Christian husband, father of 3 and bi-vocational pastor
Preacher: Pastor Ray
Why is the book of Jonah in Scripture? What is the main takeaway from Jonah? To answer this, let’s defer to Jesus. He gives us the answer as recorded by the gospel writers. Today, we’ll focus on Matthew 12:38-50.
Text: Phil 3:1-11
Thank you for sharing your salvation testimonies with all of us. In some ways, listening to a testimony can be more helpful at times than listening to a sermon because in a testimony, you are hearing someone describe how the Word of God came alive for them. I love listening to testimonies because it reminds me that listening to the Word of God is not like listening to a lecture by one of your professors. As a student listening to a lecture, you gain some facts, but that’s about it. And I hate to break it to you, but the vast majority of what you learn in class will have absolutely zero relevance for your life outside of the classroom.
I am an extreme example of this. I was an Anthropology major and I learned about various cultures and evolution and archaeology and my career was in IT and software consulting. So for me, my major had absolutely no correlation with my entire working career. Everything I did in my working career, I learned on the job or taught myself. The facts I learned in the classroom had zero connection with my real life.
Suppose I became an anthropologist and I was like Indiana Jones and I went to the jungles of Africa in search for fossils or the Missing Link or the Holy Grail and there happened to be a very close connection between what I learned in my major and my profession. Still, this is not the same thing as someone who listens to the Word of God. The difference is, in a classroom, you are learning principles while in a church, you are getting to know a Person. For believers, when 2 or 3 are gathered, Christ promises to be in our midst. That means, Christ is here in our midst right now. Do you believe this? For some of you, you may treat service like it’s a lecture. Just give me some facts. Give me a feel good message of God’s love to lessen my guilt. Teach me some concrete principles so that I can put them into practice in the coming week.
This approach is all wrong. As children of God, we should look forward to coming to service because we get to encounter the love of our live, Jesus Christ. Don’t just go through the motions on Sundays. Prepare yourself Saturday night. Get good rest. We have an afternoon service so prepare yourself Sunday morning to come here and meet the Savior and lover of your soul. And then that attitude will trickle down into every day, Monday through Saturday. It is highly unlikely that you will have a vibrant relationship with Jesus Monday through Saturday if your attitude on Sunday is, I just need to get through the service and get back to my problem set or get back to the football game. Those who come here every Sunday to worship and connect with and savor the Savior, I am willing to bet that these are the people who are much more likely to demonstrate a heart that seeks after God throughout the week.
Salvation testimonies are great reminders that God wants a personal relationship with His people. Religion is about principles and facts, like a lecture. Christianity is a relationship with a real, living Person. God the Father who sends His Son because he loves us. God the Son, Jesus Christ, who dies and is resurrected, to redeem a people lost in sin. God the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, who convicts us of sin and points us to the Savior and who keeps us on track until we cross the finished line to glory.
Because Christianity is about a relationship with a Triune God, who is a real Person, it is unlike a religion and it’s unlike a lecture. In a lecture, you learn facts and these facts might stimulate your brain or even land you a job in a related profession. Like a Physics major becoming a Physics professor. But what you learn in lecture and what you end up doing for a living has its limitations. A lecture or a profession will not change who you are at the core. If you are an insecure Physics student who needs to prove himself through academic accomplishments, you may become a Physics professor someday, but you will still be insecure and you will seek to prove yourself through your research.
Likewise, you can be a religious person, a churchgoer for decades, but religion will not change who you are at the core. Christianity is not a religion and it’s not lecture because you are dealing with a Person and as you interact with this Person, you and I change.
All 4 people who shared their salvation testimonies testified that before they met Christ, they were selfish or stubborn or ambitious or rude, but by God grace, they met Jesus. They were born again of the Spirit. They began crucifying their flesh, their pride, their desires, their appetites. And God began to change them from the inside out.
Phil 3:1-11 is Paul’s salvation testimony. Paul begins in verses 1-2 talking about the “dogs.” It sounds offensive to call someone a dog. But the point Paul is trying to make is that these leaders were not spiritual leaders who were merely a bit off, slightly off center in their theology. Or a bit overly zealous in their methodology. These were dogs, or those outside of the faith. They were evil workers, workers on the opposite side of good, workers who were essentially controlled by demonic forces unbeknownst to them.
What was their crime? They stressed physical circumcision as a prerequisite to salvation. Why circumcision? Because the Jewish people had participated in this tradition of circumcision for centuries and so when these Jewish people learned of Christianity, they blended their past tradition with the gospel. In their minds, this practice of circumcision became inseparable from the gospel of grace. It wasn’t grace alone, or faith alone that saved lost sinners. It was the gospel + circumcision. Or grace + circumcision. Or faith + tradition. They taught that faith alone and grace alone were insufficient to save. Faith and grace are nice, but in order to really be accepted by us in this community, you need to be circumcised.
