Today we finish our series on building our spiritual house and my hope is that next week we can celebrate our journey through this church year and go forward with a new commitment to living as true disciples of Jesus. Today we talk about the hardest part, the actual work and perseverance of building, the effort of putting up the house and keeping going in our Christian walk.
I know many people who read their bibles faithfully, pray, fight against sin and temptation, they have all the tools needed for building this spiritual house, but one final thing is missing, they don’t believe they can do it. How many Christians have given up on holiness, on being fully surrendered disciples because when they read the Scriptures, the description and requirements seem too grand? Or the promises in the Bible are too hard to believe?
How many of us have said, I wish could be that kind of disciple, but there’s just no way I will ever accomplish it the way my life is. I’m good with my salvation and maybe even helping others achieve it, but I could never be that kind of Christian. Do we believe we can build this house?
Perseverance, enduring is one of the strongest expressions of faith, hope. Faith is believing that which is unseen, unaccomplished. Paul tells the Corinthians to walk by faith not by sight, and we read in Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”. Again Paul, talking about all the characteristics of love closes with, “Now these three remain, faith, hope, and love”. That is what my message is about today, only these three things are required to finish building - faith, hope and love.
As soon as something becomes visible we no longer need faith. The Christian life is one of faith because we are called to live a certain way with the hope of one day being in glory with Jesus.
It is a life of work, and service, and self-denial, and if we don’t have faith in the final outcome, our efforts soon diminish. Maybe they already have for many of us. Maybe the hope of the seemingly distant future is not enough to motivate us to live as God commands in the here and now. And if so, can that faith save a person, James asks. If I say I have faith but have not works?
Work, perseverance and endurance are the final disciplines needed to build this Spiritual house, otherwise it is unfinished without a roof or plumbing, or electricity. Can it be lived in, in that state? Probably, but I wouldn’t want to live in it, and I doubt if the Holy Spirit would be too enthusiastic about it either coming from the throne of heaven. Without work/action, all the materials for building just sit there and have no purpose. Remember this is about after receiving salvation through grace.
How many Christians do you think believe that being a Christian ends at accepting salvation? I’m guessing not many of you believe that. Now let’s ask it a little differently, how many of you by looking at a person’s Christian life would conclude from appearances that that person’s Christian life was concluded at salvation?
Now this is not meant to be judgmental, and obviously we can’t know a person’s heart or everything they do behind the scenes. But would it be fair to say that many professing Christians pretty much stop at salvation and do very little to live out that faith according to Scriptures?
Why does Jesus say we should count the cost before building in Luke 14. Let’s read it from verses 26-30:
Can we afford to build this spiritual life? Now this is about renouncing everything including our own lives. Another way of putting it is that we are to completely live our lives for Christ, above family and everything else that we hold dear. Jesus isn’t saying I won’t let you be my disciples, but that it is impossible if you don’t do as I have done. Makes sense.
Now this is way out of our natural intention and therefore requires ongoing attention and effort. You see God knew it would be tough to stick with it. He knows that like any other relationship, after the excitement of the early days dies down, our motivation recedes with it. This is why he says to the church in Ephesus in Revelation chapter 2, “You have many wonderful works and you have done what is necessary to endure false teaching, but you have abandoned the love you had at first.”
This says two things. One, that we can do all the right things for the wrong reasons, and two, that love is the most important, the relationship. We have spent a lot of time on how Christians are supposed to be, what kind of disciplines we need to implement, but none of it has any power without the loving relationship with God.
I hope you can see now that I have not been bringing moralistic, legalistic messages to you, but that everything God has instructed us to do is simply what you would do in any loving relationship. All of it has the aim of developing a deeper, more loving relationship with Jesus. They are instructions that ultimately help us come closer to him, not just for his sake, but for ours as well, because he loves us more than we could ever love Him.
So, just like your marriage, it’s easy at first when you’re “in love” you gladly do anything for the one you love. But over time some of those things become more difficult, you are somehow less motivated to please your spouse at every opportunity. You pull away, start doing more of your own things. Seeking to please yourself more. Why is that?
It’s because you become less and less absorbed with them, and have gone back to being more and more absorbed with your own desires and needs, and emotional highs. The problem is that there is nothing in this world that can bring a permanent emotional high, it always fades.
The same thing happens with God given our nature, and like a marriage, the things that once came naturally at the beginning require some effort and sacrifice later. Nothing has changed but you and your desires. Then to keep the marriage working you have to work at it, you have to persevere, you have endure some things that you would probably rather not.
Now here’s the thing. Many people, including some Christians take the easy way out and simply get divorced so they can go on to another relationship and experience the high again. My question is, how many of us are at the point of divorce with God? He isn’t giving us the emotional highs anymore, things like prayer and bible reading and enthusiastically worshipping at church seem more like chores now than they did at the beginning.
The problem is, there is no other God to go to. You can leave the relationship with him, but you won’t have another unless it’s with something of the world. And God makes it very clear that he is a jealous God and that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God.
How many times have we in our Christian lives had affairs on God? We’ve left Him to go cheat with something of the world, only to find that it was an empty relationship and had to eventually come grovelling back to Him. We have all had some prodigal in us, we are an adulterous people and perseverance and endurance are not our forte.
We jump from thing to thing, we have so many houses on the go that none of them ever get finished, not well anyway. One gets boring so we jump to the other, we get sick and rather than make a permanent lifestyle change, we find pills that keep us going so we don’t have to change.
