06 T4G 2018 Matt Chandler Citizens of Heaven, In the World But Not Of

you know you maybe see this well good morning how are we if you have your Bibles if you'll turn to Matthew chapter five we'll dive in not long after my conversion to Christ I actually through a friend was assured into the kingdom of God and not long after the Lord opened up my heart to belief I found in me a zeal to have my friends know Jesus and love Jesus and I really had no real theological grounding or knowledge around how to evangelize in fact my attempts were were painful to probably watch I knew you loved Jesus or you're going to hell and that just wasn't working in the cafeteria and so what I thought I could do is I could bring my friends to church and so I began to invite friends to come with me to First Baptist Church of Texas City Texas and as I brought my friends what I found is that rather than being able to like have them introduced to the person and work of Jesus Christ what we ran into over and over and over again was a type of overt moralistic deism to quote Christian Smith he I would bring my friends hoping that they would hear about Jesus hoping that they would hear about the good news of the gospel only to have them hear sermons about not having sex before marriage or not listening to secular music or not watching Terminator 2 or and that dated me there and and so where I wanted them to know and love Jesus Christ instead they were getting a good dose of moralistic be ISM now I'm not saying that morality is a bad thing in fact I think it's a necessary thing actually woven into the fabric of our beans by our Creator but when presented the law without the gospel it you lose heart you you give up and and you punt and so I'm wondering if now after pastoring in Dallas Texas for 15 years mark that earned those other few so the early ones were hard so just thank you in in the middle of in the middle of pastoring a church in Dallas it's not uncommon for me to hear testimonies in the baptistry of growing up in church and having never actually heard or understood the gospel hear testimonies that they tried to do what's right tried to avoid what's wrong try to kind of conform their lives around these moral principles and standards only to fall short and give up on Jesus without ever having actually tried Jesus and so my my fear is coming out of that that we've got a full generation of pastors Christians and leaders who stay away from the moral imperatives in the Word of God for fear of the accusation of legalism like the one thing we must not be in a day and age where we must look cool and know what's cool and communicate what's cool is be legalistic and end in punting on our responsibility to lay before our brothers and sisters the moral imperatives that God has calling us into we have given ground just showing the world the light of the glory of God in Christ let me define terms so we'll know what we're talking about here moralism you'll have to forgive me I'm a little bit under the weather moralism is a belief that you can earn the favor of God or be accepted by God via moral behavior that's how I'm going to use the term moralism morality is being transformed by the spirit's power to God's revealed will for human flourishing and and I think this morality we see the first shadows of it actually in creation itself in Genesis 1:27 through 2028 the Bible says so God created man in his own image in the image of God he created him male and female he created them and God blessed them and God said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth I think what you're seeing in this text is a bit of the shadow or the morality of God's good design that we work and aren't lazy so what we can see is it is a moral thing to work and we're gonna see that fleshed out throughout the rest of the scriptures and it's an immoral thing to not work and to expect others to do work for you now if you're out of work right now and looking for a job I'm not talking to you if you're 40 year old expert on fortnight on Xbox I probably am talking to you we see this also in relationships not that that's not a great game we also see this in relationships if you look at Genesis 2:23 through 25 then the man said this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh she shall be called woman because she was taken out of the man therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed again I think you have in this passage that we fleshed out more as the Scriptures come to mankind some moral imperatives we see in this text a man and a woman we see in this text that a husband will leave his mother and father and he will cling to his wife he will hold fast to his wife we see that we don't as men who are married give our best our most our heart to our mamas but instead that clings to our wife now belongs to the wife of our youth there is moral ism or morality woven into the fabric of how God designed us to operate it's not just in the creative order you'll see this but you'll see this throughout the scriptures as God begins to position his people to be the light of the world we see it in the book of Exodus as God delivers his people out of slavery has them on the verge of the promised land and says this to them now therefore if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples for all the earth is mine and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation these are the words that you shall speak to my people Israel now pop quiz what comes immediately following this there's 10 of them the Ten Commandments right I'm