Sermon Supplements – Page 43

Our Mutation and God’s Creation (Matthew 19:27-30)

When Adam said, “Hey, you gave her to me,” that wasn’t a good thing. We cannot blame our sin on the Giver or His gifts. Every gift God gives is good. It’s our grimy little hands that mess things up in the reception. Sin mutates. Contra DC Comics and MARVEL, mutations aren’t cool. Sin takes life and makes it death. It perverts good things into bad things.

Awareness of this causes some to be hyper-hesitant to speak of rewards. They feel two tensions; one between God’s glory and idolatry, the other between grace and merit. But does a gift, or a reward given necessarily cause you to love the gift more than the giver? If you have a wedding ring I hope you answer in the negative. Likewise, have you ever received a “reward,” that you thought was so disproportionate to any service rendered that it spoke more to the giver’s generosity than to your greatness?

Any reward we receive will come to us as grace upon grace. Let me show you with a barrage of texts.

[Y]ou yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 2:5)

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10)

[W]ork out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. (Philippians 2:12-13)

Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. (Hebrews 13:20-21)

And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. (2 Corinthians 9:8)

You are being built by God to offer sacrifices, sacrifices that are then acceptable to God through Jesus, you are given a new heart, a heart that loves God and His law, God prepares opportunities for obedience and sets them before you, He equips you with everything you need to do that work, He works in us that which is pleasing in His sight, and makes His grace abound to us, and then, following and flowing from all of that, when we obey, He rewards it! That smells of merit as much as a Pepé Le Pew smells like an expensive cologne.

Say you get this lavish grace—overwhelmed with God’s generosity you are becoming generous. One way you are generous is that you want your son to be generous. You seek to graciously teach him about grace. You want your little tike to share to the glory of God. By God’s grace, your son shares his favorite Hot Wheel. But the friend destroys the borrowed wheels by eating them or something. Your son responds with grace. In joy you take him to buy a new favorite. Your son might mistake this for merit.

Your son grows in years and grace, and when a visiting missionary comes to town in need of a vehicle, your son offers up his ’96 Ford Tarus. The car gets totaled, and again your son responds with grace. This time you go and buy him one of three Lamborghini Venenos, with a 3.5 million dollar price tag. When this happens there is no chance that your son mistakes this reward for merit. He just thinks that his dad is nuts, but in a way that is really good for him.

When you get to heaven and hear, “Well done, now what shall I give you? Hmmm… here is a new earth, every inch radiating with the greatest of glory, the only glory there really is, Mine. And here are new eyes so that you don’t miss any of it. Also, that new heart that I gave you before; now you won’t have to worry about sin marring any of its affections. No, your joy will be able to soar without limits and without fear of heights. And here is a new brain to think and meditate on this new creation,”—when you see that your reward isn’t just earth size, that is to say a 6 followed by 21 zeros tons size, but a new earth dense with the glory of God size, which is to say infinite, then you will reply, “We are unworthy servants (Luke 17:10),” and “Worthy are you (Revelation 4:11).”

We render molecular size service and receive cosmic size rewards. The point isn’t our greatness but His. Why does God reward us so? Jesus.

Sin mutates, but God creates, and He recreates, and He always pronounces over His work, “Good!” In the new earth when He rewards, we won’t have to worry about that reward becoming an idol. This is because our hands, and everything attached to them won’t be grimy any more. We will enjoy things fully, and this means enjoying them unto Jesus’ glory.

God himself is the great good which they are brought to the possession and enjoyment of by redemption. He is the highest good, and the sum of all that good which Christ purchased. God is the inheritance of the saints; he is the portion of their souls. God is their wealth and treasure, their food, their Life, their dwelling- place, their ornament and diadem, and their everlasting honour and glory. They have none in heaven but God; he is the great good which the redeemed are received to at death, and which they are to rise to at the end of the world. The Lord God is the light of the heavenly Jerusalem; and is the ‘river of the water of life’ that runs, and ‘the tree of life that grows, in the midst of the paradise of God.’ The glorious excellencies and beauty of God will be what will for ever entertain the minds of the saints, and the love of God will be their everlasting feast. The redeemed will indeed enjoy other things; they will enjoy the angels, and will enjoy one another; but that which they shall enjoy in the angels, or each other, or in any thing else whatsoever that will yield them delight and happiness, will be what shall be seen of God in them. —Jonathan Edwards

The Blessed Brought and the Cursed Comer (Matthew 19:13-26)

In all three synoptic gospels Jesus’ blessing the children is followed by the account of the “rich young ruler”. Noticing that these two incidents are paired is both helpful and hurtful. It is helpful in that it makes you look for a connection. It is hurtful because you prematurely label this man. Matthew wants to grab you with something easily overlooked, “behold, a man.” You don’t learn that this man is young and rich till much later. You only learn that he is a ruler from Luke. You have just seen children brought to Jesus, and now you see a man come.

