Mill City 12/20/23 Mill City 12/20/23

|giv| Week 4: He Is Coming

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Transcript

Good morning my name is Chad I'm one of the pastors here if you will grab a Bible and go to Malachi chapter 3 we are uh finishing up our Series in the Book of Malachi today we're finishing up our give Series this is the last Sunday morning this year that we'll meet together next week we will meet uh in the evening for a Christmas Eve service at 5:30 um so this we're wrapping up a whole lot of things today um and as we come to the end of Malachi we are going to have our attention directed to the end of all things you.

See in the Christmas season we celebrate as Christians uh the season of Advent which is the appearing or the arrival of God in humanity that he incarnated that he took on flesh to join us and to redeem us and to rescue us and we celebrate that during during this time of year we uh remember that on Christmas Day and I I do want to point out that the Bible does not say what day of the year Jesus was born so I've heard people before say you know I found out that that uh Christmas isn't even.

When Jesus was born so I quit believing the Bible and it's like well the Bible never said that it just is a traditional thing this time of year that we focus our attention on and remember that as a thing that the Church does but we don't know exactly when he was born but this is when we focus on the Incarnation that Jesus has come to rescue his people and that his life and death and Resurrection redeem us from our sin and that's known as uh the coming of Christ or the.

First coming and then there's the second coming when he returns to judge the world and rescue his Church and the prophet Malachi is going to turn our gaze to that this morning and so if you will let's pray and then we'll uh begin to read together Lord we ask for your help we ask for ears to hear mental Clarity Supernatural focus on something that is eternally urgent we ask this in Jesus name amen if you'll look at Malachi chapter 3 we're going to read the section we studied last week together.

Because it uh is setting up what Malachi is going to say this morning he's going to be responding to what he's to this um accusation that the people have been made been making and so we're going to look at this he says your words have been hard against me says the Lord but you say how have we spoken against you verse 14 you have said it is vain to serve God vain meaning it's a waste it's it's dumb has has no uh result what is the profit of our keeping his charge or his walking and mourning before the.

Lord of hosts and now we call the Arrogant blessed evildoers not only Prosper but they put God to the test and they escape that's the accusation that what we're going to see in a moment he's responding to he's actually going to use that phrasing the arrogant and the evildoer verse 16 it says then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another the Lord paid attention and heard them and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the.

Lord and esteemed his name there's this teaching in the Scriptures that God keeps a record and that there will be books opened on the last day and there will be a distinction made between those who belong to him and those who don't that's what it's referring to here that God recorded those who feared him verse 17 they this is God speaking they shall be mine says the Lord of hosts in the day when I make up my treasured possession and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him.

Then once once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked between one who serves God and one who does not serve him there's going to be a distinction made and he says there going to be a distinction between the righteous and the wicked between the one who serves God and the one who does not serve him now this distinction that is made we're going to see in just a moment is as distinct as any two groups can ever be the gap between these two groups is infinitely eternally massive there's a fixed Gulf between the two that cannot be bridged this distinction that's going to separate all of human history and all.

Of humanity it's going to cut right through just as Jesus Christ uh splits up our Reckoning of time that we have before Christ and the year of Our Lord Lord when Jesus comes just as he does that he's actually going to do that with all of human history that there's going to be a dividing line between those who serve the Lord and those who don't between the righteous and the wicked when um my wife and I had our first son we were in the hospital and we had had our son.

For like in our care for like an hour and I have never like help a baby cared for a baby tended to a baby ever and then I just had hours to do that with like I held my niece one time and I was like neat take it back I I actually had had people before be like here hold my baby and I just said no which is fun to watch a mom be like but it's like why are you handing your baby off anyway you keep the baby it's yours don't make me hold it.

If I drop it like this is you know I just you just you keep it so I'd had this baby for like an hour he was smaller than like a peeee size football I did not know what to do with him I'm holding him and he like gurgles kind of spits up into his own mouth and begins to choke so I'm holding a 1-hour old baby and he's choking I say to my wife he's choking call the nurse she's in a hospital bed she has a button that will call a nurse she presses the button.

Now I don't remember what word for word what she said so I'm going to paraphrase and she's not here she's in Kid City so what I'm going to paraphrase is wildly accurate she presses the button yes that's how nurses respond whatever this is the nurse I don't know she said my wife says um yes if uh if you have time if it's not a bother um when you get a chance I said not when you get like I'm like this is already taken way too long you need two words baby choking like that's it that's all we needed.

When you get a chance and I don't know if it's that she couldn't see his face or she was still on some like pregnancy drugs or if she just can't jump the hurdle of being like a polite Southerner I don't know any and all of those things but I do distinctly remember the nurse being surprised when she finally got the piece of information because nothing in the conversation had led up to the the urgency that was needed at the end of it our baby's choking she was like oh yes they hustled down there flipped him over did a thing that I learned how to do later which is help them you don't hold them backwards.

If they're choking you flip them over I was just staring at him like I don't know dude flipped him over got him okay handed him back to me and I was like okay I took note of how to do that when a situation is tense when a situation is life or death when a situation is urgent you want Clarity you want urgency you want action you want to focus up and when the Bible speaks about the end of all things when we step into eternity what happens to our Everlasting Soul we ought to want Clarity this is something that you ought to want to know definitively the answer to what.

God says about this subject because there are moments in your life where you wish I wish I could have a second chance I wish I could go back and redo that I did not handle that well I feel like I had a window to have Act Ed properly or spoken properly I wish I had a chance to go back and fix that and there is not a single moment in your life that has the amount of urgency and intensity and longlasting nature other than the decision that you will make about what happens to your soul.

For all of eternity and there will be many on that day who wish they could go back for another chance to have heard this process this thought about this responded to this and there will be no other chance and so we ought to take Serious iously what the prophet of God says next as God speaks through him he says this 4 verse 1 for behold the day is coming burning like an oven when all the arrogant and all evildoers so he's using their words from earlier will be stubble bits of dry wood and grass that will be burned up the day that is coming shall set them Ablaze says the.

Lord of hosts so that it will leave them neither root nor Branch so the Bible teaches that there is a day coming a day of judgment that is burning like an oven when evildoers and arrogant will not Escape they will be left with nothing neither root nor Branch they're gone that this day of judgment will uh capture all of them he says that the arrogant and the evildoers they taunt God and they escape he says no there's a day coming when they will not Escape.

Now if you're not familiar with Christianity or if you were talking to someone who's not familiar with Christianity and not familiar with the Bible and didn't care anything about this and you told them that there's a day coming when God will judge evildoers I think the general response would be good fine even if they don't believe what you believe when you say that it's like that's fine if there is a God he should do that the reason our general response to that would be.

Well good is because I don't include myself in the category of evildoer sounds like someone Batman fights and I just think if Batman lived in Columbia he would leave me alone like I just I just don't think that I'm an evildoer and so I think in general people think I'd love for God to judge evil if there is a God that's one of the things he should do honestly I'd like to give him some tips because he's got some things that I want him to judge like that's in general our attitude there.

Now if you're a little more thoughtful you might ask the follow-up question of how does he Define that category which is a good question for you to ask that is a good follow-up question to try to understand how does the Bible define evildoer but as we look at this this morning I want us to focus in on this other category because I think it's very helpful for us to understand what's actually happening on that day and that day is a real day that is coming.

When all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble who are The Arrogant in God's Reckoning you see there are those who are doing evil they're maliciously rebelling against God the truth is the New Testament says that we're all pretty much in that category but the Arrogant are those who believe that they don't need God they don't need to submit to him that's fine if he's real cool he can judge the evil but the idea that I need him that I'm supposed to surrender that I'm supposed to ask.

For forgiveness that I'm supposed to live my life in light of him and what he has for me and what he wants from me the idea of the Arrogant are those who have rejected God some intentionally you'll hear people make arguments like well if there is a God and there is a day of judgment then I've got some questions for him on that day yeah that's arrogant I saw something online recently that said well God May judge you but don't worry his sin and outnumber yours and a bunch of people had posted underneath there what a great quote I'm writing that down that's wonderful how true that's that's arrogant.

But there's also an arrogance that just treats God is unimportant as you as self-sufficient as you as the Pinnacle of all creation that there is no God and that humanity and our reasoning and our thoughts are the top of everything and that we're to decide for ourselves what is right and wrong and good and bad that's arrogant and like someone in our justice system who chooses to represent themselves in court while knowing nothing about how the court works it's going to go very poorly that all the arrogant and all the evildoers will be destroyed on that day that there is a Day of Reckoning verse two says.

But for you who fear my name all right so this was not written primarily as a warning to those who don't fear the lord it was written to the people of God who do fear the lord as an encouragement but I want to point something out this idea this line that comes through between fearing the Lord and not fearing the Lord it calls for humility so do you want to know someone else who's included in the Arrogant the Pharisee the the religious person who says I'm one of the good ones I.

God owes me I've served I've worked I've read I've studied I've been there I've done the stuff I gave during the gift project I'm one of the good ones I serve in Kid City twice last month if anybody's in heaven it's me that somehow God owes you that somehow you've earned it that somehow you have the credentials or the resume that's arrogance so it's not just those who've rejected God but it's also going to be some people who've been very very good.

But in a way that declares that God owes them because they're one of the good religious people rather than someone who submitted and surrendered and asked for Mercy that's what fear looks like here we would go to the Lord and say I need Mercy I need rescue I need help if you don't do this work if Jesus didn't come and and be righteous in my place and die in my place then I don't have any hope I'm surrendering I need help I need forgiveness it's all on you that's this picture.

So Church family if that's you if you've trusted in the Lord and surrendered to him not working on your religious resume to present to him so that he owes you and not sitting here and saying I don't really need God that's good for other people but I don't need that but if you've genuinely said I trust Christ to pay for my sin to rescue me to atone for my to welcome me and he's my only hope then this is actually spoken by the prophet to you.

Because it says but for you who fear my name the son of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings you shall go out leaping like Calves from the stall and you shall tread down the wicked for they will be ashes under the soes of your feet on the day when I act says the Lord of hosts but for you who fear my name verse two the son of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings that day that comes burn burning like an oven.

For the wicked for those who belong to Christ healing Dawns the sunlight that crests The Horizon on that day does not Scorch or dry out or burn but there is restoration and healing the reason that happens the reason that the sun Su n of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings is because the Sun s o n of righteousness has already risen with healing for those who would trust in him that those who place faith in Jesus ultimately when he returns this he's bringing forth the full consummation of what he has accomplished.

For us by faith by grace through faith through his work on the cross that he's accomplished for us and so it's a day of healing everything that is physically wrong with you everything that is mentally and emotionally broken for those who are in Christ is fixed battles with depression anxiety fear doubt years of laboring in physical and mental pain working to submit to the Lord and follow him and try to overcome what's been done to us by sinful Wicked people what's been caused by our own shortcomings and failures and rebellions and what's just burned into our flesh through the Brokenness of sin there's a day.

When the Sun rises and that's gone there's a day when the king returns and everything is set right there's a day coming that will inaugurate is endless days for those who've trusted in Christ to be restored and welcomed and healed brought into a land where there is no sorrow or sadness or tears I love this next verse oh no the next part of this same verse you shall go out leaping like Calves from the stall who just got excited have you ever seen Cals leap it is the goofiest looking thing they're not designed.

For it cows aren't supposed to do a lot of jumping this is why we don't do like cow racing we do bull riding but that's how cowes jump if you've ever watched bull riding where they jump feet first then the feet have to come back down and their back feet come up like they don't quite ever really fully get off the ground it's hard for for them to do but Cales and cows you can Google this will jump when they are excited goofy.

But they'll jump when they're excited if you've kept them all pinned up for a while and you let them all out back in the grass they will one by one come out I watched the video of this these cows coming out one by one and they'd walk out into the grass and then they would jump and then the next one would walk out in the grass and then it would jump and they all just were so excited you know that humans do this to that we jump.

When we're excited we're all used to it but you know we do that I I I love football there are certain things that happen in football that will automatically make me shoot up out of my chair I can't help it I will I will just jump as soon as certain things happen I will already be I'll be out I'll be up if you watch people in their excitement there are times we get so excited adult human beings get so excited that we just take off running running have you seen this like they win a thing and they just run through the field their arms out like they're an airplane or something y'all what this is.

Saying is that the day that Christ Returns the Church loses it and we're jumping and we're running and we're singing and we're clapping and we're shouting and the celebrations we've seen on Earth the best buzzer beater we've ever seen the best showcase we've ever seen on the is right the best person who's ever been released from 40 Years of prison has nothing on what that day looks like when the Church has Christ shine on us in glory and we all start shouting and singing and running and leaping.

Because the day has come when everything is restored and our Kings come back and there is Joy Untold praise the Lord that day is coming because Christ came to rescue a people for himself and if we trust in him he will one day return and everything will be restored and it is a day of joy and rejoicing for those who belong to him and you verse three shall tread down the wicked for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day.

When I act says the Lord of hosts as the Church runs and Liv leaps and jumps they tread down the wicked caught up in Joy caught up in the in raptured Grace and Glory of Christ rescued and redeemed it's a Day of Victory so often the way the world seems to work is that the meek are trampled those who are seeking to do what is right and good are are underfoot that the wicked and the powerful and the the violent rise.

Jesus says the meek will inherit the earth and Malachi says there's a Day of Victory coming when those who have trusted in the Lord surrendered to him walked in fear of the Lord humbly before him tread down the wicked in their Joy there's a song we used to sing in the Church I I grew up in and it would say it was um when we all get to heaven and it would say when we all get to heaven what a day of rejoicing that will be.

When we all see Jesus Will Sing and Shout the Victory and that's what this is the distinction on that day could not be clearer there could not be a wider gap between being Ash and being enraptured in the light Charles Spurgeon was a pastor in England and he said when it comes to talking about judgment and Eternity in heaven and hell that we need clarity that dressing it up in fancy words doesn't help he said if he saw a house on fire and he looked and said I believe the operation of combustion is proceeding Yonder that wouldn't help he said.

But if you pointed and said fire that would help as clearly as I can say it without Christ without trust trusting in Him to pay for your sin you will pay for your sin and on that day you'll long for this one to make a different decision but Church family on that day our best day on Earth be a distant memory of Brokenness because of how good and glorious everything is to come this was written as an encouragement to those who were to belong to the.

Lord look at verse four he says remember the law of my servant Moses the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel remember means not just to think about them but to keep them here here's his encouragement they said that it's working out for the the wicked it's working out for the evil it's working out for the Arrogant they get away with it they enjoy life everything's going well for them but it's not going well for us and he says there's going to be a day.

When all of that is eternally reversed then he says so hold on so Church family hold on Walk In Hope and obedience as you follow Jesus because I know that there's somebody in here right now who's thinking I wish I could just give up Christ and pursue this other thing because I'd be so much happier everybody else I know is living this pursuing this they have this they don't worry about these things and they're happy they're fine they're free and I feel.

So much like I'm having to fight my flesh daily I'm having to fight against who I really am yeah because who we really are so often is an absolute Rebellion against the Lord that we do at times have to fight tooth and nail against our our sin but what Malachi says What God Says through Malachi is it will be worth it don't lose heart don't lose hope Don't Let Go verse five behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the.

Lord come so this is God speaking through Malachi I will send Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes Elijah was a prophet who had already existed prophesied spoken on behalf of God to the people of Israel he was taken up by Angels into heaven you can read about him in first and second Kings Malachi saying that he's not going to be the last prophet but Elijah is going to come one's going to come that's going to take up the same role and speak with authority from.

God now there's 400 years between Malachi and when this happens but this prophecy has already come true that before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes that Elijah will come well Elijah has already come it says this is what he's going to do he will turn the heart hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction so Elijah's role when he comes.

When this Prophet comes what he's going to do is he's going to call for a turning he's going to call for a repentance he's going to call for a restoration and this picture of hearts of fathers to children and children to fathers is that one of the most destructive things that happens in sin is that one of the relationships that's meant to be the sweetest actually meant to give a picture of what God is like and how his people are supposed to be towards him as a.

Father to children and if we're honest that relationship is one of the most Twisted broken and personally hurtful relationships that we can point to all around us either children rebelling against good Fathers or fathers that should have been being good Fathers wickedly harming their children and there's this picture of a restoration that's going to happen a turning that's going to happen when this Prophet comes he says lest mean or else lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction meaning there's going to be an opportunity.

For repentance an opportunity for turning otherwise everyone's destroyed so who is this Prophet Elijah it's a good question I'm glad you asked Matthew 11 Jesus answers that question he says this truly I say to you among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist yet the one who is least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he from the days of John the Baptist until now the Kingdom of Heaven has suffered violence and the violent take it by force.

For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John meaning the whole Old Testament rolls up to John and if you are willing to accept he is Elijah who is to come so he's fulfilled that prophecy and he's the one who was promised to come before the great and terrible day of the Lord and it's happened all the law and Prophets speak until John it rolls up to John and John is a changing some sort of something is going to happen.

Now so look at Matthew chapter 3 Let's see what John prophesied which if you're in the Book of Malachi just go like two pages you're right there Matthew 3 is right next right next door verse 11 this is John he says I baptize you with water for repentance so John came asking for a turning for a repentance for people to turn from their sin but then he says this but he who is coming after me is mightier than I whose sandals I am not worthy to carry he's talking about.

Jesus he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire his winnowing Fork is in his hand and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn meaning that the one who is to come is not just a prophet like Elijah not just a prophet like John the Baptist not just a prophet like Malachi but he's the one who owns the barn and owns the wheat and owns the threshing floor he's the king and that's Jesus his winnowing Fork is in his hand and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn.

But the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire if you believed that the idea of a day of judgment was just an Old Testament idea and that Jesus somehow undid that no Jesus is the one who does that he's the one who ultimately brings the separation and our hope is in him and him alone the distinction made on that day is do you belong to Jesus or not and there is no third category Jesus says there are sheep and there are goats there are good fish and bad fish there is wheat and chaff or wheat and weeds it's always two categories.

But the wonderful news is that Jesus came he came to rescue us he came to pay our debt he came to make us righteous through his work and it's not about what we do we're not to join the Arrogant in in declaring our good works so that God will clap for us and give us a gold star we're to join the Cavs who run free because of how good Jesus is so Church family let's celebrate today that there is a day coming and let's hold on with hope and let's tell as many people as we possibly can how good he is.

And if you have not humbled yourself before the Lord do that today ask him to forgive you to rescue you and to keep you do not Harden your heart and turn from him and fight against it do not stand boldfaced and arrogant in the midst of your sin saying I'm fine without him but surrender and ask for mercy and receive it and join all of those who've been rescued by Jesus in celebration for all of eternity let's pray oh Lord thank you that you forgive Sinners or else it would be a decree of utter destruction thank you that you came to rescue and to redeem and that we get to celebrate a hope that we.

Have secured in Christ not accomplished by us and Lord I ask for the work of your spirit to draw people to yourself that you might be glorified and that they might repent of sin they might ask for forgiveness they might ask for hope they might ask for Mercy they might ask for Grace they might ask for life because all of those things are granted freely to the glory of Christ through His Marvelous work and your wonderful love and eternal goodness to those who will ask ask.

So may we humble ourselves and ask and Lord may all of us who long for the day of joy and Delight in your glorious Kingdom when you rise in righteousness and bring about healing Lord may we hold on in the midst of trial and difficulty and may we look to the Horizon for the sun to rise we love you Lord may we celebrate well today in Jesus name amen

Mill City 12/11/23 Mill City 12/11/23

|giv| Week 3: Faithless Complaints & the Faithful

Group Guide

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Transcript

Good morning my name is Spencer and I am one of the pastors here so we are in the final two weeks of walking through the Book of Malachi and we're also in our final weeks of our give Series so every year if you're new here we do a give Series where we pause to remember uh really the gift of Jesus and what it means to be in relationship with him uh we get so caught up in this season and really the materialism that gets attached to Christmas and every year we take a moment to reset.

Remember who this is about and what he causes to is being people that do not worship gifts or don't worship money or don't worship anything other than Christ and esteem him as as wonderful and great and we do that through a give project which you'll hear more about um as we close out today but uh we're going to continue to walk through the Book of Malachi and we are in chapter 3: 13-8 so you can follow along there you can also follow along your blue Bible uh that's all around you the page should be on the screen 4 608.

If I can read correctly from a distance but you can follow along as we walk through the text together uh we are in the Christmas season and uh that means that there are a lot of things that are happening one of them is uh Hallmark movies so yeah some of you excited uh 90minut easy digestible plots that are effortless right Netflix has gotten in the game like there you know there a story for you you know the the woman who is in the city and has the high powerered career.

But she goes to the countryside for Christmas and meets the guy and all of a sudden she has to choose between a career and the Man in the countryside and every time she chooses the countryside and the wonderful life you know what I'm talking about there's these revolving plots that happen that we're all so very used to there's one that happens quite a bit as well and it's the story of a of a dad who really is all in on his career he's traveling all the time he's working really hard.

But he's not present at home and at Christmas time he believes that he can buy his children's affection by buying them all the Christmas gifts in the world like this plot shows up in you know 90-minute movies it shows up all over the place it happens in real life as well and everyone who understands that story universally responds the same way Dad he doesn't want the gifts he wants you he he doesn't want the Christmas that you can provide he wants you he wants to go out back and throw the ball he wants to have time with you.

If you would just refocus and reenter your life in in a way that would see that your children are valuable and the little time that you have with them like we know that story and all of us are on the same page and saying dude slow down the gifts don't matter it's what you it's you are what matters and yet we don't apply that same logic to God God the Father we just don't we don't see that actually having a relationship with.

God the father and being with him is actually good that's where goodness is found it's not in the gifts that he can provide it's not in the life that he can provide it's not in the things that we want in this world it's actually found in him and we don't apply that same logic we so deeply understand when we're watching a movie to who our God is and we get so wrapped up especially in a season like this in what God can do.

For for us and defining that as goodness now we're not alone the Jewish people as we're going to see today we're also in the same boat confusing what is the goodness of God how is that displayed and really believing that that's bound up in the things that he can do for his people so we're going to see that we're going to see how that applies to us as we walk through another dispute that God has with his people in the Book of Malachi let we pray and we'll walk through this together heavenly.

Father I I pray pray that you would help us be present this morning that we might remember who you are that we might even some of us discover who you are that we might see you as wonderful and good and worthy of our worship not because of what you can do for us but because who you are and God I pray that you'd help us be present this morning to hear that and that we would not just be hearers of the word.

But we would be doers of the word we walk this out in faith and in Repentance and in worship and delighting in who you are in Jesus name amen all right so starting off in verse 13 your words have been hard against me says the Lord but you say how have we spoken against you you have said it is vain to serve God what is the profit of our keeping his charge or of walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts.

Now we call the Arrogant blessed evildoers not only Prosper but they put God to the test and they escape so if you've been walking with us in the Book of Malachi one of the things that you have seen over and over again in these disputes because each one of these sections of Malachi is a dispute that God has with his people and you see this God says this is what you've done here's the accusation here's what you've said here's what you've done people are like no not us how have we done this and that's what's Happening Here your words have been hard against me and they say.

Well how how have we spoken against you we wouldn't know never he said no You' have spoken hardly another version will say harshly another version uh will say arrogantly it's all capturing the same idea you have spoken arrogantly harshly hard words against the Lord and in verse 14 we see this harshness and really what's happening in this charge says what prophet is there in keeping his charge his charge the NIV I'm going to put the NIV which is another version of this up there.

Because I want us to see what's happening here it says you have said it is feudal to serve God what do we gain by carrying out his requirements so this is a little bit different than what we've read before where they're complaining or lamenting before God they're talking amongst themselves this we his language what God is describing is conversations that are happening amongst the people of God so what's happening is the people are complaining against the Lord together which is what happens you know people who are disgruntled seem to find each other.

If you've ever worked a job if you've ever been in an office or worked in a shop or wherever like the most disgruntled people just find each other and they complain about their boss they complain about their work they complain about fill in the blank and that's what's happened with the people of God is they they've some people have been finding each other to complain together against God so what are they complaining about what the content of their beef with God it starts in.

Verse 14 it says you have said it is vain to serve God what is the profit of our keeping his charge or of walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts so they're saying what is the point in worshiping God what profit is there what gain is there in worshiping God it's not going well for us what's the point of worshiping God this language of mourning is is is the type of lament worship they would bring before God what's the point in worshiping.

God it's not it's not giving us any gain that we can really see that we can really feel that we can really grasp and we saw a little bit of this earlier when the uh earlier with the dispute with the people of God when they were bringing their sacrifices before the Lord they were bringing uh bad sacrifices disobeying the law bringing blind animals and all types of animals that should not have been sacrificed going through the motions of worship and now they're just complaining about going through the motions of worship what is the point what is the profit what is the gain in worshiping.

God and it becomes a really self-centered self-interested approach to the Lord that God has not done me any good so what's the point in even serving him what's the point even going to the temple and offering worships what's the what's the point of even going to the synagogue and hearing the rabbi preach like what is the point what is the prophet and they continue this complaint in verse 15 it says and now we call the Arrogant blessed evildoers not only Prosper.

But they put God to the test and they escape so this is similar to what we've read earlier in Malachi they are mad that those who are not of the people of God that don't worship God are prospering so the Persians still roll over them at this point in history and they're mad about that when they come back to the promised land the their sworn enemies are taking have taken over parts of the promised land and they're mad about that and those people that don't worship.

God they seem to be doing well and we aren't are you going to show up for us oh God cuz we're not prospering and they are and they're not being punished and they're comparing themselves to the people that are around them which as I told my daughter last night is a miserable existence it's a miserable existence to compare yourselves to others in childhood it's miserable but it's also Miserable as as an adult consistently compare yourself to others one of the things that we're having to deal with with our oldest she's in the.

Third grade and and this has started to happen but she's got friends in her class that have phones and that's going to continue to happen and she's already kind of wondered wait a second why don't I have a phone and those conversations are going to continue to ramp up and they're going to be more and more like hey why don't I have a phone my friends have a phone why don't I have a phone and the comparisons are going to continue in that direction and one of the things is going to be difficult.

For her that we're going to have to have conversations with over and over again is to say listen I'm not their parents I'm yours you belong to me and we have made a decision that it's going to be a while before you get a phone especially a smartphone because we have basically a decade long case study on what that does to young girls so no we're you're not going to have a smartphone for a very long time and what she's going to inevitably what going to happen in her soul.

Because she's a human is is that's not good you're you're denying goodness and and what she doesn't see is no we aren't we're actually giving you goodness by not giving you this device that could warp you no but we do this it's so innate to who we are to compare ourselves to others to say oh no like I what are you holding back from me oh Lord that the others have that is good now that complaint needs some context for when that's being said in history I mean that that matters.

For any statement that's made in history I can make the statement right now that Germany is dominating influence in Europe I mean they are a dominating influence in Europe and they are because they're the most powerful economy in the EU if I said that in 1940 that's different that's a whole different ball game so context based on generational difference differences and time matters so when is this statement when is this complaint that they are saying being said and why does that matter.

So the complaint they're making against God here is a few Generations after the book of Ezra and the book of Nehemiah Malachi is one of the is the final book of the Old Testament and it's believed that happens just a few Generations right after the events of Ezra and Nehemiah and if you read the books of Ezra and Nehemiah what you will see when the people return from exile to the promised land is that there's this renewed fervor in love for.

God there's this renewed worship for God as they're rebuilding the temple and as they're rebuilding the walls and as they're uh reading the the law and rediscovering the Covenant there's this renewed fervor for God and with that renewed fervor for God is this expectation that things are going to get better and then it kind of doesn't by their standards they don't still Ru over their land things aren't seeming to be all that much better and we we we saw even last week uh that they aren't one of the things that chat B us through last week and the last uh dispute that.

God has with this people is that they're not actually giving to uh giving their tithes to the lord they're holding back from the Lord and part of that when you can of look into the context is that they probably don't have as much it's easy to to to give a tenth when you are prosperous a little bit harder when you are not so things aren't going well as they expected and the their enemies are ruling over parts of their land they just things aren't going like they want it to be and they're saying.

Well what's the profit of following God what's the point in worshiping God because it's just not getting better now I think that context is important for us and the Western American Church because I believe that we have similar complaints because what happens with us is that many of us will place our faith in Jesus get baptized or maybe we'll go through a season of rediscovery of God and loving his word and passionate maybe you get married you're like I want to actually take Faith seriously as a family or you start to have a kid you start to go I want to take.

God ser seriously we have these Mountaintop experiences where we're starting to have a fervor and a love for God and what happens is is that we believe the false narrative that if I'm just following God and I'm doing what I'm supposed to then things are just going to get better and then life hits you in the face repeatedly over and over again death loss betrayal debt joblessness the works and what happens when you get hit over and over again as you start to question is.

God good it is he because I'm just I'm getting destroyed left and right and I I is he good now the reason I think that question seeps in very easily I think there's there's a few different threads for that I think part of that is is that the American Prosperity Gospel is so rampant in Western American Church and we like to think of that as just the you know the C dollars of the world who are buying Jets those are the worst versions of it.

But it's way more than that it's this consistent message that shows up of be you got you follow God you'll be healthy you'll be be good you'll be fine your life will be good profit gain it's all over Instagram It's All Over YouTube it's all over just it's it it fuses its way to where the goodness of God ultimately is what he can do for you if he plac your faith in Jesus watch him work won't won't he won't he work I mean just over and over and over and over again it seeps its way in all different places I think that's part of the problem I think I think also part of the problem.

Is is that we just have this understanding that goodness is found in the things goodness is found in the substance material substance there's this material idea of just goodness is these things and therefore if God is good he must display his goodness with these things if he just gives me these things then he ultimately is good I think also we just very basically we lack a very biblical Theology of suffering the the the New Testament you cannot read the New Testament without understanding that there is a baseline theolog theological like you you are going to suffer and ultimately that is.

For your good that if you are called in Christ as a Christian you will suffer and it's actually seen as something that is good for us I mean James 1 says count it all joy count it all joy my brothers when you meet Trials of various kinds for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness and let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete lacking in nothing now it says can Joy my brothers when you meet trials.

When really important word meaning you are going to meet trials you are going to suffer and he's trying to help them count it as a joy because ultimately that suffering is going to produce steadfastness and as Roman says it'll have its full effect it be like I mean just it's just just I think we lack this and we're surrounded by so many bad ideas and bad philosophies of the day bad theology bad preaching dumb Instagram dumb Tik Tok I mean just we're surrounded by.

So many ridiculous detached from the Bible ideas and I love what Eugene Peterson once said he said all the water and all the oceans cannot sink a ship unless it gets inside that all the water and all the oceans cannot sink a ship unless it gets inside so yes we are certainly surrounded by so many bad ideas so many bad philosophies so many bad theology so many bad streams but the reality is is that we're we still have the ability to believe what is true we have his word we have the Holy Spirit that don't have to get inside the boat that don't have to get in we are responsible ultimately.

For discernment and filtering out all of that so we might actually believe what is true and some of that means you've got to realize that you might have some metaphorical people that are around that are complaining and giving you bad ideas Bad Company as First Corinthians says ruins good morals so I don't know what that is for you if that's seeping into your soul you might need to Source where that is and who that's coming from maybe it's people that you follow maybe it's things that you have heard maybe it's fill in the blank.

But there's a group of people in the promised land that are just complaining and they're complaining against God because they believe what is not true the goodness is found in what God can do for us in this life mostly materially but that's not the only people in the Promised Land when you get to verse 16 you see that then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another so there still are people who fear the lord who love him who realize that goodness is found in him that Delight in him.

For who he is and not for what he can do in prospering this life now there's still people that love God and that worship him and that fear Him and they're speaking together and this is what God says and some of this is in the time of Malachi and some of this is we're going to see is forward looking the Lord paid attention and heard them and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name they shall be mine says the.

Lord of hosts in the day when I make make up my treasure possession I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked between one who serves God and one who does not serve him so we get this picture of people who in the midst of their suffering are fearing God and I want to take a look at some of that forward-looking language that is.

For the people of God who persevere in faith so that first part it says the Lord paid attention and heard them and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name those who fear the lord are his they belong to him so much so that their name is written in a book of remembrance which is something that we see from the Old Testament into the new right we're walking through the book of Exodus in the last year we saw that Moses.

When he's pleading on behalf of the people he says in Exodus 32 but now if you will will forgive their sin but if not please blot me out of your book that you have written there's this idea of that those who remain faithful they're written and recorded in some book of remembrance The Book of Revelation completes this theme at the end of the story in Revelation uh chapter 3 it says the one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments and I will never blot his name out of the book of life I will confess his name before my.

Father and before his angels Revelation says and if anyone's name was not found written in the Book of Life he was thrown into the Lake of Fire there's this idea throughout the Scriptures that that those who are faithful those who trust God those who persevere they're written in a a book of remembrance a book of life there's a recording that is taken of them now for their time that makes a lot more visual sense for them because they were very used to it at the time Kings kept a record.

So Kings at the time both Jewish and non-jewish Kings they kept a record of who did what in the Kingdom that was good who did what in the Kingdom that was bad they kept a record of all of this so it's very picturesque for them that the God of the universe the king over all things keeps a record and keeps an account of who is faithful so he says God I I will remember I have a book of remembrance and you'll be written in.

And then I want to to see what he has to say about those in the book of remembrance verse 17 they shall be mine says the Lord of hosts in the day when I make up my treasured possession and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked between one who serves God and one who does not serve him so God says couple of things he says those who fear me those who are in this book of remembrance they are my treasured possession dude where his treasured possession that.

God holds his people dear to him he Treasures them he keeps them safe like if I if this week in our office is next door if Chad philli started a fire because I don't even know what he's doing back there sometimes if he started a fire and the building was going to burn down and I had to get some stuff out of my office I'd choose the most treasured possessions and it it would be very quick CU on my bookshelf there's a pocket Bible it's an old kjb pocket Bible it was my grandparents pocket Bible and that's a treasure possession I'd grab that and above that is I have a I have a signed copy.

Of one of wle Berry's limited edition poetry books which for very limited amount of people that's a big deal but it's it's one of the best authors of the last century he I got him to sign it a book fair I'd grab that I might even grab there's at the end of the bookshelf there's a picture it's of chett but it's of Chad looking at himself so like one day um one day I was at his office and he had this uh he was looking at his computer.

But his computer has two screens and one of them just had a screen saver which was a his profile picture on our website and he's looking at it so I snapped the picture because it looks like he's fawning over himself and I sent it to him it was a big kind of inside joke and then all of a sudden he like before he went on sabatical like printed it off and put it in a frame just you know cuz we listen we make jokes about each other all the time from the pulpit cuz we're fun we like to have fun.

But we are close we're good friends and he knew he's going to be gone for eight week so he put that picture up there for me to remember him and it's just like it's a good inside joke it stays up there so I probably wouldn't keep that I if I'm grabbing things maybe if I have the time but definitely the other two objects I'm grabbing those and the reason why I'm grabbing those objects it's because they're dear to me they're treasured and I want to keep them safe.

God he says I'm you're you're mine you're my treasured possession just think about that if you're in Christ God Treasures you he Treasures you and he will ultimately keep you near to him I love that language which that we a treasure possession and he goes on and he says and I will spare them like a man spares his son who serves him and this is the language of a father who loves his son father who loves his son and I mean not just giving trying to buy his affection at Christmas.

But just absolutely loves his boy and if you're a parent you get this you understand what it means to love your children and that you want to spare them suffering you want to spare them like that that's like I right now we're so I I read a book called coddling of the American mind years ago and I'm very convinced by the arguments in it not they're not Christians but very convinced the arguments in it one of the things they're critiquing is helicopter parenting.

So we're trying to grow in our family to not be the helicopter parents so my oldest is in the third grade and we're trying to allow her to have more free play in our neighborhood where we can't see her but that's very hard because I've seen a lot of dat line and it's just hard where for Christmas don't don't tell her but we're getting her a a a Garmin smart watch that allows her to message us send out a SOS signal.

If she's in trouble but has GPS tracking so I feel a little more comfortable less helicopter sending her out in the neighborhood to play with kids where I can't see her because it's good for her ultimately to have this free play that is going to be good for her to make her a better adult now the reason why that's hard for me and my wife is because we don't want her to get hurt we want to spare her that like we don't want our children to be hurt we want our children to be.

Okay and that's something that's so distinct to parents we love our children and God says I I'm going spare them like a man spares his son who serves him like I I'm going to like like like a God who loves his child that doesn't want his child to suffer that's how I see there people who fear me who love me and in the days ahead you will be my you're my treasured possession and I will spare you and when that happens everyone will.

See the distinction between those who trust in Christ and fear Him and the wicked who reject him and ultimately complain about him because they've misunderstood the goodness of God now that question lingers of okay well when that's prophesying this when when is that going to happen in this side of the Cross we know exactly when that was going to happen so I passages like Romans 8 which makes M Malachi 3:17 come to life Romans 8 says he who did not spare his son.

But gave him up for us all how will he not also with him gracious ly give us all things and the good news of the Gospel is that God loves his people so much that he did not spare his only begotten son that he had his son crushed on a cross to absorb the wrath for our sin that we deserve so that we might be spared so that we might become his treasure possession and so the Judgment might might not fall upon us.

But it might fall upon Christ so Malachi is pointing forward to that day when Jesus is not spared but those who trust in him are and as Romans says As Romans says how will he not graciously give us all things that if we're spared this judgment and more than that we're graciously given all things what are the all things and it's not Material in this life it's Christ in life with him so as Malachi and the complaint is what is the profit of keeping his charge what's the profit what's the gain what do I get you get everything you get everything that ultimately matters you gain him in life with him forever you get the.

Fruit of his righteousness credited to our account you get to behold his face and etern you gain everything that ultimately matters so what is it worth what's the profits worth everything as Paul so succinctly puts in Philippians 3 when he argues indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord and for him the loss was reputation the loss was he suffered greatly physically he suffered in hunger he suffered in he suffered shipwrecks he suffered everything as I count everything as a loss.

Because the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord for his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish so all the things that you might cling to in this world and say that's good he says no it's garbage it's rubbish no where am I in order that I might gain Christ and be found him not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but that which comes through faith in Christ the righteousness from.

God that depends on faith that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings becoming like him in death and the Very things in this life that we're so tempted to believe that are ultimately good it's nothing it's fleeting it doesn't last it's not worth putting your hope in it the difference between those that do not know God and those who do is not bound up in the things that they have in this life it's bound up in who they ultimately worship and we have Christ and he's worth everything he's worth all the loss that you might suffer in this world he's worthy of it and he's better as.

We say every week he's better than everything else so that means that we we have to stop measuring the goodness of God and the things that we can get here and now and then all the different ways that we struggle with God because we are frustrated because of what he does not give us it means that we have to submit that in Repentance before the Lord and also believe that he is good regardless of anything that's added in this life now as we do give we get to do that every year as a reminder.

Because every year around this time we talk about this we talk about how there are things that Vive for our attention and our affection there's so many things that you can buy now on Amazon there's so many things you can level up to in life the next house the next truck the next whatever it is that you desire and when we don't get it we get frustrated we get discontent and maybe it's not even maybe it's not even a big truck maybe it's just the simple things like I don't want to be in pain anymore more I want relationally things to go.

Well for me I want my marriage to go well for me I want friendships to go well for me I want my job to go well for me there's so many things that we put value in in this life and when those are taken from us is when we start to shake our Fist and at least at give every year we get to address one of the big ones which is materialism it is money it is the things that we want to worship and lay our lives down.

For so we close out we're going to worship and then Isaac is going to come up here he's explain the next phase of our give project we're excited about and we're going to get an opportunity to actually in the coming weeks display that at least we don't love the things of this world so much so that we might give up a chunk of change a bit of our budget maybe bit of our regular giving so that we might submit our finances to the.

Lord and not love the things of this world that we so if we're honest deeply love but even more than that the hope would be is that we would not be like those who complained amongst the people of God who questioned God's goodness because he did not deliver in the ways that they wanted him to but we just be like the boy who gets his dad and just says I want him I don't want the things you can give me I just want want you and we'd be a people that whatever it is in this life that that we put value in we just put it away and say no I got you.

And if I got you I'm good let me pray heavenly father I pray that you'd help us submit to what is difficult teaching you help me submit to what is difficult teaching from your word there's so many things my heart strives to love above you but you're more beautiful you're more wonderful you're more satisfying and I pray that we believe that I pray that we' live like that's true that if there's anyone here that hasn't actually fully done that for the.

First time ever they haven't actually believed that you're ultimately better they would actually believe that they would have faith that you would give them Faith to believe that you are better the goodness is found in you and for the rest of us who are sinners trying to rid our elves of seeking the pleasures of this life may you help us in Repentance and in worship submit these things to you that we might see you as good in Jesus name amen.

|giv| Week 3 Project

Mill City 12/3/23 Mill City 12/3/23

|giv| Week 2: Robbing the Lord

Group Guide

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|giv| Week 2 Project

Mill City 11/26/23 Mill City 11/26/23

|giv| Week 1: Refiner and the Unjust

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|giv| Week 1 Project

Mill City 11/20/23 Mill City 11/20/23

Malachi Week 4: Marital Fidelity

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Transcript

My name is Spencer I'm one of the pastors here I hope you all had a good weekend especially the women who are on women's retreat I hope that was a blessing to you yeah some of you had a little more fun than others and I just want to let you know that my children are good at cleaning up toilet paper so we're going to be in Malachi 2: 10 through 16 this morning you can go ahead and turn there it's on page 467 our blue Bibles uh the text will be on the screen as.

Well as we walk this together as we're continue to walk through these different disputes that God has with his people through his Prophet Malachi I think Americans and Southerners are fairly okay with unsolicited advice and opinions uh for the most part like I think it like if I'm in the line at cookout somebody comes to me and says hey did you know that you can like upgrade your drink to a milkshake for a dollar more I welcome that I say B blessed and highly favored this is amazing that.

For $8 you can get a milkshake a cheeseburger and french fries and chicken quesadilla and sure the long-term Outlook isn't great but the short-term benefit is wonderful I appreciate anyone who's willing to give me such good news on opinions like that I think there's a lot of different areas that if someone were to speak into your life you'd welcome that and you'd be thankful that they pointed out something that was so helpful I do think it has its limits though there's a few different areas that.

If someone's looking over your shoulder and says hey this you go no uh uh mind your business like that's just I think there's a few different areas two in particular are money and romance right so if someone wants to speak into how you spend your money typical God American response is I made that money I'll I'll spend it how well please mind your business like if someone wants to come and speak into your marriage address speaking of your relationship you're like ah no I'm good you You' you've stepped over the line like I think that's kind of two general areas I think that we're not.

Okay with I mean if I'm honest like if someone want to helpfully come alongside me look at our budget and say I've looked at your budget and I have have a few suggestions on how you can cut costs here here and here that my gut instinct would be thank you for your opinion which is my stock way it's like my phrase for saying I'm I'm good with what you have said so some of you have heard me say that to you.

Now you know going forward if I say thank you for your opinion it's I'm good like I'm I'm moving on from this right I just think there's something in us that just doesn't want those two areas to be touched and Malachi says oh yeah well how about I talk about both of them uh intensely for a couple of chapters and that's what we're we're waiting into now is in the next few weeks uh we're going to look at God speaking into the marriages of the people and also the money and the finances of the people and he's coming.

For both of them so this week specifically in this third dispute we're going to see God speaking to the marriages of the people and there's a part of us that's going to want to say mind your business but Malachi is going to say do you belong to God okay then no I'm going to speak into this and I'm going to speak into the relationships amongst the people of God so we're going to see how God addresses the people and their marriages.

And then as the Church how we get to look at this and see how it applies to us today so let me pray for us then we'll walk through this together Heavenly Father we thank you for being able to come and worship you and sing praises to you offer up prayers of Thanksgiving to you and also that we get to receive your word God I pray that you'd help us receive it for it is a difficult word just as it was.

For the people of God thousands of years ago may you help us receive it and walk this out in faith and in Repentance and in worship and delighting in you ultimately because you were worthy of it we ask this in Jesus name amen all right so Chad finished up the second dispute last week where God is uh correcting the priesthood the priesthood at the time was uh conducting a charade they were they were simply going through the motions of worship it wasn't real true heart worship wasn't offering the sacrifices they were supposed to.

But they were facilitating this system and God calls out the priest priesthood for their failures and then he shifts into this third dispute picking up here in verse 10 have we not all one father has not one God created us why then are we faithless to one another profaning the Covenant of our fathers now other versions will say why do we deal treacherously or why do we betray one another that at the beginning of this dispute he is dealing with some of the the faithlessness that's happening to one another that he establishes very early on in Malachi that he is the.

Father of this nation he's the father of the Jewish people that means that they are the family of God and they should treat one another as family but they're not doing this like they are supposed to there's faithlessness happening towards one another and then he shifts this into two specific areas starting in verse 11 Judah has been faithless an Abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem for Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the Lord which he loves and has married the daughter of a foreign.

