From the Pastor's Study
We say 'I love you,' too much, particularly as English speakers. It's not our fault. English only gives us one word for the most complicated reality in our world. It has become so flat, so overused, that the most common way we see it defined is 'love is love.' What that means, of course, is, 'love is whatever you define it to be.’ For selfish people, that's a great definition. If love is whatever I want it to be, then love revolves around me. But what does God's word say? It says that God is love. That rips the power to define love from us and gives it to Jesus. And, oh, how He has defined it!
We have defined love mostly in terms of what it feels like to us. It’s a very subjective, personal, private, inward thing. It is what happens to me or how I make someone else feel. That way of thinking about love makes it all about ourselves. Everything in love is in reference to me. God defines love in an entirely opposite direction. True, Biblical love is not in reference to your feelings but in sacrificial action towards other people. In order to do this well, at all really, is not to draw from your own well of love. It’s actually quite shallow. You need to draw from love that is coming to you rather than what is inside you, so that is what we are going to be looking at today. Our main point today is defining love as doing for others what Christ is doing for you. This book of 1 John is something that you can read in a single sitting, and in fact that would be a great thing for you to do today or sometime here in the next few days of rest off from work. This is a letter written by the Apostle John, the same guy who wrote the book of the Gospel of John. If there is anything about John it’s that he wants to make sure that you know that you have eternal life. At the end of chapter 20 of his gospel he writes these things so that you may believe, and at the end of this letter, he writes these things so that you may know that you believe. Both John and James teach that the way you know that you believe is whether or not you are doing what Jesus says (1 John 2:3). It’s very simple. John doesn’t hold up perfection as possible on this side of eternity (1 John 1:8), nevertheless, the Christian is expected to live a life where the pattern of one’s actions points towards obedience to God’s commands. Their habits are ones of obedience, broken by interruptions of sin, rather than the other way around. It is like watching a child learn to walk. Before they get up on two legs, their pattern of movement is crawling, rolling, scooting, really anything except walking. When they start their walking journey, it will look like mostly crawling still, with little attempts at walking. But as they get older, they crawl less and walk more and more. Sure they will trip (I still do; and I’ve been walking for years!), but the pattern is walking. Now, our spiritual life doesn’t progress as quickly as that, but I think that is the idea. There is a stark difference that is defined by action. If someone asked me if my child was walking yet, I never said, “Oh, yes, they are! They haven’t taken any steps yet, but boy are they thinking about it!” I never said that! I know that walking is an action not a thought or a feeling. The Christian walk is the same. The Christian life is not a private, inward, emotional journey only. It breaks out in tangible action. Christian life looks different. How different? A literal night and day difference. In chapter 2, John describes the Christian life and non-Christian life as light and darkness. Wherever there is light, darkness is gone. That’s what the Bible is saying, but how are you fitting into that? Let’s get practical. Where are you right now? Are you walking? Are you in light? What would your wife say? Your kids? Your parents? If you are living the Christian life, others can have an answer because they can see it or not. Now, at this point, you may be rightly saying to me, “Wait a minute, I know people who can put on a good face. I know people who have never missed a Sunday in their lives but are just as far away from God as ever. Are you saying that all you have to do is a few religious externals and you can be saved?” No. Absolutely not. I, too, know of pastors who aren’t saved. I’ve seen guys who were conference speakers, book authors, and household names who weren’t saved, as evidenced by their later actions. Those actions proved something was missing, and that is what John begins to draw out here in chapter 2 and 3, true love. This is the part of this book that is key. It is not just external actions, it is whether you have love in your heart from God to motivate those actions. Hear from Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” Do you hear what Paul is saying? Paul is saying that even if you have one of the most impressive spiritual gifts possible at that time, able to speak in any language without training, even if it were possible speaking the language of heaven, but if you don’t have love, you’re just a noise-maker. You could have the mysteries of the world all unlocked in your head, you could have every book ever written stored in your memory and able to teach like no one else, but if you don’t have love, what’s the point? Even if you could perform miracles, be the next Mother Teresa, or even be a martyr for Christ, someone who dies for Jesus, but you don’t have love, what’s the point? Do you see what Paul is doing here? Love is the critical piece. This isn’t to say that those actions are bad, but love is the most important factor! And as we are about to see in our text, you can’t have love and it not come out in action. Now we get to the middle of chapter 3, and we find out how love is known. I think this is the heart of what John is trying to get across to us. John says in verse 16, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” This is the perfect summary of the Christian life. This gets to the heart of what it means to be a Christian. It begins with knowing Jesus and His love for you. Jesus’ love isn’t some sort of sentimentality. It isn’t your picture on His fridge, as it were. The love that Jesus has isn’t limited to teaching things, or even doing miracles like healing diseases or raising the dead. Those are wonderful things, even things that took effort, but the love that Jesus has for you is blindingly displayed on the cross and the process leading up to it. I mean, it was one thing to have God Himself step out of heaven to live as one of us in one of the least comfortable times in human history. It was one thing to leave the praises of the angels to go