David Stockton 5/16/21 David Stockton 5/16/21

The Law of the Spirit

We’re in Matthew 5 if you want to grab a Bible and turn there. We’ve been trying to understand the way of Jesus. We’ve been trying to get a vision for the righteousness of God. In particular, we’ve been sitting on the side of a hill with Jesus as he give us the Sermon on the Mount, as he is inviting his followers to know and understand what it would look like, what it would feel like, what it would taste like, smell like if they followed…

Series: The Sermon on the Mount
May 16, 2021 - David Stockton

We were doing great until we got to Matthew 5:17 through 20. If you‘ve been with us the last four weeks, you understand why I say that. Because we were just supposed to do one week with Matthew 5:17-20, but this is our fourth week with it. Because it’s such deep waters. I think it’s so important for understanding and unlocking the rest of the Sermon on the Mount.

Basically, he talks about the law here. In some ways Jesus is so much more than a rabbi. He’s so much more than a teacher. But in another way, he really is helping his disciples understand ethics. Ethics is basically when you have a decision to make, which way are you supposed to go, what are you supposed to do.

I had two young guys call me this week for advise. At first I was like, “Yeah, man. I’ve got young guys calling me for advice. Maybe they think I know some things.” Then I realized it’s probably just that I’m older and I know them. And they’re like, “He’s the only old guy I know. Maybe I should call him.”

The first one was calling me because he had an ethical dilemma. His dilemma was that he’s a musician and musicians had a really rough year last year. So he was wanting to gather some of the other musicians he’s known and done tours with, all together for kind of like a retreat or conference where they get together and pray and encourage each other, and listen to the Lord and worship. And they kind of set their sites on what’s forward out of this retreat. He was really inspired by the Lord to do this. So he, of his own volition, was looking for places to do it. He found this one place that he could afford and it seemed to good. He went and visited it and he felt like the Lord was saying this is it, this is so good.

But then, he found out that what the denomination of the place was, and some of their stances on cultural issues today, as well as some of their practices, he was kind of having some questions. It didn’t quite line up with exactly the way he believed. He thought — and it’s not anything horrific or anything — it’s just some little issues.

So he called me to say, “I don’t know what to do. I feel like the Spirit’s saying ‘go,’ but then, when I think about some of the rules and regulations that I know are in the scriptures, and some of what these guys say, we kind of vary. We differ a little bit on some things.”

And I was like, “I’m so glad you called me this week, because, basically, what I’m teaching this Sunday is ‘to the pure all things are pure.’ And ‘where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.’” And I said, “I’m excited you called. Because I know you know the word of God and you want to apply the word of God, and you submit to the word of God, and you’re inviting community into your life to help you process all of this. But I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt, if the Spirit says, ‘Go’ — go!”

And he was like, “What?” Because he thought for sure I was going to tell him, “Yes, you should be more careful. Yes, this isn’t going to line up perfectly, so you shouldn’t do it.” And he was surprised that I was able to tell him, “No, man. We understand that the Law is good, but there is a higher law that we live by — the Law of the Spirit. And we’ve got to graduate into that if we’re really going to see this world changed.

So another guy called me the next day. He was saying, “I just got invited — I’ve been hanging out with this guy and I’ve been trying to find a way to continue to get to know him and share Christ with him. He just invited me over to his house for Ramadan dinner.” He was like, “I really thought that was great and I feel like this is what I’ve been praying for, an opportunity to go and meet his family. Yet, I’m like, ‘What do I do?’”

“I’m so glad you called me, young man. To the pure, all things are pure. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Yes, I understand. You are right. There are things we need to navigate. There are things we need to understand. Absolutely. And if the Spirit is saying, ‘Don’t do it,’ You shouldn’t do it.

But if you have the Law, and you’ve processed the Law and you’re saying, “Okay, I understand that. That’s good. I’m affirming that. I’m inviting community around me to help me process this so I’m not just doing my own thing. And through all that process, the Spirit is saying, ‘Go,’ go, man! Go! You have the Spirit of God. We’re called to be salt and light. And salt and light needs to get out of the walls of the church and get into society. That’s where it’s the most effective and the most powerful.

And he’s way more prone to legalism, like I am. Like, he loves good legalism. “Give me some rules, man. Yeah. I love it. It feels so good here with all these rules. It’s nice. Yeah. Check them off.” So it was really hard for him to process what I was saying. And because some of you might know the danger of what I’m saying, as well, if people want to abuse the freedom that Christ has given us.

And there are people these days, you know — those are kind of some light and fluffy ethical issues where there isn’t major ramifications. But then we have others. Racism. Sexuality. These are ethical issues that we’re navigating right now. It’s funny, because I’ve been processing a little bit. I don’t know if you know Ibram X. Kendi and some of the anti-racism ideology that he’s putting out there, that is actually making its way not into headlines, but actually making its way into schools around the country, and also Arizona. So it’s something that I’ve been, like, “Okay, I really need to know what’s going on here.”

It’s so interesting, because at first, what Ibram X. Kendi says, is basically it’s not enough to be not a racist, you have to be anti-racist. There are only two camps. You’re either a racist or an anti-racist. Please track with me here. Send me emails if you need clarification. I’m not trying to make some massive point here. I’m trying to help use this as an illustration of why we need the word of God and we need the Spirit of God.

But his idea sounds kind of similar to what Jesus would say, honestly, that “You’ve heard it said that you shouldn’t be a racist. But I say to you you need to be anti-racist. You actually need to be proactive and make sure racism doesn’t happen.” And I think that is kind of actually what Jesus does say in the Sermon on the Mount. “You’ve heard it said, ‘Don’t commit murder. But I say you shouldn’t be angry with your brother.” Jesus kind of takes it to this next place. So you have that. But the sad and scary thing is, the very next step for Ibram X. Kendi, and really the ideology that’s being accepted worldwide goes to this place:

The only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. And the only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.

Which is absolute crap and horrible evil. It’s the exact opposite of what the entire civil rights movement was trying to put forward. It’s so against the way of Jesus. But you see the subtitles in the ethical issues that we’re dealing with today. And the importance that we know the way of Jesus, that we understand the Law of God, but also we are led by the Spirit.

Again, there’s way more conversation to have over this. I’m happy to have those conversations. I had one last week. I actually love it. I love processing this stuff, because we’ve got a lot to learn these days. But we also have to be able to figure out how to navigate these extremely challenging and difficult ethical issues that we go through, whether they’re in the grand scheme of society and culture or whether they’re inside our own hearts and our own souls, or maybe in our own marriages and families.

So that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to understand the way of Jesus. And what he does in Matthew 5:17, is he says this:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

He’s affirming the Law of God and how good it is. The rules.

Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

So here he’s saying, “I’ve not come to abolish all the rules, regulations, the Law, all of those things.” The covenant God made with Moses. The 613 mitzvot that have been passed down through Judaism. The Judeo-Christian ethic, as we would understand it. Not coming to get rid of those things. Those things are good and helpful and right. Scriptures are good and helpful and right. “I haven’t come to abolish them. I’ve come to fulfill them.”

And what he means by fulfill them, the word fulfill there, means “I’ve come to complete. I’ve come to fulfill it so that next thing can come.” And that’s where we have old covenant and new covenant. We have Old Testament and New Testament. Jesus fulfilled something in order to usher in something new. A new covenant. A new relationship that we have with God.

And that’s what we’ve been trying to do over the last four weeks. And I admit, I haven’t done that great. But honestly, I’m learning this along with you. But I feel like each week we’ve gotten a little more piece of the puzzle, a little more clarity. Like we’re trying to turn a corner. We’ve really been kind of diving into the scriptures and how important they are for us, especially insight of all the craziness around. But we’ve got to turn this corner to not just be relying on the laws of God, but relying on the Spirit of God. Not just living according to the Law, but living according to the Spirit. And that’s what we’re trying to get into.

So to reaffirm what we’ve said. There’s three things we’ve talked about:

1. The Law is good for training us in righteousness.

2 Timothy 3:16 says:

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,

That’s how I got that super clever point out of that.

2. The Law is good for showing us we are unrighteous.

Now that doesn’t sound like a good thing, but it is important. You need to know when you’re getting it wrong so that you don’t keep getting it wrong. And this comes from Galatians 3:

For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.” Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because “the righteous will live by faith.”

So basically the Law is good in helping us know that we are unrighteous. And this is where it’s a little interesting. If I were to murder someone and then say, “You know what I’m going to do? I’m just going to do so many lawful things. I’m going to drive the speed limit. I’m going to pay my traffic picture fine thing. I’m going to pay my taxes.” Whatever. I’m trying to think of more laws.

But the more laws we fulfill, it doesn’t take away the guilt from the law that we did. I can’t go into a courtroom and go, “Yes, I murdered him in cold blood. However, I drove the speed limit my whole life. So that should at least take away what I did here.”

It’s not the way it works. We need the law. We need the guidelines. We need the structure to help us know when we’re in and we’re out. And that’s a thing that God gave us. And it’s a good thing. It doesn’t feel good. It feels horrible when we find ourselves outside. But at least it wakes us up to the reality of where we’re at. So the law is good in that way.

Another way we talked about last week:

3. The Law is good at being a strict tutor holding us until maturity comes.

Galatians 3 in the Message says this:

Until the time when we were mature enough to respond freely in faith to the living God, we were carefully surrounded and protected by the Mosaic law. The law was like those Greek tutors, with which you are familiar, who escort children to school and protect them from danger or distraction, making sure the children will really get to the place they set out for. But now you have arrived at your destination: By faith in Christ you are in direct relationship with God. Your baptism in Christ was not just washing you up for a fresh start. It also involved dressing you in an adult faith wardrobe—Christ’s life, the fulfillment of God’s original promise.

So what he’s saying is that the Law was this tutor that was kind of trying to keep us together. We said the Law was like a mom (on Mother’s Day. You know, you’ve got to use moms there.) So it’s like a mom holding you together. You’ve got all these rules and laws to keep you from sitting on the couch you’re not supposed to sit on. (Again. Last week.) Until the day you have enough maturity, common sense and self-control that the mom can say, “All right. Go.” And you’re good. She trusts you. You’ve got this. And that’s what the Law was doing.

Yet, for some reason, sometimes Christians just want to stay there. It would be like this. You guys have seen those big eagle nests. Bald eagle nests in northern Arizona or somewhere else. Way in the tops of those trees, giant eagle nests with these branches kind of woven together somehow by these eagles. And they actually have sticks that are pointing in at the top to make sure that the eagles don’t fall out.

So the Law is like this eagle’s nest. It’s there to keep us from falling out. It’s there to keep us from going in the wrong way, or from danger, all of these things. But when the eagle grows up and is not a little baby anymore and it’s got these wings, it’s got these talons, it would be so weird, lame and dumb if the eagle was just like, “This is it, man. I’m just staying right here. Yes. Check me out. I’m going to be the best eagle nest person there ever has been.”

It’s honestly what it looks like when Christians try and get really good at church. When all they want to do is be good at church, it’s annoying and weird sometimes. Some of the stuff they come up with, you’re just like, “What are you doing, man?” It’s like a different language or whatever.

But they’re really good at church. They’re really good at the eagle’s nest. That’s what the Pharisees were. They were these puffed up little eagles saying, "Check me out I know all the laws so well. I can go around in circles in this eagle’s nest all day long, going, ‘Look at me. Look at me. Look at me.’”

And Jesus comes and says, “When are you going to learn to fly? When are you going to understand this was an old covenant that was just here until the new covenant could come where the Spirit now is the wind beneath your wings.”

This is what we’re trying to do. This is what you and I have to get to. The eagle’s nest is not bad. It’s actually wonderful. Especially for new believers. Especially if you’re not sure what to do. Especially when times of shaking happen. I think it’s okay. Fly back to the eagle’s nest and sit in there a little bit.

And that’s what we’ve done. The winds have gotten crazy around our society. So we as a church have said, “Hey, let’s get back to the scriptures. Let’s really make sure we’re good on what God wants and requires. Let’s really understand how God has worked in times past. Let’s really understand this.” But that’s only the start.

My prayer has shifted. I don’t want our church to be only good at the Law. I want us to know God’s ways. I want us to know God’s word, definitely. But I want our church to be filled with the Spirit way more, and walking in the Spirit, and learning to live by the Spirit. What the world needs is eagles that fly, not eagles stuck in a nest. So we’ve got to make this shift to living by the Spirit. So that’s what we’re going to try and teach today.