God may the Lord cut off from the tent of Jacob and any descendant of the man who does this who brings an offering to the Lord of hosts and the first area he's going to address is the intermarriages that have happened amongst the people of God they have married the daughters of foreign Gods now there are Skeptics that will lch on to this and see see your God is against interracial marriage your God is an ethnocentric God and that's completely misreading the text this has nothing to do with Jewish people marrying Persians this has everything to do with marrying someone who does not worship the one true.

God that is embedded into the Old Testament law this teaching that says you shall marry someone who also loves the Lord with all their heart with all their soul with all my you should absolutely enter into marriage only with those who have the same Faith this is in Deuteronomy 7 it's in multiple places but we're going to just see one in Deuteronomy 7 it says you shall inter you shall not intermar with them giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters.

For your sons for they would turn away your sons from following me to serve other gods then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you and he will destroy you quickly so it's this teaching of do not marry foreigners who worship foreign gods don't do this the people are far too weak in their faith they're far too weak to marry someone who doesn't share the same God I mean they this in Deuteronomy when they received that law that's just after.

God did this miraculous wonderful work bringing them out of Egypt that we got to walk through in Exodus last year and he brings them out and they immediately they're not even amongst the people of the the surrounding Nations it's just them and their God in the wilderness they worship a golden calf he says do not settle the land of Mary forn wives because you were far too weak to do this now the reason they would have wanted to do this and the reason why this was common at the time was.

If you're going to settle into a new area if you're going to be with people who are not of your own it was advantageous for you to marry off your daughters your Sons because that helped establish trade that helped establish treaties that helped establish covenants with other people so that you could live in peace with another and so that everyone could Prosper so there was a financial advantage there was a Prosperity advantage to actually marrying someone who worships a foreign God.

But it came at the cost of their own faith and the reason we know this is because of the whole rest of the Old Testament like the whole rest of the Old Testament is the people of God inter are Maring with the foreign people and worshiping their gods and setting up asholes and and making sacrifices to ba and giving child sacrifices sacrificing their own children to the God Malik all these surrounding Gods from around the surrounding Nations they get pulled into that worship I mean Nehemiah.

When he's addressing this which is really just before the the prophet of Malachi Nehemiah when he's addressing this uses Solomon as the prime example he says in Nehemiah 13 He says did not Solomon king of Israel sin on account of such women among many nations there was no King like him and he was beloved by his God and God made him King over all Israel nevertheless foreign women made even him to sin and he says Solomon who was the wisest King we ever had Solomon who was a great king the the downfall of Solomon and ultimately the splitting apart of the Kingdom of Israel in Judah came down to the fact that he chose to.

Establish relationships with foreign countries foreign peoples by bringing in their daughters and marrying those wives and ultimately he worships their gods and he says if Solomon has fallen into this what shot do y'all have what are we thinking what are we doing here who you want to marry is not your free choice does not matter if you love them does not matter if you think it's going to gain you some financial advantage it's going to establish some treaty with a different people the most important aspect of who you marry is who they worship that is the most important aspect of marriage who they worship.

Because marriage is not just a two-party Covenant it's not just a two-party agreement it is a three-party covenant it is man wife and God and that's clear throughout the Scriptures God is the centerpiece of marriage and the reason why is because marriage ultimately is a picture it's ultimately a smaller picture the bigger picture which is God's love for his people the marriage reflects that bigger reality God's love for his people Ephesians 5 so beautifully teaches that when it begins with husbands love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up.

For her that ultimately marriage is this picture of God's sacrificial love that God loves his people so much that he gave up his son to be crushed for his people that sacrificial love of God for his people gets to be reflected in marriage it is bigger than than ourselves and that is why from the Old Testament into the New Testament the teaching is the same when you get to First cor or second Corinthians 6 Paul teaches the same thing from the Old Testament in.

Verse 14 and following he sayso not be unequally yolked with unbelievers for what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness or what Fellowship has light with Darkness what Accord has Christ with bellal that's another name for Satan what portion does a Believer share with an unbeliever what agreement has the temple of God with Idols we are the Temple of the Living God and he says don't be unequally Yol don't marry someone who is not a Believer don't marry someone who does not love Christ like you do and he has pretty Sharp Images here what partnership is righteousness with lawlessness fellowship with uh light with light versus Darkness Christ versus the evil one you're sons of.

God and if you're not in Christ the Bible says you're Sons and Daughters of Disobedience what what are we you don't have a share with them they don't love God they worship idols and this teaching gets pulled into the New Testament because the Covenant of marriage is not just man and wife it is man and wife and our covenant God now for us maybe you're single and you you desire to be married and maybe you've made a list of things that you value in a spouse maybe you're like I you know I want him to be financially secure and to have a good 10year plan or I want him to brush his teeth I I.

Want her to laugh at my jokes and her laugh not be annoying like I just I I don't know whatever that is for your list like I don't maybe you got a list of things where it's like I I want this and I want that I want this I want that I'm not going to compromise on this or that or this or that but let me tell you something if Jesus is not at the top of that list if at the top of your list isn't do do they love Christ and not just say they are a Christian.

But love him and display him with the fruit of the spirit that they they are committed to the people of God in the local Church that they he that he is uh or she is uh immersed in his word and loves him if that's not at the top of the list of whom you are going to marry then I'll just be honest you're doing it wrong that do they love Christ that is the most pinnical question so much so that if you have that as the question every anything else on the list is he tall enough is she is she fing the blank that those pale in comparison to Christ.

And so much so that that some of those other things become less important because it's not that this man loves Jesus and this woman loves Christ I don't care if he's not 6'2 he's worth that so have that as a category so deeply in your mind as you're thinking through this because what will inevitably happen is you'll start to justify who you want to marry you'll start to make compromises you'll say yeah he says he's a Christian and I mean you he got burned by the Church he's Church her from a few years ago.

But like you know he does want to read his Bible and you he kind of part goes hard in the weekend but like I don't know like I can probably win him over a little bit I can probably win her sway her a little bit over you know if you if we progress into this then I we know we I'll start reading the Bible with them we'll pray together like when we get married like I'll I'll get them involved in our community group it'll be fine we'll work we'll work it out.

And while God in his grace does sometime use spouses to lead their other spouse to Christ that does happen I would also say that that is very much a cautionary tale because it also goes arise so often and there's so many ways that if you choose to marry someone that does not love Christ where your values are ultimately going to be petted against theirs in ways that you didn't see coming I mean very practically when you go to raise children one day.

When you go to raise children one day and you want to raise them in the faith and you want to take them and bring them here on Sundays you want to uh let them be involved in kids City and in student Ministries it's going to be very hard if you've married someone who says Nah I think I'm going to take him hunting this Sunday I think that's more important is our father son experience so I'm going to take him hunting this Sunday it's going to be very hard.

When you're trying to uh teach the Gospel to your children and and help them know who Christ is and he or she is undermining that at every turn and I got a buddy whose whose wife left him and clean I mean just cleaned his clock and the divorce and took the kids and she recanted the faith and she absolutely done everything to seow doubt in in her in in her in those kids' Minds with not just him but with Christ and he gets them once every two weekends and he does everything he can to display Christ to them.

But that's a reality you need to Grapple with before you choose spouse do they love Christ deeply if not then you're going to be in a difficult situation now if that is your situation the Bible does give us a word on this gives us a helpful uh Scripture from 1 Peter 3 it says likewise wives be subject to your own husband so that even if some do not obey the word they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives.

When they see your respectful and pure conduct so we do have some some wonderful wisdom here for what happens if you're in a marriage where someone doesn't believe the Gospel and I'll be honest this is this is even more difficult for women because we teach that that that men are supposed to lead in marriage therefore she's supposed to follow him in submission in marriage and if he doesn't value Christ that gets r really tricky it's very difficult but we have a word here that says you wi the moed by the conduct meaning that you make.

Jesus look good in the way that you live and the way that you love your husband the way that you show respect and the way that you that we have a word here that says you get to display Christ and I think this is also down the line applicable to husbands as well that if you are married to someone who's not a believer that you get to display Jesus make Jesus look good by how you love your wife and when you do this there will be opportunities.

For you you to declare who Christ is but that's difficult and the reality is is that if you are single you should not sign up for that and if you are married you should absolutely take the words of First Peter and run with it as a as a life Anthem I'm going to display Christ in my marriage to my children I'm going to display Christ in my marriage to my spouse I'm going to pray unceasingly for my spouse I'm going to I'm going to love them.

And when times are hard and we have different values and he doesn't want this she doesn't want this I'm going to surround myself with Christian Community my group is going to be praying for me my group's going to be praying for my spouse but I'm going to stay in this because of the second big thing that Malachi addresses and that is that divorce is actually not an option and that is the second part of this the second part of this dispute with the marriages of the people and that is divorce picking up in.

Verse 13 and the second thing you do you cover the Lord's altar with tears with weeping and graning because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand so there this is a lament from the people like we're offering worship we're doing the we we doing the things we're bringing it to you you're not finding favor upon us oh God and they end up asking why verse 14 but you say why does he not why has.

God not shown favor on us in our worship why is God not uh shining upon us why the Persians still rule over us what is happening why oh Lord and it says but because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth to whom you have been faithless though she is your companion and your wife by Covenant did he not make them one with a portion of the spirit and their Union and what was the one God seeking Godly Offspring.

So guard yourselves in your spirit and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth for the man who does not love his wife but divorces her says the Lord the God of Israel covers His Garment with violence says the Lord of hosts so guard yourselves in your spirit and do not be faithless all right that's a difficult text for various reasons that we're going to get to in a moment and it's vague at parts to kind of figure out what he's doing here let's start with the clearest implications from this text and what he's saying in.

Verse 14 he says because the Lord was witnessed between you and the wife of your youth to whom you've been faithless though she is your companion Your Wife by Covenant and what he just said was was a condemnation of the divorces that have happened amongst the people of God that you have been faithless to the wife of your youth you have divorced the wife of your youth that is what he's calling out here and then verse 15 it says did he not make them one with a portion of the spirit in their Union and he brings up that truth we just walked through it's a three-party covenant that my spirit was there.

When you join together I'm with you and you're breaking this apart this is Genesis 2 language the two became one flesh and God is with them in that Holy Union and you're breaking it apart that's not supposed to be and he goes on he says and what was the one God seeking Godly Offspring so guard yourselves in your spirit and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth he says in this one flesh Union you're supposed to stay together you're supposed to have a Godly Offspring a Godly Legacy of faith that carries on from generation to generation to generation and this bless one flesh Union and here is where this gets.

Pretty difficult verse for the man who does not love his wife but divorces her says the Lord the God of Israel covers His Garment with violence says the Lord of hosts so guard yourselves in your spirit and do not be faithless all right there's a lot going on here I want to be frank with you this is one of the most debated verses in the entire Bible okay so we got back up a little bit and understand how we get here.

So the Bible is translated mostly Greek and Hebrew a little bit Aramaic all right that's the original languages It Was Written in and they those Scriptures were recorded down and manuscripts the original manuscripts are lost to time however there's a very rich tradition of scribes copying down these Scriptures for thousands of years and it's guys there are more copies of the Bible around the world more manuscripts around the world than any other ancient document it's not even remotely close there's a rich tradition and what's crazy what's Wild is is that over 99% of all the different scripts and Scriptures that we have across the world from written in different centuries copy down and copy down.

And copy down over 99% of that when you line all of those words up they match every single I mean you I have a a community in Alexandria an ass syat Community here that wrote and recorded Scriptures for years and for years and for years when you line them up they line up like 99% just wonderfully dot for do Mark for Mark that's it's amazing the Holy Spirit has guided this for so long so wonderfully so reliably but every now.

Then every now and then you get two different texts and they say something different just a little bit so much so that's like actually they use this word here but this community used this word here but when you line them up together it's actually the exact same thing so we know that that's exactly what this means and there's a group of people that are huge Bible nerds called textual critics that devote their lives to these languages to make sure that we're understanding this is what the original text said we're able to trust our Bible.

So well but every now and then in the rarest of circumstances you're going to see two different textual Traditions that line up and you're going to go oh okay what's being said here is two different things and there's a whole like Rich tradition of how to figure out what was the original meaning what was the original thing saying and verse 16 is one of the RAR circumstances where it's like oh boy this is actually something where there's two different meanings here and I want to walk through them the.

First here is what we read in the ESV the ESV says for the man who does not love his wife but divorces her says the Lord the God of Israel covers her garment with violence says the Lord so what's being taught there and what's being displayed there is that when a man divorces his wife he shows a great Act of hatred towards his wife he shows a great lack of love a great hatred towards his wife and ultimately covers the Garment of violence and that's the euphemism.

For cruelty dishonoring her so that's one way to read this text then there's another way to read this text and I want to read a few different versions that capture this different idea starting with the nesb for I hate divorce says the Lord the God of Israel and him who covers His Garment with violence well that's different God hates divorce and he hates the man that that hatred is extended towards the man who covers his wife with a garment of violence who who ultimately dishonors her like this the ne captures that as.

Well I hate divorce says the Lord God of Israel and the one who is guilty of violence says the Lord who rules over all the NLT which is a which is a solid paraphrase of the Bible says for I hate divorce says the Lord the God of Israel and then it shifts a little bit it says to divorce your wife is to overwhelm her with cruelty so it moves a little bit away from God's hatred towards divorce to the man who does it to God's haes divorce and this act is a Act of hatred towards his wife.

Now God hating divorce and the man involved in it and this being an act of hatred towards her spouse are actually two different meanings and the rarest of circumstances in the Scriptures you got to figure out okay well which one because those are different and I'm not going to shock you here I'm not a textual critic scholar I know some of yall were thinking that like this guy he's just so wise no I'm nowh like that that is so far above my pay rate like I even.

If I tried really hard like I I was in classes with some of those guys in seminary and I was like I'm I'm I ain't doing that like I've got no business in being in classes with these guys so we're not we we're not skilled enough to look at this and go I you you know I based on the original language A or B okay and what happens is sometimes in these rare circumstances in the Bible what we'll do is okay.

Well I need to pick one and I want to go in my gut and I don't like the idea that God hates divorce and hates the one who's divorced so I'm I I don't I don't know about that I I'd rather go with the other option this is an act of hatred so what do you do in situations like this I think you first look at the context of the passage and kind of see what's clearly being taught and then you back away from the text and you take the text against the whole teaching of the Scriptures and you realize that actually I think both of those have truth to them I think.

If you look at the whole of the Scriptures I think you're going to see God does hate divorce and also it is an act of Cruelty towards the one who's involved so let's look at context directly and then we'll kind of back out a little more so one thing that's very clear from directly from Malachi divorce was not a part of the original plan for marriage there's a reason God used uses Genesis language here did he not make them one with a portion of the spirit and their Union in.

Verse 15 there's a reason that shows up this was not a part of the original design oh Jewish people you're doing this and you're not you're not you're not in line with how God originally designed this to be this beautiful Covenant is meant to last a lifetime it's meant to reflect something bigger than yourselves so so marriage is meant to be it it divorce is not a part of the original plan the second that's very clear from this context divorce and their context harmed women it harmed women.

Now some commentators will push this and they say well what's actually happening here is that the people of God when they settled back into the promised land they weren't like you know the elites they weren't part of the social you know they didn't have all the money and Prestige and what the some of these men were doing some of these Jewish men were divorcing their Jewish wives so they could marry Persian wives of Greater status to advance and I think that's a fine way to.

Look at this I don't know if you could really say that with certainty that that's exactly what happened here but what is clear is that divorce harmed women you can see that historically you can see it in the Scriptures it it it made them it it took them like back then it's not like that not not a lot of women could survive on their own without a husband that just that just was the reality so that harmed their ability to provide.

For themselves if they were widowed and and they divorc that stigmatized them stigmatized them greatly so they might not get remarried that that also meant that if they didn't have sons they didn't have social security because that was your Social Security back then if you didn't have sons you didn't have a way to provide for yourself so divorce harmed women it was indeed an act of Cruelty towards your wife and there was a lot of you see this being pulled all the way into the time.

When Jesus comes along of woman being divorced just for you know because she burnt the food I mean just some some heinous things that were happening happening so I think in the direct context you can see that very clearly but when you zoom out and you look at this in the context of the rest of the Scriptures I think it becomes pretty clear that God actually he does not like divorce this is not a part of his original plan and when.

Jesus is being challenged on this in Matthew 19 this is what he says so clearly he says verse 6 so they are no longer two but one flesh what what therefore God has joined together let not man separate and he's pretty plain with this let let no man separate this don't tear what has been brought together the marriage is meant to be a lifelong Covenant that God's ultimate desire is for that marriage to continue now I know when I say all of that some of you who know your Bible are like wait a.

Second though I I think the New Testament gives us like like two different two different uh reasons for a Biblical divorce and that is correct we've taught on this in the past this is not the first time we've taught on the subject matter and we've gone more into detail on our in our Matthew 19 sermon on this about some of these allowances there's the porn clause in Matthew 19 which is dealing with gross sexual immorality and then you've got in uh 1 Corinthians 7 abandonment by an unbelieving spouse these are two that we we've taught on in the past.

But I don't want to spend time in that because we've done this before and I'd point you to those sermons because m Malachi isn't nuancing here Malachi is speaking very plainly here he is arguing against divorce and the harm that it causes and that is a faithless act now I understand I understand that teaching that a is deeply unpopular in our culture and B is not done at a vacuum meaning it's not done in a neutral environment we don't have like we have pre-loaded experiences and opinions like I I get that I I I know it's deeply unpopular and the reason it's deeply unpopular is.

Because marriage in this culture is so much about happiness it's it is about your personal uh happiness and joy and that and that is the air that we breathe it's in all the the media that we consume it's in the stories that we live in that marriage is about personal happiness and when marriage fails to make you personally happy then get out move on you don't want to live a whole life that's not happy move on to something that brings you more happiness and that's the very air that we breathe in the context of the marriage that we understand in our culture.

Therefore preaching this right here makes that deeply unpopular and I also know it's not done in a vacuum if you're like me some of you are children of divorce and I mean my parents got divorced when I was four and two Christmases is pretty sweet but outside of that it kind of stinks it's pretty painful it's hard there's a lot of just of suffering that comes along with that for the years that follow and the years that follow into adulthood right and I'm also know that that some of you have walked through divorce and the pain of divorce and I understand how difficult this is and we don't approach this neutrally at all.

And while it is very difficult Malachi is not nuancing and I think it's for a reason it's to feel the force that really shows up in verse 16 for the man who does not love his wife but divorces her says the Lord the God of Israel covers her with a garment of violence says the Lord so hear this guard yourselves in your spirit and do not be faithless we want our soul our spirit to be so United with Christ that he guards us from this Folly that he guards us from this path that he defends us that he keeps us guards us I mean we we want to embody what Ephesians 5 teaches to be.

A people that understands that God's his God's place in marriage in the first place but what that means is is that we have to trust God over our own cultural instincts over what we want we have to actually trust God and that is hard to guard ourselves in your spirit and to not be faithless requires trusting God's word when we don't want to because here's the reality if you get all of your romantic desires if you get to marry the man or the woman that you want to marry even though they don't love Christ.

And if you get to end the marriage that you don't want to be in if you get those things ultimately you will get what you want but you will engage in something that is faithless towards Christ and you miss the point all together and the plea from the Scriptures here is don't don't trade your faith in for a fiance don't trade your freedom in your faith in for some for a freedom that that ultimately will not satisfy don't do it It ultimately displays a level of unbelief where we just don't trust God's word I don't care what God's word says I don't care what the Bible says you don't know my situation you don't know.

How hard this is ultimately is a step of Faith to trust God and persevere in a marriage that is difficult ultimately for our good it is difficult to walk in singl and finally find someone who likes you and and and makes you feel good and then to have to look and see they don't belong to Christ and make that decision I can't be with this person it takes a faith to trust God that ultimately his word is better than our own desires and that's difficult it's very difficult I mean you ask pastors I I'm right.

Now I'm taking classes and I'm reading all these pastors who are in these counseling books and it's just like it's clear the most difficult situation that a pastor is probably ever going to face one of the most consistently difficult situations is going to be marriage and divorce hands down this is extremely difficult but we can trust him and we can believe that he is good and that what he holds out in front of us though we don't want it ultimately is good and we can as that text ends as this dispute ends guard ourselves and our spirit and not be faithless I want to end with going to 2 Thessalonians 3 and I want to.

Read this and I want to pray this over our Church because this passage has some some some connections and language to this difficult dispute that I think is helpful to receive I'm going to read this first and then we'll pray I'm going to pray this over Us 2 Thessalonians 3 3-5 it says but the Lord is faithful God is faithful y'all he's faithful towards us even when we are faithless he will establish you and guard you against the evil one that our.

God does he would defend us from the evil one who would love to Snuff out the flame of faith in our lives he will guard us verse four and we have a we have confidence in the Lord about you that you are doing and will do the things that we command that God has a confidence that ultimately we will walk in obedience even when it is difficult verse 5 May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and the steadfastness of Christ may.

God direct our hearts towards his deep Abiding Love and the steadfastness of Christ so bow our heads and I want to pray this over us as we close out heavenly father with such a difficult teaching I pray that you'd help us have Open Hearts to receive this may we love you so deeply because you are faithful God you are faithful you are faithful despite of our desires in spite of our desires you are faithful may you establish us oh Lord may you guard us against the evil one who would love.

For us to end up in marriages that we should not be in who would love for us to choose our own instincts over trusting you may we do your will and keep your Commandments by trusting you with both our singleness but also with marriages that are the source of so much pain or may those who have been through divorce even divorce for unbiblical reasons may you direct our hearts to your love and to your steadfastness that we might even though we have failed even though we have suffered even though we've walked through some of those difficult moments of Our Lives.

When we persevere in faith even when in the past we may have acted faithlessly may we be a people who allow you into the most sensitive areas of our lives so that we may be faithful in all things and may you guard Us by the power of your spirit working in us that we might be faithful amen B's going to come up and we're going to take the Lord's Supper no doubt this sermon touches on some of the sorest regions of our souls and our stories and I just want you to.

Remember that our God is good he is worthy of our trust and our faith and in faith even when we have sinned even when we have misstep even when we have Str strayed from the path even when we've not obeyed God's word in faith Jesus gives the invitation come to the table that if you belong to Christ the table is open for you you don't have to come forth in shame but you can to come forth in the grace that covers you and the shame that was born on Christ on the cross.

Then the night that he was betrayed he took bread and he broke it and said this is my body that was broken for you and he took the blood he took the the the the cup which is the cup of the New Covenant he said this is my blood that was shed for you that is often you eat and drink this you Proclaim my death until I return so we get to come to the table no matter what your story is no matter where you are.

If if you believe and you belong to Christ you get to come to the table and Praise Jesus that even when we're faithless no matter what we're walking through even though when we're Sinners and we no matter what we're walking through that God's love is sufficient and his grace is enough so you get to come to the table and you get to take of this remember our savior whatever you're walking through through out of that Grace and that mercy and that kindness that.

Jesus shows us we get to ask Lord the difficult questions we get to ask him Lord what do you want for me what is faithfulness what is obedience and then we get to walk that together out as the Church if you're not a Christian we don't want you to take part in the Lord's Supper we want you to take part in Christ because he's worthy of it and trusting him is ultimately better than anything this world has to offer so when you are ready come to the table there's free in that back corner.

Mill City 11/13/23 Mill City 11/13/23

Malachi Week 3: Profaned Priesthood

Group Guide

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Transcript

Good morning my name is Chad I'm one of the pastors here uh excited to to get to study the word of the Lord this morning with y'all if you'll turn to Malachi chapter 2 we're working our way through the Book of Malachi and we are going to go verse by verse to this book and try to understand the message of this prophet and where we are in the the time of the life of the people of Israel is that they have returned from Exile they've returned from captivity uh in Babylon and they have rebuilt the temple and they have rebuilt the wall and they are under Persian Rule and the general feel of the people.

Of Israel at this time when you're studying this time period And when you're studying the prophets that are speaking to them is if you've ever been if you grew up in a town or been around a town lived in an area where they're used to be industry but there isn't anymore there used to be a textile Mill they used to build cars they used to have a coal mine but they don't anymore that's in general how Israel feels at this point they're people here and they're existing.

But that's kind of all they're doing it doesn't seem like there's a lot of life it doesn't seem like there's a lot of hope it doesn't seem like there's a lot of Joy they've returned but they're still under rule of the Persians they've rebuilt the temple but it's not like the temple they had they have a wall they have a city but it's not like the city they had in general the whole thing just feels like they're sleepwalking through existence and that's where we are and that's where Malachi takes up his prophetic message and he's the last prophet in the Old Testament to speak before we're going to.

See John the Baptist and Jesus several hundred years later and so he's correcting and speaking on behalf of God he has six disputes the first one is that God loves them but they don't feel it and they don't act like it and they don't seem to know it but he's correcting them that he loves them but they're not behaving correctly and then he starts correcting the priests and so we're picking up with that in Chapter 2 with the back half of his correction of the priests and what we're going to.

Look at this morning is we're going to take this we're going to understand it in its context we're going to try to understand what he's actually saying to the priest here but then we're going to try to see how we might apply this correction of the priesthood to us and we're going to see that when you translate the the idea of a priesthood into the New Testament it comes out in a few different ways and so we're going to take some time this morning to talk specifically to pastors and Church leadership.

So I'll be preaching to myself some this morning and boy am I going to give myself some amens I tell you and then I'll get real convicted no but preach to to pastors this morning and then to the Church in general because the Christian Church is a priesthood and then we're going to talk about Christ who is the great high priest and so we're going to walk through those three things after we try to understand understand it in its context.

If you will pray with me as we begin this morning God we're thankful for your word we're thankful for the spirit that indwells us that helps us to understand your word and leads us in obedience we ask that your Holy Spirit would move and work and convict and encourag this morning and that you would help us to understand rightly what this teaches so that we might live in fear and awe of you and that Christ might be glorified in Jesus name amen all right Malachi 2.

Verse 1 and now o priests this command is for you so he's about to give a command and we know who it's to it's to the the priest now this priesthood which is also going to be referred to as Levi in this chapter is the levitical priest it's a whole tribe of Israel that was blessed with the priesthood when they uh divvied up the land the Levites did not get a portion of the land they did not get an inheritance all the other tribes got an inheritance.

But Levi was scattered in little places all over and then they were given the care of the temple they were the ones who would stand as priests in service to the Lord and on behalf of the people and they would rotate so you would live wherever you lived kind of in one of the other tribes and then you would rotate to Temple service we see this in Luke with John the bapti his dad he rotates in and does his Temple service.

And then he goes back to where he lived and so that's how this would work and so we're talking to the priest or the Levites as he's going to call them later that's who he's correcting and what they're doing now is they had a temple they were performing their daily sacrifices and their Ministry but they were doing it halfheartedly it says this is the command if you will not listen if you will not take it to heart to give honor to my name says the.

Lord of hosts then I will send the curse upon you and I will curse your blessings indeed I have already cursed them because you do not lay it to heart so the command it's kind of buried in the middle there is take it to heart to give honor to my name that's what the priests were supposed to be doing it was supposed to be genuine true love worship and honor to the Lord and it was supposed they were to take it to heart and they were to be the.

First ones they were the ones who didn't get an allotment their their inheritance was the Lord that's what it actually says he says I'm their inheritance that the blessing was him that they would have him that they would love him that they would know him that was Chief among it God's blessing was on the whole of Israel but he has this special portion for the Levites to get to minister to him and be in the temple they're the only ones who caner enter certain places they're the ones that get to serve him in this unique way they get to part participate and take part in some of the sacrifices and they were to be the.

First ones to honor the Lord have you ever gone with somebody to their mama's house or Grandmama's house it's like a group of friends and y'all are about to go in or you're dating them you're about to go in and they just stop and say okay hold up when we go in here you going to take your shoes off you going to take your hat off you going to say yes ma'am she's going to offer you food you're going to eat it you going to tell her it tastes good and the best is.

When they start telling you things you're not allowed to bring up like just fun like it's you're always just like I have questions they're like don't talk about LeBron James and he's just like why I want to now like what do why why can't I bring him up like they just pick things or they might tell you like a whole political party you're just not allowed to mention inside this house like just don't bring it up but the reason is that's their grandmother and they're taking the.

First step in honoring and if you don't want to they don't care you're going to or you're not going to be welcome in this house that's how it works they're they primary you ought to but if you're not going to they're going to make sure you do that's the way the Levites were supposed to be with the Lord we read last week where people are bringing lame sacrifices the the their legs don't work they're bringing uh goats that don't that aren't worth anything they're bringing blind sacrifices or ones that have SC abs and problems that they couldn't sell anywhere.

And when they're bringing them up there they should have brought a good one but when they got to the door the Levites should have said what don't get this out of here how dare you profane the name of the Lord with that they should be the ones who are taking it to heart to honor the Lord but they aren't and so he says if you won't I will curse your blessings and indeed I've already cursed them because you do not lay it to heart.

Now that cursing of Their Blessings is a broad we should understand that in a broad way because they're blessed to be the people to be the Levites to be the priests and there were certain blessings that came along with that that they got to participate in the sacrifices that they got to uh take in the tithes that they were provided for by the people of Israel and so he's saying in general the blessings over Israel are going to fall apart the blessings to your tribe are going to fall apart and one of the things that the Levites did was they pronounced blessings.

So that when you came and and there was a sacrifice then they would bless you they would speak on behalf of the Lord to send you out in in a blessing and he's saying I'm doing all of that your blessings are cursed it's going to work backwards now and then he says in verse three behold I will rebuke your Offspring rebuke is a sharp correction I will rebuke your Offspring and spread dung on your faces the dung of your offerings and you shall be taken away with it.

Now just to us that sounds just rough that's you don't want you don't want the Lord to say that to you and whenever you're in an issue and you're not doing well and the rebuke goes beyond you to your children like you want to get an argument amped up just bring people's kids involved like I mean he's going to rebuke the whole line of the Levites but when he says I'm going to put dung on your faces he's talking about a specific thing it says the dung of your offerings and you shall be taken away with it this is actually worse than it hits our ears.

But the Levites would have understood exactly what he was talking about when they had a sacrifice the dung as well as certain parts of the innards and the overall carcass there were parts that they kept and ate there were parts that they applied to the sacrifice and then there was a whole bunch of it that was called awful o f f a l awful and it was carried outside and burned and he says that's where you're going you're not going to be allowed in the temple you're not going to be the chosen people who get to be here you're going to be toted outside and burned you're going to be toted outside and cast out.

You're going to be part of the awful that's what I'm about to do with the tribe of Levi and for those who practice this Temple sacrifice daily to be told you're becoming a part of awful you're carried out that that hit them way harder than it just reads to us this is a significant rebuke he's saying I'm getting rid of the tribe of Levi I'm going to you're not going to get to participate in this way and this but then there.

Then he says something else that we have to try to figure out what he means because it it drastically changes how we're supposed to understand what he's saying to them when he says I'm going to cast you out in this way verse four he says I'm doing this so shall you know that I have sent this command to you that my Covenant with Levi May May stand says the Lord of hosts okay that my Covenant with Levi May stand he says I'm going to do this.

So that I can keep my Covenant well now it's really important for us to know two things what is the Covenant to Levi and is it a conditional Covenant or an unconditional Covenant is there an if there like if your parents said I'm going to take you to the zoo and then you were acting up and they said hold on I got to keep my promise to you it's like yeah but the promise was I'm going to take you to the zoo.

But if your parents said I'm going to take you to the zoo if you get your stuff done that's a conditional you see the difference between conditional and unconditional the question is is God going to keep this promise no matter what is he promising that I'm going to overcome your sin and make this good or is he saying I'm going to hold to my end of the bargain and cast you out because you failed it's important for us to know how is he keeping this Covenant we also need to know what is the Covenant to Levi what is the Covenant to the priesthood.

So look at verse 5 my Covenant with him was one of life and peace I gave them to him so it was a blessing the promise he made to him was of life and peace I gave them to him it was a covenant of fear and he feared me he stood in awe of my name so God's giving life and peace and the people of Levi are to fear God to respect him it's to where the way that like parents and children are supposed to work where there's life and peace and appropriate fear and respect like you should fear your parents you shouldn't.

Look under your bed for them at night like that kind of fear like they're going to get you but you should have respect and honor it should have been like that that's what he's saying that was the way the Covenant worked and we've got to go back to the uh further back in the Old Testament try to understand what is he referencing because there are certain covenants like the Mosaic Covenant it's very clear and it's a conditional Covenant if you do these things you'll be blessed.

If you don't you won't then there's covenants to to Abraham which is a blessing that he's going to carry out there's a covenant to David that he's going to carry out no matter what he's just going to do that so we've got to look and try to say what's he talking about there's a few places where it's hinted at and one place it gives us a little more clarity so Exodus 32:29 we just read this as we studied through Exodus this is.

When the golden calf happens he comes down they're having debaucherous party and Moses says who's with me and the Levites are part of his tribe they say we're with you and then he says get your sword and go kill people who have run away from the Lord and then he looks at him afterwards and he says today you have been ordained for the service of the Lord each one at the cost of his son and of his brother so that he might bestow a blessing upon you this day this seems to be the.

First place where the Levites are being set apart for something specific then again a similar situation happens in numbers 25 and we're going to see a man named Phineas who the people were running from the Lord it says that he's jealous with the jealousy of the Lord which is he turns them back to them and he does this violently both of these situations are coming out of violence as people are running from the Lord but it says this November numbers 25 10-13 and the.

Lord said to Moses Phineas the son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel in that he was jealous with my jealousy among them so that I did not consume the people of Israel in my jealousy because they're supposed to love and worship and they were running after other things verse 12 therefore say behold I give to him my Covenant of peace and it shall be to him and to his descendants after him the Covenant of a Perpetual priesthood.

Because he was jealous for his God and made atonement for the people of Israel and then we see this idea of this Covenant mentioned in Jeremiah 33 he says this thus says the Lord if you can break my Covenant with the day and my Covenant with the night so that day and night will not come at their appointed time then also my Covenant with David my servant may be broken so that he shall not have a son to Reign on his throne and my Covenant with the levitical priests my ministers all right Pop Quiz day and night still working all right that's what he anchors it to day and night get messed up.

Because we change the time yeah that's on us though day and night are still doing their thing just cuz your kids are waking up at 5:00 a I'm mad all right just you know they they don't anyway so what he says is it's an unconditional promise that he's going to work out in the people of Levi so when he says I'm going to cast you out that my Covenant May stand we should all say what how does that work I don't.

Okay and we're going to get to see later how he accomplishes that but that's what he's saying is that this you're going to pay but I'm going to keep my Covenant you're going to you've corrupted this you've messed this up but I'm going to keep it all right as he keeps going he's going to talk about what they should have been like and what they were like as priests and then he's going to talk about how they mess it up verse six true instruction was in his mouth.

So he already said it was a covenant of fear he feared me he stood in awe of my name meaning that they trusted the Lord they were following the Lord and then he says true instruction was in his mouth he's talking about not just Levi the person he's talking about the priests he's made this promise to these people so he's saying it like it's a singular person but he's talking about the whole tribe no wrong was found on his lips he walked with me in peace and uprightness he turned many from iniquity this is what the priesthood was supposed to.

Look like for the lips of a priest should guard knowledge and people should seek instruction from his mouth for he is the messenger of the Lord of host but you have turned aside from the way you have caused many to stumble by your instruction you have corrupted the Covenant of Levi says the Lord of hosts and so I make you despised and abased before all the people in as much as you do not keep my ways but show partiality in your instruction.

So what he says to the Levites say you were supposed to trust me love me fear me stand in all of me you were supposed to guard knowledge give instruction tell the truth function impartially you were supposed to be someone who speaks on behalf of the Lord and you've corrupted all of that and so now instead of being elevated you'll be debased and despised and that's what he's saying to the people who are currently in the time of Malachi serving as priests and running the temple without without fear of the.

Lord and without care now as we try to understand this passage and we try to pull it forward to kind of where we are we're going to take three ways to look at it there are some things from the priesthood that apply to those who are pastors teachers in the Church those who serve as Elders that that apply in that way there are some things that apply to the Church in general and there are some things that apply only to Christ we pastors.

Now do not stand in between we don't mediate between you and God that's not how it works that's how it worked then that they had to go to a priest to get but that's not how it works but there are some things that he mentions In this passage like teaching instruction that do apply as we try to understand what does it mean to be a pastor and what does that look like so our Church has four pastors myself Raz Bradley Matt Freeman Spencer KY we are all Elders as the official elder or overseers official New Testament term we just use Pastor it's one of the things you're supposed to do.

But it's never used as a title in the Bible but we have four pastors or four elders and we're all Pastor Elder we're the same thing so we don't have like a chief in charge pastor and other pastors we're just four pastors or Elders we have one Elder in training his name is Isaac Hill which means that we are working in a process to install him as an elder and we have seven men not including Isaac who's also going through Pastor development we have seven men who are in Pastor development which is we have men in our Church who said I'm interested feel like I may be called to be a pastor and we said.

Well we want to help you figure that out so they're in a thing called Pastor development we're trying to walk them through that and since it's a list of seven I wrote them all down so that I wouldn't just randomly forget one of them I know all of these people and could give you all their names but it would take me longer than it needs to Jeremy Powell Ryan Krebs Brett richer Chris Rocky Brian Petri George Garcia and Mike Goble are all in our pastor development process.

So as I speak on this part right now most of it applies directly to them but some of you will not be at this Church forever some of you will and bless your heart but you're going to serve you're going to belong here you're going to labor with us and you need to know what your pastors ought to look like in a little while we're going to say in front of our Church family uh in a little while Spencer said that was unclear and it would mean like could mean 10 minutes from.

Now uh in the next year or so we're going to say we're planning to install Isaac and if anybody has any reason why he shouldn't be installed you need to come talk to us we're going to give you time to do that but you need to understand what we're installing him to and what what he's called to and you need to know what to hold your pastors accountable to some of you are going to move you're going to get another job you're going to go to another school and you're going to have to go find another Church and bless your heart you need to know what pastors are supposed to.

Look like what that's supposed to to be so that's one of the reasons we're talking through this but we also need to try to understand this in connection to what this passage is saying so verse 5 my Covenant with him was one of life and peace I gave them to him it was a covenant of fear and he feared me he stood in awe of my name stepping into leadership in the Church should begin with fear and awe and that is usually by God's blessing and goodness where it starts you love the.

Lord you fear Him you respect the Lord you trust him you're in awe of the fact that he would redeem a sinner like you that's where it's supposed to start if you are trying to question whether or not you should be a pastor and you're trying to figure it out and it's not starting here and I'm not sure you should be a pastor if you're anchored in something other than how glorious our God is and how wonderful he is and how he redeems Sinners and is.

So good that's where it begins and he's going to this pairs well with what he says later if you look down it's not going to be on the screen but it's in your Bible if you have it I'll read it he says you've turned aside from the way you've caused many to stumble you've corrupted the Covenant he says you're showing partiality you see you're either going to passor from a position of fearing the Lord or you're going to Pastor from a position of fearing people there's a way to Pastor where it's not about him it's about you there's a way to Pastor where it's about fame or being loved or being appreciated being liked there's.

A way to Pastor where it's about y'all if I meet a per I'm a pastor if I meet someone and they say they're a pastor my immediate thought is you're either a really solid person or one of the worst people ever but that's usually I mean you can be a pastor because it's an easy Inside Job you can be a pastor because nobody really keeps up with your time I can walk out of the office and say I'm going to go work on sermon stuff and I could do whatever the heck I wanted to nobody's GPS tracking me.

But you ought to fear God because I'm GNA have to stand before him later that's terrible all of our pastors we're trying to hold each other we're trying to serve this Church but there's a way to Pastor where you love the Lord and you love the Church and you serve the Lord and you serve the Church and there's a way to Pastor where you're serving yourself and it's about you and the Lord have mercy on that day when you stand before him.

So this is where it begins and it ought to stay there but unfortunately too often it gets twisted and turns into something else and we've seen it we usually see it in high-profile cases where it's about money or it's about fame or it's about something else but it can happen at any level and it can happen in small ways even in someone who's doing fairly good things for a local Church it can happen in your heart there's a way to preach where it's really just about the way people respond rather than being faithful to the.

Lord and the Bible he keeps going verse six true instruction was in his mouth so we're going to walk through this section look at this true instruction was in his mouth and no wrong was found on his lips it means that good pastoring good Church leadership means you know your Bible you study your Bible you love your Bible that's the way to have true instruction and no wrong come from your lips is that you're not just talking about what you think or feel.

But you're talking about what the Bible says so you want your pastors to know their Bible you want your pastors to submit to their Bible and Pastors in our Church family we need to know and love our Bibles it's unacceptable for us not to says he walked with me in peace and uprightness Character Matters immensely for leading and shepherding in the Church it matters immensely that in in the New Testament it's going to show up 1 Timothy 3 Titus 1 Peter's going to talk about it in 1 Peter 5.

But some of the things that qualify for you for being a pastor doesn't list things like be smart which is good it doesn't list things like like you have to be the most talented the best that it says that you have to be have character and the truth is a lot of the pastors that we've seen that flame out are ones that their ability outpace their character and that's dangerous this is one of the reasons why we take installing someone into eldership in our Church.

So slowly because character doesn't show up in a resume it doesn't show up in an interview it doesn't show up when someone preaches Isaac preached recently and people told me they said he did a really good job and I think he did but one of the reasons why we didn't just several years ago say hop up there and preach and we'll see if you can be a pastor because that's like way down the list of things that really matter your Character Matters immensely Your Love of the.

Lord matters immensely your knowledge of Scripture matters that you would be someone who turns away from sin personally and takes very seriously that at the end of all this you want Jesus more than you want anything else there have been some pastors and Church leaders that we found out a whole bunch of stuff after they died there was no confession there was no repentance there was no hating of their sin we found it out later which means that they traded Jesus.

For Ministry and that's a terrible tradeit you want people if you're going to be a pastor and you want your pastors to be people who would trade in Ministry who would repent of sin confess things would walk away from it so that they might have Jesus because if I get to the end of this and all ever had was this Church but I don't get Jesus because I hid things and I ran from from being walking in the openness and I and I chose sin rather than repentance like how I might get disqualified someday.

Lord help keep me from that but if that happens may I choose repentance and Jesus over somehow fighting to hang out and get keep doing this in a way that turns my soul away from him and they chose uprightness he says and turned many from iniquity good pastoring involves telling people they're wrong good pastoring involves pointing to the Bible and saying this is sin around the time that we were walking through our Theology of sex series and Spencer was up here and he was walking through and he was going to a passage where he says do not be deceived and he was talking through sin and sexual sin and he was calling it out.

He was confessing and bringing you in on his story and repenting there were churches all around the US that were saying about that same issue it's not really that big of a deal it's not really sin there's a high-profile Church recently that said yeah it's not ideal it's not God's favorite but it's okay and the Church is meant to stand in the Bible and say this is what it says and this is what we hold to and if you want to be a pastor.

Because you want people to like you you will at some point have to choose say what the Bible says or be liked y'all there are times where we know we know y'all we love y'all there are times where we know all right about to take these people off we know some of the things you want to hear and some of the things you don't want to hear sometimes we're pleasantly surprised a lot of times we handle it really well but we also we know what we could get up I mean we could write like a a a sermon that y'all would all just be like yeah.

But it might not line up with the Bible we can avoid things or we can say them it's one of the reasons why we teach straight through books of the Bible so that we don't have to deal with that tension of not wanting to go to places and just secretly not go to them we just work our way through the Bible and then we go you know spener our paper rock scissors who's going to have to say it we don't do that.

But we have walked in before and said did I really pick this passage I picked this one like yeah you were amped up about it I don't know all right I lost my train of thought y'all say he turned many away from iniquity verse 7 for the lips of a priest should guard knowledge and people should seek instruction from his mouth that's one of the hopes of pastoring is that you would know your Bible you'd walk in wisdom and humility and you'd be genuinely helpful you you should you should be in a place where you want to talk to your pastors and ask some questions and try to get some instruction and some wisdom.

Some help it's one of the joys of pastoring where we get to help people think through things and work through things but that should be a thing that you would look for and desire and that it should happen that they'd be people who knew their Bibles knew uh had some wisdom could help you instruct and keep people away from sin and moving forward well in life then it says this for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts that's really interesting.

When you're reading this you read the commentaries on it this is the only place that priests are ever called messengers of the Lord of hosts that's a phrase that's only ever used for prophets people that spoke thus sayith the Lord and it's saying well this is true of those who worked in the priesthood and the reason is is because they knew their Bibles and they stood in place and said this is what God would have you you do this is what.

God would have you respond this is the type of sacrifice that you should have in this moment that they stood and spoke on behalf of the Lord and that is a weighty honor it's a Divine honor that I get to stand here and open the Bible and say this is what it says it's a Divine honor but I I got to take it seriously our Church needs to take it seriously pastors take it seriously if you're ever if those men if we're able to send them out we'd love to we'd love to send them out we'd love to plant churches we'd love to install some of them in our Church family and we'd love to.

