Every week it's been an adventure. Sometimes we've had tons of handouts left over, and they're just sitting over in a pile in the other weeks we've been short. So I don't know if everybody's got one, but maybe we can, if not, maybe you can pass a few over if there are tables that are way short. Handouts will be particularly helpful since we don't have the laptop and the PowerPoint tonight. Maybe we can just pass a few around. Get close to your neighbor. And share one or two of them. Let's go ahead and begin. Let's go ahead and begin with a word of prayer. Father God, we are very used to coming to the well to drink the well that is the pre-flowing fountain of your word. You have not given us a stagnant pond that we have to survive on. You have given us your word and the spirit to apply it to our hearts and minds that is pre-flowing. It is constantly being replenished. Lord, may we never get tired of coming to the source of life. And Lord, therefore, test out our hearts when we do come with a sense of ho-hom. We're going to the word again tonight. We're, Lord, we all have those moments if we're honest, but just move us on through them into the excitement and vitality that is walking with your spirit, with your word, and pursuing our relationship with Christ on a moment-by-moment basis. We ask it in your name, amen.
If you've been with us the last few weeks in this process, you know that Joel has very adorably been taking us through the whole concept of our justification, leading into our sanctification. You know, they're not cut and dried, they're clearly linked together and yet distinctive. And so he's covered a great deal on our justification and sanctification. I don't want to rehash that at all tonight. I just want to take a moment because you might ask for an interesting topic, the good works would come up. But good works is the natural outflow of our relationship with Christ. If we understand that we have been justified by faith in Christ and that we are in a process of being sanctified by the spirit and the word, then we can understand how good works comes into the picture. So briefly by review, if you have the hand out there, I'll just mention this, you know, a lot of the books that I was reading and all spent a great deal of time dealing with the distinctive difference between how the Roman Catholic Church has always taught about good works and ultimately it exposes their view of justification and of the evangelical and of the reformation view. But I really feel like most of us don't struggle there. We're fairly familiar with it, at least on a basic level. So I didn't want to spend a whole lot of time there tonight except just by way of very brief review. And that is the Roman Catholic view of our justification is that it's a combination of faith and works. It's faith in Christ. We sometimes, you know, overstate the argument and say, well, Roman Catholics are just talking about faith and works but it's really more works than anything else. But they do stress that faith in Christ is necessary but at the same time it's coupled with their own works of righteousness and together that justifies the individual. And you can see that in contrast then with the reformation view of Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and Malanke then and all the other names I can't pronounce but where they talked very clearly, you know, Luther's whole cry. We were justified by faith alone, faith only. Solify the faith alone. Boy, it's suddenly gotten strong here. We'll just move further down the lapel here. Anyway, that we are saved by faith. We are justified by the finished perfect work of Christ, the Son of God on the cross. It's by faith in Him alone by which we receive our justification. But that's not to throw the works out. It simply puts it in a different position as you see there from the diagram. Faith in Christ, we are justified by faith in Christ alone
but the works accompany the fact that we are justified. So it's not that it disappears, that there's not a relationship of faith in works. It's just in a very different perspective. The works does not have a hand in bringing us our salvation, but the works is the fruit of our justification and our salvation. And so there is a very clear divide there and Scripture is very, very clear in demonstrating that. I remember Joel saying this, justification is by faith alone in Christ, parentheses of will, but not by a faith that is alone. We are saved by faith in Christ, but faith is not standalone. Our faith is in Christ and it leads to a fruitfulness, which is our good works. John Calvin has said this, faith in works must be distinguished from each other, but they cannot, and he's saying they cannot be separated from each other. And when you look at the, in Scripture sometimes, I know some people have said that when they were new Christians perhaps they were confused when they would read about what Paul would say about how we are just, you know, our righteousness is imputed by our faith in Christ. Christ finished work on the cross, we are declared righteous by the imputation of Christ's righteousness on our behalf. The Father looks on the Son and sees his perfect righteousness and our faith in Christ. And we are declared righteous by some of called a foreign righteousness and alien righteousness. It's a righteousness that's not our own. It's Christ's righteousness on our behalf, the imputation, a big word there. But what we need to understand is that they cannot be separated from one another. We are justified by faith alone, but our works are fruitfulness that comes out of that. Faith in works must be distinguished from each other but not separated from one another. Titus 3, 5 through 8, I think says it very beautifully. In here, Paul says, I'm gonna start back actually part of verse 4. When the kindness and love of God, our Savior appeared, he saved us not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and the renewal by the Holy Spirit whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior. Notice the mentioning of the Holy Spirit. That's our hearts are regenerated. We come to faith as the Holy Spirit is poured out into our lives, we are in dwell so that having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. This is a trustworthy saying and I want you to stress these things to those who have trusted in God so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good. These things are excellent and profitable for everyone. Do you see the outflow of that whole passage? It first introduces us to the whole nature of our being