Commit to a Local Church

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Commit to a Local Church

Acts 2:41-47

January 29, 2023 • Shane Sikkema • Acts 2:41–47

Audio Transcript:

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If you have your Bibles open up to Acts 2, we're continuing our sermon series that we started last week. The series is called Committed Essential Habits of An Abundant Life. Over the course of this series, we're going to be taking a look at 11 essential, non-negotiable, super practical commitments that every Christian must make in order to grow in their faith, in order to persevere through the trials of life, in order to fulfill God's calling and purpose for you as a Christian and in order to truly enjoy and experience the abundant life that Jesus came to give. We looked at the passage in John 10 of Jesus last week, of Jesus the good shepherd who came to give us life and to give us abundant life. We looked last week at Acts 2, the birth of the church. The Apostle Peter gets up, he preached this sermon and we're told that 3000 people that day got saved, they got baptized and they committed their life to doing what the most important commitment that we all need to make, they committed themselves to following Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

So that's first. Today we're going to be looking at what is arguably the second most important commitment that every Christian needs to make, that you've received the gospel, you've repented of your sin, you've put your faith in Christ, you have committed to follow Him. Now what? Well, we're going to see the answer to that as we finish up the rest of Acts 2 that after these 3000 people committed themselves to following Jesus, the very next thing that they did was committed themselves to one another. They committed themselves to be the church to a local church. That's the title of today's sermon. Commit to a Local Church. We're going to be taking a look at what the early church devoted itself to, and we're going to talk a little bit about what is the church and why it's important that every Christian should be a member of a local church and then we're going to talk a little bit about how we live that out here at Mosaic.

We're in Acts 2 and we're picking up right where we left off from last week in verse 41 and it says this, "Now, those who received His word were baptized and they were added that day about 3000 souls, and they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers and awe came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles and all who believed were together and had all things in common and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people, and the Lord added to their number day by day those who are being saved."

Could you please join me in prayer for our sermon this morning? God, what a amazing, beautiful picture of what your church should be, of what your church can be by the power of your Holy Spirit. Jesus, we thank you that you have not only saved us to yourself, but you have made us a family. I pray that today that you would show us what a blessing it is when we as individual members find our place in that family, find our proper place in the household of God. I pray that you bless our time in your word this morning, in the name of your son Jesus Christ. Amen.

One of the unique privileges of being a pastor here or even being a member here at Mosaic is you get to meet a lot of people from all over the world with different backgrounds, and getting to know many of you, I know that some of you grew up in Christian households, some of you did not. Some of you grew up with parents who maybe were atheists or you practiced a different religion in the family that you grew up in. I know personally some of you even had family members who were opposed to you becoming a follower of Christ. Well, personally I was blessed to grow up in a happy Christian home. My mom and dad were both Christians. They loved Jesus. They were very active in our church. So I had the benefit of growing up with a lot of healthy habits and routines.

We attended church multiple times during the week. I got to see my parents read their bibles and pray and serve at church, and I got to hear the word preached faithfully week after week. I got to have Sunday school teachers in my life that taught me the Bible, taught me about Jesus and I grew up benefiting from many of the blessings that come not just from being a member of a Christian family but from being a part of a local church. It's kind of ironic that as I grew up and became a teenager and went off to college that one of the first things I did was I stopped attending church. I kind of had this mindset going on, "Things between me and God are pretty okay and so I don't really see why I have to go to church." Maybe if I was back visiting my family, I'd go to church with them, but when I was off on my own, I didn't.

I'm not going to get into all of the problems that that caused, but what was behind this was ... well, on the one hand I was just young and I was naive and I was proud and I was really what our brother Eli was just praying a minute ago, I wanted to do things my way. I wanted to go out and I wanted to live my own life and I didn't want anything holding me down. I didn't really want to be part of a church where there was going to be people that are going to challenge me and hold me accountable. That was part of it and part of my problem was I was basing, I was building my understanding of church and of Christianity upon a really serious misinterpretation of Matthew 18. I think this is probably up there among the most misquoted verses in all of scripture. You're probably familiar with it. Matthew 18:20, Jesus said to his disciples, "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them."

It's really encouraging, it's meant to be encouraging, but I read that and I took that to mean and okay, well therefore church is not some organized community that I need to be committed to. Church can just be whatever I make of it. I can have church in my dorm room or I can have church driving in my car or out in the woods or whatever. I mean, I never actually did that, but theoretically I could have. That's what I would tell myself. I had some Christian friends on campus that I would hang out with once in a while. At the time, I don't really think I was a Christian. I'd grown up in the church, but I wasn't actually a Christian yet and so I really had a lot more fun hanging out with my non-Christian friends. I would occasionally turn on Christian radio in my car and I'd pray once in a while and I thought, "Okay, well I'm doing these good things and so I think that means I'm a good person, so I think things are good between me and God. I don't really see why I would need to go to church."

Now, the problems that that caused were many, but my thinking and my basis for it was all wrong because Matthew 18:20, that's not what Jesus is talking about. This verse isn't something that you can read in a vacuum. You have to understand it in the context of the rest of what Jesus is saying. When you look at the verse in its context, you see that Jesus is actually ... He's giving instruction to the church of how to organize at a church. Really what He's talking about, He's talking about matters of church discipline and how as a church you need to draw distinctions between who is in the church body and who is not in the church body. So read it in context, Matthew 18, beginning in verse 15 to see what Jesus was getting at.

He says, "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you've gained your brother. But if he doesn't listen, take one or two others along with you that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a gentile and tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my father in heaven, for where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them."

Then Peter came up and he said to Him, "Well, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you seven times, but 77 times." When you read this verse in its context and you read this passage, you should discover three things. First, you should see that committing to a local church matters because it mattered to Jesus. He just assumed that every follower of His, every Christian was going to be part of a local church where they were known and accounted for. Secondly, that means that committing to a local church matters because as we see here, Jesus calls the church to make clear distinctions about who is part of that church body. Then thirdly, though, committing to a local church matters because as we see in this text, the church is a family.

If your brother sins against you, go to your brother. Win back your brother, forgive your brother that we as Christians ... yeah, Jesus saves us to Himself, but he doesn't save us to Himself alone. He saves us into a family. He adopts us. We're adopted by the blood of Christ into the household of God and within this family we have brothers and sisters and we got to learn how to get along with these siblings of ours. We got to learn how to bear with one another. He talks about the need to ... you're going to have to learn how to ask for forgiveness because you're going to sin against each other. You're going to learn how to extend forgiveness to one and over, over and over again. But you see this picture that the church, the vision that Jesus has, the church is like a family. I say this so that if you're kind of in that place where I was of thinking, "I think things are good between me and God, so I really don't see the need for church."

Maybe you haven't been attending church or you kind of attend church sporadically here and there, maybe you're just not committed to the church. We're going to talk about how the early church functioned, but I want to give you four things to think about and consider before we do to see why this really matters. The first thing is this. Consider that scripture describes the church as a flock of sheep placed under shepherds. This 1 Peter 5:1-5. It says, "I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder pastor and a witness of the sufferings of Christ as well as a partaker in the glory that's going to be revealed to shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly as God would have you. Not for shameful gain, but eagerly. Not domineering those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.

"When the chief shepherd," that's Jesus Christ, "Appears when he returns, you, the under shepherds, the pastors, the elders, will receive the unfading crown of glory. Likewise, you who are younger," so the members of the church, "Be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another. For God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." We also see this in Acts 20:28. He tells the pastors, "Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God which He obtained with His own blood." In Hebrews 13:17, "Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning for that would be of no advantage to you."

The picture here is that Jesus, if you are a Christian, He is your good shepherd. He is the one that we talked about last week who leads you in and out and helps you, brings you into good pastures, gives you this abundant life. He's the good shepherd. He's also the chief shepherd. He's the chief shepherd that there then calls you to subject yourself to the care of under shepherds, of pastors, elders of local churches. The picture that we have is that a Christian without a local church, it's like a lost sheep. It's like a sheep without its shepherd, a sheep without its flock. It's both out of place but it's also in danger. You're doing a disservice to yourself but also to the church as well and even to the shepherds, the pastors of the church. Because as pastors, Hebrews tells us in this risk that we just read, we're going to give an account to the chief pastor, the chief shepherd, Jesus, for the flock that He has entrusted us with, well then we need to know who is that.

We're not going to give an account for every person that walks through the doors or attends services here at Mosaic, but we are going to give an account before God. This is a very sobering reality for every committed member of this church and this is one of the reasons it's so urgent and important for us to know who those members are. So first, I want you to consider that the church is ... it's described as a flock placed under shepherds. Secondly, consider that the church is a body made up of many members. It's another metaphor that scripture often uses. We saw this in Romans when we went through our Roman series in chapter 12:4 says, "For as in one body we have many members and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members of one another."

Same thing in 1 Corinthians 12:12, "Just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one spirit we were all baptized into one body. Jews or Greek, slave free, we're all made to drink of one Spirit." Then you have this really beautiful description of the church in Colossians 3:12 where Paul tells the church, he says, "Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience, bearing with one another and if anyone has a complaint against another, forgiving each other. As the Lord is forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all of these, put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which you are indeed called in one body, and be thankful," he says.

The image here is that a Christian without a church, it's not just like a sheep without its flock. Actually, it's like a hand or a foot that's been cut off from a body, that the hand is useless for lack of the body, but the body also suffers for lack of the hand, that you need the body and that the body needs you. So consider that the church is described like a flock, it's described like a body. Third, consider that the church is described as a temple built of living stones. This is 1 Peter 2:4-5, "As you come to Him," as you come to Christ, "A living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ."

We actually have two kind of pictures going on, is that of the spiritual house, but he also says you're a holy priesthood. When my wife and I got baptized, the day that we got baptized, the pastor of that church told us, "When you step out of the baptistry, you step into the ministry," that every member of the church is a minister of the church and that the idea here is that pastors are not people that churches hire to do the work of the ministry on behalf of the church. That's not a pastor's job. Pastors oversee, they guide the flock, they feed the sheep. But as scripture says, the job of the pastors is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, to equip the members of the church for the work of the ministry because every member of the church is a minister of the church, has a ministry to perform, has a part to play.

That's part of what we see here in this passage. But the second thing is he says you're like these living stones that are being built together into this spiritual house. It's like we together are built as a temple for the Holy Spirit. The church is not a building. Sometimes we call church buildings, that's the church and we understand what we mean. The church is not the building, but the church is a spiritual house. We are a temple for the Holy Spirit. If we're going to stand, therefore we need to stand together. Of course, with Jesus Christ being the one chosen and precious by God as the cornerstone for that building. Fourth, consider finally then that the church is described as the family in the household of God. Ephesians 2:19, "So you're no longer strangers and aliens, but you're a fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God."

1 Timothy 3:14, Paul says to Timothy, "I hope to come to you soon, but I'm writing these things so that if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth." Then Jesus in Matthew 12, we're told that, "While He was still speaking to the people, behold His mother and His brothers stood outside asking to speak to him, but He replied to the man who told them, "Who is my mother and who are my brothers?" Then stretching His hand out toward His disciples He said, "Here are my mother and my brothers, for whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother." That a Christian without a church, it's not just like a sheep without a shepherd, it's not just a hand without a body, It's like a child without a family.

Over and over we see how vital it is that we belong to a local church, that we belong to a group of people who are committed to caring for one another, to supporting one another and encouraging one another to walk and to follow Jesus together. I wanted to start here just because over the years whenever we talk about membership, there's always people that want to kind of push back against that and say, "yeah, but the Bible never actually teaches church membership." In a sense, it's true that the Bible, there's not a chapter in the Bible that outlines this is church membership and how you do it specifically. But when you read the New Testament, you see church membership everywhere. You see that it's constantly being assumed, it's being implied and you really can't make sense of the New Testament church without it.

This is why here at Mosaic we do practice church membership and we value church membership. We take it seriously because we believe on the one hand that it's biblical, but we also believe it's beneficial and when it's done properly, it is incredibly beautiful. The question then is what is church membership? We've been talking about this. If I had to summarize church membership at Mosaic into one concise statement, I would simply say this. Membership at Mosaic, it's just simply a mutual commitment of care and accountability that we formally make with one another as members of the church. That by becoming a member you are committing before God and you're making a commitment to the other members of the church in general and then to a specific group of people, primarily your community group in particular, you're committing yourself to them. To encourage them to love them, to care for them, to hold them accountable, to be your brother's keeper, to be your sister's keeper. You're committing to do that for them.

Then at the same time you're inviting them to do that for you as well. Because we all know, you know, I know we know that we need this. We can't live the Christian life alone. We need the support of other Christians if we are going to run with endurance the race that was set before us. We read that in Hebrews last week. You probably heard the saying, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. We need to understand the Christian race, it's not a hundred-meter dash, it's a marathon. It takes endurance and we need the help and the support of one another to run this race well.

If it helps, think of it like this. My wife and I got married, believe it or not, on our wedding day. A big surprise there. Before the wedding we lived apart. I had my own apartment, she lived in a house on campus with some roommates. After the wedding, we moved in together and we did life together. Now, theoretically we could have left the wedding and gone back to our own separate places and continued to live and do life apart and we could have still remained married in some legal technical sense perhaps. But realistically, well, first of all, I can't imagine a more miserable marriage than that. But if you knew us, at some point you would have to look at our marriage and the arrangement that we had and you'd really have to begin questioning the sincerity of the vows that we made at our wedding.

If you truly are in Christ, you are a member of the universal church. That's just a fact. But this reality should give you an inner desire to have true, meaningful fellowship with other followers of Jesus and to experience the blessing of being committed to a local church. It's the right thing to do, but it's also what's best for you, it's what's best for the church. With that all out of the way, if you're not a member, can't wait to see you at our next membership class. We got another one of those ... we had a great one last week. Our next one's not coming up for a while, but we'd love to get you signed up for it and in the meantime, if you have any questions about that, we'd love to talk to you about membership.

Now, let's get back to our text because I really ... what I want to do is I want to look at what this commitment looks like in day-to-day life because what we're told in Acts 2:42 is the first thing we're told is that they devoted themselves, they committed themselves, and then the rest of the passage, it shows us some of the things that the early church committed itself to. I'm going to read the passage again. Acts 2:42 says this, "And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching." This is the teaching that we have recorded for us in scripture and in the New Testament. "They devoted themselves to the truth of God's word, to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles and all who believed were together and had all things in common."

It says, "They were even selling their possessions and belongings to distributing the proceeds to all as any had need, and day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they receive their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people and the Lord added to their number day by day, those who are being saved." I want to quickly take a look at four commitments, four habits that we see the early church devoted themselves to and that we need to devote ourselves to as well as we follow Christ. The first is this. The early church was devoted to gathering in the temple for worship.

