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God’s Power for God’s Purpose

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God’s Power for God’s Purpose

Acts 1:1-8

James C. Denison

Have you ever run out of gas? I don’t mean figuratively but literally. These days our cars tell us how many miles we have left in the tank, and all kinds of lights and bells go off when we get close. It wasn’t always that way.

I’ve run out of gas twice. The first time was in Midland when I had just bought the car of my dreams, a 1965 Ford Mustang fastback. White, candy-apple red interior, four on the floor English racing transmission. And a defective gas gauge, as it turned out. My first week to drive the car, it said I had a quarter of a tank of gas left when I ran out. Janet was not amused when I called for help.

The other time was also in Midland. I drove one of the church’s vans to Brownwood for a trustee meeting at Howard Payne University. The staff gave me the key to the vehicle, but not the key to the locking gas cap. I pulled into town, running on fumes, to discover that I had no way to get gas into the tank. A locksmith had to save the day.

Both problems are also parables for us this morning. We’ve heard about the gospel and us, the gospel and relationships, the gospel and the church, the gospel and the community. Now we need to know how to take the gospel to the world. Jesus’ last words to the church are clear: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

Here we discover the purpose of the church: “you will be my witnesses,” taking Christ to our city and world. Here we discover the people who fulfill the purpose: “you” will receive power and “you” will be my witnesses. The Greek is plural, including every one of us listening to these words today.

Here we discover the priority by which the people fulfill the purpose: “in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” But how do we do this? How do we reach the “ends of the earth”?

You’re just one person sitting in a church service on a Sunday morning. The world is very large and very lost. War in Iraq and Afghanistan; tensions in the Middle East; economic turmoil at home. Newspapers this week told of people selling heirlooms to buy gas. Life can feel overwhelming today. Now you come to church and hear that you are supposed to take the gospel to the entire world. How is that possible?

My job today is to talk to you about the power by which the people fulfill the purpose and accomplish the priorities of the church: “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.” The power of God really is sufficient to accomplish the purpose of God.

But there are two obstacles to receiving that power this morning. Like my Mustang, we need to remember that we need power. Like my church van, we need to know how to receive it. Let’s look at each of these decisions in turn.

You and I live in Dallas, the most entrepreneurial, can-do culture I’ve ever known. There’s nothing people in this city won’t try, no challenge they won’t accept. It’s the air we breathe, the water we drink.

There’s no natural reason why Dallas-Fort Worth should have become the nation’s fourth-largest metropolitan area–no great rivers, mountains or ports. Just some people on a prairie willing to work very hard, to do whatever it takes.

That spirit is infused in everything this city attempts. We’re close to finishing the Cultural Arts Center, raising $335 million, nearly all of it through private donations. Our mayor is in China working to enhance our status as a world-class city. From the High Five to the new Trinity River Bridge, we’ll envision anything.

But that spirit can be a problem. We can rely on ourselves rather than God, trusting in our abilities and education and expertise rather than the Holy Spirit. Like my Mustang, we can run out of gas and not know it.

Today I must remind you that none of us can convict a single person of a single sin or save a single soul from hell for heaven. We cannot do anything spiritual using human ability. God’s word is clear: “‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the LORD Almighty” (Zechariah 4:6). If Peter, James, and John, Jesus’ closest friends and greatest apostles, had to seek the power of God to fulfill the purpose of God, so must we. Do you know that you need the power of God today? Do you know how to receive it?

Driving that church van, I knew I needed fuel, but didn’t have the key to unlock the tank. Do you have that key this morning?

Jesus told the first Christians to “Wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit” (vs. 4-5). So they prayed and waited, and the Spirit fell.

Paul told us how to have their experience: “Be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). First, ask the Spirit to show you any sin which would keep him from using you, and confess it with a repentant heart. Second, ask the Spirit to take control of your life and empower you to be used by God. Surrender and submit every part of your day to him. Third, believe that he has done what you asked, that he will empower and use you as you trust him. And he will.

This must be the daily routine of our lives, the way we begin every morning of the day. You put gas in the tank before you drive the car. You plug a computer into the socket before you turn it on. This is how God wants you to begin every morning this week, and for the rest of your life.

Conclusion

This church was founded nearly 70 years ago by people who believed that with the power of God, the people of God could accomplish the priorities of God and fulfill the purpose of God.

No church sponsored us or gave us money. We had no pastor or staff, but our first members had an urgent desire to take Christ to what was then far-north Dallas. They knocked on doors and invited friends and neighbors to come to their services in the University Park Elementary School. In 1940 they called Dr. Reid to be their first pastor and began meeting in a house on Lover’s Lane, where the HPISD administration building is located today.

During World War II, the church sent buses to Love Field Air Station to bring soldiers to Sunday School and worship. Eventually the congregation purchased this land on Northwest High and broke ground on Mother’s Day, 60 years ago. Dr. Howard, the church’s second pastor, didn’t use a shovel but a bulldozer. They built a Sanctuary which pictures Jesus pointing to the Great Commission: Go and teach all nations.

On this significant, historic Sunday you and I are called to continue that vision, that commission, that calling. Will you begin every day by submitting to the Holy Spirit and seeking his power? Will you ask his Spirit to use you to accomplish God’s purpose for your life? Will you trust that his power is sufficient for that purpose, that the Spirit of God can use you and your church to change the world? If you won’t, he won’t. If you will, he will. It’s that simple. God’s people can fulfill God’s purpose by God’s priorities if they have God’s power. Do you believe that?

God’s Provisions

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God’s Provisions

Joshua 18:1-21:45

Dr. Jim Denison

Thesis: The will of God never leads where his grace cannot sustain.

Goal: Follow God into his future for you, trusting his provision.

I have read that a buzzard can be trapped in a pen which is open at the top, so long as its dimensions are no more than six to eight feet long. The bird always begins its flight with a run of ten to twelve feet. Without such space, it will not even attempt to fly, though its pen has no roof to keep it from the skies. Similarly, a bumblebee, if dropped into an open glass jar, will remain trapped until it dies. It will fly into the sides of the jar, but will never attempt to escape from its top.

It is easy to struggle with our problems, frustrations, and needs, never realizing that our answer is just above us. God’s purpose for our lives is always greater than we can imagine it to be.

Saul of Tarsus used his theological training and cultural education to achieve significance within Phariseeism. God used them to write half of the New Testament and take Christ across the known world. Peter used his gifts of courage and leadership to create a successful fishing enterprise. God used them to lead his church into all the world (Acts 17:6). Matthew used his literary talents and prodigious memory to record tax accounts. God used them to record the Sermon on the Mount.

So it was with the ancient Israelites. Their fondest hope was that they might have a land of their own. But God’s plan was far greater. He intended to make of them a people which would endure in that land for some 15 centuries, so he could bring through them the Messiah who would bring salvation to the entire human race. And so God provided for the needs they knew they faced, and for those they did not even know existed. He still does the same for all of us who will follow him by faith today.

Where is God calling you to take a step which transcends sight? To risk, courage, or boldness? Are you facing a trial which seems beyond your strength? Temptation transcending your power to resist? A decision which you cannot find the will to make?

Where is God calling you to trust in him alone? If you don’t sense such a calling in your heart, get alone with your Father until you do. He never leads his children further into his purpose than we can see with our eyes. When we come to that place which calls us to risk, remember that the will of God never leads where his grace cannot sustain. Step onto his promises, and you will find them ever faithful.

We will watch as God leads the first Joshua to provide for the needs of his people. Then we will watch the second Joshua, the Lord Jesus, as he applies such provision to those who follow him in New Testament faith today. This week is the first Sunday of Advent and the week of hope; it is appropriate that we learn to trust the provisions of our loving Father, new each day of the year.

Claim his provision for your material needs (chs. 18-19)

Each tribe needed land upon which to live. Theirs was an agrarian society, where land was life. And so the geographical location of the tribes would largely determine their future prosperity. Discord about such a significant decision could tear apart their union. Wars over such issues are still fought today.

How would each tribe have what it needed? If the smaller tribes like Benjamin received the largest parts of the land, the larger tribes like Manasseh or Judah could starve. The current redistricting battle in the Texas Legislature shows that such issues have never lost their relevance. How would the nation avoid such infighting and potential disaster?

God’s solution through Joshua was simple: they would “cast lots” (18:10). The land-apportioning ceremony would take place at Shiloh, because it was centrally located so representatives from every tribe could attend the event. This was the location where the Lord intended his tabernacle to stand (see Deuteronomy 12:14); later Jeremiah quoted the Lord as saying that Shiloh was “where I set my name at the first” (7:12).

The tribes trusted the Lord to know and meet their physical needs. And the result was a land distribution which would stand as long as the nation survived.

In such faith, the people followed their leader. Joshua’s tribe gave him the city he asked for: Timnath Serah in the hill country, where “he built up the town and settled there” (19:50). As the nation’s leader, general, and hero, he had every right to choose his land first. He could have chosen the most valuable possession in the entire region. Instead, he took what was left (v. 49). And here he was buried (24:30).

Joshua knew the truth Jesus later taught his followers: “Do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6.31-34). The will of God never leads where the grace of God cannot sustain.

A friend sent me this reading, which I have found worth repeated reading:

There are two days in every week about which we should not worry,

two days which should be kept free from fear and apprehension.

One of these days is Yesterday with all its mistakes and cares,

its faults and blunders, its aches and pains.

Yesterday has passed forever beyond our control.

All the money in the world cannot bring back Yesterday.

We cannot undo a single act we performed;

we cannot erase a single word we said.

Yesterday is gone forever.

The other day we should not worry about is Tomorrow

with all its possible adversities, its burdens, its large promise,

and its poor performance.

Tomorrow is also beyond our immediate control.

Tomorrow’s sun will rise, either in splendor behind a mask of clouds,

but it will rise. Until it does, we have no stake in Tomorrow,

for it is yet to be born.

This leaves only one day.

Any person can fight the battle of just one day.

It is when you and I add the burdens of those two awful eternities,

Yesterday and Tomorrow, that we break down.

It is not the experience of Today that drives a person mad,

it is the remorse or bitterness of something which happened Yesterday

and the dread of what Tomorrow may bring.

Let us, therefore, live but one day at a time.

No matter our current circumstances, there is hope in the God who transcends them and knows our every need.

Choose refuge over revenge (ch. 20)

If the nation was to survive, it would have to solve not only its geographical issues but also its political and relational problems. Most urgent was the issue of the “avenger of blood” (v. 1).

In ancient Israel, one who killed another was himself to be killed (Genesis 9:5-6; Leviticus 24:17). Such regulation served to prevent murder. But it also limited retribution to the guilty party; in other cultures, it was common for the family of the one killed to seek revenge against the entire family or tribe of the murderer. And so the closest kinsman to the person killed was charged with responsibility for revenge and justice (Numbers 35:16-21).

However, on occasion a person would be killed “accidentally” (the Hebrew word means to sin ignorantly or inadvertently) and “unintentionally” (“without knowledge” in the Hebrew, not knowing that he had done so) (Joshua 20:3; cf. Exodus 21:12-14). (Numbers 35:22-24 taught the Jews how to distinguish “innocent” death from murder.) Then the innocent death would lead to another innocent death. Blood feuds would perpetuate, and could destroy the tribe and even the nation.

God’s solution was to create cities of “refuge” (the Hebrew word means “to draw together,” to give asylum or sanctuary). This had been his plan with Moses (Numbers 35:25-28), now to be enacted under Joshua.

Three cities were so designated: one in the north, one in the central area, and one to the south. Each location was rich with spiritual history and significance. First was “Kedesh” in the northern country of Galilee (the name means “consecration,” so that they “consecrated the city of consecration”). Next was Shechem, where God had earlier appeared to Abraham and offered this land (Genesis 12:6-7), and Joshua had renewed the covenant of the nation with God at Mount Ebal (8:30-35). Third was Hebron, where Abraham and Sarah were buried (Genesis 23:2), along with Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah (Genesis 49:29-32). Three towns were also designated among the tribes living east of the Jordan (20:8).

Note that each was a city where the Levites were later assigned responsibility and residency (Joshua 21:13, 21, 32; 27, 36, 38). In this way the Lord provided not only a physical location of refuge, but also spiritual influence and opportunity for worship.

God has always known that revenge leads only to further revenge. I think it was Frederick Buechner who first pointed out the fact that an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is a rapid way to a sightless, toothless world. God’s answer is always justice combined with grace, law tempered by love. He seeks always the redemption of the soul, no matter the sin.

Jesus made this principle of just love even more spiritual and internal: we must not only refuse murder, we must reject anger and bitterness as well (Matthew 5:21-27). He knew that sins of the heart become sins of the hand. And he taught us to love and pray for those who persecute us (Matthew 5:43-48), ending the cycle of revenge before it can begin. The “cities of refuge” created by Joshua are now to exist in our hearts.

