Advent Series: “Hope For Ordinary People” - Talk: “Strange Messengers”

Intro:

Do you remember the stress you felt in elementary school when they had to pick teams for any sport? There were two things you wanted:

1. You wanted to be picked on the good team 2. You didn’t want to get picked last!

I have a vague faint memory of when I was in elementary school and they were picking teams for kick ball. I remember watching other kids getting picked and starting to get that sick realization that there were less and less people standing next to me.

You stand there watching who’s getting picked and you think “Man! They just picked Tim! He’s lame at kick ball. They must think I really suck!” I remember being the last one chosen and thinking, “Man! I didn’t get picked – they got STUCK with me!?!”

Not getting picked isn’t cool. But let’s be real for a second…

When you want to win at anything what type of person do you pick? (Give your real answers) Skilled or unskilled? Strong or weak? Fast or slow?

When you want to influence someone or a group who do you pick? (Real answers!)
Popular or not? Extroverted or Introverted? Powerful or not?

Who you choose for your team reveals:

1. What you’re trying to accomplish
2. Who you’re trying to reach
3. Who you think is important.

Who you choose says a lot more about YOU and your goals than it does about the person you’re choosing!

We just started this Advent series last week and began looking at the Biblical Christmas story - the first coming of Jesus. I’m calling this series “Hope For Ordinary People”. There’s something strangely hopeful in the people God choose to use for one of his greatest miracles ever – God entering his creation.

The Christmas story is God’s answer to everyone throughout history who has ever said, “If God’s real then why doesn’t he show himself!” He finally did!

But the problem is that the way God came to us and the people he chose to use are so opposite of the way we’d do it that most of the world missed it!

The Apostle John says it like this in John 1:10…

10 But although the world was made through him, the world didn't recognize him when he came.

I spoke in a chapel service at my son Jack’s school this week in front of preschool thru 8^th graders. It’s a hard group to speak to, cause you have such little kids mixed in with 8^th graders, but it’s fun.

When I was there I asked them... “If you were trying to spread the real Christmas story to the most people- people of all different ages, races, rich & poor – how would you do it?”

Guess what their answers were? They said answers like: put an ad in a newspaper, make a tv commercial, publish a book, etc. I didn’t asked them what people they would chose to spread the story, but I bet they would’ve chose rich, famous and influential people.

The amazing thing is God DIDN’T use the methods or the people we would’ve. That’s what gives us hope as ordinary people! I told them something I want you to think about today…

You can tell a lot about God not just by who he chose to use, but also by who he didn’t choose!

Last week my father-in-law talked about Mary and Joseph. They were this young, poor couple that God decided to use to bring Jesus into the world through. They weren’t rich. They weren’t powerful. They weren’t even well-known.

They were just regular, everyday people and God chose them for his team!

Today, I want to look at who God chose to be first people to hear the good news that Jesus had been born. These are the people he chose to first spread the news to other people.

If you think about it, this choice of who to tell first was a really important choice for God to make!

Every marketer nowadays is talking about word-of-mouth marketing and viral marketing. They all want to pick the right people to tell the right message, so it will spread to the right people they want to reach.

I’ve told you about Seth Godin before. He’s best-selling author/marketer. He wrote a book back in 2000 called, “Unleashing The Ideavirus”. This book is all about how to choose the right people to get your message to the right people.

In Unleashing The Ideavirus Seth says this…

“… the future belongs to marketers who establish a foundation and process where interested people can market to each other. Ignite consumer networks and then get out of the way and let them talk.”

Later he talks about his ideavirus concept and he says…

“What’s critical in the analysis is understanding that some folks are dead ends, while others will enable and amplify your ideavirus.” He later talks about people he calls “Sneezers”. He says, “Sneezers are the ones who when they tell ten or twenty or 100 people—people believe them.”

What I want you to understand is that the people God chooses to “show” and “tell” about Jesus’ birth seem like an awkward choice. They almost seem to be a mistake! They’re the opposite of who anybody in that day expected God to choose. Let’s look at the story in Luke 2:8-20…

⁸That night some shepherds were in the fields outside the village, guarding their flocks of sheep. ⁹Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord's glory surrounded them.

Think about this…

God is so excited to tell the good news – that the savior has been born. This is what Israel has been waiting for centuries. He’s so excited! He wants everyone to know and so he thinks about who to break the news to first and who does he pick? Shepherds!

God wanted to create some word-of-mouth and instead of starting with influential people at the top, or religious leaders, he picks shepherds out in the field!?! But remember… WHO you choose reveals a lot about YOU and your goals! What does this choice reveal about God?

Choosing them would mean that the word would spread among the bottom portion of their society first. God chose the shepherds because he wanted the message of hope to start with the everyday people! When I get some good news I want to tell everyone, but I always tell people who are important to me first!

Side thought:
God most have a strange soft spot in his heart for shepherds. David was one. Jesus later used shepherds as a way to describe his relationship to us (us=sheep/him= great shepherd).

Let me make sure you understand something before I keep going…

God ISN’T against the powerful, the rich, the famous. He doesn’t love powerless, poor, unknown people MORE! He loves ALL people the SAME.

God wants everyone to know about him, but his choice exposes something cool about God: God was elevating the normal, the common.

It was the same back then as it is today. People back them were made to think that “normal” and “common” were bad things. Nobody wanted to be called these things! If you were just a normal, everyday person, back then, then you were considered less than in that society. People thought you weren’t as blessed by God.

That’s how they thought! And then God does something crazy!

He picks shepherds! They’re homeless guys who live in tents and have to stay up all night guarding their sheep so wolves or people don’t take them. And God tells THEM this good news first!

By doing that God is saying that the normal and common matter to him! He cares about them! He loves them as much as the remarkable people who get picked all time for everything!

God steps onto the playground of life and picks the misfits, the leftover people FIRST! By doing this he isn’t rejecting the rich, powerful, and famous!

When he chooses the “normal” it gives hope to all people, because we all know if THEY are important than we all have hope!

So God picks them, but what’s their response to the angel? Look at V. 9-10 They’re scared!! They were terribly frightened, ¹⁰but the angel reassured them. "Don't be afraid!" he said. "I bring you good news of great joy for everyone!

Can you imagine being out in the fields at night and suddenly having a shining creature appear in front of you? You’d be freaked out! They think they’re about to be judged or killed!

The angel knows they think he’s there for a bad reason and that they’re scared, so he says right away in verse 10, “Don’t be afraid! I’m here with good news of great joy (that’s some pretty good news)!”

¹¹The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born tonight in Bethlehem, the city of David! ¹²And this is how you will recognize him: You will find a baby lying in a manger, wrapped snugly in strips of cloth!"

This is amazing news for them to hear! It starts out good news and keeps going until its incredible, unheard of news!

