The Pathway to Perfection — Sandeep Poonen

Faith as Increasing Dependence on God

We talked about faith last week as depending more and more on God. The alternative to standing on the promises of God is standing on our own. That's the choice. So our life should be an increasing life in which our dependence on the promises of God is growing.

Till we come to the end of our life and we are only standing on the promises of God. My dad has said once that he loves, he wants to experience every one of the promises of God. Every single one. None of the promises of God where he's lost out because he was standing on his own.

That's our dream and desire too to experience every one of the promises of God. That we may not miss out on any one of those joyous moments. I titled my sermon today called, A Pathway to Perfection. A daunting title you might think, but I want to show you my understanding of it.

And it follows from last week's sermon if you were not there. I'm speaking about, I spoke about faith and this is to come right behind that. I, just to give you a summary of those who weren't here, faith, I took Hebrews chapter 11 verse 6 to describe what faith is.

Faith, Hebrews chapter 11 verse 6, without faith it is impossible to please Him. For he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. It is impossible to please God without faith.

I called it the worst sin, to come to God without faith. Whether you believe Jesus to become a Christian, whether you're already there, the thing that God is looking for you the most is not good works, not trying harder, but faith.

And I describe what faith is there as from that verse that first of all we must understand that he who comes to God, so we're acknowledging that God is there and we're coming to Him. We must say that we must believe that He is.

And I said it's more than just saying that He exists because if I'm coming to somebody, by definition I'm saying that He exists. But to say that He is, is to say that I is not. Do we have that kind of faith where we are coming to God or we are embracing the reality that God, You are, I am not.

So in the way I speak my sermons, I should speak in such a way that more and more people see God is and I am really not. And we must sing that way and we must live our lives that way, that God, You are.

That is faith. I am not. I am helpless. I am totally dependent on You. If You were to give way, I would surely give way too. It's one thing to say it. It's one thing to know it. It's another thing to live it.

And the second half of it was He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. And it is I will get Him. I will have Him. It is a statement of full confidence. Not at all worried whether we will, God, will you, will I get you?

You will get Him. The question is, do you want Him or do you want it? His stuff, anything that else that He has not promised to every one of us. He's promised us His person, His character, His freedom from sin.

He's not promised us all of His gifts. He gives some to some and He gives some to others. But we can have great confidence that He wants to give us Himself and His person, which is freedom from sin. So what is faith?

To summarize from last week, faith is total dependence and full confidence in God. It is from that that I want to talk about today, to go on that to say when we start off with faith as the greatest sin, how do we take that faith and proceed down this pathway towards perfection?

Justification by Faith in Romans

And I want to go to Romans chapter 5 to talk about that. Now if you don't know the book of Romans, Romans is—humans have organized Romans into different chapters, and Romans 1 through 3 talks about how we are sinners and that all of us have fallen short of the glory of God.

That's all the way up to Romans chapter 3. Romans chapter 4 deals with faith and justification, which is a big word, just means just as if you've never sinned. Grab a hold of that. Just as if you've never sinned, Jesus—Paul says you've got that because you have faith.

Because you depend on God, because you fully depend on God and have confidence in Him alone, God looks at you in Christ as if you've never sinned. Not as if you were sinned and forgiven, even more than that, that as if you had never sinned.

That is what justification means, and Romans chapter 4 talks to that, comparing ourselves with Abraham, our father in the faith, who called—he talks about God who calls things into existence that never were before.

It is based on that that we now look at Romans chapter 5, and we start with reading with verse 1. Romans chapter 5, verse 1, therefore, having been justified by faith, by faith, by dependence on God, by confidence in God, we now have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace by which we stand.

Grace is the power of God to overcome sin primarily. Even the grace we get to overcome whatever sin you're dealing with is by faith, is by dependence on God, is by in confidence with God, not by you working it out and trying harder and this and that.

It's by depending on God more. It's working out your ability to depend on God more. By faith, we now have the grace in which we stand, and we exalt in hope of the glory of God. And I want to just underline that word, in hope of the glory of God.

I dare say most of us just swing by that statement thinking that's a nice lot, a lot of Christianese. I don't know what that means, but I think it makes sense. We exalt, we take great joy, we rejoice greatly in our hope, in our longing, in our desire, in our primary ambition of what?