regenerated by the Spirit of God. We're justified by faith. It goes through a whole process there of our theological coming to faith and being redeemed, talks about the renewal of the Holy Spirit justified by grace, but then it goes on to say, not only do we have the hope of eternal life, but what does he say? I want you to be careful to devote yourselves to doing what is good. These things are excellent. It's a natural outflow. It comes at the end of all these other things. If God has done this work to call you to Himself, if He's done this work of declaring you righteous by faith in Christ and His perfect and finished work, the natural outflow of that, in addition to your relationship with Him, is that good works or fruit will be a natural outcome will be a natural outcome of that whole process. The necessary consequence of our salvation is good works. I had a little brain spas in there earlier. I was telling you what Paul was talking about in terms of justification, and I completely forgot where I wanted to go with that, and so I jumped into this. What I was trying to say is, Paul declares very clearly how we're justified by faith and it's a work of God's grace. Ephesians 2, 8, and 9. But sometimes when people go to the book of James and they read that where James says, you know, show me your faith without works and your faith is dead and other similar passages. And that sometimes confuses people because it sounds like Paul and James are saying two different things. But in actuality, Paul is talking again about how are we able to be declared righteous? How are we justified? James is concerned about the problem of dead orthodoxy. Again, it's a contextual thing. So many times when we think we see conflict in scripture, it's not really the case that the scriptures are convicting each other. We're simply either pulling a small passage or verse out of context to where we've removed it from why it's saying what it's saying. Paul is speaking in a completely different context about the nature of what we can do as opposed to James. James is not questioning where our justification comes from. It's in Christ or where our faith comes from. He's simply questioning on the basis of having seen what might be declared to be dead orthodoxy in the church. And that's people who are claiming to be believers and yet are showing absolutely no fruitfulness. They're not interested in doing works of righteousness if you will. They're not interested in doing good works. And James simply says those things cannot go together. Now, we don't try to put a timeline to say, okay, well, you become a Christian. So within the next 24 hours, we better see this, this, and this good work. Or we're going to question your salvation. That's not at all. But what James is saying is there is a dead orthodoxy where someone can have a head knowledge but it's never really impacted their hearts. And as a result, they may be saying all the right things. They may be going to all the services and the Bible studies and they may be participating and they may be having a grand old time. But if they're showing absolutely no fruitfulness at some point along the way, there's reason to question whether they're really a person of faith. Because a faithful person will also be fruitful. Those two cannot be separated from one another. It's the natural course of our sanctification. It's the natural work of God in a person's life. Because of that sales-same Holy Spirit who has regenerated your heart, who's brought you to faith and brought you along and is showing you the better way is that same spirit that is going to lead you to fruitfulness. And so James is simply questioning and saying, you know, at some point, if a person is not interested in doing works, what we call good works, if they're not being fruitful, which may be the better word for, there's reason to question whether they really not just understand what faith in Christ is all about but whether they have actually volitionally made a commitment to Christ that's real. So that's what that's all about. But it can be confusing sometimes when you read that in James. So what does a good work? It sounds simple now. I mean, this sounds like Christianity not 101 but maybe one here. What does a good work? Let me give you from the Westminster Confession of Faith there, some of the statements that it makes about what a good work is. It's a lot more involved than what I would think of. But I just wanted to expose you a little bit to it. We'll spend a lot of time on it. Number one, only a good work is only what is commanded by God in His word is a good word. That seems kind of narrow, doesn't it? Because we can think pretty broadly about good works. You know, anything that's done that helps someone else out. Isn't that a good word? You know, well, in a certain sense, maybe it is. We'll see down the line. But from a biblical sense, if we understand who God is and who we are and the nature of our hearts before God gets hold of us, but even in the process of our regenerated heart, we haven't arrived yet. We'll understand what the confession is saying here. They're saying that really only God can do a good work. Have you ever heard that before? Only God can do a good work. Apart from God, apart from the Holy Spirit, you are incapable of doing anything that biblical could be declared to be a good work. Remember Jesus' comments when the rich young ruler or the rich young man came up to him and he said, good teacher and he was trying to lead into a point he wanted to make. And what did Jesus immediately do there? It's kind of a little disarming when you read it because you're surprised maybe that Jesus would even say it. But immediately Jesus comes back to him and says, who are you calling good? Now, he's just called Jesus good and Jesus says, who are you calling good? You go, wait a minute, what's wrong with that? Jesus says there is only one that is good. And he's speaking about God. Now, he wasn't denying that he was good but he was making a point to the rich young man. He said there's only one who's good as God. So there's only one who's good who is God than by process of then God alone or those things that come from God himself are the only true good works. Now, that might sound like a real technicality but it's just introduced the idea and we'll have a little better understanding of it. Think about the summary of the commandments then. If only good works can only come from God, what did God say? He said, love me with all your mind, heart, soul and strength. So there's a nature of a good work