Consecration

Jan 17

Series: As For Me and My House

David Stockton

We’re going to continue in 1 Thessalonians 5. We’re in the middle of a twenty-one day season of fasting and praying for God to light a fire in our hearts that creates a hunger and a thirst for God as well as a hunger and a thirst for his righteousness. We’re doing this because Jesus promised that, if we hunger and thirst for righteousness, we’ll be filled.

The message today that we’re going to be talking about is consecrating ourselves. I was so impressed by the Lord—and I want to say this now because we’re going to say a lot of things over the next four hours of being together (that’s a joke)—but I don’t want to miss this. Some people, I think, have forgotten that maybe ninety percent of our Christianity, ninety percent of what it means to follow is Jesus is denying yourself. It’s acknowledging that you have disordered desires that you have to say no to every single day of your life.

Jesus said, “If anyone wants to follow me, come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me.” It is so easy—I mean I feel like I forgot this last year, and many of us have—it’s so hard in the culture we’re living in to remember that you shouldn’t just “do you.” That will lead you to selfishness and emptiness. But you should do what Jesus is asking you to do and be who Jesus knows you can be.

It’s this challenging thing that we’re in, but denying ourselves is a huge part of our relationship with God for now. So, this message has a little bit to do with that. So, again, you should leave right now if that doesn’t super exciting to you.

I will say, denying yourself is not just a matter of God wanting you to be miserable. Denying yourself is actually a sign of your love for him. So he receives that as love for him. It’s a beautiful thing. He is worthy of that. And also, denying yourself gets you into the place where you’re going to be able to be with him forevermore. And every single thing that you’ve denied in this life will count as a reward in the life to come. And the glory that shall be revealed to be worthy to be compared with the sufferings that we go through now. These verses are in the Bible for a reason, because denying ourself is such a huge part of our relationship with God.

We’re trying to cultivate this hunger. We’re trying to stir up this hunger. I heard someone say recently, that challenged me a bunch—when the prodigal was hungry, remember the prodigal son who took all of his father’s stuff and spoiled it on licentious living, then he got to a place where he was hungry? When he was hungry, he went to the pigs. But when he was starving, he went back to the father. When I say we’re praying for a hunger, I’m not just praying for a hunger that will get us back to the pigs, I’m praying for a kind of hunger that will actually get us to go home to the father, because we’ve all gone astray.

And our world is full of counterfeit righteousness. Tables have been set before us, full of humanistic ideologies and popular political propaganda claiming to have the high moral ground, claiming that they can satisfy the hunger and solve the problems. But communism, capitalism, socialism, nationalism, progressivism—and all of their friends—have left us high and dry just like all of the societies who looked to them before us. They will never, can never satisfy the human soul and solve any of the problems that we have. Though we try to satisfy our souls with many things, we only truly live, grow and progress by feeding on God’s nutrient-rich word.

Amen? Amen? Scream ‘amen’ kind of deal I think is the only way I think we’re going to counteract the marketing and the propaganda and the populism of our day. In case that happens again, you can scream it.

Augustine said:

“You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”

Pascal, who liked to follow science, said:

“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.”

And Ronald Rolheiser, who is a Catholic priests who wrote about longing, said:

“There is within us a fundamental dis-ease, an unquenchable fire that renders us incapable, in this life, of ever coming to full peace. This desire lies at the center of our lives, in the marrow of our bones, and in the deep recesses of the soul. Spiritualty is, ultimately, about what we do with that desire. What we do with our longings, both in terms of handling the pain and the hope they bring us, that is our spirituality.”

We have appetites. We have hunger. We have deceptive ideas in our world that play to disordered desires within us that are normalized and even celebrated in our central society. The challenge is great. The way Mark Sayers says this:

Mark Sayers describes the progressive vision of the world as “the kingdom without the King.” We want all of God’s blessings—without submitting to his loving rule and reign. We want progress—without his presence. We want justice—with his justification. We want the horizontal implications of the gospel for society—with the vertical reconciliation of sinners with God. We want society to conform to our standard of moral purity—without God’s standard of personal holiness.

