©2000 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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5/7/00
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Illustrating The Principle
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5/7/00 Illustrating The Principle
It has been a full month
since we were in our freedom from sin study.
When I've been away from an area of thinking for
that long
it takes some effort,
and some review to get my mind
back into were we were
and how we got there
and where we were going next.
We were using Romans chapter 6 as our basis for
the study,
a chapter written by Paul
for the purpose of showing the Christian
how to find true freedom from sin.
And as we have studied our way through sections of
that 6th chapter
we came across a remarkable discovery.
We saw that
when Paul reaches this crucial point in his
writing,
this point at which he addresses
what is perhaps the most emotionally
charged
and sometimes most agonizing issue
in all of Christian living,
when he writes for the purpose
of equipping God's people
with the knowledge we need
in order to find freedom
and victory in the moral battles of our
lives,
rather than injecting
some dramatic new piece of truth or knowledge
into our minds,
rather than turning our eyes forward
to some great, as yet undiscovered
hidden treasure
that we have not yet received from our God,
Paul turns our eyes BACK
to what God has already accomplished in our
lives,
back to what He did for us
and in us at the time we entered His family.
And in doing this
he is saying to us,
"What you need for the life you want to lead
you already possess.
But you are not experiencing the benefits of it
either because you don't know you possess it,
or because you don't believe it is true."
And the last few times
we were involved in our study of this passage
we saw Paul singling out 4 changes
that have already taken place in the
Christian's life,
changes that were sovereignly enacted by God
Himself
in the lives of each of us
at the time we entered His family,
changes upon which rest
God's entire program
for bringing us freedom from sin.
And we saw Paul telling us that
to the degree we accept
and build upon the reality of these changes,
to that degree we will discover
the power,
and the freedom,
and the victory we long for
in the moral battles of our lives.
I'll list those four changes for us once again,
and then we'll pick up our study
where we left it a month ago.
1. The change in our true identity.
2. The change in our relationship to the moral law
of God.
3. The change in our relationship to sin.
4. The change in our relationship to righteousness.
In past weeks
we talked at length
about the first two on that list.
We have talked about the change in our true
identity,
about the way in which God
recreates us at the deepest level of our being
into pure, holy, righteous children of God.
We also talked about why we consistently struggle
so much
with accepting the reality of that truth in our
lives.
I loved it a few weeks ago
when Mike got up to lead us in prayer
and began by introducing himself
as a saint of God.
His mic was turned down at the time
and not many of you may have heard him,
but when he said that
two thoughts crossed my mind -
the first was how true his statement was,
and the second was how uncomfortable we are
with that truth.
We have no problem talking about ourselves
as sinners saved by the grace of God.
But when it comes to calling ourselves
His holy ones,
it just doesn't compute,
because we simply do not believe
we are who God says we are.
And then we moved on in our study
to talk once again
about the change that has taken place in our
relationship to the moral law of God.
We heard Paul telling us that through Christ "...we
were released from the law, having died to
that by which we were bound, so that we
serve in newness of the Spirit and not in
oldness of the letter."
We wrestled together
with what it means for us to no longer be under
the law,
and how that release from the law
becomes the crucial ingredient
in Christ's transforming work in our
lives.
And four weeks ago
we ended our study
by looking at the two-part plan
offered to us by our God
for transforming our lives.
#1. He recreates within us a new heart,
a heart that loves God and longs to please Him.
#2. He takes the moral measuring stick
and throws it away forever.
And in the context of those two truths
He creates for us a new world environment
in which, for the first time ever,
we can begin to hear His love,
and discover the power that love has
to change us.
EX. Last week's church service
was an interesting experience for me.
If you were with us
you know we took the morning
to hear from our two returning missions
teams,
one that went to Mexico,
and the other to Russia.
I was looking forward to the morning,
but I hadn't expected it to affect me
as deeply as it did.
And the thing that affected me the most
was not what the teams accomplished,
but rather what God
was so obviously accomplishing
in the lives of every one of those
team members.
