Moving Forward in Community

Well, we are in the middle. Of a series. This is the 3rd installment of a series that started a few weeks ago with Pastor Carlos called Moving Forward in Community. And when Pastor Carlos preached, he talked about biblical truths regarding relationships.

Last week, Pastor Milton talked about imitating a mega church where he reviewed the four values of Acts 2:42, and both of these sermons have an emphasis on relationships as necessary for growth. And my message this morning is entitled How Change Happens. And my particular focus is going to be around the doctrine of sanctification with a particular application towards our men. Now it's not that we're trying to be sexist or exclude the ladies.

In fact, everything I'm gonna say this morning will, be very rela applicational to our gals, but we wanna put a special emphasis in the application sense towards our men for a couple of different reasons. And let me just take a moment to develop this. Recent statistics on church kids, we're talking about kids that come to church and go to Sunday school. Indicate that between 80 and 90% of church kids are leaving the church when they leave their parents' house.

They're not going to church. They're not following Christ. The same percentage, 80 to 90% of kids surveyed that are currently going to church, when asked, Will you continue to go to church and follow your faith after you leave the home, 80 to 90% of our kids and evangelical families are saying no. People are realizing that we are not winning people to Christ fast enough.

To, handle this hemorrhage that is happening amongst the youth in our own church. In other words, when you look at the statistics, virtually all of the signs of the evangelical church are bad. That something terribly wrong is going, going on. And if statistics, if it bears out here at Cornerstone, and I'm not saying that it is exactly the way here, the way it is in the rest of the country or the world, but just think about it, the young people that are sitting in our pews right now, think about 8 out of 10 of them walking away from Christ after they graduate from high school.

There's a problem with that. And it's my contention, and it's a number I don't stand alone in this. that the problem and the solution has to do with men in the church. It has to do with men.

In our world today, we have grave problems. You look around the world. And virtually everybody says there's terrible stuff. it's been terrible since the garden, right?

But there's bad things going on all around the world and there's bad things going on in our country. Our freedoms are being challenged, there's just in, in our own state, homeschooling was declared illegal and then it's declared legal and it's going to be declared illegal at some point in the future. Spankings, they're going after, biblical. A spanking in Germany right now.

There are several parents who have had their kids taken forcibly away from their parents from the state because they're choosing to home school their kids rather than use a home or a state education. Most of Europe, it's a foregone conclusion that homosexual lifestyle is just, it's a no brainer. It's just it's just a no brainer. In the United States we're trying to catch up with the rest of the world because we're so behind the times morally and sexually and everything else.

And the question can be asked. What hope is there for our country, for our community? When our churches are losing 80% of the kids that are being nurtured in the church. It says something bad about the families.

If our families aren't healthy, it means our marriages aren't healthy. If our marriages aren't healthy, it means our men aren't healthy. There's lots of different solutions and problems, but one of the problems and solutions that many people, many Christian thinkers are pointing to is just the problem of men leading in their homes, men leading in the church, men leading in the community, and so forth. There seems to be a connection all throughout scripture between men and leadership and families and leadership amongst people of God.

you don't have to turn here, but 1 Timothy 2, when Paul is talking about prayers being lifted up for kings, and he's talking about the gospel going out, and he's talking about all this great gospel stuff. His first application is, therefore, I desire men to pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands. He wants the men to lead in the spiritual affairs. In 1 Timothy 3, when Paul's talking about the most essential leadership that's to be happening in the church, he says, if a man desires the position of an elder, he desires a good work, and then he goes on and he gives qualifications, and the first qualification is he must rule his own house well, having his children, it's a mission.

So there's a guy, guys ought to be leaders, but if they're going to be leaders, leaders in the home. And, then Paul answers the question, why do they need to be good leaders in the home? Verse 5, for if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the Church of God? If you don't have men in the church who know how to lead their wives and their families, then you don't have men who know how to lead the Church of God.

If you don't have men who know how to lead the Church of God, then you don't have churches impacting communities. If you don't have strong communities, you don't have a country that's heading in the right direction, and you've got big problems. And so we need to ask the question this morning how Can any of us change? If you're a man this morning, if you're a husband, if you're a little boy, you no doubt look at your own heart, and I think if you're a believer this morning, you can look at the scriptures yourself and realize that there is a gospel duty to every man in this, in this room to lead his own family, to lead his wife, to lead his children.

If you're a little boy in this room, one day you will be called upon to lead your wife and lead your children and lead the Church of God. And so that means moms need to be preparing their boys for leadership. Wives need to be supporting their men. Husbands need to be discipling their wives so that they can train the little boys.

Little girls need to be trained to look for little boys that are biblical leaders. Right? And not fools. So really, this has application to all of us, but how are we going to change when we look at our own hearts and we're like, man, I've got, I'm messed up.

How's, how, how am I going to change the world when I can't even change myself? Benjamin Franklin is one that tried to reform himself by just pulling up his own bootstraps. He said, what, I am going to try to accomplish perfection. And he actually made a list of all these different attributes like charity and, and honesty and virtue.

