How to Win Within Part 2
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Intro:
Intro:
About the age of 10 my dad became a pastor. Every Sunday before that and certainly after, I went to church. And anytime that I had to sit in what I called big church I knew that if I was distracting that there were going to be consequences when I got home.
So, it was sit still, be quiet, be disciplined
And these actions seemed to be the key virtues of Christianity to a kid who grew up in church.
And through this I began to learn that true religion involved dampening my affections
Because my desires, my energy, my passions often seemed to run counter to what being a Christian looked like.
What I came to realize through this was that I could actually distract my affections
That yeah I wanted to speak how I wanted, I wanted to lie to get ahead, I wanted to be comfortable, and I wanted to satisfy myself
But for at least an hour on Sunday, through religious experience, I could tell my affections to keep still, keep quiet. I could distract them.
And for that hour it worked.
The problem was, as I grew, my affections grew and the harder and harder they became to distract.
And so I grew to understand that affections are the enemy of Christian living, so I needed to get rid of them!
Is this the Christian life? Suppressing our desires until it becomes who we are?
Is this what freedom looks like, feels like?
A child in church who is distracted and shamed into sitting still until he becomes used to it?
Let me pray and then let’s look at Scripture to unpack this
pray
Now, I don’t ever want to just handpick a couple of verses out of God’s Word to fit what I’m trying to say
So, here’s what I want to do this morning for you
I want to build a case on both sides so that we can use the whole of Scripture to try to better understand what it is calling us to
Fair enough
Because the truth is, there are a lot of Scripture that would lead us to believe that our affections are wrong, are evil, are bad and so not only should we distract them but Scripture will use words like kill, or put to death
So, let’s look at a few Scriptures that could easily lead us to believe that the Bible tells our desires to sit still and be quiet.
That the Christian life is a stoic existence of dead desires
24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires;
5 Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.
So, let’s face it, at times the Bible seems to be smacking us upside the head and telling us that our bodies and their desires are things to be mastered, overcome, conquered, put to death, done away with, laid aside, and denied!
And I am not denying that truth. It is a biblical truth!
But if you were here last week, hopefully you know by now, that that is not the whole story.
Because we know now that God wants our affections because we only ever do what we want to do
Our affections are what are truest self truly treasures
The Bible is not smacking us on the head and telling us to be still!
The Bible is telling us that the desires of the flesh are pathetic!
Affections aren’t bad, but they may be wrong
Affections themselves aren’t bad but your fleshly affections are wrong
They are weak, flimsy things that are loud obnoxious and empty promises of fun
So, yes! Your sinful desires need to go away and they need to die!
But they will not go away and die by you simply ignoring, distracting, and shushing them
The only way your sinful and fleshly affections will go away is they are reworked into holy affections
I don’t believe Scripture is telling us to stop all affections and stamp all of them out but that our affections are too weak
And our affections are too weak because they are aimed at affectionless things
And what Scripture is going to lead us to is the truth that only God, as revealed in Christ, is a worthy enough source to create an ever flowing pool of affections that will produce in us the life of a Christian
I do not believe that Scripture tells our desires to shut up and sit still but to align properly and then get up and have some fun!
Christ isn’t yelling at us to stop being who we are but to become who we were originally created to be
I said this last week and I’ll remind us again, and I believe Scriptures like the ones we just read are a reminder of this truth, affections cause action
Affections create operations
That if you want to live like a Christian, you must feel like a christian.
To do you must first desire
So, how do we do this?
How do we rewire our hearts?
How do we rewire our sin-tangled affections and desires
It is not by trying to act contrary to our affections
But to receive holy affections that then cause us to act contrary to sin
And the truth is, just like the Bible tells us to deny, kill, put off our fleshly desires the Bible also regularly refers to these holy affections
10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
The affection of fear is said to come before knowledge of God
2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
We are called to have hope and even rejoice in that hope and it is a result of God’s love being poured into our hearts!
14 Do everything in love.
and if proverbs 4:23 is also true
23 Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
If we are to do everything in love and everything flows from the heart it means that our affections must be rooted in love
And a few more Scriptures here that reference affections and desires of the heart
8 Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your laws, we wait for you; your name and renown are the desire of our hearts.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!
11 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.
14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.
So, the argument could be made that our affections don’t need to be suppressed but engaged
We don’t need fewer affections but more of them
We don’t need weaker desires but stronger ones
Now, let’s talk about the origin of our affections
Because I believe by looking at affections in their purest form we may learn better how to align our affections in a Godly way
Our affections find its origin in God Himself
I don’t know if you know this or not, but God himself has a lot of affections.
And although God experiences affections, His affections never change or fluctuate
So, theologians will talk about God’s immutability or his inability to change
Where you and I are mutable God is immutable
He does not and cannot change (Ps 102:25-28, Mal 3:6, Heb 13:7-9.)
So, let’s consider God’s affection of jealousy.
God does not become jealous, but is constantly jealous
And I know that might sound strange but it’s true
There has never been a time when God was not preeminently concerned about His own glory
God is jealous and righteously jealous because his affections are properly ordered.
For us, jealousy is bad.
