Kingdom Living Series - Part 7 PROSPER

 

But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.  Matthew 5:48
Those who listen to instruction will prosper;
    those who trust the Lord will be joyful.  Proverbs 16:20

If you’re old enough to remember the days of Vietnam and when McDonalds first put up the Golden Arches, you are also probably old enough to remember Julie Andrews’ song “Practically Perfect” in the movie “Mary Poppins”.   Mary Poppins was the nanny who was “prac-tic-ally perfect in every way”. 

About the same time as Mary Poppins entered the scene, Mac Davis introduced us to his version:

O Lord, it’s hard to be humble,

When you’re perfect in every way

I just can’t wait to look in the mirror,

‘Cause I get better looking each day

Now, those were fun things, Mary Poppins, and an arrogant cowboy…priceless!  But Jesus laid out a tougher plan; He said we should be perfect.  What’s a believer to do with that?

The founder of Methodism, John Wesley, believed^[1] it was possible for followers of Jesus to achieve spiritual perfection – to the point of not sinning by being unloving.  Indeed, he held that God expected it.  Wesley believed the pursuit of Christian perfection in love should shape our lives here on earth.

To become “perfect,” one would have to get rid of a whole shopping-list of bad things.  The problem is that we love those things because we have a base nature that tends to get worse, not better. 

When I was a kid, I used to come in from a hard day of playing in the dirt and Mom would have the bath ready.  I'd go sit on the edge of the bathtub, wet the end of the washcloth, and clean a little spot right in the middle of my forehead.  I could then announce with a clear conscience that I'd washed; Mom would say, get real!

Reality says that if you are not 100% perfectly-clean you are still dirty.  In a spiritual sense, you are not clean, simply by quitting one or two bad habits and going to church.  That is reformation; speaking of which, we are right at the 503^rd anniversary of The Reformation started by Martin Luther.  This was rearranging church life and thought to get it right.  It didn’t.  Every denomination, church, and believer in the body of Christ hasn’t gotten it perfect….ever!

If you get rid of all the bad habits, go to church all the time, go on visitation, sing in the choir, and give all your money…well, that is incredible reformation.  And it still isn't perfection! 

In fact, that's not even what God requires, or what He wants!  God doesn’t really want your reformation; God requires a transformation!  And only the grace of God can do that!

Now, there are a lot of different ideas of exactly what Jesus meant by telling us to “be perfect” or morally healthy.  It takes a lot of thought to get our minds around this one.  We know ourselves, and we know how hard it is just to stay on a diet, or quit smoking, or quit cussing.  But to do it all – to  actually be perfect before God….that is a monumental concept. 

John Wesley’s sermon on Christian Perfection (going on in this life to perfection in love) is over 20 pages long (be thankful this one is only 4!).

So, where do you start?  How is it possible to be perfect in love?  How do you do that?  How do you change?  The answer is, YOU don't!  Christ does it in you! 

In John’s first epistle the Apostle gives us the starting place for Christian perfection: 

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.^[2] 

The word “purify” (or “cleanse”) is much different than the washcloth plan I tried to pass off as having cleaned Russell.  Beloved, when Jesus cleans you, not even your mother can find a dirty spot!

Now, if this is the starting point, where is the finish line?  How can we (as Wesley asked Methodists two centuries ago)…how can we “go on to perfection in love”? 

I believe with all my heart that the answer to that question is two-fold: 

1.   RECOGNIZE AND ACCEPT THE FACT THAT YOU CANNOT DO IT  

Only God can create in you the kind of moral character that “perfection” suggests.  Everywhere in Scripture we are told to follow-after Jesus and his righteousness (see Matthew 6:33).  But it is not following-after-to-catch righteousness that we are urged to do; rather it is in the following-after we will find ourselves transformed^[3] by the righteousness of Jesus Christ! 

And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you.  Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable.  This is truly the way to worship him.  Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.  Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.  Romans 12:1-2

2.   Commit to the truth that the longer you give yourself to Christ’s will, without reservation, totally abandoned to His leading, the more you will become like Him, and less like your old self.

Committing to this truth means you will find yourself loving others even if they don’t love you back.

It has been said that the Christian life is a marathon, not a sprint.  It was never truer of something than this one issue. 

Elizabeth and I got married on February 12, 1967….and a lot of changes have taken place…yes, sir!  Hanging out with her for the past nearly 54  years has changed the little boy who tried to convince mama with a “little-dab’l-do-ya” washcloth.  Now there are no socks dropped on the floor (mostly), crumbs routinely left on the table , or messy garage (occasionally).  And do you know what?  I now like it that way! 

It is the same way with hanging out with Christ – there will be changes…you will be going-on to having your ability to love increase towards perfection as you learn to submit to His leadership. 

That’s what the Apostle Paul found out.  He first met Jesus on the road to Damascus.  He followed Jesus for the next 30 or more years, still learning.  But one thing he’d learned and found to be unequivocally-true, and the most important thing about Christian perfection:  when you hang out with Jesus you learn to love what Jesus loves, and, keeping your eyes on Jesus, the rest somehow fades away…

It’s much like Helen Lemmel’s hymn, Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus:

…and the things of earth will grow strangely dim,                                                                                     in the light of his glory and grace.[4]

So…you want Christian perfection?  Say it with Paul:

I want to know Christ…this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.  Philippians 3:10a, 13b-14 ^(NRSV)

Father help us to let go of this world’s ways so we can prosper in the ways of Your blessed Kingdom. 

