©2000 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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3/6/00
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We Seem To Have A Bad Connection
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3/5/00 We Seem To Have A Bad Connection
We are studying the 6th chapter
of the book of Romans.
Paul has been talking to us
about the Christian's relationship to sin.
As we've worked our way through some of Paul's
comments
we have seen him creating for us
a safe place in the hands of our God,
a place in which we no longer need to
run from our God,
or cower from Him in terror of His wrath
when we discover sin issues within our
lives.
We are going to step back into our study
with Romans 6:16
and talk a little more about the death thing
Paul keeps referring to
as he talks about the consequences of
sin,
but I first want to follow up on a comment I
made just before we closed last week.
If you were with us then
you may remember that during our discussion
following the teaching
I talked a little bit about the roots of the
Christian's battles with sin.
To help get us back into our study
I'd like to take some of what I said then
and present it in a little more organized
fashion.
We have seen already in this study
the way in which Paul traces the Christian's
battle with sin
to what he calls our "mortal bodies".
We spent long enough with that concept
to understand that Paul is talking with us
about the way in which our physical house,
which includes our physical mind,
our emotional system,
our memories,
and all of our learned reasoning processes
and emotional responses,
were trained under the leadership of an inner spirit,
an inner control center
that was hostile to God,
a spirit that did not trust God,
and certainly was not in submission to Him.
When we come to Christ
and our spirit submits to Him,
and He recreates within us
a new heart,
a new spirit,
a new inner control center,
that recreative work of God
does not alter the fact
that we still retain
all of those defective memories,
and emotional responses,
and reasoning processes
that have been recorded within us
and that form the basis upon which
our physical plant continues to operate.
Simply put,
even though our spirit now loves our God
and longs to please Him
and follow His leadership,
we continue to think,
and feel,
and remember in ways that are completely
inconsistent with the truth.
And in our discussion last week
I summarized that whole mistraining process
by saying that for the Christian
all sin battles are rooted in two major
areas -
1. a flawed perception of who we are,
and 2. a flawed perception of who our God is.
We don't see ourselves correctly,
and we don't see our God correctly.
The more I correctly understand
who I have become in Christ,
and the more I correctly understand
who my God is,
the more sin will loose its power over me.
Unfortunately,
much, if not most of what we attempt to do
within the religious world
is to attempt to change our performance, our
behavior
without first changing our flawed
perceptions of ourselves and our God.
And the result is an endless stream of flesh-based
manipulation
and motivation techniques
that accomplish nothing more than
covering unresolved sin issues
with a thin external facade of
righteousness.
In other words,
we simply paste on a passable external Christian
image
while no true inner changes take place.
The fundamentals of the Christian life
really are not complicated.
In fact, they are remarkably simple.
Tell you what...
I'll offer them to you in 4 simple statements.
#1. Our Creator God loves us so much that, even
though we willfully chose to rebel against Him, He
chose to take on human flesh in the person of Jesus
Christ and die in our place as total payment for all
our sins.
#2. We enter into a perfect, eternal love union with
our God through simple faith in what He has done
for us through Christ.
#3. In response to our faith
our God places a new heart within us,
recreating us at the deepest level of our
being,
giving us a new, holy, pure identity in
Christ.
#4. Our God loves us with a personal, perfect, and
everlasting love,
and His every thought about us,
and every action toward us is motivated by
that love.
That's it.
That is the heart of what I have learned
after more than 30 years of studying the Word of
God.
Except for this one additional piece of truth I will
add -
most of the time
most of God's people
don't really believe any of those
statements.
We want to believe them.
And we can and do make some progress in
believing them,
but we learn slowly,
we doubt daily,
we forget quickly, and then we must
relearn once again.
Oh yes, and one other thing -
during our times of doubt and forgetfulness
we either try to hid from God
or relapse back into flesh-based
techniques for trying to please God through our
performance.
Now, I know there are some of you
who just heard me list those four fundamentals
of the faith
and who, when I listed each one,
thought to yourself,
"Yes, I believe that,
and that,
and that,
and that too."
But the truth is,
you only sort of believe it...
just a little bit...
sometimes...
in part.
And let me show you what I mean.
What was the first one?
#1. Our Creator God loves us so much that, even
though we willfully chose to rebel against Him, He
chose to take on human flesh in the person of Jesus
Christ and die in our place as total payment for all
our sins.
