Week 4 - Chapter 3
Notes
Transcript
Question: What is the difference between tolerance and approval?
Question: Can we love those we disapprove of?
Parents who love their children do not approve of everything they do.
Is there any relationship on the planet where they agree on everything?
Of course not!
And yet, why is a person’s sexuality a deal breaker when it comes to tolerance?
It’s because those who are living in sexual sin have made that sin the center of their identity - which cannot work.
Not only that, but the world’s view of “love” sees love as a mutually beneficial relationship where each person can “feel” love in the ways that fuel their identity.
Think about it.
I’m really bad with math, fixing cars, and basic general knowledge of things.
And if you come to me and say: “Hey Zach, you know you’re really bad fixing cars.” I’ll probably laugh and say: “Yep - most definitely.”
And I’ll say that, because I honestly couldn’t care less that I’m bad at those things.
But… if you come to me and you say, “ya know Zach, you’re a really terrible father, husband, pastor and writer” it’s going to be more difficult for me to just brush it off.
Why?
Because those are areas in my life that I am tempted to ground my self-worth in.
I’m tempted to say: “If I’m not a good father, husband, writer, and preacher, than what am I?”
And here’s the thing - we ALL have SOMETHING that we are tempted to look to that grounds our identity and self worth.
And so we must work at identifying them so that we can root them out and replace them with Christ.
Question: How can we identify our identity competitors?
Question: How do we defeat our identity competitors?
For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.
But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me.
Question: When it comes to tolerating and loving those who are living unrepentant sinful lifestyles, how can we show them love while not giving tacit approval?
Preferred Pronouns?
Names?
The goal is to show respect while also speaking the truth in love!
And the truth is, the gods they are serving, whether sexuality, drugs, or materialism will not love them!
Only Christ will love them!
Question: “As Christians, what is and isn’t our mission with those living in sinful rebellion against God?”
Question: “What can/should we do if we are struggling to love/be gentle with those who are living against God?
PRAY!
Remember God’s grace to all!
Common grace vs saving grace.
Remember we didn’t save ourselves!
Remember what Christ did for us!
“While we yet enemies of God, Christ died for us!”
Remember they are slaves to sin who are blinded by the god of this world!
Remember that God’s power in the gospel of Jesus Christ can BRING THE DEAD TO LIFE - which includes those caught up in heinous sin!
In all this we must speak the TRUTH in LOVE - this requires BOTH!
“We are not extending grace to people when we encourage them to sin against God. Grace always leads to Christ’s atoning blood. Grace leads to repentance and obedience. Grace fulfills the law of God, in both heart and conduct. When we try to be more merciful than God, we put a millstone around the neck of the person we wish to help.”
We must remember that they are our mission, not our enemies!
And one of the primary doctrines we must remember here is the doctrine of the imago dei - Made in the image of God!
The Westminster Shorter Catechism asks: How did God create man? The answer provided is this: “God created man male and female, after his own image, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, with dominion over the creatures.”
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
As image bearers, human life has value not because of what we can do, but because of who we are!
Abortion
tribalism
euthanasia
What makes murder so heinous is it is an attack upon the image of God!
Statues being toppled
When we forget this doctrinal truth within the church, it leads us to reject biblica truths like complimentarianism, submission to authorities, etc.
God cannot sin, so these differences in gender roles are not arbitrary or offensive or dangerous. Being born male or female carries different blessings, constraints, and moral responsibilities. Sexual difference, and the gender identity that emerges from it, is a calling that God determines in his creation ordinance. It is not an arbitrary reflection of culture. It is hard to live up to this calling. God knows that, and that is why he gave us the Bible and his church and the family of God to help. Through those means we “put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Col. 3:10).
Ephesians 4:24 (ESV)
... put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
In Adam all die,
In Christ all live!
In Genesis, humanity was barred from the garden - from the place of intimacy and relationship with God.
But in Christ, we are brought back into the garden, where we can experience true intimacy and relationship with God and others!
THIS is the purpose of biblical hospitality!
And as we do this, we must remember that Jesus dined with sinners but did not sin with sinners,
The Bible tells us who we are: essentially male or female, and the binaries that separate the two are divine and sacred and eternal. We are ontologically image bearers of God, with a need to have our heavenly Father’s love. The gospel is good news for everyone, even those who have much to lose.
Practicing hospitality in our post-Christian world means that you develop thick skin. The hospitable meet people as strangers and invite them to become neighbors, and, by God’s grace, many will go on to become part of the family of God. This transition from stranger to neighbor to family does not happen naturally but only with intent and grit and sacrifice and God’s blessing.
So where and how do we start?
Aside from our church family - How about at the end of our driveway?
Get to know neighbors
invite them over for dinner
Help when you can
Pray for their lost dogs, etc.
“missional motherhood!”
While others brag about how cheap they are when it comes to hospitality, Kent and I budget for it, and it hurts. Practicing daily, ordinary, Christian hospitality doubles our grocery budget—and sometimes triples it. There are vacations we do not take, house projects that never get started, entertainment habits that never get an open door, new cars and gadgets that we don’t even bother coveting. Our children will never be Olympic-level soccer stars, wear designer clothes, or have social calendars requiring a staff of drivers. Instead, my children build forts and catch frogs in the backyard, eat popsicles in trees, and bring neighborhood kids to dinner and devotions when the bell rings.
It costs money and time and heartache to run a house that values radically ordinary hospitality and nightly table fellowship, and we are all in. Over the past sixteen years of marriage, we have given away a lot of things. We give away many meals each week (those we serve here, those we serve at church, those we send in Pyrex pans to neighbors who have new babies or new knees, and those we mail to brothers and sisters in prison via iCare packages). We give away our time. We share our house. We don’t rent space in our house. If we did that, we wouldn’t be able to give it away. We give away cars when we have had the means to do so. We have never suffered for the absence of anything.
Paul’s words ring in my ears: “To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things” (Eph. 3:8–9). [Or, as the KJV puts it:] “And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery . . . ”
Christian hospitality brings together the mystery of union with Christ and the fellowship of the saints to gather in close the stranger and the outcast and the chronically lonely. We make gospel bridges into our home because we notice the people around us and their needs.
We see people whom God has put into our lives—especially the difficult ones—as image bearers of a Holy God and therefore deserving of our best. Hospitality is image-bearer driven, because Christ’s blood pumps me whole. It is not time, convenience, and calendar driven.
If it were, none of it would happen. None of this grace would be mine to hold and to share.
Hospitality requires daily Bible reading, deep repentance, dark mornings in solitude, and the daily willingness to forgive others whether or not they ask.
Hospitality renders our houses hospitals and incubators.
When I was in a lesbian community, this is how we thought of our homes. I learned a lot in that community about how to shore up a distinctive culture within and to live as a despised but hospitable and compassionate outsider in a transparent and visible way.
We love because he first loved us.