that he's commanded and love your neighbor as yourself. Anything that comes under that umbrella, it's not that you specifically have to find that command and scripture to say, okay, well, this good work passes musters so we can start doing those because it falls under there. It's not to get that technical but it's the idea that if it's truly a good work then in at least a broad perspective and an umbrella statement or command God has declared that's something that's important to him. That's something he wants done or followed through on. Look at God's heart for the widows and the orphans, for the aliens, for the prisoners, for the poor. And other specifics, they're mentioned again and again in scripture, what does that tell us? It says, God has a special place for them and his heart. That's a good work, work that is being done along those lines such as with our mercy committee and compassion committee. So only what is commanded by God in a technical sense is a good work. Galatians 6, 9 and 10, many of you know that passage. Do good, we're said to do good unto all men and especially unto the house of faith. He makes a particular point. We're called to do good to all men but we have a particular responsibility to other brothers and sisters in Christ according to their need. Okay, let's move on there. Then the second thing under the Westminster Confession on good works is the doing of such works is the fruit of the spirit. We're back on that word fruit and fruitful in every way. This again is acknowledging that apart from the Holy Spirit's work with our spirit there is no good work taking place. If the Holy Spirit's hand isn't involved in it then we're not truly doing a good work. We may think we are. It may to the outside observer look like whatever you're doing. You may be building a dam to hold back water from wiping out 10 villages somewhere. To the outward observer that's a good work. But if it's done wrong motives and for any myriad of reasons that people do things other than to glorify God, it's not a good work in God's eyes. And that's just the biblical definition of it. But having said that every believer has the spirit of God and every believer will be fruitful if the spirit of God is in him. You have the fruit of the spirit, Glacian's 5, 22 and 23. No exceptions, if you're a believer in Christ you have the fruit of the spirit. Now it may be more latent than some of the others. The emergence and the maturity of that fruit will certainly vary tremendously based on how long you've been a person of faith based on the context or crucible in which you have been growing as a Christian. Hopefully growing or learning as a Christian or sanctification moves in a different pace for every one of us doesn't. Even within the same church, even within the same small group amazingly. We don't, we're all unique and God works within us and we don't all grow at the same pace. Some of that is our own stubborn resistance to the Holy Spirit in our sanctification, which if we're honest, we all do, but there are other factors there as well. But again, recognize that the Holy Spirit is intergoly a part of your personal sanctification, but that sanctification involves being fruitful. The fruit of the spirit should be evident in some small way even as a new baby Christian, though sometimes it's harder to see, sometimes it's not as evident or consistent, but it should be there because it doesn't have to do with how long you've been a believer, it has to do with the fact that the Holy Spirit has indweld you, you're a person of faith, and you will be fruitful according to that spirit and that work.
I have a statement written out here and has kind of already said that to be fruitless at some point is to be faithless. And that's kind of the point that James was trying to get at. A person really needs to examine themselves if fruitfulness is not a part of who they are. Good works are evidence of our faith. It's not the only evidence. All right, number three, the doing of them is holy from the spirit, but Christians are responsible for stirring up that grace. Now that's an interesting thing. Remember we've talked in the past, when I was in the part we talked about providence, talked about man's free will, and just how there are different ways of looking at it and understanding it. This is an interesting statement because what it's in essence saying is, okay, we cannot do good works without the Holy Spirit's work in us. That should be kind of obvious in a statement. But what's interesting is that scripture doesn't put it on the Holy Spirit then. If you're not being fruitful, well, that's the Holy Spirit's fault. Sorry Lord, you know, I haven't been very fruitful. That Holy Spirit must have been busy with somebody else. So you just didn't have time to get to me. I've been here, I've been waiting. The point is that the Holy Spirit, again, the Holy Spirit cooperates with our spirit. There's God's intentionality, there's God's initiatory work and ongoing work. But for our part, we remember we have responsibility. God has valued us, He's made us uniquely. We have a responsibility to pursue after those things. We want the guidance of the Holy Spirit certainly, but it's interesting, it's this idea that we're actually to stir up the Holy Spirit that's within us. And you might say, well, how do you do that, Chris? Well, that's a very good question that we might explore a little bit, but we're told that we're to be stirring up the Holy Spirit that is within us for the good works to be done. So there's some manner in which, again, our spirit cooperating with God's spirit, but our responsibility is not to sit back and wait for God's spirit to do something. It could be a simple as simply saying, Lord, may your spirit show me the way that I'm to go or open the door for me to go through. I mean, it could be as simple as a prayer that you're praying of intentionality. God, I want to be more useful in your kingdom work. I feel like I am just kind of spending my wheels. You opened my eyes to see an opportunity that you've probably been running, frankly, you've probably been running by me constantly, and I just haven't seen it. You opened my eyes to see that opportunity so that I can jump in there or open the door so that I can step through it. You know, all that could be a part of stirring up the Holy Spirit. It could be the conviction to get in God's word about and you're being convicted by the commands of how we aren't just supposed to be sitting and soaking in our sanctification, but we're to be out there, we're to be useful