Christ Church

Assurance (Covenant Life Together #3)

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INTRODUCTION

Last week you were exhorted to be prepared to give a reason for the hope that is in you. But whenever we give our testimony, we will be cross-examined by somebody, and we will be asked, “How can you be sure . . .?” Perhaps you sometimes ask yourself these questions. And so we come to the matter of assurance.

THE TEXT

“He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son. And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God” (1 John 5:10–13).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

We can see from John 3:32 that the Son of God has the testimony (marturia). When we believe His testimony, we are acknowledging that He speaks the truth (v. 10). And so what is the testimony that He gives? It is both objective and subjective. This is the record (marturia)—God has given us eternal life, and has done so through His Son. Note that God’s testimony lands in our inner life. The objective side of it is that all life in in His Son (v. 12). If you have the Son, you therefore have life. If you do not have the Son, you do not have life. These things were written, not so that we might be tormented with uncertainty, but rather so that we might know (assurance) that we have eternal life, and that we might know this because we believe on the name of the Son of God (v. 13).

TWO EXTREMES

Now if it is true that not every person baptized into the visible church is saved, and that istrue, then the obvious question becomes “how can we tell the difference between those who truly have the testimony, and those who simply say that they do?” It is a most reasonable question, but that has not kept many people from doing many unreasonable things with it.

There are two extremes to avoid—one is to assume that if your baptismal papers are in order, then you are automatically in, as though the kingdom of God were like a purebred line of golden retrievers. The other extreme is to flinch whenever sin is mentioned and question your salvation at every little thing. And often, ecclesiastical professionals will manipulate both tendencies for their own profit. Don’t give way to either temptation.

THAT YOU MAY KNOW

Going back to 1 John 5:13, if we have the Son, if we have eternal life, God wants us to know that we do.

DOUBTS AND QUESTIONS

There is a vast difference between doubts and questions. Doubts can never be answered in principle because they are phrased like this: “What if . . .?” Questions have answers. They can be posed, you follow it out, and you learn something. Here is the difference. Suppose a happily married woman suddenly has a panic attack out of nowhere. “What if my husband is cheating on me?” The only appropriate answer to this is “what if he isn’t?” That is quite different from a wife asking “who is the blonde in the red convertible out front, the one who is honking for you, who is that?” That’s a question.

BIBLICAL MARKS OF REJECTION

 We are not to over-engineer this. In the context of a biblical community, the burden of proof is on the one who insists upon excluding himself. Note two things about a particular way of living “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these . . . they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:19, 21). It is manifest who will not inherit the kingdom.

BIBLICAL MARKS OF ADOPTION

 We are supposed to make our calling and election sure (2 Pet. 1:10). We are supposed to examine ourselves to see if we are truly in the faith (2 Cor. 13:5). This can be done without morbid introspection. But how? Keep in mind that in all that follows, it is not so much what you look to as the way you look to it. Baptism, Bible, etc.

  • We saw in 1 John 5:13 that we are to believe on the name of Jesus. We are to hold fast to Jesus Christ (Rom. 10:9). This is the foundation of everything else. Do you trust in Jesus?
  • “Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit” (1 John 4:13). The Spirit is given as a guarantee (Eph. 1:13-14; 2 Cor. 5:5-6). The Spirit is given to us as an assurance. How do we know we have the Spirit? He grows things (Gal. 5:22-23; Eph. 5:9). He kills things (Rom. 8:13).
  • “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death” (1 John 3:14). What is your attitude toward those you know love God? Do you want to be with them, or are you repelled by them?
  • “And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3). Jesus says that a mark of true conversion is humility of mind, becoming like a little child.
  • “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby: If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious” (1 Pet. 2:2–3). A marked characteristic of life is hunger—in this case, hunger for the Word.
  • “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18). There are two kinds of people in the world—those who are perishing and to whom the cross makes no sense, and those who are saved, to whom it does.
  • “And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments” (1 John 2:3). Here is another explicit statement of how we know. We know because we obey Him.
  • “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth” (Heb. 12:6). But the previous mark should not be clutched in a false perfectionism. We do still sin. But what happens then is another mark of true conversion.

THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER

What is the conclusion of the matter? We are saved by the grace of God in Christ, plus nothing (Eph. 2:8-9). We are not saved by good works. But we are saved to good works (Eph. 2:10).

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The Man of Sin (2 Thessalonians #3)

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INTRODUCTION

And now we come to the challenging passage, the one I have been warning you about. Who is the man of sin? What temple are we talking about? Who is the one who prevents this from happening? Good questions all.