First of all, we’ve got to understand the connection. The Law was good for training us in righteousness, but it was powerless to help us become righteous. But living by the Spirit, when the Spirit comes, he not only leads us in righteousness, but he empowers us to be righteous. It’s a big shift that happens.

2 Corinthians 3:7 says it this way:

Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, transitory though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious?

What’s better? An eagle in a nest or an eagle flying around. Yeah, flying.

If the ministry that brought condemnation was glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness! For what was glorious has no glory now in comparison with the surpassing glory. And if what was transitory came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts!

This is Paul understanding there’s something new that’s come. He’s trying to help his readers understand there’s something new that’s come. Living by the Spirit. Walking in the Spirit. It’s the graduation from the Law. It’s what’s going to bring life. It’s what’s going to bring righteousness. It’s what’s going to bring salt and light in the world, which is what we’re trying to do.

Secondly the Law was good for showing us our unrighteousness. But watch what happens here in Romans 8. The Spirit actually accomplishes righteousness in us. Romans 8:1-4, which, by the way, Romans 8 is the most single important understanding of this. Romans 8, you should memorize it. I should memorize it. I don’t have it memorized. I should memorize it and then tell you to memorize. That would be better.

It’s so good. You know they tell you, like, if you could have one book on a desert island and that’s all you could have. I mean, if you could get the Bible, great. If they’re like, “No, it’s too big.” Get Romans. If you can’t get Romans, get Romans 8, okay? That’s basically what I’m trying to say.

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,

What about when I acted out in my homosexuality before I came to Jesus? Can I be free from condemnation. Yes! In Christ Jesus, you can! No doubt about it.

What about when I really, really hurt those people in that way? What about when I really let my wife down? What about when I left my kids? Whatever it might be. Whatever it might be. Once you’re in Christ Jesus, there is no condemnation. What that means is God does not have any anger toward you. God is not disappointed in you. God has completely forgotten all about it. Your sins and iniquity he remembers no more. There’s no condemnation. You are justified in Christ Jesus. It’s just as if you’ve never sinned at all.

What about my sexuality and what was done to me or what I did to somebody? No condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And he goes on:

because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

And this is where something begins to change when the Spirit comes. All of a sudden he starts to write his will on the table of your heart. Another way to say it is he starts putting desires in your heart that are beautiful. He starts putting desires in your heart that are true righteousness — not the lesser or the counterfeit righteousness, but the greater righteousness. The kind of righteousness that doesn’t just make you righteous, but it actually rights the wrongs in the world, which we’re going to be talking about in the next six weeks.

It’s a fascinating thing that God comes and begins to do that work in us so that now, when we walk in this world, we’re walking in a different way. It’s a different flavor coming out. It’s salty. It’s light-y. It’s righteousness.

Then, the last thing, the Law was good at being a temporary tutor for us, but the Spirit brings something brand new. The Spirit brings freedom forever. Now, 2 Corinthians 3:

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

And then, even more risky than that, Titus 1:15 teaches:

To the pure, all things are pure…

Now, this I don’t want my daughters to read. They are not allowed to read this verse until they’re like 80. Because as soon as they get a hold of this verse — they’re not in here, are they? Yeah. Make sure they’re not in here. No, I’m just kidding. As soon as they get a hold of this verse, they could throw this at me no matter what I say. “To the pure all things are pure, Dad. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. What are you talking about? We’re not going back into that legalism.”

This is not safe. But this is the truth. If you ask me this, God made a mistake here by giving people this kind of freedom. But it’s what God wants to do. To the point where Paul had to write this verse in the Bible:

Because of this freedom … because to the pure all things are pure … because we can do whatever we want and we’re forgiven, we’re cleansed, there’s no condemnation no matter what. Why don’t we just go sin, then? We get the pleasures of this world and the forgiveness of God. He literally was like, “I know what I’m saying is leading you to this, but it’s antinomianism.”

It’s this idea where people say, “Okay, if God’s going to do all that, why don’t I just get both?” And Paul’s like, “You can You can. If that’s what you want to do with the gift that God has given you, you can.”

So should we sin that grace may abound? But his next line is, “God forbid.” Why would you do that? Why would you do that with the love of God? Why would you do that with the gift of God?

It’s the same thing that Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery, as she says, “Hey, there’s no more accusers. There’s no one here to condemn me.” And Jesus could have said, “Except me.” Right? Like, “I’m the one without sin, and yeah, what you did was wrong. So let’s talk about that.”

He said, “Go your way and sin no more.” Like, “There is no condemnation for you, even from me, who has the right to condemn you. But go your way and be free. Use your freedom to do righteousness. Use your freedom to help others. Use your freedom to honor God. Use your freedom in those ways.”

And Paul has to caution. There’s so much freedom that we have. He says, “Don’t use your freedom to cause your brothers to struggle, or your sisters to stumble, who might be struggling with the very thing you’re saying, ‘Hey, look, I’m free. I can do this.” But if it causes others to stumble, you’re not using your freedom properly.

So Paul has to do some teachings on how to properly use your freedom. Because you’re that free in Christ Jesus.

Another verse:

All things are lawful, but not everything is profitable.

He’s trying to teach people on the other side of their freedom, “to the pure all things are pure,” now, just don’t abuse it though. Because it’s that ridiculous what God has given you. It’s that good of news that Jesus ushered in in this new covenant. Now where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is absolute freedom. And to the pure all things are pure.

Now you know why I don’t want my daughters to know about that. Because I’m the eagle’s nest. I’m like, “Heh, heh. Come on. Get in my nest. Get in the nest here, little eagles.” And then my oldest daughter’s like, “What are those people doing over there?” I’m like, “They’re not doing anything! Why do you have to have these wings? You don’t have wings!”

But that’s a bad dad. That’s a liar. And Jesus is too good to do that to us. He wants us to be free, so free. He wants us to fly. And so we’ve got to learn to walk into living by the Spirit. And there are cautions, for sure. And there’s the importance of the Law of God.

That’s why, when those guys asked me about their ethical dilemmas, I know they know God’s word. And I know they submit to it. That’s why they’re asking me. I know they understand that they need other people to help them process things. That’s why they were asking me. And because of all those things, I was able to say, “Go, be free. Go free and be bold. The gates of hell cannot stand against you.” So we’ve got to learn to live into this. I want to give you a couple of examples about what this looks like.

First of all, the way the Spirit works in our life is kind of like an electric bike. I wrote an email about this this week. I write a weekly email every week. If you want to get it, then just email me and I’ll get you on the list and you’ll get a weekly email from me right in your Inbox all the time. You could just delete it. I don’t care. But I try and write them. Sometimes they’re good. Sometimes they’re less good.

But I was writing about it this time because this is helping me understand this. My wife and I went to Coronado Island on spring break. It was just the two of us. We wanted to go kind of bike around the island. So we went to this place where you could rent electric bikes. They gave us this map. It was kind of like all of these cool places you could see on the island. So it was like, “Oh, that would be great.” But it was pretty far. So we were like, “I don’t know.” And we were only budgeted for an hour of money. So then it was like, “Okay, I don’t know how we’re going to do this. Maybe we should just not do as much.”

But then, when we got on those electric bikes, we had never done it. We didn’t know how awesome those things were. One pedal is worth like a hundred pedals because you’re hooked up to the power. I didn’t figure out that there were different levels. My wife was on high and I was on economy. I was just like working to try to keep up with her. I was like, “What is up with this lady.” But then I switched it and it was not bad.

It’s not the bike doing all the work for you. It’s that there is really a union. Your effort and energy, which is so pitiful and weak and couldn’t get the job done, connected with the full power of that battery. We cruised that entire island. We got back with time to spare and then went over to another place and got lost. (It was weird.) We could have had so little if we just had us. But connected to that it was like we got this much fuller experience.

The Spirit comes into our lives. The new covenant is God dwells inside of us and our five loaves and two fish can now feed five thousand. We can be the little be that just has a little bit to offer and say, “Well, Jesus, I’m putting it in your hands.” He’s like, “Well, stick with me, kid, and watch.” Boom!

And, honestly, that happens every single Sunday morning as I get up here. And all I have is just something real little. And last week I had maybe one loaf of stale bread. And what was so funny is a bunch of people told me that the Lord really spoke to them last week. And I was like, “Heh, heh. Electric bike.”

Or think about the disciples. These guys don’t know what’s going on. They’ve been with Jesus. And now they’re walking by a guy at the temple who can’t walk, that they’ve seen their whole lives maybe. And there’s just this little bit of stirring in their souls. A little of compassion. A little bit of consideration that was different, maybe, than other days. And they guy is saying, “Can you give me some money?” He’s like, ‘Silver and gold have I none, but I’m going to give you what I do have. And it’s small and it’s puny, but it’s connected to the living God.” The next thing you know, that guy is dancing around in the church, causing a whole ruckus.

And it looks like my mom, like I said last week, was on her death bed, cancer was wracking her brain. She knows the end is coming. She knows she’s losing everything. She knows she’s leaving us and that breaks her heart. With all the full weight of all of that, she had perfect peace. She had that peace that passes understanding. It made no sense as I was talking with her. Because the Spirit of God was there. And her little bit of faith, her little bit of courage, her little bit of strength, coupled with the Spirit of God was enough to give her perfect peace in such a challenging situation.

And for me, as a young man, I remember I was reading 1 Samuel 14 about Jonathan and his armor bearer, and how they went and fought against the Philistines. And what happened was, Jonathan was saying to his armor bearer, his buddy, he’s like, “Hey, all the Israelites are hiding in caves because they’re so scared of the Philistines.” But he’s like, “There’s something in me. This is not right. We are the children of God. This is not right.” So he says to him, “Let’s go over to the Philistine camp where they’re all camped out on that cliff. Let’s go show ourselves to them.” Which was like the whole of their plan, which is not a lot.

But then, his next line is, “And we’ll see what the Lord might do.” So they did. And the Lord basically not only helped them to conquer that, but all the noise of that battle caused all of the Israelite arm to come out of the caves and to drive off the Philistines. I just thought, Man, let’s see what the Lord can do!

So I was graduating college and this was kind of stirring in me. The Spirit was just like Boom, boom! I’ve got to see what the Lord can do. What can I do? I’ve got to see what the Lord can do. And I ended up coming up with this idea of going to Ireland. So I talked three friends into going with me. We bought a ticket and we were going to Ireland and we were coming back three months later. The whole plan, except for we wanted to see what the Lord might do.

I have so many stories to tell, but within three days we had a place to live, we had jobs, and we had our names sent out to basically all of the high schools and, kind of like Young Life Ministries, high school ministries of Northern Ireland, literally every two days we would get on a bus and I’d say, “Can you take us to this Bali-whatever, you know, Balihooli, Bali-whatever…” and they would take us to those places and we would share with the high schoolers that were there after school or in school. Sometimes we’d be doing the assembly so there’d be like two thousand high schoolers. And me and my friends would be like, “Hey, we don’t know what we’re doing here.” And we’d share the word with them. Tell them about Jesus.

I just remember at the end of that time, going, “Wow. Man, the Lord can do a lot with a little.” We really got to see what the Lord could do.

And what is fascinating is that that gave me the courage when my wife — I married a crazy lady — and Brittany Stockton, who was in Belize last week — and any time she comes back from Belize, I’m like, “Yes! She didn’t stay!” You know? Like, “She came back to me! All right! It’s awesome.” Because of the way her heart is and all of that.

Yet, she felt like the Lord was saying we should go to Belize for a year. This was a while ago. And I was like, “Why?” And she said, “Let’s just see what the Lord can do.” And I was like, “Oh, don’t say that!” Big time stuff.

So we do. We had a one-year-old daughter and we moved to this tiny little village that didn’t have running water. We just wanted to see what the Lord could do. And part of our idea was we’d get to see someone from Belize who was raised up to oversee the churches. Because, as it was, the only time there was church was when a missionary came to town.

Sure enough, long story short, everybody knows a little something about this, the guy who preached four weeks ago, his name is Kenny Welch, and he’s been leading two churches there for a long time now. We got to see what the Lord could do. Not because we had anything great. Because the Spirit was moving. We were living by the Spirit.Now, don’t think I’m saying living by the Spirit means you’ve got to go to another country. Not at all. That’s not what I’m saying. But you’ve got to go do what the Lord’s asking you to do.

One other time that was helpful for us trying to figure out how to live by the Spirit, we were going back to Dangriga, which is the next town down, next village down in Belize. I was going to be there for two days. We needed to find a place to live and what ministry connection we were going to do, because we didn’t know anyone in the town. And my wife and I got down on our knees and we got a pen and paper out. We were like, “Okay, Lord, we’re just going to sit here and we’re going to write down anything your Spirit brings to mind.”

