Larry Craig
First Congregational
Church
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Change (Part 2)
I would like to begin by taking a poll.
How many of you wish you had more self-discipline? This could be either positive or
negative. You wish you could stop doing
certain things, like eating certain foods, or you wish you could commit
yourself to certain things, maybe like regular exercise.
How many of you wish you were a more loving
person? Not just for your family, but
your neighbors and the people you come in contact with every day?
People sometimes distinguish between happiness and joy, but
how many of you wish you just felt more of either one?
How many of you have a sense of unease,
anxiety, or fear, maybe about what is lurking around the corner, the next bad
thing that is about to happen, maybe health issues, job, insurance?
How many of you wish you could handle
disappointments better, the frustrations of things going wrong, the faults of
other people?
How many of you live in a shell where you are
afraid too often to reach out to other people, afraid of failure, rejection, or
hurt?
How many of you live your life controlled by what people
think of you? You are afraid to be yourself? You
try real hard for people to think highly of you, that you are playing a role
instead of just being who you are?
How many of you usually expect the worst,
bracing yourself for the next crisis to come along? You
are not particularly hopeful about your life and your future.
How many of you feel the need to assert
yourself, to get ahead, to try to grab for everything you can get, otherwise
you might feel left out or fall behind or miss out on something important?
Well, you have come to the right place. The Bible talks about the fruit of the
Spirit, that is, what God wants and is trying to produce in your life. And what does He want to produce in your life? (Galatians
5:22 ) Love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faith, meekness, and
self-control. Most translations read
‘faithfulness’ instead of ‘faith’ here. I
explained in the adult class before the service today why I believe ‘faith’ is
the better translation. The same Greek
word is used 22 times in the book of Galatians, and every other time it is
translated as faith. And I can make the
case that faith is what Paul had in mind here.
[I may be the only person you will hear
or read who doesn’t accept ‘faithfulness’ as the translation here. The word pi/stij occurs 22
times in the Book of Galatians, and here appearing by itself, without use in a
context, we are supposed to translate it differently. Some say that the context is moral qualities,
and faith is not a moral quality. If faithfulness is the clear meaning, the
Greeks have another word, pisto/thj (pis-to′-tays), which
seems to me a much more obvious choice.
Is it because it occurs so far
down the list here that scholars think it cannot mean ‘faith’ here? So what would it mean in this context?
In this context Paul is
contrasting works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. The flesh is driven by feelings, seeking out
pleasurable experiences regardless of long term effects. This great need to seek comfort is determined
to a great extent by our views of life:
How are we doing? How are things
going?
These are not questions that
can be answered by our physical eyes.
It’s not enough to count our money and match them against our bills to
see how we are doing. It takes eyes of
faith to see beyond the obvious circumstances to see God at work in our lives,
to see His purposes. Without that, we won’t
have peace, patience, and a lot of the other fruit. Without faith one will only see the worst in
life. They will expect the worst and
face the future with fear.
While we are responsible for
the love, joy, peace, and faith that we have in our lives, still it is the work
of the Holy Spirit in us. We cannot do
this on our own, yet He will not do it in spite of ourselves.]
We have been talking about change these two weeks. We have said that not all change is
good. I can think of a lot of things
that I wish would not change or go back to the way they were.
But all growth involves change. And we are created in the image of God, and
God wants to do more things in and through our lives than we will ever
imagine. We are looking at 6 of those
changes that God wants to see in our lives, and this, the fourth, is the change
of a new focus.
Self-help books are among the most popular kinds of books
out there. We all recognize ways in
which we would like to do better or be better.
The focus there is on improving your self. But God wants a change of a new focus.
IV. The change of
a new focus Galatians 5:13-24
For God, these improvements or changes in your life are to
be by-products and not the goals. What I
mean is that you don’t become happy by focusing your life on becoming
happy. You don’t become loving by
telling yourself that you are going to be more loving.
Think of it like humility.
Humility is not thinking little of yourself. It is not thinking of yourself at all. Or just minimally.
False religions tell you that you need to perfect yourself,
purify yourself, deny yourself and your flesh before you are acceptable to
God. The Bible reverses this. You need the power of God to change and fix
your life, and God will give that before we are perfect and these things will
then fall away.
Many Christians are living under condemnation, because they
are aware of all the ways that they fall short of what God wants, and they feel
powerless to change. They feel they must
change before God can be pleased with them.
