Today's message was preached
May the 15th, 2016 to Grace Truth Church. We're in 1 Thessalonians
chapter 4 verse 1 and 2. As we look at this text, we'll
see today that God has called us through His word to be holy
in our ethics and in our living, based on the centrality of the
power of the gospel of Jesus Christ in our hearts and minds
every day. We also learn that this power
rests in the Lord Jesus alone, and that even in our best of
efforts, we will never, ever be truly righteous. Therefore,
our righteousness is Christ's, not our own. Let's look at how
the text teaches this to us today. 1 Thessalonians 4, look at the
first 12 verses. Finally then, brothers, we ask
and urge you, or beseech you in the Lord Jesus Christ, that
as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please God,
just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. For you
know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For
this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain
from sexual immorality, that each one of you know how to control
his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passions of
lust like the Gentiles who do not know God, that no one transgress
and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an
avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and
solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for
impurity, but in holiness. Therefore, whoever disregards
this disregards not man, but God, who gives His Holy Spirit
to you. Now concerning brotherly love,
you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves
have been taught by God to love one another, for that indeed
is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia.
But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, and to
aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work
with your hands as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly
before outsiders and be dependent upon no one. Let me pray. Father, I pray that your word,
as you have promised it would, would do all that it is supposed
to do. But Lord, we pray that your word would cut to our heart,
cut to our soul, shape us and trim us, mold us and make us
into the likeness of your son, Jesus Christ. And Lord, as we
hear these words, help us to recognize our little inner voice
that so often speaks from a fleshly and worldly position. Help us
to discriminate against that which we think, against those
stances which are prohibiting us from seeing and hearing. Father,
we pray supernaturally that you would take off any burden, that
you would remove any obstacle from us hearing your word this
day. Father, we pray also that we would just not fall prey to
worldly gospels, that we would not hear these words and then
decide in our hearts that we would actually begin to live
our lives better and thus please You, thus earning our salvation.
Father, these instructions are given to Your people who are
already recipients of Your grace, who are indeed the people of
Christ. So we thank you, Lord, that you
give us these things so that we might learn what your holiness
looks like, that we might strive to trust in Christ Jesus as our
righteousness, as he, as you work in us that righteousness
every day of our lives, knowing that we will never obtain this
perfection here. But Lord, one day we will see
you face to face and be just as you are. So, God, as we come
to this point, I pray that your will be done. And we pray these
things in the name of Jesus Christ, our King. Amen. When we see the word finally
in an appalling epistle, typically we come to the reality that he
has finished what he has to say and he's closing out his letter.
That's why so many commentators and higher critics, if you will,
I'll say just that, often argue the reality, or this reality,
that Paul didn't write the latter part of Thessalonians. He didn't
write chapter 5 because he closed it in chapter 4 because of that
word, finally. Friends, I want you to just ignore
that. I don't want you to bog down
on it. I certainly don't want you to be critical of especially
English translations. You should be. You should learn.
to be critical. You should learn to discern.
Does that sound like the rest of Scripture? But when people
take and make much of word, a word, and people take and make much
of a theme, or people take much and make much of a particular
point in Scripture while ignoring the entirety of the letter, they
create a heresy 100% of the time. It's always a heresy. And the
heresies are not always doctrinal. Sometimes they're just critical.
Why are we going to throw away that which God has preserved
in His Word? Because we see the Word finally. Let's look at it
in context, if we will. Finally, then, brothers, what
He's saying there. He's already told them in the
very first portions of this letter that they are believers, that
they're brothers. He even says it here, brothers.
He says, we are glad that you've come to receive the Word of God
in power with much suffering. We are thankful to the Father.
We pray for you. We know that God is truly at
work within you because we see the fruit of your salvation.
Things that you could not accomplish in your own power. A righteousness
that you would never have chosen because not only is it something
that is contrary to your very flesh and your very culture,
but it's costing you your very lives. And he says this, we are sure
and certain of your election, for you are believers, evidenced
by your receipt of the gospel. You received the gospel not from
men, not in your minds, but in power by the Holy Spirit. The
Lord gave you hearing of this gospel. You hear because Christ's
words have come to you and opened your ears and heard, allowed
you to hear the gospel. And when you hear the gospel
supernaturally, you believe. And if you do not hear the gospel
supernaturally, you cannot believe. It is true. So he's saying you
believe, you've received, you are also lovers. You are lovers
of Christ, you are lovers of us, the apostles, you are lovers
of the Word of God, and you are lovers of the brethren. Not just
of your own, but the brethren of all of Macedonia. We see that
you have shared the good faith, you're fighting the good fight
and you are suffering because of it. And we know that you are
continuing in the faith, even though it is costing you greatly.
And then he gives him some instruction as we looked at last week at
the latter part of chapter three. He says that God, he prays that
God would make their love abound more and more for each other,
not just for each other, but for all people. So that their
love would be seen and that hearts would be blameless in the presence
of Christ in the last day. It's funny that we often times
see that and I know I did not even really finish the preaching
from last week. But at 72 minutes we just had
to, you know. But ultimately what we need to
realize and keep fresh in our minds every moment is that our
love for each other and our love for the lost, our affection,
our hearts, our burdens, and our costly love actually is one
of the foundational realities of our salvation. Because if
we love Christ, if we love God, we love His people. And that's
why Paul emphasizes it. That's why John emphasizes it.
