Oil and Water Part 1

This week, we began a new series called “Oil and Water.” In this series, we will be learning how to identify law living versus grace living and avoiding trying to live by a mixture of the two.  If we live by law, we expect curse to come if we don’t follow things just right (or blame a failure to live perfectly for bad stuff that comes our way).  This is not what grace is about. Just like oil and water, grace and law do not mix.  At first, we spent some time answering the question, “if the law is so bad, why did God bring it in the first place.” It may seem like we bash the law, but, as the apostle Paul said, the law is pure and holy. The law itself is not the problem. On this side of the cross, if we use it for the wrong purpose, it brings death. The law is good, but it cannot justify us or make us righteous. Nothing but the blood of Jesus can do that!

We can find all the way back in Genesis 5 that God’s ultimate plan was never the law, but redemption by His Son. Now, it is not clearly there on the page, but it is there if we will look for it. You see, we can often read lists of genealogies in the Bible and not know why it was so important for them to be there. First of all, they help us establish the timeline and the authenticity of the people spoken of. It is not just a list of stories, but an ongoing account of man.  But here in Genesis 5, where we have a lineage going from Adam to Noah, we can actually find a lot more if we examine all of the names of those mentioned in their original Hebrew. Some of these names are direct Hebrew root words and some are made up of multiple words – as is the case with proper names.

 Adam= Man

Seth = Appointed

Enosh = Mortal

Kenan = Sorrow

Mahalalel = The Blessed God

Jared = Shall Come Down

Enoch = Teaching

Methuselah = His Death Shall Bring

Lamech = The Despairing

Noah = Rest or Comfort

 

Put it together and you would get (my words added in parenthesis): Man (is) appointed mortal sorrow. The blessed God shall come down teaching (and) His death shall bring the despairing comfort and rest.

 Wow! Some have claimed that the Hebrew rabbis had conspired together and wrote the Old Testament to say what they wanted it to say. I can’t believe for a minute that some ancient rabbis conspired to hide the Gospel of Jesus in Genesis 5!

There are many interesting things about the people in this lineage. One that is striking is that Enoch was the first “prophet.” He prophesied by God that destruction would come to the earth when his child died (Methuselah). Of course, Methuselah’s name meant “his death shall bring.” What is so indicative of the nature of God is that, in His mercy, Methuselah became the longest person to live at 969 years. God’s mercy lasted longer than anyone on earth has ever lived. That is good news for you and I!

If Jesus was the plan from the beginning, then why didn’t God send Him right after the fall in the Garden, or instead of the flood of Noah’s day, or instead of the law? God had a plan and, until it was complete, we were not ready for Jesus to come. He couldn’t have done the complete work He did until these other things happened.

In Noah’s day, God physically destroyed the earth because all of man’s thoughts and intents had become evil. Keep in mind that there was no law at that time. There wasn’t anything that defined sin. So, was it unfair for Him to destroy the earth? It was actually an act of mercy. You see, apart from law we can be right before God, but sin still destroys everything in its path. God had to stop the spread of sin’s destruction until a better solution was ready.

Fast forward to Moses’ day. Why doesn’t God send Jesus instead of the law? Once again, it was not yet time. Man was not ready. The law came to show us what it takes to be holy before God through works. In Exodus 19:8, after Moses’ first conversation with God on Mt. Sinai, Moses is to present the idea of law to the people. The people respond by saying “we will do” all that He asks.  On the surface, we may not read much into that response. But, when we look at the Hebrew, we find a little more information. The Hebrew word for the phrase, “we will do,” was ASAH. This word was used in Genesis 1 during creation. When God spoke to nothing to create something, the word was BARA. But when He spoke to something and tell it to produce something else, the word was ASAH.

