Memorial Day (Sat AM)
Tom Shrader explores Jesus' teaching that Christians are salt and light in the world, emphasizing that this is about being rather than doing. He examines how believers should influence their communities through transformed character, particularly through the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5. Shrader argues that good works are primarily about manifesting love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, rather than just religious activities.
“Witnessing isn't optional, witnessing isn't mandatory, witnessing is inevitable.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: CBCC Memorial Day 2007
Recorded: 2007 at Cannon Beach Conference Center
Duration: 1 hr 7 min
Themes: salt, light, character, influence, fruit, love, joy, peace, living in community, influencing others, growing in faith, new believer, developing character, facing judgment, young adult, seeking purpose
Scripture: Matthew 5:13-16, Galatians 5:16-26, John 8:12, John 9:5, Philippians 3:20, Acts 2:37, 2 Corinthians 4, Romans 8:28, Daniel 3:18, John 14-17, Ephesians 4:32
Theological Themes: sanctification, becoming holy, fruit of the spirit, spiritual transformation, christian witness, godly character, spiritual maturity, grace
Full Transcript
Good morning. Good to see you this morning. Hope you all slept well. I continue to set a record pace of sleeping. I went back and went to bed and woke up just in time to get here, so hope you're doing all right, and it's really exciting for me to be with you.
I don't know that I've heard any more music come out of the three of you that are leading worship. It is just wonderful to be able to sit there and to enjoy it. The three of you doing music is just incredible. I love it, and thank you so much for allowing us to be here.
Open your Bibles, if you would, please, to Matthew chapter 5, verses 13, 14, 15, and 16.
Our Foundation: Saved by God, from God, for God
Here is our premise. We have to get this right. We are saved by God. I'm saved by God, from God, for God.
The angel told Joseph, "Mary's going to have a son, name him Jesus. He will deliver his people or save his people from their sin." When Jesus was on the cross, when He cried out, "It is finished," what He meant was, the purpose for which I came has been accomplished. I paid the price for the sin of all who would ever believe in me. We'll talk about that, just kind of unpack it over the next few days.
What happens is Jesus was treated, though He is sinless, He was treated as though He was guilty of our sin. God hates sin. Sometimes, I don't know that we understand that fully. Because God is a God of love, He must be a God also who hates. He is a God who loves righteousness and holiness, therefore He hates sin. So I'm saved by God, it's an act of grace, I'm saved by grace through faith.
A Story of Grace
A week from Sunday, I'm doing a baby dedication for a 15-year-old girl. She's 15, there is no dad around, but there is this baby that's four months old. We're going to do a baby dedication. My observation has been, as the word leaks out, that some people in our church already kind of have their shorts in a knot over this deal, and they're a little concerned about how this is going to impact us. Are we now sanctioning immoral behavior for our 15-year-olds? We will not do it at every service, we will do it at our six o'clock service, which has in it a large population of junior high, high school kids.
By standing up and dedicating this baby, aren't we in fact somehow condoning what she did? I had to finally even talk to a couple of people, and I said, listen, are you stuck on stupid or what? How possibly can you get from this that we're condoning sexual behavior? We don't even talk about safe sex, we talk about no sex.
I sat with this girl, and we asked people to write out testimonies. She sat in my office and read me, while I watched her baby, she read me her testimony about how she'd been in church all her life, but never saved. How she knew all the passages and all the verses and everything that came with it, yet as is our nature, she began to live a rebellious life, to become more and more rebellious, so much so that she got involved with this guy, became pregnant, and in the midst of that pregnancy, now the guy's gone obviously, in the midst of that pregnancy, God saved her. I think that's a wonderful story to tell.
She had a wonderful line in there, she said, "I know this is not typical." The minute she said that, I grabbed a sticky pad and I wrote on it, "It is absolutely typical," and I stuck it on my computer. It is not typical circumstantially, is it? But it's absolutely typical substantially. At that point where one of us, our sin may not have been as blatantly obvious to everyone as a pregnant, unmarried 15-year-old, but it was just as tragic, and it took no more of God's grace to save her than it does to save you.
That is just a wonderful story of God's grace. I understand all the pressures, and it just makes me sad, though I know it's necessary that we have to do all these disclaimers along the way. Her story is a wonderful testimony. Can I give you options? She could have gone in and had this baby killed, that was an option for her. For nothing else, we ought to celebrate the fact that at least she didn't complicate sin.
Ready for Service
I'm saved by God, from God. And now I'm ready for His service. Here I am, send me. We posed these questions last night, just a series of them, you could add to that. Okay, now I'm ready, what should I do? How should I do it? Where should I do it? When should I do it? What's the strategy for living this life?
You Are Salt and Light
What Jesus says to us is, "You are," and we're just going to dense this down a little bit, "You are the salt of the earth" (verse 13), "You are the light of the world" (verse 14). We said the emphasis there is on this word "are," it's not doing, it's being. That phrase is not a command. He's not saying you go and be the light of the world, no, He's saying you are.
The term that we would use in here often is the term witnessing, or testimony, or sharing our faith, or proclaiming the gospel. Here's what we need to understand. It's right in line with what Jesus is saying here. Witnessing isn't optional, witnessing isn't mandatory, witnessing is inevitable. You are a witness. You may be lousy at it, but you are a witness.
We said the key here, and this is from the pen of Martin Lloyd-Jones, the key that Jesus is communicating here in this, is that we are to be of influence. Therefore we don't live a life in isolation, nor do we live in a Christian ghetto. We are in contact with lost people. There is something deficient in our life if we don't have
lost people all around us. And the more serious we get about our faith, and the more we become part of what God's doing frequently, is we can get further and further away from lost people.
I am so fortunate for this life that I live, because essentially I really only do two things. I have East Valley Bible Church, which occupies the vast majority of my time, but I make my living at this thing called priority living. I teach Bible studies in the marketplace. I used to be in a couple of bars, and a couple of restaurants, and a couple of malls, and then we lost a bunch of our sites. So now all three studies are in churches, but it really doesn't have much of an impact anymore. Initially, it really did.
