©2003 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

05/04/03

Things To Remember…Things To Forget

Ephesians 2:11

5/4/03 Things To Remember...Things To Forget

Last week we finished our study of the first ten verses of Ephesians chapter 2,

and with that study

we also finished

one of the most remarkable descriptions of the redemptive work of God

found anywhere in Scripture.

It is a passage in which we heard our God telling us

in clear, simple language

the truth about ourselves - both before and after our union with Him through Christ,

and the truth about how He really feels about us as His creation.

You were dead in your trespasses and sins...

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus...

It is a passage that contains everything we ever wanted our God to say to us

but feared He would not.

We brought nothing to Him

and found that nothing was required except our recognition of our need

and our willingness to believe Him

when He told us that He has done for us

everything that needs to be done.

But I promised you last week

that I would not continue reteaching those verses

every week for the rest of my life,

and I’m going to keep that promise.

And so, as we move on in our study of this letter,

the next words we hear Paul speak

are words that, if we are familiar with Paul’s other writings,

may surprise us.

He says, Therefore remember...

He calls us to look back at a certain aspect of our life prior to our union with Christ.

Do you remember that study of the book of Philippians that we were involved in several years ago?

Do you remember that glorious passage in that letter

in which Paul allows us to look inside his own walk with Christ

as he reveals to us the foundation upon which his Christian life is built?

Do you remember him saying,

PHI 3:12-14 Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

...but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead...

And then, just so that we don’t view him as some sort of exception to the rule,

the next thing he says in that passage is this:

PHI 3:15 Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude...

The message he’s communicating is clear -

don’t focus your attention on the past.

Don’t keep looking back at yesterday’s failures,

or yesterday’s successes.

And never, ever let yourself fall victim to believing the lie

that in Christ your past determines your future.

It is not your past that determines your future,

it is your God!

Life is not a circle,

it is a line,

and it is not where we begin,

or where we have been in the past

that will determine where we will go

or where we will end up in the future.

Every life that turns to God becomes a new recreative work of His,

and everything He says to us about ourselves

and about Himself

is designed to confirm to us

that the great dividing line in all of life,

the great deciding factor

that determines the course of our lives

is not where we came from,

but rather it is His presence within us.

Do you remember Paul’s words to the Colossians?

He talked with them about a “ mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations; but has now been manifested to His saints...”(Col. 1:26).

He calls it a “mystery”

because it was something that God simply could not reveal to the human race

until after the work of Christ was completed on this earth.

It was something that no one could have anticipated,

no one could have imagined,

no one could possibly have believed would have been possible

until we saw what God did through Christ.

And then Paul goes on in the next verse

to reveal to us exactly what that mystery is.

COL 1:27 to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

“...Christ in you...”

Not just Christ for you, loving you.

Not just Christ with you, beside you, teaching you, pointing the way.

But Christ IN you,

Christ Himself dwelling within every person who comes to Him in faith,

Christ first recreating our spirits,

and then recreating our minds bit by bit,

day by day,

living out His life through us.

Only when the entire burden of our sins had been removed from us,

only when we literally became “ the righteousness of God in Him...” (2CO 5:21),

His HOLY ONES in spirit,

only then could He dwell within each of us

and express Himself through our unique personalities.

That’s what we were looking at last week

in those verses that I promised I would not reteach -

EPH 2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

All of which is to say

that in Christ our lives are not a circle,

they are not a stagnate pool,

they are a journey into a life and a future

that could never have existed apart from the reality of our God within us.

You will not become your father or your mother,

you will not repeat their lives

or automatically live out either their failures or their successes.

Certainly we have been deeply influenced

by both environment and genetics,

but neither of those can determine our futures

unless we choose to let them.

And when Paul tells us

that one of his key principles for the successful walk with God

is to forget what lies behind and reach forward to what lies ahead,

it is his way of reminding us

that in Christ

our future is never determined by our past

and who we will become

is never the result of who we once were,

and one of the most effective strategies of the devil

is to turn our eyes back to the past,

telling us that what we see there

is the image of what we will become.

It is a lie,

and one that Paul strongly encourages us not to get pulled into.

And yet here we are now

reading Paul’s words to the Ephesians

and hearing him calling us to REMEMBER...

So why does he do that?

He does it because

even though he does not want us to look to our past

in order to anticipate our future,

he does want us to remember where we came from

so that we never loose our journey mentality toward life.

Let me show you what I mean.

This 11^th verse of Ephesians chapter 2

is directly linked to the verse that precedes it,

that verse in which Paul says,

EPH 2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

After telling us that in Christ we are each

a special creative workmanship of God,

the very next thing he says is, “Therefore remember...”