Of the glory of God. What does that mean? That means that every Christian must take great joy in saying, God, you must get the glory alone. I take great joy in that being my greatest ambition, that being my greatest desire.

So if my startup company is not looking like it's going to go public anytime soon, I still can have great joy in exalting that, God, I hope you're getting the glory through what I'm doing. I can have great joy in whatever circumstances I'm doing because I'm saying, God, you are, I am not.

It is with that that we exalt in hope of God getting the glory at the expense of me getting the glory. Oftentimes the choice is, is God going to get the glory or I want to get the glory? Do I want a Christian ministry?

Why? I say it's because God, so that you can get the glory, but it's really because I want to have a little bit more validation. And I say, God, increase my business so that I can give more to you. Yes, that's probably part of what you want, but you also want a nicer house.

But then that's both God and me trying to coexist. And God says, and Paul is saying, we exalt in the glory of God. And I find that it often comes at the expense of my dream that says, no, no, no, God, increase my yard and increase my circle so that I can have more.

Really is the prayer behind that. I exalt purely in the glory of God and he will provide all my needs. But then it gets even more interesting. Now actually I should say one more statement. We exalt in the glory of God.

Seeing the Glory of God in Christ

If you talk to many other religions that believe in God also, they will also say we want to give glory to God. But Christianity is different and unique because we give glory to God looking at a particular someone and that is Christ.

And we read that in 2 Corinthians 4, verse 6, just to point that out to you. For God who said, light shall shine out of darkness, the same God who created the universe that physicists and everybody is trying to wonder how that happened, that same God who just spoke light into existence, this unbelievable thing that none of us can figure out, this same God is the one who has shone in your hearts to give you the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, this same glory in the face of Christ.

So as we study the life of Jesus given to us through the Bible, as we study Jesus' life and the way He lived this life not giving into sin even once, we get an understanding of the glory of God. And we get to see the glory of God in the way Jesus lived, 33 and a half years, tempted in all points as we are yet without sin.

I want you to do that. Every time you sin, I ask you to do something simple. Every time you fall into a sin that you know you shouldn't have done, can you do me something simple? Look up at Christ and see Him who never sinned, who was tempted just like you were and passed the test.

Then what do you do? You beat yourself up? No, you adore Him. You worship Him and say, God, I am nothing, but I have even more respect and adoration for you and the way you lived for 33 and a half years, always saying yes to the Father, always saying no to the devil and sin.

You keep doing that and you'll have a strange love for Jesus that you don't know where it comes from and a strange adoration for Jesus that you'd be like, that was not for me, but I adore Him. Not because of a song I heard and not because of some great bonus I got, no, because Jesus is showing Himself as glorious in the face of my sin that I just did.

This is how even when we sin, God is saying, you can see my glory. Don't beat yourself up, see Jesus. That is why Jesus, Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 18, one of my life verses, that my part to play in this process is I look at the face of Jesus and I see the glory of God and the way Jesus overcame sin and Jesus lived a sinlessly perfect life and then my job is verse 18 of 2 Corinthians chapter 3, we all with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror, Jesus' beautiful life, the glory of the Lord and how He always overcame sin and never gave up, we are being transformed into His glory as I look upon Him, not as I try harder, not as I grit my teeth and say, God, one day, no, I just try harder and I keep looking at Him.

I am being transformed into glory one day so that I fully reflect Jesus one day. I will see Him as He is and I will be like Him, 1 John chapter 3. But what is this pathway, this pathway on how I gaze upon Jesus, I gaze upon the glory of God in the face of Jesus and I be transformed, what does that pathway look like, that pathway to perfection?

Enduring Temptation by Depending on God

That's what I want to talk about. And one of the things that I want to talk about is specifically this, I want to understand how do I depend on God because I've said it, it's all coming down to dependence on God, how do I depend on God for those sins that especially beset me?

Now, all of us have one or two or three sins that are keeping on bugging us. It may not be the same as other people, but it's usually sins that we can quickly identify. And usually I know what sin it is by this metric.