Because of this, and because of my life, I came out of the real estate background. That's my background. I've never been to seminary, never been trained. I don't—which is, you're probably going, really? We didn't know that? That's all right. I couldn't live with it. But I've never had any of that training. I am envious of the guys that do. Every once in a while, somebody will go, well, you never had that seminary training. You don't need that. No, I look up to those guys.
I teach a little segment of a class every year at the seminary, just for a couple hours on church and all that. And I love being with those guys. So I don't have any problem there. I just was never there. I came out of a real estate background. God saved me out of that. And I have a ton of friends that are still in it. I'm around lost guys all the time.
The Value of Lost People
Number one, I enjoy lost guys. They tend to give me great illustrations. But they also bring a fresh—they ask the hard questions. And what Jesus is saying to you and to me is we need this.
G. Campbell Morgan writes this: the world needs salt because it's corrupt. It needs light because it's dark. So let's talk just a little bit about salt and light because they may not be as significant to us, certainly the salt part of it, as in that day and age in which Jesus is speaking.
The Value of Salt in Ancient Times
Salt, John MacArthur writes, salt has always been valuable in human society, often much more than it is today. During a period of ancient Greek history, it was called theon, which means divine. The Romans held that except for the sun, nothing was more valuable than salt. Often Roman soldiers were paid in salt. And it was from that practice that the expression "not worth his salt" originated.
So here's what Jesus is saying: You are the salt of the earth. If salt becomes tasteless, can it become salty again? The answer is no. It's only good to be thrown under and trampled underfoot. So again, in that day and age, I assume you understand they weren't using asphalt for these pathways, but they would take salt, for example, and throw it on these paths and be trampled under into the ground. Nothing would grow. It would keep a path clean.
So I'm saying if salt has lost its basic function, then it's really of no value anymore except to be trampled underfoot. What's its function? And most of guys are going to give you one of these two or three things. Number one, that certainly salt does it—it adds flavor.
Salt as Flavor
On the second Friday of December every year at 1:15, I eat lunch at the same restaurant with the same guy. And we have done this now for over 25 years. I will not talk to him all year. We have about a three-hour lunch. We have a ton of fun. We talk about what's going on. We talk about families. We talk about work. We talk about all that stuff. I will not talk to him again until about mid-October when I will leave a voicemail or he'll leave a voicemail saying I'm going to have our gal make the reservations. That's the only time we're together.
We ate at a place called The Ramps. It is hardcore old school, red velvet wallpaper. In Arizona now, you can no longer smoke in any building, any public building, any restaurant, any bar, any bowling alley, unless half the revenue is from tobacco. So essentially, unless you're a cigar store or something, you can't smoke in these buildings. I don't know if you'd like it or not. It kind of cleans up the air a little bit. It's worse than the place we go. When Jesus comes, this thing is still going to smell like smoke, this restaurant that we go to.
Well, when we go, not only do we go there every year, we have the same thing to eat every year. Fat Man Special number one, that's what we order. And every time I order the Fat Man Special, I remember the phrase, you are what you eat. So I order the Fat Man One. What that means is it's a big old slab of beef, about the size of that piano.
Now they have with it—they'll say, do you want horseradish? Do you like horseradish? You all like horseradish? They have what they call their atomic horseradish. The last time we're together, and we go through this same dance every year, and last time we're together, He cuts a big old—we get our meal, and I'll say to him, do you care if I pray for the food? And he said, well, pray for yours, I'm eating mine. Not a believer, this guy.
And he cuts a big old piece about this size, shoves it like this, and I mean, he just soaks it in this horseradish. And so I'm watching and taking a little drink of my iced tea, because I know this is going to be fun. And he puts it in his mouth. It's not in there two seconds before he goes—and then he says a couple of things. I can't say them at Cannon Beach Christian Conference Center, but he says a bunch of these things. He said, I keep forgetting how hot that is.
We are to add flavor to the world. Someone has said this: we Christians have no business being boring. Our function is to add flavor and excitement to the world.
A Boring Church Experience
I was one Sunday invited to speak at this church, and it was about this size. It was not a big church by our standards, but it was a pretty good, way above this, above average size church in the country. I come in early, and I sit my stuff down, and I come back, my things are moved. There's some people
There they made it clear that every Sunday, they sit there. I said no problem, but I figured this gives me a little indication of what this day could be like.
So I have a sheet. When we come into something like this, although I didn't get one today, it doesn't really matter. We're in a groove now. We got it going after one of these. We'll get a sheet that tells us who's going to do what, who's going to say what, when, where.
So I'm looking at this sheet, and we're singing now, and it is not good. We're singing, and I'm looking at the sheet, and I'm going, oh my gosh, look at this song. I can't wait to get to this song. So I make sure I position myself right over here, and I'm watching, and he goes, "All right, number 528." I'm saying, oh, this is going to be so good. And all of a sudden, he goes, "All right, I got joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart. Where? Down in my heart. Where? Down in my heart."
And I'm thinking, I wonder how far down I'd have to dig to find that joy down deep in your heart. And I'm not saying you have to be laughing and all that. I'm saying there ought to be something in you that is provocative to the people around you. There ought to be something in you that when they see you, they say, "Gosh, I want that."
Let me read it to you again. Someone who said, we Christians have no business being boring. Our function is to add flavor and excitement to the world.
Salt as Preservative and Irritant
So salt adds flavor. Salt is an irritant, too, right? A little salt on the old wound. So you know the old phrase that we, in a sense, are to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted. There's that irritation part of it. There's telling people what they really think or feel.
But probably, and we can go nuts with this, but at least let's just make it, probably the idea here is as much preservative as anything, that we're in this world to preserve it.
Wayne Grudem. Do you know that name, Dr. Wayne Grudem? Wayne Grudem, this is me. Wayne Grudem would be to me one of the top two or three theologians right now we've got in the country. And Dr. Grudem has landed in Phoenix. And about three times a year, he is so gracious to allow me to have breakfast with him. He's right now working on the ESV study Bible.
