For those of you who were on the winter retreat, you will remember that on Saturday night Greg talked about what it means to have a real walk with God and how to continue to grow in our relationships with Him. He expressed that we all needed to be taking in “Daily Nutrition” if we really wanted to become more like Christ. During our group conversation, I felt that idea was something that the majority of the group picked up on. It seemed like person after person was expressing things like, “I want to read my Bible more,” “I want my relationship with God to be better,” and “I need that daily nutrition that Greg was talking about.”
Having heard that from the majority of you and even from the adult leader’s that were there, I thought it would be helpful and good to spend some time over the next few Breakaway’s talking about this idea of spiritual disciplines and things that will help us jump deeper into a relationship with God and make us more like Him.
Before we jump in, I want to just quickly repeat what I shared last week about the weekly Bible Readings we provide for you. From now on, all of the readings will have to do with what we will be discussing the following Monday. If you have read during the week, it will allow to get a lot more out of our times together. I think this will be a great way for us all to work together to take in that daily nutrition and really jump deeper into a relationship with God.
The other thing that I shared last week was a heads up to be expecting the following question in small groups or hanging out downstairs from the leaders AND I want to encourage you guys to ask the question as well; both to your peers as well as to the leaders. That question is this, “How have you been spending time with God this week and what have you been learning?” It’s pretty simple but yet I think it will challenge all of us to really think about God and how He plays a role in our everyday lives.
That being said I want start out tonight with a little group activity to help us think about spiritual disciplines. On the screen, you will see a list of six disciplines and I want you guys to get in little groups with the people around you and rate these in order of importance to being a “good” Christian, 1 being the most important, 6 being the least.
_____ Reads the Bible often
_____ Goes to church regularly
_____ Willing to stand up for Jesus in public
_____ Fasts regularly
_____ Knows a lot about God and theology
_____ Can pray publicly
(Above taken from Duffy Robbins)
***Give the youth a minute or two to put them in order and then quickly go through the responses***
Well, I have to admit that this was sort of a trick question. See, this list of disciplines is actually a list of things that the Pharisees and the religious leaders of Jesus’ day stressed and pushed on all of the people. These were the things that they were doing and forcing on everyone else in order to be a “good” Jew and be in good favor with God. The truth of the matter is that none of these things makes you a “good” Christian and will not earn God’s love or acceptance.
I wanted to do this activity to stress the difference between doing things – like reading your Bibles, going to church or praying in public – to be a “good” Christian and doing them to grow closer to Jesus because there is a huge difference between the two.
Let’s open our Bibles to Philippians 3:1-14 and see what Paul has to say about this as he wrote to the church in a city called Philippi.
***Read Philippians 3:1-14***
As Paul wrote to the church in Philippi there was a huge debate going on which is what Paul speaks to in this part of his letter. See, there was a group of people who were known as Judaizers who were Jewish Christians and they taught and stressed that anyone who became a follower of Jesus had to follow all of the rules, laws and guidelines in the Old Testament in order to be “good” Christians. They especially put a lot of emphasis on circumcision which was what God told Abraham back in the book of Genesis that all Jewish boys were to have done as a sign of being under God’s covenant or promise. The faith of the Judaizers was focused so much on what they had to do rather than on what Christ had done for them.
Paul, in verse 2, warns the Philippians about the Judaizers calling them “dogs” and “people who do evil.” He tells them not to buy into what they are teaching because they are wrong. He then urges them not to “have confidence in human effort,” in other words all the things I can do to be a “good” Christian. Paul then claims that if anyone can boast in their own actions and things they have done, he has more.
