The Last Message (well, maybe not)

 

The Last Message

After 29 years of teaching here at Huntington Beach Community Church of the Nazarene, there are a couple of truths that I want to leave you with. 

 

Jesus said: A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.

John 10:10 (MSG).  The “they” is you.  Jesus wants you to live an abundant life.

 

Real and eternal life, abundant life, life to the full, Jesus is the one who can empower you to live your life to the full. Life to the full is a life in which you experience love, both being loved and being able to love others.  Life to the full is experiencing acceptance and belonging, it is being an integral member of a community, a family.  Life to the full is living with meaning and purpose.  The result is that your life counts, you make a difference in this world, and you discover that you are living a significant life.

 

This is what God has intended for humanity, life to the full, and life eternally. Something went wrong.  Everything rises and falls on relationships.  In the Genesis creation, God creates the man and the woman with four key relationships, four key righteous relationships (Genesis 2).  Righteous means functioning as designed, it means rightly related. In the garden planted in Eden, humanity experienced a righteous relationship with God, with one another, and with the earth, and each individual related rightly to his or herself. God walked with humanity face to face.  The man and the woman were transparent to one another, accepted and loved they were open to one another, no secrets, no shame,   The earth yielded its bounty to the couple’s care, their husbandry, their stewardship cooperating with nature.  Mentally, physically, and spiritually, the man and the woman were perfect.

 

These four relationships were predicated on love. Love for God was expressed by obedience to His will.  Love for the others was seeking to meet their need even at the cost of a personal sacrifice.  Love for the earth was demonstrated by their tender care of all the natural resources the man and the woman were blessed with.  Love for self was found in maintaining these relationships.  Love cannot be ordered, or coerced, or demanded.  Love is freely given, love freely responds, to love, one must be free not to love. 

 

One prohibition was given to humanity: Do not eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of Good and evil (Genesis 2:16-17). The temptation that they would be co-equal with God was too great and the man and the woman ate the forbidden fruit resulting in an estrangement in all four relationships (Genesis 3:4). We call this original sin.  Sin is anything that deters, damages, or destroys right relationships.  Everything rises and falls on relationships. The aftermath of the one man’s disobedience brought estrangement from righteousness to the entire human race (Romans 5:12-19).  Fellowship with God was ruined, the man and the woman began to hide from one another, man no longer partnered with the earth to bring forth its treasures, and now death (Genesis 3:14-24).  Sin makes it impossible to live life to the full.  

 

Eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, humanity became the arbitrators of their morality. Every person decides what is right and what is wrong based on their own experience.  We became an authority unto ourselves. Cain kills Able and when asked what happened to Able, Cain responds, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9).  Thus having eaten the forbidden fruit,

lacking an external righteous moral authority, humanity falls into unrighteous behavior, resulting in a tsunami of evil (Genesis 6:5-6). 

 

Original sin is estrangement from righteousness, the personal deeds of unrighteousness are the actual sins we commit. If there was a time in your life in which you enjoyed a great relationship, but that relationship deteriorated, maybe even was destroyed, such outcomes are the result of sin.  Such an experience marks you as a sinner. Original sin and actual sins, we can call this sin problem the human predicament.  

 

Yet God loves His creation and makes grace available to humanity.  We call this grace prevenient grace.  The Holy Spirit gives this grace to everyone.  Prevenient grace manifests as conscience, the ability to know right from wrong, it keeps humanity in check from annihilating itself (John 1:9, John 12:32, Romans 2:4, Titus 2:11).  It is conscience that awakens people to the human predicament. The realization comes that something is not right within, something is missing in life, and it sends us searching to find it.  Far too many go looking for love in all the wrong places.  But a persistent search for truth leads one to an exposure to the gospel. 

 

The gospel is simply the good news that God has made a way for you to be reconciled to Him (1 Peter 3:18).  The plan is amazing, only God can fix what man broke, so God incarnated, becomes human, the man we name Jesus of Nazareth is God in the flesh (Philippians 2:5-8).  Jesus reveals to us who the One He called Father is and reveals to us what it means to be human (Colossians 1:15, John 14:7-9). Jesus' message is one of forgiveness and reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18-21).  An invitation to enter into the Kingdom of God (2 Peter 1:10-11). That message is rejected and Jesus is executed.  Unbeknownst was that His death was part of the plan to bring people back to God (Isaiah 53).  For unknown reasons, sin can only be atoned for through sacrifice (Leviticus 17:11).  Jesus voluntarily died to make it possible for you to be forgiven and reconciled to God; that unrighteous relationship with your Creator made right (John 10:18).  We call this the atonement (Isaiah 53:4-5, 1 Peter 2:24). 

