©2003 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

01/19/03

Assumptions

1/19/03 Assumptions

I’ve thought a lot about what I’m going to do this morning,

wondering if it is really a good investment

of what little time we have together,

and in the end I’ve decided to go ahead with it

because I think it may be a helpful ingredient

in my attempts to effectively teach the Word of God to you.

Public Bible teaching is a tricky thing at best

because everyone of us involved in the process,

both me as your teacher,

and each of you who listen to me,

bring so many ingredients into the learning process.

We bring our entire personal church history with us.

We bring our own mental evaluation system

with which we determine truth and error.

We bring with us

certain things we very much want said,

and others we very much don’t want to hear

because they trigger in us warnings that what’s happening is not consistent

with what we believe to be the truth.

Just recently I had a person use words like “blasphemy” and “heresy” to describe some of my teaching.

Those are strong words,

words that motivated me to get together with him

and talk with him both about what he was hearing

and what I was saying.

In the end he realized that what I was saying

and what he was hearing were, in many areas, two very different things

and that he and I were far closer together in our thinking

than he’d realized.

Part of the problem, I think,

arose from the fact that I consciously avoid the use of many of the commonly accepted Christian terms and labels in my teaching

because I consider them to be a hindrance to real learning,

but with my troubled friend

those labels and terms were “proofs” of doctrinal purity,

and their absence from my teaching alarmed him.

I’ll give you a couple of examples to explain to you what I mean.

In nearly 20 years of teaching here at PBF

I have never talked about “the eternal security of the believer”.

But I have talked frequently and at great length

about how God relates to the Christian

at those times when we refuse to trust Him,

or when we try to run away from Him,

or when we believe we must turn our back on the moral framework He has given us

in order to meet some need in our lives.

We are dealing with exactly the same issue,

but we are doing it in a way that enables us to relate

not to THE DOCTRINE,

but rather to God Himself.

Another Christian catch phrase I never talk about

is “the baptism of the Holy Spirit”

or the “infilling of the Spirit”

because, with many of you,

just the mention of those terms creates a strong response within you.

With some of you, just my mentioning them now

raises in you the hope that finally I’ll speak “the truth” on this vital issue,

and with others you respond inside by thinking,

“Oh no! Here it comes again! And I thought I was safe here.”

But the truth is

I have taught frequently about the central issues underlying those popular Christian catch-phrases.

I have talked often

about the way in which,

when we come to Christ,

He creates within each of us a new heart,

recreating us at the deepest level of our being,

giving us a hunger for Him,

and a longing to live a life that honors Him.

And I’ve talked about the way in which

Christ has committed Himself

to living His life out through each of us,

equipping each of us with the gifts and the ability

to express the reality of Christ

in the way that is perfectly matched to each of us as His unique creations.

And when we talk about those things

we are dealing with exactly the same root issue -

the life and work of the Holy Spirit in the believer,

but we are doing it in a way

that avoids the absurd doctrinal circus

that so often surrounds so many of those popular cultural catch-phrases.

The problem, of course,

is that when I don’t use the terms,

it’s sometimes more difficult for those who listen to me

to relax with my approach

because they wonder if I just might be some sort of nut on the edges of the Christian community.

So, with the hope that this may help some,

this morning I want to share with you

several assumptions about you that I bring to every teaching I do.

1. The first assumption I bring is that you are a Christian.

Of course I know that isn’t a correct assumption for all of you,

but, whether you are a Christian or not,

you need to know that I approach my time with you assuming you are.

I am not an evangelist

and I don’t believe evangelism should be the central focus of what we do here on Sunday mornings.

When we get to the 4^th chapter of Ephesians

we will hear Paul tell us

that the Pastoring and Teaching gifts are to be used, “... for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.” (4:12-13)

If what we do here on Sunday mornings

fulfills the purposes for which God established it

the result will be a growing quality, strength, and maturity in your lives

that will equip you to communicate the reality of Christ to this community in which we live

in ways that I could never even begin to do as preacher.

But it will help you to know

that when I speak up here

I do so with the assumption that you are my brothers and sisters in Christ,

that you have reached a point in your own lives

where you have seen your need for the forgiveness of God,

and have reached out to Jesus Christ for the salvation He freely offers us through His blood.

I assume that we all stand equally loved,

equally valued,

and equally and eternally significant before our God,

and the only thing that in any way qualifies me to stand before you

is God’s decision to place a teaching gift within me

that I am then obligated to use

to feed you truth

in a way that will help equip you

for the work and life God has for you as His child.