That's why Jesus, of course, they're doing it because He did
it. He emphasizes this reality. that the greatest of all commandments
is to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with
all of your mind, with all of your strength, and to love your
neighbor as yourself. Much like Paul teaches the husbands
in Ephesians chapter 5, to love your wife as Christ loved the
church, who gave Himself up for her, to present her blameless
and spotless before Him. as he teaches the church of Ephesus,
that in love we have been predestined to be in the image of Jesus Christ,
which is righteousness, which is an incredibly supernatural
affection that cost Him His life, that cost Him the nature of His
place, if you will, in glory. He stepped out of heaven, became
like the creation, subjected Himself to hate, to malice, to
envy, to strife, and to the wrath of God, so that we might be the
righteousness of God. Christ did not have to do these
things, but it was the will of the Father that He did, and so
therefore He had to do these things because of His love for
the Father and for His love for us, the church. So this love
continues and Paul emphasizes it here and not just here but
he goes on in chapter 4 later to continually emphasize this
reality. He then says, finally, in this list of things that I
want you to see, lastly, saints, not just hold fast to the truth
that you perceive, not just continue in the endurance of the suffering
that you're experiencing, not just be loving, but finally,
also, in these last breaths of this little word that I'm giving
you, finally, we urge you, we beseech you, we ask of you, we
implore you, we exhort you, walk. and please God as you walk. And
that's where he's coming from. He's not finishing his letter.
He's like, here we go. At the end of all this, and as
you do all these good things, do not forget these things are
also important. So we need to understand, and
this is a beautiful reality for us, the church. This is a beautiful
presence of the first century church that was just edified
in such a way. Historically, the church of Thessalonica
has been one of those churches that everybody goes, if we could
just be like them. And we often say, we don't want
to be like Corinth. I've never understood why church
planters name their churches Corinth Baptist Church or something
like that. I understand God restored them.
There's a beautiful picture of repentance and restoration. But
when we think of Corinth, we don't think of righteousness. We think of problems and immorality
and greed and hate and suffering and incest and sexual immorality
and all these different things. And Paul straightened them out. Well see, last week we saw that
Paul prayed that God would give them more love, more and more
and more and more love. And that they were loving so
well that it was just exemplifying the Gospel. That people were
seeing the power of Christ in them and that there was no need
for them to correct their lack of love, but he prayed that God
would abound in them more love. Why? Because we can never love
enough, remember? This is a review. Because the love of God is immeasurable. Therefore, if we are to love
as God loves, our love for each other grows. Our intimacy grows. God's love for us cannot grow. It is fully eternal already. And we're never going to see
the fullness of it. So we have an eternity to continue
to look at it. To embrace it. To worship Him
because of it. Because I don't think we understand
that about God. We think that we can study, how can we understand
God's holiness? We do not and never shall we
fully grasp the reality of the holiness of God. For the holiness
of God is immeasurable in its context. The holiness of God
is the display of His infinite and intrinsic worth. God is because
He is holy. He is then the Most High. He
is God. It is the basic elemental reality
of His name. and He is eternal and unknowable. And even when we see the fullness
of the righteousness of God in the face of Jesus Christ, the
fullness of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,
all that God is is embodied in the person of Jesus, all of His
love, all of His holiness, all of His justice. Every bit of
everything that God is is perfectly seen in Jesus and fully seen
in Jesus. Paul teaches that. But yet we,
even in all of eternity, will always be in all of the depths
of the infinite realities of His nature. You see? Because
if I can grasp something to its end, I'm a master. If I can grasp theory, if I can
grasp projects, if I can grasp tasks to their end and master
them, I am the master of them. Friends, we will never be the
master of God. And the Bible teaches that in those days when
we stand face to face with Christ, we will forever be learning Him. There will be no need for stupid
little men like me to stand up here and pound this stuff out
and hope I get it. Hope I don't mess it up and pray,
Oh Lord, look at all the times I have. We won't need scholars. Friends, Spurgeon will be laying
in the floor next to us looking at the face of Jesus Christ in
awe and wonder how he never saw that which he just heard. How
he never read that which he's looking at right now. And the Apostle Paul will probably
be right there with him. And we will be right there with
him. There's a little thing to think about in that. Let's stop
holding people to such pedestals. Men of God point you to Christ
and therefore they are shadows and dust in the wind when we
see the ineffable glory of Christ. Don't look at each other except
that we see Christ in each other. And we exalt Christ, not each
other. There is no master of this word
but the Lord who spoke it and wrote it. In this now you have
come to this thing I want you to see finally. Please walk,
I urge you, in the Lord Jesus, I beseech you, in the Lord Jesus,
that as you've received from us how you ought to walk, and
that reality is it's an imperative, you must walk this way. The ought
to there is not something that we want you to, you should. It's
be nice if you could. Have a good attitude. Paul's
saying, you will walk this way. You see, there's the rub, because
as a father, I love this stuff. I love it. Kids, you will, because
God said it. And I mean, that's how we want
to rule. That's what we want. We want to be able to get that
bullwhip of doctrine and beat it over our children. Look at there, they're scared
of God. What is fear? John says, perfect
love casts away all fear. You know what that means? We
don't walk in a cowering fear of judgment before our Father. We walk in a respect and honor
and a reverent fear before our God. It's how even when we sin,
John says, we have an advocate, Jesus the righteous. And the
writer of Hebrews says we can walk into the throne room of
God and stand bold before the throne. My friends, this is where
Paul is going to put to death this conflict. Because we've
got this conflict. We've got this grace that just is an amazing
grace. We sang about it today. An amazing
grace. It saved the wretched. Grace
saved us. We did not save ourselves. God
saved us because of His mercy, His grace, His charity, His affection,
His love, His will, His purpose, His glory, His name. It's great. Because of salvation. This is
the truth of the Gospel. The good news is that we, if
left to ourselves, are worthy of justice, worthy of death,
but God, in His mercy, because of His great love with which
He loved us, gave us eternal life in Christ Jesus, caused
us to be born again by the sin in the Gospel, perfected and
empowered by Jesus Christ, taking our sin and making it His, and
then suffering the justice of God. so that God's righteousness... Did you know that righteousness
and justice are interchangeable in meaning? They are the exact
same thing. God's justice, as we see in Romans
chapter 3, is His righteousness. Because no holy anything lets
sin go. You see? And so right now, just in that
little three minutes, we have an incredibly thick wall in the
room. We have the wall that says, grace,
grace, grace. After all does not John say,
we have grace upon grace upon grace. From Moses we receive
the law, the bad old stinky law that bound us and killed us,
but in Christ we have grace and truth. The namesake of our fellowship. We see that wall, we're divided
over it. And depending on how we are in
our temperament, how our flesh likes to play games inside of
our own minds, is how we're going to come out on the other side
of this. Some of us, as Paul would argue
with the Romans, some of us would go, man, grace is so good, let's
go to the club and let's be in the grace of God as we sin all
night. Paul says absolutely not. Because that isn't obvious. Friends,
it is the right thing to think. Listen. No, it's the normal thing
to think, not the right thing. It's the normal thing to think.