 

Empowering the atonement making redemption and reconciliation a possibility is justifying grace.  Justifying grace is the doorway into fellowship with God. When a person acknowledges that they are a sinner (2 Chronicles 7:14), believes that Jesus atoned for that sin (Acts 16:30-31), and then bends the knee to His Lordship (Romans 10:9), giving Jesus the right to rule in their life with a pledge to be His disciple (Matthew 16:24-26); then you are free to ask God to redeem you from the sin disasters of your life (Romans 10:13). God hears the sincere prayer of a repentant heart and makes you one of His own. We can call the bending of the knee, a sacred commitment, a vow of fidelity that allows the Holy Spirit to bless you with justifying grace (John 1:12). You become spiritually alive, now able to discern spiritual truth, now capable of fellowship with God like humanity knew in the Garden; God declares you to be righteous, and the change is so incredible that the scripture declares that you are born again, that you are a new creation in Christ (John 3:16, 2 Corinthians 5:17).

 

You have been declared righteous, now God empowers you to become righteous.  Sanctifying grace is the power to align every area of your life with the commands of God and the teachings of Jesus.  Sanctifying grace empowers you to develop a righteous relationship with God, with others, with the earth, and with yourself. Sanctifying grace is transformative, the Holy Spirit empowering you to mature in your faith and to become more like Jesus.

 

Three stages of growth sanctifying grace empower are a child-like faith, an adolescent-like faith, and an adult-like faith. (1 John 2:12-14, 2 Corinthians 3:18).

 

When you first acknowledge, believe, commit, and ask, being spiritually new, you exercise a childlike faith, this is the first stage of sanctifying growth (1 Peter 2:1-3).   You can’t seem to get enough new life into yourself, you’re reading scripture, meeting other believers, and your heart is glad. There is a sense of freedom from the sins of the past, the things that you did that deterred, damaged, or destroyed relationships. You are experiencing that God is good (Psalm 34:8).  Prayers prayed seem to find answers that satisfy your soul (Psalm 63, Psalm 107:9).  You’re living in a whole new world.

 

As you mature in your faith, there comes a time when you begin to realize that there is an inner conflict that you are constantly dealing with (Galatians 5:17-25).  Sometimes your zeal for the Lord is fervent, you are quick to obey, you are quick to serve.  Then other times not so much, you might even find yourself falling back into old habits, attachments, or addictions that you now recognize as behavior inconsistent with discipleship.  When you come to this realization you have entered the season of adolescent-like faith.  It is during this refining time that you may even question your experience with God as you struggle to do right but fail to accomplish your intent all the time. You’ve become more aware of your spiritual weaknesses (Romans 7:24).  This struggle is because of egoism. The Apostle Paul called it the sinful nature and said that the Holy Spirit within you conflicts with your sinful nature.  Egoism is self-centeredness, it is the desire to do what you want, when you want, regardless of the consequences.  You find yourself asking to be forgiven for the things you did not want to do but did anyway. You find yourself asking for mercy because the things you wanted to do, didn’t get done (Romans 7:18-20).  The season of adolescent-like faith is a season of ups and downs.  It’s like riding a roller coaster, the highs are when everything is right in your fidelity to Christ, and then there is that crashing low because you did what you wanted instead of the right thing. You’ve got a heart problem causing all this internal conflict.

 

When you realize something is wrong deep inside of you, that revelation has come from the Holy Spirit. Egoism is your internal saboteur.  Egoism is part of our human predicament problem.  Satan’s temptation to humanity was that “you will be like God” (Genesis 3:5). Within each of us is that desire, to be the ultimate authority (Proverbs 12:15, Judges 17:6).  Thus, the conflict of adolescent-like faith.  The Holy Spirit reveals this problem and this motivates you to seek a solution. There is an incredible prophecy given to Ezekiel for you. 

