“The Ethics of the Kingdom” - Dr. Gordon Fee, Part 4a

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Covenant Reformed Baptist Church Sunday School “The Ethics of the Kingdom” - Dr. Gordon Fee

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We're going to conclude the short series that we've been doing on the Kingdom of God tonight. I'm not going to repeat where we have been to get here, and I know that that's a good teaching methodology.
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It's helpful to just go back and in five minutes encapsulate what we've done, but I'm going to trust that you can remember enough of what we've been doing to pick up right where we left off last night.
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What I want to do tonight, and I will do enough to remind us that we've been dealing basically with the text from Mark 115, where Jesus announced, or Mark summarized, the total ministry of Jesus in the announcement, the time is fulfilled, the
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Kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the good news. The coming of the
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Kingdom in Jesus, characterized by servanthood, by a suffering servant Messiah, is
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God's good news, a good news of His acceptance that leads to our repentance. Now what we want to do tonight is deal with the ethical response, the ethics of the
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Kingdom. In the hour that we have together, we're going to look at the
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Sermon on the Mount. Now I say that smilingly, because you have enough of an idea as I as to how impossible that's going to be, but we're going to give that our best shot.
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What we want to do is to sort of get the big picture, and as we get the big picture, we're going to deal enough with the details so that you'll have a sense of what this picture is all about, what it is that God is calling us to in terms of our response to His coming with His rule.
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The basic text in the Sermon on the Mount is verse 20 of chapter 5, where Jesus says,
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I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the
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Kingdom of Heaven. I tell you, Jesus says, that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the teachers of the law,
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I'm sorry, the teachers of the law and the Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Now before we look at that text in particular and then see how that flows out in the
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Sermon, let me remind you again that this is not law, just as repentance is our response.
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Now I grant you our necessary response. I did not mean to suggest that you don't have to repent, but what
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I am saying to you is that repentance is gift. It's God's gift to us.
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It is our response to the gift of Kingdom. Just as our repentance is a response to His prior grace, so the ethics of the
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Kingdom are a response to God's prior activity. You'll notice that there are no imperatives in the
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Sermon on the Mount until verse 21. What precedes that imperative are a series of indicatives that say, blessed are you, blessed are you, blessed are you, you are salt, you are light.
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Now this is a pronouncement. This is not saying, if you do this, you'll be blessed.
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This is God's pronouncement of His blessing upon people who are going to be like this.
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Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who recognize themselves as the impoverished before God.
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Those who have experienced the humbling of becoming the little child. Those who have experienced having all of their safeties and securities removed and to recognize themselves as absolutely, totally dependent upon God.
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Those people are blessed. Theirs is the Kingdom. Blessed are you when you're in poverty in spirit, because in that moment, you have received the
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Kingdom as God's blessedness. You are salt.
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You are light, Jesus said. Those are His prior words of indicative.
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I make sure that just to take a moment theologically to make sure you hear my theological grammar.
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You understand that the entire nature of the Christian faith finally theologically is dependent upon what side of the indicative you put the imperative.
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That's very clear, right? The indicative is God's pronouncement of acceptance.
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It is His word of saying, you're mine. I love you.
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I accept you. I forgive you. You're my child. Gordon Fee, son of the eternal
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God. Now everything in the Christian faith depends upon what side of that indicative you put the imperative.
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You put the imperative over here, and that's heresy. That says do good in order to receive
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God's accepting word. Now this is what we were trying to describe last night and the night before in terms of Paul's understanding of justification.
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He had spent his whole life believing that he had to do this in order to be accepted. The good news of the gospel is that the indicative comes first, but it's followed by an imperative.
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Now do be. You are light, so be that.
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You are my child, so become that. So what
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I want to emphasize is that the Sermon on the Mount is not some kind of law or new law that we have to obey in order to be
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His children. This is a description. I grant you it's imperative.
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It is something we have to do. But it is a description of the kind of people we're going to be when we are
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His children. When we have responded properly in gratitude to His grace.
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Remember last night I suggested that somebody, and I don't know who it was, I've quoted this for many, many years.
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I don't have any idea where this came from, although I think it came from John Ruskin. I'm not sure of that. But he said, whoever it was, said that in the
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Christian faith, religion is grace and ethics is gratitude.
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Now that is the Christian faith in a nutshell. Religion is grace. Ethics is gratitude.
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That leads me then to suggest to you that I've had over many, many years what I call a working definition of a
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Christian. A Christian is a person who really wants to become one.
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That's what a Christian is. A Christian is a person who really wants to become one.
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Now you understand if you don't really want to become one, I think we can say on the authority of God's word there's something seriously wrong at the starting point.