and we're to be fruitful. And we want to be effective. Who is a Christian doesn't want to be effective in God's kingdom? Who doesn't want to be effective in being a useful instrument of his grace? I don't know that I've ever met anybody that doesn't who is truly a believer. But that having been said, we can't just simply sit and wait and say we're waiting for the Spirit to move. Again, I know it's a unique situation in the Old Testament. I always loved the request of Elijah who was succeeding. How would you like to follow in Elijah, the prophet, she is? One of the greatest figures in all of the scriptures. And here's Elijah coming along, but he was up to the task because he immediately asked what, give me a double portion of your Spirit to do this job. Give me a double portion of your Spirit to step into the shoes of one as great as your servant, Elijah, that I may not disappoint you. I just think, we talk about the wisdom of Psalm, and I think that's right up there to make that request. That's the kind of thing that we're talking about. Stir up the Spirit of God that's within you. You know that it's there. And someone's even said that the Spirit, again, because we understand the initiating work of the Holy Spirit, and you can get to where you're looking at yourself in the mirror here, and I don't mean for you to go there, but it's almost like, do you not doubt that the Spirit of God, because God's desire is always to pull you into deeper relationship, into closer relationship with Him, abide with me, and if you abide with me, you know, that whole from John 15, do you not doubt that the Spirit of God is bringing conviction and wanting to stir your heart to ask the Spirit to stir you up? I mean, it's one of those things that's kind of back and forth, but if you have the conviction of the equal portion to stir up the Spirit of God within you, you can almost certainly bet that the Spirit of God placed that on your heart to begin with. And that's really neat, because that, I mean, it just shows the interaction that God wants to have with you in this work, and in this process of your own sanctification. Again, for the gospel of John, Jesus praying, abiding me and I and you, and you will bear much fruit that abiding with the Lord, abiding with the Spirit. Very powerful. Number four, far from, this was just in the confession, I would never use a word like this. I just almost apologize for putting that in there. I hope none of you've been super-arrogating lately. That just means way over and above and beyond, but who needs that? Anyway, all right, far from super-arrogating, we got it out of our system. What is required of believers, such works fall short of much of our duty, just in understanding, again, the biblical nature of good works. Luke 17, 10, remember the statement where it's talking about the role of the servant. The role of the servant is not to be the master, not to be in charge, and it says, when the servant has even done what he was called to do, and he's maybe perfectly fulfilled his role of what he was to do, he shouldn't have the expectation of receiving some great honor. He's simply done what his task was, what his title was, what his job was, and so he said, the servant's attitude should be, I am only an unworthy servant who has done what he was supposed to, Luke 17, 10. Again, within the nature of good works, we need to always see that when we have the privilege of doing a good work, I mean, it is exciting to be a part of that, particularly when God shows you the fruitfulness of it, but we shouldn't let it go to our head, like we're the best things since sliced bread, or we're super-arrogating. I think we just best keep that under lid, don't take that out of the room tonight, someone might misunderstand. Anyway, we need to have the role that God has used me in the way that He called me to be used, and He gave me the tools to do it, and I've done it, and there's a pleasure in that, but not to get a swell head about it. We've done what we were called to do, to give it a perspective. Number five, far from deserving a reward, men's best works merit, the severe judgment of God. That sounds really harsh, doesn't it? It does to me when I read it. Again, it's just saying, look at the good work from God's perspective. God's perfect righteousness, He's holy, He's lifted up. He's an absolute perfection. We, on the other hand, have sinned and rebelled. He's called us back to Himself, but the point is, when you look at God's righteousness compared to what we can offer, our filthy rag righteousness, if you will, you begin to get the idea of what it's saying. There's simply, again, trying to put things in perspective, that our best efforts to do a good work, apart from God's grace are just not even worth discussing and talking about. In fact, they're worth the judgment of God. Again, just to have that perspective.
All right, number six, nevertheless, because believers are in Christ, these imperfect good works will actually receive reward. Now, now we get to the more positive though, but because God is gracious and because He chooses to use us as instrument of His grace, albeit imperfect and broken. Remember Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 4? I forget the exact verse. I've got it written down somewhere, but remember, he talks about these earthen, we are these earthen uses the metaphor. We are these cracked earthen vessels. We are these like unfired pottery jars. They haven't been fired, they haven't been glazed, and so they are prone to just crumble up in your hand and break apart and be absolutely useless, just like that. They're extremely brittle, and you've got to be very careful with them and they've got cracks in them anyway. He says, that's how we are. But God and His great wisdom and grace has chosen to put the treasure of knowing Christ and His spirits in us. We carry the message of the gospel. We carry the beauty of a relationship with Jesus Christ in these cracked earthen vessels that are of themselves have almost no value. And He uses that metaphor, again, just simply to drive home the grace of God in our lives, that He uses us, that He wants to use these cracked earthen vessels. I think Howard Hendrix in one of his books called empty open-ended peanut butter jars. You know, you always come up with a modern analogy, but whatever works for you, the ideas that God would choose to use that kind of vessel that you and I are for His glory and to carry this treasure in, which is a relationship with Christ in the knowledge of the gospel. That's a beautiful thing.