be a carpenter making tables and chairs for people for thirty years before his ministry began for the last three. Here Jesus was every single day sacrificing, living for us. But it is going to culminate in the way He dies for us. Jesus going to the cross isn’t just another thing He did to teach us. It is not in the same category as the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus going to the cross was making the teaching He gave us possible. We do not start out life neutral with God. We start out with a legal and moral debt. We start out as shameful children. We start out as sinners, disobedient to God, rebels to the King of the Universe. What kind of punishment fits crimes against a figure like that? Eternal punishment! Nothing less would do. Anything less would be to lessen who God is. We understand this intuitively. Commit a crime against an adult brings prison time that can be debated. Crimes against children bring punishments that almost always result in people saying, “That’s not long enough.” We have a sense of justice that expands depending on the person sinned against. It shows we value children. God is infinitely more. He is the one who creates children. And we sin against Him when we violate His laws. We can’t be taught our way out of that. Jesus wasn’t just a teacher; He is our Savior. He went to the cross as the infinite God to pay our infinite debt. His perfect life is now offered to you. And He didn’t have to do any of that. That is the definition of love. Then John is going to turn around and say, “That’s the standard for you with your brother.” That’s what it means to love people. It isn’t just a one time dramatic sacrifice, but it is also a life-long servitude for others. Verses 17 and 18 provide us with a really practical example of this. Do you see people with needs you can solve but choose not to? There isn’t love there. John isn’t satisfied with talking about loving people. Loving people is doing. It’s laying down our lives. Now, at this moment, if you are anything like me, you’re probably wondering, “Is there a limit to this?” I mean, we’ve all read or heard of the concept of enablement or helping actually hurting. Is there a point where this kind of love stops? I think this is actually the wrong question. There is no limit to Biblical love. We are commanded by Jesus Himself to pray for even those who persecute us (Matthew 5:43-44), stunningly demonstrated by Stephen in Acts 6-7 who prayed that the people killing him would be forgiven. Again, that’s the standard package. The real question is when does what you are doing stop being Biblical love and start becoming selfish love? Biblical love is always pointing to Jesus. You can’t point to Jesus and help people sin. You can’t point to Jesus and lie to people about what He says about their sinful lives at the same time. It can feel nicer and get people out of your face faster to do those things, but that isn’t Biblical love. Sparing feelings isn’t always Biblical love. Sparing hardship isn’t always Biblical love. Biblical love sometimes does involve giving people money, but it almost always demands more. Biblical love almost always demands time and personal sacrifice on your part. Now, if you are saying at this moment, “This is an absolutely crushing standard. There is no way I can do this.” If you’re saying that, Good. You’re right where you need to be. Because I’ve got some good news for you, you’re right! There is no way you can love like that perfectly all the time, and Jesus died on the cross for that, too! You can be free from the burden of measuring up to earn salvation and just go and love people. Don’t love people to get into heaven. That’s not love anyway. That’s just using people. Instead, knowing that Jesus has paid for all of your sin, including your lack of love for people, You can have that pressure taken off of worrying about yourself and love people. It’s like being told to go rescue people on a mountain top. It’s terrifying if you think you’re going to fall off the mountain yourself. But you’ve got an unbreakable harness on. You’re not going to fall! So go rescue some people! Give them a harness! Maybe if you are having a hard time loving people, it might be because you don’t know what it is like to be loved by God. God loves you. He does. He showed you so on the cross. Do you believe that? Can you believe that He could love a little sinner like you? If you don’t, I’m begging you today, with God’s own words in my mouth to you today, “Come, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Let everyone who thirsts, come to me and drink, drink without price. Taste and see that the bread of life is good.” Take Him up on His offer to you. Lay down your life, turn to Him, and He will love you and never let you go. And when you are being filled up with a love like that, it will be like a firehose going into a burlap bag. It can’t help but leak out! God’s love poured into you can’t help but leak out to others. Imperfectly, incompletely, but unmistakably. I know this, because this is the very first fruit listed as the gift of God. The fruit of the Spirit is first “love.” He has promised to give this to you, not only as a gift between you and Him but between you and others. So what does this mean for you? If you are struggling to love people, it might be because you are trying to draw from the empty well of your own ability. To love like Jesus, you need to draw from Jesus. You need to go to Him every day in prayer and ask for another portion of His love to give to others that day. It won’t be easy. He gives you just enough for the day. He expects you to spend it all, because there is another portion of love coming tomorrow. If you are here saying, “I have been doing that for decades, but the person I am pouring it out for just isn’t responding at all. You have no idea who I’m married to, who I’m parent to, who I’m related to, and I just don’t see anything happening.” You may not, but God does. Listen to Hebrews 6:10-12 “For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do. And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” Finally, let me encourage you that you are not alone. There is no way that you can show this level of love to absolutely everyone you can lay your eyes on by yourself. You’re not God. Have some humility, and ask for help. Let us love by helping you love, and for the rest of us, when we get that call may we all answer. And when we fail, and we will, let us go back to God, rest in the forgiveness that He freely gives, and let that Divine love inflame our hearts once more to love people again.
