Hebrews Lesson 74 December 28, 2006
NKJ John 10:10 "The thief does not come except to steal, and to
kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may
have it more abundantly.
This week I have gotten some
interesting questions. One
question that came in through email was somebody said, “It seems like you
always cite these different verses before class. Why do you do that?”
Some people don’t know the answer to
that. The reason that I do that is because Bible memory is very important. I
know that a lot of you are very busy and you haven’t quite figured out how to
make that a priority in your life. A lot of people don’t do that. So I am
hoping that by always repeating these sets of verses before class that you will
listen to them. Every now and then I see people lip sinking along with me while
I am saying them which is good review for you, hoping that through all of the
repetition you don’t put your brain in neutral and say, “Oh well that is what
we go through before class.”
I hope that you will think through
those verses. I have chosen them for a number of reasons and I put them
together the way I do for a number of reasons. Hopefully that will help you remember them.
I got started doing that a number of
years ago when I was sitting around at lunch up in Connecticut over at North
Stonington Bible Church at a Labor Day conference. Charlie Clough was speaking
over there. He and Jay Chapel and
I were sitting around talking about different things. Charlie told the story about
how back years ago when he was at Lubbock Bible Church he had a guy in his congregation
who was a bomber. I guess they were flying B-52’s in the Vietnam War and what
it was like the first time he went on a bombing raid over North Vietnam and
over Hanoi. According to the tactic for bombers in flight, they stacked them. You
have two or three levels of bombers. You have your wingman, your bombers on
each side, over you and below you. There is a reason for the way they fly in
formation and how they fly in formation so that everybody can protect everybody
else around them. As he described it, he was flying into North Vietnam and all
the anti-aircraft fire started going off a round him. You just get scared to
death. You want to push the panic button and you want to start grabbing the
wheel of that airplane and start diving and maneuvering and trying to dodge and
get around everything, but there are set procedures for precisely what you are
supposed to do and stay in formation so that everybody can watch everybody
else. He had this panic come over him and fear. All of a sudden in his head he heard the voice of Pastor
Thieme reciting the verses that he used to recite before Bible class. Among
them were Isaiah 40:31 and Philippians 4:5-6 and
others. It stabilized his emotions and calmed him down.
I thought, “That is a fantastic
principle.”
Reciting those verses in such a way
like that before every class so that people will learn them and memorize them
and maybe one day you will be in a position and you will hear my voice in your
head. But you will hear the Word of God and not just teaching. That is very
important. That is one reason I do that.
The last couple of weeks we have
been in this paragraph in Hebrews 6:9-12 which comes to a positive
encouragement after a section where the writer has blasted these Hebrew
believers for their spiritual lethargy. They have become lazy spiritually. They
are yielding to the pressures of the moment, the opposition from Jewish
believers, the antagonism from other Jews who are the opposition from the
Jewish hierarchy – from the Pharisees and the Sadducees- antagonism from other Jewish
unbelievers because they have chosen to follow Jesus Christ and to put their
trust in Him. As they are going through this now they are beginning to second guess their decision to trust in Christ and to follow
Him. So he has blasted them back in verse 11.
He said, “I have much to say about
Melchizedek and the unique priesthood of the Church Age.” That is the thrust of
his argumentation.
NKJ Hebrews 5:11 of whom we have much to say, and hard to explain,
since you have become dull of hearing.
The word dull means lazy or
slovenly. You just don’t care. It has affected your whole spiritual
growth.
“By now I ought to be teaching you
as adults; but I have to go back to basic doctrines, basic principles because
you need milk and not solid food.”
Then he warns them about the real
danger that a person can get in through spiritual lethargy of just losing all
forward momentum in the spiritual life and going into a reverse course where
you back up. It can get to a point just as a practical matter that you just
won’t recover. You reach a point-of-no-return, not an absolute
point-of-no-return because he says that all things are possible with God. We can
recover if God permits. But practically speaking, we have all seen this happen
in people’s lives. They create this habit pattern and this negative momentum with
regard to spiritual things. As far as things go in life, there never is real
spiritual recovery. That is what the warning is. Now he says in contrast...
NKJ Hebrews 6:9 But, beloved, we are confident of better things
concerning you, yes, things that accompany salvation, though we speak in this
manner.