In effect, what the Israelites were saying is, we can make our own way.  To understand this response better, we should look back over the scriptures leading up to this statement. In Exodus 14, they grumbled against God because it looked like the Egyptians were going to capture them and take them back to Egypt. God DID NOT rebuke them for this (remember, there was no law yet) but delivered them by parting the Red Sea.  In Exodus 16, they grumbled against God because they were thirsty and could not find water. Again, God did not rebuke them and provided water through Moses striking a rock. There is a similar situation regarding eating in Exodus 17, and God’s response was the same – no rebuke, but He still met the need.

 

The Israelite people had gotten to a place that, despite miracle after miracle happening before their eyes, they felt God was not taking very good care of them. I believe they thought that keeping whatever list of commands He was going to give would OBLIGATE Him to treat them better. They would be treated based on what they deserved!  Boy, were they in for a surprise! God had been dealing with them by grace (apart from law), but as soon as law came things changed. Now, God rebuked them when they sinned. We should all be happy we do not get what we deserve.   Sometimes, if we live in law, we try to use following a list of laws to say “now God you must…”, but we only use that for the positive things and forget all the negative things that means we deserve when we fall short.  Any time we fall short of God’s best for us (don’t eat right, smoke, etc.), we are sinning.  This becomes extremely difficult.  The law shows us just what it takes to be holy and righteous before God by works. It shows us that it is impossible.  This is what God needed man to understand before Jesus came. We had to get to the place that we knew we could not do it, that we needed a savior!  Romans 7 sums all this up.  The law showed us what was right and wrong, and also showed us that we could not do it on our own.  We knew we needed a Savior because of the law.

Romans 5 shows us the answer.  Now, Jesus has made us righteous. We must receive that righteousness apart from the law. Only then will we be empowered by His grace to begin to more closely resemble the law’s righteous picture. Christ in us, the only one who could fulfill the law, is what gives us the strength to, day by day, more closely resemble that righteous picture.

 

 

 To listen to the entire sermon go to http://ahwatukeechurch.com/media.php.  To learn more about Living Word Ahwatukee, visit http://ahwatukeechurch.com/.

Be Like Abe Part 6

This week, we finished the “Be Like Abe” series. We FINALLY got to the point of what it was that Abraham believed that God credited to him as righteousness. Before we got there, we looked at some of the things Abraham had done that, by the law, would have disqualified him.  Romans 4:13-15 tells us that where there is no law there is no transgression. Abraham lived before there was law to define transgressions. His mistakes still caused problems, as sin always does, but his mistakes did not change his right standing before God or his ability to be blessed by God.

 

In Genesis 12:1, God tells Abraham to leave his family and go to the land He would show him. Then, three verses later, we find that he takes his nephew Lot along. This decision causes a lot more trouble than God ever intended, but it did not change Abraham’s standing with God or the blessing he would receive.  Then, later in the same chapter, in verses 10-20, we find that Abraham, in fear for his own life, lied to Pharaoh about his wife. He says that she is his sister. If she were known to be his wife, he thinks they could kill him to take her. Keep in mind that she was 65 years old at this time, but so beautiful that a ruler would want her. Abraham turned his wife over to Pharaoh, and in return gets blessed with herds and servants.  God causes a disease to come onto Pharaoh and his household that keeps Sarah (Sarai the time) from being touched. Long story short, Pharaoh gave Abraham his wife back and sends him on his way blessed. Can you imagine what Sarah had to say to Abraham when they were reunited?

We also looked at Genesis 16 and found that Abraham went along with the suggestion of his wife who believed that she could not conceive a child as God had promised. She suggested Abraham lie with her maidservant Hagar. Abraham did not refuse. Out of this action cane the child, Ishmael. This decision is probably one of the greatest mistakes made my any man since Adam eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden—its repercussions are still felt today.

Then, in chapter 20, Abraham tells the same lie about Sarah being his sister (for the same purpose of saving his own life) to another ruler, Abimelech. God causes a similar thing to happen to Abimelech as He had to Pharaoh, so that he would be incapable of touching Sarah (who is now almost 75 years old and apparently still great looking).

