Restoration of New Testament Service to God Part 1

[Pages:8]Restoration of New Testament Service to God Part 1

a sermon in the series Hebrews: An Epistle of Encouragement

A sermon delivered Sunday Morning, June 22, 2002 at Oak Grove Baptist Church, Paducah, Ky. by S. Michael Durham ? 2002 Real Truth Matters

Hebrews 12:28-29

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. 29 For our God is a consuming fire.

I cannot say often enough that a proper view of God is the beginning to a revival and restoration of the gospel in our times. We are in the midst of a chaotic period not just socially and politically but also spiritually. Much of the church world has followed after strange gods. We now accept the non-reality of the sophisticated intellectual who says you and I create our own reality, as well as have the right to interpret Scripture as we deem appropriate. God has been so reshaped, remodeled, and revamped, that I fear that the majority of professing believers don't know the God of the Bible.

Many good preachers have come to bad ends in their churches for the simple fact they have dusted off the Bible and preached the God that is revealed within its pages. Consequently, men have arisen and accused these pastors of preaching heresy because what their pastors said about God was not what they had learned. Godly men and their families have been lied about and gossiped about until their reputations and characters have been so demeaned that no church will have them. All because they accepted a call by God to preach what was written in the Bible.

Today, it is said, you must not say things like God is sovereign because you will infringe upon man's right and freedom to choose. You must not preach God's freedom to grant mercy to whom He would show mercy, for then salvation is no longer in the hands of man but in God's. You dare not say that God hates sinners as well as their sin because you may offend the sinner. But we do not raise our eyebrows nor do we care when the sinner offends God and blasphemes His holy name. Something is wrong!

This is the situation as I see it, and it is the main reason why we have chaos in our country and in the world. Once you remove the Biblical view of God and make God irrelevant to life, society, and culture, you have chaos. If there is any hope for serenity to arise out of the chaos, stability to come out of the confusion, and sense to be made of life, there must be a return to God, the objective, real, biblical God of Scripture.

Last week, we showed from our text that the God of the New Testament has not changed from the God of the Old Testament. The judgment we see in the Old Testament is still seen in the New. The mercy of the New Testament is seen in the Old. God still hates sin and sinners, and He still loves the world. I know that would appear to be a contradiction, but it isn't. God is much more than human reasoning can understand. The Bible tells us both of these things about our God, that He loves the sinner and yet hates them, and therefore, it is our duty to believe them both. To accuse me of making God to be schizophrenic or a contradiction is wrong, and in fact, it is limiting God's ability to be infinite in all His attributes. I refuse to limit God in my theology and beliefs.

If I had more time I would develop this thought with you, but I must move on and get to the emphasis of the author of Hebrews. I want to turn your attention to the writer's exhortation and plea to view God and service to God in a very defined manner.

First, the writer of Hebrews exhorts his audience to a biblical view of how to serve God. As we saw in last week's message, an improper view of God will lead you into many problems. The writer seems to be concerned with how his audience viewed service to God. Once you know the God of the Bible, then you are on the right track on how to serve Him, but not until. How do we serve this God of both judgment and mercy?

The writer's first appeal is to make sure that his readers appropriate the grace of God, for without it there is no holy service or salvation. He says in verse twenty-eight,"let us have grace."

SERVICE TO GOD IS DEPENDANT UPON GOD'S GRACE

The point of the author is that we best serve God by depending upon God for grace. You cannot afford to think that now that God has saved you that you must return service to Him as paying a debt. The debt of love we owe to God cannot be repaid. We are saved by grace, and there is no way which we can repay grace. The very thought that you can repay it suggests that grace is something different from grace, that it is a loan and that it can be repaid. If this type of arrangement could happen, then grace becomes earned. But this is not New Testament teaching. "Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt" (Romans 4:4).

We know this to be true, that grace can't be repaid, but yet we act like it can and with a motive to do so. When you finance an automobile you sign an agreement that you will pay the full amount with interest. Once the loan is paid in full you do not say the bank gave you a car. No, you earned the title to that car one payment at a time. The bank may have made getting the car possible, but you earned it.