The angels tells them 3 amazing things…

1. The baby is the Saviour! (Adam Clarke) The word properly denotes such a Saviour as perfectly frees us from all evil and danger, and is the author of perpetual salvation." Some people need a good leader. Some people a good teacher, but we ALL need a savior – someone to save us from the evil in the world and from our own sins!

2.The angel says the baby is the Christ! He’s the anointed one! The chosen one Israel’s been waiting for! The world needs a hero and Jesus is it! But wait there’s more!

3. The angel says one more thing about this baby – the most amazing thing – that he’s the Lord! The shepherds knew what that word meant! It means “the supreme, eternal Being, the ruler of the heavens and the earth.” It meant he was GOD!

Can you imagine what those words sound like to these shepherds?

Israel was under Roman rule and everyone was wanting, waiting for someone to set them free. They were waiting for the Messiah!

The angel tells them that he was just born! And he says the baby is GOD!

The angel tells them a clue - a way to figure out where and who he is. He tells them… You’ll find a baby lying in a manger (first clue), wrapped snugly in strips of cloth (second clue)!

As those words are echoing in their heads, and they’re trying to grasp their meaning, all of a sudden a whole bunch of other angels appear!

¹³Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others—the armies of heaven—praising God: ¹⁴ "Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to all whom God favors. ^F6 "

The angels are so excited about the news the shepherds just heard that they bust into praising God over the whole thing. And in their praising reveals more amazing news!

They’re saying, “God is amazing! He’s unbelievable! He’s showing up today and guess what? He’s bringing peace and favor!”

Through Jesus, the messiah, God’s making a way to have peace with him. He’s giving people the ability to be at peace with each other. He’s bringing favor. He’s showing his grace through Jesus. People were expecting war and judgment and God brought peace and favor (grace)!

Let’s keep reading…

¹⁵When the angels had returned to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, "Come on, let's go to Bethlehem! Let's see this wonderful thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about."

POOF! The angels are gone and the shepherds are standing their still in shock. And what’s the first thing they say and decide to do?

This is how I picture it...

They look at each other and say to each other (and I can imagine them saying this with smiles on their faces) they say, “Come on! Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this wonderful thing that’s happened, which the Lord told US about!”

(I hear them emphasize US like “US! I can’t believe it but he told Us! They’re probably think “Nothing’s exciting has ever happened to us, but he comes and tell US!” He picked us!”)

¹⁶They ran to the village and found Mary and Joseph. And there was the baby, lying in the manger. ¹⁷Then the shepherds told everyone what had happened and what the angel had said to them about this child. ¹⁸All who heard the shepherds' story were astonished, ¹⁹but Mary quietly treasured these things in her heart and thought about them often. ²⁰The shepherds went back to their fields and flocks, glorifying and praising God for what the angels had told them, and because they had seen the child, just as the angel had said.

They went and found Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus just like the way the angel said! These guys were the first, besides Mary and Joseph, to see Jesus! God in the flesh!

So what’d they do? Exactly what God wanted them to do…

They went and told everyone! These guys were what the commentator Adam Clarke calls the “first preachers of the gospel”! Everybody who heard the story was amazed (God told a group of shepherds that the messiah was here and that he was born last night – in a stable!?!)

In “Buzz Marketing” Mark Hughes talks about things create buzz. He says...

“We talk about things that make us gasp, things that make us laugh, things that make us wonder, things that make us marvel. We talk about things that shock us, and things that thrill us.”

Think about this story…

Shepherds tell them an angel appeared told them the Messiah was born, then a choir of angels showed up praising God and they went into town and found a baby wrapped in cloth in a manger just like the angel said!

It must’ve made people do all these things when people heard it!! Now that story’s gonna buzz!

v. 20 They went back to their fields and flocks glorifying and praising God for what the angels had told them. They saw baby Jesus with their own eyes – just like the angel said! If they had any doubts about seeing the angel and all that that happened out in the field they now had all the proof they needed! They might have went back to their flocks, but I can guarantee that they were never the same again!

They never thought of themselves the same again. They never thought about their world or situation the same. God had shown them favor and brought them peace by showing him the messiah had come!

Can you imagine how it changed their self-image to be picked by God to be the first to hear the good news and the first to see – the messiah? I guarantee you they were never the same again!

God choose everyday people instead of the powerful people because He does something amazing through their lives – everyone knows it has to be God and not them!

Close
God is still looking for everyday people like us to use to spread the story of hope that he’s come into the world. He’s still looking for everyday people to pick for his team.

When we feel like no one else cares God does. He wants to choose you and use you to do amazing things through.

Why? When he does HE gets the glory! He loves to show his power, love and grace through everyday people because He shines through them brighter!

He wants to use you! He wants to use you as a messenger/as an object lesson to the people around you of who he his and what matters to him!

“The Unexpected Power Of Giving Thanks”

(This is from my unedited notes from last Sunday)

Intro:

Before I start today I thought it’d go over some facts about the real History Of Thanksgiving…

The first American Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1621, to commemorate the harvest reaped by the Plymouth Colony after a harsh winter. In that year Governor William Bradford proclaimed a day of thanksgiving. The colonists celebrated it as a traditional English harvest feast and invited the local Wampanoag Indians.

FACT: The first feast wasn't repeated, so it wasn't the beginning of a tradition. In fact, the colonists didn't even call the day Thanksgiving. To them, a thanksgiving was a religious holiday in which they would go to church and thank God for a specific event, like the winning of a battle.

Days of thanksgiving were celebrated throughout the colonies after fall harvests. But, all thirteen colonies didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving at the same time until October 1777. George Washington was the first president to declare the holiday, in 1789.

A New National Holiday
By the mid–1800s, many states observed a Thanksgiving holiday. But a poet and editor named Sarah J. Hale started lobbying for a national Thanksgiving holiday.

During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln, looking for ways to unite the nation, talked about the idea with Sarah Hale. In 1863, he gave his Thanksgiving Proclamation, declaring the last Thursday in November a day of thanksgiving.

In 1939, 1940, and 1941 Franklin D. Roosevelt, wanted to lengthen the Christmas shopping season, so he proclaimed Thanksgiving the third Thursday in November. There was a big controversy over that, and Congress passed a joint resolution in 1941 decreeing that Thanksgiving should fall on the fourth Thursday of November, where it is nowadays.

But, you know what?

I think thankfulness is actually too powerful of a thing to only focus on it for one day a year. What if you lived everyday like it was thanksgiving? How would that change you?

Today I want to talk to you today about “The Unexpected Power Of Giving Thanks”. Being thankful and giving thanks when things are going good is hard enough for most us. It’s so easy for us to forget to be thankful or take time to be thankful.

What if I told you that if we can learn to give thanks not only when things are good, but also when they’re bad that it would open us up to God doing powerful things in our lives?

I want to look at a story that many of you have probably heard from John 6. It’s the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000. There’s something strange that Jesus DOES that I want us to see today.