Now, if you are a Christian,
you probably do fine with the first part of that.
Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit,
you have recognized the reality
of your own personal rebellion against God,
and of your need to be restored
to a love relationship with Him.
You have also understood
that God has provided a way
for that restoration to take place
by Christ dying in your place
for your sins.
But I think the place where we get ourselves into
trouble
is with that business of His providing us with a
TOTAL payment for ALL our sins.
This, of course, is some of what we've been talking
about during the past few weeks.
Though our Lord tells us
in clear, simple language
that God Himself has already ... canceled
out (our) certificate of debt consisting of
decrees against us and which was hostile to
us; and He has taken it out of the way,
having nailed it to the cross...(Col. 2:14)
we still really believe
there is some remaining barrier
between us and our God.
We still think
because we continue to fight
ongoing battles with the sins themselves
we must also be fighting
ongoing battles with God for His
total acceptance.
You remember that question I asked you
a few weeks ago, don't you?
I asked you to think for a moment
about that chronic sin problem in your life,
that area in which you have yet to find
the kind of victory you long for.
And then I asked you, if this instant
you suddenly and permanently achieved total and
complete and absolute victory over that sin,
would you view yourself as being
on a little more solid footing with God
because of that victory?
Would you be more acceptable to Him?
Would you have a greater measure of peace in your
relationship with Him?
Would you relax more
in your relationship with Him?"
If you answer "yes" to any of those questions,
then you are still believing
the death of Christ was not truly
a TOTAL payment for ALL our sins.
In your mind
the full and complete debt
was not paid by Christ alone.
There is still some measure of performance
required from you
before total peace can be established
between you and your God.
Our struggles with the second statement
follow the same pattern.
Again, the truth of the statement
is clearly stated throughout Scripture.
#2. We really do enter into a perfect, eternal love
union with our God through simple faith in what
He has done for us through Christ.
Eph. 2:8 For by grace you have been saved
through faith; and that not of yourselves,
it is the gift of God;
Eph. 2:9 not as a result of works, that no
one should boast.
And yet, nearly every Christian group I have ever
been a part of
has either subtly
or blatantly added something to that faith.
"If you have faith plus baptism,
then you will be saved."
"If you have faith plus this experience with the
Holy Spirit,
then you will be secure with God."
"If you have faith plus this gift,
or faith plus that gift,
then you will be on solid ground with your
Creator.
I think the worst ones
are the ones that skillfully redefine
the meaning of the word faith.
They will tell us that
true faith means we will do the following
things...
and we will not do the following things...
And within a few minutes
they have woven for us a list of "faith proofs"
that in the end cannot be distinguished
from a list of religious works.
I've shared with you in the past
my early evangelistic training,
when I was involved in door-to-door
evangelism.
We were told that, after a person prayed to
receive Christ,
the very next thing we were to say to them was
this:
"Now that you are a Christian,
you'll need to become active in a church,
and read your Bible and pray each day."
Immediately after sharing with them
the truth of God's offer of salvation through
faith alone,
the very next thing we did
was to offer them 3 religious rules they must follow.
With the best of motives,
we had it all backwards, of course.
Going to church,
and reading our Bibles,
and saying prayers
does not draw us to the Spirit of God.
The Spirit of God draws His people
to other Christians,
and to His Word,
and to communication with Him.
When I see a Christian
who has no interest
in being with other Christians,
I don't try to get him to go to church,
I try to help him find out
why he's running from His God.
We know we are saved by grace through faith,
and that it is not a result of our works,
but we also allow ourselves to believe that
true peace with God does require certain "faith
proofs",
evidences of the reality of our faith.
We hear James telling us that...
James 2:26 ... just as the body without the
spirit is dead, so also faith without works
is dead...
and in the context of his illustration
we assume he is telling us
that if we come across a dead body,
if we pick it up,
and stand behind it,
and move its arms around
and wave them in the air,
and then turn its head from side to
side,
and open its eyes,
and force its lips into a grin,
the body will then have life.
James wasn't trying to educate us
in how to fake life,
he was telling us how to recognize death.
My only point here is this -
we are so uncomfortable
with a union with God
that rests solely upon our faith in what
He has done for us
that we frequently lapse back into
a "faith-plus" mentality.