God's grace is so amazing. I can just slaughter people.
I can catch the world on fire and I'm in the hand of God. Hallelujah! Woohoo! Because grace is just
that powerful. The grace of God saves just that
powerfully. And Paul knows these Romans.
Think about them. They weren't like the Jews who
walked in piety. I use that word lightly, not
in its true meaning. Who walked in a religious vigor and zealousness
for centuries, for millennia. They weren't like those people.
Romans were obvious pagans and they knew it. There was no question
about Roman people. And so Paul is answering that
obvious answer to his amazing grace, to God's amazing grace
in chapter 6 and 7 and 8 of Romans. When he gives these arguments
and he says, so therefore should we sin all the more that grace
may abound? You know that question? Well,
wait a minute. God's grace is manifested in
wickedness, in darkness, when we break the law. So God's glorified
and graciousness Yes, didn't Paul teach that to
the Ephesians? The purpose of the church is to give praise
to the glorious what? Grace of God. That's the point. That's why we're here today.
To learn and to praise God for His grace. So that there is no
grace if there's nothing to be gracious for. But see, Paul then
argues, no matter what your sin, even if your sin is not sinful,
what do you mean by that? Paul, sin. And this is a worldly
definition. Think about it for a second.
I'm going to make you think. Paul says, according to the law, he's
blameless in Philippians. In other words, that he followed
in an absolute perfect way the law of Moses. But then Paul goes
to say, but in Adam I'll die. So even in the perfect following
of the practice of the law, he was still wicked at heart. And
that every expression of perfection, every expression of righteousness
was nothing but sin. Even though it looked righteous,
it was just sin. You see that? So no matter how good our lives
are, we still have a far falling from the glory of God. Because
we're born into sin. We're the nature of sin, so therefore
we will sin, and we are sinning. and there's enough sin going
around internally in our lives, there's enough taintedness from
the brokenness and depravity of our world and the flesh that
we continually fight against, we don't need to add to it then
rebellious acts. Hyper-grace, as you'd say. Grace
is hyper. It's way up there. But there's
a movement out now, hyper-grace, that teaches, it doesn't matter
what you do. I've got a friend on Facebook.
God bless his soul. I love him to death. He's a brother
in the Lord. But he gets depressed and he gets aggravated with people
on the internet and he says things and he charges and he gets upset
and then he sins in his attitude. Somebody will call in to repent
and say, I don't have to repent. I'm in grace. I can do this all
day. I'm fine. Matter of fact, I got drunk last
night. I'm still in grace. That kind of stuff. It's alright. It's not alright. And then there's the other side
of the people who who like to browbeat the church into walking
into submission of righteousness in their own efforts, and nobody
ever feels the grace of God. It's like, we're going to take
the grace of God away. And these are Armenians, you know. We're
going to take the grace of God away, because you're not living
right. Give me that candy. I mean, you
know. Pay attention to church, no more
candy. I mean, you talk back to your mama, give me that head,
chop it off. I mean, that's, and that's, hey,
that's our nature, isn't it? Some of us are so, oh, it's okay,
it's, oh, you killed that so and so, it's all right. We know
you're just being a kid. We know you're just being a child.
We know you're just being a youngster. We know you're just being...
So how do we meet in the middle? Because there is no meeting in
the middle. The Word of God is very clear. There's grace and
there's grace alone. And if no one can come to the
Father except through Jesus Christ, who is the righteousness of God,
and in coming to faith and believing in Christ, trusting in Christ,
knowing Christ, He has known you. You can't clean up. You can't say the right words,
you can't do the right things, you can't be in the right church,
you can't have the right doctrine. There's a lot of hell-bound Calvinists,
y'all. A lot of them! And they're all
in their twenties. I'm just playing. They're of all ages. And a lot
of heaven-bound Armenians. If you don't know what that means,
don't worry about it. And there might even be They're
mighty. I don't know. I'm not even going
to go anywhere. But the truth of it all is that
we're saved by grace. By the mere pleasure of God.
To be received by faith. Trusting. Pistis. Pistuan. Those verbs in the Greek New
Testament are verbs. That's why so many people argue
that believing is actually a work. It is, but guess what? It can't
be done except God creates you a new heart. Believing is a work in the reality
that your whole constitution is changed. Your whole mind is
changed. Your whole heart is changed.
God has done something. You are new and you see. We see the Gospel and we love
the Gospel. We put our faith in Christ Jesus
because God has gifted us faith. It is a work of God that we would
not boast before Him, for we are God's workmanship. You know what that means? He
put the parts in order. He put them together. He breathed
the power in. He put the batteries in. He wound
us up and here we go. Some of us are little robots.
Some of us are those chatting teeth. That'd be me. You know,
I mean, whatever. He's winding us up. We're moving.
God built every point, part, article and minute detail of
who we are if we are in Christ. He created our salvation and
He made it possible and certain. Friends, The outflow of such
creation is that we are going to be those people whom God has
created. And that's where Paul is. Paul
did not write this letter to any lost person alive in that
day. They weren't addressed in it.