He just made all these different lists, kindness, gentleness, and tried to perfect himself. He would start with one and then when he figured he had mastered that, he would check it off and go to the second one. And he noticed that when he got down to round attribute 5, he was messing up on attribute 1, and when he got down to attributes 6 and 7, he was messing up on attribute 12, and 3. And suddenly he concludes by saying, everything I've tried to do, I have this inclination within my heart that defies reason.

This is coming from a deist. Who believes that reason is the highest virtue, and he tries to perfect himself and says, I can't do it. And so we need to ask ourselves, Do we, can we do it? What is the hope that we have to find change in ourselves and therefore change in our families, in our church and community?

And as Christians, there is great hope for change if we think and have a philosophy that is after the thoughts of God. If we have a Christian worldview, and if we think biblical philosophy, it starts in the mind, then we can accomplish great things in our lifetime. And I want to, what we're going to talk about this morning is more like how do we change ourselves and therefore how can we change our families and our church and so on. It applies to everybody, but I want to go after the men particularly.

And we're going to be talking about 3 lines of reasoning. I'm just going to give you like the Cliff Notes version first, and we're going to get into each point. The first point of thought and philosophy is called biblical pessimism. You can write that down.

We're going to talk about biblical pessimism. Secondly, we're going to talk about biblical optimism, and thirdly, we're going to talk about biblical realism. These will explain all these terms basically it's a Christian philosophy, a way of thinking and a way of living that as men we need to imbibe, we need to pass it on to our wives, we need to pass it off to our children, to even if our generation gets dark and nasty, that our kids' kids can make a huge difference in our culture.

Because we're teaching them how to think this Christian worldview.

So let's start with the first point. And that is the first line of thinking that we need to be armed with is we need to consider, you need to consider who you are without Christ. This is biblical pessimism. Consider who you are without Christ.

Biblical pessimism. It has to start here. We have to dig down and talk about the dirty stuff before we can build on the foundation of Christ. We need to think about, ponder, meditate upon regularly who we are without Christ, and then teach this to our kids and teach this to our families, and remind them we are without Christ.

And who are we without Christ? Well, you are a lawbreaker. You and I have violated the laws given by this holy lawgiver, who is all powerful and almighty, holy, awesome. who upholds the whole universe by the word of His power.

Every one of us in this room are lawbreakers, and this, we, we, as we compare our own hearts against the 10 Commandments. Let me just focus on one commandment, not to take the name of the Lord in vain. A lot of times we say, well, I don't use the Lord's name as a cuss word, but really it means a lot more than that. To take the name of the Lord in vain is the idea that every one of us who are married in this room, we stood.

before people and we uttered with our mouth before God that we would be faithful to our husband and wife. To take the norm, the name of the Lord in vain is to not keep that promise to your, your husband or wife. In any degree, any thought, any word, any deed, where we have not kept our covenant to our husband or wife, that's blasphemy. When we stand up here and we, and we recite a church covenant, we say, I will be a faithful member to this church.

You're taking the name of God upon your mouth and saying, I will be a faithful member of this church. And when we violate that covenant, and we hold bitterness against our brothers and sisters, we blaspheme the name of God. When we stand in the waters of baptism, and we take the name of the Lord upon our lips, and we're baptized in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, saying, I will follow Christ. And then we don't follow Christ, we've blasphemed the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Every one of us in this room are blasphemers, brothers and sisters. Your children are blasphemers. Your husband, your wife, we are all lawbreakers, and it's not like we're just corrupted by our culture. Jesus says it's from within.

In Matthew 7:21, out of the hearts of men come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance. All these things come from within. I can say, oh, I just want to keep my kids around all the good kids so they won't do anything bad. Guess what?

It doesn't work. I can just hide my kids in the closet and just run VeggieTales 24/7. And play nothing but Christian music, and those kids are going to come up with something deceitful. To do it's within the heart.

What are the most powerful forces of evil in the world? Is it al Qaeda Is it communism? Nuclear power. As a lawbreaker, you and I are in cahoots with the two most powerful forces of evil in the universe, the devil and the world.

And together, you make up the three most powerful forces of evil in the universe. Those are big enemies. You guys ever seen the old Batman movies or, the 1960s version. I, I like those a lot better actually.

They're a lot, they're pretty funny. They're meant to be funny. But you'll get these characters like the Penguin and, Catwoman, the Joker, all going after Batman at the same time. Holy nightmare, Batman, it's just crazy.

But there's No comparison. You line up the world, the flesh, and the devil, and you can put your, your body in one of those masks, in one of those outfits, and you are one of the big bad guys in the world, and I am one of the big bad guys in the world that we are trying to battle. And we need help. Even a guy like David, a man after God's own heart, when he's off by himself and he's not out doing what God had called him to do, gets dominated by himself.

His own flesh, the heart is deceitful. Jeremiah tells us above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? And yet you and I are not as bad as we could be.

God's common grace has held us back from being as wicked as we could be. This is the doctrine of total depravity. We need to understand that we without Christ are in a lot of trouble. We're lawbreakers.

And this should concern us. It should concern you. It should concern your wife. It should concern your children.