Be men that take all of this very seriously and speaking on behalf of the Lord would be a weighty thing that was not flippantly done so he says you've turned aside you've run off chased sin and there's a way to do that in pastoring and James says that not many should be teachers because they'll be held to a higher standard and by God's grace he'll protect our Church family he'll protect our pastors we'll get to send more pastors out we'll get to plant more churches and we'll be Men of Integrity who fear the.

Lord and may He help us do that but priests in the Old Testament is not a onetoone translation to Pastors in the Church because the whole Church is now the priesthood there's no mediator between you and God except for Christ and so 1 Peter 2 says this you the Church are a chosen race a royal priesthood a holy nation a people for his own possession that you may Proclaim that you may so we belong to him We're priesthood so that the Church that's the you there that you the Church May proclaim the Excellence of him excellencies of him who called you out of Darkness Into His Marvelous Light every Sunday we finish by saying you.

Are commissioned you're empowered by the spirit to go and do that proclaim the excellencies of him who's called you out of Darkness into His Marvelous Light that you get to do what Malachi is talking about to a a world that doesn't know him you get to know your Bible you get to hate sin and you get to tell people be reconciled to God so we all should take this call seriously and sometimes we say things like well I just don't know how to do that that doesn't exempt you learn how to do it start reading your Bible start practicing yall know we we practice I I practice this trying to articulate the Gospel in different.

Situations and not just it's something you work at and so if you're struggling with that we'd love to help you but we would love for our whole Church to be proclaiming the excellencies of him who called us out of Darkness Into His Marvelous Light and taking seriously the opportunity to be Messengers on behalf of the Lord so that we might see more people come to know him and he is excellent and he did call you out of Darkness so we should tell people.

And if we don't know how to tell people we should practice and tell people and if you tell somebody and you didn't do it right go back to them later and say I didn't say that right round two but we should take it seriously but y'all we need to consider Christ because he is the great high priest of our faith and he's the one who perfectly accomplishes this and upheld the Covenant so we read earlier and he said because I'm going to keep my Covenant it's basically what he's saying I'm going to uphold my Covenant.

Therefore I'm going to do this how well how does he do that what what happens here how does he uphold the Covenant in the middle of their corruption and rejection which is a very pertinent question for everybody because we have all corrupted and rejected our place before the Lord as humans and there's an offer of redemption but one of the questions is how does he do that how does he offer Redemption what does he do first of all I want you to.

See that Jesus perfectly fulfills this he walks in awe verse five he works in awe of the Lord and fear of the Lord that's what he does when he's here true instruction is in his mouth he is the truth he speaks the truth when you read the words of Jesus you're reading truth and veracity that you can build your life off of he walked in peace and uprightness that Jesus never sinned he turned many from iniquity he guards knowledge and people should seek instruction from his mouth and he is the capital T messenger of the.

Lord of hosts the one who comes to Proclaim good news to us so Jesus is the perfect fulfillment of what the priesthood was meant to be and then Hebrews tells us this for the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp so Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood he's the one who becomes part of the awful and is carried out and cast out and rejected he didn't deserve to be he hadn't corrupted the Covenant.

But he took the punishment of the corrupted Covenant on himself so that he might uphold the Covenant and that's the Gospel news for us I didn't check but I don't think any of y'all are Levites but what you are are sinners who need someone to take what you deserve which is to be cast out none of us have the right to walk into the temple none of us have the right if it still existed to go into the most holy place we would be struck down we're not welcome there not only are we not welcome there.

Because we're not Levites we're not welcome there in our sin and our rejection and our rebellion of God but Jesus is the one who was cast out so that we might be brought in that's what it says that he might sanctify the people through his own blood he's the one who took the punishment we deserve so that we might be ordained Sanctified brought in and welcomed 133 verse 13 therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured.

So author of Hebrews says he did that so that we could belong to him let's go join him let's go join him and if you say well it'll be weird if I if I go if I take Serious this idea that I'm going to go bring this message that I'm going to go participate it people might not like me yeah let's bear the reproach he endured it might make some of my friendships weird let's bear the reproach he endured it it might make things awkward at the office I don't know.

If I can do that I just not sure if that's the place well let's barely reproach that he endured for this is why we would do that here we have no lasting City but we seek the city that is to come we're all called to represent the Lord by God's grace some of us are going to try to say I want to give fulltime energy and effort towards that in Mission work and in the Church but we're all called to proclaim the excellencies of him who called us out of Darkness Into His Marvelous Light and all of us are going to stand before.

For the king and may we be people who live in fear and awe looking forward to that City there's a way to Pastor that's about right here and there's a way to live our lives that's about right here it's about our place in this city but this isn't our city we've got one that's coming so may we live as a group of people who look forward to that and who our lives our decisions our wallets our time and makes sense as we stand before the.

Lord on that day you're standing before people right now which means that some of the things you're doing ought not make sense to them it should only make sense when you're standing before him we don't want to live in a way that makes sense now and makes no sense there so let's go to Jesus to be covered by his blood and to be welcomed that's done by him and then let's walk with him taking what whatever reproach comes looking forward to that City let's pray.

Lord help us have mercy on us move through your spirit so that we might look forward to that City that we might walk in fear and awe and that we might Delight in the fact that you are the one who upholds the Covenant you're the one who was cast out so that we can be brought in and so may we rejoice in your name and Praise Your Name Lord I pray for myself Spencer Matt Raz help us to fear you more than we fear people help us to turn away from sin and by your grace Keep Us Faithful and cover Us in Mercy in that day we stand before you.

God may you bless this Church that we would send out more pastors and more Church planners and more missionaries that would labor for you that would run from sin and in the day when we're choosing between hiding or running to you may we not hide so that at the end of all this we have you as our inheritance and not Ministry and not praise nothing but you and may that be true for our entire Church family that at the end of all of this we get.

Jesus or it's been a waste we ask this in your name and we thank you for your blood amen.

Mill City 11/6/23 Mill City 11/6/23

Malachi Week 2: The Charade of False Worship

Group Guide

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Transcript

So we are in our second week of the Book of Malachi as we finish the year off in this uh last prophetic book in the Old Testament we're going to be in Malachi 1: 5 through 14 which you can turn there and follow along with us as we walk through the text together uh we introduced this last week and we said that Malachi is made up of six different disputations these are six different disputes that God has with his people and we're in the.

Second disputation the second dispute that God has with his people and this one specifically is a rebuke of the sacrifices that the people of God were bringing to the Temple of the sacrificial system that was being practiced at the time now in order for us to understand what's happening in this rebuke you really need to understand the positive version what was actually the ideal version of what was supposed to happen and at times in the history of Israel did happen when it was actually a beautifully worshipful system.

So I want you to to imagine a levitical priest from the tribe of Levi who God has called into by the nature of the tribe that he was in and his Calling On this man's life to be a levitical priest his father was a Le a levite levitical priest his grandfather was levitical Priest he is carrying on this Legacy of being a priest who helps the people worship at the temple and every day he wakes up up and he's joyfully praising.

God to own the calling of being a priest and as he puts on his Priestly garments he's singing Psalms and and praising God that he gets to lead the people in worship and then he puts on his Priestly garments and he Praises Yahweh he Praises God then he walks out into uh the inner part the inner parts of the temple where he's going to facilitate worship where he's lighting incense where he's ready to receive these sacrificial offerings and he's praising God saying I get to help the people of.

God worship I get to help the people of God experience what it means to have a covering for their sin that our sin can be atoned for through sacrifice and he owns that beautifully and wonderfully and then in walks a man who's from the Judean Countryside and this man is a man who has a farm and on his farm he has all types of livestock and one day he looks at his livestock and he sees he's a bull the most wonderful beautiful strongest bull that he could sell on the open market.

For a lot of money and he looks at his Hired Hands and he says that bull right there that's the one that's the best of what I've got and that is what I'm going to take to the temple tomorrow we all go to the temple family work hands all of us are going to the temple to offer this bull as a burnt offering as a sacrifice for our sins and the next day he takes that bull with his family and his and his whole uh his people and they start walking towards the temple and they're singing Psalms of a sense these are the Psalms they would sing as they ascend towards the temple.

For worship and they arrive into the temple and he takes that bull and he brings it to that levitical priest joyfully celebrating this wonderful offering the best of what he has to bring to this priest who's joyfully worshiping saying is this what you've brought for sacrifice and he says yes it's the best of what I have to offer praise God this will be a wonderful burnt sacrifice that is what it was supposed to be and at times in the history of Israel that's what it was.

But that's not what it is when Malachi is prophesying that's not what's happening at the temple so what we're going to see and the second dispute that God has with his people is we're going to take a look at some of the corruption that had really seeped its way into the sacrifices some of the Corrupt Practices that were happening at the time as we look at this and their context we ultimately will see really the root of this corrupted worship and really how that root and I argue that rot still exists even.

Today so let me pray for us and then we'll walk through this together Heavenly Father we thank you for the good news of Jesus that claims us and saves us and sets us apart to worship you and to Delight in you and to glorify you and I pray that you'd help us see the gift that it is to worship our King and I pray that you would expose by the power of the word of God by the power of your word you'd expose the thoughts and intentions of our hearts and that we would receive your word and we'd walk this out in worship and repentance and faith and delighting in you.

Because you're worthy the other we ask this in Jesus name amen all right so verses uh 2 through 5 as we walked through that last week was the first dispute that God has with his people and what we saw if you weren't here last week is that God out the gate before he spends the rest of this book rebuking the people of God that out the gate he reminds them that I love you you are my people I love you oh people of Jacob oh people of Israel I love you that his Covenant Love begins this book and it's the foundation.

For what everything he's going to say next but he needs his people to remember I love you fiercely with this wonderful Covenant Love and out of that love that he has for his people he begins to rebuke him in the second dispute verse six a son honors his father and a servant his master if then I a father where is my honor and if I'm a master where is my fear says the Lord of hosts To You O priest who despise my name.

So he's speaking in terms that were very crystal clear to the people of God that would have absolutely understood this language and really the force of what he is saying he says Israel I am your father oh people of God I'm your I'm your father you are my son you are my child where's the honor that is due to me like they they understood the fifth commandment in ways that we just don't the type of Honor that a parent is is deserved he said where is my honor as your.

Father he used the language of servant and master which is language that was really uh familiar to them as an ancient near Eastern World they built into the very fabric of their economy and all the economies was this servitude system and he says Where is My Honor where's my fear where's my obedience where is this o Israel what you have shown is that you don't fear me you don't honor me you actually despise me which is a a sharp rebuke I mean.

If we if we received a rebuke like that like if your boss called you in the office and if your rev you laid out all your work for the year and then said you know by your work what I can so clearly see is that you hate me that you despise me that's what your work shows if you if you heard that I mean that would be the start of a very scary moment it's like oh okay you've got my attention.

Now let's talk like that's a strong rebuke and he says what you have shown is that you despise my name and this is ratcheted up even more for a culture that understands honor and shame more than we do so he calls them to account and it continues in verse 6 but you say how have we despised your name so he gives their their rebuttal wait wait how how have we despised your name they're incredulous wait you're saying that we don't honor we don't fear we don't how how have we despised your name oh.

God and then God continues in verse 7 by offering polluted food upon my altar but you say how have we polluted You by saying that the Lord's table may be despised verse 8 when you offer blind animals and sacrifice is that not evil and when you offer those that are lame or sick is that not evil so he answers them you've polluted the worship you've polluted the offerings and specifically you've done this by offering blind and lame animals for sacrifice now that's rooted in the Old Testament law right.

So Leviticus or Deuteronomy 15:21 says talking about sacrifices but if it has any blemish if it is lame or blind or has any serious blemish whatever you shall not sacrifice it to the Lord your God Leviticus 22:22 says animals blind or disabled or mutilated or having a discharge or an itch or scabs you shall not offer to the Lord or give them to the Lord as a food offering on the altar so clearly in the law and you might wonder okay it's in the law sure.

But why why is that a big deal I mean it's a blood sacrifice it's an animal what does it matter what condition it comes in because it's going to be slaughtered the reason this is important and anytime we're approaching the Bible anytime we're approaching teachings it's try to understand why those teachings are in place in the first place okay and what is clear here is that it shows the heart behind the sacrifice what they are bringing shows the heart behind their worship.

Because sacrifices are supposed to be and this is going to blow our minds sacrificial it's supposed to cost it's supposed to cost you something and and this isn't costly worship at all I want you to imagine we get closer to Christmas and there's end of your Christmas parties I want you to imagine that your your boss says you know you guys have had a stellar year it's been a great year for the company I want to reward y'all with a Christmas party like the most epic Christmas party we've ever had.

And then you show up and it's a Christmas party that has wonderful food and wonderful drink it has a great band I mean it's just a night that you are certainly going to talk about in the office for years to come this I mean he's he's he's giv out Christmas gifts and bonuses all kindes of stuff this a wonderful Christmas party and he just tells them it's because I love youall we're taking some of our our profits this year and we're blessing you this is what you've earned congratulations.

And then the next week you get your paycheck and you look at your paycheck and it's about $1,000 left and you're like wait what you go to the accountant you say Hey listen I'm I'm short $1,000 and the accountant says oh yeah that's for the party it's it's everyone came out of their paycheck this year it's for the party your joy for for that gift that was being brought to you in the party is now wrath because you've been robbed you would have just taken the, that that's what's happening here it's it's the presentation of a sacrifice and it's not a sacrifice a blind animal is not sacrificial at all it's not a gift at.

All because that blind animal could not be sold for anything on the market it's worthless I mean if you try to go and take that blind animal and sell at the marketplace the moment that Ram like just rammed its head into the wall and fell over homeboy trying to buy it just lifts it up looks at his eyes and says it's blind this is worthless you're trying to Def me this means nothing it would be a deep dishonor and the people deep down they know this you know how they know this.

Because of how God really puts this into context in the very next phrase he mentions the Persian Governors so they're still ruled at this point by the Persians he mentions really the Persian Governors that were ruling over them he says with that blind offering that you're bringing present that to your Governor will he accept you or show you favor says the Lord of hosts he says try passing off these blind sacrifices try passing off these lame animals try passing that off to one of the governors one of the rulers who you can.

See try passing that off and see if that gift gets you anywhere be like trying to bring your Christmas gift in for your boss like a good a good boss who doesn't like do a bait and switch of the party like an actually good boss you bring in your Christmas gift and it's a half eaten tray of cookies and like a you know half open drank bottle of Two Buck Chuck from Trader Joe's that's like a week and a half old that's.

Now like not even barely cooking one and it's like here's your gift you'd never do that we'd never present that to somebody who has influence in our life no chance it would be a great dishonor your boss would get that and be like what in the world is this trash and I've got my eye on you it's just we would never he's saiding you would never present this blind animal to a governor to a governing official you would never try to pass this off as a gift how low the people of.

God must have thought of him must have thought of their God that they could try to present these animals with the appearance of sacrifice with the appearance of worship when really they're keeping the best animals for themselves they're keeping the best of what they have for themselves and God the God who brought them out of captivity the the God who's forgiven them the God who loves them sees this and he rebukes it and he continues in verse 9 he says.

Now entreat the favor of God that he may be gracious to us with such a gift from your hand will he show favor to any of you says the Lord of hosts verse 10 oh that there were one among you who would shut the doors that you might not candle fire on my altar in vain I have no pleasure in you says the Lord of hosts and I will not accept an offering from your hand so he continues this rebuke this charade the appearance of godliness and bringing worship.

God just says if just one of you priests if just one of you had a Zeal for me had a Zeal for the law had a Zeal for what is good which next week we'll spend the rest of this disputation we'll spend talking more about the priesthood but right here he's just like if just one of you had Zeal for my law and for me that you would stand up and you would shut the doors of the temple and say no one else comes in here that you D the Flames of sacrifice and say nothing else gets sacrificed in this altar.

If just one of you would stand up for righteousness just one of you had a Zeal to do what is good and would shut the doors but there's none among you that are doing this none of you are standing up to end this charade this farce this Bakery and God continues verse 11 for from the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be great among the Nations and in every place incense will be offered to my name and a pure offering.

For my name will be great among the Nations says the Lord of hosts so God reminds them who they're trying to con he reminds them who they're trying to trick I am the God God who amongst all the nations All Peoples from the farthest stretches of the Eastern sky where it rises to the farthest skies in the west where it sets everywhere across the world is what he's saying I will be worshiped incense will be offered that's the picture of worship worship will be offered amongst all the nations do you know who you're trying to con do you understand who you are trying to trick I'm the.

God over all peoples and one day you're going to see me worship among all the nations and you think that you can bring this type of charade before me what a travesty here is what the people fail to see God doesn't need their sacrifices God doesn't need their worship God doesn't need the temple he didn't need any of this God is inexhaustible he will be worshiped amongst the Nations he he doesn't need this worship but they believed they could bring their worst and pass it off as their best they belied they could come to the temple with this charade and it was all going to be good.

God says you don't know who you are worshiping you don't know who you are conning here and he continues in verse 12 but you profane it when you say that the Lord's table is polluted and its fruit that is its food may be despised but you say what a weariness this is and you snort at it says the Lord of post which what he just said was is not only are you doing a charade not only is all this fake you're bored with it you're you're bored what a weary what how weary is this he's like you're bored with this Con and you even picture that like just day in day out the priest who.

Doesn't care about his calling just doing it it's a job just puts on his Priestly garments and walks out there and says all right what you got next um you that animal looks good yep B in there drop your money off of the the offering plate like if just day in day out just bored with it and God is incensed by this you're not only is a charade you're bored with it and then it gets worse he says you bring what has been taken by violence or is lame or sick and this you bring as your offering shall I accept that from your hand says the.

Lord so not only are these lame and blind animals and they're bringing their worst not only it's everyone just kind of bored with this charade there are even people who are bringing sacrifices that they took by force which means that the kind of people that had a field and they saw their neighbors Ram wander into their field and they said that's a nice one I'll take that for myself that'll be the one that I offer at sacrifice uh at at the next Temple Festival.

So I don't have to get rid of any of my own what a a great deal and the ram wanders in he takes it into his fold and his neighbor comes out and says have you seen my Ram it's about Yi it's got spots on it oh there it is oh you found it so oh thank you so much and he says nope it's mine now takes it by force and then thinks that he can go and offer that as a sacrifice to.

God it's like are you kidding me do you know who you're trying to con here shall I accept that from your hand says the Lord the this is how corruption had seeped into the people of God who either did not read the Torah did not read the law or read it and did not care but just said this is what we do we're going to continue bringing these sacrifices that's what we do and God ends this first half of the disputation the.

First half of the dispute in verse 14 he said cursed be the cheat who is a male in his flock and vows it and yet sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished for I am a great king says the Lord of hosts and my name will be feared among the Nations so God calls them cheats you have cheated me out of what is rightfully mine God owns everything everything belongs to God everything I mean we're very individualistic we're very you know capitalistic culture and I earn this no.

God gave this to you you are a steward we are stewards of what God has given us we are co- reigning with God on this Earth bringing Dominion to this Earth but that ain't yours it's God's and he and he's calling this out you've cheated God out of what he so rightfully deserves but I will get by Glory amongst the Nations and the Nations will fear me so that's the first half of this and you got to ask the question like what why why do they think they could do this what's going on in their brain.

When they're in their soul when they're actually doing this because we don't give there's not like further verses that explain exactly why they did this we can tell a little bit from the context and I think you could read into this and kind of see kind of the most plausible reasons but I think one of the big ones is is that bringing a sacrifice is costly it just is it costs money cost time cost the energy of your like it that it's costly.

So I think part of them really just love what they had and they they love this world they love Earthly treasures and being able to pass off a lame sacrifice was just easier I think it's also very possible that really they really wanted to do was to give the appearance of godliness to get the appearance of worship to we give the appearance of what it looks like to be a holy man of God a holy woman of God that they' pass this off.

Because they like the appearance without actual sacrifice without actual worship so next week what we're going to do is we're going to look at really the priests and their role in this but this picture that he ends with here in verse 14 is something we need to sit in because what happens sometimes is that we can read things like this and distance ourselves because it feels foreign to us cuz spoil alert next year between songs we're not going to bring out a ram and cut his throat like that's I know that's going to shock you.

But that's just not what we do here and there's a reason we don't do that first off be wildly weird uh second Jesus fulfilled that entire system so people wonder why why don't you why why does the Old Testament law not continue like it because is Christ Christ becomes the final sacrifice fulfilling that system like that the whole book of Hebrews helps poetically and wonderfully help helps capture this idea the reason we don't offer sacrifices is because Jesus was the final sacrifice that everything in this system this offering of unblemished rams and unblemished Bulls and unblemished uh pure offerings this is all meant to point.

For that was the main goal was a shadow of what was to come it was ultimately pointing forward to the unblemished perfect sacrifice of Christ when Christ comes fulfills this with his death on the cross and his blood is shed for the sins of the people for the rest of time we point back to the Spotless land that died in our place in Christ so that when we read this though it feels foreign because we're so far removed from it because we don't do this it feels ancient feels foreign and it's easy us to read this.

Look at the people of God and even have the mindset of how Wicked is this how broken were the people thinking they could do something like this which honestly is a little bit of a historical historical fallacy that's just what a lot of people do when they look back at history people look back at history and said I would have never done that back then I would have never I would have acted justly I'd have been a warrior for what is good and it's like probably not CU you're Sinner and your heart's Wicked and you're more influenced by the by the culture of the time just like every single human being.

For the last thousands of years so no you're not like some Star Spangled awesome example that would stand out no you're just you're just not and it's and we'll do that sometimes you just read this and just kind of separate yourself from it all and it doesn't do it reflectively we so the way that we should read this is to understand the truth of what's happening in this text and actually look at our own hearts and ask some questions of ourselves of what's happening in our hearts.

When we worship the God in what ways do We Worship the Lord that has the appearance of godliness but in actuality it profanes the name of our God like in what ways do we bear the name of Christ but our actions and the way that we live show something different in a way that God Says by the way that you are living it shows that you despise my name so the question here is how do we worship though not in the same form.

But actually has the same kind of substance and Same Heart that's the bigger question that's at play for us as we read this text now there are a few different words for worship in the New Testament a few different words in the Greek that help capture worship the the two main uses are a type of worship that is praise singing kind of prostrating yourself humbling yourself before God so the main use of worship in the New Testament is that picture this praising of.

God like the songs that we just sang okay that's the first main use of worship in the New Testament you see over and ever again is this humbling joyfully praising the Lord the second main use is service it's the type of Life Worship how we honor the Lord with our lives How We Worship the Lord with our lives and how we live our lives so praise and life and those are the two main uses of worship in the New Testament then we should.

Look at how they worship with the system ask those same questions of our own lives within those two categories and that's what I want to do for a moment I want to look at how we might have the same Folly the same error when it comes to praise worship and Life Worship so first how might we be a people that have the same sinful patterns that the Israelites did and how we praise and bring our praise and worship to God so some of us might worship boldly on a Sunday with hands hands raised singing loudly and what we're really doing is we're more worried about how people.

See us how they see us lift our hands and how they hear our voices that we know the words of this song and and and what we're doing there is we're more concerned about how we look as opposed to actually worshiping God for who he is and that makes us the center of worship this is a really big danger for those who lead in worship because one of the problems is is that when you lead in worship sometimes it can be.

So performative you can so Focus so much on on on the technical aspects and how you sound and if we're on beat and all the different technical aspects of worship it becomes performative that you lose the thread on what it's actually supposed to be helping lead the people of God in all of who Jesus is and worshiping our King for who he is I mean years ago Raz this is a quote that he loved I don't remember where it came from.

But basically the the idea that came out of it was is that if the all the electricity was taken out of the building could we still worship God like we're supposed to and it's like oh that's man so there's a performative aspect that gets in the way that we're not actually thinking and worshiping God like we're supposed to some of us go through the motions of Sunday worship sing the song and we listen to the sermon and the whole time it's happening the whole hour and 15 minutes it's happening or 90 minutes depending on who's preaching how many jokes he's got to tell and the whole time that's happening your mind is elsewhere you're thinking.

About things from the week last week you're thinking about things you got to do today you're thinking about things that are coming up and you go through this just check in the box and sing King of Kings cool pray all right sermon cool all right and then you're out and you're just going through the motions we're just going through the motions check in boxes as opposed to seeing what we have here as a gift a gift that God has given us that we get to come together with the people of.

God and worship him and Enlighten him for who he is because he's wonderful and he's worthy of it it's good for our souls to do that now way this can happen and less can happen in our Church because of how we giving but there can be a little bit of part of worship is I'm bring my offerings and I want to be seen as someone who gives I want to be seen as a giver which the offering plate could make that a bigger temptation.

But we've robbed you of that so you got to do it at these boxes in a way that would be more performative which doesn't happen as much but it's the heart behind it is I I want to be seen as someone who's generous who's seen as someone who brings their offerings before the Lord and it's not about actually sacrificially giving God joyfully this is what we're bringing to you but it's it's about being seen there's a lot of different ways this can play out the heart behind it is all there it's a charade it it it's checking the boxes it's being seen it's not actually worshiping like we're supposed to that.

Second category of Life Worship this honor and worship that we're supposed to have we're supposed to give to God in every aspect of Our Lives that's a bigger one that many of us fall into and it's especially hard because we're in the South and Southern Christianity is just I mean the overwhelming majority of people in the South will claim to be a Christian like people from the north move down here and they're like there are churches everywhere do you not see this this isn't normal and it's not there like more churches per capita in the South than almost anywhere in the world and what happens is is that Christianity is just who we are it's.

What we're supposed to do and what happens is is that anyone claims to be a Christian in the South and what happens if if there is any bit of regularity in Sunday worship that Sunday becomes the Pinnacle of what it means to be a Christian that this is it this is the height of it but it doesn't actually show up in the other aspects of life doesn't show up in the regular repentance and walking this out in community doesn't show up and reading the Scriptures and being convicted doesn't sing up in the prayers and humbling ourselves before the.

Lord and it's this life that says I'm a Christian but the rest of life doesn't back it up at all now the way this happens in the South profaning the name of the Lord claiming the name of the Lord and acting very different it shows up in business practices shows up in using the name of God to gain Social Capital with others or business Capital with others that's why when I see a Jesus fish on a bumper on a a business card I get a little nervous oh boy you know I I used to.

So many of you know this I did Real Estate uh by vocationally I was a pastor and a real estate agent for years and now I'm just full-time here I still have my license but uh for years my license at the same place is at a brokerage um and my brokerage I love like I just I love them it's a Rowdy group of people it's kind of known to be a Rowdy group of people they just they're they're good at what they do.

But they have fun and it's a Rowdy crew and I for years would go to the office and they knew I was a pastor and you know just some jokes that kind of come with that that they're fun but they really I think they appreciated me I'm not a moralist I don't tell people how to live I tell them who to live for I tell them about Jesus but I'm not going to tell them how to live so you can live your life do whatever you want and I and I operated in there.

For years and one of the things that I found incredibly frustrating is that there was uh another brokerage that really built their name off Christ they they kind of built their branding off of Jesus and what was wildly frustrating was they also had a reputation from some of their agents doing some shady stuff and I heard our guys talk about that brokerage and make fun of them oh yeah they're Jesus he real Christian over there and they did some of the most unethical things in the market and it just drove me nuts.

Because I had a bunch of Rowdy group of people but they did things ethically and right and as a Christian I'm there and I'm trying to represent Christ and I got agents across town just doing stupid foolish wicked things infuriates me that mess happens all over the place people that bear the name of Christ that use the name of Christ to advance their career or their their their their resume in a Christian culture and its wickedness and it profanes the name of.

God you must despise the name of God to practice like that so it can happen the way way that we live our lives in the business world how we work it can happen in the offerings that we bring to the Church so the money that we bring to the Church if it's if it's given off of stuff that's stolen from other people stolen from the government and what's owed to the government stolen from from any anyone or anything and we bring that and say.

God here's your gifts here's your offerings that aspect of our life has not been Sanctified it's not Jesus is working it show that's not worship that's a charade it's not breaking your heart to do what is actually good honestly with this category it's just it's anything that claims the name of Christ anything that simply that that simply has the appearance of godliness has the has Jesus slapped on top of it but actually is not backed up at all or maybe it's you're the kind of person that that has the mindset of I'm just I'm doing good.

So I can get into heaven and I'm just getting Kingdom credits through just claiming to be a Christian and doing the things and whatever but it actually isn't backed up by a life where the heart has been so sh so changed and captured by Christ that though we walk sometimes in sin and make mistakes that we're walking that out in Repentance and worshiping and delighting in him if it's not that then you're just going to the motion and you're checking boxes and it doesn't honor.

God there two main aspects of worship but it's praising here in a Sunday or the lives that we live it really shows our hearts that we're not all that much different than the Israelites whether it's we're doing it to be seen as holy I'm checking boxes so I can be seen as one of the good ones or if it's just the idea of of well it's just what we do we're seveners and we're Christians therefore we just we do the things.

When it's actually not a vibrant faith that costs a vibrant Faith where Jesus said says take up your cross and follow me to deny yourself and follow me that the moment that Christianity becomes you having to be someone who's repenting of sin or being obedient to his mission or being sacrificial with your life towards others or the moment There's an actual cost like I don't know about that that's a little overly religiously that's just a little bit too much for me it's just what we do and that's the heart.

But how we approach this and the reality is is our approach to God what what what what's really revealed in how we actually approach life is that sometimes the way that we the way that we that we live our lives earnestly for things that we can see for Governors that oversee us for for for employers that oversee us for the people that actually can bring the the change we can see in our lives that will do more earnestly for those worldly things than we will.

For God and it reveals what's happening in our hearts and it reveals that any of the practices that we bring here in a Sunday or in groups or whatever is more of a charade brothers and sisters Ecclesiastes is correct there is nothing new Under the Sun we we we repurpose and we repackage the same old practices the same old things we're just like the Israelites and there was a prophet that was raised up to help them see the error of their ways that Malachi is trying to help them.

See don't do this don't do this here don't don't don't engage in these practices and we have a better Prophet a better priest and our great high priest in Christ and a better King in Jesus who came and shed his blood for us and offer sacrifice blood to cover our sins and his perfect righteousness to stand for us and it invites us into that kind of faith we put all of our hope in Christ and then calls us into a worship that Romans 12:1 teaches I appeal you there appeal to you.

Therefore Brothers by the mercies of God to present your bodies as the Living Sacrifice holy and acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship though he place all of our hope in the finished work of Christ he changes us and then sets us apart to present Our Lives as a Living Sacrifice to God that we might lay down our lives to follow him and to worship him and to Delight in him and it would show up in all the different aspects of how we sing and how we live and what we do.

But I'll finish back with verse 14 when the Lord says cursed be the cheat who has a male in his flock and vows it yet sacrifice to the Lord what is blemished for I am a great king says the Lord of hosts and my name will be feared among the Nations just remember God doesn't need this he do need this he's going to be worshiped amongst the Nations he's going to be glorified every knee is going to bow to him he doesn't need this this.

And if this ever becomes a charade if this ever if we ever the Church that preaches a Gospel and doesn't live if weever a Church that says all the right things but that doesn't actually back it up with our lives if all this just becomes checking boxes and just performative then man let's close the doors let's lock it up I'll go back to selling real estate I mean just we'll lock the doors we'll sell this building off that educational Wing you can make condos out of that thing this could be a nice little bar in and and and music venue I mean let's close up the doors and say move on.

Because God doesn't need a half-hearted people that are just going through the motions he wants a people who laid down their lives because we love him so deeply and we realize eternally what that he's worth it and we be a people that backed that up with our lives not as perfect people because we're going to make mistakes but where we see our sin we're confronted by the good news of the Gospel and we trust in him as our only hope and and we walk this out worshiping him and honoring him.

But if that ain't it we'll close the doors and move on but there are four Elders here that are never going to let that happen first their own lives and then as we lead forward we want to be a people who don't treat this as a charade but take the Lord seriously and the good news is God loves us enough to reveal this to us God loves us enough to be able to reveal what's happening in our hearts Stay With Me loves us enough to reveal what's happening in our hearts.

So that we can go to our community groups this week and confess sin and confess where we're falling short confess where we've treated this like a charade that we can be a people that actually are changed by Jesus and become better worshippers come better people who Delight in him but also there might be some of you where all this has ever been is going through the motions and all this has ever been is checking boxes and I want you to see.

See so clearly this morning God loves you enough to confront you and to call you into an actual real sacrificial faith in him don't treat this like a charade don't treat this as checkin boxes he's actually worth it and he's good and when you truly discover who our God is and you lay your life down for him you'll see that everything that comes after that is wonderful and is delightful and is worth it let me pray heavenly father I pray that you would help convict us of sin I pray that you'd help us.

Remember the good news of the Gospel that saves us so that we can be a people that actually worship you we can be a people that actually lay down our lives for you because it's good because we gain more of you because you died on a cross for our sins and you have a Heavenly home that await says and that's worth it it's worthy of Our Lives May we be a people that worship you not half-heartedly but truthfully in Jesus name amen man's going to come up and as we prepare to worship take a few moments to just breathe and pray.

Remember who this God is remember who he is and that he's worthy he will be worshiped amongst the Nations every KNE is going to conf is going to Bow every tongue is going to confess that he is Lord that is who our God is he's worthy of it so prepare your hearts to respond in worship but if you don't know him the invitation is there for you to actually know him and to surrender him and for this not to be something that you check off.

But to be a means of delighting in him because he's worthy of it.

Mill City 10/30/23 Mill City 10/30/23

Malachi Week 1: God’s Special Love

Group Guide

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Transcript

Good morning. I know what you're thinking. Not one more week of theology of sex plus man. One week more. No, we are going to finish out the year in the book of Malachi.

My name is Spencer and I'm one of the pastors here and we're going to be that's in page 467, your blue Bibles. If you don't have a Bible at home, you can take that. We want you have a Bible that you can uh read at home. But we're going to be in the book of Malachi for the rest of the year. It is the final book of the Old Testament.

Uh, and it's often referred to as one of the minor prophets. Um, that doesn't it's not a statement of value on the prophet itself. Um, it doesn't mean anything other than just it has fewer words. They're the major prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Isaiah. And then this is in the minor prophets.

Four chapters packs a punch. And we're going to be on it to finish out the year. And we start off in verse one, chapter 1. The oracle, that's prophecy. The oracle of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi.

Now, [clears throat] like many of the prophets, it starts off with which prophet is speaking. This is Malachi. We don't really know much about Malachi. It's only mentioned one other time in the Bible. Some will try to argue that this actually isn't a prophet.

And Malachi just means my messenger. But most realize, no, this actually is a prophet. We just don't know much about him. Now we know that the book of Malachi is quoted throughout the New Testament. In the book of Luke, Jesus quotes Malachi.

We know Paul quotes Malachi. But what we can understand about the context of this prophet really comes from the writings itself. And when we look at kind of the writings and some of the language that's used in the book of Malachi, we can kind of tell where it shows up. Um, but it it shows up around the period after Ezra and Nehemiah. Some of the language is very very similar to those books which means that if it's coming after Ezra and Nehemiah it makes it the last prophetic words the last authoritative words of the old testament in the old testament period.

So this is the last uh words about 500 to 450ish BC there the last words before Jesus comes. So, it's an important prophet, especially as we head into uh the Advent and Christmas season coming up. So, in order to understand Malachi, I want to give a little context because we're jumping right into a part of the Old Testament. Might be helpful a little bit to have some history for where Malachi shows up. So, I'm going to go back a little bit before Malachi.

Um, hundreds of years before, really at the height of the kingdom of Israel, uh, David was king. Everything was going fairly well. Solomon was king. things were prosperous and well because of some of the sin that Solomon engaged in. God says, "I'm going to tear your kingdom in two." And after, it's not going to happen to you, but it's going to happen with your son.

And that's what happens that uh the kingdom splits and you have the northern kingdom, which is the 10 northern tribes minus Judah and Benjamin. And then you have the southern kingdom, which is Judah and Benjamin, the kingdom of Judah. So you have these two kingdoms. And the northern kingdom, Israel, quickly starts to reject the Lord. They start to engage in abominable practices like sacrificing their children to foreign idols, like setting up Asherapoles that they start engaging all types of corrupt practices and God brings judgment upon the northern kingdom for this.

Eventually the Assyrians come in and they basically decimate the very identity of the northern kingdom. I mean they they destroy it. There are some people that can trace their lineage back to these 10 northern tribes but they get mixed in with the surrounding nations and the northern kingdom is no more. Then you have the kingdom, the southern kingdom of Judah. It makes it a little bit longer.

It takes a little bit longer for some of these abominable practices to really infiltrate the kingdom of Judah. But eventually they engage in some of the very same things. And then God brings judgment upon the kingdom of Judah. The Babylonian Empire comes in, destroys, lays siege to Jerusalem, and takes the majority of the people back to Babylon, which is what Jeremiah was prophesying about, that they were going to spend 70 years in captivity. So, they spend 70 years not in their land amongst the people of Babylon.

And then finally, there's this anticipation, this excitement that they're finally going to get to go back. That's what Ezra and Nehemiah, when you read those books in the Old Testament, are describing when they start to resettle the homeland. You can read the book of Ezra and see how they're rebuilding the temple and the excitement that comes into them rebuilding the temple. You can read the book of Nehemiah and see that they're building the city walls. There's this excitement, anticipation for this period that it's going to be great.

But what happens in this period is lots of other sins. They have to address the fact that they intermarried with uh foreigners which was against the Old Testament law that when they're rebelling the temple they don't actually take the uh practices of temple sacrifice seriously and this becomes a problem and they start cutting corners that when you look at all the different aspects of the law that they're supposed to uphold one by one start to many of them start to fall by the wayside. But it's kind of antilimactic because there was this big hope that finally we've made it through judgment. Now we're back home and things are going to be better. There's going to be a new era where the Messiah comes in and he's going to make everything better.

It's going to be an exciting period of time. But they kind of fall into uh not some of the same practices that happened before. like they're not setting up astropoles and sacrificing their children to foreign idols, but they're basically just kind of going through the motions. They're kind of half-heartedly worshiping the Lord, just kind of getting by and disregarding and not taking seriously some parts of the law. You see that in the book of Ezra and Nehemiah.

And then it shows up here in Malachi because Malachi, God through his prophet is going to be addressing this uh this kind of faithless o uh half-hearted obedience amongst the people. And he's going to do it through six different disputations, six different disputes that God makes with his people. And that's what we're going to be seeing over the next couple of months are these six different disputes that God has with the people. And as we walk through the book of Malachi, what we're going to see is that there are a lot of parallels between what the people of God are engaging in and some of the half-hearted worship that is happening amongst the people of God and really our context as Christians in the south in America where there are churches all over the place down here that there's some similarities between us and the way that we kind of practice a cultural faith and the way that they were practicing their cultural faith.

We'll see next week that uh Malachi goes after them begrudgedly bringing offerings and not taking offerings seriously and their worship. And we'll see some parallels but between them and us and some of the ways that we don't take our worship seriously. We're going to see in a couple of weeks how God calls out the priesthood that he takes the priesthood to the woodshed for some of the ways that they are not taking uh the law seriously. And there's a lot of parallels between how uh Malachi, how the God is dressing the people in the priesthood and how the American pastor could be addressed today and some of the corrupt practices and some of the things that aren't taken seriously today.

You're going we're going to see in the coming weeks some uh uh God addresses the fact that uh the people had not taken their marital covenant seriously. That there are uh people that are not taking their marital covenant seriously. There's some bigger things that are happening there. But there some parallels even between us and the uh uh the American Church in that time period about how we don't take our marital covenant seriously. We're going to see some parallels between the fact that God was addressing some of the corrupt uh business practices, some of the neglect for the poor when it comes to money amongst the people of God.

And there are a lot of parallels even to our time and some of the ways that Christians conduct business today and a way that when you see a a business card that has the Jesus fish on it, you kind of hope and pray that they actually back that up and sometimes they don't. We're going to see the ways that we neglect the poor and some of the parallels between us. We're going to see how God addresses uh their lack of sacrificial giving that they were called to give tithes, which is a tenth of their income to the Lord and they were neglecting this. And in one of the disputes, God is addressing this. And we're also going to see how we also don't engage in that sacrificial sacrificial giving that God calls us to.

There are a lot of parallels between what God is addressing in the book of Malachi and how God could address us as well. And that's what we're going to see in the coming months as we walk through this. Now, it's a prophet. It's corrective in a lot of ways, and it's going to be heavy at times, and the people are going to be uh rebuked for a host of different things. before before God starts to correct some of the ways that they are half-heartedly worshiping the Lord, some of the half-hearted disobedience and obedience that's happening.

Before he does that, he has a simple message out the gate to his people. And it's this. I love you. I love you. He loves his people.

He wants them to understand his love, his covenant love for his people before he begins to rebuke the different things that need correction amongst the people of God. And that's what we're going to see today. We're going to see the wonderful covenant love that God has for his people, especially when circumstances may show us something different. that God's covenant love is real and it is wonderful no matter our circumstances. That's what we're going to see.

So, let me pray for us and then we'll walk through this first few verses together. Heavenly Father, we pray that you would help us have a posture to receive your word. That as we walk through this book over the next two months, that you would mold us and shape us and conform us into your image. But that comes through first believing the Gospel. We can't be a people that change without understanding your wonderful love and how you came for us first.

So help us believe that and help us receive your word and walk it out in faith and in obedience and repentance and in delighting in worshiping you. We ask this in Jesus name. Amen. All right.

So verse one says, "The oracle of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi." Now, Israel at this point, just to for context, as we're going to be in the book of Malachi, we're not talking about northern southern kingdom anymore. This is from this point forward, Israel is all the people of God. So to Israel by Malachi, verse two, I have loved you, says the Lord. I have loved you. Now, we're going to see how that love is anchored in God's covenant love for his people in a moment some of the language that surrounds this.

But before he goes on to rebuke his people for their faithlessness, they need to hear this. They need to absorb this. I love you. And in verse six, as we're going to see next week, he uses the language of father and son.

This is the type of love that God has for his people. like a father and his children. He loves them and they need to absorb this and believe this. I mean, if you're a parent, you you understand this, right?

Like we as parents are called to discipline our children. I love I love my children and and I and I want them to be disciplined and I discipline them because I love them and also because I love you because if I did not discipline them, you would not like them. They would be unlikable. So, it's not just for the good of them, it's for the good of society, right?

We we're called to discipline. But when I discipline my children, like I I want them to know I love you so much. Like I I love you fiercely. I'm for you. I love you.

And they need this. They need to understand us out the gate. I have loved you, says the Lord. But you say, "How have you loved us?" So God says, "I loved you." But they seem to be questioning that love. I love you, but they're saying, "How?" How many of us have felt this?

How many of us have wondered that same kind of well, how I mean, sometimes you go through you're in the throws of suffering and you're just getting like pounded. It's just one thing after the next after the next after the next. Maybe a Christian in the most the kindest like not uh cliche way possible. They really genuinely just look at you and say God loves you. Don't forget that that God loves you.

And you might think really he's got a funny way of showing it because my like it's not good right now. My situation is bleak. My situation is like my life is miserable. He loves me. I just how well I I think many of us if we're honest feel this on some level at some point in our lives.

Maybe you feel this so deeply right now in this season like I just I can't see that. I can't feel that. I can't like I just hard for me to wrap my mind around how God could love me right now. And the people are here, the people that God is prophesying to in this period of time are feeling that. How does God love me?

And God wants to make it clear. I love you. And he couches this language in covenantal love language. That's what we see in verses 2-4. He says, "I have loved you, says the Lord.

But you say, how have you loved us?" God answers. It's not Esau, Jacob's brother, declares the Lord. Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated. I've laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to the jackals of the desert. If Edom says, "We are shattered, but we will rebuild the ruins." The Lord of Hosts says, "They may build, but I will tear down, and they will be called the wicked country and the people with whom the Lord is angry forever." So, if you're not familiar with that language, it's kind of jarring.

So, God's proving his covenant love by saying, "I love you, Jacob. I love you, descendants of Jacob." You know how you know this? I hated Esau. It's like what?

That's if you're not familiar with the story, if you're not familiar with the language here, it's like God has a beef with Esau. Okay, what's happening here? Context. Context. Context.

Context. That's your approach to the Scriptures in all the places. Context matters, right? That's for all of language, you guys. If I said dropping crumbs, I use that phrase, dropping crumbs.

Some of you might think children just getting crumbs everywhere cuz that's what they do. Or you might think, "Oh, Hansel and Gretle, I remember that story." Or you might be younger and think, "Oh, you're rich and you're dropping crumbs cuz you got money to spend." And that's you just you're dishing out, you buying things, you're dropping crumbs, which is what some of the young kids say. All right? Context matters. Who are they talking to?

The language that they're using, all of that matters when you approach the Scriptures. So when he says this, you got to clue in and say, "Wait, wait. What do you mean hatred?" Context matters. Hatred certainly could mean per personal animosity. That he could have personal hatred for Esau.

