Thursday, March 2, 2017

"Keeping in Step" - Doug Rehberg

Some call him the new Oswald Chambers. Others say he’s written the best devotional on the market today. I love what one reviewer said after reading his New Morning Mercies, “…Paul David Tripp aims to energize Christian readers with the most potent encouragement imaginable: the gospel.”

Listen to what he writes on February 23rd when he asks the probing question: “Why do we say we place our hope in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ and yet practically ask the law to do what only grace can accomplish?”

It’s done every day in Christian homes around the world. Well-meaning parents, zealous to see their children doing what is right, ask the law to do in the lives of their children what only grace can accomplish. They think that if they have the right set of rules, the right threat of punishment, and consistent enforcement, their children will be okay. In ways these parents fail to understand, they have reduced parenting to being a law-giver, a prosecutor, a jury, and a jailer. They think that their job is to do anything they can to shape, control, and regulate the behavior of their children. And in their zeal to control behavior, they look to the tools of threat (“I’ll make you afraid enough that you’ll never do this again.”), manipulation (“I’ll find something you really want and tell you that I’ll give it to you if you obey.”), and guilt (“I’ll make you feel so bad, so ashamed, that you’ll decide to not do this again.”).

This way of thinking denies two significant things that the Bible tells us. The first is that before sin is a matter of behavior, it is always a matter of the heart. We sin because we are sinners. For example, anger is always an issue of the heart before it is an act of physical aggression. This is important to recognize because no human being has the power to change the heart of another human being. The second is that if threats, manipulation, and guilt could create lasting change in the life of another person, Jesus would not have had to come. So this way of thinking denies the gospel that we say we hold dear. It really does ask the law to do what only God in amazing grace is able to accomplish. If you deny the gospel at street level, you will attempt to create by human means what only God can create by powerful grace, and it will never lead you anywhere good.

Thankfully, God hasn’t left us to our own power to change. He meets us with transforming grace and calls us to be tools of that grace in his redemptive hands. He lifts the burden of change off our shoulders and never calls us to do what only he can do. So we expose our children to God’s law and faithfully exercise authority while we seek to be tools of heart change in the hands of a God whose grace is greater than all the sin we’re grappling with.

It’s not just parents who endow the law with powers it can never have; it’s rife in the Church today. But thankfully Paul suffers from no such parental malpractice. As he writes to his “children in the faith” he never fails to lay the entire burden of heart change on the person and work of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, even in a text like the one we will examine this week, Paul underscores the unique power of the pure, unadulterated gospel.

The title of this section of Paul’s letter is a perfect give-away, “Walk by the Spirit”. Unlike the legalists, when Paul juxtapositions two entirely different ways of living, he unquestionably credits one to the work of the flesh, and the other to the work of the Spirit of God.

We will only begin our examination of this great text this week, but we will clearly see the  difference between the old human heart and the new one that the Spirit is producing in us.

In preparation for Sunday’s message, “Keeping in Step”, you may wish to consider the following:

  1. How does Paul arrive at his conclusion that true obedience is a function of the work of the Holy Spirit in a life?
  2. In what way are the desires of the flesh and the desires of the Spirit opposed to each other?
  3. What is different about the work of the Holy Spirit after the resurrection of Jesus?
  4. Why does Jesus say what He does in John 16:7?
  5. What does the word, “walk”, mean in verse 16?
  6. Is the list of “works of the flesh” Paul cites in verses 19-21 original with him?
  7. What is meant by his warning in verse 21? Does this mean that if you refrain from these things you will inherit the Kingdom of God?
  8. What does Jesus’ warning in Mark 7:20-21 add to our understanding of what Paul is saying?
  9. How are both lists (verses 19-21 & 22-23) a product of the human heart?
  10. What is the role of the Holy Spirit in fruit production? 
See you Sunday as we gather at the Table.