Point 1We read Scripture self-facing, not others-facing
Everybody turn your Bibles this morning to Romans. We're looking at chapter 15. We are nearing the end of Romans. 16 is the last chapter. We will have been in it for a little over two years, or right around two years, actually over two years, by the time we finish, and so it's been a wonderful journey. How many of you would say that Romans, although challenging, has been very beneficial? Right? Very challenging but very beneficial. And so I have certainly enjoyed it and grown a lot. It's created a lot of opportunity for discussion, not only in our homes but in our small groups, and so for that I am thankful. So today I want us to consider something. A lot of our conversations, and probably the way we have approached, the way we tend by nature to approach Scripture, is very self-facing, right? So because of that, whenever we even get into a Scripture then when we talk about loving our neighbor or serving our neighbor or pleasing our neighbor first or keeping in unity with our neighbor, we tend to face ourself in the conversation, so then we're not outward-facing, we're inward-facing. This becomes problematic in really properly contextualizing the Scripture, and then it also becomes problematic for you to begin to receive truth from the Scripture in which you are being challenged as you read it. I've found that this has really become present, not only for me as we have gone through chapter 14 and now we venture into chapter 15, but it's become problems, I think, for many of us, because a lot of our conversations have been centered around our liberties and not us laying our liberties down for the sake of a brother.
That is an indication that we are self-facing, not others-facing.
Why is it that very little of the conversation in our small groups is us
Pastor Shawn Gray · 2:01
laying our liberty down for the sake of our brother, but rather the conversation is, "Am I at liberty to do this? So I'll just do it in private. I'm at liberty to do this, so as long as I'm not in front of my neighbor then I'm okay, I'm good to do this." It's self-facing. But I'm afraid that the Scripture is not necessarily giving you a license to do something, but it is challenging you that if this thing bothers your brother, do you love your brother enough to lay that thing which you have liberty to do down for the sake of your brother? Oh, that conversation hasn't happened, has it? There are some of us here today that will have a glass of wine at our table. There are some of us here today who smoke. There are some of us here today who eat meat. There are some of us here today that celebrate and have our Sabbath on a different day than the rest. And the reality is there are some of us here today that worship differently than our brothers. There are some of us here today, and I understand that this is very much ceremonial law stuff and I'm not trying to get caught up in the weeds, because I think we really have to talk about the specifics of what this means culturally for the Jews, that they've come out of a place of the Old Testament where ceremonial laws were practiced within worship, and now we're talking about that for us, and we're trying to make it relevant to us because we're self-facing. I just want to take a moment though and really just focus in on: are we willing to consider others to the jeopardy of self?
That's the question. See, there's a reason why the divorce rate is what it is today in our society, because we don't consider others to the jeopardy of self. I understand each situation's different, and those of you that have been divorced, I'm not coming at you, but I kind of am coming at you, because every marriage, whether broken or together, has this issue, right? It's very important. Our rights are not necessarily always right. Now as we jump into chapter 15, and I'm going to read it here because that's the whole point, I want you to know they break up things into chapters.
Verse divisions and chapter divisions in the New Testament were added centuries after the Bible was written, and here's the actual history on this: the present chapter divisions were added in 1205 by Stephen Langton, and the verse divisions were added to the New Testament in 1551 by Robert Estienne. All right, so what we have to do is we have to be careful when we break and we go into a new chapter, specifically from 14 to 15, and consider that now the subject has changed. Now we've moved on, kind of like a paragraph break where you go from one paragraph to another paragraph and you're basically changing information, or you're moving on to another point of the story. Now we're going to another chapter, so you think, "Okay, now another chapter, another point, like he's going to make another point." He's making the same point. This is a continuation of thought. We can see that very clearly at the beginning, because he begins to continue to reiterate the fact that we need to not please ourselves but please others, that that should be the heart. So this should be a continuation of thought. Verses 1 and 2 make a familiar point, and here it is, 1 and 2: "we who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up," or her up. This is not new. We've seen it before in chapter 14, and that's why it's a continuation. Romans 14:15 says, "If your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love." But this should cause us to consider whether it is worth riskily living in our liberties or not. There should be people today who walk out convicted about the practice of their liberties, because every time you take liberty you put at risk your brother. What if your brother sees you and is grieved by what you practice?