I was involved in a conversation with a fellow Christian recently

in which the person I was talking with

concluded our conversation by saying, “I’m so grateful you didn’t beat me up.”

I responded by saying, “Why in the world would I want to do that...you’re my brother.”

But His comment made me realize again

the kind of abuses of power and position

that are so common in the Christian world.

Having said that I approach you with the assumption that you are a Christian,

I will go on to say that

if you are not yet a Christian

I’m thrilled that you’re here.

One of the best things you can do

as you wrestle with the issues going on between you and your Creator

is to expose yourself to the thinking

and the lives of those who bear the name of Christian

because it will help you to decide what you’ll do with Jesus Christ in your own life.

2. I assume that because you are a Christian

God has already created within you a new heart,

a heart that, if it were allowed to give leadership to your life,

would result in a life of moral purity,

and an approach to life motivated by a longing to live in a way that brings honor to your Lord Jesus Christ.

And this second assumption

has a profound affect on the approach I take to my teaching.

I spent at least some of my childhood

listening to preachers

who apparently assumed it was their responsibility

to provide their people with reasons why they should be good.

Much of what they would do

was designed to create within their listeners

a kind of emotional manipulation

that would then hopefully motivate the people to be better and do more.

The four pillars of this approach

were fear - “God will pour out His wrath on you if you don’t change”,

shame - “after all God has done for you, shouldn’t you be doing more for Him?”

guilt - “Look at your life! Are you really living the kind of Christian life you should be living?”

and ego motivation - “We just want to publicly thank our dear brother for his generous gift to our building campaign.”

I’m not sure why,

but the negative ones - fear, shame, and guilt - seemed to be by far the most effective with me,

probably because there was so much to work with in my life.

But when I finally met my Lord at the age of 19

and He created that new heart within me

I made the most remarkable discovery.

Motivation to grow in my Christian life was never the problem.

The problem wasn’t wanting to be good,

it was knowing how to be good.

The problem wasn’t wanting to be productive,

it was knowing how be productive.

And whenever I teach

I assume the presence of that new heart within the Christian.

I assume that there is at the core of your being

a longing for a life that honors your Lord.

For me to try to pump you up with some emotion-based motivation for change

would be to deny the reality of the recreative work of Christ within you.

3. Along with this, however,

I assume that there are some lies present within your life

that are preventing you from allowing that new heart within you

to exercise leadership in your life.

My responsibility as your teacher

is not to try to give you the motivation

to live a life that honors your Lord,

my responsibility

is to do what I can to help you recognize those lies

that are preventing you from trusting the motivation

that God Himself has already placed within your heart.

I’ll give you some examples.

If you are struggling with some moral battle in your life right now,

underlying that battle is the belief

that the only way some need in your life can be met

is though your stepping outside of God’s moral framework in order to meet that need.

You honestly believe

that you must choose between meeting your needs

and obeying your God.

That is exactly what Satan did with Adam and Eve in the Garden.

He convinced them that what they really needed

could not be found within the boundaries for life established by God.

It was a hideous lie of course,

and it is a hideous lie in your own life.

But until you see it for the lie that it is,

it will continue to have power over you.

There are all sorts of lies we bring with us into our walk with the King,

and each one of them robs us of some measure of the freedom God has for us.

We bring with us all sorts of lies about our God into our walk with Him,

lies that make it extremely difficult for us to trust Him,

or even to like Him at times.

I can give you a quick test to help you know where some of those lies are.

Any place where your God does not think,

and act exactly like Jesus Christ did when He was here,

your concept of God is wrong.

Any time you anticipate Him responding to you

in ways that are not absolutely consistent with the ways

that Christ responded to His disciples,

your concept of God is flawed.

And each of those misconceptions

war against the leadership of that new heart within you.

We bring all sorts of lies about ourselves into our walk with God.

Does God like you?

Does He delight in you?

Is He intimately involved in every aspect of your life?

What sort of goals does He have for your life?

Is He angry at you?

Disappointed in you?

How does your presence in His family affect Him?

Every place where our assumptions are inconsistent with the truth

those assumptions make it more difficult

for us to know the incredible freedom

that comes from the truth

freeing our new hearts to give leadership to our lives.

We also have all sorts of lies within us

about what God is seeking to accomplish in our lives.