Dr. Lewis Smedes wrote the best book I know on the subject of forgiveness. Its title, Forgive and Forget: healing the hurts we don’t deserve, promises hope every hurting heart needs. His central thesis is simple: biblical forgiveness is not to excuse the behavior which hurt us, pretend the pain doesn’t exist, or forget the hurt happened. Biblical forgiveness is pardon—choosing not to punish the guilty party. When a governor pardons a convicted criminal, he or she does not pretend the crime did not occur. Rather, the governor chooses not to bring the punishment allowed by law.

In the same way, when we follow the teachings of the first and second Joshua, we end the cycle of vengeance. We choose not to punish. And so our pain begins to heal. In the midst of relational suffering, there is hope in the One who loves every soul and heals every heart.

Answer his call to spiritual service (ch. 21)

In this study we have discovered God’s answers to the nation’s need for physical and relational provision. Now we watch as he provides the spiritual leadership and nurture which will sustain the tribes for the rest of their history in the land. His use of the tribe of Levi proves that God indeed “hits straight licks with crooked sticks.”

Levi and his brother Simeon first came to prominence in Israel’s history in a most disturbing way. In avenging Shechem’s rape of their sister, Dinah, they attacked and killed every male among Shechem’s people, and plundered their houses and families. Jacob reproved them from “making me a stench to the Canaanites and Perizzites, the people living in this land” (Genesis 34:30). For this sin, Jacob later pronounced their fate: “I will scatter them in Jacob and disperse them in Israel” (Genesis 49:7).

However, when Israel reverted to idolatry and sin while Moses and Joshua met with God at Mt. Sinai, only the Levites rallied to the Lord and Moses (Exodus 32:26). They followed Moses’ command, killing three thousand of the people that day (v. 28). Moses responded to their faithfulness with this promise: “You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day” (v. 29).

As a result, God turned Jacob’s curse against the Levites into their blessing. They would indeed have no single part of the land, but would be dispersed throughout the nation as God’s special and spiritual leaders: “The priests, who are Levites—indeed the whole tribe of Levi—are to have no allotment or inheritance with Israel. They shall live on the offerings made to the Lord by fire, for that is their inheritance. They shall have no inheritance among their brothers; the Lord is their inheritance, as he promised them” (Deuteronomy 18:1-2).

Now Joshua designated the specific cities and places where the Levites would live among the people. Those in the tribe of Levi who served as priests would live in the south (21:4-5). Neither Joshua nor these Levites could know that this was the place where the Temple would later be built, and their Temple service required. But God knew their future significance and ministry, centuries before they would learn it fully.

Other Levites kept the tabernacle, its furnishings, and its procedures. They lived in the 48 cities assigned to them, scattered throughout the nation. They studied and taught God’s word (Deuteronomy 13:9-13) and filled other roles which required literacy, such as physical and medical diagnosis and care (Leviticus 13:1-14). They were used by God to bring spiritual nurture and leadership to the nation, all across the land given to Israel.

Now you and I are God’s levitical servants, charged with the same privilege and responsibility of spiritual leadership and nurture. We who follow Jesus are now “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9). We are now “all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ” (Galatians 3:26-27). With this result: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (vs. 28-29).

According to the second Joshua, we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world (Matthew 5:13-16). It is our responsibility to bring his preserving, purifying salt and darkness-defeating light to the nation trusted to our care. What the Levites were to Israel, we are to Dallas and America. Each one of us.

As God provided Levites for Israel, so he provided his word and sustenance for Levites. Know that you are not called to the ministry of the word without the help of its Minister. Your words are to come from his word, your strength from his Spirit, your wisdom from his Son. You are Levite to your class and community, but only as the representative of the God of Levi and Israel. We are ambassadors for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20), not responsible for leading the “nation” we serve, but only for representing the One who has given this charge to us.

A group of botanists hiking in a remote part of the Andes Mountains came upon a rare and valuable specimen. Unfortunately, it was growing on the side of a steep and dangerous cliff. The botanists were afraid to climb down, so they called one of the nearby village boys over and offered him a large sum of money if he would go after the flower.

The young boy stared over the cliff. The money they offered was enticing, but he was afraid. Then an idea crossed his mind and face. He told the botanists to wait, and ran into his village. He returned a few minutes later, his hand in that of a much older man. The boy ran to the edge of the cliff and told the botanists, “I’ll go over the side now, so long as my father holds the rope.”

You and I live in a community in desperate need of spiritual hope. Your Father will hold the rope, if you will climb over the cliff of ministry this week.

Conclusion

In this study, we have watched God meet every need his people faced. He divided their land equitably and peacefully; he provided a system of regional government and courts which would answer their greatest political and relational needs; and he distributed the Levites throughout the nation to lead his people to spiritual health and maturity.

Joshua 21:43-45 sums up God’s provision, and closes with a fact worth claiming today: “Not one of all the Lord’s good promises to the house of Israel failed; every one was fulfilled” (v. 45). God kept his promises; he keeps them still.

The second Joshua closed his most famous sermon with a similar promise: the life built on obedience to God’s word will stand firm, no matter how strong the storms of life which batter its walls (Matthew 7:24-25). But no other foundation will suffice—all else is sand, and will lead to destruction (vs. 26-27). The promises of God are our only sure and certain provision for the challenges which stand between us and spiritual victory.

What obstacles stand between you and complete obedience to God’s call on your life and ministry? What step of risky faith is he asking you to take? Find a promise within the word of God for your need. Stand on it. And it will stand under you. This is the promise and the hope of God.

Such hope is vital to life itself. When Allied soldiers liberated the Holocaust camps, they found thousands of orphaned and starving children. Each child was given a safe place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear and beds in which to sleep. But many still could not sleep through the night. They spent the evening hours restless and afraid.

Finally a psychologist hit on the answer. He instructed that each child was to be given a slice of bread to take to bed. Not to eat—just to hold. Hope that there would be food on the morrow. And the children slept well.

Vaclav Havel once said, “I am not an optimist because I am not sure that everything ends well. Nor am I a pessimist because I am not sure that everything ends badly. I just carry hope in my heart. Hope is a feeling that life and work have meaning. You either have it or you don’t, regardless of the state of the world around you. Life without hope is an empty, boring, and useless life. I cannot imagine that I could strive for something if I did not carry hope in me. I am thankful to God for this gift. It is as big a gift as life itself.”

The God of hope came at Advent to bring this gift to us all. Have you opened yours this week?

Good News For Skeptics

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Good News for Skeptics

Isaiah 55:8-11

Dr. Jim Denison

I read this week that no piece of paper can be folded more than seven times. Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes. Walt Disney, the inventor of Mickey Mouse, was afraid of mice. A duck’s quack doesn’t echo, and no one knows why. Women blink twice as much as men. Elephants are the only animals that can’t jump. And it is physically impossible to lick your elbow. But you’ll probably try when you get home.

Why? Because we are skeptics. You looked skeptical as I recited those facts. You want to know how they know. We live in a culture which distrusts authority.

During Vietnam, we saw flags and draft cards burned for the first time in our nation’s history.

During the Watergate scandal, we watched the first resignation of an American president.

During the sexual revolution we watched morals change dramatically. In 1969, 67% of young adults said premarital sex was wrong; today only 38% agree. Over a million people reported sexually transmitted diseases last year. And the AIDS epidemic continues.

As the world’s religions have come to our shores, Muslim mosque activities have increased 75% over the last five years. There are more Muslims in America than there are Episcopalians, Jews, or Presbyterians. The Internet lists 67 different Buddhist societies in Texas. We have become the most religiously diverse nation on earth. As a result, 60% of young adults believe that God is not limited to a single faith.

As Christendom has declined, two out of three adults believe that religion is losing its influence in American society. The number of Americans who said they had no religion doubled in the last ten years.

What does it all mean for the concept of authority?

The number of Americans who believe that absolute moral truth even exists dropped last year to 22%, an all-time low. 93% of Americans say that they alone determine what is and what isn’t moral in their lives.

As Chuck Colson summarizes: “The emerging consensus seems to be that vague, comforting spirituality is healthy, but that doctrinal, authoritative religions may even be dangerous.”

Now you come to church and hear a sermon with this thesis: the Bible is the objective, absolute authority of God. When we know what God’s word says, we must do it. And we ask, Why?

Why trust the Bible? (vs. 8-9)

Today we discover that ours is a revealing God. He reveals himself to us. He speaks to us. He gives his word to us.

If he is God, he must: “‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord” (v. 8). Mark Twain was right: if I could understand every part of the Bible, I wouldn’t believe God inspired it. God speaks. God reveals himself.

Why believe that this book contains such revelation? It says it does:

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16).

“Prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1.21).

“The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever” (Isaiah 40:8).

“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away” (Matthew 24:35). When God is your King, his word must be your authority.

But the Koran says that it comes from Allah through Mohammad; the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints maintains that the Book of Mormon contains further revelation from God to mankind; Buddhists and Hindus consider their sacred writings to be “divine” revelation. Why trust the Bible?

Because it keeps its promises. For instance, the Old Testament contains 61 specific prophecies concerning the coming Messiah, each of which was fulfilled by the historical Jesus. The odds of his fulfilling just 48 of them is one in 10 followed by 157 zeroes. To count that high, you’d have to count 250 numbers per minute for 6,589,000,000 years.

Because you can trust its transmission. The Greek New Testament we possess is judged by scholars to be 99.2% accurate with regard to the original, with no questions remaining concerning any facts or elements of faith.

Why trust the Bible?

Because archaeological evidence continues to validate its claims. Here’s a recent example: skeptics claimed that no evidence for the existence of King David exists outside the Bible. But a group of archaeologists recently found an Assyrian stone tablet in Northern Israel dating from the ninth century B.C. The Aramaic inscription listed Assyria’s foes, including the “king of Israel” and “house of David.” The skeptics were wrong again.

And because the risen Christ said it is the word of God. Neither the Buddha, Muhammad, Joseph Smith, nor the Hindu masters died on the cross for our sins and rose from the grave. And Jesus called this book the “word of God.”

When we trust the Bible (vs. 10-11)

Now, here’s the most compelling reason of all to make this book your life authority: when we trust it, God uses it to change our lives. His word “will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (v. 11).

What is his purpose for his revelation?

It leads us to salvation: “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16).

It keeps us right with God: “The word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).

It guides us daily: “How can a man keep his way pure? By living according to your word” (Psalm 119.9); “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path” (Psalm 119.105).

It brings us to Jesus: “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20.31).

It still works.

St. Augustine was the greatest theologian after Paul in Christian history. But he was a notoriously adulterous sinner when he picked up the Bible one day, read it, and gave his heart to the Lord Jesus. Martin Luther was converted by studying the Bible, and began the Protestant Reformation. He read through the Bible twice every year, for most of the rest of his life.

Bill Tolar was dean of the School of Theology at Southwestern Seminary when I studied and then taught there. A brilliant science student as a youth, from a family with no church commitment whatsoever, he was challenged by a friend to read the Bible. And he became a Christian.

Dr. Isaac Mwase is professor of philosophy of religion at Ouachita Baptist University, and a former student of mine. Reading the Bible brought him to faith in Christ. Dr. Abraham Sarkar of our own church family was a Muslim missionary before reading the Bible made him a missionary to Muslims.

The American Bible Society tells the story of a missionary standing on the streets of a small African city with a tiny New Testament in his hand. An African man asked if he could have the little book, explaining that “Its pages are the perfect size for rolling cigarettes.” The missionary replied, “I will give you this book if you will promise to read every word on each page before you roll a cigarette with it.” The African agreed. Fifteen years later that missionary went to a revival. The evangelist was that cigarette-rolling man who said, “I quit smoking the Word and started preaching it.”

But God’s revelation changes us only when we read it. Nine out of ten American households own at least one Bible. But only 17% read it daily. Do you spend more time with the newspaper or the word of God?

And only when we obey it.

Billy Graham asserts, “Ninety-five percent of the difficulties you will experience as a Christian can be traced to a lack of Bible study and reading.” That’s been true of my life.

When we obey the word of God, we submit to the will of the King of the universe. Such obedience positions us to experience the salvation and significance he can only give to those who will receive them. Obedience is our response to the revelation of God. And the key to the purpose and peace he alone can give.

Conclusion

Now let’s close by applying this call to obedience to one very specific area of our lives, the matter of financial commitment.

What does God’s word ask of us? “A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the Lord; it is holy to the Lord” (Leviticus 27:30).

How do we give this tithe? “You are to seek the place the Lord your God will choose…to put his Name there for his dwelling. To that place you must go: there bring your burnt offerings and sacrifices, your tithes and special gifts” (Deuteronomy 12:5-6); “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house” (Malachi 3:10).

Is such a commitment outdated? Jesus commended tithing (Matthew 23:23); it was collected by the church (Hebrews 7:8); and tithing was required by the early Church.

We give in gratitude for the grace of God. Not so he will love us, but because he does. And to advance his Kingdom, for the sovereign Lord of the universe has chosen to fund his work on earth through the financial obedience of his people.