Anyway, that's, okay, believers are in Christ. These imperfect good works will actually receive rewards. So then He goes on to indicate how gracious it is that God does choose to use us to do good works that are pleasing to Him and that there is a reward. Paul talks about in 2 Timothy 4, which is the last chapter of any of the writing He did in the New Testament, the last letter that He wrote, the last chapter of that letter, which He knows He's about to be martyred in Rome. And He talks about, you know, that I have run the race. I've finished, you know, I've fought the fight. I've finished the race and now there's laid up for me the crown of righteousness. Paul had his eyes on his reward, his eternal reward, and it was coming very, very soon. There is a reward in great grace in the service of the King.
It's interesting also as you think about Paul's words there in 1 Corinthians 3, I think it's 10 through 15. 1 Corinthians 3, 10 through 15. That whole discussion where Paul talks about the place of our works and supposed merits. Again, not anything that we can do in ourselves. But remember how he talks about, he says, you know, you are justified by faith in Christ. You are, your salvation is not an issue when you go and stand before the King. But the works that you have done in this life all be it, you know, the fruit of the Spirit, stirring up the Spirit to do the good works that God has called you to do, those will be tested and those will ultimately be refined by fire to see if they'll be lasting or fleeting. And he talks about that. He says, the works that you do will be tested to measure whether they're lasting or not. And you know, that kind of always, whenever I read that passage, I always get to my mind kind of thinking through things that I've been involved with or had a hand in it. You know, that's gone up and smote and that's gone. That's not going anywhere. You know, but again, that's our perspective. We don't know, but what we can know is that it isn't so much the size of the grandeur of the things that we did because that's up to the Lord. And that's a very American way of thinking that we think that the biggest and the boldest and the brightest and the most spectacularly pulled off in the biggest PR campaign for whatever ministry it was. That's what's going to stand the test of time. And we're going to be so kidding ourselves because it has so much more to do with what was our heart involved with when we were doing it. What were the motives with which we did it? Were we truly doing it for the glory of the king? Were we as much keeping one eye out to see how much acclaim and favor we were getting in the process of participating in it? I mean, it's sometimes subtle and sometimes it's not subtle, but we've all been there haven't we? So it's a very interesting statement that Paul makes there. We will not come at a judgment in our salvation's not an issue, but certainly the fruit or fruitlessness of what we have done will be measured. So all that's saying that the choices that we make in terms of the works and what we do are very, very, very significant. As much as we talk about God's sovereignty and we talk about His plan of redemption will not be thwarted, our decisions in terms of what we, what plow we put our hands to, and what we do with the time that has been given to us of each day is very, very significant in terms of the works.
All right, the seventh and last one is, unregenerate men can only do bad good works. That's an interesting, unregenerate men can only do bad good works. Bad because of the evil hearts from which they spring and good only in the matter of them. I'm, that's really disrespectful. I didn't mean to laugh at that. It was, I was laughing at the bad English, not at the, the thought of unregenerate people. That there's nothing funny about that at all. Remember what Jesus said again in Matthew 7, 18, he said, you know, now again, that seems like kind of a harsh statement to someone. We think about Mahatma Gandhi who preached about peace there are other things that went on with what Mahatma Gandhi was doing if you're reading books about it. But most people's perspective and images that he was a man of peace who's trying to be world peace, how can you argue with that? How can you say that the man didn't do a great good work? How can it be a bad good work? Albert Schweitzer, he was actually a very liberal churchman, but I don't, from everything I've read, I don't believe that he knew the Lord. He was just doing a lot of very beneficial, humanitarian type of things. We know a lot of people who do very benevolent, humanitarian things as we define them. And yeah, most likely they would come out of this category of doing a lot of things, but they would have to be described as bad good works as God defines good works. That just seems so difficult and harsh. But again, we have to get back to God looks so much more because you know, God can do any of these things. God can do any of the things that he's called us to do that would come into the umbrella of good works. He doesn't need our help to do them. Again, it's his grace that he chooses to let us be a part of that. It's like letting your, I remember when I used to go out and cut the grass and my youngest son was absolutely in love with lawn mowers. And you know, at a great distance and with a lot of safety, I would let him kind of put his hands on one part of the handle and go with me for a few feet. And he would think that he was really pushing and helping out and you know, and that whole thing. I mean, God graciously allows us to be a part of the good works that he wants to accomplish, but he doesn't need us to do it. He's doing a work in us as he allows us to be a part of it. That's the principal part of it. But as we understand that, we can understand, we can't do good works of our own character or metal. A bad tree cannot produce good fruit. Hebrews 116 says that without faith, meaning faith in Christ, it is impossible to please God because he who believes in God, he who comes to God and faith must believe that he is also the rewarder of those who diligently seek him. What he's saying there, a person of faith has to believe that God is at the very root, not only of his salvation, but of everything that he's being called to do. A person that doesn't have faith in Christ has a completely different