John 6
… Jesus crossed over the Sea of Galilee, also known as the Sea of Tiberias. 2 And a huge crowd kept following him wherever he went, because they saw his miracles as he healed the sick. 3 Then Jesus went up into the hills and sat down with his disciples around him. 4 (It was nearly time for the annual Passover celebration.) 5 Jesus soon saw a great crowd of people climbing the hill, looking for him. Turning to Philip, he asked, "Philip, where can we buy bread to feed all these people?" 6 He was testing Philip, for he already knew what he was going to do.

Jesus is testing Philip and the others. Have they learned from all the miracles that they’ve seen him do at this point? Will they have faith or fear?

This is an important lesson for them to learn, because they’re going to face impossible situations and their going to need to learn to trust and rely on God in those situations!

Jesus is using this situation to test them! How will they respond?

Let me ask us this question...

• How many miracles do you have to see God do in your life before you believe God can take care of your current problem?
  
• How many do you have to see before you respond in faith instead of fear?

When we get into a problem we always have the choice between faith and fear. But have you ever thought about this?

You can’t lose by having faith. But, you can’t win by having fear! What do I mean?

If you respond in doubt and fear to your problem what will happen? The best case situation: probably nothing. You’ll find out your fear was for nothing! Worse case situation: you’ll be in exactly the place you were afraid you’d be! The fear didn’t change ANYTHING!

If you respond in faith what will happen? The best case scenario: you give God a chance to move and do something and he will do something BEYOND what you expected! The worst case situation: you’ll be in the place you were afraid of, BUT you’ll know you’ve been trusting God so he’s in control and he has a plan!

Do you see why you can’t lose by having faith?

It’s because you won’t end up in a worse situation having faith, than if you doubted and feared, but by having faith you COULD end up in a situation you BETTER than you would’ve NEVER experienced without God! Let’s go back to the story…

7 Philip replied, "It would take a small fortune ^F26 to feed them!"

Ah man! Philip didn’t pass this test! Why? He only looked at the hugeness of the situation and he was focused on what they didn’t have! Not only that, he focused on what THEY would need to do to try and feed them.

But wait a second there’s still hope! Andrew’s about to say something…

8 Then Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, spoke up. 9 "There's a young boy here with five barley loaves and two fish. But what good is that with this huge crowd?"

Ding-Ding! You’re getting warmer with that answer, Andrew! Do you see how Andrew’s focus is different than Philip’s? He sees the hugeness of the situation, but he doesn’t look at what they don’t have. He looks to what they DO have!! That must’ve been as good of an answer as Jesus thought he was going to get, cause look what he says…

10 "Tell everyone to sit down," Jesus ordered. So all of them – the men alone numbered five thousand – sat down on the grassy slopes.

Now I want to give you a chance to notice the crazy thing Jesus is about to do, before I tell you what it is. Ok? Now remember there’s 5,000 people, not counting the women and children! Watch and listen see if you catch something strange Jesus does. Ready?

11 Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks to God, and passed them out to the people. Afterward he did the same with the fish.

Did you catch it? Let me read it again… Anyone want to take a guess about what the strange thing Jesus does?

Here’s your hint: it has to do with our topic today - thankfulness.

The strange thing Jesus does is he THANKS God!!! He thanks God for ONLY having 5 loaves and 2 fish when they have to feed probably at least 10,000 people!!! Jesus thanks God for what they have!

If WE were there we’d probably start they prayer, “God, we have a BIG problem here and I don’t know how, or if you can, or want to help us. We only have 5 loaves and 2 fish God and we have to feed ALL these people! HELP!!!”

Notice there was no “thanksgiving” in that prayer we’d do! Remember, Jesus is trying to teach them something here!

He’s trying to teach them that when you’re in a situation over your heads to start by looking at what you have and being thankful for what it! Thank God that you have something to start with!

Quote
This reminds of what I heard about the famous author Dietrich Bonhoeffer…

For his part in an attempt to overthrow Adolf Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran minister, was hanged on April 9, 1945, after 2 years imprisonment in a concentration camp. He wrote:

“We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts. How can God entrust great things to one who will not thankfully receive from Him the little things?”

Jesus prayed and said, “Thanks God for these 5 loaves to feed these people.” Then it says he prayed the same thing, “Thanks God for these 2 fish to feed these people.”

Illust.
Scottish minister Alexander Whyte was known for his uplifting prayers in the pulpit and he always found something for which to be grateful. One Sunday morning the weather was so gloomy that one church member thought to himself, "Certainly the preacher won't think of anything for which to thank the Lord on a wretched day like this." Much to his surprise, however, Whyte began by praying, "We thank Thee, O God, that it is not always like this."

Learning to thank God for what you have, instead of what you don’t is all about being optimistic.

This is about seeing the glass half full instead of half empty and about being grateful for that half of glass! But optimism isn’t just about looking at what you do have instead of what you don’t have, it’s also about looking at what is, instead of what could be worse…

Illust.
George Mikes, in the book “How to be Decadent” tells this story…

*In Budapest, a man goes to the rabbi and complains, "Life is unbearable. There are nine of us living in one room. What can I do?"

The rabbi answers, "Take your goat into the room with you." The man in incredulous, but the rabbi insists. "Do as I say and come back in a week."

A week later the man comes back looking more distraught than before. "We cannot stand it," he tells the rabbi. "The goat is filthy."

The rabbi then tells him, "Go home and let the goat out. And come back in a week."

A radiant man returns to the rabbi a week later, exclaiming, "Life is beautiful. We enjoy every minute of it now that there's no goat -- only the nine of us."

The man’s view changed because he realized what he had could be a lot worse!

We naturally look at what we don’t have and compare ourselves to a better situation someone else has, but we SHOULD compare ourselves to a worse situation someone else has.

Optimism is all about not losing hope. Hope has to do with expectation! Paul says this about hope in Romans 8:24-25…

24 Now that we are saved, we eagerly look forward to this freedom. For if you already have something, you don't need to hope for it. 25 But if we look forward to something we don't have yet, we must wait patiently and confidently.

Hope is a form of faith. It’s expecting God to use what is to make what isn’t!

Watch what amazing thing happens…

And they all ate until they were full. 12 "Now gather the leftovers," Jesus told his disciples, "so that nothing is wasted." 13 There were only five barley loaves to start with, but twelve baskets were filled with the pieces of bread the people did not eat!

10,000 or more ending up FULL from 5 loaves and 2 fish would be a big enough miracle, but it gets even BIGGER and BETTER! There were leftovers!!!

They ended up with MORE than they started with!?! How cool is God!?!

He can do such a big miracle in your life that you end up with more than you started with!!!

Illust.
When I first came across this passage , realized how strange it was to give thanks when you didn’t have enough me and Sue decided to try it. This was when I was at 3 Cities Assembly in Burlingame.