So we each wrote down a few things. A couple of them in particular, my wife had this picture of this house. There was like a veranda upstairs and there was a young boy kind of staring out like he was looking at the sea. Then I wrote the name down “Raul,” which is funny because we were going to central America. But I was like, it was Raul or something like that.

Lo and behold, I get to Dangriga. I’m there and there were only like a couple of minutes left. We had like a half hour before we had to go back. We hadn’t really found a place to live. And I saw a truck with a ladder in the back. This is how desperate it had gotten. I said, “Let’s go talk to that guy.” I said, “Do you know any places that are available for rent?” Because you can’t just Google that in Dangriga. He gave us the name of this lady.

So we talked to this lady. And we went over there and there was this house. And I didn’t even think of it. But I took a picture of the house and I sent it to Brittany. And she was like, “That is the house that I saw!” And one of the nephews of one of the guys with us was standing upstairs on the veranda and he was looking out at the sea. She was like, “That’s it!” And I was like, “awesome.”

But this is me. That was more expensive than the other house that we were kind of thinking about. And I was like, “I don’t know.” But then, one of the guys we were with had a dream that night that something horrible happened to my family in the other house. And I was like, “All right. Where are we signing up?” But this is how the Spirit needs to work with me. I need extra credit type stuff to get me there.

Then the name Raul was so interesting because we were trying to figure out this ministry connection. We were driving in and we saw all these people broke down and we stopped to help them. They didn’t need help. But I remember this guy was wearing this shirt that said “Kids Connect for Jesus.” I thought That’s a weird shirt.

Then we drive into town. We met with this pastor and he was like, “Man, I think you guys should work with Kids Connect for Jesus. They seem like a ministry you could connect with. I’m like, “Oh, okay.”

Then I had an ear infection. I was like, “Could we just stop at a doctor’s office real quick because I’d love to get some drops or something.” So we go to the place that those guys knew and it was too crowded. The guy’s like, “Hey, we’ve got too many people so we’re not going to see you today. But if you go down the street there’s another guy.” So we go down the street. Little house, podunk thing. But there’s a guy in there, he’s a doctor and he’s actually from India. And his name is Dr. Raul. When I saw Raul, I was like, “Raul? What? No way!”

And as we walked into the office, literally, we almost crashed into this lady as we were walking in. She had a big shirt that said, “Kids Connect for Jesus.” And we ended up connecting with Kids Connect for Jesus and doing ministry with them. It was like, Wow! This is living by the Spirit.

Now, again, that sounds all magical and mystical. But it was very natural. It was very simple. It was stuff that we were dealing with and God was leading us and guiding us. It didn’t mean that we didn’t have the structure and all of the goodness of the Law and the scriptures and all those things. Like I said, the whole “See what the Lord might do,” that came out of the scriptures. The Spirit loves to use the scriptures to guide us. But at the end of the day, we can’t negate or forget about the Spirit and just live out of the scriptures, because in that there is death. But when the Spirit comes, there’s life.

I have so many more stories to tell. And I know many of you have stories of how the Lord has led you and guided you. And it’s my job as the pastor, a teacher, whatever I am in this place, to help us understand and see what Jesus is really trying to do.

Again, it would be so much easier for us to just buckle down into some legalism. Especially me. I love it. But it would be so much less than what God really wants to do. And, ultimately, it wouldn’t create the salt and the light that this world desperately needs. You are free in Christ, in ways that you would never actually believe if you could. Well continue trying to live into this freedom that he has given us and keep trying to learn how to do it.

A couple of guys that are smart — C.S. Lewis writes it this way. He says:

Our faith is not a matter of our hearing what Christ said long ago and “trying to carry it out.” Rather, “The real Son of God is at your side. He is beginning to turn you into the same kind of thing as himself. He is beginning, so to speak, to ‘inject’ his kind of life and thought, his zoe [life], into you; beginning to turn the tin soldier into a live man. The part of you that does not like it is the part that is still tin.”

And Dallas Willard says it this way:

“Now, what we can do by our unassisted strength is. try small. What we can do acting with mechanical, electrical, or atomic power is much greater. Often what can be accomplished is so great that it is hard to believe or imagine without some experience of it. But what we can do with these means is still very small compared to what we could do acting in union with God himself, who created and ultimately controls all other forces.”

Let’s pray:

Lord, I pray for each person in this room that is facing an ethical dilemma — whether it be within their own soul or household or in our society — whether it be a friend of their who has just confessed some really heavy things— whether it be a daughter or a son who has decided they are homosexual or identifying in some other way outside of what you prescribe — whether it’s some sort of anger issue or someone has wronged them or offended them and they just want their version of justice — or whether it’s just a decision about what to do and where to go — I thank you that your Spirit has come. And I pray your Spirit would lead them and guide them and empower them to walk in your ways, and they would be able to see what the Lord can do, and they would trust you and they would surrender to you, they would have courage to step out in whatever you do say and speak to them. I pray all this in your name, Jesus. Amen.

Watch

Unless otherwise marked, scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.The "NIV" and "New International Version" trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica. Use of either trademark requires the permission of Biblica.

David Stockton 5/9/21 David Stockton 5/9/21

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You

We’re going to be in Matthew chapter 5 if you want to grab a Bible and turn there. We’re also going to be in Galatians chapter 3 if you want to make a mark there as well. It’s Mother’s Day. My mom is not around anymore these days. She was awesome, though, in a lot of ways. She had an interesting experience of becoming a mother. She was 17 when she got married and 18 when my brother showed up, and then had another one of my brothers at 19-1/2…

Series: The Sermon on the Mount
May 9, 2021 - David Stockton

We’re going to be in Matthew chapter 5 if you want to grab a Bible and turn there. We’re also going to be in Galatians chapter 3 if you want to make a mark there as well.

It’s Mother’s Day. My mom is not around anymore these days. She was awesome, though, in a lot of ways. She had an interesting experience of becoming a mother. She was 17 when she got married and 18 when my brother showed up, and then had another one of my brothers at 19-1/2 and had me by the time she was 23. So three boys by the time she was 23.

And my dad was actually 27 when I was born, but he was probably going on about 20 as far as his maturity level. So my mom really had her hands full with a bunch of boys in the house. And yet, my mom, she was strong. She was small but she was strong. And she did set us in line and taught us a lot of things.

I was thinking, you know, we’ve been talking about the law as far as when Jesus was saying in Matthew 5:17 that he didn’t come to abolish the law, but to fulfill the law. So we’ve actually spent a couple of weeks talking about the law of God as brought to us through the Mosaic covenant. And we’re going to be talking about the law again today.

I was thinking about my first interaction with any concept of law was my mom. She was the one who laid down the law in our house. And like that little film was joking, I mean, all those are rules, right? Those are laws that moms come up with that kids violate continually, that’s why they never say those things.

One of the things that came to mind real strong was my mom got a couch one day. I don’t know if it was a nice couch and she had always wanted a nice couch and finally got a couch. I have no idea what the couch was, I just remember the law was we weren’t allowed to sit in it. So I thought, okay, there’s a nice couch coming. We destroy everything. She doesn’t want us to sit in the couch. But the couch was right in the middle of our house in our living room. So it wasn’t like a couch in her bedroom, it was a couch in a room where people sit a lot. And we weren’t allowed to sit on that couch.

I can still picture that couch and how pristine it was, in my mind, just wondering what it would have been like to sit on it and to feel that couch underneath me. But that wasn’t enough. I don’t know exactly what took place, but that rule of not sitting on the couch quickly became we weren’t allowed to go into the room that couch was in. So the entire living room, we were not allowed in, me and my three boys. There weren’t a lot of other people living in the house besides my mom and dad. But we weren’t allowed in it. We were allowed in this tv room, but I actually can picture the difference of those two rooms. This room the carpet was clean and still was sticking up, you know. Then the tv room where we were allowed to go was rough. It was a rough space in the house.

Those are some rules. We used to get a nickel for every pair of socks we could put together. Anybody else have something like that? And you’d think, “Wow, that seems like a lot of money.” We’d get like four pairs is all we could ever find each. It sounded like this really big deal but it never worked out that great for us. We had some interesting things.

Then I remember my mom came up with this real clever, like legal system for us as far as chores goes. Every time we’d do a chore we’d get a thumbtack on this little tack board she put up there. So clever and trying to get us responsible and all those things. We’d get a certain amount of money for every thumb tack that we got when we completed a chore. Sounds very normal. I just remember, because I was the youngest, it didn’t matter how hard I worked or how many chores I did, I couldn’t get more thumbtacks on the board. It would always stay the same few numbers. But my brothers, who never seemed to do any chores, just kept growing thumbtacks all the time. It took me a while. I was a little dense as a kid. They’d just walk up and it would be like bam, bam. They were just stealing them.

It didn’t matter what rules my mom made, we violated them and made a mess of them. But somehow we got through.

Talking about the law. Matthew 5:17. Let’s read Matthew 5:17-20. This is super, super important passage of scripture, passage of the Sermon on the Mount, as Jesus is trying to help the people he gathered understand what it’s going to be like if they follow him. Understand what’s it’s going to be like to walk in his ways. Understand what he was on earth to do was to bring in something new, something different. So this is what he says:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets;

Which is a past thing. He’s speaking to Jews primarily. He’s speaking about this covenant that God made with Moses. That the people had basically been participating in for thousands of years.

I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

So again, he’s just saying this is so important. All of those commands, all of the stuff you learned in the Law and the Prophets. The Torah, the Prophets, all of those things. So important they are from God. They are good. And they will not pass away.

Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

So the law is good. It’s not going to be abolished. It’s super important and yet, you need to have a righteousness that’s better than the Pharisees or you’re not even going to make it. So this is what we’ve been talking about.

It’s funny. I’v been finding a lot of help for this sermon series from a guy named Jonathan Pennington, super-cleverly on the Sermon on the Mount and it’s called The Sermon on the Mount. You can check it if you want. But he wrote in there about this passage of scripture, which just kind of confirms so much of why I just felt we needed to camp out here. He said this:

The compactness of Matthew 5:17-20 is at once its power and its difficulty. By virtue of its pithy, contrastive statements we get a large-scale snapshot of the issue; but its brevity and super-concentrated collection of weighty terms and ideas mean that every sentence is a spark that sets off a fire in a different direction. Like good poetry, this short passage is thick with meaning and in need of deep reflection.

So we’ve camped out here and you might be sick of these verses. You might be saying, “Why are we talking so much about the Law? I thought we were Christians living under grace.” And all of that is true. But I’m really trying to make sure that we hear from Jesus in this time as best we can before we go forward.

So we have been doing a lot of affirming of the Law, because that’s in here. Jesus is doing that. Affirming of the commands that God had given us. Now again, that’s a tricky, complicated thing. Because what is Jesus really referring to when he says the Law and the Prophets. There’s a lot of debate. There was a lot of debate at that time.

There were four main sects at that time: Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots and Essenes. They all had different worldviews, different philosophies on how to do that. Kind of like what we have today with Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, progressives, whatever you want to talk about. They even had these Zealots. And the Zealots were basically like, “We just want to fight. We just want to find the Romans and get rid of them because they are oppressors.” It’s kind of like the social justice warriors of this time.

They were all trying to unpack this in a different way. And then you had schools of thought. You had the school of Hillel and the school of Shammai. One of these was taking a little looser understanding of the scriptures and kind of giving a little more room to wiggle. And others were tightening it up and making it really, really strict.

So there was this constant challenge of, well, what is the Law? In the Mitzvot was the 613 confirmed commandments that came through the Torah. Torah is the first five books of the Bible, which another name for it is Pentateuch. But then it gets even a little deeper because those 613 Mitzvot commandments that came from the written Law of the Torah needed interpretation and commentary to figure out how they really applied to life.

So they came up with something called the Oral Law. The Oral Law eventually gave way and became something called the Talmud. The Talmud was basically the most general adopted orthodox traditions and teachings and commentaries on the Mitzvot which came out of the Pentateuch and the Torah. Then the Talmud was broken up into two main kind of documents. One was a little bit prior and one was a bit little after that. That was the Mishnah. Then the Gemara.

You see the complexities? This is the stuff we’re trying to do. We’re trying to gain a vision of the righteousness of God for our time. God, what do you want us to do with the issues that we are facing today? And last year, 2020, a lot of these issues came to the surface because a lot of us were feeling real insecure. And what happened was a lot of people started shouting and preaching about what righteousness and justice really were. And they were coming up with their own backing of those type of things, their own reasoning for those things. But not a lot of them were coming from a scriptural point of view, a Judeo-Christian ethic. In fact, I would even call them anti-Biblical.