Yes. That’s where we’re at. That’s where we’re at. It’s a problem. It’s a challenge. And those who deny it or try to ignore it will succumb to it. We're called to consecrate ourselves.

So what do we do with the dis-ease and unquenchable desires that we have within us? Well, 1 Thessalonians 5 is Paul, who spent just a few months with these people in Thessalonica, and God did something so supernatural and wonderful that it like stoked a fire in their hearts. And they all decided that they wanted God instead of what the world offered them. They all came together as a community and Paul was teaching them. But, because of persecution, Paul had to leave.

So this young church was just a few months old and Paul had to go on to the next town. But he wrote this letter, 1 Thessalonians, to help encourage them and give them what they need so they could go forward. He tried to give them the nutrients of God’s word so they could go forward and navigate the challenges of life. And these are some final instructions as he’s kind of summing up.

He says this in 1 Thessalonians 5:

12 Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, to acknowledge those who work hard among you, who care for you in the Lord and who admonish you. 13 Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other. 14 And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone. 15 Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else.

Then, as we talked about last week, we’re supposed to cultivate gratitude.

16 Rejoice always, 17 pray continually, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not treat prophecies with contempt 21 but test them all; hold on to what is good, 22 reject every kind of evil. 23 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.

We’ve broken this section into three weeks. Last week we talked about how to cultivate gratitude and how that can help stoke the fire within us, the hunger within us. This week we’re going to focus on verse 20 through 24, the last part, as this is some way that we can continue to make sure the Spirit is not quenched within us. And we’re going to talk about what consecration means. Then, next week, we’ll look at verse 12 through 15 and talk about what we’re going to do to serve the Lord.

So we’ve kind of housed this all as As for Me and My House. Going into 2021, we will cultivate gratitude. As for Me and My House, we will consecrate ourselves. We’ll figure out what that means for us in 2021. And As for Me and My House, we’ll serve the Lord. We’ll talk about that next week.

So, consecrate ourselves. This is one of the things that we have to do to make sure that the Spirit’s fire is not quenched within us and within the ones that God has given us. Ultimately, God has called you not to change America and make sure all the laws of the land are perfect. I’m not saying that’s a bad work. I’m not saying we shouldn’t put effort there. But what I am saying is that what God has called us to do is take care of the ones that he has given us.

Remember Jesus? Jesus came to this earth and had a big job. And yet, he was extremely small town. Extremely small town. And in the end, when he prayed in John 17, he said, “Father, I have kept the ones you have given me.” And that’s ultimately what God is calling you and me to do. And we are so connected, supposedly, with all of the federalists, nationalistic and even global situations that are in the world—and again, I’m not saying that’s wrong or that’s bad. But sometimes it can make us feel like that’s what we’re supposed to be engaging in. And we spend all our effort doing that and we get discouraged when we don’t see things go our way. We forget to do the really most important work, just to take care of the ones the Lord has given you, that are right there in your own house.

That’s why Jesus didn’t say, “Love everyone.” He said, “Love your neighbor.” And if everyone would just love their neighbor, guess what? Everyone gets the love of Christ.

So we’ve got to take care of the ones the Lord has given us. Start there and that will make a huge difference.

Just look at Jesus’ life. He took care of the ones the Lord had given him. And Christianity’s done pretty well the world over, yeah? He just took care of the ones the Lord gave him and — bam— the single most dominant force for good the world has ever seen in every area, every season of time, every age, every nationality, every language. It has been the single most dominant force for good in the world. It’s encouraging. So, if we can do that, we can take hope that God will take that and use it to make something great.

But here we have, “Do not treat prophecies with contempt, but test them all.” This is something we learned last year, for sure. There were all these people claiming to speak the truth or speak what was right. And we learned how important it is for us to hold on a minute and test these things. We all got duped. We all got fooled quite a bit last year by very powerful marketing campaigns that really housed something that was more poisonous and toxic. And we had to do some research. We had to test everything. We had to develop our filters so that we could hold on to the good and reject what is evil. That’s something that we need to continue. We need to develop our filters.

