And consider that Jesus told the religious leaders that “only the sick need a doctor”[2] suggesting, I think, that those who considered themselves to be fine in the sight of God without Jesus didn’t really need to come to Him.  So I wonder if it wouldn’t be more correct to have signs that stated “all who seek the Righteousness of God are welcome here” because it seems to me that too many of us are at the church for other reasons.

Matthew 6:33

^33 “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness…”

How do we start our day; do we ask God to fulfill in us His righteousness or do we go to church with the intent of being transformed by the righteousness of Jesus?[3]  Likely we don’t always.  More often than not we are going because it is ‘what a good Christian does’ or because we like the emotions we get from the worship, or we like the scriptural teachings we get, or maybe the fellowship of the like-minded people that we get.  I would suggest that these are the reason why our culture is so quick to church-hop so easily. 

As churchy and religious as many of us are, are we really interested in being transformed from the inside out by the righteousness of God by the resurrected Christ?  The answer to this question can only be decided by you.

In Isaiah 47:7 God tells the Babylonians “…But you did not consider these things or thing about what might happen.”  I take God’s words here to be a warning for myself to spend more time considering things in prayer and meditation, to mull things over in my heart and mind in order to assure that I am not walking according to the flesh.

As we have signs welcoming ‘all people’ to our churches, I wonder if Jesus really wants all people in His church, or if He wants just those people who are seeking His Righteousness.  Because, let’s face it, too often people who come to church do so as money-changers and Pharisees who have no interest in seeking the God who is but rather they desire the god of their own imaginations.  For remember, Paul tells us in verse 8 that people who are of the flesh cannot please God[4]. 

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[1] Matthew 21:12

[2] Matthew 9:11-13

[3] Romans 8:4 & 10

[4] I may have stated the question but I don’t claim to have the answer.  This is something I am thinking about because I think it appropriate to struggle with such things.

According to the Spirit – 6/18/2017

WARNING PREACHY…

Last week[1] I began looking at Roman 8:1-11, and in those 11 versus I found nine obvious topics that I wanted to explore.  This week I am looking at topic number two – the Law.

Romans 8:1-11

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. ² For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. ³ For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴ in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. ⁵ For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. ⁶ For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. ⁷ For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. ⁸ Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

⁹ You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. ¹⁰ But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. ¹¹ If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

THE LAW…

The Jewish Law was burdensome for the most desperate, and stifling against the genuine worship of God by the people.  The religion of the Law knew nothing of individual worship and relationship with God, but rather was more about a corporate fellowship through a regulated priesthood.  By the time Jesus began his public ministry the teachers and leaders of the Law had created a religion that was dominated by and for the elite; not necessarily about God or the people.

The Law is basically the 10 Commandments.  You know, the thou shall nots?  Thou shall have no other Gods, take the Lord’s name in vain, commit murder, adultery, thievery, lie, or covet.  All in all, someone counted and there were 613 total commands that people under the Law had to live by.  No, those were not all God’s doing, many of them were created and put into practice by the leaders of the Jewish religion, but that’s what they had to live by as Jews.  The idea of the Law was that if they obeyed the regulations then God was honored and they would be accepted by Him.  The problem was that nobody could obey the rules because the flesh was not able.  Paul speaks of this impossibility in Romans 7.

It worked sort of like this.  When I was about seven or eight, I was at my grandmother’s house. I decided to go out to swing at the pear tree and maybe eat a ripe pear. I asked my grandmother if I could go outside and she said “yes” but added that I was not to go by the road. Seriously? I wasn’t even thinking about the road but once she said not to I had a strange attraction to go out and see what the fuss was about. This is how it was for people who lived under the Law, for the Law told people not to covet their neighbor’s wife and guess what? They couldn’t help themselves and coveted their neighbor’s wife anyway.

Romans 7:7

“…I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”

And so, since the people were not able to actually obey the Law that was to make them righteous in the sight of God, God sent Jesus, in the flesh, to show them the way to true relationship with God.  By living a sinless life and dying the death required by the Law Jesus secured a righteousness that He now offers to men that we might be found righteous in the sight of God.