It’s not at all uncommon for people to enter the family of God

believing that God’s goal is to turn us into faithful church people

whose “success” in our Christian lives

can be measured by how faithfully we support and involve ourselves in the church organization.

It is a lie that is frequently strongly reinforced

by the massive, highly refined Christian industry in our nation.

Do you know what church really is?

It is not something you are suppose to give to God,

it is a gift that God has given to you,

a group of fellow believers

who support and encourage one another.

And look what they’ve done to our song...

But my point with this 3^rd assumption is simply this -

every time I teach

I do so believing that my primary role

is to help us to recognize and eliminate some of those lies

that are preventing that new heart within us from expressing itself freely through us.

4. I also assume the greatest gift I can ever give those who listen to me

is the ability to accurately understand the Word of God

because it is the Word of God

that has the ability to transform our lives.

I have all sorts of opinions

and ideas about all sorts of things in our world.

Some of those opinions and ideas will seep into my teaching.

It is unavoidable.

But the only thing I can ever offer you

that will have the power to bring change into your lives

is an exposure to what God has said to us

and an ability to correctly understand what it means.

When I begin preparation for our times together

the three questions that I wrestle with above all others are these.

What passage does God want us to focus on this week?

What does the passage mean? What is God really saying here?

And then, how can I help us to see it correctly?

5. When I teach

I also assume the presence of a hook in your life

that God intentionally has not removed from you

because it serves His purposes in keeping you in desperate daily need of Him.

When Paul talked with us about the hook in his life he said this:

2CO 12:7 Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me -- to keep me from exalting myself!

2CO 12:8 Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me.

2CO 12:9 And He has said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.

2CO 12:10 Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.

I don’t have any idea what your hook is,

but I know how it affects you.

I know it is the one thing you would most love to eliminate from your life.

I know you either believe now

or have believed in the past

that it is the one thing within you

that is really preventing you from achieving much greater effectiveness and productivity in your Christian life.

I know it makes you feel as if other Christians who do not have your particular hook

really have a much easier time of it than you do.

I know that it is the one thing in your life

that most consistently reminds you

that it is only the love,

and the grace of God that makes this Christian life livable.

And I also know there are some of you

who have gone to great lengths in your lives

to hide from that hook God has placed within you,

and if you have succeeded in doing so,

at the same time you have hidden

from the greatest single doorway you will every have

into the discovery of the breadth,

and length,

and height,

and depth of the love of God that you will ever possess.

I know it must have taken tremendous energy on your part to hide from that hook,

but my greatest wish for you

is that rather than running from it

you will turn and run toward it,

and embrace it in the context of the love and the grace of God,

recognizing it for what it is -

yet another expression of God’s love for you.

And from a teaching point of view,

my assumption of that hook in your life

is of tremendous value

because it gives me the appearance of far greater wisdom and insight than I really possess.

I have grown accustomed to people

believing that somehow I have found out what’s going on in their lives

and being absolutely convinced

that I wrote some talk just for them.

I don’t preach to individuals.

I consider it to be one of the tackiest things a preacher can ever do.

But I know to, that we are far more similar in the things we wrestle with

than most of us would ever believe.

And, if I have encountered some enemy to faith in my own life,

there will be a number of you who have faced the same enemy in your own walk with the King.

And then just two more assumptions I bring to my teaching that I’ll share with you.

6. I assume you have been damaged in some way

by the Christian industry in our Nation

that passes itself off as being the true Body of Christ.

I assume that somewhere along the way

someone has tried to replace “the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ”

with some religious system

that they assured you would produce quality Christian living

and earn for you the approval of God.

There are undoubtedly some of you sitting here this morning

who found it extremely hard

to risk reinvolvement with any form of the organized church,

and even now you are on your guard,

waiting and wondering when the attack will come.

I can’t promise you it won’t ever come,

but I can promise you

that it will not come from up here.

I will give you no system,

no set of religious duties to fulfill.

We won’t even run an offering plate past you every week.

What we want here most of all

is an environment in which

each one of us can begin to discover

the reality of the presence of Christ within us,

and His ability to express Himself through us

in those ways that are perfectly matched to our unique and perfect design.

And there is no religious system in the world

that can ever accomplish that for us.

7. And then, finally, I assume that the one thing,

the only thing that can ever really transform our lives

is our personal daily discovery of the personal love of God for us.

If, as a Bible teacher, I am ever able to accomplish anything of value in the lives of those who hear me,

it will come as a result of us being able to grasp at a deeper level

the living, endless reality

of the depth of our God’s love for us.