THE TEXT

“Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thess. 2:1–12)

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

Paul pleads with the Thessalonians in the name of the Lord’s coming (v. 1), that they not be unsettled through thinking that the final events were happening right then (v. 2). The day of Christ will not come unless the man of sin comes first (v. 3). This man of sin will set himself up in the Temple as God (v. 4). Paul had already explained all this to them (v. 5). Some mysterious power is holding this lawless one back (vv. 6-7). Then the lawless one will be revealed in order to be destroyed by the Final Coming of Christ (v. 8). He will be destroyed despite his ability to work miracles (v. 9). Those who love the truth will be saved in the truth, and those who love the lie will be damned in the lie (vv. 10-12).

THE CHALLENGES

The description here appears to include the Final Coming of Christ, which is still in our future. The coming of the Lord (parousia) could be His coming in judgment on Jerusalem, except that the phrase “our gathering to him” is used. And the man of sin who exalts himself as God will be consumed by the Spirit of the Lord’s mouth and destroyed by the brightness of the Lord’s coming. All this certainly sounds like the final eschaton.

But then what is the temple of God here? The Jewish temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. So if the man of sin set himself up there, then these events would be in the distant past and not a description of the Final Coming. This is one of the reasons why dispensationalists argue that the Temple must be rebuilt. Another argument is that the Temple is the Christian church, and that this false teacher who claims to be God is something like a wicked pope.

A BASIC PATTERN

Realize that Paul is telling the Thessalonians not to think that these events are right on top of them (v. 2). Don’t be unsettled, he says. A number of other things need to happen first. There needs to be an apostasy, a falling away first (v. 3). There needs to be a miracle-working false teacher (v. 9), one who claims to be God (v. 4). He needs to be enthroned in the Temple (v. 4).

At the same time, Paul argues that the spirit of all such things is already at work in his day (v. 7). He says that there is an unnamed external power that is restraining the outbreak of this lawless one (vv. 6-7). He says that the mystery of iniquity is already at work (v. 7), and is pushing against that which restrains it.

So here is my understanding of all this (the third option in the previous message). The events that happened just a decade or so before this, when Caligula attempted to set up a statue of himself in the Temple, was the kind of thing Paul was talking about, but was not the event itself. It was the spirit that was already at work, but was not the final convulsion of mankind’s sin. That is yet in our future, and Paul teaches us that it will run along the same lines. The advance of the kingdom of God is all part of the same long war. It is a protracted conflict, and it is all the same conflict. We are two thousand years after this prediction from Paul, but when Jesus preached to the spirits who were rebellious at the time of Noah (1 Pet. 3:19-20), He was 2400 years after the Flood. And it was all still relevant.

History is a river, not a string of ponds.

GOD-GIVEN DELUSION

The issues are therefore perennial, and they come down to every man and every woman, every boy and every girl. Those who have their pleasure in unrighteousness, and who reject the truth because they did not love it, are going to be sent something that lines up with what they love and hate. This passage says that God will send them a strong delusion so that they should believe a lie. And why is this? It is because they loved the lie. It is because they did not love the truth. Salvation is a function of loving the truth. Damnation is a function of loving a lie, preeminently the lies you tell yourself. Self-deception is the prince of all deception, and so God sends all such a strong delusion. The wrath of God is seen in this, when God gives people over to what they have loved all along.

And the one who causes delusions to evaporate is a preached Christ. And He is a preached Christ only because He is a crucified Christ, and a buried Christ, and a risen Christ. He is the truth, and He is preached. Do you love Him? If not, then the strong delusion is already resting upon you. If so, then you are loving the truth, by which you are saved.

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The Shepherd

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THE TEXT

““Most assuredly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.” Jesus used this illustration, but they did not understand the things which He spoke to them…” (John 10).

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How to Give Your Testimony

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INTRODUCTION

The message today is on being ready to give an answer for the hope that is in you, and in particular, being ready to give your testimony. By God’s grace we are seeking to live together in this place and time such that we provoke questions and accusations, and we want the center of our answer to be a testimony of Christ in us.

THE TEXT

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear: having a good conscience; that whereas they speak evil of you, as of evil doers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ” (1 Pet. 3:15-16).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

The first task of preparing to give your testimony is to sanctify the Lord God in your heart (1 Pet. 3:15). You most revere God there. You must honor Him as Your Lord and Master. It is that reverence that drives you readiness to give an answer (1 Pet. 3:15). Notice that the center of our answer is a “hope” that is in us (1 Pet. 3:15). Christian hope is not light and fluffy optimism. Rather, Christian hope is a joyful, gritty patience expectant for glory (Rom. 5:1-5, 15:4, 13). The answer we give is to be done with meekness and fear, which is what grows when you set the Lord apart in your heart (1 Pet. 3:15). Having a good conscience doesn’t mean sinless, but it does mean forgiven, clean, and put right (1 Pet. 3:16). And you know you’re doing this correctly when their accusations only fall back on themselves in shame (1 Pet. 3:16). If you are feeling shame, either you don’t have a clean conscience or else you don’t understand how God makes you clean (1 Jn. 1:9). And remember “a good conversation in Christ” has never stopped people from making false accusations (1 Pet. 3:16). Jesus said that the false accusations come precisely because you follow Christ (Mt. 5:11, Jn. 15:18-21).

