Right Choice, Wrong Reasons

Let's pray and we will get started. Lord Jesus, again, we humbly come before You, understanding that Your Word reveals that apart from Your Holy Spirit, we cannot rightly understand Your Word. We ask, Lord, that You would open our hearts and our minds so that we may rightly understand it, so that we may confess what You have revealed regarding Yourself, and that our lives would be an outward expression in obedience and love towards You and fervent love towards our neighbor of the faith that You have given us in Christ.

We ask in Jesus' name, amen. So I wanted to take the occasion today to build off of one of the themes from our sermon today. You'll note that the text, I used the Old Testament and New Testament texts to really key in on evangelism.

Doing the Right Thing for the Wrong Reason

And I wanted to save kind of the tougher topic for Sunday school today. And we're gonna be in Philippians chapter one. Now, when I was growing up, when I was growing up and I was in the Nazarene church, the Nazarenes made a big to-do about always doing things with the right motive.

And by the way, that's actually an important thing. But I noticed that because I'm a sinful human being, that I didn't always have the right motives. Sometimes I did the right thing for the wrong reason.

Have any of you ever done that? The right thing for the wrong reason? Not too long ago, I told about how when I was a youth and I went to the Care Youth League summer camp, that I wanted to get that gold neckerchief.

So I was doing all the right things for the wrong reason because I wanted everyone to tell me how great of a Christian I was, which is the wrong reason for doing your good works, by the way. That doesn't border on pharisaicalism.

That's like all the way into it. The idea then here is this, is that there was a text that really challenged me. And I remember having a conversation with my youth pastor about it. And the funny thing was, he wasn't able to make heads or tails of it either because it contradicted what he was preaching.

Let me show you the text. The text is in Philippians chapter one. And the Apostle Paul writing to the church at Philippi is talking about how there are some who are preaching the gospel with unpure motives.

Listen to this. Philippians chapter one, verse 12. I want you to know brothers that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. And he's talking about his imprisonment. He's talking about the fact that he's been locked up.

And this is actually being used by God for the advancing of the gospel. So that it has become known throughout the whole imperial garden to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. And most of the brothers having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment are much more bold to speak the word without fear.

Which doesn't make any sense if you think about it. Paul got arrested so we're gonna now go preach the word boldly without fear because he's arrested. That seems a little counterintuitive but the text continues.

He said some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry others from goodwill. The latter do so out of love knowing that I'm put here for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment.

There were people literally preaching the gospel in order to make things worse for Paul. That's what the text is saying. And what's Paul's attitude?

Well, what then?

Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth Christ is proclaimed and in that I rejoice. And you sit there and go, what? How can he rejoice in that? Well, if you remember last week we looked at Romans one and in Romans one it says, the gospel is the power of God unto salvation.

The gospel itself, the gospel itself is the power of God unto salvation. So let me ask you a question. If Kongsvinger had a pastor who was a nefarious evil person and nobody knew about it and then it came to light that he's actually a war criminal that in Kosovo he was killing Serbians and things like that and that he had somehow hidden his identity and he's not really a Christian.

He's just pretending to be one and he's here and he's preaching the word and he's administering the sacraments, baptizing your children, absolving you of your sins. Would the gospel be any less effective in that guy's mouth?

No. Would baptism be ineffective because of how wicked and evil he really is?

Nope.

So here's the interesting thing. The effectiveness of the word of God is not dependent upon the righteousness or lack of righteousness of the one proclaiming it. The efficacy of the word of God stands singularly on God.

And so you'll note here that Paul literally is saying there are some people out there who are preaching the gospel and doing so with completely impure motives. In fact, the motive of them preaching the gospel is to cause Paul pain, to make his life miserable and get him even into more trouble to which he says, right on.

Doesn't make any sense, does it? Now let's take a look at Jonah 4. I held that out today, but I wanna take a look at it because it's oh so interesting. Jonah 4. And I'll give myself a little bit of context.

Remember our pericope in our Old Testament reading today ended with verse 10. Verse 10 says, when God saw what they did, this is the Ninevites, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that He had said He would do to them and He did not do it.

Now, normally when Christians preach the gospel, when those who believe in God proclaim the truth and call people to repent and invite them to repent and believe and be forgiven, normally what happens when God acts and people are brought to repentance, the person preaching it goes, that's the best thing ever.