In other words, “I don’t expect you
to stay in this condition. If you respond to what I am teaching you in this
epistle then you’re not going to stay in this position of the spiritual
doldrums where you are stagnant and there is no growth or even reverse growth
where you are backing up completely.”
So what he is confident of is those
things that come with the package that God gives us at salvation that prepare
us for that future salvation. Always remember that when you run across this
noun “salvation” in Hebrews, it is not talking about justification.
In English and in English speaking
churches and among American evangelicals our patois, our common Koine verbiage,
is that if we want to know if someone is going to heaven, we ask, “Are you
saved?’
We use the word “saved” to be a
blanket synonym for entering into eternal life or being regenerated for being
justified. But the Bible uses the word in different senses. In many cases this
noun soteria doesn’t focus on the
beginning of the process where we are regenerate, where we are justified, where
we are reconciled, where our redemption is realized; but it focuses on the end
product what we call phase 3 when we are absent from the body and face to face
with the Lord and realize our blessings and rewards given at the Judgment Seat
of Christ. And so what we see in 9-12 is this focus in almost every sentence on
something future, something oriented to that future destiny and inheritance
which is where he ends in verse 12 that we need to imitate those who through
faith and patience inherit the promises.
In verse 10 he gives his reason, why
he is confident they are going to forward.
NKJ Hebrews 6:10 For God is not
unjust to forget your work and labor of love which you have shown toward His
name, in that you have ministered to
the saints, and do minister.
The same thing with us - no matter
what happens in your life, the same principle is true. God is just and God is
going to work in your life and He is not going to forget any forward advance,
any spiritual advance, any divine good that has been produced in your life
through the Holy Spirit. God is going to remember your work and your labor of
love and the fact that you are ministering and have ministered even though for
them they are in spiritual regression. There is still a measure of some spiritual momentum
and interest because he uses a present tense participle. He talks about God
remembering their past work, the labor that came from
their love for God. It is the love for God that motivates us. You have
ministered to the saints (aorist tense) and you do minister (present tense). So
there is still practical application in terms of Christian service. We studied
the terminology there that it relates to the word diokoneo which is the act of
Christian service.
Verses 11 and 12 are where we are
now. We read…
NKJ Hebrews 6:11 And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence to the full
assurance of hope until the end,
“We desire” is your main verb.
So what you have is an infinitive of
purpose in verse 11 that is your intermediate purpose with your ultimate
purpose given in verse 12.
That is until the end of your life.
NKJ Hebrews 6:12 that you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and
patience inherit the promises.
So step one purpose is show
diligence. Be diligent. Put forth effort in your present spiritual growth. Step
two is to not become sluggish, but to positively imitate those who through
faith and patience inherit the promises.
Now we will look at that and break
it apart this evening. In terms of summarizing this…
Now that leads us to understanding
the rationale that he is using. It is the justice of God. We need to do the
same thing when we think about things. Think about the justice of God or the
essence of God. We saw this as we looked at the essence of God. The focus was
on His righteousness and justice.
Essence of God
Sovereignty Omniscience
Righteousness Omnipotence
Justice 0mnipresence
Love Veracity
Eternal life Immutability
Righteousness is the absolute
standard of His character. Justice
is the application of that. So
whatever God does in His dealing with us, it is always going to be absolutely
fair, right and just because He knows all the data. He is omniscient.
There is no fact that he is unaware of. He knows all of your motivations. He knows all of your
failings. He knows all of your successes. He knows everything. And as Abraham
stated back in Genesis…
NKJ Genesis 18:25 "Far be it from You to do such a thing as
this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as
the wicked; far be it from You! Shall not the judge of all the earth do right ?"
We can rest and relax that God is
going to do the right thing in His evaluation of us.
So we put together this little
flowchart. We will look at it one more time to try to get it into our heads.
