The Performance Trap
The Search for Significance • Sermon • Submitted
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Introduction to Significance
Introduction to Significance
Lately I have been made aware of many folks that have taken their own lives. Just this past few weeks, someone did so on the front lawn of their home just a few houses away from my mother’s house. I have heard of young people and older people that have decided that their lives were not worth living. It seems that there is no factor in age or methodology. However, there is one factor that seems to be prevalent and that is their level of significance. These men, women, boys and girls all feel, for whatever reason, insignificant. Have you ever felt as if you did not matter? Sadly, every funeral I have attended where someone has taken his or her own life, there were always those present who were crushed with the loss of a loved one who really did matter. Suicide is always a permanent solution to a temporary problem. This is not the only reason that we are looking at a series of messages that are about this idea of significance. Sure we definitely want to stop the tragedy of someone taking their own life. We also should be about helping those that are alive to live the life God designed for them.
All of us have this incredible need to feel significant. The word significant is really not a Biblical word. The dictionary states that it first was recorded in the mid to late 1500’s. It stemmed from the Latin word significāre. I am not by any means a Latin scholar, but looking at this word this way, really has some insight for me.
I think that that our definition of this word could be easily derived this way:
significāre
Sign-if-I-care
Don’t we all need some type of indication or sign that shows we are cared about? That we matter? Maybe it is a stretch, but when I broke it down this way, I was moved even more to show people that they do matter.
Significant means important and deserving of attention.
God knew that we as mankind would crave the desire of being important and deserving of attention. He also know that we would mess it up. We would mess it up so that our attempt to find significance would be detrimental.
As we look at these areas, we will find that our mess can always be resolved. I am alway in awe that God can take my rambling mess and turn it into His redemptive message. One book and author that has helped me with this over the years is a book called The Search for Significance by Dr. Robert McGee. Dr. McGee was a Christian Psychologist. He was the founder of RAPHA which was a network of hospitals that people with various issues could receive treatment from a Biblical perspective and Christian insight. The word RAPHA is Hebrew for healing. This network would not only involve Christian counseling but it would equip churches to be centers of discipleship and care to continue help folks with their struggles in life. This network is still in existence in the Dallas/Fort Worth area even years after Dr. McGee’s death. I was fortunate to study and be under his teaching as he used this book for basis for these treatment centers.
Dr. McGee indicated that when we searched for significance, we would often would try to find it in four areas:
The Performance Trap
The Approval Addict
The Blame Game
Shame
Interestingly, we can find many answers to these areas in God’s word. Remember a few weeks ago we mentioned this idea in quoting 2 Timothy 3:16:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
I firmly believe that God has an answer for every area of significance in which we try to find ourselves. God’s designed significance comes us through the person of Jesus Christ. Over the next few weeks, we are going to look at these areas in which are detrimental to our significance and see exactly what God has done for us in His design. We will list them here then share insight from God’s word to gain understanding.
Performance Trap/Justification
Approval Addict/Reconciliation
Blame Game/Propitiation
Shame/Regeneration
The first one we are looking at today is this idea of the performance trap. One of the biggest lies that have been taught Christians is that we have to act a certain way in order to find our significance. “Just do this or do that and you will be blessed.” The Performance Trap states, “I must meet certain standards to feel good about myself.” The consequence from this false belief is that there will always be a fear of failure. There will be a constant drive to succeed even to the point of manipulating others to achieve success. Can you see how this becomes a trap? That is not God’s design. God’s design is that we are already justified and we do not have to perform to a certain standard.
Justification is a theological term that means God not only has forgiven me of my sins but has granted me the righteousness of Christ.
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
Let’s dive into this a bit further. What does it mean and what exactly happened in this justification process. I would dare say that many folks who call themselves Christians have no idea what this means. The reason I say this, when you ask someone about there faith, the first thing they say is, “I go to such-and-such church.” Then they begin to list all that they do, all they perform, to show that they are significant. “My church passes out water during the parades.” “We have given away free hot dogs on game days in our college town.” You know I am an advocate of those things but we have to remember that our attendance, our actions, or our performance does not justify our faith.