SANCTIFY GOD IN YOUR HEART

As you know, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19). It is holy space because God lives there. But our bodies are not generic temples, they are unique and varied. And think about your body as the shape of your entire life. That shape comes from God working particular stories of grace in each one. This is Paul’s testimony: “And last of all he [Jesus] was seen of me also, as one born out of due time. For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me” (1 Cor. 15:8-10, cf. 1 Tim. 1:14-16). The first task of sanctifying God in your heart is simply submitting to Him as a holy God, admitting your sin, and turning to Christ in principle. But then you have to do the same thing in particular with everything in your life: your parents, your childhood, your vocation, your spouse, your children, and everything else, including your failures, weaknesses, trials, and sin. Your testimony is telling how the holy God has been at work, how you have contributed sin, how Christ has forgiven and restored, and all by His grace in order to display His grace in you.

IN PRAISE OF BORING TESTIIMONIES

You have heard us say before that we are aiming for boring testimonies for our children in our community. What we mean by that is that by the grace of God, we want our children growing up in the faith of their parents and embracing it, with faithfulness passing from generation to generation like runners in an Olympic relay race. By faith and God’s great grace, we want our children growing up in Christ, which will often mean that they don’t remember the exact moment when they first trusted in Him. And by that same grace, we pray that our children will never know a time when they were not walking with God. It is glorious to always walk with God, to have no rebellious phases. Some Christian traditions so emphasize the dramatic conversion story (biker gang rebellion followed by Damascus Road experience), that it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. And kids who grow up only hearing those kinds of conversion stories wonder how they could possibly be a Christian since they haven’t even started selling drugs yet. But Scripture is full of ordinary covenant conversions: John the Baptist was filled with the Spirit in his mother’s womb (Lk. 1), David learned to trust God on his mother’s breast (Ps. 22:9), Samuel came to know the Lord as young boy (1 Sam. 3), and Timothy was taught the scriptures from his youth (2. Tim. 3:15). We want a culture of cultivating and encouraging faith.

BUT NOT REALLY BORING

Nevertheless, and even celebrating the ordinary “boring” testimonies of our children, we really must run back around the other side and insist that there are no boring testimonies. This is because amount of sin is not what makes a testimony amazing or powerful, but rather, the amount of grace. How much grace was needed for your salvation? Every son or daughter of Adam deserved death and Hell, and therefore, every Christian was purchased with the infinite price of the blood of Jesus. There is nothing boring about that. And when we say “grace,” we mean the presence of the Father beaming at the work of His Son in you, sealed and secured by the Spirit. The Triune God is the most extravagant, adventurous, creative, brilliant, gracious Being of all. If He is present, nothing is boring, nothing is ordinary. To sanctify this God in your heart is to see the presenceof this God in your life. Every salvation is also a salvation to an unspeakable glory. Eye has not seen, ear has not heard what God has prepared for those who love Him (1 Cor. 2:9). The process of a Red Wood sapling growing up into a towering tree may not look explosive, dramatic, or glorious in any given snapshot, but if you could see the whole thing from God’s perspective – all the atoms firing over decades, it would make you close your mouth with awe. And that is the hope that is in you.

CONCLUSION

Everyone in this room who knows Jesus has a testimony of His grace. For many of you, it is a testimony of growing up surrounded by the grace of loving parents, sibling, teachers, and friends. But do not take that grace for granted. Perhaps you do not remember when you first believed, but you should absolutely remember times when you have believed more. Maybe you don’t remember the first time you were forgiven, but you absolutely should remember many subsequent times when you were convicted of sin, confessed, and were cleansed. Maybe you don’t remember the first answered prayer, but do you remember the many others? Maybe don’t remember the first time His word encouraged you or helped you during a trial, but do you remember many others? That is your testimony, that is the hope that is in you. Christ is in you.

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Confession of Sin (Covenant Life Together #2)

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INTRODUCTION

Confession of sin is a basic activity that all Christians need to understand and practice. It is the most fundamental form of spiritual housekeeping. There is no way for us to maintain covenant life together without this sort of understanding being woven into the fabric of our community.