The word is taught. Under the filling of the Holy Spirit it comes into the soul
as epignosis doctrine. It is not just
academic knowledge which is gnosis. It is useable
knowledge. That is epignosis. It is spiritually
useable knowledge. But, it is potential. You don’t just automatically apply it
because you are filled with the Spirit. Some people have gotten that idea. It comes from a quasi-mystical view of
the filling of the Holy Spirit – that if I am filled with the Holy
Spirit, He automatically applies it. We all know that if you try to do that
(let go and let God), it is very frustrating because the Holy Spirit doesn’t
override your volition. That is what is wrong with defining the word filling
with the Spirit as control. Control has the idea that your
volition is controlled by the Spirit. Your volition is not. Your spiritual growth is being controlled by the Spirit – not
your volition. It is better to understand it as influence. God the Holy
Spirit is influencing you with the Word of God so that you have that brought to
your attention in your mind to apply. In that process as you apply the Word, God the Holy Spirit produces growth.
Now as we study the Word we go
through this process of divine viewpoint truth coming into our soul. Divine
viewpoint comes in and human viewpoint kosmic truth gets flushed out -
hopefully. Actually it doesn’t leave. It is still there so you have something
to live on when you are in carnality. Sometimes at certain levels of Christian
growth you feel like you almost have multiple personalities. You
are in fellowship walking with the Lord one day, you
are one way.
The next day when you are carnal and out of sorts - you are angry, you are bitter or
you are resentful- you think, “What happened to me? I am like a totally
different person than I was yesterday.”
We feel like there is this battle. There
is a battle going on in the soul. Sometimes you feel like you are two different
people. We all have days like that where we look in the mirror and wonder what
happened. Who is that? But when we are growing we take in the
Word. Epignosis doctrine comes from
divine viewpoint truth that goes into the soul and we exchange the human
viewpoint garbage that we learned growing up for divine viewpoint truth.
As we walk by the Spirit, stay in
fellowship, apply doctrine, abide in Christ the Holy Spirit produces spiritual
growth that affects us in two ways. One way is through spiritual production of
character. This is Galatians 5:21-22, the fruit of the Spirit. But then it also
produces Christian service. That is the positive side of divine good, human
works, Christian service as expressed through our priesthood
which is toward God, serving God. We have a verb that we will see
tonight that is important. The word is leiturgos which is where we get our word liturgy. It is the
idea of serving God. It is related to worship. Our life should be an act of
worship toward God as we obey Him. The second aspect is ambassadorship
which is related to man. That is representing God, taking the gospel to
a lost world. So, Christian service flows out in a couple of different ways. This
is what is covered in verse 10 in terms of our work, our labor of love, and
Christian service. That is all summarized in verse 10.
Ephesians 4:11-12 says that the
purpose of the pastor-teacher is to equip the saints. That’s you. I am the
pastor. You are the saints. My job is to equip you to do the work of service. How
do you do that?
NKJ Ephesians 4:11 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors
and teachers,
NKJ Ephesians 4:12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of
ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ,
You do that by teaching the whole
council of God, teaching the Old Testament and teaching the New Testament,
teaching all the doctrines, teaching everything so that you become equipped
mentally with what you need to live your spiritual life and to grow. That will
eventuate in service. That is the work of ministry in verse 12. It is the word diakoneo, the same word we have in verse
10 which is the word for ministry.
So let’s look at these verses.
NKJ Hebrews 6:11 And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence to the full
assurance of hope until the end,
Here the main verb of this sentence
is “we desire.” The word for epithumeo which is a word sometimes translated lust in a
negative sense. It indicates a strong controlling desire. It emphasizes
volition. It is a strong desire to see something happen. This is the desire of
the pastor for his congregation that they get serious about the Word of God and
that they press on.
I was going to read was a report I
took off the internet last week on the Barna Report
which George Barna is an evangelical sociologist who takes all kinds of surveys
and has for about 15-20 years on the state of evangelicalism in America. His
end of the year report came out last week and he listed the 10 most significant
findings of the last year. I was going to read all ten of them. I will do that
another time. One of them was that the survey indicated that pastors think that
70% of their congregation is going forward spiritually. The reality is that
about 10% of them are. Now that is a broad spectrum of evangelicalism. I would say that is probably pretty
optimistic even for most evangelicals. Most of them are just part of the old
nod to God crowd. They just want to show up on Sunday morning and have a 20 minute sermonette for Christianettes and that’s it. That
is all that they have got. They don’t ever get much feeding of the Word. But
you have a lot of idealistic pastors out there who are extremely naïve about
the nature of sheep. But I think we have a different scenario here at West
Houston Bible Church and a lot of doctrinal Bible churches because people who
come to doctrinal churches tend to be very motivated to learn the Word. But
even that doesn’t mean that just because you are here three times a week or you
are listening tapes four or five times a week or whatever it is that you going
anywhere spiritually. You may just be accumulating a lot of knowledge, but
there may not be much application or much change. That happens with a lot of
people. We have all seen that happen where people get a lot of knowledge and
think that somehow just the knowledge of doctrine equals spiritual maturity - and
it’s not. It is the application of doctrine that brings about spiritual growth
and spiritual maturity. So the writer of the epistle uses a first person plural
here. It is an authorial “we”. It is simply expressing his
own desire that each one in this congregation shows the same diligence
to the full assurance of hope until the end.