The other gospels are helpful in creating even more contrast. In Matthew Jesus says, “little children;” how little are they? In Mark He takes them in His arms (Mark 10:16). In Luke it is said that they are “bringing even infants to Him (Luke 18:15).” These children have to be brought to Jesus, they cannot come otherwise, and the kingdom is made of such.

Critically dependent children are brought to Jesus and are blessed. A self-reliant man comes to Jesus and is cursed. If you are truly blessed it is because you were brought.

“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day (John 6:44).”

When Jesus says it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom note carefully the disciples question. They don’t want to know how a rich man then can be saved. They want to know how anyone can be saved. Jesus says that man cannot act; man must be acted upon. Man must be brought. God, by the Spirit must bring you to His Son, and then in the Son, you are brought to God as Father.

Hydrogen to Helium (Matthew 19:1-12)

1 + 1 = 1—this is the formula for marriage. Marriage is God turning two hydrogen into one helium. It’s fusion. But first, marriage is fission. A man must leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife. Family ties are near strongest. They have a-bomb power; fission power. Marriage is stronger. Marriage has star power; fusion power.

Marriage is held together by the strongest glue—Trinitarian strength glue. Only the triune God could be the author of such a mystery as 1 + 1 = 1. God made man in His own image and He made man male and female. One way that man images forth God is in marriage. There are many junk illustrations for the Trinity (water in three forms, clovers, an egg, etc.) but there is only one authorized metaphor. Marriage, though a limited analogy, it is an analogy after all, is a legitimate one, the best one (cf. 1 Corinthians 11:3).

How permanent is marriage supposed to be? As permanent as the Triune God. One man, one woman, forever, till death do them part and usher them fully into the eternal reality of which their earthly marriage was just a shadow. Anything less isn’t marriage, it’s “mar-age.”

Let not man do fission where God has done fusion. When you toy with divorce you need to know you are playing with a nuclear warhead. You can’t seek to undo God’s work without the effects being cataclysmic.

Beyond 2 × 10 to the 30th Power (Matthew 18:21-35)

1 denarius = 1 days wage.

1 talent = 6,000 denarri or over 16 years of labor.

10,000 talents = over 160,000 years of labor.

Our debt is cosmic, our sins so weighty they make galaxies look miniscule. Your smallest sin is more weighty than the sun. The sun’s mass is estimated at just shy of 2 × 10³⁰ kg. That is a 2 followed by 30 zeros! The sun is so massive it accounts for approximately 99.8 percent of the mass in our solar system. Yet, the sun is finite. Your sins are infinite. They are committed against a God who is infinitely worthy of glory, of obedience, of love. Sin is that big a deal because God is that big a deal.

Whatever is not of faith is sin (Romans 14:23). Think how many seconds of your existence you live without faith. That is how often you live in sin. Ponder how even your every good work is only purified as it is offered up to God through Christ (1 Peter 2:5). You have committed galaxies of sins, with each sin more weighty than a star. Feel the weight of your sins that make the universe comparatively shrink to the size of spinning electrons.

But this is a weak effort to show you the scale of our sins. The best place to look is not up into heavens, but down here on earth at a tree and a naked bleeding Christ hanging on it, under a dark sky.

Truly it [the gospel] is the greatest and purest testimony against sin. Though sinners find favor from the Gospel, sin finds none. The Gospel is not the least indulgent to the least sin. —Ralph Venning

How massive are our sins? The only possible way that our debt could be cancelled, is if the infinitely glorious and beloved Son of God takes on human flesh, achieves all righteousness in our place, and suffers the full wrath of God for our sins. For God to create a star is easy. He need only speak. But to ransom man, God must bleed.

At the cross now you see not only the expanse of your depravity, but the exhaustiveness of God’s grace. And if you say you’ve tasted of this grace, you will be forgiving (1 John 3:10, 15; 4:7, 11; 4:19-21).

More than someone will ever sin against you, they sin against God. God is always the most offended party in sin. When against you, man’s sins are all earth size. Most are pebbles, you should generally just overlook those in forbearance and love. Sometime our brother’s sins are boulders. When boulders are tossed you should confront your brother per the house rules Jesus had just given. If they repent, you must forgive them, for this is beyond comparing boulders to stars.

Matthew 18:15-20 – A Grace Place?

Grace place—that is why some churches say they abstain from church discipline—they want to be a place of grace. Imagine that you have cancer and pleading with doctor after doctor to remove it to hear, “We don’t do scalpels here. They hurt. They’re not loving.” The last description you would give of such a doctor is gracious.