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Joy is a serious issue. We give up too quickly on experiencing it, especially if it has been a long time since circumstances have been favorable. I think part of the reason why we give up on it is because we think that joy is optional in the Christian life, when it isn’t. I said at the beginning of this series that the fruit of the Spirit isn’t multiple choice. You can’t decide that you are going to be peaceful without having any self-control. You aren’t going to choose love and leave patience on the table. And you cannot take goodness and leave behind joy.
So is joy just another word for lack of sadness? Well, as I’m sure you’ve heard many times before, joy isn’t just another word for “happiness,” something that changes by circumstances. Jesus wasn’t slap happy all the time, as His weeping before the then-occupied tomb of Lazurus, and the then rebellious house of Jerusalem. Jesus experienced sadness to the point that Isaiah said that He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Yet in all of that, He didn’t fail God’s commands in any way, including this command to rejoice always. So what is joy? Joy, as we will see in a moment, is happily self-forgetful worship of the transcendent Christ. And this is to be done in all circumstances, even sad ones. How are we to do that? The quick answer is, “Have a good long look at Jesus and what He has done for you.” My old seminary dean once put it this way when defining joy, “Christian joy is marked by celebration and expectation of God's ultimate victory over the powers of sin and darkness, a victory actualized already in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ…" (Timothy George, 401). Christian joy constantly keeps the cross, resurrection, and consummation in mind. Let’s see how I got here. The first step is to see that joy is commanded of you. Did God really say that? Well, yes! In fact, we aren’t just called to rejoice, but we are to rejoice always! The Bible doesn’t say in our passage here in Philippians 4:4, “Rejoice…when it is convenient” or “Rejoice…when it comes to mind,” or “Rejoice…when you’re feeling it.” It is, “Rejoice always, and again I say, rejoice.” It’s not like Paul just got a little overzealous on this point in this letter, as the exact same command is given again in 1 Thess. 5. One preacher put it this way, “Unsaved people do not rejoice in God, pray to God, or give thanks to God. Religious people rejoice sometimes, pray when they feel like it, and give thanks when things are going well. But Christians rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in all circumstances. This is not the believer's response because we are impervious to life's dangers, toils, and snares. It is our response to life because we are in Christ Jesus" (H.B. Charles, here). Now, perhaps, Paul and Pastor Charles are just forgetting about how hard people’s lives can be! It is also no accident that the command to rejoice comes from Jesus as well in Matthew 5:11-12, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad…” Did you catch that? Jesus is commanding you to rejoice and be glad when you are being persecuted, made fun of, and slandered because you are following Jesus. Jesus is saying, “Hey, following me is going to make the world hate you, and when that happens, you should be rejoicing.” Now, why does Jesus get away with saying that? If any of us were to command that for ourselves, we would be called total narcissists at best. Delusional is probably the better word. So why does Jesus get to say it? If you can answer that question, then you are well on your way to experiencing joy. So what is the answer to the question? The answer to the question of why can Jesus say we are to rejoice, sing, be glad when people are slinging stones at us to kill us, or slinging words at us to get us canceled because of our stand for Jesus, is because Jesus is the main character of this world’s story. You and I are not the main character. We are not the center of the universe. Jesus is. So when we are contributing to Jesus’ will on earth, yet the earth doesn’t like it, we are still advancing the main character’s agenda. We can see this play out on a small scale when we see a mom give birth. I’ve been in the delivery room twice now for this process. I’ve never birthed a child and never will, but as an outsider, I can tell you, with deep conviction, that it is a rather painful process. Prior to children, I could never imagine why people would sign up to do that more than once. But it wasn’t until I held my children in my arms, and watched my wife hold our children in her arms, I understood. At the end of a pregnancy, there is a baby. What makes a mom sign up for that process again is self-forgetfulness. I don’t mean she doesn’t remember the pain. I mean that she isn’t thinking about herself in that moment. She is thinking about her child. Yes, pain is real, but it is in the context of a birth of new life. And in that the mother finds joy. Again, I say that this is a small scale. Because even as significant as that child is to that mother, that child isn’t the main character of the universe either. It is one of approximately 385,000 other babies that were born in the world on that day. Advancing through the pregnancy process advances the life of that little one, but living the Christian life advances Jesus’ agenda. So no matter what happens, we can rejoice. This requires a great deal of self-forgetfulness, though. But how? How do we forget ourselves when we live inside us? Well, walk with me on this. The starting point to self-forgetfulness and then to joy, is to recognize that you are not enough for yourself and you never will be long term. There is no amount of fun that you could have to satisfy your heart. No amount of money will ever grant you peace. No amount of affirmation will grant you confidence. No change in marital status that will ever grant you wholeness. You have to be convinced of this. Otherwise, you will constantly fall into the trap of seeking out things for yourself and be disappointed eventually over and over again. But you can’t just stop at forgetting yourself. Because if that were all that it was, then the Buddhist could have told you that. Buddha will tell you that the reason why you are sad is because you have desires. If you would just get rid of those desires through self-denial and meditation, you will be above feelings of disappointment. Now, besides desiring to get rid of desires, which is apparently the only desirable