It was during a time when we didn’t have very much money. We were really struggling. But, instead of complaining about how short we were on money we decided to start thanking God for what we had!

We started experimenting with trying this and something cool happened…

We were at Costco buying some groceries which we hardly ever did, but I had gotten a Costco card from the church to use for buying using supplies or whatever and we went there to get food, some other things and diapers.

We got there, got what we needed and then got in line. When we got in line we saw a guy we knew from the church named Dan. He was right behind us in line. We started talking and they started scanning our things.

As I’m talking to Dan he doesn’t something strange that I don’t notice. He runs his card through the credit/debit machine. It doesn’t click to me what’s happening at first, cause the machines were farther back, kind of behind where you stand and talk to the cashier.

All of a sudden I realize something weird is going on and I say, “Hey, Dan! What are you doing?” He says, “I’m paying for your things!” I was like, “Wait, you don’t have to do that!” He says, “I know, but I want to!” I’m still shocked and a little embarrassed and I say something like, “Thanks! But…” Then we thanked some more times.

We really didn’t have enough money to live and God totally provided for us through Dan! It was such a cool miracle for us to see after we had started thanking God for what we had instead of what we didn’t!

Thankfulness is not a magic trick. It doesn’t always get you you’re way. But, it always puts us in the right attitude – no matter WHAT happens!

I wonder if ingratitude is one of our greatest sins?

The 5 loaves and the 2 fish weren’t much, but they were better than nothing! At least it was some food that could feed someone! Even if there wasn’t a miracle God should still be thanked for what he had given them!

Illust.

EVERYDAY THANKSGIVING

Even though I clutch my blanket and growl
when the alarm rings, thank you, Lord, that I can
hear. There are many who are deaf.

Even though I keep my eyes closed against
the morning light as long as possible, thank you,
Lord, that I can see. Many are blind.

Even though I huddle in my bed and put off
rising, thank you Lord, that I have the strength to
rise. There are many who are bedridden.

Even though the first hour of my day is
hectic, when socks are lost, toast is burned and
tempers are short, my children are so loud
thank you, Lord, for my family.
There are many who are lonely.

Even though our breakfast table never looks
like the pictures in magazines and the menu is at
times unbalanced, thank you, Lord, for the food
we have. There are many who are hungry.

Even though the routine of my job is often
monotonous, thank you, Lord, for the opportunity
to work. There are many who have no job.

Even though I grumble and bemoan my fate
from day to day and wish my circumstances were
not so modest, thank you, Lord, for life.

Close

I want to encourage all of us to try something different. Go against your natural reaction. The next time your about to complain to God about a problem you have, stop yourself and thank him for what good is happening. Thank him for what you have. Then, pray and give him your problem and see what happens!

I want to end today with communion and remember what God’s done for us through Jesus and thank him for it all.

"LOST" Series - Finding Your Way Out PT. 2

(These are my unedited notes from my talk from last Sunday. Try not to trip about spelling, grammar and punctuation errors! :) )

Last week, I started our new 2-Sunday series called “LOST” – Finding The Way Out.

I told you I want to help us to let what happened to Ted Haggard remind us all about the most terrible and dangerous power we all have – the power to destroy ourselves.

We saw in the story in John 8:1-11 about the woman caught in adultery, and brought before Jesus, that the greatest lesson he taught the people that day was…

We should let someone else’s sin/failure cause us to look and focus on ourselves, NOT on them!

Let’s pray for Ted, his family, his church but we shouldn’t focus on him! That doesn’t do us any good! Let’s use what’s happened to turn the focus on ourselves!

We all have the ability to destroy ourselves. We’re all weak enough and dumb enough to do it. I know I am!

We started last week by trying to answer these questions:

• How can we really have more victory in our lives?
• How can we really overcome our sin and ourselves?

I told you right from the beginning last week something that should be a real relief to all of us and that’s this fact…

You can’t be good enough. Stop trying!

Until we realize this and admit it to ourselves we’re stuck.

Last week, I told you that there are two things I’ve realized recently that we need to do EVERYDAY if we want to have more victory and overcome our sin and ourselves:

1. Daily admit we’re lost and can’t find our way out of this mess.
2. Daily admit we’re weak and can’t do what’s right.

It’s this power and freedom in confession – in admitting you can’t make it on your own – that Paul knew when he confessed in Romans 7:14-25…

¹⁴We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. ¹⁵I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

The first step that Alcoholics Anonymous teaches people is that they have to admit that they’re an alcoholic. They have to stop living in denial. Until they do that they can’t get better!

Last week we saw that our first step to seeing victory is the same thing! We have to become like Paul and be able to admit, “What a wretched person I am?”

We have to not only see that we’re lost and weak, but we need to realize that we’re sinners and we have no way to save ourselves. We need to realize that our bad choices (sins) have made us guilty before God.

This ISN’T about beating ourselves up or condemning ourselves! It’s all about admitting the truth. If we don’t do this, we’re lying and fooling ourselves into thinking we can do it on our own!

It’s not a negative thing. It’s a freeing thing – just like it frees an alcoholic to confess who they are.

Until we get to that place where we admit we can’t do it by our self, then we won’t and can’t get help. We won’t be able to fight against those dangerous desires we all have.

But admitting we need help is just the first step. Our weakness and lostness won’t suddenly be gone just cause we admit they exist!

We saw last Sunday that our only hope to win the fight against these weak areas is to be saved from what we’ve done and what we are. We need to be born again! We need a fresh start – a new nature!

We saw in John 3:1-17 that Jesus told Nicodemus this truth. He told Nicodemus that even though he was a Pharisee who had done everything he could to live a righteous life – that it still wasn’t going to help him see or experience the Kingdom of God! He told Nicodemus he had to be born again to see the Kingdom of God.

He told Nicodemus if he didn’t become born again he was fooling himself. He was still living his life, trying to fight his weaknesses from his old nature.

Jesus told him that seeing the Kingdom of God, feeling it’s effect in your life, having it’s power in your life, only comes from looking to Him (Jesus)!

We have to believe and trust in Jesus for our salvation from what we’ve done and for the strength to fight against what we are. We can only be born again through Jesus!

The only way to be saved from what we’ve done and to even start being able to have victory in our lives is to stop looking to ourselves and our strength, and stop looking for the right information/method to help fight our weakness.

Instead, we all need to LOOK TO, rely on, Jesus! We need to look to what he did on the cross to pay for our sins! When we look to anything else and trust in anything else for our strength (religion, good works, whatever) we’re still dead in the water!

We HAVE to be born again! We have to have a new nature planted within us! We can’t fix or clean the one we have! Jesus is the ONLY way!

We need to look to Jesus and not ourselves. If you’ve only heard about Jesus and it’s all been head knowledge, but you never committed and submitted your life to him, then today’s the day to do it! You can do it right now. Just tell him you believe and want to trust him as your Lord and Savior.