It's not what I'm so craving to do all the time, sometimes that is it, but oftentimes it's what sin am I tempted most to commit when I'm feeling lonely or when I'm feeling hurt or when I'm feeling angry or when I'm feeling tired or when I'm feeling hungry.

What sin am I then tempted to commit? I've noticed that the sin of pornography is close at the door when I'm feeling one of those things, and the feeling to fight back and to punch back and to hit back is right at the door when I'm feeling one of those things, when I'm feeling lonely, when I just felt rejected, when my boss said something harsh towards me and I come home and I'm feeling down, sin is crouching at that door.

What is that sin, your favorite sin you love to lean back on instead of leaning back on God? God. Those are the things that keep us in shame and guilt. I want to talk about those sins primarily, but I want to see how God, Paul is saying we must exult in these trials that keep coming at us.

And I say, God, what are you talking about? I want to show you some of God's desire before that for us. Let's turn to James chapter 1. I want to talk about trials. This may be a passage that may be more familiar.

We'll come back to Romans chapter 5, but I wanted to show you something in James chapter 1 that unlocked for me, me understanding trials in the right perspective. James chapter 1 verse 2 and 3. Some of you may know this verse.

Consider it all joy. Again, James inspired by the same Holy Spirit that Paul was inspired also says, consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials. Why? Knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.

And this is what I want you to notice about that, these verses. Did you notice how James talked about trials and then talked about testing of your faith? Have you noticed how he said, consider it all joy when you encounter various trials?

Okay, these trials, why should I consider it all joy, James? Because the testing of your faith. And I don't know if a lot of us have realized that all of our trials is fundamentally and primarily a testing of your faith.

Now what is faith? We've gone over this. Dependence and confidence in God. So when I say the testing of my faith, I'm talking about the testing of the core building block of what God is trying to develop in us, which is faith, dependence on God.

So he allows trials and temptations to come at us to test the quality of our what? Dependence and confidence in God. God says, without faith it is impossible to please me. And God says, I want to give you a way for you to know whether you have real faith.

So we're going to test it. We're going to test it so that you have a sober estimate, so that you have a good understanding of you say you have faith, you say you have dependence on God, let's test it so that you know whether you really are depending on me.

And the temptation of to smoke, to do drugs or something comes by, and I say, God, no, I'm going to depend on you. And God says, you have faith, continue in that. And then with every single trial, every single temptation that's coming, God is saying, don't look at it as this big mean thing I'm doing to you.

Look at it as me trying to show you the right nature of your faith, the right level of your dependence on me. So when you fall down, what does that mean? That is an indication from a loving heavenly father that is saying, you thought you had this much dependence on me, but this trial knocked you down.

You don't have as much as you thought. You don't depend on me as you thought. So what must you do? You get up and say, God, I'm sorry. I thought I had this much dependence on you. I thought I was standing on your promises that this trial just told me I wasn't, so I fell.

I'm sorry, Lord, I'm getting up and I'm going to stand on your promises right now and we're going to do it again. And I'm so thankful, Lord, that the trials are not over because the trial is surely going to come, but this time I want to stand on your promises.

So with us men who struggle with the lust of the eyes, when you see a woman walking by in an immodest dress and we feast our eyes on them, we have surely fallen. But don't sit down and beat yourself over it.

Look up to Christ, see him who never sinned, ask God for the Holy Spirit to say, God, now I want to stand on your promises. She went to get coffee. She's surely coming back this way in three minutes. It's coming.

Consider it all joy. The trial is coming in three minutes. Father, help me to depend on you. It's that simple. Oh man, that girl's going to come by again. Ah, it's going to be so hard. Consider it all joy, my brethren.

You need to just depend on him more. So every time you fall, we do God an injustice by beating ourselves up. We slap God in the face because we go against his very word saying, God, you're not true. Because his word says, I love you.

I am just trying to teach you that you ought to depend on me more. Faith is what pleases me. Right now your faith is this much. We need to increase it this much. I'm going to show you trials so that you realize this much is not enough to go through the day.

You need more and more and more and say, God, that's not enough. I need some more. And slowly I say, God, I want to stand on your promises and depend on you more and I want to have more confidence in you.