This guy is brilliant. I said to him, he went to Harvard and then to Oxford and some other stuff in between. I said, "How did you decide to go to Harvard?" He said, "You know what? I was just talking to somebody one day and they said, you ought to go to Harvard. And I thought, oh, all right, I'll apply for that." And he went to Harvard and studied economics and then he went on to Oxford.
Government and Public Policy
He's written a systematic theology that's about 1,000 pages, 1,200 pages, which is a great book. But he's got a little book called Bible Doctrines, about 450 pages. So you ought to own for sure this book.
And I'm in a thing the other day for public policy and I didn't know Dr. Grudem was going to be there and he didn't know I was going to be there. Not that made any difference to him, but we had a lot of fun. And he said this, one of the significant ways God restrains evil in the world is through government.
And what he was saying is, we understand how ugly politics can be and how we can be galvanized and we go through all that. But he's saying public policy. In 1973, there was a public policy that says, you know what, now you can abort babies. And as a result of this, as many as 50 million babies have been slaughtered while we stood by essentially silently. And some saying, "I don't want to be involved in politics." It's not politics, it's public policy. Those are important issues in distinction.
The Historical Impact of Christianity
Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes this observation: "Most competent historians are agreed in saying that what undoubtedly saved England from a revolution such as was experienced in France at the end of the 18th century was nothing but evangelical revival. This was not because of anything which is done directly, but because of the masses of individuals had become Christians and were living this better life and had a higher outlook. The whole political situation was affected and the great acts of parliament which were passed in that last century were mostly due to the fact that there was such a large number of individual Christians found in the land."
Jesus is saying you're the salt of the earth. You are here to make a difference. You add flavor. You irritate. You preserve.
Light Reveals Reality
You're the light of the world. Now in John chapter 8 verse 12, Jesus says, "I'm the light of the world." But in John chapter 9 verse 5, He says, "As long as I'm in the world, I'm the light of the world." So He's saying I'm not here. You're the light of the world.
And light has essentially, as close as I can tell here, three functions. Number one, it reveals reality.
So you're going to be laying in bed. We're laying in bed one night and I hear this sound, rawr, rawr, it wasn't a roar. And I wake up. My heart's beating and I'm looking around and I'm pretty convinced there's something out there. And I saw, I'm almost certain that I saw something move. And I was pretty certain, the more I looked at it, I was pretty certain that I could see a shadow. I said, "Susan, Susan, I think there's somebody out there. You go get him. I'll call the police." Well, I mean, I figured she could distract him and I could call 9-1-1.
And finally, she said, "Tom, you little weenie, get up and go do something." I said, "Well, no, all done." I threw on the light and what had happened was I had left a coat, my coat over on the chair and the wind was blowing it a little bit and I thought it was Charles Manson and it was my coat. But the light, the light, the light revealed things as they really are, allows us to see things.
I was in college, well, I was in college for three terms, Johnson's, Nixon's, and Carter's. It was a long time when I was in college, a while. I liked college, you know. I was, this is an absolutely true story. I was president of our freshman class and then
Next year I ran for re-election. I didn't have enough hours to be a sophomore, so I thought that was pretty cool. So I went to a little Christian, little Catholic university, liberal arts school called St. Ambrose University. We were the St. Ambrose Bees, that was their nickname. And so the student union would have logically been called the Beehive, correctly.
So we would go to the Beehive and we would sit around. I had friends who smoked. I never liked cigarette smoke. Cigarette smoke is always—I don't mind cigar smoke or pipe smoke, I don't like cigarette smoke. So we would sit around, and this would have been 1968, 69, 70, you know, in those times. And we'd sit around and it would be like this: What is reality? And then we would talk, and we had no idea, no idea what reality was.
But when God comes and sheds light in your life, all of a sudden you see things as they really are. So you now are the light of the world, you take that into the world. You allow people to look at you and they see that there's something distinct and different about you.
Light as Measurement and Life
Light is also a measurement. One of the first things the astronauts did in 1969 when they landed on the moon is put down a little device and they shot a beam from the earth, hit this, brought it back. By measuring it, by the speed of light calculations, they could figure out exactly how far it was from earth to moon at that point. The measurements of being a—you'll see those guys working on, they're working on the roads and they're shooting beams, they're reading them back. Light is a reality of measurement.
Light also gives life. Black out the sun for a couple of days, you got issues. You are the light of the world. You bring to the world a sense of what reality really is, a measurement, a standard by which we're to live, and you bring life. Jesus said, "I've come that you might have life and have it abundantly." This is really living.
The World's False View of Life
Now, can we package all those together? The world has no idea what's going on. The world has a totally different sense of what is reality, what's fun, what's life. You can turn on a television, usually during sporting stuff—I watch a lot of sports—and you will see an ad and there'll be these guys and gals playing beach volleyball and there'll be guys sitting in a lawn chair with a Corona and they're drinking and they'll go, "This is really life. This is really living." That's the world's idea of life.
And God says, "No, no, that isn't life. That's just a bunch of dead people trying to have fun. That isn't life. This is much closer to life. This is reality."
I have a friend. I had a pretty wild background. Before God saved me, I was kind of a party guy. I liked to play golf and I liked to party. I was kind of a drink guy and a gamble guy and a few other little things. God saved me from that. And I have this friend who said—in fact we had lunch just about two months ago—and he said, "Schrader, in the old days, you were so much fun. We could bring you any sin, you were like Baskin Robbins. We could bring you any sin and you had 31 ways of enhancing the sin. You could always take things to a new parallel." And I was very creative in sin.
But He said, "Now, here's the deal, Tom, now you're vanilla." And I said, "Isn't it interesting when your kid's strung out on drugs and your wife leaves you, you don't call the guys you go to the club with, you call me." That's the impact that you're supposed to be having on the world.
The Necessity of Contact
And for light and salt to work, by definition, there has to be this idea of contact. And there is the absence of the idea of somehow this has gone underground. One author again writes this: there can be no such thing as secret discipleship. For either the secrecy destroys the discipleship or the discipleship destroys the secrecy. That you and I are to live in such a way that it becomes visible.
