Holy Habits

Welcome

-Welcome/Personal Introduction/Day of Atonement this Week (most Holy Day of the Year for the Israelites)/Hurricane Check-In

Opening

So in Evangelical Culture (that’s us) We have a problem with the word “Do”

In our sub-culture we have certain colloquial explanations for explaining the gospel.

For example, have you ever heard someone present the gospel this way:

"Religion is spelled D-O but Christianity is spelled D-O-N-E.”

Now, there’s some huge truth to that statement. There is absolutely not one single thing that you are I can do to earn God’s favor and salvation. On the other side, there is not one thing you and I can do to lose God’s favor and salvation. You see, justification is from God alone.

But here’s the problem - we simplify the gospel with those kinds of statements, but then we put a Bible in the same person’s hands and the word “Do” is all over the Bible- over 500 times the Greek word ποιέω is used to indicate an action of some type… interestingly, that verb is found over 100 times in the Gospel of John alone.

But we have an issue with the Word “do” in Christian circles… on one side - we know that we’re commanded to do things and on the other, we know that we have freedom in Christ.

The word kind of scares us… but for some of us, we have a misunderstanding of the gospel so anytime we’re confronted with commands from the Bible, we’re quick to wonder, is following this legalism.

The Apostle Paul in Galatians 5 says that for Freedom Christ has made us free. But he goes on to say that we shouldn’t let our freedom become an opportunity for the flesh. So we are free from the demands of the law (what we call legalism) but we are not free to ignore the law at the expense of godliness (what we might call license).

Take a look at this picture:

SLIDE-picture of Alligator Alley

Can anyone tell me what this is a picture of? Go ahead and shout it out.

....

Yes- this is alligator alley. It’s the highway that connects the west and east coasts of south Florida.

You don’t really want to break down on this road.

So I want you to picture going down that road…

you have swamp land to the left and swamp land to the right.... and a really long road ahead.

This is one way that we can view journey of sanctification… what we call, keeping in step with the Spirit.

So if you go off the road, you might fall into the swamp. And friends, there’s gators in those swamps.

So as you look at this picture, think about the left side of the swamp as legalism. And the right side as license.

The road in between is the sanctification journey and there are some aids to that journey, which we’re going to discuss today.

But you see the obvious tension that exists on this road flanked with swamps to the right and to the left....

So keep this picture in mind as we go through the rest of this message.....

Introduction

If you were here last week, you know that we’ve started a new teaching series called “Transforming Grace”

‌And Stivey last week laid some groundwork for us to understand how this grace transforms us. Stivey talked to us about this amazing thing we call grace.

And he reminded us that the same grace that saves us is the same grace that changes us.... we call this sanctification, which is a life-long process of changing us into the person we're meant to truly be.

To be saved means that we have right standing before God. This is a declaration of position, not an assessment of who we are. But sanctification is a process of becoming.....

I like to say that through sanctification, we are becoming truly human. Jesus was truly human (to the fullest extent) and truly God. When the Bible talks about us becoming like Jesus, it means becoming truly human like him.

In this series, you're going to learn several principles in each sermon that will help you know what the Bible teaches us about how we change... or as we're calling it, transforming grace.

Last week you learned a few of those principles, and then Stivey asked what is your spiritual why?

Why do you want to change? What is God's purpose for you? Also he asked for you to seek your spiritual how, which is understanding that change comes through God's empowering grace.

SLIDE

Find your Spiritual Why

Find your Spiritual How

Find your Spiritual What (What are You Becoming?)

Today, I want to speak about your Spiritual What..... what is that God uses to bring about change in your life. And change is about who you are becoming, so what is it that this transforming grace is changing you into?

Habits are Part of the Journey

So I want to let you on the answer right from the start. One of the keys to defining the Spiritual What in your life is found in your habits.

I don't know if we realize just how much our habits actually form and shape our spiritual growth, or how much we're being formed by outside influences and habits we don't even realize we have.

Habits transform us way more than our hopes do...it's hard to see this, of course, because habits are the water we swim in.

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the heck is water?”

Our habits are like that.

“the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.”