And James chapter one says, verse three says, the testing of your faith produces endurance. That means when I get beat up and I got knocked down, endurance is not having the victory. It's saying I'm getting back up.

I'm not giving up on you, God. Your promise says that I can have victory over sin with my eyes. I'm going to stay here. And then I get knocked down again because I wander over here 10 minutes later. And God says, get up and come back and depend on me.

And he's producing in you not victory over sin right away. He's producing in you endurance. Let's go back to Romans chapter five. And we see that Paul inspired by the same Holy Spirit describes the exact same process and he expands on it a little bit more.

But he says, you also must exalt in your tribulations knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance, not victory over sin, not I finally defeated this giant that is oppressing me. I know I wanted to be defeated.

God is saying, first, I want to build in you endurance. If calculus just came to you when you were eight years old, you wouldn't have any endurance in mathematics. God builds in you endurance. Now I want to talk to you something about sin and different kinds of sin so that we are all on the same page about this.

Sin, Responsibility, and Protection of Others

I want to make a demarcation about where I am saying we must have endurance. I want to just talk about a demarcation between two kinds of sins. There are sins, all sins are an affront to God. There's no doubt about it.

All sins are an insult to God's holiness and cannot stand in God's presence. So in that sense, all sins are evil. However, there is a difference between the sin, let's say, of pornography, if I was single, and the sin of fornication or the sin of adultery if I'm married.

Or even if I was single, if I was committing adultery with a married woman. Let me explain that to you. All sins are an affront before God. So all sins, as Jesus said, if you lust in your heart, you've committed adultery in your heart.

All sins are a sin in the vertical component. But when I watch pornography with my eyes, if I was a single man watching pornography, I've not really done a lot of damage to anybody else, if you'll understand my limited analogy.

Compared to the amount of damage I do when I commit adultery with another man's wife, I've hurt that man, I've hurt that man's wife, I've hurt her emotionally, I've hurt her children if she has children, and we all know the devastation of affairs.

In the same way, if I get angry, there's a difference if I have a spirit of anger in my heart, but I don't show it to somebody else, there's a difference between that and going and committing murder. Do I need to explain this point?

Both are sins against God. Let's be clear about that. Both need you to claim the blood of Jesus and ask God to—and you have to repent of both sins, and both, God says, I want you to live in freedom over both.

However, there's a greater implication when I murder somebody. This is how the law of the land has been created. That is why the law has been created in such a way that there's a greater punishment when you hurt somebody else.

That is how church administration also happens. That is why, for example, in Safari Kids, we check people's backgrounds to make sure that people who have had a past record of abusing or misusing children are not allowed to serve in Safari Kids.

It is not that they are not forgiven before God. Let's be clear about that. They are. Anybody. No sin is too great that God cannot forgive them, and God does quickly forgive. However, in terms of taking care of a church body, there are certain exceptions that we must make, and we depend a lot on trust.

In the same way, if I were to steal tens of thousands of dollars from some of you, and especially if I used the stage here to gain your trust, got access to your life, and then cheated you of tens of thousands of dollars, you would be very gracious to forgive me.

You would be going above and beyond the call of duty to say, you don't even have to pay it back. But, you would gently, but yet firmly say, we would appreciate if you don't teach from the pulpit anymore, because we don't trust you, and we want people in leadership positions who are shepherding the flock who we can trust, who are not abusing or misusing their authority.

So, in that sense, I say, if some of you sitting here are struggling with a present sin of adultery, my word to you is not endure, my word to you is give it up immediately. You don't have to pray about it, you don't have to say, oh, but you don't know the feelings of my heart, she was made for me, I found the perfect one.

No, she's not the perfect one. She's in contradiction to God's word if you're committing adultery with her. You don't need to endure through that sin, you have to give it up. If you're beating your spouse, you don't have to endure, one day I will start beating up my spouse.

No, stop it immediately. Seek counsel, seek help, seek help from other brothers, but stop it immediately. You're hurting somebody else. I hope I don't have to belabor that point anymore. For the rest of the time, I want to talk about the other kind of sins.

I hope most of us Christians are quick to realize those sins that are hurting other people in real ways and in actual ways and destroying their emotional makeup and their lives and their children's lives, and I hope we discard them right away.