Now we are going to just lock in on verse 16 for a second. Here it is: "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they see your good works and they glorify your Father who is in heaven." Here's the two things that Jesus is telling us to do: that we need to make the invisible God visible and then we speak the truth about Him.
Just read that. Just read through verse 16 and just look at the obvious. Just obvious. We don't need Greek and all that other stuff for this part. Let your light shine before men. This is your life. Your life is just shining before men in such a way that they see your good works. They see your good works. It's visible. People are watching. They get it. That's the action. Your life and your works are visible and the result or the reaction is that they glorify your Father who is in heaven.
Citizens of Heaven
In Philippians chapter 3 verse 20, Paul tells us that our citizenship is not here on earth but our citizenship is in heaven. Is that right? That we live here and dwell here but our home is there. I come back to this theme a lot. That we are to live with this idea of a heaven consciousness. That there should be in us an ever growing homesickness for a place we've never been.
I was born and raised in Iowa. You ever been there? Anybody ever been to Iowa? I've got a bunch of you. Neil Lomax is pretty predominant around Portland, at least he was in the old days. I'm one day emceeing an MCA dinner or something, I don't know what it was. I'd never met Lomax before but I heard he was really a good guy. He was really beat up then. His hips were all beat up. From this area, I would think you would know that name. From Portland State. The guy is just an incredible athlete.
I'm getting ready to introduce him. I said, "I'd never met him. I said, help me welcome Neil Lomax. Neil is an incredible guy. He's an incredible athlete." I said, "I just was at a Cardinal game." Neil was quarterbacking for the Cardinals then. I said, "It was really interesting. Roy Green was a wide receiver and he brought Roy with him. They're sitting over here. I said, it was really weird because Roy ran a little out pattern and—"
Neil just launched in about the first row. The guy next to me says, "Send him to where I ran." Pretty soon he ran a pattern over the middle and Neil launched it. Just got sloppy and threw it way over his head. The guy next to me goes, "Send him to where I ran." Right before half, Roy Green runs this post right over the middle and Neil's got him wide open. Launches this thing way past him. The guy next to me goes, "Send him to where I ran." Boom. The halftime gun goes off. I said to the guy, "Neil's not having a good half but let's just send him to where I ran." He said, "I think he'd be valuable to the State Department because it's obvious to me he's the only guy we have that could overthrow the Ayatollah."
I said, "Welcome Neil Lomax." I've never met Neil. We ended up being pretty good friends. He's really hurt. He kind of gets up and he gets over and he said, "Thank you. Tom, thank you for that kind introduction. It's good to see you in men's clothing again." And I don't know how Lowe knows any of this stuff but he says, "You know, Tom's from Iowa. Iowa. Idiots out wandering around. Iowa. Tom's from Iowa. I owe the world an apology."
So we start this whole thing. I love Iowa. I love it. The other day, almost every morning now, I turn on my computer and I go right to the fight page and I play the fight song. Especially now, you can almost smell college football coming and it doesn't get any better than this right here. We're going home for the Michigan State game. When we fly into Iowa, it is so, I just begin to tear up. Now here's what's ironic. I don't love it enough to live there. But that's a whole different issue.
I love it. When I had my family, my father died last July unexpectedly. He died about the best way you could die. He watched Lawrence Welk. I love Lawrence Welk. You all love Lawrence Welk. It doesn't get any better than Lawrence Welk rocks. I love Lawrence Welk. He is one of the great, if you can buy or read anything about Lawrence Welk, Lawrence Welk is just incredible. Lawrence Welk had the Mills Brothers on two weeks ago. It was unbelievable. But I digress. He watched Lawrence Welk, went upstairs and fell over dead, my dad.
The Tom Schrader Life Tour
We're back for the funeral. So I got a van. I got all the kids, my kids, their husbands and grandkids. I said, "We are going on the Tom Schrader Life Tour." So I took them down. I said, "This is where I pitched my first no-hitter right here, where I hit my first home run. This is where I had my first kiss. This is where..." and they said, "Okay, Dad, you know what? This is boring. We don't care."
Well, I'm homesick for Iowa because it's filled with all these memories. God says you're to be homesick for a place that you've yet to occupy, that our citizenship is here. Our citizenship is not here. It's in heaven.
Citizenship in Heaven
Now, commenting on that and what Paul might have had in mind, one author writes this: To be a Roman citizen living in Philippi, so he's writing at the church at Philippi, or wherever, did not mean that you spent your time pining for the good life in the city of Rome. Okay, got it? It did not mean that you longed to get out of Philippi, out of Asia Minor, and back to where your heart was, the city of Rome. Instead, it meant that you were entrusted with the task of bringing Rome and all its achievements and glory to Philippi, or Jerusalem, or Alexander, or wherever you found yourself.
Now apply that. Your citizenship is in heaven. You are not to sit here and just idly dream about heaven, though it's good to reflect on heaven, but you are to bring, to put it in this context now, all of the achievements, all of the glory, all of the presence of heaven to Cannon Beach, or to Tacoma, or wherever God has placed you. So there's the thought. Isn't that a great thought? There's that thought. We'll talk about it tomorrow or the next day, somewhere in here, you're an ambassador for Christ.
Let Your Light Shine
Now let's hang here on verse 16. "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they can see your good works." What is it they see? The minute I read that idea of see your good works, I start thinking about stuff that I'm supposed to do that's typically human.
So in Acts chapter 2, Peter delivers this powerful sermon, right? He delivers this powerful sermon. Acts chapter 2, verse 37 says they're pierced to the heart, and here's what the listeners say. They say, "Peter, what do you want us to do?" We are action-oriented. So remember the context here of verse 13 and 14? You are not doing, being. So when we talk about our good works, we might add things to this list like prayer, and fasting, and evangelism, and worship, and service, and all the subsets of that, celebration, all those things.
What Makes Us Christian
I want to take just a little bit of a different path here. Rather than talk about good works that I can see that I'm doing, feeding hungry and all that, all fine, all good, all have their place, all the result of my salvation, right? That's really important. Our Christian faith is not about what we do. It's about what we believe. What makes us Christian is our doctrine.