Okay, that's a possibility. I mean, you can't read the Psalms without seeing that God has some personal animosity towards the wicked, towards those who tread upon the poor, towards those who are violent towards others. That certainly is a possibility. But when you read this, you see this is actually covenantal language. This is a language of covenant love, acceptance of Jacob and covenant rejection of Esau.

That's what's happening here. And if you know the story of Jacob and Esau, the story basically is the the the promise to bless the nations came through Abraham. Abraham passes that down to Isaac. Isaac eventually passes that down to his one of his two sons and Esau's the older and if you read kind of the more likable one and then there's Jacob the younger and you would think Esau is going to maintain the blessing. Esau is going to maintain the it's going to go through him and that's what happened a lot with amongst the people.

The blessing goes to the older son. But God chooses by his sovereign choice, Jacob. And he gives covenantal acceptance and love towards Jacob. He rejects Esau. That's what's happening here.

That's what Paul when he quotes this passage in Malachi later on the book of Romans. That's what Paul is tapping into when he is trying to help the people of God understand it's by God's sovereign choice to whom he shows mercy and favor to. So this is covenantal language reminding them I chose you. I chose your descendants. I chose Jacob, Israel.

I chose y'all and I love you. I love you. I've rejected Esau and his descendants who are called the They have been rejected. I love you. Now, that's important for them to hear because right now that is somewhat hard for them to believe because the people of God have come back from exile.

They're coming back to the promised land. They're coming back with the hope to resettle their lands, their heritage. When they get back, the the descendants of Esau, have taken over vineyards. They've taken over parts of their land and they've gotten back and they're like, "You love us?

Our sworn enemy has taken parts of the land. Our sworn enemy is is all over our area. They're not in the kingdom of Edom anymore. They're now extended all the way here." So, they're doubting this covenant love.

[snorts] Now certainly certainly the people of God would have understood why this happened in their absence. Certainly they would have understood that because of what they did because their forefathers rejected God and and and committed all types of abominable practices and idol worship they rejected God. They earned judgment. I mean the prophet Jeremiah is making that clear over and over again. In Jeremiah chapter 9, it says, "Which was prophesied by Jeremiah, I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, a layer of jackals, and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation without inhabitant." That before this judgment comes from Babylon, Jeremiah is telling him, "This is what's going to happen." And he's making the point because you have rejected your God, you're going to become a a desolate land, a heap of ruins, a layer of jackals.

They knew that. They remember the prophet Jeremiah. So they understand that judgment is that this is this is why they're in the state that they're in. But the hope is it's like wait but but you still love us and we come back and still the land is not completely ours. So while they may understand this necessary judgment, it is hard for them to understand the the covenant love that God has for them because the land is not completely theirs.

And all they can see is their present circumstances. All they can see is what's right in front of them. And God is trying to lift up their eyes, trying to pick up their head a little bit, try to help them see what's about to happen. That's what God does with his people. He just gently, he lifts your head and says, "Look what I'm about to do.

Look at what I'm about to show you." And that's what's happening here when he says, "I have laid waste his hill country." I want you to hear the similarities between the what the prophet Jeremiah said of the temporary judgment upon his people and what he's about to with the same language apply permanent judgment to the He says, "I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert." Same language. If Edom says, "We are shattered, but we rebuild the ruins." So beatum says, "Oh, we're down for the count for now, but we're going to get back up off the mat." The Lord of Hosts says, "They may build, but I will tear down, and they will be called wi the wicked country and the people with whom the Lord is angry forever." So this temporary judgment that happened to the people of God is going to permanently happen to the And that makes sense because what's about to happen to the is a group of uh nomadic people called the Nabotans are about to come in and they're about to completely uproot the They're about to come and completely take over the land of Edom and all the are going to shrink back and then eventually they're not going to have their own land and eventually they're not going to be their own people anymore. The reason you don't hear about the past Malachi and the New Testament is because they don't exist anymore. So God's judgment is about to come upon the and God is helping his own people see this. He's helping them see this is what's about to happen.

I have favor upon you. I love you, but all they can see right now is what's right in front of them. All they can see is their present circumstances and how things are right now. But God's trying to help them see, no, no, you need to understand what's about to happen. And that's how this first disputation, this first dispute ends in verse five.

Your own eyes shall see this and you shall say, great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel. So the people have questioned the goodness and the love and the favor of God. And God is lifting their eyes up and saying, "You're going to see this." Now, the way that's going to be immediately answered is what I just talked about. The fact that the are going to shrink back. They're going to take retake some of their vineyards, and the are eventually going to fall by the wayside.

And the God's power beyond the border of Israel and the land of Edom is going to be shown. So, they're about to see that. That's the immediate context. But like all the prophets of the Old Testament, that's not all that's happening. There's some immediate things that are being addressed, but also God is pointing forward to something bigger.

This is bigger than just Edom falling. This is bigger than God's power just happening there. The reality is is that one day God is going to send the Messiah and God is going to extend the work beyond the borders of Israel. And that prophecy from the Old Testament resounds into the New Testament. And that happens when Christ comes.

That when Jesus ultimately comes, God is going to work past the border. That his power is going to be made great beyond the border of Israel. And that's going to happen through Jesus going to the cross and his blood being poured out on behalf of his people and also the nations. That's going to happen when he rises from the grave and defeats the power of death by his resurrection. That's going to happen when the offer of salvation is made not just to the Jews, but to the Gentiles and to the nations.

This prophecy is going to be ultimately fulfilled when the people of God are called ultimately to a home that is past the border of Israel, but to an eternal home with God. That's where all of this is going. So, we as Christians get to read this and understand what's happening at the very beginning of this, what God's covenant love actually is because we got to see that embodied and fulfilled in Christ. And yet, many of us, if we're honest, [snorts] still can't really wrap our minds around that. Like, we still can't like we just we still can't fully realize that.

We can't fully see that clearly. And that shows up in how our lives reflect that belief, which we're going to see throughout the rest of the book of Malachi. That many of us are just going through the motions of faith and not actually displaying the type of obedience that believes the promises of God that believes God's redemptive work. That's what we're going to see throughout the rest of the book of Malachi. But for right here and what he's addressing, part of the problem for us is we just can't see past our uncircumstances.

We just can't see past what's right in front of us. Like we just we hear that God loves you. Don't you know God loves you? We just we we can't see it. It's just like I just [snorts] then why is everything so bad?

Like why is life so daggum hard? Like why is why are things so difficult? If God loves me, then what then why is what what's wrong with this picture? If we're honest, we feel that like just so deeply. We we feel that.

And if you're like, "No, I've never felt that. I'm I just I don't believe you. Like I just we all at some point like we we question the love of God." It's it's it's this side of the fall just a reality that plagues us that we just can't really believe when God says he loves us, that he really actually loves us. But he does. And we're we're stuck in the middle right now.

When we do the Lord's supper, we talk about how uh we're uh between the cross, the events of what Jesus did, his life, death, and resurrection that we celebrate when we come to the table. That this is what he has done for us. And we remember the the work of Christ by taking the Lord's supper. Remember what he did for us. But that also points forward to the day that he returns when he comes and he makes all things new and the kingdom is consummated.

meaning that heaven comes down to earth and he remakes everything and we live with God and we dwell and gaze upon his beauty for an eternity. That both of those are God's redemptive covenantal love. But we're stuck here between the two of them. And as we're here, life is just sometimes pounding us, throwing haymakers at our soul over and over and over again. And we just can't pick our heads up to see either of those clearly.

Like sometimes it just feels like we're on a ship in the middle of the ocean, in the middle of a storm that just won't end. And every day we go out, it's the same pounding waves and the same wind and the same gray skies. There's no break in the horizon and the lightning's crashing and we got no control over this. We're just a deck hand on a ship and we're just mopping, doing our job, or we're moving cargo around and we got no control. And every day we walk out and we see the same mess, the same situation.

And maybe the captain's telling us, "Yep, I'm telling you, the storm's going to break. Yep, there's we're going to make it through this, but we can't see that." We go out every day, every day, every day, every day. Same thing. And it just like, what is this?

Is it ever going to break? That's what life feels like sometimes. That's what our circumstances feel like sometimes. Whether it's your financial situation, whether it's your familial situation, whether it's fill in the blank, you just over and over and over again, it just [snorts] doesn't feel like it's going to end. But the reality is is that while it may be hard to believe sometimes because of our circumstances that God's covenant love is real, it is.

And faith is picking our heads up and realizing something beyond our own circumstances. It's picking our head up and realizing God did love me. The evidence of God's perfect love is Christ. that he did not leave us in the storm, but that he came from heaven to redeem us. God does love us.

But you you have to remember the work of the cross. You have to look back at that and realize that happened. Our God loves us so much that he did come for us. That he did die for us. That he did rise for us to offer us life and fulfillment and joy that is found in him and not in our circumstances.

That we have to look at that and believe that did happen. I'm going to bank my life on that reality while we also look forward and realize yes there will be a day when he does come back and there will be a day where the pains of this life and the sufferings of this life and the trials of this life are temporary and that is eternal. I believe that is going to happen. Faith is lifting our eyes and seeing both of those with open eyes. That's what we're called to as Christians.

And while that is hard, that is faith. It is trusting in what we cannot see sometimes. It's trusting that we what we cannot see that we could not see that. But I believe with all of my life, yes, Jesus loves me so much that he gave his life up for me. And I believe yes, Jesus is going to make all of this new.

This life is temporary. It is like a vapor. It is here for a moment and that is gone. And that what awaits me is ultimately better. But that takes lifting our eyes up beyond our circumstances and trusting in the covenant love of God.

So as we walk through Malachi the next couple of months, he's going to beat us up a little bit. Just being honest, it's it's going to get in our grill a little bit, but that's because God loves us. And while we might have a propensity to read the rest of this book and go, I'm going to take worship seriously. I'm going to start giving more. I'm going to fill in the blank in all the ways he's going to correct us.

That means nothing if we don't build it upon the covenant love of Christ and the faith that informs that obedience in the first place. So brothers and sisters, I don't know where you are in your life right now. I don't know what you're facing right now. I don't know what your circumstances are right now, but the invitation is to lift up your head and to see the work of the cross and the final work of Christ and to believe in something bigger than your own circumstances.

The band's going to come up and we're going to take the Lord's supper and you're going to have an opportunity to do that right now. That as we come to the table, we remember the work of Christ. And I want you to do that like I as you come as you're sitting in your seat before you come to the table. I want you to picture Jesus immense love for you. I don't know what your circumstances are.

I don't know what you're facing. I I don't know what life has for you right now, but I want you to see that he loved you so much that 2,000 years ago, he gave up his life for you. For you. And I want you to joyfully come to the table remembering that whatever you're facing right now, it's temporary.

It's temporary circumstances. That what awaits us is better. And as a people and the tension between those two realities, we lift up our eyes. We place our hope in that covenant love and faithfulness and not what's right in front of us. If you are not a Christian, if you've never surrendered to the covenant love of God, if maybe for you life has just been a mix of of works and and Sunday coming and being a part of a group, I maybe I don't know what your story is, but if you haven't actually put all of your hope in the covenant love of God and what he has done for us, please do not come to this table.

That would be a meaningless work. Don't come to the table. Come to Christ. Believe. Put your faith in the covenant love of God and what he has done for you.

And then come and talk to us and we'll walk you through what it means to follow Christ. What it means to place your faith in Jesus. And then you'll be ready to come to the table. But when you are ready, Christians, come. There's gluten-free in that back corner over there.

Let me pray for us as we prepare to take the Lord's supper. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the good news of the Gospel of your covenant love and faithfulness towards us. I pray that we would place our hope in you and not the circumstances, not the things that you can do in this life, but what you have done for us and what you will do for us because that is better than anything this life has to offer. It's better than health. It's better than riches.

It's better than anything this world has to offer. God, I pray that you would help us place our hope in you. And for some people, that's going to be placing their hope and your covenant love and what you've done for us for the first time. And I pray that you would bend their hearts towards you in faith. And I pray that for all of us who are sinners in need of a savior that we joyfully come to the table as men and women between the cross and the new heavens and earth.

We ask this in Jesus name. Amen.

Mill City 10/23/23 Mill City 10/23/23

Theology of Sex+ Week 7: Christian Societal Ethics

Group Guide

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Mill City 10/16/23 Mill City 10/16/23

Theology of Sex+ Week 6: Transgenderism

Group Guide

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Transcript

Good morning my name is Chad I'm one of the pastors here uh grab a Bible if you will and go to Genesis chapter 1 we're going to be there we've been there for several weeks um as we have tried to wrap our head around uh the way God has designed us and uh what that means for us as we seek to follow him today we're going to talk about transgenderism um and this is something I believe that it's worth us taking some time to consider um the concept of transgenderism and the way that we've approached it culturally has changed rapidly uh in 2014 was one of the.

First times there was a Time Magazine cover 2014 so that's that's 10 years ago nine years ago that said that that was the new area that we needed to grow as a culture was in accepting transgenderism so there was a transgender uh person on the the cover of the Time magazine that said this is the new the new area where we're going to grow culturally this is the next thing that we need to grow in acceptance and and it was that that magazine cover was saying hey this is the future not not this is where we are.

Now but this is the next thing that's coming for us and that was in 2014 so we've rapidly changed how we've thought about this and approached this and so as our culture has shifted on it and as you've heard more about it seen more about it participated more in understanding what's going on around it we think it's helpful for us to take some time to just say what does the Bible tell us uh about this so transgenderism uh if you were to.

Look in a dictionary um English dictionary for most of English History and you were to look up the words gender and sex uh there would be a definition that was the same which is gender or sex dealing with Biology whether whether or not you are male or female but the the new way of thinking about this if you look it up now if you go to dictionary.com and you look it up is that sex deals with your biology your hormones your physical body whether you are male or female and that gender is separate from them that gender has to deal with your internal impression and your external expression of masculinity or femininity.

So that your gender can be different from your biological sex this is what's being taught this is the way that gender is to be understood now and so that someone can be uh their gender can be feminine or masculine and that can be connected or not connected to whether or not they were born male or female on transe equality.org it says it this way transgender is a broad term that can be used to describe people whose gender identity so that's internal impression or external Al expression is different from the gender they were thought to be.

When they were born meaning that they looked at their biology they looked at their physical traits and said this is a boy or this is a girl um painted the room blue and then were wrong that's what this is they grew up and it was that's not what they were their gender is something different than what they were thought to be and that's the way this is being taught and understood culturally now now there's a lot of different definitions this is changing all the time different people have different opinions on how this is.

But this is a a fair General representation that sex and gender are separate and that your gender can be different than your biology and that's what we're talking about this morning is how ought we to think about that is that okay what does the Bible have to say about that how should we inter in in in engage in that and then next week we're going to spend a good bit of time basically asking how do we as Christians live in a culture that disagrees with us on some things what does it.

Look like for you to be a Christian and follow Jesus and be faithful where a lot of people around you disagree with what you think so that's what we're going to do today we'll be in Genesis 1:26 I'm going to pray for us I would invite you to pray with me Lord we ask for wisdom we ask for Grace um none of us I don't think come into this neutrally I believe that we have opinions I don't think anybody just learned the concept of transgenderism just.

Now as I tried to explain it I think we have opinions I think we have interactions with this I think we have uh what our news stations or favorite YouTube people have told us to think and so Lord I just pray that you would help us to see what your word says on this to be kind and gracious and humble towards one another but to hold firmly to what you tell us is true we ask for your help and the empowerment of your spirit this morning in.

Jesus name amen I want to begin by telling us a story that is beautiful and sad Genesis CH 1 we're going to look in Genesis 1 and 2 it says this then God said so this is in the process of him creating everything he says let us make man that's Humanity in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the Earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So God created man in his own image in the image of God he created him male and female he created them so we spent some time here God made man and woman in His image we are created in the image of God that you were specifically gendered you were given of biological sex on purpose you were male or female and designed that way intentionally by God that's God's original and design and it says this and God blessed them so this gendered Humanity male and female is blessed.

God said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth and subdue it have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth and God said behold I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of the Earth and every tree with seed in its fruit you shall have them for food and to every beast of the earth and every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth everything that has the breath of life I have given every green plant.

For food and it was so and God saw everything that he had made and behold it was very good so God designed Humanity he designed our bodies he encased us embodies we are meant to be embodied we have a gender and that is built into how we image God uh one of the terms for this is tellos or tellos that we have a purpose that there's an end in mind in our design that there's purpose built into it we are not just set free to be whatever.

But we actually have God had purpose built into how he built us as CS Lewis puts it uh who is a um a writer and theologian philosopher uh in the 1900s he says this Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions which thoroughly approves of the body which believes that matter is good that God himself once took on a human body and that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in heaven and is going to be an essential part of our happiness we believe that your body is good that you were given it on purpose and that we are not going to one day die and Float off.

Into ethereal wispiness where we're free from our horrible Earth carcass we believe that we will be given new bodies and live on a new Heaven and a new Earth that we will en engage in this same sort of thing it'll be a renew Eternal Body it'll be a glorious one but we are embodied and that that is good and blessed so Christopher Yuan who is now a um Bible Professor but he was once a um practicing homosexual who was selling drugs got kicked out of dentist school.

For selling drugs which I didn't know much about dentist school but apparently they frown on you selling drugs I you can tell I don't know much about it cuz I'm calling it dentist school um but he says this in his book holy sexuality and the Gospel so he became a Christian and changed his lifestyle and he says this we know that we are created in God's image thus rejecting our inherent Essence and replacing it simply with what we feel or do is in reality an attempted coup d'a against our creator we don't need to find our identity our identity is given us by.

God so we believe that we're embodied and there's a purpose there there's intentionality there but it um gets sad I said the story was beautiful and sad well let's move to the to the last part of the beautiful part and then into the sad part so Genesis chapter 2: 24 God brings the man and woman together and it says therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

So one of the things that we said when we looked at this earlier was that they were perfectly comfortable in their bodies and perfectly comfortable in their gender and perfectly comfortable with the other person's body and their gender that they were naked and not ashamed that everything was fine they weren't concerned about their bodies they felt at home chapter 3 now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made and we find out later in the Scriptures that this isn't just any serpent this is actually Satan the Ultimate Enemy of.

God and man so the serpent he said to the woman did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden so God had planted a garden and he had planted the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life In The Garden but in the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil he said y'all can't eat from this one and so so the serpent comes along and he says God says y'all can't eat from any of these trees and the woman said to the serpent we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden.

But God said You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden neither shall you touch it lest you die which the text doesn't tell us that God said that you can't touch it or you'll die just not to eat of it but the enemy has come along and he's begun to ask is God really trustworthy isn't he withholding good from you can we really believe what he says but the serpent said to the woman this is verse four you will not surely die.

For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil you won't die you'll be like him you'll get to decide what's right and what's wrong you'll be the one who can be the Arbiter of truth and reality so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise she took of its fruit and ate she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate.

Then the eyes of both of were opened and they knew they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin cloths and they heard the sound of the Lord God Walking In The Garden in the cool of the day and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God Among the Trees of the garden but the Lord God Called To The Man and said to him where are you and he said I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid.

Because I was naked and I hid myself and he said who told you that you were naked have you eaten of the tree which I commanded you not to eat they were perfectly at home in their bodies they were perfectly free God had designed it to where they would just be free and enjoy and delight and rest and work but all in Freedom and all in comfort in who they were and how they were designed and When sin enters the world that's gone they suddenly know they're naked and feel great shame and even after they had covered themselves they still hide and say we were naked did you catch that that they sew fig leaves.

To cover themselves up but when God shows up they still hide and say we're naked cuz that it's it didn't work it doesn't fix the problem there's a couple of things in this passage that have traveled through time and exist in your heart that have that are just innately born into us now one is the lie that the serpent tells is God really trustworthy and shouldn't I be the one to decide what's right and wrong oh if that's not in your heart this idea that ah I mean is he really right about that you ever just reading your Bible and you go nah that can't be right I think I know know what ought to.

Be right here you ever do that like that's in us this idea that shouldn't I be the one who picks what who is he to say the other thing is this this feeling very not at home in our bodies very uncomfortable and exposed there's a reason why there's like a human wide nightmare that you're going about your day and then suddenly you're naked that's what happened to them you know that feeling they ate of the of the fruit and suddenly realized oh I'm I'm exposed I'm out in the I'm not.

Okay you ever you have that moment where you just feel exposed have you ever had that nightmare where Suddenly It's just like this is I was given a presentation and then I was naked and it was not okay cuz that's in US y'all we wear clothes and still feel wildly uncomfortable you know how much you fidget with how your clothes fit you like I have some collared shirts where one of the collars curls in and one of them curls up and I have no clue whether anybody else ever notices that.

But I think about it all day long you ever had like a cold SAR and you're like I just want to cancel my life for a week you see other people with a cold sord and you think I'm glad other people get cold sores you don't care that they have a cold sore really you're just like that's fine I'm not going to kiss you but that's fine but when we have stuff like that we feel it because we don't feel at home y'all this the theological concept here is called estrangement we we don't feel at home in ourselves.

And so one of the things that I think we need to wrap our heads around as Christians is that Christians ought to understand gender dysphoria and transgenderism better than anybody else the idea that you would not feel at home in your body ought to break our hearts and bring out our sympathy more than anything else that should be the first thing that it does to us we should understand oh yeah know I feel that there's things about me that I don't like there things about me that I don't feel at home in there are things about me that I wish were different there things about me that I hate there are things about me that.

I uh long for and crave that I wish I didn't there are things about me that that just never felt right I never liked I never appreciated never could enjoy it always felt like am I sure this was right I was reading someone who was talking about transgenderism and they said there their argument was why should we be beholden to our bodies it's it's like a taxi cab that we were shoved into at Birth and had no choice over and as a Christian part of me understands that feels that you didn't choose how tall you were going to be what you were going to.

Look like what your skin was going to be like how your hair Works y'all know that it seems like and this is I'm not a lady but it seems like ladies really really appreciate apprciate whatever type of hair they don't have I think that's part of the curse I think that's part of the Fall if you've ever said I wish my hair did blank it it's just built into us that we would not feel fully at home and so when someone says I was reading on Pew research and they just did they just got a bunch of people who would identify as transgender and they asked them a bunch of questions and they would all.

Say things like ever since I was little I just never really felt like I was in the right body y'all do you know how hard that would be it it's whatever you felt in all these little ways but it's so acute and so painful and so lifelong and in such a big area of life to feel like you're the wrong gender has got to be extremely difficult and if that's you then you're here this morning I'm sorry that you've felt like that your whole life and I I understand a little bit.

But I don't understand fully but you're welcome here and you're welcome to be here and and and struggle and not feel at home in yourself and you're welcome to be here and to to express that and voice that and to say I'm in the middle of trying to figure this out' we understand and we ought to one of the things that comes along with this this our human bodies designed for good built in intentionally but then Fallen is that we now have birth defects we.

Now have people who are born interx which is a small portion of the population people who are born with both sets of of reproductive organs then there's a wider portion that that will get labeled as intersex where they're born with um physically externally male or female but then there's some internal biological things that go into what would the people would now consider interex and there are some realities to that the the vast majority of are born physically externally male or female and there may be some hormonal or some biological things going on that they can have to take some medicine.

For or adjust and try to figure out how they're going to approach life very rarely is anybody born with with both sets of genitalia but even that those situations they end up usually having to figure out and have some sort of surgery and figure that out as they go forward in life and we understand that that's part of the Fall as well it doesn't mean that there is no male and there is no female it doesn't mean that we don't understand male or female there are some people who are born with the wrong number of Limbs and that's horrible.

But it doesn't mean that most humans aren't born with two arms and two legs and five fingers and five toes it's it's something that happens and can happen and even the Bible understands it happens when Jesus talks about in U marriage in Matthew 19 he refers to people who were born um he says Unix from birth and then there are unic that have been made Unix by by men so he understands that there is some sort of birth process birth defect that can go into this.

But that's part of the Fall as well and it doesn't negate either the the reality of God's intended design for male or female but it also doesn't negate how gracious and kind and welcoming the Church ought to be in understanding that as well and walking alongside people and not not stigmatizing that or making it something you can't talk about or deal with because we all understand that we're all living with some form of the effects of the fall but here's where we are culturally.

For someone who has felt like I've been born into the wrong body has felt this this gender dysphoria this particular type of estrangement culturally right now we come around them and we give them a Playbook we say well here's what you do if you feel that way they they're getting a script that says go this direction and as Christians we have to disagree with the script and it is culturally impacted I want to show you the things that go along in this cultural approach that have gotten us here it's like a all the building blocks that that made it to where this is how we respond.

Now so I want to show you this list we're going to talk through these fairly quickly the fall of Christendom relativism radical individualism Triumph of the therapeutic the sexual Revolution and new gnosticism and I know you're are like I'm so excited for this list and just so you know when we were walking through and making sure the slides were working Josh babone who was up here earlier already called all those as band names he's claimed them so you can't start a band named any of those he's already he already called dips all right the fall of Christendom we've existed in the West in in a judeo Christian ethic.

For hundreds of years and we have rejected that now as the ruling thought process for the West that we are no longer all under a general judeo-Christian ethic which meant that we had a baseline philosophy and a baseline Theos ology for how we were going to live life and we would say we've removed that but the thing is when you remove it you don't just remove it you replace it and the problem with replacing it from our standpoint as Christians who believe our Bibles is that we think we enter into what Paul's talking about in Colossians 2.

So I want to read this to you he says this see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human TR tradtion according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ okay we want to know what Jesus tells us we want to follow what Jesus tells us we want to be uh led by Christ and then everything else fits into one of these other categories philosophy it's just them thinking through this is how the world ought to work empty deceit meaning they're intentionally trying to deceive twist things around human tradition ACC according to the elemental spirits of the world meaning that the enemy at.

Work in some of these kind of things and so we we aren't fans of the fall of Christendom in general we want to be genuinely Christian in the way we approach things and follow Christ that's where he says this for in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily and you have been filled in him who is the head of all Rule and Authority so we think Jesus is over everything and we're to follow him but that's gone culturally so we get The Replacements relativism relativism is the concept that there is no objective right or wrong you get to decide nobody can really tell you what's right or wrong nobody can really come in.

Tell you how you ought to live it's up to you you do you boo that General thought process whatever you want to do you do as long as you're not hurting anybody as long as you're not bothering anybody as long as you're not oppressing anybody nobody can really come in and tell you you're right or wrong whatever you want to do is fine that's relativism and y'all we we all kind of yeah okay like you just you've been trained in this it's like yeah that that's kind of true like the uh one of the Justice Anthony Kennedy.

And when he was writing one of the majority opinions this is one of our Supreme Court Justice he says this at the heart of Liberty is the right to Define one owns concept of existence of meaning of the universe and of the mystery of human life that's at the heart of Liberty you get to decide meaning purpose existence the mystery of human life all up to you which just if you think about that first of all the in the garden version of us that wants to eat from the tree goes yeah I get to pick the purpose and meaning of existence.

But if we'll just pause for a second you're going to have a hard time picking what to eat for lunch existence and the meaning of purpose in life is way above your pay grade but that's at the heart of relativism and he says it's at the heart of Liberty that that's true Freedom that you get to decide the next thing is radical individualism that we've just been sold on this we bought into this this is the idea that you are the only one you can really trust you are the only one who really knows.

For you you're the only one who really decides every Disney movie every Disney song just watch a preview for a Disney movie and they'll be like and then I suddenly thought have I even considered what I want and we're like yeah I think about you but that radical individualism is that you're the only one who can really decide for you and no one else can really so it's relativism but it's boiled down to ultimately you are the last Arbiter of all things.

Then we have what Carl Truman calls the Triumph of the therapeutic so it used to be 100 years ago 60 years ago you would um you would have to if you went to see somebody and they were trying to help you work through life they were trying to help you change you to exist in the world they were trying to to make you capable of existing out there you you were being bent and molded to reality but when Carl Truman's looking at this and he's tracing this out through history he says we've actually flipped this and what we've started doing is trying to change your circumstances to fit to you.

So we're going to get rid of toxic people we're going to get rid of toxic environments we're going to get rid of any Professor that says things you don't want to hear we're going to get rid of anybody who would come around you and say things that you don't want to hear you get to perfectly mold your environment and this is up to and includ including our physical bodies are now going to be brought in in line with you which goes along with the next two the sexual Revolution which is just our overemphasis on sexual enjoyment and cutting out all of the GU guard rails and guidelines that used to be around sex and Christians.

Aren't anti-sex we believe it's actually more important and more powerful than our culture does that's why we think it needs guard rails it's why we think it needs to be handled appropriately it's not because we think it's bad it's because we actually think it's better than our culture thinks it is more powerful not essential to life essential to the existence of humans for sure um but not essential essential to everybody's individual life you can live a perfect meaningful human life without ever participating in any sort of sexual activity.

But the sexual Revolution the general idea that your body is is a playground the only question is how would you like to play and then the new gnosticism which is connected a lot to the Triumph of the therapeutic and the radical individualism but gnosticism is the idea that your body is in general lower than the spiritual reality and we wouldn't culturally refer to it as spiritual reality as much as we would refer to it as reason our thinking self is more important and better than our physical self uh one author put it this way he said a person's self-awareness is different than and more important than their physical bodies that's this new idea of narcism.

So you can change your physical body to be in line with the way you think because your physical body is less than it doesn't actually give you any indication of anything you can change what you think so there's a Melinda selmies who was a practicing former lesbian who's repented and Fallen the Lord and she wrote this Bute all the pageantry of free sex and self-love there is a fundamental belief that the body doesn't mean anything that it is insignificant in a literal sense signifying nothing you can do anything that you like with it you can give it away to anyone.

For any reason it's just a sort of wet machine a tool that you can use in exchange for whatever purpose suits your fancy that's some vivid imagery but that's the general idea you have a body use it enjoy it change it the real you is on the inside the real you is your reasoning thinking self and that's new gnosticism and gnosticism is an ancient heresy so just so y'all know this is the problem Christians ought to understand understand the tension and the pain and the hurt and the Brokenness in transgenderism we ought to understand gender dysphoria in a very real sense that makes us very empathetic and caring and and gentle.

But the ideology is completely contrary to Christianity yall we disagree with this whole list of the things that come together that give you the script for how you ought to respond if you feel gender dysphoria they're going to come along and say well if you feel that that's internal to you so whatever you feel is right and you're the only one who can really decide and no one should come from outside and tell you that you are wrong that would be oppressive that would be harmful that would be bad.

For your psychology we ought to think well and Care well for your approach to the world and we ought to change your environment and if you if you want to pursue any sexual desires those are good and to be pursued never to be curtailed unless you want to but y'all we're Christians so we want to follow Christ we believe that he's the authority so it's not relative there's a actual reality that we can run up against radical individualism is bad for us we are individuals that need to be to repent and follow.

Jesus there's some amount of understanding that a unique person who who can follow Jesus that God designed on purpose is good but not you're in charge and you're the only one who knows what's right the Triumph of the therapeutic y'all we're Christians we think we should change that's repentance that's discipleship when you say things like well this is just what I'm like the Bible sometimes goes well stop it what you're like is bad quit talking to people like that quit acting like that it's bad.

For you repent so when people just you can't just go I was born this way I'm Italian so I yell or whatever it's like what stop we believe in Repentance and we believe that's good for us that we can change we believe the sexual revolution has been a negative thing for our culture that it has taught us poorly and gnosticism we've hated it ever since it showed up we don't like the new version or the old version We believe that you the physical body is important and good and that God's going to redeem both soul and body.

So here's the problem all of that leads to destruction and so the script that you're given if you feel gender hish Foria is bad 1 Peter 2 he says beloved I urge you as soers and Exiles he's talking to the Church saying we don't fully belong here we'll talk more about this next week but I urge you to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul in considering gnosticism and this idea that you're really separate from your body that the real you is on the inside and has nothing to do with the outer you the physical body Christopher West wrote this and I thought it was a helpful quote he.

Says Satan's fundamental goal is always to split Body and Soul why well there's a fancy theological word for the separation of body and soul perhaps you've heard of it death and we believe that that is where this thought process leads to to death to destruction it's what James 1:14-15 says but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire then desire when it is conceived gives birth to sin and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death this is the Baseline Christian position that all of us have desires that will produce death in us and all of us need to repent all of us need.

Jesus to redeem us to work in us to forgive us so here's the problem whenever we isolate one and say you don't have to repent of that one pursue that one engage in that one we can't go along with it the message to someone in gendered dysphoria is actually the same message to all Christians There's Hope in Jesus there's repentance in Jesus and y'all this is a terrible place to be so as Christians we've got to be kind and gracious and understanding and welcoming and friendly and hospitable.

But we also can't say go for it because we don't think it'll lead to Joy they've they've done studies in 2008 they did another big one in 2015 they did another big one in 2022 the results of the 20221 aren't out but all of your statistics of negative statistics are increased by by being transgender I found that transgender people are four more four times more likely to live in extreme poverty have doubled the rate of unemployment double the rate of homelessness um 41% and this was both in 2008 and 2015.

So the the jump on acceptance changed from 2008 to 2015 it's continued to change I'm interested to see what happens in 2022 study study 41% of survey respondents both in 20 2008 and 2015 reported at least one suicide attempt 41% that's the people who weren't successful the amount of Despair and death wrapped up in this is horrific and we ought to be kind and gracious and welcoming and hospitable and we ought to plead don't follow the path that's laid out for you culturally the argument made is that the reason it's.

So high is that they're stigmatized they're hated they're treated poorly their whole life is awful and look we ought to understand some of that you ever had a bad haircut I'm not trying to be trivial but if you had a bad haircut and you felt it the whole day you walked around you ever been in the place where you were the only person of your race you never really think that much about your race and suddenly that's all you can think about.

For that day y'all if you are in the middle of transitioning I think they feel it I think they feel it when they're not trying to differently portray how they physically appear I think they feel it when they are I think that it's on them all the time and so yeah there's certainly some social stigma and some things that go along with it that make it extremely difficult but they did a long longterm study in Sweden Sweden way ahead of us in acceptance and celebration of this from 1973 to 2003 what they did was they followed people who had gender affirming surgeries.

So people who had actually made the transition which I just have to say somewhere we don't think you can actually do we think you can physically change your body but you have not actually changed your gender you've been given a gender you've been designed by God and we think you can physically alter your body but it doesn't actually change you from a man to a woman but they had gender affirming surgeries and then they followed them for for 30 years and they compared them to the regular population and they controlled.

For things like poverty level gender at Birth what age group that sort of thing they needed psychiatric care at five times the rate of the normal population the suicide rate was three times the normal population no I'm sorry death from suicide was 20 times the rate of the normal population impatient psychiatric care was three times the rate the suicide attempts was five times the rate and the conclusion they have is this this is straight from the conclusion of the study persons with transsexualism after sex reassignment have considerably higher risks.

For Mort mortality suicidal behavior and psychiatric morbidity than the general population our findings suggest that sex reassignment although alleviating gender dysphoria may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism and should imp Inspire improved psychiatric and somatic care after sex reassignment for this patient group meaning that for those who are actually in a place where they change their they have gender affirming surgery and then live in a place that celebrates it it still doesn't fix the problem and as Christians we go yeah.

Because pursuing it can't fix it because that's what we're told is it pursuing any of our desires in that direction won't fix it it might alleviate some of the symptoms it might alleviate some things but it's not going to actually fix the root level problem Paul McHugh who is the the head over the this department in John's Hopkins and they used to do they were one of the leading ones to do these surgeries and then they stopped it under him and they've recently restarted it.

But he says that it's it should be treated more the way we treat someone with anorexia we should say that the way you're thinking is not in line with the way your body actually is and we would do best to help bring you in line with reality because you do have a physical reality and so as Christians 1 Corinthians 13 says this love does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth so we can't celebrate we can't Rejoice we can't go along with saying this is a fine way to go.

Because it would be unloving so we have to be loving we have to be gracious we have to be gentle we have to be kind we have to be hospitable we also can't just say that's fine pursue what you want because we believe it would lead to death so I have a better option when Matthew 12 is talking about Jesus it says this a bruised Reed he will not break and a smoldering Wick he will not quench that's a prophecy about him from Isaiah and it's quoted in in Matthew a bruised Reed he will not break and a smoldering Wick he will not quench a candle that's just barely hanging on barely blowing smoke.

Jesus doesn't come and snuff that out he's gentle he's gracious Andrew T Walker in his book on transgenderism quotes this from Matthew 12 and then he says this the visual imagery Jesus uses is important to remember and beautiful to see Jesus will not let fragile people crumble and collapse under the weight of their struggles Jesus wants to take those who feel they are close to flickering out and return them to brightness and joy Jesus is tend tender and gentle towards those who think they cannot go any further Church family some of us need to repent.

Because when it comes to transgenderism or homosexuality or anything in the lgbtq plus Zone we've looked like anything but Jesus because we haven't been gentle you can't say we haven't snuffed out smoldering Wicks we've made it seem as if this is one of the most hostile places for someone who needs it the most that we're welcome here in our sin but you aren't we're welcome here in our frustration and our confusion and our our estrangement but you aren't Lord help us help us.

When we stand before the king and he's been so kind and so gracious to us in our sin and we've acted as if there's somehow line between us and them may God have mercy on us for that and I'm so grateful that he's not going to Snuff us out if we come to him in Repentance and ask for Mercy but may we be gracious and kind and hospitable and welcoming people to someone who so badly needs to hear the Gospel and what our culture is telling them to do leads to death y'all it doesn't help it it doesn't fix it we can't celebrate it we've got to love our hope is not in the rejection.

Of our bodies but the Redemption of our bodies Romans 8 this where we'll finish we'll look at this together for just a moment Paul says I consider that the sufferings of this present time and that's all of us are not worth comparing with the glory Glory that is to be revealed to us so that we're to look at everybody and say you're going to suffer but there's glory and there's hope this direction for creation Waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of.

God for the creation was subjected to futility not willingly but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of children of God yeah we're all creation is subjected to futility and a bondage to corruption it's falling apart it's decaying and we're all longing whether we know it or not for this Redemption for we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in Pains of child birth until.

Now and not only the creation but we ourselves who have the first fruit of the spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as Sons the Redemption of our bodies our hope is not in the rejection of our bodies Our Hope is not here our hope is found in the Redemption of our bodies that is going to be worked in Christ on that day where we receive forgiveness and renewal and so we wait patiently but we ought to wait as people who understand the groaning we ought to wait as people who understand the pain and the discomfort and the estrangement and the Brokenness we ought to be the kindest most welcome most hospitable.

People and listen in our culture in disagreeing we're going to be told that we're hateful and so we've got to hold the line on loving enough and holding on to what is true but in a way that silences critique because of how much grace and kindness and gentleness there is for in this hope we were saved now hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what he seen disas but if we hope for what we do not see we wait.

For it with patience we believe that our God put on a body that he intended us for have to have a body that he's going to give us new bodies and that he's going to renew all of that in Grace and we wait with patience some of us need to change our position because we've been echoing what our culture says and we're wrong and we shouldn't do it because it leads to death but some of us need to change our posture.

Because we've been saying true things with not a hint of Grace and not a hint of kindness and we don't look at all like Jesus let's pray Lord we ask for we ask for Mercy where we've been wrong where we've supported what will ultimately lead to destruction where we've agreed with our culture on some things that are damaging and lead to death Lord we ask for Mercy where we've not modeled well the way you treated people who needed Grace where we've acted as.

If somehow we've merited or earned something or we're some of the good ones because we think this way or vote this way or act this way or we don't have that desire how dare us Lord forgive us have mercy on us and may we be a people who love like you love so that we hate sin but our arms are wide open to anyone who's coming to you and Lord our culture is confused on this and they're leading a lot to destruction more more and more children and teenagers are headed in this direction.

God have mercy on us have mercy on our nation give us wisdom help us to love help us to plead on behalf of our country so that you might keep people far from destruction and may they see clearly the grace that's found in you in Jesus name amen Church family we're going to sing we're going to praise the Lord if you need to take a moment to repent if you need to take a moment to ask the Lord for help.

For grace and for Mercy do that if this is something you struggle with and you want to talk about it and understand that we're just trying to understand and we're trying to walk in it the same way we walk in all these other things which is that we believe Jesus is better that our passions are at war with us to destroy our souls we'd love to talk with you let's sing.

Mill City 10/8/23 Mill City 10/8/23

Theology of Sex+ Week 5: Homosexuality Part 2

Group Guide

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Mill City 10/1/23 Mill City 10/1/23

Theology of Sex+ Week 4: Homosexuality Part 1

Group Guide

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Transcript

My name is Spencer I'm one of the pastors here we are in week four of our Theology of sex plus series and this uh week and next week we're taking a look at the topic of homosexuality so and approaching this and trying to teach on this it feels like a little bit of a game of operation if you remember the kids game you've got the tweezers and you got the guy that's got all the body parts you got to get in there and get his rib out without touching the sides.

If you touch the Sid it buzzes and as a kid I was terrible at that game I would make a terrible surgeon and you just at any given point you move left right front center if you move around too far you're going to actually hit something and it's going to buzz and that's kind of what this feels like because there's a few different things that play into this that make this difficult to teach on the the first is is what Chad was walking us through last week that uh sexuality has become identity and that this is uh been uh has risen to the place of idolatry.

So much so that we worship this in the place of God and if anyone uh speaks about something that's at the core of your being at the core of your identity that's considered harmful or destructive and that makes that difficult to talk about what's also difficult here is that many of us have family members friends co-workers neighbors people we love that identifies as lgbtq plus and many of them are wonderful kind loving hardworking people so it's not a neutral subject that we talk about another thing makes this difficult is that there's whole denominations in the west that have shifted on truth in this area that have failed to speak the truth I came out of.

The United Methodist Church that's where I became a Christian and that denomination has shifted so has the ELCA Luther Church so has the Episcopalian Church so has the pcusa Church and that also makes this difficult what also makes this difficult is that there are a lot of people who claim to be Christians but there all are actual genuine Jesus-loving Christians who have spoken harshly about this so we don't approach this subject neutrally and it feels like wherever you move in this you're going to hit the edges and you're going to hit the buzzer.

So because all of that is true we want to take two weeks to be able to walk through this together in this first sermon we're just going to ask the question what does the Bible say about this what does the Bible have to say about the subject matter of homosexuality and we're going to dive deep into the text a lot of this is going to be super laborious it's going to be in deep into the text to see what does the Bible have to say about this especially.

Because in the west there's been a shift amongst some denominations that have tried to reinterpret the Bible to say something that I would argue it doesn't say and I want to take those arguments seriously and look at what the Bible has to say about this next week will be far more practical be far more applicational but I want us to look deeply into the text this week and I want to end with showing why I believe that our Church can be a a wonderful and safe place to be able to figure this out be able to discuss this to be able to work through any type of sexual identity and Brokenness.

So let me pray and then we'll walk through this together Heavenly Father we thank you for the good word that we have for the Scriptures for your kindness and for the work of the Holy Spirit no doubt there's lots of things swirling in our souls this morning as we approach your word may you help us be present may you help us listen may we respond as you desire in Jesus name amen all right so we've been in Genesis 1 and 2 pretty much every week and this week is no different we won't be in it very long.

But Genesis 1 and 2 kind of establish what is the biblical idea for gender and for sex and then on Genesis 2 24-25 it says therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh and the man and his wife are both naked and were not ashamed so we've looked at this multip weeks but it's important to read that out the gate because that is the establishment of biblical romantic love and romantic sex one man one woman and the confines of marriage and the rest of the Bible upholds this picture from Genesis to Revelation throughout the Old Testament.

Jesus in multiple places in Mark 10 and Matthew 19 highlights this as the biblical reality for marriage romantic love and sexual Union so that's the first picture we get out of the gate in the Scriptures and then when you flip a few pages you'll inevitably get to Genesis 19 and that is going to be the first mentioning of homosexuality in the Bible so in Genesis 19 God has determined to bring judgment upon two cities Sodom and Gomorrah he sends two angels to really inspect the City to.

See if it's worth redeeming and not worth judgment he gets there Abraham's nephew lot is there lot takes him into his house really quickly because he knows what this city is like and these two foreigners he doesn't want them to be harmed so he takes them to his house and at nightfall the men of the city surround the house and you pick up in verse four it says but before they laid down the men of the city the men of Sodom both young and old all the people to the last man surrounded the house and they called to lot where are the men who came to you tonight bring them out to us that we.

May know them now that know them is a Biblical euphemism throughout the Bible for sex that we may know them sexually this happens the angels strike the men with blindness tell lot and his family get out of the city now we're going to destroy it they leave and the city is destroyed and these Infamous cities Sodom and Gomorrah become really the prime examples of both wickedness and judgment throughout the Bible you can't read the rest of the Bible and not see that it happens in Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel Lamentations Amos Zephaniah.

Jesus in multiple places mentions Sodom and Gomorrah bringing that type of judgment to mind that these cities are synonimous with sin and judgment so the question is why are these cities known for sin and judgment and we get a few biblical reasons I'll point the first one Ezekiel 16 49 it says behold this was the guilt of your sister Sodom she and her daughters had Pride excess of food and prosperous ease but did not Aid the poor and needy and what we.

