“Gaining Clarity”

Thank you, Jenny.

If you've got your Bibles, I'd like you to find some words about this King we are here to worship in the Book of Colossians, Chapter 1 , if you would like to follow along in a pew Bible I think you can find that on page 983.  We're going to, in a few moments, get to a message dealing with the issues of gaining clarity.  Gaining clarity.  But before we do that, I would like for us to hear the voice of God in his Word speaking truth about this one who is King.

Colossians Chapter 1, beginning with verse 15:  As a matter of fact, I think I would like to drop back to verse 13 and interrupt part of Paul's prayer so you can make sure you understand your place in the context of this.

Col 1:13  He [that is God, through his Son, the Lord Jesus] has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,

Col 1:14  in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Col 1:15  He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

Col 1:16  For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities--all things were created through him and for him.

Col 1:17  And he [that is Jesus] is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Col 1:18  And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 

Col 1:19  For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,

Col 1:20  and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

Col 1:21  And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds,

Col 1:22  he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,

Col 1:23  if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

That is the one we serve and that is the one we call King, and I only read that for our hearing so that we might hear the Word of God to prepare our hearts and minds for some bit of gaining clarity.  It's easy to lose our focus these days, and before I walk right into that, there are a couple of things coming up in church I want to tell you about.  Some I'll remind you about at the end of the service. 

One, tonight, Rudy Vaughn is one of our own and he is a pilot who travels the world, and God has also called Rudy to the ministry of gospel evangelism.  He has provided him just an amazing number of contacts and one of the contacts that he has made is a Korean missionary in Korea who is now stateside and he is going to come by our church tonight and just tell us a little bit about what God's doing in Korea and particularly through their ministry, so I invite you to join us tonight to hear a bit about what God is doing through other people and other places that our church, through Rudy, has had a connection to.

On the first Sunday of November, one of our own, Dr. Kurt Wise, is going to be speaking in the morning service.  Now, Dr. Wise is directing the Center for Science and Theology and there may be an official name for it, I don't know, that's close enough, at Southern Seminary.  He also has connections and does work with and for the Answers in Genesis group, the Creation Museum.  You will find him to be very interesting as he talks about, as a scientist--now his degree is in science from Harvard, some little ill-known school somewhere over close to the East Coast.  And he's going to talk about the simplicity and the power of the gospel in this scientific age, and then in the evening, for 2 Sunday evenings, he'll lead a discussion because I know many of you have really high levels of interest in, okay, our Bible - we say God created the heavens and the earth.  Scientists say God doesn’t even exist and how do we reconcile those two things, and he'll guide us through some of that.

And then, there's another issue that's on the cutting edge that we have a privilege to take part in, and it won't happen until after the first of the year.  There is an issue going on in the Southern Baptist Convention that is causing very, very much unneeded alarm and I have to give credit to our new Director of Lifeway who used to be a professor at Southern Seminary, Dr. Tom Rainer.  He, I think, under the, with the help of a group called the Founders Ministries, and Southeastern Seminary, Dr. Tom Nettles, one of our own has been affiliated with the Founders Ministries since the day it was born and the issue they are going to discuss is Southern Baptists and Calvinism.  Strangely, Calvinism is one of those words that for some rings a word of warmth and love for Bible doctrines of grace.  For others it is a word that causes the hair to stand up on the back of their neck because they think it says things about God that are really strange.  We want to get rid of caricatures, of theological nonsense and get right down to what does the Bible say.  Dr. Tom Nettles has been invited to speak at that conference called "Building Bridges" that represents the whole of Southern Baptist leadership in churches to deal rightly and Biblically with those things.  It's going to be our privilege in a few weeks after the new year, we're going to have a series of Sunday nights, 6 or 7 of them, where Tom, a member of our church and professor at Southern Seminary and one of the best Baptist historians there is alive today, is going to take us through Baptist history and these doctrines of grace and help us understand as a church what they really mean; how do you really respond to them, and how then, does a church develop deep theological roots with a genuine Biblical outreach and practical productivity in this world. 

So those are just some things I want you to know about.  Then, one final thing, I know it sounds like I'm giving a string of commercials, I get paid for these later… This morning we're talking about gaining clarity.  No, I promote those things because I truly am excited about them.