Salvation is not a loan, and it cannot be repaid. It is a gift, with a price that cannot be reckoned. The grace of God is beyond the grasp of man. He can receive it, but he cannot deserve it. Your service then to God is not in any way to be considered a repayment to God. Certainly we love Him and serve Him out of gratitude--but not a gratitude that is considered the paying of a debt--rather as gratitude that is an expression of joy in God's mercy.

I am not saying we do not owe God. We owed a debt we could not pay, and He paid our debt that He did not owe. All I am saying is that you and I cannot repay the debt we owe God at all, not any of it, not even in the least. But let us suppose for a moment that we could repay this debt of love we owe. What kind of relationship would that create with God?

First, it would remove the security of the believer, for if you did not perform well on the repayment of grace, then you could forfeit or default on God. Oh, how many miserable people there are in churches because they see their relationship with God much like this. They work for God with a feeling of insecurity, wondering if what they are doing is enough to keep up with the payments they owe Him. Are you such a one? Isn't it true that you are never quite sure you're going to make it because you feel the burden of the debt, and it is more than you can repay? The only time this person feels sure that he may be right with God is when he has done something really good or religious. He feels like a person who has caught up his back payments and is one month ahead. But it does not take long at all for him to be back into doubt as to whether or not he is acceptable to God. One day of not performing in a way he believes is expected and he is in default again. What a vicious cycle doomed in the end to fail!

Secondly, this type of relationship is devoid of joy. God is more like some cosmic banker to whom they owe a debt much larger than their ability to pay. They see Him disgruntled, always demanding His payments with interest. They cannot come to Him in joy, because they know they are behind in their payments. It literally steals the joy out of their relationship. The only time they can feel good and have joy is when they think that by their goodness they are current with God. What a miserable life! What a terrible witness this person makes. No sinner would ever look at their life and envy what they have. There is no attraction to this kind of religion, because it does not glorify God as being your source of joy and happiness. Your relationship with God is based upon you, and you know you are insufficient. How then can you have joy in glorifying God when you see yourself behind in your payments to Him?

Third, if you think you can repay God's salvation, then it would remove the relationship's foundation of love and replace it with a servile duty. You end up serving God because if you don't, you will die and go to hell. You are in a relationship of bondage and an ungodly fear. There is no real love of God because your unhealthy fear of Him removes all possibility of love. You cannot love someone whom you are afraid of. If you think you can, then you will not know whether God will smile upon you or strike you. How do you then approach Him in love? It is quite difficult. Paul has told us that those who have been made the children of God have no longer this dread of God. He says in Romans chapter eight and verse fifteen, "For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry,Abba, Father." The Bible says in 1 John 4:18,"There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love." To the one who understands grace, God is not one who is trying to call in His loan, demanding payment, but He is their Father, who does not loan His love to His children, but gives love willingly and freely.

If you begin to go down the pathway of viewing your service as a repaying of your debt to God, you eventually will end up in this ruin. If you say, "Well, I know God doesn't expect me to pay back in full what I owe to Him. Rather, He expects me to show my gratitude by serving Him." But I reply to you and ask you how much service does that require and how do you know if you have met the requirement? The Bible does not say how much gratitude is expected. How then do you know how much is enough? "Well, I just know," you say. And again I reply, then that makes you the arbitrator, the decider, and now you have another problem much larger than your first. You become the one who decides how you are saved and serve God. Such a mindset in the end becomes a works salvation rather than a simple heart-felt trust of Christ for salvation. The sinner, whether he sees himself doing this or not, believes in a justification by works and not a justification by faith.

It is here I see so many in our churches living and professing relationship with God. In the end they do not believe in a salvation by grace but in a salvation by their own works.

Your service to God cannot be thought of as such. Your service is rendered to God as a heart's expression of glorying in God's free pardon and grace. Your joy is in God's grace, and your love for Him motivates you to please Him, serve Him, do anything you can to enjoy making others see how important God really is. Any other impetus for serving God dishonors Him rather than honors Him. It is like telling your wife, "I have to love you." "I have to open your car door for you." "I have to provide for you." That does not make her know you love her but discredits and shames her.

The truth of the matter is God does not need our service since He is self-sufficient. God needs absolutely nothing. If He were to need one thing that only someone outside of Himself could supply, then He would be incomplete. An incomplete God is not a God at all. He is self-existent, meaning God owes His existence to no one. He has eternally been happy in Himself ages upon ages upon ages. Before anything existed, God infinitely enjoyed Himself and needed nothing more for His happiness, and He has done so for eternity. He must be self-sufficient for had He any need before His creation, He would have gone deprived. And if God did have a need, His creation could not satisfy it. All things were created by Him, and nothing He made could meet His need since everything came from Him.