In all of these things, we do not find a single time where God rebukes Abraham. Wow. That might be hard to believe, but I challenge you to read the stories yourself. You will not find God rebuking Abraham. Is this because God was okay with these actions? No! But, there was no law to define the trespass, so there was no penalty for the trespass – from God anyway. Again, each of these actions produced problems for Abraham that were not God’s plan.  They had repercussions but not in terms of Abraham’s relationship and standing with God.

We also looked at Romans 4. We must remember that, if we are in Christ and we receive His righteousness by faith, we also are no longer under law. Sin still produces unnecessary pain and trouble, but it does not have the power to cut us off from God or His blessing. Don’t misunderstand this message. Sin is not the way to blessing, but sin, or lack thereof, is not the determining factor that determines whether we receive blessing.

In verses 18-21, we see that the thing that Abraham believed that was credited as righteousness was that he was “full persuaded that God would do what He had promised.” That is what we have to do – believe that when God says something, He will do it. Most important is for us to believe that, when He says we have been made righteous by the blood of Jesus, He means it. Live your life like you truly believe you are righteous apart from works.  Then I firmly believe that grace will do its work in you, and you will slowly become transformed into His image. Sin’s power will break, and it will fade in your life. Living by law can never do that. All it will do is force us you to look holy and not be holy. Grace will change you at the heart level.

  To listen to the entire sermon go to http://ahwatukeechurch.com/media.php.  To learn more about Living Word Ahwatukee, visit http://ahwatukeechurch.com/.

Be Like Abe Part 5

 

This week, we continued the “Be Like Abe” series. We looked at two ideas related to this topic of grace. First, we looked at the importance of the role of the Holy Spirit as we receive the message of God’s grace.  In Galatians 1:11-17, Paul talks about how it was not any man, including the apostles who walked with Jesus, who gave him the message of the gospel of grace that he preached. It was the Spirit of God Himself who gave it to him. Paul, after receiving Jesus on the road to Damascus, spent as many as 17 years back and forth to Arabia to study his new-found faith in the one he had been persecuting.

 The power of the Holy Spirit will lead you to the truth of God’s righteousness by faith, as opposed to righteousness by works. This is a difficult concept for us to truly receive and live by. The Holy Spirit is also the source of God’s signs and wonders – the things that will draw men toward God.

In Mark 2:1-12, we read a story that perfectly illustrates both of these points. Jesus was teaching in a home. The home was so full that no one else could fit. Do you think so many would be drawn to hear a then still unknown teacher, if all he was teaching was the same law teaching that they regularly heard in the synagogues? In addition, the parallel passage in Luke 5 says that the Spirit to heal was there – that is signs and wonders. Even though people did not yet know WHO Jesus was, they were drawn by that healing spirit in Him (and that same spirit dwells in each of us!).  Because of the crowd, a paralytic man there to be healed had to have four friends take him up to the roof of the house, cut a hole in the roof, and lower him down to where Jesus was. Jesus sees the man and tells him that his sins are forgiven.

 The Pharisees (read “the law”) were there thinking that Jesus was a blasphemer for implying He could forgive sin. Jesus, by the power of the Spirit (again the same Spirit who dwells in you!), knows what they are thinking and calls them on it. After arguing with them and shutting them down, He goes back to the paralytic and tells Him to take up his mat at walk away.  Did you see what happened? The law was there to try and disqualify the man from receiving what Jesus said was his. The enemy likes to use the law to either disqualify you or disqualify the healer when you stand for a miracle. Don’t let the law steal your miracle!

Next, we moved on to Romans 4 to clarify our examination of what it was that Abraham believed that caused God to credit his faith to him as righteousness. I believe we will get to the actual answer next Sunday, but I wanted to draw our attention to a couple points Paul makes in this chapter.  He quotes King David in verses 7-8. This is referencing Psalm 32:1-2. David says that blessed are they whose sins are forgiven, and blessed is the man whose sins God never holds against him.  I wondered why he changes pronouns there. Why is it first “they” and then “the man?” There are many who believe they are forgiven and will be received by Christ in eternity, but there are very few who ever get the revelation that He is NEVER holding their sin against them – and that includes NOW. You see, it is not just that we WILL be clothed in His righteousness when we enter heaven, but we are righteous NOW because of what Jesus did!