So we really did have to kind of all of a sudden say, “Okay, God. I’m being pulled in so many different directions. These are some powerful ideologies being passed out. Some of them sound so good. I don’t know what to do.” So we dove into the scriptures, the safety that’s there. And we affirmed the goodness of the Law of God. And we unpacked it and tried to understand. We went back to 1 Kings and really looked at what was the idolatry of that day. Where did they go astray so that we won’t fall into the same traps. And we really affirmed the Law.

We’ve been doing that the last two weeks. Two weeks ago, remember Kenny? He was here preaching about those who relax on the Law of God are the least in the kingdom. We don’t want that. We don’t want to be the least in the kingdom so we’ve got to be careful we don’t relax on the Law of God or teach others that they can relax on the Law of God. We talked last week about how we don’t want to mess with the truth because the truth is what sets us free. Then if we mess with the truth we’re really messing with our freedom. And if we diminish or water down the truth, we’re really diminishing or watering down our ability to be free as the Lord as prescribes it.

All of that is good and right and wonderful. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have done that. But I’m saying that is partial. And you’ve got to track with me here. And I don’t even know if I’m going to do a good job of explaining this, but I’m trying. I’m trying and I will keep trying until we can understand it. Because the New Testament is full of this relationship. What is the role of the Law in the life of the believer? Where does it stop being a good thing and become a bad thing? Because that happens.

And that’s where Jesus brings in the example of the Pharisees. Because the Pharisees knew the Law. They loved the Law. They searched the Scriptures constantly. They put them in little boxes on their head and wore them around. They put them on their doorposts. They were trying to really unpack and understand how to live righteously according to God’s standards. They committed themselves to it.

But Jesus said their righteousness wouldn’t even get them into heaven. So something was missing. In some ways the picture in mind as I’ve been trying to understand this for myself, is picture a bunch of logs on a fireplace. There’s no fire, but the logs are in there. For me, I love bonfires in a little bit of a too much way. At least that’s what my mother-in-law says to me all the time. But the kids that I have and the cousins that are around a lot, they don’t think so at all. They think it’s awesome.

But I love to build these bonfires, build them, and you can build a box one. You can lean things together and make little teepee. It’s really fun to build these things. Basically, that’s what it seems like these Pharisees were doing. They were building all these things and in some ways it seems like they were building their own Tower of Babel trying to reach to the righteousness of God.

And was Jesus was saying was, “I haven’t come to get rid of all that but I’ve come to set fire to it. I’ve come to bring the fire that will actually make this thing come alive, make this thing good, make this thing bring warmth to the people who need warmth; and healing to the people who need healing.” But the Pharisees had no fire. They had none of the Spirit of God or the Spirit of the Law. They just had the substance and their righteousness was completely empty, according to Jesus.

So we’ve talked about that. Now we’re trying to shift into this understanding of what Jesus was moving into. “I’ve not come to abolish the Law, but I’ve come to fulfill it.” That word fulfill means complete or satisfy. And that’s what I like. It’s like, “I haven’t come to get rid of this bonfire, but I’ve come to actually bring fire that will now ignite this thing in such a beautiful, world-healing, individual healing way.” That’s the righteousness that he’s really after. Not these empty towers of righteousness that often religiosity brings about; but a true relationship with Jesus that causes justice to flow into the world out of each one of us. So that’s what we’re trying to move into.

So let’s go to Galatians chapter 3, because here is where Paul — who is just such a perfect example of what was happening here — Paul was writing to the Galatians about the Law of God and what its purpose is and what it was supposed to be about. He’s trying to help them shift from this understanding of walking in the Law to now walking in the Spirit. This kind of thing that Jesus ushered in, moving us from an old covenant to a new covenant reality.

Paul is coming, not just from a person who’s understanding this from revelation from God, but he’s coming because he’s actually experienced all of this in his own personal life. We first meet Paul as someone who is so filled with anger and murderous threats in his pursuit of righteousness. He was someone who was zealous for the Law. He was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, he says of himself. He said, “According to the Law, I was blameless.” Yet what he had inside his heart was anger and frustration and murderous threats. Literally, he was trying to go kill people who were following the way of Jesus. That’s what all of that religiosity, that’s what the Law brought him until Jesus came and said, “Hey, what are you doing? What you’re doing is not righteousness.” And Jesus began to interact with him and teach him the way of Jesus.

It’s kind of interesting. We did mention last week, remember, how Jesus was trying to help people understand that murder, according to the Pharisees and according to the law is if you don’t kill somebody. But Jesus is saying that’s not the righteousness that God’s after so you won’t kill somebody. God’s actually wanting to see that the anger in your heart, you call people Raca, you call people fool, something in your heart turns from anger to love. He’s wanting to get at these divisions and bring unity and peace.

And Paul experienced that firsthand in his own heart. When he met Jesus, Jesus stole his anger. And the very people that he was trying to kill, literally, he now became a champion for, someone who served them and cared for them and built the Church of God. Which is so fascinating that that shift happened because the Spirit came. He went from old covenant to new covenant in a beautiful way.

Let’s read what he says in Chapter 3 about the Law. Now verse 2 is where we’re going to start:

I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? Have you experienced so much in vain—if it really was in vain? So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard?

So, first of all, we’ve got to understand that the Law is actually a covenant. So when these people were hearing Jesus talk about the Law, I mean, when we talk about the law, we think cops and robbers, right? We think of courtrooms and all of those things. We think of governments trying to pass laws, which they’re doing right now. That’s where our mind goes.

But when these people were hearing about Law, they were hearing a lot more the word covenant. Because that’s what the Law was. The Law was where God, who had set the Israelite’s free from slavery in Egypt, had sustained them in the wilderness, had led them to the Promised Land, had been so kind and good to them, had been so close and faithful to them, was now saying, “As you go into this new place, here’s the relationship I want to have with you. I will be your God and I will give you blessing and I will watch over you and I will prosper you. And here’s what I want you to do in return. I want you to love me, have no other gods before me. Don’t take my name in vain. And I don’t want you to kill each other. I don’t want you to commit adultery.”

He gives them the Ten Commandments. This is basically the relationship. It’s almost as if you’re at a wedding. What happens at a wedding? You have a guy standing up there. You have a girl standing up there. They look at each other before the authority, the priest or whatever, and they give vows. “I promise that this is what I’m going to do. I promise that this is how I’m going to be. I promise that I’ll never leave you, til death do us part.” We make all these promises. That’s a lot more, when they hear the Law, they think more of vows, of covenant, of relationship.

That’s ultimately what God was trying to do with the laws he was giving to Israel. He was trying to draw them in close to say, “Hey, this is how we’re going to have the best relationship.” But what happened in Israel was they began to make the laws all about the laws. They began to just focus so much on the laws, they forgot to even focus on the Lord. They started focusing on doing all the things God was asking them to do, and really gave no attention or care to God at all.

We have to remember that all of the laws that we’ve been given, all the commandments are ultimately to cultivate a relationship with Jesus, which produces righteousness. Not a righteousness that, someday if we get it all right, God will bless us. It’s such a challenging thing for us to not fall back into those things.

The Galatians, when Paul came there, the Galatians didn’t know the Law. They didn’t know what God was up to. And Paul preached to them and he shared with them about who Jesus is. and he basically told them that the world has all been set up and your life is just going to be empty until the Spirit comes. The Spirit’s going to bring fire to all of this and then your life can be shining bright.

And they were like, “Yeah, we believe. We know we need forgiveness. We’re stuck in our sins. We can’t stop doing that. We have hatred. We have all these things you’re talking about. We need forgiveness. We need the Spirit.” They received it. They received what Jesus did on the cross. They received his Spirit in their lives. And signs and wonders broke out in Galatia. People were being healed. People were being set free. Beautiful things were happening. And it was wonderful.

Then, shortly after that, the people started to just kind of be all about rules. And they started to create just religion. And they really forgot to just kind of be walking in the Spirit in relationship with Jesus. And Paul was saying that you’ve got to remember that the Law is a covenant with a person, the person of Jesus Christ. That’s what it’s all about. It’s not to make you righteous. It’s to make you closer to Jesus, because Jesus is the one who makes you righteous.

The second thing he says here is the Law is a measure for us. 3:10 through 11:

For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.” Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because “the righteous will live by faith.”

So here, what he’s saying is basically the Law given to us, the Ten Commandments — all of these things — one of their purposes in our lives is to help us know what righteousness is and, therefore, to know that we’re not righteous. That’s literally one of the reasons God gave the Law to the people, so that they would know what righteousness is, but then in the very next breath they would remember that they are not righteous, because they’re not fulfilling those things. They have the hatred in their heart. They can’t get free from the lust. When somebody does something to them they lash back. They don’t love their enemies. They don’t stay faithful to their contracts and vows, including marriage.

These are the things that Jesus was describing and unpacking. When we measure ourselves against all that God desires, all that God asks of us, if we’re honest, we fall short. And he’s saying here, if you even do one, you could nine out of ten and your righteousness is still not enough to get into heaven. That’s the way he finishes up this little part of it. He says, “Be perfect, even as my Father in heaven is perfect.” That’s the kind of righteousness that he’s requiring.

So when we’re face to face with the Law, it’s totally appropriate for us to affirm the goodness that is described there, but then we also have to acknowledge that we are sinners. That’s bad news for just a second, right? Everybody’s feeling a little heavy right now. Everybody’s like, “Why is he saying this? Is he trying to be mean?”

It’s important. This is one of the reasons the Law is there, to help us know we can’t make it, which then makes us then go, “God, I need you.” And he’s like, “Cool. I just sent my Son. Bam. All your sins are forgiven. Righteousness just like me. Bam. We won.” It’s all there. But we have to understand our insufficiency if we’re ever really going to be able to receive the sufficiency that Christ is.

If we keep falling back to just saying, “Well, maybe I’ll get it right this time,” and not rely on his strength, not fall into his grace, not live out of grace, we’re going to be brutal to ourselves and we’re going to be brutal to those the Lord has around us. We need to be full of his grace in the face of his Law.

So the Law is covenant. The Law is a measure for us. Then this one is interesting. The Law is a tutor. I’m going to read from The Message translation (MSG), but it’s the same chapter 3 verse 23 through 27. This is what Paul says about the Law:

Until the time when we were mature enough to respond freely in faith to the living God, we were carefully surrounded and protected by the Mosaic law. The law was like those Greek tutors, with which you are familiar, who escort children to school and protect them from danger or distraction, making sure the children will really get to the place they set out for.
But now you have arrived at your destination: By faith in Christ you are in direct relationship with God. Your baptism in Christ was not just washing you up for a fresh start. It also involved dressing you in an adult faith wardrobe—Christ’s life, the fulfillment of God’s original promise.

Basically, what he says is the Law is kind of like a tutor. The Law was given to us to hold us there, to keep us safe until the day something else kicked in. When I think about my mom’s laws, that’s exactly what they were. My mom was basically trying to provide a little structure, a little shelter to these three boys that were insane, until the day — and she prayed a lot — that maybe a little maturity would show up, maybe a little common sense would kick in, the tiniest bit of self-control might be there. She had to war with us. She had to fight with us. She had to try to get my dad on the page, because she would make the laws and he would enforce the laws, but he would also break a lot of the laws. It was like the enforcer/breaker. We were just the breaker/receivers of the enforcement. Anyway.

All those laws were put there to try to protect, until the day she was just hoping and praying, one day we would be able to make a good decision all by ourselves. That’s what that was. Basically, that’s what Paul was saying the Law was. God gave the Law to his people to kind of hold them together, to teach them the way, to keep them from falling off the cliff until the day that something much better showed up. That “something much better” is the Spirit of Go, who wants to not just teach us about what God’s ways are, but he wants to write them as desires on our heart. He wants to come inside of us and navigate us. Not only that, but the best part of it is to empower us to walk in those things.

Jesus was, they said of him, that John came to baptize with water, but Jesus came to baptize with the Spirit and with fire. He was saying, “I’ve not come to abolish that whole Law, but I’ve come to fulfill it. I’ve come to put the fire in it. I’ve come to release my Spirit into you so that you can now walk in this righteousness.”

It’s a major, major thing. I know it’s so hard for us to grasp totally what he’s saying. I’m not saying you. I’m saying me, too. The intensity of what he’s saying. But the rest of the epistles in the New Testament are all unpacking this new covenant, this new thing that God created in Christ Jesus, where we can be made just as righteous as God the Father. Justified. Just as if we never sinned — by the life of Jesus, by the death of Jesus, and by the resurrection of Jesus. All the work that he did applied to us gets us into the fulness of righteousness.

