So What
Notes
Transcript
So What
So What
Romans 12 “Therefore I exhort you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice—alive, holy, and pleasing to God—which is your reasonable service. Do not be conformed to this present world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may test and approve what is the will of God—what is good and well-pleasing and perfect. For by the grace given to me I say to every one of you not to think more highly of yourself than you ought to think, but to think with sober discernment, as God has distributed to each of you a measure of faith. For just as in one body we have many members, and not all the members serve the same function, so we who are many are one body in Christ, and individually we are members who belong to one another. And we have different gifts according to the grace given to us. If the gift is prophecy, that individual must use it in proportion to his faith. If it is service, he must serve; if it is teaching, he must teach; if it is…”
Introduction
I love disaster movies.
A disaster movie is a movie where some big earth threatening event is either happening or about to happen, and the protagonist in the story have to band together to survive the eminent threat.
It’s a classic man vs nature story.
Movies like Armageddon, independence day, 2012, Dantes Peak, the day after tomorrow.
They’re all movies where a disaster is either happening, or about to happen.
And I’ll be honest, one of the reason’s I love them, is that they’re so predictable.
In fact, I will describe for you the plot of a disaster movie, and you’ll see just how predicible they are, because this plot you could plug it into about a doezen different movies.
The opening scene is usually in a labratory somewhere. Or maybe it’s a military facility, but it’s somewhere where there are a lot of scientists or officials, and they’re all looking at charts.
Whether it’s volcanic activity, or whether patterns, or studying the stars, there’s a bunch of guys and they’re all looking at charts.
And one guy will see something on his charts that gets his attention.
And anomoly. A reading that’s not supposed to be there.
He usually has a messy desk, by the way, I dont’ know why, but in these movies, the guy that finds the anomoly has a messy desk.
But he sees the anomoly, and he clears off his desk and starts doing calculations on the chart reading he sees, and then he starts to get really worried.
then he calls his supervisor.
And he’ll say the line “sir, I think you need to take a look at this”
and the supervisor will look at the chart, and he’ll turn ghostly white, and he’ll take off his glasses, because the supervizor always has glasses for some reason, and then he’ll drop the big line.
“What have we done”
or
“Get the president on the line”
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That’s act 1
Act 2, then is usually the scene where the person in charge needs to be informed that he disaster is incoming.
The president, or the governer. Whoever it is.
The scientest has been trying to get to the president to tell him that something’s wrong, and eventually he bursts in unexpectedly, and starts explaining things to the president
Mr President, we’re seeing seismic activity under the san andreas fault, that’s higher than usual this time of year. And we’ve been noticing unusual geothermal activity all around the pacific ocean. and on and on
And he explains all of this techno babble, and at some point, the president cuts him off. and says
Son get to the point.
And finally, it all comes to a head, the young scientist says the line.
“Mr president, we’re looking at the end of the world as we know it”
---
You could plug that plot into at least 20 different disaster movies.
What makes it so compelling, is that it keeps us on the edge of our seat. We are getting pieces of information, a little bit here, a little bit there, and at some point, the big so what gets dropped. and the person in charge realizes, ok, we are going to need to take drastic action in light of this new information.
Transition
Over the past few weeks, we have gathered a lot of data from the bible,
And today is the day where we piece together all of the information, and we discuss, what action do we need to take in light of all of this new information.
Today we’re going to wrap up our sword series.
This is a series that kind of came in two parts. Over Christmas we looked at the basics of how to interpret scripture, how to read the Bible. How to look at a passage of scripture, and understand all of the context we need to properly interpret and understand a passage.
The results of that part 1 of the series have carried over, and we’re going much more in depth on our tuesday night bible studies
And at the start of the year we shifted into phase two of the sword series, which is how we study a topic in scripture.
How do we go through the Bible from cover to cover and understand any given topic and understand Biblical concepts.
The topic we’ve been studying for the past several weeks is the holy spirit.
We’ve gone into it asking the question, “what does the Bible say about the Holy Spirit.”