You've got all sorts of people who feed hungry. You've got pagans do that. You've got all sorts of religions that feed the hungry, or clothe the naked, or do good things. What makes us Christian is not what we do. What makes us Christian is what we believe. Now what we believe now affects what we do. So our external life may look very much like those. We may do the same things, but we do them with a different heart or with a different motive, right? And our heart is very wicked.
Now if you watch, I use this illustration all the time. If you watch every Thanksgiving, they will go down, Thanksgiving news, because there's really nothing to report on Thanksgiving. So they'll go down to the rescue mission or the food bank or wherever it is, somewhere in your town, and they'll say, "And your name?" "I'm Skippy." "Skippy, what are you doing here today?" "Well, I'm feeding these people." "Well, Skippy, what would make you, on a holiday that has food and football..."
and all that goes with it, what would make you come down here and feed these people? Here's what Skippy will say all the time. It makes me, you want to guess? Feel good. He can't even feed a hungry guy because he's hungry. He feeds a hungry guy because it makes him feel good. That's how deceitful and wicked your slimy heart is. Me too. But you get the point there.
What makes us Christian is what we believe. That's why doctrine is so important. Our doctrine is critical. We will teach doctrine, doctrine, doctrine, doctrine, doctrine. Why? So we're smart, knowledgeable? No. It has huge practical ramifications.
The Importance of Knowing God
It is so important for you to understand who God is. We sang this morning a song about, I'm crushed, I'm perplexed, but I'm not destroyed. Well, how can that possibly be? How can you be crushed and perplexed, confused? Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4, I'm pushed in by every angle. I'm afflicted in all these ways. They've beaten me. They've stoned me. I'm looking for dead. I've been shipwrecked. How can you not be perplexed?
Here's how. Because he's got really good doctrine, and his doctrine tells him God's in control. Very important for him. I don't know how long it's been since you read Knowing God by J.I. Packer, but it would be really good. I just found a hardback cover of that. I don't think I've ever seen that book in hardback, and I just bought it, brought it up here, and I just started going through it again. I forgot how good J.I. Packer is in Knowing God, and how for you and me, the key to our life is to just know God and who He is, and that has huge practical ramifications in our life.
Walking by the Spirit
Turn in your Bibles to Galatians chapter 5, and this, when we talk about good works, this is what I want you to think of. We only have a brief time together, so I'm not going to unpack all of this. All I'm going to do is whet your appetite here. Verse 16, but I say to you, Paul's writing to the church of Galatia, I say to you, walk by the Spirit, and you'll not carry out the desires of the flesh. Verse 17, the flesh sets its desires against the Spirit, Spirit against the flesh. They're in opposition to one another.
When he uses the word walk, here is not what he's saying. He is not talking about a primitive form of transportation, in which case you put one foot in front of the other. This is not what he's talking about. That is a way that we use the word walk in the Scripture, but there's another way. The way it's used here has the idea of lifestyle. It's in a present tense, and what Paul is saying, he's talking about the way we live in a continuous, regular, habitual way of life.
So in Ephesians chapter 4, verse 1, Paul said, Therefore I imprison the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you've been called. Colossians 1:10, walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. First Thessalonians 2:12, you should walk in a manner worthy of God. What does he mean? He means develop a lifestyle and a way of living that reflects a transformed life.
Doctrine Leads to Practical Living
So if you take a book of Ephesians, and this is arbitrary, but pretty close. Ephesians chapter 1, 2, and 3, doctrine, doctrine, doctrine, doctrine, doctrine. That's where you find I'm saved by grace through faith, that faith out of ourselves, to get to God so no one would boast, and we're saved for His workmanship. He talks about predestination, heavy, heavy, heavy stuff in Ephesians 1, 2, and 3. When he gets to Ephesians 4, he says, Therefore, now because all of that's true, therefore walk in a manner worthy of your calling. Because all that doctrine's true, live this way.
Ephesians chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, doctrine, doctrine, doctrine. Wonderful truth. And now he says, Therefore, don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Your lifestyle's affected, but it starts with the renewing of your mind, what you know. So important for us to know God, to believe God, to understand God, to begin to plumb the depths of God and who He is. And then out of this comes all this practical life.
We were leaving the other day, and Susan said, you know, I always get nervous when we have to fly. It's not like we're afraid or she's afraid or anything, but she said, I get nervous when we have to fly. And I said, what is the worst thing that can happen, other than I get an aisle seat? But what's the worst thing that could happen? Well, we could crash. I said, Susan, okay, let's imagine that we're flying up to Cannon Beach, and our guy gets disoriented and puts this plane in the side of a mountain. That does not sound bad to me. That sounds pretty good to me. Now, I'm not going to ask him to do it, but I would be in heaven. I would no longer be reading about Jesus. I would be with Him. That doesn't sound bad to me, does it? This stuff has to get deep, deep, deep into your soul.
The Fruit of the Spirit
So he says, I don't want you to walk like this. And then he lists, we taught it last night, the fruit of the flesh. And he talks about sin. He talks about immorality. Look at verse 19, immorality, impurity, sensuality, sexual sins. He talks about idolatry and sorcery and enmity, and now we're talking about strife and arguing and the Donald and Rosie and all that stuff where they're just screaming at each other.
He said, now don't live that way, but here's how I want you to live. The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Now we look at this and go, well, this is a bit confusing, because grammatically here, Paul screwed this up, because he said the fruit is, and then he lists nine things. He clearly has never been in Sister Mary Loyola's fourth grade class, where we learned the fruits of the spirit are. Well, he uses the singular fruit, and he uses the singular here verb, which makes sense, fruit is, and he lists nine things. So what's he saying to us?
The Fruit of the Spirit: Understanding True Good Works
This fruit comes like a bunch of grapes. The fruit of the Spirit is these things. The premier one is love, and in a sense, all the rest of these define what love is. So when we say to you to let your light shine, when we say that you're to live in such a way that people are to see your good works, I'm saying to you, what is worthy for them to see are these things here. Not the activities—those are fine—but they see you operate with a different heart.
