Pillar and Ground

For Christians, worry is to be disobedient and unfaithful to God.  Nothing in our lives, whether it be internal or external, justifies our being worrisome when God is our Master.  What worry does is distrust the promise and providence of God.  In Matthew 6, which is our memory text for our church right now, in v. 25 Jesus commands us not to worry.  The tense of the command in the Greek includes the idea of stopping what is already being done.  We are to stop worrying and never start again.

The English term “worry” comes from an old German word meaning “to strangle,” or “to choke.”  Worry does that—it strangles us mentally, causing physical affliction.  Usually we worry about something that is small, but the worry causes great damage, much larger than the small thing could cause that we’ve worried about.  It has been said that worry is a thin stream of fear that trickles through the mind that, when encouraged, will cut a channel so wide that all other thoughts will be drained out.

Would you categorize yourself as a worrier?  If you do worry, what has driven you to choose that over trust in God?  If you are worrying, you should stop now, because you have good reasons to be content and Jesus gives some of those in Matthew 6.  Contentment, not worry, should be the believer’s state of mind, like was the Apostle Paul’s as we read in Philippians 4:11-12.  He had learned to be content in whatever state He was in.  He found contentment, like all Christians will—in God.

In Matthew 9:37-38, Jesus said that the harvest was plenteous but the laborers were few.  Harvest in scripture is a picture of God’s final judgment.  Jesus worked with diligence and compassion because He saw the ultimate consummation of divine judgment for those who did not trust in Him.  Paul said that the fear of the Lord was a motive for persuading men to salvation (2 Cor 5:11).  We can easily lose the awareness of the suddenness and inevitability of God’s judgment, thus losing one of our prime motivations for obedience to His will.  This motivate Jesus to pray for these workers to work in the field that was soon to be harvested.  Workers can come only by the power of God, so we pray to God for them.

The “Lord of the Harvest” is a title of God that represents His role as Judge of the unsaved—those who will stand before Him in the last day will be condemned to Hell.  Waiting on the Lord is also crucial when we understand that it is only by His working that lives are changed.  When we pray for workers, it might be us that becomes the workers that God intends to answer that prayer.  We may know someone who is unsaved.  We can pray that God will raise up someone to go and evangelize that person.  And maybe someone is praying for us, and we’re the ones who will be the evangelist, preaching the gospel to their lost loved ones.  Our assumption should be that God would answer that prayer.

Here is a hymn by Charles Wesley:

Long my imprisoned spirit lay

Fast bound in sin and nature’s night.

Thine eye diffused a quickening ray;

I woke — the dungeon flamed with light!

My chains fell off, my heart was free,

I rose, went forth, and followed thee.

Now here’s a contemporary one from Brenda Lefavre:

I need you to hold me

Like my daddy never could,

And I need you to show me

How resting in your arms can be so good.

I need you to walk with me

Hand in hand we’ll run and play

And I need you to talk to me

Tell me again you’ll stay.

One of these focuses on God and the other on self.   One chooses words carefully for their loveliness.  The other is interested in keeping it simple for the audience.  The two poems do tell us, however, where we’ve gone in our understanding of the content or substance of our worship of God.

We live in a world that, for the most part, has no absolute standard for life and behavior. We are under a system of morality by majority vote—in other words, whatever feels right sets the standard for behavior.  That philosophy, however, runs contrary to everything we know about our world. For example, in science there are absolutes. Our entire universe is built on fixed laws. We can send satellites and other spacecraft into space and accurately predict their behavior. Science—whether biology, botany, physiology, astronomy, mathematics, or engineering—is controlled by unalterable and inviolable laws.  Yet in the moral world many people want to live without laws or absolutes. They try to determine their points of reference from their own minds. However, that is impossible. When we move from the physical to the spiritual realm, fixed laws still exist. We cannot exist without laws in the moral and spiritual dimensions of life any more than we can do so in the physical dimension. Our Creator built morality into life. Just as there are physical laws, so there are spiritual laws.

