Last
Sunday, we continued the “No Condemnation” series. We finally got to the core
of the connection between grace and faith – specifically grace’s part in
experiencing answered prayer. We began
by looking at Matthew 6:33 – seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and
all those things will be added to you. The “things” are the things we are in
need of – clothing, food, shelter. What we are being told is that we should be
seeking His kingdom, or His way of doing things. His way of doing things is
entirely connected to His righteousness.
The scripture is not saying to seek His kingdom and be righteous by not
sinning. That would by YOUR righteousness. We have to seek after HIS
righteousness. We will never accomplish truly great things in His kingdom in
our own righteousness. We need an awareness and understanding of the fact that
He made us righteous.
When
we read this passage in its context (starting at verse 25), we find a common
thread in Jesus’ analogies – birds and their food, and grass and lilies being
clothed in splendor. They do nothing to
earn those things. They are simply God’s creation and are taken care of because
He cares for His creation. Then, we are much more valuable to God than birds,
grass or flowers. So, then why doesn’t
God seem to do a better job of caring for us? The key is there in verse 33. We
must operate in His righteousness to be operating in the kingdom where He is
king. He is not the ruler of our self-righteous kingdom and its “ways of doing
things.”
We
spent some time in Romans 14, looking at Paul’s admonitions regarding judging
our brothers and sisters in the Lord over “disputable matters.” The reality is
that everything outside of God the Father’s existence, and Jesus, His Son,
being the only way to the Father, is a disputable matter. We may feel very
strongly about our religious beliefs, and Paul’s point is that we should
worship and act in ways that are important to us and as we are convicted to do.
This means we are to seek God and do what is in our heart by the Spirit to do,
but we also don’t judge others based on what God told us to do. That’s the short summary of Romans 14. What I want to zero in on is verse 23. It
warns us not to condemn ourselves in our hearts by what we do. We also aren’t to set up rules for ourselves
that will then condemn us when we can’t follow them. If you create a rule, and you believe that
breaking that rule condemns you, it will. God does not condemn you. It says
that you condemn yourself. That word condemn, in Greek, is krinos.
Then,
in Mark 11:23, the famous “mountain-moving faith” verse, we find Jesus
making a very bold and often misunderstood statement. First, context is
important to understanding. Jesus had just entered Jerusalem Mount of Olives . This is
the place where, just a few days later, He will be sweating great drops of
blood as he takes upon Himself the condemnation of man’s sin so that it can be
taken to the cross.
There
is even more to His reference than that. In Hebrew, the name Jerusalem
is a compound word – Jeru, meaning way of, and Salem Jerusalem Bethany Mount of Olives , figuratively
speaking, separated the house of poverty and affliction from the way of peace.
But the picture gets bigger. When Jesus says we should not doubt in our hearts,
the Greek word for doubt was diakrinos. Remember krinos meant
condemnation. Dia is a prefix that means “by way of.” So, Jesus
is actually saying we need to speak to the mountain of condemnation that is
separating us from peace and have not the way of condemnation in our hearts. This
was also true physically. On the
Sabbath, there was a law at the time that said you were only allowed to move
within your own city or it would be considered work. The only day this changed, was Passover, the
day Jesus made this statement. On Passover,
the boundaries of Jerusalem expanded so that
people from Bethany
To
listen to the entire sermon go to http://ahwatukeechurch.com/media.php. To learn more about Living Word Ahwatukee,
visit http://ahwatukeechurch.com/.
