©1999 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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11/28/99
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Right And Wrong Rules
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11/28/99 Right and Wrong Rules
In the time we have together during the next few minutes
I want to help us understand the difference
between two radically different concepts that are often confused within the Christian world
because they both involve
establishing rules for personal conduct
that go beyond what is specifically addressed in Scripture.
One of them is healthy and extremely valuable.
The other is always destructive.
I'll give you names for the two right now,
and then we'll back up and get a running start at our study
through a little review.
The destructive one you will recognize
as a reoccurring theme
throughout much of my teaching -
Man-Made Religion.
The healthy one we're going to call Personal Protective Boundaries.
But first a little review...
We began several months ago
with a statement made by Christ
to Christians,
a statement in which He said,
John 8:32 and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. "
And we are involved in a series
designed to help us understand
how Christ brings true freedom into our lives.
We have seen the difference
between the lies being peddled by our society,
and the truth offered to us by our God.
Our society pretends
that freedom means having the right to live out our inner bondage.
Our Lord tells us that true freedom comes from having the ability
to break free from that bondage.
From there we moved on to see
the two major areas of freedom
our Lord seeks to offer us:
freedom from the Law,
and freedom from sin.
Then last week
we took the first of those,
freedom from the law,
and looked at the three-phase process
God seeks to bring each of us through
in that freeing process.
We saw the way in which God uses His law
as a special tool with which
He forces us to recognize
our heart rebellion against Him.
Through the Law
He actually forces us to sin more,
not because He wants us to sin,
but because He wants us to face
the root source of our sin,
our hearts of rebellion against Him.
Then, in phase two,
He takes that same Law
that drove us into sin
and uses it to condemn us,
creating within us a hunger
for the redemption and healing He offers us through Christ.
Once the Law has served those two roles,
it is removed forever
from being the basis upon which
we relate to our Creator.
Rom. 7:4 Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of
Christ, that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, that we
might bear fruit for God.
And from the time we enter into Christ
through faith in His death for our sins,
from that point on everything changes.
We hear our God saying to us,
Rom. 5:1 Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord
Jesus Christ...
We hear Him saying,
Rom. 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
And just as we finished last week
we looked briefly at the 3rd phase
in our relationship with the Moral Law of God.
In this third phase,
once the Law is no longer the master over us, goading us into sin,
and once it no longer ever again
has the power to condemn us
and isolate us from our God,
for the first time we are able to look honestly at God's moral law,
and to see in it the perfect pattern for life being offered to us by our Creator.
James, the author of the New Testament Epistle that bears his name,
created his own special term for the Law in this 3rd phase.
He calls it "The Law of Liberty",
and in that phrase
he captures the heart of the role the Law is now designed to serve
in the lives of God's people -
it guides us into liberty.
Now, at the risk of rushing this too much,
I need to make one more important distinction
before we return to our contrast
between man-made religious systems
and personal protective boundaries.
It helps me if I can visualize
the concepts God is offering us in His Word.
I've found that especially true
in what He says to us about His moral law.
And this is what I see God doing for the Christian through His moral law:
Sin destroys.
It always destroys.
It destroys every relationship it touches.
It destroys our relationships with others.
It destroys our relationship with ourselves,
driving us into defensive,
secretive,
frantic attempts to justify and rationalize our own behavior to ourselves and to others.
Having first freed us from the condemning power of the Law,
God then uses His moral law
as a crucial tool in freeing us from the power of sin in our lives.
And the first step in that process
is opening our eyes and our hearts
to the powerful protective nature of the law.
And this diagram illustrates
what I see God doing for us
through His moral absolutes.
He provides for us
the foundation upon which
He then builds for each of us
our own personal protective framework
in which we can know absolute freedom to be ourselves
without ever getting caught in the self-destruction that always accompanies sin.
And I hope you have some appreciation
for the incredible gift this is
for those of us who live in this society
at this point in history.
There have been pockets of time
throughout human history
in which the prevalent cultural values
have somewhat mirrored
the basics of this protective moral framework.