Many in the early church had a very difficult time receiving Gentiles into the faith without the requirement of circumcision. Even the apostle Peter was a proponent of this qualification.  Paul reminds that Abraham was declared righteous and blessed BEFORE he was ever circumcised. Before Abraham had DONE anything, God declared him righteous – not by what he did, but because of what he believed.

 

 To listen to the entire sermon go to http://ahwatukeechurch.com/media.php.  To learn more about Living Word Ahwatukee, visit http://ahwatukeechurch.com/.

Be Like Abe Part 4

 Be Like Abe Part 4

 

This week, we continued in the “Be Like Abe” series; examining grace and what it is that Abraham believed that God counted as righteousness.   Titus 2:11-12 focuses on how grace teaches us to say no to ungodliness. In Romans 7:9, Paul says that when law came, sin was revived. Some translations say that sin sprang to life. However, the Greek word that is used there, anazao, only means to revive. So that means that sin had to have been alive, was put to death and then was revived.

I believe that one way of looking at this relates to when we receive Christ and forgiveness  of our sin, we enter a life of grace by faith apart from the law. As we (supposedly) “mature” in the Lord, we are put back under law with all of the rules and regulations of being a “true Christian.” In doing so, we resurrect sin. Paul said numerous times in numerous ways that law magnifies sin and brings death to us. Law does not stop sin, but defines and magnifies sin.

Another related view of this statement in Romans 7:9 takes us all the way back to the Garden of Eden. There were two important trees in the Garden – the Tree of Life that they were to eat freely from, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that they were NOT to eat from. “Knowledge of Good and Evil” sounds a lot like law in its goal of showing us how to be right before God by doing good and avoiding evil.  God told Adam in Genesis 2:15 that if he ate of the tree, he would surely die. God did NOT say that He would strike Adam down as punishment for his disobedience. He said that if he ate of that tree, death would come. Go back to the many times Paul equates life under the law to death. It is fruitless and does not produce righteousness.

For further evidence that this tree did represent life by law, we should look no further than what happened when they ate of it. The results were EXACTLY what happens when we live by law and fail (sin). Adam and Eve were ashamed, they covered themselves with fig leaves because they were suddenly ashamed of their nakedness, and they avoided God.  When you are not under grace, but law, when you sin you are ashamed and try to hide from God (as silly as that notion is). You will avoid Him until you feel you have paid for your sins and are once again worthy to be in His presence. Of course, our works never make us worthy, so we either never come back or we lie to ourselves by somehow thinking we’ve managed to produce righteousness.

Under grace, we feel guilty for our sins, but that grace draws us nearer to God for help in dealing with our sins, as opposed to separating  us from Him. Grace helps us understand that He loves us, and that love is unconditional. He doesn’t want you to struggle with sin.  He wants to help you overcome it. You can’t do it yourself!

 If we were to look at what I would call a timeline of law and grace, it would look something like this. At the fall, God placed a wall to keep man from continuing to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There was an era of grace that lasted between Adam and Moses. This was the time that Abraham lived in. He could be considered righteous by only believing God.  Then when the Law came through Moses, that wall was removed. Man was freely eating of that law tree, and it was producing death. It continued to do so without restraint until Jesus Christ came and fulfilled the law, became a sacrifice for us and resurrected. This resurrected the wall that kept man from eating of that tree. We can still, by our own will, eat of it. We can reject the work Christ did and go back to eating of law.

