United with Christ: Blessing and Suffering

What's the Big Deal About Easter?

Hallelujah! Jesus is alive!  Because of Jesus death on the cross we have forgiveness of sins!  Because of His death on the cross and resurrection from the dead we now have hope found in being raised to life with Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.

This kind of language is quite common during this time of year.  Even by people that aren't really religious.  Easter is a time of celebration.  We know this because of the massive amounts of candy and pastel colored decorations littering the stores.  Everyone is happy! Everyone is rejoicing and rightfully so.  However, I wonder if  we are all on the same page when it comes to the reason why we rejoice.  I wonder if we are simply repeating words we've heard said before repeating a euphoric tradition rather than truly experiencing the joy of what Easter represents not just for today but everyday.

Something I've found to be characteristic of all the facebook statuses and things people say about Easter have a common emphasis on the blessings found in the resurrection of Christ.  That's great and wonderful, however I think that to truly appreciate the blessings of Easter more attention must be paid to Christ's death on the cross.  After all, without His death, the atoning sacrifice for sins, the beginning of the cosmic restoration of God's universe would never occur.  Without His death, there is nothing to celebrate.  This is the reality of things within the big picture that I think are largely ignored.  But I also think that the symbolism of Christ's death and what that means for believers holds equally significant importance to those who say they follow Christ.

God's Desires and How that Affects Christians

 I believe that Holy God's desire is to be given proper glory in all His creation and that He gives man the opportunity to be bearers of His glory throughout His creation. (Ezekiel 20:9, 36:22; Gen 1:26-28)  I also believe that evidence of God's glory is manifested in man when man is totally submitted to God in love. I do not believe that the goal of Christians is to attempt to change their behaviors to show their love for God. (which in itself is not an act of submission)  Rather I believe that God desires for us to show our love for Him by being wholly submitted to Him so that the very core of our existence is transformed by God Himself. (Psalm 51:10, Romans 12:2, Col 1:9-14)  This understanding of who God is and what He wants for His children presents us with a scary picture of the state of the Church(body of Christ) particularly in America.  I limit this statement to America simply because my experience with other parts of the Body of Christ are limited.  My experiences with believers in other parts of the world are skewed because of the heavy American influence shown in the practice of religion by non-American Christians.  Therefore, I speak to the plagues that are symptomatic of both my life and what I've observed in other people who say they are followers of Christ.

Heart Matters

I wish that I could say that as soon as I became a disciple and follower of Jesus Christ that I immediately submitted to the Will of God so that all my actions brought glory to God and I haven't messed up since then.  Unfortunately, I can't say that, and I doubt that any person that is a follower of Jesus can honestly say that either.  I think that part of the reason why this is true is because when most people think about what it means to be a good Christian, people immediately think of behaviors and actions.  I don't think this is a bad thing, and I do believe that measuring people by their actions is a natural human thing to do.  However, we are in relationship with Supernatural God.  Ultimately the only approval we should seek and the only one that matters is God's approval not the approval of man.  I think there is a tendency for us to equate our human means of measurement with God's measurement.  We are only able to examine the outward actions of people and based on those things determine the inward nature of man.  God sees into the heart and soul of man, the quality of our relationship is not measured in our behavior, rather the quality of our relationship with God is dependent on the attitude of our heart. (Gal 1:6-10, John 12:43)  

At this point I feel it necessary to address the relationship between the attitude of our heart and our actions.  I am not saying that as long as our heart and attitude toward God is good that we have a license to do whatever we want.  Far from it, in fact if we say that we have a good relationship with God but persist in sin we are liars. (1 John 1:8)  There is plenty of scripture regarding this issue of the production of actions/behaviors(by the Holy Spirit) that are pleasing to God born out of genuine love for God.  (1 John 3, Romans 6) However, that is a subject that demands volumes of books dedicated to exploration of the relationship between faith and works, in this present work I hardly scratch the surface.  In view of this, let us turn attention back to the subject at hand which is, why the heart is more important in determining the quality of our relationship than our behaviors.  

All of us have had some experience with relationships.  At the very least we've had the experience of being children.  As children no doubt at some point in time our parents have asked us to do something that we didn't want to do.  Whether we obeyed our parents or not doesn't really matter so much as the attitude we had in responding to their command.  I'm sure there are plenty of times that we've probably done what our parents asked us to do but did so with a hardness of heart.  We obeyed out of fear, spite, or obligation, but I doubt that the desire of our parents was that we obey them for any of those reasons.  I think we may see hints of this  when we do something for our parents that is not mandatory. Isn't there a difference in our parents reaction/response when we do something out of thoughtful love?  Isn't there more joy that comes in knowing when someone does something for you that you didn't ask them to do or have to pull teeth with them?  I think it is fair to say that people can do things that are considered good but still have an attitude of resent or hate towards the people they are performing the actions toward or for.  Returning to the parent/child analogy, a parent can tell their child to clean their room.  The child may not want to clean it and may be angered at having been instructed to do something he doesn't want to do.  So to spite the parent will clean the room and begin to clear out other parts of the house to and become critical of other parts of the house that are not their responsibility in an attempt to upset or get back at the parent.  

