Faith that Lives

We are in the middle of a sermon series focused on Grace. We are looking at how this attribute of God can’t be deserved or earned, but it impacts our lives because God still offers it to us because of the love that he has for each one of us.

Today we look at grace and faith and how grace gives us a “Faith That Lives.” Our scripture comes from Galatians 2:15-21.

15 “We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles 16 know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.

17 “But if, in seeking to be justified in Christ, we Jews find ourselves also among the sinners, doesn’t that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! 18 If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a lawbreaker.

19 “For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”

Please pray with me…

Grace and faith were intertwined in the message offered by Jesus throughout his time on earth. He looked at the way that the Jewish people were living their lives and he attempted to lead them towards an understanding that there was a better way.

A way not based on being rule followers. A way not based on trying to be “gooder” than the person next to you. A way that doesn’t lead to guilt and shame but releases us into an understanding of a God that loves us so much that he has offered us this gift called grace.

What we can allow to happen when we are not careful is that we can fall back into this trap of becoming rule followers. We turn our focus towards the past and we want to be more like the Jewish people of Jesus’ time and less like who God desires for us to be today.

(Transition)

Paul is pointing out in today’s text that if we try, we will fail. We can’t be good enough to be able to be the people that God desires for us to be. We can’t be “justified.” We can’t be “right with God.” It is why God needed to provide for us a “better way.”

Jesus came down to earth to live among us. He became that example on how God desires for us to live. Jesus showed humanity and through the scriptures us that the law matters, but compassion also needs to be a part of our lives.

He then took it a step further and died on a cross to offer humanity that “better way.” He allowed for the grace of God to forgive us of our sins. He made it so we no longer had to be weighed down by the guilt and shame of our sins. He allowed for us to be in a close personal relationship with God.

(Transition)

How we choose to live our lives defines what we believe concerning what Jesus has done for us. Paul points out that if our main focus is on the law than Jesus died for nothing. We are stating that his death was not enough. We still are not able to allow grace to overcome our sin.

Grace allows for us to be people that love God and desire to follow God but who also acknowledge that we no longer have to focus on attempting to do the impossible. We no longer need to attempt to keep the law because evidence shows us that we will fail.

The Jewish people lived their lives attempting to figure out how to keep the law. They would take the laws given to them by God and make additional laws to attempt to help them not break those laws that God had given them.

Christian author Kent Crockett points out that there were a substantial number of laws given to Moses by God, he states the number at 613. What the Pharisees did in order to attempt to keep those 613 laws was they created over fifteen hundred additional laws. What they did was make the impossible only more impossible.

(Transition)

Let me pause for a moment and look at Paul. What we need to remember is that Paul did not get “it” when Jesus was walking the earth. Paul wasn’t a follower of Jesus. Paul saw the message of Jesus as blasphemy against God. He believed that Jesus was just another false Messiah.

Why does that matter? It matters because it should point out to us that the person we are talking to may decide to walk away. That friend we know needs Jesus may decide that we have been brainwashed.

Paul’s journey to a relationship with Jesus should lead us to look at these moments as “not yet” moments. We need to believe that God is working towards helping that individual towards a realization that they are in need of him. They need a Savior.

Now I admit that being a part of a “not yet” moment isn’t fun. It isn’t what would motivate us to try again. What it should do is lead us into a time of prayer. We may not be able to lead a person into a relationship with God yet, but God can. We can ask God to help us turn a “not yet” moment into an “I’m ready” moment. God can give us the words to say and the actions to take.

This takes faith. It takes a willingness to first believe that God will listen and second that he will tells us something that will help. We need to believe that God loves us, and he loves that person we want to see become a follower of Jesus. We have to have the faith to believe that God cares enough to intervene.

(Transition)

Jesus only asks that we live our lives with a focus on two laws. They are for us to “love the Lord our God with all are heart, mind, soul, and strength; and love our neighbor as ourselves.” Jesus is saying for us to focus on doing the best we humanly can to love God, follow the law, while making sure that we remember that we are to also love those that are around us.

Jesus made life easier for us but in some ways, it became more difficult. The vagueness of love God and love others, leaves our understanding of scripture wide open for interpretation. We find ourselves attempting to choose what these words mean to us.

This leads to some conflict among Christians. We talked about this a couple weeks ago, some believe we are to lean towards the law while others turn their focus towards loving our neighbors.

These disagreements lead to different ways to follow and worship God. We call these denominations. We have recently seen the impact this has had on the United Methodist Church with over 7,600 churches leaving. At least 3,700of those churches joined a brand-new denomination. By the way, it is believed there are over 200 denominations in the United States.

(Transition)

We are to choose to live our lives by choosing to follow the ways of God instead of the ways of the world. We are to allow faith to help us do what is desired by God instead of the expectations of the world. That is when our faith lives.

We are to choose to put God before the things of the world. We should have our relationship with God above our denomination. God above our politics. God should be considered greater than any area of our lives that can get in the way of our relationship with him.

I point this out to make the point that we can easily turn our focus away from the main thing. We find denominations fighting other denominations. Fellow followers of Jesus should be joining together in celebrating on what we should all be able to agree on.

