Cleaning up the 56/100ths--Sermon on the Mount Series

            My father spent all of his working years as a general maintenance man at the Proctor and Gamble manufacturing plant in Kansas City. Proctor and Gamble produces a very diverse range of products, but they’re probably best known for making soap. In fact, after they started to produce radio and then television shows to market their products, those shows became known as “soap operas” because they were sponsored by Proctor and Gamble.

            The company’s most famous brand of soap is Ivory, and for years their advertising focused on the claim that Ivory Soap is “99 and 44/100ths percent pure.” I remember seeing an ad about that claim on a Christmas gift box from the company that we had around our house for years. I guess that’s a pretty high standard for purity, but after I learned about fractions, I remember wondering what was in that remaining 56/100ths! After all, rat poison is basically a bunch of harmless ingredients—with just a tiny portion of stuff that’s deadly!

            Obviously, that ad campaign was meant to emphasize the purity of the soap and just how desirable that level of purity should be. In the Beatitude we’ll be discussing today, Jesus also praises purity, but of a very different sort—the kind of purity that no bar of soap can provide. In Matthew 5:8, Jesus says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” This statement foreshadows many of the ideas that the Lord will discuss in this sermon. We’ll see some of those connections as we take a closer look at this verse.

“BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART…”

            The word “pure” means to be unmixed, unalloyed—free from any contaminant that may pollute a product or lower its value. Our English word “pure” lines up very well with the Greek word that lies behind this translation. Researchers have found that word in documents where it’s used to refer to wine that has not been diluted with water, corn that has been sifted and separated from all of the chaff, and an army that has been purged of all cowardly soldiers.

            So to paraphrase, we could say that Jesus is praising a heart that is unmixed, undiluted, and uncontaminated. But unmixed with what, exactly? I think the answer becomes clear in the rest of Jesus’ sermon, so let’s draw on those words for clarification.

A PURE HEART IS FREE OF…

1. Improper standards

            Here I’m speaking of standards that judge obedience to God only by external behavior. Jesus speaks extensively in this sermon about the proper way to gauge our obedience to God. We cannot measure our obedience simply by looking at our external behavior—we must also assess the attitudes of our heart. For example, Jesus says that God’s command against murder is violated if we simply harbor anger and hatred against someone in our heart. We don’t even have to commit the physical act of murder in order to violate the command; the attitude of the heart is enough to make us guilty.

            So a pure heart belongs to a person who assesses not only his external behavior, but the attitudes of his heart as well. This person’s heart is pure because it is free of hypocrisy; this man doesn’t pat himself on the back for merely conforming to external standards while his heart remains rotten and filthy.

            This kind of attitude is in direct contrast to the attitude of the Pharisees, which is why Jesus so often butted heads with them in the Gospels. On numerous occasions, Jesus challenged them with various statements like this: “You are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness (Matt 23:27).” The Pharisees had created all kinds of standards to judge whether they were following the Law that God had revealed through Moses, but their standards could only assess external behavior—they couldn’t judge the heart. Nevertheless, they confidently used their standards to proclaim themselves righteous in the sight of God, which is like measuring something with a 12-inch ruler and then confidently proclaiming that its 20 feet long!

            The pure in heart remember that they must assess their heart as well. Thus, they seek to root out hypocrisy so that their behavior is a true reflection on what’s in their heart.

2. Improper motives

            In chapter six in particular, Jesus warns us about doing things simply to receive acknowledgement and praise from other people. If that is our motivation, then according to Jesus, when we receive that praise, we have received all the reward we will ever get for that action—even if it was a religious activity like praying!

            The person who is pure in heart seeks to keep his motives undiluted by such self-serving goals. Rather, his motive is to love God with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love his neighbor the way he loves himself.

3. Improper masters

            Later on in this sermon, we will encounter the famous statement, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other (Matt 6:24).” Perhaps you’ve worked in a job before where the people above you weren’t on the same page. That’s not uncommon in companies where you have a corporate headquarters somewhere with a lot of local branches scattered around. Sometimes policies are handed down by the corporate office that the branch manager doesn’t want to keep, so now what do you do as an employee? Two people are asking you to do different things, and you can’t please them both!

