Weekly Sermons in Swanton: Don’t Think You’re Invincible

The message, preached on September 26th, 2010, covered 1 Corinthians 10:1-13, and it can be heard via streaming audio at http://www.swantonalliance.org. Sometimes we need a little warning, and even strong Christians can fool themselves into thinking they’re stronger than they are. Paul urges believers not to fool themselves, but to look to the history of God’s people, to guard their hearts, and to look to the Lord Jesus for help each day. Note: Past sermons can be accessed through the resources page.

Dirty

ALL – Psalm 69:15-36
ALL – Proverbs 24:6-7
OT – Isaiah 51:1-53:12
NT – Ephesians 5:1-33

Interesting passage for the day: Dirty stories, foul talk and coarse jokes—these are not for you. Instead, remind each other of God’s goodness and be thankful. – Ephesians 5:4, The Living Bible

Thought: I take a pretty strong stand against Christians using swear words. And some people close to me have challenged me on it, asking me whether swear words are inherently any worse than what I consider to be less offensive words—words that I use in pretty much the same way.

And you know what? In some ways, my friends are right. They’re right that when I use “cleaner language” to express my own unclean thoughts, I’m still sinning. I may be less offensive to other people, but my heart still has major problems.

So is that a justification for swearing?

I don’t think so.

I think that both my friends and I are called to clean up our act, and zealously. Here’s a theological truth that anyone can understand: God is GOOD. Seriously good. And we’re His children. Would He share our language—whether the less-filtered language my friends don’t mind or the cleaned up versions I use? Would God appreciate our dirty stories or foul jokes?

God is good. And we are His. We aren’t missing out on anything by giving up our dirty stories and foul language. We should be thankful that such a wonderful God is willing to associate with us, rather than upset that being associated with Him means saying no to our filthy hearts.

Question: How comfortable are you with your personal degree of impurity? What have you learned about putting off unclean thoughts and words and putting on purity? What’s your role? How does the Gospel fit into this discussion?

To review the Bible reading plan options, please visit http://tinyurl.com/yj2o7jz.

Love that Spills Over

ALL – Psalm 50:1-23
ALL – Proverbs 22:22-23
OT – Song of Solomon 1:1-4:16
NT – 2 Corinthians 8:16-24

Interesting passage for the day: He is glad to follow my suggestion that he visit you again—but I think he would have come anyway, for he is very eager to see you! – 2 Corinthians 8:17, The Living Bible

Thought: I love these personal touches we find in the Scriptures. Paul’s letters are full of teaching, logic, and sometimes even argument. But we can never forget that these letters are intensely personal. Paul wrote to people he loved dearly, and he was happy to tell them how much others loved them, too.

How well do we communicate our love for one another inside the church? Or, for an even more foundational question, how much do we actually love one another? Sometimes the evidence for our love runs thick, but sometimes it feels as if our love for one another is more of a show than a heartfelt reality. Christ died and rose for us because of His love for us, and because of the Father’s. And His command is that we love one another. Love must be sincere. If it’s genuine, it’s gonna show.

Question: How dearly do you love other people – your family, neighbors or associates? After you’ve answered a quick, self-defensive, “I love them very dearly, of course!” ask yourself whether deep down in your heart, you actually love them or love when other people think you love them. Would you pray with me that our Lord Jesus Christ would give us hearts whose love for each other grows continually?

To review the Bible reading plan options, please visit http://tinyurl.com/yj2o7jz.

Planned Generosity

ALL – Psalm 40:1-10
ALL – Proverbs 22:1
OT – Job 16:1-19:29
NT – 1 Corinthians 16:1-24

Interesting passage for the day: On every Lord’s Day each of you should put aside something from what you have earned during the week, and use it for this offering. The amount depends on how much the Lord has helped you earn. Don’t wait until I get there and then try to collect it all at once. – 1 Corinthians 16:2, The Living Bible

Thought: Have you ever noticed that the New Testament seems to be much more interested in the heart of a giver than in the act of giving?

Don’t get me wrong. Jesus and the apostles definitely talk about giving. But they want us to give because we are givers. They want our actions to flow from our nature.

With that said, someone whose nature is generous will want to give, and someone who wants to give will want to consider making plans to give. The Corinthians had said that they would collect money to give to Christians in Jerusalem. So Paul talked with them about their plans. If they wanted to give substantially and helpfully, they would have to make plans and follow them. Paul urged them not to plan on a last-minute scramble to give. Instead, he encouraged them to give what they could each and every week until the gift was ready to be sent.