They weren't given it. It wasn't read to them. Now,
were there not lost in the church? Of course there are. Amongst
the church, but not in the church. They're not the church. They're
just hanging out. We don't know the difference. But Paul and
Jesus says that we will know the difference. Jesus says we'll
know the difference because those who love me will do what I ask
them to do. It's not even that easy, is it?
He doesn't use silly little words like that. That's like New Living
Translation words there. We'll follow along in my steps.
They'll skip down the road in my direction. They'll peek into
my house. No. He says, we'll obey what
I command. If you love me, you will obey. And what does God obey? What does Christ obey? He obeys
repentance. He commands repentance. There
we go. What does Christ command for us to obey? He commands repentance. He commands belief. He commands
striving for righteousness. He commands loving the Lord.
He commands teaching the nations. He commands raising our children.
He commands these things. John says that the law of God,
the law of Christ, is not a burden to the believer. Why? Because
from our hearts we get to do that which we most enjoy, which
is to give glory to God and pleasure to God and walking and living
as His creation. I don't like who I am in my flesh. I love who I have been made to
be in my soul by Christ. You ever sinned and just loved
it? No, you don't as the church. It's always a rub. It's always
a grief. It's always a burden. It's always
pain. It's always dark. So as we're in these Thoughts. It's really easy for us to fall
into one or other place. And I want you to see that what
Paul is doing here is so beautiful. He exhorts this church back to
my original introduction. This church is the poster child
of healthy church. Keep doing what you're doing.
God is doing. Lord, keep doing what you're
doing, Lord, in their lives. Love more. Learn more. Live more. Be more of who you
are. Continue to do these things that
you're doing. Now He says finally, walk, walk,
walk. He does not say this by His own authority.
And he starts to get into some specifics that we'll go through
very quickly in the end, and then next week we'll look at
them explicitly. But he says, you're doing good
here, brethren, brothers and sisters, but these things right
here I want you to pay close attention to because they're
smelly. You see that? Friends, I don't know why I never
really concluded it. early in my ministry. But these
things have application in my personal life in such a degree
that I'm driven to righteousness. I want you to hear this. Because here's the other part
of even understanding a right view of grace and righteousness
and holy living and striving and obedience to Christ out of
affection and power. Here's one of the other things.
What we do is we put such an emphasis on those problems in
our lives and those sins in our lives that they bind us to guilt, to brokenness, to regret,
What's your sin? What do I mean? We've got a list
of things. Don't do this. Don't do that.
Don't do this. Walk this way. Walk this way. Walk this way.
Don't walk like the Gentiles. Walk like the church. You see,
it's everywhere. It's all over the New Testament. Don't tell
me that we don't have instruction on how we ought to live. But
in our flesh and with the devil's temptation, James chapter 1,
We are tempted to stay in a place of guilt when Paul says in Romans
8, 1, there is therefore now no condemnation. So we remain
condemned of our own selves for that which God has not condemned
us. So then we become the master of our own judgment. It's crazy. Well, we should just keep sinning
so God can forgive us. No, we've already gone through that. That's
not the point. The point is when I see this
great church who had it all together and then Paul says, but you need
to clean up your sexual immorality, you've got some problems there.
You need to live in purity in your body. You need to be careful
as you start to look at some of the things in which you walk.
Don't walk in lust. Don't wrong each other. Why would
he say that? Because they were doing it. Paul doesn't give just generalized
instruction. He answers issues. Timothy came
and visited. Praise God, the report was fantastic. The pastoral then. What? Oversight, the shepherding of
this local church to the apostles during this time? He wrote this
letter. He says, you're doing great. We're celebrating Christ.
We're celebrating God's work. But look, don't forget about
these things. Work toward them. And it's harsh language. It's
not easy. Oh, just get to it when you get to it. No, it even
says God's going to bring judgment on people who do this. So in
other words, God's going to bring judgment. God can't bring judgment
to His church because judgment has been put on Christ. So those
who continually walk in these things without respect of repentance
at all, maybe they're not in Christ. You see? So there's a
measurability that comes with walking in this world to the
display of our righteousness, which is Christ. And when I see
this, I'm empowered, church. I'm empowered to let go of those
things that I continue to hold myself bondage to and guilt.
Man, I wish I had not ever done those things. It's not even present
sin. It's like, oh, woe is me, look
at what I... We know from what we've been
saved. Let us walk in that freedom. And when it comes back up, Paul
is actively teaching the church in the New Testament, put to
death the flesh. How? We've already learned that.
By the Word of God. See, this would be very difficult
for me, if in this chapter 4 verse 1, if Paul said, finally, we
exhort you, we beseech you, that you should want to please God. I'd be like, Paul, you're Paul. I can't do these things. I don't
know how I'm going to do it. But look what he does. He says,
we urge you in the Lord Jesus. To what? That as you receive
from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you
are doing, that you do so more and more.
You see? We're not talking about somebody
who's living an apostate life. We're not talking about people
who are not living in godly example. We're talking about people who
are still struggling with things. Not all of them, but some of
them. And friends, there comes a time
when we often hold people to a standard that we are not living
in our own selves. And that's the standard that
Paul's calling us to right here. And he's not calling it, Christ
is calling it. So we can't get mad at Paul
and say, well, you're not perfect. Can't get mad at James because
I'm not perfect. If I wrote down all my sins,
I would never get it from the table. Because they'll forever
start coming into my mind, wouldn't they? And then I would have to
confess the sin of trying to organize my sins. And then I'd
confess the sin of the pride of trying to get them all out
on paper so I could walk away from them. And the sin of unbelief
as I repented. And then the sin of guilt because
I feel guilty because I didn't repent beforehand. You never
get up. God's grace abounds. I beseech you in the Lord Jesus,
Friends, this is the utmost persuasion. We're telling you with the most
great emphasis. It's not us who say these things,
Paul is saying. It is Christ. In the authority
and the name of Jesus Christ, we urge you, just as you've learned
how you ought to walk in the Lord and pleasing to Him, You
continue to do so more and more. This is the command of Christ.