At the same time, it shouldn't shock us. When I'm sitting at the dinner table trying to lead family devotions, and, one of my kids just breaks out with some sinful comment or they're being disruptive, or they're, they hit their sister right in the middle of Bible time. It shouldn't shock me. We're in the middle of Bible time.

What are you doing? Where is this coming from? It comes from within. And my children and myself, we need to be constantly reminded this is not Plan B.

This is Plan A. God wants us to daily be reminded of who we are outside of Christ. And even as we'll talk about later in Christ, we're still lawbreakers and still struggle. Secondly, as we consider who we are without Christ, we are wrath deserving.

You are wrath deserving. Romans 1:18. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness, who suppress the truth and unrighteousness. Has anybody ever suppressed the truth and unrighteousness here?

Is there anybody in this room who's ever known I should do that? But what, I'm going to mentally ignore that and go do this. Brian's the only one. Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, all of us, if you're honest with yourself, we suppress the truth and our righteousness on a regular basis, sometimes unknowingly.

The Bible says the wrath of God comes on the sins of disobedience. We are by nature children of wrath, and the end of those folks in Revelation 21 is the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable murderers, sexual immoral idolaters will have their part in the lake of fire, the second death. We're lawbreakers. We are wrath deserving, and thirdly, we are utterly hopeless.

Without Christ you are utterly hopeless. Ephesians 2:12 says you were without hope, having no hope without God. Still helpless, Romans 5:6. Jeremiah 13:23, the leopard, can the leopard change its spots?

Then may you also do good who are accustomed to do evil. How many here have been accustomed to do evil? That's me. Can we do good on our own?

Who can say, I have made my heart clean? I am pure from sin, Proverbs says, Jesus tells us, without me, you can do nothing. And so the summary of all of this is all men in Adam are equally depraved. This is the doctrine of total depravity.

We need to have as part of our Christian worldview, as part of our thinking, our philosophy on a daily basis, biblical pessimism. That you and I are depraved. The hymn writers did not shy away from this subject, and a lot of our modern hymns deal with this concept. One of the hymns we sang this morning, Amazing Grace, right in the middle of the first verse, Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, not just saved somebody who used to be a wretch, somebody who is a wretch.

A wretch like me. Another hymn says, Alas, and did my Savior bleed and did my sovereign die? Would he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I? Throughout the hymns, there's this contemplation of who we are without Christ, lawbreakers, wrath deserving, utterly hopeless, and the hymn, the hymns do not shy away from that topic.

Now modern versions of these hymns actually do shy away from that topic. Our own hymnal, on that last hymn I just quoted, changes the last line from worm to sinners. They use the sinner word, but they don't like the worm terminology. There's some modern hymns that take the wretch term out of Amazing Grace.

They don't want to Use the rat's term. They don't like worm theology. As they call it But biblically we need to keep this before us. Paul says, I am the chief of sinners.

He didn't say I was the chief of sinners. I am the chief of sinners. He says, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of sin, he doesn't stop there, but he begins there. Now notice what Jonathan Edwards says in his, his one of his resolves, the 8th resolve.

Throughout his lifetime, he had these statements that he just crafted for himself as just reminders of how to think biblically, how to have a Christian philosophy of life every day, and one of his resolves, number 8, is this resolved to act in all respects, both speaking and doing as if nobody had been so vile as I. And as if I had committed the same sins, or have the same infirmities, or failings as others. And that I will let the knowledge of their failings promote nothing but shame in myself and prove only an occasion of my own confession or my confessing my own sins and misery to God.

That's not the only resolve that Jonathan Edwards has, but it's one of the resolves, and it's very important.

A guy like Jonathan Edwards in this modern day would look at John Edwards, who's just fallen into some public sin, and rather than saying ha, the politicians, he would look at that guy and say, Oh, that's me, that's where I can go. I pray for this man. I pray for his family. I pray for his children.

I pray for this country. We look at our own hearts, we realize that we have the same potential, we have the same enemy, and we don't look at someone who's been caught up with sin as an opportunity for us to triumph and toot our own horn. It is so important to dig deep if we're going to build upon the foundation upon the righteousness of Christ. That brings us to our second point.

If we're going to see change in our own lives, in our marriages, in our families, in our church, our community, it starts with thinking biblically, biblical pessimism. Thinking about that and teaching it and keeping it before your family. And then secondly, we need to consider, you need to consider who you are in Christ, and this is biblical optimism. Biblical optimism.

Who are we in Christ? We need to keep both intention. The Puritans would talk about holding the two horns of the altar, the law and the gospel, and keep both intention. And we must keep our eyes focused on who we are in Christ as well.

And so let's talk about what is it that Christ has done? Well, Christ is the lawkeeper. You and I are lawbreakers, but Christ is the lawkeeper. Galatians 4:4 says that he was born under the law that he might redeem those who are under the law.

Jesus said, I did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. And Christ is the one that Hebrews says is without sin. Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law.

One of the things that I try to ask our kids and family devotions on a regular basis is how many sins has Christ committed? How many commandments has Jesus broken? My children know the answer by now. 0 How many sins have we committed?

How many laws have we broken? Thousands upon thousands. Christ is the law keeper, we must keep this before us. We must put it before our families.