We rent space in a Jewish temple. We like to joke sometime we take this verse very literally here at Mosaic, but the temple is not the point here. Before Jesus, it was. Before Jesus, God's people had to gather in the temple in Jerusalem to worship Him because that is where His present dwelled within the holy of holies, and before Jesus, the only hope that they could have of approaching this holy God in worship was to go through this system, this temple system of priests and of sacrifices that would allow them to approach a holy God. Now, after Jesus, this all changed. Hebrews tells us that Jesus is now our great high priest, that his death has put an end to the entire temple system with its priest, with its sacrifices once and for all. We're told that the moment that Jesus died on the cross, that the earth was shaken, that the curtain in the temple was torn from top to bottom and that the barrier separating God's holiness from sinful man, it was no longer needed.

Not because we were no longer sinful or because God was no longer holy, but because Jesus Christ had fully paid the penalty of our sin. He'd made atonement for us on the cross so that as God's people we can now draw near to the presence of God with confidence and with boldness, because we have been clothed with the righteousness of Christ, we have been cleansed by His blood on the cross and there is no further sacrifice that will ever need to be made. His was sufficient. The Holy Spirit no longer dwells in a temple. The Holy Spirit now dwells in a people. The Holy Spirit dwells in the church that we individually and together are a temple for the Holy Spirit. Why did the early church then continue to gather in the temple?

Well, the answer that we see throughout the New Testament is that the early church chose to gather for worship, not just in the temple in Jerusalem, but really in whatever location was convenient and available and accommodating to a large group of people gathering together. It just so happened to be in Jerusalem the best place to do that was in the temple, but in other places you see them gathering in synagogues or in public places or even out in nature sometime. The emphasis is not on the building, the temple, the location. The emphasis is on the reality that something special happens when God's people come together, gather together as a large group to worship him. This is why to this day, all over the world, Christians gather on Sunday mornings. They gather together to read the scripture, to preach the word, to praise and to worship God together.

This is not something that we should neglect and this is not something we should take for granted. Hebrews 10 talks about this very thing and it says in verse 19, "Therefore brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus," using the temple [inaudible 00:28:10] to kind of describe what Jesus has done, since we can enter the holy of holies, the presence of God by the blood of Jesus, not by the old way, but "By the new and living way that He opened up for us through the curtain that is through his flesh, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us then draw near with true hearts and full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

hen verse 24 says this, "And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as we see the day drawing near." Really quick, I just want to give us seven compelling reasons for why we should make this a priority and why we should not neglect gathering together and worshiping here together on Sunday mornings as a church. First of all, we commit to do this above everything else. Our top priority, the main motivation for why we gather here every week is because God is worthy of our praise. This is important because it's easy to come in like, "I hope I get something out of the service today. I hope I leave feeling fed or encouraged or I hope the band sings some good songs."

Yeah, that's all going to happen by God's grace and praise God for the many benefits that we have of coming and gathering together, but that shouldn't be our primary motivation. Our primary motivation is that no matter what's going on or what's happened over the last week, that God is still the same and He's still worthy of our praise, and so we are going to gather and give Him the praise that He is worthy of not. We're not coming here primarily to get something, but to give something, to give God the glory for His faithfulness and his character and his attributes for being the holy, perfect, beautiful God that He is. We commit because God's worthy. With that, we commit because it's what we are made to do, that we were made to worship and that if we neglect to worship God, if we fail to give that glory to God, our hearts are going to find something else to give it to.

We cannot help but worship. It's what we were created to do, but God alone is the one worthy of our worship and so we commit to come and to gather and to do that. A third, we commit to gather for worship because we know that God blesses the preaching of His word. We see this throughout a scripture, but God uses this time in a special way and it's not the messenger. We're imperfect people, but by God's grace He uses the preaching of His word to correct and to edify and to encourage and to unify His church. A fourth, we see in the passage from Hebrews that we should commit to doing this because we need to stir one another up to love and to good work. We talk about this, this is halftime in the locker room at the Super Bowl, right? We gather and we look back over the first half over last week and we thank God and we praise Him for His faithfulness for getting us this far.

We celebrate the victories and we learn from any mistakes that we have made and we get ourselves pumped up to go out in the second half and live on mission in the week to come. It's a time for us to come and to stir one another up to love and to good works. Then fifth, with that, Hebrew says we also do this because we need to encourage one another, that we should be showing up here ready to give courage to one another, not coming as consumers. I'm going to talk about this a little bit more here in a few minutes, but we talk about this at our membership class every time we have one, that our goal at Mosaic is not to be a cruise ship. Our goal is to be more like a battleship where we have a mission to accomplish and that mission is going to take courage.

This idea of encouragement, literally think about that, is we're filling, we're giving other people courage to do what they need to do because it's not going to be easy. There's a battle to be fought, fighting the good fight of faith, and we need to gather to encourage one another. So we show up here every week saying, "Who can I help? Who can I serve? Who can I be an encouragement to today?" Six, we do this because we know as Hebrews says, that the day is drawing near. All the more reason to commit to gathering together, because we know every day is one day closer to when Christ is going to return and praise God for that. But we understand that therefore we don't want to be caught off guard. We want to be ready, waiting, excited, anticipating His return, awake and alert and walking faithfully together.

Which really leads us to the final thing is that as this day draws near, we commit to gather for worship because we understand that this is a foretaste of heaven. This is an experience where we get just a small glimpse of what it's going to be like to be together worshiping God in eternity. If we want to experience this abundant life that we've been talking about, this is perhaps no greater commitment that we could make to experience this than to commit ourselves to a local church and to begin to do that by making this Sunday morning really the top priority of our week. This is the first day of the week. We want to give God our first and our best. This should be the priority of our week. I gave you seven reasons why. I'm going to give you five practical tips for how you can do that, how we can make this time a priority so that everyone gets the most out of it that we can.

Number one, commit to pray for this gathering throughout the week. Pray for your pastors who are going to be preaching the word. Pray for the worship team that's going to be leading us in praise. Pray for the teachers and the volunteers in Mini Mosaic and in Mosaic Teens as they prepare to guide and to shepherd the hearts of our children. Pray for the children, pray for the teenagers. Pray that they not just be learning about God but they'd be coming here and truly experience His love for them. Pray for the hospitality, the operations teams that work so hard behind the scenes to make all of this possible week after week. Pray that the saints would be edified and encouraged. Pray that unbelievers would come and hear the gospel, that the Lord would add to our number daily those who are being saved. Then most of all, pray that God would be glorified.

Pray the name of Jesus Christ would be highly exalted here at Mosaic and that the spirit would be working in and through us as a church. Commit to pray for this gathering throughout the week. The second thing you can do is commit to ready yourself for worship before you come. Super practical stuff. Saturday night, go to bed on time, get a good night's sleep. Get up Sunday morning, wake up early if you need to kind of prepare your heart for worship. It's like going into a workout. You don't want to go in completely cold. You got to do a little bit of a warmup first. So turn on some worship music, spend some time in prayer. If you know the scripture we're going to be talking about today, read it. Meditate on it ahead of time. If you know the songs we're going to be singing, listen to them.

Think about the words that we're going to be singing together, but warm your hearts, get yourself ready for worship. Then along with that, and I know this is difficult, but make it a priority to not let other things take place of this on your calendar. I understand, especially as parents, this can be hard. I have had to say no to so many sports and so many birthday parties for my kids, but I can encourage you that one, if you hold a consistent front on that, they just stop asking after a while. They don't even think about it. Of course, we're not going to do that because it's Sunday, we're going to church. But also when you do this, you're showing them that you're saying no to certain things because you're saying yes to something better. You're saying yes to what is really truly best, not just for yourself, but for them to come and to be a part of this.

You're showing that you actually believe this and that this is a priority to you and that's going to help it become so much easier for it to be a priority for them as well. So commit to ready yourself for worship and to protect this time. I understand things come up and you're not going to be a hundred percent perfect in this, but you do your best. Third, commit to be here early. Notice I didn't say commit to be here on time and there's a reason for that. Showing up on time is a rookie mistake in Boston. If you leave on time in the city of Boston, you're already late. You know got to leave at least 15 minutes earlier than you think that you need to be, and then maybe perhaps sometimes you'll actually get there on time.

But this is really important and I'm going to spend some time on that. I know we've mentioned this a few times over the last couple of weeks, but in the first service I said there's nothing more discouraging than beginning a worship service with an empty room and then seeing it filled up by the time the sermon starts. On a more positive note, there's nothing more encouraging than being here and when the service starts, the room is full and people are ready and everyone's excited to worship together. One of the most encouraging things that we can experience, but it's something we need to do for one another as a church. It's not going to happen by accident. You got to make it a priority. You got to think about it and plan and be intentional. When we say that worship starts at 09:15, just tell yourself, "No it doesn't, it starts at nine o'clock," or 11 o'clock if you come to this service.

If you got kids that you need to check into Mini Mo, you got to figure that out and factor that in too. Mini Mosaic opens at nine o'clock and so you can start getting them checked in right at nine o'clock. But it's going to be a blessing to you, to your kids so you're not rushing in, frazzled. They got time to get adjusted and ready for Mini Mosaic. You got time to come upstairs, take a deep breath, get a cup of coffee, say hello to some people. It'll be a game changer. With this, commit to be here early and commit to serve. I don't primarily mean commit to joining a service team, although I think that would be great. We've got tons of opportunities to serve and we're always looking for more people to do that and we're thankful for the people that do.

What I mean, though, is come with a servant heart. Show up early with a servant heart, not a consumer mentality. Because when you show up early with a servant's heart, you have the opportunity to do the work of the ministry, to be the church to one another. It's not complicated. Just saying hello and greeting your friends, your presence is such an encouragement to them. On top of that, every week we've got people here at Mosaic that are visiting us for the first time. It's just a reality. People when they visit a church for the first time, it's not a hundred percent of the time, but most of the time they show up early. If you get here early, most of the people in the room, it's like their first time here.

You could be the person that goes up, shakes their hands, welcomes them, helps them, maybe invite them to your community group or help them get connected. Somehow you can make a huge difference in someone's life just with some simple changes like that. It's not only you get to be a blessing to others, but you also be an encouragement to the whole church. Just a couple of tips, because I understand it's kind of a big church, there's a lot of people here and so sometimes you're like, "I don't want to go up and say hello to someone because I don't know if they're new or if they've been attending here for five years," because we've all had that awkward conversation of like, "Oh, are you new here?" "No, I've been here longer than you have." So here's a tip. Don't ask somebody if they're new to Mosaic. Go up, shake their hands, say, "Hey, how long have you been coming to Mosaic?"

Then if they say, "Hey, this is my first time," great, then you know that and you can help them get connected. If they say, "Hey, I've been going here for five years," well that's great too, glad that we finally met, but it's less awkward. Also, if you see someone walk in, this is just a reality. You see somebody before, after, during the worship service that won't stop staring up at this terrifying thing looming over our heads, that's usually a pretty good sign that they're new to Mosaic too. Because after a few weeks, you get used to it, you forget that it's there. But if you're new, you're walking in, you're like, "Oh my goodness, are we going to die? Is that going to fall on us?" It's been up there for a hundred years, so I think we're good, but a good indication that somebody's new and then especially if they take out their phones, they're taking pictures, go talk to them. Probably their first time here.

We call this fishing in the aquarium, right? You're showing up as a missionary and you've got the lowest hanging fruit that you could ask for because God's already done the work of drawing these people here. They're here for a reason. Some of them are looking for a church, maybe they're new to the city, some of them are looking for God. It might be the first time that they've ever been to church. Think about that and have that mindset that you're coming in ready to just be here with a servant's heart and to connect and to encourage one another. Then finally commit to give God your full attention and participation while you're here. If you're doing the other things I mentioned, this part's going to come naturally, you'll be coming in less stressed, less distracted. But the idea is expect that there's a reason that you're here right now, that God in His sovereignty has ordained that you would be here right now.

So stay focused and be attentive. If you need to turn your phone off, the world's still going to be here an hour and 15 minutes from now. If the sermon's a little bit long, maybe Jesus will come back before the end of the service. But be it attentive. If we're singing, sing loud, think about the words. If someone's praying, pray along with them in your heart. If someone's preaching, really apply your mind to try to focus, no matter how long and boring the sermon might be, trusting that God is going to use it and that He has something for you that He wants you to understand from His scriptures. If everyone in the room committed to doing these five things, just imagine the energy and the excitement that we would have as we come in, as we worship together even more than we do already right now.

Living in this city, just doing life, I understand it can suck the life out of you if you let it. I understand it's easy to kind of stumble in here sometimes half zombified, but I also understand that that's not ideal, that's not healthy and it's not going to change if you don't do something to change it. It's going to take commitment and discipline and planning and forethought, intentionality. But I promise it'll be worth it. It'll be worth it for you, it'll be worth it for the people that you connect with here on Sunday. So fight the busyness, fight the distractions, fight the cynicism of the city and fight to make this a priority, to show up here every week, ready, rested and excited, to serve one another, to be an encouragement to one another into worship together.

Point number two. Don't worry, the rest of the points are going to go really fast. The early church was devoted to gathering in the temple for worship. They were also devoted to gathering in homes for fellowship. Says that they day by day attended the temple together and they broke bread in their homes, receiving their food with glad and generous hearts. We're going to talk a little bit more about this in the coming weeks, but just for right now, just what we see here is that as important and as vital as this Sunday gathering is, there are certain shortcomings that come with it, that in a larger gathering like this, it's easy to be anonymous, it's a little harder to make meaningful connections, to have really deep, meaningful life-changing conversations. What we see is that the early church, they met in the temple, but then they also met in smaller groups in their homes.

We do this at Mosaic through our community groups. If you've been to another church, maybe you call them small group, fellowship group, life group, whatever. All kind of the same idea where you're getting together outside of Sunday, usually in a home, and it's just a smaller, more intimate environment where you can talk about Sunday and what we learned from the sermon, but it's also a time where you can build those meaningful relationships, where you can pray for one another's specific needs, where you can encourage one another and hold one another accountable as a family. Personally, I've been involved in community group consistently for almost 20 years. My wife and I joined our first group about 19 years ago. We were engaged at the time and I can just say for myself that community groups have been one of the single greatest contributing factors to our health, to our growth, to our sanctification and maturity in the faith.

If you're not in a community group, I would challenge you, make that a priority as soon as possible. We've got over 20 groups meet all over the city throughout the week. It should be easy for you to find one that works with your schedule or with your location. We would be happy to help you find that. You can stop by the welcome center. People there could show you a map and help you figure out what might work best for you. You can also find that information all on our website. But the early church was devoted to gathering in their homes for fellowship. Third, with this, they were devoted and we see this, they were sharing their lives sacrificially. We're told that verse 44, "All who believed were together and had all things in common and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need," just freely sharing their lives with one another, meeting one another's needs.