But those days are long since gone in our culture.
Apart from the revelation of God's Word
those of us who enter our world today
have very little more to work with
in trying to find how life really works
than the painful process of trial and error,
a process that more often than not
leaves us broken,
and bloodied,
and bitter,
and cynical.
But when we come to Christ,
one of the many gifts given to us by our God
is His clearly marked map
showing us the way across the land-mine infested fields of life.
And just so you understand
exactly what I'm saying here,
the boundaries of that protective moral framework
are revealed to us through the moral commandments
given to us through God's Word...
those same commandments
that once drove us into sin.
Once our spirits are freed from that condemning battle against the law,
and once we find ourselves
beginning to rest in the secure arms of our Lord,
knowing our sins will never ever again
have the power to separate us from Him,
His Spirit wants to open us up
to a truly remarkable discovery.
He wants to show us
that His moral law has the ability
to reveal to us two incredibly valuable areas of knowledge:
1. It reveals to us how our needs can truly be met,
2. and it reveals to us how true love relationships can be built.
I want to read you a remarkable statement
found in the 13th chapter of the book of Romans.
Rom. 13:9 For this, " You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not
steal, You shall not covet," and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this
saying, " You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
We haven't got the time this morning
to go into it in depth,
but let me simply say that in that passage
Paul reveals to us
the underlying purpose behind the moral laws of God.
They were given to us
in order to show us what love is.
To love another person
is to relate to them within the moral laws of God.
Do you have someone in your life,
with whom you long to build
a strong, solid, durable love relationship?
Hopefully there are lots of those someones in your life.
Well, God reveals to the Christian
exactly how to do that.
To love another person,
and to build a strong love relationship with them,
is to relate to them in a way that is consistent with the moral laws of God.
We live in a world filled with desperately lonely people,
people longing for strong, solid, durable love relationships,
but people who have absolutely no idea how to go about building them.
We are exposed daily
to the twisted patterns of immorality
pumped at us from TV's
and movie screens
and radios
and try to duplicate those same patterns
in our own relationships,
and then wonder why
it never turns out in our lives
the way it does on TV.
They all seem to end up happy,
and we end up hurting,
and lonely,
and isolated even within the walls of our own homes.
And we just can't seem to figure out why.
Our God does not want us to have to go through that kind of pain.
He wants us to know
how life works,
and how durable relationships can be built.
And the beginning to that learning process
is trusting what He says to us
about the pattern for life
and for relationships
revealed to us through the Commandments.
But that is only part of the process.
The commandments provide for us
the basic principles upon which love is built,
but where do we go from there?
How in the world do we apply these commandments
to our unique personalities,
and distinctive cultural settings,
and personal areas of weaknesses,
and the countless changing circumstances that make up our lives?
It is one thing for God to call us to moral purity,
but it is a very different thing to know
how we live that out in the context
of each individual relationship.
It is one thing for God to call us to be subject to the governing authorities in our lives,
but it is a very different thing for us to know
how to live out that principle
on an issue by issue
and day by day basis.
And this is where the Spirit of God within the Christian
takes on a critical and unique role in our lives.
With each of us
He takes that basic moral framework
and in an active, changing, fluid way,
He applies that basic framework
to our own unique personalities
and circumstances at any given moment.
I picture it like this:
Simply put, what that means
is that in the lives of all growing Christians
there will be certain points where God's Spirit will step into our lives
and in a personal, unique way, He will say,
"My child, for you, at this point in your life,
because of the work I've called you to,
because of the weak areas you bring into your walk with Me,
because of things that have happened or things that will happen
that you currently have no knowledge of,
you need to eliminate this from your life,
or you need to incorporate this into your life."
He will draw a boundary in our lives personally,
that He has not drawn in the lives
of other Christians around us.
I've mentioned to you before
a time in my own life
when God's Spirit convicted me about wearing a watch.
For several reasons unique to where I was at
and what God was doing both in me and through me,
He didn't want me to wear a watch.