Now, we know the Word of God, all of it. 2 Timothy 3, for the
Word of God is what? All Scripture is breathed out
by God. All of it. And is useful for
teaching, correction, training in righteousness, rebuke. And the man of God, that the
man of God, so that the man of God would be competent in every
good work. There's no other need. There's
no other thing. but the Word of God. We know
that if Paul had not put in the Lord Jesus in this phrase, we
would not have to argue, was this God or is this Paul? Paul
wrote it. He did not clarify, this is just
my opinion like he does some places, or this is my wisdom. But even if he had, does Paul's
wisdom not come from the Lord? If it's written in God's Word,
it's a command from God. If it's written in the Word,
it's true. Whether we like it, whether it's
bound or conflicts by our culture, whether it's just frustrating
or what, it's true. It's what we should understand.
Especially when Paul and the writers of the New Testament
say, I am saying this in the authority of the name of Christ.
I'm telling you. in the Lord Jesus. This is the
authority through which Paul speaks. Not his own desire, but
the command of the Lord and the persuasion of Christ. Your Lord. Your Savior. Your King. Paul's
not saying, hey, I want you to make Christ your Lord. Paul's
saying, Christ is your Lord. Obey Him. We're not making Christ Lord
by falling in line. He's Lord. That's baloney. We're disciplined and discipled
and we repent and we walk and we live by faith forever, going
back in daily to the Word of God for our strength and the
grace and living life together. We look after each other. We
hurt each other. We have opportunity to forgive
each other. We do all these things every single day. It's a war.
It's a battle. You can never kick your shoes
off and kick your feet back and go, I've got this Christian life.
It's great. It's not going to happen that way. I wish so. We wouldn't have church services.
We'd just meet at the pool or something. The commandment of
the Lord about the persuasion of Christ, I urge you. What does
He urge? To walk and to please God. I want you to walk and I
want you to please God because you were taught it before. You
know what to do. Do what you're doing and do so
even more. You see that? And that's what's
beautiful about it for me. This is beautiful about it in
a lot of places, but in this, I can see. And as a pastor for so long,
you know, when you first go into ministry, you know where you
are, but you fake it. You know you're dumb and ignorant,
but you act wise and haughty and powerful and strong because
you look like a baby. You don't even have your beard
filled in yet. I mean, you know, it's rough. It's rough. And so you stand
strong and you sin all the way through, and you get through
a couple of first years, your first five years, first six years,
first eight years, and you go, my goodness, I was a horrible
person. And then you get into that, what I call that sophomore
year where you, I got it now. I'm not faking it. I'm not a
child putting on a man's clothing. I got it now. And then you start
instructing. And then you start preaching,
and then you start striving, and then you just walk, and it's
like you just sort of poof into existence out of the presence
of God and just suck back up into there, you know, and all
these people, if they would ever open their eyes, they'd see and
walk with you. I mean, you know, that's about
it. And then you get into the latter
days, or a little more mature, and I'd like to say I'm in my
senior, but I'm probably still in my sophomore. By the way, it means wise fool. Sophos moron. That's what it
means. That's the combination. Sophomore.
All you 10th graders, there you are. But as you get later, you see,
wow, I'm a nothing. I'm a nothing. And my sin is
forever before me. It may not be visible to anybody
else, but I know it's here. I know it's there. I know what's
coming and I know that the grace of God is my only hope. And I'm
not looking at a people who need to get their act together. I
am the people who need to get my act together. And the only
act that I'm going to be able to get together is continually
trusting in Jesus Christ, the righteous. So no matter how hard
I try, no matter how much I persuade myself to walk as I ought to
walk to please God, it is only possible and it's only evident
and it's only going to actually happen in effectuality if I know
that Christ is my only hope in that. And so it becomes in a
place of, it's sort of like lunacy. I'm going to do this, but I can't
because Christ has got to do it in me. I'm going to walk this
way anyway, even though I'm probably ill-motivated. But God, do the
work in me. Father, Lord, none of this work
that I'm doing, even the righteousness in which I'm walking, is going
to account for anything if Your grace isn't sufficient for me,
if Your love isn't cast upon me, if Your power isn't resting
on me, that I would be Yours in Christ Jesus. God, buy me,
please! Take me out of this box! Take
me out of this chasm. Take me out of this pit of despair.
I have no other place to go. I've walked around in my own
way for all these years and all I've done is tread in my own
fecal matter. Made more mess. The reason I said that is because
I envision myself like a box of puppies just sitting in a
window waiting to be adopted. Stepping in their own poo. The puppies don't know they're
cute. When we look at them with affection,
we say, oh, look at that nasty little puppy. Let's take him
home and clean him. That's sort of like what God does. Snatches
us out of the domain of darkness, but it's much greater than that.
God's righteousness, His holiness bears upon our wickedness. We
are condemned in unbelief to suffer not just the consequence
of our sins, earthly-wise, in this world fleshly, but to suffer
the eternal justice of God in our flesh forever. In the Lord Jesus, I urge you,
I beseech you to walk in order to please God. You know what
you ought to do, church. That's what Paul's saying. You
know how you ought to walk. You've learned. You know what
that tells us about the gospel ministry? It's exactly what Jesus
says to do in Matthew 28. Because all authority in heaven
and earth has been given unto me, therefore, go make disciples."
What does that mean? Teach them to obey everything
I've commanded you. That's what a disciple is. One
who walks in Christ. One who teaches others to walk
in Christ. Much like the testimony of that congresswoman that you
told me this morning. If you believe in the gospel,
if you claim to be in Christ, you don't support the death of
the unborn. You just don't. And sometimes
people are bound up with, you know, we live in a different
world, we understand, but we've got to let people have their freedom,
we don't want to impose our religion on them. Absolutely not. I don't
want anybody coming to church who's not in Christ. But the
righteousness of God and His truth is going to be down on
their head anyway. I don't want unbelievers stinking up the place. But you know what I'm saying?