Does your brother matter enough for you to lose your liberty? Christ lost his for you.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 7:18
Christ paid it all for you. His liberty, he laid it down for you. What of your liberties? What of your liberties if it grieves your brother? Yet we're self-facing. So many of us have looked at chapters 14 and 15 as an opportunity to defend the practice of our liberties rather than to come to the defense of our brother, and there at the heart, at the heart of our conversation in our groups and one-on-one around dinner tables and as we discuss this subject, we show that our hearts are not as God would intend them to be. Romans 14:19 says, "Let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding." Romans 14:21 says, "It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything" (in case you want to know, "Well, it's not my problem, my liberty is not eating meat or drinking wine, my liberty is doing other stuff." Well, but there might be a brother that has a problem with you doing that other stuff, although you have liberty to do that other stuff, and if you grieve him, you cause your brother to stumble. So what of your liberties? So he throws in that it is good not to eat, drink, not eat meat, drink wine, or do anything that causes your brother to stumble. It's not good to do it. In other words, set it down. There are some of you who should walk out today and consider whether your liberty you should set down for your brothers, because God forbid you cause them to be grieved when they see you in your liberty. So the point throughout has been, be willing to forgo your freedom in matters of meat and drink and anything else and days if you can avoid destroying a weak brother, instead, rather, build his faith. Why has the conversation not been, "Should I lay down my liberty?" Where has that conversation been? Are you with me? It's problematic, it's problematic. The reason we haven't had the conversation is because most of us are self-facing. Now here then he gives us counsel in chapter 15, he begins, the apostle Paul, to tell us how to not be so self-facing, because we have issues with that, right? Like we do. I mean, the reality is, I don't know, maybe you don't, but I use the mirror occasionally, and I kind of like when hair doesn't grow out my nose too long, because I want my life, well, my wife, I want my life to not have hair growing out its nose, but I want my wife when she looks and gazes across the table at me at dinnertime to not be disgusted at the hair that continues to grow out my nose forever long. It is like there was a reverse button hit at the age of 36 and everything that grew up grew out. Are you with me today? I didn't lose hair, it just rerouted its direction, so now it doesn't grow up on my head, it grows out my ears and my nose. Can I get an amen from all the men in here?
It is God's sadistic, it's, we are his comic relief. Yeah, we are. And so because I care about how I look, and we should, I look at the mirror and I make sure there's not any werewolf hairs growing out in my ear. There are currently at the moment, because Brook the other day, just two days ago, looked over at me adoringly in the car, and you know, I was like, she's checking me out, she's checking me out, and then these words came out of her mouth: "We should probably wax those ears of yours." And my ego went, sure. Are you with me today? I was like, oh great, I thought she was checking me out. Was she checking me out? My werewolf ears. Anyway, what was I talking about? We are very self-facing. We care about how we look, we care about what people think about us, we care about those things, but is your care about that based on your concern for how others might see you, and ultimately not how they see you but when they see you, how they might notice God? Oh, catch me now, catch me. The whole point of this theme in chapters 14 and 15 is that when they see you, his children, they would glorify God. See, that's the point of your brother not grieving.