We would not have a Heritage Sunday to celebrate next week, except that those who founded this great church were obedient to the word of God with their financial commitments. This congregation was founded 64 years ago next Sunday, with no monetary support from any sponsoring church or organization whatever. It would live or die on the financial sacrifice of its first members.

And sacrifice they did. In their very first worship service they collected an offering to be used for missions. Their first budget was five times greater than the church’s size would suggest. Before they were two months old they called a full-time pastor and promised to pay his full support.

The next year they bought the house on Lovers Lane which was the church’s first permanent home. They added property and buildings, then purchased this land, on the northern edge of the city of Dallas. The church committed herself to a capital project of $575,000 in 1946, when their unified budget for the year was $25,000. By that ratio, our current capital project should cost $207 million, not $32 million.

In the last 25 years, our church has given $35,327,205 to missions, $2,302,920 just last year. Such has been the financial obedience and sacrifice of our people across our history.

Now we stand on the edge of the next chapter, ready to cross the Jordan into the next part of our Promised Land. But we will cross over only by the financial obedience of our people to the word of God. Our heritage will guide our future only if we are as faithful as those who have come before us. As faithful to give sacrificially and obediently to our God.

If our future depended on your obedience to the word of God, would that fact be cause for concern or hope today?

Gospel Movements and Servant Leaders

Written by

Gospel Movements and Servant Leaders:

Changing the Culture for the Kingdom

Dr. Jim Denison

Religious trends in the Western world are not encouraging. According to the latest American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), the number of Americans who describe themselves as “Christian” has dropped from 86% to 76% since 1990. At the same time, the number who says they have “no religion” has nearly doubled to more than 15%. The number who call themselves “atheist” or “agnostic” has quadrupled, and is now almost twice the number of Episcopalians in our country.

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life recently released their “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey.” The survey reports that more than one-quarter of American adults (28%) have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion, or no religion at all. Among Americans ages 18-29, one in four say they are not affiliated with any religion.

Spiritual trends in Europe are even more troubling. Harris Interactive conducted a large survey of religious beliefs on the Continent. Its results: in Italy, 62% say they believe in “any form of God or any type of supreme being”; in Spain, 48% of the population agrees; in Germany, 41% affirm the existence of “God”; 35% in England and 27% in France concur.

Why is Western spirituality in this condition? How can servant leaders change our culture for God’s Kingdom?

Why do we think the way we do? Explaining the “postmodern” context

The first Christians held a clear and positive view of biblical authority, so that Paul could say that “All scripture is inspired by God” (2 Timothy 3:16). Today, nearly half of all Americans say that the Bible, the Qur’an, and the Book of Mormon all teach the same truth. What has caused our shift from objective authority to “relative” truth?

The medieval world

In the generations following apostolic Christianity, the authority structures of the Christian movement shifted from the Bible itself to the Scriptures as they are interpreted by the Church. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch argued for the authority of the bishop over the church and a “college” of bishops as the ruling authority of the universal Church. Irenaeus further identified the Roman Church as the “preeminent authority” in Christendom, with her leaders emanating from Peter and Paul through the bishops who have succeeded them.

Soon (ca. 250) Cyprian of Carthage had separated the “clergy” from the “laity” and made his famous claim, “He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother.” When Constantine made his conversion to Christianity in 312 and subsequently legalized the church, the institutional authority of the Christian movement was clearly defined as the Roman Church and her leadership.

This concept of ecclesiastical authority molded greatly the patristic and medieval concepts of Scriptural authority. As God gave the Scriptures through the Church, so (it was argued) he guided the Church through her leaders to the proper interpretation and application of his word. Creeds, councils, and papal rulings became the means by which the biblical materials were understood and transmitted.

And so the foundation blocks of the modern world were set in place: objective truth and absolute authority structures, centered in the teachings of the Church.

The Reformation project

In shorthand, the Protestant reformers sought to relocate authority with the Scriptures as they are interpreted by the individual believer. Martin Luther made the famous claim, “Only the Holy Scripture possesses canonical authority.” He discounted in turn the claims of magistrates, church councils, church fathers, bishops, and even the pope to authority over the Scriptures. John Calvin agreed: “God bestows the actual knowledge of himself upon us only in the Scriptures”; “Scripture has its authority from God, not from the church.”

With the reformers’ achievement the Protestant foundation blocks of the modern world were laid: a Bible which possesses objective meaning, theological positions which are certain and true, and Scriptural authority which is final and absolute.

The “modern” mind

While the religious world was experiencing this monumental conflict between ecclesiastical and Scriptural authority structures, the philosophical world was undergoing a struggle equally foundational and far-reaching.

Rene Descartes, a Catholic mathematician with an intense personal need to find foundational truth, sought that truth which he could not doubt. He determined that the existence of the thinking self was the first truth which doubt could not deny. As a result, he defined the human condition as one centered in the autonomous rational process. The “rationalist” worldview followed Descartes’ location of authority within human reason.

The empiricist reaction focused upon personal experience as the true authority for knowledge. John Locke asserted that the mind is born not with innate ideas (the Cartesian system) but as a blank slate, a tabula rasa. David Hume claimed that this empirical method cannot lead to true and certain knowledge. Every belief is derived from an object; our minds connect these objects into patterns on the basis of the appearance of unprovable causal relations. We cannot defend our reason by reason.

Immanuel Kant forged that merger between the rational and the empirical worldviews which organized the foundational building blocks of modernity into their final form. In short, his truce between mind and senses combined both into a larger whole: the senses furnish “raw data” which the mind organizes according to categories within itself, and the result is

“knowledge.” However, according to this system we can have certain knowledge only of the “phenomena” (those objects which are present to the senses of the knower), not of the “noumena” (objects lying beyond sense experience). This distinction would prove to be crucial for the later shift from the “modern” to the “postmodern” world.

With the Kantian synthesis the philosophical foundation stones of the modern world were laid beside the Catholic and the Protestant. In all three, truth is certain and available, and epistemic authority is clear and absolute. Whether authority resides in the Church, the Scriptures, or empirical knowledge interpreted rationally, there is no question in the modern mind about its objective character.

The philosophical problem was this: there exists within the Kantian synthesis a subjective element undetected by most of its contemporary followers. In short, if knowledge is the result of our individual interpretation of our personal sense experience, then in what sense can this knowledge be objective? My sense impressions may be different from yours. My interpretation of this data is personal and subjective as well. Not only can I not know the “noumena” (the “thing-in-itself” which lies beyond my senses), I cannot claim objective authority for my interpretation of the “phenomena,” either.

The first “postmoderns”

First we must consider Friedrich Nietzsche, the “patron saint of postmodern philosophy.” According to this critic of the Christian faith, the world is composed of fragments, each one individual. We construct concepts which rob reality of its diversity and individuality (such as forming the concept “leaf” for leaves, an idea which can never do justice to the diversity of leaves). These concepts or laws are actually illusions or convenient fictions. “Truth” is solely a function of the language we employ and exists only within specific linguistic contexts. It is a function of the internal workings of language itself. The authority structure of the Church, whether centered on the Bible or the Church’s teachings, is therefore unfounded and irrelevant.

Nietzsche’s hermeneutical insights parallel Friedrich Schleiermacher’s earlier theological assertions. According to this “father of theological liberalism,” biblical texts are not systematic theological treatises but reflections of the minds and contexts of their authors. The interpreter must move behind the text to its author’s mind. The work of theology is therefore to “abstract entirely from the specific content of the particular Christian experiences.”

And so an entirely different epistemological foundation began to be laid by Nietzsche and Schleiermacher, one which rejected the objective building blocks of the modern world for a knowledge base centered in subjectivity. In their view, truth is not absolute and objective but relative and individual. Recent philosophers of language would soon finish this foundation and build a new house on it.

Finishing the new foundation

According to Wilhelm Dilthey, hermeneutics functions in a circle. We comprehend language by understanding its words, yet these words derive their meaning only within their holistic context. Objectivity in interpretation cannot be achieved, and should not be desired.

Hans-Georg Gadamer agreed that the interpreter must “fuse the horizons.” Meaning emerges only as the text and interpreter engage in dialogue, a “hermeneutical conversation.” Because each reader will conduct his or her own conversation with the text, objective meaning is obviously impossible.

Ludwig Wittgenstein rejected his earlier language philosophy (built on a scientific, mathematical, positivistic hermeneutic) for a view of language as “game.” Social rules determine the use of words and their meaning. Language is a social phenomenon which derives its meaning from social interaction. Since each “player” works from personal and subjective rules, there can be no objective authority within any speech act.

The “structuralists” further developed the social nature of language. According to Ferdinand de Saussure, language is like a work of music in which we focus on the whole work, not the individual performers of the musicians. As social constructs, texts are developed to provide structures of meaning in a meaningless existence. These structures form the foundation for hermeneutical theory and practice.

The movement known as “deconstructionism” moved even further toward subjectivity: meaning cannot be inherent in a text or speech act, but emerges only as the interpreter enters into dialogue with the author. One significant role of the contemporary interpreter is to deconstruct the modern epistemological structures with their mythical claims to objective authority.

In this century language philosophers have largely discarded the hermeneutical foundations which undergirded speech and faith since the time of Christ. Claims to objective truth and absolute authority have been dismissed, whether their source is the Church, the Scriptures, or interpreted experience. In their place we have seen the construction of a foundation and building called “postmodern.” The implications of this project for Scriptural authority are historic and monumental.

Building a postmodern world

The “postmodern” movement which has resulted from such foundational shifts is still evolving and ill-defined. However, three names stand above the rest in stature and significance: Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Richard Rorty.

Michel Foucault (1926-1984) was the most significant bridge figure from Nietzsche to the postmodern world. He insisted that all language expresses power. There is no objective “world” behind our speech; “truth” is the fictional fabrication by which we seek to make sense of a senseless world.

Jacques Derrida critiques the Enlightenment ontology with the approach known as “deconstructionism.” According to him, there is no fixed or universal reality. Not only can we make no objective claims to knowledge, given the subjective nature of the interpretive process; there is no independent reality to describe. We “create” our own world by speaking of it. Language possesses no fixed meaning and is not connected to a fixed reality. Our words do not carry meaning (“logocentrism”); rather, they create it.

For instance, the device on which I typed this manuscript is either a MacBook Pro, a fancy typewriter, or a strange box which makes annoying clicks, depending entirely on whether I, my grandfather, or my preschool friend is describing it. We cannot get beyond the words to the “reality,” for the words create that reality for us.

Richard Rorty, one of America’s most popular philosophers, completes the postmodern foundation by demonstrating its pragmatic usefulness for our daily lives. Rorty agrees with Foucault and Derrida that language is a matter of human convention, not the mirror of an objective reality. Because no foundational truths or “first principles” exist apart from our linguistic creation of them, we must develop our personal ways of coping with reality as we see it. “Truth” for us is what works for us. Language is therefore to be judged by its pragmatic value, not its supposed representation of objective reality. Language is a tool for interpreting and coping with life.

To sum up, the postmodern worldview is built upon three foundation stones. First, the ontological and epistemological belief that no reality exists independent of the linguistic interpretation of our personal experiences. Second, the linguistic belief that we literally create our own worlds by the speech we employ to describe and interpret these experiences. And third, the pragmatic belief that such language acts, when affirmed as mutually acceptable and equally valuable, forge a community of tolerance and shared, created purpose.

Arguing for truth in a day of subjectivity

What does this evolution in worldview mean for the “ethics of leadership”? Clearly it challenges our understanding of both terms and their significance today.

In the postmodern view, “ethics” are personal, subjective, and relative. There is no such thing as absolute truth. You have no right to force your beliefs on me. So long as we are sincere in our beliefs and tolerant of the beliefs of others, we’ll get along. No objective ethics can be posited or defended.

“Leadership” is equally subjective as a term and category. Since the “will to power” is the basic drive in human nature, leadership all too easily becomes an expression of this power motive. To defend an objective, even biblical view of leadership ethics, first we must defend the notion of objective truth.

First, a philosophical response. Unfortunately, one approach to postmodernism among evangelicals is to accept its foundational beliefs and attempt to build a Christian structure

upon them. This results in an intensely subjective faith which possesses no intrinsic or objective merit for others. Fortunately, there are other ways.

I suggest that the postmodern rejection of objective truth contains within itself the fissures which may lead to its collapse. In brief, if no objective truth exists, how can I accept this assertion as objectively true? According to postmoderns, no statement possesses independent and objective truth. And yet the preceding statement is held to be independently and objectively true. This seems a bit like the ancient skeptics (ca. 500 BC) who claimed, “There is no such thing as certainty and we’re sure of it.”