causing me to lose heart here you've got right after God says listen here's what I'm gonna do I'm gonna set you up as a holy nation as a kingdom of priests and I'm gonna position you right where all the ancient powers of the world couldn't look in and by the way here's how I want you to live and you get the Ten Commandments and then you get the tabernacle and then you get the law he's saying there's a ways that I'm gonna have you walk there's a way I'm gonna have you live there's a way I'm gonna have you relate to one another and relate to the world around you that will show my wisdom and my glory and the right way to live life in such a way that they are ushered into me and my presence that they become captivated by my beauty because if your God has you living this way that's leading to this kind of flourishing then come and see that I am good and yet has fallen people all rules commands and external authority seem to threaten our autonomy I mean is this not the day and age in which we're living where men and women think no one knows what's best for them except them like no one gets to tell me what's best for me except me I know what's best for me when it comes to sexuality when it comes to how I live my life when it comes to to this or that like I am my own God and listen 15 years of pastoral ministry I've never had anyone I've had people say crazy things to me and I have never heard anyone tell me hey I I think I'm smarter than God I mean I've looked at the text just think if God knew the situation I was in like if he really understood all the kind of details around this situation that he certainly wouldn't be commanding me to walk in this in fact pastor I there's an asterisk there and if you turn to the back of your Bible you'll see that my face is in the back of your Bible as the asterisk that this doesn't actually apply to me because of these situations in my life if I've never had anyone talked to me like that and yet I see hundreds actually live like that that I'm smarter than God and so then Jesus arrives on the scene begins to declare the gospel of the kingdom and we see in the Sermon on the Mount really a proclamation of Kingdom living and so I want us to read this together Matthew chapter 5 we're gonna start in verse 2 and he opened his mouth and taught them saying blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you this is huge falsely on my account not because you're a jerk rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you now what we see happening here is we've got some mirroring of what happened at Sinai you've got Jesus now up on the Mount and you've got the disciples of Jesus that have followed around Jesus and Jesus the greater Moses now surrounded by his disciples is beginning to teach like Moses taught Israel what it means to be a holy people but I need to make some clarifying statements here Jesus is doing more than giving the disciples something to simply legalistically obey but rather he's laying before them a transformation of the inner man by the spirit that will start on the inside and flow to the outside and you can see this clearly in the Beatitudes but because the Beatitudes cannot be accomplished through white knuckled discipline you will not with white knuckled discipline be a peacemaker you will not with white knuckled discipline become those who mourn those who are meek what we're seeing in the Sermon on the Mount specifically in the Beatitudes are a list of things that have counter compulsions that are born of our flesh there must be brought into the presence of Christ and broken and humbled you will not gain salvation by obeying the Beatitudes any more than you will gain salvation in obedience to the ten commandments what we see in the Beatitudes is the picture of the ideal man submitted fully to the person and work of Jesus Christ dragging his compulsions into the presence of Christ and having the Spirit of Christ break his heart built him up in love and send him back out into the world those who repent and believe upon the name of Jesus Christ get these seeds these seeds of being poor in spirit having a heart that's humble before Lord being meek hunger and thirsting for eyes to be the first fruit the first seeds of that are put in our soul upon conversion and then must be cultivated through the process of progressive sanctification in order to grow into the fruitfulness that God has commanded us in Christ I love how he ends here it's where we're gonna spend a lot of our time look there in verse 13 you are the salt of the earth but if salt has lost its taste how shall its saltiness be restored it is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet you are the light of the world a city set on a hill cannot be hidden nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket but on a stand and it gives light to all in the house in the same way let your light shine before others so they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven now if you did your good kind of logos Bible study software work there or you you wanted to dig around okay what are the uses of salt in the ancient world so I can look at those uses and kind of apply them to Christian living you would find that that salt is a preservative it's a flavoring agent it's a substance to treat wine skins it was an agent to slow down the fermentation of manure so it could be used as fertilizer and on and on and on and on you could go but I think the point Jesus is making here and I think the way first century men and women would have heard this was that salt cannot