See, if you make it all about the neighbor, you miss the point.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 12:47
It isn't just only about you serving and pleasing your neighbors, that's not the point. The whole point is not that your neighbor is pleased. The whole point is this demonstration of pleasing your neighbor over pleasing yourself gives glory to God. Notice here there's a difference between this, or there's a difference, you can be self-facing and people focus on you can be neighbor-facing and people focus on your neighbor and they focus on you for loving your neighbor, or you can be God- facing. Paul is trying to demonstrate for us there is a way to not be so self-facing that you still glorify God, and there is a way where you're not so neighbor-facing and pleasing that you steal glory from God, but there is a demonstration where you acknowledge yourself enough to lay down your rights to love your neighbor, and this demonstration glorifies God. It doesn't glorify self. Now you can do all this wrong and still get glory. There are people who serve all the day long but then rob God of glory because they make it all about themselves. How many of you, don't raise your hands, just in your head raise your hands, how many of you have ever been guilty of really doing something wonderful for somebody but then talking about it all the day long, how you've done something wonderful for somebody? Who gets the glory, is it God or is it you? And we're all at risk of doing this, because the reality is we don't want to love our neighbor without people then falling in love with us because we loved our neighbor. But the whole point of this is not that you would please men but that you would please God. God is the goal. God gets the glory. It is God we bring joy to in his heart when we serve this way. It is all about God. The whole Bible is about God. The gospel message is about God. Your life in him is about God. He gets the glory. And let me tell you, as a believer in Christ, this should not bum you out. It is not narcissistic of God to want to receive the glory. If anyone on this earth or above this earth or below this earth, anyone at all, deserves the glory, it is somebody as magnificent as God. He is worthy of this type of glory. Oh, so let us not then in our practice, as we hear what the apostle Paul is commissioning and calling us to do and how he is calling us to live, let us not then rob him of the glory, because that misses the point. Let us not turn to human moralism to try to strive to be awesome for God. That's not the point. He is saying that his children set aside their self-perspective. Paul simply says it a little different in Romans 15:2. It's almost like he reiterates it, but he just rephrases it so you could get the point. He talks about not pleasing ourselves but pleasing our neighbor for his good, to build his faith. Notice the goal here is to build your neighbor's faith, not to flatter them. It's to build their faith. Now in our culture today, in greater evangelicalism, all right, what we have seen in the church today is people have turned to flattery in the name of texts like this. We have said that it is right to love your neighbor, to lay your rights down for your neighbor. We have then brought, through our culture, from our culture into the church this idea that we will prioritize our neighbor and their wants over our wants
Point 2Pleasing others applies only to nonessential matters
And we will lay our rights down at little concern for the fact that the rights they fight for are not godly. Now we have to make two clarifications here that I think are extremely important about this issue of not pleasing ourselves but pleasing our neighbors. One of them, one is that pleasing others functions as a guideline for our behavior only when nonessential things are at stake. So let's go back to chapter 14 at the very beginning of 14, and it's this: he's talking about nonessential issues. He's not talking about stuff like homosexuality, "Well, we've got to please our neighbor, let's not make anybody uncomfortable, because we've got to please our neighbor, not please ourselves." He's not talking about issues like pornography. He's not talking about that, "Well, we've got to please our neighbor, and so we should start a small group." Are you with me? And that seems extreme, but this is where it goes. We create provisions inside the church for people to continue in sin, and we have made provisions to please our neighbor inside the church because we've made what is not essential, what is essential. He's talking about nonessential things. Those are the issues where we really just lay our rights down. He's saying no, when it comes to things that are black and white, when it comes to stuff that is sin, that stuff we don't lay our rights down. We stand firm in the Lord and in his truth and in his mighty power, and if it doesn't please your neighbor, oopsy daisy. It doesn't please some neighbors, it doesn't please some people to come to church and hear sin be called sin. That doesn't please them? Well, I guess we're unbiblical. Well, I guess that brings disunity in the house. Well, I guess that's not God-like. Well, that's not real loving. Well, be very careful. There is a stipulation here, and the stipulation is that we're talking about nonessential stuff. Pleasing others functions as a guideline for our behavior only when nonessential things are at stake and only when the other person would really be built up in his faith. These are two determining factors that you cannot lose or you will lose the whole point. I want to say it again, I'm going to say it again: nonessential, and when we build up someone's faith. We know these limits apply because, for example, Galatians 1:10, the same person who wrote this writes, Paul says, "Am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ." Listen,
You can't, listen, you can't serve both.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 21:06
The problem in the church is we are trying to serve men and serve Christ, and let me tell you, we're doing it, and we're using Scriptures like Romans to back up our case, but you're getting it all convoluted. In other words, in Galatians crucial issues about the content of the gospel are at stake and Paul will not change the gospel to please men. Why? Because when the gospel is changed, people are destroyed. Let's just look all the way back to the beginning. Shall we? The devil comes and quotes the gospel but just bends it a little bit, and how many of you have been destroyed because of that? That's good stuff. Listen to me today, listen to me today, this is important stuff. And today we have a crisis on our hands, even denominations are splitting over issues, and we are creating provisions in the church and we say we are pleasing our fellow men and it's Christlike, and this is a perversion of the gospel and it is not okay, and it destroys lives, and we're not talking about just the temporal ones, we're talking about eternally damned. Are you with me? Because we'd rather, you know why? Because we're self-facing and we're not God-facing. It's not his gospel we hold, we hope to uphold, it is our gospel. It is his gospel twisted and made convenient for men. This is a massive problem. This is why when you listen to podcasts, and i'm just going to get all up in your grill, but listen to me today, when you listen to podcasts and you listen to famous preachers, some of them might be wonderful, some of them, all of them, you should seek out the matter like the Bereans did, and you should consider whether or not the stuff coming off the airwaves is actually biblical. And if you don't have time to go study the Bible, you shouldn't be listening to any podcast, because we have some nonsense out there. Some complete and utter nonsense is making me mad. We have some serious, I know I'm making her mad too. Make anybody cry? We have people who are uneducated, undisciplined, and unprepared to be delivering any word, and they have enough following that they have perverted the gospel to the degree where thousands upon thousands of men will go to hell while they become famous. This is a problem. It's a problem, and let me tell you may not like it. I'm not a heresy hunter. There are people who do that and I am somewhat appreciative to them, whether you like it or not, because I think we need to have a gong out there pulling people off of platforms that don't need to be there, right? And the reality is that the apostles were really really serious about this, and you have got to get to a place where you actually take the time and consider that what you have been told, if it is biblical. Some of you have got to get in God's word and you have to consider a thing a little bit, and you need to do it not self-facing, you need to do it facing God.