Revival has broken out in Nineveh. Let's praise the Lord. Not so, Jonah. No, he was quite upset, which tells you even his preaching, he did it because he had to. Not because he wanted to. And this is where it gets interesting.

The Ninevites repent. This displeased Jonah exceedingly. He was fit to be tied. Now, let's consider the reasons for this, if you would, if you know your history of this particular people group that the Ninevites come from.

I've described them in the past as they were so horrific in their war crimes, they literally made the Nazis look like schoolgirls. They were extremely cruel to those who they would conquer in battle. So much so, they would take the officers from the opposing army and stick them on a pike and let them die with their bodies suspended on a pike.

Horrific stuff that these fellows went into. And there were Israelites in Jonah's generation who had lost their lives to the Assyrians, who had lost their lives and cruelly and viciously so. For us, if we were living in the World War II generation, Jonah would be like a convert to Christianity from Judaism who grew up in Europe.

And now his job is to preach the gospel to Nazis. And he's having none of it. He's not happy that God is forgiving them. And the reality is that his distaste and almost bigoted hatred of the Assyrians, we mimic this in our own day.

I mean, have you ever really thought this? I know I have. Man, if that person ever repented, would they really be welcome at church? And we know somebody like that. Maybe somebody, a public figure that we all know about.

I mean, if Harvey Weinstein became a Christian and decided to attend Kongsvinger, that would be a little bit unnerving for some of us because we know of his sins and his cruelties. Yeah, that was big news just a few months ago.

So, yeah, 2017 was an epic year just as far as terribleness in the news. But then there's people in our own community that may be the case. We would love for that family to attend Kongsvinger but not that guy or those people or that group or whatever because we know sometimes people's sins are so out in the open and so known.

But this is what we gotta remember. God is slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, pardoning iniquity. The whole point of the gospel is that it's for the ungodly and that God demonstrates his love for us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ dies for our sins.

So there's Jonah, Torah observing Jew, Ninevites are war criminals. He knows people who've been killed by these people, and so them repenting and God not destroying them has, well, got him sideways. He's triggered.

So he prayed to Yahweh and he said, oh, Yahweh, is this not what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish for I knew you are a gracious God, merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, relenting from disaster.

Notice he's holding that against God. So we could tell, kind of bracket this, chapter one and chapter four. In the in-between in chapter three when he's out there doing the preaching and the teaching, is he doing so from a pure motive and a good heart?

No.

And the Ninevites repent. This tells us of the efficacy of the word because God's word is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. Let me show you another text real quick so you kind of get another piece of context.

God Uses His Word to Save and Repent

If you would, go with me to Romans 10. Vital text in understanding how the gospel works. And I think I'll add some context here. We'll start at verse one and I'll just keep reading because it's really just a great piece of scripture.

Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. Talking about his fellow Jews. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God but not according to knowledge. For being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own righteousness, they did not submit to God's righteousness.

So this is the perplexity that Paul's going through because there are people who are genetically Jewish, descendants of Abraham, and they are opposing the gospel and he says of them, it is his desire that they be saved.

But the problem is they're trying to establish their own righteousness. They are trying to say, I can do this myself, and as a result of that, they're not submitting to the righteousness of God, which is given by grace through faith.

You see, this is one of the things we talk about as Lutherans, we like to say it this way, and I'll say it from time to time. There are really only two religions. There really are only two. One takes on various forms.

The one religion is the religion that says, I'm going to earn my salvation by my good works, by my obedience, by my righteousness. So Islam is an example of this, five pillars of Islam. You say that Muhammad is the prophet of Allah.

You say your prayers so many times a day towards Mecca. You make your pilgrimage, you give your alms, and maybe, just maybe, just maybe. You see, there is no assurance of salvation in Islam, none whatsoever.

If Allah wills, maybe you'll be saved. One of the reasons why that there are so many Muslims who are jihadists and are blowing themselves up or engaging in terrorist acts that result in them dying is because one of the only ways you can have any assurance of salvation with Allah is if you are martyred.

And so they have this twisted idea of what martyrdom is. And so I'm gonna take out the infidels by blowing myself up. And by me being martyred, now I can be assured that I'll have my 70 virgins. It's a way of certainty.

Apart from that, there is no certainty in Islam. And here's the thing. In all of the self-righteous religions, and there's really only one, it's all self-righteousness, there is no assurance of salvation, zip.