Endurance as the First Stage of Spiritual Growth

For most of the other Christians, I think there are habits, there are mentalities. It could be not towards somebody else, it could be a wrong word or a wrong statement that your mother may have said to you that always beats you up and that you're never able to let go of.

Or maybe it's something else that somebody else did when you were still a young boy, or maybe it's something that happened recently. It's a lack of forgiveness, maybe it's a spirit of bitterness, maybe as it is often the case with many of us men, it's the lust of the eyes.

And many other sins, or maybe it's an inattentive or a loose tongue that is usually in place, but once a week, once a month, it lashes out at somebody. And like a snake hiding in a cave, it's all quiet for most of the time, but once in a while it just bites somebody and goes back.

God wants to give us freedom in those areas as well. God says if you can't control your tongue, your religion is worthless. And God says, I don't want snakes hiding inside your mouth. Just waiting for the right storm of events and bam, somebody's going to get that poisonous venom.

God wants to free us from those kind of sins. I want to use Romans chapter 5 to describe how God has given me light and opened the eyes of my heart to see the pathway that He wants me to come into perfection, into a life of freedom from sin and perfection in this area.

God says that the knowing, in chapter 3, 5 verse 3, it says, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance. And I brought a little plant with me to illustrate my point. You know, we all have God's Word that we think of as the seed, and the seed comes into our lives, and it hopefully finds fertile soil, it finds good soil, and then the seed goes in.

And I think what the problem is, when we look at our lives, we oftentimes see this. And you know, I'm not knocking this plant or anything, but I don't see this plant as being especially beautiful. I don't see beauty as yet.

I see the potential that maybe someday there are a couple of buds, maybe beauty will come out of it, but I don't see exceptional beauty out of it the way I want to see it. I didn't buy this plant for this.

In the same way, we look at our lives and we buy into the Christian life, but we look at our lives after a while and we see this. And we say, God, we don't want this. And so what we try to do then is we tend to criticize either the soil, saying, God, we're not good enough, we're not getting it, we're just bad people, or we start criticizing the seed, saying, God, that word's not for me, I need another word.

So I go to another preacher and say, give me your word. And that word works for two weeks, and now I'm like, no, still, I'm only getting this. So I say, I constantly need new words, new words to get me to get fruit in my life.

And God is saying, consider it all joy, because tribulations, trials, temptations are producing not first flowers and fruit and beauty, but ordinary, simple endurance, nothing so pretty to look at. Hi, like, what's my number one virtue?

I've got a lot of endurance. People are like, yeah, we want to follow you. You've got a lot of endurance. That's not a very virtuous thing that a lot of us think of, but God says, that's my pathway. We despise endurance, we despise perseverance, because we think, God, I want to go straight to proven character, I want to go straight to victory over sin.

God says, my way is to go through endurance. Now why is it God's way to go through endurance? Not because He is not big enough, not because He is not powerful enough, because whether we know it or not, our soil is still so rocky.

We think our soil is soft, we try as best as possible to get our soil to be soft, but in so many ways, we still have layers and crusts of pride that are like rocks. But God is not intimidated by it. God says, your word, my word is in you, it will bear fruit, hang on.

Step aside, as we sang in that song, step away. Don't give in to this temptation to uproot this tree, give up on Christianity, give up on church, give up on what God is trying to tell you to do. Hang on, there's rocks underneath that this plant has encountered, but the Holy Spirit is working on that rock if you keep coming to Him.

If you keep getting up every time you fall into sin and say, God, I want to depend more on you, He's pouring a little bit more of that Holy Spirit that can break away, can chip away at that rock called our pride that still wants to depend on ourselves.

And slowly, surely, God will produce flowers in it one day. And surely if we keep staying and staying out of the way and allowing God to do His work as we keep coming back to Him, depending on Him, God will produce proven character.

Proven Character Is Not the Goal

And I got a plant for that too. All right, this is what the same plant looks like when you let it grow. And you can clap for it if you want, it's okay. How many of you want this plant? How many of you want this plant?

That's what I mean. I mean, relatively speaking, a lot of us look here and we look at our lives and say, God, I don't think anybody needs to see my life, so I'm not going to show anybody and I'm going to cover it up because all I got is endurance.