Now I want to come back to this word
in just a minute. This idea – the same diligence - the
same as what? What is the point of comparison? The same diligence - you
really have to go to the next verse to pick it up. In verse 12 we read…
NKJ Hebrews 6:12 that you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith
and patience inherit the promises.
Now in the context of Hebrews he is
going to go through this whole list of faith heroes in chapter 11 at the end of
which he is going to say, “This great cloud of witnesses.”
So what he has in his head is he
looking back to the great heroes of the faith from the Old Testament. Because
he is focusing on the Old Testament doesn’t mean that that nobody in the New
Testament is, but in terms of canonicity they aren’t there yet to mention them. So we are talking about Adam and Noah and Abraham and
Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and Moses and David and Elijah and Isaiah and
Jeremiah and Daniel and all the Old Testament saints. But also we would include
the New Testament people such as Mary and Martha. We would also talk about
Peter and Paul and James and all of the apostles that these are men and women
who pushed it to spiritual maturity and were tremendously dedicated to serving
the Lord. That is the example. We are to look to them because they are
imitating Christ. It is not that we are imitating them because we are imitating
them. As we will see in a few minutes, look at some of these passages.
Paul said, “Imitate me because I am
imitating the Lord.”
We don’t imitate him in the things
where he is not imitating the Lord, but imitate him and these heroes of the
faith because of what they had in common which made them tremendous servants of
God and servants of Christ. Our focus is to look to them as models and examples
of how they through faith and patience inherited the promises. So we are to have
that same kind of diligence. So he says that...
NKJ Hebrews 6:11 And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence to the full
assurance of hope until the end
Demonstrate it! It is supposed to be
evident in your life. A Greek word that indicates proof that
somebody will look at your life and see this kind of thing.
The word for diligence is spoude. It is the noun form of the verb spoudazo. Spoudazo is the word that is translated in the King James Version,
“study to show thyself approved unto God.” The study
is more of an interpretation in that passage. It is the idea of being diligent
in your responsibilities. Since Timothy was a pastor, his responsibility was to
study and teach. So that is why they translated that “study to show yourself
approved unto God” in the King James. Newer translations usually translate it
“be diligent.” But that is the idea. It involves hard work. It has a sense of
urgency about it. It has a sense of priority and importance that this is so
crucial that you need to be diligent, you need to put forth effort, and you
need to put forth spiritual sweat to grow. You need to make going to Bible class a priority, reading
your Bible a priority, learning promises a priority, studying everything you
can and putting it into application.
As we will see there is a sense of urgency in the text all through the
New Testament because Jesus could actually come back tomorrow. Are we ready for
the Bema Seat? It can happen tomorrow. It may not happen until the next day. Even if Jesus doesn’t come back tomorrow, you may be in a head on
collision on the way home tonight and you are meeting Jesus just as sure as if
He had come. So are you ready? That is the urgency that he has
here. Put forth a diligence, an
effort to the full assurance of hope until the end.
The word for assurance is
conviction. Do you really believe that Jesus could come tomorrow? Now if you
believe that, how is that affecting how you are living today? If you knew for sure that Jesus Christ
was going to come back next week, how would that change what you are doing
between now and next week? If you knew you were going to be standing before the
Bema Seat of Christ in 10 days, how would that change? If it is going to change
anything, then that is what we need to work on. We need to realize that this
really is going to happen. It is not just a nice doctrine. It is not just an
interesting curiosity. It is not just a nice academic fact. Jesus is coming
back. We are going to be taken to an evaluation before Him. And, are we living
today in the light of that evaluation.