Even the worst atheist in the world is still bound by the authority
of God. He is still Lord over their lives
and will be Lord over their eternity as He gives His just wrath. And
all of us, though we may have compassion, and we should, we
will not have sadness in eternity. We will not see the reprobate
and weep. We will be at peace and we will rejoice Christ in
His righteousness. We will praise Him for His glorious grace that
if it had not been for Him loving us and saving us, we would be
in the same state. And not only that, but we know
that without the intervention of God, every human being, whether
they know it or not, has an opportunity in their flesh for salvation.
But it's a moot opportunity. What does that mean? Well, we
see that Paul says in Romans 1 that all people are without
excuse. They know God is who He is. They know truth is what
it is. They know righteousness is what
it is. They know morality, but they suppress the righteousness,
they suppress morality, they suppress truth by what? Works of unrighteousness. Paul is saying don't walk that
way. It's easy to find some brothers and sisters to engage in life
with in such a way that's not pleasing with God and we feel
justified because we're comfortable because we're doing it together.
Don't believe that the crowd is going to save you from God's
judgment. I'm okay, I've got some people got my back. They're
going to have your back when God beats it. And theirs. See, we don't have to as the
church fear God that way. But as unbelievers they must
recognize the authority of God over their lives. And we as a
church must live in such a way that shows God's authority over
our lives. What good is salvation? What
good is to say that we serve an omnipotent God who by His
own Word breathed the words and the universe came into being?
That Christ formed us from the dirt and breathed into us the
breath of life. That God became man and dwelt
among us. That the fullness of the glory
of God is revealed to us in Jesus Christ. And that the love of
God is made manifest to us through the suffering of Christ. And
the power of God and salvation made manifest to us through His
resurrection. If we don't live as we are, then
where is the witness of Christ? We preach one thing. We live
another. We say one thing. We act a different
way. What is that? That's a lie. It's
not a confession. It's a lie. And see, the road's bad. Isn't
it? It's bad. Oh, I'm feeling good
in grace. Oh, I'm feeling condemned. I've
got to steer it back. It's forever. And there's a certainty
and there's a hope. Establish your hearts last week
in holiness. I pray that God would establish
you, would abound you in love more and more, and establish
your hearts in holiness before Jesus Christ. So that the day
of Christ, when we stand there, there is a record of God's working
in our lives. You ever seen that? You know
what I'm saying? To stay in sin and to not war
against it is to be not in Christ. When we stand before Christ,
not only are we justified by Christ, but we're justified because
of Christ, and there's a witness of our justification
as Christ works in us. That's what it is. And not everybody
is going to be where everybody else is. Not everybody is going
to walk in this life perfectly serving God and fighting sin
and being a great theologian. Because not everybody is going
to have the time. There are going to be some who at the day of
the Lord will be saved. Never to have served Him one
ounce in this life. How's that? I don't know. Jesus
just said. Look at that wage. Those people that come in and
they work all day and then that homeboy comes in at the last
hour and gets a full day's wage. That ain't fair. What about the man or the woman
who's dying? All those years of rejecting the Gospel and all
that Word comes back and the Spirit of God brings fruit to
it. God's glorified in that. And you can stand and you can
preach. You know one of the biggest errors of preachers at funerals? Oh brother so and so served the
Lord and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Don't ever preach my funeral as proof of my righteousness
and justification in Christ Jesus because of my ministry and the
efforts I put through in the text. I could be a pagan devil
worshiper and preach the Word of God. Now I'm not saying correctly,
but There's a lot of people in ministry who have never been
born again. And there's a lot of born-again
brothers, as I have been, who have been used by the devil greatly
to distract people from truth. We come to know that we are living
in grace. And that's what Paul says, keep
living in grace. Living in grace, you receive
the truth. Now hold fast to the truth. What
is the truth? Christ. Hold fast to Christ. You receive the Word of God.
Not just in mind, not just in word, this is what he says, of
men, but as the Word of God. You know by whose authority we
came and preached to you, and you received it as God's Word,
not as mine. Not as men's. Not as a philosophical
debate. Not as a new cultural fad. Not
as a new theological revolution. You received God's Word. He spoke
to you and you heard it. And you've become alive in Christ.
This is a miracle of God. Friends, I don't want to see
people rise from the dead so I can believe. I see the dead
come to life in Christ when they hear the Gospel. And it's a greater
miracle than if a body came up out of the ground. I can take
a burned up car and rebuild the engine and crank it up. Woo!
I'm not God. Back in the 30's they used to
put electronics and electrodes and put electricity through bodies
and they thought it was life because they could make a dead
cadaver wiggle. Look at there! We're close. It's about electricity. What would they think of popcorn
these days? The popcorn's alive! Keep living in grace, brethren.
Keep loving each other. You're doing well in this church.
You're doing well in this, Christian. It is indeed the power of God
that gives you such affection, as I have that affection, Paul
says. It is the affection of God, I'm sorry. Stay in this. Keep doing these
things. Lord, he even prays, continue to abound in them more
and more love for each other. And most importantly, keep learning.