 

Ezekiel 36:25-27 (NIV)

 

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

 

This heart transformation has many names according to the faith community you fellowship in.  Names such as confirmation, total dedication, or baptism in the Holy Spirit are used.  In our Church of the Nazarene, we call the experience entire sanctification. Our faith community views this experience as God’s second blessing.  The first is justification by faith that reconciles your estranged relationship with God.  The second is heart sanctification by faith which breaks the power of egoism. Again you’ve recognized a spiritual problem, egoism, and you want nothing more to do with it, you are willing to sacrifice self-rule for God-rule, so you ask for this gift.

 

Once you’ve experienced this second blessing you enter into the season of Adult like faith.  Egoism can no longer hijack your best intentions.  Now you dictate your behavior, you freely choose your actions. Temptation still abounds but now you have the power to carry through with your righteous desires.  The choice you consistently make is loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and your neighbor as yourself.

 

It is as a spiritual adult that you are consistently living your life to the fullest. You have counted the cost of being a disciple of Jesus (Luke 14:8), you have picked up the cross of self-sacrifice, and serve at God’s pleasure (Matthew 16: 24-26). You delight in doing the will of God (Psalm 40:8), being His ambassador, spreading the word of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:20), making disciples, and teaching others what God has revealed to you (Matthew 28:18-20).

 

The fuel for all this transformation, for thriving and living your life to the full, is the daily practice of the 7 habits of a disciple.  It is through daily reading and studying the scripture, prayer, fellowship, service, worship, obedience, and contemplation that you invite encounters with God that encourage you along your spiritual journey. The 7 Habits help you to deepen your relationship with God. Consider back in ancient times when people wrote letters to one another, that’s how the scripture still functions. Through the reading of the scripture, God reveals to you who He is and what He is like as well as explaining what it means for you to be human. Prayer is similar to making a phone call to converse with your friend, no desire to text, you want to hear a voice.  God speaks into your heart and mind as you pray, telling you how to align yourself with His will. Jesus said that whenever 2 or 3 of his disciples gather together, He would be in their midst (Matthew 18:20), that’s why fellowship with other believers is so important, we become Jesus with skin on to one another when we gather in His name. For a relationship to work well, we need to bring something to the table, that is what service is all about. The scripture declares that the Holy Spirit gives each believer gifts of service, a task that we are to give away to others (1 Corinthians 12:7). Worship is about celebrating the life we share with God together.  It’s giving God His due (1 Chronicles 16:29). Obedience is doing everything you can that will enhance your relationship with God, Others, the Earth, and yourself while refraining from any thought or behavior that would do otherwise (1 John 5:3).  Finally, contemplation involves an intimate and serious discussion about something that needs adjusting in your relationship (Psalm 46:10, Romans 8:26, Ephesians 3:16-20).  The daily practice of the 7 Habits of a Disciple will keep you in step with the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s work of transforming you into the image of Christ, and empower you to live your life to the full (Galatians 5:16-26).

 

These are the truths I have been preaching and teaching over all these years. Once more time I must ask two questions.

 

First: Have you reconciled your relationship with God; Have you acknowledged your estrangement from God, believed that Jesus can reconcile that estrangement, made that commitment to live life under Jesus' direction, and then asked God to save you? 

 

If not, then today's message is your divine invitation to do so. Do you hear the call, “Come unto me, come let me love you?”  Now is the time to act upon that invitation.

 

Second:  You have asked God to save you, you know He has, but now you see the stumbling block of egoism tripping you up as you seek to live your life to the full.  Are you ready to surrender your egoism, and consecrate yourself to God, to firmly put yourself on the path of holiness? 

 

If so, then today’s message is your divine invitation to ask the Holy Spirit to break the power of egoism and make your devotion to God the one thing in your life.

 

I ask you to close your eyes and take a moment to think about the kind of life you want.  Then I’ll ask you to raise your hand if you would like for me to pray for you that God grant you the desires of your heart.

 

 

Jude 24-25 (MSG)

And now to him who can keep you on your feet, standing tall in his bright presence, fresh and celebrating—to our one God, our only Savior, through Jesus Christ, our Master, be glory, majesty, strength, and rule before all time, and now, and to the end of all time. Yes.