Making Your Mark
Notes
Transcript
Good morning, what a great day to be at church. I want to start off this morning by saying Happy Father’s day. I am so thankful for the godly men in this church. I want you to know that your example and your willingness to live like Jesus is appreciated. So many good things happen when men follow God and invest in their families. I am constantly encouraged by the faith that is on display here. So Happy Father’s day. I pray that you enjoy the day and I am so glad that you choose to start it here at Hillcrest.
Summertime is here and there is a lot going on. in Just a few days the Children’s ministry will be off to CentriKid camp and in a couple of weeks the middle school and high school group will be on their way to Engage camp. Let’s definitely be in prayer for those groups. I am a huge believer in the value of camp. Just to spend some time disconnected from the business of life and spending time focusing on what God has to say, I think that has the potential to change lives. And then VBS will be here before you know it. I am very excited about how VBS is starting to take shape. I think our kids are going to love it and the opportunity to connect with new families is huge. A lot happening and a lot to pray for. Let’s spend a moment in prayer together right now.
Pray - Father, we are grateful to be here once again. I thank You that You are the ultimate example of fatherhood on this Father’s Day. That we can look to You and follow Your lead in our homes. I thank You for this place, I thank You for this people. Lord, I pray now for the camps in the next days and weeks. I pray that You would keep everyone safe traveling there and back and that this would be a time where our devotion to You grows. Lord, as we spend a few minutes in Your word right now, please speak to us. In Jesus name we pray - Amen.
It is so good to be back this week. Cindy and I went to Brockport, NY which is right outside Rochester. We got there on Saturday and I had the opportunity to preach at two churches on Sunday, then we made our way back into town late Monday. It was a whirlwind trip, but it was so worth it. 25 years ago, we left Springfield, Mo with some friends of ours, Alex and Sarah True, and moved to Brockport. God had placed it on his heart to start a new church there, Cornerstone Community Church, and we felt like God wanted us to go help. So we packed up what little we had at the time and moved to NY state. It hindsight it was a little funny watching my Georgia born and bred bride acclimate to the northern culture. It was a lot different than what we were used to but we saw God move in those early days. Both my kids were born there. They are native new yorkers, Over the years Cornerstone has kept on mission and 25 years later we got to be a part of celebrating all that God has done there. It was really a great time, a lot of new faces, and spending some time with good friends. There was a video with pictures of those first few years. I had a few less wrinkles back then, but we saw the faces of people that accepted Jesus as their Savior. We saw pictures of the baptisms and the one time where the heater didn’t work and folks got baptized in freezing cold water. It is good to stop sometimes and think about all that God has done. I’m sure you have some stories of how God has worked in your life and how He has brought you to this place this morning.
And that is the reason it is so good to be back this week. I have been very nostalgic over the last few days thinking about all the God has done and it has made me very excited to think about all the things He is getting ready to do. The faithfulness of God in the past gives us confidence that He will continue to do great things. And I pray that I can be a part of what God is doing. I hope that you are praying in the same fashion. I would love to look back and see all the incredible things that God has done that starts right here in moments like this.
This morning I want to talk about Making your Mark. When people think of you, what comes to mind? How do you want them to think about you? And we can use a lot of terms to describe this, your reputation, your name, but I want to think about it in terms of making your mark. The book of proverbs gives us this piece of wisdom.
The memory of the righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicked will rot.
How do people remember you when your name comes up? Whether you are a father who wants to build up his family, or a student who is beginning to make choices that will form their future, or someone who is looking for what God has in store for their next steps of faith, what kind of mark do you want to make? This passage gives us two paths and two distinct destinations. My hope is that when someone hears my name, when someone hears your name, that it carries a blessing. The alternative doesn’t sound very good, does it? The name of the wicked will rot. I have had the unpleasant experience of encountering rot. One time we had some critters die and that was not fun to clean up. The smell of it made my skin crawl. It mad me want to turn away and go in the other direction. Instead, the memory of the righteous is a blessing. I want to choose to be a blessing. So how does that work. The passage tells us that the memory of the righteous are a blessing. So we have to ask the question...
What Is Righteousness?
What Is Righteousness?