desire, that only gets you to non-feeling. God wants something more than numbness for you. He wants you to have joy. Joy isn’t found in you. Joy is found when you see God. From Earth to the sun is 93 million miles. That’s a good distance, but there is a lot more of the universe that we can see. It turns out that, as near as we can tell, the observable universe is about 93 billion light years across. For reference, light travels nearly 6 trillion miles a year. Now multiply that by 93 billion and you get the size of the universe as near as we can tell. Honesely, that is such a large number, it doesn’t even really compute. And God is bigger than that. He made all that. He didn’t need to make it that big, but He wanted to show us just how big He is and how small we are. The God who made all of that is who we are talking about. That’s the one who commands you to be joyful. Now are you able to look at that God and say, “Well, He can’t make a difference to my joy.” Well besides that being ridiculous and sinful to say, let’s go with it for a minute. Maybe the bigness of God didn’t impress you. What about His relationship with you? Did you know that God is actually committed to your joy? He sends the Holy Spirit to produce Joy in you. He tells you that He works out all things together for good for those who love Him. That’s true. Do you believe that? Psalm 16:2 says, “I say to the LORD, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.” and verse 11 says, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” God isn’t some sort of toxic boss who demands you be happy or He is going to get you. God is inviting you to see where your true joy comes from, and it is Him! He wants to do good things! We cut Jesus off earlier in Matthew 5:12. Remember when He was saying, “rejoice and be glad” under persecution? He gave you the reason! “FOR great is your reward in heaven!” Why can we, must we, be joyful under persecution for Jesus’ sake? There is something greater coming. What is that thing? It apparently makes all the suffering here worth it. Paul tells us just that in Romans 8, where he describes all of the horror of life as a “light, momentary affliction” compared to the glory that is coming. It is better than having the power to boss around the spiritual world. When the disciples were able to cast out demons in Luke 10, Jesus said not to rejoice in even that but rejoice that their names were written in heaven. How can heaven stand up to that kind of hype? Because God Himself is there! Not only the One who created all of that, but came down from that exalted throne to live among us, suffer and die to take away our sins! We were so audacious as to disobey a God like that who is above all things and wants our good, and instead of simply getting rid of us so He could delight in billions of galaxies He made who do exactly as He commands, He goes down to take our punishment for us. In order to maintain His perfect justice sin against an eternal God must be eternally punished, but in His creativity, Jesus takes all the punishment on Himself. He becomes sin who knew no sin, who hates all sin, BECAME sin so that He could bear the punishment for sin, so we could go free. And it is freely offered to you. We did everything wrong, He did everything right, and is offering to switch places with you, so you can be considered perfect in God’s eyes and thus have a place in heaven. And not just a place in heaven, a place of God’s joy over you, not because of who you are, but because of who you are in Christ. When He looks at you, He sees His Son Whom He loves eternally. Catching a vision of that is finding transcendence. Forgetting yourself isn’t enough. It is looking into the face of God where you find joy, even as you are being persecuted for it. Well, what if all that isn’t enough for you? It could be that you haven’t applied all of what I have just said to your situation. You might have been content thus far to have the Bible be true over there but not in your real life. You could have just made God to be a philosophy that works for some people rather than a Real Person who has done real things in your real life. But it could also be that you just can’t see it yet. It could be that God hasn’t moved in your life. Because there is one last step to joy. Yes, it requires self-forgetfulness, yes it requires a view of transcendence, but it finally requires full dependance on God to grant it to you. You cannot obey the command to be joyful without God’s help any more than you can obey the command to be truthful without God’s help. And just like you sin in other ways, you will sin in not being joyful in all things. You will get wrapped up in yourself and try to worship yourself by doing what you command. That’s not joy. That’s not obedience. Joy is worshiping God despite any and all circumstances fueled by the good news of the gospel. But if you have never experienced that, then today I invite you to come to Jesus. Leave yourself behind, there won’t be room for that. Transfer your trust to Christ, and leave behind your sins, including your lack of joy in Christ. Christ invites you to not just serve Him, but enjoy Him. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Glorify God and enjoy Him forever. If you don’t know how to do that, then I would encourage you to keep coming back here. As Sinclair Ferguson points out, keep looking at the means that God gives you, His church, His Word, His listening ear in prayer, and in them you will see Him. And you will find joy. So what does this mean on Monday? God is committed to your joy in Him, and the world is committed to distracting you from it by reminding you of yourself. When your body hurts, God is doing something with that. When you are facing another day in a role you hate, remember the gospel and not just that it means that things will be alright in the end, but that you can begin to enjoy that now. Heaven is near and it is sure. Focus on that. Kids are actually good at that. Have you ever promised a kid something? They remember. And when you don’t deliver, the disappointment is impressive, because they have been thinking about that all day. They have modified their behavior around that promise. Patience may not be their strongest quality, but those kids can believe. We have to warn them about disappointment when their joy gets to be too much! Y’all, we have been promised more. He who promised is faithful. He never breaks a promise. So preach that to yourself, ask for joy, ask for what God commands you to have, and you will find it. 