If you’ve been born again already, you need to remember what God’s done in your already and stop looking to yourself and look to him!

Today, I want to look more at how we can see this new life/nature that God’s given us, through Jesus, have more victory over our old life/nature that’s still in us.

So what’s the next step?

If we know we’re lost and weak and can’t save ourselves and we submit and let Jesus into our lives as our Savior (one who saves us from our sins) and our Lord (the boss – one in control), then what do we do?

Before we can take that next step we first have to understand what God tells us he done in our lives when we give our lives to Jesus.

It might be a little DIFFERENT than you think…

When we submitted to Jesus and asked him into our lives and were born again, God didn’t get rid of our sinful nature! It’s still there!

Here’s what God did…

He gave us a new nature to live out of. He gave us a new power to draw from through the Holy Spirit coming into our hearts – God himself!

But, that means we now have a problem: There’s a BATTLE going on inside us!

I saw this explanation online…
Do you know how a worm gets inside an apple? Maybe you think the worm digs in from the outside. No, scientists have discovered that the worm comes from inside. How’s it get in there? Easy! An insect lays an egg in the apple blossom. Later on, the worm hatches in the heart of the apple, then eats his way out. Sin, like the worn, begins in the heart and works out through a person's thoughts, words, and actions.

Our problem, our battle, is within ourselves!! W.P. Mackay in book from 1888 called “Grace & Truth” said… “Most anxious inquirers seem to think that we have to fight against ourselves in order to be saved, whereas we fight against ourselves because we are saved.”

That battle that we’re having inside, against sin, is not a bad sign! It’s a GOOD one! If you weren’t a Christ-follower than you wouldn’t fight in some of these areas at all! That there’s a fight proves something changed in us!

Paul talks about this battle in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10…
But to keep me from getting puffed up, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from getting proud.

⁸Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. ⁹Each time he said, "My gracious favor is all you need. My power works best in your weakness." So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may work through me. ¹⁰Since I know it is all for Christ's good, I am quite content with my weaknesses and with insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

A person in AA is taught to always think of themselves as an alcoholic no matter how long it’s been since they had a drink. People in AA count the days or years they’ve been clean. I saw a friend recently who is a recovering addict and he said he was, something like, 140 days clean.

It’s the same with us in our battle against sin/temptation! We still deal with the flesh – our old nature. We have to constantly remember we’re sinners. It has to be a constant daily battle and we need to count our daily victories!

We need to admit DAILY that we’re lost and weak - that we can’t find our find our way out and we’re too weak to do the right things!

Just like Paul says in verse 9… “For when I am weak, then I am strong.” When we admit we’re weak and stop trying in OUR strength THAT’S when we’re finally STRONG!

When we think we’re strong and think we aren’t lost anymore THAT’S when we do 2 stupid things that are guaranteed to cause us to fall and mess up: we try with our own strength and rely in our own wisdom!

And what happens? Maybe at first: nothing. Maybe at first we do good in the areas that we weren’t that weak in anyway. But sooner or later, we fail and fall and wonder how we got lost again! The problem is we were trying in our strength – in our flesh.

In Philippians 3:3, Paul says it like this…
We put no confidence in human effort. Instead, we boast about what Christ Jesus has done for us.

Mark Bubeck in his book The Adversary said this…
”The flesh is a built-in law of failure, making it impossible for the natural man to please or serve God. It is a compulsive inner force inherited from man's fall, which expresses itself in general and specific rebellion against God and His righteousness. The flesh can never be reformed or improved. The only hope for escape from the law of the flesh is its total execution and replacement by a new life in the Lord Jesus Christ."

Ex.
If I want to defeat you and you’re stronger than I am. I’m not going to attack you straight on – when you’re ready! If I’m smart, I’ll wait till you’re not ready - wait till you drop you’re guard, then BOOM – BANG, you’re going down!

That’s what the devil wants to do to us. We can’t ever let our guards down and forget that we’re lost, weak and can’t save ourselves!

Paul says we NOW brag about what Jesus did for us, NOT in what we’ve done!

When we talk to any non-believer it should never be as someone better than them, looking down on them. It should be as one of them! An alcoholic anonymous person says, “I’m an alcoholic. I’ve been clean 4 years 63 days.”

Those two things together “alcoholic” and “clean” are what intrigue someone enough to say, “How’d you do THAT?” People should be intrigued about us in the same way!

1 Corinthians 10:12-13 Paul says…
¹²If you think you are standing strong, be careful, for you, too, may fall into the same sin. ¹³But remember that the temptations that come into your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will keep the temptation from becoming so strong that you can't stand up against it. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you will not give in to it.

How do we control the flesh? I can’t tell you an exact way, but the way has to START by being based on the truth in these two verses…

Psalm 127:1

“¹ Unless the LORD builds a house, the work of the builders is useless.
Unless the LORD protects a city, guarding it with sentries will do no good.”

Proverbs 21:31

“The horses are prepared for battle, but the victory belongs to the LORD.”

It takes relying (on the Holy Spirit) and it takes trying (your part)! It takes both prayer and for you to prepare. You can’t succeed with just one of these! You have to have both.

I want to tell some ways I’ve been trying in the last few weeks to control my flesh that have helped me to have more victory…

The first step has to be through submitting to the Holy Spirit and letting him give us the strength and wisdom. Otherwise, we can’t do ANYTHING. We need to constantly turn our will and our lives over to the Holy Spirit.

The confession/admission I’m trying to do at least twice daily (morning and before bed)… “God, my problems are bigger than I am. My sins are stronger than I am. My calling is larger than I am. Without you, Jesus, I can do nothing. I’m lost. I’m weak. I’m a sinner. I can’t find my way. I can’t be strong enough. I will fall short without you. With you I can do all things – I can produce much fruit. The only way I can succeed at any of this is by leaning on and relying on you, Holy Spirit. Help me to do this. Teach me how to do this.”

Ilust.
Old American Indian Man: And The Battle Within
An old indian man told his young friend that his good nature and bad nature are like two dogs fighting. He sais his good nature is the white dog and his bad nature is the black dog. His friend asked him, “Which one wins?” And he said, “The one I feed the most!”

The second way we can control the flesh and have more victory is by starving our old nature. We can’t ever kill it, but we can make it weaker. You do this by denying your desire/weakness. You say “no” to it. How can you do this?

You need to see the small things that you start doing, early on, that lead to you saying yes to your weakness, then fight/stop those small things!

For example, you need to figure out…

• · If your weakness is anger, what are the small things that you begin doing, early on, that lead to you finally exploding in anger?
  
• · If your weakness is lying , what are the small things that you begin doing, early on, that lead to you finally lying to someone?

When you are starting to take the small step towards giving into your weakness THAT’S the time to confess and admit to the Holy Spirit what you’ve done or what you want to do. That’s when you need to ask for forgiveness. That’s the place to say NO!