Now, the exact opposite happened with that other tree. Man was kept from eating of the Tree of Life out of God’s mercy. Once man had the knowledge of law, sin and condemnation, it would have been brutal to live eternally. Cutting man off from that tree was not a punishment, but protection.   So, why did God put that tree in the Garden if He knew what it would produce? Why create it at all? Was God just playing some cruel game with His creation? This could be discussed in many volumes, but the very short answer is that He HAD to do what He did. Man could believe God at His Word – which is a demonstration that we love Him, or we could choose to disobey and NOT trust Him.  Love is not love unless there is a choice to not do so. Without the option of a choice to disobey, obedience is not genuine. How amazing is God’s grace and mercy, that even in our disobedience, He began to immediately make a way to overcome it.

 

To listen to the entire sermon go to http://ahwatukeechurch.com/media.php.  To learn more about Living Word Ahwatukee, visit http://ahwatukeechurch.com/.

Be Like Abe Part 3

This week we continued our “Be Like Abe.”  We focused on the idea that accepting grace is what breaks the sin cycle.  2 Corinthians 3:6 emphasizes that law and sinful nature are one in the same, but the Spirit and grace work together in the same way.  Curse and failure comes in because of condemnation when we believe that good works are the reason for blessing, or lack thereof.

This week we began by looking at a couple of what I refer to as “yeah, but…” scriptures. These are verses that may seem to contradict what Paul has written in places like Romans, Galatians and Hebrews concerning grace and faith. Some call these other scriptures “balance” to the grace message. But grace does not need balance. Our interpretation may need clearer understanding, but it does not need to be balanced.  Additionally, God would not balance by contradicting Himself. The Word of God does not contradict itself. It is only our misunderstanding of it that causes supposed contradictions to appear.

In James 2:21-24, we read that being justified by faith, without works, is dead and useless. Does this contradict what Paul says about being justified by grace and faith alone? It does seem like it. Is this just one of those ways of “balancing” the grace message? No and no!  Again, scripture does not contradict itself. After the overwhelming evidence that Paul has presented in regard to righteousness by faith, we should look deeper into what James did and did not say in order to clear up the misunderstanding.

I agree with what James says about righteous works being important – but not at the place in the system that you may think.  In James 2:22, (in regard to Abraham) he says YOU SEE that his faith and his actions were working together. Verse 24 says that YOU SEE that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone. (emphasis added on the YOU SEEs).  In modern English we often begin a sentence by saying things like, “You see, I was at the grocery store…” But James did not write using a sort of slang or casual vernacular. He MEANS “you see”.   Can anyone SEE that you’re justified by faith alone?  No. They can’t see until your actions in life begin to reflect that you know you are righteous by faith alone.  They see you doing work not to become justified but because you ARE justified.    

Abraham was righteous in Genesis 15:6 when God says Abraham believed and it was credited to him as righteousness, but WE SEE that righteousness in action in Genesis 22 when he is willing to obey God in sacrificing the promised child, Isaac.   Our works have nothing to do with our state of righteousness; however, no one else can see you are righteous until that righteousness inspires you to good works (and the good works I am talking about are not just keeping a list of religious rules). Doing that doesn’t make us stand out to the world. There is no supernatural occurrence when we don’t watch tv or go to movies.

True, grace-driven works are awesome. Abraham believed God and trusted God and was obedient to God out of his knowledge that God loved him and promised to bless him. So, when God asked for Isaac, Abraham had to know God had a plan, and, in case you are not familiar with the story, God did have a plan. God stopped Abraham from offering Isaac on the altar and replaced Isaac with a lamb (a picture of Christ).

That righteous work is still being talked about today. No one is talking about any of the Israelites who didn’t covet their neighbor’s donkey. Obeying the commandments is good, but it isn’t going to change the world. Actual acts that are bold and world-changing happen when we KNOW we are right before God, and that there is nothing hindering His power flowing through us!

When you truly know you are right before God, the works that you will do will be awesome. I dare say that the biggest reason we are not all doing such awesome works is that we don’t really know just how righteous God has made us by the blood of Jesus!  We do good works BECAUSE we are righteous, not in order to become righteous.

We also looked at Romans 4:4, which reflects law thinking.  Romans 4:5 reflects what Abraham did.  When we ask for something God has promised, we have to remember the answer is yes and then receive it as a gift.  We also looked at Galatians 5 as a reminder that the fruit of righteousness is through the Spirit and through Christ and not fruit of our own labor.