See there is that like most depraved cities and most depraved cultures there was excess the pride of life enjoying the riches getting fat and not caring for the poor and maybe even building your wealth off of the poor which is wickedness I mean you cannot read the prophets you cannot read the gospels without seeing that the God despises that type of disregard for the poor and the needy now in an attempt to legitimize same-sex relationships some have attempted to say that that's all was wrong with Sodom and Gomorrah that Genesis 19 and the picture of judgment there is only.

For this that social justice is the only reason that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed now it's certainly clear from the text that Injustice was a major part of their depravity and that is true but what's been understood for thousands thousand of years from Jews into Christianity what has been understood for thousands of years is that these cities were not only destroyed for the prideful greedy life that they lived but also for the promiscuity and specifically the homosexuality that was prevalent that these cities were known.

For that's clear when you read the text that's clear outside of the text there are extra biblical resources extra biblical historical documents in second temple Judaism so the period of time between when the last Scriptures were written around 500 BC to the time when Jesus came you can look at second temple Judaism and see some of the writings that describe this as as a universally understood truth that Jews understood one of those is The Testament of naftali it says do not become like Sodom which departed from the order of Nature and the Order of nature there is the design.

For sex with men and women they departed from that referencing the Judgment that fell upon them in the Testament of Benjamin another extra biblical historical document it says from the words of Enoch the righteous I tell you that you will be sexually promiscuous like the promiscuity of the sodomites and will perish again in the book of jubile it says and in this month the Lord carried out the judgments of Sodom and Gomorrah and go say they were terrible and very sinful and have defiled themselves and committed fornication and uncleanness over the earth.

Now we don't look at those sources as authoritative like the Scriptures they don't have an authority but what they helped describe was it was universally understood that these cities were known for that type of sexual promiscuity I mean you get to the some of the Contemporary writers of the Bible so some of contemporaries alongside the Bible Josephus a Jewish historian and Pho a philosopher you can even go into their writings and see that at the time of Jesus it was universally understood that this was a part of sodom's downfall.

Now that's important because what also happens with Genesis 19 is people seek to reinterpret this and say that what was really happening with what we read is not the type of consensual loving same-sex relationships we have now that what was actually being articulated was rape and that's the real problem and while that that seems to be the logical conclusion of what was going to happen if those angels did not step in those cities were known for this it was universally understood at the time and that's important to articulate and that's helpful to understand especially.

When the book of Jude at the end of the Bible comes along and references Sodom and gomorah in the same way that a lot of other writings do in the book of Jude near the end of the Bible in verse 7 it says just as Sodom and Gomorrah in the surrounding cities which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of Eternal fire so Jude is doing what some of those other resources outside the Bible are doing judee's made argument in the book of JW we were in this book about a year ago his main argument is against false teachers and the Judgment of heretical false.

Teachers that had come into the Church but in his writing against false teachers he uses something that was obvious to Jews for centuries and was also OB obious to the Christians who were receiving this letter and he mentions just like Sodom and Gomorrah which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire and what he's getting at there is that there is a natural design for sex that we see very clearly in Genesis 1 and 2 and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah rejected that.

For an unnatural desire and it ended up in their judgment and he categorizes that with sexual immorality and that's also very important because sexual immorality is really a broad term in the Scriptures it's kind of a a bucket for all types of sexual sin and sexual Brokenness and it's important to understand that because a lot of times what you'll hear and rebuttal to some of this is that Skeptics will say but Jesus never spoke about homosexuality he never talked about this once why do you talk about it and what's important to understand is that.

Jesus Jesus did speak about sexual immorality in multiple places which absolutely biblically and theologically includes homosexuality and the reason why Jesus doesn't explicitly name homosexuality has to do with his ministry context Jesus ministered the majority of his time in Galilee and Galilee was not a region that was known for homosexuality at all historically now the reason why it shows up more as impos letters is because Paul is writing to GRE Roman cities all over Asia Minor and Rome and those cities were known.

For homosexuality but it wouldn't make sense for Jesus to address something that wasn't in his immediate Ministry context but he does address sexual immorality and that absolutely includes homosexuality so Jude is making a bigger point about judgment but he references something that was obvious obvious to the Christians at the time and that is the pursuing same-sex attraction is sin and next week we'll get more into this there's a difference between same-sex attractions samesex desires and pursuing those one is in the Temptation Arena the other one is pursuing rebellious sin.

But we'll get into more of that next week the Church needed to understand this but also the people of Israel needed to understand the morality of this which is what is clear when you get to the Book of Leviticus in chapter 18 and chapter 20 and there are two verses in 1822 and 2013 that show this to be prohibited in verse 22 of 18 it says you shall not lie with a male as with a woman it is an Abomination an Abomination is just a it's a it's a aggressive word.

For God despises this sin he finds it attestable to him it's often applied to idolatry it's often applied to corrupt money practices and greed but it's also applied to homosexuality in the Book of Leviticus and then in verse 13 chap 20 it says if a man Man Lies with a male as with a woman both of them have committed an Abomination now the language here is intentional if you read all Leviticus 18 and all of Leviticus 20 and you read those chapters you're going to.

See man the word man show up over and over and over again but in these two verses another word shows up male and that's the Hebrew word zakar and when that word shows up it draws the reader's mind back to Genesis 1 because that's creation distinction language male and female showing this goes against the very design for sex now a common objection to even using the Book of Leviticus Leviticus 18 Leviticus 20 to show that this prohibits pursuing same-sex relations Is that the New Testament clearly teaches we don't follow the law.

So a popular rebuttal that I've heard over and over again is okay well if you think that's true then why are you wearing a shirt with two types of fabric in it and why do you eat pork you're a hypocrite read your Bible now I've always actually found that rort pretty clever if I was not a Christian I would probably use it because it ends an argument pretty quickly because I'll be honest a lot of Christians don't know their Bibles like they should.

But you got to do something with that that's that's a fair critique they are correct we don't look to the Book of Leviticus for our understanding we don't follow the law that's we didn't do this like we don't do this like the Jews do so why even mention it when clearly as you walk through ex we walk through Exodus of the last year we said over and over again we live in the New Covenant of Christ we're not under the law it's helpful to mention these two verses.

For three reasons first it clearly shows the Jewish people believe this was sin it's unmistakable even even Scholars that that seek to legitimize samesex relationship ship will say no it's very clear that in Judaism they understood this to be sinful second the text is talking about consensual homosexual sex this is not rape this is not power and balance this is talking about consensual homosexual relations third the Hebrew word used in these passages in Leviticus 1820 becomes Central to interpreting two passages in the New Testament and we're we're going to go there.

Now 1 Corinthians 6 1 Timothy 1 now these like other writings of Paul other parts of the Scripture it's a it's got a big list of sins and the middle of this is homosexuality so First Corinthians 6 or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God do not be deceived neither the sexually immoral nor idolators nor adulterers nor men who practice homosexuality nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor reelers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of.

God then in 1 Timothy again now we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully understand this the law is not laid down for the just but for the Lawless and disobedient for the ungodly and sinners for the Unholy and profane for those who strike their fathers and mothers for murderers the sexually immoral men who practice homosexuality enslavers liars perjurers and whatever else is contrary to sound Doctrine so in 1 Corinthians 6 homosexuality is translated from two Greek words Maloy and our syoy time.

So two Greek words in 1 Timothy 1 it just uses our syoy time now this is why this is really important I know we're in the weeds you guys but this is it's really important to understand this when you're trying to understand Greek and Hebrew and how it's used you have to look at the immediate context of the bi the Bible book that it's written in the context of its use in other books of the Bible and then you look outside the Bible at other Greek and Hebrew historical documents.

See how that word is being used and when you do a Greek word study on our Senai what you will see is there's not one single use outside the Bible you cannot find one Greek historical document that uses this word nowhere which begs the question okay then what does it mean when you break it apart you have arson and qu it literally means betters of men but more importantly when you look at Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20 and you look at what's called the septu which is the Greek translation of the original Hebrew.

If you look at that you're going to see that in Leviticus and the Greek translation when it talks about homosexuality the word for it is arenos and cotin which means Paul made up a word that's what he did he took the language of Leviticus brought it into 1 Corinthians and Timothy put it together our syy time and anyone who is familiar with the Old Testament who was receiving those letters would have immediately understood what he was doing that he was bringing in the morality of the Holy that part of the Holiness code in The Book of Leviticus to show this is something that should not be practiced.

Listen even even the scholars that believe that homosexuality is is legitimate form of love and sex they're going to agree on that point and say yeah you can't get around it it's very clear that's what Paul is doing and some of them will go on to say but we know better now and they appeal to an authority of our own authority not the authority of the Scriptures but it's almost universally understood that's exactly what Paul's doing now that brings us to what I think is the most definitive text in the Bible on homosexuality and that is the Book of Romans chapter 1 we were here last week and we're going to be here again starting.

In verse 24 it says therefore God gave them up in the lust of their heart to impurity to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchange the truth about God for a lie and worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever amen so we looked at this last week that we as Humanity exchange the truth about God for a lie that we worship created things we worship idols and the place of God and when we reject.

God for created things God says continue in your rebellion and it gives us in and we pursue that all the way to an exchange of the natural design of sex for the unnatural use of sex and homosexuality and that's clear starting at verse 26 for this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions for their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to Nature see that that when you follow idolatry and are given into to your sexual Pursuits it will ultimate result in this women exchanging the natural design of sex.

For unnatural contrary to Nature sex verse 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another men committing Shameless acts with men and receiving themselves the due penalty for their error now the the reason why this text is so important especially in this current context is because one of the most popular arguments that tries to legitimize homosexuality from the Bible is an argument that says that what's really happening in the New Testament what's really happening in the New Testament is not a condemnation of the committed and loving same-sex relationships that we.

See nowadays what's being condemned is pasty and pasty which is very prevalent and the Roman Empire men sleeping with teenage boys it's all over the GRE or Roman Empire it was a common practice and what's argued is is that what's really being condemned is that type of abuse but not the loving committed same sex relationships we have now and that argument is indefensible in light of Romans 1 first off it's indefensible for other reasons that I won't get into but Romans 1 is clear.

Because there is not one history historical example of pasty being practiced by women you cannot find it in the Roman Empire older women did not sleep with teenage girls that did not happen so that's not what's being condemned here at all it's a broad condemnation of homosexuality not a specific condemnation of a type of homosexuality so it's clear from the Old Testament to the New Testament the teaching is consistent that homosexuality is against the very design for sex which is man woman in the confines of marriage biblically there are no same-sex relationships that honor.

God and there's not one example of a samesex relationship in the Bible That's seen as honorable now if you want to argue that there is no God if you if you want to be an atheist and argue that that there is no God and that there's no purpose there's no such thing as meaning that this is all the result of cosmic chance and we're all creating what we want in front of us and nothing really matters so yeah homosexuality should be fair game it happens in nature right like what.

If you if you want to make that argument that because there's no purpose and no meaning and there's no God I think you can be intellectually consistent and do that I would want to argue with you about some other things this will be one of the last things I want to talk about I want to walk you through theological argument to help you see that it's mathematically impossible to believe that this is all the result of cosmic chance but you can be intellectually consistent and be an atheist and argue.

For this but you cannot argue that there is a Christian God that condones homosexuality it is impossible you cannot do it it is intellectually inconsistent to do so and that's very important to establish I know it took a lot to get here but I that's very important to establish out the gate so that we can understand and engage with some of the different arguments that are made in our culture the Bible does not condone this so that's a lot and I I hear the critique of those who don't follow Christ.

For those don't I I I hear the critique when they say that what you're saying is too much to tell someone that they would have to abstain from their desires to pursue chasti to not give in to what feels normal and right to them that's wrong like I've heard the arguments sexual desire is too strong and to tell someone that they can't engage in this is harmful I had a psychology professor in college who called out all the Christians in the room and he called all the Christians in the room and he just he said y'all don't get it sexual drive is too strong of a psychological drive to tell someone that they can't pursue.

This is wrong I've heard that argument that if you understood if you understood what they were going through if you understood the experience if you understood this and how hard it is you wouldn't tell someone not to pursue this said you certainly wouldn't speak so harshly about them that critique has weighed heavily upon me for years and that critique has weighed heavily upon me the last couple of months and that's when God started to lead me to tell you a bit of my own story I became a Christian.

When I was 17 years old and about a year after following Christ I came to grips with the reality that I didn't just struggle with sinful heterosexual lust but that I also struggle with sinful same-sex attraction and at 18 years old as a new Christian I didn't know what to do with that I I didn't know what to to do with this reality that I could no longer deny now when I say that I struggle with same seex attraction that a lot of people have theories on about how all this comes about some will say.

Well they must have been the result of abuse growing up or this must have been uh you must have had an overbearing mother which is not true or that maybe you you were born this way I'll get into more of the Nuance of that next week but I can speak very practically from my own experience where I think this began cuz it's not something I knew when I was seven it began and it kind of formed through years of Internet pornography.

So I came of age probably at the worst time to come of age so when I was uh in the fourth grade we got our first computer in the house when I was in the fifth grade we got dialup internet when I was in the sixth grade we got broadband internet it happened so quickly and if you're around my age I'm 35 if you're around my age 30 to 40 years old and you're a guy you probably have the exact same story story I've hardly met any guy that doesn't have this story.

But at 10 years old I started to look at pornography until I was 18 years old when God freed me from it and in that time period something just shifted in my sinful nature and in high school I started to notice this this creeping desire and I was confused this was in the mid early 2000s and I didn't know to I mean back then South in South Carolina no one was talking about LGBT stuff that wasn't even a phrase that was thrown around in this area and I was confused I didn't know what to do with this that I had this heterosexual Temptations and I like girls.

But also had the same sex attraction attraction that was lingering and I didn't know what to do with that then I became a Christian and I started to understand what the Bible says on this and I started to understand sin and I was like okay by the time I was about a freshman in college I was like I can't deny this anymore this is a reality but I'm never going to talk about it at that point I felt called to Ministry felt called to be a pastor and I I was had some maybe had some unbiblical ideas of what that would mean.

If people found out about this but I'll say very clearly there's a difference between samesex attraction and pursuing it one is Temptation one is disqualifying but I didn't know what to do with it and I was scared and to be honest I've been around Christians long enough to hear some very harsh language I heard the word so many times that I was like I'm not talking to anyone about this ever and that was my goal and for the next few years I continued to just stay quiet to never say anything.

And then going into my senior year the summer before my senior year I was a part of a college Ministry and in this college Ministry I was leading discipling a room full of guys and we were I was teaching them the Bible and I taught them 1 John 1: 7 but if we walk in the light as he is in the light we have fellowship with one another and the blood of his son Jesus cleanses us of all sin same thing I've taught here and I taught them that and I watched each one of them confess sin and it was beautiful and I felt like a hypocrite and I could not live under the weight.

Of that hypocrisy any longer I could not preach and not practice I couldn't do it and I said if I'm going to believe the Gospel and I'm going to believe this I'm I'm actually going to believe what I'm saying and that is when I began to finally walk in the light and I found a dear brother and I I told him it's the first person I talked to I told him and he just he said thank you so much for telling me and he gave me the Gospel and he gave me Grace he pointed me to.

Jesus and then later that summer I talked to two other guys two brothers in Christ and I listened to one of them after I done telling me this telling him this listen to one of them articulate almost the exact same story that I have and I realized I'm not alone and I continue to walk in the light I contined to walk with other Christians I saw God use this I got the disciple guys where this is exclusively was their struggle and as I started to walk with other brothers in Christ I was talking with my mentor back home Andy told him this he acted like a Christian in fact I just go on to say.

This everyone I've ever talked about this has acted like a Christian the Church is a wonderful place to figure this out I talked to Andy and Andy said hey man I I'm proud of you but you're getting serious with Anna and you're going to have to tell her before you get engaged and I was like what I don't like that but I I listen to his counsel and obeyed it and I it's the hardest thing I've ever had to do in.

First semester towards the end of senior year I sat Anna down and I looked at her and for 20 minutes through tears stumbling all over my words I just said I I've begged God to take this and he hasn't and that might be the case for the rest of my life I may struggle with samex attaction for the rest of my life and if you marry me you need to know that and they had been preparing me for this and and talking like.

Listen she might need some time she might need a couple of weeks that's fine it's a lot to absorb and she was patient she let me finish and when I got done she looked at me and she said I love you and I want to marry you this does not keep me from wanting to marry you and we'll have to talk about it but I love you and I'm man and I put a ring on it two weeks later find you someone whom you can bear your soul to who doesn't Flinch who acts like a Christian that's and that's that's.

For romantic love that's also for Christian friendship that where you can bear your soul and they don't Flinch for a moment that's what Christian supposed to do and over the years I've continued to walk in the light never publicly moved to Louisville went to Seminary was part of a Church up there walked with other Christians there had accountability had pastors who knew about this came back down here same thing here with our pastors people I've been in community group with people I've been recovery groups with have continued to walk in the light and the Church is a wonderful place to do that.

But when people say if you only knew what it was like I do I do know what it's like I know what it's like to beg God to take it away to plead with God to take it away Theus that is the that that was the Genesis that was the beginning of why I wrote I Trust You Lord that came right out that first verse comes directly out of this when I wrote I feel the stain of darkness and my sin a headd in voice recounting all my shame I know what it's like to feel that shame I know what it's like to have the enemy come in and Whisper things recounting it I've confessed.

His work and Glory the power of His name but the path of life seems like it has no end I've confessed the Gospel I pray in the name of Jesus take it and he said no and the path to Eternity just feels so long I know what that's like you know who else knew what you know who else knew what that was like if Apostle Paul Paul for different reasons understood this he knew what it was like to beg God to beg.

Jesus to take something away when you get to 2 Corinthians CH 12 there's a thorn and the flesh we don't know what that thorn is for Paul we don't know if it's something physical or it's something spiritual if it's sin we don't know what it is but it's afflicting him and in 2 Corinthians 12 he says so to keep me from being conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations a thorn was given me in the flesh a messenger of Satan to harass me to keep me from being from becoming conceited three times I pleaded with the.

Lord about this that it should leave me he pleads I know what that's like I know it's like to plead and ask God Jesus this is sin will you take it will you take it will you take it and Paul is pleading with the Lord he's pleading with Christ and this is what Jesus says that in verse 9 but he said to me my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness I've pleaded with Jesus you know what he said my grace is enough my grace is sufficient and my power is made perfect in your weakness and Paul responds.

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ May rest upon me and that's why I'm doing this today this isn't walking in the light I've done that for over a decade but a couple of months ago I was in a doctoral class and I just started to God started to just press into this and what he was saying was it's time it's time for my power to make perfect in your weakness and I was like I I went home and told Anna she's like.

But we prayed for weeks and realized this is exactly what God wants to do that it is time we had fears wrapped in all of this some of them completely irrational some of them more based in reality some of our biggest fears was our kids this is not something they need to know about and we certainly didn't want anyone saying anything harsh or ugly or we didn't want any other kids in the Church to might go up and say something to them we'll have the conversations one day.

When they're ready but we were obedient to the Lord we just said it's time and I think it's time for a few reasons the first is that some of you struggle with same sex sex attraction and you aren't walking in the light some of you struggle with same-sex desires and and you're living in darkness and you're not alone you're not alone some of you are struggling with this maybe you're looking at pornography maybe you're even thinking about engaging in same-sex relationships and I want to tell you that my door is open my door is open to talk you're not alone and there are other Christians in our Church that struggle with this and a few.

Of them have given me their names and taken a brave step so that you can go and talk to them too but Katie Freeman my sister Jordan Sarat my brother also know what it's like to struggle with same seex attraction and choose Jesus is better you're not alone and we're ready for you we're ready to talk to cry but you got to take a leap of faith and you got to step into the light the second reason is that there are people in this city that are pursuing same-sex desires and it is never going to satisfy them it's never going to satisfy them I don't know what's going to happen with the sermon it's going.

To go online I have no idea about a month ago brother of mine said just you need to stop worrying about this and I made a decision right then and there that I was going to stop worrying about it I don't know what's going to happen let me tell you something we're in Casey I don't know if you noticed that Casey is becoming a more gay friendly part of town you can go up and down the Avenues you can see pride flags.

And if this Church gets to be a hospital for the broken which is what Jesus wants his Church to be if it gets to be a hospital for those who are working through sexual Brokenness and they want to come in here and figure this out together Praise Jesus that's what our Church should be and that's what our Church is doesn't matter what you struggle with this Church is a safe place to be able to figure this out together to be able to expose sin and experience the goodness of his grace and his mercy and his kindness and forgiveness this Church is a wonderful place to be to figure that out together no matter what you.

Are struggling with but if you are struggling with same seex attraction I want you to hear something very clearly the most important truth I can say to you today is that if you belong to Jesus your same seex attraction does not define you if you belong to Jesus your same seex attraction does not define you your sin does not define you your savior does I left out a very important part of 1 Corinthians 6 for a reason so let me finish it.

So you can hear this in verse 9 it says or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God do not be deceived neither the sexually immoral nor idolators nor adulterers nor men who practice homosexuality nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor revelers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God verse 11 and such were some of you such were some of you such were some of us that if you belong to Christ you are defined by him that is not who you are that is who you were and he goes on to say.

But you were washed you were Sanctified you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God that when you come to Christ you bring your sin and your Brokenness and even your disordered desires and you lay them before the cross and he washes Us by the renewal of his blood that he puts the Holy Spirit in our lives and sanctifies US putting the old person to death and renewing us every day he justifies us which means that.

When God the Father looks upon me he doesn't see my disordered desires he sees the perfect righteousness spotlessness perfect record of Christ that's the truth of the Gospel and if you are a Christian you're not defined by your sin you defined by your savior and if you don't know Christ you can be you can be defined by the goodness of the Gospel and you don't have to be defined by your sin but that means you've got to come to him in faith and you got to submit all of your desires before him I'll close with this Rosaria Butterfield who I think is one of the biggest gifts to the Church in this Arena she was.

A professor at Syracuse she taught feminist queer Theory and she was a lesbian and she met Jesus and left that lifestyle behind you'll hear more about her next week but she says Temptation patterns linger but they do not rule your life anymore and they do not define you Temptation patterns are Outsiders to your true nature in Christ they don't co- with Christ even as they remain I've asked God and I'll continue to ask God to take it and for the rest of my life his answer may be no that my grace is sufficient and my power is made perfect in your weakness.

But that's not my true nature Christ is and though they linger Christ remains and that truth will continue into eternity so brothers and sisters some of you need to take a leap of faith maybe that's talking to me maybe that's talking to someone else in your group some of you need to take a leap and experience the goodness of fellowship and freedom that's found in the Gospel and some of you need to believe in Jesus and need to see that our savior is better than anything this world has to offer and that includes disordered desires we pray Heavenly.

Father we thank you for the good news of the Gospel that saves us that saved me that sets us apart to worship and Delight in you I'm thankful that your grace is sufficient your power is made perfect in our weaknesses we will boast all the more in our weaknesses because that is where your wonderful Gospel is made beautiful so Heavenly Father there are undoubtedly people in this room that are scared there are undoubtedly people in this room that are afraid to talk may you lift that fear and give them Faith to step forward in Freedom and in faith and in trusting you and I pray.

If there's anyone here that is not convinced I pray there's anyone here that does not believe what the Scriptures has to say on this God I pray that you would soften their heart towards truth even when it is difficult Lord help us we love you in Jesus name amen.

Mill City 9/24/23 Mill City 9/24/23

Theology of Sex+ Week 3: Sexual Idolatry

Group Guide

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Transcript

Well good morning my name is Chet I'm one of the pastors here grab a Bible go to Genesis chapter one we're going to be in Genesis 1 and 2 and then we'll be in Romans 1. but this sermon is a little bit different this whole series is a little bit different than what we normally do we usually work through books of the Bible so we just finished Exodus we're going to start Malachi as soon as this series is over and then we're going to be in Philippians next year and the reason we do that is that we believe that the Bible all of it is helpful and all of it is needed and that we.

Often if we just pick on our own ask the questions we want to ask we miss things that the Bible needs to tell us but we don't ask the right questions it's it's one of the reasons why you don't let elementary students pick the topics they're going to learn it's because they won't pick the topics they need to learn there'll be things that they would pick that they're interested in like if you let my third grade son choose what the school curriculum was he would know a lot about dinosaurs and wrestlers and Pokemon.

But he would never have been like teach me math he just wouldn't have asked for it and we believe that that's how we would approach the Bible that there are some questions that we ask that we're interested in that we want to know answers on but there's a lot that we should that we don't ask but in this series we're just taking a moment to say look our culture has a lot of training that it is giving us on sex and gender and sexuality that every single day.

If you ride down the road and look at Billboards if you stand in line at a grocery store and glance at the magazines if you watch your television or listen to the radio you're going to be coached up on some amount of how you ought to think about sex and gender and sexuality and we're taking some time to say hey what does the Bible say does it help us out and can we get our footing so if you came in a little late and you smuggled in a fifth grader or down I would encourage you unless you want to have interesting conversations.

For the rest of the day you may want to take them to kid city that is up to you but we are talking through what the Bible says about sex and we're talking about what our culture says about sex and so it just depends on where you are in those conversations as to where how much you want to be here this morning with those at that age I've that's probably covered it all right here we go um we have said so far in this series we've said we are created image bearing embodied and distinct people made.

For complementary co-rule with God we took the first two weeks to try to flesh that out and say this is the way God designed us and now we're going to take a moment to say where are we culturally in our thought processes what's going on around us and so this sermon even as this series is distinct this sermon will be a little more distinct because we're going to talk a little bit about what the Bible says but we're also going to try to take some time in the middle to Define where we are culturally.

But let's start with the Bible Genesis 1. verse 28. we've read this every week so far he says and God blessed them that's humanity and God said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth and subdue it so the First Command that we see here given to humanity is to be fruitful and multiply that that part of this design of God that men and women would be complementary to one another is a reproductive design that we for Humanity to move forward need one another we need men and women to be able to reproduce and that was part of the way.

God designed this and that he built this and blessed it sex is not something that Humanity discovered it is something that God designed on purpose and blessed and made it the way he made it on purpose or Genesis 2 verse 24 and 25 it says therefore man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed that verse 25 naked not ashamed we said points to the fact that they existed in their own bodies comfortably and that sin has broken that we no longer exist in our own bodies comfortably like we once did.

But that God designed sex and sexuality and he blessed it and he brought them together and that they will come together and they will become one flesh and that's this picture of sex it's also this picture of reproduction that in children you have legitimately taken two sets of people two people and made one new person that is the image the United image of those two people who have come together that God did this on purpose Tim Keller who's a pastor in New York recently passed away.

But he says this he says in Genesis 1 28 God tells Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply so procreation is obviously a large part of God's design for sex but he also made sex feel good and the Song of Solomon is full of references to the rapturous pleasure found in a sexual relationship between man and wife sex and the pleasure that comes along with it are designed to reinforce the connection between a husband and wife creating a stable bond.

For a family in a safe atmosphere to raise children the pleasurable chemicals released during sex are meant to remind the participants of their wedding vows that they belong to and are attached to one another that they mutually serve one another if the Covenant of marriage is that all of me belongs to all of you for all of our lives sex is meant to be a covenant renewal ceremony a covenant remembering ceremony it's meant to be that same thing that we're giving all of ourselves to one another and that.

God designed it that way on purpose and made it enjoyable on purpose Tim Keller goes on to say that this is one of the reasons why we uh when we enter into sexual relationships to people we aren't married to it's one of the reasons why we stay in bad relationships longer than we should because we've been telling ourselves through our physical acts that we belong to each other in a covenantal way and it's one of the reasons why when we break up it hurts more than it should.

Because we've been enacting covenantal relational activities rather than keeping that where it's supposed to be so one of the the general views of the way Christians think about sex and sexuality is that we think it's dirty and bad and wrong that the Church teaches sex is dirty and bad and wrong save it for your spouse that's not the Christian teaching on this we actually believe that sex is more beautiful and more powerful than our culture does and therefore it ought to be guarded and not be in the right place and it's to be celebrated and enjoyed in the right context we don't agree with our culture that it is the the only way to have.

A happy life and the only way to to exist the Bible celebrates celibacy and singleness as you are a full human I know culturally we're told if you if you've never had sex you're only like a half a person you don't really exist until you've done this you don't really get to be a real person until then that's not true it is it's a gift but it's not ultimate and you can see how if this is our approach to sexuality We Stand contrary to our culture this and our culture doesn't really like our position on sexuality and this isn't new this is uh C.S Lewis talking 80 years ago in in a completely different continent.

He writes this Chastity that's this approach to sexuality is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues there is no getting away from it the Christian rule is either marriage with complete faithfulness to your partner or else total abstinence he says that's Christian's approach to sexuality and people don't like that he actually goes on to say it's difficult so difficult and contrary to our instincts that either the Christian rule has to be wrong or we have to be wrong and we've we've made it worse.

Because we've added either marriage between one man and one woman to further differentiate and clarify our position with complete faithfulness to your partner or else total abstinence and if you're familiar if you've been in the United States for more than about 30 minutes you realize that's not the cultural approach and so we stand contrary to our culture and we say a thing that's not very popular and most cultures have rejected this approach to marriage because our approach to sexes wrong as C.S Lewis would put it contrary to this ideal that.

God gives us an interesting thing it used to be that as Christians held this position the culture around us viewed us as more moral than them that we were prudish or we were too strict but that this position was more moral so they might would make fun of you or they might would exclude you from things but they didn't see you as less moral they saw you as more moral but recently the cultural position on the Christian view has shifted so the Christians are.

Now likely to be viewed not as more moral but as less moral that our position is actually harmful that our position is actually oppressive that's interesting and I want to take a moment to try to understand how we got there and why our culture views thus that way because the Christian approach to this hasn't changed my grandad's name was Chester Phillips he was a pastor and when he taught on the Christian approach to sex he would have taught this marriage with faithfulness or total abstinence we haven't thrown a curveball in here we've clarified a thing.

But we hadn't we hadn't changed our position but the culture shifted around us so that their view on our position has changed and that's interesting we need to figure it out first I want to explain one quick aspect of where this is and then we're gonna have to spend a little more time on another one the first one is this we've bought into the idea of the pursuit of happiness and honestly we're kind of built that way as humans and God actually designs us to have ultimate happiness in him and he assumes that we're going to pursue things that are good.

For us and things that we see is valuable this is one of the reasons why he'll tell us to pursue treasure in heaven rather than treasure here it's not that he says treasure is bad he says to get your priorities straight understand where you'll have the most Joy the most Delight so we've got this idea of pursuit of happiness but here's the problem when we use the word happiness we often mean two separate things there's happiness as in joy as in contentment as in everything is good and I don't need anything else and there's happiness as in pleasure which is this is really good I want some more.

And if you in the book The hacking of the American mind there's a pediatric endocrinologist who wrote the book and this pediatric endocrinologist argues that we have subtly in the U.S swapped out the word happiness for the word pleasure we've just taken happiness and filled it with the word pleasure and he says the reason that is is that pleasure is controllable and sellable we're consumers we're designed to be consumers that's what America runs off of you buying things and it runs off of you buying more shoes than you have feet like we're designed to own too much stuff as an American Consumer the the culture around us doesn't want you to say I'm happy.

I don't want any more I'm at peace also just so you know that version of joy happiness is harder to attain it's less controllable by you I want to feel content is way harder Target to hit versus the pleasure button y'all sugar caffeine caffeine with sugar in it we know how to press this button and that's our approach to sexuality is just pleasure not contentment stability enjoyment Joy we just know how to press the pleasure button and so we've been sold on happiness as a Pursuit pleasure as a replacement.

For that because that's the one that's controllable and sellable and sex is one of the primary ways to accomplish that and that's where we are culturally that's what pornography is that's what a hookup culture is it's the ability to go after pleasure because pleasure is in some ways controllable attainable sellable achievable and we hope that if I mash the pleasure button enough I'll get the contentment but our skyrocketing addiction and depression shows us that just mashing the pleasure button doesn't make us content all right we need to understand that's going on in our culture.

But the next thing we need to understand and the reason why because that was already happening the reason why our culture has shifted its view on our view is because of this I want to read this quote to try to help you understand kind of where we are this is from Carl Truman and Strange New World and he does a really good job of trying to articulate this but he says this indeed it can seem as if things that almost everybody believed as unquestioned Orthodoxy meaning truth reality the day before yesterday that marriage is between one man and one woman.

For example he says things that we used to believe that we were all on the same page with we were all because of the day before yesterday but give you an example you know how political positions shift depending on what everybody thinks um if you didn't know that there you go uh when Barack Obama ran for president in 2008 that was his official position the marriage was between one man and one woman that's not to take a shot at Barack Obama and try to help you understand how quickly we've shifted our position on this that that idea.

For example are now regarded as heresies advocated only by the dangerous Lunatic Fringe he goes on to say when I was young religious people were often regarded as foolish or hypocritical by The Wider culture but I do not recall any widespread belief that they were as a class dangerous hate-filled bigots who represented a threat to civil order he used to be viewed as more moral now we're being viewed as less moral why the reason why is this we are currently in what some social scientists and philosophers would call the age of authenticity or the age of expressive individualism what started with Renee Descartes saying I think.

Therefore I am placing existence inside of us and then Rousseau who took that and ran with it Russo at one point says I'm going to do something that's never been heard of I'm going to do something that'll shock the world I'm going to write a story but I'm just going to talk about what's going on inside of me is that shocking to us no that's a diary man like that's just that's the way that's the way we think about the world is that I'm the main character and what's going on inside of me is primary and it wasn't something that was new uh Saint Augustine had already done it Christians believe that you have an.

Inner man we're not against this idea but that the seat of reality exists inside of you is new but what we've done is we've said that the primary thing that matters is who you are on the inside so we say things like you have to be true to yourself you need to just believe in yourself we talk about you can't argue with someone's lived experience if they've actually experienced it you can't tell them they're wrong we say things like this is my story this is my truth.

Because it's seated in us there's a Canadian philosopher his name is Charles Taylor and I thought he put it well he says this expressive individualism believes each one of us has his or her own way of realizing our Humanity and it believes that it is important to find and live out one's own and that's what he's talking about one's own way to live out your Humanity as against surrendering to Conformity with a model imposed on us from outside by Society or the previous generation or religious or political Authority I give you the plot to most of the movies you've watched in the last 30 years that's the books we read That's the movies we watch.

That's what we believe is that you have to figure out what's going on in you and you have to express it you have to impose yourself on the rest of the world and that anybody who tells you you're wrong is the enemy you see what we've become to believe and usually that other what we've come to believe is this we can't really know right or wrong we can't really know things about God we can't really know things about eternity we can't really know any of those things objectively all we really know is who we are and what we want and what's going on inside of us and since we can't really know things outside of.

Us but we can know what's inside of us then we might not have right and wrong but what we can have is power and oppression what we can have is someone else who imposes their will on yours and anyone who poses their imposes their will on yours is oppressive and abusive and harmful anybody who tells you that you can't be the you that you want to be is oppressive and abusive and harmful and the Church has been the bad guys from Footloose onward probably before that that's just the one I know about that's what the Church does is it comes in and says no there's actually something wrong inside of you and you need some.

Objective reality to guide you to change you you need to submit your will to something outside of you that's not the stories we tell that's not the advice we give it sounds weird to us to give the exact to say the opposite like if you were coaching someone up and you said look don't be yourself yourself is bad so stop it you go out there and you be what your parents expect you to be high five don't be yourself don't follow your dreams your country needs you submit to the will of your country don't be yourself don't find out what's true to you and express it do not sing a song into a.

Well look at me do not sing you do what your ancestors want from you you do what your religion tells you to do that sounds like a monologue of the bad guy that's what we've been trained in now Christianity believes that you have an inner self and Christianity believes that your inner self you have value and dignity and worth that you are an individual you're not a cog in a machine that you exist individually and personally the Christianity agrees with those things.

But then Christianity steps in and says but there's something wildly broken and wrong and sinful in your heart and you cannot trust yourself which puts us completely sideways with our culture and once you take our culture's approach to pursuit of pleasure and sex and our culture's approach to individuality and self-expression and for lack of a better word marry those things together we have what we have now which is the Church is oppressive and abusive I want to read this this is Carl Truman talking about that coming together he says this in short the sexual Revolution does not simply represent a growth in the routine transgression of traditional sexual codes or even a modest expansion of.

The boundaries of what is and is not acceptable sexual behavior not at all rather it is the repudiation of the very idea of such codes in their entirety so what what he's saying is this the sexual Revolution wasn't saying hey we've made the line too too rigid too too narrow on what good sex is and we need to move it out we need to be able to talk about it a little more we need to be able to change the boundaries what he says the sexual Revolution is is any line drawn is bad we got to get rid of the lines and we currently really only have like one cultural lines left pedophilia and bestiality.

And we're wavering on both of these and you're actually going to start hearing the arguments for why those are bad not based in they are morally repugnant and intrinsically Wicked sins against your dignity as a human it's not what you're going to hear we're going to start hearing more arguments about the problem is consent because we only understand how to talk about power and oppression and it has to do with individual expression and so the issue is not that these are bad on their own.

But how are you going to define consent okay he keeps going more than that it has come in certain areas such as that of homosexuality and transgenderism to require the positive repudiation of traditional sexual mores okay so not just we got to get rid of them we actually now have to announce that any of those lines were actually evil they were bad they were oppressive that's what positive repudiation means it's come to we have to do that to the point where belief in or main maintenance of such views trying to keep the line has come to be seen as ridiculous and even a sign of serious mental or moral deficiency the Church is oppressive.

Less moral he says and to understand this how we got here we need to see the sexual Revolution as a particularly sharp manuscript manifestation of the characteristics of expressive individualism if the individual's inner identity is defined by sexual desire then he or she must be allowed to act out on that desire in order to be an authentic person so when the Church says we think you're wrong this desire is bad the Church is articulating we see you as separate from your sexual desires.

But our culture no longer does that our culture says sexual desire is identity and even when we talk about it one of the reasons you feel uncomfortable is you've been coached by our culture and how to think about this and the younger you are the more coaching you've received this is why people who are older than you can say things that make you go oh you can't say that this is why if you go back and watch old episodes of sitcoms you'll go oh you can't say that and they weren't they're not that old.

But you'll be going and you realize oh I've been trained for example if I said there are most people and they're Chipotle people and chipotle people are wrong you would first of all probably agree with me who wants to pay for chips I don't get it but you would not hear it the way that you would hear there are straight people and gay people and gay people are wrong because Moe's and chipotle is a thing that you desire it's not who you are do you.

See how we've shifted to Identity and Christianity says no no who you are is an image Bearer made in the image of God who you are has desires who you are needs Jesus and we love you enough to wherever your desires are crossed Away With Jesus to say oh please come to Jesus and not because he hates you and not because we think we're better than you but because we think that what you're chasing is harmful and that Jesus is better.

But that's not the language or culture speaking so we come across and are seen as oppressive and abusive because it's a personal attack you are wrong at the core of who you are and anybody who's out there saying you are wrong is equivalent to a racist is equivalent to someone who is saying just by the nature of how you exist you are wrong and it's seen as wickedness and we're right about racism culturally and we're wrong about this so because of this and this we are more sexually liberated than we've ever been in this country you are more free to pursue sex to pursue pleasure and we're told that.

If you can freely nobody's going to put any restraints on you and if you can freely pursue pleasure you'll be happy that's what we've been sold on you gotta get your parents to not tell you what to do you got to get Society to not tell you what to do you got to get religion to not tell you what to do if you can have all those things you'll be happy is our culture happy has it worked we're told that pornography.

For a long time it's just a normal thing it's a social good it'll reduce people who would otherwise commit sexual assaults it um it's a normal craving it's in the privacy of your home like we've been told all these things this is fine this won't hurt us it's good it's a desire it's a it's like an appetite you can just you know you get hungry you eat this is this is fine for us but has pornography been a public good for us we have an increased amount of addiction we have an increased amount of abuse and addiction and depression we have an increased amount of young men who are.

Now having to seek medication because they no longer function properly sexually because of their pornography addictions it's increased depression it's increased social anxiety because it's a very bad representation of how men and women should interact it's increased the objectification of people it's increased the commodification of people the buying and selling of people we have hookup culture which is just find as many people to sleep with and that's a that's a route to Joy visit has it been has this been a good.

For us we have stories now of people who are using apps to to sleep around and they've met somebody they sleep with them and they're in the bed with them and open the app back up because it doesn't lead to satisfaction we were told that if we had the pill and if we had contraceptives and we had abortion we could help cut down on the number of children that are born out of wedlock and the reason why we want to cut down on the number of children who are born outside of a married couple is.

Because all of their statistics are bad they're worse you can you can succeed from that position but your chances for poverty for violence for abuse being abusive and being abused all increase we were told though if we had the pill if we had free sex if we could just get it to where it wasn't we would fix these problems we now have the highest rate of children born out of outside of wedlock in the U.S we've ever had it's nearing uh it's 40.

So it's almost half of all children born or born into a situation that's worse for them we have sexual assault and rape which we've always had the world has had that forever but it's on the rise and we're told culturally that what we need is more we need more freedom we need to get rid of where people are still saying things like we got to get to where we can talk about sex without it being taboo is that our problem that we don't talk about sex enough we're not free enough with how we talk about it every single show we've watched every single movie you've watched every single everything you've participated in has sold you.

On the idea that that sex is free and easy and simple and if you could just have more of it you'd be happy and we're told we need more that this is freedom and this is satisfaction and I think we ought to look around and say if this is freedom and this is satisfaction we don't want it and I think we ought to look and say thankfully that the Bible looks at this and says this is not Freedom or satisfaction this is called idolatry and slavery those are the words the Bible is going to put to this.

So go to Romans 1. because God loves us he helps tell us that things are bad for us I love my children which means that I often stand between the pleasure button and shoe them towards Joy my kids are convinced if they only ate Candy and didn't have a bedtime their life would be magical they're convinced that they could speak to their parents however they wanted to their life would have more freedom they're convinced that if they had to go to school and weren't forced to brush their teeth life would be good and I'm.

Well aware that all of those things will mash the pleasure button and will never ever head them towards Joy and God stands in between us and our Twisted desires in his infinite wisdom and love and says no no no that'll match the pleasure button but it'll never ever head you towards Joy Romans 1. we read some of this earlier we read all this earlier we're going to pick up in verse 21. this is talking about Humanity it's talking about what all creatures under the Earth have done and how this has worked out it says.

For although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish Hearts were darkened I want you to understand one of the things that Christians believe is that we have foolish hearts you have lied to you more than anyone else has you have caused you more problems than anyone else has you have caused yourself a problem and then lied to yourself about it we have foolish hearts it says their foolish Hearts were darkened claiming to be wise they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal.

God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things so rather than submitting to God worshiping God delighting In God we said no we want something else and we swap it out that's idolatry the idea that I'll be the person who decides what's right I'll be the person who's in charge is not new it's actually quite old that's the thing we did in the Garden of Eden that's Genesis chapter 3. that's where they say no we'll choose right and wrong we'll be in charge of Good and Evil thank you very much we'll decide.

So our culture is saying hey you're the final Arbiter on the right and wrong good and evil it's like didn't a snake tell us that a long time ago that's where we are we exchange God for something else and sometimes this shows up in straight up the way we think of idolatry a totem pole bird something that you're lighting incense to but also we've replaced it for images resembling mortal man my own intelligence my own reason my own Inner Man and also physical bodies of other people and it says.

Verse 24 therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves and y'all our approach to sexual sin is a dishonoring of our bodies and that's what he's talking about he's going to go further and say more about sexual sin he also says that he gave them up to all kinds of sin but that's what happens when we reject God often he'll say you can have which have it and it's not good.

For us it's actually his wrath on us to give us what we want at times it says because they exchange the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever amen you are worshiping something and you are serving something you are a slave to something this is how Humanity works you have something that you set out in front of you and say this is good this is desirable this is the right outcome this is who I want to be this is how I think want things to work that's worship that's this this is what is most wonderful and delightful in the world.

And then your track to get it and enjoy it is your service or slavery so that Peter's going to say things like whatever overcomes a person to that he is enslaved or later in Romans in chapter six he's going to say you're a slave to the one whom you obey he says it's either God or it's to sin which leads to death and culturally we are told if you can think about yourself and you can think about sex in these ways you'll have freedom you'll have joy you'll have Delight This Is Our.

God come let us worship and Bow Down and we have not been blessed by our cultural approach to sex you have not been blessed by our cultural approach to sex it has not been good in your life or added to your joy for many of us most of us we were introduced to sex way too early it ruled in our imagination way too early our introduction to sex if it was through pornography completely Twisted for us what it is supposed to be.

Because rather than being something that is participatory and covenantal and enjoyable between two people it became voyeuristic and you were separated from it became a commodity it became only about pleasure and nothing about Covenant or sacrifice or the giving of yourself it came only about self-service rather than service and kindness and graciousness and generosity and sacrifice and belonging if we went from relationship to relationship if you're currently going from relationship to relationship sexual relationship to sexual relationship or not even a relationship just sex to sex.