Just as we saw last week that there was a caveat in the decree that there is now therefore no condemnation, there also is a caveat in the decree that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us.  That caveat is that we must be walking according to the law of the Spirit of Christ and not the Law of the flesh. 

To repent is to be traveling in one direction and then to turn immediately around and travel in the other.  When the Israelites who followed the Law of Moses were called to repent, they were being called to stop walking in the Law of the flesh but to turn around and begin walking in the law of the Spirit. 

For us gentiles who never walked in the Law of Moses, we do walk according to something of our flesh.  Generally it’s some form of self-focused misguided philosophy or religiosity but whatever it is, we need to repent from that Law of flesh and begin walking in the Law of the Spirit of Jesus. 

And for those of us who do, Paul assures that there is now therefore no condemnation.

I pray that you will go this week and confidently walk in by the Spirit of the Christ who secured such a great salvation for us.  Be blessed my friends.

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[1] http://warningpreachy.blogspot.com/2017/06/youve-been-redeemed-6112017.html

You’ve Been Redeemed! – 6/11/2017

WARNING PREACHY…

Romans 8:1-11

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. ² For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. ³ For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴ in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. ⁵ For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. ⁶ For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. ⁷ For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. ⁸ Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

⁹ You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. ¹⁰ But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. ¹¹ If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

These words were written by the Apostle Paul to the church in Rome.  In just 11 verses he tackles a bunch of Christian concepts.

1.      Condemnation

2.      The Law

3.      Flesh and Spirit

4.      The Incarnation of Jesus

5.      The Incarnation of Men

6.      Righteousness

7.      Life and Death

8.      The Resurrection from the Dead

9.      The Holy Spirit

There is a lot here and can easily leave us befuddled if we don’t address the passage in its parts.  So over the next weeks I want to take some time to address these parts together.

CONDEMNATION…

Romans 8:1-2

¹There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. ² For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

The idea of condemnation is from Genesis 3 when Adam and Eve sinned against God.  From the very moment men chose to go their own way they were spiritually separated from God and became spiritually dead.  Without repairing the severed relationship with God, men would physically die and be automatically condemned to spiritual death in Hell.  It’s not pretty but that’s the reality.

In the Old Testament, God gave the Israelites the Law (i.e. The 10 Commandments) to follow in order to honor God.  In this way, they lived but the problem was that the Law was not able to repair man’s severed relationship with Him, so the Messiah was sent to do what was necessary to makes the repair.  The Spirit of the Messiah (Jesus Christ) did the work on the cross through His death, burial, and resurrection which destroyed sin and death, thus eliminating what separates us and this redeemed us from our slavery to sin and death.

Therefore, all who trust and hope in Christ are not condemned to the automatic spiritual death when they physically die because the Spirit of Christ has set them free from it.  The physical Law (10 Commandments) held us in bondage to sin and death but the law of Spiritual life has set us free and repaired our spiritual connection with God once again.

This hope and life is the reality of our Christian lives.  Often, people will get baptized, confirmed, and dedicated then go to church for the rest of their lives in order to go to heaven when they die.  But the real message here is that the Spirit of Life (Jesus Christ) has set us free from our slavery to sin and death.  This is why there is NOW NO CONDEMNATION; because we have been redeemed!

The caveat here is but this, the only ones who need not worry about condemnation are those who are in Christ Jesus:  meaning those who have faith in His death, burial, and resurrection as the redeeming factor for their lives.  For those who do not have this belief in Jesus continue where they were, and are still condemned.

Jude 1:5

⁵ Though you already know all this, I want to remind you that the Lord at one time delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe.

So there are two groups here, those who believe that Christ redeemed us and those who do not.  For those who do not, then their fates are the same as that of Adam, but for those who do, they are in Christ and therefore have no condemnation to be concerned with.  For those of us who have faith in Christ, we do not fear death because we know that God sees the shed blood of Jesus covering over our sin.  We need not fear judgement for we will be passed over as the Angel of Death passed over the homes of the Israelites when it saw the blood of the lamb on their door jams.