One of the names of God means self-sufficient--El Shaddai. The Apostle Paul tells us in Romans chapter eleven, verses thirty-five and thirty-six that God needs nothing and no man can give to God or make up in any lack in Him. "Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen."

Therefore, our service to God is not based upon some supposed need in God, that God needed us. It is based upon something else--His worth. God deserves our service. He is the fountain from which we all flow. Any degree of importance that might be attached to our lives is derived from Him. Our Lord is the Creator and there is none like Him, none near Him, none beside

Him. You cannot find one thing more valuable, more important, or more worthy of service than God. Whether God saved us from sin or not does not enter into the equation. He is still God and deserves holy worship, which is our reasonable service.

It is His kindness toward us to even allow us the privilege of serving Him, not because He somehow needs what we can give Him. It is we who need to serve Him. Man was created with this all pervading desire to experience and enjoy God. And without His revealing Himself to us and causing us to know Him, we would live, die, and have never been satisfied. We would have wasted our lives and not have known what life was really all about. It is we that need to serve God.

God, the Father, sent His Son Jesus Christ to die in order that you may know this awesome privilege. Sin is a barrier between God and us, and it is a barrier that no human remedies can remove. But on a cross Jesus died, taking sin upon Himself and dying to remove sin's condemning stain and mark on you. If you would be washed in His life sacrificing blood, then God will cleanse you with it, and the mark, smell, and ruin of sin will be removed from you eternally. Won't you humbly come to God in absolute trust and surrender and be cleansed? By Christ's great sacrifice you and I can now be approached by God and He can have fellowship with us, and us with Him, if we trust in Christ. It is only after having experienced the cleansing of sin by the blood of Christ can we serve God. Oh, we need grace in order to serve God!

Service to God is a holy privilege men do not deserve. Again, service to God is dependant upon God. That is why Jesus said what He said in Luke 17:10,"So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say,We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do." The truth is we do not deserve to serve in the household of God. Ours is a place shut out and away from God. But by grace He has brought us into His home and family. He has bathed us in the sin-cleansing fountain, put new clothes, called the garments of righteousness on us, and given us an earnest (down payment) of eternal inheritance which cannot be depleted or exhausted.

Yet another reason that service to God is dependant upon grace is that we need grace to serve God. It is only as we depend upon God to give us the grace we need can we ever hope to serve Him.

We need the same grace daily as we needed at the moment we first cried out to God to forgive us. We need grace to deal with our remaining corruption for we have not been perfected yet. We also need grace with which to serve Christ. The Christian life is not, as described by so many today, a life of morality. Oh no, it goes much deeper than morality. Morality can remain in the realm of our choices and actions, but Christianity goes to the depths of a man. Christianity goes much deeper than morality. For you see, a man can make moral choices and perform admirably in the area of ethics while his heart remains corrupted with self and self-satisfaction. We may judge a man moral but his motives for his morality may have nothing to do with exalting God but instead with exalting himself.

Christianity is a change of the entire man--heart, mind, emotions, and will. He is a complete new man. This is a work of God only, for a man cannot do this kind of changing. A man can change his outward behavior but he cannot change the person that he is. What God requires is that you be absolutely changed so that you are just like Him. "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" is the directive every Christian is under (Matthew 5:48). Paul said it this way to the Romans in chapter eight and verse twenty-nine, "For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren." To the Ephesians Paul said it this way, "According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love" (Ephesians 1:4).

To be holy and without blame and perfect as God is, is impossible to you and me. There is no way humanly possible that we can do this. But the beautiful thing is that God did not intend for us to do this humanly. Rather, He intended to do the work of conforming us into the likeness of His dear Son, and He is doing that, even as I speak, by the means of grace. We are to serve the Lord, and we are to perform good works. But our service is fueled by His divine kindness giving us the desire and the power to obey God, without which, we could not even dare to hope to be like Him. We cannot serve God without God gracing us with His divine power.