            That’s the kind of situation that Jesus is describing. The pure in heart take their marching orders from Jesus. They don’t follow the commands of anyone else, so they don’t have divided loyalties. Often we’re tempted to carry out the wishes of our sin nature, or we’re tempted to carry out someone else’s desires because we want to impress them. But the person who is pure in heart says, “I have one master, and I only take orders from him!”

So this is a sketch of the person who is pure in heart. He or she is free of improper standards, improper motives, and improper masters. Jesus pronounced a blessing on this person by saying...

“…FOR THEY SHALL SEE GOD.”

            This statement must have been jarring for those Jewish people who were listening to Jesus. In fact, “seeing God” may not have sounded like a blessing at all! Throughout the Old Testament, people who saw visions of God came to one unanimous conclusion—“I’m toast!” Both Isaiah and Ezekiel were terrified when they first saw their visions of the Lord. It wasn’t until the Lord calmed their fears that they had any measure of comfort at all.

            Perhaps the story of Moses would have quickly come to mind for these people. In Exodus 33, Moses asked the Lord, “Please show me your glory.” God told him that he would hide him in a cave and pass by that place, but Moses would only see him after his glory had passed by, because he said no one can see my face and live (Ex 33:18-23).

            So it must have been an astonishing thing for these people to hear that the pure in heart would see God—and that it would actually be a blessing! This statement was a clear declaration from Jesus that he was introducing something that was superior to what had come through Moses. The Lord had given his commands for the children of Israel to Moses, and as a message from God, those commands were a good thing, but as the Apostle Peter said in Acts 15, those commands became a heavy burden that the people could not bear because their sin nature prevented them from living up to those standards. But now, Jesus was proclaiming something new which would break down the walls that separated sinful mankind from their holy God.

            So what did Jesus mean when he said that the pure in heart would “see God?” I think first and foremost, he meant that they would come to recognize God in Jesus, and would thus learn about what God is like in greater depth. The pure in heart would come to recognize that they were already seeing God right in front of them! This is why most of the Pharisees never came to understand that Jesus was God, because they did not have this purity of heart. As I mentioned earlier, they had their own standards which allowed them to declare themselves acceptable to God, so when Jesus told them they did not, in fact, measure up to God’s standards, they proclaimed that he was a deceiver. As Jesus continues in this sermon, it would have become more and more apparent to the people that if they wanted to see God, they could not follow the path of the Pharisees. Instead, if they would follow Jesus, they would come to understand that God was right there in their midst!

            They would also come to have a greater understanding of what God is like. As Jesus would later say to the Apostle Philip, “He who has seen me has seen the Father (John 14:9).” Those who come to understand the truth about Jesus, understand the truth about God. In that statement to Philip, Jesus used the word “see” in the sense of understanding something. We sometimes use the word “see” in the same way. If I ask you the question, “Do you see what I’m saying?” I’m not asking if you see one of those cartoon word bubbles beside my face with words in it! I’m asking if you understand my point.

            I think this idea of greater understanding is what Jesus meant to emphasize in this Beatitude. So if I were to paraphrase Matthew 5:8, I would say it like this: “Blessed are those with a whole-hearted devotion to God, for they shall come to see him as he is.” This “seeing” involves a deeper understanding of God today, and it will be a literal reality for us one day, as Revelation 22:4 says, “we will see his face.” Do you remember? That was the very thing that Moses was told he could not do—see God’s face. But when we are living with God in the New Heaven and New Earth, all barriers will be removed, and we will see God’s glory in the person of Jesus Christ.

            Long after the Apostle Paul had been converted, after he had even seen visions of God and followed him in obedience for many years, Paul stated that his primary goal was still “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death (Philippians 3:10).” Each one of us still has the goal before us of knowing God in a deeper way.