Too many of us are not generous. We want to hold on to as much of our money as possible. So we find other ways to justify ourselves as givers (when we can never justify ourselves—only Christ makes it so that we can get out of God’s courtroom safely). We spend our money quickly, so that “we just don’t have anything left to give this week.” Or we give a couple bucks each week or month, not giving generously because “the church doesn’t need my money.” Some of us claim, “I’m tithing my time instead”—which is ironic. Assuming that we’re awake 112 hours a week, you would expect to see us giving at least 11 hours each week to specifically kingdom-building activities, which rarely happens. It’s also ironic because none of the time we’re tithing ever seems to be money-earning time; that’s our time, not God’s.

Lord, may we recognize all that You’ve given us, repent of our selfishness, give ourselves entirely to You, and be transformed into generous people who scheme up ways to give even more.

Question: I’m convinced that I need to grow in generosity. Do you? What are some creative ways that we could extend our generosity?

To review the Bible reading plan options, please visit http://tinyurl.com/yj2o7jz.

Are You (Really) A Christian?

ALL – Psalm 11:1-7
ALL – Proverbs 19:10-12
OT – 1 Chronicles 19:1-21:30
NT – Romans 2:24-3:8

Interesting passage for the day: For you are not real Jews just because you were born of Jewish parents or because you have gone through the Jewish initiation ceremony of circumcision. No, a real Jew is anyone whose heart is right with God. – Romans 2:28-29a, The Living Bible

Thought: By the time the Holy Spirit inspired the writing of the letter to the Romans, there were no second-generation Christians—or at least, there were very few of them. Christianity was still counter-cultural, uncommon, different. The idea that Christians were the people of God was still a new idea.

The Jews, on the other hand, were not only a religious group, but a nation. And even though they were taught that each of them individually needed to obey God, the fact of the matter was that many of them felt as though being part of the Jewish people and being moderately aware of God and His expectations was enough to make them the people of God.

Almost two thousand years later, these verses no longer apply only to the Jews. Christians and their religious culture have spread globally for generation after generation. Even among those of us who teach our children that they must have their own relationship with God, there is almost a Christian-nationalistic expectation that our children will, in fact, put their lives in God’s hands. And our children have learned that other Christians are satisfied to accept them into the church if they claim to have prayed to Jesus for salvation—even if they continue to pursue their own desires and show little other devotion to Jesus.

So for us this verse could be re-phrased: You are not real Christians just because you grew up in a Christian home or because you prayed a prayer of salvation or were accepted into a Christian church, or even baptized! No, a real Christian is anyone whose heart is right with God.

Question: Why do you believe your heart is right with God? Is your reason only about your past interactions with God? Or is your heart right with God today?

To review the Bible reading plan options, please visit http://tinyurl.com/yj2o7jz.

Gods Provoke Emotions

ALL – Psalm 147:1-20
ALL – Proverbs 18:4-5
OT – 2 Kings 15:1-16:20
NT – Acts 19:13-41

Interesting passage for the day: At this their anger boiled and they began shouting, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” – Acts 19:28, The Living Bible

Thought: People like to blame the world’s wars on religion. They push their blame a bit too far, but the charge is not without evidence. Passions get aroused by religion. And why not? If (since) there is a Creator God who oversees the entire universe and sent His Son to redeem sinful humanity, as I believe there is, He deserves the adoration of the world. People who believe in other gods likewise want their gods to be honored. And when a person’s god begins to be ignored, it is natural to try to draw attention back to the honor of the deity that person believes in. I am not advocating the harmful and violent methods that people have used throughout history to promote their gods—false gods don’t deserve such allegiance, and the true God who gives and takes every person’s life in His time doesn’t need our violence to achieve His goals. But I am trying to make a point: My God deserves my feelings. My God calls me to be reasonable, but not to such a point that I don’t care whether people love, respect and adore Him or not. I am to be His faithful witness, no matter what responses I get from those who deny my God’s authority and care for them. And the people I speak to are right (even if they respond wrongly) to take God seriously enough to respond not just with their heads, but with their hearts. God matters. Love Him or hate Him, but don’t think of Him with apathy.

Question: Do you love God? Do you care about God? Or do you just like to think of yourself as someone who loves God? What convinces you that you love God as you should?

To review the Bible reading plan options, please visit http://tinyurl.com/yj2o7jz.

A Heart Like a Toilet – Clean on the Outside Only

ALL – Psalm 78:1-31
ALL – Proverbs 12:19-20
OT – Deuteronomy 29:1-30:20
NT – Luke 11:37-12:7

Boy meets girl, what happens next? Usually, they’re both going to try to make a good impression. What happens from there is anyone’s guess.

Prospective worker meets potential boss, what happens next? Usually, they’re both going to try to make a good impression. What happens from there is, again, up in the air.

Pastor meets congregant, what happens next?

Good impressions are not only part of the secular world. Believers like to make a good impression on people, too. Not only do we want to make a good impression—we want people to like us! I can’t think of anyone who would prefer to be despised rather than liked.