You need to consider what he is saying and what implications that has for your life. Okay, I'll get off that soapbox. The other clarification is this, that not pleasing ourselves,
Point 3Serving others rightly brings real joy
To use the word at the end of verse 1, does not mean that we can't enjoy pleasing others. As a matter of fact,
If you are his child, pleasing others pleases you.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 25:24
Notice here that pleasure is not one way. Notice here that pleasing others pleases you and pleases God. It is the trinity of trinities, are you with me? It's not the trinity of trinities, but it is a trinity of sorts. Notice the connection. We are one with him and he is one with us, and we are one with the body and the body is one with God and God is one with the Spirit. You are you with me today? So any of this transactional stuff that happens does not emit outward and then not return. Even God's word does not return void. Are you with me? So everything that goes out from a child of God returns to the child of God to the glory of God.
It's reciprocal in nature. Now we don't do stuff so that we might reciprocate, but you need to understand that pleasure out is pleasure back in. It should bring pleasure. If you find that serving your neighbor doesn't bring pleasure, it might be because you're out of sync with him. It might be that you have hoped in moralism as your sense of salvation, but moralism doesn't save. Therefore then this act of just simply loving your neighbor as a non-believer doesn't do the same thing for you as it does for a believer. Are you with me? And so these then are checkpoints, if you will, an opportunity for us to evaluate whether this comes from God or comes from men. The reality is, how many of you know there are some things that can come from God and there are some things that can come from men, and oftentimes the same thing that comes from men can look like things that come from God but are actually not things that come from God. That's what we learn. It's not bad that you're pleased or you have joy in loving your neighbor either. That's not what he means. "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." So there will be many things in the Christian life that are not pleasant but painful in themselves. Paul also taught his new churches this: "Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God," Acts 14:22. But we must always add that Paul also says, "We rejoice in our sufferings," Romans 5:3. Even when the service of God is hard, the command stands in Psalm 100:2, "Serve the LORD with gladness." So it is not bad to be glad, it is not bad to rejoice, it is not bad to have pleasure in serving others. This is the natural outcome of walking in his ways. So misery doesn't have to become your course in and of itself. In the time of misery, in the time of sacrifice, in the time of not being self-facing, in the time of laying your rights down and the time of picking up your cross, you still have this correlating joy that rises up in the midst of all that. God helps us in that. So we have to be careful when we read, "We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves," it does not mean you will receive no pleasure in serving others. Be careful to not think it is a sin to take joy in pleasing others for their good and upbuilding. In fact, something would be deeply wrong if you did not take pleasure in building up other people's faith. So there are at least two clarifications: verses 1 and 2, one, aim to please others rather than yourself if it will do them good and build their faith, but not if it distorts the gospel and hurts people. Number two, it is a virtue, not a vice, to be glad when you can build another person's faith, even if it costs you some immediate pleasure.