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You see, what happens when we are converted is not that divine perfection sets in, but divine infection sets in.
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We are infected with a new spirit. And the whole point of our life is now to let that infection work its way out into all parts of our being.
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The divine infection of the Holy Spirit. That will bring us finally in the, what is not yet for us, the final eschaton to those kinds of perfections that God is leading us to.
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But in the process we are becoming what we are. Now we already are
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God's children. What we are about is becoming what we are. You are in fact
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God's child by grace. You can't do anything, you can't do anything about that.
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I mean, God has simply accepted you freely, graciously, you're his child.
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What that means then is that the rest of our life is to be lived out becoming what we are. I am not yet what
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I'm going to be, but I am now what I'm going to be. I know that sounds strange, but that's the way it really is.
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I am not yet what I'm going to be. I am becoming what I'm going to be. But I am what
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I'm going to be, namely God's child. So a Christian is a person, don't try to write that down, that's the kind that's playing with words, but I hope that little kind of playing with words will help you to get the point that we're trying to get across.
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That becoming a Christian doesn't mean instantaneous perfection, but it means a new want to.
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It means a change of will. Remember last night we suggested that it's radicalized at the point of our prayer, where instead of praying,
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Gordon, thy name, thy kingdom, thy will, it's now, Father, thy name, thy kingdom, thy will.
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Everything is radicalized in this. We have been so radicalized by the coming of God's rule that secures us and eliminates our need to secure our own existence and our self -centeredness, that we are now free in Christ Jesus to become
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His child, because we already are His child by His grace. Now you must understand the ethics in that way, otherwise what you'll do is you'll read the
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Sermon on the Mount and you'll spend all of your time going through a terrible guilt trip. It has that great possibility, you know.
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It says, no anger at all, and you say, hmm, hmm, so you turn the page real quick.
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You know, I have a lot of texts that I call my turn the page real quick texts.
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Do all things with, oh, you've heard me say that one enough, you know that I have trouble with that one. Do all things like grumbling and murmuring, hey, count it all joy when you fall into various kinds of testings.
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Well, I turn the page real quick on that one. I am ready for, in thy presence is fullness of joy, and at thy right hand are pleasures for everyone.
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I mean, I can handle it, but, you know, so turn the page real quick. And the
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Sermon on the Mount is full of turn the page real quick. I mean, there are so many of them, you can't turn the page fast enough.
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Now my point is you'll suffer a tremendous amount of guilt if you do not recognize that the ethics of the kingdom is gift as well as demand.
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That God expects us to be this way, but he also gives us this. This is his gift in our lives.
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His command is his gift. And that is what makes the
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Christian ethic a radically different thing from law. Law has to do with conduct that can be controlled.
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This has to do with attitudes that spring from a new source, a new power, a new enablement that God the
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Holy Spirit brings into our lives. It also, of course, because it is
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God's will for life in the kingdom, is an expression of what we're to be. And when we're not, it should lead us to repentance.
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That's why, what I think anyway, that a Christian who is truly walking close to the
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Lord is a Christian that experiences repentance on a regular basis.
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I'm always frightened by those people who don't like the idea of going to a church where regularly there's confession of sins, where we have corporate confession of sins because that sort of leads us in a heavy trip, you know, that we're always sinning.
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Well, I don't like that way of putting it either. But my experience is that the closer
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I walk with the Lord, the more I experience repentance on a regular basis.
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The closer you walk, the more you realize the distance there is.
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But it isn't a heavy guilt trip. Repentance, remember, is joy. It's an awareness that God is at work in your life, and as He works on your life, moving you more and more to what
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He wants us to become. Well with that bit of preliminary, in terms of what this is that we're dealing with, let's take a brief look at the basic text, verse 520.
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Jesus says, I tell you that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the
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Pharisees and the teachers of the law. Now you remember this morning in our lecture on reading and studying the laws in the
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Old Testament, we mentioned what the Pharisees had done. Well, in their desire to obey the law, they put a hedge around the law.
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And in putting a hedge around the law, they did so not because they were trying to lay heavy burdens on people, but because they truly wanted to obey
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God. But they sort of missed the point. And in missing the point, they did a disastrous thing with regard to the law.
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In putting a hedge around it, they not only kept others from experiencing Torah as gift, but they also did a thing with regard to their relationship to God and law that is ultimately going to be destructive.
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They externalized piety and they quantified righteousness.
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That is, they made piety something that had to do with what could be externally observed behavior.
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What is work? You define work in categories that can be observable and quantifiable.
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You know what we mean by quantifiable? You quantify righteousness by keeping records. And you can keep records of observable behavior.
