Model Faith "Wholly-ness"

How good it is to know that you reign, that you're big, that you're sovereign, that you're unique, that you are other. Yet when you choose to reveal yourself to us, the thing that most people said about you, the thing that people concluded about you most was that you were love. There's something about your otherness that is appealing to us because it prevents us from trying to limit who you are by our own understanding of you. There's something about your bigness and your strength that makes us feel secure and cared for, but there's something about your love that makes us feel noticed and worthy. And we bask in your love today, Father. We bask in our identity as sons and daughters of a really good God and a really good Father. And we're here for you today, Jesus. We're here because of you today, Jesus. And Holy Spirit, thank you that you are the lingering personal presence of Jesus with and for us, continuing to point us toward Him, continuing to challenge us toward the life he longs for us to experience, continuing to lead us toward truth and to encourage us and counsel us and lead us into an understanding of the things that previously we just couldn't understand. And so we welcome you here today to do whatever you need to do in our lives. And we just pray all this because of you, Jesus. Amen. Okay, first, Thessalonians 4, the first 10 verses is going to be up on the screen for you out of the new living translation. There are going to be several slides today where I'm going to just offer some things pretty wrotely to you and try to stay as connected as best I can to my note so that we can get through our time together in a fashion that allows us to experience some other things together as well. But first, Thessalonians 4, the first 10 verses, finally, dear brothers and sisters, we urge you in the name of the Lord Jesus to live in a way that pleases God as we have taught you. You live this way already and we encourage you to do so even more. For you, remember what we taught you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. God's will is for you to be holy. So stay away from all sexual sin. And then each of you will control his own body, live in holiness and honor, not in lustful passion like the pagans who don't know God in his ways. Never harm or cheat a Christian brother in this matter by violating his wife or the Lord of Venge's all such sins as we have solemnly warned you before. God has called you to live holy lives, not in pure lives. Therefore, anyone who refuses to live by these rules is not disobeying human teaching, but is rejecting God who gives His Holy Spirit to you. But we don't need to write you about the importance of loving each other. For God Himself has taught you to love one another. Indeed, you already show your love for all the believers throughout Macedonia. And even so, dear brothers and sisters, we urge you to love them even more. And this is the word of the Lord. Okay, so four statements today. Real quickly and we'll move through some of these. So out of all the things we could talk about today and all the ways we could pursue this idea of holiness, I broke it down to these four statements and we'll talk about them over the next few minutes. First one is this, God is holy and God's will is for you to be holy. Secondly, holy is a way of describing first and foremost what God does in and for us and not something we do to secure the title. Thirdly, you can only pursue holiness from a place of holiness and fourth. Love can be the only legitimate motivation for holiness. So we're going to talk about those four things today and those four aspects. The first one, God is holy. So Exodus 15 verse 11, "Who is like you among the gods, O Lord, glorious in holiness, awesome and splendor, performing great wonders." So when we talk about holiness as it relates to God, we're talking about everything that celebrates and forgive me for using a made up term, but everything that defines or describes or characterizes his godness, everything that makes God who he is, everything that sets him apart from every other little G God who is attempting to vie for the title. So on the screen today, holiness is everything about God that distinguishes him and makes him worthy of our singular devotion in Hebrew, Kadoch is the word. It means sacred or other or marked off as distinct to be set apart, to be devoted, to be worthy of devotion or wholeness. So I told you before last week and I've mentioned it on other occasions, when we think about holiness, I also want you to think about holiness if we were to spell it, W-H-O-L-L-Y, any SS, because there's something about holiness that captures this idea that God is complete in and of himself. God is sufficient in and of himself. Everything about God is integrated, it functions properly, it works well. And out of that what God anticipates is that is, he demonstrates himself as whole and holy, he calls us into a way of being which represents him well. Why? Because we are created in the image of God, meaning that we are to reflect that holiness or that distinctness or everything that causes him to be worthy of devotion, we are to be a people who are characterizing that in our own lives. Drawing attention to this God who is whole and holy and allowing us to experience the most full functional presentation or representation of what it means to be human. So God is holy, but God desires for you to be holy as well. The story requires us to deal with God as he reveals himself not as we imagine him to be. I've said this before, folks, we do not get God on our own terms. We know God as he chooses to reveal himself to us and therefore God is not