Listen, God loves it. It says in 2 Corinthians 9:7, "God loves a cheerful giver," not a begrudging one, whether we're talking about money or time or not eating meat or any other sacrifice, he loves a cheerful giver. "Oh well, I can't be cheerful when I do it, because otherwise then that would be pleasing myself. If I'm cheerful, you, it's got to be, I've got to be, you know what is it, Mr. Kinney, I've got to be Scrooge. The more Scrooge I am, the more godly I am." No, it's okay to be joyful and giving generously. "Oh well then, I sinned if I'm joyful." No, that's not what he's saying. It's not what he's saying. Now
Point 4All of it exists for God's glory
Where's all this going and how does Paul help us get there? Where is it going is, where it is going is crystal clear from verses 6 and 7. Paul says it twice. It is all going towards the glory of God. Write that down, even in your head or on a notepad or on your phone. It's going towards the glory of God: "that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." That's what it says in 15:6 and 7, that together, how, what, together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. "Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you." What does it say after that?
"For your glory"? No. "For your neighbor's glory"? No. "For your church's glory"?
No. "For the glory of God." That's why we do this. It's why God commands it.
You are not worthy of glory because you did something good. You are infinitely wicked,
Pastor Shawn Gray · 32:03
and even the fact that you do something good is only because God graced you to be able to do it through the power of the Holy Spirit, otherwise you wouldn't do anything good, and everything that you did that looked good and looked godly would actually be for selfishness' sake. So although it looked good, it wasn't good, because the motive, the heart, was wrong. Are you with me today? And without God there is no hope.
That's the whole point. Number two, we glorify God. Paul's goal is never merely to have good human relationships, unless of course we can define good human relationships as God-glorifying, Christ-exalting human relationships, which we should, but the ultimate aim of Christ and his apostle is to display the glory of God, the beauty of God, the greatness of God, the many-sided perfections of God. All of creation, all of redemption, all of church, all of society and culture exist to display God, nothing and no one in and of itself, but only God. Romans 11:36 says, "From him and through him and to him are all things." That means church, worship services, from him, through him, to him. Did you know that we can't even have a worship service unless people are saved and the Holy Spirit empowers us to worship him? Because worship without the Spirit is not worship at all, and it certainly is not worship of God. Sunday school classes, small groups, church nurseries, church committee meetings, church small groups, church boards, church evangelism, church missions, all of them exist for one ultimate thing: to make much of God. That is why we say we exist. I've been praying that this would be the atmosphere of our church. We will not have, I believe we will not have succeeded if we are known as a friendly place. No, we will not have succeeded, we will have failed if people refer to Echo Church as a friendly place. That would be a failure. We will not have succeeded if we are viewed as an unfriendly place. We will not have succeeded if we're viewed as a cool place.
The longer I live, I feel like the less and less I care about being cool and the more and more I care about being biblically true,
Pastor Shawn Gray · 35:00
because being cool will get you to a hot place, not to a heavenly one. Are you with me today? God don't care about cool. I believe we will have succeeded if we are known as a people who bestow on God the glory that's fitting to his name. If our children grow up not remembering our cool programs, track with me here, but our children grow up celebrating the glory of God, that's a win. That's a win. And there's a huge difference between liking Rock City and liking God. There's a huge difference. I think it's great that young children want to come to Rock City because it's fun, and we should, we should. They should not want to come and suffer, you know what I mean? Like I'm not crazy. I am just saying that when they grow up I would hope that they would remember Echo Church or Rock City as a place that gave glory to God,
Not as a place that had a really cool slide, because slides don't save. The gospel does.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 36:41
Are you with me today? This is important. You see, because when you get the glory of God wrong, then you put your energies and money in the wrong place. It matters. You see, it repositions everything. It repositions your conversation. Why are you here? To give glory to God. Some of you are like, "Well, I'm here to learn God's word." You're here to give glory to God. Pause, just for a second. Just give me one second. This is not on my notes, just give me a second. There is a secular humanist who's a great leader. His name is Simon Sinek. He's great, he does good leadership conferences, fantastic, I really like him. Human secularist, great scientific mind, he is not a scientist, he was a businessman. He started a business, learned that there was no joy in leadership, it was misery, although he had a successful business, made lots of money, had very successful businesses, sold his businesses, did all of that, he was miserable, and he began to evaluate, why am I so miserable in the midst of all my success? How many of you have lived long enough to learn that success is not the essence of joy, and