It kind of builds off the last point. What you see is that the early church clearly had something going on that was deeper than what we think about as friendship. What they had was fellowship, right? The beginning of Acts, it said that they devoted themselves to the fellowship and fellowship, it's not something that is built around just shared hobbies or interest. It's deeper than that. Fellowship is something that is built around a shared commitment to a vision, a mission, a goal, a purpose, and this is what drove the early church to therefore with that freely share their lives with one another so sacrificially. I mentioned this earlier, that we like to try to think about Mosaic as being more like a battleship and less like a cruise ship. Cruises are great. I've been on a cruise, they're fun. You might make some acquaintances on a cruise and you have a good time, but fellowship is built on battleships.

Fellowship is something that is forged in the heat of battle through these deep, meaningful bonds. That's where they're formed, where people are accountable to one another and where they're constantly counting on one another and they're working together towards something bigger than themselves. Think of it like this. If you're thinking about church like a cruise, you show up to a cruise and you expect to be served and entertained by the crew. If you're not, you're disappointed. When you get on a battleship, you are the crew. We're all the crew. When you get on a cruise, you go around, you have a good time and you end up right back where you started. When you get on a battleship, you go out with a mission to accomplish and to accomplish together.

This is what creates that fellowship where you're like, "We're ready to sacrifice for one another," because we know if one part of the body is hurting, we're all hurting. If one member of the body is wounded, we all feel the pain. When one member of the body wins, we all celebrate that victory together, that we're all in this together. In the early church, they were devoted to sharing their lives sacrificially and then finally we see in this passage they were devoted to sharing the gospel expectantly. Says verse 47, "Having favor with all the people and the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved." This doesn't mean that they weren't met with any hardships. When you look at the New Testament, you see that the early church clearly expected two things that were seemingly contradictory things to happen as they went out on mission and shared the gospel.

On the one hand, they expected sinners to reject Jesus, and on the other hand, they expected Jesus to save sinners. This shouldn't be a surprise to us because this is what Jesus told us to expect. He taught us this in the Sermon of the Mountain. Matthew 5, it says in verse 10, "Blessed are you when you are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed you and others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account." It says, "Rejoice and be glad for greatest your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you." But He says, "But you are the salt of the earth. If the salt is lost its taste, how shall it saltiness be restored? It's no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet."

It says, "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on its stand and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who's in heaven." If you follow me and if you preach this gospel, Jesus tells us that you should expect that some people are going to hate you. They're going to slander you and they're going to persecute you. He says, "But don't let that discourage you. Don't let that cause you to lose your saltiness." Instead, He says, "Rejoice and be glad. Keep on shining that light." This is the same light that's going to blind those who love the darkness, it's going to shine like a beacon of hope to those that God is drawing to Himself, that they're going to see it and they're going to give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

Charles Spurgeon said ... I'm not a hundred percent sure that he said this, but this is commonly attributed to him, that's what a big deal he was as a preacher. There's a quote that is attributed to him where he says this, that "The same sun which melts the wax hardens the clay. And the same gospel which melts some persons to repentance, hardens others in their sin." It's not our duty to do the hardening or to do the softening. That is up to the sovereignty of God. Our duty is to shine the light of the gospel together in faith and trust that as we do that, even if we face opposition, that Jesus will save. The early church believed this. They were committed to sharing the gospel, expecting that despite the opposition that Jesus was going to save. If you come back over the next couple of weeks, we're going to dive into this in more detail.

Two weeks from now, we're going to talk about being committed to discipleship. Next week we're going to talk about being committed to evangelism. I'm excited to get into those topics with you and just look at some of the practical implications of those. But my challenge to you for today is just this. If you've committed to follow Jesus, then commit to a local church. If not Mosaic, then another Bible-believing, like-minded, Jesus-loving following, gospel proclaiming church. Commit to a local church. If you are committed to a local church, if you're already a member at Mosaic, well this would be a good time to just kind of take an evaluation of that commitment. This is something we as Christians should do routinely, just evaluate our lives.

Consider the practical things that we talked about today and if you need to just go home this week and grade your level of commitment. "Have I been making worship the priority that it should be? Have I been making my participation in worship the priority that it should be? Have I been making my community group the priority that it should be? Am I showing up there ready to love and serve and encourage those people and ready to receive them as they do the same for me?" If you find yourself right now bored with church, I would challenge you to consider that it's not church that you're bored with, but perhaps what you're bored with is consumeristic cruise ship Christianity type church. It's a lot more exciting to be on board the battleship that Jesus calls us to, that He is calling for all hands on deck. If you hear that call that I pray today that you would answer that call and I would invite you to come and to get on board and to join us and be part of this mission as we work together here at Mosaic.

With that being said, let's pray and we will spend some time worshiping God together. God, we thank you for making us a family, brothers and sisters saved by the blood of our big brother, your son, Jesus Christ. God, we also thank you for calling us into your family business, for calling us as a church to your mission and for bringing us on board this battleship. I pray, Lord, that as your word reminds us, our battle is not against flesh and blood. Our battle is against the spiritual forces of darkness, against Satan, against sin, against the lies and temptations of the enemy. Your word tells us that our weapons are spiritual and divine, in nature. Even now, Lord, our worship is a weapon that we can wheel to push back the forces of darkness as we together sing and proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Lord, I pray right now that we would sing these words from our hearts knowing that they are true, because we know that you are our heavenly Father, that you love us, because we know that your Holy Spirit is working in and through us, and because we know that your son, Jesus Christ, is with us, that He is building His church and that he has promised that the gates of hell will not prevail against us. Lord, you alone are God. You alone have the power to save. You alone are worthy of our praise and so we give you our praise right now together, in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, amen.