lose its saltiness because its salt he's throwing before an absurd idea how consult not be salt its salt if it's salt that it's salt right so he's saying here listen you you born anew you belong to Jesus you're gonna be salty right how can light not be light like lights light and and nobody lights the lightning hides the light because you're lighting light because you're like so Jesus is like laying before the hearers the reality that to be born anew is to be conformed by the spirit's power into an external moral reality and then from there he moves on to teach on anger lust divorce Earth's retaliation love for enemies giving to the poor praying and fasting money anxiety judging others the golden rule warning against false prophets surely this brother was a legalist he ends the Sermon on the Mount with this Matthew 7:24 through 27 everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock and the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock and everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand and then the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell and great was the fall of it and so you see right after the Beatitudes the salt is salt and then you've got at the end of the Sermon on the Mount build your life on the rock how do you build your life on the rock do what I said dr. Thomas Shriner describes what I'm talking about like this disciples have a distinct profile over against the world they admit that they are poor in spirit they are peacemakers and merciful they endure persecution and do not hate those who mistreat them they are not marked by lust in the abuse of women they love their enemies they do not practice religion for the praise of others they trust God for their physical needs and do not judge others they communicate their difference from the world and shine as witnesses in a dark world now you see what's happened is that one of the ways that we show that we are sons and daughters of God is there's been an inward transformation that has led to an external outward transformation that the world finds peculiar the Apostle Paul what we see I think in Jesus's teaching is that salt can't not be salt but certainly it can be diluted light can't not be light but apparently it can be hid under a basket and we see here that there seems to be a way to build your life on the sand I'll be it not not a wise way to build your home so I want us to look at a simple one verse in the book of Romans that I think will help us navigate how to live with what Don Carson calls grace driven effort not airing on the size of side of legalism but certainly not airing on the side of license either in Romans chapter 12 verse 2 the Apostle Paul writes do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of God what is good and acceptable and perfect and so he starts this passage or at least this verse after appealing by the mercies of God that we would not be conformed to world but transforms so the verb translated conformed here means guided by saying do not be guided by the world do not get swept up in the wind or the current of this world it say don't do this by the mercy of God on your life don't be guided by the world guided by its principles guided by its values guided by its entertainment got out I don't know if you're aware of this but you are being discipled by the world around you everything you watch everything you read all your intakes are forming and shaping your life the Apostle Paul is appealing pleading by the mercy of God don't be guided by the world instead he says be transformed by the renewal of your mind now this idea of being transformed once again it's internal language it's not external language it's something internal that's happening to be transformed inside that at least this is not outside in I am NOT preaching dududududu I'm not preaching that I'm saying because it's been done we do the inside or this inward transformation involves according to the text the renewal of our mind the word translated mind here in 12:2 is capable of comparing all kinds of various nuances about the life of the mind it's used in some places to just refer to intellect and other places attitude and other places still thoughts opinions or decree so it's talking about the whole of man in our thinking and feeling and attitudes and actions in fact I like how Paul says at any fees for when he talks about being renewed in the spirit of your minds let let all of you be renewed and so to be renewed in the inner man in such a way that it leads to external moral visible salt and light that's gonna it's gonna involved by the power of the spirit both mortification and vivid fication so I want to start with vivify keishon a in Philippians 4:8 yet again our brother Paul says finally brothers whatever is true whatever is honorable whatever is just whatever is pure whatever is lovely whatever is commendable if there is any excellence if there's anything worthy of praise think about these things dwell on these things hang out on these things consume these things sit in these things marinate in these things if there's anything lovely anything beautiful it is the holiness of heaven that dries out the filthiness of the world it is the beauty of Christ that compels us to say no to what is broken and grotesque in the world Paul says if it's beautiful if it's lovely if it's right if it's good if it's pure hang out there stay there dwell there I want to flood my life fill my life with joy bringing Jesus exalting beauty I think John 15 is a good thing to consider what does it mean