A second philosophical critique of postmodernism centers in its rejection of objective ethics. Since all ethics are purely pragmatic and contextual, no ethical position can be judged or rejected by those outside its culture. If this be so, then how are we to view events such as the Holocaust? Within the interpretive culture of the Third Reich, Auschwitz and Dachau were pragmatically necessary and purposeful. And yet they stand as the quintessential rejection of the tolerance and inclusion so valued by postmoderns. The postmodern must choose between his insistence on inclusion and his rejection of intolerance. Logically, he cannot have both.

The postmodern rejection of objective biblical authority thus rests upon illogical and mutually contradictory foundational principles. This “apagogic” apologetic (defending one’s position by exposing the weaknesses of its opponents) may prove effective with the postmodern who values logical consistency.

If, however, our postmodern friend simply shrugs her shoulders and says, “So what”? we can turn to a pragmatic response. Here the postmodern rejection of modernity is in our favor. The chief obstacle to faith posed by modernity was its insistence on empirical proof and scientific verification. The postmodern rejects such a materialist worldview, insisting that all truth claims are equally (though relatively) valid. The result is a renewed interest in spirituality unprecedented in our century. While this contemporary spirituality is unfortunately embracing of all alternatives, at least Christianity can function as one of these options.

How can we make an appeal for biblical authority in such a marketplace of spiritual competitors? By reversing the “modern” strategy. In modernity we told our culture, “Christianity is true; it is therefore relevant and attractive.” We invited nonbelievers to accept the faith on the basis of its biblical, objective merits. “The Bible says” was all the authority our truth claims required.

In the postmodern culture we must use exactly the opposite strategy: our faith must be attractive; then it may be relevant; then it might be true (at least for its followers). If we can show the postmodern seeker for spiritual meaning that Christianity is attractive, interesting, and appealing, he will likely be willing to explore its relevance for his life. When he sees its relevance for us, he may decide to try it for himself. And when it “works,” he will decide that it is true for him. He will then affirm the authority of the Scriptures, not in order to come to faith but because he has.

Can such an approach be effective? If we jettison our “truth first” approach to biblical authority and begin by appealing to our culture on the basis of attractive relevance, will we abandon our Scriptural heritage? No–we will return to it.

We live in a postmodern, post-denominational, post-Christian culture. The first Christians lived in a pre-modern, pre-denominational, pre-Christian world. They had no hope of taking the gospel to the “ends of the earth” by beginning their appeal to the Gentiles with biblical authority. The larger Greek world shared the postmodern skepticism of any absolute truth claim, let alone those made on the basis of Hebrew scriptures or a Jewish carpenter’s teachings. And so the apostolic Christians build their evangelistic efforts on personal relevance and practical ministry. The result was the beginning of the most powerful, popular, and far-reaching religious movement in history.

I am convinced that we are now living in a culture more like that of the apostolic Christians than any we have seen since their day. They had no buildings or institutions to which they could invite a skeptical world, and so they went to that world with the gospel. They had no objective authority base from which to work, so they demonstrated the authority of the Scriptures by their attractive, personal relevance. We now live in a day when nonbelievers will not come to our buildings to listen to our appeals on the basis of Scriptural authority. But when we show them the pragmatic value of biblical truth in our lives, ministries, and community, we will gain a hearing.

Postmodernity offers us a compelling opportunity to “remember our future.” To remember the biblical strategies upon which the Christian movement was founded, and to rebuild our ministries on their foundation. To move into our postmodern future on the basis of our premodern heritage.

The challenge of cultural leadership in Dallas, Texas

Jesus tells us that whatever we do for “the least of these,” we do for him (Matthew 25:40). Our compassion for widows and orphans is proof of our “pure and undefiled” commitment to God (James 1:27). If we claim to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, we must love our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:37, 39).

So, who are our neighbors? What needs can we meet in Jesus’ name? Here are some facts regarding Dallas, Texas:

Education

•450,000 school-age children in Dallas County across 600+ schools in 15 districts.

•Just 42% of third graders in Dallas County are reading at or above grade level.

•DISD spends $40,000 per high school graduate, during four years of high school. How is that working for us? Only 4% of high school seniors read at a 12th grade standard; only 1% compete in mathematics at a 12th grade standard.

•21% of Dallas County is illiterate, just two points above the state average. 19% of adult Texans cannot read a newspaper. Texas ranks last in the nation for citizens age 25 and older who have a high school diploma or GED.

Hunger

•The number of North Texans seeks help from food pantries or soup kitchens each week has risen 80 percent since 2006, to 64,600 a week. Nearly half are children. In fact, 20% of Dallas children live with “food insecurity.”

•Texas ranks next to last among states for hunger and for child hunger.

Financial stability

•29.3% of children in Dallas County, more than 190,000 children total, live in families below the federal income poverty level. Across nine counties of North Texas, the number rises to more than 360,000.

Immigration and opportunity

•44% of the residents in DFW are first or second generation immigrants; the number continues to grow. More than 239 languages are spoken in our city.

•We have nearly 20,000 International students and the largest refugee population in America.

Human trafficking

•Globally, two children are sold into slavery every minute, 1.2 million a year. 79 percent are sold into sexual exploitation; half are children. The average price per slave: $90. They generate annual profits around $32 billion, more than Google’s annual revenue.

•More than 200,000 slaves are working in the U.S.; 17,000 more will be trafficked next year.

•25% of all international victims in America are in Texas.

•There are 6,000 runaways annually in Dallas; one out of three is lured into sex trafficking within 48 hours of leaving home. The average age of entry into sex trafficking is between 12 and 13 years old.

Vulnerable children—fatherless and orphans

•There are as many as 210 million orphans around the world.

•10 to 15% commit suicide before they reach the age of 18

•60% of the girls become prostitutes and 70% of the boys become hardened criminals.

Cycle of incarceration

•The Dallas Crime Index indicates that Dallas is in the fourth percentile for safety; 94% of America’s cities are safer than we are. 223 crimes are committed in Dallas per square mile; the national average is 39.

•Dallas operates the seventh-largest jail in America, with an average jail population of over 6,300 inmates and 100,000 per year.

My friend Randel Everett says we have no right to preach the gospel to a hungry person. Do you agree?

Servant leadership in a post-modern context

How can servant leaders make a different for God’s Kingdom in our culture? What are the practical implications of a culture which questions an objective understanding of leadership? My assertion is this: effective leadership today must be transformational rather than positional.

Positional leaders assume an authority derived from their title or place within the organization. Postmodern culture questions all such assumed or inherent authority claims. Transformational leaders, by contrast, earn the right to lead by enabling the organization to achieve its mutually-agreed upon measures of success. Such leaders empower and encourage those they lead, transforming the organization with a culture of community. This approach alone ensures sustained success in our post-modern worldview.

How is transformational leadership achieved?

Choose servant leadership

First, our postmodern culture requires leadership built on relationship and servanthood. Bernard Swain describes the four types of leadership:

•Sovereign: the leader determines both the vision and its implementation

•Parallel: the leader serves the organization as it seeks and fulfills its vision collectively

•Mutual: the leader serves as a member of a team which shares its duties and responsibilities

•Semi-mutual: the leader defines the vision and direction of the organization, then serves its members as they achieve that vision through their own initiatives and efforts.

Our context requires and rewards a semi-mutual leadership style. Effective leaders know and define their passion and that of their organization, then serve and empower its members to fulfill that vision in a collective and collaborative spirit.

Oswald Sanders, in his now-classic Spiritual Leadership, claims that “true greatness, true leadership, is found in giving yourself in service to others, not in coaxing or inducing others to serve you.” Max DePree, the former CEO of Herman Miller and author of bestselling leadership literature, defines leadership:

The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor. That sums up the progress of an artful leader.

Would those you lead say that you serve them, or that they serve you?

Know your strengths

A collaborative servant leadership style builds mutuality and community. It requires that leaders know their strengths and weaknesses, and be enthusiastic about delegating responsibility and authority to those who complement and supplement their gifts. Peter Drucker, often called the “father of modern leadership theory,” distinguished four personalities needed for the tasks of top management:

•The “thought” person

•The “action” person

•The “people” person

•The “front” person.

Drucker believed that these four temperaments are almost never found in a single person and warned, “the one-man top management job is a major reason why businesses fail to grow.”

A servant leader in postmodern context will celebrate the gifts and passions of those he or she serves in the organization. Who are you empowering and encouraging as they join you in fulfilling your organization’s vision?

Choose personal integrity

The leader’s personal character is foundational to success in a culture which disparages positional authority. Sanders quotes the great military leader Bernard Montgomery: “Leadership is the capacity and will to rally men and women to a common purpose, and the character which inspires confidence.” The second is essential to the first.

Warren Bennis is the University Professor and Distinguished Professor of Business Administration and Founding Chairman of The Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California. In 1976 he warned us about the “unconscious conspiracy” in every organization to maintain the status-quo for the future benefits of current participants. The solution is for leaders to empower their followers to fulfill the organization’s collective vision for the benefit of its members and customers. To do so, leaders must embody four critical competencies:

•Management of attention

•Management of meaning

•Management of trust

•Management of self.

In a culture which depreciates leadership by position, it is essential that we earn the right to lead by virtue of our personal character. We cannot ask people to do what we are unwilling to do, or go further than we are willing to lead. What the leader is, the organization becomes.

DePree cites Mahatma Gandhi’s list of the seven sins in the world:

•Wealth without work

•Pleasure without conscience

•Knowledge without character

•Commerce without morality

•Science without humanity

•Worship without sacrifice

•Politics without principle.

Because character is so central to effective leadership today, spiritual formation is now indispensible for leaders. If the members of your organization were as committed to personal integrity as you are, would that be good for your colleagues and customers?

Conclusion

My argument is that the postmodern context challenges positional leadership assumptions, requiring leaders to transform their organization through service, community and integrity. Such leaders enable and empower their followers to achieve mutual goals in an environment of sustained success.

When Allied armies advanced on the North African port of Eritrea during World War II, the fleeing Axis forces did an ingenious thing. They loaded barges with concrete and sank them across the mouth of the harbor, making it impossible for the approaching troops to enter. But the Allies hit on an even more inventive solution. They emptied several gigantic oil tanks, the kind which hold one hundred thousand barrels of oil and more, and sealed them watertight. They attached chains to each of them. Then at low tide their divers attached the other ends of the chains to the barges sitting on the bottom of the harbor. And when the tides rose, their power was so great that they lifted the sealed oil tanks and the cement-filled barges with them. It was then an easy task to dispose of the barges and reopen the harbor.

This power of the tides inspired Shakespeare to pen these immortal words:

There is a tide in the affairs of men

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyages of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat;

And we must take the current when it serves,

Or lose our ventures (Julius Caesar, Act IV, scene II).

If we embrace the challenge of servant leadership in the postmodern tides of our day as transformational leaders who serve, build community and lead by example, we will “take the current when it serves” and become the most effective leaders we can be. May it be so for each of us today.

Suggested reading

•Jack Beatty, The World According to Peter Drucker (New York: The Free Press, 1998).

•Warren Bennis, Why Leaders Can’t Lead: The Unconscious Conspiracy Continues (San Francisco: Josey Bass, 1989).

•James MacGregor Burns, Leadership (New York: HarperCollins, 1978).

•Stephen M. R. Covey, The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything (New York: Free Press, 2006).

•Max DePree, Leadership Is An Art (New York: Dell, 1989).

•James Davison Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, & Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

•Mac Pier, Consequential Leadership: 15 Leaders Fighting for our Cities, Our Poor, Our Youth and Our Culture (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Books, 2012).

•J. Oswald Sanders, Spiritual Leadership (Chicago: Moody Press, 1994).

•Bernard Swain, Liberating Leadership: Practical Styles for Pastoral Ministry (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986).

•Stephen T. Um and Justin Buzzard, Why Cities Matter: To God, the Culture, and the Church (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2013).

GPS for the Soul

Written by

GPS for the Soul

1 Corinthians 1:1-3

James C. Denison

Have you ever been lost? Not just mildly displaced or momentarily disoriented, but truly lost? I have.

On one level, it happens to me nearly every day. Janet says I’m directionally challenged–when I come to an intersection, I should decide which way I want to go and then go the other way. Minni prints maps for me to every destination before I leave. Just because I’ve been someplace ten times doesn’t mean I can find it the eleventh.

But I still remember vividly the time I was truly lost. It was the sixth grade. Our class went on an end-of-year field trip to the piney woods of East Texas. Somehow three of us managed to get separated from the rest of the class. Before we knew it, we were completely alone in the forest. We had no idea where we were or what to do next.

We should have stayed in one place and waited for help to find us, but we weren’t nearly that smart. For the rest of the day we wandered through the trees, yelling for help, hungry and thirsty and hot and tired. Late that afternoon, park rangers called by our distraught teacher rescued us.

What if we had a GPS unit, a Global Positioning Satellite device? Of course, when I was in the sixth grade we didn’t even have remote controls for the television yet, but you understand the question. A little box with a reassuring voice to tell us “turn right at the next log” would have been a lifesaver.