That is the idea here - that we have a true conviction that this is
true. That is part of what faith is. If you believe that your house had just
caught on fire, what would you do right now? You would be running out the back
door. Your actions would be related to what you truly believe and are convinced
is true. That is the idea here. There is to be diligence to the full assurance
of hope until the end.
That word “hope” is the word for
confident expectation. It is to the end. That is the destiny. That is the end
goal of the Christian life, not the end of our life; but until the end where we
reach that mature stage. It is the Greek word telos which is related to the
verb teleioo which is translated
maturity or completeness. It is the idea of taking it all the way to the final
product of spiritual maturity.
Then we come to verse 12.
NKJ Hebrews 6:12 that you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith
and patience inherit the promises.
In other words, be diligent. Don’t
be lazy. Don’t become complacent, but set out your goals spiritually. Make a
plan. Change your priorities. Make the Word of God a priority. Listen to tapes.
Get in the car and listen to a MP3 player. When you are at home, put it on
whatever recording device that you have.
Listen to DVD’s. If you don’t have time to listen to a whole lesson
at one time, then listen for 15 minutes. Whatever time you have, utilize that
time. If you want to memorize
Scripture, get 3 x 5 cards. Print them out. You can go
to any Christian books store and buy the NavPress pack for the Navigators that
they have for their basic Bible memorization. They give you a vinyl plastic
thing that has a clear side on it. You get your memory verses and you work on
that. I did that for years. You learn those verses. Whatever works for you, but
just get it done. Memorize
Scripture. Listen to the Bible on tape. You can go to any kind of website (a
used book website) and get Charlton Heston reading the Bible on tape or on CD or whatever it is. The point is to maximize the time that the Word of
God is shaping your thinking.
So we are not to become sluggish. This
is the Greek word nothros which is a
word meaning lazy or sluggardly or complacent. So the contrast is not to become
complacent and sluggish in your spiritual growth, but to imitate mature
believers. He has already accused them of being sluggish. The same word is used
in verse 11 where he says that they have become dull of hearing. So they are
already showing signs of slipping into negative volition.
Then he says to imitate them, the
mature believers. This is the
Greek word mimnetes
which is where we get our word mimic. You can hear it in the sound of
the Greek word mimnetes. It means to
imitate someone, to follow their example as we see how they live. How are we to
imitate them? We are to imitate those through faith and patience inherit the promises. We don’t imitate them in their
carnality, because every human being who is a believer has carnality and
failures. Paul had failures. We don’t imitate them in that area. We imitate
them in the way that they are imitating Jesus Christ. This is what Paul says in
a number of passages.
NKJ 1 Corinthians 4:16 Therefore I urge you, imitate me.
Now he is not on some kind of
approbation trip where he wants everybody to live just like him. He is
imitating Christ as he makes clear in I Corinthians
11:1.
NKJ 1 Corinthians 11:1 Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ.
He is a mature believer.
He is so sold out to the plan of God
and the agenda of Jesus Christ and serving Him in the Church Age that he can
say, “Do what I do.”
This is because he is doing precisely
what Christ said to do. That is the Apostle Paul.
In Ephesians 5:1 he says…
NKJ Ephesians 5:1 Therefore be imitators of God as dear children.
That is the ultimate standard that
we are to mimic.
He says to them….
NKJ 1 Thessalonians 1:6 And you became followers of
us and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of
the Holy Spirit,
So we are to be imitators ultimately
of the Lord Jesus Christ. But this concept of imitation is further defined by
this prepositional clause. It is to be done through faith and patience. I
already pointed out that this is primarily a reference to Old Testament
believers, Old Testament heroes of the faith; but secondarily it would also include
the New Testament leaders of the church.
Now the word here translated
patience is the word makrothumia
which has the idea of long suffering or forbearance. Makro means long. That is where we get
our English word macro. It means big or long or large. Thumia is the word for anger. It takes you a long time to be
irritated, to get angry or impatient.
That is a good word. It makes a lot of sense. Most of us are still
struggling with that. We are to be long suffering. It is through patience and
waiting. We aren’t going to see that inheritance tomorrow or the next day. That
is part of the test – learning to wait on the Lord. This is a different
concept from the word for endurance which is hupomone which has the idea of staying
under the pressure. This is the idea of waiting calmly with a relaxed mental
attitude, not getting impatient because we are living in the devil’s world and
we are getting so frustrated all the time with having to deal with a lot of
sinful people around us.