perspective on what they're doing, why they're doing it. I'm not saying that they don't have some sense of doing something for someone else. It's not always all about them. I'm not trying to paint them out as evil in that regard. But if you think about it, again, as we say, scripture says, God is the only one who's good. Then directly or indirectly, good works have to flow out of him. They have to flow from relationship with the Spirit. They have to flow from relationship with the Son. And if you define it in that manner, that's why I say that the greatest benevolence that Bill Gates or anyone else can do if they don't know Christ is a bad good work. Because ultimately, again, I just pick Bill Gates out because their foundation gives away billions of dollars ever. There's something you and I will never have to worry about. But, and I don't know what is, I'm sure his motives are very generous. He's got this money. He wants some of it to go to a good thing. I'm not going to try to read Bill Gates' heart. But one thing I do know is, it's tough enough for me as a believer with the Spirit of God in me and faith in Christ to do things with the right motive. A person that doesn't know Christ, where is their heart going with all that? Now, we can't read it. Only God can do that. But that's why it sounds so harsh and saying that. Because, you know, motives is what God looks at when he, he doesn't just look at the act of what's going on. He looks at, why are you doing this? If you're doing it for anything other than the glory of God, you do it for the wrong motives. And in essence to what Paul says, that's going to be burned up. That's kind of the reality of it there. Okay, let's move on. James Kennedy just kind of reiterates that in a piece that he wrote about what must have worked be, what are the characteristics of the work for it to be called? And he says, it must be commanded by God, done by a heart purified by faith. He's talking about a regenerated heart and it must be done to the right end. He's talking about our motivation. What is the motivation in the good works that you were doing or involved with or seeking to do?
I read this illustration about, now we're going to move on. Some of you may remember, I think I used it one of my first sermons here about, it was an African story about the Apostle Peter and the other disciples and they were picking, if you can remember this, that's fine. You don't have to have your hand, they were walking along and Jesus asked them to pick up stones and carry them with them. He didn't give them an explanation of why. He just commanded them to pick up stones and so they all picked up stones and walked with them for a while. And after a while, the stones turned into bread according to the size of the stones. Well, Peter had picked up a relatively small stone because you're going, well, I don't know how long we're going to be carrying this and he didn't really tell us what size stone we had to carry. So he wasn't going to break his back by carrying a large stone so he carried a small one. So he was kind of disappointed when it turned out that was their meal when the stones turned into bread. So when Jesus, again, and he could tell that, and you think maybe the story was manufactured to make a point, anyway, I'll leave that up to you. But then when Jesus told them again to take stones, this time Peter goes, you know, fool me once, okay, fool me twice, so he picked up the biggest stone he could find and he carried it. And at that point, Jesus had them carried along for a long time and then he told them to set it down and he didn't turn them into bread and Peter was all bent out of shape about that. And Jesus just turned to him and said, Peter, for whom did you carry the stone? For whom did you carry the stone? Again, the point is that what is the motivation of a heart in the works that we do? All right, I'm not going to hit on all these. You've got these in print along with some scripture. Because motives are so important, when we talk about good works, about doing works that are pleasing to God, again, ultimately, there to be for his glory, I decided to include this, and it's like a number of things. Wayne Grewdom, who has probably one of the most readable systematic theologies I've ever seen, that's what it's kind of in a based text for what the different pastors have been using in this series, although he didn't actually have a chapter on good works. He kind of threw me on that one. I had to scramble around a little bit, but here are 11 motivations. And again, I'm not going to read through every one of them. You can do that on your own if you're interested. Motives for our obedience to God. Why do the good works? Number one, a desire to please God and express our love to him. That should be obvious. You know, if you love me, keep my commandments. If you love me and obey me, you know, again and again, that's the relationship, it's the faithfulness. Colossians 3.23, Paul says that whatever you do, do it as unto the Lord. That should be the case with whatever we engage ourself in and put our hands to. Whatever you do, do it as unto the Lord, whether you eat, whether you drink. The need to keep a clear conscience before God. Number two, number three, the desire to be a vessel for noble use. Paul talks about a, talks about in noble vessels, but he talks about vessels that are useful and noble and have increased effectiveness in the work of the kingdom. Second, Timothy is particularly a good passage there. This falls right in line with, notice in the statement with an increased effectiveness. Just as we grow in our sanctification, the expectations of God and His spirit working with our spirit is that we will grow in our effectiveness of the good works, that we will be more fruitful. That is a mature, you know, mature tree bears a whole lot more and bigger fruit than an immature tree. It's that same kind of analogy. And that should be true of us as we have matured and moved along in our sanctification, our Christian life. We should be more fruit bearing than we were in the past. And so, I mean, I know that that gets measured in different ways and we're in different contexts and different phases of life and so it's not an ideal comparison. But for that very reason, we ought to be able to look back, say, five years, or certainly 10 years back in