We’ve gone through a lot of scripture, and a lot of themes throughout scripture, relating to the holy spirit
But if I’m being honest, I have a list of passages that we haven’t even scratched the surface on.
Because of the time constraints on a Sunday morning, we could honestly carry forward this series throughout the rest of the year, there’s just so much.
But just to jog our memory, the whole purpose of this series was to go through every passage of scripture that mentions the Holy spirit, understand it in it’s context, so that we can paint a broad biblical picture of what the Bible teaches about the Holy Spirit.
And we’ve drawn out of scripture several major themes and ideas.
The first of which is that
The Holy Spirit is a source of life
-In the very beginning, god breathed his ruach, his spirit into adam and eve.
-The idea being, that without the Spirit of the Lord we are Dead. We are dirt.
The Holy Spirit is a source of authority
There is no leadership without the Spirit
Moses, the Judges, the Kings, the prophets, they were all given the holy spirit as a sign of God’s authority
-Jesus, when he was baptized, the holy spirit came down upon him so that everyone would know that he hadthe rightful authority of God.
The Holy Spirit gives us gifts
Acts chapter 2, 1 Corinthians 12-14, Ephesians 4.
The Holy Spirit, living in the lives of believers, gives us the ability to do things we wouldn’t be able to do
Gives us talents, and gifts, and skills for the purpose of building up the kingdom of God, and glorifying Christ.
The Holy Spirit guides, teaches, and leads us
But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and will cause you to remember everything I said to you.
The Holy spirit is a gift that is both from God, and IS god (acts 5)
Given to believers. So that we might have life, Spiritual gifts, guidance, teaching, under the authority of Christ.
And as we draw out these themes from scripture, as you study your bible, as you start to draw out big ideas from your studies,
One of the final things we ought to do is ask ourselves the question:
So what.
At the end of every study, every time you read the bible, you gather knowledge, and information, and data.
And the final thing you should always ask yourself is “How do I need to live my life differently now that I know this information?”
What is my response?
Because if we just read it, if we just get the information from the Bible, but then we don’t put it into action, James says it’s like
For if someone merely listens to the message and does not live it out, he is like someone who gazes at his own face in a mirror.
For he gazes at himself and then goes out and immediately forgets what sort of person he was.
We can not afford to let the Bible go in one ear and out the other. We have to ask ourselves, So what.
Big idea: If I want to have the proper response to the Holy Spirit: to the Life and authority he brings, to the gifts he provides, to the leading and teaching He guides us through. My response to that has absolutely nothing to do with what I DO. and everything to do do with who I’m going to Be.
Roadmap
As we wrap up our series I want to lead you through the three Be’s of our response to the Holy Spirit
Point
Statement
Be Renewed
Explanation
We need to recognize that without the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives we bring nothing to the table.
We are dead in our sins, we are utterly and hopelessly broken
And we have to completely remove the idea from our heads that we bring anything to the table.
we need to be renewed.
Great quote by William Temple, a brittish pastor from the early 20th century he said
I can contribute nothing to my own salvation, except the sin from which I need to be redeemed.
William Temple (bishop)
We have a need to be renewed. Because God has offered this gift of the Holy Spirit
Peter said to them, “Repent, and each one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
What shall we say then? Are we to remain in sin so that grace may increase?
Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it?
Or do you not know that as many as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may live a new life.
Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council.
He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
“How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.
Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.
You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’
The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
When we put our faith in Christ, when we make him lord of our life, when we choose to enter into that covenant relationship with him, when we put our old self to death through baptism, and are born again, to walk in newness of life
We become renewed.
For the love of Christ controls us, since we have concluded this, that Christ died for all; therefore all have died.
And he died for all so that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised.
So then from now on we acknowledge no one from an outward human point of view. Even though we have known Christ from such a human point of view, now we do not know him in that way any longer.
So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; what is old has passed away—look, what is new has come!
And all these things are from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and who has given us the ministry of reconciliation.
In other words, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting people’s trespasses against them, and he has given us the message of reconciliation.
Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making his plea through us. We plead with you on Christ’s behalf, “Be reconciled to God!”
