Moving Forward - Pt. 6

That is the context by which we gather. We are here today to glorify God together. We glorify Him as we mutually embrace our brokenness, exemplify His perfection, and encourage one another toward holiness.

You see, what we are doing today is more than a hobby or religious experience. This is real life - realizing that we are no better than anyone else, and that apart from God’s grace we have no hope!

I don’t know about you, but I am thankful for the Gospel truth that my sins are many, but’s God’s mercy is more.

So we get together to remind one another that life is all about God, not us.

And friend it all begins with and centers on the Gospel.

Here is truth: I Am Created, I Broke God’s Law, Jesus Died for Me, I Must Respond

The Bible is really clear on God’s plan to redeem broken people.

Titus 3:5 CSB

5 he saved us—not by works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy—through the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit.

And friend, for those who believe by faith, the Gospel changes everything!

The truth that God extends His righteousness to the unrighteous through faith in Christ's life, death, and resurrection changes everything! The gospel changes our worldview and the way we progress through the Christian life. As we study, apply, and live out the truths of God's Word, the gospel continually molds our worship, spiritual transformation, relationships, service, and outreach. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the why that formulates the what of our faith family.

Because of Jesus, we are emphasizing 5 gospel-centered realities: and today we are going to begin looking at the third of the five.

So far, in this Sunday morning series, we have emphasized:

Gospel-centered Worship

The heart cannot love what the mind does not know, which is why our worship of God is grounded in treasuring His Word. As we diligently study the Bible to know Him greater, our knowledge of God overflows into praise to Him for who He is and what He has done. Worship involves every affection, attitude, and action because they ascribe worth to what we value. When we gather together, and when we don't, God alone is the focus of our worship.

God created me; and God redeemed me. He alone deserves my total affection and adoration.

God has called us to worship Him in Spirit and Truth - And that involves two things:

The Inner Man - Your Heart

The Truths of God - defined by the Word of God

Our worship, when we are together and when we are apart, is to be:

based on truth, not our feelings

focused on Jesus, not ourselves

from the heart, that has been transformed by the Gospel

So that is Gospel-centered Worship - recognizing that because of the Gospel, God deserves adoration in every area of my life.

Last week, we finished up the two week intro into:

Gospel-centered Transformation

Slowing down sufficiently for the will and presence of God to fill our lives doesn't happen naturally. We intentionally embrace our limitations and strive to allow the rhythms of our lives to reflect the grace and goodness of God. Centering our hearts and schedules on the gospel transforms the way we pray, rest, relate to others, and work. Although perfection is not a reality on this side of heaven, progressive growth is a result of a life impacted by the gospel daily.

As I mentioned last week, the development of this discipleship piece will be in greater detail in our 8 week healthy discipleship course that begins next Sunday.

Please register online today - through email or in the connection point.

This course will replace our Sunday evening service for 8 weeks and is offered in two time slots.

You can choose from either 3:00-5:00 PM or 5:00-7:00 PM.

At the heart of emphasizing Gospel-centered transformation is the reality of our lack of intention when it comes to our relationship with God.

We are crazy busy and expect our relationship with God to mature and blossom through a microwave-type scenario. We expect to be spiritually healthy by attending a service a week and getting snippets of the word and prayer throughout the week.

We often approach our time with God like a debit card. We pull up to the devotional ATM, swipe our card, and expect a return that will get us through the day.

But as Jen Wilkin emphasizes, we should look at our time together with God more as a savings account than a debit account. Instead of seeing our walk with God as something that we can withdraw from whenever it is convenient for us, we approach our walk as a savings account - making deposits into the bigger picture of life.

She says: “ these small deposits are so that you are growing in your knowledge of the Scripture in such a way that you are building a comprehensive knowledge rather than just using that time for devotional thoughts.

It is a beautiful thing to do devotional material and to spend time meditating on one or two verses, but if that is all we ever do, we will tend to focus on very small portions of Scripture, and it can feel satisfying in one regard, but it isn’t necessarily building toward the bigger thing.

I like to encourage people that no matter how much time you have, be sure that you are keeping track of whether you are spending it all on devotional time, or whether you are focusing it in on things that build toward bigger understanding. The goal of Bible study — I think many people misunderstand — is not to build greater knowledge of the Bible, but really, when we study the Bible, we are looking for greater knowledge of God himself. And that is something that unfolds for us over time, and therefore requires some diligence.”

So friend, Gospel-centered transformation boils down to intentionally centering our hearts and calendars to Gospel truth - seeking to know God in a greater way through walking with him on purpose.

This does not happen naturally. And if we are not incredibly diligent, it won’t happen.

For our family it is a lot like meal prepping. If we don’t think about supper, there are nights we get home and it’s 8 o’clock and we haven’t even thought about feeding ourselves.

Thankfully, Heidi keeps things in the freezer that we can heat up and eat without a lot of prep time. But other weeks, we are super diligent.

Last week, we scheduled our week. Heidi went grocery shopping on Sat and we were ready for the busyness to come - finished up our ball season Mon, Tues, Thurs, AWANA Wednesday. We had a full day last sunday with morning worship service, councelling in the afternoon, evening service, and then on Sunday night, we had a few friends from church over to watch the super bowl game and the drop ceiling in our kitchen lived up to it’s name - it dropped and came crashing down all over the food on the counters and the floor.

So this week, we have been rebuilding a legitimate ceiling that will endure enough Super Bowls till Jesus comes back.

This wasn’t in my plans. But God was not surprised.

And although I wanted to be diligent with meal prep to combat a normal crazy week, the week only got crazier. But many of the nights we had planned still happened - and we have made it through the week still eating.