Little do we realize that only one thing will ever bring us lasting satisfaction, and it probably won’t even be in this life – eternity with God. So God calls us time and time again to endure, persevere, don’t give up, fight the good fight for the prize that you may not receive until your life is over. He knows it will be hard.
James 1:25, “But the one who looks at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.” Paul in EPHESIANS 6 TALKS ABOUT PUTTING ON THE ARMOUR OF God against the spiritual powers that are against us including doubt and discouragement, lack of motivation and such, and to stand firm, be ready, pray at all times and keep alert with all perseverance.
A little known phrase in Luke 21:19 has Jesus talking about coming tribulation and persecution and he finishes with, “By your endurance you will gain your lives”. We have to keep the faith. We have to keep believing that living lives obedient to God is worth it. Without faith we can’t do it, it’s too easy to give up. There are too many other temptations.
Paul tells us how difficult the work is. He himself laments about how badly he wants to do what is right but his flesh fights him every step of the way. He asks us, what fruit are we really getting from living the old way? Then in 1 Cor 9 he is talking about surrendering his rights and uses the race metaphor, run to obtain the prize and to do so you must be focussed, and he disciplines his body and keeps it under control, lest after preaching to others he himself shall be disqualified.
Nothing is more important to Paul than walking his talk, so he is disciplined and focussed single mindedly on one thing – the imperishable prize that awaits at the finish line. The beautiful completed house that God sees and says, “Wow I’d live in that. Great job.”
The writer of Hebrews says the same thing in chapter 10 verse 36, “For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised.” In chapter 12 verse 1 of Hebrews, “Let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.” Are we going to work to complete this building?
Endurance is mentioned time and time again in Revelation, and what is one of the things that love does in 1Cor 13? It endures all things. And finally in 2Timothy 2:12, “If we endure, we will also reign with him.” The reward is eternal life with God.
There’s a very important verse in Philippians 2 where Paul says, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure”. Notice it doesn’t say work for your salvation, but work out your salvation because He is working in you.
When you go to the gym to workout, you are not creating muscle. The muscle has already been given to you, but as you work out, that muscle which was placed in you by God can grow and become stronger, and this only happens by your choice to work out. But our choice machine, our will machine as Rick Warren says, is broken.
So God works in you by giving you the salvation and he also gives you the desire and will to work out that salvation. He gives you the will to go tot the gym. By the Holy Spirit your choice making machine is fixed, but you still have to use it. And by the way he also says to do it without grumbling or questioning.
Where would we be if builders always quit half way through the job? Whether they want to or not, whether it’s going smoothly or not, they can’t just pack it in and leave a house unfinished, because amoung other things, they wouldn’t get paid. When we work out, we have to do it whether we feel like it or not, or we will simply not reap the benefits.
Is that what we need to persevere in our work of building this spiritual house, so that we get the reward? The bible clearly says yes, that’s part of it if that’s what it takes to motivate you, it’s better than nothing. But that motivation can also make you a self-centered, closed in Christian who will have very little impact for the Kingdom.
The best reason for keeping at it is love. Faith, Hope, and Love. Love for God, love for His church, and love for people who are perishing without Jesus Christ. God didn’t just sit back, he didn’t give up after the millionth time his children turned away from Him. He kept pursuing, and he keeps pursuing to this day, and if we are like Him, we will do the same. He’s done it for thousands of years, we only have to do it for maybe 70 or 80. Yes we have rewards waiting, but like Jesus, our love should make us desire to do anything to bring people to a saving knowledge of Jesus. What a reward that is.
And it is primarily by the way we live our lives, the way we function in relationships, that will witness Christ to people. Paul knew that, he knew his preaching would be powerless unless his life backed up what he said. Is that our problem? If you have been in the church for any amount of time, and have read the blueprints, you should know the basic Gospel message. Do we keep it to ourselves because we don’t feel worthy to present it because of how we live our lives like everybody else who doesn’t know it?
If you’re like me, this year of preaching has maybe exhausted you. I have had to preach everyone of these sermons to myself, and I can’t escape them after Sunday service. I have been awakened to how difficult it is to really be a disciple of Christ. I can’t tell you how many times I have wanted to veer away from this preaching agenda that God gave me this year. I don’t want to come at you every week, telling you what is required of you as a Christian.
But as exhausted as I am, and maybe you are of hearing it, I am going to press on. I am going to give my best to be the person described in this book. I believe now like never before that the reason God has such strict standards is because the reward of spending eternity with Him must be worth it. Isn’t anything really good worth working for, worth paying the price for?
And not only that, I think God is making it clear that we are in the birth pains and our labour is increasing. Tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, wars and rumors of wars are definitely not only increasing in frequency, but also in intensity. These are urgent times, and any birth, even if it is the new heaven and earth, is preceded by pain. So it is more important than ever I think to evaluate our spiritual house, to look at how we are serving God in our commission to present the saving grace of God to people before it is too late.
Next week we are going to celebrate though. I want to hear of victories you have had this past year. Answered prayers, new attitudes, sin that you have overcome, new appreciation for the relationship you have with God. Let’s share with each other next week what great things God has done and is doing in our lives, strides that we have made, and I will bring a short message from Romans 8 on the transformation and glorification that awaits us.