But what happens is that we begin to make an idol out of our reputations and our relationships. We want people to like and appreciate us so much that we will sin to get their approval, or else we’ll sin if we don’t get it. And often, the way that we sin to get people’s approval is that we stop being honest. All of us already have sin in our lives; those of us who need other people’s approval and appreciation add yet another sin—we hide the sin that’s already there rather than bringing it into the light, humbly and honestly confessing our sins and repenting of them before God.

A love of men’s approval and respect that rules over all other loves, including our love for God, is deadly. Jesus talked with the Pharisees about this issue in their lives:

Woe to you Pharisees! For how you love the seats of honor in the synagogues and the respectful greetings from everyone as you walk through the markets! Yes, awesome judgment is awaiting you. For you are like hidden graves in a field. Men go by you with no knowledge of the corruption they are passing. – Luke 11:43-44, The Living Bible

Are you pretending to be someone you’re not? Are you covering over your shame in order to deceive people? Don’t get me wrong—it’s not a good idea to give people detail after detail about our sins. But we must be honest about the fact that we are sinners, and even help people know what kinds of struggles we face and ask for their help and prayer. We must deny the temptation to create a false image of ourselves, to paint a picture that says we have everything under control. The only way to keep our hearts clean is to deliberately and honestly admit who we are, how we think, what we want, the things we do. The best way to lead others to know God is not to portray ourselves as people who never sin, but as people who have learned to confess our sins in humble honesty before God, finding the grace that He has already provided for us through Jesus Christ.

Are you honestly cleaning out the corruption in your heart by confessing your sins and having them washed away by the blood of Christ? Or are you harboring your sins, refusing to confess and repent of anything for fear of what people might think?

To review the Bible reading plan options, please visit http://tinyurl.com/yj2o7jz.

When Satan Wins

ALL – Psalm 69:19-36
ALL – Proverbs 12:2-3
OT – Deuteronomy 9:1-10:22
NT – Luke 8:4-21

Which people can Satan keep out of heaven?

Yikes! That’s not a fun question, for sure. But in one of Jesus’ parables, it seems like it’s a reality for some people that Satan can actually take Jesus’ words out of certain people’s hearts. What’s this mean? How does this work?

Well, as Jesus was explaining his parable, this is what He said:

The hard path where some seed fell represents the hard hearts of those who hear the words of God, but then the devil comes and steals the words away and prevents people from believing and being saved. – Luke 8:12, The Living Bible

Satan’s ability to steal God’s words away from people’s hearts is related to their hearts’ condition. And the kind of hearts that Satan can steal God’s words from are hardened hearts.

The next question is whether we have hardened hearts or not. And to be honest, some who are reading this may have hardened hearts. It’s a real spiritual heart condition, so the chances are that some of us really have this condition. But who? Who has a hardened heart? Who is vulnerable to Satan’s thievery of God’s Word?

Well, Hebrews 3:13 gives us a clue. It says, “But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness” (NIV). Hardening comes from sin. Specifically, it comes from the deceitfulness of sin. Sin is deceptive. Even as we sin, we convince ourselves that we’re ok. Initially, sin deceives us by saying, “It was just a little sin. I’m not really such a bad person. At least I didn’t do what so-and-so did the other day.” And because we’re listening to our sins rather than God’s words, our hearts are hardened against hearing God’s words. And the sins get worse. And the deception gets worse. And eventually it no longer matters to us whether we’re listening to God or not, or even whether we’re good or not.

A hard heart won’t even consider God’s words. They don’t sink in at all. And Satan doesn’t have a hard time quickly snatching God’s words away from a heart that isn’t trying to listen to God.

Have you been ignoring God, believing sin, believing its lies, following its enticements? Your heart is all the more vulnerable to Satan’s work of snatching God’s words of life away from you. Salvation’s chances of taking root are lowered.

Find believers. Listen to their encouragements. Do what they encourage. Follow God and His commands. Be willing to be good. And then listen. Listen to God. Soak His words deeply into your life. God’s words will produce life in you.

To review the Bible reading plan options, please visit http://tinyurl.com/yj2o7jz.

He Did It!...Or Did He?

ALL – Psalm 68:1-18
ALL – Proverbs 11:28
OT – Deuteronomy 4:1-49
NT – Luke 6:39-7:10

I find that adults really haven’t grown up all that much. Not just a few of us. All of us.

Think about it. Watch some kids. See what happens when someone—anyone—tries to confront them about doing something wrong.

“I didn’t do it.”

“Michael did it.”

“Emma did it”

Or, if they’re at least willing to admit that they hit, or screamed at, or pulled another kid’s hair: “Emma made me.” “Michael made me.” “It wasn’t my fault.”

Adults do the same thing. We still seek to justify ourselves. We either seek to deny that we did anything wrong, or if we did something wrong, we STILL try to show people that it wasn’t our fault, that we have good hearts. Something happened, and we had to make the best of a bad situation. Someone else made us angry, and we responded wrongly. She seduced us and led us into adultery. We couldn’t help it!