What in life has you feeling lost today? What decision is confusing you? What stress is frustrating you? Where are you unsure what to do, where to turn, how to proceed? We’ve all been there, and we’ll all be there again. That’s just the nature of life for fallen people on a fallen planet. But the good news is that God has given us a GPS for the soul. Let’s learn how to use it together.

How to be a saint

Paul addresses the letter we call First Corinthians to “the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy” (1 Corinthians 1:2). “Called to be saints” is how most versions translate the text. When you hear the word “saint,” what comes to mind?

A person of great personal character and pious spirit? “She’s such a saint,” we say when someone does something particularly pious.

Or you might think about a great person of God designated a “saint” by the Catholic Church. For instance, St.Genesius, Bishop of Clermont, is on the Church’s list of saints to be remembered on June 3. He renounced the world for the church back in the seventh century, founding a hospital, church, abbey, and convent. Fearing for his own soul, he made a secret pilgrimage to Rome in 661. His bereaved flock sent messengers to the Vatican, where they found him and convinced him to return. He died in AD 662 and was buried in St. Symphorian’s church at Clermont in France; the congregation is now known as St. Genesius’s church.

That’s impressive. But you and I aren’t likely to renounce the world in order to live in the church or make a secret pilgrimage to Rome anytime soon or have a church named for us when we die.

No sainthood in our future. Except that “saint” is the Bible’s most common title for Christians–all Christians:

“To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints” (Romans 1:7).

“To the church of God in Corinth, together with all the saints throughout Achaia” (2 Corinthians 1:1).

“To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus” (Ephesus 1:1).

“To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi” (Philippians 1:1).

“To the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae” (Colossians 1:2, NRSV).

Sixty-one times (by my count), the Lord calls Christians “saints.” This is by far the most common designation for followers of Jesus. “Disciples” is used of the entire church 27 times (by my count); “Christians” only once (Acts 11:26).

“Saints” is always found in the plural. And so every believer is a “saint.” No halos or harps or pilgrimages to Rome required.

The word “saint” translates hagios, meaning “holy one” or “set apart one.” Thus the NIV translates, “called to be holy,” while nearly every other translation renders Paul’s phrase, “called to be saints.” The two are synonyms.

We think of “saints” as the holiest of people, sanctified and pious in every way. We think that we could never be one of them. And yet these Christians in Corinth, called “saints” by Paul in this letter, were fighting and plagued by divisions (1 Corinthians 1:10).

Paul calls them “mere infants in Christ” (3:1) and “arrogant” (4:18). He rebukes them for condoning of sexual immorality (5:1) and suing each other (6:6). Later he tells them to “stop thinking like children” (14:20).

So how can they be “saints”? Because God’s Spirit has made them so. The moment we ask Jesus to be our Savior and Lord, we become the “saints” of God. In that moment you were set apart for him.

He has claim on your life now. You belong to him: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

He is the potter; you are the clay (Isaiah 64:8). He is the head (Ephesus 5:23); we are the body (1 Corinthians 12:27). He has “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28:18); we have none. We belong to him, for he made us, then he bought us. We are his forever.

Note that they are “the church of God in Corinth.” Where we are is not who we are. We are the saints “of” God “in” Dallas. We are not what we have or where we are. Never forget the source of your personal worth.

Know that you are the child of God, bought with the blood of your Savior and Lord. Understand that you are not your own–you belong to him. You are set apart for him. You are his.

How to become a saint

So we are the “saints” of God living in Dallas. What does that fact have to do with our need for direction and purpose today? How is sainthood a GPS for our souls?

Examine our text again: we are “sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy.” We have already been “sanctified” or set apart for God, made the saints of God. And yet we are “called to be holy,” called to become saints, called to grow into our status as the saints of God. In one sense, all of us are saints. In another sense, none of us are, yet.

The journey from A to B, from being saints to becoming saints, is God’s purpose for our lives. Becoming the saints we are called to be is north on his compass for our lives. Getting us there is the work of the Holy Spirit, the GPS who will guide our souls. How does the process work? How does the journey unfold?

First, decide that you want to be holy, set apart completely for God, his in every way.

This is the commandment of Scripture: “Just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy'” (1 Peter 1:15-16). God’s purpose is that we be “conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (Romans 8:29).

God is all about making us like Jesus–making us holy, completely and unconditionally his. Decide that you want that. Make holiness the north on your compass. Choose this definition of success. The first step to being holy is wanting to be.

Next, position yourself to be made holy by the Holy Spirit of God. You and I cannot achieve holiness in our strength and resolve. We are fallen people on a fallen planet. Only the Spirit of God can sanctify us. But we must be near his voice to hear him. We must be yielded in his hands to be molded by them. We must listen to the GPS before it can guide us home.

Jesus prayed for his disciples that God would “sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17). The Bible is God preaching. It is the truth which must guide and mold our lives. Said bluntly, if you’re not meeting God in his word each day, you have no chance to fulfill his purpose for your life. You cannot get somewhere you’ve never been without a map drawn by those who have been there.

Time alone with God in prayer enables the Spirit to make us like Christ, sanctifying us as the holy children of God. Why do you suppose that even the sinless Son of God had to get up a great while before day, go to a solitary place and pray (Mark 1:35)? Why did he pray late at night, and sometimes all night? Why did he pray in private and in public?

Because even he needed the connection with his Father which comes only in prayer. Said bluntly, if you’re not meeting God every morning and through the day in prayer, you have no chance to fulfill his purpose for your life. Prayer positions us to be shaped and empowered by the Holy Spirit, the only One who can make us holy.

Through Scripture and prayer, the Spirit will speak to our hearts and guide us as a GPS for our souls. But we must turn the unit on, and listen to what it says.

Third, reject all that rejects God: “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you.  For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life” (1 Thessalonians 4:3-7).

Sexual immorality grieves the Holy Spirit. The epidemic of pornography on the Internet is a tool of Satan. Movies and television shows which endorse sexual sin are instruments of the enemy. Simply put, all sexual relationships outside of marriage are wrong. Not because God is a cosmic killjoy, but because he knows that sexual sin destroys his children. It separates us from our Father and his holy purpose for our lives, and plagues us with guilt.

If I want holiness above all else, and am willing to submit myself every day to God in Scripture and prayer, the Spirit will enable me to refuse what refuses God.

Relational immorality grieves the Holy Spirit as well. If I “wrong my brother,” I wrong my Lord. You cannot say you love me if you mistreat my sons. Slander and gossip keep us from holiness. Using others to get what we want dishonors our Lord and grieves his Spirit. To be holy, I must refuse what refuses God. To get home, I must stay out of the ditches along the way.

Conclusion

What happens when we choose holiness as our goal and purpose, when we submit to the GPS of the Spirit in Scripture and prayer, when we refuse the ditches which would wreck us along the way?

Every day has purpose. Every decision has direction. We become all that God made us to become. We experience the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control which are the fruit of his Spirit in charge of our lives (Galatians 5:22-23). There’s nothing like a day spent in the purpose and passion of God. There’s no joy like the joy he gives. His GPS really does work. But we must turn it on this morning.

Grace Has a Name

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Grace Has a Name

Isaiah 9:1-7

James C. Denison

This past Thursday, the New York Post told the story of Joshua Persky, a man who was laid off by an investment bank in New York City a year ago. He has tried everything to get work, even handing out resumes to passers-by on Park Avenue. His wife and two of his five children were living with her parents in Nebraska to save money. Finally he posted a blog with his qualifications and began walking the streets of Manhattan wearing a sandwich board with the words, “MIT grad for hire.” And that did the trick. He has a new job, and his family will be together for Christmas.

You can’t hire someone you don’t know exists. That’s why, seven centuries before the Incarnation, God started telling the world about the Christ of Christmas. All so we could know enough to choose him as our Savior and Lord. He promised us that the Messiah would be a Wonderful Counselor, a Mighty God, an Everlasting Father, and a Prince of Peace.

The third title is our focus today, literally a “Father forever.” A God whose love is absolute, unconditional, and eternal. There’s a reason why you need God to love you today, and there’s a reason why you wonder if he does. Let’s explore both.

Know that God loves you

The people of Isaiah’s day were threatened with military defeat and annihilation. Assyria had destroyed the North and was now marching on the South. I know that the threat of a Canadian invasion is not frightening to most of us; imagine that you were in South Korea facing China coming from the north, and you’d have a sense of their dread.

They wanted a Messiah to be a military conqueror, a general who would overthrow their enemies and establish his Kingdom on earth. The Jewish people of the first century wanted the same thing. Both times, God promised a very different kind of deliverance. The Messiah would be a “Wonderful Counselor,” one who would guide their lives and give wisdom to their steps. He would be a “Mighty God” with power to heal their bodies and save their souls.

Now we learn that he would be an “Everlasting Father,” a “Father forever.” He would come with all the grace, unconditional love, and nurturing compassion a father should have for his children. How would he be such a Father?

He would come to “Galilee of the Gentiles,” to those “walking in darkness” and living in “the land of the shadow of death.” Despite their many sins, he would establish and uphold the throne of David “with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever.”

Did Jesus fulfill Isaiah’s promise?

As you know, he was the only baby to choose his parents and first attendants, and he chose Galilean peasants and despised field hands. Imagine that you could have Bill Gates or Warren Buffett as your father, and you choose a construction worker or day laborer. You could invite movie stars and politicians to the celebration, and you choose street peddlers and those men who accost you at intersections with “will work for food” signs to come to the maternity ward of your hospital.

He could have chosen to live anywhere, from the palaces of Jerusalem to the beauty of the Judean hillside, and he chose to live in Nazareth, a Galilean town so obscure it is not mentioned even once in the Old Testament. Imagine that you could grow up in Dallas but choose Dibble, Oklahoma, population 289. Never heard of it? Neither had people heard of Nazareth.

He could have called Judean rabbis or Hebrew scholars to be his disciples, as he had certainly impressed them in the Temple when he visited at the age of 12. Instead, he chose Galilean fishermen, people considered to be “unschooled and ordinary” by the elites living down in Judea (Acts 4:13). He later called tax-collectors, the most despised turncoats of their day, to join his movement. Imagine that you could hire Catholic cardinals and Baptist mega church pastors and Ivy League scholars, and you chose to hire migrant farmers and dishonorably discharged and disgraced Army privates.

He touched lepers, men who were unclean both physically and spiritually. He healed demoniacs, men who were rejected by everyone in their culture. Imagine that you could do your work with business executives, flying in private jets and meeting in top floor board rooms, and you chose instead to start a church in inner city slums.

Now God promises to be Everlasting Father to you and me just as much as Jesus was to the Galileans he first came to love. Even in hard times—especially in hard times, he loves his children.

He tells his people: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the LORD, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior…You are precious and honored in my sight” (Isaiah 43:1-3, 4).

He assures us, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1).

Scripture testifies, “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him” (1 John 4:9).

No matter how many Assyrians are camping on your borders, God is your Everlasting Father. No matter how guilt-ridden your past, difficult your present, or bleak your future, God is your Everlasting Father. Nothing you can do can make him love you any more than he does right now, or any less. This is Isaiah’s promise, fulfilled by the Christ of Christmas.

Believe that God loves you

But there’s a “but.” If God loves you and likes you and accepts you unconditionally as a Father forever, why do you live in a broken and battered world? This week we learned of record unemployment and foreclosures. No one thinks that the economy is ready to turn around. More layoffs are expected after the holidays. As you know, Miller is having surgery tomorrow for a tumor on his spine; I’ve spoken with many this week who are facing enormous physical challenges.

When hard times find us, we have three choices:

We can doubt the knowledge of God—perhaps he didn’t know that your job was in jeopardy or your grandson was so ill. Perhaps he’s not a Wonderful Counselor. I’m sure there are people who question the omniscience of God, but I’ve never spoken with one.

We can doubt the power of God—perhaps he is unable to heal your cancer or prevent your job from being lost. Perhaps he’s not a Mighty God. I’m sure there are people who question the omnipotence of God, but I’ve not spoken with one.

Nearly always, we question the love of God—he knows about your pain and could prevent it, but he doesn’t. So the only option left is that he doesn’t want to. He must not be an Everlasting Father, at least not for us, not for now.

We can believe that God always does what is right. You have heard me state that God always gives us what we ask for or whatever is best. If he didn’t save your job or prevent your car accident, there must be a reason. You may not know it until you’re in heaven, but one day you will.

And we can believe that God always redeems what is wrong. You have often heard me say that God always redeems for a greater good whatever he allows. If he didn’t cure your cancer or heal your mother, he will redeem your pain for his glory and your good.

But when life crashes in, don’t you want more than logic? Doesn’t your heart ache for more assurance than theological reasoning can give? That’s what Christmas is for. The greatest proof that God is our Everlasting Father is the manger, the fact of the Incarnation, the time when God became man. This is the greatest miracle God has ever performed.