            But remember—that greater understanding is the result of a whole-hearted devotion to God. The commitment to God comes first, and only then does the greater understanding come. That order is very important to remember. As the old saying says, “The proof of the pudding is in the eating!” If God says, “This is the proper way for you to live,” we won’t fully understand why until we choose to live that way! This is just another way of saying that we must follow God by faith. We must choose to believe that his ways are true before we will gain a greater understanding of them.

            You can think of it like an extreme sport. How do you really come to understand what skydiving is like? By stepping out of the plane! You can read all about it and listen to other people talk about it, but you won’t really understand what its like until you take the plunge—and by then you’re fully committed, right? Growing in your knowledge of God works the same way. As long as you try to serve two masters, as long as you judge yourself by standards that are not God’s standards, as long as you have mixed motives, you will not grow in your knowledge of the Lord.

            There’s a verse of the old hymn “Trust and Obey” that puts it well. This verse isn’t as well-known as the others, but it deserves to be! It goes like this:

But we never can prove

The delights of His love

Until all on the altar we lay

For the favor He shows

And the joy He bestows

Are for them who will trust and obey.

"What Goes Around, Comes Around"--Sermon on the Mount Series

            Some people may think the word “Coolidge” is a new slang term, but if you’ve reviewed your presidential history lately, you’ll remember that Calvin Coolidge was our 30^th President (he served during most of the 1920’s). A story is told of how Coolidge was burglarized one night while he was staying in a hotel. He was sound asleep, but was awoken by the sound of a man going through his belongings. He was understandably startled, but he told the man he didn’t want any trouble and simply asked him not to take the chain on his pocket watch because it was special to him.

            Coolidge then noticed that the man was rather young and actually started to ask him about his life. The robber told him that he was a college student on a trip and had simply run out of money, so he was stealing to pay for his hotel bill and a ticket back to campus. The President then proceeded to give the man the money he needed and told him to consider it a loan. He also told the man he had better leave the way he came in so as to avoid the Secret Service!¹ (I hope they’re a little better at their job today!)

            It is easy to admire a man in a position of power who nevertheless chooses to show compassion to others. It is said that power corrupts, and far too often we have seen that statement proven true. But I think that’s why we admire people who can hold power in one hand, yet still extend compassion with the other.

            That is the idea of showing mercy, and mercy is the quality that Jesus blesses in the next Beatitude—“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy (Matt 5:7).” Let’s talk about the message of this verse, and then we’ll focus on some specific situations in which we may have the opportunity to show mercy.

“BLESSED ARE THE MERCIFUL…”

            An act of mercy is very similar to an act of compassion—there is just one important difference. An act of compassion is an act of kindness that you perform for someone else because you have seen them in a position of need and you’ve been moved to help alleviate that need. Compassion can be shown by anyone to anyone else—that’s actually what makes it different from mercy.

            Mercy is an act of compassion that is done by someone in authority to a person who is under their authority. Mercy and compassion are identical in many ways, the only difference is in the relationship between the two people who are involved. Its hard enough to show compassion to others because we all struggle with selfishness, but when an authority structure is introduced into a relationship, the degree of difficulty is raised to a whole new level.

            If you have siblings, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It was hard enough to get along with each other under normal circumstances, but what happened when your parents went out for a while and left one of you in charge? All kinds of havoc broke loose! When there’s an authority structure in a relationship, it introduces all kinds of new temptations. Now there is the temptation to abuse your authority, or to rebel against the person in authority over you. There may be new temptations toward pride or resentment.

            That’s why we admire people who show mercy. They demonstrate that they have not allowed power to warp their character, but they are still capable of extending compassion to others. And of course, mercy is something that God has extended to us, so when we show mercy, we are imitating God—which is something that Scripture repeatedly calls us to do.

Now, many of us may think that we’re not in any position of power over others, but in just a moment I’m going to mention some situations that you may not have considered. For now, let’s talk about the second half of this verse.

“…FOR THEY SHALL RECEIVE MERCY.”