I mention this because
I know of no better illustration I could offer
of the principles I just shared with you
than what we saw in those teenagers
and adults last week.
God is obviously changing their lives,
changing their life goals,
changing their entire value systems,
changing both their short-term
and long-term priorities.
In a very real sense,
God is actively rebuilding
their entire world view.
Teenagers who, before they left,
honestly believed the reason they felt this
emptiness,
and this lack of fulfillment in their lives
was because they didn't yet have the right clothes,
or the right car,
or the right toys,
discovered that what they were really hungering for
was a group of orphan children to love,
and to give a little zip-lock bag of candy to,
and the high honor of investing
two days of their lives
into building a little house
so that one family will no longer have
to live in a plywood and cardboard shanty.
What those teens were looking for
was the reality of the life of Jesus Christ
working through them
in a way that touched another human being's
life.
And what I want us to see here
is the way in which Christ accomplishes that
work in our lives.
Let me show it to you by contrast.
Under the law it would have worked this way -
God would have handed each of those teenagers a
list.
On that list would have been written the following:
I am your God. Here is what I require of you.
1. I demand that you invest one week this Spring in
full-time service to Me.
2. I demand that you give Me several hundred
dollars of your own money to be used for missions
work.
3. I demand that you stop lusting for newer,
and bigger,
and better things in your lives.
4. I demand that you take your eyes off yourself
and invest your efforts into meeting the needs of
those less fortunate than yourself.
5. I demand that you love children
and make their needs more important than your
own desires.
You see, that is the way the Law approaches change.
But that isn't what our God does for us through
Christ.
And it is not the way He transforms our lives.
Do you know what He does?
First of all He draws us to Himself,
and as we place our lives into His hands
He recreates within us a new heart,
a heart that loves Him,
and longs to follow His lead in our lives.
And then, He throws the list away,
and replaces it with His working within us,
changing us from the inside out.
He doesn't demand that we invest one week in full
time service to Him,
He gives us the desire
and the courage to follow His leadership
every day of our lives.
He doesn't demand that we give Him OUR money,
He gives us eyes to see the needs
of another human being
who has nothing,
and then He shares with us
the high honor being of able to meet some need
in that person's life.
He doesn't demand that we stop lusting for more,
and bigger,
and better,
and require us to invest our time and resources into
a group of noisy children
who can't even speak our language.
He simply fills our hearts
with a love for those children,
and then honors us
with the great privilege
of making some small difference in
their lives.
But what I want us to see here
is that those kinds of changes
could never take place in our lives
until God first frees our spirits
from a law-based union with our
Creator.
If Gary or Chuck would have stood before those
missions teams,
outside those orphanages,
and said to those students:
"Here this!
This is what your God requires of you:
You WILL go into this orphanage!
You WILL love those children!
You WILL give both your time and your
possessions to meet their needs!",
what happened in the lives of those who went
would never have happened.
I don't know if you noticed,
but one comment made repeatedly
by those who shared with us last week was
this:
"It is so hard to come back..."
How can that be?
How can it be so hard to leave
the poverty,
and the heat,
and lousy living conditions,
and the lack of privacy,
and the long days of work?
How can it be so hard to come back
to our nice, warm, comfortable houses,
and our controlled lives,
and all our toys,
and all our wealth?
Because it is always hard to leave
any situation in which
you are doing what God has given you a
heart to do.
Only God can accomplish that in our lives.
And here is the crucial thing -
the thing we can so easily misunderstand,
or miss altogether -
the same principles that governed
the work of Christ
in and through those on those missions teams
in Mexico and Russia
are the principles that govern
His life and work in and through us here and
now.
I will admit that sometimes
it is easier for those principles
to suddenly come into focus
when we are yanked out of our comfort
zone
and dropped into another culture.
It throws our lives off balance
just enough to open our eyes
to things we've never seen before.
But the truth is,
the governing principles of the life of Christ
within us
are identical whether we are in Russia,
or Mexico,
or Soldotna Alaska.