We also looked at two different kinds of righteousness. When the Lord took me to Genesis 18 and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in my study last week, I was initially wondering why. The first thing that occurred to me was how grace responds to sin. Abraham, who was right before God, plead with God to save as many people in Sodom and possible. If all he was concerned about was his nephew Lot, he would not have started by asking God to save 50 people.

 We contrast this with the story of Jonah, whom God sent in grace to warn the people of Nineveh to turn from their sinful ways. Even though his message was successful in changing the hearts of the people of Nineveh, Jonah still sat waiting for God to rain down fire on them for their sin. Law-mindedness is always looking for how to disqualify people from God’s favor. Grace is always hoping to qualify.

While studying that story in Genesis 18 another thought came to me. How would there be ANY who were righteous in Sodom? Abraham is the only one who was right before God. Hmm, I thought… maybe the Hebrew word for righteous in Genesis 18 was different than the one used elsewhere, and it was. The difference between them tells an amazing story.  The Hebrew word that was translated righteous in Genesis 18 (to describe some people in Sodom) was tsaddiyq (pronounced: sadeek,) and the word used in Genesis 15:6 to describe Abraham was tsedeqah (pronounced: sedaka).  In the Hebrew language, each letter contributes  to the overall meaning and/or context of the word.

The two differences between the Hebrew words tell the story. The third Hebrew letter in the word tsaddiyq is yud. Yud represents the work of man (and it is also the smallest word in the Hebrew language). In ancient Hebrew, its symbol was an outstretched arm, working. The word used to describe Abraham’s righteousness, tsedeqah, does not have a yud in it. Instead it has the letter hey at the end (all the rest of the letters are the same). Hey is the fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It represents the breath of God, and many agree it represents the idea of His grace, His very life being breathed into a imperfect human vessel.

 Now a picture of the Gospel comes into view. Abraham was pleading for the “good people” in Sodom. Those people who do really good things. But their works were not good enough. If not for the intercession of the one whose righteousness was by grace (to us: Jesus), they would have been destroyed along with the wicked of the world.  No amount of man’s works is enough apart from the intercession of THE righteous one. Hallelujah, we have that righteous one interceding for us!

 

 To listen to the entire sermon go to http://ahwatukeechurch.com/media.php.  To learn more about Living Word Ahwatukee, visit http://ahwatukeechurch.com/.

Be Like Abe Part 2

This week, we continued the “Be Like Abe” series. We want to learn to be like Abraham, in that we are righteous only because we believe in God. Our own works and relying on law and rules for justification are dead and cursed, but life by faith in grace is blessed! (Galatians 3:9-10) 

Normal thinking (which should NOT be normal) is that the way to be blessed by God is through lots of obedience (and no disobedience), lots of prayer (loud and lengthy prayer), lots of fasting, and a whole lot of “do, do, do, do , do…”  Law living is a lot of do-do J  That same thinking says that if you are experiencing curse, it is because you sin openly or perhaps have some sort of hidden sin. That is how we explain the circumstance when someone who seems to be very faithful to God deals with the fruit of curse.  We believe it must be some sort of hidden sin.  But Jesus said in John 9, when the disciples asked if it was a man’s sin or his parents’ sin that caused him to be born blind, that it was not sin at all. The world is pretty messed up and terrible things happen – babies are born with defects and diseases.  This is not due to specific sin but the sinful nature of the world as a whole.  A note, the Greek language does not have punctuation….so if we add a period after the part about the sin not being from the man or his parents, then the meaning changes significantly and clears up a lot of misconceptions about this verse (of course this only holds because that change holds up against other scripture).

