Great Themes of the Kingdom: Temptation & Sin, 2/14/16

Sermon 2-14-16 temptation and sin              Gal 5:13-18

¹³ You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh^[a]; rather, serve one another humbly in love. ¹⁴ For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”^[b] 15 If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.¹⁶ So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.¹⁷ For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever^[c] you want. ¹⁸ But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

Series- kingdom themes – sin and temptation

imagine a discussion of sin that was hopeful, not hateful……

We know about sin….. we get it.  Catholics in northern England have a mobile confessional.

Sin – why we don’t talk about it

          Specifics vs selfishness – tax evasion/gluttony/gossip

Living in character of Jesus holds us together – in him are all things held together

 ¹⁷ He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Col 1:17

Sin fragments a life

It is unnatural

We know that intrinsically eccl 3 – he has set eternity in their hearts

Sociopaths

Nature of the gospel

·         I talk to people all the time whose minds are so worried about sin
Honestly, it hurt to listen to it all. 

·         Here is another fine person who has been raised on the gospel of how bad everyone is. 

·         Many American churches have fed this to our people for so long that it is hard to overcome. 

·        It is hard to help people that are infected with this to see the truth.

How do you want to raise your children… filled with fear and worry or filled with love

·        
On this I will stand to my dying day- A gospel based on sin is not good news. 

·         The gospel of Jesus Christ does not begin with sin, it begins with love.  God so loved the world that he gave. 

·        Of course we are sinners, but we do a disservice to our Father and to ourselves when we spend our lives focusing on how bad of sinners we are instead of the amazing mercy and love of God.

In fact, when we spend too much time talking about our sin, the focus is on us.  It's about us.  When we talk about God's love, the focus is on Him and he gets the glory.  The gospel of Jesus Christ begins with love not sin.  We need to Get that.

your image of God will say everything about how you live your life

if you think god is angry and judgemental- you will live in fear and distress

if you think that god is loving and merciful, then you can live with joy

          pay your money, take your choice

          if you hang your hat on the angry god scriptures you can have an angry god

          but there are so many scriptures on love

jesus talked about the abundant life

jn 10:10 ¹⁰ The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. [have it more abundantly]

punishment - Sometimes people say, O, God is punishing me for my sins
If we got what we deserve, none of us would be here.
Do you think you can bear the burden of your sin?

E Stanley jones says

God doesn’t punish us for sin, sin is its own punishment

sin the great deciever

is a great deceiver. It always promises what it cannot deliver. The end result is pain.

list of Temptations of us

What are our primary temptations? My list

To covet.  To want more.  

Pride - To want it to go our way. Don’t challenge me.  I want to be in charge. To demean others, to brag, my dog is bigger than your dog

Sloth - To want the easy way - To quit, to give up, to wallow, to worry, to cheat

Revenge-To act w retribution.  Eye for an eye.To hurt back

It seems that it all boils down to what we want

I am the center of it

There is a sin that I think of every time I come back from a mission trip.  It is the sin of forgetting.

We go, and we see, and we think, how can it be like this?  We have so much, they have so little.  It is very easy for us to fall back into our comfortable life, and forget the people that God has called us to love.

is God trying to make our lives difficult?
Why is God against this stuff?

"it's not that God doesn't want you to have fun, God is against sin because it is bad for you.".

Why is God against this stuff?

1. god wants to save us from the pain

it is bad for us -
succumbing to temptation leads to brokenness and guilt

you were convinced that it would be ok, but now you see it hurts

the farmer who picks up the snake – you knew what I was when you picked me up

A few words about Judging others -
judging others Only the holy spirit convicts of sin

It is not our job to condemn others

It is gods job to talk w them about their lives

And he does it with the most gracious and loving ways

The job of the church is to catch them first, then clean them

·         Someone suggested in a facebook post the other day that the purpose of the church is to point out sin or call out sin.

·         While I do believe in sin and I have personal experience with it, this is not the job of the church or the job of the Christian.  

·         That is God's job and God's alone.  

·         When we point the finger at others, all we do is come across as hateful.  There is nothing Christian about that.  

·         We end up driving away the very people that we would have hoped to have won.

·         Over and over Jesus dealt with sinners with grace and compassion.  

·         The only people he crushed were those who were crushing others, the Pharisees.  ,

·         too many modern Christians sound more like the Pharisees and not enough like Jesus.