to abide in the presence of Jesus to remain to commune with Jesus not just to know about not just to know what's right and wrong brothers I will I will just lay this before you I am NOT the husband I am called to be the father I am called to be the pastor I am called to be the preacher I am called to be simply because I know a series of texts that command me to be those things I am best at those things when I have abided in the presence of Christ when I've communed with him when I've gazed upon his beauty and the fuel of my soul is communing with Christ in the Word of God in the quiet so that out of the overflow of that abiding presence of Christ I bear the fruit of external moral righteousness this should be driving what we fill our minds with listen I own a television some of my brothers down here do not I own a television I have a Netflix account I I can tell you I'm not a binge watcher I don't have the space for that could not name for you right now what I'm currently watching which is a question I get often probably some nerdy documentary if I were to answer it and and yet I am oftentimes deeply concerned at what seems to be our knee many of our need to to feel like we're in or that we we know or at least we can banter back and forth with what the world is watching and partaking in again I don't think the television is the demon box brothers but I do believe that being entertained but what God finds deplorable it's probably a bad usage of 30 minutes two to three hours if I find myself entertained by rape and incest and horrific violence and sexual perversion what does that say about where my mind and heart are and is Jesus sitting there with me and join that again don't read me wrong brothers and sisters I'm not telling you to throw out your TV although some of you should throw out your TV it's not just vilification or dwelling on what is beautiful is also mortification Romans 13:14 the Apostle Paul says but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires so so I love this put on Christ I want to put on Christ I want to abide I want to commune I want to dwell with Christ and then from there he says make no provision for the flesh don't give it any opportunity don't give it any chance don't play with sin I used the illustration before I'll I'll use it here again there's something broken in our minds broken in our spirits broken in our souls that leads us to believe that we are in control of sin in a way that is not biblically true though the way I'll illustrate that is several years ago I was out riding and was on a little bit of a riding retreat and I don't like I got well I didn't I was I didn't know what I had written before and so I'm like oh man do I need to go search that I say that already I don't know if you've written that if anybody else experiences that but anyway I was looking few so I just stopped and I was out in the woods and there's like three channels on and and one of those channels was a win animals attack anybody seen this show when animals attack and I don't know why man I like I'm always for the animal on that show because I feel like the people involved are like dumb and and we need to get that out of kind of the DNA strand that's flowing through humanity right and so I'm watching this show and and near the end of the show there's this that the scene that they're trying to shoot this commercial and the commercial was going to be for like shampoo or something and it's this woman you know this model that walks out and they want her to lay on this male lion you know like like I like coming like a mane kind of thing going on and and the lion attacks her and just rips her to shreds and then they're interviewing the trainer and the guys like couldn't see this coming and I'm like it's a lion it's a it hat it has one purpose in all of creation to kill stuff it is an apex predator but to hear this brother talk he talked about you know raising it from when it was a baby you know kidding it when he could just hold it taking it for walks you know combing its mate and I just have to believe that many of us are playing with sin like this brother was playing with a lion oh I've got control of this oh man that's never gonna turn on me man for 15-20 years man I have trained this sin to sit when I tell it to sit to get in its bed when it's time to get it better and the way this works brothers is is through a lot of worldly sorrow without godly repentance it's a lot of I won't do this again I'm never it's a lot of worldly sorrow it's not I have offended I have committed treason against God on high no no no I would urge you brothers to not play with lions eventually in season at the right time it will turn and it will devour therefore put on Christ and make no provision for the flesh for 20 years now I've just tried to live by these kind of two concepts that maybe maybe they're missing something the great thing about my friends here is that they'll let me know if I am so the I want to kind of keep keep watch my own heart and soul about what stirs my affection for Jesus Christ what when I'm doing it when I'm around it when I'm reading it when I'm participating really builds me up to know and love and follow and I want to pay really close attention to what robs me of that affection because what I found at 43 twenty-something years into following Jesus Christ is most of the things that robbed me of my affection for Jesus Christ are morally neutral things if I walk out into the parking lot today and someone offers me black tar heroin I am NOT gonna need to run that through