How do you develop a filter so that you will not be fooled? You get to know the word of God. It’s that simple. I mean, some people say you’ve got to climb up the mountain and stare at your belly button for a little while. You could try it. I don’t know. But I know this will work. This right here will work. It’s served a lot of people for a lot of time that were in much more dire situations than us. It withstood the test of time. It’s trustworthy. It’s true. And it can help us so much filter out what is not good and what is not right. The Bible actually describes itself as a sword that can cut through joint and marrow and really get to the heart of everything. So we’ve got to know the word of God, absolutely.

“May God himself, the God of peace sanctify you through and through.” I love what Paul is saying to these people. He’s not saying, “You need to go and sanctify yourselves.” He’s saying, “I pray that God will sanctify you.” Just like when Jesus said to his disciples, “If you follow me, I will make you into fishers of men. All you have to do is stay close to me. I will do the work to make you into the person that you’re supposed to be.”

So sanctification is an important process of consecration. We need to be set apart. We need to be holy. We need to be other. We need to be alternative. We need to realize that following Jesus is going to require us to go against the grain. And it may require that more and more and more, depending on how our society goes. But that’s what we’re called to be, a peculiar people.

Then, lastly, he says, “May your whole spirit, body and soul be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus.” All of those matter. Body, soul and spirit are all extremely important. Your whole being is to be kept blameless.

Now this is tricky, because we think, “How am I going to be blameless? You don’t know what I’ve done. You don’t know what I’m dealing with.” It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter to God because your unrighteousness will never be more powerful than his righteousness. And through the blood of Jesus Christ, his righteousness is applied to you. How about some good news right there? The blood of Jesus, applied to your life washes out, cancels out everything. In fact, now when God sees you, he sees you as blameless, he sees you robed in the righteousness of Christ when we come to him.

And his whole goal, the work of the Spirit, the work of the word of God in our lives is to get us to the day when we go stand before Jesus, we are presented as a spotless bride. I know it’s a little weird for some of us guys, but just take the analogy. A spotless bride. Blameless. It’s what God’s plan for your life is, if you’ll hold on to him. So this is what Paul was encouraging them with.

So I want to kind of unpack consecration a little bit more. We’re going to do three things. We’re going to think biblically, which is so important for us these days. Think biblically. Think theologically. We’ve got a lot of help. A lot of people have fought some of these battles and sorted through some of this chaos before, and they’ve got some good things to say to us. And we’re going to think practically, because it’s 2021 and we’ve got to leave this place. I mean, leave the church, that’s all I’m saying. You have to walk out of this place. Not like, whoa, leave this place. Not being crazy. Test those prophecies, you know? Whatever. But think biblically, think theologically, and think practically.

First of all, biblically. It’s so important for us to be thinking biblically these days. The Bible has a lot to say about consecration. First of all—brace yourself—when I say consecration, thinking biblically, you should be thinking about circumcision. Now, it’s very rare times where any pastor is going to tell you you should be thinking about circumcision. But if you think about what God was doing in his people, he said to Abraham, “I want you to circumcise every male in your household, and this is going to be a sign that you belong to me. This is going to be a sign of my relationship with you. This is going to be part of your consecration. This is going to be part of your sanctification. I’m calling you out. I’m calling you to be different than all the other nations. The reason I’m doing it is because I want you to be an example of what it’s like to be in a relationship with me, for all of the other nations.”

So Abraham circumcised everybody, including himself. Whoa. And that circumcision carried on as a sign of God’s covenant with the nation of Israel. And there are all kinds of ramifications you can make, but absolutely, one of them is sexual. God wanted his people to be very different sexually than every other nation. Because every other nation didn’t have any boundaries as far as sexuality. Even in their worship of their gods, there was often a sexual element. But God said, “My people are going to be very different sexually.”