            It seems here that it literally goes without saying that the merciful shall receive mercy from God. There is no guarantee that you will be shown mercy by other people simply because you have shown mercy yourself, so it seems clear that Jesus means the merciful shall receive mercy from God. This becomes even more apparent when we encounter two similar statements later on in the Sermon on the Mount:

·         Matthew 6:14-15—“If you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

·         Matthew 7:1-2—“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.”

All of these statements teach us that God will deal with us in the same way that we deal with other people.

            Now this observation brings up a question that we need to address—is Jesus saying that showing mercy is a requirement for getting into Heaven? Many people have that question when they read this verse, and I think it reveals to us how important it is to incorporate the doctrine of rewards for Christians into our thinking. If we fail to incorporate the doctrine of rewards into our thinking, we end up tying everything that sounds good in the Bible with going to Heaven and everything that sounds bad with going to Hell. With that mindset, we end up reading Matthew 5:7 like this—“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall go to Heaven.” But that creates all kinds of confusion for us because we think, “I thought going to Heaven was a gift and we don’t receive it through our works, but this verse seems to say that I have to show mercy to get into Heaven—and that sounds like works!”

            What we must understand from Scripture is that within God’s grand plan called “salvation,” there is a gift and a reward (or perhaps I should say a gift then an offer of reward). If we fail to distinguish between those things, we will have no end of confusion when we try to understand Scripture. When we encounter this confusion, we need to take a step back and say, “Is this referring to the gift or the reward?”

            I think Matthew 5:7 is most definitely referring to the reward. Let me point you to a passage of Scripture that offers an important commentary on this verse. Turn with me to James 2:12-13. Here James is writing to people whom he has repeatedly called “brothers,” and in 2:1 he refers to their faith in “our” Lord Jesus Christ. Then in 2:12-13, he writes about the judgment that we as Christians will face in the light of God’s Word for our rewards. He states [READ James 2:12-13]. The first part of v. 13 expresses the same basic idea as Matthew 5:7, just from a negative perspective instead of a positive one, but the last part of the verse—mercy triumphs over judgment—expresses the same thought as our Beatitude.

            That statement—mercy triumphs over judgment—should give us tremendous comfort. When I think about having my life evaluated by Jesus, I don’t get very optimistic about a good outcome. When Scripture tells me that I will give an answer for every word that I have spoken and every deed that I have done, and when James in chapter 3 says that teachers of the Word will receive a stricter judgment, I have little hope to hear “well done, good and faithful servant.”

            But just as God’s grace and mercy were poured out when He declared me righteous and adopted me into His family, there will be grace and mercy available on that day, and apparently I will receive mercy from Jesus to the degree that I have shown mercy to others. Mercy triumphs over judgment! We do have hope for a good evaluation; we do have the opportunity to have a positive assessment because we are dealing with a merciful Lord, and He has said that we will receive mercy if we will show mercy to others.

WHAT ARE SOME SITUATIONS WHEN ANOTHER PERSON IS IN YOUR POWER?

            Now as I have said, mercy is shown from a person in a position of power to someone who is under their power. Given that definition, many of us may think, “Well, I don’t really have any opportunities to show mercy then, because I’m not in any position of power!” Let me mention some situations that you may not have considered.

1. When someone has sinned against you and has asked for your forgiveness

            Perhaps you’ve never thought of it this way, but when someone wrongs you and then asks for your forgiveness, you are placed in a position of power. They have admitted their guilt, and now the future of that relationship is in your hand. You can choose to forgive or you can choose to hold a grudge or to take revenge. They have humbled themselves before you, and now—at least in that moment—you are in the driver’s seat. That is a position of power, which means it is also a perfect opportunity to show mercy.

2. In your relationship with your children

            While your children are in your home, they are commanded by God to obey you. Thus, you are in a position of power. So how do you exercise that power? Are you reasonable with your rules and your discipline? Do you treat your kids like they exist for your benefit, rather than the other way around? Do you berate, dictate, manipulate, castigate, or otherwise dominate your child? How do you exercise that power?