But it is the other way around. The things that we think we need to do before
God is pleased with us are the very things that we need Him to do in us.
We do this as we fill our lives with His Word and His
Spirit. The Word feeds our spirit, and
the Holy Spirit guides our lives through His inner leadings. So instead of trying to be more loving, more
peaceful, more joyful, we focus our lives on God, His Word, and His Spirit, and
the Spirit works these things in our lives.
V. There is a
fifth change that God wants to work in our lives: the change of a new
strength (Isaiah 40:30 ,31 Even youths shall faint and be
weary, and young men shall fall
exhausted; 40.31 but they who wait for
the LORD shall renew their strength, they
shall mount up with wings like eagles, they
shall run and not be weary, they shall
walk and not faint.)
When you were born, you were entirely dependent on your
parents for all of your needs. As people
grow up, they assume more responsibility for providing for their own needs. People become more self-reliant. However, an important part of growing up is
knowing when to ask for help, the realization that no one knows everything, and
someone else knows more about some things than you do. And you are not afraid or ashamed to ask.
This personal aspect of growing up is played out large today
in the scientific and political arenas.
Not only are they not willing to ask for help (as in God’s help), they
don’t even believe there is anyone to ask.
But we need to leave that for another time.
Let’s look at Isaiah
40:27-31 And let’s start with verse 30. Even youths
shall faint and be weary, and young
men shall fall exhausted (certainly stumble); The passage is going to show a contrast here,
and it starts with physical limits.
Youths are the young men rather than the old. The young men here literally means choice men
or chosen ones, often used of those who served in the military. THEY have limits to their physical prowess.
But God has no such limits, whether in His abilities or His
understanding. And He is perfectly
willing to give strength and power to those who need it. (v 29). Verse 31 provides a little more detail. They shall renew their strength. It’s not like charging up a weak batter, but
rather getting a whole new one. You take
the old one in and come out with a new one.
The next clause has some translation challenges, but the
sense in the RSV here is quite adequate.
Eagles don’t soar to such great heights on their own strength. They are carried aloft by the wind, but the
picture here is of an exhilaration that brings one to rise high over the
troubles of life. And while those who
don’t rely on God’s strength grow weary and faint, those who wait on the Lord
don’t.
So what exactly does it mean to wait upon the Lord. This particular Hebrew word suggests an
earnest expectation. I picture the child
in the back seat of the car who keeps asking: Are we there yet? I see a person who in the midst of a dire
situation is not distraught, but he or she believes that God is going to take
care of this. The answer may be taking
longer than this person would like, but they are holding on to the conviction
that God will come through. More often
than not, the answers we are looking for don’t come as quickly as we would
like. But we keep looking, expecting,
believing, confident that God will come through.
VI. There is one
other change that God wants to see in our lives, and this is probably the best
one of all. Why? Because we don’t have to do anything to bring
it about. Except, of course, that first
change we talked about last week, the change of a new beginning.
When God first created human beings, He put them in a
perfect world. But there was one itty
bitty problem. Humans had free
will. And if something can go wrong,
eventually it will go wrong. And so it
did.
Death and sin and evil all became a part of this world. But God is not going to leave it that
way. He is going to do it all over
again, but now this time He will start with human beings who have already used
their free will to choose God and to choose what is good. And they will receive new bodies that will
never grow old and die.
God loves you more than you can imagine. He tries to help us understand how much by
our having children of our own. For
various reasons, not all of us do, but all of us have had parents who ideally
experienced a bit of that love when they had us. That didn’t always work either, because the
world is broken.
Paul says in Romans
5:5 that the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts through the
Holy Spirit who has been given to us, and that God demonstrates His own love
for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
So know that you are loved, and however things may now be in
your life, God wants to make them better.
If you have not made that first commitment to God through Jesus Christ,
please come and talk with me after the service or with one of the elders.
In conclusion, as Paul said in I Corinthians 2:9 Things which eye has not seen or ear heard or
which have not entered the heart of man, God has prepared for those who love
Him. áA o)fqalmo\j ou)k eiåden kaiì ouÅj ou)k
hÃkousen kaiì e)piì kardi¿an a)nqrw¯pou ou)k a)ne/bh, aÁ h(toi¿masen o( qeo\j
toiÍj a)gapw½sin au)to/n.
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