• Religion says, I obey, therefore I’m accepted.  The gospel says, I’m accepted therefore I obey.
• Religion is defined by and focused on the rules. The gospel is defined by and focused on the gracious Ruler.
• Religion changes your behavior so you look good in front of man.  The gospel cleans your heart so you can stand in the presence of God.

All of us are like the Pharisees.  There’s part of us that like the religion and law.  Why?  Because that gives us control.  Deep down, we are do-it-yourself-God-wannabes.  We want to maintain control; we want the outcome of our lives, including our salvation in our hands.

Give me 3 steps to a happy marriage and I can guarantee myself a happy marriage – or I can be mad at God if it doesn’t happen.  Give me 5 rules to follow to ensure sexual purity or 7 steps to grow in godliness, and then I can pat myself on the back by following those rules and taking those steps. “The law seems safe because it breed’s a sense of control.  It keeps life formulaic and predictable.  It keeps earning-power in our camp.”[1]

We drift toward law because we are afraid of grace.  Grace takes control from us.  Taking hold of grace means we have to let go of self – we don’t like that.  As Michel Horton says, “The gospel of grace throws our glory train off its tracks.  Instead of calculating, mastering, and determining, we find ourselves completely helpless, left with no option but to fall into the everlasting arms of the God who could consume us in wrath but instead embraces us in his Son.”[2]

Our Father in heaven, You are the Everlasting Father of the fatherless, Heaven is Your throne and the earth is Your footstool. The heavens declare Your glory, and the sky above proclaims Your handiwork. Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.

Our Father in Heaven Hallowed be Your Name From the rising of the sun to its setting, may Your Name be praised and be great among the nations! Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised and your greatness is unsearchable!  Let Your glory be over all the earth! Let heaven and earth praise You, the seas and everything that moves in them, let them praise you!  May Your glory, the glory of the Lord endure forever.

O Father in Heaven, Hallowed be Your Name, Your Kingdom Come, May all the ends of the earth remember and turn to You, and all the families of the nations worship before You.  Declare your glory among the nations, your marvelous works among all the peoples from China to India to Chile to Fiji to the Philippines to Hungary to Fiji to Iceland and every tribe, tongue, nation and people! For kingship belongs to You; You rule over the nations. You are the strength of Your people -the saving refuge of Your anointed! Oh, save Your people and bless Your heritage! Be our Shepherd and carry us forever! You are our King, O God! You are the King of all the earth! Your throne is forever and ever!

Your Kingdom Come and Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Make us to know Your ways, O Lord. Teach us Your paths. Teach us to do Your will. Let your good Spirit lead us on level ground. Not our will, but Yours be done!  Father, we pray for the unborn this very day, for you form their inward parts; you knit them together in their mother’s womb, every child in the womb is fearfully and wonderfully made, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Give us this day our daily bread. You, our God, will supply every need of ours according to Your riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Give us neither poverty nor riches; feed us with the food that is needful for us, lest we be full and deny You and say, “Who is the Lord?” or lest we be poor and steal and profane the name of our God. Satisfy us with righteousness and remind us You are our portion forever.  We pray for our very own members, continue to lavish your grace upon us as we strive to love you will all our heart, mind soul and strength; enable us to love her neighbor has ourselves.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.  We confess our iniquity; we are sorry for our sin. Have mercy on us, O God. Help us put to death what is earthly in us: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.  Wash us thoroughly from our iniquity, and cleanse us from our sin! For Your name’s sake, O Lord, pardon our guilt for it is great. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and You the LORD has laid on him the Christ the iniquity of us all.  For our sake You made him, Jesus, who knew no sin, to that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from Evil. We do not ask that you take us out of the world, but that you keep us from the evil one. Restore us; let Your face shine, that we may be saved.  Help us take up the whole armor of God that we can withstand the schemes of the devil, praying at all times in the Spirit that we might keep alert and persevere.  For the glory of Your name, deliver us and atone for our sins, for Your name’s sake.