If I have faith plus this,
or plus that,
then I can be at peace with God.
As Paul puts it,
Having begun by the Spirit, we then
attempt to be perfected by the flesh...(Gal.
3:3)
But it was really those last two statements
that I was referring to last week
when I talked about our sin problems
being rooted in our flawed perceptions
of ourselves,
and our flawed perceptions of our God.
And it is also these last two statements
that I see us having the most trouble believing.
The third one was this:
#3. In response to our faith
our God places a new heart within us,
recreating us at the deepest level of our
being,
giving us a new, holy, pure identity in
Christ.
Now that is a simple statement of fact.
It's not up for dispute.
It's not open to debate.
It is simply, precisely, exactly what God
does within us when we come to Him.
2 Cor. 5:17 Therefore if anyone is in
Christ, he is a new creature; the old things
passed away; behold, new things have
come.
The difficulty we run into
is that far too many voices
for far too many years
have been telling us who they think we
are.
And now, when we begin living our lives with our
Lord,
it's a little bit like this:
Picture yourself sitting on an empty stage.
On either side of you,
mounted on three-foot tripods
are two huge cone speakers.
Through those speakers is coming
a constant barrage of words
telling you who you are.
You are smart.
You are stupid.
You are funny.
You are dull.
You are pretty.
You are plain.
You are a high achiever.
You are not doing your best.
People like you.
People don't like you.
You have great potential.
You have little potential.
You are most likely to succeed.
You are most likely to make a fool of yourself.
You are a failure.
You have done things God can never forgive.
You got yourself into this mess and you
have to get yourself out.
You deserve the bad things that have happened to
you as payment for the bad things you have done.
You have no purpose and little value in life.
And on and on and on the speakers blast,
interpreting for you every event in your life.
And then you come to Christ,
and suddenly,
miraculously you discover
a portable telephone receiver in your
lap.
There is a voice coming from the receiver,
but the speakers on either side of you are still
blasting so loud
that at first you don't even realize
there is voice coming through the
receiver.
Then, as you bring the receiver closer to your ear
you begin to hear the words coming from it.
"Listen to me, my child. This is your Father
speaking to you.
Most of what you are hearing through those
speakers is not true,
and none of it is being presented in the context
of truth.
You are now a new creation.
You are My holy one.
You are pure and righteous.
Your sins can never again separate you from Me.
Your sins can never again determine your true
identity..."
And the voice on the other end of the line
goes on and on and on
telling you again and again
the truth about yourself in Christ.
But the speakers do not stop blasting their
distortions and their lies,
and gradually you discover that
the only way you can hear the truth,
and begin to accept it as truth,
is if you hold the receiver tightly against your ear,
and then plug your other ear to the lies,
and concentrate hard on the messages coming
through the telephone.
And as soon as you get distracted,
and let the receiver drop away from your ear,
all the old lies come blasting in again.
I think that is a little bit what it's like
in our calling to discover
and accept the truth that,
in response to our faith,
our God has placed within us a new heart,
recreated us at the deepest level of our being,
and given us a new, holy, pure identity
in Christ.
And if I can stretch this illustration
just a little farther,
the time will come
when our Lord Jesus Christ
will personally step onto that stage.
The first thing He will do
is to rip those speakers from their stands,
crush them with ease in His mighty grip,
and silence them forever.
Then He will kneel down beside you
and take that telephone you have been clinging to
so tightly.
He will set it aside and tell you
that you won't be needing it any more,
because from now on
and forever more the two of you
will be able to talk face to face,
with no more lies,
and no more distractions,
and no more interruptions -
just pure, glorious truth in the presence of your
eternal God.
I'm out of time for this morning
and never even got to the last truth
that we don't really believe:
#4. Our God loves us with a perfect and everlasting
love,
and His every thought about us,
and every action toward us is motivated by
that love.
All I'll say with this
is that the same illustration fits with our learning
in this area as well.
We may know in a doctrinal sense that our God
loves us,
but the messages about Him
that keep blasting through those speakers
seem to deny the truth of that doctrine.
Only when we listen carefully to what He's saying,
and then consciously choose to believe
His voice over the blasting lies
to the point where we will risk
trusting what He says
will we discover the increasing, living reality of that
love.
We'll save that death thing in Romans 6 until next
week.