And then he tells them exactly what it is they are to remember.

EPH 2:11 ¶ Therefore remember that formerly you...were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

Do you know what he’s saying?

He’s not saying, “Remember what you did back then.”,

but he is saying, “Remember what it was like living without Him.”

There is a powerful series of words in that 11^th verse

that I want to be sure we don’t miss.

Paul says that before we met our Lord we were strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

Do you remember what that was like?

Do you remember what it was like

when the only resource you had in life

was the resource of yourself

and your own ability to motivate

or manipulate others into doing what you wanted them to do?

Do you remember what it was like

when calling out to God

was like calling out to the wind.

Do you remember what is was like

when the thought of life after death

was a place you simply could not allow your mind to go,

when your beliefs about God and about eternity

were driven by your fears,

when your only basis for hope

was the belief that, if indeed there was moral accountability before God,

then surly He would grade on the curve,

and because you were not as bad as others

you would certainly be at least somewhat acceptable to Him?

Do you remember what it was like

to live without an awareness of His love,

to live without His Spirit within you,

to live without the knowledge that your Heavenly Father has promised to work all things together for good in your life?

Do you remember what it was like

to be a created being

separated from the love,

and the kindness,

and the grace,

and the compassion,

and the constant friendship of your Creator?

Those words of Paul say it so well...having no hope and without God in the world.

You see,

Paul isn’t calling us to remember our sins,

but he is calling us to remember our emptiness,

to remember what it was to live in that horrible separation from God

brought about by our own sinfulness.

Now why would Paul want us to remember that?

Well, first of all,

I think he wants us to remember

because those memories intensify our joy

in living in the presence of our King now.

Nothing intensifies the joy of being loved

like the memory of loneliness.

Nothing intensifies the enjoyment of our peace with God

like the memory of that life we lived in fear of Him.

But I believe there is another reason Paul wants us to remember as well.

I believe he wants us to remember

because in remembering it reminds us

that life with God is not a point,

it is a journey.

What I am about to say now

will likely be misunderstood by some of you.

I can’t help that,

but I won’t let it prevent me from saying it.

I spent most of my early Christian life

involved in groups and organizations

in which the only significant question being asked was,

“Are you saved?”.

The message I heard was one that suggested

that salvation was the goal,

the completion,

the fulfillment of the work of God within a person.

I was led to believe that,

if I was saved,

and if I could get others saved,

then I would have fulfilled my calling in life.

Do you know what that’s like?

That’s like saying

that birth is the fulfillment of life on this earth.

It is like a mother and father looking at their new born child and saying,

“Good! That’s over.

Now lets see if we can get another one born.”

It is like a man and woman

walking out of the marriage ceremony saying,

“Well, that takes care of the marriage thing.”

Did you know that not once in His entire time among us

did Jesus ever say to a person, “Are you saved?”

He did say things like,

“You are not far from the kingdom of God”,

and things like, “Why did you doubt?”,

and things like, “Who do you think I am?”,

and things like, “Do you want to go away from Me?”

Did you know that Paul never asked anyone, “Are you saved?”,

and Peter never asked anyone that question?

You see, the salvation offered to us by our God,

that point at which we turn to our Creator

and accept His offer of forgiveness through simple faith in His death for our sins,

that act was never intended to be in any way an end in itself.

It is not the goal,

it is not the purpose.

It is simply the first step into life with God

just as physical birth is the first step into life on this earth.

What God offers us is not salvation.

What He offers us is Himself - an eternal life with Him.

What He offers us is not a point,

it is a journey,

and endless journey with Him.

And in our frantic desire within the Christian community

to distill the Christian message down into a nicely packaged,

easily marketable product,

I believe we have made a tragic error in focusing our message on salvation.

God has not called us to salvation,

He has called us to Himself.

Christ did not die on that cross so that we could be saved,

He died so that we could enter into an eternal friendship with Him.

It’s not a point,

it is a journey.

And like any journey

it has a very specific goal,

a purpose,

a direction.

The journey we are called to

is a journey into the discovery

of the true nature of the mind and heart of our God.

Listen to this!

This is Paul sharing with us his own journey with the King.

PHI 3:8,10 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ,... that I may know Him ...

...that I may know Him...

And here’s the way it works

when it’s working the way it’s suppose to.

Through our faith in the death of Christ

the barrier of our sins is removed forever from between us and our God,

making it possible for us to then literally live in the presence of our God

every minute of every day from then on.

With that friendship established,

we then begin to discover, bit-by-bit,

day-by-day

more and more about our God

as we walk with Him

through all of the endless events and circumstances of life

that we go through with Him.