Christ is the law keeper, but Christ is also the wrath bearer. We are wrath deserving, but Christ is the wrath bearer. First John 2:2, he himself is the propitiation for our sins. The idea of propitiation is he's bearing the wrath of Almighty God on Himself.

First John 4:12, and this is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins. And this is the symbol that we get, or this is the type that we get in the Old Testament with the Passover lamb, with the Day of Atonement, is this lamb that dies for us and delivers us from the wrath to come. We even see it in Genesis chapter 3, right there in Genesis chapter 3, we're reading this in our, family time just this week, we just started going through Genesis again.

We come to chapter 3 where it talks about the fall.

And God says to Adam and Eve, you may eat of every tree in the garden, but on the day that you eat of that tree, the knowledge of good and evil, you shall surely die on that day. It's emphatic in the English. It's emphatic in the Hebrew. On that day you shall surely die.

And so I asked my children, what, when Adam and Eve eat the fruit, what's supposed to happen? They're supposed to die. Johnny on the spot. Now we talk about the spiritual death side, and there's, there's something to that, the fact that in Adam death is going to come.

But if they got the letter of the law, Adam and Eve would have died at the moment. But what happened? Something did die. Something did die in Genesis 3.

And kids, if you read Genesis 3, you'll see. That God comes and he puts skins around Adam and Eve and dresses them and clothes their naked nakedness. Where in the world did God get skins? Something had to die to get skins, animal skins.

God is the first one that kills in the Bible. He kills an animal, and he dresses Adam and Eve in that skin, a type of Christ. He dressed them in the righteousness of Christ. That's why they don't die.

Johnny on the spot. There's still consequences. Adam and Eve, the fall came and they would one day die, but they don't get death immediately because of the righteousness of Christ. Christ bore the wrath for us and then Christ is the hope giver.

We are utterly hopeless. But Christ is the hope giver. Christ is the hope giver because he's brought first of all, forgiveness of sin. In Ephesians 1:7, he's the, he's brought the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace.

He's also brought freedom from sin. As it says in Romans 6:7, he has, for he who has died is freed from sin. Christ has freed us from the power of sin. And then he has given us thirdly, the power to change.

Matthew 19:26, with men, this is impossible. With God, all things are possible. Paul can say I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Jesus says, without me, you can do nothing.

Paul says, with Christ, I can do all things. Ezekiel 11:19 prophesized the new covenant and says that I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and I will take out the heart of the flesh, and I will give them a heart, a heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh, and they will walk in my statutes and keep my judgments. You look at without Christ, we can't keep the law, but you look at in Christ now. He gives us freedom from sin, forgiveness, and power to change.

So there's no Christian in this room that can say, Oh, I'm Irish. I just get angry. I'm Italian. my dad passed on his bad genes to me.

All of us have those inclinations. We're not minimizing the fact that we have this propensity towards sin, but now we have power to change. We can be biblical optimists. A Christian is the only person in the world that legitimately can be optimistic.

There's lots of people out there that try to be optimistic. I had a professor in college that every day he would come and give us these little sayings and turn lemons into lemonade, and he was just Mr., Mr. Positive, just like a male Oprah, just like, Hey, do you believe in yourself and And it just made me sick every class because this guy had absolutely no foundation for that positiveness because the only thing that awaits him is death and judgment. If he doesn't come to Christ.

But in Christ, Christ has been our lawkeeper. He's born the wrath, so there's no more wrath, and he's given us hope. He's, we're forgiven of our sins. We've been freed from the power of sin.

One day, the presence of sin, and now we have power to legitimately change. Now there are pagans all over the world that can change in a non-eternal sense. They can just mentally focus themselves and use part of God's universe to focus themselves to change certain aspects of their lives. But in an eternal sense, no pagan can change in a way that glorifies God.

Only a Christian can have true heart change in a way that brings honor to God. If you think about it, any pagan that tries to just quit smoking and now I'm not smoking anymore, what do they do? Look what I did. they're always proud about how they were able to stop smoking, and now they don't smoke anymore, and they rob God of His glory.

And so they turned from smokers to thieves. As Christians, we can have true heart change and give glory to God. Recognize I can't do anything but Christ to God be the glory for any change that's been able to happen in my life. So we can summarize this whole section in this way all men in Christ are equally dressed.

All men in Christ are equally dressed, and this hearkens to the doctrine of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, that Christ lived a perfect life for us, it's been imputed to us, and the resurrection, the doctrine of the resurrection, the fact that when he was raised from the dead, there was accomplished for us power to live the, the resurrection lifestyle. And so we need to keep these two doctrines in tension, and they're not doctrines that are meant to be enemies, they're doctrines that are meant to be friends.

We can be biblical pessimists and biblical optimists at the same time. We consider on a daily basis who we are without Christ, who we are in Christ.

We keep that before us as a biblical frame of mind and philosophy and worldview. We bring that to our family on a daily basis. As we worship with our wife and children and present this before them every day as a reminder and we can see change. George Eliot, I love this quote from George Eliot where he says, it is never too late to become what you might have been.