Church discipline is about love. When discipline is absent we wave with a smile to our brothers as they tread the path to hell. Abstaining from discipline for fear of offending your brother is like not yelling at your kids when they are playing in the street, because yelling might scar their little souls. Cars kill bodies. Sin kills the soul. Better to offend someone into heaven than nice them into hell. Church discipline loves—everyone. It loves:

The sinner, by seeking their repentance and restoration.
The church, by seeking her purity and protection from the leaven of sin (1 Corinthians 5:6-13).
The world, by seeking to guard the church’s testimony and witness to the transforming gospel of Christ.
God, as we act in obedience and for His glory.

When leaders and churches ignore church discipline, they are loving. They are loving themselves. They are concerned for their jobs, their reputation, their number, their offerings. A failure to do discipline reveals idols.

Jesus spoke the words in Matthew 18. Jesus commanded discipline to be done. And Jesus promises He is with us when we obey this command (Matthew 18:20). This is the ultimate reason to faithfully do church discipline. Because to do so is to stand with Jesus. And no one loves like Jesus.

“By abstaining from church discipline… we claim we love better than God loves.” —Jonathan Leeman

Acts 20:28 & When the Watchman Hydes

Elders are watchmen, entrusted with a city dear to the King. A city he bled to conquer with love. The task calls for unceasing vigilance. Not only are enemies without the walls, treachery is within, and the most dangerous men inside the city are the watchmen. In Christ we are all a Mr. Hyde turned Dr. Jeckyl. It is one thing when Hyde is within the city. It is another when He is the watchman of that city. Elders must make sure that Hyde stays dead. They must mortify him (1 Corinthians 9:27, Romans 8:13). They must “pay careful attention,” not only to the city, but to themselves.

Elders are sinners, and in desiring and being appointed to that office, they place themselves in a position to sin disastrously. If Hyde comes out you will sin against God’s little ones (Matthew 18:6), his dear blood bought city. Elders, watch yourself. The greatest danger when the watchman Hydes isn’t his destruction of the city, but the destruction of his own soul.

[T]hat man will never be careful for the salvation of other men who will neglect his own soul. -John Calvin

Titus 1:5-9 & Out of Order

Until elders are put in place, the task of missions is incomplete and the church is out of order.

Paul was a pioneer missionary. It was his “ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest [he] build on someone else’s foundation (Romans 15:20).” Paul was fulfilling the Great Commission by going to “all nations.” Evangelism does not complete the task of missions. Church planting does not complete the task of missions. Paul’s normal pattern for missions was to install elders in every church (Acts 14:23). Until this is done, things are out of order. Our call is not to garner professions, but to make disciples. Disciples that we teach to observe all things, whatever Christ has commanded. Biblical church government is one of those things. There is no way to soften it, until a church is led by a plurality of elders, she is disobedient. And disobedience always brings disorder. It turns new creation into chaos.

Sure, every church is sinful, but no church has an excuse to remain that way. Yes, the gospel is chief, but this is not to say that church government is inconsequential. When the toe hurts the body hurts (1 Corinthians 12:26). How much more does the body hurt when the eyes, or the mouth, or the ears are out of wack? Don’t think your obeying the command to not despise the lesser members of the body by denying the cruciality of the leader-members.

In the church car, government may not be the motor, but perhaps it’s the frame. No matter how sound the engine may be at the time, a whompyjawed church government means this car is going to wobble. Sure you can ignore problems in the frame longer than a plume of smoke coming from the hood, but to think that you can ignore the frame altogether isn’t wise. Something has to hold that motor in place. No frame, no order, only chaos.

Matthew 18:1-14 – Childlike, not Childish

Scripture holds up being childlike, not childish. The disciples are behaving like children here, but in all the wrong ways. Mark tells us that the disciples had been arguing about who was the greatest, and that they were reluctant to tell Jesus what the issue was. I’m sure if we had a transcript it would read as follows:

“I’m taller.”

“Me first.”

“Oh, yeah well…”

“Nuh-uh!”

There is a way we should be like children, but it should lead to us growing up. “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation (1 Peter 2:2).” In Ephesians 4:12-13 Paul tells us that Jesus gifts His church with shepherds “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” There is a way in which the child of God should be childlike, but the result should be not a resembling of Benjamin Button, but of Jesus Christ.

Jesus says we must become like a child to even enter the kingdom, and then He says that the greatest only go deeper in this childlikeness. In what way are we to be childlike? Note that we are to humble ourselves to become like a child, we are not told to be humble like a child. Children can be as pompous as an adult. The humbling is in becoming like a child. In a sermon on Mark 10:13-16, B.B. Warfield says, “Childlikeness is one thing; that by which the state is attained is another.” Humility is a road, but a road to where? Warfield deals with the various options, arguing against simplicity, trustfulness, innocence, and humility. Ultimately taking his cues from Mark 10:15 he argues for dependence; “Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child cannot enter it.” The kingdom is to be received, and that like a child. The childlikeness we are to have is in relation to our receiving.