limited to my projections or my interpretations or my understanding of who he is. God will always be bigger than my knowledge of him, but by the same token, he allows me to experience him in a way that is distinct and unique and he is holy. Holy is a way to describe, so this is a second point. This is kind of like holiness for dummies in 20 minutes. It probably wasn't a great way to describe us, was it? Let's just say holiness for beginners or something like that. Is that sound better? Thank you. Here I was just talking to you about your identity in Jesus and your sense of worth and then I called us all idiots. That probably wasn't smart. All right. Well, secondly, holy is a way of helping to describe first and foremost what God does in and for us and not something we do to secure the title. Second Timothy 1, it is God who saved us and chose us to live a holy life. He did this not because we deserved it, but because that was his plan long before the world began to show his love and kindness to us through Christ Jesus. Again, on the screen, God's people were holy by virtue of the fact that He had chosen them. It had nothing to do with any glaring qualities that made them the obvious favorite. It was because God chose them that they were chosen. Does that make sense? So they were to be holy as a reflection of their understanding of their identity. What makes us holy, God chooses us and sets us apart and calls us out as distinct. It's in His chosenness that makes us holy. So it's purely distinctly by God's calling, God's chosenness on our life because it's what He wants to do that sets us apart as unique and there's a way that we go live into that identity that then establishes our sense of understanding of holiness. You can only write, so that's point number two in two minutes. I don't think I've ever done this before. It's really frustrating, but I'm going to keep going. Thirdly, you can only rightly pursue holiness from a place of holiness. I've said this over and over again and I believe this to be probably one of the most important things that I'll say today. You can only rightly pursue holiness from a place of holiness up on the screen today. Before we are ever called to be good, we are called to be holy. Alright, I'll say that one more time. That's a really important statement. We dare not even talk about holiness as a lifestyle until we become convinced of holiness as an identity. Holiness is first and foremost who you are and not what you do. Does holiness in our calling and our chosenness anticipate that our lives will be different and it will reflect our distinctiveness? I would say yes. But to start with our behavior sets us on a trajectory that gets us really confused about what it means to be God's people, about what it means to be a people who are holy or unique. It takes it out of our hands in terms of our ability to qualify ourselves. What qualifies us is not our good behavior, not our compliance to the laws and commands. It sets us apart what makes us unique is God's chosenness upon us. Okay, that is pretty good. So how does Paul, the one who gives us most of the New Testament, right? How does Paul want us to understand this? Over and over again, repeatedly Paul uses this phrase in Christ. If you've read through Paul's letters, he consistently comes back to this idea about being in Christ. Paul uses that phrase often to provide both the motivation and the means of such a reality. It's a way of recognizing that there's something about my present relationship to Jesus that's directly altering my life. To be in Christ, to means to be so wrapped up in Him, so identified in Him, that there's something about my relationship to Him that causes me to see myself differently, that causes me to understand God differently, that causes me to understand and relate to you differently, which sets me out on a trajectory of going into a culture that needs to understand something of the belovedness of Jesus for us. And it sets us out into that world to do that well. Why? Because we have been chosen in Christ. I said to the guys on Friday morning and I'll rehearse it really quickly because some of you know my story already. So I ran across this note and it was pertinent this week, but I ran across this note several years ago at the age of 21. This has been 1982. I get a letter in the mail, a letter I had been anticipating for some time. So I go out to the mailbox, letters in the mailbox I've been looking for it for a long time. And I recognize the return address. I recognize the logo. It was this tire with these wings that came off it. It was a representation. It was the logo for the Ohio State Highway Patrol. And I open up the letter and it says inside the letter right off the top. I was so nervous to read this because I had been testing with them for over a year and a half. And it says within the first two lines, dear Philip Strong, congratulations you have been chosen. Okay. And then it went on to say to be to participate in the 112th Academy class of the Ohio State Highway Patrol. Can I tell you something folks? Here's what I wanted to convey to the guys yesterday. Here's what I wanted to convey to you. When I read that letter from that moment on, I was a trooper. I had never been to a class. Nobody had given me a uniform. I hadn't received any instruction. In fact, it was months until I would go away to the Academy. But from that point on, I was in Ohio State Highway Patrolman and it changed my life. It changed the course of my life. It changed my eating habits. Change my exercise routines. It changed the way I saw myself. Change the way I respected myself. It changed the way I respected others. Why? Because