The enemy uses law thinking against us by convincing us to receive curses when we mess up, believing it is what is due us because of what we’ve done.  Many believers can agree that God wants blessing in their life, but they have that old, “normal” viewpoint on how to get it. The first thing to understand is that blessing is not stuff. Blessing CAN produce nice things in your life, but they are not the blessing.  They are merely fruit of living in blessing. Boiled down to its simplest form, blessing IS grace. You have a relationship with the God of this universe that you do not deserve and cannot earn. That is blessing! 

We are a vessel that God wants to pour His blessing into and see overflow into the lives of those around us, but law thinking sees our actions or inactions as the lever turning on and off the blessing faucet. We think sin turns off God’s blessing. So, when we know we’ve failed, we believe we are back under curse, and we accept curse “fruit” that comes our way.  

Sin DOES have a place in how and to what extent we experience blessing, but it is not at the faucet. Instead, sin or disobedience puts holes in our vessel. The grace of God ensures that the blessing continues to pour out, but if our vessel is full of holes, that blessing disappears, and we never experience it. We react by trying by our own actions to turn the faucet on – wasting time and energy doing something that has already been done.   

What we need to do is to get hold of grace and allow it to transform us – driving sin out at the heart level and sealing up the holes. When we do that, we become a finite vessel under an infinite faucet of blessing. Then, blessing overflows out of us and to those around us. Law living never even gets off the starting block because all of its energy goes to justifying self.  Romans 5:13 and forward emphasizes that we received salvation and thus God’s blessing is a gift.  A gift does not have strings attached and is something you can not and never could earn, but something you need to receive and open in order to actually benefit from.   

Picture yourself as a rose bush. If the whole plant becomes diseased, we will see ugly branches and leaves. We can continue to cut off all the ugly, dead parts, but the plant is still diseased – so the ugliness comes back. So, then, we could become even more aggressive with our trimming. But, guess what? The plant is still diseased and will continue to produce those ugly leaves and branches. That is the law / behavior modification approach.

 A more effective approach is the grace and life transformation approach. Grace heals the diseased plant at the root. It may still look a little ugly, but it is in fact far healthier than the diseased plant we keep trimming. Over time, the plant will become healthy and will thrive. We must have patience as grace does its work. If we (or law-minded people around us) become impatient, we will assume that grace does not work, it was just a license to sin, or that it needs a little law to really work.  Law gets immediate and visible results; however, those results are temporary, and the law work never ends. Grace changes hearts and lives and has everlasting results!

 

 To listen to the entire sermon go to http://ahwatukeechurch.com/media.php.  To learn more about Living Word Ahwatukee, visit http://ahwatukeechurch.com/.

Be Like Abe, Part 1

This week, we started a slightly new series piggybacking on what we have been studying.  We are studying what it was that Abraham believed that made him right before God. That righteousness was the source of blessing in his life. 

In Galatians 3:9-10, Paul points out a contrasting viewpoint that believers can have that determines a life of blessing or a life under curse. Understand that, as a child of God we cannot BE cursed, but we can continue to live UNDER curse.  Paul says that those who live by faith will be blessed with Abraham, the father of faith. Then he goes on to say that those who rely upon observing the law are under a curse. He did not say that observing the law is a curse, but relying on its observance brings curses to us. What we rely on the law for is righteousness. That brings curse.  We are to rely on Jesus for righteousness.  I don’t even think Abraham “thought” he was righteous, but instead just relied on God and that that reliance was then “credited to him AS righteousness.”  We can’t un-see law, but we can look at ourselves differently and not define ourselves by law.  We have something Abraham doesn’t have.  We have the Holy Spirit to reveal truths to us and lead us.  The Holy Spirit can reveal more and more about grace to us in order that we can walk in God’s power more and more.  Notice also that God never rebukes Abraham for his mistake.  He just focuses on him receiving the promise later and how that happened.

Understanding this contrast helps us understand how we can be a believer but still live under curse. We may believe in God’s mercy. Mercy is what keeps us from getting what we deserve. His mercy pays the penalty for our sin. Our eternity is changed, praise God! We must also believe in His grace that empowers us to also get the blessing that we do NOT deserve.  In the blessing professed in Deuteronomy 28 we find that experiencing it is dependent on keeping the entire law – which cannot be done. So, we are disqualified from that very blessing. But then Jesus completed the law for us. If we are IN HIM, we are qualified for that blessing that we did not deserve.