In verses 5 and 6, he goes through all of his qualifications. He was circumcised when he was a baby just like the law said. Paul was in the family line of the first king of Israel, a man named Saul, and whose lineage was known as the tribe of Benjamin. He was also a member of the strict group of Pharisees which meant that he had memorized the entire Old Testament and knew all about the laws and religious necessities. He was so zealous, which means passionate, for what God taught in the Old Testament that he killed and persecuted Christians justifying that he was killing heretics and blasphemers. And on top of all of those things, he obeyed every piece of the law that there was “without fault.” In other words, what Paul was saying is that he had done it all and could be considered the “best” religious person of all.
But, in verses 7-8, Paul goes on to say that he once thought all those “things were valuable,” but now he considers “them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared to the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus.” No matter how much you do or no matter how many religious rules you follow you can not and will not earn God’s love or become a “good” Christian. This notion is echoed throughout the Scriptures over and over again. In Colossians 2:17 Paul writes, “These rules are only shadows of the reality yet to come. And Christ is that reality.” In Ephesians 2:8-9, Paul writes that, “God saved you by his grace when you believed…Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done.” The things we do to try to be “good” Christians and earn God’s love and acceptance are worthless and will get us no where.
So, now does that mean then we don’t have to worry about spiritual disciplines anymore? Did I just prove Greg wrong about what he was talking about on Saturday night? Well, not quite. Instead of being rooted in being “good” or as actions to earn God’s love and a place in heaven they instead become a means to understanding the “infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus,” as Paul says in verse 8. This is what Paul is striving for and encouraging the Philippians to do as well. Paul goes on to say that he has discarded all his old habits and considered them garbage, “so I can gain Christ and become one with him.” In verse 10 he says again, “I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised Him from the dead.”
The prophet Jeremiah echoed this idea as well in Jeremiah 9:23-24. “This is what the Lord says, ‘Don’t let the wise boast in their wisdom, or the powerful boast in their power, or the rich boast in their riches. But those who wish to boast should boast in this alone; that they truly know me and understand that I am the Lord who demonstrates unfailing love.”
The Hebrew word that Jeremiah uses to communicate that the people “truly know” God was so important to the Jewish culture and no doubt what Paul is referring to as he writes in Greek to the Philippians. But it is also very important to us understanding this idea of taking in daily nutrition. I’m going to teach you guys pretty much the only Hebrew word I know and that word is yāda’ (יָדַע). Everyone say it with me. What this word meant went so much deeper than just simply to know the way we think of knowing someone or something. The word meant to know in both knowledge and experience and was also heavily sexual in nature. It was the idea that you knew someone so intimately and deep that you in essence became one with them; which is what the act of sex does between two people according to Genesis. Paul speaks to this as he states that he “wants to become one with Christ.”
Now, just to make sure we are on the same page, Paul is not saying he wants to go and have sex with God in the way that some of you may be thinking right now. What he is talking about is knowing God so well and intimately, in knowledge and experience, that he is in a perfect union or relationship with God where he is one with Him. That is what Paul strives for and what he urges the Philippians and those of us here in this room to strive for as well. And of course, the way we do that is by taking in daily nutrition as much as we can.
What Paul goes on to say in verses 12-14 is so important. “I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.”
***Video clip***
We have to take everything that we have and press on towards that perfect union with Christ. We have to take in as much daily nutrition as we can, not because it will make us “good” Christians or earn us God’s love because we can’t do enough to earn that. Instead, we need to press on in a relationship with God, engaging in spiritual disciplines and taking in daily nutrition because it is the only way we can know God more and more. Just like a friendship that you have, the more time you spend with God, the deeper you will grow in relationship with Him and the more and more you will know him.
My challenge to us all tonight is to pick one way to hang out with God, which we are going to talk a lot more about next Monday, and try to put it into practice this week. Read the Bible Readings for the week, commit to a time of prayer, listen to some worship music, or take a walk outside and admire God’s creation. Whatever you do, try to find time to spend with God this week where you can begin to know Him more. My prayer for all of us here tonight is that we would jump in deep with Jesus and yāda’ Him more and more each and every day as we look forward to what lies ahead for us in eternity with Christ Jesus.