I don't know about you but I lose clarity sometimes and when I lose clarity, it could be a number of reasons.  Probably the most common is when I get overly busy.  I have a very narrow one-track mind, though it runs all the time, I do best when I get one thing in front of me.  That's really an odd makeup to be a pastor, let me tell you because you never get one thing in front of you.  Rarely do you, anyway, so it's been my privilege to serve you for 14 years and I want my vision to be as clear as possible for your future.  If I am to have a torch that is lit so you can come and light your torch on Sunday morning, I want mine burning fully and burning brightly, so for the next 3 weeks, I'm going to spend some time clearing my vision as well as getting a little bit of rest.  We've had a few things in our family life, as you know, that have drained our physical energy this year.  I had severe back problems and right after that, the shingles, then Joie has had hers, everything's fine in our family, by the way.  They discovered that the only reason for Joie's blood pressure going from low to high was 27+ years of marriage to me! [Laughter] She does not have what we expected, a tumor on her adrenal gland  that her brother had, and she's doing great and so am I, so we're going to take some time, so that I had realized that the fuzzier my focus gets the faster I go.  I even preach fast when I'm fuzzy and I've been preaching really fast lately, lots of verbs in one sermon.  So, the trouble is the faster I run the less ground I cover, and I want to be able to see as clearly as I can see for you. 

Why?  I cannot think of a more important time in this church's present or past life to prepare us for the future.  Oldham County has done nothing but grow in the 14 years I've been here and I think it is very highly possible, even though there's a huge downturn in the housing market, just due to things that are happening in our locale, we could be on the verge of one of the greatest growth periods there is, but we need to realize that if the county did not grow another person for the next 10 years, we still have more work than our church and all the churches in the county can do. But it's not going to happen that way.  It's going to keep growing. We, as God's church, need to keep growing, deeper in theological truth, further in Biblical practice.

You know what that's going to mean, don't you?  I'm looking at your faces and you look just so comfortable this morning.  We've got these nice, firmly padded pews, bottom and back, that's really cool, isn't it? We've got nice lighting in here, we've got way too much air conditioning for the front half of the auditorium, not enough for the back so I would suggest you just switch every few Sundays.  The front side can complain about it being too cold and the back side can complain about it being too hot, and we'll just feel like everything is just fabulous around here. We've just got to serve food after every service and we'll qualify.

No, we've got things really good, we really do, except for the fact that every day we sit still and comfortable, our relationship to what the Lord has called us to do gets further and further and further and further apart.  I don't really want us to be comfortable because I don't think God wants us to be comfortable.  I don't want you to be comfortable in your own personal walk with Christ, because I think that's extremely dangerous.  I don't want our church to be comfortable in who we are in Oldham County and LaGrange, Kentucky because I think, are you ever comfortable in Jesus' presence? Do you ever get nervous in the head coach's presence when you played football? Or the principal when you had to go to his or her office?  Can you imagine going into the presence of the Living God?  I'm not comfortable there and I don't think he expects us to be comfortable in what he has called us to do.  There's got to be a flame burning that he fans into full flame. There's got to be a heart to know him, and a heart to know his people, and a heart to take his gospel message out, but I know us, we're people!  And if I don’t have somebody fanning the flame regularly for me, I will tend to grow stale and that's the last thing I would ever want us to be.  So, let's gain some clarity this morning. 

First, in review:

We learned of a couple of weeks ago about the blessing and the burden of the Bible.  The blessing and the burden of the Bible is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Now, I'm going to talk about some of these verses, I'm going to turn to some of these verses, but I have the text and I have the page.  The page is where you can find that verse in the pew Bible.  If you want to have your soul stirred up with the very few verses I have here, I would challenge you, not this morning, you can look at them all you want to this morning, but you don't have to, but you might want to write notes down because clarity is easily lost for God's children this side of heaven.  Why do you think he established what we call Communion or The Lord's Supper?  And he told us to do it repetitively until he comes again, to remind us of the very core of who he is, who we are, what he's done and that he's going to come back.  So, the blessing and the burden of the Bible, you find, you don't need to turn there unless you want to, in Genesis 12:2.  God chooses Abraham.  He calls Abraham and promises something to Abraham, Abraham believes him and its counted to him for righteousness.  He said, "Abraham, I am going to bless you," that's the blessing of the gospel.  And he said, "I'm going to bless you that you might be a blessing to all the nations of the world." That's the burden of the gospel.  It was never, it was NEVER given for us to take and think about "Oh, how sweet it is that God loves me so much!" Self-centeredness, my friend, is always sinful.  And self-centeredness about the gospel is doubly sinful.