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You can't keep records of the number of times you have thought ill of someone.
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But you can keep records of the number of times you have done a dirty thing to someone.
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Well, let's go on the other side. You can't keep records of the time you feel loving towards somebody.
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But you can keep records of the number of times that you do things that can count as loving.
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Now, the moment you externalize piety and quantify righteousness, you have done the law in.
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And the problem, of course, and I should step back for a moment and indicate, when
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I was a teenager and had been marvelously brought to Christ in my 16th year,
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I decided that I would read the Bible through. And I did.
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That was when I discovered how many texts there were that I had to turn the page real quickly on.
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I didn't know there were so many things. Of course, I didn't know how to read the Bible very well, so I just read it like I was supposed to, three chapters a day, and I finished the whole thing in a year.
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And boy, there was a lot. Well, I remember this text. This one gave me trouble. I was reading it through in the
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King James Version. And the King James Version, I'm not remembering now how it says.
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Somebody has it. I'm going to read it quickly. Verse 520. What does it say in the King James Version? For I say unto you that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees.
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Okay, that's what I thought. That's exactly what the RSV has. You know what the word exceed meant to me as a kid?
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When I heard the word exceed, I immediately quantified that word. I said,
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God expects more righteousness out of me than the scribes and the
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Pharisees. Now, as a 16 -year -old, I knew that I didn't have a chance on that one. Because I knew enough about the
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Pharisees to know that I was a full -time occupation for them. And I was a basketball player, and I ran track, and I did all the other things that a teenager in an
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American high school does, played football, that's the other thing. I didn't have enough time.
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There weren't enough hours in the day for me to have more righteousness than they. And I must admit to you, that was a very disturbing text.
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I frankly, I didn't turn the page real quick, literally, but I tucked that one away.
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I didn't know what to do with that. That seemed terribly unfair of God, that he should expect more righteousness of me than these guys who had spent all their lives trying to be righteous.
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Now, what I learned, of course, is that that's not what that word means. The word that is translated exceeds might be better translated surpass, or better yet, go beyond.
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Accept your righteousness, go beyond that of the scribes and the Pharisees.
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No kingdom for you. Now, what does that mean? That is, in fact, a considerably different idea.
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There is a righteousness that must go beyond theirs. Okay, let me see if I can explain what
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I think that means. The righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees that we'll define again as a righteousness that externalized piety and quantified righteousness always asks the wrong kind of questions.
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See the moment you start to count, well first, let's start with the externalizing piety. The moment you externalize piety, then you begin to think of yourself in terms of what good thing
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I'm doing that has God on my side. And the Pharisees had this down to a fine thing.
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There were the three kinds of piety, fasting twice a week, almsgiving on a regular basis.
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In fact, you know that the Pharisees actually deliberately kept some people poor so that they might give them alms, so that they could get points for giving alms.
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I mean, that shows you how bad the thing had become. Deliberately kept some people poor so that they could regularly give them alms on a regular basis and thereby get points, see, gain favor with God for being good by giving alms.
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Talk about absolutely, totally, radically missing it, that's it. And then, of course, the prayer three times a day.
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Then there was the tithing and the ritual regulations for food and that kind of thing.
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Everything perfectly externalized, their lives perfectly in order, and as long as they were doing what was required and not doing what was not required, that meant they were going to make it.
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That meant that they were accepted with God from their point of view. Now as I was about to suggest, what that does is that this describes relationship to God on the basis of law, and the law is a fence.
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What people are asking for is for a fence around their lives that will fence them in, that by describing their lives inside this fence, they can consider themselves as righteous.
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So, the fence says, thou shalt not steal, no steal.
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So, if you don't steal, that means you're good, right? Of course right, or of course wrong.
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I mean, I don't beat my wife, that makes me a good man, right? No, but see, this is why externalizing and quantifying never has any value.
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Paul finally says that, you remember in Colossians chapter 2, he says, why do you still submit to regulations, do not touch, do not taste, do not handle, as though these had any value because they have no value in checking the desires of the flesh.
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They have value in terms of looking like you're righteous, but they have no real value in checking the desires of the flesh.
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The point is that a person can be inside the fence and be a perfectly, totally nasty human being.
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It may never show, but so what? It isn't the show that counts, it's what is going on in the life inside that counts.
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The show is only the demonstration, finally, of what goes on, and much of what we do often in show is not the real person anyway, we're just showing off.
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We're being pious for the sake of the people around us, so that we will be good in their sight. You see, when
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God is in the process of saving us, he is not trying to simply do a whitewash job on us, or to change the metaphor.
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He is not wanting to paint the barn red, and then leave the dung inside.
