Trinity Baptist Church May 21, 2006
True Values
Accountability throughout the Body
Leroy Eims used to tell the story of a man named Robert Robinson. Robinson lived in the 1700’s. He was riding one day in a stage coach -- and he sat slumped in a corner, trying to sleep.
In that coach also sat a lady. After a while, she started humming a favorite hymn. Robinson roused himself, looked her in the eyes, and in no uncertain terms told her he did not appreciate her humming. She quietly asked why her humming bothered him.
“It‘s not your humming, madam, it‘s the tune you hummed.” She realized it had been: “Come Thou Fount“. She asked, “Why --- why does that hymn bother you, sir?“ He responded, “Madam, I am the unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and I would give a thousand worlds, if I had them, to enjoy the feelings I had then."
“Prone to wander, prone to leave the God I love.”
Robinson’s words identify that downward pull on our hearts -- the urges, the thinking and feelings -- which entice us to put distance between ourselves and Christ.
Some of those impulses come from out of our flesh,
some from the world‘s enticements; some even originate in the dark demonic realm.
The consequences are the same -- we often get neutralized, maybe even emotionally and spiritually paralyzed and we begin to level off and descend in the spiritual life.
I want to talk to you today about a resource God offers to shore up your life and help you keep moving strongly in Christ‘s direction.
This is our final study examining the biblical foundations of what we call Trinity’s Core Values.
Today we wrap up with the one inside your worship folder. “Accountability Throughout the Body.” Like a couple of the others, word “accountability” scares some of us more than we’d admit. It doesn’t have to. I trust by the time we’re done, fear and resistance will get replaced by motivation.
The expansion of the value reminds us of what we talked about last time in the area of community. “We are ‘members of one another’ and should be open to others in the Body who will be part of our lives. We reject the superficial relating common in our culture and churches. To facilitate discipleship and spiritual transformation, we seek close relationships
in which people can be open, challenged, encouraged and helped to develop as God desires.
Everyone, including leaders, needs accountability through significant relationships.” No, that’s not a typo. Everyone, including leaders, needs accountability through significant relationships. This isn‘t something we need when we‘re young Christians, accountability is for everyone, including leaders. We’ll see that as we move through the study. Let’s start with the meaning.
What is it?
When we say accountability, we’re not talking about coercion, or invasion of privacy, or bringing people under the weight of someone else’s preferences or legalism. Biblical accountability isn’t manipulation like it might be practiced in cults.
The dictionary says it means “being liable to being called to account;” it means “answerable and responsible to others“. In a biblical sense, it’s developing relationships with other believers which will promote spiritual reality, honesty and obedience to God. That happens through honest evaluations of how we’re doing, in walking with God, in relationships with others and in the responsibilities of life. It involves relationships which help us change by grace, by the Spirit’s power and in line with the Bible.
So accountability means teaching, challenging, supporting and encouraging one another in ways that promote spiritual integrity in us as believers.
That’s what it is. Why do I need it?
First, because the Bible says, we’re a lot like straying sheep. Sheep wander off and start eating the wrong thing, and putting themselves in danger zones. Just like that, we wander off and do our thing.
Sometimes it’s inadvertently choosing the wrong path. More often, it’s leaping at disobedience knowing full well what we’re doing.
Any one of us could have written those words: “prone to wander.” Accountability builds a hedge of protection, it helps hold onto us in spite of our urges. Authentic relationships -- with God, with God’s Word, and with some Christians who love you are like a three urgent voices that repeatedly remind us, “don’t go there.”
Another reason: accountability builds integrity into us. Chuck Swindoll says, “you need someone in your life who will ask you the hard questions.” Integrity results when Truth and life align. We all need help with that aligning because we’re weak and subject to
deceiving ourselves.
Accountability brings freedom. Listen to me: More times than I’d care to admit, I’ve been into wrong thinking of lots of different kinds. Doubts about God, fears of all kinds; and wrong thinking propel us to be alone a lot. And the result is bondage to all kinds of stuff.
People who try to make it on their own don’t.
Lone targets are easy targets -- for temptation -- for sin -- and for Satan. Jesus said knowing Truth, getting an experiential handle on His Truth would set us free. That freedom comes more often than not in a circle of committed accountability.
And, accountability reflects the truth that we grow best in the context of a Body. Body relationships described in the NT aren’t the kind where you visit with other Christians for 15 minutes before and after worship services on Sunday morning. NT relationships are the sort in which where there’s a lot of time, there’s growing depth and there is open honesty. We’ll never get to that kind “on the fly“.