Turn to James 5. James 5:7-11 gives
us this same idea in an expanded sense. James is one more book to the right -
Hebrews and then James. This is the last chapter of James. James 5:7 is where James begins the conclusion of the epistle. In James 5:7 he says…
NKJ James 5:7 Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious
fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and
latter rain.
He is going to repeat the word for
patience or use it as a synonym for endurance several times from 5:7 to the end
of chapter 5. That’s the theme. He introduced the theme of endurance back in
James 1:2 where he said….
NKJ James 1:2 My brethren, count it all joy when you fall
into various trials,
NKJ James 1:3 knowing
that the testing of your faith produces patience.
Our doctrine gets tested. Our belief
system gets tested. We are to be consistent in application of the Word. It
wraps up in his conclusion. He
says…
NKJ James 5:7 Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious
fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and
latter rain.
Again we see that James has that
same future focus that the writer of Hebrews has and Paul has. We need to live
today in the light of what is coming. We don’t want to be like the person John
refers to in I John 2:28 of having shame at the Judgment Seat of Christ. So we
need to be patient, long suffering, not get impatient until the coming of the
Lord.
He uses an illustration from
agriculture. Whatever you do, you can’t make the corn or make the tomatoes or
whatever you are growing, grow faster. It proceeds at its own rate. You can’t
make yourself grow any faster spiritually. You can’t hurry it up. You can’t go
out there and try to make things happen.
It takes time. I am convinced that a certain amount of spiritual
maturity is going to take place because you become more emotionally mature. It
just takes time and you can’t rush it.
This is not a reference to the
coming of the Holy Spirit at the beginning of the Church Age and then a later
manifestation for some end time. I just have to throw that in because there are
a whole lot of people out there that believe that. As soon as they see latter
rain they start talking in terms of the Holy Spirit because this is a big
charismatic doctrine. It’s not talking about that. It is just using an
agricultural analogy. In Israel you have a rainy season and a spring. That is the early rains. You have
another rainy season later on towards late summer or early fall. That is the
latter rains. It doesn’t have anything to do with the coming of the Holy
Spirit. But there is a whole bunch of people who think it does. That is what
happens when you have literal hermeneutics.
NKJ James 5:8 You also be patient. Establish your hearts,
for the coming of the Lord is at hand.
He repeats the concept again.
Eggizo - it is at hand. It is imminent. It
can happen at any moment. So he repeats this command to be patient and then he says
to establish your hearts. This again is an imperative form of the verb sterizo which
means to set it in place. It is setting something in concrete, to make it firm,
to establish it. You need to take your decision to make the Word of God a
priority in your life and set that in concrete. There are a lot of people who
20 years into their Christian life they are still trying to figure out if they
are going to follow Jesus. It is okay to follow Jesus as long as His agenda is
my agenda and as long as He stays in my comfort zone. But as soon as He gets me
out of my comfort zone, then I better find something else to do. We don’t want
to get too fanatical about this Bible doctrine stuff. The idea here is you have
to establish your heart. You have to make a decision that “what matters to me
is the Word of God. It doesn’t matter what else, because I am going to do what
the Word of God says to do. I am going to make that the thinking of my soul.” So
the command here is to set it in place, to fix it so that it doesn’t move, to
make a permanent decision in terms of the course of your life.
The coming of the Lord is near.
Then we have the reason given based
on a hoti clause. It is because the
Lord’s coming is near. This is a reference again to II Corinthians 5:10 that we
will all stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ.
This brings us to the doctrine of
works that we studied a couple of weeks ago. I just want to remind you of
Ephesians 2:10.
NKJ Ephesians 2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus
for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
You are not saved just so you can go
to heaven. You are not saved just so you can sit in Bible class and accumulate
25 doctrinal notebooks from A to Z of all the important doctrines of the Bible
and be able to correlate everything together. Not that there is anything wrong
with those things, but that is not the purpose for your salvation. The purpose
of your salvation drives through all of that. It is to get through all of that
to application. We are to be living evidence within the framework of the
angelic conflict. That means a production of divine good that stands on record
for all of eternity
NKJ Ephesians 2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus
for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
That is manifesting these good
works. Part of this affects our basic attitude. This is one of the verses in
the Bible most of us would like to say that we believe in the inerrancy and
infallibility of Scripture every word comes from the mouth of God except for
this verse. There is a verse over in Philippians that says do all things
without grumbling or complaining.