God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we would become the righteousness of God.
Argumentation
And all of those things: Repenting of our sin, putting our faith in Christ, being baptized, choosing to Walk in the light as he is in the light as 1 John 4 says
Don’t be mistaken, here, those actions are not doing anything to earn right standing with God.
That’s just receiving the gift that’s already been paid for.
If I went to western union, and wired you some money to pay off your car loan.
In order to get that money into your account, you need to go to safeway, wait in line at the counter, show your ID, fill out a form. They’ll give you a casheirs check, you’re going to need to take that thing, get in your car, drive over to the bank, stand in line, fill out a deposit slip.
Nobody in their right mind would say, “look at me, I earned that money by going to western union, and filling out these forms”
No you didn’t.
It’s the same thing with our salvation.
We have a proper response in order to receive the free gift of life that Christ gives us
The bible teaches us that in order to be a part of the covenant we need to put our trust in Christ, make him Lord of our life, die to our sins, be baptized, commit ourselves to living a new life in Christ
But make no mistake we didn’t DO anything to earn it.
Your sin was paid for on the cross
Illustration
There’s a young man that I know who I’ve been talking with about faith off and on for the last few years.
And he wants to commit his life to christ, but he has this hangup.
He keeps thinking that in order to be accepted by God that he needs to know more information, he needs to read his bible more, that he needs to be a better person, so that he can be ready
so that he can be good enough to be accepted by God
And I keep trying to tell him, brother it doesn’t work that way.
You don’t get clean before you take a bath.
One time when I was a kid, for my parents anniversary my dad paid for a housekeeper to come and clean the house top to bottom so that my mom could just take a day and relax
Ladies, I bet you know where this is going
What do you think my mom did the entire day before the housekeeper was supposed to show up?
Application
Don’t do that with God
You don’t need to clean up your life, you need to allow God to clean it up for you
Open the door, and let him do the work.
Transition
Because what we’ll find, when we move from being utterly and completely broken, unsaved, lost in the dark,
We receive the holy spirit, and instantly, God starts to work on our hearts and transform us .
Point
Statement
Second Be
Be Transformed
Explanation
At the tail end of our message two weeks ago we read from Romans chapter 8
And we discussed how the holy spirit guides us, and leads us
And how we engage with the spirit through prayer and scripture,
and spending time with God
and over time as we spend time with god,
As we allow ourselves to be led by the holy spirit, God transforms us.
Illustration
Here’s a fun thing for you to do this week
go through your bible pick out one of the gospel accounts - matthew, mark, luke, john, doesn’t matter which one.
And go through and read all of the parts where Peter is speaking.
Just skim through, and everywhere you see peter mentioned, just read what he does and what he says.
What you will find, is that peter is a dolt
Good heart, good intentions, but the dude’s just clueless sometimes.
He’s always misunderstanding what jesus says
he’s always going too far from one extreme to another
he doesn’t understand the assignment
He denies that he even knows christ at the crucifixion.
Read all that, and then turn the page to the book of Acts
And what you will find is that the peter described in the gospel, and the peter described in acts, are not the same person.
Peter in acts is bold, and confident, and speaks the truth
and he’s calling people out. This jesus whom YOU crucified
He’s making big speeches, he’s healing people
He’s spreading the gospel
He’s leading the church.
What happened?
The transformational power of the holy spirit happened.
Application
Therefore I exhort you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice—alive, holy, and pleasing to God—which is your reasonable service.
Do not be conformed to this present world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may test and approve what is the will of God—what is good and well-pleasing and perfect.
The holy spirit works in our lives, transforming us each and every day into the image of Christ
and our job is to facilitate that transformation and let it happen.
We engage with God, we cooperate with Him in his efforts to make us holy because he is holy.
I’ve found for myself, and most people,
The biggest stumbling block to spiritual transformation
is us
Sometimes we just need to get out of the way and allow God to change us.
What does that look like?
Argumentation
Because it’s such a nebulous idea. Allow God to change us. What does that even mean?