Now the Law of God, for the life of a believer, is now we’re going from righteousness to the Law to be guided. Not trying to use the Law to gain some sort of righteousness. So now we have to figure out what it means to walk in the Spirit, that there is a much more important Law, a greater Law over our lives than the Law of Moses or the Law of the old covenant.

So we’re now living into what does it mean to live in this new covenant life? This new relationship with God. Walking by the Spirit. This is what we’re trying to unpack. I’m saying this because I know it’s hard to understand what that’s like, to walk in the Spirit. Paul is continually trying to help people understand what it means to walk in the Spirit. So I’m going to give you a couple of examples to finish up here. But more importantly than anything, I want you to start figuring it out on your own, what it means to walk by the Spirit.

Like I said, for Paul, what it meant when the Spirit came in was he no longer living according to the works of the Law, but now he was trying to follow what God was asking him to do. He just started doing what God asked him to do in this relational way. He wouldn’t go to the Law, necessarily, to figure out what God would want. He would go to prayer. He would go to his relationship with the Spirit to figure out what God wanted. And yes, more often than not, what God wanted him to do was totally in line with the scriptures. Absolutely. This is God’s favorite tool. But don’t ever make this God. Don’t seek this God where you think you have eternal life by doing this or you’ll fall way, way short like the Pharisees. This is just trying to help us know about Jesus and the relationship we’re supposed to have with him by the Spirit.

But going back to my mom, my mom had to really figure out what it meant to walk in the Spirit. She had to figure out how to live by the Spirit because her dad took off on her when she was really young and left her to try to figure out some things on her own. Then her mom kind of went super cold because she was trying to figure out how to raise some kids and pay the bills. So my mom was really kind of left alone to figure out a lot of things on her own.

Then, when she was seventeen, she met my dad. Through my grandmother, my dad’s mom, she ended up meeting Jesus. And she invited Jesus into her life and she began to learn of his ways. She began to navigate this exact thing that we’re talking about, not falling back into the antinomism of no law, but not falling into the legalism of too much law. Trying to learn how to walk in the Spirit. She loved the scriptures. She loved to teach them.

I remember the day when my dad took his life and her having to navigate that situation. Yes, the scriptures were helpful, but what she really needed was something a lot more powerful than just the scriptures. She needed God to show up. She needed the Spirit of God to be enough for her at that time. I watched her lean into Jesus and cry out to Jesus. And I watched Jesus be enough and give her peace and comfort and strength to keep going.

Then, shortly after that, she ended up getting cancer. That cancer was going to be something that was easily taken care of, but then it metastisized to her brain. And real quickly, her life was leaving her. I remember staying with her on her death bed and I knew she had a relationship with Jesus. I knew what the scriptures taught and I knew God could work all things out to good, but that wasn’t doing anything for me. So I asked her a question. I said, “Mom, what’s Jesus saying to you?” And she just smiled and looked at me and said, “Jesus told me that his power is over me to heal me.” And she had so much peace as she said it. That’s not a bible verse, by the way. I mean there are Bible verses that affirm that, for sure. That’s why the Bible is so important. But she was just having a conversation with Jesus in this place. And the Spirit of God made it clear to her that God’s intention was to have his power all over her to heal her.

I was like, “Does that mean he’s going to heal you?” And she said, “No. He just wanted me to know how close he was. That he could do it if he felt it was the right thing, but he has a better plan.”

That message to her right there gave her so much peace in the face of death, in the face of leaving this world, in the face of leaving us, her sons, who still needed a lot more common sense and self-control and maturity. But the Spirit of God was enough. It was more than enough. If all she had was just a tower of wood and structure and religiosity, it would have been dead and insufficient. But what she had was, she had a living, real relationship with the living, real Spirit of Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead.

So Jesus didn’t come to abolish the old covenant, the old Law. He came to fulfill it, giving way to something new. And you and I, today, we have a decision to make. Are we going to completely forsake all that God teaches and says and come up with our own way? Because the world around us is dong that like crazy. Or, are we going to really dig into this and try to earn some sort of righteousness by following the works of this law? Because there have been Christians like you and I who have wasted so much time and energy and left themselves raw and exhausted trying to do that. Or are we going to receive the Spirit of God that is a gift of this new covenant that Jesus purchased by his blood and begin to learn to walk in the Spirit, day in and day out? Begin to hear what he has to say each day, and trust that and go.

Yes, look to the scriptures and community to confirm that we’re not just hearing whatever weird pizza put in us last night. This is still an important thing. It’s still a tutor for us. But this is not what you really, really need. What you need is a relationship with Jesus. You need the Spirit of God to come in with his fire and consume your disordered desires, and speak to you and teach you and sustain you and empower you to walk in righteousness, so that those around you can really know what it means to be in Christ Jesus, so that the fruits of the Spirit, the love, the joy, the peace, the patience, the kindness, the meekness, the gentleness, the self-control can show up in our lives, not because of our effort, but because of our connection with Jesus.

Lets pray:

Jesus, I’m sorry that I so often just fall back into religiosity and rule following and I leave you. But, Lord, I really do pray that you would help me to learn to walk in your Spirit every single day, not only so that I will have the guidance and power that I need for my life, but so that I could actually help the people around me with true guidance and power that comes from you.
And I pray for the people who are facing really tough decisions or really struggling with some disordered desires or addictions, or maybe they had someone that they really love come to them and say something that was really hard and they don’t know how to handle it. Lord, I pray you would visit them by your Spirit. I pray that they would be still and they would seek you and your Spirit would speak to them. That they wouldn’t just live off past scriptures or past experiences, but, Lord, they would seek you new and fresh every day.
Let this be a church that, yes, is full of your word, but Lord, more so, way more so, let us be filled with your Spirit. I pray that your Spirit would really break out in this place, that you’d come with your baptism of fire and of Spirit and baptize us anew, Lord.

Watch

Guest User 9/29/19 Guest User 9/29/19

When Jesus Shows Up

David Stockton
Series: Church Around the Table

We’ve been going through Church Around the Table. We’ve been trying to define what the Church is. There are a lot of different thoughts — whether the Church is good or bad—that the Church is is based on people’s definition of the word.

In the book of Ephesians, Paul is laying out what he thinks the Church is. He was saying it at a time when the Church looked nothing like it looks today. It was a fledgling movement that was basically about to be snuffed out by Roman persecution. There was not much to it. But he was talking about it as being this Body, this Bride, and this family that is going to fill to world in every place with the fullness of who God is. And everyone would laugh at him, for the most part. But, sure enough, here we are a couple thousand years later, and the Church is a powerful entity.

We also define the Church both as an organization and as an organism. The organization of the church is like Living Streams—or whatever church you grew up in. It’s an organization that is supposed to be a good house, a fruitful environment for the organism, which is the Church, which is you and I—the people that Jesus died for, the people who are following Jesus, the people filled with his Spirit. Living Streams is just an organization that will come and go as the sands and winds of time change. But the organism will continue to go on. My job is to be a leader of an organization. What I try to do is make sure that this place is a really good house for the organism of the Church.

So we’ve spent some time defining that. You can go back and look at some of those things. The organization has had good seasons and bad seasons, no doubt about it. But the organism has continued to grow into this beautiful thing that is the fullness of God in every part of this world. It is the single, most dominant force for good the world has ever seen. Any true historian would say that it is just amazing what these people have done in this world. We’re going to talk a little more about that.

We’re trying to get this concept Around the Table to help us understand that Church is not something that happens for an hour on Sunday mornings. Church can happen there, but what Christians are supposed to do happens outside of these walls and outside of this Sunday morning context, for the most part. This is just supposed to help us, encourage us, teach us, equip us, so that we can go be the Church outside. So that’s where we’re trying to get people’s minds to think about your own home. Or when you’re having a little lunch break at work. Church can happen around the table.

For me, one of my first real, powerful church experiences was around food stamps, with a friend of mine who was loving on me and caring for me, but he was living on food stamps. We talked about Church happening in a 15-passenger van. For Jesus and Peter, Church first happened when Peter had a boat, and Jesus came and hung out in his boat for a day. Peter left feeling really dirty. And Jesus said, “Don’t worry about it, I’ll take care of that.”

We’ve been spending the last two weeks talking about the Church that was happening around the table at the Last Supper. Are you with me there? We looked at Matthew, Mark and Luke’s account. Those are three of the four gospel accounts. They really focused on that moment when Jesus was having his last meal with his disciples. When he was trying to give them that final message, that final teaching that would stick in their minds. What he says to them is, “I’m giving you my body and blood.” And he hadn’t gone to the cross yet, so they were thinking in that moment about all the times that Jesus had cared for them, served them, saved them, and healed them the last three years of walking with him. That Jesus, who they now realized is a lot more than just a man. He’s their teacher, he’s their rabbi, he’s their Lord and Savior. He’s actually served them and given of himself for three years.

He’s saying, “You guys know, this is my body. This is my blood. I am giving it for you. have given it for you.” He was also alluding to the moment on the next day when he would physically offer his body and blood as a sacrifice for their sin and the rest of the world.

So when they finally remembered that moment of Jesus’ teaching around the table, and then they knew of the crucifixion, the message was so powerful in their lives that they completely devoted the rest of their lives to that, even to the point of being martyrs for that cause. What Jesus was trying to teach them was, “Just as I have given body and blood for you, I want you to now go and give body and blood for others.” It’s a heavy thing.

So Church is not a picnic. Church is not a little club. Church is not easy. It’s the hardest thing you will ever do, if you you really want to follow Christ. The covenant he made with those disciples was, “Just as I have given body and blood for you, I want you to now go and give your body and blood for others.” It’s intense. It’s heavy. Another way to put it is, “Just as I have loved you, I want you to go love others.” It’s a very, very high, hard calling. And last week we talked about how he empowers with his Spirit to do that.

The next week we looked at John and saw how he also talks about the Last Supper, that Church Around and Table moment, but he never mentions the body and blood. Not to contradict them, but he wants to focus on a different thing. He said when they first walked into that room, Jesus shocked them by taking off his outer clothes, wrapping a towel around him, getting the basin that was there by the door, and he started to wash his disciples’ feet—which was something that a lowly servant was supposed to do.

He washes their feet and he does this very cleansing, very kind, very humble way of caring for them; and it was so important that John, 60 years after Jesus rose from the dead, writes that as his account of the final message of Jesus Christ. And Jesus said, after he did that, said, “Now I want you guys to go and do as I have one unto you.”

We talked about another way that Church is supposed to be going on. When we go into this world, to seek to cleanse the world. To seek to wash the world—refresh the world—instead of condemn the world. That’s the call of what Church Around the Table is supposed to be. Giving body and blood and seeking to wash and cleanse and renew people around us.

That’s what Church is. Church happens when we do those things. No matter where you are in this world. No matter what frame of mind you’re in. Whatever.

I want to illustrate how this happened after Jesus left. Jesus sends this message. He establishes these things, and then we have the book of Acts. Now Jesus is gone. The followers of Jesus, who have made this covenant with Jesus, are now practicing this. We see in Acts 2:42 (MSG):

41-42 That day about three thousand took him at his word, were baptized and were signed up. They committed themselves to the teaching of the apostles, the life together, the common meal, and the prayers.
43-45 Everyone around was in awe—all those wonders and signs done through the apostles! And all the believers lived in a wonderful harmony, holding everything in common. They sold whatever they owned and pooled their resources so that each person’s need was met.
46-47 They followed a daily discipline of worship in the Temple followed by meals at home, every meal a celebration, exuberant and joyful, as they praised God. People in general liked what they saw. Every day their number grew as God added those who were saved.

This is now Jesus’ teaching imparted to his people. Jesus is now gone and this is an account of what took place just a few months later. They were now practicing the way of Jesus. Those who learned this lesson, those who were imparted this lesson, those who got to watch Jesus do it for three years, and then it all culminated on the cross—they now started to walk it. I love these people. I love Jesus for sure. But I love these people because they were doing it without Jesus there in person. How he was there with the Holy Spirit. But these people were like you and me. They didn’t have a clue what they were supposed to do, but they had some teachings from Jesus and then they had the power of the Holy Spirit.

I love looking at the book of Acts. It’s like, “Okay. Okay. I can get into this.” It’s also challenging because they got to see some really cool things happen. But their practice was in the temple and then house to house. That’s what we’re trying to get into our minds. It’s good for us to gather together, encourage one another, and celebrate what the Lord has done. But it’s also important for us to think about Jesus showing up outside of this place: in our homes, our workplaces, Life Groups, and things like that.