As believers, we are supposed to be qualified to “boldly go before the throne of God.” We may, on the surface, believe we do, but, if there is any law thinking inside of us, we put ourselves back into our own righteousness that is NOT qualified to boldly go. We must know that we are clothed in Jesus’ righteousness, and in no way of our own, to be that bold.  Then we truly can boldly go.  If we are in HIS righteousness, it is as if it is Jesus before that throne. Then we make our requests known, based on the promises made in the Word, and it will be as if Jesus is making the request.  What rules are we relying on that may break our boldness in coming before God?  God’s promises are yes and amen to us because we come as Jesus and His righteousness and not in our own selves.

The word of faith movement in general has in the past put our faith in our faith, in our giving, in what we say or do, rather than in God and the righteousness of Christ.  All of this is like our train, but grace is the locomotive that makes it all move.  Otherwise, we are doing everything right, but it’s not coming to fruition.  Christ’s righteousness is what makes the promises available to us.  What is important is to completely remove our worthiness, or lack thereof, from the equation (instead of I did therefore I get, it is He did therefore I get). The enemy likes to remind you that you sin and fall short and to try to disqualify you from any of God’s promises, especially when we desperately need one. 

All of the curse that was part of justification by law was taken with Jesus to the cross. Galatians 3:13-14 talks about this. It quotes Deuteronomy 21:22-23 in stating that “cursed is every man who hangs on a tree.” Paul knows what this will mean to his audience, early believers in Galatia. That statement in Deuteronomy was referring to the fact that those who were hung on a tree were those guilty of the worst of the worst – murder. Making this statement says that Jesus paid the price for the very worst sin, and there is nothing you may have done that He has not paid a high enough price for.  This also says that God redeemed us so that we would have access to the promises and blessings given to Abraham, blessed because He believes in God and not because of what he does or does not do, like with Moses (thus the parallel list of curses for those who didn’t fully obey).    

The image becomes bigger when we realize the symbolism of the crown of thorns on His head when He hung on that tree. Thorns are a symbol of the curse. Thorns did not exist until after the fall of man. In Genesis 3:18, God tells Adam that the land will now be cursed and produce thorns and thistles. In Matthew 13, Jesus shows us that thorns and thistles are symbolic of the cares and worries of life. That was a major part of the curse that entered the earth at the fall.  In Hebrews 6:8 we find that law living causes our soil to produce thorns and thistles. Again, law living will produce cares and worry.

For this reason, even when Paul talks about the thorn in his side, I believe he is talking about sin, curse, and law. Many believe his thorn was a sickness, disease or ailment; however, God’s answer helps us understand a little bit about what the thorn could be. You see, God’s answer was that His grace was sufficient.  Grace is the answer to sin, law and curse.  The answer for sickness is healing, not grace.  Jesus never gives grace to those needing healing, so why would God do this here?  Paul was a Pharisee who lived his life, prior to meeting Jesus, not only by Mosaic law but by oral law and ordinances. He is the most profound teacher on grace we have ever seen, but I believe he still had to struggle to overcome law like any of us do. He also had to battle with other prominent believers who felt his teaching on grace was giving believers a license to sin (the same argument that gets used today), and that even Gentile believers should be required to keep some of the law. 

He asked God to remove this “thorn” and God said that His grace was sufficient. His grace is also sufficient for you to overcome sin and law as well. God doesn’t simply take away law mentality, though. We must renew our minds (Romans 12:2) with the Word on grace.  Finally, Jesus went to the cross with a crown of thorns on His head – literally hanging on the cross “under” the curse for us!

 To listen to the entire sermon go to http://ahwatukeechurch.com/media.php.  To learn more about Living Word Ahwatukee, visit http://ahwatukeechurch.com/.