Your Will in My Power

Often Christians will desire to accomplish God's will in their lives.  They will emphatically proclaim their love for God and the behaviors of their life will be consistent with what people expect of a growing and maturing Christian.  They'll do and say all the right things.  They attend church regularly, attend a small group bible study, tithe, volunteer at church.  They live highly disciplined lives abstaining from the things that the ungodly partake in like tobacco, alcohol, and television.  In spite of all of these wonderfully measurable evidences of healthy Christian life, most people characterized by these traits lead lives that are a struggle.  The things that they try to do always fall short of the what they intended.  Doing the will of God is troublesome and hard because its being done out of obligation.  The key thing that is missing from the lives of so many people that claim to follow Jesus is the power of the Holy Spirit.  Instead of allowing our lives to be controlled by the Holy Spirit we often pick and rationalize what we think is best for us.  When faced with a situation we think through the steps that we think would be best to get us through the situation.  Most of the time there is no thought of involving the Holy Spirit in our lives.  We desire to accomplish God's will for our lives without God.    But if we see throughout the gospels evidence of how Christ Himself submitted to the leading and prompting of the Holy Spirit why do we think that we should live any differently.(Mark 1:12, Luke 4:1, Heb 5:8-9)  If the believers of the early church relied on the guidance of the Holy Spirit for all they did and totally depended on His power to accomplish the task at hand, why should or lives be any different?  Our God is Eternal and Unchanging, we are in just as much need of the Holy Spirit as the early church and Jesus.

Partial Unity with Christ

This is where things tie into Easter and being united with Christ.  To be united with Christ and share in His glory and the blessings of being a child of God means to die to self. (Phil 1:21)  In order for us to ever truly experience new life in Christ and be united in Christ we must be born again.  (John 3:3)  The only way for us to be born of the Spirit is to die to self and flesh and be raised up in the Spirit.  (Ephesians 2:1-7)  We can't be partakers of the blessings of the kingdom of light until we become united to Christ by dying to self.  To be co-heirs of the inheritance of God with Christ we must be born and the way that we are born of the Spirit is to become dead to the flesh. (Col 1:15-22)

If you've been in Christian culture for very long, Christian culture that honors God's Word by carefully studying scripture, then all of this rhetoric is very familiar to you.  This is stuff that you've heard countless times and have probably read lots of times to.  However, I think that because of the familiarity most Christians have with this concept it becomes easy for us to gloss over the importance of some of these statements.  So many of us, myself included, have made these pledges of devotion to Jesus Christ, yet by choosing to walk our own way and walk in the ways of the old sinful nature of flesh we are choosing to die.  We are choosing to remain dead.  God brought us out of the dominion of darkness and into His Kingdom of Light through His Son Jesus Christ.  (Col 1:13-14)  We have been freed.  Sinful behavior is characteristic of those still in captivity in the kingdom of darkness.  As free citizens of the kingdom of light, the Kingdom of God, we don't have to and shouldn't continue to sin.  The problem for most Christians is that we've never really come to terms with the idea of dying to self and being alive in Christ.  Many people who claim to be followers of Christ find themselves slipping into pits of sin because they never truly died.  They never truly submitted themselves wholly to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  

If any of you have ever played Age of Empires or Star Craft you'll be familiar with the concept of total war and alliances.  When you play a free for all game there is only room for one winner.  The victor is the last one standing.  The entire field is completely cleared out of the opposing enemy teams until only the property and units of the victors team remain.  This free for all is played out in reality too.  There is only room for one victor.  God will wipe the entire field of everyone and everything that doesn't belong to Him, nothing but His will remain.  The problem is that for many of us we approach Christian Life with the mentality of being an opposing team that allies itself with God.  We continue to do our own thing.  We have our little skirmishes and battles with other opposing teams and don't attack God's team.  And we figure that because we've allied ourselves with God that He'll only attack our enemies and help us out.  We can trade with God and in exchange for our not fighting against God we can reap some benefits.  However, the reality that we live in is that God will not tolerate any other person or force.  God will not share His glory and in the end even though we think that we've allied ourselves to God, because we continue to act on our own doing our own thing, we act in defiance to the supreme authority of God.  This can not and will not be tolerated.  The only way that we get through this is to be completely surrendered to God, 'converting'  so that everything that we do is now dictated and controlled by God alone. (Just as in the game, the converting isn't something that we do but that the Holy Spirit/victorious winner does.)