We can explain this principle in another illustration. Gravity is a fixed law. You may choose not to believe in gravity, but regardless of what you choose to believe, if you jump off a building you’ll fall to the ground. You don’t have an option. It’s not a question of what you believe; it’s a question of law. The law will go into effect when you put it to the test. That is true in any other area of physical law.  The same thing is true in the moral and spiritual dimension. To segment life into a physical dimension in which fixed laws cannot be violated and a moral or spiritual dimension in which laws can be violated is an impossible dichotomization. The same God who controls the physical world by fixed laws controls the moral and spiritual world.

Where, then, do you find the laws of morality? How do you determine what is right and what is wrong? Has our Creator revealed such standards to mankind in a way we can understand? The Bible is the revelation of God to man, God’s Word, authentic and authoritative.

I’m sure that if I asked each person in our church how he wants me to use my time, I would get a lot of different opinions.  When I was in college, I would often ask visiting pastors how they used their time.  I never had one tell me.  Once I became a pastor, I figured out why.  It is probably like it is for a lot of people, which is why we people don’t floss or water their plants.  I think about the qualifications of the pastor and then what the pastoral epistles tell me to do.  I look at the example of Jesus and Paul.  I do believe that I fall short of what I’d like to do.  However, I get done with the things that I’ve got to do.  I put a high priority on the preaching.  For that, I’m talking to the most people at one time and it is an important period of Christian growth, like meal time physically, except spiritually.  I talk to people.  I deal with problems.  I train young men.  I work with my own family.  I evangelize.  I make disciples.  I would like to spend more time with everyone here.  I always like doing that.  I at least want to take care of whatever problems people may have.  One of the reasons a pastor can’t get it all done is because he can’t get it all done.  He perfects the saints for the work of the ministry and the saints do things that he would like to do if he could.  Let’s pray for one another in 2009 to have the most productive year as possible for God—each one of us.

Philippians 3 may be the best spot in Scripture to talk about goals.  I often preach there around New Year’s Day.  The Apostle Paul had a goal he was driving toward and that was Jesus Christ.  He wanted to know Christ, to be like Christ, and ultimately to be with Christ.  A goal is important but it is most important that it is the right goal.  What are we headed towards?  What do we want?  Paul had it right when he wanted to be like Christ.  To reach this goal, we can see several aspects of reaching goals from this example of the Apostle Paul.  First, we must, like Paul, face-up that we haven’t reached the goal.  He wrote in v. 12 that he had not already attained or apprehended his goal.  A second step is that we must forget.  Paul forgot those things which are behind.  We forget both negative and positive things.  Paul had both successes and failures that he needed to forget to move forward.  When we keep thinking about our successes, we can easily get pumped up with pride.  When we think about our failures, we can become depressed.  Having a goal and reaching for it really does help our attitude and mental state.  Third, Paul focused on the goal.  He “reached forth” to those things which were before.  He kept his eyes forward on that goal and reached to it.  To reach to something, you have to know what it is, see it, and be directed towards it.  Last, he forged.  He “pressed toward the mark.” This is like a sprinter in a race.  He leans toward that goal.  God wants us to go after our right goals with enthusiasm.  God expects us to give maximum effort.  When we do this, we can reach the prize.

The carols that we sing at Christmas time are reminders of the fact that Jesus Christ was born a King.  We sing “Joy to the World” and that carol says “The Lord is come, let earth receive her King.”  In “It came upon a Midnight Clear,” we sing, “Heavens all gracious King.”  “Angels We Have Heard on High” says, “Christ the Lord, the newborn King.” “Hark the Herald, Angels Sing” says, “Glory to the newborn King.”  “We Three Kings of Orient Are,” has a line:  “Born a King in Bethlehem’s plain.”  The carol, “What Child is This” says, “This is Christ the King.”  “Come Thou long expected Jesus” says, “Born a child yet a King.”  And “Angels From the Realm of Glory” expresses, “Worship Christ the newborn King.”  All of these emphasize the great reality of the birth of Christ, that He is in fact born a King.  The wise men who came seeking for Him, stopped in Jerusalem and asked, “Where is He who is born King?”  The Christ child was born to be supreme ruler, supreme monarch.  In fact, the writer of Revelation, John, says He is King over all kings and Lord over all lords.  He is the greatest, the most supreme of all monarchs.  A king has a sovereign right to rule.  A king is the final court of appeal. He holds in his hand the power of life, the power of death, the right to make every decision and all decisions.  Jesus Christ was born a King.  He is different than any other King but nonetheless a King.  He’s King, so who are we, as we relate to Him?  Are we His subjects?  Are we obedient to Him?  Have we received Him as King?  He is King whether we accept that or not, but whether we do will make all the difference in our eternity.