The third thing we need to is feed our new nature. This will help it to grow stronger. We do this by saying yes to the things that are the opposite of our desires. We do this by feeding on God’s word and memorizing it and reminding ourselves of God’s truth.

I told you that we can’t have victory till we admit the truth that we’re lost, weak and sinners, but we also can’t have victory till we know God’s truth about what he’s done for us and what he says about us now!

We have to know the truth of what the Bible tells us about the cross and resurrection. We have to remember what Jesus did and that the Bible says we were crucified with him!

We have to FIRST know the truth in our heads and hearts, so we can know it by experience!

In Romans 6:16-23 Paul gives us another way to think of this, instead of starving one nature and feeding the other one…6 Don't you realize that whatever you choose to obey becomes your master? You can choose sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God and receive his approval. 17 Thank God! Once you were slaves of sin, but now you have obeyed with all your heart the new teaching God has given you. 18 Now you are free from sin, your old master, and you have become slaves to your new master, righteousness. 19 I speak this way, using the illustration of slaves and masters, because it is easy to understand. Before, you let yourselves be slaves of impurity and lawlessness. Now you must choose to be slaves of righteousness so that you will become holy. 20 In those days, when you were slaves of sin, you weren't concerned with doing what was right. 21 And what was the result? It was not good, since now you are ashamed of the things you used to do, things that end in eternal doom. 22 But now you are free from the power of sin and have become slaves of God. Now you do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.

The choice is who to become a slave to! Paul asks… Do you want to be a slave to sin, which will destroy you – ultimately the cause of death OR a slave to righteousness (right choices) which will lead to life, lead you to God’s purposes?

Some of you might remember this story I told from our Galatians series last year. Charles Swindoll in his book “The Grace Awakening” tells this story…

”It was on New Year’s Day 1863 when the Emancipation Proclamation was publicly stated, but it was not until December 18, 1865, that the Constitution made those convictions official… Headlines in newspapers in virtually every state had the same message “Slavery Legally Abolished”.

“And yet something happened that many would never have expected. The vast majority of slaves in the South who were legally freed continued to live as slaves! Most of them went right on living as though nothing had happened. Though free, the Blacks lived virtually unchanged lives throughout the Reconstruction Period.

Swindoll later says this…

“I call this tragic. A war had been fought. A president had been assassinated. An amendment to the Constitution had now been signed into law. Once enslaved men, women and children were now legally emancipated. Yet amazingly, many continued living in fear and squalor. In a context of hard-earned freedom, slaves chose to remain as slaves. Cruel and brutal though many of their owners were, black men and women chose to keep serving the same old master until they died. They were a few brave exceptions, but in many parts of the country you’d never known that slavery had been officially abolished and that they had been emancipated. That’s the way plantation owners wanted it. They maintained the age old philosophy, ‘Keep’em ignorant and you keep ‘em in the field’

The amazing thing about what Paul is saying is that through Jesus we now have a choice of who to serve! Before we submitted to Jesus, and began following him, we DIDN’T!

Fourth, we need to is what Paul just told us in Roman’s 6. We need to think of the end results from choosing to give in to our weak areas. Think about what your choice will lead to. Keep that in your mind! Remember what you’re really saying yes to when you say yes to that weakness!

Fifth, we need to do is find someone to be accountable to. In Ted Haggard’s letter he said…

“For extended periods of time, I would enjoy victory and rejoice in freedom. Then, from time to time, the dirt that I thought was gone would resurface, and I would find myself thinking thoughts and experiencing desires that were contrary to everything I believe and teach.

Through the years, I've sought assistance in a variety of ways, with none of them proving to be effective in me. Then, because of pride, I began deceiving those I love the most because I didn't want to hurt or disappoint them.”

Conclusion
We are going to struggle with our old nature until we die. We’re going to fall and sin! We will fall, cause we have this battle within us, we live in a world full of temptations, and we have an enemy – the devil – who wants to destroy us!

We can’t be sinless, but… we can sin less! We can have more victory!

If we are born again, and continually confess and admit our weakness and lostness, if we rely on the Holy Spirit to put to death the old nature and live in the new, if we have someone we’re accountable to, THEN we can be protected from a major fall.

Here’s the promise I want to end with that I want us to always remind ourselves of…

Romans 5:20-21

“…where sin increased, grace increased all the more, ²¹so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Before Jesus, sin once reigned because it lead, ultimately, to death. That was the way it defeated us!

But, NOW, because of Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit, grace reigns because it will ultimately lead to righteousness. Because of grace, we’ll be able to stand and be right before God. It will ultimately lead to eternal life! That’s the way grace gives us the ultimate victory.

If we keep submitting to Jesus and following him through the ups and downs of this battle, then we will make it! That promise is still true for Ted Haggard and it’s true for us!

Grace reigns! Thank God!

"LOST" Series - Finding Your Way Out PT. 1

Intro:

Most of you have probably heard in the news about Ted Haggard, but in case you haven’t. He a guy who was in the leader of the National Evangelical Association and the pastor of a 14,000 member church in Colorado and he was accused of doing Meth and having an ongoing sexual relationship with a male prostitute.

Ted denied it all at first but later admitted that some of the accusations were true. He stepped down from being the leader of the NEA or and he was asked to resign as the pastor of that church.

How should we respond to a news story like this? There are a few different ways…

• We can be mad that a leader fell because he made other Christ-followers and God look bad.
• We can be sad for him, because he embarrassed himself, his church and hurt his family and lost everything he had.

Both of those ways are normal, natural ways to respond.

But what if there’s another way to respond to what happened that could actually be used to help US?

I want to talk to you about this third way to respond today. It’s a way that could help free us and protect us from making choices that could destroy our lives and make us lose everything we have.

In John 8:1-11 there’s a pretty well-known story about an adulterous woman who was caught. I want to show you something that we don’t always notice in this story…

Jesus is at the temple and he’s teaching a crowd that’s gathered there. (These people are God-followers.)

While he’s in the middle of teaching, the teachers of religious law and Pharisees bust in with a woman that’s been caught in adultery and then stand her in front of the crowd.

Then they ask Jesus, in front of everyone, ⁴"Teacher, this woman was just caught in adultery. ⁵The law of Moses (God’s word) says to stone her. What do you say?”
(They were doing this to try and trap Jesus into saying something they could use against him.)

Can you imagine the pressure on Jesus at this point? If he says to stone her, her life is over. If he says don’t do it, he goes against God’s word. So,, what does he do?

He turns the pressure/tension back on them by not answering them. Instead he just starts scribbling on the ground with his finger.

The teachers of religious law and Pharisees couldn’t take the silence and kept pressuring him for an answer. Finally, he stands up and says to them and the whole crowd…

"All right, stone her. But let those who have never sinned throw the first stones!" ⁸Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.