We become jealous when we are not loved as much as someone or something else
And in expressing this affection we express our belief that we should be the primary object of affection to the person toward whom our jealousy is aimed.
This is always a false assertion of us
But it is always a true assertion for God
He is always the One to whom everyone owes ultimate love.
Therefore, God has always been jealous for the love of all beings
And this isn’t because He is needy, but because He longs to see everyone’s desires properly ordered as his own are.
Now I chose jealousy because it is a deep seeded emotional reaction
It is an affection full of emotion
But God isn’t just jealous
God also loves with everlasting love (Jer 31:3)
He is compassionate toward those who fear Him (Ps 103:13)
He rejoices over us (Jer 32:41)
He burns with anger against sin and injustice (Ex 22:24)
He is zealous for His glory and name (Ezek 5:13)
And so what we see is the affections of God’s heart are properly wired
In fact, it is in God incarnate, Jesus, that we see the ultimate example of proper affections
Now, when you read the gospel accounts, let me ask you: Does Jesus come across as a stoic, unmoved, non-affectionate, anti-feeling Savior?
No! And let me give us some examples:
Luke 22 tells us that God prayed so earnestly and with so much affection that not only was he sweating while praying but his sweat was like drops of blood
That his heart became troubled and full of sorrow to the point of nearly dying in Matt 26:37-38 in that moment.
We see Jesus zealous for the house of God in John 2 when goes around flipping tables
He becomes grieved and angry over peoples hardness of heart in Mark 3:5.
He mourned, wept, and lamented over Jerusalem because of their sin in Luke 19.
Upon seeing Mary and the others weeping at Lazarus’s tomb, he was deeply moved and cried along with them. And He knew and had promised that He would raise him from the dead
There are numerous accounts that he was filled with compassion and pity for the hurting, the ill, the sick, the outcasts.
God does not present himself to us as some stoic, perfectly composed, passionless Zen master.
No He comes to earth as an affectionate and affected person, quick to empathy, compassion, tears, and even holy anger.
And I believe that the writers of the Gospels often, explicitly, and purposefully give us the emotion lying behind the actions of Jesus
He doesn’t just heal people, he heals them because he had compassion for them
He doesn’t just cry at a funeral, he cries because of his great love for Lazarus and his great hatred for death
He doesn’t just flip tables for funsies, he did so because of his great zeal and passion for the house of God
In fact, Heb 12:2
2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
It is Christ’s affection of joy that led Him to the cross and made the gospel even possible
Now, how can joy be the affection when pain and suffering are the result?
Because Jesus had you in mind when he endured
It was the joy of knowing that death would not have to be final
That eternal separation was not going to be the only option
That personal relationship would now be possible
We talk a lot around here about how our vision for Cornerstone is to help each person individually become more like Jesus
And when it comes to this specific topic Jesus was the ultimate example of how we should be guided by our affections
He wanted what God most wanted and He hated what God most hated
And this is what it means to have a correctly wired heart and properly ordered affections: to love what God most loves and hate what God most hates
But if we are honest, we often don’t look like Jesus
In fact, we often look the opposite.
We often hate what God most loves and love what God most hates
And so the question is not whether or not we have affections but whether or not these affections are properly ordered.
Don’t stop your affections, just align them properly
Properly ordered affections want the right things
They love and they hate well
All of God’s affections are properly ordered
And since God himself is most worthy of love, the number 1 spot on God’s priority list is himself
That is why his affections are never affected. they are perfect. and perfect things don’t need to change
Our affections on the other hand are only properly ordered when they mirror God’s
Which means, our affections are only properly ordered when they place God in the number one spot
and the greatest temptation and most damaging temptation you will ever face is putting yourself in God’s place
We can work our whole lives to get God to move up the ladder of our list of priorities
But if we are always at the top, then it doesn’t matter if he’s 2nd 5th or last.
This is why Jesus was the perfect example for us, because He only ever did what the Father wanted and only ever gave God glory
For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.
Jesus did God’s will because he had God’s heart.
This is the ultimate goal of every believer
To have God’s heart, to have our hearts properly wired to the things of the Lord
So that then we may do His will
And so, yes, of course God also wants our actions, which is the very reason God wants our hearts, because our actions are unaffected unless touched by our affections
This is why James can say “Faith without works is dead.”
In our terms today we might say it like this
a heart without properly aligned affections will never produce holy fruit
Our hands reveal our heart
Jesus’ actions revealed to us the heart of God
So, now we know that God wants our hearts and He wants our affections because He knows that everything we do flows from it
We also know, that God isn’t asking us to reduce or subdue our affections in fact He wants us to strengthen them
The problem is we need to align our affections properly
And in order to learn how to do this, we look to Jesus who gives us the perfect example
And so, now, the last two weeks of this series we are going to talk about how God rewires our hearts, how he aligns our affections with Him
The things we can personally do to not just say shush and suppress our sin but how to hate our sin and love the things of the Lord
How we can be holy as He is holy
so this will be life changing stuff and I can say that confidently because I know that is the goal of the gospel
Not to change a part of us but to change all of us
Which is why God is so interested in your heart, because he wired it to be the place that everything flows from
pray