There is such a dichotomy between Christmas for the Christian and Christmas for the world.  Consider two Christmas cards —one of them with a fat man with a white beard on it and a couple of little elves and it says, “Ho, ho, ho.” The other has a manger with a star and a baby and it said, “Thou shalt call His name Emmanuel.”  What is Christmas? For some it is peace and good will toward men. For the world it is mass confusion, furious rushing around, and a rising suicide rate. That lovely night 2,000 years ago one star lit the sky and marked the spot where the Christ was born, where God was made flesh. Today a million neon signs mark where the sale begins, or where you can throw away your money buying what isn’t needed and doesn’t fit anyway.  The first Christmas was a poor one, with a manger and a stable.  Now Christmas is a dazzling display of wealth beyond belief as millions spend billions to ignore its true meaning. Once wise men came to worship Jesus, but today fools have parties of wickedness, ignoring all that Jesus came for. The babe of Bethlehem was born a Savior to give to men all that they need. He has been replaced by a huckster named Santa Claus who takes what is valuable and gives tinsel in return.  With the recent stock market crash and mortgage crisis, I’ve heard the media ask, “Will we have Christmas this year?”  Of course we will.

God created the world.  He created man.  Everything in the world that God made was good.  God keeps loving us.  He sustains the world through the might of His power.  We have air to breathe and water to drink and food to eat and energy to work.  We have amazing bodies with brains to think, hearts to circulate the life-giving blood in our bodies, and reproductive systems to bear children.   God gave us His Word by which to live.  He put us here to please Him.  Even when we sinned, He did all that was necessary for us to be saved from the penalty and power of sin.  God the Son became man, lived a perfect life, shed His blood, died on the cross, rose from the grave, and ascended into heaven where He sits at the right hand of the Father and every lives to make intercession for us.  When we receive the Lord, we are placed in Him by the Father, and in Him we have every spiritual blessing in heavenly places.  We become a partaker of the Divine nature and all things that pertain unto life and godliness.  So what do we do with all this?  1 Corinthians 4:1-2 tells us.  Our one requirement is to be faithful, faithful with what He told us to do and faithful with these resources He has given us.  We are to obey the Father’s will like the Son through the supply of the Holy Spirit.  We do that in the church.  At the end, we wish to hear, Well done.

A church must perceive itself as designed for the glory of God.  Most churches today have deviated from that priority and developed a human focus: meeting man’s felt needs. Instead of faithfully proclaiming God’s sufficient Word to direct people’s minds toward God, church leaders respond to superficial needs with temporary solutions like psychology, self-esteem, entertainment, among many others.  As a result, those churches no longer emphasize knowing and glorifying God; instead they try to help people feel good about themselves.  If you know and glorify God, you don’t need to be concerned about your needs because “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov. 9:10).  When you relate with God right, you’ll have the right perspective on your needs.  We shouldn’t ignore people’s needs, just be concerned about people just like God.  The right balance begins with a high view of God. We love God first and then our neighbor.  We can’t love our neighbor without loving God, because without God, the neighbor is hopeless.

In addition to having the right view of God, a church must uphold God’s Word as absolute authority.  Because we believe Scripture is true, we must proclaim it with conviction and without compromise or apology.  It is not our own authority. Insofar as our teaching accurately reflects the truth of Scripture, it has the full weight of God’s own authority behind it. That is a staggering thought, but it is precisely how 1 Peter 4:11 instructs us to handle biblical truth—that if anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God.  Since the Bible is true, then it is also authoritative. As divinely revealed truth, it carries the full weight of God’s own authority.  This all means making Scripture the final arbiter of truth—the rule by which every other opinion is evaluated.