They all are standing there thinking did he just say, “those who have never sinned throw the first stones”?

They start to realize they’re not any better of a person than she is. She just got caught and had her sinfulness exposed.

So they started slipping away one by one, starting with the oldest, until only Jesus was left with the woman.

So it’s just the woman who was caught and had no excuse, and the one person worthy enough to pick up a stone and punish her: Jesus.

But this is the cool part…

Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, "Where are your accusers? Didn't even one of them condemn you?" ¹¹"No, Lord," she said. And Jesus said, "Neither do I. Go and sin no more."

Do you see what Jesus did? He didn’t justify what she did. He just said to her, “Go and sin no more!” He told her to go and be free from the desires and actions that could destroy her life and others.

But, I want you to see the real lesson Jesus taught the crowd that day…

He taught them that we should let someone else’s sin/failure cause us to look and focus on ourselves, NOT on them!

I want to take this event that’s happened in the news and use it to do a 2-Sunday series called “LOST” – Finding The Way Out.

I want to help us to let what happened to Ted Haggard remind us all about the most terrible and dangerous power we all have – the power to destroy ourselves.

Let’s pray for him, his family, but we shouldn’t focus on him!

That doesn’t do us any good! Let’s use this to turn the focus on ourselves!

We all have the ability to destroy ourselves. We’re all weak enough and dumb enough to do it. I know I am!

James Russell Lowell US diplomat, essayist, & poet (1819 - 1891) said this…

“Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this, that you are dreadfully like other people.”

We’re all the same in this way! Some of us might be stronger in some areas than others people, but those same people are weaker in areas where other people are strong!

Henry Ward Beecher, a famous preacher from the 1800’s said it like this…

"All men are tempted. There is no man that lives that can't be broken down, provided it is the right temptation, put in the right spot."

You have a weakness that can break you down if you’re tempted with the right temptation at the right time!

Like Lowell said we’re all dreadfully like other people!

• How can we really have more victory in our lives?
• How can we really overcome our sin and ourselves?

I’m about to tell you something that will be a real relief to all of you. Ready?

You can’t be good enough. Stop trying.

Until we realize this and admit it to ourselves we’re stuck!

Illust.
What’s the stereotypical problem that people say men have with directions?

Men won’t stop and find directions! What happens? They wander around forever saying, “I don’t need any help. I know where we are. I can get us there!” And the whole time the wife is saying, “Can we please just stop at the gas station and get directions?”

What would happen if us guys just admitted they were lost right away? We’d get the right directions and get there a lot quicker!

But instead we stay in denial and stay lost! It’s the same with us in our struggle against our weaknesses!

There are two things I’d realized recently that we need to do EVERYDAY if we want to have more victory and overcome our sin and ourselves:

1. Admit daily we’re lost and can’t find our way out of this mess.
2. Admit daily we’re weak and can’t do what’s right.

There’s a lot of power and freedom in confession – in admitting you can’t make it on your own!

That’s what Paul did in Romans 7:14-25

¹⁴We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. ¹⁵I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

This the apostle PAUL talking here! He’s admitting that he’s totally weak and lost in a letter to the Romans that will probably be passed onto other churches! He goes on…

¹⁶And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.

Did you hear what he says? When we mess up and finally admit our weakness and lostness it should prove to us what God’s word warns us about sin is TRUE. It should remind us of the fact that we need a savior! He goes in verse 18 to say…

¹⁸I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.^F28 For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. ¹⁹For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing. ²⁰Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

Do you hear how hopeless he says he is on his own strength?

²¹So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. ²²For in my inner being I delight in God's law; ²³but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.

Listen to this last part…

²⁴What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

²⁵Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

Alcoholics Anonymous

Alcoholics Anonymous is a program that’s helped many people, who struggle with alcohol, to finally find freedom. It’s a program that, at the beginning, was started on a lot of Biblical principles.

The first step that Alcoholics anonymous teaches people is that they have to admit that they’re an alcoholic. They have to stop living in denial. Until they do that they can’t get better!

Our first step to seeing victory is the same thing! We have to become like Paul and realize “What a wretched person I am?”

How can we get to the place where we can really admit we’re lost and can’t be good enough? We need to look to God’s word.

W.P. Mackay in an old book from 1888 called “Grace & Truth” said, “We all have one authority to refer to, and it is within your reach; will you take your Bible and remember one thing, that it is God who speaks? Turn to Romans, the 3^rd chapter and 22^nd verse, and at the last clause we read, “For there is no difference; for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” This is what God has said.

We have to not only see that we lost and weak, but we need to realize we’re sinners and we have no way to save ourselves. We need to realize that our bad choices (sins) have made us guilty before God.

W.P. Mackay says it like this, “The one question is, guilty or not guilty. There are no degrees as to that fact of guilt. “He that offends in one point is guilty of all, and nothing more. He that offends in all points is guilty of all and nothing more. Therefore while there are differences among offenses, there is no difference as to guilt. Therefore, all men in the world (that means you and me are included), have been brought in guilty before God.”

This whole thing about saying we’re lost and weak and believing we’re a sinner who needs someone to save us is NOT about beating ourselves up or condemning ourselves!

It’s all about admitting the truth. If we don’t do this, we’re lying and fooling ourselves into thinking we can do it on our own!

It’s not a negative thing. It’s a freeing thing – just like it frees an alcoholic.

If I worked out a lot and got really strong could I ever lift 10,000 pounds by myself? Could I do it with someone with a crane to help me?

How long would it take me to find my way out of a rainforest if my legs were amputated and I was given a map? Could I do it with someone with a helicopter who knew where I was?

But my first step in either of these situations, would have to be to admit the truth: there’s no way I can do either of these things without someone’s help. Until I do that I’ll keep failing and falling.

The impossibility of us being strong enough on our own to resist sin in our weakest areas is just as impossible and just as improbable! Until we get to that place where we admit we can’t do it by our self, then we won’t and can’t get help. We won’t be able to fight against those dangerous desires we all have.

But admitting we need help is just the first step. Our weakness and lostness won’t suddenly be gone just cause we admit they exist!

Our only hope to win the fight against these weak areas is to be saved from what we’ve done and what we are. We need to be born again! We need a fresh start – a new nature!

There’s another well known story I want to look at that’s in John 3:1-17…

¹After dark one evening, a Jewish religious leader named Nicodemus, a Pharisee, ²came to speak with Jesus. "Teacher," he said, "we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are proof enough that God is with you."

This is Pharisee he probably lives a holier life than any of us here. But he has a problem, he doesn’t think he’s weak and lost. He hasn’t taken the first step we talked about. He’s still fooling himself. But, not only that, he’s still living his life, trying to fight his weaknesses from his old nature.

But he’s a pretty amazing person! He’s one of the only Pharisees who’s ever said, “we know God has sent you… your miraculous signs are proof enough that God is with you.” I mean that’s pretty amazing for him to realize this! And what’s Jesus say to Him?