For Yours is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory forever and ever.  Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are your judgments and how inscrutable your ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” For from You and through You and to You are all things. To You be glory forever. Amen.

The Puritans had a saying that went something like this: “Pray God’s handwriting back to Him.”  That’s good advice for when we pray the Scriptures we can be sure that our prayer are in accordance with God’s character and will, not just random ramblings from our finite minds.  Below is the prayer I (Joey) prayed in our service yesterday based on Ephesians 1:3-14:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm.  You chose us in Christ before the ground of the world was laid to be holy and blameless before you; In your love you determined in advance to adoption us as your sons and daughters through Jesus Christ according to the good pleasure of your will, to the praise of your glorious grace.

Grace which you gave us in your Beloved Son through whose blood we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of Your glorious grace which you poured out on us in abundance.  In all wisdom and insight you made known to us the mystery of your will, according to your holy counsel, which you settled beforehand in Christ, in whom you will unite all things, thing in heaven and on earth.

In Jesus we obtained an inheritance, having been predestined to the purpose of the one who works out everything in accord with the counsel of his will, so that we would be a praise of his glorious grace!  We who were the first to hope in Christ, when we believed in the gospel of our salvation, have been sealed in Christ with the promised Holy Spirit; who is the down payment on what we will inherit when God redeems his own people to the praise of his glory!

We give you praise Father for you are the grand architect and designer of our creation and redemption.  We give you praise Jesus for you are the agent of our creation and redemption.  We give you praise Holy Spirit as you apply the work of creation and redemption to our hearts that we might know, praise, enjoy, and delight in Jesus the Christ.

When you don’t know what to pray, pray God’s Word back to him!

If it’s been a while, could it be that you are nibbling too much on the mediocre things of the world that you have no room left for the great things of God?  Here’s the way one pastor exposed this truth:  ”If you don’t feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great.” (John Piper, A Hunger For God)

May we all replace our nibbling with feasting!

Psalm 135:1–6 —

My dictionary defines rhythm as “movement or procedure with patterned recurrence of a beat, accent or the like.”  The score of life is not, or should not be, an endless blur of sixteenth-note intensities.  God wants us to follow a recurring pattern of intense work and then rest, intense work and then rest, and so forth.  Whatever view one takes of the Sabbath, surely the six days of work and the one day of rest embedded in the creation remain relevant in some sense.

Any routine of life that is unsustainable long-term cannot be of God.  He calls us to work.  But he also calls us to rest, in order to work most fruitfully.  What sets us apart is this.  We rest, in order to work; we do not work, in order to rest.  We who believe the gospel are not living for the weekend, but for The End.  In the meantime, we figure out rhythms of life that make fruitful labor sustainable.

Jani and I have just returned from a week in Chicago celebrating our fortieth anniversary.  It was one of those special times when the usual disciplines of life are temporarily suspended for the sake of renewal and celebration.  It was a time to sleep in, to buy my wife some nice things, to take it easy, to savor the goodness of God.  It really was refreshing.

Now we’re back in Nashville.  It’s time again for productive labor.  But the rhythm of God-created life will include more moments, on a less grand scale, of restful self-care.

We receive it all from the good hand of God.

In regards to the verse in Ephesians it says, “Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.”  I answered how this verse points us to the Word one way in the sermon; now let me come at it from another angle that you might find helpful.

Paul in Ephesians 5 is drawing parallels between drunkenness and being filled with the Spirit.  And how does one get drunk?  By drinking alcoholic things.  So how does one get filled with the Spirit?  By drinking ‘Spiritual things.’ But what exactly are ‘Spiritual things’? 1 Corinthians 2:10-14 gives us a crystal clear answer.

“These things [that is the glorious gospel] God has revealed to us through the Spirit.  For the Spirit searches everything even the depths of God.  For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”

Here we see the “natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit.” In context, the “things of the Spirit” is the Spirit-inspired Word of God (cf. 1:18-25).  So how do we drink ‘Spiritual things’?  By drinking deeply from the Word of God.