What's the blessing of the burden? How's it stated in the New Testament?  I want you to look at 2 Corinthians Chapter 5, Verse 17, page 966 in the pew Bible.  2 Corinthians Chapter 5, verse 17. 

Now, you may be faster than me getting to your verses of scripture this morning because I'm preaching out of a brand new Bible.  It was a gift.  I was sitting by Tony Tabor in the Wednesday night sessions with Dr. Johnson.  And I looked over and he had an ESV Bible with large print and I could read it! [Laughter] And I said, "Where'd you get that?" and you know what, he went out and bought me one.  So, thank you Tony and Penny.

2 Corinthians Chapter 5, beginning with verse 17; the reason its slow getting there is all the pages aren't separated yet, they're still sticking together.

2 Corinthians Chapter 5, Verse 17: This is the blessing and the burden of the Bible put in New Testament terminology:

2Co 5:17  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

That is the blessing of the gospel, when you put your faith in Christ because he died for your sins, was buried and resurrected, you trust him to forgive you of your sins, give you eternal life, give you a home in heaven, make God your father, adopt you into his [God's] family, then you've become a new creation, on the spot, right then.  The old has passed away.  God looks at you in Christ and because he's done this, this is the description, Verse 18:

2Co 5:18  All this is from God, [it's not from us, it's from God] who through Christ reconciled us to himself [he took away our sin, he removed the enmity that was between us, he brought us together]  and gave us the ministry of reconciliation;

The blessing and the burden of the Bible.  He reconciled us and then gave us, as a gift, the ministry of reconciliation.  He goes on and clarifies…

2Co 5:19  that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, [what a blessing!] and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. [What a burden!]

2Co 5:20  Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

The blessing….

2Co 5:21  For our sake he made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

The blessing is we can know God through Christ.  The burden is once we know God through Christ, we become his ambassadors in this country called Earth, to take the gospel message.  How well are we doing?

Then we looked at the "If / Then" of the gospel.  This is one of the ways God teaches us.  Just briefly, because this was just last week, Philippians Chapter 2 says:

Php 2:1  So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy,

Php 2:2  complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.

Col 3:1  If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above.

If you have been risen with Christ, set your mind on things that are above and put to death your members or the sin in your life.  Put it to death.

1 Peter Chapter 1: says:

If you call on God as Father pass the time of your sojourning, your pilgrimage on earth in fear, worshipping in him because you know that God judges all things.

It would be silly to call God, Father, and live as if he weren't God or Father either one.  So, if these things are true then what will you do? You've got a blessing of the Bible, the gospel, the burden of the Bible, the gospel.  If the gospel is true, then this is how you live.

Then God gave us the indicative and the imperative.  Statements of indicative truth, imperative statements of command based upon that truth.  Exodus 20, you know that passage of scripture, that's The Ten Commandments.  God said, "I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt.  This is what I did, this is who I am; therefore, I want you to obey these commands.  Don't have any other Gods before me, don't make any graven images, do not lie, do not steal, honor your father and mother, all of those things are commanded based upon who God is and what he's done.

Deuteronomy Chapter 6, verses 4 and 5: The Sh'ma:

Deu 6:4  "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.

Deu 6:5  You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

What do I want you to do? I want you to hear me.  I want you to hear who I am so then you can do what you should do in relation to who I am.  Now, remember this is all gaining clarity.  Jesus said indicatively, truthfully, a statement of fact,

"All authority is given unto me, (in Matthew 28:18) in heaven and on earth."  That's why I don’t get real comfortable in Jesus' presence.

Now, there is a measure of comfort when I go to him and seek from his almighty arm forgiveness for my sin, comfort in his grace, an uplifting for the downcast because he is so mighty, but there is always that element of holy reverence that brings me to the place of comfortable discomfort in the presence of Christ. 

Mat 28:18  And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Mat 28:19  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, [This is true of me so this is what you should be doing.]

And then we saw the identity and the responsibility of the person who is a Christian. Peter said,

1Pe 2:9  But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, [You are a people of God's own possession.  You're the place where God dwells.]  a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim his excellencies.  of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

I can remember times in my Christian life to where there would be long stretches of time that if I said any prayer at all it would be the little prayer before the family meal in the evening.  Other than that, I was a practical atheist.  Have you ever been there?  Let's gain some clarity, can we?