I knew that to dawn that uniform was to represent something and others bigger than myself. So here's the under so-so-so. Paul says, "You are in Christ." This whole letter, you should open this up and read it. And the first thing you should hear is congratulations. You have been chosen. You're the beloved. Now just go and live like that. That's what the rest of the teachings all about. If I could break it down really simply, this is what this is all about folks. You're the beloved of God. You are the chosen of God now go and live like that. And as you live like that, it's going to change the way you see yourself. It's going to change the way you respond. It's going to change the way you order your life. We call it the spiritual practices, the disciplines. Those are not things we do to earn holiness. Those are things we do because we're holy. And we want to grow in holiness. So I read the story. I read my Bible. I spend time in solitude. I pray. I gather with you. Why do we do all those things to better help me understand and live into my sense of identity in Jesus? I want you to know that it's not just about me. My identity in Jesus necessitates you as we live together in community. Okay, but some of you would say, how many of you in just in conversation through this week, maybe it was a graduation party, you referred to yourself as holy to another person you didn't know. Okay, it's probably not a moniker. We attached to ourselves very frequently, right? And maybe you'd look next door to you today and said, I don't even know if I'd use that term to describe them either. But this is what Paul is doing. I think what Paul is trying to doing by calling us saints or holy ones, he's trying to get our attention. He's trying to shock us into a different kind of reality. He's trying to transform our imagination to cause us to reimagine ourselves and who we are in Jesus and the way that we are together. That isn't calling us holy when we don't particularly act holy, isn't that some lame attempt at manipulative flattery? Why don't you just tell us the way it is? Can I just tell you this? I believe that we give consent to a lot of things in our life that just ain't true. I think we lack discrimination in our endorsements in our life. I think we hear things spoken of us or said about us or pointed toward us even in an unspoken way that we adopt is true for us and it starts to alter us. And then we start to behave as if that's true, even if it's a lie. Several years ago and I don't know why I remember this incident. Isn't it funny the things that you remember so vividly? And that was at the store she was doing some shopping and she was in the changing room trying some stuff on. And you know there are guys I don't know if this makes you feel I always feel kind of like a creeper sitting outside of the dressing room. I always feel like when somebody comes out I need to explain myself. Oh, I'm here for my wife. The phone camera I'm not using that at all. I promise. So the next thing they're trying to close on and there's a lady sitting out near me. And so another lady comes out of the dressing room. It's obviously her friend and this lady was probably 25 years older than myself and I just looked up and I just thought, well that dress looks really nice on her. And immediately her friend says, and it's just what she says, oh girl, that dress washes you right out. And abrupt, you could see the demeanor, you could see her count and it's dropped. And abruptly she turned around and walked back in the dressing room, took that one off and tried something else. Is it what happens in our life? These endorsements, these things that people say about us, words spoken over us that just are not true. And we adopt them and it's true and we start to live as if they're true. And we miss out on the blessing or the goodness that God keeps speaking over us week after week, day after day of our lives. And if there's anything, if there's any, some kind of goal or objective I have week after week coming here is to interrupt all that. And for you to walk out of here knowing that you are the beloved, you are the chosen of God and is that chosenness that is meant to alter and transform the way you leave here. All right, remember, no clapping yet. Okay, our confession, this is on the screen for you. Our confession of being in Christ is the healthy antithesis of shame. It gives direction to my feelings and allows me to interrupt all the damaging self-talk. It helps to create more distance between my brokenness and the person that I'm becoming. It's not some cathartic attempt to excuse my sin. Instead, I am declaring I am not that person anymore. Yeah. Be holy because I am. Okay, now how you hear that, how you hear that will determine the way you move forward in your life. He doesn't say try to be holy because I'm holy, does he? He says, be holy because I'm holy. Allow my holiness and my chosenness of you to alter the way you see yourself. Be holy. Go and be holy. Okay, finally, love can be the only legitimate motivation for holiness. Two statements that you'll be on the screen, one right after the other. Holiness is everything that makes God glorious. When God loses his glory, so do we, because we're created in the image of God. What is most glorious about God is that He is love. What's most glorious about us is that we are the beloved. I experience a disproportionate number of people in my life who believe that God is predisposed to them and desires only their purpose best. Most people I run into don't believe that. And don't think that way, even if they've been following Jesus for some length of time. I'm not sure that we really, so we can stand up here