Keep learning the Gospel in your life. Keep learning Jesus Christ
every day. Live in Him because He is alive
in you. Walk more closely with Him. He
said in 2.13, and we also thank God constantly for this, that
when you receive the Word of God, which you heard from us,
you accept it not as the Word of men, but as it really is,
the Word of God, which is at work in you, believers. You see why to play with sin
and to play it off is just one of those things that just doesn't
make sense if the Word of God is working in us. The living
Word of God is Jesus Christ. I'm not talking about application
of black and white words. I'm talking about infusing of
Christ who is the living Word. How do we get that? Through the
black and white pages. Applying in obedience the lists
of things is not walking in Christ. Friends, God who is alive in
us, whom He has purchased through the blood of His Son, works in
us mightily. This reality of faith, with this
reality of your faith comes the reality of what I've sort of
tried to play it this way, or word it this way, of a visible
and personal holiness. Personal, not in that it's your
holiness. Look, what I did, no, it's that
it's in you. Because a lot of people like
to have the argument, well, the church, see, what it is, the
church is large and there's a lot of Christians, and so as a whole,
on average, Christians are more holy than non-Christians. So
that's sort of what got, that's baloney. Paul is talking to the church
collectively. You all walk this way. How does that work? If I
have a gourmet meal, $5,000 worth of food all over this table to
feed a bunch of people, dignitaries, I mean stuff flown in from everywhere
and chefs from around the world. Imagine some of those dinners
at the White House probably cost half a million dollars. Imagine
that. Easy. Imagine that. I played saxophone
in a wedding years ago that was $115,000 for the reception. Crazy. But that kind of idea
of saying, well, the church, you know, it doesn't matter about
the one person who's not living well or the one person who's
just walking away. It's okay. Because collectively,
if we average it out, we're all doing okay. That's like saying
you're going to a million dollar meal and there's just a couple
of roaches on the table. I'm sorry. It went from delight
to dive. It's awful. It's over. Friends,
we are responsible to display a visible and personal battle
over sin. Battle with sin. Victory over
sin. And I'm not pulling in Lutheranism
here. I'm not talking about perfection.
Our perfection is in Christ. Even if we got it, it wouldn't
be perfect. You see? But there is a reality of personal
holiness, of a moral transformation. The heart... would be blameless
before Christ as you live in this life. Paul is saying, I
want to see you grow into that holiness. I want to see the work
of God more and more and more abundantly evident in your life. I want to see you be more forgiving
now than you were a year ago. I want to see you have more affection
for the brethren than you did yesterday. I want to see God's
work in you because if it's not there, He's not there. That's
the point. What do we do if I don't see
the work of God? What am I supposed to do? You
need to pray God would work in you. How am I going to do that? Read the Word of God and you'll
be compelled to do so. I think it starts, church. Listen,
it starts here. Not here, here. It starts in
the Word. I've never met anyone in my entire
life who has never eaten food. But yet I meet so-called Christians
all the time who couldn't tell me the last thing they learned
from God's Word. They have not eaten of the bread
of life. And then they call me and they say, how am I supposed
to overcome this? How am I supposed to see? How
am I supposed to pray? I'm praying and God won't do anything in my life,
anything in my marriage, anything in my job, anything with my heart,
anything with my addiction, anything, anything, anything. Well, what
have you read in the Bible in the last few hours? You know
what they want? They want a McDonald's faith.
Yeah, I like freedom from crack and a better attitude. That'll
be $16, drive around. I mean, yeah. Here you go. And they think I'm the McDonald's
server. They think you, because you walk righteously, are the
gal that's going to tap them on the head like a magic wand.
I've got a magic wand. Come on over. It's made out of
steel. I'll hit you with it. Now here's your magic wand. It's
not magic. It's not mysterious. It's supernatural. God's Word
infuses into us life. His mercies are new every day.
Not every week. Not every year. Not every January
1st. Day. And if I were you, I would say
every hour. Get some Word of God in you,
friends. It will overpower your hobbies. I promise you it will.
It will overpower your job. It will overpower your problems.
Christ will overcome all these things primarily and foundationally
in that you won't care much about them anymore when you're spending
time with the Lord. And those that are really bothersome,
really burdensome, He will give you the peace and the power to
sufficiently suffer through it. Romans 8.8 It says, those who
are in the flesh cannot please God. Paul says that we must not
walk in the flesh if we're going to please God. We must walk by
faith. We must walk in the Spirit. We
must walk with Christ. It's here, y'all. Now we command you, brothers,
in the name of our Lord Jesus, 2 Thessalonians 3, 6. It's a
couple of weeks ago. That you keep away from any brother...
I actually haven't got there. 2 Thessalonians 3, 6. We're going
to be there months from now. I command you, brothers, in the
name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother
who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition
that you received from us. It's such an important reality
that we walk as Christ has called us to walk together. that when
people refuse to do so, we're to ostracize them until they
actually come to repentance. Why? Because it's a pot on the
face of the Gospel. And it's interesting because
congregations hold their pastors to that standard, but not their
parishioners. And it's all-inclusive. You hear
about these pastors with bad attitudes and making their church
buy their books so they can be number one sellers. It takes
them years to get them out of those pulpits. Years. They have
to go out of the country so they can fire them. Yet there are so many people
in the congregation living the same way. It doesn't excuse one or the
other. It's about everything. It's about the brother or the
sister who refuses to walk. I'm not giving that sin up. I'm
not stopping that. I'm not going to get married.
I can live with this woman as much as I want to and still be in
the fellowship of God. I can sell drugs because I need
a little extra income. I can watch these things on TV.
I know the difference. They're not going to hurt my
marriage. Yes, they will. Most importantly, they'll hurt
your witness when that which is done in darkness comes to
light. And friends, all of us are scared to death of the light
when we have sin. Oh God, please don't shine the
light on that. But Jesus says in Nicodemus that people love
the darkness, therefore they don't come into the light. They
don't want to be seen because their works are evil.
But those who come to the light, do so that it may be," here is
His words, "...clearly seeing that all their works have been
carried out in God." So now we're back to the beginning. How are
we to walk in pleasure in God? We walk with Him. We come to
His Word. We come to His table. We do all
these things so that we may know He is our Father. And in verse 2 there it says,
for you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord
Jesus. You know what we've already taught you. You know that you
are alive in Christ, so live in Him as He lives in you. Submit
to Him. Call to Him. Cry to Him. Run
to Him. You see? Hold to Him. And He's
not with us in the flesh. He's with us in His Word. And
we're together as the body. We need each other. More importantly,
even for our physical needs, we need each other in prayer.