If you're currently looking at pornography daily it might hit the pleasure button but it is not added to to contentment to rest peace it is not added to your joy it's one of the reasons it's so confusing because you've potentially been convinced that it would so maybe you're not doing it right or maybe you need more or maybe it's got to be different or maybe you've got to find the next approach to it that that makes you send out more dopamine maybe next time.

But it will not satisfy more and more when we do pre-marital counseling or when we do marriage counseling we are not dealing with people who have only had sexual relationships with each other and their previous sexual relationships have not added to their Joy it has not added to contentment it has not added to Delight it has not added to the picture of what God had for us our objectification of each other and buying and selling of one another has only added to the Brokenness around us.

If sex and individuality are our God we need a new one because this one has not blessed us this one demands more worship more sacrifice more service always promising to at some point finally satisfy satisfying us saving us fixing us and it will not ever deliver and by God's grace we will see that sooner rather than later Jesus says in John chapter 8 Jesus answers them and he says truly truly I say to you everyone who practices sin as a slave to sin and the slave does not remain in the house forever the sun remains forever and he's playing on a concept they understand here slaves don't inherit the end of the line.

For a Slave is not inheritance rest and Delight that road leads to more slavery but the Sun remains forever and then he shifts and he starts talking about himself and he says so if the sun sets you free you will be free indeed do you want freedom do you want satisfaction do you want joy do you want to learn how to quit just trying to chase after pleasure and find contentment and Delight that lasts not only last for this little life as we walk this out.

But last for an eternity because it has been purchased for us not by us but by him then you need the son to set you free you need Jesus to pay your debt to rescue you to forgive you and to make you his forever one of the reasons we can say that we know with definitive Clarity that God loves us when he stands between us and pleasure is because he sent his son to die on a cross for us that he came to suffer.

So that he might pay our debt and set us free there's a beautiful story in Luke chapter 11. Luke tells us that Jesus is in the house of a religious leader and a prostitute comes she falls on the ground and she begins to weep she begins to weep on Jesus's feet you ever had really dusty Sandy dirty feet and put a little drop of water you know that little line that runs through them that's what his feet looked like but more lines more lines more lines I don't know.

If you've ever just wept and you've cried to where it's just dripping she's just weeping on his feet and she starts using her hair to clean his feet because there's so many tears she had been chewed up and spit out by her culture's approach to sex she had been run racket she had been wiped out she had approached something that was supposed to be good for them and it was horrific and and the religious leader thinks to himself if Jesus was really a prophet he would know what kind of woman this was and he wouldn't let her touch him we're looking in the pages of our Bible and we know that he's not only a.

Prophet but he's the son of God and you're struck at that moment oh he knows exactly what kind of woman this is and he welcomes her and he forgives her and he Delights that she would come to him and in this room right now we may have some significant sexual Brokenness because you have been poorly trained by our culture about what satisfaction and Delight look like and I want you to know that you can fall on your face at Jesus and he welcomes you he does not hesitate he wraps you up and says it's.

For you that I died it's for you that I came that I might cover your shame that I might clothe you in righteousness that you might shine forever with me and all of this can be taken away so do not hesitate do not feel dirty do not feel ashamed but run head long to Christ and to his Redemption and may we be a people who begin to understand what our culture is training Us in so that we might speak well to them.

And so that we might speak well to our hearts to know that we need Jesus to set us free let's pray Lord Christ we praise you and our hearts lie to us and deceive us and lead us astray and Lord we're tired we're tired of biting the hook and being reeled in and being promised satisfaction and being promised fulfillment and being promised that if we just had this we'd be happy and it always falling short and Lord we're hurt we've pursued sexual sin or we've been actively harmed by the sexual sin of others.

Well we're in this room today and we've been marred we feel bruised and abused we feel like we've dirtied ourselves and been dirtied by others and Lord we praise your grace that Jesus shed his blood that we might be clothed in righteousness and by the power of your spirit by the working of the cross may you be at work right now for every person here who is holding on to sin that they might repent that they might weep at your feet and be restored that they might come humbly that they might be lifted up and that we might leave here with new worship and new service in rejection of a false.

God we've asked this in Jesus name amen Matt's going to come up as a Church we're going to sing he's going to take a moment to play while we reflect we're going to take communion and communion is a celebration that Jesus came and that his body was broken and that his blood was shed and that he was made to suffer on our behalf and to cover us through his work and so I'd like for you to take a moment that before you take communion before you come to the feet of.

Jesus she would take a moment to repent that you would take a moment to praise him for his sacrifice for you for his covering of you some of you right now have felt shame creeping up on you and I want you to know that if you're in Christ there is no condemnation there is no guilt because he has paid for it you are made holy and righteous and new if you've trusted in Jesus if you've repented you don't have to dredge all this back up you get to walk free you've never brought it to him come surrender.

So that you might be made new communion is for Christians for those who place their faith in Jesus if you have not trusted in him we'd ask for you to to not partake in it but we would ask you to come to Christ but if you place your faith in him today you can walk over and take communion and celebrate that he died for you that you might be made so take a moment where we are and pray and then Delight in the salvation of Christ.

Mill City 9/18/23 Mill City 9/18/23

Theology of Sex+ Week 2: Built and Blessed

Group Guide

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Transcript

Well good morning my name is Chet I'm one of the pastors here grab a Bible and head to Genesis chapter one should be the first page of your Bible shouldn't be too hard to find but we're going to be there this morning we are in our Theology of sex plus Series where we are trying to as a Church get our footing in the midst of a culture that has a torrent of things to say about how we ought to think about men and women and gender and sex and sexuality that we are just overrun with this is how you're supposed to think about that this is how you're supposed to say that this is what's.

True this is what not I mean it's it's um unending and Relentless and we need to be able to take some time to say does the Bible help us out here does it tell us anything that will give us some clarity so this morning I'm going to say something that uh philosophers historians anthropologists scientists medical professionals theologians and stand-up comics have all noticed and remarked upon men and women are different oh that's what we're going to talk about this morning but we're going to not just say that they're different and not just make remarks about the differences.

But we're going to look at the fact that God designed them distinct on purpose for a purpose that these distinctives these things that go into masculinity and femininity aren't random or evolutionary but that they were built into US baked into us on purpose for a purpose you could say that we were built and blessed or we were designed and destined or you could say it in this long sentence and we looked at last week which is this we are created image bearing embodied and distinct people made.

For complementary co-rule with God and what we looked at last week was created image bearing embodied and distinct and today we're going to look at complementary co-rule with God and we're going to try to wrap our head a little bit around what's built into masculinity what's built into femininity and why is that good because the Bible tells us that it's it's good now in order for this to be sermon length we're going to speak in some generalities so they're going to be some things that I say that aren't always true.

For all men or all women but they're generally true and then we're going to try to rough in some of the Baseline things that are handed as responsibilities to masculinity and hand it as responsibilities to femininity and hand it as gifts to masculinity and hand it as gifts to femininity and hand it as gifts to masculinity for femininity and hand it as gifts to femininity for masculinity and I will try not to say femininity and masculinity that many times in a row again.

But no promises so grab your Bible go to Genesis chapter one we're going to look at verse 26 we're going to pick up where we left off last week kind of looking at this same passage last week and we're going to notice some different things so it says this then God said let us make man in our image so we are designed in God's image after our likeness and let them so this man is not male but Humanity let them and we're going to.

See that fleshed out even more in just a second let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the Earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on Earth so Humanity was made for nothing less than complete and utter world domination that's what we're designed for Authority is built into humanness so if you dislike Authority and reject Authority and think Authority is bad you are rejecting something essential to the nature of humanity that every single person in this room was built to wield Authority and you need to understand that we were designed to exist in authority and to wield Authority.

And to wield it well and to co-rule with God God's going to rule over the Earth but he specifically designed image bearers to have dominion co-dominion with him and co-dominion with one another it is weighty and beautiful that God would lay that responsibility on us verse 27 so God created man in his own image again that's Humanity in the image of God he created him male and female he created them and Genesis 5 is going to say the same thing but it's this picture of humanity being both male and female designed with a purpose.

For this purpose and I want you to know something it's something that we just assumed that we know without knowing that we know it but in our cultural time I need to point it out uh when it says male and female or later when it says that God made a woman and brought her to the man you know what that means this isn't confusing language for us I was reading a book to my children or read at night to my children some and I thoroughly enjoy that do a lot of voices it's a lot of fun um there's a book that we gave up on.

Because it annoyed the snot out of me but one of the things it did early on in the book was it said it was a little Adventure book or whatever and it said that in their Garden there was a thwap and a thwap is about the size of a Zonk and then it just moved on with its hilarious little joke where it tells you two words that you don't know what they mean uses one to describe the other haha you got us I was very angry at this author I still am I shouldn't talk about it here that's not what the Bible's doing.

When it says male and female it's not talking about flaps and zonks that we don't understand what it's talking about when it says man and woman you know what it's talking about you know what a man is you know what a woman is you actually know what a man is and what a woman is with surprising accuracy you you can walk around and spot them and you're real good at it and so when it says this it's distinct creatures that are distinct on purpose and we know built in some of those distinctives we've lived around it our whole lives.

And so when it says male and female and later man and woman we know what those are and that God intentionally from the very beginning built this distinction in so look at verse 28 and God blessed them and God said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth and subdue it and have dominion over it so this blessing this intentional design that God gave us is to subdue the Earth and he says be fruitful and multiply now you have the healthy human has everything it needs to survive built in you you breathe with your own lungs your body converts oxygen puts it in your bloodstream your heart pumps that around you eat on.

Your own you digest on your own there is one thing though essential to the existence of humanity that God did not give you the ability on your own but split that and he split it based off of gender and that is reproduction and he made our participation in reproduction not just have to have two distinct types of people but our roles in reproduction are very different if you don't believe that you can ask my wife because when I said we should have more children she said it's difficult and I said it wasn't that difficult and she seemed to think that her participation and it was different from mine she told me we could have more.

Kids if I had them because it's difficult it's very different it's wildly different for the way that God designed this and y'all much of human history and the way things have planned out between men and women is built into this one particular design difference that God gave us women get pregnant and men do not women stay pregnant and look being pregnant you are you are I mean doing this amazing phenomenal you're creating a human inside of you it's insane but being pregnant also makes you bad at most everything else it just does.

Look up pregnancy brain my wife one time wore one of my flip-flops and one of her flip-flops for like an hour before she noticed she did not get faster and stronger while pregnant she got to where she couldn't breathe or sleep whatever it's insane and then after the baby's born you don't just bounce off and they don't run off like lizards they cling to their moms forever and have to be fed by their moms the ability for a dad to feed a child it is a recent development and it's not even something that we did in our bodies y'all this is historical fact that has played out and how men and women work.

God built it that way on purpose and here's what it says in Genesis 31 it says it's all what he made and behold it was very good God made men and women distinct from one another on purpose for a purpose and he says it's good this is going to be very good now gender is essential to our design as people this is a quote from Kathy Keller I'll quote her a couple of times a day in her in the book meaning of marriage with Tim and Kathy Keller she wrote the the one on uh the chapter on gender differences and she has some really helpful things to say.

But she says this this means she's talking about this passage in Genesis this means that our maleness or our femaleness is not incidental to our humanness but it constitutes its very essence that from the very beginning we were made male or female God does not make us into generic Humanity that is later differentiated rather from the start we are male and female every cell in our body is stamped as XX or x y and even in situations where there's x x y or xyy there's still this on every single cell this Mark that delineates between male and female is there a y chromosome is there not it says this.

If I try to ignore the way that God has designed me or if I despise the gifts he may have given to me fulfill my calling if the postmodern that's our current cultural approach to things if the postmodern view that gender is wholly a social construct or true then we could follow whatever path seemed good to us if our gender is at the heart of our nature however we risk losing a key part of ourselves if we abandoned our distinctive male and female roles that it is built into your very existence as a human you are human.

But you're not just a human you're a male human or a female human and God did that on purpose now the idea that gender is just a social construct is something that we will deal with more later but gender isn't just a social construct while there are some socially constructed things like how we dress like there's a passage in Deuteronomy or in the Old Testament law where it says men shouldn't dress like women but that changes from culture to culture what what that looks like there's nowhere in the Bible that says that boys have to like the color blue or that pink is a girl color or the girls have to play with baby dolls.

And boys have to play with trucks there's nowhere that says that a man can't wear a green flower shirt even though some of y'all have had a little attitude about it this morning it's not in there there's felinity and femininity that do studies bear this out mean that often little boys would rather play with something that have wheels and if they get to pick they'll pick that and little girls will play with things often even if you give them a ball sometimes they'll treat it like a baby doll it just is how it works and that's some things that you can say.

Well that's culturally poured into them by the people around them and maybe but we are designed differently and you can look there's study after study after study that shows this but that some of the things that we have given to us culturally aren't biblical commands they're just ways that some of this plays out as we try to figure it out and look at it together so if you don't if you're a lady and you don't like flowers that's fine and if you're a man and you don't like hunting that's fine.

And if you don't like football that's fine you're wrong but it's fine that's not unbiblical now culturally we're given a couple of options on how we should treat gender and they're both they're bad so let me share them with you one is to just say there are no differences between men and women just flatten it out there's no differences any difference we see is just culturally given to us it's just what we taught the kids but there are no real differences between men and women that's that's one thing that we're told culturally and what that ends up doing though the more you press on it is it either rounds off masculinity or hardens up femininity.

Is usually how this works out it's usually either trying to press men to be more effeminate or press ladies to be more masculine and it's a rejection of the beauty of the distinctiveness given to us one of the books I was reading said so often one of his problems that he has with people saying that women are just as good as men is that when he talks to them and they play that out they end up just pulling women onto the battlefield he said most often what they're doing is erasing a lot of the beauty of femininity by pressing into this idea that's not always 100 true.

But that's what happens is we flatten it out some way and we reject the goodness of the distinctiveness or the other cultural option we have is to over value one to uh and to demean the other so we say things like men are trash women are crazy men are going to take over the world women are like this men are like this but we mean it in the way that women are dominant and they're going to be the ones who rule everything and they're the ones who are the best and anywhere you add a man you just added stupidity one of the arguments you'll hear every once in a.

While and it boils down to men are stupid women are just as smart as men it's like good what a well-articulated argument this way that we owe value one or demonize the other and so we overvalue men and we demonize women and and neither one of those is meant to be what happens God gave them both distinct but gifted for good so here's what we're about to do we're going to read in Genesis chapter 2. and we are going to just uh make some notes about the things that kind of fit under the man and make some notes about the things that fit under the woman.

And then we'll kind of take those all together and look at them so I'm just going to go that's important that's important and then we'll have we'll kind of compile a little list and then we'll look at it all together all right General same stuff that we just saw in Genesis 1 but it zoomed in it tells us more about how God went about making man and woman this Genesis chapter 2 verse 5. we know Bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up.

For the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land and there was no man to work the ground okay so he's not here yet but we're already told he's got work to do one of the primary things that's going to happen is he's going to work and you can say that well this is the same word for Humanity it is it's the word Adam it's the same word for Humanity it's the same word for Adam the man that they're going to make.

But that God's going to make and then but this ultimately as this story plays out it's he's talking specifically of the male so he says work so if you want to write that down or Circle it or whatever we'll put that under man if you're making a chart man put work under there woman oh I need to say this uh one time my wife was wearing a jacket and I said to her that's a that's a cute jacket I really like that jacket and what she should have done was blushed and said thank you boo.

But that is not what she did what she said was I wore a jacket yesterday did you not like that jacket now maybe I oversold how much I like this jacket I don't know the way I said it it's probably I could have delivered it better when I say as we're going through this this is true about men or this is true about women don't flip it around and say oh so men can't or oh so women can't just hear the direct statement does that make sense Men You're supposed to work we're going to talk about that in a.

Second I'm not saying women aren't that's not but we're just as the essential things that are built in that's one of them okay all right y'all stay focused let's keep going verse six and a miss was going up from the land oh wait is that no not verse six jump two verse oh my goodness that's it's in there and the Miss was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the Breath of Life and the Man became a living creature and the.

Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east and there he put the man whom he had formed it's going to talk more about the garden where it's located go to verse 15. the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it so this man goes there and he's got this specific job so it's worked but in this work and keep we're going to look at that in a moment so mark that that's important.

And then he's going to tell the man to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil go to verse 18. and the Lord God said it is not good that the man should be alone I will make him a helper fit for him so you can underline not good if you're filling out the little chart for men it's work and keep and not good now don't get too excited about writing that it's not good that he's alone masculinity is incomplete without femininity.

But there's a real tension thrown into the text when this is said because in chapter one God makes something and it's good he makes something and it's good and then at the end it says it's very good this is the first time where he's made anything and said that's not good have you ever been around somebody and all of a sudden they go uh-oh and you immediately like what that's what this is oh and we're supposed to pause we're supposed to have this moment oh what how what's going on and that's what's happening here is that masculinity on its own God's design.

For Humanity is not going to complete be complete with just masculinity so let's let's look yeah that's where we are and he was made first now that's not said it just it said it's there and you might would think well is that important and the New Testament is going to say yes it is and that's going to play out in the way we're to understand what are the distinctive things for masculinity so that's what we've got all right go back to.

Verse 15. the Lord God took the man put him in the garden oh no sorry verse 18. then the Lord God said it is not good that the man should be alone I will make him a helper fit for him now we don't know that that's the woman yet but that's going to be the woman and so if you want an underneath woman when you're filling that chart out help her fit for him and we'll have to Define what that means.

But that's helpful it's essential to kind of what God has designed for femininity so help her fit for him and we'll Define those words later okay now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them and whatever the man called every living creature that was its name this is how the world Works God designs God's creates and we get to discover and name and classify he's like the.

First little scientist charting things out it's it's really it's an interesting picture of how God wants to partner with humanity and it shows some of the authority of Adam to be able to name creatures that he has dominion over them the man gave names to all livestock unto the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field but for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him and I think that sentence is so weird that's what we were doing.

When he was naming all the animals we were also background looking for a helper fit for him y'all do y'all see how much that drags out the tension of this it says it's not good that he would be alone he says I'm going to make a helper fit for him and then it says he made it all of the creatures and not one of them was fit for him none of them could match with him none of them could share life and ideals and hopes and dreams and effort none of them and Adam feels this I think some of it is to show Adam his lack.

Verse 21 so the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh all right so that rib or came from his side that's That's essential to understanding the role of women the role of femininity y'all everything Adam was made from dust everything else came out of the ground Eve doesn't she comes out of Adam she comes out of his side she doesn't come out of the front or from behind she comes out of his side they pulled apart almost breaks him he does surgery he says he cuts him open and closes him back puts him in a.

Deep sleep does anesthesiology and this picture of Eve being made from Adam and for Adam is important and how we're to understand this and y'all this is like Love Song stuff they're made for each other that God intentionally designed it to have this some level of completeness together and and this isn't to say that every single woman or every single man is incomplete we over celebrate that kind of romantic love culturally where the Bible is going to say that no there's there's a wonderful beautiful way to live single a single lifestyle to the glory of.

God and it's actually better in some ways so every lady who says you know what I'm I'm just going to devote my life to Jesus I'm going to go be a missionary and every man who takes on the same thing is a blessed wonderful thing you're not incomplete because you don't have someone of the opposite gender that lives in your house but humanity is incomplete without two genders our country will be worse if we get rid of genders because we need masculinity and femininity.

Okay y'all this is great watch this verse 22 and the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and he brought her to the man can y'all picture God's face when he's doing this you ever given a really good gift to somebody he's brought every animal that he's created in front of Adam and I can almost see him walking up with the woman like what about this in our search for a helper fit for you in the search.

For a companion what do you think of this it's the best thing that he's brought and we know it's the best thing that he's brought because Adam starts singing or doing poetry one or the other both invented to impress women apparently then the man said this at last is bone of my bones and Flesh of My Flesh she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man yeah he he goes Ella Fitzgerald on this at last and he didn't do that with any other part of creation he didn't go giraffe like it didn't it's not a thing.

God brings the woman forward as this like celebrated Crescendo of creation and we should not have that lost on us when we read this text we were stuck for a long time with we're missing something and then there's a poem a song when she shows up and I can tell you this the men in the room we've felt this before we've had the moment where we were just around guys for too long where we existed in just a masculine world for too long.

And then some femininity showed up and you were like thank you this was needed this was helpful this is so good and that's the way this is written that humanity is the Capstone of Creation in Genesis 1. but then Genesis 2 is like yeah it is Humanity together but don't miss the celebration of the woman verse 24 therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh it's written a couple interesting things in that that passage that verse right there is that the man leaves he's going to set up a new kind of household he's the one leaving is what we're told.

It says that he would leave his father and mother meaning that from the very beginning where father and mother is the ideal and I was reading some sociologists that said that if they had to just come up with it after doing all their study they had to come up with the best way to raise a child they would have come up with this something like this a father and a mother like that you need masculinity you need femininity and that's the best way to raise children.

Now in some situations we're not in that situation and if you're a single mom and you're having to raise children on your own we're where the ideal is lacking Grace abounds but that's the ideal and that's why God made reproduction happen the way it happens 25 and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed you know they were perfectly comfortable with their gender with their bodies that's one of the blessings that happens in the original design for Humanity he was a man news a man felt good being a man was glad to be a man she was a woman knew she was a woman felt good to be a woman glad.

To be a woman he was glad she was a woman she was glad he was a man it was good that's part of the very good design here all right where are we at where's our man and woman chart that we're working up here man working keep not good on his own it's not good that he's alone he was made first all right a woman is helper fit for him created from Adam's side and a celebrated crescendo of creation Now that's very good and we have never enjoyed the just very good version of this not a day in your life you've enjoyed some glimpses of it you've gotten some taste of it you've seen it.

Work well but you've never just gotten this because Adam and Eve immediately fail and fall into sin so we're going to look at Genesis 3. we're going to look at the curses because they also help us see some of the tension here and some of the way God intentionally designed men and women to function differently all right after they rebel against God God curses certain things and this is what it says in Genesis chapter 3 verse 16. to the woman he said I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing in pain you shall bring forth children.

So there may have been some pain but now it's been multiplied and it does seem also that there's an extended painfulness difficulty in the overall raising of children for women and observation seems to bear this out that women have a lot of care and love and connectiveness to their children in a distinct way from the fathers fathers love their children but there seems to be some kind of distinct thing here that that goes along with the difficulty of not only giving birth.

But also of just bearing and raising children I remember when our son was born I was holding him and my wife said don't you just love him so much we were at the hospital and I said I don't know I just met him give me a minute which I thought was hilarious she didn't think it was funny at all it was a joke I did love him but the reality was she had known him for nine months she had known him like he had existed inside of her he was much more real to her.

For a long time than he was to me and it seems like that's continued that there's some amount of this connection that she has with our children that I love my boys as their father but our approaches and tone on things is just different and so it's cursed and certainly it has a lot to do with just the process but it seems like there's maybe more there It also says this your desire shall be contrary to your husband that he shall rule over you foreign the beautiful design of headship and helper which was celebrated as very good.

Now makes us feel uncomfortable for me to even say headship and helper what was going to be something that we delighted in and knew a beautiful picture of is cursed so that there's friction there's dominance there's demeaning there's all these things that go into this now that make it worse but it's cursed and we'll see in a minute more of how that plays out to Adam he said because you have listened to the voice of your wife he was meant to lead he was meant to be the one who helped protect her like as far as we know.

God only told him not to eat of that tree maybe God told her but we don't see that in the text so it was partially on seems like it was on Adam to help protect them from this to help them make wise decisions together since you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you you shall not eat of it cursed is the ground because of you in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life thorns and thistles it shall bring forth.

For you and you shall eat of the plants of the field by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground for out of it you were taken for you are dust and to dust you shall return cursed for men now childbearing and work existed pre-fall and they're essential to existence but now they're worse they're broken and this headship in helping this design for masculinity and femininity is the same it existed pre-fall but now it's worse it's it's messed up we only have gotten the janky version we've seen some blessings of it we've also gotten it broken apart.

So it says this verse 20. the man called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living and that's another thing that's important for for women um her name is life Giver and that's what he names her again indicating some of Adam's Authority in naming his wife but also this elevation of her as the mother of all living that she's life Giver so let's look at our chart that we've made here man he's the work and to keep not good on his own that's masculinity incomplete on its own which is like one of the things that.

First wave feminism articulated was like we need femininity in the world for it to be good and they were right which is good uh he was made first and work is cursed woman a helper fit for him created from Adam's side a celebrated Crescendo childbearing a relationship with a man is cursed and she's called life-giving or life Giver all right let's just talk to men for a second using the work that we've done so far men you were meant to work and to keep it's part of the thing that's given to masculinity that you should play out in your life this means that laziness and there's some like we know this.

But there's something gross about a lazy man it just is it's just bad it's a rejection of masculinity it's a rejection of humanity is you're meant to work you're meant to labor you're meant to cultivate and here's the thing primary examples of masculinity the old Pagan version this is Tim Keller flesh this out I thought it was a helpful he said you got three kind of versions the old Pagan version is all hardness no softness it's just Warrior that's Achilles that's Beowulf that's the the version of we I want my enemy to beg.

For mercy so I can cut their head off while they're doing it that'll be funny it's the old version of masculinity and then he says you jump to the modern version and it's all softness no hardness it's all gentility he said if you actually look at history the hard version of man creates a society the society gets created all the men get soft and a new hard version of man comes in and conquers them that's how history plays out he says only the Christian version that says we're supposed to be both y'all this this concept of work he's a gardener too much patience gentleness that takes how much control over yourself and over your frustration.

And how much trust in the Lord it takes to Garden but he's also a keeper he's to keep the garden he's to defend it and you're like well it was in the what was there to defend oh he immediately lost it from an enemy that it needed to be defended against that word keeper is the same thing we just read where it says God is my keeper it's like the keeper of a gate the keeper of a castle it's the Watchman is the same word.

So you're supposed to be a gardener and a guard which means that a Godly Man is the best person to hand a baby to and the worst person to try to kidnap a baby from that's the way that's supposed to work out tough and tender now this is what Jesus was he could run everybody out of the Temple in the midst of buying and selling I've always said if you think you're bad go throw everybody out of the Barnyard Flea Market on Sunday we'll find out real quick how bad you are bad as.

Jesus but he also was surrounded by women who knew that he understood him that he related to him that he treated them with dignity and worth he was also surrounded by children who felt somehow oddly comfortable and welcomed around him and that's a beautiful picture of masculinity and this idea that he's made first and that Eve comes out of him and is built for him is where the New Testament is going to Anchor this idea of headship and you're going to.

See Peter talk about it you're going to see Paul talk about it this idea of headship this idea of male leadership and it's going to play out throughout the whole Bible it's assumed throughout the whole Bible but we're going to see some words given to it in the New Testament but this idea of headship that men go first in a way is not men go first in luxury and relaxation they're not first in line to get the dessert they go first like a shield they're meant to to take the brunt of difficulty on behalf of everything behind them that's the idea of headship and the reason we cringe at it we'll get to later is.

Because we hadn't done that right that's what that's supposed to look like there's a reason why I watched Men pull up some today when it was raining harder and drop women and children off and then drive away to then walk in the rain that's how that's supposed to work supposed to be some amount of extra difficulty added to men for the sake of those around them and this does not speak ill of women the idea that we should throw men at things and let them die let them carry the brunt of difficulty let them carry the weight of things does not speak ill of women it's part of the song of at last how wonderful.

My brother's a police officer and he was telling me a story about they had a guy in a house they had surrounded the house he was hiding behind the engine block and the wheel well of his vehicle because the guy had been shooting out of it he said he sat crouched like that for like two hours got to eat some pizza eventually they saw robot and the reason they send in the robot is not that the robot's the best cop they have they send in a robot with a little camera on it.

Because it's less valuable than what was outside and when we say that men should go first as a shield that's not a devaluation of women it's a celebration of a value structure that says now we if somebody's gotta go down if somebody's got to be hurt if somebody's got it then that should be men shouldn't be women that's why I'm when you're trying to figure out what does the Bible say about masculinity and femininity you can look to the places where it talks to husbands where it talks to fathers where it talks to wives where it talks to mothers.

Because not all men will be husbands but all husbands will be men two wives but all wives will be women until it's one of the ways that very practically some masculinity and femininity gets fleshed out and one of the pictures given to men in Ephesians 5 is that they would love their wives as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her and it's this idea of sacrifice for the good of another so men do you want others to sacrifice.

For you do you want them to carry the weight so you don't have to do you want them to carry the weight of decision making so that they can be the one who is wrong at the end of the day do you want them to carry the weight of effort and intentionality and work do you say things like well look you just do what you want to with the kids that's fine so that you don't have to to carry that do you shirk at work to let other people do the hard jobs or to you try to walk out what it means to be a shield and to be sacrificial.

For those around you to work and to keep foreign women let's talk about helper fit for him because we have we read helper in a negative sense or like like if my kid was helping me I said oh my little helper as if it's somehow degrading it's not the the primary person that's called a helper in the Scriptures is God we even read it where does my help come from my help comes from the Lord that's that same word it's a Zaire.

And so that this idea of helper is a strong help it's also used for reinforcements in a battle so your help shows up and you get to win because your help is here and that's the way it reads in the text just looking at this text without any kind of historical anything you would just go yeah like this this is wonderful that she's here and this helper can't be like demeaning because of look at how the text reads and the idea of fit.

For him just means complementary across from designed to match together and that's both reproductively and also just skill set wise the way we think the way we approach things uh my wife and I we were we had won tickets from a radio station and we were trying to get the tickets given to us and the communication was just awful it was all over the place and bad and non-existent and eventually my wife said so this radio station is just run by dudes huh there's not a single woman that works here and I busted out laughing.

Because that's really what it felt like it felt like we were just dealing with men because of how bad it was and there's this idea of a woman that's coming in and fixing a whole lot of complimenting a whole lot of where men might be strong they're fixing where all these weaknesses are found this idea of ezer is not condescending there's this picture here of the gift of going second that women get to show up and make things better because men have already roughed in a whole lot of stuff that's that's one of the ways that this plays out it plays out this way in particular in marriage where you get the gift of going.

Second and it's not to be demeaning it's meant to be a gracious gift where you get to go where can I help where can I serve where can I come along and make this better and do things that that you would not otherwise be able to do and this plays out in human history and it plays out in God's good design and it's not meant to be taken as anything but good but there's a reason why it is and that's this curse that comes into the midst of how we relate to one another in gender that he will have dominion over you your desire will be contrary to him.

But he will have dominion over you is how human history has played out so that your desire will be contrary for him is the same phrasing that's used in Genesis 3 when God's giving Cain a warning and says that sin's desire is for you but you must rule over it it's the exact same phrasing your desire will be for your husband but he will rule over you is the exact same phrasing and it means not sin's desire for Cain isn't nice your desire.

For your husband here is this in Conflict desire but it says he'll rule over you but the reason why I think this is given to women the reason why it's a curse said to women is not because they're going to be the primary offenders in this they're going to be the ones causing all the problems it's because they're going to carry the brunt of the curse in how this is going to play out this is the way Kathy Keller puts it as to why she's going to be the only one who writes in this chapter she said we've been writing together.

But I'm writing this chapter on my own and she says it this way when she's talking about gender differences she says I have had more direct experience and talking about and struggling with the difference in gender roles between men and women no surprise there under the influence of the curse in Genesis every human culture has found a way to interpret male headship in a way that has marginalized and oppressed women and it's usually the women who notice and object to this treatment.

First so what was meant to be sacrificial joyful gracious service and celebration in male headship becomes domineering and one of the reasons why we have so much conflict here and pain here and one of the reasons why we dislike so much of what is said when we start talking about what men do and what women do is because of how terribly bad this has gone I've heard a study one time where they asked college students what would you do to prepare to run at night and all the men said stuff like wear shoes get my playlist together a whole lot of the men thought is this a trick question some sort of riddle here.

All the women said things like tell somebody where I was going get a friend plan my route don't listen to music I need to be able to hear my surroundings and most of them said I would not run and that's because men have wielded what God graciously gave us which was a bigger body and strength for wickedness and it's sickening and it's evil and what God meant for every place a man went for everybody else around them to be safer has not been true in human history there was a Twitter thing where someone said hey men don't exist.

For a day what would you do and women were like go out in the world well how in the world and not be scared and that should not be how this has worked but it's how it's worked and so when there's a tension and a rejection of any amount of male Authority it makes a whole lot of sense because if you look historically it's played out really poorly but the response to this is not to reject it but we need it to be redeemed we need the.

Lord to come to work here we'll talk about that in a second the last thing I want you to see is Eve is life Giver there's something intentionally wrapped up in the way that women are meant to be that involves child bearing and child raising and we should not detach that from femininity Abigail favali grew up in the Church she was a feminist scholar and professor she's now professor at Notre Dame but she grew up in the Church and she said.

When she got to college she started trying to figure out who am I supposed to be as a woman and she said she didn't think the Church had good answers but feminism had some really good ones and so she she said she took that on as her new religion until she got pregnant and then she felt like feminism didn't have a lot of answers for the things that she was experiencing going through and she said it is surprising how detached gender philosophy is gender theory is from the phenomenon of motherhood and that we should not separate that out from femininity.

Because it is a beautiful wonderful thing that not all women will be pregnant will get pregnant we'll have children but it's built in this idea of Life Giver is built into femininity so we need a redeemed version of this we need a lot of repentance we need a lot of repentance for where we have degraded the opposite gender or degraded our own gender where we've rejected God's good design and not seeing this as helpful we need a lot of forgiveness for where this has been wielded poorly against us we need a lot of humility as.

Jesus comes in and rescues and redeems us and forgives us and calls us to to faith in him we need a lot of humility and trusting that this is good and that his design for this is good and a lot of humility as we try to figure it out we'll close with this first Peter 2 as Peter is introducing this concept of what it looks like to live out life as Christians and he's going to talk about his uh his call to husbands and wives.

Because he's finishing it up as he's going to give that he starts here and says this beloved beloved I urge you as sojourners and Exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh meaning we're meant as sojourners and Exiles to look different from the culture around us and to control ourselves and to not approach the world the way everybody else approaches it which wage war against your soul keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers they may.

See your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation what if our culture said Christians are crazy in the way they think about men and women they're crazy in the way they think about headship and Helper and submission they're crazy in the way this is evil it's broken and then they got to come be a part of your community group and then they got to come be invited to dinner at your house then they got to go on vacation with you and they realized that hold on a.

Second there's something different here there's some Joy here there's some peace here there's some rest here maybe they hate men and then they show up and they go well I don't hate these men maybe they hate the idea of the way this would work and play out but then they show up and they go hold on a second this this is this is something different here and they have no they have no argument against the way it actually plays out but that involves a lot of repentance that allows a lot of humility and it involves a lot of faith as we try to figure out what does it.

Look like for us to be Godly men and women in light of the work of Christ in us let's pray Lord we're thankful for the good gift of masculinity and the good gift of femininity we're thankful for your intentional design there and Lord we have been affected by the Fall that has brought in so much confusion and wickedness abuse manipulation anger hurt and so Lord we thank you for the work of Christ that you forgive that you heal that you redeem.

When we ask Lord that you'd help us to be Godly men and godly women who are comfortable in our own bodies and see and celebrate your good design not only for our gender but for the opposite gender in a way that brings delight and glory to your name amen

Mill City 9/10/23 Mill City 9/10/23

Theology of Sex+ Week 1: Reality Check- Created, Image-Bearing, Embodied, Distinct

Group Guide

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Transcript

Good morning my name is Spencer and I am one of the pastors here we're going to be in Genesis 1 and 2 today we're in a series called Theology of sex plus so we did this series uh Theology of sex nearly nine years ago the very beginning of 20 16 a lot has changed since 2016. first off we don't title sermons like we used to there was a there is a sermon title back in the 2016 series called do you even Sports bro which is just not something you hear nowadays in our sermon titles.

But a lot has also changed since then like culture has continued to shift and in that series we approached it we talked about a theological basis for sex and gender and sexuality and what the Bible has to say about those things and some of that stuff is is stayed the same a lot of it has changed because the culture has continued to shift back then if we pulled the room it's quite likely that if we asked and said if you do you know someone who identifies as lgbtq Plus I'd say not just no.

But you have a friend do you have a family member A co-worker I think probably half the room would have said yeah I do I think if you did that now it would be much higher and back then in 2016 I don't even think the Q Plus was a major uh part of the mainstream thought on LGBT issues it was just LGBT and that's even shifted because more things have been added to these identifier letters I think even the language of identifies as was not in the mainstream lexicon it wasn't the language of the day like it is.

Now it's so commonplace to have that type of language I think the phrase back then I am uh I'm a man trapped in a woman's body I'm a woman trapped in a man's body was more foreign than it is now I think if you say that phrase now most people know where that is coming from so a lot has changed in the last eight to nine years and being in this culture we've experienced really a lot of I would say even maybe a bombardment of different cultural narratives that run contrary to the Gospel that are antithetical that run against some of the gender and sexual ethics that the Scriptures uphold and you.

See this you see this in popular TV shows and and film you can't scroll through social media without hearing some of these narratives it's ingrained very much the fabric of our culture and I think that's increased since we did this back in 2016. but also since 2016 even things in that Arena have changed some of the ideas have shifted if you go back and read the lyrics of Lady Gaga's Born This Way if you read them in light of some of the current uh cultural thought on sexuality and gender those might even seem a little bit outdated compared to today's phrasing a lot of the language.

Then was that sexuality and gender were really fixed categories that were you were born this way they were unchangeable but even that has changed in mainstream thought that it's more fluid now so a lot has changed in the last decade and we are in a culture that has a different world view than the Christian worldview and Sundays are a time for the Church to gather together to really reset and to hear what the Scripture says and how it speaks to a whole host of issues.

But it's a time for us to reset remember what's actually true and what's actually good and what's actually beautiful I mean this is not just for the subject matter of the sermon series but this is for a whole host of things the reason we do a give series every year around Christmas time because we live in a culture that's so immersed to consumerism it's so immersed in materialism and we that's so ingrained the fabric of our culture and it affects us that we need to.

Remember what it means to not worship money but to actually be people that worship God and lay our finances down before him it's the reason why over and over again we have to address the issues of hatred and the issues of the Spiral because our culture's so angry right now and so so valid on social medias uh so um fierce that we have to address hatred and gossip and slander and racism and the works so there's a time for us to come and hear the word of.

God and hear what is true and hear what is good and hear what is beautiful and a lot has changed in the last eight to nine years on the subject matter so we thought it was wise to actually cover it again in this sermon series and that's what we're going to do over the next six weeks today specifically what we're going to do is we're going to start laying a foundation for how to biblically approach the subject matter we're going to.

Look at Genesis 1 and 2 to to have a Biblical basis for understanding how to even approach the subject matters that will later get more into topically as it relates to homosexuality gender societal ethics related to that but in the coming weeks we're going to lay that foundation and then we're going to do what we normally do in sermon series that we're going to continue to walk out what's taught here on Sundays in the context of our community groups we will continue that discussion and here's what I love about our groups I love that art groups and difficult stuff that we don't avoid we don't avoid difficult topics in the Bible I love that our.

Groups walk this out graciously that we speak the truth in love that we seek to be not harsh with our language but gracious towards one another we seek to see one another as men and women made in the image of God and Christians seeking to conform the image of Christ and Seekers trying to figure this out and that's what we'll get to continue to live this out in the context of our community groups so it's a heavier subject matter over the next six weeks.

But we invite you into it to walk with us as we seek to understand what the Bible has to say about these matters but today we're going to start in Genesis 1 and 2 to establish that Foundation here's what we're going to see over the next two weeks that we are created image bearing embodied and distinct people who are made for complementary co-rule with our God so I'm only going to focus on the first part of that and Chet's going to pick it up next week and the last part of that.

Today specifically we're going to look at how we are created image bearing embodied distinct people so let me pray for us then we'll walk through this together heavenly father I pray that you would be so present now that you'd speak so clearly to us from your word that we would open our hearts to a subject matter that is difficult that is not foreign that affects many of us who have different family members and Friends and wonderful people in our lives that would think differently about this even folks in our Church family that think differently about this.

God I pray that you'd help us be open to your word we'd receive it and we walk this out in faith and in Repentance and in worship and delighting in you as a community in Jesus name amen all right so we're going to see first that we are created in Genesis 1 26 after God the first Genesis account has the first aspects of creation and how the universe came to be and then we get to the creation of mankind of humanity and it says in.

Verse 26 then God said let us make man in our image let us make now that may seem obvious to Christians that God is creator but it has to be stated God made Humanity God is The Sovereign maker he is the one who rules all things who has made all things who governs all things he made Humanity God made man and it has to be established for a reason that has to be established because we live in a time where in our culture will reject that narrative in favor of its own I was listening to a professor named Abigail Fable she's a professor at Notre Dame she's a background in gender studies and in this.

Interview she's recounting how she went from being kind of an a religious or religious post-modernist feminists academic to where she is now which is a giving critique of that movement from academic standpoint not necessarily from a Biblical standpoint but I was listening to her and kind of her journey of how she's come to where she is now in her academic Pursuits and in even her faith that she's newly found and she's wicked smart and she gave the most succinct definition of post-modernism that I think I've ever heard post-modernism is the world view it's the the world view that we live in it's the very air that we breathe this is how it's How we think.

And how we view the world we are living in a post-modern moment that we're all collectively in and she says that post-modernism is the world view that sees reality as narratives created by human beings rather than an order of objective reality discovered by human beings and I thought she hit the nail on the head that this worldview that we live in in the West is a bunch of competing narratives that all narratives culturally are just man-made all they're all stories all narratives are just man-made and what happens is you have a bunch of competing there there's a bunch of competing stories and what's kind of resulted in is a little bit of a power struggle.

That's why so much of the language in this uh discussion is so hyper charged it's because it's a it's a it's a competition of narratives and it's viewed largely in Western culture as each one of these are man-made and she says as opposed to us as humans recognizing the objective narrative the objective reality that there is no such thing as competing truths there's no such thing as your truth or this truth or that truth there is one absolute and objective truth and we as humans as created beings get to discover what that reality is and I thought of wisdom on that was very helpful insightful we had to establish that.

God made man that God as Creator and we are his creatures we have to recognize that he made us and how he made us so first God is creator the second is that we are image bearers we are image bearing people because on in verse 26 of Genesis 1 then God said let us make man in our image after our likeness so God says let us make man mankind human beings in our image after our likeness this Doctrine is known as the Imago day it's Latin.

For the image of God and this image of God Doctrine this is unbelievably profound and wonderful it's one of the most mysterious and impactful doctrines in all the theology that theologians have debated this Doctrine for the last two thousand years and the Mystery of it and The Wonder of it that we as humans are made like God we are like him in some wonderfully mysterious and Powerful way that unlike any other aspect of creation we are distinct and different that we are like.

God that we are like God in the way that my dog is not there's something distinct about us and what's debated is okay but how are we like God how are we like God unlike any other aspect of creation and there's really really helpful arguments that really help flesh that out one of those is is that there's something about our physical characteristic or physical embodiment the way we look that reflects somehow God's spiritual self if you're with us in the book of Exodus we looked at this a little bit in uh Exodus.

When Moses is wanting to see the face of God there's some aspect of the image of God that our physicalness somehow reflects God's spiritualness the God is Spirit but somehow we're like him in some mysterious way another way this is fleshed out is that there is an intellectual component that somehow unlike the rest of creation God has given us the intellect the ability to reason the ability to think in a way that is more like him unlike any other aspect of creation some will argue.

For the more relational aspect that unlike any other aspect of the animal kingdom that humanity is relational and the ways that we build families and societies and communities some will argue that there's a moral component to the image of God that we are moral beings that you can turn on planet Earth and watch a lion track down a zebra and kill it and it doesn't no one is pounding the TV getting furious that this Injustice has happened there's there's no morality in that.

But someone hunts down another human being and it's absolutely a moral issue they're all there are a lot of different aspects to how we're made in the image of God I think all of those have arguments have different value and Merit to them I think they all capture some of this mystery of how we're made to be like God but you put those all together and what that adds up is that Humanity has unbelievable dignity and value and worth as being image bearers every human being has dignity and value and worth whether you identify as transgender or a Christian every single human being has unbelievable dignity and value and worth as being image bears made.

In the image of God and that gets established in Genesis 1. now what does it mean to what do you do with that as image bears and that's what the Lord continues to show us and as this verse continues let us make man in our image after hour likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and of the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the Earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the Earth that has distinct image bears that have value and worth and dignity we give to co-rule with.

God we get to bring Dominion to the chaos of creation a few years ago we spent time in the Book of Genesis a lot of time kind of like we did in Exodus and and we spent some time in Genesis 1 and 2 you can go back and listen to those sermons you can hear how the different creation accounts come together so beautifully and wonderfully but we established then that part of our image bearingness is to help bring order to the chaos of this world this world has made chaotic and we're meant to subdue it with our.