In the years since that happened
I have seen God's Spirit perform that same type of work again and again,
carefully shaping and reshaping
and then reshaping again
the parameters of my life
in the ways that best fit with His purposes for me,
and His work within me at any given time.
That type of process goes on in the lives of growing Christians on a daily basis.
You'll find some point in your life
where you suddenly become aware
that God's Spirit is saying to you,
"I don't want you going there.
I don't want you doing that."
And your first response will likely be,
"But Lord! No one else seems to have that boundary!
There's nothing in the Bible about it."
And His response in return will be,
"This is between you and Me.
It doesn't matter what anyone else is or is not doing. This is for you alone."
Those are the Personal Protective Boundaries I was talking about earlier.
Paul talks about them in Romans 13:14.
He says,
But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.
That process of making no provision for the flesh often involves our Lord
establishing for us Personal Protective Boundaries
that guard us against our individual areas of vulnerabilities.
And I find it fascinating to notice
that immediately after he makes that statement,
the very next thing Paul talks about,
is the way in which we are to relate to those Personal Protective Boundaries
in the lives of our fellow Christians.
In the next verse he says,
Rom. 14:1 Now accept the one who is weak in faith, but not for the purpose of passing
judgment on his opinions.
Rom. 14:2 One man has faith that he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats vegetables
only.
Rom. 14:3 Let not him who eats regard with contempt him who does not eat, and let not him
who does not eat judge him who eats, for God has accepted him.
He says that we are to respect those boundaries
and uphold them
wherever we encounter them
in the lives of our fellow believers.
Fine! So we don't go poking around
in our fellow Christians' personal boundaries.
But then what is the difference
between those personal boundaries
and man-made religious systems?
How do they differ
from what Paul is talking about in Col. 2:20-23 when says,
Col. 2:20 ¶ If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if
you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as,
Col. 2:21 "Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!"
Col. 2:22 (which all refer to things destined to perish with use) in accordance with the
commandments and teachings of men?
Col. 2:23 These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made
religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against
fleshly indulgence.
In one place Paul is telling us
to respect and honor certain extra-Biblical boundaries within the Body of Christ,
and another place he is calling us
not to submit to certain extra-Biblical boundaries at any cost.
So what makes the difference between
those Personal Protective Barriers
and destructive Man-made Religious Systems?
Very likely you already recognize the difference between these two,
but I wanted to take a morning
to set them side-by-side
just so they are clear in our thinking.
Both of them involve rules designed to govern our lives,
rules that are not specifically addressed in Scripture.
But the difference between the two is simply this:
Personal Protective Barriers are given to us personally,
individually,
from within by the Holy Spirit.
They are His special gift to each of us
within the context of His unique works
both in us and through us.
By their very nature they are non-transferable.
By that I mean that they are uniquely applicable to our own personal lives,
but we are not to attempt to pass them on to our fellow Christians,
and we are certainly not to attempt
to turn them into some sort of religious system
that we then try to pass on to our fellow believers.
Man-Made Religious Systems, on the other hand,
do not enter our lives from the Spirit's working within,
but rather they are imposed upon us from the outside,
and declared by those who impose them
to be applicable to all Christians.
They provide a religious system
through which we are suppose to measure our standing before God
or our faithfulness to Him.
On the surface they often appear
to be wise and sensible,
showing people how to live better lives,
or how to develop a deeper spirituality,
but in reality they poison the very heart
of true Christian living
because they usurp
the personal life and leadership of the Spirit within us,
and replace the living God
with a set of rigid rules and expectations.
The Personal Protective Boundaries
given to us by our Lord
within the context of our walk with Him
are to be guarded and treasured as His special gifts to us.
Man-made religious systems, on the other hand,
are to be fought against at all costs
because of the destruction they bring
to life in the Spirit.
Let me offer it to you as best I can in a final statement:
God did not call us to a system,
He called us to Himself -
those boundaries that grow out our union with Him are among His most precious gifts to us,
but those systems that seek to replace
the living reality of Him in our lives
with a religious form to which we are called to conform
are to be resisted at all costs.