the longer you live and the more money you get, the more you realize neither is money, neither is any of that stuff. It just only reveals that there is still something else that you haven't found in that abundance that you have obtained, that only God can remedy in the hearts of men. Only God can instill hope and joy and love and peace. It comes from him, and no amount of money can buy it, and no amount of time can get it, and no amount of achievements can accomplish it. There is something that is lacking. But I really do like the fact that he tried to put it in a human way into this kind of like equation. Here's the equation, you could draw a target with three different rings, okay, the outer ring being the furthest, the next ring, and then all the way into the bullseye. And so on the outer ring you would write the "what." What do you do? On the inner ring, he talked organizationally about how as an organization do you do it, and on the inner ring, all the way into the very heart of the issue, is the "why." Why do you do it? And he began to talk about in this talk, and I really loved it, he began to talk about how some organizations really understand how to get to the heart of the why when they're marketing, and their whole organization functions based on the why, not on the what. Most organizations function based on the what or the how. If you go up to an organization and you ask them, "What is your why?" They will most often give you the what, or they will actually give you the how, but very few organizations actually know their why. They simply function from the greatest ring in, never really getting to the why, and it is the why that drives men and makes men lay down their lives for a thing. See, I believe the apostles knew the why, and they were not just simply captivated by the what, because when you live your whole life on the what, it's what I do, the what doesn't bring satisfaction, but when you know the why will make you lay down your life. So he begins to compare, like, it was like Samsung, right? Samsung and Apple, and he talks about the marketing things, how they did it, that Samsung would start on the what. What do you make? Well, we make a TV. Now Samsung had been making monitors for a long time and Microsoft had been making monitors for a long time, and they came out and made TVs, and then TVs kind of flopped with Samsung, they didn't do very well, right, when they came out with it. Or they tried to come out with an iPod thing, not iPod, but it was, see, we can't even say anything other than iPod when we say this. Like, I think there was like a Zune or something. What was the other, like, there were a bunch of different MP3 players that came out that flopped, right? Because they came out and said, "What are you making? Here's what we're making." So when they run an ad they say, "Here's what we're selling. What we're selling is a TV. What we're selling is this. Buy one."
And then he talks about Apple, and they said Apple knew, that's why they knew it's the what too, but they mainly started their marketing campaigns with the why. The why was, "We challenge the status quo," and everything that we do, that was their why. "Oh, and by the way, we make iPods, we make computers, we make this, you want to buy one." So what it did, it expanded the market because it was based on the why. They sold the why. The why is what people get invested in. They don't get invested in the what, and people don't care about the what. Let's just move that into the church dynamic. I know it's a secular humanist idea, but just let me tell you something. Why are you here today? Not what are you doing here, not how did you get here, why. Don't look to your mommy or your daddy to tell you why. What is your why? The what today in the Scripture, listen to me, I know I'm going off a little bit, I don't know why, I just feel like it's important though. The what is please your neighbor. That's the how, actually. The what is, what are you doing? Keeping unity. How are you doing it? Pleasing my neighbor and not pleasing myself. Why? I don't know. Oh no. Guess what?
If you ain't going to do it much longer, if you don't know the why, you ain't doing it much longer.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 43:38
I'm going to do it a couple times, it's like when somebody apologizes to you, "I'm never going to do that again." Yeah, you are. Yeah, you are. Yeah, you are. I got kids. "I'm sorry, Dad." I mean, that's a miracle in and of itself when you get that right, but after you get the "I'm sorry, Dad," then they'll say, "i'm not going to do it again." Yeah, you are. You know why they're going to do it again? Because they don't know why they're sorry. That's just what they should do and how they should do it to get out of the punishment. Are you with me? We live in the what and the how, and we evaluate Scripture based on the what and the how, and we don't consider the why. Paul is going through painstaking effort to get you to understand the why. What is the why? The why here is for the glory of God.
That's the why. Why? So that God is glorified. Why? So he's glorified. Why? Because he deserves the glory. Why? Because I don't deserve the glory. Why? Because the neighbor doesn't deserve the glory.
Why? Because God deserves the glory. He's worthy of glory.
That's the why that helps you do the what and the how with joy.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 44:58
Because if I'm only doing the what and the how, what is the what and the how? What is it? It's pleasing my neighbor and not pleasing myself, right, to build up their faith. I'm only going to do that for Brook if I'm doing it for the glory of God, because he's worthy of this behavior.