If he is God, the Creator of the universe, he has every right to calm stormy seas and heal broken bodies on the planet he made. He can certainly rise from the dead and ascend back to his home in heaven. If you’re writing the story or drawing the cartoon, you can make your hero fly and stop bullets and do whatever you choose.

The real miracle isn’t that the Creator could manipulate his Creation as he pleases. The real miracle is that he would enter it himself, as a fetus and then a newborn, helpless, crying baby. To be the child of a peasant teenage girl, laid in a stone feed trough in a cave surrounded by sweating, smelly animals and field hands. C. S. Lewis suggested that, to get the hang of it, you think how you would like to become a slug or a crab.

Let’s extend the analogy. Pike and I were talking this week about the sermon, and I suggested that the Incarnation could be described this way:

Let’s say that Pike chose to leave his job at Park Cities Baptist Church to begin a ministry among a particular gang in South Dallas. I’ve read that we had more than 200 gang-related shootings in Dallas last year. Crips, Bloods, Deuces, and many others.

To reach them, Pike didn’t just change jobs—he moved out of his home, leaving Andria and Nash, to live on the street. He ate what the gang members ate, wore what they wore, every day, all day. He shared the gospel with them, taught those who came to Christ, and helped them with their problems and pain.

All the while, he knew the members of this gang were planning a crime which would lead to their arrest, conviction, and execution. After this group of gang members was sentenced to die, he went before the judge and somehow convinced him that he should die in their place. So he was arrested, taken to Huntsville, and put to death by lethal injection. Whatever you might say about Pike, could you ever doubt his love for them?

The Bible says, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Whenever you doubt that God is your Father forever, that he loves you absolutely and unconditionally, go to Bethlehem.

Conclusion

Why do you need God to love you today? Do you need him to forgive you, or to heal you, or to help you? A Father wants to do all these things for his child. Why do you doubt the love of God for you today? Go to Bethlehem, and choose to believe what you discover there.

Last Sunday afternoon we held our annual bereavement service. Dr. Jack Martin was kind enough to ask me to speak again this year, so I prepared a sermon for the occasion.

Before the message, it came time for us to step to the microphone and say the names of those we had lost. Then we would light a candle for them and place the candle in its holder. Seeing all the candles at the front of Ellis Chapel is a powerful reminder that grief touches us all.

My turn came. Standing at the microphone, with Janet at my side, I spoke the names, “Lester and Ruth Denison.” That was the first time in the 29 years since Dad died that I had spoken their names together. For reasons I cannot explain, the experience was overwhelming to me.

When it came time for the sermon, I couldn’t preach what I had planned. Instead I read from John 14 Jesus’ promise, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (vs. 1-3).

Through tears, I told the congregation about my experience sitting beside Mom’s casket the day after her death, realizing that all the apologetic arguments I had taught for so many years could carry me only so far. How did I know that she was really alive, in heaven and well?

In that moment, I simply had to choose to believe it or not. I cannot prove that God is real, or that he is not. I cannot prove that heaven exists, or that it doesn’t. I think the evidence for God and heaven are remarkably strong, but you cannot prove a relationship—you can only trust it and experience it. In that moment, on that Monday, I chose to believe that it is true. Last Sunday afternoon, I chose to believe that it is true.

Today I ask you to decide that the Lord of the universe is your Everlasting Father. If you will choose to believe in his love, you will experience his love. This is the promise, and the invitation, of God.

Grace is Greater than Guilt

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Topical Scripture: Genesis 6:1–8

Bill Belichick will coach the New England Patriots in today’s Super Bowl, marking a record eighth time his team has made the championship game. An interesting statistic helps explain his genius: eighteen of his players were not drafted by any team in the NFL. This is a far higher number than for any other team.

Belichick is brilliant at spotting talent that will work within his system. His intellectual approach to the game is clearly working for his team.

Our minds are God’s greatest gifts to us. Our rational capacity is the only attribute which enables our superiority on this planet. Other animals have far better eyesight, hearing, strength, stamina, and so on. Our minds are our best friends or our worst enemies. “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7, KJV). What we think is what we become.

How do we keep our minds holy? What do we do when we don’t? No subject is more crucial to living in a way God can bless today. This morning we’ll investigate one of the most perplexing texts in the Bible and find that it is actually one of the most urgent, practical, and relevant passages in all of God’s word.

Admit your need of grace

Our passage begins with one of the more confusing sentences in all the Bible: “When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose” (Genesis 6:1-2).

Who were these “sons of God” and “daughters of men”?

  • Some interpreters believe that the “sons of God” were angels (cf. Job 1:6; Psalm 29:1). But Jesus told us that angels “neither marry nor are given in marriage” (Mark 12:25).
  • Some believe the “sons of God” were kings, but the Bible never makes this connection.
  • An interesting approach suggests that the “sons of God” were descendants of Seth, the godly child of Adam and Eve, and the “daughters of men” were descendants of the evil Cain. But the text doesn’t say this.

I think the clues we need are found in the text immediately surrounding our passage. Scripture intends to be clear and was very clear to its original audience. So, we must ask ourselves, what did they understand these words to mean?

Genesis 2 says that God formed man from the ground, and woman from man (vv. 7, 23). So, calling men the “sons of God” and women the “daughters of men” was simply repeating what the readers of Genesis already knew, and what the rest of the Bible teaches as well.

The Bible refers to men as “sons of God” in nine different places (Deuteronomy 14:1, 32:5, Psalm 73:15, Isaiah 43:6-7, Hosea 1:10, 11:1, Luke 3:38, 1 John 3:1-2, 10). The text here seems simply to refer to men and women. And nothing in these verses ties these “sons of God and daughters of men” specifically to the flood which follows. They were simply populating the earth as God had commanded them (Genesis 1:28).

Now we come to another confusing reference: “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown” (v. 4).

They are among the children produced by the “sons of God and daughters of men,” but nothing in the text ties them specifically to the coming Flood. They are simply figures in the biblical narrative.

So, we have “sons of God and daughters of men,” probably men and women who are marrying and having children. Among them were mighty warriors and heroes in the ancient Near East. Perhaps you’re wondering how any of this could be urgent, practical, and relevant, how it could apply to our lives today. Let’s read on.

As our text proceeds, we move quickly from confusion to clarity, from ancient history to life today. Verse 5 comes home: “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.”

God reads our minds and knows our thoughts. He knows how sinful they can be. He knows that we don’t put our thoughts into action because of legal restraints and fear of being caught. But he knows what we would do if we could. Think about your thoughts for a moment, and you’ll see what God sees every moment of every day.

If we could project on a screen what has been in your mind the last twenty-four hours, what would the congregation see? How embarrassed and ashamed would you be? That’s what God sees every moment of every day.

Such sin “grieves” the Lord and fills his heart with pain (v. 6). He is holy and cannot countenance or condone our sin. He must bring it to judgment, as he did with the Flood.

But now the good news dawns on the black horizon: “Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord” (v. 8).

He “found” it—he didn’t earn it. He found “favor”—the Hebrew word means “to bend or stoop,” and describes the condescending and unmerited favor of a superior for an inferior. This is the Old Testament’s primary word for grace; this text is its first use in all of Scripture.

Through Noah, God extended this favor to the rest of mankind, as Noah warned the race of the coming judgment and Flood. Finally, God had to judge humanity, after mankind refused his grace and salvation. But only after he had given them every chance to be saved.

We are all in this passage, each of us a “son of God” or “daughter of men.” No matter how much “renown” we have earned in the eyes of others, each of us is guilty of sinful thoughts and hearts before the only Judge of the universe.

Will you admit that this text describes you? That you are as much in need of God’s “favor” as those who died in the Flood? That apart from God’s mercy you have no chance at heaven, no claim to salvation, no right to forgiveness? That your thoughts require God’s grace today?

Find his grace for your need

Since our thoughts determine our lives, it’s vital that we learn how to control them so that God can bless them. How?

First, seek the mind of Christ.

Consider these biblical imperatives:

  • “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5 KJV).
  • “Holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess” (Hebrews 3:1).
  • “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (Colossians 3:1-2).

Make it your goal to think as Jesus thinks, to have his thoughts in your mind and heart. How?

Second, admit what is impure.

When we see ourselves in his light, we see all that is wrong in our minds and hearts. What next? “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (Colossians 3:5-10).

Do a mental inventory this morning. Do you find sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed, anger, rage, malice, slander, filthy language, lies? Get rid of the impure, so you can replace it with the pure. It doesn’t take much poison to pollute a bottle of drinking water.

Conduct this mental inventory every day before the Father. Ask the Spirit to show you the thoughts which must be removed. Spit out the poison before you swallow it into your soul.

Third, give your guilt to his grace.

When you find sin in your mind and life, and you confess it, the residual which remains behind is guilt. Guilt is not of God. Jesus condemned sin, never sinners.

Guilt is how the enemy punishes us when we fall into the temptation he lays before us. And it is the way we punish ourselves when God forgives us. We don’t want to be in debt to anyone, not even the Lord. If he won’t punish our sin, we’ll do it for him. We’ll carry guilt in our souls until we finally think we’ve paid its price. Some of us never finish paying that debt.

So, confess your sinful mind and life to God and claim his forgiveness (1 John 1:9). Rejoice in the fact that he has separated your sin from you as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12), throwing it into the depths of the sea (Micah 7:19). Trust his promise: “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more” (Isaiah 43:25).

If he doesn’t remember our sins, why should we? The next time guilt attacks you, fight back. Claim the forgiveness you received when you confessed that sin, and say that the sin is gone, its debt paid, its guilt gone. The next time the guilt attacks, say it again. And again and again, until the guilt finally leaves. Give your guilt to his grace and find his favor today.

Last, fill your thoughts with God.

The Bible commands us to “be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). Spend time each morning and through the day in prayer and Bible study. Think about God often and practice his presence throughout the day. Stay connected to the source of your life, and you will have his pure and holy thoughts in your mind.

Conclusion

Anne Graham Lotz is not only Billy Graham’s daughter—she is also one of the most anointed communicators of biblical truth I have ever heard. My wife and I have been privileged to be her friend for many years and to share a speaking platform with her several times.

Anne’s ministry produces a daily devotional taken from her writings. I read it each morning and commend it to you most highly. This week, one of her devotionals noted:

“The One Who called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees, promising to fully bless him if he would follow Him in a life of faith is the same Person Who today calls us out of the world and promises to bless us if we follow Him in a life of faith.

“The One Who delivered His children from bondage to slavery in Egypt with a titanic display of power is the same Person Who was crucified then rose from the dead to deliver His children today from the bondage of sin.

“The One Who halted the entire invasion of Canaan by the Israelites while He extended His grace to one Canaanite prostitute is the same Person today Who stops to care for and extend His grace to sinners.

“The One Who answered Elijah’s prayer and sent down the fire to consume the sacrifice on Mount Carmel and then sent down the rain to end the three-year drought in Israel is the same Person today Who hears and answers prayer.”

His grace is always greater than our guilt. Why do you need this fact today?

Grace vs. Grades

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Grace vs. Grades

Dr. Jim Denison

Matthew 20:1-16

Thesis: Life’s motivation should be gratitude for grace, not performance to earn it

John Claypool has long been one of my favorite preachers. In his now-classic treatise, The Preaching Event, he describes the preacher as a “gift-giver,” one who gives to others the gifts he has received from God. The gift we have received is grace. The gift we are to give is grace.

Unfortunately, many of us don’t open the package. Claypool describes himself during his school years as “a nobody who had to compete and out-achieve all others in order to become a somebody.” Even in seminary his problems with self esteem persisted, and were made worse by the institution he attended. Perceptively, he calls his theological alma mater “a community of grades rather than a community of grace.” Claypool has been reading my mail. And yours.

Surveys indicate that the vast majority of Americans are like John Claypool. We live with perpetual self doubt and self esteem problems. Most of us feel deeply inadequate. We don’t want you to know who we really are, because we’re afraid if you do, you won’t like us very much. So we create what psychologists call an “idealized self,” the person we wish you to see. It’s a mask we wear. And we’re never without it.

But there’s a better way. Living by grades is a sure road to frustration and despair. We can never do enough, for long enough. There’s always someone else to impress, another way to perform. We’re only as good as our last success.

By contrast, living by grace is the sure road to joy of mind and peace of soul. It is the only way off the roller coaster of good days followed by bad. And it’s a road available to every one of us. Here’s how to find it.

Accept the grace of God

We meet the hero of this week’s parable early: “the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard” (Matthew 20.1). Remember, in a parable about the kingdom, the hero is the King. In this week’s guise, he’s a landowner with a vineyard. He owns the vineyard and all it produces. He can hire workers or not. As many as he wishes, whenever he wishes. Anything he pays them is by his choice. And so all is grace.

The first group of workers agreedto receive a denarius, the typical working man’s wages, worth around 17 cents today (Broadus 412). And they began working in the owner’s field.