It’s always someone else’s fault, someone else’s responsibility, someone else’s problem. Even if we admit our sin, in some way someone else’s sin or some outside situation is the real problem. Not us. Not our hearts. Not our choices.

Jesus puts that myth to rest:

A good man produces good deeds from a good heart. And an evil man produces evil deeds from his hidden wickedness. Whatever is in the heart overflows into speech. – Luke 6:45, The Living Bible

Whatever is in the heart overflows. Into speech, yes, but into deeds, too. This verse talks about both. Our hearts are the real problem. Yes, we may face terrible circumstances. We may even face terrible opponents. But the way we respond to them is not their decision. It’s ours. And the choice we make is, in each circumstance, the choice we most wanted to make. Of course we wouldn’t have chosen to commit our particular sin in a more comfortable setting! But in a painful, frustrating, or even scary setting, we acted the way we most wanted to act. And it revealed our hearts.

God is God not just when times are good. But when they’re bad. Do you think He gave us His Word to guide us only through the easy times of life? Of course not! As much as we need His guidance during the easy days, it’s the tough days where we really have to lean on His wisdom, His grace, His faithfulness, His righteousness. It’s the tough days—and the tough people—who help to reveal our hearts. But it’s not their fault our hearts are the way they are.

Let’s ask God to help us confess our sins, confess our wrong thoughts, confess our wrong desires, and confess our need for Him.

To review the Bible reading plan options, please visit http://tinyurl.com/yj2o7jz.

Tasting Words, Testing Hearts

ALL – Psalm 16:1-11
ALL – Proverbs 3:27-32
OT – Genesis 37:1-38:30
NT – Matthew 12:22-45

Jesus had just cast demons out of a man, demons that had been preventing the man from talking or seeing. Now the man was completely healed.

Most of the crowd was, rightly, amazed. They said things like, “Maybe Jesus is the Messiah” (Matthew 12:23, The Living Bible). But some people in the crowd hated Jesus’ ministry and, assuming that He couldn’t possibly be associated with God, said that Jesus was associated with Satan, instead. They said demons were listening to Jesus because Jesus represented their demon-king.

Some responded with good words. Some responded with bad words. Not that words ought to be measured merely by how kind they seem to be. As we’ll see in a moment, Jesus’ response to those speaking bad words doesn’t seem to be filled with good words.

You brood of snakes! How could evil men like you speak what is good and right? For a man’s heart determines his speech. A good man’s speech reveals the rich treasures within him. An evil-hearted man is filled with venom, and his speech reveals it. – Matthew 12:34-35, The Living Bible

Jesus starts off by calling them a brood of snakes! But then he criticizes them for revealing their evil hearts by their speech! What about His own speech, you might ask? What’s the difference? Isn’t Jesus returning insult for insult?

No. He’s not. Jesus’ words are designed to reveal the truth to the hearts of wicked men, while their words were designed merely to oppose Jesus by obscuring the truth. Their words opposed what was truly good; Jesus’ words revealed what was actually bad. So their words were evil. Jesus’ words were good.

When Jesus was calling men to speak what is good and right, He was calling them to speak the truth in love. His speech, even in response to the evil speech of his opponents, was the truth spoken in love, revealing precisely the kind of good heart Jesus had described. He wants us all to lovingly reveal the truth by our speech, and sometimes the truth won’t sound friendly.

But the goal is not to sound unfriendly. The goal is to lovingly tell the truth, rather than lying. If you must oppose people, do so from a pure heart. If you have to lie in order to make your point, then you’re trying to make a point that shouldn’t be made. Your character is at stake! And discerning people will know your heart when they hear your words.

Who has a clear example of this – either a clear example of a good person’s heart being revealed by amazingly good words, or of a bad person’s heart being revealed by evil words?

To review the Bible reading plan options, please visit http://tinyurl.com/yj2o7jz.

What Have We Done?

Zechariah 12-13; Psalm 147; Proverbs 31:1-7

How long has it been since you thought about the effects your actions have on others? And I’m not just talking about all the little consequences that play into the lives of our families and neighbors—though those matter, too.

But how long has it been since you’ve thought about the fact that your sins against God pierced the Lord Jesus Christ?

Do you care about Jesus? Do you love Him? Do you believe He loves you? Created you? Gave you life? Gave you food? Gave you breath? Do you believe He has only ever done good to you?

If Jesus is worth knowing at all, then it ought to matter to us how our decisions impact Him. And the painful truth is that we’ve pierced Him by our sins. If we love Him at all, at least, this truth should be painful. As people realize who Jesus is and what they have done, they will mourn:

And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son. – Zechariah 12:10, NIV

Does your heart mourn over what you’ve done against Jesus?