The fruit of the Spirit is these nine things, and I want to touch on each one of them just briefly. I want you to see here, and I'm going to encourage you to resist the temptation to go right and talk about work, because you can be very busy. You can be doing Bible studies, and going to this, and going to that, and coming here, all those things, and still not have a transformed heart. So when we think of good works, I want us first to think about what we're supposed to be before we think about what we're supposed to do.
The Nine Aspects of Spiritual Fruit
Here's the first thing that should be present in your life. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace. Somebody's broken them out this way: love, joy, peace, which are habits of the mind that find their source in God. Then patience, kindness, goodness—that is fortified as we reach out to others, fortified by the love, joy, peace. And then faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—those are general conduct that we have with people.
The first is love, this idea of agape. We come back tonight, we're going to spend the whole night defining love, and I'm going to pass over it.
Joy and Peace: Grounded in God's Promises
Joy—joy is a deep, inner rejoicing that's promised to us by God. Here's the key: it doesn't rest on circumstances, but it rests on God's promise. This idea of joy is not happiness, though there may be this component of happiness to it. It's a sense of God and who He is and resting in that in spite of circumstances.
I'm going to knit this together with peace, and I would define peace this way. It's not the absence of turmoil, it's the presence of God. Let's link joy and peace together. They are fruit that the Holy Spirit brings in our life as a result of a right relationship with God and are not based on experience or circumstance.
A Personal Story: Walking the Beach at Cannon Beach
I'll give you an example. Labor Day, 2004, we are here at Cannon Beach Christian Conference Center, and we had a blast. The great joy and privilege of my life is when Janet calls or writes and says, "Can we book you for something?" We're coming back in September to do a men's conference, we're coming back next year—she just gave me the note on it—next August for a half week. August 9th, love it.
We are walking down the beach, so it's Labor Day. Labor Day here in Cannon Beach is really busy. The next day, there's nobody in town. I mean, literally, bam, overnight. Labor Day busy, Monday busy, Tuesday nobody there. As soon as I get up, we're going to hang around and get a late flight. We start down here in our room, we walk down to Haystack Rock, and we're talking and coming back.
We are about two-thirds of the way back. When we talk at a place like this, we always ask questions like, "Could you live here?" These promote these kinds of things. We take August off, and we have these conversations that I'm sure she hates.
A Moment of Confidence About the Future
But we're about two-thirds of the way back, and I said to Susan—because we're talking about the rest of our life, and this is September 2nd of 2004—I said, "You know what's interesting? We have been really following God's plan in the area of finance, and if you take everything that we have in place, barring disaster, and this is not an idol, I'm just trying to give you a statement here, we probably have our retirement funded."
I mean, it's amazing to me. I'm only four and a half years away from being eligible for Social Security, and that's weird to me, because I don't feel that. And I'm walking along, and I said, "Susan, the only thing that could screw us up is if one of us got sick." That's September 2nd, 2004.
The Beginning of a Trial
The middle of October, Susan says, "There's something wrong with me." And she starts to describe all of this stuff, and I said, "Well, go to the doctor." So we have a friend that's a doctor, and she goes to the doctor, and the doctor said, "I think you have some infection"—it's in her chest, in her breast—so he gives her some stuff. Doesn't go away.
Two weeks later, she comes to me, and she says, "Come here and look at this on the internet." She said, "I know I have this." What she had pulled up on the internet was called inflammatory breast cancer. I don't know if you're familiar with it or not. It's deadly. Twenty years ago, the survival rate was 1%. She said, "There's eleven symptoms, I have all eleven of these." I said, "Well, you've got to go back to the doctor. I can't help you."
The Devastating Diagnosis
So she goes back, and he said, "Susan, this is so rare, very, very rare." So he said, "I'll do a biopsy, but I doubt it." This was a Friday. Monday he did the biopsy, Wednesday he called, and he said, "You need to come in."
Now, he's a really good friend of ours. He's German. He is stoic. You can just take him and put his hand in a vice and crank it, and he'd smile. He's stoic. He's sitting across from us, and he begins to cry, and I said, "Uh-oh."
Going in, I said to Susan, "He's a surgeon, so all surgeons want to do is surgery. That's all they're going to want to do. He's going to want to cut something. We aren't cutting anything." He said, "I can't do surgery on this," and away we go. And that started—we're still in the midst, she still takes chemo every
Living with Uncertainty
When you see her walking around, it's kind of amazing, because in 2005, we didn't get here. We had to cancel that time. So it's amazing. And we walk around with this, and some of you, this is no different. You've all lived this kind of stuff. You walk around with this over you constantly.
You know what's really important in that? In the midst of all that, what's really important is doctrine.
The Foundation of God's Sovereignty
So Paul writes this in Romans 8:28, "and we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose." We know it. It's a fact. It's not speculation. God causes all things to work together for good. That doesn't mean that they're all going to work exactly the way we want.
Paul goes on then, and here's what he's talking about. Those that He foreknew, He predestined. Those that He predestined, He called. Those that He called, He justified. Those that He justified, He glorified. What he's saying is from beginning to end, salvation is utterly, completely a part of God.
Then he says this, "What then shall we say of these things? If God's for us, who's against us? Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies."
Nothing Can Separate Us
"What can separate us from the love of Christ?" Not our love for Him, but His love for us. "Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword," and all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.
"For I am convinced," Paul writes, "that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor heights, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus."
The Reality of Human Suffering
We live a life filled with joy and peace, not because we don't have excruciating circumstances. Have you noticed that Christians die at the same rate as pagans? I mean, it drives me nuts when hardship comes into people's life and they go, "Oh, I don't know why." I can tell you why. You're a human. This is part of the human condition.
I mean, I love my dad. My dad died. I did not go, "God, what are you doing?" You die. It's what you do. It's part of life. Relationships are broken. Kids rebel. Economic problems come. Physical problems come.
Life is difficult. You aren't exempt from that. And to think that somehow you're supposed to be exempt from that is presumptuous on your part.