When we go through pain

and our spirits cry out to Him,

we find Him there,

and find Him caring for us,

and carrying us as a nursing mother carries her infant child.

When we fear

and share that fear with Him

we find Him giving us the courage we need to go on,

and in the process we learn more about His love for us.

When some relationship in our life

becomes filled with turmoil,

and we don’t know what to do,

we reach out to Him for knowledge,

and wisdom,

and comfort,

and guidance

and find Him there.

When some ugly addiction

or sin bondage from our past tries to conquer us once again,

we share the struggle for freedom with Him,

trusting His grace,

and reaching out to Him for the healing,

and the deliverance,

and the knowledge we need for freedom,

and in the process we learn more about our King.

And during those times when the circumstances of life are good,

His presence with us intensifies the goodness

because we know that all that we have has come to us

as a result of His endless kindness to us.

Life with God is not a point,

it is a journey,

a journey designed to lead us ever deeper into the discovery

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

And having stumbled into this whole thing,

I can’t leave it without raising one more question.

If this is really true,

if what God has called us to

really is not a point but a daily journey into His love,

then why is it

that there seem to be so many within the church world

who have no apparent awareness of it?

They get saved,

and then get stuck,

and quite honestly nothing significant has happened in their lives

or in the relationships with God for years.

There is no sense of forward movement,

there is no delight in their King each morning.

There is no spirit of gratitude flooding into them

at the end of each day.

There is just some salvation experience in the distant past

that seems to have little or no affect

on their life they now live each day.

What causes that?

Well, in the few minutes we have left

this is obviously going to be an oversimplification,

but maybe not as much as you might think.

And actually I’m only going to mention one cause this morning,

but I have selected this one

because I personally believe it to be one of the most common causes

for that horrible stagnation that so many seem to enter into.

And that one cause I would mention is bitterness -

either bitterness against God,

or bitterness against another person.

Bitterness is, quite simply poison to the human spirit.

It consumes,

it possesses,

it drives and dominates and corrupts and defiles.

It’s not hard to recognize if we are willing to see.

If our bitterness is toward God

we will find ourselves thinking,

and in many cases saying out loud things like,

“How could God allow this to happen to me?”

Or, “How could God allow me to have to face this problem?”

Or, “How could God bring this into my life?”

And in a very subtle but powerful way

we once again set ourselves up as god in our own life,

and stand in judgment over our Creator.

We weigh Him in our balance

and find Him wanting.

He gave us the wrong parents,

or the wrong mate,

or the wrong children,

or the wrong job,

or the wrong body.

And once we’ve decided our God has been unfair in His dealings with us

until that battle is resolved,

until we will face our bitterness against Him

there will be no growth,

no forward movement,

no journey with our King.

Only God’s Spirit can give us eyes to see ourselves honestly in this,

but once He’s been able to do so

I can tell you how to find freedom from the lies.

It takes just three words - “Thank you, Lord.”

Thank you for the way you have dealt with me,

thank you for being all I need for whatever I face,

thank you for taking even the worst that comes into my life

and reshaping it into good.

Thank you for being my God,

and for being infinitely good to me, your child.

And the power of bitterness against another human being

can be just as powerful

in its ability to stop the journey.

In truth any relationship in which we allow ourselves to become bitter

will have the same devastating affect on our spirits.

It will consume us

and blind us to the goodness of our God

until it is resolved.

And there are three words that can bring our bitterness against others to an end as well.

“I forgive you.”

The truth is

every one of us will have those in our lives who will wrong us,

just as we will have those that we have wronged at times.

If we choose to

we can allow our bitterness to consume us

and in the process loose all sense of the journey our God invites us into.

Or we can follow the example of Joseph in the Old Testament

and find the freedom in spirit that only forgiveness can bring.

You remember Joseph, don’t you?

His brothers literally sold him into slavery.

They hated him so much

they were determined to destroy him.

He spent most of his adult life in a foreign land,

isolated from his family,

and from all that he knew as a child.

Years later when Joseph looked back on the actions of his brothers he said simply,

GEN 50:20 "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.

And the same is true for each of us

with every person our God brings into our lives.

Even when another person’s actions toward us

are driven by evil within them,

that evil does not prevent our God

from turning that evil into good in our lives

if we will share the journey with Him,

trusting Him to give us eyes to see what He’s doing.

So, there it is.

I believe Paul calls us to remember where we came from

because he wants us to always live with a strong sense of the journey we have entered into with God,

the life-long journey into the discovery of the heart and mind of our Creator.