Category: Christianity

Armor Up

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Samarai armor

This past Sunday I preached the second message out of the Armor of God in Ephesians 6. The critical truth of this armor is two-fold. First, this is God’s armor, God’s strength and God’s protection for us. Secondly, knowing that it’s imperative that we have it to protect us from the Devil’s schemes, we must put it on. That’s our part. So the question arises; how do you put on the armor? Here’s a brief explanation of all six pieces of armor Paul describes in Ephesians 6:

  1. Truth
    • There’s no value in unapplied truth. Jesus said, “and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32) Seek the truth but put on the armor of truth by applying it.
  2. Righteousness
    • Putting on this piece of armor is as much about what you don’t do. Remember, that our righteousness does not come by way of anything we can do. Only true righteousness is imputed (put on us) by God through Jesus. Paul wrote, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21) How do you put on the armor of righteousness? Stop trying to be righteous on your own. (We mostly do this through religious yet un-scriptural works.) God is not impressed by us, He’s impressed when He sees the Son’s righteousness on us by faith.
  3. Gospel (Good News) of peace
    • Even in the midst of the spiritual battle that Paul warns us about, and the one that we know’s going on deep down, we can  have peace. How? Jesus said, “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) Jesus promised that we can have peace, deep, soul-quenching peace even in the midst of the battle; in Him.
  4. Faith
    • This piece of armor deflects the “fiery darts” of the devil. How do we have it? By continually and deliberately placing the full weight of our faith in Jesus’ ability and not our own. That’s what faith is. So, continue in the process to which Jesus has called you and learn to take faith from your own ability and place it in Christ.
  5. Salvation
    1. I know what you’re thinking; how do you put on salvation? Salvation is of the Lord! That is correct, it is. You put it on, not in any way trying to save yourself, but living as though it matters. You put on salvation by remembering that there’s more to life than just this life. The Apostle John said, “For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.” (1 John 2:16) If you’re only tied to the stuff of this world, Satan will use that against you. Make sure you’re tied to the next life, store up your treasure there as you live fully here.
  6. The Word
    • This is how God instructs in truth. Just like the armor of truth, it must be applied. But, you will never apply it if you don’t read it. Whatever you do, don’t let everything you know, or even most of what you know about the Bible be second hand. Read it for yourself.

Make sure you put on the whole armor today and live in the protection and security of the Lord!

Below is a link the the full sermon from Sunday:

http://www.viennabaptistchurch.org/sermon_audio/Full-%20Part%2019.mp3

Believer is as Believer Does

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Like a lot of movies, if you ask your friends what they think about the movie “Forrest Gump” you’ll hear one of two reactions. They either love it or hate it.

Regardless of what you think of the movie, there is one line that Forrest uses several times that makes a lot of sense. Any time Forest is asked if he’s stupid he answers with the famous line, “Stupid is as stupid does.” What he was saying was that someone only could call him stupid if he was doing stupid things.

Biblically, I can assume this statement when it comes to a true believer. You can do it to. If someone walks up and asks you if you’re a believer (by that I mean a true believer in Jesus Christ) you could answer, “believer is as believer does.”

The only way to truly know if someone is a believer is if it is lived out of their life. (Church attendance is not a way to know if someone is a true believer by the way.)

Jesus said it this way in the context of spotting false prophets:

“You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.” (Matthew 7:16-18)

Both James and Paul later write according to this teaching of Jesus. Paul states in Galatians 5 that Spiritual “fruit”, the fruit of the life of a believer, is as obvious as the “fruit” of the flesh.

“If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.” (Galatians 5:25)

James teaches that it’s important that believers “be doers of the word, and not hearers only.” (James 1:22)

Jesus, Paul and James are not teaching that you should act a certain way to try to “look like” a believer. As a matter of fact, the Bible has a term for that too; hypocrite. What is true, however, is that both you and those around you will know whether or not your a believer by what you do. Believer is as believer does.

You’ll never see me try this illustration in a sermon but here’s a video excerpt by Francis Chan that delivers this question: how many are true believers? Take a look:

What’s a Christian? (Part 4)

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I read the story in Acts 10 this morning about Cornelius the Centurion and his request for Peter to come and tell them, in Cornelius’ mind, whatever Peter needed to tell them. Peter had the greatest message to tell in the history of the world and Cornelius had a chance to hear it!

Ever since I preached a sermon from Matthew 13 several months ago asking the question, can you hear Jesus speaking? Do I want to hear what Jesus has to say? I have been trying to evaluate in myself how much drive and desire I really have to hear Him. I could picture in my mind all these people who were looking for their Messiah, but when He was there, they didn’t listen; they didn’t even have ears to hear! Scary!

It seems that we are in a culture, a church culture, where few seem worried about what God says or wants, or wants to say. Even in the church I pastor, I see people who say they’re Christ followers yet their decisions on their involvement, and even church membership, seem to be made without regard to what Jesus is wanting or saying. Usually, it comes down to whether things are done the way they want or whether it’s the right program, or the right program on the right day, or the right program on the right day at the right time.

I wonder if this is just a symptom of the real problem, which is, a lack of desire to actually hear God speak through His word. I wonder if the problem is really just a matter of familiarity.

Doesn’t it seem like our human nature just causes us to want things we can’t or don’t have and think of that which we do have as no big deal?