Commit to Finish Well

April 2, 2023 • Shane Sikkema • Matthew 24—25

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston, or donate to this ministry, please visit http://mosaicboston.com Over the last 11 weeks we have been looking at some of just the super essential, practical, non-negotiable commitments that all of us as followers of Jesus need to make in order to grow in our faith, in order to persevere in our faith, in order to experience the abundant life that Jesus Christ came to give us. And if you have your Bibles, open up to Matthew chapter 24. The title of today's sermon as we finish this series is, Commit to Finish Well. And on the surface that might sound a little bit redundant because that that's really what commitment is. The whole purpose of commitment is to see something through to completion. And the whole reason you need to make commitments, it only is necessary when you're attempting to do something that's going to be difficult, that you're going to be tempted to give up on or possibly quit. And Jesus promised to give us abundant life. We looked at that when we began this series, but that doesn't mean that the Christian life is going to be an easy life. That the abundant life that Jesus talks about, yeah, it comes with peace that passes understanding. It comes with joy and contentment and hope, but it comes with its fair share of difficulties as well. The Christian life is we live in this tension of both tribulation and hope that John 16:33, Jesus told his disciples, "I have said these things to you, that in me, you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart, for I have overcome the world." This is the tension that we live in as followers of Christ, that in this world we will be faced with tribulations, with temptation, persecution, with many trials. And there will be times when we are tempted to give up. There will be times where all we can do is hold on to the hope that we have in Jesus Christ and do what he calls us to do, which is to endure, to overcome these tribulations by standing firm, by persevering, by holding fast until he returns so that we may finish well. It's a race that we must run with endurance, but as we're going to see in our text today, it's also a race that could come to an end at any moment. And at the heart of our text today, we're going to be looking at a really large passage of scripture and I'm going to talk a little bit more about that and introduce it here in a little bit. But at the heart of this passage, Matthew chapter 24 is verse 36 through 44 where Jesus says this, he says, "But concerning that day and hour, no one knows." And he's talking about his return, "not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. For as in the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, and marrying and giving in marriage until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away." And he says, "So will be the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field, one will be taken and one left. Two women will be grinding at the middle, one will be taken and one left. Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known and what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore, you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming in an hour you do not expect." And the big idea is that Jesus is coming back. No one knows exactly when, but when he comes, he says it's going to be like some people are asleep. That they're just completely caught off guard unaware by his return. It's going to be like in the days of Noah, people are just going on with their lives, ignoring the warnings coming from the Prophet Noah until that day when the flood comes and just swept them all the way. And he says, "It's going to be like that. When I return some people are going to be caught off guard as if they were asleep. But others," Jesus said, "well, they're going to be wide awake. They're going to be ready, waiting for Jesus' return." And Jesus doesn't tell us exactly when he's going to return, but he does teach us how to be ready for his return. And that's what we're going to be focusing on today. Today as we've said, is Palm Sunday. In the passage that I just read, it comes from a larger passage of scripture that's often referred to as the Olivet Discourse. It's in Matthew chapter 24 through 25. And in Matthew's gospel, this is the sermon that Jesus preached on the Mount of Olives to his disciples sometime after his triumphal entry on Palm Sunday, but before his crucifixion on Good Friday. And there's way too much here for us to get through all of it verse by verse today. But we are going to get through most of it section by section. And as we do, we're going to be looking at five lessons, five steps that Jesus gives us that will enable us to be ready for his return, five areas that we need to endure in, in order to run this race and to finish well. And so the outline of today's sermon, Five steps to Finishing Well. The first step is to endure in hope. This is the beginning of Matthew chapter 24. Point two, endure in obedience. That's the end of chapter 24. Third, endure in faith. That's the beginning of chapter 25. Endure in mission. And then finally at the end of his sermon is the call to endure in love. Before we jump into the first point of today's sermon, would you please join me in prayer for our sermon today? Father, we thank you that you are a good and a just God. That you will not tolerate sin and evil forever, that a day is coming when you will judge the world in righteousness, where all sin will be accounted for, either in hell for all of eternity as it deserves, or on the cross by Jesus Christ in our place. Jesus, we thank you for your sacrifice. We thank you for taking the punishment, the wrath that our sins deserve so that we can look to your coming, not with the fear of punishment, but with the hope of salvation, of deliverance. That you have saved us, you've justified us, you've saved us from the penalty of our sin, that you right now by the power of your Holy Spirit are saving us, delivering us from the power of sin in our lives. And that you will come again to once and for all time deliver us from the very presence of sin for all of eternity. We long for, we look to that day. And Lord, we pray as we do that you would give us the strength to endure. That by the power of your Holy Spirit we would persevere for the glory of your name. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. All right, point number one today is to endure in hope. And this comes from the beginning, Matthew chapter 24. Beginning in verse one, Matthew sets the context for us. He says that, "Jesus left the temple and was going away when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. But he answered them, 'You see these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.'" And then later, "As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, 'Tell us when these things will be? What will be the sign of your coming at the end of the age?' And Jesus answered them, see that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name saying, 'I am the Christ,' and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All of these are but the beginning of the birth pains. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." And so Matthew begins, he sets the context for us. Jesus and his disciples, they're in Jerusalem and he begins to notice that his disciples are, they're starstruck by the impressive buildings, the stones of the temple. And he answers them. In verse three he says, "You see these things?" He says, "Listen to me. Truly, I say to you, there's not going to be one of these stones left on top of another. They're all going to be thrown down." And then his disciples come to in verse three and says, "Well, tell us Jesus, what are you talking about? When are these things going to happen? What are going to be the signs of your coming at the end of the age?" And then Jesus begins to answer their question. And as you read the next two chapters, it becomes clear that Jesus' answer is not so crystal clear. That he doesn't give him a straightforward, "Well, here's the time and here's the date." And actually what you see is that as he answers, he seems to be actually describing multiple different events all at the same time. Events that are distinct, but that are in some ways similar, some ways connected. On the one hand he's predicting the literal fall of Jerusalem. He's predicting the literal destruction of the temple, a prediction that actually came true within the lifetime of his own disciples. That happened, we know this from history. Now, on the other hand, when you look at the larger context of Matthew and especially the Gospel of John, we see that Jesus often compared the destruction of the temple to the destruction of his physical body, that he was foreshadowing his crucifixion and his resurrection. And this is why a few chapters later in Matthew 26, when Jesus is standing trial, well, some of his accusers come and say in Matthew 26:61 that, "This man said he was able to destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days." Well, we know Jesus actually did say something like that, but he wasn't referring to the literal temple at that time. He was talking about himself. That he was going to be crucified, buried, and that three days later he was going to rise from the death. Now, on the other hand, Jesus is clearly not just talking about himself. He's clearly not just talking about the temple, he's talking about the end of the world. And so he's preparing his disciples for God's judgment. He's preparing his disciples for the judgment of God that was going to be poured out on him later that week on the cross in their place for their sins. And he's also teaching them about the judgment of God that was going to fall on the whole temple system, that this was going to be a sign. That that old temple with its old, it wasn't needed anymore, because Jesus had come to fulfill all of that. Jesus was the true temple, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. And his disciples were as well as the Holy Spirit came to dwell in them and that they didn't need the priests and the sacrifices. Jesus was the high priest. Jesus was the sacrifice. But then thirdly, he's foreshadowing the judgment of God that was going to someday day come on all of creation. There was going to come a day when Jesus is going to return to judge the world in righteousness and to make all things new. And the apostle Peter later on in his life, he wrote in second Peter chapter three, remembering the words of Jesus. He quotes him in II Peter 3:10, "That the day of the Lord will come like a thief." And then he says, "The heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved and the earth and all the works that are done on it will be exposed." Nothing's going to be hidden from the judgment of God. And so verse 11 he says, "Since these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness in godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn. But what is our hope? Verse 13, "But according to his promise we are waiting for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells." And this should cause the enemies of God to tremble in fear, to humble themselves and repent. But the reason that Jesus is telling his disciples this is because he wants them. He needs them to fix their eyes on this hope, because this hope is going to be the only thing that is going to allow them, enable them to persevere the tribulation that is about to come. And we need the hope of Jesus' return, because as we wait for his return, the truth is, things are going to get pretty bad. That before Jesus returns to rescue his church and lead us to glory, Satan is going to do everything he can to ravage the church and lead us astray. Jesus continues in verse four and he says, and so therefore he says, "See that no one leads you astray. For many are going to come into my name, saying, 'I am the Christ and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you're not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. And all of these are but the beginning of the birth pains. And then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.'" Jesus warns about three tactics that Satan, that the enemy is going to use, three categories of tribulation that he's going to wield against the church in order to lead us astray. In the first category we see. The first category of tribulation we see is that of trials. And what I mean by trials here, as Jesus talks about, there's going to be times of great difficulty. Wars, rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes, pestilence, disease, that he says, "There's going to be an increase in lawlessness. That it will just become common for people to lie, to cheat, to murder, to steal. And that these trials, they're going to be experienced, they're going to be common to everyone, but that Satan is going to use them in order to lead people astray. To lead people away from God, to lead them to extinguish their love, to grow cold in their love for God and their love for one another." And Jesus refers to these tribulations as birth pains. That they'll come and they'll go. They'll ebb and they'll flow throughout human history. And every time they do it's going to feel like the end of the world. It's going to feel like things couldn't possibly get any worse. And that these cycles of tribulation, they're going to come, they're going to continue until eventually a time of great tribulation, which the church will have to endure. But this will take place immediately before the return of Christ. It'll be painful, they'll be scary, but the hope is that these pains are leading to something glorious. And Jesus doesn't try to sugarcoat it. He says, "It's going to be bad." But he says in verse 13, "But listen, the one who endures to the end will be saved." And so in the trials of life, dear Christian, endure. The second category we see, the second category of tribulation is that of persecution. Verse nine, it says, "They will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another." Again, like the pangs of trials, persecutions, they come and go throughout church history and as they do, Jesus says, "They're going to cause some Christians to fall away, to turn against one another, to even hate one another." And I think a lot of people think that Christian persecution, oh, that's just something of the past. That's maybe something the early church experienced under the Roman Empire, but that doesn't happen today. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. It is estimated that since the dawn of the church, 70 million Christians have been martyred for their faith in Jesus Christ, 70 million. And over half of those took place within the last 100 years. And estimated around a 100,000 Christians are martyred every year, because they bear the name of Christ. And those of us who grew up here in America, we don't think about this often, because the world doesn't want to look at it. The world turns away from it, pretends like it's not happening. And much of it is happening far away on the other side of the world. I think a lot of Christians got a wake-up this week, these demonic evil attack that took place at the Covenant Christian School in Tennessee. It was a young woman who hated God, who hated Christians and targeted her rage at a Christian school. Satanically murdered three adults, three children, and I don't use that word satanic lightly. What is persecution? Persecution is what happens, when Satan tempts a person to love their sin and their perversion so much that they are willing to kill for it, rather than look to the one who loved them so much that he was willing to die for it, to die for them. It's demonic, it's evil, it's satanic and it's heart-wrenching when it hits so close to home. But this is a reality that many Christians throughout history and around the world today face every single day. This is the reality that got Jesus nailed to a cross. This is the reality that led every one of his apostles to a brutal martyr's death. That when the general calamity of the trials of life are not enough to pull us away, well then Satan is not above using specifically targeted evil at the people of God through the form of persecution. And sometimes it's social coercion, sometimes it's economic exclusion, sometimes it's threats and acts of violence. And Jesus warns us, verse nine, "They'll deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death and you'll be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another." Again, he doesn't sugar coat it for us, but he does leave us with this hope in verse 13, "That the one who endures to the end will be saved." So endure in trials, endure in persecution. The third category of tribulation we see in this passage is that of temptation. That Satan, look at verse 11, "Many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because of lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold." And then later in verse 24, he says, "For false christs and false prophets will arise and even perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect." Obviously, that's not possible, but he's trying to communicate how severe the temptation will be. That Satan doesn't always need to use persecution when sometimes all it takes is a little temptation. Sometimes all he needs to do is raise up a false prophet to tell us what we want to hear. Raise up a false pastor who instead of boldly preaching the truth that we need to hear will cower before the crowds and just tell them what they want to hear. This is, I mean these signs, they're everywhere. We see them all around us in this world today, the pains of labor. And when we feel them and when it feels like they've become too much, there's really two ways we can respond. We can look at this rising hatred of God, of persecution against Christians around the world. We can look at the cult of rampant perversion and sexual immorality that is domineering our culture. We can look at the wars, the rumors of wars, the famines, the disaster of the disease. We can look at the alarming apostacy in churches around us that scoff at the Word of God. We can look at these signs and lose heart. We can get discouraged, we can get angry. We can get bitter. We can allow our love to grow cold. We can believe the lie that these pains are just leading to a meaningless death. Or we can believe the truth, that these pains of labor will someday eventually give birth to eternal life, to new creation. And so dear Christian, endure the pains of this tribulation. Pick up your cross and fix your eyes on Jesus, the founder, the perfector of our faith who promises us Matthew 7:13, "That the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few." And then 24:13, "But the one who endures to the end will be saved." And finally, Matthew 24:32. Jesus gives us this beautiful illustration of hope, because after hearing all that, we need some hope. And this is what he says. He says, "From the fig tree learns its lesson, as soon as its branches become tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see all of these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates." I don't know about you, but I am ready for summer in more ways than one. Outside the front window of our apartment we have these two magnolia trees, and right now they look like death. They're barren. There's no leaves. They've got these ugly, fuzzy, grayish, greenish, brownish buds on the end of their branches. But when we see that ugliness, we get a little bit excited because we know what's about to come. We know it's only a matter of time before these buds start to bloom, before this barren tree begins to explode with color, with new life. And I really think this is just the providence of God. I looked out our window this morning and I can see just a few here there, 10, 11, maybe 12 of these buds beginning to open. The signs of life and color peeking through. Jesus may return in our lifetime, or he may not. We don't know the day or the hour. If he doesn't return soon, we have the promise of scripture that he is going to be with us. He will never leave us or forsake us. He will give us the power and the strength to persevere. And if he does return soon, he will do so in power and great glory to save and glorify his church and to put an end to Satan, sin, and death once and for all. In these last few verses of this first passage in verse 29, Jesus tells us, "Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the heavens, and the powers of the heaven will be shaken. Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and all of the tribes of earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." And so first and foremost, in order to finish, well, we need to endure in this hope. And we see this here in this first section that we've looked at. But now as we look at the rest of Jesus' sermon throughout Matthew through chapter 24 and 25, what we see is that Jesus teaches a series of parables and each one of these shows us another step, another area that we will need to endure in order to finish well. And that we can endure in because of this hope that we have in Jesus Christ. And this really shows us practically what this is going to look like in day-to-day life. Point number one was, endure in hope. Point number two is verses 45 through 51 to endure in obedience. Jesus says in verse 44, "You must also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect." And then he begins to teach this parable. He says, "Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, to give them food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. But if that wicked servant says to himself, 'My master is delayed,' and begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him, at an hour that he does not know and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place that will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Parables are a lot like jokes. And I don't say that to say that this parable is funny. It's not. This is a very serious and grave warning that Jesus gives us. But they are in the sense that they're the closest, modern equivalent in the sense that a lot of the details in a parable are really meant to get you to the punchline of the parable. They're usually not meant to be read allegorically. They're meant to communicate one big idea, one big aha moment. As we read these parables, we got to ask, "What is the punchline of this parable?" And the punchline of this one Jesus is teaching us is, don't be like this wasted servant living a wasted life. In other words, you need to live every day as if it were your last because it very well could be so. That there is an urgency to our obedience to Christ. And the reason that there is an urgency to obedience is because we all have this tendency to want to put it off, to get to it later. How many of us have been in that place in life where we tell ourselves, "I want to follow Jesus, but I'll get serious and really give him my full obedience someday, later. I just got some stuff I want to do first." I've been there. I was that stereotypical church kid that went off to college and drifted away. And you know this about me, my first semester I joined a band and on the weekends, I wasn't going to church on the weekends, we were driving all over the Midwest, touring, playing shows. And I remember one spring morning we were on some college campus, we'd been up late playing a show the night before. And I don't know, we got up at the crack of like 10:30 or 11:00 and decided to go out and try to find something to eat. As we were driving through town, I see this woman, she's got a nice dress on, she's got a big fancy hat. She's walking down the street by herself waving a palm branch. I was like, "What on earth is she doing?" And then suddenly it dawned on me it was Sunday, today was Palm Sunday. I'd considered myself a Christian, and yet it had been so long since I thought about God or I thought about church, I didn't even realize the season, that Easter was just a week away. I was oblivious. I was like the hypocrite in this parable. And if you're waiting until later to give your full obedience to Christ, that's a really dangerous game to play. Later may never come. And if it does, you might not have the heart to respond when it does. Hebrews three warns us. Hebrews 3:12. It says, "Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end." And so endure in obedience so that you may not be hardened by deceitfulness of sin. That's point two. Point three is to endure in faith. And this is the beginning of the next chapter, chapter 25:1-13. Jesus tells us another parable. He says, "Then the kingdom of heaven will be like 10 virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bride groom. Five of them were foolish and five of them were wise. And when the foolish ones took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wises took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a cry, 'Here's the bridegroom. Come out to meet him.' Then all those virgins rose, trimmed their lamps. And the foolish ones said to the wise, 'Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.' But the wise answered saying, 'Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.' And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. And afterward the other virgins also came saying, 'Lord, Lord, open to us.' But he answered, 'Truly, I say to you, 'I do not know you.' Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.'" So again, we got, this is not an allegory, it's a parable, so the punchline here is, does Jesus know you? He answers the foolish and he says, "Truly I say to you, I do not know you." And this is echoing a statement that he made in the Sermon of the Mount earlier in Matthew chapter seven. He says, "Listen, not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord', will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. And on that day, many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you, depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'" When Jesus returns, he's not going to be impressed with our self-righteous list of accomplishments as we stand before his throne in judgment. The question is, does he know you? Do you have faith? Do you have a relationship with Jesus Christ? Oftentimes we're tempted to put off our obedience to Christ. Well, oftentimes we're often tempted to put off our relationship with Jesus Christ to say, "I'll get serious about my faith later. I'll spend time in fasting and prayer. I'll start to read my Bible later. Someday when I'm less busy, someday when I have more time." Well, later may never come. And the question is, Jesus wants us to feel an urgency that if he came back today, would it be like you're meeting a stranger, or would it be like you're meeting a friend, somebody that you know, someone you have a relationship with? You need to endure in faith. Point number four is to endure in mission. This is verse 14 through 30, Matthew chapter 25. This is the parable of the talents. And we looked at this last week, so I'm not going to read through the whole thing again for us this week, just to give you the CliffsNotes version, the parable of the talents that there's a wealthy master, a wealthy king. He's entrusted three of his servants with a certain amount of money, with a certain number of talents to invest as he departs and goes on a long journey. And then he comes back to settle accounts with them after a long time. And what we're told is that the wicked servant, he took his master's money, he hid it, he buried it in the ground, and when the master comes back he punishes him. But the good servants, they took their master's talents, they invested them faithfully. And when the master comes back, he says to them in verse 23, "Well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful over a little, I'll set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master." And last week when we looked at this parable, we looked at it through the lens of giving and generosity. And that's, I think a good way to look at it. It's one of the ways that you can look at it. But ultimately, Jesus was talking about a lot more than just managing money when he was teaching this parable. He wants us, we need to look at this through the lens of God's mission that Jesus is teaching about the Kingdom of God. Now, Jesus is the master, right? He's gone on a long journey. He's ascended into heaven. We don't know the day that he's going to return, but we know that when he does return that he will be back. And while he is gone, he has left us with a mission to accomplish. If you remember back in Matthew 24:14, Jesus tells us this, "That this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." We all love this idea of doing evangelism, of making disciples, of answering God's calling for our life, investing our talents for his kingdom. But so often we are not doing those things now, because again, we keep saying, "Oh, well, I'll do those things someday later." And what we're doing in those moments is we're really acting like the foolish, like the wicked servant. Were burying God's talents in the ground. And Matthew 9:57 we're told that as Jesus and his disciples were going along the road, someone came and he said to him, "Hey Jesus, I'll follow you wherever you go.' And Jesus said to him, "Well, foxes have holes in birds of the airs have nests. But the son of man has nowhere to lay his head." And to another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "Well, Lord, let me first go and bury my father." And Jesus said to him, "Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God." And yet another said, "I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to those at my home." And Jesus said to him, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God." And obviously Jesus is using a bit of hyperbole here, but the point is clear, that the mission doesn't start tomorrow, the mission starts today. That we cannot put this off. We need to go, proclaim the kingdom of God, keep both hands to the plow and not look back. We need to endure in this mission. And then finally, we're called, at the end of his sermon Jesus calls us to endure in love. That is point number five, Matthew 25:31-46. But first, if you remember back to the beginning of chapter 24, Jesus warned us about this. He said, "That many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold." That we need as the church to endure and love. We need to endure in our love for God, we need to endure and our love for our neighbors, for people in general. But at the end of his sermon here, Jesus gives us a parable in which he is calling us specifically to endure in our love for one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. This is the meaning of the final parable. This is the parable of the sheep and the goats. Matthew 25:31. Jesus says, "When the son of man comes in his glory and all of the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. And before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on his left and then the king will say to those on his right, Come, you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me in. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me." Then the righteous will answer him saying, "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you a drink? When did we see you as stranger and welcome, or you are naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?" And the king will answer them, "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers, you did it to me." And then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink. I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, I was naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me." Then they will also answer saying, "Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and not minister to you?" Then he'll answer them saying, "Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me. And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." And I think most of us, at least for myself, whenever I've heard this read or preached, it's usually preached in the sense of, this is a call for Christians to do good works. This is a call for Christians to be charitable and compassionate and to care for those are who are in need. And those are certainly all good things that Christians should do. But that's not the point of what Jesus is talking about here. Because again, so the parable, it's not an allegory. And so what it is the punchline of the parable, it's verse 40, "That the king will answer them, 'Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of," the least of who? "One of the these, my brothers, you did it for me." And when you read the gospels, when Jesus uses that language of the least of these, when he uses the language of my brothers and sisters, he's referring to his disciples. That as Christians we should love our neighbors as ourselves, that we should be charitable and compassionate to people in general. But the big idea that Jesus is talking about here is that this needs to be especially true for how we love and care for our brothers and sisters in Christ. That as Christians, when we love other Christians, when we care for the body of Christ, it says, "If we are caring for Christ himself." And when we don't, we see the warning there as well. Now, we need to think about this in the context of the sermon that Jesus is preaching. Jesus is preaching to a people who are about to face tribulation. And in just a few days he's going to lead the way by going to the cross himself. And I think part of what's going on here is that Jesus is, he's foreshadowing the reality that a time of difficulty was about to come for himself, that he would be crucified, and that when he was his followers, his disciples, his brothers and sisters would be tempted to desert him, to betray, to deny, to be ashamed to associate with him. And that's exactly what happened. But he's also saying, "That a time of difficulty is coming for you, my church as well. And when it does, you're going to be tempted to do the same, to turn against and to abandon one another." And he's reminding us that in those moments when it becomes the most costly, the most inconvenient to love one another, that is precisely when we need to love one another the most. And we have a very direct example of this in the New Testament. In II Timothy chapter one. The apostle Paul writes in second Timothy 1:15, he says to Timothy, "Listen, you are aware of all of those in Asia who turned away from me, among whom were Phygelus and Hermogenes. May the Lord grant mercy to the house of Onesiphorus, for he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains. But when he arrived in Rome, he searched for me earnestly and found me. May the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day." And so he says, you remember Phygelus and Hermogenes, right? Phygelus, goat, Hermogenes, goat. They're hypocrites. They claim to be followers of Jesus, but they were fakes, they were frauds. When it came time to prove their faith, they were ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. They turned and they abandoned the apostle Paul. Onesiphorus, now there's a sheep, right? He cared for Paul while he was in prison. He wasn't ashamed to go to him and give him help in his time of need. He's the real goat in the modern sense, not to get too confusing. But you see what's going on here. He cared for Paul. And in caring for Paul, it's as if he cared for Christ. And look at what Paul prays for him in verse 18. He says, "May the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day." On what day? On the day when Jesus comes to separate the sheep from the goats. That as the church we must endure for love and love for one another always, especially when it's hard, especially when it's costly, especially when the world around us hates us. By doing so, we honor Christ and we prove, we test testify to the world that we truly are his disciples. And Jesus, in John 13:34, he tell his disciples, "A new commandment I give to you that you love one another, just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another." And he says, "By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have loved one another." And so the five steps to finish well, endure in hope, endure in obedience, endure in faith, endure in mission, endure in love. And Jesus gave this last commandment that we just read. If you remember this, he gave this in the context of the Last Supper, right after having washed his disciples' feet. It says John 13:12. It says, "When he had washed their feet and he put on his outer garment and resumed his place, and he said to them, 'Do you understand what I've done for you? You call me teacher and Lord, and you're right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I've given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed you if you do them, I'm not speaking of all of you, I know whom I have chosen, but the scripture will be fulfilled. He who ate bread has lifted his heel against me.'" He's talking about Judas who would betray him. "But I'm telling you this now before it takes place, that when it does take place, you may believe that I am he, truly, truly, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me." Today is a special day, today is Palm Sunday. It's the beginning of Holy Week and it's fitting that we look to the return of Christ on the day that he first entered, his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Today is also Communion Sunday, we remember the crowd that cried, hosanna, that welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem as their savior. We also remember that crowd quickly turned into the mob that later that week rejected him as their Lord. And their response, it stands as a warning, as a reminder throughout the ages that our greatest need is not for a savior who is going to come and save us from our circumstances. Our greatest need is for a savior who's going to come and save us from ourselves, save us from our sin, our guilt, our shame from the wrath of God that those things deserve. And communion is a time for us to remember and to give thanks and to celebrate that Jesus Christ came to do just that. Jesus died on the cross to deliver us from the penalty that our sin deserved. That Jesus rose from the grave to deliver us from the power of sin over our lives. And that Jesus is going to come again to judge the living and the dead, and to deliver us from the very presence of sin, a once and for all and for all eternity. God, we thank you for your amazing grace. We thank you that the signs are all around us, that the winter is almost over, that spring and summer are almost here. And that when we see these signs, we know for certain that you are with us. You have promised to be with us always to the very end of the age. And whether that day be soon, or whether that day be long beyond our time here on earth. Lord, I pray that you'd give us the grace and the power to walk faithfully and endure to the end for the sake of your name and glory. That every one of our lives would be used as a witness, as a testimony to your goodness, to your grace, to your power, to your glory. And we thank you for the blood of your son, Jesus Christ that was poured out for us, so that we could be forgiven, so that we could be redeemed from our slavery to sin and adopted into your household as sons and daughters. And we come now as your children and just continue to give you thanks and give you our praise. In Jesus' name, amen.