God and that is wonderful and that's an aspect of our image bearing now we are like God unlike any other aspect of creation but we are not exactly like God as creator we are creature we are created got a spirit and we are embodied and it's the third essential aspect I want us to see as we're establishing this Foundation that we are embodied image bearers we're embodied in the second creation account when it starts to focus more on the creation of man we get to.

See how mankind has made in Genesis 2 verses 7 and following it says then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the Man became a living creature and the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the East and there he put the man whom he had formed that God takes the raw elements of this Earth he takes dust he takes atoms and he forms them into a man he forms them into Adam.

And then he breathes life into him and this is intentional of how God designs Humanity to be embodied that his moral intellectual relational Dominion sharing beings are not just spiritual but they're embodied they have flesh we have organs we have blood that's purposeful that's designed that his image bearers can throw a 50-yard pass for a touchdown that I sort of saw so wonderfully last night from our backup quarterback that are that his image bearers can paint and impressionist painting of the sunrise can build and rebuild an engine can weave a tapestry can smoke a brisket can do all types of wonderful things that help bring creation into order and all of these abilities are done.

Physically with physical body parts and physical Minds there's a reason why we don't live underwater it's by God's design that we we don't have gills we're land dwellers that's all intentional in how God makes us as embodied creatures and that's unbelievably important to establish one of the earliest and most destructive heresies false teachings and the first few centuries of the Church was something called gnosticism gnosticism you can see the early kind of sea bed beginnings of it in the book of The Gospel of John and how he is telling the story of.

Jesus but you can see it in Church history in the centuries that followed an agnosticism one of the core teachings is this aspect of dualism this division between material matter and spiritual matter and in this dualism that gnosticism espouses material matter is intrinsically evil it's it's in and of itself evil and that the spiritual matter is good and really that's the problem that's what Nazism says teaches that Jesus wasn't embodied that he was spiritual because he's not of material Evil subject matter it's this idea of division between matter and spirit and in this teaching that really rage through the Church in the.

First few centuries it taught that really what really mattered is this spiritual self and really this inner spiritual self pitted against the body and that's not the teachings of the Scriptures at all and the implications of that are rather dangerous The Body Matters our bodies matter our bodies are not intrinsically evil we certainly inherit faultliness and evil from the fall but when God made Humanity said it's good our bodies are good we we should not it all espouse that bodies are materially evil at all our bodies have dignity and purpose and value and worth I love it one Theologian says Andrew Walker Professor he says this means matter matters our bodies matter your body is.

Not arbitrary it is intentional while you are more than your body you are not less hear that while you you certainly are more than your body and the older that you get the more that you start to fade and decay that that reality is there yeah I am definitely more than my body but don't hear that you're less than no you're not less than your body we're not just a collection of atoms and synapses that happen to be conscious nor are we.

God aware Souls trapped in the materials of the universe and what he's addressing there is we're not a collection of atoms that just evolve together that just happen to be conscious nor are we just got to wear souls in the prison of a body that's not the teaching the Scriptures he says we are living feeling emotional embodied beings designed to relate to and reflect the Creator with each part of ourselves every aspect of ourselves matters and is designed to as embodied creatures to relate and glorify.

God it's the third thing I want us to see now God did not make generic embodied people he didn't make generic embodied people he made genders man and woman which makes us distinct embodied distinct people that's what I want to say the fourth thing I want us to see is that we are distinct people in Genesis 1 27 it says so God created man in his own image in the image of God he created him male and female he created them that he made two embodied engendered image bears both in the image of.

God and then in Genesis 2 he goes on to show how that happened so we saw what happened with Adam that he takes raw elements real physical material good elements from the ground and puts his image into Adam and then we see the creation of Eve picking up in verse 21 of chapter 2. so the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man well and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh and the red that the.

Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man again material here that he he takes a part of Adam's Body and then forms Eve verse 23 then the man said this at last is the bone of my bones and the Flesh of My Flesh she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man and that's poetry which in the English is not all that lovely sounding in the Hebrew it sounds a little bit better.

But what's actually being captured there is that Adam has wandered without a counterpart every other aspect of creation has a counterpart but he doesn't and he's lonely and God makes Eve and he says this at last is the bone of my bones and the Flesh of My Flesh she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man this is joyous poetic I'm not alone therefore verse 24. a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh.

Now Chet later on is going to in the upcoming sermons address this more directly and with more time but let me just say very plainly that that's the first time in the Bible we see in verse 24 that the original design for sex is within the context of marriage between man and a woman and that sex outside of that marriage Covenant as a rebellion against the will of God verse 25 and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Now you cannot read the creation narratives you cannot read these creation stories you cannot tell our history and leave with the idea that men and women are generic image bears human beings are not generic we are embodied and we are engendered every person is created engendered I know when I say that there's a there's a there's a direct rebuttal from some folks to say wait a second what do you say what about intersexual people and we'll spend more time on that later.

But let me just address that out the gate intersexual uh people intersex is a is a genetic abnormality that the chromosomal makeup your DNA doesn't match your phenotypical your your uh genitalia Anatomy there's a difference there and it happens in about .018 of the population is exceedingly rare if you study this you might see a statistic thrown around that says 1.7 that is not true I can send you the NIH study that backs that shows that there's a lot of other genetic deformations that are thrown in that category.

But the actual amount of people in this world that have a different chromosomal DNA makeup than their than their genitalia that that's only 0.018 of the population it's exceedingly rare and the same way that someone might be born without hands because of a genetic abnormality because of the Fall because the fallenness in a fallen world this happens that's a rare exception doesn't mean that the created order doesn't mean that we're supposed to have hands and what happens a lot of times in these discussions is the rare exception gets upheld to disprove the rule no we're created engendered male and female which means it means men you are male from your external features your Adam's Apple.

Your genitalia your muscular structure your bone structure all the way down to your DNA is maleness by purpose and design that means that women your you are female from your face to your chest to your hips to your genitalia to your muscular structure your bones your womb all the way down to your DNA is femaleness and our differences are wonderful and that is the design of our creator that's as intentional handiwork and how he made us I love what pastor Kevin De Young says about this Genesis 1 and 2 in this regard he says far from being a mere cultural construct which is the argument a lot of times the gender is just a cultural.

Construct which we'll get into more later far from being a mere cultural construct God depicts the existence of a man and a woman as essential to his creational plan it's an essential aspect of Genesis 1 and 2. the two are the two are neither identical nor interchangeable but when the woman who was taken out of the man joins again with the man in sexual Union the Two Become One flesh dividing the human race into two genders male and female is not the invention of Victorian prudes or patriarchical Oaths it was God's idea that the idea of man and woman being distinct and different is God's idea our creator that's his idea and he is Creator.

And we are his creatures this means that we should recognize the reality and how we're made and that's important and valuable and to not do so is actually dangerous I was talking to a few of our doctors this week talking to Mike Goble and Brandon Hannah I was getting their take on when you were diagnosing patience does how much does gender matter and it's very much an essential aspect of the equation and to not recognize those differences can be fatal for instance men who have who come in.

For heart attacks present with what are known as some of the classic symptoms chest pain shortness of breath but that's not the same with women women present differently and if you just take how to treat men and say that's how they're supposed to it's it's chest pain and shortness of breath and you discount what a woman is saying when she comes in having a heart attack that could be fatal a very fatal mistake there's a difference between men and women and we should embrace that wonderfully celebrate our differences a rejection of that through self-determination through I determine who I am I Define who I am is an elevation of self to God-like status and it's.

A rejection of God's special design for our embodied selves Andrew Walker goes on to say in his argument that maleness isn't only Anatomy but Anatomy shows that there is maleness and femaleness isn't only Anatomy but Anatomy shows there is femaleness men and women are more than just their Anatomy but they are not less our anatomy tells us what gender we are our bodies do not lie to us God made our bodies and the difference is tell a big part of the story and we shouldn't reject that broad shoulders are not an evolutionary development that came from cavemen to protect the family and to go and kill the Beast that is God's intentional normative design.

For men that women are created differently broad hips are not some evolutionary development that happen over time to spare women death and childbirth that is an intentional embodied design that God chose and those differences should be celebrated they should never be denigrated they should never be belittled not at all now that doesn't mean that there's not exceptions to the rule of course there is every single woman who fights in the UFC circuit every single one UFC has mixed martial arts every single woman who fights in the UFC circuit could end my life in less than two minutes that is a fact that is an absolute undeniable fact I have a bad back it would be.

Over probably in less than 60 Seconds be nurturing my son this week broke his nose like just you can see him he gets out of kid city it's all black and blue through here because he put his arms in his shirt and his legs in his shirt and his class and then when you fall out of your chair and your arms are in your shirt your face breaks the fall and I and I held him in the Children's Hospital emergency room.

For hours waiting to be seen absolutely I'm gonna nurture him it's different than his mom but those exceptions those times where we rise we do different things they don't disprove the normative creation pattern and Rule they just don't this is how God used men to build cities this is how God used women to build Society our differences come together wonderfully and beautifully and to if we act like there's not a difference between maleness and femaleness if we insist upon an interchangeability between the Sexes that runs contrary to the design of.

God if we do this to deny the created embodiment of human beings means that we're taking more of our cues from this cultural moment and the philosophy of the day which resembles more of a Neo gnosticism than anything else that resembles more of this idea of that your material physical body doesn't matter but your inner spiritual self is what truly matters and that is what is ultimately Sovereign is you listen to that inner self and that's how you determine who you are that is more of a form of neo-nosticism than it is biblical Christianity it means that we don't tap into a secret knowledge we tap into the wisdom of the Scriptures humbly searching what.

It means to be men and women who are embodied who are distinct who are created image bearers brothers and sisters these two indifferent embodied genders are meant to come together wonderfully to fulfill God's creation mandate to subdue the Earth to be to be fruitful and to multiply and to fill the Earth and subdue it literally cannot happen without two different embodied sexes it literally cannot happen because of procreation and it cannot happen because we're made in our differences to come together to co-rule and co-rain and to argue that these two genders aren't beautifully and wonderfully designed to rule together with our.

God and all of our differences is to misunderstand reality and a rejection of reality ultimately is a rejection of the very Foundation the fabric of creation itself and ultimately it's a rejection of our creator altogether we need a reality check humbly I submit to you we need a reality check if I pick up a project at home and it requires 106 foot boards I need to measure every board the original measurement matters if I measure a six foot board I cut it.

And then I take that board and I say well that's being a measurement for the next board and then I cut it I'm going to be close to a blade length off and then I would take the next board and use that for the next measurement and cut it and the next board for the next measurement and cut it and cut it and cut it I'm going to end up with a bunch of six foot board seven foot boards eight foot boards and the design of the project is going to go completely out of sorts and every time in the western Church and I mean the western Church not the global South not the East.

And the Middle East because those parts of the Church are not they're not they're not having a problem with this part of the Bible it is mostly the western Church and just be frank it's mostly the Western White Church one cut at a time one cut at a time over the last century one cut at a time one cut at a time is getting further and further and further and further away from God's created design for Humanity and we need a reality check we need to reset and this series is designed to do just that it is designed.

For us to look at the Scriptures and the wisdom and the commands and the Glorious Wonder of how God made us into sit in that and not ignore it to sit in that and see what is actually wonderfully good and beautiful to trust the Lord with how we are made and how we're to operate this is what we get to do as the Church and I'm if we do this humbly and walk this out as the Church family that we're supposed to be.

God willing we're going to discover something wonderful something good Something Beautiful and how God made us now we get to do that here on Sundays then we get to do this scattered in our community groups throughout the week and we've got a wide range of backgrounds political opinions it's not a neutral subject that we're going to have discussions in a vacuum many of us have family and friends who would disagree with us on this and I just would ask us to not run from this.

But to engage to do so humbly and lovingly to tone down some harsh opinions to speak the truth in love and if we can do this well we can discover God's beautiful good design for embodied engendered different created image bearers let me pray Heavenly Father we thank you for the good news of the Gospel that saves us we thank you that we have you who did not look at us in our sin but became embodied In the Flesh for us so that we could.

Look to your death on the cross your real physical death on the cross for us your real physical bodily Resurrection for us so that we could worship you enjoy you as men and women May in your image got to pray that you would invite us into discussions that are soaked in your love and in your wisdom and in your grace I pray that you'd help us open our hearts I pray that you'd help us receive the good news of the Gospel the wisdom of your Scriptures and your teachings.

So that we can be the people of God that you want us to be we ask this in Jesus name amen Matt's going to come up for us and we're going to take the Lord's Supper on the night that Jesus betrayed he took bread and he broke it and he said this is my body that was broken for you and then I took the cup of the new covenants this is my blood that was shed for you that as often as you eat and drink the this you Proclaim my death until I return.

So as Christians we come to the table remembering the death of Jesus the physical embody death of Jesus what that means for us all of us are sinners in need of a savior all of us are broken and we come to the table joyfully remembering what Jesus did for us remembering that one day he will come back he will make all things new in reality will ultimately be reset and we will worship him forever so if you're a Christian you get to come to the table there's gluten-free in that back corner over there.

If you're a Christian we invite you to consider our sin and our savior and joyfully come to the table and take of this meal if you're not a Christian we ask you please don't take of this meal we want you to take part in Christ to take this meal and not know our savior as an empty gesture we want you to know the good news of the Gospel that Jesus saves Center is in a place of faith in him but we ask you to consider our sin Our Savior and joyfully come to table and worship.

Mill City 9/3/23 Mill City 9/3/23

Life in The Spirit

Group Guide

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Mill City 8/28/23 Mill City 8/28/23

Exodus 35-40

Group Guide

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Transcript

Well good morning my name is Chet I'm one of the pastors here grab your Bibles and go to Exodus chapter 35. we are working our way through the book of Exodus we have six chapters left and we are going to go through all of them today so I hope uh we did send you an email to pack your lunch right um now here's what's happening in the book of Exodus we have walked through and we've made it to the place where in Exodus chapters 25 through 31 Moses was on the mountain.

God said you're going to build a tabernacle and here's how you're going to do it and so chapter 25 26 27 28 29 30 and 31 is God explaining to Moses in detail how to build the Tabernacle what they're going to do to accomplish this and then chapters 35 36 37 38 and 39 is them building in detail the Tabernacle so in chapters 25-31 God says this is what I want you to build and in chapters 35-39 they build it and it's this picture of this culmination of God's plan coming together from start to finish in the book of Exodus where ultimately what he's rescued them out of slavery.

For is going to be accomplished and so it's a little bit like if we went and watched a fireworks show they're shooting off fireworks the whole time but then at the end they shoot off about as many as they've already shot off it's all coming together to kind of finish it off that's kind of where we are is that we're in the the crescendo of the book of Exodus and so we're going to take all six of these chapters together so let's pray.

And then we will study through this together this morning as we try to take in the full picture of the book of Exodus God we're thankful for your word we're thankful that we get to gather and study it together we ask Lord that you would help us to sit under the weight of the authority of your word that we would believe you more than we believe culture that we would believe you and trust in you more than we believe and trust in ourselves that.

Lord where we need to repent we would repent where we need to Rejoice we would Rejoice we ask the Lord that your spirit would teach us work through your word this morning and help us to see the glory of Christ reflected in the book of Exodus in Jesus name amen so we're going to be in Exodus chapter 35 and that's why I'd like to begin by reading something from Exodus chapter 25 it'll be on the screen Exodus 25 because this is where.

God on the mountain begins to tell Moses this is what you're going to do this is verses 8 and 9 it says and let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell in their midst exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the Tabernacle and of all its furniture so you shall make it okay the Tabernacle is a movable tent it's a big tent that they're going to use particularly for worship and it's this place where God is going to dwell in a particular specific way among them he's not entombed in it he's not imprisoned in it.

But he's choosing to place his glory there in a specific particular way to be a blessing and a sign for the people of Israel but the word Tabernacle literally just means Dwelling Place so he says I'm going to show you a pattern that you might make a dwelling place for me that I might dwell among you and that's his plan that he would rescue them out of slavery and not just say okay you're free best of luck but that he rescues them out of slavery and says.

Now I'm going to dwell among you you're going to be my people I'm going to be your God we're going to Delight in one another there's going to be Joy here and so that's that's what he's doing is that he takes them out of slavery that he might dwell among them and so here's what happens in chapters 25-31 God says this is what it's going to look like and then in chapters 35-39 they do it it should be chapter 25 through 31.

God says this is what it's going to look like and then chapters 32 is when they begin to accomplish it but that's not what happens in chapter 32. Moses comes down the mountain the dust isn't even out of the grooves of the stone that all of this is carved in and they have rebelled against God and broken the Covenant they immediately destroyed it I remember when my wife and I had first got married we were renting a house in Clinton South Carolina and the there was a guy who had come over to fix something and he knew the lady we were running from and he had helped fix something he's an older gentleman and he.

While he was there he got to talking to me and he whittled and he handed me a little whittled figure and I cannot remember if it was like a dog or a horse or a boat I don't remember but he handed it to me and I was looking I was like that's neat and he said it's made out of teak wood antique wood is one of the strongest Woods that's why he was talking to me as soon as he said that I just oh strong wood I just kind of did this and I snapped it in half.

And so I just quickly put it back together and I looked at him and he had not noticed and so for about two minutes while I held it like I was still looking at it but I'm really just you know holding it together formulating a plan he told me that Teakwood is very strong it's kind of expensive hard to get hard to carve they make ships out of it like he was going on and on about how great Teakwood was and I was like it's not as strong as you think.

So when he got done I just handed it back to him and said I broke it and he just went hmm I think he said something about it broke along the grain because I tried to explain what you said it was strong I was just but I wasn't trying to put too you know I didn't try to break it and then he just left and we didn't talk anymore after that that's somewhat what chapter 32 feels like is that God has designed this beautiful Covenant he's made this plan he's going to dwell among them and he says this is what it's going to.

Look like and they're like great we broke it that's immediately what they do it falls apart and so we hit this moment in chapters 32 33 34 where we're going what's going to happen and God in his grace and in his goodness Works to redeem and overcome their sin and he renews the Covenant which he does not have to do but he does and we get to see Moses in this intercessory role and so in 35 we pick back up with a renewed Covenant and they're going to build the Tabernacle.

So go to 35. Moses assembled all the congregation of the people of Israel and said to them these are the things that the Lord has commanded you to do six days work shall be done but on the seventh day you shall have a Sabbath of solemn rest holy to the Lord whoever does any work on it shall be put to death you shall Kindle no fire in all your Dwelling Places on the Sabbath day Okay so Moses about to tell them we're going to build the Tabernacle he's about to give them a whole lot of work to do.

But all the time in the book of Exodus whenever that's happening is that there's this reminder you're not slaves anymore and one of the primary ways that we're going to worship and enjoy the Lord is in rest so we've got a lot of work to do but we're going to work for six days and we're going to rest for one it's actually interesting in the book of Exodus one of the words that's described for their slavery is the same word that's described.

For their worship so that they used to slave and serve and worship Pharaoh and now though slave and serve in Worship the Lord but it's going to look different their their value doesn't come from their labor anymore it comes from him and so this service to Pharaoh becomes service to the Lord but there's always this reminder of a Sabbath so verse 4. Moses said to all the congregation of the people of Israel this is the thing that the Lord has commanded and that was in 25 through 31.

Take from among you a contribution to the Lord whoever is of A Generous Heart let him bring the Lord's contribution gold and silver and bronze blue and purple and Scarlet Yarns and fine twined linen goat's hair and tanned Ram skins and goat skins acacia wood oil for the light spices for the anointing oil and for The Fragrant incense and Onyx stones and stones for setting for the ephid and for the breast piece so everyone whose heart stirs them they're going to take a collection.

For this purpose let every skillful Craftsman among you come and make all that the Lord has commanded the Tabernacle its tint and its covering its Hooks and its frames its bars its pillars and its bases the ark with its poles The Mercy Seat and the veil of the screen the table with its poles and all its utensils and the bread of the presence the lamp stand also for the light with its utensils and its lamps and the oil for the lie and the altar of incense with its poles and the anointing oil and The Fragrant incense and the screen.

For the door at the door of the Tabernacle the altar of burnt offering with its grading of bronze its poles and all its utensils the Basin and it stands the hangings of the Court its pillars and its bases and the screen of the Gate of the Court the pegs of the Tabernacle and the pegs of the court and their courts the finely worked garments for ministering in the Holy place the holy garments for Heir and the priests and the garments of his sons.

For their service as priests that's why it's multiple chapters because he tells them specifically how to make all of that how they're going to build it what it's going to look like how it's going to be designed how wide how he doesn't just say make a table he says make this table and so that's why it works through slowly to build all of this for the Tabernacle and now they're taking a collection for it verse 20. then all the congregation of the people of Israel departed from the presence of Moses and they came everyone whose heart stirred him and everyone whose Spirit moved him and brought the Lord's contribution to be used.

For the tent of meeting and for all its service and for the holy garments so they came both men and women all who were of a willing heart brought brooches and earrings and Signet rings and armlets all sorts of gold objects every man dedicating an offering of gold to the Lord and every one of them who possessed blue or purple or Scarlet yarn Yarns are fine the linen or goat's hair or tanned Ram skins or goat skins brought them everyone who could make a contribution of silver or bronze brought it as the Lord's contribution and everyone who possessed Acacia would of any use in the work brought in and every skillful woman spun with her.

Hands and they all brought what they had spun in blue and purple and Scarlet Yarns and fine twine linen all the women whose heart stirred them to use their skill spun the goat's hair and the leaders brought Onyx stones and stones to be set for the aphid and for the breast piece and spices and oil for the light and for the anointing oil and for The Fragrant incense all the men and women the people of Israel whose heart moved them to bring anything.

For the work that the Lord had commanded by Moses to be done brought it as a free will offering to the Lord so they respond and we're told in later in the next few chapters that the everybody who's working on stuff has to come to Moses and say tell them to stop we have enough tell them to stop giving we have enough and it's all those whose heart stirred them whose spirits of them he didn't say we need x amount of pounds per woman and x amount of pounds per man and this much gold per tribe it doesn't do any of that he just says.

If your heart moves you give and they respond in this generous way one of the blessings that our Church has gotten to participate in over the years is at the end of the year we have a give series where we intentionally pick something where we're going to try to bless and be generous and help fund a missionary or give some money to a Church plant or work in some sort of service area in our city and it's just so much joy.

When we all collectively as the spirit moves in our heart stirs give and the times that we get to to acknowledge that we were able to raise more than we needed to accomplish this thing and that's what they're getting to do here where they just respond in joy and delight and generosity to who God is then it's going to talk about bezalel and a holy AB that's the bulk of our reading so if you were thinking we were about to read all the stuff we're not just to help you out a little bit.

But it talks about bezel and holy ABS two of the ones that the Lord specifically sat apart for the work it tells us that they ended up bringing one ton of gold four tons of silver and two and a half tons of bronze so they have plenty and this thing is going to be decked out in Beauty and glory for God's Tabernacle in chapter 36 they make the frame and the tint of the Tabernacle in chapter 37 they make the Ark of the Covenant the table the lamp stand and the altar of incense and one of the things that happens in this is that much of what is built is designed to represent something to.

Display that God's going to dwell among his people that he's going to share meal with them that he's going to eat with them to display that he's their provision to display they have a a lamp a lantern that that won't ever go out and it's to burn continually and it's it's to display that God is their light and their life continually and this is what he does and there's all these pictures that are woven into this in the Tabernacle what's around the ark and the most holy place a lot of it has pictures that are meant to bring to mind the garden.

So there's blossoms there's blooming there's pomegranates there's cherubim and it's meant to be that God's original design in the Garden of Eden was that he would dwell among his people and y'all I just learned this this week the word Eden is just the Hebrew word for Delight or pleasure I didn't know that I thought Eden was a name The Garden of delight that is what he originally placed them in the garden of pleasure that that's God's original intended design was that we would Delight in him that he would Delight with us that there would be pleasantness with him.

And then when they build the Tabernacle that's some of what his image what's pictured here is that he's restoring that but also they're a cherubim there and the cherubim were placed at the Garden to keep them from entering and so there's still this picture of not only is he seeking to restore some of Eden but he's also picturing again that there still is some separation between them and him and that's why there's so much that goes into sacrificial system in the Tabernacle where they have to atone.

For sin to approach God in chapter 38 they make the Altar for the burnt offering the bronze Basin the court that's its hooks pillars bases and hangings but there's this one verse in chapter 38 that I want to draw your attention to because it just gets buried in here it's one verse but I want y'all to see this and I think it's beautiful chapter 38 verse 8 we'll have it on the screen but if you've got your Bible in front of you it's on page 45 of the blue one I don't know what page it's on.

If you brought your own Bible but I'm glad you brought your own Bible chapter 38 verse 8. he made the Basin of bronze and its stand of bronze from the mirrors of the ministering women who ministered in the entrance of the tent of meeting now you might be inclined to say who because that's the first and only time that they're mentioned this isn't the tent of meeting that's going to be a part of the Tabernacle when it's finished it's the tint of meeting that Moses used to set up outside of the camp where Joshua would stay in it Moses would meet with the.

Lord and that was also the place where people who wanted to seek wisdom from the Lord or from Moses would go and so apparently there were some women who served there that's what ministered means they served and when it came time to build the Tabernacle those women had bronze mirrors which means a solid sheet of polished bronze uses a mirror because they wouldn't have had glass and mirrors the way we have glass and mirrors this is one of the only ways you would have a mirror you could.

Look into some water or you could have some kind of a polished metal and so these ladies had polished bronze mirrors and I love this verse because I think it's such a beautiful picture of when you actually begin to see who the Lord is like they got to minister near the tent of meeting they got this glimpse of the glory of the Lord and he's going to come dwell among them and they turned their bronze mirrors in so that they might make the bronze Basin I think it's intentionally told us here.

So that we might hear the sacrifice that is involved in this I don't think mirrors were easy to come by and what do you use a mirror for looking at yourself and it's just a beautiful picture of when we get a glimpse of him we want more of him and less of us when we get to see what he's like and who he is and and the idea that he would come there they just turn this in there like I don't I don't want to.

Look at myself I don't want this to be about myself I want it to be about him and isn't that a beautiful picture of the Gospel for us that when you're trying to follow Jesus and so much you're thinking here's what I'm good at here's what I'm bad at here's why I'm succeeding here's why I'm failing y'all turn the mirror in quit looking at yourself it's not about you it's about Jesus when we say Jesus is better than everything else it's about what he's done what he's accomplished who he is it's about his glory and not yours.

When we show up in glory to Worship the Lord we will have our eyes transfixed on him there won't be a big line where they say welcome to Heaven here's your mirror now go sing stare at your face and sing about your it's not how it's going to work and I love this picture a sermon I could get amped up but I can't it's just one verse we gotta move on but it's a good verse just remember that we get to turn in our mirrors we get to.

See it set our eyes on him and some of you are spending right now a lot of time in Pride or despair because you're looking in a mirror I just want you to know the Gospel is way better than that chapter 39 they make the Priestly garments and in chapter 39 they repeat this phrase over and over again as the Lord commanded or as the Lord had commanded and it's this picture repeated over and over again that they they did this just the way the.

Lord told them so that phrase as the Lord of commanded is in verse 1 verse 5 verse 7 verse 21 verse 26 verse 29 verse 31 verse 32 verse 42 and verse 43 as the Lord had commanded and there's this beautiful picture of obedience and that they're doing exactly what the Lord called them to do now much of chapters 35 to 39 is repeated almost verbatim from chapters 25. 31. I picked one example we're going to look at the making of the table.

So this is chapter 25 verse 23 you shall make a table of acacia wood two cubits shall be its length a cubit its breath and a cubit and a half its height chapter 37 he also made the table of acacia wood two cubits was its length a cubit its breath and a cubit and a half its height chapter 25 you shall overlay it with pure gold and make a molding of gold around it chapter 37 and he overlaid it with pure gold and made a molding of gold around it chapter 25 you shall make a rim around it a hand breath-wide and a molding of gold around the rim chapter 37 and he made a.

Rim around it a hand breath wide and a molding of gold around the rim chapter 25 and you shall make for it four rings of gold and fasten the Rings to the Four Corners at its four legs chapter 37 he cast for four rings of gold and fastened the Rings to the Four Corners at its four legs 25 close to the frames the ring shall lie as holders for the poles to carry the table 37 close to the frame were the Rings he's going a little off script here asshoulders.

For the polls to carry the table it's like when you're cheating off your friend for their homework but you just mess some of them up you make it look like you did it okay chapter 25 you shall make the poles of acacia wood and overlaid them with gold and the table shall be carried with these chapter 37 he made the polls of acacia wood to carry the table and for a second you're like oh no and overlaid them with gold it just flips it he builds some suspense this is much of how these chapters read and one of the things that happens.

While you're reading through them at least for me is my mind goes kind of numb and I'm just like okay okay okay yep okay okay hand breath got it polls got it gold and if you've already read through like if you sat down to read through the book of Exodus and you read through chapters 25 through 31 unfortunately you're a little excited that it doesn't immediately go into 35 you're glad they go off the rails and something gets to happen it doesn't immediately go into 35 where it just repeats the same stuff and you're reading it.

Now when you're back in 35 you're going okay okay and there's a little bit of you that's like why didn't they just say they did it the way that he said to do it that's like a sentence and I would have believed him why does it go through the process of repeating all of this what I'm about to offer is some speculation because it doesn't tell us but I have some I've thought about it I have some guesses I'll share with you I think one of the reasons is intentional thoroughness and a desire to show the strict adherence to God's instruction and their obedience beautiful walkthrough of obedience of taking God's word seriously honestly it.

Would be delightful for us if all of us could live our lives with the same amount of rigor and seriousness to the word of God that chapters 35-39 take in the book of Exodus that we knew what he had instructed and we followed it your life would be better if you did that and so there's this display of thoroughness but there's also and and obedience but there's also this display of God working out things according to the purpose of his will that.

God tells Moses on the mountain this is what you're going to do and then it happens and it happens after everything falls apart where God works to redeem and to forgive and to help accomplish what he's set out to accomplish and it's a beautiful picture that When God says this is what I'm going to do he does it and so it's this picture of human obedience and God's will together so I think there's obedience I think there's thoroughness I think there's the Fulfillment of God's will that he accomplishes what he set out.

But I also think there's something that we miss y'all there's delight and excitement in these chapters I don't know when you've had the opportunity to prepare for the arrival of a loved one I don't know if you've ever gotten to prepare a house where you'll move in with a spouse you're not married yet but you're going to be I don't know if you've had the opportunity to to labor away at that I don't know if you've had the opportunity to to prepare a room where a baby's going to dwell I don't know.

If you've ever had the chance all your grandkids are coming home or a friend you haven't seen in a long time is going to come to visit and you have a week to prepare and you're thinking about what you're going to cook you're getting the place ready you're washing the sheets you're getting the room ready you're setting it up you stand in you think okay like I don't know if you've had these opportunities but that's what chapters 35-39 are when we get done building this he's going to dwell here our.

God is going to dwell Among Us the one who rescued us out of Egypt is going to come be here you know there's Delight this these were slaves who slaved away with endless toil and the only thing held out in front of them was death I bet there are days when they still wake up and have to remind themselves oh I'm not a slave anymore I bet some of them are just now getting to where they walk a little taller getting over some of the the beatings that they had taken loosening up a little bit learning how to to be a little Freer.

When they wake up and they labor towards this it's in Delight of the God of the universe who has specifically rescued and chosen them to come dwell among them they're preparing diligently for something wonderful and if you ever talk to a person who took the time to build a table for the house they're going to move into to make a recipe for their grandchildren that are going to come visit to paint a room and prepare it for a baby if you ask them about it I'm willing to bet that they will joyfully go into about as much detail this chapters 35-39.

Well you know what I went and I went and I was looking at two different pieces of wood and I decided to go with Oak now your Pond's good but and I've got laughter I mean they're going to go into it it's just a Sprinkle of cinnamon now don't you don't want to do too much cinnamon but you're going to want to just a pinch like just you know maybe just two fingers if you do too but you got to get it it's like oh yeah I bet it was good that's what's happening here.

Because there's delight and joy and in preparing for the Lord to come this is a refrain it's a crescendo it's all coming together and it's work to prepare so move to the end of chapter 39. verse 42 and 43. according to all that the Lord had commanded Moses so the people of Israel had done all the work and Moses saw all the work and behold they had done it as the Lord commanded so had they done it so Moses blessed them there's a little Echo at the end of creation here where.

God views all that he made and he sees that it's good and then He blesses the man and woman to be fruitful and multiplying to have dominion over the Earth like there's a little a little echo of it now God is able to discern on his own that it's good Moses has to just see that they did what God Said So it's still God's standard it's not Moses standard but he looks and sees it it's all done that it's been done the way.

God told them to do it and He blesses them chapter 40 verse 1. the Lord spoke to Moses saying on the first day of the first month you shall erect the Tabernacle of the tent of meeting so on the first day of the first month you'll erect it and then it goes through you're going to set this up this up this up in this way and it goes through a big list of some of the stuff that we read earlier that they were getting everything together go to.

Verse 33. and he erected the court around the Tabernacle on the altar they've gone through the process of setting the stuff up and um consecrating it for the presence of the Lord so they didn't just throw it up but they went through a process of getting it ready and marking it with oil and doing some sacrifices and he erected the court around the Tabernacle on the Altar and he set up the screen of the Gate of the court so Moses finished the work you read through chapter 25 through 20 through 31.

And then you read through 35 and 39 you'll appreciate how much fun it was for Moses to write this I think when he got to write so Moses finished the work because it was a lot of work then the cloud covered the tent of meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle y'all that's what we've been working towards that these people who were slaves would have God dwell among them and all the stuff that we've gone through where he's shown signs and wonders where he's rescued them where he brought them out or they wandered and argued and he had to provide.

For them with Manna and he had to work through all of this and when he gives his instructions on how to do this and he gives the Ten Commandments and he sets up a covenant people and they rebelled and he has to work to restore and to renew this Covenant and then they work to build all this it's all so that he might dwell among them that he desires to have his people in his presence in his place where they belong to him and his desire is like a.

Father who's trying to adopt and fill his household the children that he loves and it says the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle we shouldn't move quickly past that we should enjoy and Savor how good that is for the people of Israel that he desired to have them belong to him verse 35 and Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it and the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle throughout all their Journeys whenever the cloud was taken up from Over the Tabernacle the people of Israel would set out.

But if the cloud was not taken up then they did not set out till the day that it was taken up for the cloud of the Lord was on the Tabernacle by day and fire was in it by night in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their Journeys now if you'll remember the pillar of cloud and fire was leading the people of Israel but at a distance and they had attend a meeting that was set up outside of the camp.

Now the pillar of clown fire dwells on the Tabernacle in the midst of the camp he's surrounded by them and he told Moses if I show up like that I'm going to kill everybody because they're Wicked but Moses intercedes and God gives Grace so that this might happen the way God's designed it to happen but there's this whisper there's a whisper in this text that shows us that it's not done God's full final realized version of what he set out to do is not done I want you to.

See it it let's look back the 34 and 35. then the cloud covered the tent of meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle and Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the clouds settled on it and the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle picture of God's glory his holiness the Moses Moses to just walk in it's not like God walking with Adam and Eve in the garden there's a separation from God's glory and there's this whisper in the midst of this Crescendo and this delight in this Wonder there's this Whisper of not yet not exactly it's not fixed just yet.

And so Exodus points us to the glory of the Lord but it also in a very specific and real way points us to the glory of Christ that the story of The Exodus is meant for us to see how good our God is and then as it unfolds more to see how good the Lord Christ is because Jesus is the one who redeems us out of slavery to make us his people my wife watches these um murder shows True Crime stuff I have to make sure she's not like taking notes you know like on how to get away with things.

But she she watches these and one of the things that police will often ask people when something really terrible happens and they're doing investigations is they'll say is this the sort of thing that this person would do they'll interview friends and say is this something does this seem like something they do does this seem out of character does it seem in character I read the book of Exodus and then we consider that we were lost that we were rebellious that we were Wicked that we were dead in sin that we were slaves to sin that we desired to go back to our old Masters is is rescuing a people like that overcoming their sin.

When they work to actively break the Covenant so that they might belong to him and he might dwell in their midst is that the sort of thing Our God would do yes it's exactly the sort of thing he'd do when we read the book of Exodus we're meant to be able to see that's exactly the sort of thing he'd do that's exactly the type of God he is that's exactly when you look at the times that they sin and you think he's just going to eradicate them and he doesn't like that verse we read earlier that in his Divine forbearance he overlooked former sins.

So that he might be just and Justified that there's this moments where God carries it forward to pay for it in Christ so that he might be gracious so that he might be loving so that he might redeem a sinful people and Jesus is the one who rescues us out of slavery Jesus is the one who shows Mighty signs and wonders Jesus is the one who is our Passover Lamb whose blood is painted on the door that we might not have judgment fall on us.

Jesus is our bread from Heaven that comes down to to fulfill us and to give us life Jesus is the one who not only teaches us about the law but fulfills the law on our behalf so that the weight of the law does not fall on us but it falls on him and then the righteousness of the law is carried out in him and fulfilled in us because of his work Jesus is the one who in the midst of our Rebellion intercedes.

For us who goes up the mountain and says to God take me instead and who God accepts his sacrifice Jesus is the one who Tabernacles among us as the Incarnation of God in human flesh Jesus is the one who by his sacrifice makes it possible to where the spirit dwells inside of us that God would be surrounded by Wicked people is exactly what he's done when he renews us and restores us and his Spirit dwells in us in a specific and beautiful way just as he was intending to do with the whole nation of Israel he.

Now does inside the hearts of Believers and he does it in the Church to his great glory and credit of the work that Christ has accomplished and Jesus is the one who can enter into the tent where even Moses is cast out because of his Holiness and his righteousness and so as we studied the book of Exodus I hope that you grew in your love for Christ who is a better Moses who leads a people to the promised land fully and forever through his glory not ours in a way that resounds in the praise to our.

God let's pray God we're thankful that you're the type of God who saves rebellious slaves and we're thankful that you're the type of God who overcomes sin so that we might belong to you and we're thankful that you're the type of God who Delights to dwell among your people to get rid of their sin without getting rid of them so that we might have pleasure and Delight with you well we're thankful that you fulfilled the Covenant that you fulfilled the law that your blood covers Us and that ultimately we can trust you to be at work in us and to lead us to the Fulfillment of all things May there be great Glory given to.

Christ amen Matt's going to come back up we're going to take a moment together as a Church to take communion communion is a tangible reminder in Celebration of what Christ has done for us on the cross it's us proclaiming his death until he comes it's us remembering his sacrifice and so that when we take communion what we're acknowledging is that Jesus died for us he literally died to pay for our sins that he's our propitiation that we deserved death and wrath.

But that Jesus paid for and we're celebrating that that covers us and so that when God looks at you he does not see you in his sin but he sees you in Christ and so when we walk in Repentance we're moving ourselves into Delight in the Lord but we're not oscillating out of his salvation and back into it for we are covered by Christ and so you get to take seriously a moment to repent and to confess and then you get to come forward and Delight in and rejoice in that.

Jesus Christ and that our hope is in him if you are not a Christian communion is not for you can trust in Christ you can place your faith in him and he will save you he will not put the shame any who call on him but if you have not blessed your faith in Jesus we would ask for you to refrain from taking communion we have communion set up in the front and in the back and there's gluten-free communion elements at the back as.

Well so take a moment to pray and confess to remember our glorious Lord who redeems Sinners and when you're ready we'll take communion and then we'll sing together.

Mill City 8/20/23 Mill City 8/20/23

The Glory of God, Pt. 3 (34:10-35)

Group Guide

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Transcript

Good morning so Fall allergies have hit me in full effect so you're going to hear some earthier tones this morning as we walk through the text today we are in the Book of Exodus chapter 34. verses 10 through 35 is on page 43 in the blue bibles if you want to grab one of those you can follow along the text will also be on the screen the past few weeks we have looked at the glory of God that Moses made this bold request to.

Behold the glory of God Show Me Your Glory and we saw that glory in God's goodness are are the same terms that in asking to see the glory of God his wonderful goodness would be uh displayed and we looked at that as God's uh Fierce love and his Fierce Justice held together to displays the character and the goodness of our God and then last we we looked at that the really the centralized aspect of God's glory some of the most powerful aspects of who he is and his goodness is displayed in his revealed face and that what Moses was asking was actually too wonderful.

For him to behold that as a sinner beholding God in this in his face which would lead to certain death that Sinners cannot gaze upon the glory of God because of our broken sinful natures and our broken sinful bodies and we looked at that bold request with the hope that one day we will behold the face of God that the end of the story for Christians is beholding the face of God in eternity forever and ever amen that we will get to gaze upon the Perfection of beauty and who he is forever and that's where we are going.

But there's also another aspect of God's glory to begin to look at today that as we finish out chapter 34 we're going to look at that what that means for us as Christians as we still get to meditate on the glory of God so let me pray and we'll want to this together heavenly father I pray that you would open our hearts to receive your word that with glad and generous Hearts we would receive it that it might shape us to be a people that are.

So in love with you and so in love with your glory that we would seek you and that comes through the initial step of faith that comes through daily enjoying you that comes through repentance that comes through worshiping you like we just got to do and I pray that you'd give us a wonderful vision for them in Jesus name amen all right so Exodus 32-34 we've been in this for a couple of months now and what's happening in these chapters is the people who were had received the Covenant of Moses they'd received the Ten Commandments.

And then they immediately rebel against God they reject him and worship a golden calf instead Moses coming down the mountain sees this and then he goes and he pleads with God do not destroy this people and then and then we get to see in the coming chapters there's this lingering is the Covenant going to be restored is God going to restore his Covenant with his people and then the past couple of weeks we've seen yes this Covenant will be restored and the rest of this chapter in 34 is kind of repeated language bringing up different uh passages that we saw on in Exodus 23 different aspects of this Covenant as it's being renewed.

So a lot about what to walk through is going to sound very familiar you've been walking with us through Exodus so we're going to start off in verse 10 it says and he said behold this is God speaking behold I am making a covenant before all your people I will do Marvels such as have not been created in all the Earth or in any Nation and all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you and I just I.

So appreciate that verse before we walk through some of this repeated aspects of the Covenant being renewed that they rejected God they rejected him for a golden calf and God not only is granting forgiveness and restoration he says I'm going to do Marvels with you such have not been seen which is incredible if you've been with us through Exodus because you've seen God's Marvels poured out on the Egyptians you saw them cross the Red Sea we've seen God provide daily Manna.

For the people these are wonderful Marvels and God's saying I've got more that I want to do with you that I'm gonna do awesome things with you which is an incredible statement if you work for a big giant wonderful company I mean lots of employees a wonderful CEO and all of a sudden you at the break room for lunch and like a like a like a thoughtless child you took your tinfoil burrito and threw it in the microwave hit five minutes.

And then walked away and then came back and the microwaves on fire and the rooms on fire and the whole business Burns to the ground and it's all caught on footage backed up to the cloud and your boss invites you to your house and his house and shows the footage of you thoughtlessly throwing the Brito in hitting and walking away and you're waiting for the pink slip you're waiting like this is it I'm done and he looks at you and he says you messed up.

But I'm still gonna do awesome things with you you're gonna you're gonna stay on board here we're gonna rebuild this thing and I'm gonna do awesome things with you you'd go what I burnt your business to the ground what and now I get to do awesome things with you our God is wonderful y'all this is what he does he works with Sinners who Rebel all the time and he looks at us and he says I'm going to do marvelous things with you it's wonderful.

And then he continues in verse 11. observe what I command you this day behold I will drive out before you the amorites the Canaanites the Hittites the parasites the hivites and the jebusites take care unless you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go lest it become a snare in your midst you shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their ashram for you shall worship no other God for the Lord whose name is jealous is a jealous.

God lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land and when they hoar after their gods and sacrifice their gods and you are invited you eat of his sacrifice and you take of their daughters for your sons and their daughters after their gods and make your sons after their gods this is repeated language from Exodus 23. God when we walk through that section we got to see how God has judgment coming to the people of the land the the jebusites the Hittites the Canaanites this people who have committed all types of atrocities and Abominations they've done things like sacrifice their own children to foreign Gods they've done all these things and judgment will.

Fall upon them and he's saying do not make covenants with them lest you fall into the same trap of worshiping therefore in Gods don't in a marriage don't know this judgment will be upon this people don't do it we saw that in Exodus 23 and God is bringing that language back to remind them don't do this lest you chase other gods which by the way just happened and we see this more directly in Exodus verse 17. it says you shall not make.

For yourself any gods of cast metal now some repeat language from the second commandment in Exodus 20 but there's there's a phrase in there that wasn't there before that is very much a reminder of what just happened the word the phrase cast metal that comes right out of Exodus 32 the same language when Aaron is making a cast metal calf of gold and that's kind of thrown in there to help them see don't don't break the second commandment in this way that you just did be like showing up to the new business show up to the new break room and all of a sudden above the microwave is do not microwave burritos in this microwave.