3. In your relationship with your employees

            Even if you’re not the head honcho where you work, many of us have people who answer to us on the job. How do you exercise that power? Many of you who farm have hired men who work for you—how do you treat them? Do you give them a fair wage? Do you make them work hours that you would never keep yourself? If money gets tight, is your hired man the only one who has to take a pay cut, or do you absorb some of that as well? How do you exercise that power?

HOW CAN WE CULTIVATE A MERCIFUL SPIRIT?

            Now as I also mentioned earlier, being in a position of power brings additional temptations into our lives. Its hard enough to show compassion to someone who is our equal in every sense, so when you add an authority structure into a relationship, it just becomes that much more difficult. So how can we cultivate a merciful spirit?

1. By reflecting on the incredible degree of mercy that we have received from God

            You may remember the parable that Jesus told about the man who was forgiven a debt that was like the size of our US national debt—just a mind-blowing amount that you can’t even wrap your head around. Then that man turned around and punished someone who owed him a few weeks’ pay. The lesson of the parable is that such a lack of mercy is improper in light of the staggering mercy that we have received. The misdemeanors that people commit against us are nothing compared to the outright treason that we have committed against God, yet He has shown us mercy. We can increasingly reflect this mercy in our actions by reflecting on it in our own minds.

2. By walking in the shoes of those under your authority

            I want to point you to a fascinating passage of Scripture in Hebrews 2 [READ Heb. 2:14-18]. By walking around in our skin and facing the temptations that we face, Jesus became a merciful and faithful high priest—a representative for us in the presence of God. Verse 17 says he had to be made like us in every respect, so that he might become a merciful high priest.

            Developing a spirit of mercy requires that you walk around in the skin of those who are under your authority. You must make an effort to mentally step into their world and take a look around. Mercy is an act of compassion, and the literal meaning of the word compassion is “to suffer with someone else.” When you show compassion, you are coming side-by-side with another person to walk down the same path together.

            Power has the tendency to create distance between people. It can lift my ego higher and higher as my opinion of others gets lower and lower. Thus, to show mercy, we have to swim against the current of that tendency and step into the world of those who are under our power.

            So to show mercy to someone who has wronged you, remember how you feel when you’re in their shoes. What do you desire? What’s going through your mind? To become more merciful with your kids, ask yourself, “What must it be like to have a parent like me?” Maybe the next time your child gets frustrated with you, you’ll think, “Wow! You’ve actually shown a lot of patience, kid!” Show greater mercy to people under you on the job by trying to understand what their experience must be like. What must it be like to have you as a boss?

            In short, to become merciful we must act like Jesus! He has shown us mercy, so we must show mercy to others. He became a merciful high priest by walking around in our shoes, so we must follow the same path to grow in this trait.

Notes:

1. www.bible.org, filed in Sermon Illustrations under “mercy,” cited from Today in the Word, October 8, 1992.

Satisfaction for the Soul--Sermon on the Mount Series

            After our need for air, no need is more essential for life than our need for food and water. We cannot let these needs go unmet for long before we start to have serious problems. We also plan much of our lives around meeting these needs. Your daily schedule probably revolves around meal times. Every time we plan some kind of special event at church, we must either plan to provide a meal or plan to avoid mealtimes so that you can take care of that need on your own. Or think about planning a vacation—if you’re driving, you plan your route and your travel time to make sure that you’re near a town when mealtimes roll around. Otherwise, you plan ahead and take food with you.

            Imagine if we gave the same kind of concern to obeying God. Imagine if we woke up every day and thought, “How am I going to plan to obey God today?” You and I have never lived a day in which we didn’t think about eating and drinking, because they are needs; they are necessary for survival. Imagine if we thought of obeying God as being necessary for our survival.

            That’s the kind of attitude and passion for obedience that Jesus praises in the next Beatitude—“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied (Matt 5:6).” The Lord uses the metaphor of a physical need to encourage us to have a spiritual appetite. Let’s look at the two parts of this verse.

“BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO HUNGER AND THIRST FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS…”

            To truly appreciate this metaphor, we have to travel back in time for a minute. The way that we meet our need for food and water today is vastly different than it was for the people in first-century Israel who heard Jesus speak these words. Few of us have ever experienced a life-threatening hunger or thirst. Most of us have far more than enough to eat and far more than enough to drink, and we have very easy access to food and water, but life was very different back then.

            Imagine waking up one day as a person in first-century Israel. To meet your family’s need for water that day, you would have to take a bucket and go down to the river—or more likely to the local well—and haul water back to your home. Perhaps you would make that trip a couple of times, depending on the size of your family. Don’t forget that parasites in that water could kill you, so you may have to build a fire and boil some of it before you could drink it.

            By then, it would be time to get to work cooking food, because after all, you have to do everything yourself. If you want to make bread, you have to grind the flour. If you want to eat chicken, you have to butcher it and prepare it yourself. For at least one member of the household, then, cooking would have been a virtually continuous occupation.

            So for those who heard Jesus speak these words, hunger and thirst were typically a much more urgent need than what we experience most of the time. We can afford to let our need for food and water be almost an afterthought because we can easily run to Subway and have food and drink in front of us in a matter of minutes. But for the first-century Jew, meeting those needs required a great deal of thought, planning, and effort, and their daily reality was far closer to the line between starvation and survival. Author William Barclay put it well when he wrote, “the hunger which this beatitude describes is no…hunger which could be satisfied with a mid-morning snack; the thirst of which it speaks is no thirst which could be quenched with a cup of coffee or an iced drink. It is the hunger of someone who is starving for food, and the thirst of someone who will die unless given something to drink.”¹

            Hopefully now we have a sense of the urgency and intensity in these words “hunger and thirst.” But what is “righteousness?” What is this thing that we’re supposed to long for with such intensity? A basic definition of righteousness would be “that which meets God’s standards.” When the Bible talks about our righteousness, it describes it from two angles.

            First, there is our position of righteousness. This angle refers to our standing before God in light of His commands. To be righteous in this sense means that no case can be made against me in light of God’s commands. This position of righteousness is what we refer to when we use words like conversion, being saved, being born again, being forgiven, or accepting Christ (if you know the big, fancy theological word, this is justification).

            Let me illustrate what I mean. If you looked right now at the laws of the state of Kansas and then examined my life, you could not bring any charges against me or make any case against me because I haven’t broken any laws. That means I am righteous in the eyes of the state of Kansas; I have met the state’s standards for a law-abiding citizen.

            Now I must confess that it hasn’t always been that way. I have received some speeding tickets in my day, and at those times I have broken the law. In those instances, I did not meet the standards for a law-abiding citizen and I had to pay a fine, but once I did, the case against me was closed and I again became righteous in the eyes of the state of Kansas.

            Now according to Scripture, when we receive the gift of salvation from God, He treats us as being righteous in light of His law or commands because He accepts the sacrifice that Jesus made for us as the payment of the fine (so to speak) for all of our sins. This reality is described well in 2 Corinthians 5:21, which says, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Don’t miss what this verse is saying. Even though Jesus had never committed a sin, God treated Him like a sinner when He was on the cross. He took our punishment in that moment so that now, after we accept Christ, God can treat us like righteous people, even though we don’t deserve that status simply on the basis of our own lives. So, because Jesus took what we deserved from God, we receive what He deserves from God—that is our position of righteousness.

            But the Bible then goes on to describe righteousness from the angle of our practice of righteousness. This angle refers to our efforts to live in obedience to God’s commands. After we are saved and we receive that position of righteousness as a gift, we can then actually obey God’s commands through the power of the Holy Spirit. This practice of righteousness is what we refer to when we use words like discipleship, walking with Christ, growing in Christ (or sanctification).

            This angle is described well in 2 Timothy 2:22, when Paul tells Timothy—who is already saved—to “flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.” So Timothy, who has the position of righteousness before God, is challenged to live out that righteousness in his life.