In short, to shore up your life and walk with Christ, you need the sort of engaging with God, His Word and people that accountability will get you .
So let’s take a look at just a few biblical principles. And then we’ll conclude with the practical side of accountability.
Accountability isn’t just having a few relationships with a few people who keep you moving in the right direction.
1. The heart of accountability: a relationship to God.
(Romans 14:11, 12, 1 Corinthians 3:13-15, 2 Corinthians 5:10)
The is the foundation stone for this concept is that we are first accountable to God.
The Bible tells me that I’m not a free agent. It says, for those of us who believe in Christ, God holds double title to my life. First, He made me and so He holds full ownership rights to me as Creator. And, in my rebellion against Him, in my sin, He redeemed me in Christ; He came and bought me back.
Daniel Webster said, “My greatest thought is my accountability to God.” He’d obviously spent some time meditating on Scripture’s clear word -- that there is an eternal Creator Who will examine the details of every person’s life.
Let me take you over to Romans 14 -- verses 11 and 12 with me. Romans 14, beginning with verse 11: For it is written, As I live says the Lord, every knee shall bow before Me, and every tongue shall give praise to God. So then, each one of us shall give account of himself to God.
God will bring every person into His holy and eternal Presence and He will ask us for an accounting: We will account for the decisions and actions of our lives. That’s not a judgment at all like the one unbelievers will experience. But it is a determination of the value and the eternal nature of our use of time, and the stewardship of all of life.
I imagine Christ asking me: “Dean, why” -- He’ll get at the heart of my motives. He’ll ask me “why not”? Mostly I think the question will be “How?“ “How did you use all that I gave you?“ -- the gifts, the relationships, the myriad of opportunities.
1 Corinthians 3 and 2 Corinthians 5:10 describe that examination of Christians by Jesus as accounting for the deeds done in the flesh.
This is where accountability begins. I‘m not my own. If you‘ve never come to that stark realization and all the decisions which flow out of that realization, then trying to do accountability with other people isn‘t going to be effective. Small groups and accountability sessions fizzle out because one or more people haven’t come to this point. You need to begin with this cognizance: I must no longer live to myself, but Him Who died and rose again for me.
Spend some time meditating on the verses about your accounting before God. You will conclude that the wisest thing you can do is to live in light of what Christ did for you.
Then you will begin to be accountable in life. Secondly we have
2. The standards of accountability: the Truth of Scripture. (Psalm 119:4, 89, 105; 2 Timothy 3:16, 17)
Whether in your accountability before God, or in accountability with fellow believers, we’re not left in the dark about how to advance.
Scripture provides us the pattern and principles of life: the ones God uses and the ones to which we call each other.
Psalm 119:4 says, You have ordained Your precepts, that we should keep them diligently. (Psalm 119:4) Verse 89 says, Forever, O Lord, Your Word is settled in heaven.
As I said at the beginning, the objective of accountability isn’t that I push other Christians to do things like I do them. It’s not my habits or preferences or my convictions that ought to underly our accountability it’s God’s Word.
So if you determine to engage with a person or a small group, each person needs to be in Scripture for themselves. You need to be feeding on it and digesting it day by day, so that you can not only apply it’s principles to your own life, you can help each other apply them.
God’s Word is a lamp to our feet and light to Christians’ paths (Psalm 119:105)
Paul told Timothy, Scripture is profitable to teach us Truth and to correct us, call us back to the right path and keep us in the right ways. (2 Timothy 3:16, 17)
We too often feel like we can make our own determinations as to how to live and which lifestyle choices to make. So what standards do we employ to do that? How we feel. Emotions. How other people operate. Input from friends. And without realizing it, we find life and life’s choices are pretty much driven by the culture, maybe with a Christian twist on it.
So the heart of accountability is the Truth that we will give account to God. Our accountability must be shaped and guided by the principles and paths laid out in God’s Word.
Then comes
3. The human side of accountability: leaders and the Body. (Hebrews 13:17, Matthew 18, Galatians 2:11-21, James 5:16)
We understand that when we believed in Christ, God not only placed us into Christ, He put us into the Body -- into Christ’s Church.
It’s in the setting of the Church, especially the local church, that God then calls each of us to operate along several new lines of accountability.
Some of those you’ll understand if you’ll do a study of what’s called the “one another’s” in the NT. In those commands, there is wide-ranging responsibility in functioning in this new sphere of accountability.
Alongside the responsibilities we have to each other, there are several places in the NT which teach the accountability of the church to its leaders, like Hebrews 13:17. It says, obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls, as those who will have to give account. It tells us to let them give that accounting with joy and not with grief, for this would not be profitable to you. 1 Peter 5:2-3 also calls us to submit to leaders.