We say, “Let’s go to the next
verse.”
This says not to grumble. The word
is the Greek stenazo which
means to complain, to groan or to gripe about whatever it is that other
believers are doing that irritate you.
NKJ James 5:9 Do not grumble against one another, brethren,
lest you be condemned. Behold, the Judge is standing at the door!
Now I don’t know about you, but
there are a lot of things about other believers that irritate me. This is not
an easy verse.
Don’t complain about other
believers. Whatever it is they are doing, don’t complain about them. Don’t
gripe about them. That is between them and the Lord and the Lord is going to
handle it.
You are going to be accountable for
that. They may be doing things in an irresponsible way. They may be doing
things in a foolish way. They may have lower standards. They may be messing up
by the numbers, but that is between them and the Lord. Your job and my job are
to apply doctrine consistently so that we are going to be accountable before
the Lord.
He wants us to realize this. We need
to live in the immediacy of the rapture, the immediacy of the coming of Jesus for us and taking the Lord us to the Judgment Seat of Christ,
so that it is so real to us that it is more real than anything else that we are
doing in life.
NKJ James 5:10 My brethren, take the
prophets, who spoke in the name of the Lord, as an example of suffering and
patience.
He is saying the same thing that the
writer of Hebrews is saying. Look at Abraham, how long he waited before he realized
the promise of Isaac. Look at Jacob as he is out of the land for 20 years before
he returns to the land. Look at Joseph as we are studying now and look at the
years he spends as a slave and then in prison before God promotes him. And look
at David and the years he spent out in the wilderness waiting on the promise of
God before it was finally realized.
Look at Paul who is called an apostle as one out of
season in Acts 9.
Yet he has to spend 14 years back in Tarsus before
Barnabas says, “Oh. Wait a minute we have this guy named Saul of Tarsus or
Paul. I have got to go get him because he would be perfect for the job of
taking the gospel to the Gentiles.”
So he is set aside
in training for a long period of time before Paul finally gets involved in the
ministry. So there is a period of suffering and training and patience in verse
10.
NKJ James 5:11 Indeed we count them blessed who endure. You have heard of the
perseverance of Job and seen the end intended
by the Lord -- that the Lord is very compassionate and merciful.
There is hupomone. It is related to patience.
So the writer of James takes Job as
his example. But there is one other thing that is going on here.
You see when we look at these
examples and you say, “Okay. I hear what you are saying. I need to look at Adam
and Noah and Abraham. But God appeared to them. What about Jesus appeared to
Paul? And you have Peter and Andrew and James and all the other disciples. They
walked with Jesus for 3 years. Now if I had that, then maybe that would make a
difference. These guys - there was something different about them.”
That is the rationalization that
people adopt to justify mediocrity in their spiritual life.
“I can’t have the impact of James or
John or Peter or any of the Old Testament believers because they had something
special.”
The lie is that they were different
from us. We tend to think that they were different; but they are not. The truth
is that there is no difference whatsoever. James 5:17 says…
NKJ James 5:17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he
prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for
three years and six months.
The point is that Elijah is not any
different than you or me. Isaiah wasn’t any different than you or me. Daniel
wasn’t any different from you or me.
Don’t say. “It was his environment.”
Don’t say, “God appeared to
him.”
That is garbage. There is no
difference. The only difference is their volition. You see when you look at Old
Testament saints which is where both Hebrews and James are going here for their
point of comparison, you have got so much more. You have the indwelling of the
Spirit. You have got the filling of the Holy Spirit. You have
been sealed by the Holy Spirit. You have the completed canon of
Scripture. You have this vast array of both Old Testament and New Testament and
Church Age witnesses who have set an example before you. You don’t have an
excuse. I don’t have an excuse. The challenge here is that with all of this we
need to follow their example. The only difference is that they were willing to
trust God and walk by faith and not by sight. We’re not. It is a matter of
volition. Are you willing to do what they did, make the decisions they made,
because for them God was more real and the plan of God was more real than
anything that they experienced – anything in their background.