When we look at who we are in Christ, there are those of you that are like me, you've crossed over into the old age, and you're looking back and you're thinking, oh, what I might have been. It is never too late. You can be 80 or 90 years old, and it's not too late if you're in Christ to make significant changes because of Christ. And sometimes we can be, if we're not.

Encouraging each other and communing with these thoughts we can get down, right? I, I think of just friends I had in high school. I got saved at 14 and had a bunch of Christian friends. We all had these big ideals that we were going to accomplish for Christ, and some of them were accomplished, but we got older and then all of a sudden we started realizing, what, this sin problem is not going away.

When we were in high school, life's good, right? You're thinking you don't have all these responsibilities. You're just out there witnessing for Christ, doing all this. You just, you stay up till 2 in the morning worshiping with your friends.

You're just out there playing guitar and whatever and go out and do crazy things for Christ. You're just like, yeah, life's good. And then you get older and you suddenly realize that, man, I thought I would have been over the sin stuff by now. And you get married and God puts you together with another sinner and all of a sudden you start realizing that wow, there's some stuff in there and then you have kids and you're like, Whoa, I didn't know that was still in there and then you're 40 years old and you're like, what happened?

Everything was going good when I was a teenager. We need, it's never too late. We need to keep it both intention, who we are without Christ, who are in Christ, and realize it's never too late. Those dreams that you've had when you're young, you can still accomplish those things through Christ.

We need to get to the third point because this is the glue that really binds the whole thing together. And that is biblical realism. And that is number 3, we need to become, you need to become who you are in Christ, in community. Become who you are in Christ, in community.

First of all, by practicing the first two items. Constantly live your life in light of who you deserve, what you deserve without Christ and what you get in Christ, and then become who you are. This is Paul, if you could summarize all of Paul's ministry in his writings to Christians, it can probably be summarized in the statement, become who you are. That's what Paul is doing all the time.

When you look at the book of Ephesians, when we preach to Ephesians here, the 1st 3 chapters are just, here's who you are in Christ. He doesn't give him any commands in the 1st 3 chapters. Here's who you are. You're elect.

You've been redeemed. He gives them all this just great identity in Christ stuff, and then he gets over to 45, and 6, and he gives them commands. In light of the first two chapters, and it's not, he doesn't give them the commands first and say, knock it off and shape up. He says, here, here's, here's who you are.

Now become who you are. And by the way, you have to become who you are with others. You're not going to be able to become who you are by yourself. And Paul is emphatic about that in Ephesians.

We'll look at some of those passages. That's what he's doing in many of the epistles. He's encouraging believers to become who they are. Let me just give you a definition of sanctification.

Then, becoming who we are in Christ is sanctification. And one definition of this doctrine from our brother Wayne Gruden goes like this Sanctification is the progressive work of God. It's not something that happens all at once like justification, regeneration. It's a progressive work of God and man, by the grace of God, that makes us more and more free from sin and like Christ, our actual lives.

It's a progressive work. It's like walking up an escalator going down. You're walking. And you feel like you're starting to move, and then all of a sudden you're like, what is going on here?

And then, somebody comes along and helps you and then you're walking together and then you're moving along. And it's, it's a progressive thing that happens throughout our lifetime, and it's all by God's grace, but God calls upon us by His grace to put into practice things that He has given us. He's given us various means of grace. He calls upon us to put those into practice within the community of God's people.

And so let's talk about how this biblical realism flushes itself out. By the way, when we're talking about this biblical realism, one of the doctrines that we're dealing with here is the doctrine of indwelling sin. And the doctrine of sanctification, the doctrine of indwelling sin is the concept that though you are born again and I am born again, and though we are forgiven of our sins and we are freed from the power of sins, we are not yet removed from the presence of sin, and sin will cling to us to the day we die.

Be it God calls upon us to move towards Christ, realizing that there is hope, though we have this disease that keeps clinging to us, and when we die and get to the other side, that disease will be removed.

But until we die, there's always going to be this nagging thing. That's trying to pull us away from where we really want to go and pull us away from who we really are. And if you don't understand the doctrine of indwelling sin, then your life will be befuddling as a Christian. Understand the doctrine of dwelling sin is vital to healthy Christian life.

And so how do we work this stuff out? Letter A, be believing with believers. How do we become who we are in Christ? We have to be believing, we have to be constantly believing the gospel in community.

This is called faith in community. We see the faith aspect all throughout the scriptures. We see when Peter is reciting how the Gentiles got saved. He says that the Spirit was purifying their hearts by faith.

Paul says in Philippians 3:9 that we get this righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. We need to ask ourselves, do we really believe the gospel? Are we really believing that Christ is the lawkeeper? Do we really believe that He has borne the wrath?

Do we really believe? That He has given us hope. But more than that, are we believing this with others? Because one of the questions we need to ask, when we consider this particular topic, all men in Christ are not equally developing.

All men in Christ are equally dressed, but all men in Christ are not equally developing. We need to ask why. Why is it that when you just even just look around Cornerstone, you're gonna find some folks that are just, they're really growing and, and, and they're gonna, they're having, they're doing well with their family and their marriages. They're not perfect, but there's, there's a movement and then you'll find other people that will stay in the same place for years.