³Jesus replied, "I assure you, unless you are born again, you can never see the Kingdom of God."

Jesus isn’t condemning him. He’s not clowning him. He’s telling Nicodemus the truth: He can’t ever see God’s Kingdom unless he’s born again!!

Nicodemus, this man that knows God’s law and does amazing things to live it out – this Pharisee who realizes Jesus is from God – he’s totally confused!!!

⁴"What do you mean?" exclaimed Nicodemus. "How can an old man go back into his mother's womb and be born again?"

Jesus tells him what I want you to hear today…
⁵"The truth is, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. ^{F16 6}Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives new life from heaven. ⁷So don't be surprised at my statement that you ^F17 must be born again. ⁸Just as you can hear the wind but can't tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can't explain how people are born of the Spirit."

Poor Nicodemus is even MORE confused NOW! ⁹"What do you mean?" Nicodemus asked.

¹⁰Jesus replied, "You are a respected Jewish teacher, and yet you don't understand these things? ¹¹I assure you, I am telling you what we know and have seen, and yet you won't believe us. ¹²But if you don't even believe me when I tell you about things that happen here on earth, how can you possibly believe if I tell you what is going on in heaven? ¹³For only I, the Son of Man, ^F18 have come to earth and will return to heaven again. ¹⁴And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so I, the Son of Man, must be lifted up on a pole, ^{F19 15}so that everyone who believes in me will have eternal life.

¹⁶"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷God did not send his Son into the world to condemn it, but to save it.

Jesus is telling Nicodemus who as a Pharisee has done everything he could do please God and gain his acceptance and enter into God’s kingdom that it all won’t work!

W.P. Mackay says… Pg. 39 bottom “The majority of respectable religious people…”

Jesus tells him that seeing the Kingdom of God, feeling it’s effect in your life, having it’s power in your life, only comes from looking to Jesus! We have to believe and trust in him for our salvation from what we’ve done and strength to fight against what we are. We can only be born again through Jesus! We need him for that fresh start – that new nature!

Nicodemus knew that’s what Jesus meant when Jesus reminded him of the story of Moses lifting up the bronze snake to save the Israelites lives.

Most of us don’t know or don’t remember this story, so Jesus’ example goes over our heads! Here’s what happened…

Numbers 21:4-9 (***READ FROM SCREEN)

4 Then the people of Israel set out from Mount Hor, taking the road to the Red Sea ^F73 to go around the land of Edom. But the people grew impatient along the way, 5 and they began to murmur against God and Moses. "Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die here in the wilderness?" they complained. "There is nothing to eat here and nothing to drink. And we hate this wretched manna!"

6 So the LORD sent poisonous snakes among them, and many of them were bitten and died. 7 Then the people came to Moses and cried out, "We have sinned by speaking against the LORD and against you. Pray that the LORD will take away the snakes." So Moses prayed for the people.

8 Then the LORD told him, "Make a replica of a poisonous snake and attach it to the top of a pole. Those who are bitten will live if they simply look at it!" 9 So Moses made a snake out of bronze and attached it to the top of a pole. Whenever those who were bitten looked at the bronze snake, they recovered!

Why did God have them do that? It wasn’t to get them to worship a snake! No!

By having them do this, they were showing that they trusted (had faith) in God completely and would do whatever he said even when they didn’t understand it. It stopped them from trying to DO anything to survive and just rely on God’s way of DOING it!

The only way to be saved from what we’ve done and to even start being able to have victory in our lives is to stop looking to ourselves and our strength, stop looking for the right information/method to help you fight your weakness.

Instead all we need to do is LOOK TO (rely on Jesus) and what he did on the cross to pay for our sins! When we look to anything else we’re still dead in the water!

W.P. Mackay says… pg. 40 second paragraph and 3^rd to “educated people are lost”

We HAVE to be born again! We have to have a new nature planted within us! We can’t fix or clean the one we have! Jesus is the ONLY way!

That’s what Paul realized after he confessed his weakness and lostness in Romans 7! In the next verses in Romans 8:1-16… ¹Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,^{F29 2}because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. ³For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature,^F30 God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.^F31 And so he condemned sin in sinful man,^{F32 4}in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.

Think about this…

If God made some other way to be saved: money, knowledge, self-control, then it would limit who could be saved, because some wouldn’t have enough money, or wouldn’t know enough or would be too weak.

But since God offered us salvation through faith (believing and receiving what he’s done), then anyone can receive it who wants too! (I got this idea from W.P. Mackay.)

Ed Young a pastor of a huge mega church in Texas wrote and article in the ezine version of Relevant Magazine about the Ted Haggard scandal. In the article he said this…

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/850/110606/110606.htm

“In biblical terms, a fall from grace is not the sinner saved by grace who is caught in moral failure. That is a fall to grace. A fall from grace is the self-righteous person who tries to earn his or her salvation through the guise of moral living, declaring that Christ's work on the cross was unnecessary—at least for them…”

A little later he says…“People say to me, "I don't go to church anymore, because churches are full of hypocrites."

Let's just lay our cards on the table. We're all hypocrites! Being a hypocrite means assuming a role that is not yours to assume. Sadly, too many churches are communities of criticism instead of communities of compassion”

Conclusion:

Today’s the day for all of us to come clean and admit the truth to ourselves and Jesus.

You know I bet Ted Haggard kept thinking “I can beat this. I’m a pastor. I know how to defeat this.”

Finally after the scandal hit in a letter to his church that was read last Sunday he finally came clean with himself… ”I am a deceiver and a liar. There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life.

“For extended periods of time, I would enjoy victory and rejoice in freedom. Then, from time to time, the dirt that I thought was gone would resurface, and I would find myself thinking thoughts and experiencing desires that were contrary to everything I believe and teach.”

And later he said…

“2.) Please forgive me. I am so embarrassed and ashamed. I caused this and I have no excuse. I am a sinner. I have fallen. I desperately need to be forgiven and healed.”

You know now that he’s at this place of complete truthfulness with himself and God I know that one day God can/will use him again! How do I know?

When King David had the affair with Bathsheba and later caused her husband die, he suffered. He lost the child Bathsheba was carrying. But, when he repented and admitted his weakness, lostness and need for God. God forgave him and used him. He was called “a man after God’s own heart!”

Let’s let this scandal cause us to come clean with ourselves and God now. We’re lost, we’re weak, we’re sinners.

We need to look to Jesus and not ourselves. If you’ve only heard about Jesus and it’s all been head knowledge, but you never committed and submitted your life to him, then today’s the day! If you’ve been born again, remember that and stop looking to yourself!

NEXT WEEK: I’ll show why it’s actually good if you struggle with sin in some areas of your life. We’ll talk about how to see this new life/nature that God’s given us through Jesus have more victory over our old life/nature that’s still in us. And more!