our Christian life. And we ought to be able to see a difference. If you haven't just kind of mailed it in and you're just kind of waiting for glory and I won't ask for a show of hands on that, but if you understand sanctification to be what it is and to be a cooperative work with the Spirit of God, then you ought to be able to look back and go, you know, I'm producing a more mature fruitfulness than I was 10 years ago or I can see where I'm more effective in certain areas maybe than I was 10 years ago because, you know, God is dealt with me. I've grown. You know, I'm not saying we all see that. And so maybe that should be an area of conviction to say, I need to be back about my father's work. I need to be stirring up the Spirit of God that was within me to be more useful. I need to be more intentional in the good work and seeking the good works that God wants to put in my life. That could be an indicator for that. We could go a lot of different ways. The parable of the 30, 60, a hundredfold production. Paul's talking about in the midst of his own weakness, though, because of his pursuing that God's strength showed through and made him effective in the work. Number four, the desire to see unbelievers come to Christ. There should be a tremendous evangelistic aspect in our motive to do good works. In the book of Acts in the early church, the unbelievers flocked into the church and were being converted. And a lot of it was coming because they were observing the way in which the body life was taking place in the early church. They would sit there and stare at the way that the believers would take care of each other even though they had had no previous connection or blood relationship, just the way that they were very free with their things with one another. And they were loving on one another. And the unbelievers would stand off in the distance, almost like outside the light of the fire, they can't fire, and they'd say, look at how they love one another. Look at how they love one another. They could not get over that. They'd never seen anything like it in their own experience or civilization. And that became a win some drawing of many of them to faith in Christ as they saw the way in which the believers loved each other and how they loved on even the unbelievers who they came across. So there's tremendous gospel implications and mission implications there. Five is receiving present blessings, our motives, blessings on this earth and ministry. Six is kind of a negative one. And sometimes we say, how is the greatest motivations? I don't know if the way to get a proper motivation is out of a fear, but there is an incentive in going the right way when we know what the wrong way will bring. And that's not an adjustment kind of way again. Was it saying Hebrews 11? It says, the Lord will discipline or chase in those he loves. Because he loves you because he wants the best for you. We always forget that little point. We always think, why is he brought this into my life? Why is he doing this? We may not understand it, but the Lord is doing it for one reason and one reason only. It's for his glory, but he's also doing it because he loves you. And it's in your best interest, even though you can't always see it then. And sometimes we have to accept that.
Okay, got heavenly rewards, number seven, a deeper walk. I mean, you can read through the list. I won't bore you with it, but obviously there are a myriad of true motives for why we should be pursuing good works as part of our relationship with him. And I didn't even get to maybe the most powerful verse in scripture with all the mystery that's wrapped around it. And of course, that's Ephesians 210, right? After 289, where we've been told that the grace and faith are both gifts of God for us to come to redemption, then in the very next verse it says, of course, that we are God's wordmanship, created in Christ Jesus, for good works, which he has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. That's just an amazing verse to me. I can't wait to get to glory to hopefully maybe understand it better. I may not need to when I get there then, but that is just an amazing verse to me. God is, even, it's so integral part that our justification and our sanctification should naturally lead to fruitfulness and good works that God has even prepared the good works for our process of sanctification that we literally would, I don't think a walking into them much less walk in them. Now, again, it still requires our being responsible and our making choices there, but God has literally put us in a context where He wants us to be a part of the good works. And He's not left anything to chance or doubt. That's an amazing, beautiful thing. We still have to be willful in moving and looking for them and asking for the spirit to help us in them. We can flee just like Jonah. It's not a good result. It's kind of not very pretty when Jonah was running the other way. It was kind of foolish, but we can do that. But rather, would we walk in the good work so he's prepared ahead of time? The, okay, on the very last page, these are pretty self-explanatory. I just our response, again, when you bullet all down, maybe simplistically, we need to constantly remind ourselves as believers, particularly if we've been believers for a while. It's not a case of entitlement. It's a case of being entrusted. We're not entitled as believers. We're entrusted with a very beautiful thing, with a very beautiful calling. God has invited us to partner. And partner is probably maybe not a great word other than the fact that he's including us into it, but it's not a 50-50 partnership. God has invited us to partner with him and doing good works that glorify him and that grow us in our relationship with him and give us great joy and great pleasure. It's very powerful. Always in therefore, should we give thanks with gratitude and constantly be looking for the fruit of the spirit to be growing in our lives. Examples, you know, we've got a W plus two, as Tim has been presenting and putting before you and preaching and the officers have been looking at the implications of that. It's a very simple statement. It's got a lot behind it, however, in terms of the implications for our church body, but we talk about, we are worshipers, that's who we are, and missions and discipleship, and you know, in the