Sexuality is a hugely important reality for the flourishing of human society or the demise. When God created the world and there was nothing but goodness, what he did to make sure that goodness could be maintained was he created something in his image and he called it male and female, nothing else. And as soon as we start messing with male and female, we lose the greatest picture of the image of God that he gave us. And then he said that male and female, to even take this further, “I’m going to put them together in some sort of sacred, holy covenant of marriage, where they’re going to become one. And they’re going to produce family. And if everyone will just take care of their own family, then everyone will be taken care of and the goodness can be maintained.” It’s that simple.

Yet, we’re moving the boundaries. We’re wanting to change what God has set in order for our greatest freedom and our greatest flourishing. So he calls his people to consecrate themselves in what seems like very radical, even challenging, self-denial, sacrificial ways, but it’s not because he doesn’t love us. It’s because he’s creating the boundaries that we need for the greatest freedom and the greatest human floushing.

So not only think about circumcision—we’ll move on—think about Samson. Samson was called to be different, to be set apart. So he had this Nazarite vow in the scriptures, which was, he wasn’t supposed to cut his hair, he wasn’t supposed to go near any dead thing, and he wasn’t supposed to —anyone? Anyone? I’m saying that because I can’t remember the third one right now. I remembered it first service. No alcohol! He wasn’t supposed to go near any fermented thing. Whew. Almost had to quit the message right in the middle there. Just kidding. Samson. Nazarite vow.

Think about Daniel. Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego. They’re taken from their place. They’re young men. They’re pulled into Babylon and they’re getting to see what basically, you know, total indulgence looks like. Babylonian culture was powerful, luxurious, all of those things. And these young men just felt this need to consecrate themselves. They said, “We will not eat the king’s meat and we will not drink his wine.” And they consecrated themselves against all the others. And, in the end, they were shown to be wiser, stronger and faster, but they had that call to consecrate themselves. They understood the need, in that moment, that they would be completely overcome by the power and persuasion of that culture if they didn’t real quickly figure out how to cultivate hunger for God. They consecrated themselves.

In the Old Testament, think about Sabbath. Think about tithing. These were things that set apart that community, that they would give a tenth of everything that they made. They would just go and give it to the priest. They would give it to the community at large. That was so bizarre, so different. And that carried on.

And Sabbath. Every once in a while, one day a week they would just chill, and just rejoice and thank God for all that’s been given to them. And there were times where those lines were blurred in Israel’s society and it ended up causing them to go into exile. God was very serious about those things. God considered it robbery when they would not give him a tenth of what they had produced. These were things that would set them apart.

Now go to the New Testament. In the New Testament, the best thing, I think to do is to think about the book of Acts community. And, again, if this is hard for you to understand, you need to read your Bible more. I know I’m going through these things quickly, but you should be reading your Bible. You should be cultivating that in your life, so that when we talk about these things, you’re, “Oh, yeah, yeah. I know what you’re talking about. The book of Acts community.” This is basically the first church, and they were set apart. There was one time where it says that all the people around that first church were in awe and in fear of them, and none of them dared join them. I know that sounds a little weird. They weren’t saying that no one was joining them. They’re saying that people were a little unsure of what to do about them. And daily the Lord was adding to their number those that were being saved.

They were such an alternative community. They were a city on the hill. They were the salt and the light in their communities. It was tangible and evident. And the four things that stuck out were, they would gather together, all of them. And it wasn’t just gathering together that was so fascinating. What was fascinating is that they would gather together as rich and poor and everybody felt the same. They would gather together as Jew and Gentile. But they would love each other. They would gather together, though they all had different political backgrounds or ideologies, but it was no problem when they met together, because there was something that was stronger than all of those. That was the bond of the Spirit and the unity of Christ. And it was remarkable to everybody else who couldn’t get along. Can I get an amen here? You see how this is working out, right?