Your spiritual progress is the assignment of church leaders. One of their areas of accounting before God someday will be how you did spiritually. That’s a weight that ought to cause them to rejoice, not grieve.
Elders and leaders are obviously limited in their capacity to maintain accountability with the whole body of Christ. Just like Jesus focused His ministry, with the twelve and the three, effective leaders do the same. So the need for accountability again falls into the realm of the “one another‘s”. Ephesians 5:21, for example say, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Submission, is for every one of us. Paul said in Ephesians 5 that submission is a Spirit-produced and mutual responsibility. If submitting willingly to others is not your there is strong evidence you’re not walking with Christ and filled with His Spirit. Submission carries that idea of mutual authority and accountability.
Does submission include elders and pastors? It does. In the NT, it even included apostles. The passage on your outline from Galatians 2 is the account where Peter is rebuked by Paul. Peter believed the gospel of grace but when it came to living grace in front of some legalists, he let fear cause him to act like he was still under the Law. Paul rebuked him publicly and taught the whole church a lesson in grace.
In Peter’s letter he calls himself a fellow elder with the local church elders. Paul told readers more than once to study and determine whether what he wrote was true and valid.
The difference between biblical leaders and, cult leaders for example, is biblical leaders don’t mind being challenged, or questioned, or asked how their teaching aligns with God’s Word.
In letters to the Thessalonians, Philippians and Corinthians, Paul opened his lifestyle and invited them to examine how he lived. He said more than once, you know what manner of life I lived before you. There’s openness like that when leaders practice accountability.
They don’t mind having their lifestyles checked and compared to NT character standards. That’s why character is a necessary quality for choosing church leaders.
The point is, no one stands alone. No one’s autonomous. Our lifestyles, whether leader or not, are subject to the accountability of the whole church. (Matthew 18)
Let’s spend the remainder of our time and talk about some of the practical issues:
4. The practice of accountability.
There are a number of different kinds of accountability relationships: some of it happens in marriage; husband and wife need to be open and honest and communicating about what‘s going on in their lives. It can happen in 1-1 friendship or discipleship relationships.
Accountability probably happens best in small groups. It happens best when people make the commitment to regularly get together and help each other live life under God and God‘s Word.
There are some basic elements that are usually part of accountability time.
First Scripture: You can read, or study a passage; you can review some verses you’re memorizing together. If you start with something from God’s Word as the focus of your thoughts then God’s ideas become central.
Obviously praying together is vital. Spend some time allowing your each person to open their heart and share needs. Pray specifically and definitely for each other by name when you meet and pray for your fellow members during the week.
Then third, share your lives. How are you doing: are you walking with God? What are the victories, battles, temptations, relationships with spouse, friends, family, unbelievers?
And some issues to consider: Work at honesty and humility with regard to your struggles. The tendency we have is to protect our comfort zones and build up layers of self-protection. We don’t engage in accountability to impress each other.
Practice grace and understanding. You’re not involved to judge and condemn others. Practice grace and acceptance, even when people blow it. That doesn’t mean there can’t be challenge, exhortation, even rebuke, but do everything with love and gentleness.
Guard your tongue. You can’t be God’s instrument in someone’s life to mature if you don’t guard against gossip and being critical. What you talk about in accountability should concern the people present, not other people and it has to be kept in strict confidence. Everybody in your accountability group needs to person needs to know they can trust the others.
Finally, be faithful and dependable. Don’t start accountability if you don’t have the commitment to meet every time, to do assignments, to show up on time and to follow through with others who need you to check back with them.
Steps I need to take
Ask yourself a question: if you began to wander, what would hold you back?
First, is there a serious sober reality in your understanding of accountability before God and His Word? Have you ever developed those convictions? If you haven’t, that’s where you need to begin. It’s a waste of time for you and others to try to get seriously moving if you’ve never got those issues settled. Spend some time meditating and praying over the verses I gave you on the outline concerning our accounting to God.
Secondly, if you wandered, who would come after you? Who knows you and loves you enough to recognize symptoms and come after you? Not let you go without a fight?
If two or three or four names don’t immediately jump into your mind, then you have an assignment. It is to gather one or two people or couples and spend some time considering the idea of accountability. Don’t start without counting the costs. But you can start with reviewing the benefits.
Get going. Make the decision. Open your life. You can help each other stay on track. You can help each other have an impact. Find a person. Find a few people. Make the commitments. And watch God work.