Committed to Generosity

March 26, 2023 • Shane Sikkema • 1 Thessalonians 4:13—5:11

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston or donate to this ministry, please visit http://mosaicboston.com We are continuing today in our sermon series Committed Talking about Essential Habits of abundant Life. If you have your Bibles open up to 2 Corinthians 9, that's we're going to be spending most of our time today. And if you haven't been with us, what we've been doing throughout this series, we are about 10 weeks in. We got two weeks to go. Next week's going to be the conclusion of this series. We've been talking about the essential, non-negotiable, super practical commitments that we all need to make as followers of Jesus in order to grow and persevere in our faith and in order to experience the abundant life that he calls every one of us to. And we've covered a lot of ground in this series, talked about a lot of topics. And the topic that we're going to be talking about today is we're going to be talking about money. We're going to be talking about generosity. We're going to be talking about giving every pastor's favorite thing to talk about. Actually, a lot of pastors are uncomfortable talking about this. And really I think a lot of the reason is because we've seen it done so poorly. Especially you think about Christian television, these guy, they're practically like charlatans, pedaling the gospel for financial gain. And that's not what this is about. And so just right up front in case you're worried, I do not live in a mansion. I have a nice apartment in Brooklyn. I do not fly in a private jet, but I do have a pretty nice Mazda. I'm proud of that. But I'm not after your money. I don't need your money. God doesn't need your money, right? That's not what this is about. Psalm 50, God tells us, he says, "Listen, every beast of the forest is mine. The cattle on a thousand hills, they're mine. I know all the birds of the hills and all that moves in the field is mine. If I were hungry, would I not tell you? For the world and its fullness are mine." He says. And God's not lacking in anything. He doesn't need anything. He made it all. He owns it all. But the reason that we're talking about money today is because as much as God doesn't need our money, he does desire our maturity and how we relate to money is going to be one of the single most, the greatest contributing factors to that, to our spiritual health, our growth, and our maturity. Because we live in a world that worships money, that is obsessed with money. And every single one of us, we are either going to worship money as well or we are going to learn how to worship with our money, but we can't do both. And Jesus, he made this clear in Matthew 6:19. He said, "Remember, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, where thieves breaking and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither rust nor moth destroy where these do not breaking and steal for where your treasure is there, your heart will be also." And then he goes on though in verse 24, he says, "Listen, no one can serve two masters. He will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other, but you cannot serve both God and money." And so we need to see money as what it is. Money's a tool and it's a powerful tool. But if we fail to learn how to use it properly, it will slowly begin to use us. It will take us captive and enslave us. And there's danger here. The apostle Paul writing to Timothy in 1 Timothy 6 he warned him about this. He said, first of all, verse six, he says, "Godliness with contentment, that's great gain for we brought nothing into the world and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing with these we'll be content." But he says, "Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction for the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. And through this craving, some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs." There's a warning there. But we also need to look carefully at this because this verse 10 it's up there in the list of probably the top most misquoted verses in all of scripture. Because usually when you hear this verse, you hear it said that "Money is the root of all evil." But that's not what it says. It says that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. The money itself is not the problem. The problem is how we use it and how we use it can be either to produce great good or to cause great evil. And this is why when you look at the gospels, Jesus talks about money all the time. Actually, he talks about money more than just about anything else. Over half of his parables had to do with how we manage money. He talked about it all the time. And so we need to talk about it as well. And so that's what we're going to be talking about today. And so we're in 2 Corinthians 9 and I believe this gives us one of the most straightforward, clear, practical teachings and scripture about giving about Christian and generosity. And so we're going to just work through this verse by verse. And as we do, we're going to be looking at seven principles of godly giving the apostle Paul teaches us this passage is packed with application. And so we're going to be looking at these seven principles. We're going to move through them pretty quickly. And the big hope, the idea is we want to learn how to wield our wealth as generous stewards and use these things for God's glory. And so 2 Corinthians 9, beginning in verse six, the apostle Paul writes this. He says, "This is the point. Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. And whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion. For God loves a cheerful giver and God is able to make all grace abound to you so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work as it is written, he is distributed freely. "He's given to the poor. His righteousness endures forever. He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way, to be generous, in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many Thanksgivings to God. By their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God upon you. Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift." This is the reading of God's word for us this morning. Would you please join me in prayer for our sermons day? And God, we do give you thanks for this inexpressible gift that you have given us life. You have given us your word. And Lord importantly, you have given us your son Jesus Christ to pay our debt and to supply our every need to be completely sufficient in every way. And Lord, help us to know, to trust and to see you for who you really are, that you are our gracious and generous father and we ask that you would teach us as your children to live in that grace and to live lives of grace and generosity as well. And I pray this for your glory and we pray this in the name of your son Jesus Christ. Amen. All right, so we're looking at seven lessons, seven principles of godly giving today. And the very first one we see in verse six. And Paul starts out just plain and simple. He says, "The point is this, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. Whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully." And the first principle that we see is that as Christians we need to get beyond this view that giving is this drudgery, this obligation that we're all bound to and actually start to see it for what it really is, which is it is an incredible opportunity to invest what God has entrusted with us, with the expectation that there will be a reward, there will be a return. The first principle is that giving is an investment opportunity. That God is not the IRS, he is not taxing you on what is rightfully yours. God is your father and he is entrusting you with what is actually rightfully his. Everything you have it's a gift from the father's hand. And he doesn't give us these things just to hoard them for ourselves. He wants us to experience the freedom and the joy of using them, of investing them to bless others, to bless God, to seek his kingdom and invest in his kingdom pulses. "So therefore, if you sow bountifully, don't worry, you will also reap bountifully." In Matthew chapter 25, Jesus teaches one of his most famous parables on this very subject. And it's a little bit long, but I'm going to read the whole thing cause this is extremely important. This is the parable of the talents. Matthew 25:14. Jesus teaching his disciples about the kingdom of God and he says "It's going to be like a man who's going on a journey." "He calls his servants and he entrusted to them his property to one, he gave five talents to another two and to another one each according to his ability. And then he went away. "He had received the five talents, went at once and traded with them and he made five talents more. So also he had the two talents, made two talents more, but he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and he hid his master's money. Now after a long time, the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them and he had received the five talents, came forward bringing five talents, more saying, "Master, you delivered to me five talents here I've made you five talents more." And his master said to him, "Well done, good and faithful servant, you have been faithful over a little. I will set you over much, enter into the joy of your master." And he also who had the two talents came forward saying, "Master, I delivered to you. You delivered to me two talents. Here I've made two talents more." "And his master said to him, "Well done, good and faithful servant, you've been faithful over a little. I will set you over much enter into the joy of your master." He also had received the one talent came forward saying, "Master, I knew you to be a hard man reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you scattered no seeds. So I was afraid and I went and I hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours." His master answered him "You wicked and slothful servant. You knew that I reap where I've not sewn and gather where I scattered no seed, then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers I might coming, I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to the one who has 10 talents for to everyone who has more be given and he will have an abundance, but from the one who is not even what he has will be taken away and cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."" And one of the things that we're meant to do as we read this parable is notice the dichotomies that are going on that in this parable what we see are two very different types of servants, two different categories of servant. We have two very different destinations, but we also see two very different perceptions of the master. And that what separates the good and the faithful from the wicked and the lazy servant in this parable is not just that the good servants go and they invest the talents that the master gave them. What really separates them is this perception of who the master was, that the good servants were willing to invest their talents to go immediately, to go quickly because they understood that the master was a very joyful and generous guy. Now the wicked servant, he didn't see that. He didn't know the master clearly. The wicked servant believed that the master was cruel and corrupt. And so he hides his talent out of fear and he wasn't willing to take any risks to make any investments with what he had because he was afraid. He's afraid that the master was cruel and that if he made a mistake, if he didn't get a good return, that the master would punish him for that. But that that's not the kind of guy that the master was. The good servants they understood this, that the master wasn't cruel, the master wasn't unjust, he was kind, he was joyful, he was generous. And then all he was really asking them to do was to take what he had entrusted them with and go out, take a risk and invest it. And we see that when the master returns, notice that he doesn't praise them for their success. Primarily what he praises them for is their faithfulness. He says, "Well done, my good and faithful servant, you've been faithful over what" he says, "a talent" and the master says "is a little." And then from the master's perspective, apparently a talent was just a small amount, but to the average person, a talent represented like 20 years of wages. For the average person, five talents was more money than they would see in their lifetime. And yet to the master, he says, "I was just trusting you with a little and you were faithful with that." And the big idea is that how you give is ultimately a reflection of how you view God. And if you view God as stingy, as cruel, as withholding, as unjust, if you believe that God's provision is scarce, then yeah, you're going to live in fear. You're going to be afraid to take risks. You're going to be afraid to invest what he has given you. You're going to be afraid that God won't take care of you. If on the other hand you understand that God is a good father, that his resources are limitless, that as we read that creation and all the fullness thereof, that's all his. He has everything he needs, he's never going to run out. Well then you, you're set free as the good servants were to just go at once without hesitation and invest what he is giving you to invest because ultimately at the end of the day, the father's not looking for our ROI. What he's looking for is our faithfulness. He says, "Well done, good and faithful servant." The question is, "Do you trust me and are you willing to do what I say even in when that involves risk and sacrifice," and how you answer that question, it's dependent on how you view God. And so guys, the master in the parable says, "You were faithful over a little and I put you over much. You were faithful over a little. Enter and experience the joy of your master." Luke 6:38. Jesus says, "Give and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together. Running over will be put in your lap for with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you." And so the first principle is we need to stop viewing giving as this taxing obligation and begin to see it as the opportunity that it is, an opportunity to take what God has given us and invest it for his kingdom, for his glory. The second principle we see is that giving is a matter of the heart. Paul says that whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. Whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. And then in verse 7, he says, "And each one must give as he is decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion for God loves a cheerful giver." And so he says, "You got to give as you've decided in your heart." But then he also gives us the filter of how you reach that decision. How do you decide in your heart what to give? Well, he tells us. And if you were here a couple weeks ago we talked about the Venn diagram of discernment, of how you discern God's calling God's will for you. Well, this verse here, it's kind of like the Venn diagram of giving. How do you decide in your heart how much to give? And we see these three circles in the text and you're looking for the sweet spot again in the middle. And the first circle that we see is the first verse that we read that God calls us to give bountifully, to give generously, even to give sacrificially. And the illustration that he uses is that of a farmer planting seed. Like the farmer has a decision. The farmer can hoard everything, keep it for himself and use it, eat all of the grain, all of the seed that he sort. Or he can deny himself a portion of that in order to plant with the idea that the more you plant, the more you sew, the more you will eventually reap. And so practically, when it comes to deciding how much you should give, particularly we're talking about giving to church, tithes, offerings, things like that. But also generally how do we give when God provides us opportunities to live generously with The principle is that you should be giving enough that it actually feels like a sacrifice. That in order to give bountifully, well that means you got to be able to deny yourself right now, like deny yourself certain comforts, certain luxuries that you need to decisively live below your means in order that you may be have that margin in your budget to give to God and to be generous with others. And in the Old Testament, the principle, it began with it, the idea of the tithe, remember this, that God's people were called to give 10% of all that they had back to God as a worship offering. And in the New Testament, Jesus actually he affirms and he assumes the tithe is a good thing, something that his followers will do as well. We see this in Luke chapter 11. We see this in Matthew 23:23. Jesus is addressing the problems with the Pharisees. And he says to them, he says, "Whoa to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. For, you tithe mint and dill and cumin." He's talking about you. You tie even the most minute things in your life, making sure that you give precisely 10% of everything. But he says, "But you neglect the way your matters of the law, justice, mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done." Yeah, you ought to have tithed, "But without neglecting the others, you blind guides, you're straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel." So the Pharisees, they thought they were like hot stuff. They thought they were really flexing by how precisely they ties on everything that they had. But Jesus says, "I'm not impressed." You might be trying to impress others, but you're doing this and you're doing it for the wrong reason. And Jesus says he's not impressed. Yeah, you should have been tithing, but more importantly, you should be faithful. You should be, be merciful. In other words, you should be living beyond the letter of the law in order to fulfill the spirit of the law, in order to be people who's who are living radically sacrificial lives of generosity, both in their tithes and offerings to God, but also with how they, they're generous with their entirety of their lives. Are you generous with your time? Are you generous with your talents, your skills, your ability? Are you generous with your talents, your treasures, your material possessions? And so as we try to decide in our hearts what to give, the first question is, am I truly sacrificing? Am I sowing bountifully? Or if I'm honest with myself, am I just kind of serving up my leftovers to God? Like the things that I wouldn't miss if they were gone anyway? Well, scripture calls us to give sacrificially. C.S. Lewis in mere Christianity. He said, "I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I'm afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare." In other words, if our expenditures on comforts, luxuries, amusements, et cetera, if that is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, well we're probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small, there ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditures exclude them. And so that, that's the first circle. But then Paul goes on, he tells us the other two, which are also important as well. In verse seven he says, "You also, you must give as you've decided, your heart give not reluctantly or under compulsion and cheerfully for God loves a cheerful giver." So give it cheerfully, joyfully, not under compulsion and not begrudgingly and sacrificially as well. And the only way that you can find that sweet spot in the middle and be able to do all that is when you understand that your giving is a response to just the incredible, abundant, overwhelming generosity that God has already shown us in his son Jesus Christ. And so personally, just practically, this is what I do, this is what I think I would recommend all Christians do in our household, Kelly and I, every year or any time that our household income changes, we sit down and we update our budget. And the way that we budget our household budget is we figure out our income and then before anything else first, foremost, before rents, before taxes, before Uncle Sam gets his hands on a single penny of that income, we block out, we are giving our tithe that at least 10% of that is going straight to our local church to Mosaic. That is our offering to God. It's an act of worship. But then beyond that, you build the whole rest of your budget with that idea in mind of like, we need to leave space, we need to leave margin, we need to cut things out, luxuries, comforts that maybe we would like to have but don't need to have. So that we have that space there to be generous when God presents us opportunities to be generous and to do so knowing that Jesus taught us it is more blessed to give than to receive. And so this is not easy to do, especially if you've never done this before. This can be hard. It can be scary to really trust God and to commit to do this. And I think that's why the next principle that we see in our text is that giving is not only a matter of heart giving is also an act of faith. Giving is an act of demonstrating what we truly believe, that at the end of the day that God is the one who cares for us. He is the one who PR has provided for us and that he will be faithful. Paul says verse seven, each one us give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And then consider these next few verses carefully, verse 8. "And God is able to make all grace abound to you so that having all sufficiency and all things at all times you may abound in every good work as it is written, he has distributed freely his given to the poor. His righteousness endures forever and he who supplies seed to the sower and bred for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. And the question here is at the end of the day, do we really believe this? Do we really trust that God will take care of us or are we putting our trust in our own ability to take care of ourselves, our own ability to produce wealth? Jesus, he also taught a parable about this in Luke 12, which told in verse 13 that someone in the crowd came up to him and said, "Hey teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me." And he said to him, "Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?" And he said to them, "Take care and be on your guard against all covetousness for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." And he told them a parable saying "The land of a rich man produced plentifully. And he thought to himself, "What shall I do for I have nowhere to store my crops?" And he said, "I'll do this, I'll tear down my barns and build larger ones. And there I will store all my grain and my goods and I will say to my soul, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, be merry." But God said to him, "Fool. This night your soul is required of you and the things that you've prepared, whose will they be?" So is the one who lays up treasures for himself and is not rich toward God."" And when we are rich toward God, ultimately what we're doing is we're demonstrating that we trust that God is our provision. And that also means that we're not trusting ourselves to be that provision ultimately. And I don't think it's a coincidence that therefore the very next thing that Jesus begins to talk about with the people listening is their anxiety, their anxieties about the things of life every day, things that average people worry about when it comes to money. But we go on and you read in verse 22, he addressing these anxieties and he does so by offering just some of the most comforting words that we have in all of scripture. And so it says that, "He says then to his disciples, "Therefore I tell you in light of everything we just said in light of this call that I've given you to live richly toward God," He says, "I tell you, do not be anxious about your life. What you eat nor about your body, what you will put on life is more than food in the body is more than clothing." "He says, "Consider the ravens. They neither sew nor reef. They have neither storehouse nor barn and yet God feeds them of how much more value are you than the birds? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour or to a span of life if then you are not able to do as smaller thing as that? Are you anxious about the rest? Consider the lilies how they grow. They neither toil nor spin yet I tell you, even Solomon in all of his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothed the grass which is alive in the field today and tomorrow's thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, oh you of little faith." "You're not seek what you are to eat what you're to drink nor be worried for all the nations of the world seek after these things and your father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom. And these things will be added to you. Fear not little flock for it is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom, sell your possessions and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with money bags that do not grow old with treasures in heaven that do not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys for where your treasure is there, your heart will be also." So how is your anxiety level right now, particularly when you think about money, when you think about these cares that we all have? Well, scripture consistently draws a connection between our level of anxiety and our level of faith that Romans 8:15 it says, "You did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. You received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba, Father." That God doesn't call us to live an anxiety and fear as if we were orphans, as if we were slaves. He calls us to live as sons and daughters of the king in that safety, in that security. And what this means is that that for the Christian anxiety, it's based on delusion, illusion, it's based on deception. It's a lie of the enemy telling us that God is not good, that he is not our father, that he is not going to keep his promises, he's not going to take care of us. And the only way we overcome that is through the eyes of faith. It's through the eyes of trusting and seeing God for who he really is and that ultimately our lives are safe in the father's hands, Paul talks about this in 1 Timothy 6. He's again teaching Timothy and he says, "As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share. Thus storing up treasures for themselves as a good foundation for the future so that they may take hold of that which is truly life." That when you see reality for what it really is, when you see God for who he really, that's how you take hold of that which is truly life to not live basing your life in the uncertainty and the anxiety of earthly riches, but resting in the security of your father who as Paul says, richly provides us with everything to enjoy. So giving is an act of faith. Fourth, we see giving. Giving is also a catalyst for spiritual growth. It's a means of growing our faith. Paul continues, verse 10. He says, "He who supplies seed to the sewer and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You'll be enriched in every way to be generous, in every way, which through us will produce thanks giving to God." And what we see is that not only is giving an act of faith, it is also a means of growing in our faith that as we sow the seed the father entrust to us, Paul says we will be enriched in every way that we will reap a harvest of righteousness. Most of us know this, that scripture tells us to not put the Lord our God to the test. But there is actually one place in scripture where God commands us to test him, where he invites us to test him in something. And it has to do with this topic of giving ex. This comes from Malachi chapter 3:7. God is talking to his people Israel and he tells them, "From the days of your fathers, you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them." And he invites them, "Return to me and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, "How shall we return?"" And then God asks them this question. He says, "Well man, Rob God, yet you are robbing me. You say, "How have we robbed you?" Well in your tithes and contributions, your curse with a curse for you robbing me, the whole nation of you. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house and thereby put me to the test," says the Lord of hosts. "If I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need, I will rebuke the devour for you so that it will not destroy the fruits of your soil and the vine and your field shall not fail to bears as the Lord of hosts." And then verse 12 says, "And then all nations will call you blessed for you will be a land of delights," says the Lord of hosts." I remember the first time that I read this, the first time I heard this scripture, Kelly and I, we were newlyweds, we were baby Christians and we saw this and we're like, "We don't want to miss out on this. So we're going to do this. We're going to make the decision to start tithing as a family as a couple." Now at the time I was pulling in about $25,000 a year as a entry level graphic designer. Kelly on the other hand, she was pulling in negative dollars a year as a college student. And so things were pretty tight for us. We were getting by on chicken nuggets and fish sticks from Walmart. But we were like, we read this and we're like, "We trust God. We're going to do this. We're going to put God to the test." And so we did. And what we found is that he proved himself overwhelmingly, abundantly, faithful, not just then, but every day since then. And as we saw God's faithfulness, God's provision over and over and over, well as we saw all these examples of God being faithful to us, our faith itself grew in tandem. We were given so many opportunities to grow in our faith because of witnessing his faithfulness to us. And so giving can be a catalyst for spiritual growth. And fifth is that giving is a blessing to the church. Paul says in verse 12, "The ministry of the service," he's talking about their the church's giving. He says, "The ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanks givings to God." And I love this because even just thinking back over the last year, we can see clearly that Mosaic, the ministry of your service, of your giving, it has supplied the needs of the saints. And it has resulted in an overflown in many Thanksgivings to God. If you don't know this Mosaic, we as a church, we tithe. And so what that means is that 90% of everything that we take in is used for the work of the ministry here in Boston to be a blessing to the saints here so that we can be a blessing to the city. It covers the cost of doing ministry and a really crazy expensive place like this. But the other 10%, at least 10% as an organization, we send that out to be a blessing to saints all over the world. And so last year we were actually able to go above and beyond that. Last year we were able to give around $220,000. And just to break it down about 80,000 of that we were able to raise through the Ukraine fund, which directly every dollar. Well that went to support a ministry in the Ukraine that was caring for orphans, refugees. In addition to that, another $40,000 was sent to basically fund a brand new church plant in Ukraine through that same organization. And then the remaining $100,000 was used to support church planting efforts here in Boston, new England, north America, all over the world. And so I say that just to say praise God for Mosaic's generosity like this is so encouraging. It's a blessing to us to be able to see how God uses this. And it's a blessing to saints all over the world that results in thankfulness of God. And I want to thank you, I want to encourage you in that. And then I also want to stir you up and challenge you because I think as a church that we can do more that we've been faithful over little, God wants to put us over more. The last statistic I saw reported that the average Christian in America only gives about 2% of their income away. By God's grace we can estimate the average a tender at Mosaic gives around 3%. So we're above average, but there's room to grow. Imagine, just imagine what we could do if even just the members of Mosaic started to bring in the full ti as Malachi said. Malachi says, verse 10, "Bring the full tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house and thereby put me to the test as the Lord if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need." And then he says, "And when you do this that all the nations will call you blessed and you will be a land of delights." And somewhere around 2 billion Christians in the world today, imagine if they all tithed. Imagine if it started with us. Imagine like the work that we could do, the blessing that we could be, the reward that we could expect if we stepped up as a church to go against the odds, to go against the norm and prove to be faithful over however little, however much God entrusts with us. Imagine the thanksgiving and the glory that could be given to God as we grow together in this area. And that really leads us to point number six, that not only is giving a blessing to the saints, a blessing to the church that giving is also a blessing to God. And we see this throughout the text. Verse 11 says, "You will be enriched in every way to be generous, in every way, which through us produces thanks giving to God for the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanks givings to God. And by their approval of this service, they will glorify God." I'm not going to say a whole bunch about this because it's pretty self-explanatory, but this is really the greatest benefit of giving that people get to see through us, that as Christians, as we live generously, people get to see a reflection of God through us. They get a picture of what God is really like, that God is generous, he is gracious, and he is trustworthy. And this results, thanks giving results in him receiving the glory that He deserves. And then finally point number seven is that giving is the natural response to God's grace. 2 Corinthians 9:13, Paul says, "By their approval of the service, they will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all the others while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God upon you. Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift." And this is ultimately what motivates it all. This is what's at the heart of it all, that we give God our first and our best and we do so joyfully because God gave us His first. He gave us His best, that God's greatest gift, this inexpressible gift, it's not money, it's not possessions, it's not treasures here on earth that God went so far beyond that, that God gave the very treasure of heaven itself, his son, Jesus Christ, to come and to secure our salvation, to secure our eternity. John 3:16 says "That for God so loved the world that He gave His only son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life." And once you've received this gift, you clinging to it for dear life. And as you clinging to this gift, this is what sets you free and enables you to hold everything else in life loosely, to hold the treasures of this world loosely and to give the treasures of this world freely knowing that you are merely giving freely of what you cannot keep. And knowing that you have found the one treasure that you can never lose, the treasure that itself has taken hold of you in Christ Jesus. I'm going to close this morning by reading from Philippians 4 because this is just a great example of getting to see this played out in real life and the relationship between the apostle Paul and the Philippian church that throughout Paul's life, the Philippian Church was a church that brought him a great deal of joy. And it was a church that faithfully throughout the years supported him financially in the work of his ministry. And he writes to them towards the end of his life to thank them and to remind them of this partnership. And he says in verse 10, he says, "I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me. You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity to show it. And it's not that I'm speaking of being in need for, I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance I've learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. Yet it was kind of you to share my trouble." "And you Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel when I left Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving except only you. Even in Thessalonica, you sent me hope for my needs once and again. And it's not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that increases to your credit, I have received full payment and more, I am well supplied having received from Epaphroditus, the gift you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice, acceptable and pleasing to God. And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches and glory in Christ Jesus, to our God and Father, be glory forever and ever. Amen." This is just a great picture of godly giving, of faithful stewardship. And my hope today is that as we all walk and grow in faithfulness in this area, that we would learn the secret of contentment that Paul talks about, that we would learn that the joy of the master, that it is more blessed to give than it is to receive. That we would learn to do all things through Christ who strengthens us, that we would press on faithfully toward that day where we will hear those words. "Well done, good and faithful servants, you have been faithful over a little. I will put you over much calm and enter into the joy of your master." And if you haven't been faithful in this area, well my challenge to you today is that you would start today. You take that first step of faith and really put God to the test and see if he will not answer with faithfulness and help you to experience all these blessings that we have talked about today. And I say that not to seek the gift, as Paul said, it's not just about the money. He says in verse nine, "It's not that I seek the gift, it's that I seek the fruit that increases to your credit." Now with that being said, would you please join me in prayer and we'll continue and worship this morning. Lord, as we close today, I remember Acts 20:35, which tells us to remember the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. How He himself said, it is more blessed to give than to receive. And we thank you that this is true and we know it is true because you have proven it is true that you are the most blessed and you are the one who has given more than any of us could ask or even imagine in your son Jesus Christ. God, we thank you for your abundant provision in our lives. Every breath we take, every moment is a gift from your hands. And we pray that you would help us by the power of your Holy Spirit to not waste it, to steward it well, to use every ounce of time, talent, treasure that you have entrusted to us, to invest that for the sake of your kingdom and glory, willingly, joyfully knowing that you are our good Father who provides for all our needs. Help us to steward well. Everything we have to bring you, honor and glory to you, our joyful master, our generous father, help us to be faithful over little so that we can be given even more. And Lord, we do all of this as we long to hear those words. Well done, good and faithful servants. Lord, I pray that those words would be heard by every soul that is gathered here today. And I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Commit to Good Works