Do you have the faith in Christ and know that there is no condemnation or do you still worry about meeting Him face to face on Judgment Day?  If you are concerned, I suggest you need to meet with the Jesus who is because in Him, there is now no condemnation.

What, is God Crazy?!?! – 6/4/2017

WARNING PREACHY…

Have you ever had the experience where you are assessing your life and you wonder what the heck God is doing?

Unfortunately I do, and too often – even though you would think that I know better.

There are situations in each of our lives that cause us to question God at times, and even question His judgement.  Or worse, we don’t question Him at all because we don’t truly believe that He is there or that He even cares.  Both situations are completely human and are understandable when our world doesn’t make sense.

In Exodus 14, God had done the miraculous by causing Pharaoh to release the Israelites from their enslavement.  Do you remember the 10 plagues?  God turned the water into blood, and then he plagued Egypt with frogs, and then with gnats, then with biting flies, then he caused just the Egyptian livestock to be inflicted with disease, and then to have an epidemic of boils on their persons, then a devastating hail storm, and then He sent a swarm of locust to destroy what was left of the crops, and a bitterly deep darkness, only to be completed with the death of every first born mail of both man and animals. 

By the end of these 10 plagues, Pharaoh had relented and told Moses that the people could leave – so they did.

God directed Moses to lead the people out of Egypt in a confused circle forcing them to camp by the Red Sea.  This caused Pharaoh to see them as lost and helpless so he changed his mind and went out with his army to force them to return as slaves.

Exodus 14:10-12

¹⁰ As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord. ¹¹ They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? ¹² Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!”

It was at this point the people started complaining and questioning Moses, the man of God’s judgement.

As much as you and I, as outside observers, would like to believe, the Israelites are not special in their ability to complain and fear about their life’s situations.  We may not be as obvious as portrayed here in the Exodus account but you and I will worry and complain to our friends and family effectively proving that we are not happy with our own life’s situation and that God is somehow not in control.

I want to be clear here and observe that there is a stark difference between situations that God is placing upon us to bring Him honor and glory and situations that we get ourselves into by our own poor and sinful choices.  I am referring to the later as I observe the situation of the Israelites in Exodus 14.  It is this later situation that causes us to sink into dark places and begin questioning what God is doing.

Job 7:20

²⁰ If I have sinned, what have I done to you,
    you who see everything we do?
Why have you made me your target?
    Have I become a burden to you?

We all know this dark place where we understand that God is in control but we just cannot figure out how our current situation can possibly resolve with a happy ending.  We may feel as though God has forsaken us and we are being punished unjustly for a crime that we haven’t committed.  Our eyes just simply cannot see that God is even noticing our plight, except to pile more on.  In this, we can understand and feel the fear and confusion that the Israelites were feeling as they watched the armies of Egypt approaching.

Exodus 14:21-22

²¹ Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided, ²² and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left.

Verse 22 tells us that “all that night the Lord drove the sea back.”

The Israelites were literally in a pinch: Egypt’s army was coming upon them and the Red sea was preventing them from fleeing.  This was the Rock and the Hard-Place and we’ve all been there wondering how it could work out.

But I want to encourage you that God is on the job, he works in ways that are greater than our own and when all we can see is hopelessness God is at work; “all that night the Lord drove the sea back.”  Even while we are sleeping, though we cannot observe it, God is pushing back the situations that trap us in.

And even if we don’t believe these words, even though we don’t believe that He is aware, we have a choice to make.  Will we trust Him with whatever pinches us in?  Will we trust the One who raised Jesus back to life from the dead with our plight?  For this is true faith.  To trust in the God who IS and not our own ability to reason out what we can observe is the point of faith.  We trust in God and not ourselves.  

Faith is difficult but it’s how we as Christians roll.

John 6:68-69

⁶⁸ Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, ⁶⁹ and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.