God recreates within each of us
a heart that loves Him
and longs to allow Him to express Himself
through our lives.
Then He seeks to open our eyes
to where and how He wants to do that.
And let me prepare you for something -
most of what He wants to do
both in you
and through you is very close to home.
Let me give you a couple of examples
to show you what I mean.
I received an e-mail this past week
from one of the students
who went on the Mexico trip.
In the e-mail he was sharing with me
some of the changes he saw Christ bringing
about in his life through the trip.
Part of that note said this:
"The last major thing was the kids. I don't know
how to say this, but I always avoided little kids. I
really didn't want to be around them. They seemed
so small, and they couldn't do much...like I was
too "important" for them or something. Now I find
myself often in the elementary wing of the school
talking to them, helping them tie their shoes, and
things like that. I finally learned, at the orphanage,
what is so special about them..."
Do you know what thrilled me so much
when I read that?
It wasn't that he went to Mexico
and reached out to some Mexican children,
it's that he came home and realized
the same principles that governed his life
there
also govern his life here.
There is absolutely no difference
between handing a Mexican child
a little zip-lock back full of treats,
and kneeling down in the elementary wing and tieing
the shoe lace
of a Soldotna 1st grader.
And let me offer one more example
of what I'm trying to say here.
This Spring, when the snow finally melted off our
property,
I discovered the rotting carcass
of a large dead moose in our back yard.
Something had been chewing on one section of it,
and during the day
the flies covered the thing.
Our dog, Pepper, discovered the thing
long before I did,
which explained why his normally offensive
odor
had suddenly turned from offensive
to absolutely hideous.
During the 25 years I've been up here
I have adjusted to most aspects of Alaskan life
well.
I built our house,
a good portion of our winter heat comes from
firewood,
I can handle snow with the best of them,
long winters,
cool summers,
and a thing called "break up"
instead of Spring don't even phase me any more.
But when it comes to large,
dead,
decomposing animals in my yard,
I'm totally out of my element.
I didn't realize how deeply
this THING was affecting me
until I found myself waking up
at 4:00 in the morning
suddenly churning over what in the world I was
going to do with it.
I came up with two possible plans of attack -
My first thought was to get my chain saw
and hack the thing into chunks
that I could then haul somewhere.
But the more I thought about
the possible results
of dropping my chain saw blade
into the side of that rotting carcass
the more I shifted to plan "B".
Plan "B" involved getting several gallons of
kerosene,
soaking the THING with it,
and then setting it on fire.
Then last Sunday
I told a friend of mine about my problem and
asked for help.
Late last Sunday afternoon,
when he knew I was going to be gone,
he and his son went up to our house
and made the moose disappear.
Monday morning it was gone.
Folks,
removing that moose from our yard
is no different whatsoever
from building a house for a family in
Mexico.
It is the life of Christ
being expressed through the people of Christ
in just the way that fits
the way God has designed each of us to
be.
There is no way I want to make this whole thing
complicated
or to spiritualize it in a way that blinds us to
what God is really doing in our lives.
God has already done the hardest part -
He has recreated our hearts,
giving us a longing to follow Him at the
deepest level of our being.
Each day we live
He will give us eyes to see
some untied shoelaces
and some rotting moose carcasses in our
world.
Some of them will come in the form of
that fight with our brother or sister
or our husband or wife
that we all of the sudden choose not to
have.
Some of them will come in the form
of an act of gentleness,
or kindness,
or honesty,
or moral purity
that displays the true nature and reality of our God
to those around us.
Peter said best in a single verse
what I've been trying to say all morning.
1 Pet. 1:22 ¶ Since you have in obedience
to the truth purified your souls for a sincere
love of the brethren, fervently love one
another from the heart...
The hardest part has already been done by God
Himself.
Through Christ
He has already purified our souls
for a sincere love of the brethren.
And now Peter's calling to us is clear -
since we are among the very few
who have been equipped by God to love,
let us do that one thing
which alone can offer our world
the one undeniable proof
of the reality of our God.