  

When we think of sin, we think of repentance – turn from turn towards

Repentance means to turn around.  To stop one action or behavior and turn to another. 

We tend to think of repentance as turning from sin.  But, what do we turn towards? 
I repent.  I want to stop the bad behavior, but I also want to move towards the great lover of my soul.

jesus in my heart or me in jesus heart

our mission statement – connecting jesus to me? no its connecting people to Jesus

master blaster……

we have left every thing to follow you…

Mt 19:27

²⁷ Peter answered him, “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?”

so lets end this painful sermon

First, lets admit that everyone has a dark side. All have sinned

Second, regardless of what you have done, no one is beyond hope. That is the great hope of the Christian message. No amount or depth of sin in your past can trump the grace of God.

If you question that remember Saul of Tarsus.

Third, even though your past is soiled, anyone can find a new beginning with God. It is never too late

whatever you are facing, God will make a way for you to get out of it
You do not have to succumb habitually

fight temptations-
1Put your mind somewhere else
2Make good choices-

-avoid compromising situations
-Don’t put yourself in positions of temptation

3stay connected to Christian friends
find new friends

4pray read scriptures [find words of hope]
Jesus is tempted in the wilderness Mt 4 - how did he counter? by the word

5Call upon the name of the Lord for strength
take it to Jesus
lord give me strength

We have a resolution for our sin, Jesus Christ the righteous

1 john 2:1-2 My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. ² He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

So We have hope in Christ
and so we turn to him. We throw ourselves upon him.  We trust in him

one day, one step at at time

– lets pray.

We All Have a Story to Tell: Peter & Cornelius, 3/15/15

Mar 15     Acts 10:1-15         Title:  Transformation- Peter and Cornelius

10 At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian Regiment. ² He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly.³ One day at about three in the afternoon he had a vision. He distinctly saw an angel of God, who came to him and said, “Cornelius!” ⁴ Cornelius stared at him in fear. “What is it, Lord?” he asked. The angel answered, “Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God. ⁵ Now send men to Joppa to bring back a man named Simon who is called Peter. ⁶ He is staying with Simon the tanner, whose house is by the sea.” ⁷ When the angel who spoke to him had gone, Cornelius called two of his servants and a devout soldier who was one of his attendants. ⁸ He told them everything that had happened and sent them to Joppa. ⁹ About noon the following day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. ¹⁰ He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance.¹¹ He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. ¹² It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds. ¹³ Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.” ¹⁴ “Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.” ¹⁵ The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

Invisible dog fence.  Do you have one?

I have never had an invisible dog.

My neighbors saved greyhounds….. one time, their dog got away.

What do greyhounds do?........... they run.

Fast and far.  He said it was miles before they caught him

Sermon series on change and transformation

Real change is difficult.

We think of change as me choosing jesus

So we change our beliefs. And we become right with god

And we think we are right about everything

The world is filled with Christian know it alls

Jim shrieves story.  I was once the manager of a shop.

Insisted that they listened to Christian radio.

Sometimes the only way that you learn to stop judging people is to see how much you are hurting them.

The law and grace- its still around.  Many people still hold up the law – their law over grace

What if you are not right?

Who made me God

Jenny and being boss of the world

God invites us to change the way that we think

This is painful change

Cornelius

A godly man who does not know jesus.

Not a Christian.  Not a jew.

What?? How can this be?

God ways must be higher than our ways.

Wanting to be a part of a thing when you know you are excluded

Hoping for reconciliation with God

Seeking god.

An angel appears to him

Yet, He is being judged by peter.  His is a gentile.  He is not worthy

Isn’t that crazy?

The nature of judgment

Dualism……..our need to separate the good from the bad and make value judgments.

When we do this we can no longer love people

Love the sinner, hate the sin

Usually ends up feeling like hatred to the “sinner”

¹⁸ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’¹⁹ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.”  Mt 11:18-19

Wisdom is proved right by her deeds

In life there are two paths.  There is the natural human path.  It is the way of self.  Self protection, self centeredness, and self importance.  It ultimately is the way of complaint, retribution, anger and rage.

The other path is the way of grace.  It is the path of forgiveness.  It is the path of love.  It is the path that calls us to see life through the eyes of another. Those who choose the way of grace are always glad that they did.