So, our habits shape us without our realizing,

but with that understanding, here’s a question to consider

How many of our habits actually match our confession?

Our habits move us along in life.

Do your habits move you down the road of sanctification.

Or do your habits have you fall off the road into legalism or licentiousness.

Or perhaps your habits have you at a standstill on the road or maybe even moving backwards.

The question I have for you today is:

SLIDE

If the road of your sanctification journey is paved with Christian content, but the vehicle of your habits is just like everyone else’s, How long will you go forward?

If you want to handle on being a Biblical Christian, then you need to get your hands on the right theology. Some of that was discussed last week by Stivey.

But, If you want to get a handle on who you are becoming, you need to get your hands on the right habits.

As we consider that this morning,

I want to take a look at a portion of Jesus’ most famous teaching....

This is an extract from the sermon on the mount. We’ll cover 3 principles, and then I’m going to give you

3 daily and 3 weekly habits you can implement in your life that I think will help you move forward with a gospel-centered approach to work out your sanctification journey.

So, if you have your Bibles, and I hope that you do, please turn to Matthew chapter 6.

And we’re going to read a lot of Scripture this morning.... we’re going to read from Matthew chapter 6. The setting is the sermon on the mount, Jesus’ most famous message where he teaches all about the way that his disciples are to function in the world as ambassador’s for the kingdom of God.

So, Starting in Matthew chapter 6, verse 1....

JESUS SAID:

SCRIPTURE

SLIDES

Matthew 6:1–18 LSB

1 “Beware of doing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven. 2 “Therefore, when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be glorified by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. 3 “But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving will be in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. 5 “And when you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. 6 “But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. 7 “And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. 8 “Therefore, do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. 9 “Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. 10 ‘Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. 11 ‘Give us this day our daily bread. 12 ‘And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 ‘And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. [For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.’] 14 “For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 “But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions. 16 “Now whenever you fast, do not put on a gloomy face as the hypocrites do, for they neglect their appearance so that they will be noticed by men when they are fasting. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. 17 “But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face 18 so that your fasting will not be noticed by men, but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

SKIPPING DOWN TO v31

Matthew 6:31–33 LSB

31 “Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ 32 “For all these things the Gentiles eagerly seek; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

This is the word of the Lord. Amen.

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Well I’m pretty sure that we could spend the next couple of hours discussing this passage but I want to pull out 3 principles that I see in this passage…

Related specifically to the topic of Habits,

In this passage I see the principles of an Expected Commitment, an Extreme Concern, and an Excellent Commandment.

An Expected Commitment: Jesus Expects Us to Practice Holy Habits

First,

An Expected Commitment.

Scan down the first half of our passage this morning, and you will notice that Jesus speaks about 3 spiritual practices.

He begins each section with when you practice this habit, don’t do it this way, and then he teaches the way that we’re supposed to do it.

So, for example, he says when we give, don’t make a show of it. Instead, we should give in secret so that only the Father sees us.

Now the point Jesus is making is that our motives for giving, praying, or fasting should be in service to God and not to gain attention from man. But I want to point out something that’s easily missed in this passage.

Jesus doesn’t just pick giving, praying, and fasting as illustrations for his teaching.

Jesus says, “when you pray” and “when you fast” and “when you give”....... He says “when” not “if”

So he expects that anyone hearing him is already practicing these things.

The language written for us doesn’t even phrase these as commands. These are simply the expectations of what disciples do who are following God.

And here’s what I’m getting at:

SLIDE- An Expected Commitment: Jesus Expects Us to Practice Holy Habits

Jesus expects us to practice holy habits. This is part of what we do as disciples.

We pray, we fast, we give.... these are spiritual disciplines, but more importantly, they are habits.

As we practice them, they become part of who we are. Practicing them shapes us into the type of person who prays, fasts, and gives.

So Jesus doesn’t dismiss these habits but they are actually just part of following God.

And that leads us to the second principle,

An Extreme Concern: Legalism Leads to Hypocrisy

Jesus has an Extreme Concern about how the people we’re being taught to practice these habits.

So, stepping back for a moment, if I were to ask you what issue did Jesus have with the teaching of the Pharisees - you would probably say that the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law were teaching legalism.