So the second things was they shared everything in common. Again, a further explanation of this tithing idea. They constantly brought things in together to make sure everybody was okay. They were generous. They were kind. They were not greedy. And it was a puzzle. It was confusing to all those who were trying to get ahead and get rich. And they cared for the sick and the poor. Like, literally, they would go and take care of lepers, even though, at that time they thought leprosy was contagious and could kill them, it didn’t stop them. When the plagues would hit and those type of things, they would go and get the dead and bury them, risking all of that danger. To where Roman writers were saying, basically, “Those Christians are taking better care of the Roman dead, poor and sick than we are, and we’re the empire.” Amen? Amen? Amen?

And then the last thing, and probably the most fascinating to everybody at that point that caused them to be so set apart and so different was the concept of enemy love. When the experienced persecution, hatred, disadvantage, whatever it was, they would respond with love. They would respond with the good news of Jesus Christ. Enemy love. Picture better than anywhere else when Stephen is being martyred and the religious leaders are throwing rocks at him. And they will keep throwing rocks until he’s not breathing anymore. And as the rocks are hitting them, he just cries out, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.” He’s full of love for them.

It was radical. It was beautiful. It was alternative. It was different. It was set apart. It was consecrated. And it’s our inheritance. It’s our heritage to live up and into that. It’s so necessary for us to figure out consecration.

So that’s thinking biblically. Now let’s think theologically. This might be a little bit painful, but hopefully not. Theologically. Basically, when we talk about soteriology, that’s the study of salvation, we know that Jesus is the Savior. He came. To save us. But the salvation that is unpacked in the scriptures anymore through theology has three different aspects to it. Salvation that we experience with Jesus first of all is justification.

That’s what we receive. When we receive Jesus, when we confess our sins and say, “Jesus, I need you,” and we call on his name, we are saved. But the first step is justification, which basically, now God looks as you just as if you never sinned at all. His righteousness, the blood of Jesus is that powerful, that it completely wipes out all debt, all sin forevermore. Even to the extent where, if you sin in the future, bam, his price that he paid is counted for that as well. And so you are justified, you are seated in heavenly places. It’s done. Your names in the book. Over. Justification. It’s one of the greatest things to unpack and understand.

But when I hang out with you, I don’t see you that way. There is a reality. We all know inside of us, though we have been justified, though we are saved, though we know our place is in heaven, we’re all good to go with God, we look in the mirror and say, “There’s still some things wrong.” I hang out with you a little while and I’m like, “There’s some things wrong.” You get to know me and you’re like, disappointed.

Because there is another aspect to our salvation that is called sanctification. And sanctification is the journey. It’s the work of God every day in the life of a believer to renew them, renew them back into their original design, to get them back into the image of who God wants them to be. Ultimately, the image of Christ. And it’s this daily work. Sanctification. Sanctification. Where God is renewing, he’s setting us apart, he’s making us holy. And that’s the work that God does every day.

The way the Westminster Catechism says it, again, a theological document. It says sanctification is…

“…the work of God’s free grace,…”

Hallelujah! God didn’t make us figure this out. He said, “You’re not going to figure it out, so let me send my Son to do it.

…whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God,…

I just explained some of that. And catch this, this is so important:

…and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.”

This is where what I said in the beginning comes into play. Ultimately, the goal of the work of the Spirit of God, yes, it’s to get you to be able to live beautifully and wonderfully and experience all that God has for you; but one of the main things that the work of the Spirit in your life is supposed to do is hep you win the battle with your disordered desires. It’s to help you deny yourself so that you’re not overcome by the sinful nature and desires that are housed still within you until the day you die or Jesus comes back.

I mean, that’s good/bad news, right? It’s bad news because the truth of the Scripture is, until the day we die we’re going to have some of these desires. We’re going to have some of these things within us that long for the things that will kill us and destroy our relationship with God.

But the good news is, you’re not alone. The good news is God puts his Spirit inside you, puts his community around you. He puts his words in you to help you combat those things so that you don’t have to succumb to those things.