Don't you think it's a bit odd that those people who have said, "I have placed my entire hope, all of my faith, on one who lived 2000 years ago, who died, who was buried, who has risen and ascended to the right hand of God, I have placed all my faith on him to give me life now, to forgive me of my sins now, to take me to heaven when I die or when he comes back, and I have bent my knee and I have proclaimed that He is Lord to the glory of God the Father," and then live as if we're not certain he's really there.  When we do that, we have lost clarity.  Now that's not a statement to make you feel guilty, that's a statement of truth.  And frankly, there are many pulpits and churches that aid you in that quest to forget God because we think he is here as our Heavenly Bellboy to just do for us and give us a happy life, even your best life now!  And, in case you don't get that hint as I've hinted several years ago, I think Joel Osteen is off his rocker!  He doesn’t preach the gospel! He tells people he wants to give them hope, and that's why the guy who interviewed him on 20/20 asked him, "Well, why didn't he mention God or Jesus in his new book?" "Well, I just want to give people hope."  How do you give people hope without Jesus?  You can't!  You're going to die and go to hell without Jesus!  You have no hope without him!  We have nothing to preach in the church except the gospel!  It's simple, it's plain, it's clear.  We don’t need to market the world and give them trinkets.  Wal-Mart's too good at that.  We don't need to feed the world, McDonald's is too good at that.  We may feed people, we may give them things, but all for the means of showing them the love of Christ, that we may then have an opportunity, as God opens the door, to share the gospel!  The church is God's agent to share the gospel!  And when we lose clarity, the church will interestingly do everything but share the gospel. 

The blessing and the burden, an If and a Then, an indication of truth and an imperative command.  Our identity: We're God's dwelling place.  Our responsibility:  To proclaim the glory of the one who called us out of darkness into light.

So, this morning, how about some simple clarity.  First, do you know who you are? I say this, whether you are Christian or not, to begin with, because all of us are the same.  You did not get on this earth by your own accord.  You are not here because you decided you would be.  Every single one of us is a divine creation.  Many people on the earth, many people, still believe that.  And many people hold that truth in their mind and live exactly the opposite of that truth.  Sometimes our religion is nothing more than a psychological feel-good rabbit's foot.  Haven't you ever noticed how good you feel when you get in a conversation about God with those who want to talk about God? But how shut our mouth is when we're in places where it's just inappropriate to be bringing up the name of Jesus?  It just doesn’t make sense to me and I've done it in my own life! 

Who am I?  Genesis 1:  "God said, Let us make man in our image and let him rule over the birds of the air, the beasts of the field."

So, God created man and woman, male and female he created them.  He made us, we are made.  You might want to find Psalm 139, please.  That's on page 522 in the pew Bible, Psalm 139.  This is written about you because it's written about every human being that has ever lived.  DO you know who you are?

By the way, did you know the Bible says, "And it is appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgment." Did any of you hear the story and I can't remember the state it happened in, one of the homes destroyed by one of the recent tornadoes, there was an infant about 15 months old in its crib.  It was lifted out of the house about 30 or 40 feet in the air and set back down.  And a neighbor heard the whimpering, crying infant and found it underneath it's upside-down crib, underneath the mattress with almost not even a scar.  Why did that baby not die?  It is appointed unto man once to die!  There is no such thing in God's eyes as a premature death. It is to us and we can acknowledge that because we're not ready.  I've never met anybody whose parents' death wasn't a premature death, even if they were 95.  But, from God's perspective, whether we die at 5 or 95, it's not premature because He's God!

Psalm 139: 13

Psa 139:13  For you [God] formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb.

Psa 139:14  I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.

Psa 139:15  My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

[You know, long before ultrasound, God knew whether you were going to be a girl or a boy when you were born]

Psa 139:16  Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

Some simple clarity is, my friend, you exist because God deemed that you would exist.  You are here not by random chance.  You are here not by some evolutionary ladder.

[By the way I was at the Zoo this week and every time I go to the zoo I always spend a lot of time at the wooly monkeys, the gorillas, and the orangutans.  Frankly because I love them.  And secondly because I always get a kick out of how highly intelligent people want to work so hard to make us kin to such beasts. Have you ever watched them behave?  If you did some of the things they did in public, you'd get in real trouble!  [Laughter]  They ain't my cousins.  I've got some rowdy cousins, they ain't none of them orangutans. [Laughter]

Boy, I got off track there, somehow, didn't I?]