Brook is not. I'm only going to lay my life down and my wants down and my liberties down for someone who's weak in the faith to build their faith for God, because he's worthy. She's not worthy, as amazing as she is, and sometimes I wonder if she's worthy. She's not worthy. And so there will come a point, although she's good, that she'll set me off one day and I'll be justified in being set off and I won't want to do the what and the how anymore that this commands, because I've lost the why and I've moved the why to being, "Do you deserve it or not?" And if you don't deserve it, then I will withhold the what and the how that the Bible commands.
So if you miss the why, you don't do the what and the how.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 46:24
It's birthed out of the why. It's birthed out of that. Well, that was a tangent of all tangents, right? So listen to this is for glorifying God. I'm going to, real quick, and I mean it, real quick, I'm just going to give you the points. I don't have time to talk about them. There are four ways that we do this. One, we know the why, we know the why, but here's how, practically, I think four helping things that help you, they help you keep your gaze on the why. Don't keep your gaze on the what. "Well, I've got to be nice. Well, I've got to please people. Well, I've got to set my
Point 5Four things keep our gaze on God
Rights down. Well, I've got to..." That's not how you do it. That's not how you do it. First, according to the Scripture Paul lays out for us, four things that keep our focus and our gaze heavenward. First, Paul draws attention to Christ. He draws attention, verse 3: "For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, 'The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.'" In other words, to become the kind of person who joyfully serves others rather than using them, consider Christ. Look at Christ. Look at Christ. Fix your gaze on Christ. Look at Christ.
Don't fix your gaze, like according to the scenario, don't, Shawn, don't fix your gaze on Brook, look at Christ.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 48:01
2 Corinthians 3:18: "Behold the glory of the Lord." Behold, look at Christ, look at God, "and are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another."
Beholding the glory of the Lord, you are beholding the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. How are you being transformed from one degree of glory to another? By beholding him, not beholding your neighbor. Fix your eyes on Christ. Second, Paul reminds us how essential the Scriptures are in becoming self-denying servants of love. Verse 3 quotes actually Psalm 69:9, and Paul says in verse 4, "For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction." For whatever was written, the word, in former days was written, the word, for our instruction. The picture of Christ that he just gave us came from the word.
It came from the word. Give yourself to the word. Fix your eyes on Christ and commit yourself to Scriptures.
Number three, Paul reminds us that we will never survive in the path of self-denying, sacrificial love if we don't have hope. "Well, I've got to muster it up, got to have some hope today. I'm going to have a bowl of hope." And to make me a bowl of hope, I'm going to really feel, I'm going to make sure that I feel happy today. No, Paul reminds us that we will never survive the path of self-denying, sacrificial love if we don't have hope. Verse 4 again: "For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope." Through endurance and through encouragement of the Scripture. How do you have endurance? By the Holy Spirit. By the Holy Spirit. And through the encouragement of Scriptures we might have hope. You need both his Spirit and Scriptures working in harmony to birth in you a hope that can only come from God, but not from men. It is him that does the work. It is he. Hope that all will work together for our good and we will inherit eternal life. How did Jesus endure through Gethsemane and Golgotha?
Hebrews 12:2 says it was the power of hope: "who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross." It was before him, it was before him, it was before him.
Are you with me?
He fixed his gaze on what was before him, not on what is now.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 51:01
Look to Christ, number one. Commit yourself to Scriptures, number two. Number three, hope. Number four, Paul shifts in verses 5 and 6 from teaching and exhortation to praying. Oh, prayer.
Prayer is a drudgery when you don't have your why. Prayer is a drudgery when it's your how or your what, and many churches have that. "May the God of endurance," it says in the end of this 15 section, verses 5 and 6, "May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." He is still speaking to them, but he's not mainly speaking to them. Paul has reached the end of his ability to persuade people, and his longings for this church are beyond the reach of what man can do. God must do it, and he beseeches God in this turn as a prayer: God, help them.
God, help them. Look to Christ, commit yourself to Scriptures, eternal hope, and prayer. All of these keep our gaze on God, on the God who deserves glory,
All of these keep our gaze fixed on God, the only one who deserves the glory.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 52:57
This is the why. This is the why.
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