Title: The Perfect Sermon
Text: Matt 19:16-21, Jas 1:2-5,19, John 17:4 & 23.
FCF: God is perfect, and would have us be too.
SO: I want the congregation to link communion, with the completeness goodness of God and the realities of this present age.
The basis of this sermon is a word study of the word ‘teleios” – perfect. Hence, I am in no way suggesting the sermon is perfect, but rather is about perfection
Intro:
How would you like to perfect?
I know that seems like a pretty tall order, but let’s face it. Why do you come to church? Why do read the Bible? Isn’t it because, at some level, you want to be … perfect?
For the last few weeks, we’ve been talking about growth. We know we need to grow, we’ve even heard about how the gardener makes us to grow. (Ref to sermon on Luke 13:6-9). But what is growth, other than a movement towards perfection?
Now, this morning I want to do something a bit different with the sermon. You know that normally, I’d like a single passage of scripture, read it, outline it, and then pull out action statements from it. As a regular diet that you would be following in your daily bible study, I still that’s the best approach – seeing it in context and pulling from it. I like to call that the “telescope approach.” But, like I said, this morning, I want to take a different tack. I want to pull out my “microscope,” and examine just a single word.
That word, is “perfect.”
Now, in our responsive reading, you used this word a lot. You saw “mature,” “fulfilled,” “complete.” In the original Greek, these are the same word, “Teleios.”
If you’re driving up Rt. 7 some time, near 28, you’ll see a building for a company called “Telos.” They make aircraft, but somebody who started that company must have known Greek, because that’s the base for our word. Telos is a goal. It’s your “end,” in the sense that the end of a turkey is to be my Thanksgiving meal. It’s what it wants to be.
You can see how these words would be related.
This morning, since we’re going to be thinking about being perfected, that means we’ll be spending a lot of time in James. James uses the word more than anybody else.
Specifically, I want to look at three aspects of perfect – and you’ll get a sense of it by understanding three different words that are sometimes used in its place. You can think of perfect as:
1. Maturity
2. Complete
3. A Fulfillment
Perfect is a Process
When you think of perfection as maturity, you realize first of all that perfection is a process.
If you have your bible, would you turn with me to James 1:2-5?
" My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing. If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you." (James 1:2-5, NRSV)
By definition, a goal – a perfect goal – is something that we aren’t at now. If we already were perfect, we wouldn’t need God. But we’re not. So, how does God perfect us? Simple. He brings us situations that grow us.
If you’ve ever spent time with a child, you know that it is usually much, much easier to simply clean up after them then it is to get them to do it themselves. But still, you know there are times when you have to stand over them and make them pick up each toy, one by one. It breaks your heart, and if the kid is anything like Rachel, it breaks hers too!
So, why do you do it? Because – at some point, they have to learn how to be an adult. And that only happens when you’re given a task.
You know, we often ask why God is “doing this to me.” Why don’t I have X? Why is my body suffering from Y?
Maturity is always painful. It always means letting go of something cherished. In the case of the rich young ruler, it meant his possessions. In the case of the child picking up, it meant his freedom to leave things where he pleased. But maturity – growing up – is what leads us to perfect.
In the Christmas song, “Away in a Manager,” we pray that God will “fit us for heaven, to live with Thee there.” If that really is our prayer, then we have to learn at some point that this world isn’t heaven. James 4:7 makes explicit – This world and heaven are exactly at odds with one another.
So, if that’s the case, how else are we supposed to grow, except that we begin to have less and less of this world?
In the story we read about the rich young ruler, Jesus had some pretty hard advice. He said, “if you want to be perfect, go and sell everything you have.” Why would he say such a thing?
Well, if the goal is to be fit for heaven, your gold is just paving material! So, if you want to get a head start on heaven, Jesus is suggesting, get rid of it!
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. This portion of scripture is probably one of the most dismissed or explained away in all the Bible. Theologians can give you a hundred reasons to tell you why it doesn’t apply to us. But I’ll tell you why I haven’t followed this – I’m just not there yet. I wish that I had that kind of faith. I wish that I could be made perfect. But there is sadly still too much of the world in me.
Perfect is a Gift
So, if that’s the case, what hope do I ever have? Well, keep look back at James 1:5 again.
If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you. 6 But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind;
This brings me to my second point about perfect, and that is this: Perfect is a gift.
God wants us to be perfect, and he knows that we can’t do it on our own. Don’t have wisdom? Ask God! Don’t have faith? Ask God!
Aren’t grown up? Ask God.