I wonder if this is the reason it seems so many, who call themselves Christians, don’t read their Bible with regularity and don’t seem to allow Jesus’ desires and Word to factor into decisions of church attendance, membership and even worship.

Anyway…..

As I was reading Acts 10 this morning, I found myself wanting to feel like Cornelius. Can you imagine wanting to hear God speak so badly? I don’t just mean “so badly” that he would send for Peter but Cornelius had such an expectation of what would be said that he assembled “his relatives and his close friends.” Can you imagine? Cornelius just knew that God was going to speak through Peter so he gathered everyone he knew and loved!

I want that kind of desire to hear the Word speak!

So, I want to be careful with my next answer to the question of What’s a Christian? I want to say, “A Christian is one who is driven to hear their Savior speak.” But, I know there are many Christians, who like me, at times struggle with this. So, here’s my statement:

A Christian is a person who wants to here their Master speak. This, at times, culminates in a prayer asking God to give a desire to hear Him. Lord, please give me ears to hear! A believer is someone who cares about what Jesus has to say.

“And he said to me, ‘Son of man, stand on your feet, and I will speak with you.’” (Ezekiel 2:1)

What’s a Christian? (Part 3)

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This is part three of the series, how many parts there will be I don’t know. But, it’s fun just to continue to write though I’m confident the subject will never be exhausted.

My desire is to find, Scripturally, what a Christ follower is and what one isn’t. I’m positive that I’m growing in my understanding that what we in the American Christian culture call Christianity, in ways, does not measure up to what Jesus would call it. So, I continue my pursuit to find out what Jesus wants me to be, in Him.

I preached a sermon last Sunday from the book of Ephesians, and the text in chapter 4 brought me to what I think is a pretty major conclusion. (My text was Ephesians 4:17-24)

The point that jumps out at me the most is when Paul writes to, “put on the new self” in verse 24. This after a lot of language explaining that our old life, old thoughts, old drives and old wisdom are worthless for the pursuit of this new life in Christ. Worse than that, the old life is actually a major rub, a stark contrast, against the new, Spiritual life.

Here’s the problem. Widely in Christianity, and I think in my own life too, we’ve reduced our faith in Christ to learning a set of principles and trying to apply or live up to them.

Please know this truth. Jesus cannot be reduced down to a set of rules to follow or reduced down to some kind of philosophical salve that’s used as a momentary relief to the pain of life. He’s much more than that! Christianity that defines itself as a new principle to learn and then to apply which continues like the instructions on the back of the shampoo bottle; lather, rinse and repeat, is a painful substitute for real faith and a true relationship with Christ.

So what is Paul’s “put on the new life?” He speaks of this “putting on” also in Romans “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” (Romans 13:14)

Paul’s statement isn’t that we would have Jesus as a proverbial monkey on our back but that we’d have the connection to Him that He desires. In my estimation, Paul’s “put on Jesus” is equivalent to Jesus’ “I am the Vine, you are the branches.” (See John 15:1-5) The key to this new life is not leaning and applying new principles, it’s simply about abiding in the Vine; in Jesus. That is the very thing Jesus said we must do. He never said, “learn and apply principles from my word,” He said, “Abide in me!”

What is a Christian?

A Christian is not someone who is trying learn something about Jesus that my help out in this life, though learning Jesus’ principles certainly do. A Christian is a person who is learning Jesus and learning by the Word and by His Spirit how to truly, fully abide in Him.

What’s a Christian? (Part 2)

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This is part two of a blog series in which I intend to investigate, biblically, the marks of a Christian. I want to encourage you to join the conversation in the comments area at the bottom of each post.

The reason I want to take some time with this discussion is simply because I’m a pastor in the Bible Belt which is a culture in which the definition of a Christian is very confused. So may believe that a Christian is simply a person who goes to church or a person raised by people who go to church. (Christians do, and should, go to church but church attendance and worship is a fruit, not a cause.)

I was inspired by some thoughts as I read Oswald Chambers’, My Utmost for His Highest, this morning which led me to make a second defining statement. Here’s what He spoke:

“It is possible to take the forgiveness of sin, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and our sanctification with the simplicity of faith, and to forget at what enormous cost to God it was all made ours.”

This statement caused my mind to go to Philippians 2:5-10 immediately. The cost of God’s ability to forgive us was extremely high. No greater example of Jesus’ sacrifice can be found than Paul’s words, “And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” What sacrifice! God’s holiness, righteousness and justice made it so He could not forgive us for our sin and sinful nature. But, God’s inexpressible love made it so He would take the punishment for our sin on Himself so He could forgive us. Can you imagine begin the perfect, creating God of the universe and placing yourself in the kind of pain, embarrassment and death that Jesus did? Your answer to that question is actually the same as mine; no, none of us can. No one, who sees forgiveness in the light of Philippians 2:8 views it with a the flippant attitude of the modern American church.

Here, then, is my second definition of a Christian:

A Christian is one who understands that forgiveness is easy to accept but it only comes in light of the inexpressible tragedy of the cross.

Forgiveness is easy to accept but it was not easy to bring about. Though Jesus is the God of the universe, I don’t know of any way to make Philippians 2:5-10 easy for Him and I’m sure we should not make it too easy either. As I like to say when I preach, no one truly sees Jesus for who He is and walks away like He’s no big deal. The same is true for forgiveness. It’s a very big deal!

Yet another reminder of something of which I should be so thankful! What a great God  is He who came after us!