This is one of those church words that we all hear a lot, but what does it mean in a practical sense? What is righteousness and how do we know if we are righteous? This is a big word and it appears often in the Bible. In order for us to define it, we need to see that there are expectations. There is a standard. Righteousness is our relationship to the standard. If I were to ask- What does it take to be your friend? What I’m asking is - What is your standard? You might not think about it but you may have standards like, a friend is someone, not a fictional character. You may love a character from a book or your favorite tv show, but they are not your friends. You probably have a standard that a friend is someone you know personally and not a person you don’t know. No matter how much I may root for Juan Soto to hit a homerun, we are not friends. You may have other requirements like this friend has to like you and doesn’t hate you. You may have other standards when it comes to things like loyalty, companionship, and compatibility. You may not think about them, but you have standards, expectations and your friends have a relationship to those standards. They are either righteous friend or they are not.
When the bible talks about righteousness, it is talking about our relationship to the standards of God Himself. God has crafted us and has expectations of us. You and I were designed to be the friend of God. But God doesn’t lower His standards. Righteousness is determined by how we interact with the incredibly high standards of God. In order to really make our mark, to be a blessing, we have to be righteous in our relationship with the expectations of God. If we want to be a blessing to those around us, we have to live in such a way that pleases God.
And here is where we run into a very large problem. Romans 3:10 tells us...
None Are Righteous
None Are Righteous
as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one;
In order to make our mark, we need to be righteous, but our problem is that none of us can be righteous. And this is the core problem of the human experience. God’s standard is absolute perfection and all of us fall way short of that. God’s expectation of us is pure holiness. Our relationship to that standard is righteous or unrighteous. And for us, we all fall unrighteous - “None is righteous, no, not one;” We cannot generate righteousness on our own. We cannot create perfection out of our imperfection. So we are stuck. We need to be righteous in order to have a real relationship with God, and then we also need that righteousness to live life in such a way that it makes a difference, but we don’t have it and can’t create it. That puts us in a place of need. It is important that we recognize the need that we have because if we do not fully understand our need, we will not fully understand how great our God is when He meets that need. Because we cannot meet God’s standards and because God does not lower His standards, we need something from outside of us to lift us up to His expectations. We need...
Imputed Righteousness
Imputed Righteousness
Imputed Righteousness means that God places His righteousness on our account. When we cannot meet the standard, God in His goodness, lifts us up by His own holiness.
And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption,
When we are in Christ (saved, born again) God gives us His wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. God changes our relationship to His standards not by our merit but by His merit. Here is a very crude example - How many have used a word processing software before? Word or Google docs or something like that? In those they have the alignment tool, I’m sure you have take advantage of that. You can have your text line up on the right, or on the left. You can even space it out so that both margins are lined up at the same time. And do you know what the call that? Justified. The text’s position has been moved to satisfy the rules. That’s what God does for us. Because of His work on the cross, He moves our position to satisfy His holiness and His standards. In Christ, we are justified and given His righteousness in place of our own. We now have the ability to do things like be in the presence of God through prayer because we are not standing on our own good works but on the finished work of Jesus. We have the ability to make a mark in the lives of others because it is God working through us. We can be a blessing because God’s goodness reaches out through us.
So how does this work? How does God give us His righteousness? God’s righteousness is...
Imputed By Faith
Imputed By Faith
God gives us all of this through a simple faith. Abraham in the Old Testament found this same this to be true
And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.
God uses faith as the conduit to impart His righteousness to us.
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Faith in Jesus changes everything. When we have nothing within ourselves , God steps in and fills us with His goodness, His grace, and because of this we have the ability to make a mark - The memory of the righteous is a blessing. This is the type of life worth chasing, the type of life worth sacrificing for. Paul says it like this...
Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—
A life lived in faith - Do you want to be a blessing - to your friends, to your family, to your community, to those who have not heard the gospel yet? Then live each day in faith. Let it extend beyond a Sunday experience and begin to see the whole of life through the lens of faith in Jesus.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
Do you want to make a mark? Live in the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus. If you do that consistently, you will make a difference. The memory of the righteous is a blessing.
Let’s bow our heads and close our eyes for a moment this morning. As we sing our closing song, I want to extend an invitation to you. Whatever your next step is, I invite you to take that step this morning. If you need to take that first step of faith, I would love to show you from the bible how you can be saved. If you have put your trust in Christ but have not take that next step of baptism, I encourage you to make that decision this morning. If you are struggling this morning and just need some time to pray, get someone you trust and come forward to pray together. As we sing, let God move in your heart today. Step out in faith and take a step closer to Him today.
Let’s pray together and sing:
Father, we are so thankful that when we had no righteousness of our own, Jesus provided righteousness based on His work on the cross. I pray this morning for each person here and listening online, that you would stir up our hearts and that would give us boldness to live by faith. In these next few moments as we sing, please continue to work and draw us close to you. In Jesus name we pray - Amen.