This truth is also made clear when we compare Ephesians 5:18-20 with Colossians 3:16-17:

“And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

By looking at these two verses we see that “being filled with the Spirit” and “letting the word of Christ dwell in you richly” have the exact same results.  Why?  Because the Spirit fills those up who “hear the word of Christ with faith” (Galatians 3:2).

Also, it’s important to note that prayer and Word, lead to filling of the Spirit as we obey.  We can’t be like the man in James who looks in the mirror but walks away and forgets and expect to be filled with the Holy Spirit.  For this reason, obedience also plays a role in our being filled with the Spirit.

If we disobey, we either “quench” the Spirit (Eph. 4:30) or “grieve” the Spirit (1 Thess. 5:19).  However, if we truly approach God in dependent prayer meditating upon His Word and repenting of our sins while trusting in Christ, we will be filled with the Spirit.  That’s exactly what Acts 5:30-32 tells us:

“But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.”

May we all be filled with the Spirit as we seek to advance God’s kingdom here in DC for the fame of Jesus’ name!!

Sermon Notes
Sermon Manuscript

Also, here are a couple of related resources:

• Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance
• The Mystery of the Holy Spirit
• Joy Unspeakable
• How to Be Filled with the Spirit

1. Recognize the spiritual battle. Conversation is not incidental. Words reveal the heart (Matt. 12:34). If people’s words are filled with worldly concerns, that’s because their hearts are filled with worldly concerns. Ultimately, only God the Holy Spirit can give the kind of spiritual life and growth which enables this kind of culture. So pray that he would.

This won’t happen by accident. It’s unnatural for us to speak of spiritual things not just because such matters are personal, but because we’re sinners, and sin likes to stay in the darkness (Jn. 3:19-20). So you can’t let your church culture just go with the flow—you have to constantly swim upstream.

2. Talk about the sermon immediately after the service.  Talk about God’s Word with each other right after the sermon.  It is entirely possible for the Word to fall along the path and for college football or for the weekly agenda to snatch it up and carry it off. So we want to discuss the sermon right after the close of the service.  Of course it’s allowable to discuss football, the weather, and the news after church. But it’s particularly strategic to discuss spiritual matters during the only time in the week when the entire church has come together in the same place and has just spent forty-five minutes listening to a sermon.

3. Pray through the main points of the sermon every week. In your prayers during the week, both individually and with other believers, pray through the sermon that you heard on the previous Sunday.

4. In discipling relationships, use the Bible and Christian books—or whatever it takes—as a third party. Many people who feel uncomfortable about discussing spiritual matters one-on-one will be more open if you add the Bible or a solid Christian book as the third member of your group. So read a chapter in the Bible or a book together and discuss that. Use it as a springboard into more personal matters.

5. Lead by example. Consistently model spiritual conversation. Share judiciously about your own struggles, challenges, and areas of growth. Tell others about how you have been applying the Word to those issues through your own daily devotions. Be transparent about your own spiritual life—a see-through leader is a powerful culture-shaping force.

6. Lead by example—through questions. One of the best ways to foster a culture of spiritual conversation in your church is to consistently and subtly force other people to do the talking. Ask questions like:

• “What are you reading in your quiet times?” (“Um…I haven’t been having a quiet time.” “Well, OK, let’s talk about that.”)
• How have you been growing spiritually lately?
• What are some sins you’ve been struggling with lately?
• What has God been teaching you lately?
• How’s your marriage?

Also for those looking for a Bible Reading Plan, here are a few suggestions:

• A Plan for Feeding on Christ in 2012
• The Bible Reading Plan for Shirkers & Slackers
• Essential 100 (an overview of the Bible in 100 selected readings, 50 from the OT & 50 from the NT)

If none of those suite your fancy, you can find more plans here and here.