One last reason why our service to God is dependant upon grace is that grace is the only means by which we can glorify God. If it is by grace only that we serve God, then whatever service we render to Him must glorify God and not us. If God is the one who is molding us into Christ-likeness, then He must be the one who receives the credit. The vase is not given credit for its beauty, but the vase maker is the one praised for his craftsmanship. Once we understand this principle, the sooner will we understand that the way to glorify God is to be desperately dependent upon God for grace. If you and I cannot humanly serve Him without His undeserved kindness giving us the desire and the ability to serve Him, then we can conclude that the more of this wonderful grace we trust Him for, the more He is glorified. In other words, in us, God looks more attractive and valuable to others. If this is not so, why would Jesus say,"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven"? (Matthew 5:16). Why would God be glorified if we were the ones who were responsible for the good works? Why not glorify us? Because, we were not able to do these works without God's grace, and it is Him who is working in us to do these works.

This is the view of service to God of the writer of Hebrews as well as all the men God used to pen His word. The Bible's view of God is nothing like what most of us think today. We see our service rendered to God as only a means of expressing gratitude or repaying the debt we owe God for saving us. For so many, service is the means which they believe will earn them eternal life. This, I say to you, is a result of a weakening of our view of God and our overconfidence in man. May God show us the truth again and lift the veil that covers so many eyes today.

But here is our problem--we want to serve Him in our power. We want to impress God, or others, or ourselves that we can do what God requires of us. As a consequence, the power of God

is absent in the church. Our actions may be outstanding, but they have no impact on others for the simple fact we do them in our own strength. There is no touch of heaven on us, no fragrance of God about us and therefore, no authority! No authority! Our good works may temporarily impress others, but they will never seize their hearts with the eternal. Without an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon our lives, we are bound to a futile service that will never impact another for Christ. It is when God settles upon a man or woman that they live with an authority on their lives that makes them different. It is the mantle of God on us that awakens sinners to the realm of the supernatural. It grips the mind of the lost man that there is something different about us other than that we are moral and go to church. There is an aroma about us that is not earthly, but heavenly. This is what we need. We need God to anoint us with the enduement of the Holy Spirit's power. We need fire from heaven to ignite our hearts, minds and wills. We need a fresh wind and fire to fall on churches again.

Again, I say this is the reason we see so little conviction in sinners and so few are being converted. All of our praying and witnessing and preaching has little of heaven's authority in it. We are saying the right things and doing so many things that are good, but there is no power in them. Why? Because we do them in our own strength. We are trying to serve God without this holy and powerful grace that will make what we do and say fruitful. I am thoroughly convinced that if God would see it wise to grant us this grace of powerful enduement then we would see much more fruit than we currently see.

Why then do we not wait on God for this heavenly power? Why will we not cease our efforts and wait in prayer and one accord as the early church did? They knew with all of their hearts that they were not sufficient for the work, and so they followed the Master's instructions and waited for the Holy Helper. Perhaps this is what is missing in us--a feeling of total inadequacy. We do not see ourselves as insufficient. We are so convinced of our cleverness, resourcefulness, and rightness that we believe it is these things that God honors. I do not think I am exaggerating in the least when I say that we are sure that our methods and activities are what make a church successful. We do not believe that the proven methods of the apostles, such as waiting and travailing in prayer and faithfulness to God's word, will work today. Yet, all I think I need to do to prove the unworthiness of all of our present church methods is to ask you to list our accomplishments. Tell me how many souls have we seen converted lately. Rehearse the many victories that have come as a result of all our work and activities. My point is that our methods have proven futile. Let us have the courage to consign these traditions to the flesh and return to the record of God's word that emphasizes the only power and energy of the church is a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

We need grace in order to "serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear." This grace is not learning some new witnessing technique. That is a construct of man and not God. More entertaining services, jazzed youth ministries, and flashy marketing is not what we need. We need the grace of God that ignites our hearts and burns up the worldly dross that keeps us earthy and sensual rather than heavenly and spiritual. We need God's authority on our lives. This is the need of the church and the world. Church, let us seek the Baptizer of the Spirit and cry unto Him for a fresh and vital infilling of this heavenly infusion of divine power. Without it we cannot

serve God and God will not be glorified in us. Let us consecrate and dedicate ourselves to serving God best by depending upon Him for grace. This is the New Testament method of serving the Lord, and for His name's sake let us do it. Amen.

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