And just because you have some of those disordered desires does not disqualify you from living under righteousness and being extremely fruitful in your life. And, somehow, even those disordered desires, the only reason the Lord leaves them there is because he knows they’re going to work in you a dependency on him and a sympathy for those around you, or an empathy for those around you, that’s going to be very, very fruitful.

But you’ve got to understand, there are deceptive ideas in our world that play to disordered desires within us that are normalized and being even celebrated in our sinful society. And we need that sanctification process.

The really great news is there’s one more aspect to the soteriology, the salvation, is glorification. You’ve got justification, sanctification, glorification. Glorification, summed up real easy, is when Jesus comes back or we go to be with him, no more sinful nature. No more disordered desires. We are free forevermore to just live into the righteousness and goodness of God. Amen? Amen.

Lastly, thinking practically, I’m just going to give you a little illustration here of thinking practically about consecration. Where I live, some of you have been over at my house, by where I live, there are thirteen humans, including me. Most of them are smaller. There are twelve chickens. There are two little goats. There are two giant tortoises. I think they’re still there. They’ve been underground for a while lately. There’s a bearded dragon. I don’t see him very much, but I guess he’s there.

One of the things we’ve had to do is we’ve had to build some pens, right? Chicken coop, a goat pen, built some fencing around. And we’ve done this because we’ve had animals before that haven’t made it. They haven’t made it because we have coyotes and we have bobcats and we have raccoons. They’ve got to eat too, you know?

One of the things that I’ve had to do is I’ve had to get really good at building these coops and these pens to make sure the bad guys don’t get in there to get the animals, right? And I build them, and that’s fine and all, but raccoons are smart. They’ve got opposable thumbs and they’re like, rrrrr rrrr, little by little, rrrr, rrrr, and so I have to go and do boundary maintenance. I have to continue to mend the fences. I have to continue to check and see where the holes are and build those things back up.

And I also have to do something else. I had to get a German Shepherd. It’s actually my daughter’s dog. His name is Lucky. And I leave him out there at night. He wants a job. He’s a German Shepherd. He loves jobs. And he goes out there at night and he sits in a chair. Literally, this big comfy chairs and he just sits there and watches. It’s a cartoon, but it’s my life. And we’ve got no problems. If I’ll mend the fences, if I’ll do the boundary maintenance and I’ll keep Lucky out there, we don’t have any problems. And what we’re supposed to do for our own souls and four the people that the Lord has given us, is we’re supposed to be people who do boundary maintenance.

And our society now is wanting to completely erase all of the boundaries. They think that freedom is “no boundaries.” They think that, if we really loved the chickens and the goats, we would get rid of all of those things that are holding them in. And what has happened to every society before us who’s done that, who’s tried to throw off the old, archaic, oppressive word of God and biblical boundaries—they get decimated. They get destroyed. God knows what he’s doing. He has set the boundaries in a place, not to limit our joy, but to give us the most freedom possible in this life, and to set up the greatest chance for human flourishing. But the boundaries are important.

And we, as people of God, are to be about boundary maintenance. I don’t know how to legislate righteousness. I don’t know how to vote in this or that. I mean, obviously the Democrat and Republican parties are both lost. Neither of them house the word of God. You might think one does more than another. But go ahead and talk to another Christian, and they’re going to convince you another way. We’re not building that. We’re building the Kingdom of God. And I think we should fight the federalist and nationalistic battles. We should fight for Arizona. We should fight for the things we believe in, absolutely. But, at the end of the day, what we’re measured on is what we’ve done with the ones that the Lord’s give us.

As for me and my house, we will consecrate ourselves. We will do boundary maintenance. As for me and role as a father, I will let my daughter have a phone. And I will do boundary maintenance every half hour for the rest of her life. And I do. Because there are coyotes. There are raccoons. There are bobcats. And way worse.

And it’s not that I just create these boundaries and suffocate her. But I have to figure out how to create boundaries and do boundary maintenance, and then teach her to do that for her own soul. Because, at some point, she’s gone. And if I haven’t helped her learn how to do boundary maintenance and see the beauty and wonder of it all, it doesn’t matter what I said or didn’t. And that’s what we need to be doing.