And why does that happen? Why are there different rates of development within the body of Christ? There's lots of answers to that. some of it is just within God's sovereignty.

God gives a certain measure of faith, and there are those that would tend to be more weak hearted and so on and have different challenges in their life depending on the sovereign circumstances that God puts in their lives. But I want to suggest to you that one of the reasons for the stunted growth of some believers is because they try to live this philosophy by themselves in isolation from others. And as Americans, we are famous for running away from relationships. And in our culture it's epidemic.

It's epidemic. You go even into the average Christian household today and you've got somebody watching something on TV. The kids are off playing Nintendo, the wife's off on the internet. Somebody else is texting on their text phone, and they might say hello before they go to bed.

And that's the Christian family too often today. And then the same thing is happening so frequently in the evangelical church where we come together on a Sunday morning gathering. I'm glad you guys are all here for a Sunday morning gathering and that we can hear the word preach so we can shake hands afterwards and say, Hey, hey, how are you doing? And then, but if that's the only contact that you have with brothers and sisters the rest of the week, then brothers and sisters, that's, that's not going to cut the mustard.

You will not develop the way God wants you to develop if all you get is a Sunday morning service. Because we can't practice all of the one another's the way they're designed in the New Testament in this particular location. It ain't going to happen. Mike and I aren't going to be able to get into the intimate aspects of our lives and keep each other accountable right here in front of 300 people.

And I'm not going to even attempt it. It's got to happen. So, so look, I want to point out a number of passages here. Hebrews 10 would be one.

Why don't you guys turn to 2 Corinthians 6:6 because we're going to come to that here in a 2nd. 2 Corinthians 6:6. But I want to read off a number of different passages that just put this emphasis on the community aspect of our faith. Hebrews 10:21.

Having a high priest over the house of God. Let us draw near with a true heart, a full assurance of faith. I want you to notice one thing, that the New Testament picks up all this house of God temple terminology in the Old Testament, and the New Testament applies to the church. It's not just a nice analogy.

This is what God was trying to teach us from the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, God's spirit came and dwelt in the tabernacle first, and then he came and dwelt in the temple, right? That's where God's spirit resided. When you get to the New Testament, the temple is what?

It's us. It's not this building, sometimes we call this a sanctuary. That's actually bad terminology, because this isn't the holy place, right? This isn't the sanctuary.

You are the sanctuary. You are the temple. You are the house of God. And so as God resided, specially in the house of God in the Old Testament, God's spirit chooses to reside, especially in the house of God in the New Testament.

What does that mean? Does that mean that God does not indwell us individually? No, but what it means is God is especially pleased to indwell us corporately. And so you need your brothers and sisters to experience the full presence of the Spirit of God.

Notice the rest of this passage. You guys are still in 2 Corinthians 6. I'm finishing Hebrews here 10. Let us draw near with a true heart of full assurance.

Let us consider one another, how we can stir up love and good deeds, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, but exhorting one another and so. Much more as you notice how many one anothers one another, one anothers. Consider one another, one another. It's all throughout this passage.

It's all throughout the New Testament. One of the crimes of the monastic period was especially when you had the individualistic monks who went out and just were in the desert all by themselves. And they got out there and they're out there for 40 years and suddenly some of these guys started figuring out how are we going to love if we're all by ourselves, how can we practice to one another if we're all by ourselves? So they actually moved into Cynobitic communities and actually started to, to come together and so you had monk means isolated, Cenobite means together, so you had these isolated people coming together anyway.

So we need to come together. Ephesians 2:21, in whom the whole building, here's building terminology and being fitted together is growing into a holy temple. In the Lord, in whom you also are being built into a dwelling of God in the Spirit. Where's the dwelling of God?

Where does God make His Spirit known? In the building, in the temple. 1 Corinthians 3:16, do you not know that you plural, are a temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you, plural. Now here's the passage I had to turn to 2 Corinthians 6:6, for we plural are the temple of the living God, as God said, I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

I just want you to notice how many places in the New Testament do you have corporate terminology where the Spirit speaks of indwelling His people plural. So many times in Western Christianity, we pray to receive Christ, our personal Savior, we become born again, we talk about the Spirit indwelling in us, and that's all I think fine and biblical. But then we, we miss the idea that the overwhelming emphasis of the New Testament is the Spirit's indwelling of a people, not just you as an individual, but the temple of God.

Is what God's about.

What does this mean practically? What this means is, I can go out to a forest. I can go out. Bishop's one of my favorite places to go in the world.

I can go out to Bishop, go sit up there in the forest by myself for 2 weeks with my guitar and my Bible, and sing my lungs out and read the whole Bible 50 times, and I'm not going to experience God's presence the way I'm going to experience God's presence here with the people of God. There is something about being with God's people that God has chosen to indwell his temple corporately. And when we isolate ourselves, if I were to get disgruntled with Cornerstone and yank my kids from this church and say we're going to have church at home, And I'm going to get up there and preach and I'm going to play guitar and and I'm going to tell everyone what to do and stuff like that, and we're going to do it the way I want it done.