Because the question that is always sitting in the back of your head and nagging you over and over and over again is, have I done enough to be saved? Have I done enough? When will I know I've done enough?

So I'll pull out the 10 commandments, start walking through them. Are the 10 commandments the type of list that you can check it off and say, done it. Now I know I'm saved.

No.

Good luck on that. So there is no assurance of salvation. Now for those who are trying to save themselves by their own self-righteousness, the gospel is actually a threat. And the reason why it is a threat is because it opens the doors to anybody being saved.

And one of the interesting things is that people who are self-righteous kind of intuitively believe that if my salvation were free, that that would somehow mean that I would live a life of rank immorality, as if somehow the gospel becomes a license to sin.

And they're very threatened by the gospel. And you'll note, what do the Pharisees say about Jesus? Why is he eating with tax collectors and sinners? Does he not know that that woman is a sinner? The town hooker just believed in Jesus and he's eating with her.

This can't be! The salvation is by grace through faith alone. Good works always follow. Make no mistake about it. The person who says they believe in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins and that they are trusting in him alone for their salvation in total, and then lives like the devil, has turned the gospel into a license to sin.

That person is not a Christian. It doesn't work that way. So as a Christian then, you have a regenerate nature and you have your own old sinful nature and they're doing this, day in and day out. What does it feel like to be a Christian?

To be a Christian feels like you're at war within yourself. That's what it feels like. And I'm not worried for the person who is struggling, I'm worried for the guy who's given up the struggle. That's the guy I'm worried about.

Person comes to me and says, pastor, I'm just struggling with this, that or the other thing. We can work with that. Confess, receive the absolution, continue to by faith, mortify your sinful flesh. Welcome to the club, we're all in this together.

But the person who says I believe in Jesus shows up to church, you know, every so often and then just lives for themselves. They don't have faith. There's no faith there at all. How do I know? They're not bearing fruit in keeping with repentance.

There is no repentance. There's no effort at all to mortify their sinful flesh and worse, if you try to confront them on it, they get in your face and tell you how you're judgmental and how you're this and how you're that.

How dare you judge me?

How many times have I heard that in that tone of voice?

Yes.

I never quite understood when Jonah goes to them and says repent, Hebrews at one time, I mean, why would they, I mean, it'd be like going to Adolf Hitler and saying,.

Yeah.

Repent.

Yes, and he did.

And okay, I mean.

Okay.

Isn't that the power of the Lord?

It is.

Softening those people.

Oh, it is totally God's work. So here's the deal, let me ask you a question. You actually answered your own question with your question. You really did. But you erased the answer with one word, but. But is one of those words that has this magical ability to erase all of the things in front of it.

You said, I understand the power of God does these things,.

But.

No, no, no, no.

Take the but out. Take the but out. Get your but out of the way. I knew I was going there.

Okay.

Just gave in.

Okay. Yeah.

You could see me going, yeah.

Just jump off the cliff.

Okay, now that we got that out of the way, we can move along. So here's the idea. Do you have the power to bring anybody to repentance? No, it has to be God. We're all dead in trespasses and sins.

And I mean that.

By nature, that's Ninevites, Norwegians, it doesn't matter. Germans, Poles, whatever the nationalities. We're all dead in trespasses and sins. And it's God. Let me show you another but that erases that so that you can kind of see it from scripture.

I'm gonna open this up in a different tab and then we'll come back to Romans 10. Take a look with me at Ephesians two. Over and again, I keep coming back to this passage. And the reason I keep coming back to it is that this is ground zero for understanding how the Christian faith works.

And you, you could say you Ninevites, you people from Oslo, from Warren, from Alvarado, you Grand Forkians. You were dead in trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work and the sons of disobedience.

So that, here's how that is. That includes the Ninevites. Among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and our mind. So don't think it's just your flesh, it's your mind also.

And we were by nature, children of wrath like the rest of mankind. How do you like that picture of humanity? Were any of you exempt from that when you were born? Not a single one of us. No way. That's the picture of humanity.

But here comes the best but ever. Remember, but erases the thing before it.

And here it is, but God.

So watch what's being erased. But God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, and God's the subject, God made us alive together with Christ.

By grace, you have been saved. So who's the one who raises us up? God. And he's the one who seated us with him in the heavenly places. So that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ.