And that’s true but I want to point out something. In the passage we just read, Jesus didn’t call the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law Legalists..... he called them hypocrites.

And to understand this, you need to understand a little background to the teaching of the Pharisees.

You see, there are two types of legalism. The first type of legalism is trying to earn favor and salvation from God by doing or not doing certain things. I don’t think the Pharisees actually practiced this type.

But there is another type of legalism that tries to force commitment to man-made religious rules and regulations on those who follow God.

The Pharisees practiced this second type. After the Babylonian exile, the returning Jews vowed to commit to following the commands of the Torah.

And so as they sought to follow the Torah, they built fences around each command so that they wouldn’t even come close to sinning.

For example, because the law says not to work on the Sabbath,

the Pharisees came up with a whole list of things that they thought as considered “work”

some of which bordered on ridiculous-

like not picking one grain with the hands to eat.

This type of legalism adds to the Law. The LAW of God is perfect and helpful to human beings. Adding to the LAW always seems to get people into trouble.

And here’s the big problem. With all the additions the Pharisees added they couldn’t keep even the basic commandments to be humble before God and to love their neighbors.

They required the people to follow their rules but failed to keep even the most basic commandments of love by doing that....

So, the second principle we see in this passage is this:

SLIDE- An Extreme Concern: Legalism Leads to Hypocrisy

Legalism leads to hypocrisy.

Jesus has an extreme concern about our legalistic tendencies- and that’s because legalism leads to hypocrisy. Rather than protect us from sin, it causes us to sin before God. And that’s how we become hypocrites.

Jesus knows that sometimes we have to build fences because of the temptation to sin.

Or sticking with our earlier illustration, Jesus knows we need to build road guardrails to keep us from falling off the road....

For example, when we have the habit of over-indulging in alcohol - sometimes the best response for us as individuals is to avoid alcohol completely.

And this may be a great thing to do, and a proper guardrail for us, even though it is not a command found in the Bible. The problem comes about when we turn our personal guardrails into the main thing for everyone.

Suddenly the command in the Bible not to get drunk is turned into the command to

not drink, smoke or chew, and never date others that do- and if you do, you’re committing sin and removed from fellowship.

Brothers and Sisters, that’s building a guardrail and then requiring people to build the same guardrail--- which is requiring them to follow a man-made tradition and not the heart of the LAW.

When we do that, we are universalizing what we think is God’s particular leading in our lives and we apply that to everyone else.

That’s not building holy habits- but binding the consciences of other believers with the private convictions that arise from our personal walk.

So here’s the point:

SLIDE:

As we seek to travel down the road of sanctification and build holy habits that sustain our walk with the Spirit,

we must not impose our personal road guardrails on others. God has not appointed any single one of us as the moral police for all believers.

But keep in mind, he does call the church body to safeguard each other....

And we shouldn’t think that Jesus opens the door for licentiousness by his teaching against hypocrisy.

Remember our first point, Jesus expects us to pursue holy habits too.

Therefore, falling off the road into legalism or licentiousness are both errors that Jesus forbids.

So, what does it look like to stay on the straight path and keep in step with the Spirit while avoiding legalism or license?

An Excellent Command: Seek First the Kingdom of God

For us today, we can sum it up with the excellent command the we Jesus spoke about at the end of our passage:

SLIDE- “An Excellent Command: Seek First the Kingdom of God”

Jesus said,

Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.

The Kingdom of God is the Kingdom in which God’s grace leads us to a life of holiness, service, and love.

This grace overflows so that our desires are changed by the Holy Spirit and when we focus on this grace, we are focusing on God and his Kingdom.

When we focus on God, all the other things find their proper place.

Brothers and sisters, instead of just building road guardrails, our habits and practices should focus on the better thing-the Kingdom of God.

We are not legalists, nor or we anti-law.

And certainly, we should not be licentious- falling off on that side of the road leads to disaster too. But we do have something better to focus on. And we call that grace.

Jerry Bridges is the person who I got the illustration of the road, he says in his book that the road represents grace.