Please don't look at me, I've got endurance. But the moment comes after some time when I get proven character. And this is what a lot of us are desiring when we say, God, this is finally what it's all about.

And then we say, God, thank you so much for proven character. We kept enduring, we got proven character. Now you can take my picture next to it. Now I'm happy to stand next to it. Here guys, why don't you see, you see my proven character, you see how I overcame the lust of the eyes, do it my way.

Yeah, I'll speak in your seminar. Sure, I'll tell you how, ten ways to get over lust of the eyes. But see, I've done it now, I'm the pro now. And I love smelling the roses or the flowers or whatever, like wow, what a beautiful tree and I stand back and I hope people get to see all my proven character.

And I just love it. And nine out of ten Christians who get proven character, 99 out of 100 Christians who get proven character, I think this is the goal of the Christian life, morality, a good life. This is the way of most religions, but Paul doesn't end there, I hope you notice that.

Offering Proven Character to God

Proven character's not the goal. And proven character produces hope. What is hope? We talked about our hope in the beginning, Romans chapter five, verse two. Our hope is that God, you get the glory. Our hope is that we reflect Christ and that we bring up Christ, that Christ looks bigger and we look smaller.

How do we get this plant to reflect Christ when this plant is our proven character? I don't know if you're gonna like this, but we gotta, uh-oh. And you know, we don't like this because we think this is such a bad thing to do.

And don't worry, I'm not ruining the tree, I'm just ruining the flowers. And I had scissors in the previous two, but I couldn't find the scissors, but I think that's of God too, because this is the painful part.

God says, crucify that flesh that wants to say, you get the glory. Take it all out, rip it out, crucify your flesh, take it all off. What do we do with this? God, you must get the glory. God, this is for you.

This, it's not for me. Every one of those flowers were for you, they were not for me. I got all of this proven character because I hung out with you and I stuck long enough, but those are for you. And like Abel and Cain, we offer up our offerings to God and we say, God, I hope you are pleased with my offering.

And God says, if you created those flowers by dependence on me, I am well pleased with you and your offering. By faith, Hebrews chapter 11, verse two or three, it says, by faith, Abel. This is the difference between Abel and Cain.

Not that Abel raised sheep and that Cain raised flowers, not at all. It is by faith. Abel had a dependence on God and created, had all his life and he said, God, that was for you. Family, don't stop with endurance.

Maybe most of us are here. Maybe some of us are tempted to uproot the tree. Don't stop just yet. Flowers are on the way. For those of you who have started to see flowers, that's not the end of the journey.

Take them out. Rip out the hardest ones, crucify the parts of the flesh that are the hardest to crucify, which is that desire to take the glory for yourselves, to make it all about your beauty. Take it and righteously put it, fling it at the feet of Jesus.

Like the 24 elders in Revelation chapter four will take off their crowns, which is a symbol of God's rewards for their good works. They fling it at the throne of Jesus saying, Jesus, you alone are worthy.

Hope in the Love of God

Now, and this life doesn't disappoint. This life doesn't disappoint. There's a vain allure to this kind of life where we glory in our proven character. But this life where we offer it before God doesn't disappoint because Romans chapter five verse five, it ends, hope does not disappoint because you get the love of God.

How many of us want the love of God and that's it? Nothing more. God is love. You get God, you get his love, and he loves you. That is enough. I don't feel the love of God. Here's the pathway. Through the spirit, hope will not disappoint.

Set your eyes on him where you only want him and you only want his glory and you want only his agenda and you're willing to give up every single dream of yours, however valid they may seem to you. And hope that God gets the glory will not disappoint because God gives us his love.

Christ as the Bridegroom in Song of Solomon

He tells us how much he loves us and all of our love for God is only because he first loved us, 1 John chapter four verse 19. This kind of love, I want to end with a song of Solomon is a book that is often thought about as a book that helps us understand how marriage relationships ought to work.

But I have seen it even more beautiful, 10 times more beautiful when I have understood it to be a story between Jesus and me. And I hope you will see it as this is a story between Jesus, the bridegroom, and you, the bride.