I will be robbing my kids of the full experience of God's spirit.

That's not why the Holy Spirit came to indwell just my little isolated event. He came to indwell the body of Christ. And without the body of Christ, you will be not all that you could be. You will not develop the way God has intended you to develop.

And so we need to be believing with believers. And then secondly, let it be, we need to be repenting with believers. And this is repentance in community. This is ongoing.

This is a daily, a moment, a moment by moment event. I love the way that the reformers stated this or the concept that applies to this. You've heard of the sola, sola scriptura, so Chris, so on. They also had another saying semper reformata, which meant always reforming.

The idea is the reformers didn't say, Hey, let's reform the church and reform our own hearts, and then stop 20 years from now. They said we always need to be reforming because sin is always trying to creep into the church and it's always creeping up in our hearts and so we need to have the attitude that we're always changing, we're always repenting, we're always looking for ways that we need to grow, semper reformata. And so this repentance within the community of believers, what does this look like?

Well, it, it goes from saying, it's really not that bad, to saying, no, it's worse than I could ever know.

It goes from saying, it's not my fault, to saying, no, it's, it's my fault. It goes from saying, I can't really help it, saying, no, I can change through Christ. Repentance is a change of mind. And you'll notice, I don't know if you noticed this in yourself, but I'll preach a sermon or I'll counsel with somebody, biblical stuff.

And then I'll get home and I'll say things like, I really couldn't help it. Just right after I'm thinking the biblical stuff. somebody, I need somebody in the body of Christ to come up and slap me upside the head. So, what were we just talking about?

Oh, thanks for helping me repent. I need to always be repenting and realizing that no, I can change through Christ. Now let me just hit one little pet peeve. That I have, and I know we've talked about this as a staff within our circles, and I'm talking tightly like our version of evangelicalism.

There's this idea that if you just come and hear the sermon and you go hear John MacArthur or go hear CJ Mahaney or go hear RC Sproul and just sit under good preaching, that good preaching will magically change you. All you got to do is just sit here, hear a good sermon, and you will be changed. I want to challenge you with the idea that I think that is very Roman Catholic in its theology. It's very much like just let the word sprinkle you and it'll magically do its work.

It's almost like the concept of baptism. Just, let the magic waters come over you and you'll get regenerated. Let the magic words be said Sunday after Sunday without any thought, consideration, or processing of your own, without any community involvement, and you will just go out a changed person. And I think it's a lie that people in our types of churches have been believing for a long time.

Why is it that you can have someone who's been sitting underneath Milton's preaching for 17 years? be almost unchanged in 17 years. Did the Bible return unto God void? Did the word of God not do its work?

Well, it's doing its work. It's hardening some. And it's changing others. We have a part to play in this by God's grace.

We need to be constantly repenting with believers. James says that we need to be doers of the word, not hearers only deceive ourselves. We can look into the mirror of the Word of God preached or read. And if we walk away and just don't consider ourselves with the unexamined life.

And don't think, how can I change? And don't ask questions. How can you help me change, brothers and sisters? We can go for years and years with no change.

He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy. Humble yourself, God says, and James, resist the proud, confess your sins to one another. Submit yourselves to God and resist the devil, and he'll flee from you. Draw near to God.

We're called upon by Paul in 1 Timothy 2:22 to flee youthful lusts, with others who call upon the Lord out of a pure heart. Not by ourselves. This is biblical realism. Biblical realism is the idea that even though I was, I used to be a sinner.

I used to be. without Christ I was wrath deserving. I broke the law without hope in Christ. He's kept the law for me.

He's given me hope. He's borne the wrath, but I still have this disease, this indwelling sin that walks around with me, and I need your help, and you need my help in order to deal with this, in order to be sanctified. That's part of, if you read the resolves, it's one of the things that Jonathan Edwards talks about, at least in his writings, about the need to ask other people to examine his life. That was one of his life philosophies is to ask other people, what do you see in my life.

That needs improvement or perhaps I can't see myself. He recognized that he had blind spots. I love this quote from Martin Luther. That was part of his life philosophy where he says, I am always sinning.

Always repenting, always forgiving. What does Martin Luther mean by that? Always sinning. He understands that without Christ, here's who I am, but even in Christ, I've got this disease that's holding itself onto me.

But within Christ, I'm always forgiven. That's the biblical optimism. And I'm always repentant. That's the biblical realism that day in, day out I'm repenting of sin.

That's sanctification. Sanctification isn't like we all go to some mountain top and we have this wonderful conference and we love Paul Tripp. We love the Paul Tripp conference, but we go to the Paul Tripp conference and magically everybody's changed all at once, and now we're on this higher plane. The cold hard reality of sanctification as we take those truths we heard and now we start to walk a difficult road that Christ has gone before us.

And we do it together. I want to end by giving you guys a sharing with you just a little snippet. Of the book Pilgrim's Progress. Some people have said that next to the Bible, this is probably the most valuable resource for counseling and even theology.

I'd encourage you, if you haven't read Pilgrim's Progress, I would read this before you read even like say Gruden's Systematic theology or something like that. This is like awesome stuff for counseling, for practical theology. meaning some, we, there's even, there's a play actually out there in Redlands at the Lighthouse Theater. I think Ali's, plays one of the parts.