March 19, 2023 • Andy Hoot • James 1:1–5

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston or donate to this ministry, please visit http://mosaicboston.com Heavenly Father, we praise you that you have made this day. We thank you for the light, the bright, almost spring sky that just reminds us of the light of Christ coming into our lives, penetrating the darkness of our souls and the situations that we have lived in. And we praise you that in every season and every situation, we can trust you. We pray right now, Lord, that you would show us how to trust you in the small moments of life, how to trust you in the training that you are providing for us through day-to-day life. Give us just great joy to honor you and serve you in all situations. And we pray that we would all leave here encourage and embolden to be your disciples and to face a world that does not know you or love you. Please, Holy Spirit fill us that we might be fruitful servants this week. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. And as I mentioned, we are talking about our commitment to good works. And as I prepared for this sermon, it really made me respect Pastor Shane's service throughout this series. I realize that every topic he's taken up has been a huge topic. We've talked about commitment to following Christ, commitment to the local church, evangelism, discipleship, scripture, prayer, fasting, worship and calling. And I think he's done an incredible job to consolidate these giant topics with a lot of scripture in forming them into just digestible just amounts of wisdom for us. And today, the task about talking about our commitment to good works as Christians could be endless. And really the reason is because everybody, not even just Christians, they know that Christians should commit themselves to good works. As Christians, we know verses like Ephesians 2, eight through 10. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God. Not a result of works so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. And so we know these key verses, these popular verses when good works, but people who aren't even Christian know that we are called to good works. I walk around the Brookline parks often with my children. And when a non-Christian man or woman, when their dog invades my personal space or my children's personal space, I reward their evil with kindness and bring up the church and Jesus Christ. And those conversations typically result in them really just without any preparation, having a list of good works that Christians should be doing, good works that the church should be doing. And so there's no shortage of thought and conversation in our world around what good Christians should be doing in day-to-day life. And there's no shortage of scriptures around this topic. And so we can talk about Christian good works in many ways, but what the Lord has been giving me the past few weeks as I've pondered this topic, commitment to good works. It's been filled with a strong dose of realism. You see, the last four weeks I've had big plans to do a lot of good works. I planned and scheduled many counseling sessions, many meetings with leaders of the church, tried to set aside time to proactively pour myself in the study and prayer and planning for future endeavors to take up in the church. But the Lord has caused me to postpone a lot of that work or begrudgingly do it in the early hours of the morning or late hours of the night after my children have gone to bed. And in this period, why have I had this situation? We've had four weeks. We had two weeks of sickness, colds and stomach bugs pass from one person to another from school and daycare. We had two snow days. Childcare fell through for one day of the week for one of my children for several days. We had to deal with daylight savings. This Tuesday, after I dropped off my children and one gets straight to work. I came back to my condo building and the public laundry machine right next to my unit was banging really loudly. It was like a sledgehammer pounding on the wall and I stepped out, it was overheating, it was smoking, it was melting, it's some of its machinery and I was the only person there to address it. So I ended up having to just address the situation, ended up having to take my neighbor's laundry and actually do her laundry for her, wasted a few hours of that morning. And so it's been quite a month as I've had looked at this date where I have to preach about commitment to good works and my availability to do good works and capacity and energy has been severely limited. And I don't tell you this to ask you for pity or to just get some sort of catharsis, emotional purging. I tell you this to really introduce the lesson of the day regarding good works. And really I hope through my sermon teach you the main lesson of the sermon. Through all that I've faced in the past month, I've been reciting just a verse that I've memorized years ago, James chapter one, verse two through five. And what I've learned with time as this month has passed is that our ability to do good works for God is highly dependent upon our ability to receive God's training for good works in day-to-day life. Our ability to do good works for God is highly dependent upon our ability to receive God's training for good works in day-to-day life. And so what do I mean by training? A personal example of the training that God has called me to as a pastor is how I stand over what's happening in my house. One of the requirements, one of the character qualities of a pastor is found in 1 Timothy three, four to five. It says, he must manage his own household well with all dignity, keeping his children submissive. For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church. Right? So I'm called to, part of the central era of training for me to serve as a pastor is as the head of my household. And what did the Lord require me to do over and over again in the past few weeks with a lot of these unforeseen challenges, he forced me to give the priority of my time and attention to my household. Love my wife, love my children, make sure that everything was going well. Try to continue to train them in the word despite all of the hiccups, make sure everyone's healthy and strong. And now when I had to pause from my good works that I planned for the church and outside of the home, how do you think I felt in the moment? I did not receive a lot of these moments and these things that I thought as inconveniences as my training, but really it is, it was. Fortunately, I did have my wife there to remind me that these situations were, these scenarios that I faced were essential to my training for doing good works in the church, but I struggled to view it as training. Another area where God has called me to do training is just as a neighbor, right? Christ says, the primary commandments are to love God, the Lord your God to all your heart, soul, strength in mind and love your neighbor as yourself. And furthermore too elders of the church. He says, moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders so that he may not fall into disgrace. And so my training took place this week in that situation, when that washing machine was banging against the wall and seemingly melting itself. I literally had a crossroads moment of I can act like I'm not hearing that sledgehammer sound and get on with my day or I can responsibly address it. And I did follow in the ways. I followed the smell, I had turned off the machine, unplugged it. And you know what? If I didn't, I would've missed an opportunity. With that laundry, my neighbor's laundry was completely soaked still and is covered in detergent. And so it's this woman, recently widowed whose husband did everything for her in life. And so a thing like laundry is a lot for her. And she was just absolutely distraught that the machines were off, her whole schedule was thrown off for the day. So I said, I can work from home. I'll put your laundry in my machine. So when I did her laundry, it just amazed her that a person would pause and do an act, a simple act of kindness like that. She was so touched that she went out, and I'm not trying to brag about myself, I'm saying I could have missed this. She went out, she bought flowers. Not for me, for my wife. She knew the best way to bless me was to bless my wife. And this little illustration of we can miss these moments of training if we get lost in thinking that all of our works, good works as Christians are out there. They're these big grand gestures, often ones that you can take pictures of and post on social media. But what the Lord wants us to do is view trials, view tests, view conflicts that you need to address as your training and actually as the good works that he's calling you to do. And do you want... As you listen to this, if you know Christ, you know that if you have experienced the love of God, he has offered his son for you on the cross, despite your sin. You cannot but want to live a life for his glory and do good. That's really what's behind Christian works. If you don't want to offer yourself entirely for God, you have to really pause and question your faith and ask, Lord, do I know you? Do I really love you? Pour out your love upon me. Let me just be amazed by your grace. But Christians, it's an assumption that you want to do good works. And so how do you do good works? How can you continue to do works for the length of your life? And so I instruct you today, ask yourself, how are you training me, God? What are some trial, storms, broken situations that he's put in your life? How are you addressing them? Are you looking at them as inconveniences? Are you dismissing them as insignificant compared to the greater things out there, outside of your household that you want to do? Are you handling them unfaithfully with a poor attitude? Really ask yourself, Lord, how are you training me? Again, I said James one, one through five as the passage that I've just recited in my mind. The Lord use the simple set of verses to help me through this season and it's what I want to meditate on today to drive home this point. And I just want to hammer home, the main single point of the sermon is the degree to which Christians can stay committed to good works for God is dependent upon the degree to which they can rejoice in their training from God. The degree to which Christians can stay committed to good works for God is dependent upon the degree to which they can rejoice in their training from God. And so this is, I pull this from James one chapters one through five, and I just want to just belabor this point because I think it's so essential. Especially for a young, really hopeful believers. We have a very young church and we have a tendency to just look, see people post on social media, read books of great endeavors that Christians have taken up through history at the cost of really having sight for how the Lord is teaching us, training us, using us in day-to-day life. So I'm going to read James one, one through five and continue on this point and we'll walk through the text to elaborate on it. So I have my Bible down there. Can't fit my notes in my Bible here. So I'll read from my notes. James one, this is the word of our Lord. James, a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ to the 12 tribes of the dispersion, greetings. Count it all joy my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness and let steadfastness habits full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives generously to all without reproach and it will be given him. So who is James? The little background kind of emphasizes the thrust of the points going forward. Who's James? James is the brother of Jesus, the half-brother of Jesus. The son of Mary and Joseph, one of the sons. And the Apostle Paul mentions that James actually got a special visitation post resurrection from Jesus, first Corinthians 15, 6 to 7 says, then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to the apostles. Perhaps this is the moment that James committed his life to Christ, received him as his savior and Lord. 4 John 75 says, for not even his brothers, Jesus believed him. And I just dab into this background because it makes the first word of the book of the James amazing. James one, one. James, a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ. A servant, doulas in the Greek. It means servant, slave, bond servant. A bond servant is someone who willingly dedicated their entire life to service to another. So James says he's a bond servant of Jesus Christ, this brother that grew up in his household. Further, James goes on to say that he's a bond servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ. In doing this, he's equating Jesus Christ with God. And that's pretty amazing given that Jesus again was his earthly brother. And I just want to elaborate on this point because this is one of the reasons why we believed scripture. A guy who grew up with Jesus, lived his life and in submission and believe saw him as a savior. And James writes here about suffering. He probably suffered for the sake of his brother's kingdom, not just advised the church as he does in these verses. So at the end of verse one, James tells us that the letter is addressed to the 12 tribes of the dispersion. This doesn't mean that it's not relevant for gentiles in his day or us. What this reference to 12 tribes is an appeal to persecution, a persecution that happened amongst his readers. James was one of the leaders. He was Jewish, he was one of the pastors of the church, placed his faith in Christ, became a pastor, committed his life to Christ. And at one point during the history of his tenure, there was a great persecution of the Jews. He's appealing to a time when believers, probably primarily Jewish believers were persecuted and scattered. And scripture talks about in Acts 7 when Saul, before he became the Apostle Paul, persecuted Steven, went house to house persecuting Christians. Act 8, one says, and there are rose on that day, a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem and they're all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samara except the apostles. And so James is appealing to this group of believers who have been persecuted and it's not just they face persecution from Jews who were mad that they became Christian. It's probably you have to think about the internal family strife that they faced. They left. Think of any Jewish friends you have today and what it would mean for them socially, familiarly to receive Christ as their Lord and Savior. These people experienced it to the stream. They're probably kicked out of households, lost their inheritance, lives worth, physically threatened for Jesus. And all of this really just drives home, just makes James next words just that much more powerful when he says, count it all joy my brothers and sisters ] when you meet trials of various kinds. And so James is talking to these people, this population who's been scattered, persecuted, probably kicked out of their homes and he is telling them to count it all joy. Everything that they're facing and it's just, we have to pause here because it is ludicrous. We're allowed to look at the text and say, this sounds crazy. Trials, conflicts, persecutions, storms. They're not things we typically consider to be joyful. Rather, we tend to think of them and label them with other derogatory terms. But James is trying to get his audience and us to zoom out of our worldly logic. He's trying to get Christians to consider what he is saying with supernatural logic. He's appealing to the cross of Jesus Christ here. Apart from the central story of Christianity, this call to count at all joy when you meet trials of various kinds makes no sense. And so how does someone look at trials, conflict and experience joy? It's only if you believe that the most excruciating experience of pain in the history of the world, the most ugly act of violence against the sinless son of God. If you only believe that this moment of Jesus Christ, the sinless son of God being put on the cross, was redeemed into the most beautiful act of history in the world, the resurrection that procured the salvation of God's children. Then you can count sufferings, trials, storms, tests, training as joy. And so, no, this isn't like sadistic like advice from James. He doesn't want these people to suffer because he is evil. He's not alone in providing such wisdom and scripture. God is not a sadist. Again, he's calling them to rejoice. He's not saying rejoice because this trial is in your life. The fact of it, he's saying rejoice in it. Seek joy in it. There's a big difference there. And he's saying, look, Christian, you are struggling right now, but you're not facing anything that compares to the struggle that Jesus Christ experienced when his own father turned his back on him for your salvation. He's saying, if you believe that Jesus Christ, his just terrible death was the means for God to procure your salvation, your redemption. You can trust the Lord in this moment, trust that he's sovereign over it, trust that he can use it for your good in his glory. And so James is appealing to the central part of Christianity. When he says, count it all joy. The Lord does work in this mysterious way where he can use brokenness for his glory and that's the source of hope for Christians when we are facing trials. And notice that the text doesn't say count it all joy if you meet trials. It says count it all joy when you meet trials. The assumption is that every single Christian worships a God who redeemed us, not in despite of Christ's suffering, but through Christ's suffering. And so Christ himself said, a servant could not be above his master. Every Christian is going to face suffering. This Christian life is not just a rosy walk where you are going through life and everything goes well for you and people when you share the gospel always receive you kindly. It's going to be a challenging one. And so how are you going to respond? Do you believe that Christian, do you believe you can actually have joy in it? And we need to be thinking along these lines. If we're not expecting the trials, not expecting the pain of some of these situations as Christian, we're just going to live in shock. And how do many Christians respond to trials? There's a few typical ways. A lot of Christians face challenges and they just get paralyzed. They say, I am too frightened about facing this head on. I don't want to engage the tension. I can't see the way forward in my own strength and they just become just useless for the kingdom. A lot of Christians, they face trials and what do they do? They over busy themselves to escape the fact that there's a tension lingering in their life. There's a situation that they have to trust God but they don't want to. They'll do everything they can to distract themselves. A lot of people just don't acknowledge it and they sweep it under the rug and then it comes back to really biting them. And so we can't be shocked by these tests and we know that facing them in faith is good. And that's what James says, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. For you know it's an appeal to something that we know, but something that we tend to selectively forget as Christians. When we're lashing out, when we're groaning, when we're complaining about the difficulty or simply avoiding it all together. We know that the Lord, especially when we look upon the cross, can use the most trying of circumstances for his glory. And so we know this, we know that the pain of a good workout results in a good pump and greater strength, greater flexibility, greater energy levels. We know this, like we know that studying for a test does often, more often than not result in greater results on the exam. We know that preparing, putting the time to prepare for a recital pays off in better performance. But in our faith, when we're challenged by trials, we don't lose this all together. We don't pause and think, how could God be using me for his glory? How could he be strengthening me and sanctifying me for greater works in the future? We easily forget this and I do too. I'm guilty. I had many times where in the past few weeks I just got overtaken by anger before just the Lord convicted me or my wife God on me. But James says that we know that the testing of our faith produces steadfastness. Steadfastness, a better translation here instead of steadfastness might be endurance. The testing of our faith produces endurance. In the Greek, the word carries the meaning of the perseverance that it takes to finish a marathon. That's significant. For the Bible talks about the Christian life, it speaks of it in terms of a long race like a marathon. 