And he says this:

SLIDE - Quote:

“When you focus on grace in the fullness of its meaning, you will keep the law, liberty, and love in their proper relationship to one another. But if you focus on any one of them instead of grace, you will inevitably end up in the swamp of legalism or license”

The road we travel is a road called grace. And the habits that we cultivate and develop help keep us move on that road because they focus on the things of God and the grace that he provides.

Thus, we need to cultivate habits that lead us down the road always towards grace.

Life in grace motivates us to follow God's commandments, which includes practicing the habits he has taught us- especially those habits that Jesus modeled for us.

If we want to change things in our life, then we need to learn how to live in this grace, practicing the habits God teaches us and commands us, all in a response to the grace he has bestowed upon us.

Anything outside of that is either legalism or licentiousness.

To cultivate habits while focusing on grace is the means to learning how to Love God and Love Neighbor.

So, church, we need to stay on the grace road and it is the habits we pick up and practice that can bring lasting spiritual transformation to our lives.

Application

As we come to a close, I want to leave you with some suggestions of new habits that you can pick up. These are based on the book called The Common Rule by Justin Earley.

I highly recommend that book because it takes the idea of spiritual practices we recently discussed in our summer series, Way of the Master, and it contextualizes them for our modern distracted age.

So here’s a list of recommended practices to build new habits that we keep you focused on God’s grace. None of these are binding on you, but they can be an aide. I have 3 daily habits and 3 weekly habits to share with you-which follow the model of the 3 habits taught by Jesus in the sermon on the mount.

SLIDES - one for each practice:

DAILY HABITS:

KNEELING PRAYER THREE TIMES A DAY

The world is made of words.  All of our day is ran by words- think email, text messages, and social media post. Even small, repeated words have some power. Regular, carefully placed prayer is one of the keystone habits of spiritual formation and is the beginning of building the best of habits. Prayer before or after a meal makes this a habit that is formed with the natural breaks of the day. To become a presence-centered church we must change our daily habit of prayer.

ONE HOUR WITH PHONE OFF

We were made for being present with each other, but so often our phones are the cause of our absence. To be two places at a time is to be no place at all. Turning off our phone for an hour a day is a way to turn our gaze up to each other, whether that be children, coworkers, friends, or neighbors. Our habits of attention are habits of love. To resist absence with your phone is to love your neighbor.

SCRIPTURE BEFORE PHONE

Refusing to check the phone until after reading a passage of Scripture is a way of replacing the question "What do I need to do today?" with a better one, "Who am I and who am I becoming?"  We have no stable identity outside of Jesus.  Daily immersion in the Scriptures resists the anxiety of emails, the anger of the news, and the envy of social media.  Instead it forms us daily in our true identity as children of the King, dearly loved.

WEEKLY HABITS:

ONE MEAL WITH OTHERS

We were made to eat, so the table becomes our center of gravity.  The habit of making time for one communal meal each week forces us to reorient our schedules and our space around food and each other.  The more the table becomes our center of gravity, the more it draws our neighbors into gospel community.

FAST FROM SOMETHING FOR TWENTY-FOUR HOURS

We constantly seek to fill our emptiness with food and other comforts.  We ignore our soul and our neighbor's need by medicating with food and drink.  Regular fasting exposes who we really are, reminds us how broken the world is, and draws our eyes to how Jesus is redeeming all things.

SABBATH

The weekly practice of sabbath teaches us that God sustains the world and that we don't.  To make a countercultural embrace of our limitations, we stop our usual work for one day of rest.  Sabbath is a gospel practice because it reminds us that the world doesn't hang on what we can accomplish, but rather on what God has accomplished for us.

SLIDE- All 6 Habits

Conclusion

So that’s 3 daily habits and 3 weekly habits that can be an aide and a means to focusing on the grace of God.

Can you imagine your life if you built up habits that honored God, and gave you opportunities to love your neighbor?

Would we begin to see that the things we thought were important for our lives -suddenly become less important - as we are shaped into this type of person. Would the vehicle of our habits keep us on the roadway of God’s grace?

I think so.

Holy Habits move you forward on the Lord’s road of grace.

Does the vehicle of your habits match the Christian content paved on the road you are on?

Let’s Pray.