Image by Zoltan Matuska
What is the one thing we are all actually after? Peace. We work hard to earn enough money so we don’t have to worry about life, which is just a negative way of saying that we would like peace. Why do we go to war as nations? Because someone either has upset or threatens to upset peace. Imagine that! War to get peace. Killing each other to get peace. It is the most sought after gift in the world, yet here it is, sitting right in the fruit of the Spirit. It’s not even the first one listed! Now, what is peace? I imagine that many of you have different answers to what that would mean for you. Some in here, I would imagine, would feel peace if this physical problem would just go away. If only you could hear like you used to, see like you used to, move like you used to, then there would be peace. Peace is found in a return to the past. For others in here, particularly the youth, peace is found in finally reaching the future! If only you could look ahead to see if life is going to be ok for you, you would find peace. For those of us in the middle of those two sections of life, we don’t want the past or the future; we don’t want time to move at all! In fact, if life could just be still for a minute, THEN there would be peace. All of that is a lie, and it isn’t even the first thing about what real peace is. Those may be pieces of peace, but they are not peace itself or even the things that lead to peace. Peace is a person, the one Who’s arrival caused the angels to sing that verse we’ve just read, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” What impresses angels so much that they would say that? Well, let’s take a look at what peace means. I’ll give it to you up front, and over the course of the next few minutes together, you’ll see it come from the Scriptures. Peace is the feeling of wholeness solely founded on the fact of Christ's work for you. The word translated “peace” in the passages we will look at today is the same word that is used to translate the Hebrew word for peace: Shalom. Shalom is an absolutely beautiful and massive word that isn’t limited to the state of not being at war, but is a sense of wholeness (Dictionary of New Testament Theology, 165). To be whole is to not be missing anything. Everything is as it should be when you experience shalom. Are you beginning to see how what Christ offers you when He offers peace is more than just physical wellness, lack of anxiety, and a nap that lasts longer than an hour? What or Who could possibly promise shalom, rightness with everything, wholeness in your life? Well, it starts at the birth of Christ the night sky lights up with angelic glory as they herald the birth of Christ, closing with a praise to God (Glory to God in the highest) and a proclamation to Earth, “peace, among those with whom He is pleased.” This Child that has been announced here is the key to this verse of praise! His arrival is the cause of God’s glory and peace among those with whom He is pleased. He has sent a Savior. Now think about what this might mean for the people there. Who is currently over the known world at this point? The Romans. They’ve brought what they call the pax Romana, the Roman Peace. Who is to stand in the way of the might of Rome? They have conquered so many nations there isn’t anyone really able to stand against them. Sure they tax a lot, but not having to worry about invaders is a pretty sweet gig if you can just get on board with Caesar's agenda. What is this Jesus offering? And how is He going to offer it? Does He have something better than even the Romans can provide? We do well to answer this question today. America is way more powerful than Rome ever was taking modern military tools into account. Can you imagine Nero having access to an atom bomb? If we wanted to, we could close our borders and never talk to another country again with about 5 years lead time to put together some factories. And for many Americans, that is what peace would look like. But is that how Jesus defines peace? Well, if we skip to the end of the story, Jesus is all grown up, and here comes this peace talk again at the end of John 16. To give you context, Jesus is about to go to the cross, and these are the final things that He wants to tell them before He goes. In verse 33, He says, “I tell you these things so that in me you might have peace.” Ok, well, what are “these things”? Well, it points back to everything that has been said since chapter 14, which opens with “Let not your hearts be troubled.” Why is He saying that? He knows He is about to go to the cross, but the disciples don’t know that. He is about to go and be the Savior that He was announced as being in Luke 2, but the disciples can’t see that yet. So He tells them plainly that Peace exists solely in Him. It’s not in Rome or riches. How? First, because He is going to prepare a place for them (and us) in heaven and be the way to those who are going there. Jesus is not only building the room, He is being the road. You may know peace because you know Jesus. But how do you travel on the road of Jesus? John 15:4 answers that. Abide in Him. It turns out that Jesus isn’t a bridge to heaven that you’ve still gotta figure out how to walk across. It turns out the way to heaven is being still. It is living with Christ. Listening to Him. Obeying Him (vs. 9-10). This comes from already having a relationship with Christ. You are already filled with life, Little Branch, by being connected to the Divine Vine. Connection with Jesus is connection with God, and that is peace! What is wholeness! You and I are broken and rebellious. And if you’ve been on that path for any length of time you know you are doing what you need to. And if you’ve ever attempted to reform your ways, you know how often you fail. Abby watched the movie “The Star,” an animated movie about the nativity, with the kids the other day. She said that it was a cute movie, but they missed the gospel at the end. At the end of the movie, the villains are all gathered around