a grid of should I do this or should I didn't know what are the pros and cons of black tar heroin it's a pretty easy no I'm alright thank you you should run now but it is the morally neutral or what could be called by Jerry bridges respectable sentence tolerable sins that will if I make provision for my flesh sink their hooks into me and rob me of affection for Jesus that will in turn rob me a vitality of Christian living which then Rob's me of being the salt and light that God has called me to brother sisters we must embrace being the peculiar people we are we must embrace being the peculiar people that we are and I have yet to hear the story of anyone coming to know Jesus Christ because the pastor knew a little bit about Game of Thrones I just have not met the man or woman that had a powerful experience of Jesus Christ because we get to discuss the latest Radiohead lyrics and John 17 Jesus prays I asked not that you take them out of this world but did you keep them from the evil one we seized Jesus praying that as we live in we not become of church we are meant to be a picture of the future that is to come we are meant to be a picture of the future that is to come I would plead with you brothers and sisters to consider the transforming power of Jesus Christ in the inner man that leads to external moral transformation if I could just take a moment and I'm certainly not gonna use all of my time but if we could just look back at Matthew five let me show you how I think this actually works as we consider grace driven effort as as opposed to kind of white knuckled discipline if we look back on let's let's take verse nine blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God now I want to talk to you about how we we take this this command because this is the Sermon on the Mount not the suggestions on the Mount but like Jesus didn't say hey think about these things get back to me on what you like what you know like this is this is what the Sermon on the Mount the proclamation of the kingdom so blessed are the peacemakers so this call since you and I have experienced reconciliation peace with Christ then we are men and women that seek peace not cause division so I would make an appeal to a moral appeal to you based on this text to not participate as best you can in the polarization of our current climate but to be peacemakers to seek to understand one another to UM not vilify one another to be careful what you post for concern out of one another on a hyper political scale I'm just I'm just appealing to you as Christian brothers and sisters to consider that there are Bible believing Jesus loving Democrats and there are Bible believing Jesus loving Republicans as hard as that is for many of us to imagine it's true and if you're confused by that blessed are the peacemakers sit down with your brother and ask for clarity you ain't got to agree but you got to be gracious let's just seems like be a lost art in 2018 so here here's how I want us to think about if we're talking about compulsion so if when we get in the political arena you see anger like flare up in your eye you just get angry you feel like you got to tell somebody got to be the I think what Jesus is saying here is okay something's broken in your heart that that brokenness is working itself out and anger and compulsion in anger to post nonsense on your Facebook page and so you need to take that anger and you need to drag it into the presence of Jesus and say man I've got an angry heart I don't even know where this stems from spirit of the Living God will you help me be what you have called me to be what you are gonna empower me to be spirit of the Living God will you grant to me the kind of compassion and grace that I might live as salt and light in a world that's dying to know what is true this is dragging compulsion into the presence of Christ it's not white-knuckled disciplines now I know I'm supposed to be a peacemaker so I'm gonna be passive-aggressive instead of blatant but I didn't really say that there's freedom to be found in dragging our compulsions into the presence of Jesus Christ I think this is the way that we are internally transformed so that external moral beauty is visible we are a picture of the future that is to come but we must be serious about God's call on our lives to cultivate a soul transformed by the presence of Jesus into the life that he has called us into let's pray father I thank you for my brothers and sisters pray that they would hear in this sermon what is true and right and good and that they would reject all that is not I pray not that we would be legalistic or return to some legalistic mode or moment in church history but I do pray they'll be serious about the things that you've commanded of us do we not look at your commands as chains I thank you that every thou shalt and thou shalt not in the Bible is about our joy about your glory about human flourishing pray that we not look at any command in your Bible as impossible to step into by the spirits power and I ask all the more that your sons and daughters would drag compose oceans and drag things that are out of step with the gospel into your presence to delight in you to gaze upon what is beautiful in you and to be transformed by your presence and it's for your beautiful name I pray amen god bless [Applause]

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Length: 33min 37sec (2017 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 15 2018

Reddit Comments

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Love Matt Chandler.