Dualism is antagonistic – you always have to choose sides – comparing one idea to another.

Jews in, gentiles out

Paul resolves the opposition.

Jews and Greeks, male and female – all are welcome

We should take a lesson from Paul on this topic

Judging others is a sin.

When we see others who we think are sinning, there are several things that we don’t know.

1.   We don’t know how hard he or she tried to avoid the situation

2.   We don’t know the power of what they are facing

3.   We don’t know what we would do in the same situation

Judging others is a sin

Lets look at romans 1 and 2.

Romans 1. A long list of sins.  People use it to point out others faults.

That is not why paul wrote it.

Read chpt 2:1

2 You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.

The point of the list of sins isn’t for us to judge others, it is so that in our smugness, paul can say,  look, you are just as bad.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

but we like to use such lists to point out the good ones and the bad ones.

Judging others is a sin.

One time a bishop was on a trip to the holy land.  He was randomly assigned a stranger as a room mate. After going to see the accommodations, he came up to the front desk and inquired if he could leave his gold watch and other valuables in the hotel safe. He explained that ordinarily he never availed himself of that privilege, but he had been to his room and had met the man who was to occupy the other bed. Judging from his appearance, he was afraid that he might not be a very trustworthy person. The clerk accepted the responsibility for the valuables and remarked, 'It's all right, bishop, I'll be very glad to take care of them for you. The other man has been up here and left his valuables for the same reason!'"

I had a thought last week about helping homeless people and judging them.

When we help others, but judge them – we rob them of the greatest gift.

“here is a dollar, go get a job.  Here is a sandwich, go shave.”

What if we just helped the poor and didn’t judge them?

Jesus did not say, I was hungry or thirsty for reasons beyond my control, and you fed me.  He doesn't qualify the worthiness of the person who receives the help.  He simply says, I was hungry and you fed me.

Part of the holiness of helping the homeless is in the helping them.  The other part of the holiness is not judging them for why they are the way that they are.

But for the grace of God go I

Prayerful, Contemplative mind is non-dualistic

Dale dorst- lets just see how it turns out

These are the ones that do not judge

These are the ones who are turning the world upside down.

Who is in and who is out?  Here is a moment of awakening

Every pastor is asked.  Who is in and who is out?

I like to answer, I am not in charge of who gets in and who gets out

The world would be a kindler and gentler place if more people realized they were not in charge of who gets in

Odd………the very person that peter thought was out, was being talked to by an angel……….

Ramifications for us – judge a person w tattoos? A muslim?  Maybe god is talking to them……

Peter

Thinking we have it all right

We don’t have it all right

Being so arrogant as to fight with god over our ideas

Jews are not allowed to visit the homes or eat with non jews

King James Version……….

¹⁴ But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean.

¹⁵ And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.

Imagine god saying this to you……..

How dare you!  What I have called clean, what I have loved, you will not call unclean.

3x the vision is given.

What will it take to get God idea through your thick skull?

Love is indiscriminate……..

The shade of a tree, the scent of a rose, the light of a lamp go out to all

So Gods love goes out to all

This is a great moment for peter.  He gets over himself and goes to Cornelius home.

Doesn’t preach a rousing sermon

God is already there.

The holy spirit falls upon them.

There is no record of Cornelius accepting peters message.

He is already accepted by god

The vision that God gave to peter is still around, and guess what.  God wants to give it to us.  What will it take for us to get over ourselves?

Judging Others 2 Kings 2:23-25 8-30-98

2 Kings 2:23-25

The moral of this story is clear -- don't make fun of people who are losing their hair. They may be God's people, there may be trouble in it for you.

The moral is clear -- be careful about judging others. Elisha was God's man; he just came from doing a miracle...be careful.

There's a particular United Methodist minister who I did not care for -- his ways, his benefits, his politics. This week I heard Mayor Emanuel Cleaver speak. You may not like his politics, but I have a new respect for the work of God in his life.

The boys bashed Elisha, I judged the mayor, who have you held in contempt?

From the "only one thing at a time" department: when we judge, we waste our time, doing evil. We spend our time doing evil, when we could be doing good.

When we look at God's people and say "What is wrong with them?" -- we are implying that something is wrong with God!

We demean others to the detriment of ourselves. We may not be mauled by bears, but there is trouble ahead for those who sow negative seeds. People don't need to be judged or demeaned, they need to be loved and affirmed, to be believed in.