the Christ child, look at Him and one of them says, “Are we good now?” Another replies, “We can try.” Doh! So close! No, you don’t look to Jesus for inspiration to live a good life, you look to Him for salvation to the good life. He is the road, He is the life-blood who gives you salvation. So what about this stuff about obeying Jesus? Well, peace exists solely in Christ, but Peace is experienced in obedience to Him. If you remember a time where you were joyous in Christ but now not so much, take a look at how you are living your life. Sin isn’t the only reason you lose peace, but it is a big one. Look at Phillipians 4:4ff: Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 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 is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you. In other words, if you aren’t doing these things, then it should be no wonder to you that you don’t have peace! If you are contemplating that which is ugly, worldly, and sinful, it should be no surprise to you that you don’t have peace. It has been well said that, “Facts don’t care about your feelings,” but it is equally true that feelings care deeply about the facts. What are you labeling as fact in your life? Are you keeping Christ and His work at the forefront of your mind? Do you see peace as only existing in Christ and experienced in obedience to Him, or do you think it exists and is experienced in money, sex, political dominance or even good things like a happy family? Feelings care a lot about facts, but they wait for you to tell them what the facts are. Are you telling them Jesus’ words here in John or cable news’ words? Are you giving them Biblical wisdom or your own? If you wander from the source of peace, Jesus loves you enough to take it away to draw you back to Him. It is Jesus’ loving discipline, like a good father, that will not only bring you back to Him, but expand your peace. Hebrews 12:11, in context tells us that God disciplines those He loves like a good father, so in verse 11 we read, “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (emphasis added). Discipline will bring you peaceful fruit! Oh, talk to someone who has gone through something like that way back in their lives (often it takes a while to see), and they will tell you that though what they went through was hard, it has brought them closer to God than ever before. Sometimes we just put things in the way of our own peace. Your life in Christ is like running a race, but Jesus is carrying you as He is running. Meanwhile, you’re looking at your shoes going, “Whew! Glad I’ve got these shoes on. Don’t know how I would run the race without those.” Jesus then takes the shoes off, you panic, and grip hold of Jesus. At that point you say, “Oh, wow, look at Jesus go! It’s a good thing I’ve got strong arms to hold Him with!” then Jesus weakens your arms so you can’t even lift them. You panic again, but then you realize that Jesus is holding onto you. It turns out it was never the shoes or your ability to hang on that got your through the race. You feel more peace than you ever did with shoes or strong arms, because now you know it wasn’t anything you had or anything you could do that kept you in the race. It was Jesus the whole time. Now, you’re just grateful that you can see Him. And then, he covers your eyes. But this time you don’t panic. You’ve realized that He has always been there, and even if you can’t see Him, you know He’s there, and that is peace. Wholeness in spite of your circumstances not because of them. You know that peace only exists in Christ, is more richly experienced in obedience to Him, and is even expanded under His discipline. Peace has a name, and His name is Jesus. Look at Isaiah 51:12-16 with me. The quick translation of this verse? “How dare you trust anything else?” As John Piper put it, “Who do you think you are to trust something other than God?” Look at John 16:33, “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” Or as D.A Carson translates it, “I have conquered the world.” So don’t trust that which Jesus has beaten! Jesus has cut the arms and legs off of the world, and all the world can scream is “I can still bite you!” Why are you throwing in your peace with that? You don’t have to trust the world. You don’t have to find your peace in circumstances. Romans 8:31-39 “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Piper points out that “in these things” means that all those horrible things can and do happen to us, yet! We Are More than Conquerors! How? Because Christ won the victory. He went to the cross, paid for our sin, reconciled us to God, and can therefore bring you peace. So what does this mean for you? Well, if you don’t have any peace, you should take it like the check engine light. Something is wrong. I don’t mean that anytime you are sad you are being disobedient. God gave ⅓ of the Psalms as laments, so He expects you to lament the sinful world and its effect. Peacefully lamenting is like swimming at the bottom of a deep lake with scuba gear. You feel the pressure, but you can still breathe. But if you are consistently missing peace, it is time for reexamination. Come to Jesus. Don’t run to distraction. We live in a time where you can recreate the “feeling” of peace without the facts to support it. You can forget about your troubles for a moment by scrolling through the internet. You can forget about them even longer with psychedelics, as many turn to those. You can forget your troubles even longer by pretending that the world is just atoms crashing into one another, and all of this Jesus stuff is just a crutch and probably doesn’t matter. It’s all a distraction that God will one day pull you back from or give you over to. We’ve built the modern Tower of Babel, the tower of distraction. God tells us to come to Him for peace, and we’ve gone to anything else. Don’t do that. You want peace? It’s right here. Don’t you dare run to the internet to get through your day. Don’t do that to yourself. Find true peace in Christ. 