Even If He Doesn't
I love Daniel 3. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Here they go. They're on their way into the fire. And they say, "Hey, Nebuchadnezzar, we want you to know something about our God. Our God is able to deliver us from this." But here's what I love is the punchline. I think it's 3:18, something like that. "Even if He doesn't, He's still God."
A Father's Nightmare
Susan and I are leaving town one time. And I'm dropping her off at the airport. We're going to separate places. I'm dropping her off at the airport. And she said, "I don't like it when both of us are out of town." I said, "Susan, please, what's going to happen?" She said, "I don't like it." Because I'm going to do a men's conference. She's going to see her mother. "I don't like it." And I said, "Well, get out. Take your bag with you. You've got to get a plane."
So I get up and I do the men's conference. I'm in my room asleep. And at 1 o'clock—and I said, "Oh, no." And I open the door. And they said, "You've got to get the phone right away."
So I get on the phone. My daughter, Sarah, is a sophomore in high school. And she's a cheerleader. So they were coming back from the game. And three drunk kids in a stolen pickup T-boned the car right on her. And I said, "Sarah's in the hospital. She's in really serious condition. You need to get down here."
Racing Against Time
So I'm picking up all my stuff. And we're driving down. And I'm trying to role play this in my mind and be prepared. I get halfway down. Because they're saying, "We think she's OK. I think it's going to be all right." I get halfway down. They said, "She's just had a brain seizure."
So we go through all this thing. I'm driving down. And all I'm thinking is, Susan's going to just be so mad that I made her get on that plane. But she wanted to go. But we'll take care of this.
The Hospital Room
So I get down—and you don't want to go through all the details. And again, you guys have had worse stuff than this. But I come in. And there's my daughter just laid out there in the hospital bed. They've shoved this tube down her throat. And they're saying to me, "You've got to not." Because every instinct in her wants to pull this tube out. Because she doesn't think she can breathe. But she will be able to breathe. And she's going to want to pull that out.
They didn't give her anything for pain. They didn't give her anything for pain or anything. Because they didn't want to distort the brain waves. They need an accurate brain wave. So she's there with nothing for pain. And they said, "That tube's got to go back down her throat. So we're going to have to shove it back down if she pulls it out. So don't let her pull it out."
Wrestling Through the Night
So all night, my daughter and I wrestled. I sat there and held her. And about every 10 minutes, she'd wake up and go for that tube. And her eyes looked up at me as though she was saying, "Daddy, what are you doing? Why won't you let me breathe?" And I'm trying to say to her, "Sarah, you've got to relax. You've got to relax. You'll be OK." This goes on all night long.
Now, when you're a 14-year-old girl, part of what's important to you is how you look. Well, she's kind of beat up a little bit...
the face. Her jaw's broken. She's got some issues. We kept her away from a mirror just to kind of get her settled and stuff.
So I go back one day. I took the days. Susan took the nights. I'm up there. And I come up, and the nurse said, you can't go in there. She's going to the bathroom. I said, did you let her in the bathroom? And she said, yeah. And I said, oh, no. So they call me back in. And she was laying there. And I said, because now she's seen her face. And I said, how you doing? She said, you don't look so good. And I said, oh, I think you're cute. It'd be better if you had more teeth. And she laughed because her jaw's hard shut. She said, that's not funny.
Here's this little girl. She got down to something like 89 pounds or 85. I don't even remember. I remember I walked her around. It was like walking my grandmother literally around the floor just to get her to move. Not once, not one time did she say, why would God do this? What happened? She knew doctrine.
God Is Good Regardless of Circumstances
Well, that was a Friday. So Sunday, I'm going in to teach. And people are going, are you going to teach? I said, this is the perfect time to teach. And as I'm going in, people are saying this. You know what? God is good. Sarah didn't die. God is good. Sarah didn't die.
God is good even if she dies. God's not good because she doesn't die. God is good. We have to understand who God is. He owes you nothing. And He promises you that He will never leave you or forsake you. He doesn't promise that your life is going to be absent of hardship and difficulty. And when those things come, is there kind of a flinch that goes, why me? There may be. But once you stop and settle, those begin to fade away. And the Spirit produces in your life joy, peace, not the absence of turmoil, the presence of God.
Christ's Promise of Peace
In John Chapter 14, 15, 16, 17, Jesus is saying goodbye to the disciples. They sang about it in the second or first song that they sang. Here's the trauma. It's all the idea that Jesus is gone. That's why He begins that night by saying, don't let your heart be troubled. Why? Because bad things about ready to happen. But here's what He says. I won't leave you alone. I won't leave you as an orphan.
It's for your betterment. John 15, 7. It's for your advantage that I go away because the Helper will come. And He will give you peace. And here's what He says. But not peace as the world gives.
That's what the world says. The world says snort peace, smoke peace, touch peace, drink peace, buy peace, rent peace, travel for peace. The world says that's where you're going to find peace. And no, peace is not the absence of trouble. It's the presence of God in our life. That's why the doctrine is so important. That's why this awful doctrine of an open theism and this idea that God doesn't really know. God knows everything. Oh, my gosh. How scary would it be if God was not all knowing or if God was not all powerful? You know what that would mean? That would mean none of those promises mean anything because He could not protect you.
The Fruit of the Spirit in Action
When I understand the Holy Spirit begins and we got to go quickly. Begin to produce in my life, love, joy, peace, patience. This is kind of cool. Paul has available for Him a variety of Greek words that translate to the word patient. This one has with it the idea of not circumstances but people. It's living in an understanding way primarily with people, forbearance, kindness. It's an extension of grace.
The idea of kindness has with it really benevolent action toward others. Not because even in some cases they deserve it. Ephesians chapter 4 verse 32, Paul tells us to forgive. Why? We forgive others just as God in Christ has forgiven us.
Let me tell you, there's a whole bunch of things I don't do well. A ton of things I don't do well. I am a world class forgiver. You can screw me over and I'll forgive you and forgive you and forgive you. I'm really good at it. You know why? Because I wasn't always that way. I used to say. I used to say as many of you do, I don't get mad, I get even. I loved it. And I would say, you can mess with me, man, but you're going to die in the process.