Just to unpack it a little bit more, as we’re thinking practically here. Ten Commandments. Start there. Start there. But not in King James Version. Like, start with “You shall have no other Gods before me,” and figure out what that means. “Remember the Sabbath.” Figure out what that means for you right now. “Honor your father and mother.” And on and on. Unpack those things. Those are boundaries that God has given us for human flourishing. And, ultimately, those things have become the Judeo-Christian ethic.

And the Judeo-Christian ethic is the best thing that has ever been given to a society. Wherever the Judeo-Christian ethic has been applied and embraced as a society, you have experienced freedom and human flourishing. Ever heard of Israel? Against all the opposition and challenge that they have experienced, if you go there, there is flourishing and there is freedom. And the American experiment was that same thing. Let’s apply the Judeo-Christian ethic in a Constitutional governmental form. And what has it caused? It has caused freedom and flourishing, no doubt about it.

And yet, we want to get rid of it. We want to throw it off as oppressive, abusive and archaic, and call it progressivism. As for this house, Living Streams Church, as long as I have breath in me, no. It will not live here. I don’t care if there’s two people left in this church, it will not live here. I don’t care if they shut us down. I don’t care what happens, that’s not going to happen here. We’re going to be about boundary maintenance. And we have really good boundaries, and a really kind God, who knows how to get us where we need to be. And I’m so thankful that, ultimately, I’m going to lose the breath in my lungs. And, ultimately, I can talk big, but I’m nothing. But the last verse in this section says, “The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.”

So, in my daughter’s life, ultimately, I can try, but it’s a promise of my father that he’s going to do it. And it’s a promise of the father that, if you let him, he will do it.

If you’re working ninety hours a week in pursuit of the almighty dollar, understand that you move the boundaries. The boundaries in your life are in the wrong place. There may an underlying issue that’s driving you to move the boundaries in the wrong place. So boundary maintenance would involved moving the boundary back to the right place, as well as addressing the underlying heart issues that drive you to move the boundary to the wrong place.

If someone has a sexual partner outside the boundaries of scripture, the covenant of marriage, one man, one woman, then boundary maintenance would be to end the out-of-boundary relationship, deal with the issues driving you to engage in that behavior, and do the ministering of healing the heart of everyone affected by the moving of those boundaries.

None of this disqualifies you. It’s not like God said, “Hey, you moved the boundary. Sorry.” It’s just a matter of coming home. It’s just a matter of returning to the Father, and he’ll say, “Okay, let’s get the boundaries back in place. Let’s start doing the healing. Let’s get back on track.” And here we go. That’s the good news of Jesus.

Let’s pray. Let’s just bow our heads and listen in as we close. And as you’re trying to hear from the Lord, I want to read this verse and just see if something pops out as maybe the Spirit is highlighting this. It’s Galatians 5 [paraphrase]:

The things your sinful old self want is sexual sins, sinful desires, wild living, worshiping false gods, witchcraft, hating, fighting, being jealous, being angry, arguing, dividing into little groups and thinking the other groups are wrong, false teachings, wanting something someone else has, killing other people, using strong drink and wild parties, and all things like this. I told you before and I’m telling you again that those who do these things have no place in the holy nation of God. But the fruit that comes from having the Holy Spirit in our lives is love, joy, peace, not giving up, being kind, being good, having faith, being gentle and being the boss over our own desires.

Jesus, we are undone before you. As we hear this, we are reminded of how weak and frail we are against the challenges in our lives. But Lord, we don’t lose heart. We don’t despair because you, you are able and you are willing and you are for us and you are with us, no matter what we’ve done. So restore unto us the joy of our salvation and renew a right spirit within us. Create in us a clean heart, God. And show us where we’ve allowed the boundaries to be moved and help us put them back in place, Lord. We pray all this in your name, Jesus. Amen.

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