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It is not a matter of doing a whitewash job on us, he is trying to absolutely, radically change us inside.
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Put this in yet another way. You are not a thief because you steal.
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You steal because you're a thief. God can forgive X number of times you've stolen, but what he's after is not the
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X number of times you've stolen, although that's true. He's after the thief in you.
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He wants to do something in your life so that you will never steal again, given any kind of opportunity.
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Now you understand, a person can be inside the fence and still be a thief, even though he's never stolen. You understand?
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In God's sight, the desire is the same as the deed. In God's sight, the person who wishes all his life he could have stolen, but never had the opportunity, or was scared to death that he'd get his hand caught in the cookie jar when the
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Lord came back, or something like that, you know, the person that has done that is indeed in the same category as the one who has done the deed, in God's sight.
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That's the scary part about the whole thing, you see. What God is trying to do is to do something in us so that we will not do those things that we can externalize and count, or in some way say that's bad or that's good activity.
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Now this particular part of the problem is so thoroughgoing in our lives that the majority of us as Christians carry this baggage with us most of our lives, even as believers.
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I don't mean to be unkind in saying that, but this is really true. And at some point as we grow in the
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Lord, we've got to grow out of this, or have the Holy Spirit do a number on us at this point in some way.
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We learn it young. We learn to define righteousness very, very young in terms of things we don't do.
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We have four children. Our oldest is a boy, our next is a girl.
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When they were small, we were the pastors of a small church outside of suburban
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Seattle in the state of Washington. And Mark was three and Cherith was a year and a half.
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We had an evening service, seven o 'clock Sunday night, and as typical American, I had to be there on time.
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And having to be there on time was a great thing for me. And this one night, the two children were sitting at table, drinking some milk and eating a piece of cake.
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Only they weren't. You know, they were sitting at table, supposed to be doing that, but they weren't doing it. And I started to look at my watch and saw that they had to get eating in order for us to get to church on time.
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I'm the pastor. I had to be there on time, you know, and all that. And they continued to dawdle and not do what they were supposed to be doing.
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So I raised my voice at them a bit, said, hey, come on, you guys, let's get to eating.
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And that didn't do anything. You teach children very quickly, very young, what tone of the voice is the one that really counts.
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Now, your parents teach children that. I mean, I'm not going to blame them for that. But I taught them this somehow along the way. There's a tone of voice that is the one that really requires action.
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And so I gave them that one. Come on, you whatever. I mean, I don't know really what I do, but anyway, it's something.
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And whatever it was that came that particular time, little year and a half old
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Cherith caught on and she, in her anxiety, reached out and hit that milk and it went all over everywhere.
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Everywhere. And then I really got upset with her.
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Beautiful experience. I mean, you know, you know, that's going to be a great service tonight. Dad's doing all the right things.
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I mean, I was really upset with her. I mean, a year and a half old, just a little blonde girl with big blue eyes.
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And I just reamed her out for spilling that milk, for not doing what I told her the first time and all that.
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And my son, three -year -old son, looked up at me in total innocence.
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And he said, Daddy, I'm a good boy, aren't I? I didn't spill my milk.
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You could have put a knife in me. I had taught a three -year -old boy to define goodness in terms of not spilling milk.
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Now most of us live our lives that way. You'll notice the kinds of questions that we ask when we're still within the fence.
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I am regularly asked by people, can I do this and still be? What can
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I do and still, you know, you know what they're asking for? A fence.
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They want to know what are the limits to my conduct that I can still do and still be inside.
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My stock answer to that question, tongue -in -cheek, is, well, you can get saved and quit asking that Pharisaic question.
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Yeah, I mean, see, that's not a Christian question. You haven't understood the Christian faith yet when you ask that kind of question because that question is saying, where's the law?
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My life is prescribed by law. I want the law around my life. Please fence me in.
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The moment you ask that question, you have removed yourself from a Christian understanding of ethics back to a
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Pharisaic understanding of ethics. What can I do and still be? What defines my conduct as by law so that I can know that I belong?
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Notice how it comes out all the time in the New Testament. What lack I yet?
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Remember that's what the young man asked Jesus? All these I've kept from my youth. What lack
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I yet? Remember they come and ask the question, or he asked the question earlier, what good thing must
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I do in order to inherit? Or Peter asked the question, how many times must
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I forgive? Always wanting some quantifiable relationship with God to give us security.
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Security lies in our obedience to law. Jesus comes along and takes this blue blanket away from the lionesses of the world and says, you have no security in that.
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You've got to trust God. You've got to trust God to accept you.
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And out of that trust must overflow a life of gratitude that expresses appreciation for that acceptance.