Acts 5:41-42 (NIV)

41 The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. ‘

They had just received a rebuke and a flogging from the Sanhedrin.

42 Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah.

Here are some accounts from the early book of Acts and what was taking place. The time frame was probably about 60 a.d. when this was going on. But I want to borrow some Roman historians’ words about the Church. We’re going to go extra-biblical here. This is not in the library of Scripture. But these are some Roman historians that were writing around 100 a.d. and around 350 a.d. They were describing these followers of Christ and what they were like. They obviously don’t think that they are right. They don’t like them, necessarily. And there is persecution, so there are some heavy things. But I want you to just understand that these people were practicing this way in such a profound way, that the Roman historians were taking note of it, as well.

Here’s a Roman official named Pliney writing to another Roman official named Trajan around 100 a.d. He says,

Meanwhile, in the case of those who were denounced to me as Christians, I have observed the following procedure: I interrogated these as to whether they were Christians; those who confessed I interrogated a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment; those who persisted I ordered executed. For I had no doubt that, whatever the nature of their creed, the stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy surely deserved to be punished. There were others possessed of the same folly, but because they were Roman citizens, I signed an order for them to be transferred Rome.

And here’s what they were guilty of, according to Pliny:

They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food—but ordinary and innocent food. Even this, they affirmed, they had ceased to do after my edict by which, in accordance with your instructions, I had forbidden public associations. Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition.

There’s a lot to take in right there. But around 100 a.d. this Roman official was talking about these Christians, and how they kept getting together before dawn. They would get up before dawn and they would sing some sort of hymn to this Jesus, as if he was a God. And they would have this time together and then they would continue it on from house to house. They would have this fellowship. They would care for one another. They would do all these things.

Then you go further on and there’s this Emperor Julian around 360 a.d. He says this:

Atheism…

The Christians were considered atheists because they didn’t believe in the polytheistic gods of the Romans and Greeks. It’s kind of weird, right? Because they only worshiped one God they were atheists—because they didn’t believe in all the gods.

Atheism has been specially advanced through the loving service rendered to strangers and through their care for the burial of the dead. It is a scandal that there is not a single Jew who is a beggar, and that the godless Galileans care not only for their own poor, but for ours as well; while those who belong to us look in vain for the help that we should render them.

So three hundred years later, after Jesus was gone, this is the testimony of a Roman emperor, writing about these Christians who had become a huge problem for them; because they were doing things like rendering service to strangers and caring for the burial of the dead. They were caring for their own poor and also for the Romans’ poor. They were giving body and blood. They were washing people’s feet—not just their own—but those around them.

What history teaches us is around 316 a.d. is when Constantine became emperor, and he basically took away the ban from being a Christian. It wasn’t illegal to be Christian anymore. It was a big move. What was illegal, and what Paul talked about as being this beautiful thing, but it was just this fledgling, persecuted movement in the Roman Empire had now become something that the Roman Empire said, “Ok, what you’re doing is actually so good, we can’t deny the beauty of it, so it’s no longer illegal.

And this was in 360, so there was a lot of debate about what to do about it. So in 390, Christianity became the religion of the Roman empire. And Rome has a very different story from that point on.

The power of this movement. The power of the people of God, filled with the Spirit of God, giving body and blood, washing one another—actually caused the Roman Empire to be completely turned upside down. That’s the Roman Empire. We’re just dealing with America. There is just so much beauty and power if we can get this right. If we can be who Jesus has called us to be and wants to empower us to be.

The second thing that I think we need to notice, as we read these same Scriptures, and we think about Church Around the Table, is that true church happens when we give body and blood; and we wash one another and wash the people in this world; but Church also happens when the life of Jesus shows up. So that Acts 2:42, remember that whole phrase that talked about how they devoted themselves to the apostles’ doctrine, the breaking of bread, fellowship and prayer—it says that they were caring for one another in a really beautiful way. And it says that all of these signs and wonders started showing up all over. It was just as if, when Jesus was alive and Jesus would show up, healings would happen, miracles would happen, wonders would happen. They just followed everywhere Jesus went; because the life of Jesus was being manifest into the world.

Now, what was a shock, and something that the book of Acts writers were marveling about— that Jesus is not here in body, but the life of Jesus kept showing cup in the same way. The manifest presence of God kept popping up. They’re having a little time together, all of a sudden somebody comes in that is sick, or can’t see or whatever. The next thing you know they’re leaving and they feel better or they can see. The life of Jesus. Those things kept popping up.

The disciples were harkening back, thinking about when Jesus first came on the scene. He had just been baptized by John the Baptist. He had just spent time in the wilderness. And now he’s coming back full of the Spirit and ready to do his ministry. He starts out going to synagogues and reading a verse from Isaiah that says (Luke 4:18, 19):

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

And then he sits down and everyone’s looking at him. Jesus says, “Today, this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” It was a big moment, where Jesus is like, “Watch out. It’s on.” And, sure enough, as he goes out from that place, some would reject him, some would come to him. And those who came to him with any kind of illness would be healed. The life of Jesus was showing up. The promise of Jesus, followed by the life of Jesus.

And we talked about John the Baptist in Luke 7. He believes Jesus is the Messiah. But now he’s in prison and he’s about to lose his head. And, like any of us, he’s like, “Hey, Jesus. I think one of those things you mentioned was ‘setting the captives free.’ But I’m still here.” So he sends some of his friends to say, “Hey, Jesus, are you the one? Or is there another one who might set me free. Because I’m not free. I’m sitting right here.”

And Jesus responded to him and said (Luke 7:22):

“Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.”

Jesus said, “John, look at the fruit that’s on the tree and then tell me whether the tree is real or not.” What he was saying was, “Yes, this is it.” And it’s a hard thing for John to hear and process when it doesn’t happen—to trust God in those moments. Jesus is saying you can judge the tree by the fruit. The life is showing up everywhere. The kingdom of heaven is breaking into our world, and we’re seeing the evidence of it all around.

What was so amazing was, again, he was there with the same guys that he had the Last Supper with. In Mark 16, he says to them:

15 He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.

Now plug your ears if you don’t want to have Jesus mess with your life.

17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18 they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”

Jesus is saying, “Look, I told you it would happen. It happened. John was wondering, I reminded him it’s happening. And now I’m going to go away and, guess what? It’s going to keep happening.”

And the disciples were like, “Well, how’s it going to happen if you’re not here?”

And Jesus was like, “Those who believe in me, those who are following my way, those who continue to do the things that I taught you to do—as you do them…”

…the life of Christ will show up. The manifest presence of Jesus will show up. And when it does, things like this will happen. Sick people will get healed. You’ll speak in new tongues. You’ll cast demons out of people so they can be free. Something about snakes and poison and whatever.

So here we are. We got to see Jesus promise that. We got to see it show up in the book of Acts. But this is 2019 in Phoenix, Arizona. Where’s the life of Jesus? And you in your relationship with God and your journey, maybe you’re saying, “Jesus and all this is crazy stuff!”

I totally understand how you can think that. So you have a decision to make. Are you going to step into this family? Are you going to start following the way of Jesus, hoping and believing that the life of Christ will show up? And you’re sitting around a bunch of people who are saying, “Yeah, he shows up.”

Some of you are saying, “I’ve been following Jesus for a while but I haven’t seen a lot in my life. Maybe I’ve seen it in others, or I’ve heard other people talk about it. But they’re kind of crazy, so I don’t know if they’re telling the truth. Is it for me too?” And the message is, “Yes. It is.”

And then there are a lot of people in this room who, if you really sat them down and asked them, “Has the life of Christ shown up?” They would look you in the eyes and say, “Yes.” And some would say lots of stories and some would maybe just tell you a couple. But Church happens when the life of Jesus shows up. It follows the believers.

In Mark 16, Jesus said, “Now it’s your turn to go and do these things.” The apostles experienced it. For us at Living Streams, here in this one small representation of the family, we’ve been able to see the life of Jesus show up. I actually asked Pastor Kurt, who loves to pray for people to be healed, to start cataloguing, you know, like they did in the book of Acts—start listing them. This date, this time, this is what happened and this is how we followed up to make sure they weren’t just having a moment. But like, a week later, a month later, we checked in and, sure enough, there it is.

We had a guy, I just heard, that had a problem with his shoulder. He had surgery and then he had done something and re-hurt it. He was so bummed out. Then in one of our church services, just a few weeks ago, he was singing and thinking about how much his shoulder hurt. He felt like the Lord told him to lift his hands in worship. And as he did, he said his arm kind of got warm, and got healed up. Then he was like, “No, that can’t be right.” But the pain has been gone for over three weeks now. I don’t know what that does for you or what that doesn’t for you.

Kurt started pulling out all these stories. I was like, “Holy Moly, there are a lot of stories.” But some of them are hard to verify. And then some of them, a month later, are like, "I don’t know why, but the pain is back.” I don’t know what to do with all of those things.

What I can do—I can offer to you as one person, just like the gospel writers did, my account of what Jesus has done and how his life has shown up to me.

First of all, when I was about fourteen years old, I didn’t know any of this stuff. I didn’t really care about this stuff. I just wanted to play basketball. I was at a retreat with friends. Kurt was actually one of the guys that was leading the retreat. I was there because there were some friends and there was a gym and you could play basketball. At one point they were having a time—and I didn’t understand what was going on—at one point one of my friends was saying “yes” to one of the things the pastor was saying about being baptized in the Spirit of God.

Again, I was not paying attention. I didn’t know what was going on. I just knew that at one point there was a circle of everybody and they were all putting their hands on him in the middle and praying for him. Because I was his friend, I thought I should probably do something. I was putting my hand on them and all I could think about was my hand. I was like, “This is weird. Does that person think I’m weird? Is this weird? I don’t know this person that well, but I can’t reach the guy.” All I was thinking about was my hand. That was the full extent of what was happening for me and my fourteen-year-old brain.

But I could hear people start to speak in tongues. I didn’t know they were speaking in tongues. They weren’t speaking English and I thought, “Okay. People do that—maybe.” I’m not joking. I have no reason to make this up. But, as this fourteen-year-old, in this very weak moment of trying to love on my friend and say, “Hey, yeah, I care about him,” I started to speak in tongues just a little bit. I started to speak in a language that wasn’t familiar and it was short. It wasn’t long.

I went right back to being just as self-centered and crappy of a teenager as I could be. Again, I had no framework for it all. I just thought, “Well, that was weird. Was I just mimicking them?” That was it. I literally did not think about it again until I was eighteen years old and I was in a little Bible study school and they were teaching on baptism of the Holy Spirit, they were teaching on the gifts of the Spirit and they were talking from the Scriptures about this thing called “tongues.” And I was like, “Whoa. Wait a sec.”

And it was funny, because at that point—you’re going to crack up—but at that point I was trying to figure out if tongues was right or wrong. I was trying to figure out if it was a good thing or a bad thing. But I had a problem, because I didn’t know anything and it happened. And the only thing I could think was just that God, in his mercy, was basically just kind of pouring out his Spirit and there was this little splash that came over to this dumb little kid.

God knew the story. God knew what was going to happen and, in his mercy, he was like, “Watch this.” And he let a little splash over on this kid. So now I’m having to learn about something that had already happened in this moment of Church that was taking place where we were trying to care for this guy and love him. The life of Jesus showed up. And I didn’t even know it until years later.

And then you continue on and he talks about speaking in new tongues. I was with my wife and my one-year-old daughter and we were totally diving into all that the Lord had for us. We felt that he wanted us to go to Belize, to this village that we knew about, and just love on these people. Go give body and blood and to wash their feet. We were there, doing it as best we can, not really sure what we were supposed to do.

One morning, early, I heard this guy yelling from the little dirt road that was next to our house. “Hey, Pastor David!” I looked up and it was just getting light. He said, “You’re needed in the other part of the village.”

So I got dressed and went down there. He had a bike for me. We rode bikes to the other side of the village. I walked upstairs, still trying to get my eyes to stay open. There was an older guy who was reading Scriptures about demon possession and those type of verses. There was a lady and her daughter sitting on a couch, crying. They looked like they had been through a lot. I just sat there and watched this happen. And then he prayed for them. Then we walked down the stairs.

He looked at me and said, “Do you have any experience in this type of thing?”

And I was like, “Like getting up early? No, I don’t. Honestly. I don’t. You can see on my face, no, I don’t have a lot of experience in it.” But I knew what he was referring to. I just kind of smiled and was like, “I don’t know.”