First and foremost it means submitting to the ultimate sovereignty of God in our lives
It means committing yourself to living a new life in Christ
Colossians 2:6-15
Colossians 2:6-15
Therefore, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him,
rooted and built up in him and firm in your faith just as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
Be careful not to allow anyone to captivate you through an empty, deceitful philosophy that is according to human traditions and the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
For in him all the fullness of deity lives in bodily form,
and you have been filled in him, who is the head over every ruler and authority.
In him you also were circumcised—not, however, with a circumcision performed by human hands, but by the removal of the fleshly body, that is, through the circumcision done by Christ.
Having been buried with him in baptism, you also have been raised with him through your faith in the power of God who raised him from the dead.
And even though you were dead in your transgressions and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, he nevertheless made you alive with him, having forgiven all your transgressions.
He has destroyed what was against us, a certificate of indebtedness expressed in decrees opposed to us. He has taken it away by nailing it to the cross.
Disarming the rulers and authorities, he has made a public disgrace of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
And a few verses down, in this same argument paul is making about newness of life, and transformation in the holy spirit he says
Colossians 3:1-10
Colossians 3:1-10
Therefore, if you have been raised with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
Keep thinking about things above, not things on the earth,
for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ (who is your life) appears, then you too will be revealed in glory with him.
So put to death whatever in your nature belongs to the earth: sexual immorality, impurity, shameful passion, evil desire, and greed which is idolatry.
Because of these things the wrath of God is coming on the sons of disobedience.
You also lived your lives in this way at one time, when you used to live among them.
But now, put off all such things as anger, rage, malice, slander, abusive language from your mouth.
Do not lie to one another since you have put off the old man with its practices
and have been clothed with the new man that is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of the one who created it.
Transition
In reponse to the holy spirit, we are to Be renewed. We ought to Be transformed.
Point
Statement
Be a light
Explanation
What good is the joy of Christ, and the gift of the holy spirit if we don’t share it with others.
It’s what we’re called to do.
Argumentation
You are the light of the world. A city located on a hill cannot be hidden.
People do not light a lamp and put it under a basket but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.
In the same way, let your light shine before people, so that they can see your good deeds and give honor to your Father in heaven.
on the Day of Pentecost, when the disciples were in the upper room, and the received the holy spirit
their immediate response was to share the good news of Christ.
And it says that 3000 were added to the church that day.
We have an obligation to spread the truth of scripture, to spread the good news of Christ, and his death, burial and resurection, and the coming of the holy spirit
We have an obligation to be a light to the world.
Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making his plea through us. We plead with you on Christ’s behalf, “Be reconciled to God!”
Illustration
One of the biggest joys that I have is the privilege and honor that God has given me, to be able to do what I do, to preach the word of god
to share a message of hope
to teach the truth of scripture, and the blessings of God
The other day, I was thinking about it, and it just hit me
And I said, how incredible is it, that God can use me
Of all people, me.
Messy me, flawed me. I don’t know if you know this or not, but I’m not the greatest person.
I’m not worthy to be able to do this.
God could have picked a thousand other people to do this, to be a light, to preach the word who would have been more qualified, more talented, more effective.
But god wanted me. He put me here in this exact place, at this exact time.
And I don’t deserve it.
It’s not my light. Our final point, we ought to be a light
It’s not my light. It’s not anything special about me, it’s not anything that I do
That’s not what it means to be a light
Stain glass windows are beautiful but they don’t create light
They simply allow the light to shine through them.
Anything I have to offer is not of myself. I bring nothing to the table except the sin that makes it neccesary
God’s light, God’s truth it’s all him.
He gets the glory
He does the work,
He transforms me into the person he wants to be, even when I fight him kicking and screaming the whole way, because I’m not worthy, but he is Good
Application
And you’re called to do the same thing
Right here, right now, in this place, God has plans for you in his kingdom
Transition
One or two sentences to smoothly shift to the next part
Conclusion
Do it.
Be renewed, be transformed, be a light
Spread the gospel
Because there is a whole world of hurting people, just waiting on you.
Waiting on the Holy Spirit to work through you to bring them into the light.