It’s like if I made it mandatory that in order to be saved at the Hill, everyone here must tithe 10% and show up early to church to cook on Sundays. Otherwise, you might in fact be saved but we wouldn’t treat you that way. We’d keep you out of the inner circle. We’d look down on you. That’s a distortion of the gospel. Or, suppose I stopped talking about sin and I only emphasized God’s love. God loves you. Sin, what sin? Don’t worry about sin. Think positively. If you add anything to the gospel or take anything away from the gospel, you no longer have the gospel that saves.
The false teachers were not presenting the gospel. They were presenting religion. Be circumcised and I will accept you. Religion says, I obey therefore I am accepted. The gospel says, I’m accepted therefore I obey. The two may look very similar on the surface, but one leads to death and the other eternal life. If you reverse the order and say, you need to do this and this and this in order for me to accept you, you no longer have a gospel that sets people free and saves them, but instead, you are left with a religion that binds people and leads them straight to hell.
The teachers who are emphasizing circumcision might seem like they care and might seem like they are doing everything for God, but they are working on the side of evil. They are legalists that bind people with rules and tactics of manipulation and pressure so that the people under them no longer serve out of gratitude for what Christ did, but they serve out of guilt and fear that they will be ostracized by the group.
What was the point of the physical circumcision anyway? Physical circumcision of the Old Testament was a necessary, preliminary step in God’s redemptive plan to set apart a people for Himself, but the practice of physical circumcision was meant to be a pointer to the future spiritual circumcision, a circumcision of the heart by the Spirit of God, and this Spirit of God was ushered in by Christ’s death on the cross.
Phil 3
3 For we are the circumcision, the ones who serve by the Spirit of God, boast in Christ Jesus, and do not put confidence in the flesh…
Circumcision is not something you do in order to be accepted. We should never put confidence in our flesh or what we can do. Instead, we put our confidence in Christ and what He did for us. We are accepted in His sight not because we are perfect or because we did so much, far from it. We are accepted by a holy God purely because of Christ. Salvation is a gift. You receive it and you can be fully confident that God accepts you. He loves you. And because you are accepted fully, you can obey. Never the other way around.
1) Fruit bearing is gradual.
Paul, why does he use the word “fruit”? Why not say traits? He’s using an analogy of botanical growth and it speaks to the rate of growth. Bearing fruit is as gradual as the growth rate of a blade of grass. Can you see a blade of grass growing while it is happening? Of course, not. Growth is gradual. If you expand the analogy to people, take for example a young boy or girl. For a parent who sees their child every day, you think that your child has grown, but you are not sure because from one day to the next, you can’t tell. The growth is so small, so gradual that you can’t see it. But grandparents who see grandchildren once or twice a year, they can notice right away that the kids have grown several inches taller.
Growth is gradual. So we need to be patient. In terms of spiritual growth, we don’t often see dramatic change. There are some exceptions like Apostle Paul who seemed to blossom overnight. But for the vast majority of us, there is slow growth. There are long stretches of winter. But there are also seasons of growth in the springtime.
2) Fruit bearing is gradual and it’s mysterious.
For humans, there is no formula for growth. It’s part nature, our gene pool, and it’s part nurture, what we eat, how much sleep we get, our environment. We can’t self-generate physical growth. You can drink 4 cups of milk and sleep 10 hours a day, but if your parents are under 5 foot, chances are, you will never play in the NBA. We can’t will growth, even physical growth. How much more we are utterly powerless to grow ourselves spiritually. It’s the fruit OF THE SPIRIT. The Spirit does the growth and we can’t fully explain it. It’s mysterious. No growth, nothing, nothing, week after week, then suddenly, a little bud breaks through the soil, a little shoot, a sign of life.
3) Fruit bearing is gradual, it’s mysterious and it’s internal.
There is a difference between mechanical growth and organic growth. Mechanical growth is external and organic growth is internal. For example, you can make a pile of bricks. And the pile may be growing, but it is not growing organically. It’s mechanical growth to put a brick on top of another brick and watch the pile grow. It’s not the same as the way a child grows.
The spiritual fruit of love, for example, comes organically from the inside out. 1 Cor 13 – the point of this chapter is that you can have all these external giftings, but if you are harsh, if you’re rude, then the bottom line is, you’re not loving. 1 Cor 13, Matt 7, Gal 5 – God is God so he can use your gifts to save people even while you are not saved. Did you know that? God can use a donkey to speak to you. If all you have is external change or mechanical change, God can still use your life to achieve his purposes. But in the end, Jesus will say, I never knew you. If people’s lives are being changed through you, through your ministry, but you yourself are not being changed organically, spiritually, on the inside, stop everything you’re doing and run to Jesus. Ministry can be a sign of true spiritual life, but it can also be a leaf.
Recall the fig tree we studied at the end of Matthew a few months ago. The fig tree had many leaves, but no figs, no fruit. In fig trees, the figs come out and then the leaves. Most other trees, the leaves come out and then the fruit or flower. But it’s the complete reverse in the case of fig trees. The presence of leaves assumes or presupposes that figs will be there. Because it had leaves, the tree was advertising, come get your figs. Jesus was hungry and seeing the fig tree with leaves, he understandably goes up to it looking for a fig newton snack. But he finds nothing. No fruit. He was deceived.