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
I want to invite you to look at the justification of the Giver, the justification of the Gift, and the justification of the Gifted.
Justification of the Giver
Justification of the Giver
This verse is a summary of the Gospel Christ, the only entirely righteous One, took our sin upon Himself at Calvary and endured the punishment we deserved, which was death and separation from God.
Our verse today in 2 Corinthians 5:21, tells us that God was the Giver of this justification. The first words, “God made.” How did God do that? We must remember that there are four distinct characteristics of God.
God is omnipotent. He is all powerful.
Yes, and from ancient days I am he.
No one can deliver out of my hand.
When I act, who can reverse it?”
God is omniscient. He is all knowing.
Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
God is omnipresent. He is everywhere.
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
God is omnibenevolent.
The Lord is good,
a refuge in times of trouble.
He cares for those who trust in him,
If God is all these things, and indeed He is, then we can be assured that He can give what He desires to give. He can take what He desires to take. He can make what He desires to make. His justification is because He is! When He says He made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, then we should say, “Thanks be to God!” The Giver is justified because He is the Great I AM! The Giver is justified because He is God! So it is God who justifies and the Giver. So therefore, He justifies the Gift.
When the verse states that “God made Him,” it refers to the fact that God caused it to happen, that He made it came to be, and that the Gift was His Son, Jesus Christ. God made His Son the Gift. Why would God do that? Because YOU AND I ARE SIGNIFICANT! Do you remember the Prime Minister of Humor from Hee Haw? There was a real-life minister on there named Grady Nutt. One of his most famous sayings was “God don’t make no junk!” How how true that is!
We have already established that God is good. Everything that God made was not just good, but very good.
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
Justification of the Gift
Justification of the Gift
“God made Him, who had no sin, to be sin for us.” The Giver made the Gift. Jesus, the Son of God, was made to be sin. What exactly does that mean? It does not mean that Jesus became a sinner. Jesus had no sin because as the perfect Son of God, He never committed sin.
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin.
Jesus was sinless and obedient to become the Gift the Giver had created Him to be.
but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.
“He committed no sin,
and no deceit was found in his mouth.”
The Giver made the Gift sinless and He became an offering.
God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—
The sacrificial death of Christ for my sins and your sins is amazing to me. For someone to die for me means that I am significant. For someone to die for you means you are significant. There is absolutely nothing we have done to even begin to deserve that sacrificial death. But, do you know what? The emphasis in 2 Corinthians 5:21 is not about the sacrificial death of Jesus. The fullest intent of this passage is that the sinless Christ was made to bear the consequences of our sin.
You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.
The fullest intent of 2 Corinthians 5:21 is “so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.
Do not miss this. The Giver presented the Gift so that we, the Gifted, might understand significance by becoming the righteousness of God.
Justification of the Gifted
Justification of the Gifted
We received the righteousness by simply calling on the name of the Lord and being saved.
for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
“The righteousness of God, understood as that which believers have or become, is the gift of a right relationship with God based upon the fact that He has adjudicated in their favor by refusing, because of the death of Christ in their place, to take account of their sins.” -Colin G. Kruse
You are significant enough in the eyes of God to receive the righteousness of God!
When you realize that you have received this righteousness, you will realize how incredibly beautiful this gift of justification is and can be in your life.
He changes rivers into deserts,
and springs of water into dry, thirsty land.
He turns the fruitful land into salty wastelands,
because of the wickedness of those who live there.
But he also turns deserts into pools of water,
the dry land into springs of water.
He brings the hungry to settle there
and to build their cities.
God can turn your dry thirsty land into pools of water. He can bring you into His righteousness through the process of justification, your insignificance into great significance. When you received the righteousness of God by saying yes to Jesus, and you realize the righteousness of God as He turns your desert into a fruitful land, then you will reign in that righteousness because you are a child of the King.
The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
This helps me get ready and causes me to practice for my role in heaven.
But you, O Lord, are exalted forever.
Where are you in your search for significance? Do you feel that you have to perform or do certain things to be made right with God? You are significant enough in the eyes of God, that you are justified and are righteous in the eyes of God!
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.