For by grace, you have been saved through faith. Important words. It's not your own doing, or it's not of yourselves. It's the gift of God. It's not a result of works so that no one may boast. We are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

So you see the big but there?

Yeah.

So then, you know, the Ninevites, I don't know who they were worshiping before Jonah come.

Yeah.

Do they become like Hebrew believers? And then they fell away later.

No, no.

Jesus says of the Ninevites, they will rise up on the day of judgment and they will condemn the people in Jesus' day who were in Israel who refused to believe in Jesus. You wanna know their fate? Jesus tells us their fate.

The Ninevites will rise up against this generation. Let me find it and I'll show it so you can see it. Matthew 12, 41. Let's get the context here so that we can see what Jesus is saying. So you wanna know what happens to these Ninevites? Jesus tells us.

Starting at verse 38. Matthew 12, 38. Some of the scribes and the Pharisees answered Jesus, saying, teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.

Sign.

Jesus says that even adulterous generation seeks for a sign. No sign will have given it except for the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Verse 41. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and they will condemn it. For they repented at the preaching of Jonah and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. The queen of the south will rise up at the judgment with this generation to condemn it for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon.

Behold, something greater than Solomon is here. So we know the fate of these Ninevites. They will rise up on the last day and they will condemn the generation of those Jews who persisted in unbelief and sin regarding Christ.

So we know they're saved. Like saved, saved, saved, radically saved. Like going to heaven saved. Like your next door neighbor in the new earth could be a Ninevite. That kind of saved. That's what this is talking about.

Now then, here's the thing. Coming back to Jonah four, I'll just make an allusion to this and then we'll go back to Romans 10. Clearly, the repentance was not a result of the pure heart of Jonah. He was preaching literally under compulsion.

He was highly motivated by the negative consequences of his last attempt to not do what God told him to do. But we learn in chapter four, he has no heart, no love for the Ninevites. None whatsoever and it has upset him that they have repented.

So how do we then understand it? Now let's go back to Romans 10. Brothers, my heart's desire and my prayer for the Israelites, the Jews who do not believe is that they may be saved. I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, not according to knowledge, for being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own.

They did not submit to God's righteousness. And that comes by faith, by the way. For Christ is the end of the law, for righteousness to everyone who believes. For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them.

And the present tense in the Greek makes it very clear, shall continue always to live by them. There's no way to check the list off and say I've done it. But the righteousness that is based on faith says, do not say in your heart who will ascend into heaven, that is to bring Christ down or who will descend into the abyss, that is to bring Christ up from the dead.

But what does it say? It says the word is near you. It's in your mouth, in your heart. That is the word of faith that we proclaim. Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

For with the heart, one believes and is justified. With the mouth, one confesses and is saved. For Scripture says, everyone who believes in Him will not be put to shame. Now when you read the Psalms, have you ever noticed that word that pops up every now and then?

Selah, selah.

Do you know what that means? Have you ever read the Psalms and go, why is that there? Selah is basically telling, it's like a speed bump. It tells you to slow down and stop, look in your rear view mirror and consider what you just read.

Think on that and really kind of take it in. The selah is God saying, don't let this pass you by. Don't just read this and not let your mind apprehend what's going on here. Stop, go back and reread that again and make sure you're really getting it.

And if you have to, keep rereading it. That's what selah means. I think there should be a selah here. Scripture says, everyone who believes in Him will not be put to shame.

Selah.

Everyone, that's you and me. Everyone who believes in Him. Ninevite, Nazi, Norwegian, Pole, doesn't matter. Tax collector, prostitute. Everyone who believes in Him will not be put to shame. There is no distinction between Jew and Greek.

The same Lord is the Lord of all, bestowing His riches on all who call on Him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. So how then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed?

Let me kind of put it to you this way. Do you know of anyone living near you who does not believe in Jesus? How are they going to believe then? Because everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

So you have a neighbor who's not calling on the name of the Lord. How are they to call on Him in whom they have not believed? How are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?

And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news. But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, Lord who has believed what he's heard from us.

So faith comes from hearing, hearing through the word of Christ. Take that and apply it to Jonah. God gave Jonah words. Jonah is not, his heart's not in this task. He's literally going through the motions.

Kind of compelled to do so by God. I'm not going back into that fish again. So I'm gonna go and preach the words that God gave me to give. And the text says, he preached those words. Yet 40 days and Nineveh is gonna be overthrown.