simplest forms is what we do, but those are broad and brilliant, involving a lot of good works, involving a lot of in-reach within the body of the church, and a lot of outreach outside the body of the church. So as we think about good works, we can really think about the W plus two, because as a church, we're trying to get a handle on that to be more effective both in in-reach and outreach, to believers and to unbelievers, to present the sweet-smelling nature of Christ. I think of one example where we've tried to get a better handle on that, and I want to give kudos again to the men who are on our mercy committee and to our deacons. As you know, the deacon on call system, and it wasn't just yesterday that there was a conviction on the part of our leaders and our officers to say that we need to do, you know, we're doing a great job in terms of world missions, and everybody knows about that. We're not doing such a good job in terms of missions right in our own backyard, our own neighborhood, and out and around in Chattanooga, Hamilton County. And so it took a lot of work and a lot of conviction for many of our deacons and the mercy committee to say, we're not doing, we're not doing well at this. We're not doing it in a good, biblical way. We're not honoring the Lord and not to take away from what was done, but they're saying, we think we can do a better job. We think we can be more effective in getting help where it really needs to be getting and giving people help in a long term, not just in a one-time kind of assistance. Looking at the whole person and their needs both physically and spiritually rather than, let's just give someone one time and move on. And so that took a lot of courage and a lot of risk to do that. And it hasn't gone perfectly. They've been doing it for a while now. There've been mistakes made. There've been a lot of lessons learned, a lot of growth, a lot of humbling, but what is encouraging is that it keeps getting refined. There's like a maturity that's coming to the deacons that I call into the mercy committee. And just in the time I've been here, I can tell you, I've seen a difference in how they go about handling the stewardship of things that you've entrusted to them, to minister to people that were called a minister to. The good works that were, some of the good works that were called to do. And I'm encouraged because I'm seeing a growth there in terms of how they take on that job and responsibility. And it really is seeking to be done for God's glory and not for any glory of the church or the individual. So I just want to, when the young people say, I want to give a little shout out there to the Deacons on call in the mercy committee. It's not an easy job. It's not an easy job at all. But God is doing growing work there. I'm just going to bring this to a closer. A lot of the things we could bring into this, but are there any comments or questions and we've got just a handful of minutes left. This is a broad area. So OK, number nine on the motivation. That's on page three except that they're not numbered. So you've got to kind of be fluid here. Number nine, the desire that angels would glorify God for our obedience. OK, is it a question or comment? OK, yeah, you're right. They already glorify God. That's their chief task. And of course, we read in other places that there is rejoicing among the angels and the heavenly beings in heaven when a person comes to faith, when a person is saved and comes to faith in Christ. So we know that that takes place. This is saying that the angels rejoice over our obedience. In other words, they're, they're glorifying God, but they're rejoicing when they see an individual or it could be a group of believers doing just loving for the right reasons with a heart that like them, they're glorifying God. That's what they were made to do. We were too. We're just coming around to it slowly, you know, with our regenerate heart. So when they see us do what they do naturally, they just rejoice further at that. With proper motivation, we've glorified God by being obedient, whatever it might be. It could be a very simple thing. Anything else? Anyone else want to make comment? Or, okay, well, go forth and do likewise. That's the hard part. No, you know, good works can take on a host of different things.
We have certain ideas about what we think are the good works, but I would just say if you're not sure about how God is using you to be fruitful, then that's just something, take it before Him and ask Him to give you eyes to see what He wants you to be about because it may be completely different than what the person next to you is called to do. Now as a church, we have certain things we're called to as a body, but we have our own particular gifts. We have our own particular calling and God may be calling you to based on just who you are or the way He's positioned you or your particular gifts to do a good work that maybe no one else is really equipped to do or in a position to do. So, you just have to ask God to give you that conviction and direction, but also, constantly be asking Him to show you your own heart so that you're, you get the blessings and benefit of doing it with the right heart. When you do it with the wrong heart, the blessings and benefits just aren't there. Anyway, let's close with the word prayer if anybody has any further comments they can come up. Lord, thank you for this time this evening. Seems like such a rudimentary subject, good works. Well, we start to see how complicated it is when we begin to be honest about our own hearts before you and the way in which a lot of the things that we do that seem meritorious and admirable when we really start looking at them, we realize that they were mixed motives. Lord, you understand that. None of us do anything out of perfectly pure motivation. You do understand that. Lord, we confess it to you. You don't want us to be immobilized and not doing the good works because we can't be 100% pure at it, Lord. You just want us to see our hearts and to see your heart in it as we do it, as unto the Lord. We pray it in your name. Amen. I kinda did that in the prayer, but I just wanted to emphasize again, if we had to wait until our hearts were 100% pure in terms of the motivation factor, nobody would ever do anything. Okay, so if there's any encouragement there, you go on anyway.