Now that leads us to a question. That
is, what is it that really made them different? What made it possible for those
men and women to be the spiritual giants that we think of to have impact that
they had and to serve the Lord to such a great degree? How can we imitate
that?
Well, the first point is that it
boils down to their faith. They had the will, the gumption, the guts (whatever
word you wan to use) to really believe God; to truly
trust Him and take Him at His word and take up the challenge to walk by faith
and not by sight.
NKJ 2 Corinthians 5:7 For we walk by faith, not by sight.
That means that the Word of God and
the principles described in the Word of God have to become more real to you
than anything you experience whether it is emotions, pressure from those who
are outside. Think of all the rejection that Jesus went through. John 1 says
that He came to His own, but His own received Him not. For 2,000 years God was
preparing the Jewish people to receive and accept Jesus His Son as their
Messiah.
He came and they said, “We don’t
want you.”
Did He react? Were His feelings
hurt? Did He get all upset and go home?
Did He say, “I am just going to go
home now?”
No, He just kept at it and kept at
it and kept at it. No matter how they mistreated Him, maltreated Him, abused
Him, falsely accused Him, Jesus never vacillated, never changed and never
waffled. He kept His eye on the mission. The mission was to serve God
completely.
So for Jesus in His humanity the
Word of God was more real to Him than all of the opposition, all of the
rejection, all of the hostility, all of the insults, all of the gossip, all of
the slander. They called Him a drunk. They called Him a glutton because He went
to parties and He would eat and drink. Obviously He has to be drinking
alcoholic wine or they wouldn’t have had a basis for calling him a drunk. It
didn’t mean he got drunk. He ate food so they called Him a glutton. That means
He had to have had a glass of wine and then they called Him a drunk. The reason
was that John the Baptist came and he didn’t. He fasted. He did not partake of any pleasantries. You see
people are always going generate an excuse to be against you if you are a
believer – if you are standing for the truth. They are always going to
take something that has a little core of truth and then twist it all out of
proportion. So Jesus came and for Him the Word of God was more real than
anything that people did.
That means that you have to do what
Jesus did, what Paul did what Moses did and what everybody did. They lived on a
totally different code of conduct.
What was in their head and why they lived and why they made the choices
they made was not like anybody else. They had a
different standard of thinking.
They were operating (you are going to love this) on a Mac operating
system while everybody else was on a PC. They had
something better going for them.
They had the truth. Now some of you PC people don’t
understand that. I have been using Mac’s for 20 years and any given Mac I have
ever had never broke. Every PC I have had gets a new everything
every year. They had a superior operating system. They had the truth, divine
viewpoint. They were completely sold out to it. People who continue to try to
operate on both systems – human viewpoint and divine viewpoint when it is
comfortable - always crash. It never works. That is what made the heroes of the
Old Testament better. They operated at key points on divine viewpoint. Their
core values whether we are talking about Jesus or whether we are talking about
Old Testament prophets whether we are talking about New Testament heroes -
their core values were always shaped completely by the Word of God so that the
existence of God and accountability to Christ at the Judgment Seat of Christ
was more real to them than any temptation, than any physical pleasure, than any
personal agenda item that you can come up with. The fact of the Judgment Seat of
Christ was so real to Paul. Just read what he says I Corinthians 9 and in II
Corinthians 5 in places where he talks about running the race and how he beat
his body into submission as it were, using a tremendous metaphor there. You
feel the energy there of how he is almost physically grabbing himself forcing
himself to do that which he knows he must do because of the real danger of
being disqualified. So the existence of God and accountability to Christ was
more real. They were walking by faith and not sight.
That is the first. I have 5 things
that made it possible for these people to be the spiritual heroes that they
were. It all starts after salvation with that willingness to make the Word of
God the number one priority and to walk by faith and not by sight where what
God says is more important to you than what anybody else says or thinks. No
matter what anybody does, the only thing that matters is what Jesus said I need to do in this kind of
situation. That is the starting point. We will get to the other 4 when I come
back from Kiev in three or four weeks.
One of the points is that they all have
a passion for evangelism. While I am gone Ike is going to be teaching on
Tuesday and Thursday night related to principles of evangelism and communicating
the gospel in a pagan world. So you are going to want to pay attention to what
Ike says at that time.
Let’s bow our heads in closing
prayer.