Children are altogether dependent on another. This is why it is so humbling to become one. Kingdom greatness isn’t achieved by the ambitiously accomplished, but the desperately dependent. Cool big varsity kids won’t get to play the kingdom game. They won’t even ride the pine. They will be thrown into outer darkness. The kingdom is for “little ones”. And the greatest, go deep in their dependence.

Because of the fall, man is a vacuum in a dirty world. He can only suck in dirt. Thus his desperation. If man is to be “converted” from a vacuum to a water hose, dispensing water instead of sucking dirt, the water must come from an outside source. Thus his dependance. The greatest, those who disperse the most water, are the biggest consumers of grace. They pump out what they are chugging down. They know the true of the vine taught in John 15, that it is by abiding in Christ that they bear much fruit. They humbly admit any greatness they posses is not their own, but Christ’s.

Matthew 17:24-27 & No Taxation because of Representation

Matthew 17:24-27, this text isn’t about taxes. Trying to make it so is like trying to help out your friend who recently bought a classic car, which is complete and in running condition, but dissembled into many pieces, by giving him your son’s Lego car instruction booklet. Sure, there is correspondence, both have a steering wheel, wheels, a windshield and so on, but that classic car won’t be going anywhere because of your help. Sure, we have taxes here, but trying to make this text about civil taxes removes all its go power. Make this about civil taxes and you’ll have to push your little Lego car to make it run.

The glory of this text is not about how you relate to Caesar, but how you relate to God in Jesus Christ. The tax collected here was not one Matthew would have formerly gathered. This tax was not used to fund Rome. Whereas you would be unpatriotic for being a tax collector, paying this tax was a patriotic act. Whereas being a tax collector indicated the idolatry of mammon, paying this tax could be an act of worship of the one true God. This tax was collected to upkeep the temple. This tax has more in common with a church offering than a state tax.

The temple is Jesus’ Father’s house (Luke 2:49, John 2:17). Jesus is under no obligation to pay this tax. Jesus is free from this tax because He is the Son. We are free because in the Son, we are sons (Galatians 3:26).

Our country was birthed crying, “No taxation without representation.” We are reborn rejoicing, “No taxation because of representation.” Jesus is the true Son, representing those chosen by the Father in the Son, to be adopted as sons. He takes our sin, we receive His righteousness. We are free. This isn’t freedom from a tyrannical Caesar. This is freedom in becoming a Son of the King; a generous King who gives His only begotten Son to make us sons. The Son was taxed, meaning He was put under the heaviest of strains, paying our ransom, so that we might be free. And “if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed (John 8:36).”

Matthew 17:14-23 & A Check that Clears

Gardner’s Bookstore in Tulsa boasts being the largest used bookstore in Oklahoma with over 23,000 square feet packed with books. When I would browse the religion section looking for a jewel in a mountain of straw my frustration would be alleviated by humorously observing two of the titles that most populated those shelves. There were regularly at least half a dozen copies of Joel Osteen’s Your Best Life Now, and Bruce Wilkinson’s The Prayer of Jabez each.

People generally discard user’s manuals, especially if those manuals prove faulty. A lot of people bought these books hoping they were true. I speculate that a lot of people sold them having found they were false. The prosperity premise may not necessarily be rejected, this just wasn’t the right how to for them. “This plastic must be old; run a different card and I can stil have the goodies, right?” The results are diabolical. They think they took God’s check to the bank and it failed to clear. Keep the major premise and you can only come to two conclusions. God has limited funds, or you’ve irritated Him such that He put a hold on that check. You can only doubt God, either as regards His funds or His love. Either this isn’t by grace, or there just isn’t that much of it. Here is a text that is meant to bolster faith but when the prosperity wolves finish chewing on this bone it leads only to doubt. That is unless the manual worked for you, but then the results are still diabolical, for you are worshipping mammon and using God instead of worshipping God and using mammon. Doubt is still the end result, for your faith is in a different God.

Why is it a faith issue for the disciples to fail to drive out this demon? In Matthew 10:1 Jesus gives them “authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal ever disease and affliction.” Jesus says they have little faith, but it is not themselves they are doubting. They are dumbfounded as to why they can’t handle this (v. 19). They are doubting Jesus. Faith is anchored in the word of Christ, not the abilities of self (Romans 10:17). What is being bolstered by this promise then is not faith to move whatever mountain you desire, but faith to move whatever mountain Christ has commanded. To properly appropriate this promise you need to ask yourself not, “What mountain do I want to move,” but, “What mountain have we, the church, been commanded to move.”

What mountain can we move in faith?

“And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age (Matthew 28:18-20).’”

Jesus had just gone up a mountain and glory was breaking through while the disciples were powerless below. Christ has ascended higher into greater glory, powerlessness should doubly not be our state.

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight (Acts 1:8-9).”