We walked over and there was a young man, probably about twenty-one, and he was with two friends who were sitting on the ground. He was sitting on a chair and was writhing up and down and making some moans. We walked over there. Obviously, he was looking to me to do something. I didn’t know exactly what to do. I mean, I knew some Bible verses and so I actually grabbed his hand. I knew his name, so I said, “I’m here. I want to try to help.”

I grabbed his hand. I was nervous, because in the Bible sometimes, you know, demon-possessed people are strong. Then he started squeezing, but it didn’t end up being that strong. It was strong, but it was just normal strong.

I got right next to his ear. All I could think to do was to say, “You’ve got to call on the name of Jesus. Jesus is the only one who has authority. Jesus is the only one that can save. You’ve got to call on the name of Jesus.”

At first, he was just kind of writhing, so I was just going up and down with him a little bit. At one point, it seemed like he was trying to speak, but he was choking up. We just kept trying. It was about eight or ten minutes of repeating this. At some point, he started saying, “Jesus, help me. Jesus, help me. Jesus, save me. Jesus, save me.”

Then he just went limp. Again, I don’t know what to do at this moment, but he’s limp and his eyes are closed. I had this thought, “Ask him what he sees.”

So I said, “What do you see?”

He said, “One of them left.”

I was like, Oh, no. What do you mean one of them left? And at this point, I just said, “Well, how many are there?”

And he said, “There’s one more.”

And I was like, “Okay, that’s not too bad.”

I don’t know! I don’t know what to think. So, I said, “All right. Let’s call on the name of Jesus.”

As soon as he tried to call on the name of Jesus, he started writhing again. We went through the whole process again and he went limp again. I said, “What do you see?” (It worked last time!) “What do you see?”

And I’m not joking. I’m not trying to make this sound better. He said, “A man in white told me to go to the church.”

I don’t know anything about the man in white. But I was like, “We’re going with him. We’re going with him. He’s talking about church. He’s in white. Sounds all right. Let’s do this.”

So we got him up and we walked him down to the church. Right as we were about to get him into the church, we were like, “This is cool.” In some ways, I’m like, “This is amazing.”

We got him to the church and we were trying to get him into the church. He started screaming and kind of pulling back. I don’t know if this is spiritual or not, but both of us lowered our shoulders and just smashed him into the church. But he was in the church now and he was okay. So I don’t know if that’s part of what the Bible teaches, but it just felt right at the moment. So he was in there. And there’s more story to tell about things that the Lord spoke to him.

We actually went to town. We came back and he was in a different place. He left the church and it was all happening again. They had garlic and crosses all over him. We had to get the toff of him. There’s more to it.

But I’n offering to you that, for this guy this was a significant moment where he experienced some freedom from something that was freaking him out. But for this guy, it was also significant. It was like the life of Jesus was showing up. And here, in another moment, where either Jesus was or wasn’t—Jesus was.

I could tell you more stories about healings and about how the Lord has shown up and those things. We are kind of out of time. But we’re going to keep sharing these things. If you want to hear more stories, talk to Kurt or talk to me if that is something you’d like to hear more about. If you have stories to tell, share those stories in your Life Groups or in other moments, if you can.

The life of Jesus is the fuel that we run on. If Jesus stopped showing up, we really don’t have anything. We just have a social club. But Jesus is showing up. He’s showing up Sundays. He’s showing up outside of this place. That’s the call. That’s the hope. That’s the prayer that we have.

Let’s close in prayer. Bow your heads and take a moment to allow Jesus’ Spirit to speak to your heart, to quiet your heart.

Jesus, we’re hungry for your life to show up. We know you rose from the dead. I pray for those who haven’t ever experienced your life connecting with their life. I pray that today, Lord, they would ask and you would answer, and they would become part of your family and experience your great salvation. Thank you that you pour out your Spirit, Lord. Fill us anew. In this week, as we’re going through our lives, I pray that you would awaken us to moments when you’re wanting to impart some special gift; and we would be obedient, courageous and faithful, and leave the rest in your hands.

7000 N Central Avenue ∙ Phoenix AZ 85020 ∙ 602-957-7500 ∙ https://www.livingstreams.org

Scripture is taken from Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Watch

Guest User 9/1/19 Guest User 9/1/19

Church as the Bride

We’re going to be in Ephesians. We’re looking at Paul’s vision of the church. He didn’t have a vision for Living Streams Church. Living Streams is just an organization that has men and women who are leading it. And the Church that Jesus Christ gave birth to by his blood and the vision that Paul had is the Church organism. It is the thing that lives on beyond Living Streams. It is the thing that was there before Living Streams or whatever other church you might be a part of.

David Stockton
Series: Ephesians

Good morning. College football has started! But I’m an Oregon fan. It was a rough night for me.

But it’s good to be with you guys this morning. We’ve got baptism this morning—both services. About ten people getting baptized today, which is super exciting and fun. And we’re going to be working through Ephesians again. Ephesians 5.

Life Groups. Life Groups. Life Groups. Maybe it’s weird phrase: Life Groups. But it is small groups of people trying to get together outside of the Sunday morning context to check in on each other, pray for each other. The four things we’re dreaming and praying for you is that you’ll get raw authenticity and the healing that comes with that. You’ll get relentless encouragement from each other because we definitely need that. You’ll get Biblical counsel in those small groups. And you’ll get some genuine friendship. Not the online kind but the face-to-face kind. Online is cool. You can do that, too. But face-to-face is important, as well.

We actually have over 200 people that have signed up since last Sunday. Yeah. There’s a lot of “whoo-ing” going on around here. We think it’s really important. We are not trying to build a Sunday morning show. That’s the last thing we’re trying to build around here—where people come for an hour, watch a show and then go. We are not in that business. We’re trying to build a church. And it is so important that the church has more than Sunday morning to stand on.

I don’t care if you find life groups in another church. You’ve got to find ways to get together with people in smaller settings, where you can be known and you can impart the wisdom God is speaking to you and you can be supported.

Did I mention Life Groups? It’s very easy. You go online, livingstreams.org and we’ve got a whole list of them. They’ve got times, locations, what’s happening there. We’re asking everyone in our church—everyone—if this is your first Sunday—hey—you’re in. You came. It’s your fault.—to at least sign up for six weeks, starting September 15. We have leaders, we have groups, we have everything ready. We even gave the leaders their first snacks for the first night. We’re serious about this thing. And we’re serious about snacks, too.

Just give it at least six weeks. The leaders are going to be there and they’re ready to run past six weeks, but we just really want you guys to give it a shot and see what the Lord can do. We don’t want to miss anything that God has in store for us.

All right. We’re going to be in Ephesians. We’re looking at Paul’s vision of the church. He didn’t have a vision for Living Streams Church. Living Streams is just an organization that has men and women who are leading it. And the Church that Jesus Christ gave birth to by his blood and the vision that Paul had is the Church organism. It is the thing that lives on beyond Living Streams. It is the thing that was there before Living Streams or whatever other church you might be a part of.

And we’ve built these organizations, these churches that are hopefully going to help that organism prosper and thrive within it. But YOU are the Church if you are called by Jesus’ name. You are the Church. And the Church is the single most dominant force for good that the world has ever seen. Any era. Any age. Any place. No one can deny the power of what the Church, the true Church has done.

At the same time, no one can deny that there have been real good seasons and real bad seasons for the organization aspect of the Church. There have been horrible seasons when we look at the organization of the Church. But Jesus is not the head of the organizations. We do our best to make sure he is in control of this place, but at the end of the day, it’s got to go through people like me. And it’s going to come out a little squirrly. But he is and always will be the head of the Church, which is his Body here on earth. And everyone of you has a part to play.

So Paul is trying to impart to us this vision, this grand vision, this vision that, when he got it, he did not want it. But when he got it, he changed every single thing in his life. He threw away everything he had ever known and become—position, power, money, self-righteousness, pride. He threw it all away and said, “I just want to live into this vision.” And he spent the rest of his life traveling the world to tell Gentiles (people who are not Jews) about this vision that God has for them.

In Ephesians he tries to piece it all together in this letter that he was writing. And it’s so ridiculous. If you were to get this letter back in Paul’s day, you would think the guy is insane. You would think he’s absolutely crazy. Because, what he is putting forth in this vision, and what was in reality at that time of the Church are so far apart. If you get nothing else in our time in the book of Ephesians, I just want you to get this. That Paul was declaring something that had no chance of becoming a reality. The Church at that time was scattered, was living in caves and dens, was persecuted and dominated. It was a laughing stock. It was pitiful. And yet Paul could see something that Marty Caldwell gets to see all the time as he travels around. That other people—we have someone speaking next week who’s been around the world seeing the Church in action in all different continents. He’s going to share a little bit of the strength and beauty these days.

If Paul could see the Church today, he would do an old man backflip. Which is kind of like rolling over, I think, or falling down, maybe. What the Church has become, there is no way Paul could actually have believed that it would be what it is today. She is so beautiful. But Paul could see a vision. We talk about Martin Luther King, Jr., as he speaks to that crowd right before he was killed and he said, “I have no worries. For I have been to the mountaintop and I’ve seen the other side. I’ve seen the Promised Land. I know we’re going to get there.”

And that’s basically what Paul is saying in his day and age. He’s saying, “I’ve seen the vision. Jesus has given me the vision. And now I’m living into the vision. And I’m going to see us grow from this tiny, little, infant baby that is not even having a chance to live, forsaken in every way—it’s going to become the most powerful thing the world has ever seen.

It’s awesome what we are reading right now. And I’m hoping it will get in us. I’ve had a couple of visions in my life. When I first gave my life to Jesus, I was about eighteen years old. When I first gave my life to Jesus. I had received Jesus prior to that, but there was a big difference when I turned seventeen and eighteen, right in there, where I think Jesus was saying, “Okay. Now I’m going to ask something from you.”

And I went for it. Immediately (Mike, you can attest to this) I just, for some reason starting thinking about Ireland all the time. I had actually gotten to go to Ireland with my family right after I graduated, so I just thought that’s all that it was. And yet, this idea of going to Ireland and starting a camp, like a summer camp, and then also starting a church and having a school there kind of all on the same property. This vision just started coming.

Again, I had been to Ireland. My grandmother was Irish. I do have Irish citizenship—I have dual citizenship through her. So, I started thinking, “Maybe there’s something here.” And I just had a compelling vision of going to Ireland and getting rid of all the snakes. Not really. That was somebody else’s vision. But going to Ireland, trying to see the Lord do something. So I graduated college and I talked to some friends who were crazy enough to say, “Let’s do it.”

We came up with a plan. We were all going to go for three months. We bought a three month ticket. That was the entirety of the plan. And we were going to just see what the Lord would do. And I’m here in Arizona now. Right? Working here, you know.

But we did go there. We got to see the Lord do really great things. It was very strengthening for our faith. Within three days we had jobs and a place to live. And our names were being sent to all these different ministry clubs in Northern Ireland. We got to go two or three times a week. We’d get on a bus and say, “Can you take us to this place and do ministry?” And at the end of it, though, we were like, “Well, we should go home.” It was a great time. It was building my faith, but then we came back.

Then I had another vision. I was sitting right down here one time by Mark Buckley as he was about to preach. And we were singing the song, “For the sake of the world, burn like a fire in me.” And I can’t tell you how clear it was. I saw a vision of a bunch of Belizeans. My wife and I had lived in Belize a little before, so it wasn’t that far off. But I saw a room full of Belizeans and they were singing, “For the sake of Belize, burn like a fire in me.” And it was real clear. And it was a vision.

I remember talking to Mark about it and the elders, and saying, “You know, my wife and I are thinking maybe we should go to Belize again.” And Mark said, “Okay. Okay. Let’s figure this out.” And, sure enough, we ended up going to Belize for a little more than a year with our family. And step by step, we started a Friday Night Fire, is what they wanted to call it. Except, in Belize, it’s called “Friday Night Fi-yah.”

We started a little worship night. And my wife and I were doing music, which is not that impressive. We started using that song to close every one of the Friday nights that we had. We changed the word, I don’t know if we’re allowed to, but it was in Belize where you can get away with anything. We changed the words and I thought, “Wow, this amazing.” Little by little, the room started to fill up. And people were singing that song. And the Lord, just to make it so clear that I didn’t miss it, there was one night when it was totally jam-packed. This was probably about one hundred or so Belizeans. It was a small room so it was jam-packed.