And everyone knows it's you Jason that that notice is for you bro that's a reminder you you worshiped this cast metal object don't worship foreign Gods especially the one which you just did continues this renewing Covenant language in verse 18 you shall keep the Feast of unleavened bread seven days you shall eat unleavened bread as I commanded you at the time appointed the month of Eve for in the month of bib you came out of Egypt all that open the womb are mine all your male livestock the firstborn of cow and sheep the firstborn of a donkey shall be Dean with a lamb or.

If you will not redeem it you shall break its neck all the firstborn of you all the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem and None Shall appear before me empty-handed so again this is language we've already seen we've seen it in Exodus 13 when they Institute the Passover and and the Redemption rights for the firstborn it's a reminder that I your God your Redeemer redeemed you out of Egypt by striking down the firstborn of Egypt I redeemed you from slavery and you will.

Remember this through Passover through Redeeming the firstborn over and over again this language being brought back into the Covenant again and it keeps going with language on resting and feasting in verse 21 it says six days you shall work but on the seventh day you shall rest in plowing time and in Harvest you shall rest you shall observe the Feast of Weeks the first fruits of Wheat harvests and the Feast of end gathering at the Year's End three times in the year shall all your mouths appear before the.

Lord God the God of Israel for I will cast out Nations before you and enlarge your borders no one shall covet your land when you go up to appear before the Lord your God three times in a year and it's this language if you're going to rest that you were slaves in Egypt you recogn the machine where you work seven days a week and did not rest and I redeemed you and I'm bringing you back into this rhythm of working six days and resting on the seventh it goes back to Creation you're not a slave to a foreign Pharaoh you belong to me and you will rest and you will feast you'll.

Remember we walk through this in Exodus 23 the keeping of the feasts that help the people regularly celebrate that they are the people of God and they get to do that through their whole Feast calendar which if you if this is if you weren't with us for Exodus I'd encourage you to go back and listen to some of these sermons where we walk through these different aspects of the Covenant that's being renewed again in verse 25 it continues you shall not offer The Blood of My Sacrifice with anything leavened or let the sacrifice of the Feast of passive remain until the morning the best of the.

First fruits on your ground you shall bring to the house of the Lord your God you shall not boil a young goat at its mother's milk which we saw this language in Exodus 23 but it's instructions on in this Covenant you're going to keep the sacrifices in the way that I tell you to do and you're not going to mix them in a way with some of the Pagan ways of offering Sacrifice from the Pagan practices like boiling a young goat in its mother's milk you won't do what the people of the land do you are going to do what I am telling you to do as my people separate from the Nations.

So this covenant's being renewed with some summarized language from before and it's getting wrapped up here in verse 27 and the Lord said to Moses write these words for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel he's like write these down bring them back to the people and and he's he's he's summarizing that bringing it to a to a conclusion here you you are my Covenant people I'm still going to walk with you still gonna be with you I will be your.

God you will be my people Moses has to be joyful at this point knowing yes we're back in favor with God and in verse 28 it says so he was there with the Lord 40 days and 40 nights he neither ate bread nor drank water and he wrote on the tablets the words of the Covenant the ten Commandments so he spends the next 40 days and 40 nights with God supernaturally sustains him with complete dependence upon him during this period of time through an absolute fast from both bread and water and he spends this 40 days and 40 nights with.

God ready to bring down the good news of this renewed Covenant to the Israelites and then when he comes down the mountain there's something different about Moses and that is because you cannot experience the power of our God like Moses did and leave unchanged you don't experience the power of God like this and leave unscathed in the best way possible he Journeys down the mountain we pick it back up in 29. when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand as he came down from the mountain Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone.

Because he had been talking with God Aaron and all the people of Israel saw Moses and behold the skin of his face Shone and they were afraid to come near him but Moses called to them and Aaron all the leaders of the congregation returned to him and Moses talked with them so Moses tablets in hand joyfully excited to tell the people you're not going to be abandoned God Is With Us starts coming down the mountain and then all of a sudden the people who are at the base.

See this light in the distance approaching and this isn't like a flashlight in the darkness or something different about this light and and this light has power in it and all of a sudden it's getting closer and it's getting closer and people are starting to to cringe a little bit they're starting to Shield themselves it's too much they're starting to be afraid and then at some point they piece together this is Moses and there's something about him his face is shining.

Now at some point as the people are stirring and Afraid witnessing Moses's face shining at some point someone has to tell them Moses you face is shining like get him a mirror get him a pail of water let them see this but your face is glowing there's uh one Theologian some or one commentator I think nailed it he said Moses glow is actually an Afterglow from being in God's presence this is Afterglow somewhere between Moses's profoundly wonderful experience with God when he asked to.

See his glory somewhere between him God covering him in the cleft of The Rock and passing by and in the next 40 days and 40 nights that he spent with God somewhere in that time Moses is very complexion changes his face begins to Glow with the glory of God there's Afterglow shimmering from his face displaying emanating the glory of God and that is because Moses experienced his glory and his power in a way that no one really has since Adam and Eve and you don't get to experience.

God like that and leave unchanged he has this intense experience and now Moses who's the the mediator he's the one in the middle between the people and God needs an intermediary for himself because the people can't stand in his presence and they're they're scared so he needs something that's going to kind of Shield a little bit this Glory verse 32 afterward all the people of Israel came near and he commanded them all that the Lord had spoken with him in Mount Sinai.

And when Moses had finished speaking with them he put a veil over his face so now Moses in order to be with the people and them not be fearful he has to put a veil of his face I mean this is very similar to the Tabernacle and we spent some time looking at the Tabernacle that in the innermost part of the Tabernacle was a place called the holy of holies this room is where God ruled and reigned from and there was a a curtain a veil that separated the holy of holies from the rest of the Tabernacle and this veil was needed.

Because God and His glory is too wonderful for Sinners to Behold Him so this Veil separates God from the people and in the same way there's an Afterglow of Glory bound up in the face of Moses and there's a veil that is needed so that the people can be in his presence so that Moses can be amongst his people which I just for a moment this isn't the main part part of the story but I just I appreciate if you've been with us long enough in Exodus just Moses as a person to study as a character study with things helpful to do sometimes we want to be like Christ.

Okay doesn't mean that you know you study David so you can slay Giants I'm not arguing for that but I'm saying is that sometimes it's helpful to look at different people in the Scriptures and notice things about them one of the things I love about Moses is that he is Meek he's Meek he is mild and God uses the meek and the mind to do wonderful things the meek shall inherit the earth for a reason so sometimes we just get it twisted we get in our ideas that strength is this idea that is not biblical.

But actually meekness is strength and God uses his meekness to the point now where he has to he's so powerful he has to keep his face bound up again it's not the main point of story but it's worth examining its own so verse 34 it says whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him he would remove the veil until he came out and when he came out and told the people of Israel what he was commanded the people of Israel would.

See the face of Moses that the skin of Moses face was shining and Moses would put the veil over his face again until he went in to speak with him and this is the pattern of ministry going forward after Sinai in fact this Mark's really the pivot in in the wilderness narrative where they're leaving Sinai and the ministry is going to be this point for going forward in the wilderness with Moses and his people and Moses is going to regularly enter into the tent of meeting he's going to meet with.

God and that is going to come out and teach them more about his laws where we're going to get the Book of Leviticus and numbers in Deuteronomy he's going to teach them more about who their God is and his face is going to continue to Glow and that's just what is going to continue to do and I just one commentator he talks about Moses and I'll summarize what he said but basically he just said this is really Exodus 32-34 this really does establish Moses as he's the goat the prophets he is the greatest I mean he just he's just amongst all the prophets in the Old Testament he he stands apart I mean even the.

Last few chapters when the people rebel and Moses comes down and he stands between them and God and he pleads with God mediates for the people and then when God says all right you can go to the promised land but I'm not going and he says God I'm going to go where you go I don't want the promised land without your presence God if you're in the wilderness that's where we'll be from that all the way into asking to see the glory of.

God we've got to spend some time looking at that to coming down the mountain and now the rest of his ministry he's going to have this these these intensely wonderful experiences with God where he leaves with some glory on his face just shows who Moses is as a prophet the reason why he was so revered and so rightfully respected for centuries to follow and Judaism I mean that and just what he brings to them which is something that is the foundation.

For their belief it's the law it really does help us see the ministry of Moses going forward how wonderful it is now that's the end of chapter 34. we this this hint of what's what's going forward is that he's going to regularly go into the tentative meeting he's going to meet with God it's going to come out he's going to have glow on his face he's going to teach the people the law now when we try to understand the Old Testament.

Okay when we're studying the Old Testament we're studying these stories one of the difficult parts of interpretation is that I understand these stories isolated by themselves but to actually understand these stories in light of the bigger message of the Gospel from Genesis to Revelation what we're trying to do is understand these stories in Light of Christ and that takes work it takes slowly reading passages like this and trying to understand like What's Happening Here how does this correct to this bigger story of God's Redemption.

And then every now and then we get a wonderful gift from the New Testament because every now and then the New Testament does the work for us and that's what we have for this story right here that second Corinthians 3 is that chapter that helps us look back at this story and understand it in Light of Christ for the rest of our time that's what we're going to be we're going to be in second Corinthians chapter three on your blue in your blue Bibles that's page 561.

If you want to follow along but we're going to the text will be on the screen as well second Corinthians 3 is really interpreting Exodus 32 through 34 in light of the New Covenant of Christ it's looking back at the event that we've been in the last few weeks that really find their ending in the story that we went into today it's understanding that in Light of Christ now let me give you some context for second Corinthians because we're jumping into a book.

Second Corinthians is a defense written by Paul who's an apostle it's a defense of his ministry of the Gospel and his apostleship to the Church at Corinth who at the time was Wayward in sin but also being led astray by people who were coming in and teaching a different message so Paul is having to defend his apostleship and defend the ministry of the Gospel that he established when he planted this Church so but he's going to use Exodus 32-34 to make that bigger Point pick it up in.

Verse 1. are we beginning to commend ourselves again or do we need as some do letters of recommendation to you or from you which by the way that's rhetorical and I think it's sarcasm he's like do we need a lot of recommendation answers no you verse 2 yourselves are our letter of recommendation written on our hearts to be known and read by all and you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us written not with ink but with the spirit of the Living.

God not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts so Paul says that I don't need a letter of recommendation to be able to justify the ministry that we established here the letter of recommendation is your changed Hearts it's the Holy Spirit changing your heart and that didn't come through reading the law so he says tablets of stone that's what he's talking about that didn't come through your interactions with the law which we catch a hint of what teaching has been weaving its way into the Corinthian Church it's at the same teaching that's weaved its way into many churches at that time and that was uh Jewish Christians who were upholding the law.

Saying you can have Jesus but you also need to obey the law so we see hints of that teaching that it's weaved its way into here and Paul is establishing no it is the Holy Spirit that changes Hearts verse 4 such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything is coming from us but our sufficiency is from God who has made us sufficient to be Ministers of a new covenant not of the letter.

But of the spirit the letter kills but the spirit gives life so he highlights here's the difference between the old Covenant and the New Covenant the old Covenant of the letter it kills it highlights the death that we deserve because we cannot uphold the law because of our sin the letter kills the spirit on the other hand gives life as one commentator puts it he says the spirit alone gives life because only the spirit can change the heart thereby enabling God's people to keep his commands.

So he says the law wasn't what changes your heart it's the spirit of God that changes your heart you know how we know this Exodus 32. the people receive the Ten Commandments and then 10 seconds later say you know what golden calf disregarding the second commandment let's worship this instead if the letter was sufficient at changing the human heart the Old Testament would read radically different because I don't know if you've read the rest of the Old Testament it goes poorly.

For the people over and over and over again it feels like watching a train wreck in slow motion on repeat the letter does not change it only brings death it only highlights the death that we have because we cannot be changed through our good works and Obedience of the law the change that happens that truly matters in the human heart it's by the power of the Holy Spirit he continues now if the ministry of death which I just appreciate it's like we're talking about the law right the law is wonderful and good he's like New Covenant the help the ministry of death carved in letters on Stone came with such Glory that the Israelites could.

Not gaze at Moses face because of its Glory which when we read the Bible we should go wait a second I know that story which was being brought to an end will not the ministry of the spirit have even more Glory for if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory I don't want us to miss what he just said there the old Ministry the old Covenant was a Ministry ultimately of death highlighting the condemnation that we deserved.

And if that came with this glorious picture that we just saw of Moses coming down the mountain face glowing if it comes with some Afterglow how much better is the ministry of the New Covenant that we have it's so much better because we have the Holy Spirit verse 10 indeed end this case what once had Glory has come to have no glory at all because of the glory that surpasses it four if what was being brought to an end came with Glory much more.

Well what is permanent have Glory so he finishes off this this first part is really interpreting those that story Exodus 30-34 and he says boy oh boy that which came to an end at glory in itself how much more glorious is faith in Christ and the spirit changing our hearts in a way that never ends has so much sweeter that's so much better so he makes a pivot there and interpreting Exodus 32-34 now he's about to apply it to the people.

Verse 12. since we have such a hope we are very bold not like Moses who were put a veil over his face the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end but their minds were hardened for this day when they read the old Covenant the same Veil remains unlifted because only through Christ is it taken away yes to this day whenever Moses is read a veil Lies over their hearts he says those who put their hope and the law those who put their hope and their own good works and their own good behavior through obedience and law he's talking about the Jewish people he says that Veil still.

Covers their hearts they can't see and behold God they don't know him they're looking for life but they're actually only receiving death because obedience to the law doesn't save and it never will and they're missing out on the glory of God there's a wonderful picture we've looked at for weeks now they're missing out on his glory their hearts are hardened their eyes are darkened they cannot see and behold God for who he is the veil Still Remains the only way that Veil is removed.

So that so that you can behold God but trusting and the finished work of Christ it's about trusting that he fulfilled the law on our behalf it's by trusting that he went to the Cross to die for our sins by trusting that he conquered death of the Resurrection it's by putting all of our hope in Christ and not the law because if your hope is in the law and if your hope is in good works the veil remains verse 16.

When one turns to the Lord the veil is removed now the Lord is the spirit and we're the spirit of the Lord is there is freedom he says that when we turn from our sin and from our hope in the law from our hope and good works and obedience and we turn to Christ the veil is removed and when that happens there is freedom there's wonderful freedom freedom from condemnation to sin freedom from a need to be good to be good to obey the law to do all the right things freedom from this ministry of death and freedom to Christ Freedom 2 beholding.

God Freedom two not having to go back to the old yoke of obeying the law but trusting the finished work of Christ as our holy hope there is freedom that is found in faith in Jesus alone there's freedom to enjoy him and to worship him and to Behold Him with this freedom we get to Behold Him and as we Behold Him we are changed and this is where the argument ends Verse 18 and we all with unveiled face behold the glory of the.

Lord beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from one degree of Glory to another for this comes from the Lord who is the spirit just as beholding God changed Moses it's literally it changed his complexion so beholding our God through faith transforms us and it lifts the veil off the heart so that we can actually Behold Him so that we can experience more of his glory but it's continual it's one degree of Glory to the next one degree of Glory into another degree of Glory which I don't fully I can't fully picture what he's getting up there.

But it sounds incredibly awesome this idea that will conform more to the image of Christ from one degree of Glory to the next last week we sat in this picture of the end state of reality for Christians that's beholding God's face with new eyes and that's it that's where we're going and I want us to miss that that should be so like ingrained in the fabric of our being that we would look at this life and say I don't want what this life has to offer.

Because what what what what awaits me for eternity is is infinitely better but don't miss that that's not the only picture of Glory that we give because there is a regular daily aspect of beholding God from one degree of glory to the next and to the next and to the next and to the next and that's called sanctification that's called becoming more like Christ don't miss that right that we get to behold God regularly in Daily and when we do that it changes us from one degree to the next and to the next into the next some of you all have known Christians who have walked with.

God for decades I mean you've got you've gotten to see someone up close change the spirit work in their heart daily and daily through the decades and it's wonderful when you get to see that and if you have it if you haven't got to see this long-term play out I encourage you to spend some time with some of our older Saints in this Church get to know them in their stories and I'm sure what they're going to tell you is is that yeah they're not perfect at all far from it.

But they are different than what they were 50 years ago are different they were 40 years ago and that was through daily beholding God from one degree to the next to the next to the next in a way that they're not as anxious as they used to be they're not as angry as they used to be that there's this peace there's this love there's this Joy there's this faithfulness there's this gentleness there's this kindness there's this self-control that they've grown into.

Because the fruit of the spirit has been shaped in them because from one degree of glory to the next they have taste it in seeing that the Lord is good and they found their refuge in him and they've seen that he's actually truly better sometimes trying to take in faith just feels like I just don't know what I got you I mean I'm just so broken I'm so messed up I don't know if I'm gonna get this that's a great place to be in.

Because that's the best that's the beginning the Genesis of faith is recognizing that I'm broken and I need Jesus but boy oh boy faith is a lifelong journey from one degree to the next and the invitation is there you want the glory of God do you want the glory of God do you want to behold his face forever one degree at a time to the next and to the next into the next this comes through the things that we talk about all the time and we won't stop talking about them.

Because they're wonderful that comes through beholding God and his word this comes through growing in prayer this comes through repentance this comes through being open and honest at your community groups on care nights this comes through walking in the light with brothers and sisters this comes through uh Faithfully following Jesus every day from one degree of glory to the next so the invitation is there it's waiting for you you want Jesus believe in him you want more of them taste.

See every day and you're going to experience them from one degree of glory to the next into the next to the next and to the next and to the next and boy oh boy we won't even come close to the finished product not a chance but every degree of Glory ends up being better every degree of Glory is the spirit changing us until one day we will actually Behold Him and there will be no degrees left it'll just be Jesus let me pray Heavenly.

Father we pray that you would help us behold you and worship right now and when we leave here we pray that we be a people with veils off for hearts beholding you every day because you are beautiful and you are wonderful and you're better than anything this world has to offer and I pray that you would help us believe that with everything in us we would Bank Our Hope on that reality Jesus name amen band's going to come up so so much of the message sometimes gets mixed up especially in southern Christianity that following.

Jesus is about cleaning your life up and it's about getting your life together getting your stuff together so that you could be back in Church that you can so you can be around the Christians and I just want to say that's Moses y'all if you came looking for Moses and trying to clean your life up that's that's a Ministry of death don't do it some of y'all I just want to extend the invitation of Faith to actually behold God for who he is and that doesn't come through cleaning your life up doesn't come through a bunch of good works that comes through surrendering to our.

God so believe and surrender to him and behold him for who he is and then walk the journey with us as a group of broken Christians that are seeking to grow to be like Jesus one degree at a time.

Mill City 8/13/23 Mill City 8/13/23

The Glory of God, Pt. 2 (Exodus 33:18-34:9)

Group Guide

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Mill City 8/6/23 Mill City 8/6/23

The Glory of God, Pt. 1 (Exodus 33:18-34:8)

Group Guide

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Transcript

Good morning my name is Spencer I am one of the pastors here we are in Exodus chapter 33 18 verses 34 through 34 Verse 8. we're going to be in this passage uh for two weeks we're gonna hit it from two different angles I was in it original intent was to make this one sermon and then it was just like nah there's no way too too much so we're gonna look at this from two different angles this morning so you can be on page 42 in the blue Bibles around you uh the text will also be on the screen you can follow along uh with us.

So we uh uh pastors just got back from our pastor's Retreat um so the four Elders four Pastors in our Church plus our pastor and Elder and training Isaac we all went up to Lake Greenwood we do this once a year we get away it's uh we call it 100 Fun 100 work it really shouldn't be called a retreat because I think Retreat implies like getting away to rest um which it is not that but we spent a lot of time praying and debating and it's been formative and how our uh in shaping kind of the future of our Church and it's also a lot of fun we get to hang out together it's the.

One time of year we get to have some fun together one of the ways that we do this is we have a meal competition so we divide up teams every year uh there's this year it was Raz Chet and myself and Isaac and Matt and you have a breakfast and a lunch and a dinner and the goal is to execute the best set of three meals and every year it's come down to basically who takes two of the three uh and you know I'm not here to boast or brag.

But we did win uh and that's two years in a row for me which is nice because I was on a three-year losing streak up until a few years ago but uh we made a lunch where we did basically Cantina 76 style tacos all right so each you know Raz chat myself each took a taco we owned that taco as a part of the lunch so Chet made a delicious fried fish taco that was the best razzmade a carne asada Taco which lost us the round I'm not bitter about it I'm fine we could have had a sweep would have been two years in a row that's fine I made this Nashville hot chicken taco.

And uh and I was you know I brought Chet in because I was like we need to we need to make sure the flavor profile on this Taco is money like we got to make sure I don't want it to just be all overwhelming on the front end and then that's all you can taste I want some heat and some flavor on the front end I want you to bite into it and we were messing with the flavor profile to make sure that happens I want you once you swallow it the aftertaste to just be delightful.

So much so that as you continue to to chew on this you want more of it and I stuck The Landing it was great but that's a little bit of what Moses has been experiencing as he's walked with God from orib from that Horeb up until now that he's gotten to taste the Lord a little bit got it to see who he is experience him from Europe all the way to his uh the the ten plagues and experience in God and we saw last week a little bit that he was there was a temporary tent of meeting where you get to meet with.

God he met with him and he went into the cloud at Mount Sinai there's all these instances where Moses has gotten to experience more and more of God and what we get to today is this bold request from Moses who wants more because as he's experienced Our God he wants more of him and this bold request is what we're going to look at today and not just the request itself but how God responds to this bold request to see the glory of.

God and we're going to get to see how wonderful our God is the richness of his character and His glory and his goodness and what that means for us as Christians looking at this so let me pray and we'll walk through this text together Heavenly Father we thank you for the good news of the Gospel that saves redeems sets us apart to be a people who regularly get to taste and see that you are good you get to see how wonderful you are and the songs that we just sang and the Scriptures that were read.

Now in this text that we get to walk through together Lord may you open our hearts our eyes and our minds to experience you that may respond in faith and in Repentance and in worship and ultimately delighting in you we ask this in Jesus name amen all right so we pick up basically right where Chet left off last week so Chet walk us through uh that after the golden calf incident so after the people reject God for a golden calf instead and the tablets are broken and the Covenant is shattered there's this wondering what's going to happen next and what Chet walked us through last week is.

God saying you can go to the promised land I will make good on this you will get to the promised land I'm just not going to be there so you can have the land of it's flowing with milk and honey but I'm not going to be there and Moses just he just responses oh no where you are is where we're going to be if you're in the wilderness we'll be in the wilderness we're not going to the promised land without you.

God It's a Wonderful response and we pick up right in that same this is the next part of the interaction in verse 18. it says Moses said please show me your Glory please show me your glory now as I said earlier Moses has experience of the presence of God and some of his glory since he was called at Mount Horeb which when you look at the two kind of interactions of Mount Horeb he's fearfully kind of oh oh with God.

Now he's kind of boldly walking it's just a really cool difference in how he's experienced God and he's wanting more of him but it at Mount Horeb as he's walked with them through the plagues as they exit Egypt and the temporary tent of meeting that we saw last week is he's got to experience God over and over and over again as they went as he went into the cloud at Mount Sinai and he got the Ten Commandments even in Exodus 24.

When they when Moses and the elders have a meal at the feet of God and his presence on the mount he's gotten to experience God more and more and more now he just says Show Me Your Glory it's a profound request it's it's a big deal he has not experienced this what he's asking for here he has not experienced yet now we'll get into next week more of what's happening in that request but there's really two ways of reading this request one is that he's asking this as a representative of the people of.

God which he is he's asking this on behalf of Israel as their representative the other aspect that you can look at this is say that this is a personal request from Moses so show me us as a representative of your people Your Glory or God showed me personally Your Glory now theologians and Bible nerds debate back and forth which one it is and I would argue that I think both of them are true there's no way you can hear Moses request disconnected from that he's represented of the people of.

God so what he's saying Show Me Your Glory he's asking for a sign here that there's no right up until this point the Covenant is not good has not been restored okay the people are still in rebellion and God is he's not brought wrath on them fully but he has not restored the Covenant yet and there's a little bit of him asking on behalf of people of God give us a sign Show Me Your Glory are we good God so there's that aspect that that absolutely is a part of this.

But I don't think that's all that there is I think there's another aspect of this that has both a representative of God of the people to God and himself that he's saying God show Me Your Glory because he doesn't say show us your glory Show Me Your Glory that he wants to know more of God personally however that's a big request that's a huge jump from the interactions that he's had with God to show me who you are and your glory that's a big leap one of my favorite shows on YouTube which me presenting that makes it seem like I watch a lot of shows on YouTube one of the only shows I watch on.

YouTube and it happens to also be my favorite is a show called Hot ones all right and this show it's very simple it's a guy interviewing celebrities while they eat hot wings that's it they ten different hot wings and the first Wing is a milder sauce and it gets progressively more intense as it goes along and the Brilliance of it is that celebrities most of the time when they do interviews they're fake they're just not being themselves and I get that.

If you if I had to be interviewed all the time I'd also probably would be fake I think I would be tired I think I would just tell you what you wanted to hear I would probably say all kinds of things so a lot of times you hear these interviews they're just they're acting they're faking their way through it but the Brilliance of this show is that as they're eating these hot wings like their guard is let down their mouth is on fire like they they just start talking freely.

So it's pretty it's a pretty incredible concept but the first Wing is mild towards the end they're scalding all right and the eighth Wing is the same sauce every time it's called the bomb okay now it's technically not the hottest sauce it's not on the Scoville level the hottest sauce of the tin but by testimony of people it is the hottest sauce like every celebrity who eats it there's like this is like eating battery acid it scalds them and if you just want to spend 10 minutes watching compilations of like Shaq and Jennifer Lawrence and all these celebrities just like crying and losing it and melting and falling apart and drinking milk.

Because it's burning their lips and their tongue and their throat and their stomach it's worth it but they don't jump from one to eight y'all that's not how that works they progressively build their way up to it and Moses has had like Wing One Wing let two level experiences with God he's got to experience God and His presence and some pretty profound and amazing ways but what he just asked for was Next Level okay what he just asked for is the bomb level experience with.

God and he doesn't know what he's asking fully otherwise he would have asked it and if we don't have time to get into that this week but if he does experience the glory of God and what he's asking he'll die because he can't see the glory of God as a sinner and live but he's asking for this unbelievably profound experience with God Show Me Your Glory and this is how God responds verse 19 and he said this is the Lord I will make all my goodness pass before you and will Proclaim before you my name the.

Lord now a couple things here he says Show Me Your Glory and then God says I'll make all my goodness pass before you so goodness and Glory are the same here and how God is described by to describe himself that's important because for us glory is a very difficult concept to imagine it just is it's an American it's a western it's just Glory it's just not something we we think through well biblically we have ideas of it they're just not the most biblical ideas uh there's a movie that came out a few months ago called air uh it's a sports movie it's about how Nike landed Michael Jordan and his shoe contract.

So if you like sports movies and you like NBA basketball like I do to ride up your alley so 10 of you will love it all right so in air the whole bit the whole what's about is they're trying to land Michael Jordan Nike can't land Michael Jordan on their own because at that point they're a cute little running shoe company they're not cool at all in fact Adidas was the favorite to land Michael Jordan at the time because Adidas was the shoe at the time.

But they do this is a whole build up like it's a whole storyline of how they actually get to finally had an interview they got to sit down with Michael and they make their pitch the pitch isn't going well they're blowing it Michael Jordan's not interested at all and then in the most Pinnacle moment of movie Matt Damon goes off script who's the main character and he just makes this appeal to Michael Jordan he gets the speech and as the speech is going there's this Montage highlights of all of Michael Jordan's highlights and basketball and the music's building up and he says this to Michael Jordan the shoe is just a shoe until someone steps.

Into it then it has meaning the rest of us just want a chance to touch that greatness we need you in those shoes not so that you have meaning in your life so that we have meaning in ours and it's a little ridiculous because we're talking about a shoe and a basketball player let's worship y'all it's like so we we need meeting in our life so that you can be in these shoes now what he's capturing there is Glory okay that's what he's going.

For so we want to we want to we just want to be able to touch your glory Michael and it's showing all of his best moments in basketball as this speech is going on now the reason this speech has ridiculous and over the top as it is the reason it even makes sense is because Michael Jordan is arguably the best basketball player that has ever lived one of the best athletes that's ever lived and I know some of you are big LeBron fans you're like no.

But wait listen I'm not here to argue that I don't like LeBron or Michael Jordan to be honest you can have that debate on your own Michael Jordan is one of the greatest athletes that has ever lived the only the reason that scene even makes sense is because he scored 30 points a night over his career which is ridiculous in basketball for his career he averaged 30 points a night he won six titles in just heroic fashion okay if Michael Jordan doesn't do that there is no movie.

If he's a bust Matt Damon isn't fawning over him saying I just want to touch your greatness that's not no because of what Michael Jordan did on the court right because he was great on the court that's why that scene makes sense it's not because he's a great person which if you know about Michael Jordan he's a jerk I don't care I don't know Michael Jordan but every person that like he just pieced together all the stories it's not a likable person and maybe I'm a little bitter.

Because not only did he keep the Charlotte Hornets who I grew up brewing for from ever making the finals he ended up buying by he purchased the Charlotte franchise after his career and ran that franchise into the ground so for 30 years Michael Jordan ruined basketball for me but that's not the point the point is is that he was great on the court had nothing to do with him as a person but that's how we understand Glory y'all we understand Glory about the great things that people do it's the great things that you do that make you glorious that's how we understand Glory and certainly.

God is great because of the things that he has done but that is not the only reason he is glorious down to his very essence and his very being God is glorious he's not just glorious because of the things that he's done he is glorious he is the epitome of what glory is and in the English language the best catch-all term that we can have is is all the goodness of God which is wonderful but that doesn't even capture.

Because language can't even capture the glory of God it just can't he says I will make my glory who I am my goodness who I am past Before You O Proclaim my name the Lord which we spent on some time on earlier in Exodus that even his name is wonderful and glorious because of all the character that flows out of his name so God is glorious he says and continues and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show Mercy on whom I will show Mercy.

Verse 20. but he said this is the Lord you cannot see my face for man shall not see me and live and the Lord said behold there's a place by me where you shall stand on the Rock and well my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of The Rock and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by then I will take away my hand and you shall see my back but by face you shall not.

See shut my face shall not be seen which awesome we're not spending any time on that this week that's all next week so there's a lot of questions that come out of that a lot of things you want to talk about that's next week okay so as that chapter 34 verse 1. the Lord said to Moses cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets which you broke.

Now that that right there is sandwiched between some pretty big verses and passages and you got to skip over that and keep going but that's a big deal what he just said when he said cut for yourself two tablets of stone Moses probably went oh yes the Covenant is going to be restored that's what he just said it's been lingering here are we going to be able to go on the promised land with you are you still going to be our.

God are you still going to be your people and when he says cut for yourself two tablets of stone that I'm gonna write the Ten Commandments on oh yes Hallelujah God is with us he's not going to abandon us this is good news keeps going verse two be ready by the morning and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain no one shall come up with you and let no one be seen throughout all the mountain let no flocks or herds graze opposite that mountain.

So very similar to what we saw in Exodus 19. this is a holy moment a holy event no one comes to the mountain no animal comes to the mountain nobody continues verse 4 so Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first and he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai as the Lord had commanded him and took in his hand two tablets of stone the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the.

Lord so this is when everything he said about hiding them to cleft The Rock and putting his hand over him all that's happening right here and again it's wonderful and we're gonna spend all our time next week looking at that right there for the rest of our time and God descends by Moses this is what he says and this is where we're going to spend the rest of our time on verse 6. the Lord passed before him and proclaimed the Lord a.

God merciful and gracious slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness keeping steadfast love for thousands forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin but who by no means cleareth the guilty visiting the iniquity of the fathers and the children of the children's children the third and fourth generation and Moses quickly bowed his head toward the Earth and worshiped so God audibly vocally describes himself he says not a prophet speaking on behalf of God God descends in this powerful moment and he describes who he is the.

Lord the Lord his wonderful name Yahweh and that it is further described with this description this is the goodness of God you want the goodness of God summarized this is it I'll make your my glory and my goodness pass before you this is the description right here this is the goodness of God and this is one of the most powerful statements throughout the Old Testament this phrasing that God describes himself with is used over and over and over and over again throughout the rest of the Old Testament numbers 14 Deuteronomy chapter 5 and Deuteronomy chapter 7.

Second Kings 13 second chronicles verse 30 or chapter 30. Nehemiah 9 all over the Psalms Psalm 35 78 86 99 103 106 145 Jeremiah 20 Daniel 9 Joel 2 Jonah 4 it is either quoted or alluded to over and over and over again throughout the rest of the Old Testament so if that is the case and this is a summary description of the goodness of God then we should spend some time looking at how wonderful this description of God is and that's what we want to do we want to.

See that the goodness of God and the glory of God is not just a visual experience that Moses gets to be a part of but it is a description of who he is it is his character and it shows really the wide range of God's goodness and his character and if you were to categorize this in two broad categories one is the love of God the fierce love of God and the second is the justice of God so let's work through this starting with this.

First part of the description which is really the love of God so the first thing he says is that he's merciful and gracious God is merciful and gracious that is literally on display in the fact that he does not bring judgment upon the People by wiping them out when they reject him for a golden calf at the base of the mountain he's merciful he relents he doesn't bring his judgment upon them he's merciful he relents he's gracious maybe he gives favors to people that they don't deserve they don't earn this favor.

But he's merciful and he's gracious one of my favorite parts of the musical Les Mis is the very beginning when the main character Jean Valjean this is set in the French Revolution he gets out of prison when he gets out of prison and that period of the French Revolution he's can't get work starving he's he's a social pariah and he ends up on the doorstep of a bishop in the Catholic Church and the bishop acts like a Christian and he takes him into his house and it gives them a meal it gives him a bed to sleep in he takes care of them in the middle of the night Jean mil Jean grabs a bag.

And grabs as many valuable items in the house as possible loads it up steals his stuff and gets away now he doesn't get very far policeman catches him brings him back to the bishop knowing where these items came from and he says this man says that you gave him these knowing good and well he stole it and the bishop looks at Jean Valjean right for the police officer and this is what he says he says but my friend you left so early surely something slipped your mind and it goes and he grabs two silver candlesticks and he gives them to him he says you forgot I gave these also would you leave the best behind.

But remember this my brother see this some higher plan you must use this precious silver to become an honest man and he gives him the silver he says take this use this change your life and spoiler alert that's the whole rest of the musical it's in living a better life and it's such an overwhelmingly beautiful picture of the grace and the mercy of God that he he stole from him he stole fine objects lots of riches and he says now take this awesome we attempt to steal Glory from.

God all the time all the time as prideful human beings we sin against God all the time endless amounts of sin and rebellion and God and His mercy and Grace says take this also he gives us himself he's unbelievably gracious and merciful in spite of our sin he shows Mercy when we don't deserve it and it gives Grace when we don't deserve it God is unbelievably gracious and merciful and the nice thing he says is he's slow to anger he's slow to anger.

Now it's even slower when you understand this and read this wisely when you understand this theologically okay what happens is that Skeptics what they'll do is they'll say you know the Old Testament your God is just he's like a he's like an angry child like the people do things they sin against him and then he just pours out his wrath immediately and it's like you're not you're not a wise reader of the Scriptures you certainly don't understand this theologically because if you think that.

God is experiencing their rebellion in real time you you have completely misunderstood our God it's hard for us to picture and imagine but God created time so if God created a time and think of the time as this represented by this pen okay God created time he's outside of time okay so he's that means that God existed and Eternity passed Before Time which that breaks our brain and we can't reprimands around that but it's biblically true he existed in eternity past.

Okay is always existed and then he operates within time that he's created so the people of God Rebel here at this moment in time he sees it coming in eternity pass when we Rebel in this part of time God sees it coming way before it happens and God exists in eternity future which again breaks the brain and it presents a lot of other questions that I'm not going to resolve for you but God is slow to anger because he sees a rebellion way before it even happens and he doesn't destroy us.

God is he's so slow to anger y'all he sees it coming and he sees it coming and he's slow and he's patient and he's enduring and he's steadfast he's so slow to anger when I think about this in light of my own self man I just for all of sin and fallen short of the glory of God and I'm just like I know it because my children they do think sometimes and I'm like because I'm experiencing in real time and I'm just I'm not slow to anger I'm working on it.

But I'm not slowed anger God is slow to anger he's so unbelievably slow to anger with impatient as we sin and as we mess up and as we rebel against him he's slow to anger he's abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness abounding y'all and steadfast love and faithfulness that we do not deserve like we we can't categorize how rich that is we don't have we don't understand that like I play this game with my kids sometimes uh when we when I put them to bed and I say I love you.

So much and they say I love you too and I say well I love you more and I say I love you most and I say well I love you mostest and they're just because I love you times a thousand times infinity my kid watched Toy Story he said enter to infinity and beyond it's like nice move kid and we do this back and forth because I love my kids I have steadfast love and faithless my kid there's only one other person in the world that gets more of my stuff as love and faithfulness and that's my wife.

And then it's my children and then there's a gap that just that that's that's what happens it's just I I have this steadfast love and faithfulness towards my kids and that right there and if your parent you understand this this is even true for friendship there's speaking of steadfast love and friendship all of that pictures is a is a poor picture in comparison to the steadfast love of God you think you love your kids you don't understand the love of God you don't understand how steadfast and is his love and his richness and kindness and his faithfulness towards us he's.

So unbelievably loving towards his people and it continues keeping steadfast love to thousands for giving iniquity and transgression and sin God forgives his people of their sin and their repentance is a forgiving God he gives second and third and fourth chances all the time and y'all we love Second Chance stories we eat that up the plot line for so many movies and books we love the story when somebody gets out of prison and restarts their life we love the woman who declares bankruptcy.

And then restarts a business and then it succeeds we love those stories and that story Thompson Infinity you're getting the picture at this point God gives a second third and fourth chances over and over again he's so forgiving he's so unbelievably forgiving of all of our waywardness and Rebellion how how much of a relief must have been for Aaron when Moses came down the mountain with two fresh tablets man we're in he's not he's still with us he still loves us.

God is unbelievably forgiving now these descriptions he could spend sermons on each one of them they're just wonderful and as an American westerners like that's we like that aspect of the goodness of God preach right tell me more of that the next part we're less comfortable with and many of us If we're honest we wouldn't say this is an aspect of the goodness of God because it goes on to say God says but who will by no means cleared the guilty visiting the iniquity of the fathers and the children and the children's children to the.

Third and fourth generation now that exact phrasing is the same language that we saw in the second commandment when we walked to the second commandment a while back in Exodus same same phrasing that if you if you persist in sin the Obama means clear the guilty and what's being pictured here is generational sin and I'll say what I said then all those months ago still true I think John Piper Nails it when he describes this he describes this right here generational sin as like a disease.

If you're father gets the flu that does not automatically mean that you're going to get the flu it's how that works okay however if you get the flu did your chances of getting the flu because you live in the same house rise yes and so it is a generational sin you grew up in a household where father was abusive and cruel and hurtful maybe even outwardly religious went to Church every Sunday but by no means resembles Christ and he Christian sense and you can grow up in that household.

See cruelty vileness hate does that mean automatically that the moment you turn 18 when you bounce out of the house that you're gonna up and leave the Church and never come back no that's not how that works is it more likely possibly could be and you play this out for any type of sin pattern but if you are rounded enough inherit some of it the mystery of this is hard for us to wrap our minds around but you can pick up this generational sin and that that literally plays its way out and this story.

Because they're going to wander in the wilderness and they're going to settle into the promised land right now as a Church where a bunch of us are going through a reading plan a two-year Bible reading plan and when the Book of Judges which is a pretty painful book to be in because when you're reading the Book of Judges you just see over and over again this playing out they reject God they worship idols instead and they their kids worship idols.

Then their grandkids worship idols and it's just painful and by the way if you want to opt into that reading plan email me come talk to me after this I add you to it you'll be a little bit behind us but you can join with us it's just to help us continually read the Bible together as Church but you see it all over the Book of Judges you see it all over the people of God they they reject God they worship idols and they pass that on down to the Next Generation the Next Generation and we just.

For honest we don't like this how's that good how does that display the goodness of God how how is that I think the reason that we have that heart posture as westerners is because we are largely insulated from absolute Injustice and I'm not saying that Injustice doesn't have in America I'm not making that argument it does but it ain't like it is in the global South main like it is in other parts of the of the world ain't like it is in other parts of History it's just not and the way brothers and sisters in in Nigeria we're brothers and sisters in the Church in Nigeria who in the middle of the night extremists islamist.

Groups come in Murder Men kidnap they're 13 and 14 year old girls do horrible things them and force them into marriage and then forcibly convert them into Islam that ain't happening in America it's just not you think our Nigerian brothers and sisters aren't looking at this passage and saying praise God that he doesn't he by no means clears the guilty they long for the justice of God people experience Injustice long for his Justice to roll down like a raging River they want Justice flow and I think that's a weakness.

For us as westerners a weakness in our assessment of the character of the goodness of God we need both we need both a fierce love of God and as Fierce Justice we need both of us one commentator puts it on this passage he says this makes good sense in light of what would just happen which was then rejecting God for the golden calf and It prepares the way for the renewal renewing of the Covenant furthermore it indicates that Divine love and punishment must be held in balance it is wrong to give priority to one over the other.

So you read that and you are left thinking okay but still like how how can both of those things be held together how can God have this steadfast love and mercy and Grace and all of that while also not clearing the guilty like how do those meld together if you read the Old Testament you're like I don't know how that works I want to have faith and trust to you but how does that work and then you flip and you flip and you flip and you flip.

And then you get to the Gospels and wear that overlaps perfectly and wonderfully is the cross that's where the love and the mercy and the grace and it's Rich forgiveness and his Justice flow together flows of the blood of Christ on the crossed that's it because God steps into the timeline and says I'll be the one that accomplishes what I am about I will be the one that comes and absorbs the Wrath that they deserve for being Rebels against me I will be the one that absorbs their sin on the cross and I will give to them is love forgiveness grace mercy and the righteous of his kindness the cross is where all of this.

Makes sense that's where the balance comes together Colossians 2 13-14 and you who were dead and your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh that's the sinful nature of your flesh God Made Alive together with him Heaven forgiveness all our trespasses that through the cross that's what's offered but it only happens verse 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demand it's legal demand is death for the wages of sin is death Romans 6. by canceling the record of death that stood against us with its legal to man this he set aside nailing it to the cross that is where Fierce love and the fierce justice of.

God come together beautifully what God is announcing about himself the Lord the Lord who he is is most beautifully displayed at the Cross of Christ and when you realize them pull up a seat at the table taste and see that he is good take refuge in him so we open this website sorry that's our memory verse for the month the more that you experience Christ like Moses he's got a taste of God he's got to experience him and say I want more of Me Show Me Your Glory and we get to.

See the glory of God at the cross and when we pull up a seat at the table to worship Him and behold him we respond like Moses Moses hears this and it says Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth end worshiped and so do wait brothers and sisters the more you experience the Wonder and the glory of Christ the more it should lead to worship you should Show Me Your Glory show me your goodness show me your character experience him in his word and in prayer gotta want a seat at that table I want you I want you.

God you should worship and Delight in who our God is now there's some of you that have never had a seat at that table some of you have never experienced the goodness of our God you've never experienced his Fierce love and his unbelievable Justice and it's offered at the cross through faith you can lay down your life at the cross and say I want you Christ I want to experience your goodness I want you I want everything you have to offer and the moment I pray that you would do just that.

Let me pray Heavenly Father we thank you for the good news of the Gospel we're thankful that thousands of years ago when you declared your character and your goodness that we get that see that so beautifully displayed at the cross God I pray that if there's anyone here that has not tasted and seen that you were good that has not trusted in you as their only hope God I pray that you would absolutely melt their heart right now they would surrender their life to you.

For those of us that love you better struggle with our sin and struggle with understanding your Rich love and your mercy and your forgiveness got to pray that we'd be able to just respond like Moses bowerheads and worship in Jesus name amen Matt's going to come up we're going to take the Lord's Supper if you're a Christian we invite you to come to the table when you are ready Jesus Took on the night that he was betrayed he took bread and broke it he said this is my body that was broken.

For you he says take and eat took the cup of the New Covenant and he said this is my blood that was shed for you that as often as you eat and drink this you Proclaim my death until I return so as Christians we come to the meal of remembrance remembering what Jesus did at the cross remembering his goodness displayed at the cross so when you've considered your sin when you've considered our need for God come joyfully to the table knowing that our.

God is steadfast in love and rich in Mercy and Grace come and worship and then stand and sing there's gluten-free in that back corner of there if you have a gluten intolerance if you are not a Christian please don't come to this table if you had a Christian come to Christ pray and receive the good news of the Savior who came to rescue you.

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