Those were not Jonah's words. Those were God's words. And it says, they believed God.

Not Jonah, God.

So how on earth did they repent? God repented them through his word. And they believed. And they showed that they believed in their actions. And God relented of the disaster. And Jesus says of them, they're gonna rise up and condemn the unbelieving Jews of Jesus' day.

God did it through his word. We must keep this in mind. So you sit there and go, listen, pastor, are you actually saying you're expecting me to tell my neighbor about Jesus?

Nope.

I'm saying God expects you to do that, not me. But what if they don't? Or what if they do? Or what if that? Cast the net. Where the fishermen of Jesus' day, bait fishers or net fishers?

Nets.

They were net fishers. So a good way to think of it this way. You wanna be a fisher of men? I can tell you what the net is. The net is the word of God. Faith comes by hearing. Hearing by the word of Christ.

That's your net. So the conversation with your neighbor is about Jesus and what he's done for them. Their need to repent. And that Christ has bled and died for their sins. And inviting them to church.

But they may not like what I have to say. I know, I get it. Been there, done that. But the other thing I've seen in my lifetime, so many times now, I've like lost count, is the person who hears the word and God does something to them.

To where they sit there and go, you know what, you're right.

You're right.

And they confess their sins. They receive in absolution. They have faith in Christ. And they want to know more about him. One of the things that we discuss here at Kongsvinger is that we have got to have a more local presence.

I'm just gonna kind of put it in these terms. Because of my other job as the pirate, and by the way, he does not work here. The pirate does not work here. My other job, my other vocation as pirate, I have many opportunities to preach and proclaim the word of Christ.

And that word is bearing fruit in people who want to know more. And we have our Aletheia service that we offer for those who do not have the ability to get to a good local church. Either geographically, that's impossible for them, or psychologically, they've been so abused that that's not gonna work for them.

They've got to have a place to heal first. But the reality is this, is that Kongsvinger exists for making disciples, and here's the fun part, disciples of all nations. We're kind of taking it literally here.

But the Aletheians and the Kongsvingerians are the same. There's not a difference. The difference is locale. But there is a growing desire for us to have these kind of results, not around the world, but in our own backyard.

And here's the reality of the situation. That ain't gonna happen until we all cast the net of Christ's words here. It's really easy for me to do on the internet. There are no borders that get in the way.

It's a little different here in the face-to-face. Do we want to see disciples being made here? People going from being dead in trespasses and sins, and then God applying the big but to them so that they have faith in Christ and bear fruit in keeping with repentance and do good works for the sake of neighbor because they are in Christ.

In order for that to happen, we all, I'm not the professional Christian here. I'm just the outfitter. My job is to equip. And the best thing I can tell you, you want to see it happen here locally, tell everyone about Jesus.

You have neighbors living next to you who are going to hell. And you have the only message that God uses to turn people around, to bring them to repentance. The Ninevites didn't behead Jonah, they repented.

Your neighbor may behead you, but your neighbor may also repent. And it's by casting the net of the word of God. You don't even have to be good at it. You don't even have to have a pure heart in doing it.

You could be completely upset and say, fine, I'm going to go and tell people about Jesus. That could be your attitude. And you know what? You tell people about Jesus, and the weirdest things are going to happen because God's word doesn't return to him void.

Some people believe. Some people persist in sin and unbelief. Couldn't explain to it. And when I preach, weirdest thing happens. I got to tell you this, been here now three and a half years. The weirdest thing happens every single time I preach a sermon.

I have no clue what that word of God is going to do in each of you. Some of you, after a sermon, will come up to me and go, oh, pastor, it's like you put a red dot laser beam right on my forehead, and boy, you just nailed me to the wall.

Same sermon. Some will say, that was the most inspiring thing ever. How do we get such different results? Answer, I'm not smart enough to do that. You preach the word, the Holy Spirit is working in that word, and the Holy Spirit is going to work in us each where we are at, to convict us of our individual sins and weaknesses, to assure us of Christ and his grace and mercy and build us up the way we need to be built up.

God's word does stuff, because it's his words, not mine. I'm just the guy who gets to speak it. And I assure you of this, if you speak it to your neighbor, God has promised he will do things with it. It may be to condemn them, you don't know.

It may be to give them life, you don't know. We're not to worry about the results. We're just to preach the word, you see? I want to take a look at two passages in the book of Acts. If you would, turn with me to Acts 13.