Prov. 12:25 "Heaviness in the heart of man maketh it stoop; but a good word maketh it glad." Jesus took a ragtag bunch of fault-laden fellows and made them into a group that changed the world. Take Peter -- cuts off a soldier's ear, denies Jesus 3 times.....what does Jesus see? "Upon this rock, upon people like this, I will build my church."

What is God calling you to do? Do it. Do not be deterred by those around you. It's important to bring a word of encouragement to share love. Babies wither without love; so do adults. We need someone to believe in us, and those around you need someone to believe in them.

Yet when it comes to how we treat one another, we have a way to go yet. Use your day, use your time, to build others up, not to tear them down. People tend to rise to the top when they know that someone believes in them. I want you to know today that I believe in you, as individuals and as a church. I believe in who we are, I believe in where we are going.

So, lay off the old guys, the slow guys, the mean guys, the guys you don't understand, the bald guys. For they may be one of God's guys. Find some way to show them that you care, that you believe in what God may be trying to do in them. Amen.

Examining Our Hearts Matthew 7:1-5 10-3-04

Mt 7:1-5 Examining our hearts Oct 3, 2004

Projection….primary means of self defense
the externalization of blame, guilt, or responsibility as a defense against anxiety
its not me, its you…its not me, its anyone

Judging discussion, beg the question of relativism
Is everything ok? Are there no wrongs anymore?
No
You can love the person without condoning their actions
The judging does not come in the disagreeing, but in the
condemning attitude

Do not judge….why
1. you may be wrong
2. you don’t know anything about them
1884 - Harvard, Stanford 26 million dollars
3. it hurts them
a pastor of a church in Fort Worth, Texas, tells of two of his closest friends, Jean and William Tucker. William is Chancellor at Texas Christian University. An article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram featured their coming to terms with the fact that Jean's oldest nephew had died of AIDS. Rather than try to hide the tragedy, Jean said, "I am going to make this public. " The nephew was an artist. The Tuckers had some of his paintings in their home. They loved him dearly. But what made Jean decide to tell the story was that following her nephew's death, someone came to her, trying to bring comfort. The person said, "I am so sorry." Jean thanked the person. Then the person asked, "What did he die of?" Jean replied, "He died of AIDS." Then the other person said, "I'm sorry, ... anyway."
4. shows your self-righteous attitude
two men on a boat, will share a cabin…….
5. it derails your primary mission, which is the transformation of you

Pharisee and the publican
Publican, common person, knew what it was about,
not others, but me & God
9To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: 10"Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee stood up and prayed about[1] himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.' 13"But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' 14"I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." Luke 18

Paul said….when you come to the table, let a person examine themselves

1 Corinthians 11:28A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup

We are going to remember the event that delivers reconciliation
The moment that heals all man kind
Are you ready, will you take the process seriously

Today, take some time, look inside, open yourself to the power of the Holy Spirit to change your life
Confess your sin
Throw yourself on the grace of God
Ask for forgiveness
Receive again the blood of Christ to cover your sin
Receive the power of the holy spirit

Two Levels of Thinking Proverbs 21:2 8-25-02

Sermon 8-25-02 Prov 21:2
Every man’s way seems right in his own eyes, but God judges the hearts

Vacation/trip wanted to come home….missed you
Went to church…..dry, hungry. Sat night….so glad to be back at WCC

Caring about others….how we talk, show empathy, giving, today conclu…
The source of caring…how we think….no conclusion to caring about others.

learning to think differently/hope begins when we commit to open our minds

Babies…selfish…lifelong learning process
Process of new thinking is ongoing, doesn’t end with giving life to Christ
It just begins

Isaiah 55: 8-9 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Paul…Romans 7:14-25

2 levels of thinking
Addiction/Dysfunction/Darkness/don’t like to admit to others or self
drink, somke, drugs, gamble, eating, working, shopping, sex, sports, hobbies, beauty,

Yes you can 2nd guess yourself too much…
I have a brainsurgeon friend….no second guessing please
but that is not our problem
We are on auto pilot….

David…Darkness, Psalm 51
He was open, he was humble….

1 Cor 10:12 let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall


Today … maybe you don’t know what church is about, maybe you didn’t really want to come here…I invite you to find a new way to think. Stop, open mind, commit your ways to the Lord.