March 25, 2009

• Hebrews 12:14-17 by Pastor Don

  Pastor Don began this Bible study by telling us that self examination is fundamental to spiritual survival. If we lose ourselves by focusing on examining other people we become subject to other’s opinions and then compare ourselves to them but without looking in a mirror.  We have to look at our own self.

  Righteous people examining the righteousness of others thinking that if they find something wrong with the other person that that makes us better than them.  What they should do is walk in love.  Instead of asking why did that other person not talk to me, ask yourself who did you speak with?  Why didn’t they hug me?  Ask yourself how many people did you reach out and hug?  In our church we have a 10 foot rule where we should speak and greet people within 10 feet of you, because everybody needs to have a friendly greeting and words of love.

  We put up a wall and expect others to climb over it, criticizing the ones who don’t make the effort to climb over our wall and get to us.

  The book of Hebrews is talking to the church.

  Hebrews 12:14-17 Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord: looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled; lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright. For you know that afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears.

  We are to pursue peace with ALL – EVERYBODY – not some, not a few, not those you like but with ALL PEOPLE.  Never assume that people are out to get you, even if they don’t like you, pursue peace with them.  You may not like them, or they may not like you but we are still to pursue peace. Everybody does not have our cultural framework.  When people come into the Body of Christ, everyone does not have the same framework.  We have Roman Catholics, Black Baptists, White protestants, and many other cultural groups, and they do not always come to us on our terms.  When people come to our churches often visitors want: 1. to be invisible and 2. to have the church meet their needs. 

  How do we pursue peace with people with no understanding of where they are coming from?  You have to drop your stuff, and not let your past drag you from doing what God wants you to do.  But we also have to realize that NOT EVERYBODY WANTS PEACE.

  Verse 14 tells us ALL PEOPLE.  We are to pursue peace with all people, and HOLINESS.  There are two levels of holiness. 1. sanctification of faith.  Faith in Christ has cleansed us by the Blood of the Lamb. We are holy, but our external self may still be unclean until we learn more how to line up with God’s will for our lives.  2. by works of holiness.  God is Holy by both standards and He wants us to be holy by both standards.  Faith without works is dead.  When people see our works, they also see our faith.  But we do not earn salvation by works, but when we are saved and walking in God’s will our works will show that to others.

  We begin with holiness through Christ and begin to work our way to the 2nd type of holiness.

  It is to be holiness even in little things. If someone is talking about another person on the phone (gossiping) the brother or sister should say let’s pray about so and so, or I don’t want to discuss this person without them being present.  Holiness shows in our deeds and actions.  We are to walk in love, not spread doubt and discouragement. Pastor Don also says that it is a good prayer to say, without naming names, pray with me so that I can get a better understanding of the situation.

  Romans 14:17 for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

  Righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

  It may feel good in the physical and seem to build your self esteem to put a person down or gossip, but you will notice that if you do that your peace and joy are gone for the Holy Spirit is not pleased when you do things like that.  You complain about a person and how terrible what they are doing is, and the Holy Spirit reminds you that you’ve also done that.

  When you do things that are not pleasing to the Holy Spirit first righteousness leaves, then your peace leaves, and then you are not happy anymore for your joy has left.  The Holy Spirit gets quiet.  He does not abandon you, but will quietly wait until you come to your senses, until you pull out your mirror and check yourself in light of the truth of God.

  Hebrews 12:14  Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.

  Holiness, sanctification and works.  We have faith and belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, and we have righteousness by faith, not by works.  Yet, as we grow in Christ, we are working on ourselves to begin to change ourselves to be more like Christ.  The Holy Spirit works on us to begin the process of growing closer to Christ.  We find that things stand in the way of our maturity, subtle things.  We don’t want to come to the House of the Lord carrying things that are not right in God’s eyes.  When we have faith our works will show it – but we do not get saved by works. 

  The thief on the cross acknowledged Jesus is Lord.  He had been a thief and was dying, having no chance to do works to gain heaven – yet Jesus promised him that he would be with Him that day in Paradise. The other thief rejected Jesus and would not be saved.  Salvation comes not from works but from faith and believing in our hearts that Jesus is Lord.

  We can be instantly saved, but not all are instantly redeemed or delivered, it sometimes takes time to get over the damages we have in our lives.  It took time for us to get to where we are and it can (although not always) take time to get beyond the damages. 

  There is stuff that we have to let go of so that we can pick up something from heaven.  When our hands are full we can’t work in the fullness of Christ, to walk in His way, and learn what He has for us.  If our hands are full of old baggage it blocks us from doing Christ’s best for our lives.

  We have to face facts, Pastor Don is not talking about living in a fantasy world where nothing is wrong.  Yes, we have hurts.  Pastor Don shared about his father wound, where his dad was so busy with his ministry that he did not have time to be a good father to Pastor Don.  At some point, Pastor Don had to go and talk to his father about that lack of presence, and the end result was that his dad was able to admit he wasn’t there for Pastor Don as a father, but he could be there now for Pastor Don as a friend.  The relationship was healed, and Pastor Don was able to let go of that old stuff and move forward.  We can’t keep carrying our past.