Image by Dorota Kudyba
We have a complicated relationship with presents at Christmas time, don’t we? We wrestle with the idea that Christmas has become too commercialized and hate that stores have taken the meaning of Christmas from good tidings of great joy to great spending on good toys. That is true as far as it goes, but who can deny how good it feels to give a child a great present that they are so thankful for? It’s a great feeling to do that for adults as well, especially if it is a practical gift that they will use everyday. One of the most useful gifts I got from Abby was an electric kettle. You fill the thing up with water, set it on the little base, turn it on, and in a couple of minutes, you have water heated perfectly for tea or coffee! It is a perfect gift for me that has been going strong for a couple years now. The thing is though, it is so much a part of my everyday life, that I often forget that it was a gift. It just blends into the kitchen. I think that is often what happens with the gifts that God gives to us. They are so freely given to us, and often so perfectly suited to our needs, that they just become part of the background of our lives. And I’m not even talking about the physical gifts like the car you got here in today, or the house you came from, I’m am talking about the gifts that are given to you in your life that you don’t notice are there. I’m talking about the fruit of the Spirit. There is no gift more practical, more satisfying to oneself and others than the fruit of the Spirit. You’ll notice that I say “fruit” not “fruits,” and that comes from something that Pastor Reader would always point out. This list of virtues in its entirety is present in the life of a true Christian; they are not multiple choice. We are expected to have all of them, even if we have more of one virtue than another. There isn’t a way to cover all of these virtues comprehensively in just a few weeks, so I have selected a few that correspond more or less with the theme of the advent candle for that week. Unfortunately, for this sermon, hope is not on the this list in Galatians, but I think that the one I’ve picked out today is often not talked about, hence the title of sermon, the forgotten virtue of gentleness. Part of the reason why gentleness is forgotten is because we as a society have abandoned it by changing its meaning. Instead of how the Scriptures define it, we think that gentleness is a limp-wristed, weak excuse for lack of action. For example, a basically punishment-free approach with one’s child is called “gentle parenting.” Speaking “gently” implies today a soft tone of voice, safe words, and subtle coaxing rather than confrontation. We certainly wouldn’t apply the term “gentle” to someone who flips over tables and chases people out of a temple for defiling it, but that is exactly the term that Jessup applied to Himself (Timothy George, 404)! Far from a limp-wristed excuse for lack of action, gentleness actually requires a great deal of strength. Listen to how my old seminary dean, Timothy George puts it: "As an expression of the fruit of the Spirit, gentleness is strength under control, power, harnessed in loving service and respectful actions. One who is gentle in this sense will not attempt to push others around or arrogantly impose one's own will on subordinates or peers. But gentleness is not incompatible with decisive action, and firm convictions” (404). You see, gentleness isn't the absence of correction, it is the manner of correction. It isn't the absence of passion (see Jesus flipping over tables) or strong action, it is the heart's posture while doing so. The dictionary definition of the greek word for gentleness is “the quality of not being overly impressed by a sense of one's self-importance” (BDAG, 861), or as I have put it on your outline, The ability to live in humility. Why is this a gift? It is something that we don't naturally have, it is something that our society actively discourages, and it was something that Jesus embodied. So let’s look at the Scriptures and see how this term is used. Our main text is going to be Titus 3:1-7, because this sums up very well how gentleness is the ability to live with humility. Paul writes to Titus, a young pastor, what he needs to be teaching the church. Chapter one talks about what the leadership is supposed to look like. Chapter two tells us what the whole church needs to be taught, namely, “sound doctrine” and how that is practically applied. When we get to chapter three, that thought continues. Paul points out that we are to be gentle, as opposed to quarreling, but verse 3-7 gives us the motivation, the reason, the proper perspective on why we need to be gentle. We need to be gentle because we were just like the people we don’t want to be gentle towards, namely, sinners. We were just like them in kind if not in degree. We committed the same sorts of sin, even if they weren’t as visible as other people’s. We were saved from those sins not by anything that we did, but by everything that Christ did! So since we were just like the people we want to be harsh with, AND the only reason why we aren’t like that anymore (sort of) is because of the grace and mercy of Jesus, we are not in a position to be pompous and arrogant towards people. So what does it look like practically? What does gentleness look like when there is sin that needs to be dealt with in the church? Well, we turn to Galatians 6:1-2, where we see Paul telling us to restore someone with gentleness when they are caught in transgression. We do so knowing that the roles could just as easily be reversed even post-salvation! True Christians can and will fall into sin, and we want grace when it is our turn! So extend that to others. We need to be reminded of this, because this approach is strange to us. Is this how the world operates? No, it is not. When someone commits some sort of online sin (usually a thought that hasn't been approved of), what does the internet do? They cancel you. If you haven't said anything bad lately, people will dive back to the beginning of social media posts and dig up stuff from a decade ago. And then somehow the way to deal with someone being mean online is to be meaner to them. The internet doesn't forgive because it can't. You can't forgive what wasn't directed at you. The internet does not restore because it can't. If someone tries to restore someone who has been disgraced, what does everyone think about you? You must have done the same thing! They come after you as if they had never sinned themselves. And it isn’t just online, isn’t it? Our southern culture lives in honor and shame, and once you’ve moved to the shame category, it’s nearly