We were singing that song and it was a great night. We were really leaning in to the Lord. And, all of a sudden the power went out completely. When the power goes out in Belize, it was dark. It was so dark you couldn’t see anything inside this room. And it was very hot. Yet, the power goes out, our mics, everything is gone, and everyone just kept singing. And we’re just at the part where we sing, “For the sake of Belize, burn like a fire in me.” And I just stepped back from the mic for just a second and just went, “Oh, my goodness!” It was like the Lord was saying, “No, no, no. We’re making a point of this. Exclamation point. Boom!”

There are these visions that the Lord gives us. Paul was so compelled by this vision of what he was going to see. I don’t know if he ever got to a point where he felt that he got to see it. I think he probably saw little pieces of it. But again, Ephesians is this grand vision that he’s trying to lay out for all of us.

He starts out giving a vision of the Church as a family—that we’ve been adopted into God’s heart. So the Church is one of the ways we can see this vision. One of the ways Paul saw it as it’s like the family of God. We’ve got the name of God on our jerseys, on the back. We walk around and are learning how to live according to his family rules and culture.

And then he goes on to talk about how the Church is the dwelling place of God. That somehow his Spirit is in all of us and, as we go about the world, God’s presence goes into all the world, and it’s a picture of what God can do. When people come and get to know us, it’s like coming over to God’s house and hanging out for a while.

Then we talked last week about how the Church is a body. That we’re this body. We’re trying to grow into this full stature, this amazing, powerful force that God has in mind for us to be. And we start at one point and try to grow into it so that we can be strong enough to withstand the winds of every deceitful scheme that comes our way. That we won’t be tossed to and fro by the waves. And that’s the dream that we have.

Today we’re going to talk about the Church as a bride. So all the girls are like, “Oh, yeah, that’s cool.” And all the guys are like, “College football, man. College football.”

So Ephesians Chapter 5. You’ve got to deal with it. It’s in the Bible so get ready. Get your wedding dresses out.

5:1 Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children 2 and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

So there you have fragrance, right? We’re already getting girly. But Jesus loved us and he gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering. And then he says:

3 But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.

Or, for God’s bride. Right? Skip down to verse 21:

21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”

And then Paul says this as a little bit of a hesitation caveat:

32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.

So all this stuff about submission, all this stuff about two becoming one, he’s saying, “Now, I need you to pay attention here. I’m not trying to be weird. But somehow this is a mystery. All of this stuff that I’m talking about is actually about Christ and his Church—his bride—the people who follow him

33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Paul opens up this whole can of worms. He’s basically saying, “Now another way I want you to picture the Church is as the Bride of Christ.”

It is the people he has chosen. The people he has give his life for and will forevermore. The people that he is actually trying to love so well that they actually form into all the beauty that they can form into. He’s talking about how Christ and His Body are to become one in lovingkindness and mutual respect.

Again, John 17 is a prayer that, if Jesus didn’t pray it, I would never really teach it. is prayer is that those who believe in him would become one with him, just like he and the Father are one. It’s not saying that we’re going to become gods. But somehow we’re going to be included into the trinitarian love and oneness as we follow him.

It’s a profound mystery. And I’m not going to talk about it anymore because I no idea what else to say about it. One day I’m just going to die and—bam—in it. I can just call it a profound mystery,

We’re talking about this love. We’re talking about the romance. We’re talking about how God in Christ romanced us. Reckless love. However you want to talk about it. He wooed us. Romeo and Juliet. All of the stuff you want to say here.

It’s fun for me to talk to guys when we go on men’s retreats or Belize retreat. To get to know them, I love to just ask the question, “Do you have a girlfriend?” (if they’re not married.) And it’s so funny because, immediately, I feel like—bam—you are in. Unless they’re like, “No. Don’t talk to me about that. I don’t know you.”

But if they start to answer that question at all, they can’t help it. Their heart is coming right out of their mouth. You get to see their heart right away, whether it’s good, bad or whatever. Because that’s a big part of where their life is flowing out of. It’s that part of their heart that longs for that companionship.

And then I love to ask guys on our men’s retreat—we were in Belize and last time I asked the guys, “All right. What we’re going to do tonight as a kind of debrief, I want everyone to tell us how you got engaged.”

You could see all the guys were like, “What do you mean?” And then they’d start telling it. And they would be struggling, trying to make it not a big deal. But then as they would start telling the story they would start gushing a bit. It’s like, “Oh, you’re sappy! Yeah, you are a romantic guy! Look at you! Ha ha! We got you! Busted.”

But as they would tell the story, it comes out. And it’s so precious and beautiful. Even the guys who are like so tough, when they start telling about getting engaged, it’s just an awesome, awesome thing.

For me, I fell in love with this girl named Brit. And she and I were dating and hanging out. (This is my wife, by the way.) Yet, at the same time, I knew she also loved another. It was the kids in South Africa. She loved them a lot. She knew that she needed to go to them. So we started dating and we were hanging out and I was like, “Yeah, we love each other. But I know you love these little kids in Africa.”

So, we knew she had to go. And so she went. A big thing was, she was going to see. She loved the Lord above it all and she wanted to go where God was leading her. So she went for a few months to Africa. I didn’t know what was going to happen. Would she love me more than Africa? Would God put our paths back together at some point? It was a real moment of truth.

I remember talking to her while she was there. At one point it was pretty clear that what she was saying was that she loved me more than Africa. That was a big deal for my life. I was like, “I’ve got all of Africa beat! Yeah!” I was thrilled.

So knowing that, I ended up getting on a plane and flying to London where she was going to be flying back. I surprised her by being in London. She didn’t know I was going to be there. And I surprised her by looking like this (photo of David with long hair and beard). She was going and I said, “I’m not going to cut my hair while you’re gone.” I didn’t think about this part. So she was like, “Oh, hey! Oh, heyyyy!”

And I surprised her one more. I got on one knee and asked her to marry me. She said, “Yes.” It’s been almost fifteen years. It’s been a pretty cool deal.

I’m saying all of this because Jesus loves you in this way, if you can receive it. He loves you and wants so badly for you to love him. Not only for his own good. Somehow, mystery of mysteries, if you love Jesus, his heart is full. If you don’t, his heart is broken. God of the universe, Creator of everything, has somehow made his heart dependent on your love.

If you choose to love him, you will be loved well. There are some verses in Ephesians that bring this out. I want to go through these and I want you to maybe grab a couple of things out of these. Maybe write them down. Maybe just hide them in your heart.

There are some phrases that are key as we go through. Ephesians 2: I’m going to read this out of the Message translation. I like the way the Message says it:

1-6 It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin.

You weren’t anything that special.

You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience.

That’s powerful imagery.

We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. We loved a lot of other things. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us.

He walked right up to our filthiness, our rebellion, and our anger, and he hugged us. He pulled us close to him and stole it all away.

He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.
7-10 Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus.

That is what Jesus is longing to do. To bring you closer to him. To shower you with lovingkindness both in this world and in the next. And just so you know, there won’t be pain in the next. Here you get both.

Next is Ephesians 2:11-13 in the NIV.

11 Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision”

(Those who are feeling like the upper class and you were called the lower class by them.)

(which is done in the body by human hands)— 12 remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

All the way into his arms. Pressed against his own chest. Covered by his love. Never needing to fear or worry again. Perfect redeeming love is wrapped around you in Christ Jesus.

I defined it a little bit like this, the way that God treats us as his bride: Lovingly, romantically, faithfully, kindly. What happens is our vulnerability is met with his passionate, wholehearted, generous covering. He finds us naked and ashamed, and he covers us with his righteousness and love. His love really does redeem.

Ephesians 5:1-3.

1 Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children 2 and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
3 But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity…

Why is the Bible so serious about sexuality? Why is the world disparaging and rebelling against the Scriptures right now because it’s too harsh or hard? Well, because the writers of the Bible are trying to help us understand that there are really two images that God has given us outside of Christ incarnate that teach us about him better than anything else.

Genesis 1 makes it very clear that God created male and female in his image. So if we get male and female right, then the world gets to see God. If we screw up or twist up male and female, we lose one of our most powerful demonstrations of who God is in full. God is not male. Never has been. Never will be. God is not female. He is somehow the fullness of both of those when we get it right. That’s why there’s a big attack right now. But it’s not the first time. We got through this attack generation after generation, where the devil tries to destroy our image of God found in maleness and femaleness.

We do need to sit back and weather the storm with love and kindness. But we also need to make sure people understand God put the fence there for a reason. If you move the fence, you’re going to find the lions, the tigers, the bears ready to devour you. Which we see over and over again. That’s why the world and society has never really been able to move on to this total free love thing. Because, ultimately, the consequences show up and we go back. This isn’t a new thing. This is just the latest wrong version of “woke,” that we’re going to have to wake up from with consequences all around us. The Bible is the only thing woke.

Not only that, but he also says that the second thing that is the best image of God is marriage. Marriage is the second best image of God. I’m talking about Christ and the Church. You want to learn about Christ and the Church, go look at someone’s marriage. That’s how you’re going to learn about the love of God. The faithfulness, the stick-to-it-ativeness, the patience, the kindness. That’s the way God loves you, except that he’s perfect and totally trustworthy.

So why would the enemy want to destroy marriage? Why would he want to get rid of that or call it crazy or too hard? Because he doesn’t want people to see the image of Christ and his Church. Because they might fall in love with him and experience his love.

The last thing I want to read as we close is Ephesians 5:21-33. The same passage, but I want to read it in the Message translation. I want to highlight a couple of things. I ask again that you try to grasp a couple of things for your own heart right now.

21 Out of respect for Christ, be courteously reverent to one another.
22-24 Wives, understand and support your husbands in ways that show your support for Christ. The husband provides leadership to his wife the way Christ does to his church, not by domineering but by cherishing. So just as the church submits to Christ as he exercises such leadership, wives should likewise submit to their husbands.
25-28 Husbands, go all out in your love for your wives,

Be extravagant like Jesus was.

…exactly as Christ did for the church—a love marked by giving, not getting. Christ’s love makes the church whole. His words evoke her beauty. Everything he does and says is designed to bring the best out of her, dressing her in dazzling white silk, radiant with holiness. And that is how husbands ought to love their wives. They’re really doing themselves a favor—since they’re already “one” in marriage.

And we’ll just finish with that. I love some of those phrases. That this is the love that Christ has for us. It’s the love that we’re supposed to show toward our spouses, toward our kids, toward our friends, toward our enemies, toward our neighbors. This kind of love that is marked by giving, not getting. The kind of love that makes the person that we’re loving more whole. It doesn’t point out their deficiencies, but it actually begins to fill those things, cover those things until they have a chance to grow in those things. And their words evoke their beauty.

I want to love my wife like that. And I’m so bad at it. I want to love my kids like that. And I know I fall short. I want to love you guys like that. It’s a beautiful love that Jesus has for us. It’s a life-changing, redeeming love. It’s a love that feels like vulnerability met with passionate, wholehearted, generous covering.

As I was worshiping downstairs with the team, there was a moment where I saw this picture of some people who are feeling pretty vulnerable, pretty gross, pretty bad themselves, pretty unsure, pretty weak—whatever it might be. And Jesus comes and actually covers you with his robes of righteousness, of love. He wraps this covering around you. And then, when you look in the mirror, you’re like, “Wow. I didn’t know I could like this.” But the story wasn’t over, because, at one point, that robe was removed, and no longer was there something disgusting underneath. Now it was like you had your own form of beauty. You had your own form of strength. It was Christ in you, that hope of glory. So the covering doesn’t just cover up your sickness and make you feel better for a moment. That covering actually redeems everything underneath the covering, stirs up, evokes the beauty that he made for you to be. His innocent love causes that kind of change.

It’s hard to abide in Christ. It’s hard to keep absorbing that love from time to time. But that’s the only way that we’re going to be able to love like him. We can’t do it in our strength. Never can. Never will. But Jesus knows that. So if we will set aside time to go sit in his presence and allow him to robe us once again—if we can put on Jesus Christ, be robed in his righteousness, we will absorb that love. It will reform us and fill us so that we can then go and clothe others in this world. That’s a beautiful vision of Christ and his Church. Christ and his Bride. You are the Bride of Christ.

Let’s pray:

Jesus, we do thank you so much that you love us, that you gave yourself for us in ways beyond what we can imagine. I pray, Lord, that once again we would allow you to cover us so that you can cleanse us and transform us and fill us, so that we can go into this world and we can cover others with that same love. Thank you.

______________________________

7000 N Central Avenue ∙ Phoenix AZ 85020 ∙ 602-957-7500 ∙ https://www.livingstreams.org

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

WATCH ON YOUTUBE