Fullness of God's Blessing

So the way to truly be united with Christ is to be wholly and fully submitted to Him.  This isn't just a thing we do or say once.  To be united with Christ and truly experience His blessing we need to continually be reminded that we are dead to self and alive in Christ.  We must continually look to the cross so that we remember that Jesus is Lord.  Through Jesus Christ alone do we have forgiveness of sins.  And just as we can not be born into new life as citizens of the Kingdom of light without the power of the Holy Spirit, so too we can not live in the Kingdom of Light without His grace working upon us every moment of our day.  (Colossians 2:6)  So in being united with Christ in His suffering and death we become recipients of His blessing of grace.

      What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. 

5 If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with,a that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7 because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. 

8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. 

11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13 Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. 14 For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace. 

Slaves to Righteousness

15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. 18 You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. 

19 I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. 20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. 21 What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life ina Christ Jesus our Lord. 

The Holy Bible : New International Version, electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), Ro 6:1–23.

To the Wall

I.                     ME

a.        Church Planting

b.      Different from other churches

c.       Church plants are/should be the natural out growth of obedience to Jesus Christ

“^1aGo therefore and ^bmake disciples of ^call the nations, ^dbaptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,

20teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, ^aI am with you ¹always, even to ^bthe end of the age.”^[1]

d.       Mission of Discipleship

II.                   Losing Focus

a.        Let’s face it, being part of a church plant is hard

b.      Lack of resources

c.       Lack of structure everyone has to work

d.      Frustration and tiredness

e.      Seems like everything is set against us

f.        The task of church planting and being obedient to the command of our Master Jesus Christ is not easy. 

III.                 Nehemiah 4

a.        People in Nehemiah’s day in a similar predicament as us.  Had a difficult task and mission.

v. 1-6

    1   ¹Now it came about that when ^aSanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, he became furious and very angry and mocked the Jews.

    2   He spoke in the presence of his brothers and ^athe ¹wealthy men of Samaria and said, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Are they going to restore it for themselves? Can they offer sacrifices? Can they finish in a day? Can they revive the stones from the ^2bdusty rubble even the burned ones?”

    3   Now Tobiah the Ammonite was near him and he said, “Even what they are building—^aif a fox should ¹jump on it, he would break their stone wall down!”

    4   ^aHear, O our God, how we are despised! ^bReturn their reproach on their own heads and give them up for plunder in a land of captivity.

    5   Do not ^1aforgive their iniquity and let not their sin be blotted out before You, for they have ²demoralized the builders.

    6   So we built the wall and the whole wall was joined together to half its height, for the people had a ¹mind to work. ^[2]

a.        When faced with opposition they stayed focused on the mission.  They rallied to the wall and kept their minds focused on the mission and the one who gave the mission to them. 

b.      Didn’t turn their focus and energy on the people mocking them or the problem.  Turned to God.  Relied on God.

c.       Kept on keeping

v.  7-11

7 ¹Now when Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabs, the Ammonites and the Ashdodites heard that the ²repair of the walls of Jerusalem went on, and that the breaches began to be closed, they were very angry.

    8   All of them ^aconspired together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause a disturbance in it. ^[3]

    9   But we prayed to our God, and because of them we ^aset up a guard against them day and night.

  10   Thus ¹in Judah it was said,

“The strength of the burden bearers is failing,

Yet there is much ²rubbish;

And we ourselves are unable

To rebuild the wall.”

  11   Our enemies said, “They will not know or see until we come among them, kill them and put a stop to the work.” ^[4]

a.        Persevered in the task at hand

b.      The task took time

c.       They were on guard at all times

d.      They prayed/depended on God and each other

v.  12-15

  12   When the Jews who lived near them came and told us ten times, “¹They will come up against us from every place where you may turn,”

  13   then I stationed men in the lowest parts of the space behind the wall, the ¹exposed places, and I ^astationed the people in families with their swords, spears and bows.

  14   When I saw their fear, I rose and spoke to the nobles, the officials and the rest of the people: “^aDo not be afraid of them; remember the Lord who is great and awesome, and ^bfight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives and your houses.”