impossible to get back to honor, isn’t it? It doesn’t take much to get a reputation around here, and it is very hard to get that back, especially in a small town. If people do manage it, it doesn’t come by grace. It comes with years of grinding work. A graceless honor/shame culture, online or otherwise, can only exist as long as someone thinks that they don’t sin, too. This is exactly the point that Galatians is trying to make, isn't it? We can restore someone with gentleness because we know that we are susceptible to sin, too. The humility of knowing our own susceptibility to sin makes gentle correction in the church possible. Pride makes that impossible. "Good, good," you may say (channeling Palpatine for some reason), "we should be gentle to those who are around us, so let's spend our time sharpening up the knives for those outside the church!" Well, let's take a look at 2 Timothy 2:24-25. The opponents here are thought to be false teachers (Guthrie, Tyndale), so even here the requirement for gentleness stands. Again, this is meant for people who are undermining the church with their teaching and yet the call is to correct with gentleness and to do so patiently. Notice that in verse 24. It isn’t a quick process. You know, oftentimes the gentleness part of correcting with gentleness doesn’t look like talking. Take the story of Rosaria Butterfield. If you've somehow never heard of her, she used to be a lesbian literature professor whose goal was to make this sin acceptable. She was married to her female partner at the time, and was in every sense of the word a gay rights activist. Now, she wanted to understand how Christians thought about this, and one pastor, named Ken Smith, offered to have her over for lunch to explain the Bible and how he came to the positions he did about homosexuality. She was intrigued by his hospitality and kept coming back. Take a guess as to how many meals it took before she came to Christ. 10? 30? According to her, 500, and that is apparently a conservative estimate (link). That's gentleness, y’all. Do you see how much ability to live in humility you have to have to do that kind of work? Do you see how little a sense of self-importance Ken Smith had there? Who takes the time to have 500 meals with the same person? Would not after meal 250 we might be tempted to say, “My time is too valuable to give to this one person!”? This kind of gentleness isn’t limp-wristed non-action, this is a robust display of endurance and strength of character. Ken told Rosaria the truth. He called homosexuality what it is, a sin. There was genuine opposition there, and yet, making 500 meals for a person does something, doesn't it? The end of the story is now she is one of the most prominent voices in defending Biblical understandings of sexuality and is married to a presbyterian pastor! That doesn't mean that all you have to do is have several hundred meals with someone and they will guarantee change, but if they haven't changed, did you try that? Have you corrected with this kind of gentleness? There is no denying that that is a big calling. It’s way easier to just call someone an idiot in the comment section. Y'all, so much of our internet apologetics doesn't even reach the first rung of the ladder God calls us to climb. Our efforts for people often drop very quickly. Now, yes, there is a difference between gentle correction like this and enabling sinful behavior. Allowing someone to live in your home so they are free to indulge in their sin, whatever that looks like, liquor, laziness, or lust, isn't gentle correction because it isn't correction! But we are very quick to reach for the easy button, aren't we? Now, you might say, "Well, there is no way we can do this for everyone!" and you are exactly right! This is why gentleness is the ability to live with humility. It takes humility to recognize that you actually can't do it all. Modern life has convinced us that we can live the Christian life in twenty directions at the same time, and we can't! Not like this. You've maybe got time to do this with your immediate family and maybe one or two friends at a time, and that's about it. But can you imagine if we all did that? Can you imagine if we all did that using the different gifts and talents that God gave specifically to each one of us and brought us all together so we could work like, I don't know, a body? Wouldn't that be great? If only that was in the Bible somewhere. So how do we apply this to ourselves? Really, the only way to do this for anyone is to recognize that it has already been done to you. How patient is Jesus with you? You know, Ken Smith had basically a year and a half’s worth of lunches with Rosaria. Jesus spent thirty three full years on Earth away from heaven. Three of those years was nearly constant contact with disciples, eating, drinking, praying, traveling, teaching, all the time. Constantly serving rather than being served. He did so all the way to the cross, being despised and rejected by men, a suffering Servant. Listen to Paul apply all of this to us in Philippians 2:3-8, (1165) “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Did you catch verse 5? You already have this mind in Christ. In Christ, you are perfectly gentle in the eyes of Christ. Jesus has given you the title “gentle in heart” because you and Christ are united together like a marriage. You’ve already gotten the title. God because of Christ sees you as perfectly gentle, and now, in light of that, be gentle with others. One scholar put it this way: ‘When Paul thinks of (the glory of Christ) he does not look back, he looks up … men [and women] were saved, not by dwelling on the wonderful words and deeds of One who had lived some time ago, and reviving these in their imagination, but by receiving the almighty, emancipating, quickening Spirit of One who lived and reigned for evermore … And so it must always be, if Christianity is to be a living religion.’ (James Denny, from Martin’s commentary in the Tyndale series). You aren’t gentle because you can see a good ethical example in Christ, you can be gentle because Christ, gentle and lowly, is living in you at this very moment. Now, anytime that you are able to display even a moderate amount of gentleness, that is a gift that doesn’t come from you but from Jesus. So take the time to not only notice it, but thank God for it. To forget that last part makes it just pride and an abandonment of gentleness! Notice the gift that God has given to you, and pass it on. Show Christ’s gentleness to your kids, spouse, co workers, fellow church members, it is a gift too precious to be forgotten, too precious to be unshared. |
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