Around the “third hour” he found a second group of workers. They agreed to work for “whatever is right” (v. 4) and joined the first crew. At the “sixth hour” and the “ninth hour” the vineyard owner hired still more workers, who agreed to work for whatever compensation the master determined to give them.

To this point the story is all routine. The Jews divided the day, from sunrise to sunset, into twelve equal parts. Thus the “sixth hour” was always noon, and the third and ninth would correspond roughly to 9 AM and 3 PM (the hours would be longer or shorter as the length of the days changed; Broadus 412).

A man not hired at the first hour of the day (6 AM) would wait for work “in the marketplace” (v. 3), the place where prospective employers and employees met. These were day laborers, in the most precarious position of anyone in ancient Israel. Even slaves belonged to their master and his family, and would not starve unless times were at their very worst. But a day laborer was hired for a day at a time. He made so little that he could save nothing. To go a day without work was to go a day without food for his family (Barclay 2.223).

Given that the workers were sent to a vineyard, we know that this was the time of the grape harvest, toward the end of September. The fall rains would arrive shortly. If the harvest was not gathered before the rains broke, it would be ruined. Each year’s grape harvest was a race against time. So the master would need all the workers he could get, whenever he could get them (Barclay 2.222).

As a result, even at the “eleventh hour” (v. 6), an hour before sundown and the end of the day’s harvest, the vineyard owner found and employed still other workers. These men had spent the day looking for work, to no avail. Now a man is willing to hire them at day’s end. They cannot expect to receive much compensation, but anything is better than nothing.

So far so good. No surprises, except that a landowner would hire men for so little time, and that workers would accept what they could only anticipate as the smallest of wages. Now comes the twist, the turn which changes everything: “The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius” (v. 9). This was twelve times what they deserved or expected. Imagine their surprise and delight at the generosity of their employer. This is a gift not earned, payment not deserved. Compensation chosen by the owner of the vineyard, in his sovereign will. This is amazing grace.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, a woman dressed as a male page and hid herself in the queen’s bedroom, waiting for an opportunity to stab the queen to death. But she was found by the queen’s attendants, and dragged before Her Majesty. Realizing that her case was hopeless, she fell before the queen’s throne and begged for grace. Queen Elizabeth looked at her coldly and quietly said, “If I show you grace, what promise will you make for the future?”

The woman looked up from her knees and said, “Grace that hath conditions, grace that is fettered by precautions, is not grace at all.” The Queen was surprised. After a moment’s reflection she said, “You are right. I pardon you by my grace alone.” And they led her away to freedom. Historians tell us that from that moment Queen Elizabeth had no more devoted, faithful servant than the woman who had received her grace.

Such gratitude is the true and best motivation for service in the King’s vineyard. Not so we will be rewarded, but because we are. Not so we will be people of worth, but because he has made us so. Not so he will love us, but because he does.

The world’s religions know little of this grace. Prometheus gave fire to men, and was punished by the gods for his “man-loving disposition.” Whether we seek to climb up to God on the Buddhist ladder of the eight-fold noble truth, the Hindu pathway of karma, or the Muslim or Jewish rope knotted with laws and regulations, the work is ours. The way of grades.

Christianity is different. During a British conference on world religions, the experts began debating what, if any, belief was unique to our faith. None could be found—others had various doctrines of incarnation, resurrection, and revelation. Then C. S. Lewis wandered into the room, and asked what the controversy was about. He was given the question, and responded immediately, “Oh, that’s easy. It’s grace.”

Share the grace of God

Whenever surveyors ask Christians in America for their favorite hymn, Amazing Grace always tops the list. We love to sing about grace. We love to receive it. But we’re not always so enthusiastic about sharing it.

The owner arranged payment of his workers so that those employed last were paid first. When the one-hour employees received a day’s wages, the twelve-hour workers quickly did the math. The grace by which they had been employed at all has now faded in the face of this new possibility of wealth. In their minds the good news has already been shared with their wives and families, bills paid, vacation days planned.

Then came the second surprise: “each one of them also received a denarius” (v. 10). And excitement turned sour: “When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowners” (v. 11). “Grumble” here means to complain or gripe. The imperfect tense shows an ongoing, continuous action (Broadus 413). We can hear their words of frustration, whispered to each other as they scowl at their one-time benefactor. Spurgeon said it well: “As soon as the penny was in their hand, a murmur was in their mouth” (276).

Someone became their spokesman: “These men who were hired last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burdens of the work and the heat of the day” (v. 12). He has a point. The work in that late summer Palestinian climate was hard, its heat intense. The “heat of the day” probably refers not to typical high temperatures, a routine fact hardly be worth mentioning, but to the dry and scorching east wind common in that region of the world.

This was the wind which blasted the grain in Pharoah’s dream (Genesis 41.6), withered Jonah’s vine (Jonah 4.8), and destroyed the vine in Ezekiel’s parable (Ezekiel 17.10; Robertson 160). It was infamous throughout the world, and a terrible thing to experience (Broadus 413). Those hired last worked in the cool of the day, not its heat.

When we compare ourselves with others we can always find someone who has had things easier than we have. Someone has been given greater advantages, had better luck, seen better times. As soon as we assume we have earned what has been given to us by grace, we want more grace. We are thankful for our blessings until we see others we have missed. Then we take for granted all we have received, and protest that others have received more.

We complain about the boss’s son who inherits the business we work so hard to advance. We are frustrated that people who work no harder than we do have a nicer home, newer car, better clothes. We forget that all we have comes by grace. Did we deserve to be born in America with its freedoms and not North Korea with its oppression? Did we deserve to have parents who loved us rather than abandoning us? Did we deserve to be given physical and intellectual abilities and not challenges? Did we deserve to work in an office in Dallas on September 11, 2001 and not the World Trade Center in New York City?

The master straightened things out: “Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius?” (v. 13). “Friend” is a kind, familiar term, a generous reply to this man who has voiced such criticism (Broadus 413, Robertson 160). What we have is the grace of our Master. The proper response is gratitude, not grumbling. So “take your pay and go” (v. 14). Literally “Pick up your money,” as if the worker had contemptuously thrown his denarius on the ground (Robertson 160).

Now the sovereign will and rights of the master are made clear: “I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?” (v. 14). “Are you envious” translates “Is your eye ponerous,” evil, stingy, miserly. The ancients knew that the eye reveals the soul (which is why sculptures made of dead subjects always leave the eye blank). The “evil eye” revealed an “evil soul.”

The owner can do whatever he wishes with his money and his vineyard, for they are his. If I want my employer to be generous with me, I should expect him to be generous with my colleague as well. When all is of grace, all receive grace. And “the last will be first, and the first will be last” in line (v. 16). Each should be grateful to be included.

Celebrate the grace of God

Jesus’ parable exposes the motives of our hearts. Each of the workers did what he was employed to do, for as long as he was employed to do it. Each received the wages he had agreed to accept. But some rejoiced in grace, while others complained about it. The story reveals our reasons for religious activity, our motives for spiritual service. Grace for some, grades for others.

Why are you reading this commentary? Why do you serve the Lord and our church? Why am I writing these words? Our motives can only be two: a desire to become significant, or gratitude that we already are. We serve Jesus so that he will love us or help us; or we serve him because he already does. We work in the vineyard to be blessed, or because we are.

Jesus’ parable makes this diagnostic suggestion: to learn whether or not you are a person of grace, see how you respond when someone else receives it. When someone else is given the recognition you hoped would be your reward; when another is graced with more than he or she deserves, when you wanted to receive more than you deserve.

In Matthew 19, Peter says to Jesus: “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?” (v. 27). Does his question reveal your heart today?

Is your motive grace or grades? Dr. Criswell’s comment is worth repeating: “Jesus seeks permanent servants to honor Him, and men and women love the work and who are not in His service for pay or reward. We are not to work for the Lord by contract, for the reward, for what we can get out of it. We are to work for our Savior just for the love of the Lord and we are to leave the reward up to Him” (p. 116).

The pastor then illustrated his exposition with a poem, author unknown. Perhaps the Spirit would speak its words to your heart:

Where shall I work today, dear Lord?

And my love flowed warm and free.

Then the Lord pointed out a tiny place

And said, “Tend that for me.”

I cried, “Oh, no, not over there,

Why, no one would ever see,

No matter how well my work was done.

Not that little place for me!”

When the Lord spoke, He was not harsh.

He answered me tenderly:

“Tell me, precious child of mine,

Are you working for them or for Me?

Nazareth was a little place

And so was Galilee.”

Grades vs. Grace

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Grades vs. Grace

Psalm 139:1-18

James C. Denison

Thanksgiving was the first American holiday. A harvest feast was celebrated by Indians for centuries before Europeans first landed on these shores. In 1621, the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn harvest feast which may have been the first Thanksgiving in the colonies. They had no forks, eating with spoons and knives and their hands.

Their first menu was somewhat different from yours last Thursday, I would presume. It included mostly meat: wild turkey, crane, duck, eagle, goose, seals and swans. Their seafood included clams, cod, eel, and lobster.

Their vegetables included beans, carrots, lettuce, onions, peas, pumpkins, and radishes. They had no ham, no sweet potatoes or potatoes of any kind, no corn on the cob, and no cranberry sauce. Worst of all, pumpkin pie had not yet been invented.

From then to now, we have much for which to be thankful. Consider the prosperity of just our generation. Per capita income in America since 1950, adjusted for inflation, has tripled. Global gross domestic product has increased seven-fold. I’m 49 years old; if you’re anywhere my age, think about the home in which you lived as a child. Now compare it to your home today.

My first car was a 1966 Dodge Dart, the most misleading name in automotive history. My second car was a 1967 Mercury Cougar–it had no air conditioning (in Houston!) or radio. My car today is not a Lamborghini (I wish), but at least it has air and a radio, and a six-CD changer to boot.

I remember our amazement when Dad brought home a color television. Of course, we had to get up to change the channels. Not that this was such a problem, since there were only three

My first dictionary was given to me by my parents in the sixth grade. I’ve kept it for the simple reason that the word “computer” does not appear in it. I did my masters degree on my father’s World War II manual typewriter; several years ago our sons got it out of the closet, looked at it, and asked me what it was. Now I work on my laptop when I’m not using my BlackBerry.

Yet with all our prosperity, are we happier people?

“Unipolar” depression, the condition in which a person always feels blue, is ten times as prevalent as it was 50 years ago. Suicide among young people has tripled since 1950. Every year in America, more people kill themselves than kill each other. Alcohol consumption has doubled in the last 50 years; 43 alcohol-related deaths occur every hour in our country.

Why, when we have so much for which to be thankful, are we not more happy? It’s because we need to learn a simple formula: Grace – Grades = Gratitude. This formula will lead us to Thanksgiving all year long and the joy of Jesus every day.

Here’s how.

The good news of grace

Tradition attributes Psalm 139 to David, written probably near the end of his life as he is looking back over all he has seen and done: Saul, Goliath, Bathsheba, and all the rest of one of the most checkered figures in history. Here is his testimony of the grace of God.

God knows all about us: “O Lord, you have searched me and you know me” (v. 1).

“Searched” is a Hebrew word for boring or digging, exploring every part of us; “know” means to know someone intimately and personally. These words are active–God has searched you and me and knows us right now, this moment.

He knows our actions: “when I sit and when I rise.” He knows the good and bad things we’ve done, our personal Goliaths and Bathshebas and everything in between.

He knows our thoughts: “you perceive my thoughts from afar.” He knows what you’re thinking at this very moment.

He knows our activities: “You discern my going out and my lying down,” what I do in public and in private. “You are familiar with all my ways,” literally “all the paths I take, everywhere I have been and am going.”

He knows our words, so that before we speak our next word “you know it completely” (v. 4). He knows what we say and what we mean by what we say.

And yet, despite all that he knows about us, he loves us and cares for us. “You hem me in–behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me” (v. 5). The phrase was used of troops surrounding us to protect us. His hand is upon us so that he will never lose us. As Jesus said of his followers, “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:28).

He will not abandon us, even when we abandon him (vs. 7-12). “If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there” (v. 8). These are the vertical extremes of the world, from the highest to the lowest. “If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast” (vs. 9-10). The “dawn” was to the east, of course; the “far side of the sea” was the Mediterranean Sea to the west. These are the horizontal extremes of the world, from the east to the west.

“If I say, ‘Surely darkness will hide me,'” “even the darkness will not be dark to you” because “darkness is as light to you” (vs. 11-12). “Darkness” in the Hebrew is usually associated with chaos and death, while “light” signifies holiness, purity, and hope. These are the moral extremes of the world, from worst to best. Even then God will not abandon us.

He will not forsake us, because he made us. We are the children of the Father of the universe. “You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb” (v. 13). “Knit me together” translates Hebrew which means to weave all the strands of cloth. Later he will say “I was woven together in the depths of the earth” (v. 15); the words mean to use all the various colors to make a beautiful tapestry.