We need each other to pray for each other. We need each other
to encourage each other in the Word. If I'm dying and I'm in
despair and my life's falling apart, I don't need your pity,
though I may want it. What I need more is for you to
rebuke my pity and fill me with the fullness of the glory of
God with His Word. Pray that God would give me joy
in the midst of darkness. Because that's what's really
glorious. And when we see our sin, we fall into a little mini
death camp. a little mini deathbed, and we
despair over and over again. And in reality, we need to strive
to share each other the Word of God, to share with each other
the grace of God. You know that if you sin, you
have an advocate. You know that your heart is new and that you
hate it when you do sin. You know that your testimony
is true and that your life should follow. You know that in what
ways your life should emulate Christ. You know those who are
not walking, striving, desiring holiness are not in Christ. And you know, Paul would say
to this church, I edify the light among you. And I encourage you
to strive to put to death the flesh. And church, that Word
is true for us today. We're not condemned before God,
nor are we strangled by sin any longer. But we need to take a
note of a few things in our lives. What are they for you? Are they forgiveness? Bitterness? Fear? What we say, what we think,
what we lust over? What are they? We know what our
sins are. We come to the cross of Christ with those. We remember
and believe Christ took those from us and paid the penalty
for those sins. So we're no longer subject to
God's condemnation. So we can freely walk and say,
Lord, this is You. Help me walk. Give me a striving
to walk. It's a desperation of dependence,
even as a believer. But it's not brokenness in the
sense that we can't live with joy. Because our joy is there
because Christ is at work. And there's several things. I
know we've gone a little long. We started a little late. Several
things in verse three through eight. Look at these and we'll
talk about them next week. For this is the will of God, your
sanctification. Your sanctification. That you
are righteous, justified, holy, and perfect before God in Christ
Jesus right now. You are. But our lives forever
are molded in this lifetime into the image of Christ. sanctifying
us, making us more holy in our thoughts and minds and desires.
And friends, a lot of times this comes through pruning, discipline,
correction, suffering. But he gives a list of things.
He says, you're walking with the Lord, and the will of the
Lord is you are sanctified. And it looks like this, that
you abstain from sexual immorality. We're going to talk about that
next week. Sexual immorality, what is it?
We live in a day when sexuality is a freedom to be that which
you desire to be, what you feel, what you want. And either God's
Word is the standard or it's not. I won't get on it. Verse
4, let each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness
and honor. Put to death the lust of the
flesh, the passion of the flesh. 1 John 2.15 Don't love the world. Put it to death, those loves. Not of the passion of lust like
the Gentiles, who are ignorant of God or do not know God. See
that no one wrongs his brother, transgresses against his brother,
sins against his brother in this matter. Because the Lord is an
avenger of all things such as these. We told you beforehand
and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for
impurity, but in holiness. Therefore, whoever disregards
this, disregards not man, but God who gives His Spirit to you. His Holy Spirit to you. And so friends, as we close this
service, this opportunity of hearing and thinking, Let us
not disregard these words. Let us not disregard that which
God has given us. To walk in purity. To walk in
a manner worthy of the calling. The calling, what has Paul already
said, to His glory. So that it can be clearly seen
that we are truly in Christ. At this time in our service,
church, we're going to partake of the Lord's table. And I don't
want to belabor it, just drag it out, because we've been talking
about it all day. We've been talking about it all
day. The grace of God, the love of
God, the justice of God, the righteousness of God, through
the Son Jesus, who gave His life as a ransom for His church, to
pay their penalty, to pay their sin debt, to pay for that judgment
that should have been theirs. And so church, as we take the
Lord's Table, we see in several places in Scripture that gives
us an instruction. It is just a remembrance. It's
not supernatural. It's not something that does
something for our spiritual life as we drink or eat that stuff.
God isn't present in the wafer. We don't take a literal stance
and having to use the right kind of materials for such a thing.
It is about remembering that Christ suffered in His body and
it was broken and that His blood was spilled so that we could
have eternal life. And furthermore, as we see instruction
of Paul, that we ought not to take the Lord's table in an unworthy
manner. What does that mean? If we have
been forgiven much of all things, much by God through Christ, then
we also must forgive each other and those who have offended or
sinned against us. So that when we take the Lord's
table, the foundation is that we are in Christ. We are His
because of grace and forgiveness. And the test is, are we forgiving
others in our own lives? Are we letting them free of what
they've done to offend us? And if they repeat that, will
it be the first offense in our minds? Or is this just a list
of continued offenses? Friends, if we've forgiven something,
it's new every time it comes up. And I want us to think about
that. I want us to take the time of just being quiet before the
Lord. And I want us to just meditate
on that. Think about the Gospel. Some
of us in here today may say, you know, I'm not quite sure
I'm born again. I don't know where I stand. Friends,
if you stand on your own efforts, If you stand on your own righteousnesses,
if you stand on your own status, if you stand on your own materialism,
if you stand on your own abilities, you will never stand before Christ
justified. If you stand at all in your own
power, you will never be justified. You will never be forgiven. But
the good news, the Gospel, is that God has saved you through
Jesus Christ alone. Are you believing in Christ today? Not yesterday, not tomorrow,
now. If you find that difficult, then
my only course of action for you to take is what the Scripture
says is to plead with God that He would give you a heart of
faith. It would help you see and believe. And friends, I don't
care who we are or how long we've been saved. We all need strength
in our faith. And so even as believers today,
we need to pray that God would continue to strengthen us, continue
to help us love each other, continue to help us walk in holiness,
continue to help us endure in suffering, continue to help us
be the body that He's called us to be as we live this life
for His glory and for His namesake. Let's do that. We thank you for
joining us today for this message. If it's been a blessing to you,
you'd like to reach out to us, have questions about the Word
of God or doctrine, or would like for us to pray for you,
please reach out to us on the web at Gracetruth.org, Gracetruth.org,
or call us toll free at 1-877-789-7725. Grace Truth Church desires to
be a people for God's glory by the power of His grace.