But now I'm telling you, I can forgive and forgive and forgive. You know why? One simple verse, Ephesians 4, 32. When I understand, I'm going, oh, my gosh, this is what I did to Him and Christ died while I was yet a sinner. How am I not going to forgive you?
Faithfulness: Being Trustworthy
Kindness, goodness, doing good things, faithfulness. You know what that means? Trustworthy. If you say you're going to do something, do it.
This guy came to me one day. I had this thing I used to do called the leadership forum. It was not about leadership and it wasn't a forum, but I knew guys would come to it. So I hand this guy and he said, I want to do what you do. Apparently what I do is so easy that anyone can do it. So I said, I want to do what you do. And what he meant was this. And I said, okay. And he said, I want to hang around. I want to see how this is done. I want to spend time with you. I said, okay, fine.
He said, what do you want me to do? I said, well, Saturday's a leadership forum. I need somebody to come and make coffee. He said, all right. Starts at 7. I said, you need to be there by 615, 620. Get the coffee on. These guys are going to want coffee.
I get there about 10 minutes to 7 and noticeably absence from the room is the fragrant aroma of freshly brewed coffee. No coffee. So I get one of my guys, one of my reliable guys at this point is now back making coffee because he's seen it. And then comes this guy. And he said, hey, man, how you doing? I said, not so good. What's the problem? I said, there's no coffee. Oh, man, I forgot. I said, okay. I'm all done.
He comes up and he said, hey, man, I want to do what you do. And can you give me something to do? Now, I want to confess to you at this particular moment I am not operating under the influence of the Holy Spirit. So I said to him, if God can't trust you
The Standard of Faithfulness
If you cannot be trusted with coffee, how could He trust you with a soul? He shoved it right up his nose. It drives me nuts.
I just read a book called "I Sold My Soul on eBay." Have any of you read this book? It's about an atheist who puts himself up for sale on eBay. A guy buys him, a church consultant guy buys him for $504 and has him go to churches and evaluate churches. It's an amazing book. So he's writing about these real churches that he went. He went and saw Joel Osteen. He went to Second Baptist. He went to some little churches.
So he's writing at the end. And he said, you know, I'm not a believer, but let me tell you one thing I noticed about churches. I don't understand why people are late. Now, he said, I don't believe in this God you believe in at all. But when I go to a concert, I'm never late. When I go to a movie, I'm on time. This is an atheist. You're coming to worship the God you say created it all and the Savior, who you say saved your life and you can't get there on time for that.
It blows me away that people cannot get to the 8:30 service at 8:30. What are you saying to the Savior and to each other? And those are little things. If you say you're going to do something, do it. That's what faithfulness means.
Gentleness: Strength Under Control
And gentleness, strength under control. You want a picture of gentleness? Here's what it is to me. Jesus hanging on the cross. And there's that moment, and I think I talk about it every time I'm in Cannon Beach, because the moment drives me nuts, is when they're just hurling words at Him, and then one of them says, "Look at Him. He saved others, but He can't save Himself."
And it just seems to me at that moment, that would have been the limit, when I would have climbed off the cross and gone, "Come here a minute." That would have been it. For whatever reason, that just resonates in my heart that something's wrong at this point. But there's a sense of truth. He saved others, but He couldn't save Himself.
Now listen now, really important. He couldn't save Himself and save you. Strength under control. That's gentleness.
Self-Control and Curbing Fleshly Desires
And self-control. The only time this word appears in the noun form here in the New Testament, it has to do with curbing your fleshly desires.
So here we go. Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter 5, verse 16, that we are to let our light shine before men. Let our light shine before men in such a way that they see our good works. Now what I'm talking about there is you've got the actions. What I want to just add, my whole point here is to develop the heart mindset as well.
The Fruit of the Spirit as Our Witness
In other words, people should look at you and see love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. If difficulty comes into your life and you're falling apart like everybody else, then somebody's going to say, "I don't understand what the benefit of this God thing is." If you're sitting and you're driving in traffic like an idiot, mad at everybody around you, then why would I want what you have?
If the slightest little thing throws you off and sets you off, something's wrong. If you can't forgive, then the world's going... Because remember what we're talking about now? Remember the context here, salt and light, unbelievers watching you?
Can I read it to you again? Here's what He says. "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they see your good works." They see something different about you. If they watch you live life and your reaction is the same as theirs, then there's nothing in your life that is compelling to them.
God's Purpose in Our Difficulties
God brings adversaries in your life, difficult circumstances in your life. Why? So that you can prove first and foremost to yourself and secondly to the world around you that there's something different about you as a result of the Holy Spirit, the living God indwelling you. That becomes your good works. So people see it. And then they glorify your Father who is in heaven.
Tonight what we're going to talk about is singularly one word. We're going to talk about love. We're going to talk about love tonight, and we're going to work a little bit in 2 Corinthians 5, and then we're going to try to tie all of this stuff together as we get ready to head out of here on Monday.
Closing Prayer
Let me pray for you, and we'll adjourn. No lunch today over here, so you're on your own. You're free for lunch. Let's pray together.
We thank You for the God that You are who spoke this world into existence, who said "Let there be light" and there was light, and You surround us day after day after day with blessings. You don't exempt us from the difficulties of the world. In fact, as a result of our following You, we may even have more of them. Why? So that You can prove to us that You are trustworthy, that You'll never leave us or forsake us.
God, we pray that You would work Your way in our heart. I pray especially for those who as they listen to this, nerves are being touched, and they begin to just, they're hurting. God, let them feel the sweetness of Your comfort. You are a great God, a mighty God. And God, our fundamental problem in this world is not economic or political or educational. Our fundamental problem in this world is our sin, and Your solution is nothing but the blood of Jesus.
God, as we walk around this place today and take naps and have fun and eat, explore the beach, we pray that everywhere we go people would see us and say they're citizens of heaven. Let our lives speak volumes. We pray that in Christ's name, amen.
Have a great afternoon. We'll see you back at dinner tonight.