  15   When our enemies heard that it was known to us, and that ^aGod had frustrated their plan, then all of us returned to the wall, each one to his work. ^[5]

a.        Remember the battle belongs to the Lord

b.      God frustrated the plans of the enemy

c.       Each one returned to his work

IV.                 To the Wall

a.        What is our wall?  Just like the Israelites we need to know what our mission is.  We must be focused on our mission and give all of our attention to the mission giver.

b.      Our wall is Epic church, our mission is making disciples at Epic Church.  The giver of our mission is Jesus Christ

c.       The blessings of Jesus Christ can’t be fully experienced outside of the mission of Jesus Christ

-Ephesians 2:10

“For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared beforehand, so that we might walk in them.”

d.      We must persevere because the race before us is a race of endurance.  Making disciples takes time.  The call to make disciples is a command to make intentional relationships.  Called to live life together.  Life on life is the only way to do discipleship. 

e.      Relationships take intentional work.  “Teaching them to observe.”  That indicates intentionality in our relationships.  Not just hanging out. 

f.        We all have relationships, so you know that the quality and strength of your relationship is directly proportional to the amount of work you put into it. 

g.       The Picture we see in Nehemiah is that of individual children of God praying, relying on God and relying on one another.  We need to do the same.  If we don’t we will never be successful in completing our mission. 

h.      The final point is that everyone returned to their work.  Everyone had a job.  Everyone participates.  Not all of us will have the same job.  Not all of us will preach, sing, or teach.  Praise God!  It says in God’s word that only some are given to particular tasks and gifts.  But all of us are gifted.  If you are a believer, a child of God.  If you’ve placed your trust in Jesus Christ then you’ve been blessed with gifts to serve and build up the body of Christ. 

i.         How are you using them? 

j.        How do you say thank you?

---

¹ Or Having gone; Gr aorist participle

^a Mark 16:15f

^b Matt 13:52; Acts 1:8; 14:21

^c Matt 25:32; Luke 24:47

^d Acts 2:38; 8:16; Rom 6:3; 1 Cor 1:13, 15ff; Gal 3:27

^a Matt 18:20; Acts 18:10

¹ Lit all the days

^b Matt 13:39

^[1] New American Standard Bible : 1995 Update (LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Mt 28:19–20.

¹ Ch 3:33 in Heb

^a Neh 2:10

^a Ezra 4:9, 10

¹ Or army

² Lit heaps of dust

^b Neh 4:10

^a Lam 5:18

¹ Lit go up

^a Ps 123:3, 4

^b Ps 79:12

¹ Lit cover

^a Ps 69:27, 28; Jer 18:23

² Lit offended against

¹ Lit heart

^[2] New American Standard Bible : 1995 Update (LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Ne 4:1–6.

¹ Ch 4:1 in Heb

² Lit healing

^a Ps 83:3

^[3] New American Standard Bible : 1995 Update (LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Ne 4:7–8.

^a Neh 4:11

¹ Lit Judah said

² Lit dust

^[4] New American Standard Bible : 1995 Update (LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Ne 4:9–11.

¹ So Gr; Heb omits they...up

¹ Lit bare

^a Neh 4:17, 18

^a Num 14:9; Deut 1:29, 30

^b 2 Sam 10:12

^a 2 Sam 17:14

^[5] New American Standard Bible : 1995 Update (LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Ne 4:12–15.

Stuff we miss apart from the Old Testament

You know, most people today don't like spending much time reading the Old Testament, especially the books of law.  Most people will say, "we'll those people back then were under the old covenant and now we have a new covenant."  It can be really tough sometimes to make a connection of relevance between what happened to the nation of Israel and how that should affect the way we live.

I was in Leviticus 6-7 for my daily bible reading and something that kept coming up or stuck out for me was how specific everything was for the sacrifice.  All these sacrifices that needed to be made and a very detailed process of preparation before each sacrifice.  A reoccurring word that comes up time and again through out the book is "holy."  Another word that comes up a lot is "atonement."

Then it occurred to me how we talk about Jesus being the atonement for the sins of those who place their trust in Him.  Jesus is the sacrifice for our sins.  However, without context that simple statement doesn't mean much.  I'm sure knowing that we are "bad" people full of sin must be convicting on some level.  But really I don't think that most Christians take the statement, "Jesus is the sacrifice for our sins, " seriously enough.  We don't make much of it, or not as much of it as we could.  And I think that's because most Christians today just don't come from the same background and culture as the Jews during the days of the Apostles.  We aren't familiar with the highly detailed and laborious system of sacrifice the early Christians practiced before they came to Christ.

I have a new appreciation for the "dry" books of the bible because they illustrate the depth of God's love for me.  The standard and holiness of God exemplified through the old testament law magnifies the love of God shown in Jesus death on the cross.  Saying that, "Jesus died for my sins," carries greater weight because I more fully know the depth of my depravity compared to the Holiness of Almighty God.