Frustrated, he curses the fig tree. It was not fig season, meaning it was unnatural growth for this fig tree to display leaves in the first place. This figless, leafy fig tree was a freak of nature and Jesus used this as an object lesson for the nation of Israel. They had many leaves of religion but no fruit and soon God’s judgment would be upon them.
We have to heed the warning. Obedience to God is good. External acts where you are trying to love others is good. Ministering to others is necessary, but these things can be leaves. If you are not being changed on the inside, you don’t know whether or not you have true salvation. I’m not saying you are not saved, but you have no way of knowing for sure.
4) Fruit bearing is gradual, it’s mysterious, it’s internal and it’s symmetric.
Notice that it says in Gal 5:22, the fruit of the Spirit, not the fruits. This was the wildest thing when I learned this. I never saw this in all my years as a Christian until a couple of years ago. The subject is singular and the predicate is plural. Did you ever notice that? What is going on here? Why is Paul breaking the rules of grammar?
Jonathan Edwards wrote a book entitled “Charity and Its Fruits.” He introduces a word in his book that helps unlock the mystery of Gal 5:22. It’s a word that you might know if you are a Microsoft Excel power user. The word is “concatenate.” In Excel, there is a concatenate function which joins 2 or more words or strings together. The graces of Christianity are concatenated, or linked together, concatenated or connected.
Listen to what Edwards says–
“True thankfulness is the exercise of love to God on occasion of his goodness to us. So there is love in a true and childlike fear of God; for a childlike fear differs from a slavish fear, for a slavish fear has no love in it. And all these three graces of love, humility, and repentance, are implied in gracious childlike submission to the will of God. And so weanedness from the world, and heavenly-mindedness, do consist mainly in the three graces of faith, hope, and love… Love and humility, again, are the graces wherein consists meekness toward men. And so it is love to God, and faith, and humility, that are the ingredients of Christian patience and contentment with our condition, and with the allotments of providence toward us. Thus it appears that all the graces of Christianity are concatenated and linked together, so as to be mutually connected and mutually dependent.” (p. 274-75)
Edwards starts by talking about thankfulness. We are thankful out of a sense of God’s love and goodness toward us. So a thankful heart is concatenated or connected to God’s love and His goodness. An incorrect pairing is love of God and a slavish fear of God. Those two don’t go together. They are not concatenated or connected. Perfect love drives out fear so love and fear are never linked.
Then, Edwards talks about being weaned from the world. Not earth bound but heaven bound. Such a person has faith, hope and love. Being freed from earth and having our minds set on heaven are concatenated or connected to faith, hope and love. Faith because you are living for what you cannot see instead of what you can see. Hope because hope is not consumed with what’s happening right in front of me but is future-oriented. And love because in the new heaven and the new earth, only love remains because faith has become sight and hope has become actualized because we are in the presence of God.
According to Edwards, all the graces are concatenated–love of God, our faith in Him, humility, patience, contentment with His provisions–these are all mutually connected and mutually dependent.
Let me read you one more quote from the book, “Charity and Its Fruits”–
“They are all communicated in the same work of the Spirit, namely, in conversion. There is not one conversion of the soul to faith, and another conversion to love to God, and another to humility, and another to repentance, and still another to love to man; but all are produced by one and the same work of the Spirit, and are the result of one and the same conversion, or change of the heart. And this proves that all the graces are united and linked together, as being contained in that one and the same new nature that is given us in regeneration. It is here as it is in the first generation — that of the body, in which the several faculties are communicated in one and the same generation; the senses of seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, and smelling, and so the powers of moving, breathing, etc., all being given at the same time, and all being but one human nature, and one human life, though diversified in its modes and forms. It is further true of the Christian graces.” (p. 276)
Edwards likens spiritual birth to physical birth. When you are born physically, you are not born in stages. In 9 months, the baby plops out. The baby is fully born at that point. And the baby’s senses are given in one shot. You are not born with only eyes and then when you turn 1 year old, the mouth grows. That would be a horror movie. A healthy baby is born with two eyes, two ears, a nose. The 5 senses are given in one shot. Likewise, when it comes to spiritual birth, you are not born in stages. You are not born of the Spirit with only humility and no repentance. Or only love for God without having faith in Him. Or only love for God and zero love for your fellow man. You are born in one shot and all these graces–love for God, love for neighbor, humility, repentance, faith–these are all given at once. You might not start out with a lot of love for God or a lot of faith, but all the ingredients should be there. All 9 aspects of the fruit of the Spirit are given altogether upon spiritual birth. And all 9 aspects ought to grow simultaneously, there is symmetry. The 9 aspects are like a cluster of grapes that grows altogether, simultaneously, if in fact the source of the growth is the Spirit of God.