            I believe this second angle on righteousness is what Jesus had in mind in this Beatitude. We who are forgiven by God and empowered by the Holy Spirit should hunger and thirst to live in a way that meets God’s standards. The desire to obey God should create hunger pangs in our soul that will not subside until we have met the desire. The Lord pronounces a blessing upon those who have this desire by saying, “they shall be satisfied.”

“…FOR THEY SHALL BE SATISFIED.”

            I don’t think its difficult to understand what Jesus means here. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will receive what they desire—approval from God that they have lived by His standards. We can have this knowledge today as we live for the Lord, but it will be most evident when we stand before Jesus to hear His assessment of our lives. The New Testament makes it very clear that each one of us will be assessed or judged by the Lord Jesus to receive either reward or rebuke from Him (or quite possible some of each!). 2 Corinthians 5:10 states, “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.”

            1 Corinthians 3 talks about building on the foundation we have in Jesus Christ, and it states, “each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire (1 Cor 3:13-15). As one pastor has put it, there are going to be some smoky Christians in Heaven! When you are evaluated by Christ, do you want to come out smelling like roses, or smelling like you were standing too close to the campfire?

            If I want to avoid seeing my life’s work for God go up in smoke, I need to hunger and thirst for righteousness. I must have an arresting passion to obey God that will not leave me alone until I have addressed it. Obeying God cannot be an afterthought in my life, just like food and water could not be an afterthought for the people who heard Jesus speak these words.

            Along this line, I think the scenario I raised earlier is most appropriate—imagine if we woke up every day and thought, “How am I going to plan to obey God today?” I have this appetite to obey God that just won’t leave me alone—how am I going satisfy it? Now when you envision this scenario, you can easily become overwhelmed. Just think of how many commands there are in the New Testament! Here’s what I want you to do—I want you to use this question (How am I going to plan to obey God today?) and simply focus on the commands that present you with the greatest struggle. Focus on the area where you have the most obvious need for growth.

            Its probably not difficult for any of us to pinpoint our area of greatest struggle. Once you’ve settled on that, look up the commands in the Bible that deal with that particular issue, and then let that become—for right now at least—your primary focus. When you ask yourself, “How am I going to plan to obey God today?” make your planning specific to that issue, because here’s what’s going to happen—as you grow in that area, your growth will bear fruit in all areas of your life. A rising tide raises ALL of the boats in the dock, doesn’t it? Well, there’s a very similar effect that takes place when you grow spiritually.

            Its kind of like learning how to play a musical instrument. When you learn how to play an instrument—say the piano, for instance—there are times when you will spend most of your practice time focusing on just one song. On one level, that may seem silly; after all, after you’ve put out all that time and effort, you will still only know how to play one song. But here’s what you discover—when you start to look at other songs, they are easier for you to play. You discover that your fingers are stronger and more flexible. All of the progress you made in that one song now carries over into many other songs.

            Spiritual growth is very similar. When you learn to walk closely with God in one area of your life, it will create a ripple effect that spreads into other areas of your life. That’s why Paul talked about the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5 rather than the fruits. Have you ever noticed that? Paul says “the fruit (singular) of the Spirit is…” We would expect some kind of singular after that, wouldn’t we? But Paul goes on to list nine character traits—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

            The reason for this is that all of these traits are tied together. If you grow in love, you will also see growth in the area of self-control. If you grow in patience, you will also see growth in the area of gentleness. You will never find a loving person who completely lacks kindness, or a patient person who completely lacks self-control. These traits fit together, and as you grow in one, you will see some growth in the others as well.

            So please don’t feel overwhelmed when you think about having a passion to obey God that is like an essential need for survival. I’m not saying this is easy, because we have the Devil and our own sinful desires working against us, but we don’t need to make it more complicated than it really is. A pebble only hits the surface of a lake in one place, but the ripples that it creates can be far-reaching.

            Start today with a narrow focus on growing, and when the difficulties and temptations do come, we have the promise of approval from Jesus to carry us along. It will be worth it in the long run to remain faithful to Him. Let us pray now for the faith to believe that!

Notes:

1. William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, vol. 1, The New Daily Study Bible (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 115.