You know, life happens. And our schedules change. But if we are not intentional with our time - a real, abiding walk with Jesus won’t happen.

So the challenge over the past couple of weeks has been to align your schedule for time with Jesus - slow-cooker type opportunities to abide in Christ. To walk with God in His Word and in prayer. To fill our minds with a greater knowledge of God!

I am going to work over the next couple of weeks with Pastor Bobby and a few other friends on compiling a list of books and resources you can use during the focused times you schedule.

Books to read, videos to watch, and podcasts to listen to - can be resources that point your heart and head to a greater grasp of God.

So that is Gospel-centered Transformation - and it requires intention with your heart, mind, and time.

This week, we begin in our third emphasis - Gospel-centered Relationships.

Our mission of glorifying God by making spiritually and relationally healthy disciples begins with our relationship with God and extends to our relationship with people.

You recall when Christ was asked about the greatest commandment in the Law of God, he responded:

Matthew 22:37–39 NKJV

37 Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

So what does an emphasis on Gospel-centered relationships look like:

The Christian faith is not intended to be lived in isolation, but in community with other believers. Our affections leak, so our gatherings remind us of our mutual love for God. The local church is not something we attend but a people to whom we belong, and as we get together, we do so with mutual love, grace, consistency, and authenticity. Our care for one another is an overflow of Christ's care for us through the gospel.

Friend, those who belong to Christ should get together with others who belong to Christ. There is a mutual edification that is built into God’s plan for the redeemed.

To begin, Christ is our ultimate example. Our lives should strive to mimic his, and if you think about it, a logical look at the life of Christ teaches us a lot when it comes to close relationships.

Knowing the full deity of Jesus, we know that he could have done ministry on his own, but He didn’t! He surrounded himself closely with the 12. And even out of the 12 he had the closest three - Peter, James, and John. He also was very close with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus - and when Lazarus first died, and Christ went to raise him back to life, you’ll recall - Jesus wept.

Jesus was close to people. He spent time with people and cared for people. In fact, we learn in Heb 4:15 - For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Christ knows what you are going through, and He cares. Not only that, he set the perfect example of how relationships are to be had.

Not only does Christ’s specific life show us how to live in close relationship with others, but we also learn how in other passages in the Bible.

A quick bible word search reveals 101 results for the words one another.

greet one another, love one another, be hospitable to one another, comfort one another, edify one another, honor one another, give preference to one another, be kind to one another, submit to one another. the list goes on and on.

The Christian faith is not intended to be lived in isolation, but in community with other believers.

Not just attending a service with others, but living life together. It’s not very practical for all of us to greet, love, comfort, edify, honor, and submit to a group. But it’s much more practical to take the one another admonitions of scripture and apply them to our individual relationships.

A long standing doctrine since even before the reformation is the perseverance of saints. The idea that if God draws, and convicts, and redeems sinners, that he also seals them until the day of redemption like Ephesians 4 teaches.

That as Paul said in Philippians 1 says:

Philippians 1:6 NKJV

6 being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;

The puritan writer John Flavel said in 1691, Did Christ finish his work for us? Then there can be no doubt that he will also finish his work in us,

If those who are genuinely Christs, will be genuinely Christ’s forever.

And part of the doctrine of the perseverance of saints is that it is plural.

As JA Medders wrote, ‘God has given an ecosystem for the saints to persevere in - one another.’

God shows us the ecosystem God designed in Hebrews 3, if you will join me.

In heb 3, the author is continuing his thought that Christ is better than everything. Hebrews teaches that Christ is better and worthy of our affection and trust, over every other religious tradition and thought.

And in Heb. 3 we find that Christ is faithful, and we should be faithful too.

And echoing psalm 95, we find a teaching in vv. 12-13 that gives us another dimension to our Gospel-centered relationships.

Not only do we come together for mutual encouragement and love with a pat on the back and the typical phrase “isn’t God good?”

We get together for mutual love and encouragement to combat the natural bent that we all deal with.

Hebrews 3:12–13 NKJV

12 Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; 13 but exhort one another daily, while it is called “Today,” lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.

Just as God uses the redeemed in the process of getting out his message of salvation, God uses the redeemed in the process of sanctification too.

We have a daily opportunity to exhort (earnestly encourage a response) those in our faith family.

God understands fully our depravity, and although we have been delievered from the eventual penalty of sin, and the now the power of sin, we have yet to be delivered from the presence of sin - and as much as we like to think that our sin problems originate outside of us (being someoene else’s fault), they originate from within. It’s our own fleshlyness that we struggle with.

In fact:

v. 12 - beware - strong caution

evil heart of unbelief leads to turning from God - living a life on our own terms. Doing right in our own eyes.

This is something that non of us are exempt from.

v. 13 - so encourage one another daily.

Don’t wait till tomorrow (while it’s called today)

Don’t put off reaching out to the faith sibling who God put on your heart.

Don’t wait for someone else to encourage them.

Intentionally take note of those who you haven’t seen recently, and reach out.

The goal (v. 13)- lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.

Friend, sin is deceiving! We are really good at convincing ourselves away from God.

And this is one dimention that Gospel-centered relationships addresses.

As our statement reads, Our affections leak...

We tend to love God real well when we are consistently together, and focused on Him. but that changes when we are consistently not together and focused on other things than Him.

It’s like a camp fire - the fire does well when the logs are together. There is a synergistic reality that the logs feed off of one another - but when you take those same logs and separate them, the light and heat dissipates.

Encouraging someone else is grounded in the goal of them and us not being deceived by sin, but rather edified toward holiness.

Now, join us next week as we build on this thought, but for now, I want you to leave with a challenge.

* Find one person today and ask them how you can pray for them this week. Do so this week - pray for that request, Then next week, check in on them and that request.