THE TEXT

“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” (1 John 1:8-10)

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

If we decide to lie to ourselves, then obviously the truth is not in us (v. 8). One of the lies we like to tell ourselves is the lie that our current condition is “normal,” and that we have no sin. Or at least we have no sin to speak of. John tells us that this is self-deception, period. And if we lie in this way, we are making God into a liar (because He says we have sinned), and His word is obviously not in us—a lie is (v. 10). The meat of this sandwich is in verse 9, but these two pieces of bread make it a sandwich. Don’t kid yourself, John is saying—we all need to hear this. In the ninth verse, John gives us a conditional statement. If we confess our sins, God will do something. The word for confess is homologeo, and literally means “to speak the same thing.” If we say the same thing about our sin that God says about it (i.e. that it is sin), then God will do what He promises. What is that? God will be faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and He will cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

TWO HOUSES

Imagine two mothers with a robust family—six kids each, let’s say. One home is bombed all the time and the other is spotless. The difference between the two homes is not that in the second home nothing is ever spilled, or knocked over, or left on the coffee table. The difference between the home that is trashed and the home that isn’t is the difference between leaving things there “for the present,” and picking them up right away.

Given God’s promise above, we need to recognize what this means. The promise is good on Monday mornings, and Thursday afternoons. The promise is good in May, and good in October. That means there is never a legitimate reason for refusing to deal with it now. The vacuum cleaner is never broken, never at the shop, never too far away, never too hard to operate. The word is near you, in your heart and in your mouth. “God, what I just said . . . that was sin.” That is confession. And God’s promise is fulfilled at that moment.

TANGLEFOOT

The writer to the Hebrews describes what sin does when you leave it unattended. It starts to trip you up—it starts to really get in the way. “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us . . .” (Heb. 12:1). Sin clutters, sin gets in the way, sin weighs you down, sin gets tangled around your feet. Set it aside we are told, and then run the race. You can’t run the race with a two-hundred-pound backpack on. You cannot run the race with snarls of rope tangled around your feet. Stop trying to be good with unconfessed sin in your life. It just makes you more irritable than you already are. John tells us how to get untangled. Don’t try to do that and run at the same time. Get completely untangled, take off the backpack, and then run.

CLUTTER AND BACKLOG

Let’s change the image. Suppose you haven’t cleaned the garage for twenty years, and you are overwhelmed at the very thought of trying to straighten it out. Every time you go open the door, you just stare helplessly for about five minutes, and then go back inside. All you can think of to do is pray for a fire. Now suppose that is what your pile of unconfessed sin looks like. You are tempted to think that you have to remember everything that is in there first, and then set about cleaning it up.

But you don’t have to remember the sins you don’t remember—just confess the ones you do remember. The ones you stuffed just inside the garage door just last week. Don’t try to remember what is at the bottom of the pile; just look at what is on the top of the pile. If you deal with the sin you know about honestly, then God will cleanse you from all unrighteousness. The confessing is your job; the cleansing is His.

HONESTY

The central virtue here that of honesty. No blowing smoke at God. No spin control. No attempts to make yourself the flawed hero in this tragic affair. We saw that homologeo means to speak the same. If God calls it adultery, don’t you call it an affair or indiscretion. If God calls it grumbling and complaining, don’t you call it realism. If God calls it theft, don’t you call it shrewd business practice. As the Puritans might have put it, had they only thought of it, bs and honest confession accord not well together.

A FEW PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS

This is not meant to sound flippant. Sin is a ravening wolf, and has destroyed many things. If you have held back from confessing your sins because you know that to do so could threaten your marriage, or cost you your job, or get you expelled from college, you really do have a significant practical problem. I am not saying you should charge off and start confessing your sin like a loose cannon on deck. But you should decide today to deal with it honestly, and depending on how tangled up it is, get counsel and help today in putting things right. Commit yourself now. Busting yourself is the best thing you can do to rebuild trust with those you may have wronged.

And last, allow me to consider your feelings. You may feel like a hesitant cliff-diver, toes curled over the edge, and here I am poking you in the back with a stick. There are any number of things you might want to do—anything but jump. You might rationalize. “What I did wasn’t really wrong.” You might excuse. “What I did was not started by me.” You might postpone. “In my honest opinion, the best day for jumping will be sometime tomorrow afternoon.” You might blame somebody else, anybody else. “I think they should be here jumping, not me.” You might use vague terms to try jumping sideways along the cliff edge. “I think that, generally speaking, I have certainly sinned in some ways.”

It is easy to dismiss this kind of emphasis as morbid introspectionism, but actually it is the opposite. If you confess your sins, and lay aside the weight of that backpack, you never have to think about it again. Now, with it unconfessed, you think about it frequently.

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