Not only did God make us–he made all that surrounds us: “your works are wonderful; I know that full well” (v. 14). You are the greatest miracle you know. Of all the billions and billions of living species which have existed since the dawn of time, 99.99 percent are no longer around. But you are. You are made of protons, things so small that a dot on an “i” can hold 500 billion of them (the number of seconds contained the last half million years). And yet you live in a visible universe which is a million million million million miles across. Our Milky Way is one of 140 billion or so other galaxies. Our universe is so large that the chances you would end up on this tiny planet by random coincidence are one in a billion trillion trillion (one followed by 33 zeroes). Your God made all of that and all of you. Now, what’s your problem?

“All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (v. 16). All 650,000 hours or so. He has made us, and he knows everything that will come to pass in our lives, and loves us anyway.

In fact, he is thinking of us right now: “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand” (vs. 17-18a). A better translation from the Hebrew is, “How precious concerning me are your thoughts, O God.”

God thinks of us more than the grains of sand in the world. How many is this? The latest guess is 75 followed by 18 zeroes. That’s how many times God thinks about you. Do the math: if you live to be 70 years of age, you will have 2.2 billion seconds in your lifespan. To think about you in that lifespan as often as the grains of sand, God must think of you three billion times a second.

When we awake, he is still with us. He never sleeps: “he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep” (Psalm 121:4). He thinks of us all day, every day, every moment. This is the grace of God.

The bad news of grades

When I was in high school, my student minister gave me the best single piece of advice I’ve ever received: “Remember the source of your personal worth.” Your worth, your reason for Thanksgiving, can be the grace of God. It can be the fact that you are beloved by the Lord of the universe, that the Creator of all that exists is on your side, that you are the child of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

You can choose to celebrate the good news of grace. Or you can choose to accept the bad news of grades.

You can decide that you are what you have, what you drive or wear or where you live. This year’s Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog will sell you a submarine for $1.44 million or a $75,000 talking robot. You can buy 10 acres in Montana for $2.3 million, or a $73,000 cell phone studded with 7.2 carats of white and pink diamonds.

Your Christmas can be all about what you get and give, because the one who dies with the most toys wins. You are what you have, except that it’s never enough. They’ll make new cars next year, and bigger homes down the block. Grades are never enough.

You can decide that you are where you’re from. For $119.00 you can buy a kit which will trace your ancestry through your DNA. You can be the product of your family, your home, your education, your college. Except that someone else is from a wealthier family, a better education. Grades are never enough.

You can decide that you are what you do. You are the friends you have or the points you score or the grades you make. Except that you’re never done. There are always more people to impress, more games to win, more tests to take. Always. When I’m finished this week, I have to plan for next week. And the week after. Grades are never enough.

John Claypool, the Baptist pastor turned Episcopal rector, was one of my very favorite preachers. In his classic book The Preaching Event, he speaks for most of us: “People used to ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I was shrewd enough to fashion my answer according to what I thought they wanted to hear. For some it was a policeman, for others a fireman or a preacher. However, in my own heart of hearts, I had my own private fantasy that I never dared to share with anyone. Do you know what it was? I am telling you the gospel truth: I wanted to be president of the world! I envisioned the whole human race as a giant pyramid with one piece of preeminence at the top. I dreamed of climbing over everybody’s back until at last I got there. Then I knew exactly what I would do. I would look down and say, ‘Now! Now, do I amount to something? Have I at last become a somebody out of my nobodiness?'” (p. 64).

Grades are never enough.

Conclusion

Why did you need to hear about grace today? How was your Thanksgiving? Did it last past the meal and the football games? Where have grades stolen your soul? What troubles or stress or guilt or fears have enslaved your spirit?

The good news of grace is that when I don’t want to be with God, he wants to be with me. When I am too shamed to seek his presence, he seeks mine. When I am too busy for him, he is never too busy for me. When I want only what is best for me, he still wants what is best for me. When I refuse to follow him, he still follows me. And you.

Worship Jesus because he loves you, not so he will. Pray and read God’s word because he accepts you, not so he will. Serve your Lord and share your faith because God has rewarded you, not so he will. Grace – grades = gratitude.

Henri Nouwen heard God whisper these words to his soul and ours:

I have called you by name from the very beginning.

You are mine and I am yours. You are my beloved; on you my favor rests.

I have molded you in the depths of the earth, and knitted you together in your mother’s womb.

I have carved you in the palm of my hand and hidden you in the shadow of my embrace.

I look at you with infinite tenderness and care for you with a care more intimate than that of a mother for her child.

I have counted every hair on your head and guided you at every step.

Wherever you go, I go with you, and wherever you rest, I keep watch.

I will give you food that will satisfy all your hunger and drink that will quench all your thirst.

I will not hide my face from you. You are my beloved in whom I am well pleased.

This is the grace of God. Are you grateful?

Grades Vs. Grace

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Grades vs. Grace

Matthew 5:1, Galatians 3:23-29

Dr. Jim Denison

Do you remember the story of Prometheus, the god who gave fire to mortals? For his transgression he was chained and tortured by Might, Violence, and Hephaestus, servants of Zeus. And so the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus makes Hephaestus say to Prometheus, “Such is the reward you reap of your man-loving disposition… Many a groan and many a lamentation you shall utter, but they shall not serve you. For the mind of Zeus is hard to soften with prayer.”

There have been times when I’ve wondered if Hephaestus was right. Times when God felt distant from me, days when my prayers seemed to ricochet from the ceiling unanswered, when it seemed clear to me that I must do more to merit the attention and help of the Almighty. That I must be more religious, keep more rules, do more to impress God. Many of you have been there as well. But we were wrong.

John Claypool once called the church a community of grades rather than a community of grace. This morning we’ll explore the difference, as we begin studying the Sermon on the Mount together. We’ll see this Sermon as grades, and then as grace. And we’ll choose which Sermon we want to hear this fall. And which faith we want to live.

The sermon as grades

Consider first the Sermon on the Mount as grades. Religious legalism. Spiritual rules and dogma. That’s how the religious people of his day heard Jesus. And how many religious people hear him still.

Paul explains: “Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed” (Galaians 3:23). How did they become so imprisoned by legalism, rules, and dogma? The same way we do.

God created us for relationship with himself, but our sin drives a wedge between our hearts and our Holy Father. And we know it. We know something is wrong, misguided, missing.

So we create what psychologists call an “idealized self,” the person we wish we were, the person we lost, the person we want desperately to be. Then we spend our lives trying to become that person. We project that image to others, always frightened that they will see behind the mask to the ugly truth hiding inside. We try to become what we think God wants us to be. And so religion becomes rules. And rules for keeping the rules.

The Jews of Jesus’ day found in the Ten Commandments 613 rules. And then they made rules for keeping the rules. For instance, they were very concerned about the Sabbath prohibition against work. What constitutes work? 39 basic actions were defined and prohibited. And then each was further defined.

A woman could draw water with one hand but not two. A man could not wear his false teeth or a needle in his clothes, for this was carrying a burden. Any man who lit a fire, rode a beast, traveled by ship, struck anything, caught an animal, bird, or fish, fasted or made war on the Sabbath must be put to death.

To this day some of the stricter Jewish synagogues employee Gentiles who work on the Sabbath doing things like turning light switches on and off. All to keep the rules.

But don’t shake your heads just yet. We Baptists know a thing or two about religious activities, rules, and regulations. Early in my Christian experience, I learned how church “success” worked: the more you did, the better others thought you were.

Here was a typical week in my home church: Sunday school and church services on Sunday morning; Training Union and evening worship, followed by youth fellowship on Sunday night. Visitation on Tuesday night. Prayer meeting on Wednesday night. Bus Ministry and youth Bible study on Saturday morning.

Then there was the annual calendar, running like clockwork each year: January Bible Study, February Valentine’s Day Banquet; spring Easter pageant; Vacation Bible School; summer camp, mission trip, and choir tour; annual fall revival; High Attendance Sunday every October; and the Christmas pageant. Along with the special activities planned each and every month.

And we were graded through it all by how much we did and how well we did it. By how well we knew the rules and kept them.

Blaise Pascal was a mathematical and philosophical genius. Listen to this observation from his Pensees, and see if it rings true with your experience:

“All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions. However different the means they may employ, they all strive towards this goal. The reason why some go to war and some do not is the same desire in both, but interpreted in two different ways. The will never takes the least step except to that end. This is the motive of every act of every man….

“Yet for very many years no one without faith has ever reached the goal at which everyone is continually aiming. All men complain: princes, subjects, nobles, commoners, old, young, strong, weak, learned, ignorant, healthy, sick, in every country, at every time, of all ages, and all conditions….

“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.

“God alone is man’s true good, and since man abandoned him it is a strange fact that nothing in nature has been found to take his place” (Pensees #148).

You can hear the Sermon on the Mount this fall as grades. Rules to keep, things to do, religious activities and requirements. But in the end you’ll be more frustrated than you are right now. For only one person in all of human history ever kept these rules without fail. And he was God.

The sermon as grace

Here’s God’s advice: hear the sermon as grace. And the faith it founded. Paul will show us how.

First, accept God’s grace personally.

“You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus” (v. 26). We become the “sons of God” not by grades but by grace. Not by joining a church and then attending, keeping its rules and impressing its members. By grace.

When you accept his grace, you “clothe yourselves with Christ” (v. 27). When the Father looks at you, he sees his Son in you. He sees his blood and death in place of your sins, his Spirit bearing fruit through your lives. He sees you as his own children.

But only by his grace. No person in human history can keep enough rules to earn such a relationship with a perfect, holy God. Even Lance Armstrong cannot ride his bike up Mt. Everest. Even Barry Bonds cannot hit 200 home runs. Even Mother Teresa or Billy Graham could not be good enough, religious enough, moral enough to earn heaven. God’s word is clear: “it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

The author of these words is proof of their truth.

No one tried harder than Saul of Tarsus to earn a relationship with a Holy God. Then the day came when he met Jesus and discovered that God loved him already. Despite all his failures and sins. He never got over that fact. Accepting God’s grace changed him forever.

It will you as well. Give up trying to earn God’s love, for you have it already. Don’t try to impress him—you already do. Reject a religion of rules today. Decide that you are not what you do, in the church or in the world. You are not what you earn, or wear, or own; you are not the classes you teach or committees you serve or songs you sing or sermons you preach. You are the child of God, loved beyond words. Accept his grace.

Jerry Bridges is right: “Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace. Your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God’s grace.”

Receive his grace, and then give his grace.

Saul of Tarsus was raised to hate Gentiles. He was taught that God made Gentiles only so there would be firewood in hell. And he was taught to be nearly as bigoted towards women and slaves. The Jewish men of his day typically prayed every morning: “God, I thank you that you have not made me a Gentile, a slave, or a woman.”

So marvel at the words the grace-changed Pharisee can now write: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (vs. 28-29).

Give his grace to someone who needs it from you today. Who needs your acceptance or pardon? Your forgiveness or mercy? God’s grace through yours?

A woman hid in the private bedroom of Queen Elizabeth I, waiting to stab her to death. But the queen’s attendants found the woman among the queen’s gowns and brought her into the presence of their sovereign, taking the dagger from her hand.

The would-be assassin realized that her case was hopeless. She threw herself down on her knees and pleaded with the queen to have compassion on her and show her grace. The queen looked at her coldly and quietly asked, “If I show you grace, what promise will you make for the future?” The woman looked up and said, “Grace that has conditions, grace that is fettered by precautions, is no grace at all.”

Queen Elizabeth thought for a moment and then said, “You are right. I pardon you freely by my grace alone.” And they led her away, a free woman.

Historians tell us that from that moment, Queen Elizabeth had no more faithful, devoted servant than the woman who had received her grace. Have you received such grace from your Sovereign Lord? How can you not give it to another of his children?

Conclusion

This fall we’ll explore, verse by verse, the greatest Sermon ever preached. But first we must understand why it was preached. We must see it not as religious rules but as life-giving grace. As the way we live because we are loved, not so we can be loved. As the way to live with success and significance, purpose and power—gifts from the God who loves us supremely. We can choose grades or grace. And that choice will make all the difference.

John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress has sold more copies than any book in all of literature except the Bible. We would think such an author and minister to be the greatest success. He did not think himself so. He titled his autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners.

And he wrote this prayer, words I invite you to share this morning:

Thou Son of the Blessed,

what grace was manifested in Thy condescension.

Grace brought Thee down from Heaven;

grace stripped Thee of Thy glory;

grace made Thee poor and despised;

grace made Thee bear such burdens of sin,

such burdens of sorrow,

such burdens of God’s curse as are unspeakable.

O Son of God!

Grace was in all Thy tears;

grace came out of Thy side with Thy blood;

grace came forth with every word of Thy sweet mouth;

grace came out where the whip smote Thee,

where the thorn pricked Thee,

and where the nails pierced Thee.

Here is grace indeed!

Grace to make angels wonder

grace to make sinners happy,

grace to astonish devils.

Do you choose grades or grace today?