We state it every communion, “Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.” We have a simple message to share but we instead have turned Christianity into a competition on trying to decide who may be more right.

What I would like to see us do at The Church of the Good Shepherd is to keep the main thing the main thing. It is true that we have different beliefs and different understandings of scripture than other Christians, but the differences should not be our focus.

Jesus laid out what our focus should be. We are to decide that we will tell those around us about Jesus. We need to be focusing on reaching out to those we meet through word and actions instead of focusing on the disagreements that Christians are having around us.

(Transition)

This is where we need to focus on what it means for us as a church to love our neighbor. How has God created us as a congregation to allow for us to best serve him and those around us? We need to be in prayer for the ways that God wants to use us to serve him and those around us.

Prayer and listeningcan allow God to direct us to the ways that he wants us to be a part of what he desires to do in our church and in our community. We need to be open. We need to be responsive to what God desires from us.

Responsive means that when the orders have been given by God, we need to be willing to follow. We need to be willing to allow God to work through us both individually and as a church to allow others to know about Jesus.

(Transition)

But what about loving God, how are we supposed to live out that part of the commandment given to us by Jesus. Our first reading can help us understand the actions we should take and shouldn’t take in order for us to best focus on God while also loving our neighbor.

I believe thatJames chapter three is one of the least utilized scriptures to help us understand what God desires from us. It is written by the brother of Jesus who also is the head of the Jerusalem council. The group that was leading Christianity during that time.

It is believed he is writing to a group of mainly Greek Jewish Christians who had been forced or had decided to leave Jerusalem due to the persecution that was taking place during that time. His words are to help them keep following Jesus the way that Jesus showed them despite the persecution they are facing.

(Transition)

He begins our scripture by stating that we should have “humility that comes from wisdom.” The closer that we become to God the easier it should be for us to acknowledge that we should not want to be in charge of our lives. We should turn our lives over to God.

This is difficult for us to do in our humanness. We will often fail and choose to take actions that would not follow the will of God. We end up deciding that we are the god of our own life and we choose to live our lives the way that we want.

This leads us to the negatives mentioned within our first reading. It leads us towards “bitter envy and selfish ambition.” A lack of humbleness leads us to a focus on things of the world instead of things of God.

We find ourselves desiring what someone else has. We seek ways to be seen as better than the person next to us. We search for meaning in things instead of in God. Matthew chapter 6 has Jesus say it this way,

19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

We are to be people who recognize that following God is more important than following the ways of the world. We find many examples of those that are successful in ministry but have moral and ethical failures. Many times afterwards they will point out that the ministry had changed from what God can accomplish through us to what I can accomplish.

This goes back to a focus on us individually and as a church of keeping the main thing, the main thing. We need to have our focus on what God desires to do in us and through us both individually and as the church.

(Transition)

Paul next lists for us some traits that we should consider emulating in order for us to live lives focused on God instead of the world. This list does not contain rules. They are internal goals that will allow us to serve God in the world.

The first one deals with what we have already been focusing on, we are to be pure in our thoughts. This means that our focus needs to be not on ourselves but on those that God has placed before us. We are to live out our faith by relying on God.

We are to be peace-loving. This is us choosing to be peace makers. We are to attempt to live at peace with each person that lives around us. This becomes difficult in our current environment that seems to have people not wanting to be at peace with those that disagree with them.

Jesus attempted to be at peace with his enemies. The conflict he faced was when the Pharisees would not leave him alone. They would attack him which would lead to Jesus having to offer ways to find peace with each other. We are supposed to seek peace with those around us.

We are to be considerate to those that God places before us. We may have to agree to disagree. We may have to have enough faith to believe that God can change hearts even if we can’t. We are to not fight. We are to love those around us.

We are to be submissive. The question becomes who are we being asked to submit too. I would argue that we are to submit to God. We are to go to God and ask for his assistance on how we are to interact and serve those that are around us.

(Transition)

Which leads to our actions. We are to be full of mercy and good fruit. This to me is where John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, gets his three rules. He tells us that we are to love God, do no harm, and do good.

We are able to live out these three rules out when we are focusing on mercy and goodness. It goes back to having the main thing remain the main thing. Our focus needs to remain on loving God and loving others. We do this when we are full of mercy and goodness.

The last two are that we need to be impartial and sincere. We are not to take sides when it comes to denominations or politics, and we could go on. We are to be people that want to believe that everyone is doing the best they can.

We also aren’t supposed to fake it. We are supposed to have God in enough control of our lives that we can be people that follow the ways of Jesus through our words and our actions. We are to attempt to always being right with God.

(Transition)

This is a lot to take in. I would recommend that you go back occasionally to James 3 and ask yourself whether am I living in a way that reflects that I am receiving wisdom from Heaven. Am I right with God.  Am I living out a faith that lives.

God loves you as you are and he loves those around us as they are. Let us decide today and everyday that we are going to have the faith to trust that God is at work. Let us allow him to guide our lives today and every day.

Please pray with me…