You were made, my friend.  You are human.  You have breathed into you the breath of life that only humans have.  You are the pinnacle of God's creation.  You are the only thing here made in the image of God.  That's why you have a sentimental judgment in your soul.  That's why you have this essence of right and wrong, something in you without anybody even teaching you, but it's broken beyond measure because of the fall.  That's why God came into the world to redeem those he had created and make us into his image again, but you and I, all humans are created, and yet we suck in the air that God made, we look at the beauty that God designed, we do everything as if, "Oh, it's just supposed to be there for us because that's the way life is."  No it's not!  Every breath we breathe, every tree we see turn to brilliant red this fall is a gift of God!  And we gain clarity when we slow down and realize the world and not one iota depends on us, it depends on Him!  So you need to know who you are.

All of us are created. All of us need to be recreated in the gospel because we have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and there's this huge gap. To be saved you need to bow your knee to Jesus and proclaim who he is, that he is LORD, receive what he can do, he's savior to you, he can give you new life, but sometimes I think we've lost clarity on who Jesus is.  Jesus is fully God, Jesus is fully man.  He's the second person in the Trinity, coequal and co-eternal with God, the Father and God, the Holy Spirit.  But in practical sense, how can we say who Jesus is?

1 Corinthians Chapter 8, verse 6, you'll want to turn to these, please.  Page 956 in the pew Bible.  1 Corinthians Chapter 8, verse 6.  This is the most interesting verse, tucked away into a very pastoral problem the Apostle Paul had in the church at Corinth. It was a pagan city, they were offering meat sacrifices to idols, some of these people were saved out of the idol's temple, they were used to going to the meat market and after they sacrificed the meat they'd sell it in the market or sell it in the restaurant there connected to the temple, and these new Christians were saying, "Well, can we eat this meat sacrificed to idols?" And Paul says, "There is no such thing as another God, idols are really demons." "Can I really eat that meat?" And he brings simple clarity in proclaiming who Christ is in 1 Corinthians 8, verse 6:

I'll read verse 5 so I don't interrupt the sentence:

1Co 8:5  For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth--as indeed there are many "gods" and many "lords"--

1Co 8:6  yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

That is a New Testament explanation of Old Testament Israel's Sh'ma!  Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one."  And these people understood that.  Paul was saying "Jesus is God.  We exist through him and we are from him and we are for him."

Look at the last chapter in that book, 1 Corinthians 16: 22.  I just want to show you a little something that's hidden away well for us there.  I'm going to read mine and then I'm going to ask you if some of your translations did different than my Bible, and it's okay that they did, you'll see why in just a minute.

Verse 22:

Co 16:22  If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed. Our Lord, come!

Does anybody's Bible, when you get to there, just have a word there? Just a single word? What is it?  Maranatha!  Now, we have to translate that word because I would say most of you who read that word probably don't know what it means.  What it means is, "Our LORD, Come."  But it's not a Greek word, it's an Aramaic word.  These were not Aramaic-speaking people Paul was writing to.  They were Greek-speaking people.  Paul was saved a little later than the very first Christians.  He was transformed by God into a missionary to the Gentiles.  The Christian-early Jewish community spoke Aramaic. They didn't need the word, Maranatha, mar is Aramaic for LORD, come!  They didn't need that translated.  So this had become a word like our word, Hallelujah, praise the LORD. Or the word baptism.  That's really a Greek word, that's not an English word, it's just transliterated.  He didn't need to give them the meaning.  They knew when he said maranatha he was saying, "Our LORD, come!"

Now, when they spoke the word mar¸LORD, they used it to refer to Jehovah God of the Old Testament.  But we know in this context, Paul used it and the Corinthians understood it, to say, "Jesus, LORD, come!"

What's my point?  Do you know who Jesus is?  He's the God of all the universe. You can do a Bible study on Yahweh and all his character traits in the Old Testament and you will find in the New Testament that Jesus had every single one of those.

Romans 10:13, we'll look at that and then we close.   Romans 10:13 - this is for clarity.  It's a simple little verse, New Testament, right in the middle of confessing Christ as LORD.  By the way, when he says, Jesus is LORD, he says Jesus is Kurios.  Over 1600 times in the Old Testament when they translate it into the Greek, they use the word, Kurios, LORD, to translate Jehovah, or to represent Jehovah God.  And when Paul says the proclamation that you are to make is to say, "Jesus is LORD," they understood what he was saying, Jesus is God!  And then, in Romans 10:13, he says it strangely this way - he says:

Rom 10:13  For "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."