For the glory, honor, and praise to which You alone are worthy, o Lord, we pray in the Name of the Son, cooperating with the Spirit, to honor and exalt the Majesty of the Father. 

Let it be so in each of our lives…Amen!

 

Title Image:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation  Matthew 10:24-39©

Watch Sermon Video

---

[1] John Wesley, sermon #40 “Christian Perfection”:  http://new.gbgm-umc.org/umhistory/wesley/sermons/40/

[2] 1 John 1:9

[3] Romans 12:1,2

[4] Lemmel, Helen, Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus, The United Methodist Hymnal (1922 Nashville, UMC Publishing House) No. 349

 

Sin at the Poles

T

[1]

Then the king summoned all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem.  And the king went up to the Temple of the Lord with all the people of Judah and Jerusalem, along with the priests and the prophets—all the people from the least to the greatest.  There the king read to them the entire Book of the Covenant that had been found in the Lord’s Temple.  The king took his place of authority beside the pillar and renewed the covenant in the Lord’s presence.  He pledged to obey the Lord by keeping all his commands, laws, and decrees with all his heart and soul. In this way, he confirmed all the terms of the covenant that were written in the scroll, and all the people pledged themselves to the covenant.  Then the king instructed Hilkiah the high priest and the priests of the second rank and the Temple gatekeepers to remove from the Lord’s Temple all the articles that were used to worship Baal, Asherah, and all the powers of the heavens.  The king had all these things burned outside Jerusalem on the terraces of the Kidron Valley, and he carried the ashes away to Bethel.  He did away with the idolatrous priests, who had been appointed by the previous kings of Judah, for they had offered sacrifices at the pagan shrines throughout Judah and even in the vicinity of Jerusalem.  They had also offered sacrifices to Baal, and to the sun, the moon, the constellations, and to all the powers of the heavens.  The king removed the Asherah pole from the Lord’s Temple and took it outside Jerusalem to the Kidron Valley, where he burned it.  Then he ground the ashes of the pole to dust and threw the dust over the graves of the people.  He also tore down the living quarters of the male and female shrine prostitutes that were inside the Temple of the Lord, where the women wove coverings for the Asherah pole.  Josiah brought to Jerusalem all the priests who were living in other towns of Judah.  He also defiled the pagan shrines, where they had offered sacrifices—all the way from Geba to Beersheba.  He destroyed the shrines at the entrance to the gate of Joshua, the governor of Jerusalem.  This gate was located to the left of the city gate as one enters the city....King Josiah then issued this order to all the people: “You must celebrate the Passover to the Lord your God, as required in this Book of the Covenant.”  There had not been a Passover celebration like that since the time when the judges ruled in Israel, nor throughout all the years of the kings of Israel and Judah.  But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah’s reign, this Passover was celebrated to the Lord in Jerusalem.  Josiah also got rid of the mediums and psychics, the household gods, the idols, and every other kind of detestable practice, both in Jerusalem and throughout the land of Judah. He did this in obedience to the laws written in the scroll that Hilkiah the priest had found in the Lord’s Temple.  Never before had there been a king like Josiah, who turned to the Lord with all his heart and soul and strength, obeying all the laws of Moses.  And there has never been a king like him since.  2 Kings 23:1-8, 21-25[2]

October 31^st is the celebration of two different worlds; one is Halloween, something of a dichotomy between good and evil.  It is All Hallows Eve, the beginning of Allhallowtide, three days of remembering those who died in Christ, but also coinciding with many ancient traditions of harvest time, including the Gaelic (or Celtic) festival of Samhein, a time of thanksgiving tied to some Christian and some pagan roots.  The most nearly modern Christian church celebration is Reformation Day, celebrating Martin Luther’s nailing of his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenberg, Germany 503 years ago[3].  Luther was a Catholic priest who saw the depths of hypocrisy and death-inviting sin into which the church had slipped.  Those theses were 95 challenges to kickstart a holy cleansing revival in the church.  When that failed, and Luther was excommunicated, the Protestant rebellion was on.  Calvin, Luther, Wesley, and a host of others led the way in schism.  Today there are so many denominations it is hard to say just how many. 

And it’s harder still to say which denomination, if any holds the corner on the market of being right in its preponderance of doctrines and rules.  There is one safe thing to say; in all the preaching, opinions, self-righteousness, wonderment, and wishing, only God’s Word holds truth without mixture of man’s error.

When king Josiah, a young man, heard the Word of God it convicted his heart.  And he not only felt remorse, Josiah changed his ways.  The young king offered his heart to God, and his life to the cause of helping others know God.  He emptied the Temple of every pagan vestige and practice, and sent the lying priests packing.  He burnt the Asherah poles of pagan worship and banished the male and female prostitutes connected with such worship. 

For You Today

These days when denominations are confronted with God’s holy Word they usually rewrite their Bibles instead of their rule books.  Josiah was different; he was willing to turn the whole world upside down to agree with God and not man’s new ideas.  Join me in praying for Josiah to visit our land!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO

---

[1] Title Image:  Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

[2] For another post on 2 Kings 23 see Heart Soul and Strength

[3] See the Encyclopedia Britannica article here