and we can celebrate all the ways that God's moved us in the person of Jesus. But can you sit here with me today and say, I believe that this creator God is predisposed to me. I believe that nothing makes him any happier than to love me well and for me to respond to his love. See that's what should be wrecking us. That's what should be reordering us is this idea of God chooses to set his affection on us and its affection toward us that transforms us and alters the way we see ourselves in the world. There's a glaring disparity between the revelation that God is love and those who actually as Paul says in Ephesians 5 live in love. Christ's love compels us, Paul says. I'll skip a couple things and take you toward the wrap up. Second Corinthians 5, you've been around here the last three and a half going on four years, you'll realize. Second Corinthians 5, one of my favorite segments, passages talks about us being new creation, talks about God's reconciling, work to us in Jesus and then we're reconcilers. But he starts it from a place of love. Paul says, Christ's love compels me. That word, it means it narrows his options. It causes him to be devoted to Jesus. It's the love of Christ. It's interesting to me that the word saint or holy means not only pure and clean, but it means warmed by tender love or cherished. Now how many of you could say, well, I can get around with that when I can get on that one if that's holiness? And by tender love, cherished, that's who you are. I know it's hard to believe. I'm just asking you to start to assimilate it as if it's true. Start to live that way. You'll never have to use guilt or obligation as a means of motivating people who've come to understand and experience that kind of love. So three things I would recommend for you. The first one is this on the screen. You should avoid any pursuit of holiness that's performance oriented and shame-based. Even hearing the challenge to find out what pleases the Lord or live in ways that are pleasing to God launches us into murky waters. Some of you grew up in households with a father that never noticed you, with a mother who was never satisfied. So you end up being quietly compliant, but you're dangerously resentful. So we envision then this God is perpetually disappointed. We have to find ways to excel which gets God's attention and secures his affection and the message is all too clear for us. You're inadequate. You're not enough. And so Paul offers us the beauty of grace. Little sinners, Paul says, "While we were still separate from him, Christ died for us." So we hear that and then that doesn't even satisfy us. We're not content with that because now we're saying, "Okay, great." So I'm so messed up that Jesus actually had to die for me. So what Paul does right away is he takes that out of your hands by starting with the fact that he says, "We know how dearly God loves us and many goes on to talk about Christ giving Himself for us." It's always centered in the love of God for you. I really hope you hear that. Choose an approach that's not based on deprivation but transformation. What do I mean by that? Unless you know God and unless you know love, you will hear all the commands as prohibitions not provisions for blessing. God is not attempting to deprive you of pleasure but your pleasure is not His ultimate concern. Your wholeness is. Can I read that one more time? That's really good. Your wholeness is. And then finally, don't commit yourself to obedience for obedience, sake. Get yourself to becoming the kind of person who desires to obey. I always wanted so much more for my children than obedience. Any other parents would say that that was true of you too. You know why? Because my children obeying me is not what brought me the greatest joy. Because I knew back then, even starting having children at 24 years old, trying to figure out what it was like to be a man, trying to figure out what it was like to walk in covenant relationship with a woman and figure out all that and then we introduce children into that mix. And I realize as I held those children there's going to be something that I want. I want them to know about their father and I want them to know His love. And I want them to know that what makes daddy most happy is not that they're compliant children. Because I knew there was going to come a time when my kids were going to start pushing the boundaries and they were going to start testing my authority. Any parents here would say, "Yeah." But here's what I wanted them to know. I wanted them to know that what brought me pleasure was not their obedience. What brought me pleasure was their love. Was the fact that if they could rest in the idea that their father loved them and therefore their father set some boundaries out for them that if they could respond to that, that's what would make me really happy. And so John says this in second John, "How happy I was to meet with some of your children and to find them living according to the truth just as the father commanded." You know what makes his heart happy is just that we are a people who are longing to respond well because we're being loved well. I hope was always in love and not in the rules of the house. God's never been interested in compliant children but people who share his heart and when given the opportunity to choose, find themselves choosing the ways of Jesus, as Paul said in Ephesians 6, "Doing the will of God from the heart." Okay, so here's a few questions for you today. Nothing, that was not the exhaustive teaching on holy. I just believe that whole concept, that whole topic is just, that's what we talk about every week. Even though we may not use that particular