  Pastor Don wanted to be able to lead people to the Lord and to help them know about God the Father.  With the father issues in his past, it blocked him from being as effective in this.  He didn’t know how to be a dad – neither his father or his grandfather were good role models.  Cynthia, Pastor Don’s wife, had a great father and Cynthia was able to help Pastor Don learn what the things were that a good father did so that he could be those for his sons.

  Pastor Don then told us that we have to let stuff go or our works will always be tainted, and we will end up carrying all kinds of stupid baggage.  And then we end up bound by our sins and expectations that cause sadness and cause us to doubt our walk. 

  He then shared that in counseling so often people come in with excuses for people who have hurt them so much, for example:  they didn’t have the ability, they did the best they could, they were unable to do it.  That is a crock, the people had the ability to reach out and ask for help and chose not to do it, ending up then being a poor parent or person in the life of the one being counseled. Yes, a person may have had impaired ability to be a good parent, but they could have corrected that if they were motivated enough to change. 

  A dad that tells their child that they are stupid, damaged goods, needs to gain help, and you do not need to buy what they spoke over you.  You need to come to terms that your parent was a rotten parent and you have to get yourself well.  Put the blame where it belongs, get the blame off of your shoulders.   It is impossible for you to get well carrying their blame. Forgive and move on.

  God had a system in place of extended families – so that parents could go to elders for help.  Technology has destroyed those close family ties and now there can be 3,000 miles or more between family members.  People need the older generations to help raise their children.  There is a big difference between making a phone call and having help in person.

  To be holy we have to let go of some stuff to free us to do God’s work.

  Hebrews 12:15 looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled.

  We have Grace, the favor of God, to empower us to do exploits for His Glory.  Look for God in our day to day.  He wants us to receive the truth that God really loves us and because He loves us, He gives us stuff, abilities, opportunities, blessings.  He transforms tragedy and tough times to blessings, as we give Him glory.  Stuff we don’t like in our lives, we later realize was a blessing.  How do we move in the Grace of God? We need to make sure that roots of bitterness do not spring up. We need to dig up those roots and not allow them to raise their heads, the root must die.  Don’t fertilize the roots of bitterness. 

  Anything that we are unhappy about, disappointed in we do not have to receive and create a root of bitterness.  Starve it to death, if we feed it it encourages the bitterness to grow, and we want to outgrow those roots of bitterness.

  People are hungry for God, and many people claim they have a word from the Lord.   We need to realize that the Lord always sends a spiritual herald – Gabriel announced to Zacharias about the birth of his son John the Baptist, who would proclaim the coming of the Messiah. Zacharias was versed in the scriptures and would have known the time of the Messiah’s coming.  Jesus would rebuke the priests and scribes because they knew the time of his coming and did not heed it.  God will not do anything unannounced.  When we know God and we know God’s Word, we are not surprised by what God is doing. And when someone brings a “word from the Lord” we can discern if it is from God or not according to what we know about God and about His Word.  We need to discern, for not everyone claiming to have a Word from God has such a Word, some Words from God come from roots of bitterness and seek to destroy the truth of God.

  The root of bitterness comes through a spirit of rebelion. The root grows sort of like crabgrass, interlocking roots that are very hard to dig out, but if you miss a root it grows back.

  King Saul is an example of a root of bitterness.  So often roots of bitterness erupt when a person becomes a spiritual giant overnight, and has not had the training or has not paid their dues, and then they chop down one root and it springs up another way.  Roots of bitterness cause us to become defiled, unclean.

  Hebrews 12:16 lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright.

  Remember the story of Jacob and Esau – for glitter he gave up the glory.

  Hebrews 12:17 For you know that afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, through he sought it diligently with tears.

  What Esau wanted was the wealth that he sold out to Jacob for a bowl of lentils, but now he regretted giving up the land, the wells, the livestock, etc.  But that was not the real blessing that Esau rejected, he rejected being yielded to God, and the relationship that Isaac and Abraham had with God.

  Pastor Don pointed out that sorrow is not repentance.  You can be sorrowful that you sinned or you made a mistake and got caught, but that is not repenting.   Judas Iscariot was sorrowful, but did not repent.

  2 Corinthians 7:10 For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted, but the sorrow of the world produces death.

  If God said to Esau, I forgive you and will save you, but you won’t get the material blessings, Esau would not have accepted that.  It was a heart issue.  He did not say, whatever I forfeited because of sin, I accept.  If we truly repent, God can bless us beyond blessing. 

  Someone read Psalm 15 Lord, who may abide in Your tabernacle? Who may dwell in Your holy hill? He who walks uprightly, and works righteousness, and speaks the truth in his heart. He who does not backbite with his tongue, nor does evil to his neighbor, nor does he take up a reproach against a friend. In whose eyes a vile person is despised, but he honors those who fear the LORD; He who swears to his own hurt and does not change. He who does not put out his money at usury, or des he take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things shall never be moved.

  Pastor Don concluded by telling us that to be right means even if it costs you something, do it.

  Praying your day is blessed!!!

  Heather

  • 11:38 am
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