2 Timothy 4, 6 to 7 says, for I'm already being poured out as a drink offering and the time of my departures come. This is the Apostle Paul toward the end of his ministry. I've fought the good fight. I've finished the race, I've kept the faith. I was thinking in between services, it's like a life as a Christian is a long boxing match. And I'm from Philadelphia, so for some reason I thought was triggered to a lot of life is Rocky just taking on opponents that are so much better than him. But in the end he somehow finds the way. He wins or he loses righteously and earns the respect of his opponent and wins their heart over. But there's stick to the marathon. A lot of this life is like it's a marathon. Christian life is a marathon. A long race that requires a lot of preparation, a lot of endurance, a lot of pain tolerance to go forward. And we need to be realistic about that. I believe we're at this point because I know a lot of you are sprinters, a lot of you are good for going 50 meters to a hundred meters really fast. I've worked for churches for almost a decade now and you see so many people sign up, sign up for five ministry teams, just really pour themselves out, show up to everything for a couple of months, flame out. And then you see people in the church who are there at least for a year is a little bit better than the people who flame out and disappear in a couple months. You see a lot of people in the church for years just stuck in this cycle of going hard, burning out, going hard in engagement with the church and their faith, burning out. You need to maybe retain those sprinter tendencies with your work that might benefit you. But in your spiritual life, how do you change your approach to become a marathoner? And notice I'm not talking about 75% of the people who run the Boston Marathon. I've lived on Beacon Street, I still live a block away. I lived on the street of the Pittsburgh Marathon and watching marathons is very painful. You get that first wave and then you... I've always lived on my mile 15 and it's just people who shouldn't be running marathons just crawling their way forward and you just don't know how they'll get there. I find it to be very painful and I pray for them and I say, well, they're doing something that I'm not and I really fight my heart to respect them. But we are not called to be marathoners who are just limping through at mile 15. There's 26.2 miles in a marathon. And so as Christians we want to... Like how does that affect, how can that be a good witness for our great God? And there's this balance as Christians in day-to-day life, we don't need to lead with our strength. We lead with the fact by telling people I need God's grace daily, but at the same time we can pursue excellence for God's glory. And so we don't want to be marathon runners who, sprinters who flame out a hundred meters in. We don't want to be marathon runners who are just crawling forward at a snail's pace. You have to learn to walk far then you have to learn how to do a speed walk. You can do the Olympic silly style of walking. You can then learn how to jog and then try to get to a pace where you're running at a solid pace. And the Lord is using you to attract people to his kingdom as you just try to offer yourself as a living sacrifice to build your witness up daily. And so Christianity, it's a marathon. What James is doing to these primarily Jewish believers, he's not saying, I feel bad for you. You've been persecuted. Like there's not really much sympathy in his message. It's greetings, kind of cold hard wisdom. This is what you need and he's training them well. He just gets to the heart of you need to see that, pursue joy in these moments. You need to trust that the Lord and your challenges is growing you and there's a fruit of steadfastness, of perseverance that will help you finish the race. And we need to apply this in our own lives. We need to learn how to pace ourselves. And so when our faith is tested by storms, like we really have to pause and say, Lord, what are you teaching us? Verse four, he carries on. Let steadfastness slash endurance have its full effect so that you may be perfect. By perfect, he's not talking about being sinless necessarily or not messing up anymore. By perfect, he means having reached the finish line, finish the race, getting to the point of full flourishing and wholeness that God wants you to attain on this side of heaven. He's saying like go as far as you can in the pursuit of Christ-likeness and holiness. That's what the Lord is calling you to do. And in this life that use of let. Let steadfastness endurance have its full effect. He's saying you need to let hardship have its way with you so that you can finish the race, so that you can be made perfect, complete, lacking in nothing. There's this element to where we are responsible for the way that we respond to these trials and the way that we respond to them affects how much we get out of them. So God wants to give and his talking about God is being generous here. He wants to give you a lot of blessings, not just an eternity but in this life. And so how can you trust the Lord in them? He wants to give you blessings so that you can be a blessing and be able to better tell more people about the love and mercy of God. Do you really want that? If so, trust him in the tension, the challenges, complete, lacking in nothing. James is saying that God wants us to have the whole portion that this race, this life offers. And whatever that is, whatever it is for each of us, I think you can pause and ask, what is it that you think he wants you to have? What are you lacking in Christian character? What are you lacking in your gifting, in your arsenal of things you can use for the advancement of God's kingdom? What are you lacking in Christ-Likeness, holiness? That's probably what God is trying to grow in you in these moments, in these situations and hardships. And you have to pause and heed the lessons. For us to understand what James is talking about, we need to understand just a few key verses that are helpful here that continue in this main. Romans 8:28 says, and we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. We need to really know and believe that God has purpose, that the trials in our lives will bear fruit for his kingdom and for our good. And it's really a matter of faith here. And this is not prosperity gospel. I'm already telling you, you're going to face trials, but trust that the Lord can use them for the advancement of his kingdom and your good. It really comes down to in the moment, do you trust that he is using these situations for good? And that's right now, some of you are in hard phases and trials and it feels like torture. But can you stay present in the moment and trust that he might do good in your life through it, he might refine your character, he might give you perspective to be a better disciple. He might use you to save someone by staying faithful and not lashing out in the moment. Furthermore, Hebrews 12, 7:11 says, it is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons for what son is there whom his father does not discipline. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant. But later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. So God has purposed that through endurance in trials and storms, there will be a harvest of righteousness, a peaceful work of God that will come from this. So as you are going through life planning a lot of good works, but then being slowed down by these trials and conflicts and storms, are you open to God training you like this? Do you see these situations as inconveniences that stifle your interests on all those great works out there? Or do you see that God might be training you and he might be saying, this is the good work I want you to do right now. Stay faithful in it so that maybe I can bring you to that grand thing later. Will you have the faith to just trust God at his word with these verses? Do you want endurance and steadfastness? A lot of people, these are just foreign categories. The sprinter is out there. You just don't even know this. If people engage you this week and say you're a sprinter, you don't know steadfast. I love your witness for Christ when you're like on for about two weeks, but you don't know steadfastness, really seek it. Seek faithfulness in these moments, read, study this topic. The passage says, let steadfastness have its full effect. This is again, let. We need to let God the Holy Spirit speak to us, give us what we need to learn from our trials. We need to have a devotional life that on day-to-day basis to allow God as we engage his words, speak to us, to help us identify that lesson. He's trying to teach us God's promise says that he has good purposes for our trials. He's disciplining us like a father, but there's this element of responsibility to let. And so a lot of this letting is a check of our pride. A lot of Christians think I've suffered too much for the kingdom. I don't deserve this situation, this scenario. We have to be humble in difficult times even as we go further. And really the lesson is as you look at scripture, is those great leaders that God has given great responsibility to, he has humbled them through just brutal experiences. And that he couldn't use them for good things, until he just broke all elements of pride within their being. And we need to have humility and difficult times to say, Lord, I probably need to learn something from this. And there's an element of you can, James goes into this, count it all joy. There's an element to as the Lord is shaping you and training you, it can be joyful. For you can say, Lord, you have saved me. You have used the cross to save me. You have the power to use such a moment. You can use any challenge to refine me, shape me, grow your kingdom. Lord, have your way with me. Let your will be done. And that can be a very joyful process. You can have joy in the midst of sorrow and trial and you can have joy that just the existence of the sorrow is just an affirmation that God's loving fatherly hand of discipline is upon you. It can be joyful or you can resist it and ignore it and it can be dreadful. And a lot of Christians, you really need to learn to embrace this moment, all moments you're facing. Are you in it? Is it the will of God? If you're there, it is. And seek the presence of mind and the humility to receive what God has for you and even have the hope that you can't just survive it, but that you can have joy in it. And so Christian, what hinders you from hearing these lessons? A lot of people face challenges and trials and storms and they respond with just bitterness. Some of you might just be bitter. God has forced by his severe mercy hard situation on your life that really could be a great means of learning, of growth and steadfastness, of great growth and wisdom for you. But you are so mad at him that you have never paused to try to figure out why he did that, what his purposes could be, what perspective, how he could use that for his glory going forward. Are you just a Christian that doesn't want to hear any of this because you're bitter? Christian is it bad theology? Someone told you that Christian life would be easy? Has someone told you that God only has good things and good plans for you? The tendency of the struggle with these kinds of things like yeah, God works all things for the good who walk according to his purpose. But the issue in these situation is that people don't want to submit what is good to the ways that God has submitted it. And so what is good? It is all that which honors God, all that which grows Christ-likeness in me and in others and spreads forth God's kingdom. And so according to his word as the most blatant clear revelation of those things. And so have you surrendered what is good to God? If not, that's going to get in your way of having joy and learning and growing in these situations. Many of us are just really impatient. We live in an on-demand culture and we have been for decades. We don't really have to wait for anything. We don't see crops being grown outside. We don't see just how food is prepared. We put it in the microwave. We just get everything instantly. And we're not aware that just like the moment of time of history that we've been born into has bred just impatience in us. And so we need to pause and see just Lord sit back. One of the ways that a lot of Christians just are disobedient is that they don't take a Sabbath. They don't pursue, they don't commit a whole day to the Lord for they have greater good things to do. And there's no way the Lord will contradict himself. He wants you to pause once a week to take in, to let your body, let your heart, let your mind refresh, to better take in how he is working in your life and how you can from that day forward better serve him in your life. A lot of Christians, what they wrongly do is they get lost in a bit of a prosperity gospel. Just believing that God is only working and they're flourishing their success and they rebuke moments of trials and discomfort and convenience as something that just must be denied altogether or declared as satanic. They don't have eyes to see, ears to hear, they completely missed the moments of trials. And these people just get stunted in there development. Everything is over spiritualized. There's no reflection in the moment of, Lord, I'm in this situation. This is hard. Search me and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. See if there'll be any grievous way with me and lead me in the way of everlasting. There's no heart check. It's always something on the outside that is causing, Satan particularly, that's causing this inconvenience. And so people blame the devil, they blame other things. A lot of Christians just look at hardship and say, I'm doing something wrong. And that is right there, the gospel is that we're not saved by our works. We're saved by God's grace. His grace is always there to save us, to help us in the way forward. And we're just stuck in an achievement type mentality. And know sometimes God has ordained hardship for us. And ultimately what this text is teaching, it's for our joy, for our good, for our ability to persevere. One Peter 4:19 encapsulates a lot, basically all that I've said. Therefore, let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful creator while doing good. And so it's a faithful and trust your soul to a faithful creator while suffering, while doing good. And it really is a matter of faith in these moments. Can you trust God when you're facing the trial, when he's put hardship in your life to train you? Says, will you trust him? And that's a yes or no. And if you're going to be split minded about it, that joy, that ability to see the situation through in a way that glorifies him will not be there. And after all of this, we ask, why does God test us? Why does he train us like this as his disciples? And God doesn't put us in the fire, the crucible just because it gives him pleasure. He puts us in the fire because he cares more about holiness instead of momentary happiness. Because he knows that holiness breeds true joy and joy that's rooted in him and that's what he wants. If he really wants what is best for us, he's going to just expose us just to that which is going to bring about true holiness, true joy. And he is good in it. Even if in the moment it's hard for us to understand that and agree. God, ultimately, he's trying to breed greater dependence on him than us. Verse five says, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives generously to all without reproach and it will be given him. So God doesn't want us to go forward doing our work for his kingdom, thinking that it all depends on us. He wants us to grow in our dependence on him. He knows that we are going to stop short in the race if we do it on our own strength. He wants us to become more and more dependent on him and trust that his Holy Spirit is there with us and working in us and through us. Furthermore, he wants us to develop a loving and abiding relationship with him. When we are stretched in this cycle of going out, being stretched, being faithful in the tense moments to the point that our bodies, our souls are on the brink of being crushed to our mindset, but then we're drawn in and we go to Him. He wants us to get to truly see that he, his presence, his wisdom is actually what satisfies our souls and gives us joy. It's not achieving anything in the world, it's not showing our own strength, it's just living in his presence. These challenges force us to go to him in communion and say, God, help me. It challenges us to learn more about him, to understand how he works. And when you understand that, you grow in your appreciation and love for him, you grow in your appreciation of how he is sovereignly directing your life, shaping and cultivating you to become more like Christ and you love him all the more. Your faith goes from just an appreciation of deliverance from sin and the power of sin and the chance of be in heaven to God, I just love you because I love you. As I see your heart, as I see your ability to redeem the hardest, the most challenging of moments for your glory, for my good, for the salvation and sanctification of others in my life. I love you more. And do you really want that? That's a deepening of faith that a lot of people, because they just don't even stay present in trials, they don't even know this experience of Christianity. Of just, I love this life because I know God, you are with me. That's all I need. That's all I want. Use me as you will. And if that means struggle and conflict and trial, so be it. And so when Christians understand this, it changes them. It gives you wholeness as you are forced to just lean on the Lord more and more because you turn to him, you receive his guidance, you receive as counsel, it becomes a greater part of you. And so you have to master this. If you want to do good works for God, we can't really start off with a sermon on listing them out, on identifying the most important ones, on how we and our contexts can do the most for His glory here. If you don't understand how he trains you, if you don't understand the cycle of going to him in the midst of the trial to be satisfied, to find the way forward. And so Christian, do you want to do good works? Do you want to commit yourself to them for the rest of your life? Do you want to persevere to the end being used tremendously by God? I ask, think about how is God training you right now and rejoice in the training. Let me pray to close. Heavenly Father, we praise you for your wisdom. We praise you that what is foolishness to men is a means of your glory and our glory and our growth. Lord, you have the ability to just use the darkest of moments, the most challenging of moments, the graves of sin for your eternal purposes of redemption and making us new and bringing about, just working toward the return of Jesus Christ. Lord, we pray, give us faith to trust you. To trust that in the hardship you are working in us and through us, and training us so that we might love you more and we might have greater capacity to serve you if we trust you through it. Give us faith to trust that we can actually have joy in the midst of sorrow and trial and hardship. Give us great hope that all of this sacrifice is worth it. That when we lay ourselves down daily, you are glorified and that you are actually using these moments for your eternal purposes. And let us trust that your wisdom is so much higher than ours. And when we do this, let us just have peace. Peace that transcends understanding. And as we exhibit that peace, use it to draw others home to your kingdom. Pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.