phrase, this is what we're talking about. What does it look like to realize, to figure out our identity in Jesus and then what does it look like for us to go and live as if that's really true? That's holiness. That's wholeness. That's shalom. How many of your present, I mean, I wrote this wrong, should say how many of your present pursuits would you say are motivated by fear? How much of your current activity is driven by a determination to validate yourself or win the approval of another? You may not be able to answer that now but I would encourage you to sit with it because it's important. Do you feel that such motivation is healthy and sustainable? Where in your life are you able to detect responses which are motivated, not by your desire to be loved, but by the realization that you already are loved? Jesus, thanks for loving us so well. Thanks for a place with you. Thank you for somebody like Paul or somebody like John who picked up most on your love. It had such a dramatic encounter with you but then walked away realizing the most important thing about that encounter or that experience was that they had met love. They had encountered love that renamed them and redirected them and set them on a different trajectory and may that be true of us. Jesus may our obedience, may our determination to align ourselves with your will may that always be motivated by our love for you because you've loved us so well. Amen. We come to today Lord and what a joy it is to pray blessing over dance in our congregation. But first of all we want to say thank you that you are our Father. That you created a Fatherhood and in the light of who you are. You've given us an amazing responsibility to reflect your Fathering through our own Fathering. And so today we want to pray blessing upon those fathers who have traveled the road of Fatherhood, who have shepherded, who have prayed, who have guided, who have corrected, who have championed their kids. And they find themselves in a new role and in a new season of life. And we bless those dads today for the role that they have played in the lives of their children. We want those dads who have finished well that role of active shepherding. We want to bless them for the legacy that they have laid down. We want to celebrate with them today that they are in a new season of life. Still Fathering but from a distance. And we pray that you would enable them to grow in that role, enable them to look to you and how you have shepherded them as they have reached adulthood in the faith. But Lord we know life being what it is that there are many dads who look back with regret with a sense of deficiency and there's much pain and much regret. And we want to bless them today with that sense that you love them and you loved them in the midst of their deficiency. And we want them to understand that you are a loving God who steps down into their pain and into their regret. And you who say, "Let my love be enough for you and let me be a redeeming God for you. I will redeem the years that the Locust have eaten and I will bring loving transformation, not only for you but for your offspring." And so we bless dads today that have walked the journey of parenthood and we release them into your future for them, into their continuing parenting of their kids by your grace and in your grace. In your name we pray, amen. And in the lives of these fathers, smack in the center of life's most demanding seasons of work and family, Lord, provide these men with the wisdom they need because you say that as they ask, you will give wisdom generously. Bless these fathers with strength and courage to live in authentic community with other men, sharing their joys and sorrows while spurring one another on to walk with you and victory and wholeness. Bless each one God as He shepherds His children into a life of loving you and loving others. Let him be present, loving and kind as Jesus was with the children in His life. And the responsibility feels too great, remind him that you are his ever-present help in times of trouble and that no matter what he does, you cannot love him any more or any less. Most of all father draw these men close to your side so that they depend on you the most, so that out of their love for you, they would be the men of God you have created them to be. I pray blessing over you and the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. I pray that you will fully express the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, journalists, and self-control. I pray that you will seek God's will for your life and family and that you will walk in that purpose. I pray that you will be a light to those around you with safety and stability. I pray that you begin to understand how much you are loved fully by God and that you are enough. And finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable. If anything is excellent and praiseworthy, think about such things. Amen. I bless you today in the name of Jesus, the one who came to put a name and a face to God. And the one who referred to this God most often is Father. The one who spoke to this Father with such passion and heart, the one who moved toward others on his behalf with such compassion, the one who was so keen to Father's voice, the one who trusted Father, the one who knew Father was good and who gives good gifts to his children. The one who invites us into family and into brotherhood with him and into fatherhood with our Creator God. I pray that you could come to trust and give of yourself to this God. And more than anything, more than anything, I pray that you will come to experience the love of God for yourself, although you'll never understand it.