Like a good parent, he gives. He gives generously. He won’t begrudge you anything.
I’m going to skim over parts of this first chapter, but notice here too that James is saying, don’t trust in your worldly:
Let the believer who is lowly boast in being raised up, 10 and the rich in being brought low, because the rich will disappear like a flower in the field. 11 For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the field; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. It is the same way with the rich; in the midst of a busy life, they will wither away.
12 Blessed is anyone who endures temptation. Such a one has stood the test and will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.
Like I said, I don’t know that I’m ready to boast in being brought low. I don’t like testing. I don’t like trials. But you also know that
No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.
Remember that? It’s true. But, I’m getting off the point. These trials, this testing – it is a good gift from a good God who is going in His good time to grow us.
Look with me at verses 18 & 19:
Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18 In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures
I would be perfectly just in rewording that a little bit. Every good act that you do is from God. It’s a gift – it’s perfect. God, the Father of Lights, is perfect. There is no shadow of turning with Thee.
Perfect is a Person
And that leads me to my last point. Perfect is a process, yes – and that’s maturity. Perfect is a gift, yes – it’s a fulfillment of an obligation of love. But most of all, perfect is a person. And that person is God himself.
To Paul and the people of his day, the only things that didn’t change were the things that were already perfect. I mean, after all, if something is perfect, how could it get any more perfect? And, in the context of right and wrong, worldly and unworldly, it is true – our God is already perfect, so there wouldn’t be any need for change.
But you see that this perfect God wants to be complete.
He wants to bring us to him, that we might be complete, and he might have us.
It’s a pretty hard thought that God would desire us, but it’s the entire basis of Christianity. He doesn’t need us to be complete, but he desires to give us completeness.
Let me show you what I mean by looking at one last set of verses.
Jesus is going to use our word perfect twice in John 17. John 17, as you’ll remember, is a prayer that Jesus prays the night before he is going to become a gift for all of man. I want to read you two things that he says.
He starts by saying this:
Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, 2 since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 4 I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. 5 So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.
When he says that he “finished the work,” he says he has completed it. He has made it perfect. In other words, he has finally reached the end.
And that would be an amazing thing on its own. Here is Jesus, a man, who has finished the work of God. He has become perfect.
But if he stopped there, what hope would there be for us?
So he too, continues to ask God in prayer for this:
I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me
Complete. And completely one. Prefect. Reaching the Goal.
He wants us to have a part in his “Perfect.” He will mature us and push us, and gift us as he becomes part of us. That’s what it’s all about.
We are coming to a time of communion – literally a perfect completion in the body and blood of our Savior. It is the holiest – most set apart thing we do. But it is holy precisely because it is our end, our goal – the perfection that we desire.
When we take it, we do so that can be less of ourselves, and more of him.
Would you pray with me?
…
Communion is a special time. We acknowledge that we are not perfect, but that we desire to be. Our lives are being matured, but we will never get there on our own. Perfect is a gift, from the Father of Lights. Let us remember that as we prepare for communion by singing, “I need thee every hour.”
Long Branch Baptist Church
Halfway, Virginia; est. 1786
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Enter to Worship
Prelude David Witt
Invocation Michael Hollinger
*Opening Hymn #35
“How Great Thou Art”
Welcome & Announcements
Morning Prayer
*Responsive Reading [See Right]
*Offertory Hymn #505
“Marching to Zion”
Offertory Mr. Witt
*Doxology
Scripture
Matthew 19:16-21, James 1:2-18
Sermon Mr. Hollinger
“The Perfect Sermon”
Invitation Hymn #379
“I Need Thee Every Hour”
The Lord’s Supper
The Bread
The Cup
Congregational Response #372
“Heavenly Sunlight”
* Congregation, please stand.
Depart To Serve
RESPONSIVE READING
Among the mature we speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish.
Be ye perfect, even as your Father is perfect.
Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal;
but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.
Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own;
but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
Let those of us then who are mature be of the same mind;
and if you think differently about anything, this too God will reveal to you.
It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ.
For this I toil and struggle with all the energy that he powerfully inspires within me
And now, I will show you a more excellent way.
Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease;
as for knowledge, it will come to an end.
For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part;
but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child;
when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.
For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.
Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.
- 1 Cor 2:6, Matt 5:48, Phil 3:12-15; Col 1:28-29, I Cor 12:30, 13:8-12
10/22 – Manassas Baptist Church, 9am. Northstar Network Church Meeting. Long Branch may send 4 messengers. See Michael to attend.
W