In fact, Joshua, my son over here, while we were singing, he looks over, he's all, hey, there's, there's that, that actress that's in that play. Yeah. I want to get her autograph. That's cool.

but this is just an awesome. Awesome, awesome book. I wanna just read and just ask you to just think through some of the, just the biblical worldview stuff and, and, that's going on here. Prudence is talking to Christian and she says, Do you not think sometimes of the country from whence you came?

That's the city of destruction, his old life. Christian says, yes, but with much shame and detestation, truly, if I had been mindful of that country from whence I came, I might have had an opportunity to have returned, but now I desire a better country that is a heavenly one. Prudence says, Do you not yet bear away with you some of the things that then you were conversant with all? The idea is, aren't there some things that you've like brought along with you that you used to do back when you were in the city of destruction?

Aren't there certain aspects of that past life that are still attached to you in some way that you're carrying with you even though you're on this road towards Zion? He says, yes, but greatly against my will, especially my inward and carnal conjugations. With which all my countrymen, as well as myself were delighted, but now all those things are my grief and might I but choose my own things, I would choose never to think of those things more. But what I would be doing of that which is best, that which is worst is with me.

Prudence says, do you not find sometimes as if those things were vanquished that at other times are your perplexity? In other words, he's saying, aren't there some times where it seems like that disease and sin is like, almost like it's gone away, that hampers you at other times? He says, yes, but that is seldom. But they are to me golden hours in which such things happen to me.

Prudence says, can you remember by what means you find your annoyances at times as if they were vanquished? Yes. When I think what I saw at the cross, that will do it. When I think upon my embroidered coat, that's the righteousness of Christ, that will do it.

Also, when I look into the role that I carry in my bosom, that's his assurance of salvation, that will do it. And when my thoughts wax warm about whither I am going, that will do it. Prudence says, and what is it that makes you so desirous to go to Mount Zion? And this is the last paragraph.

Why there I hope to see alive. That did hang dead on the cross. And there I hope to be rid of all those things that to this day are in me an annoyance to me. And there they say there is no death, and there I shall dwell with such company as I like best.

For to tell you the truth, I love him because I was by him eased of my burden, and I am weary of my inward sickness. I would fain beware. I shall die no more, and with a company that shall cry, holy, holy, holy. There's such an incredible intricate balance within this dialogue of pilgrims rescued from the city of destruction.

of his desire to be totally free and be in heaven, and yet that nagging sin that is clinging to him. And one of the things you don't get in this dialogue, but you do get in other places is the fact that Pilgrim is walking with others on his journey. First he's walking with faithful who's martyred, then he's walking with hope, and he's not just going it alone, but he's walking with others as they pick each other up throughout their journey. With that being said, while the stuff we've talked about this morning applies to everybody here, I want to challenge the men to think about, are you creating within your marriage, within your home, if you're a grandfather, are you taking the part of a grandfather to help your kids and children to understand a biblical philosophy of life?

Are you considering and teaching the concept that we need to realize and think about who we are outside of Christ? Are you a biblical pessimist? Are you putting before your wife and your children and the others around you, the biblical optimism that we have in Christ? And are you also teaching them the reality that we have?

We still have this remaining sin problem that plagues us? And so it should not be befuddling or surprised if we have struggles in this life and when we need one another. It's up to the men in this church to lead their wives in that respect. And it's up to the men to lead their boys, and where we have un-Christian husbands or wives there alone, it's up to us guys to come alongside and help those young men.

There are kids, there are boys in this room who are going to grow up and they're, they're either going to be part of the statistics, 8 or 90% and just walk away from the church, or they're going to counter the statistics. They're going to go out and they're going to follow Christ and they're going to raise godly families and hopefully have a lot of kids so that they can raise other godly kids who are going to go out and change our church and community and country. Just think, in two generations, if we're able to retain 80 or 90% of our children, and that our boys go out and marry godly wives, and our, and our girls go out and look for godly husbands, and they go out and they have a vision for the family that says, I'm going to have a lot of kids and raise those kids for Christ.

Two generations from now, our country could be in a whole different place.

We need to have that vision for the future, not just for our own lifetimes. Let's pray. Our ushers will come forward as we have this time of meditation in preparation to take the offering. Lord, we thank you for your word.

We thank You, Lord, for giving us A way to live, a way to think, and we just pray for all of the men. In this church, not to exclude the gals, but we do just pray, Lord, for our guys. The day would follow you We pray that our guys would Lord, that you would turn the father's hearts to their sons and turn the sons' hearts to their fathers. We pray, Father, that in our church, that we would see the vast majority of our children embrace Christ and keep following the Lord after they graduate from high school and leave the home.

We pray, Father, that there would be a great generation of, of young people that would grow up to, to follow you with all of their heart, mind and soul. And we know that it starts with us by your grace. We don't know what's going to happen to our culture and our community, but we do know that we play a part. We pray that you would help us to do that.

We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Let's give up to the Lord and let's, let's sing to him as well.