Harbor Church - Mid City

Spiritually Healthy Lives—Gardening the Heart                                            Jan. 24^th, 2010, Mid-City

We’re in a series looking at the ingredients to a spiritually healthy life and this week we’re going to talk about gardening your heart spiritually.  Now, quite honestly, gardening your heart flows out of last week’s message on private worship b/c the way you garden your heart is by worshipping the right person.  Last week we defined worship is simply this-making your life about something or someone and how we all do it.  Whether you are a religious person, a follower of Jesus, or an irreligious person, you have to make your life about something or someone and to do so is to worship.  For followers of Jesus, v4 says pretty plain, v4 “When Christ, who is your life.”  Your life is to be about Christ.  You’re to worship him.  But the reality is that even after becoming a follower of Jesus, you won’t always do this.  You will begin to make your life about other things. 

Dave and I were working out and he talks with his hands and in doing so it helped me.  I’ll rephrase with my hands what he said.  To make Christ your life and to worship him means he is here, and family, career, sex, beauty, comfort—all these other important and good things are here.  They flow out of Christ.  But what happens is that we take one of these things—you pick it, could be family, career, beauty, any of them—and we put them here and jesus here.  Jesus becomes a means to the end of what our life is really about---career success.  What we are worshipping isn’t Jesus but our career, even though you are a follower of Jesus.

So here is the million dollar question that Dave asked me:  (1) How do you know when you are worshipping something besides Jesus?  Well, that is the first question we’re going to answer this morning and the second question we’ll look at is this—(2) What do you do when you find yourself worshipping something other than Jesus?

(1)   How do you know when you have made your life about something other than Jesus?

Paul gives you the answer in v8-9.  This week we’re going to work backwards from 8-9 up to the front and glean what we didn’t have time for last week.“But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these:  anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.”  Paul gives us a series of indicators to tip you off when you are worshipping something other than Jesus.  These are like red blinking lights on the dash.  Or, since we’re talking about gardening the heart, your negative emotions are like weeds in the garden.  Weeds alert you to the reality that work needs to be done.

First indicator:  negative emotions.  Anger & rage.  You get angry when whatever you are worshipping is denied.  This isn’t just a little anger, but the Greek here means a continuous smoldering.  You fume and the anger sticks with you and it turns to rage. 

This often leads to another indicator that you are worshipping something else in v8—malice, and slander.  You find yourself wanting to inflict harm on your boss or the person who got the promotion in front of you.  Usually, unless you want to go to jail, the harm you want to inflict on someone is in the form of slander, as he mentions in v8.  You carve them up behind their backs.  

#3--filthy language.  If you already have a filthy mouth anyway, then you’ll miss this indicator, but if you find yourself ripping someone else up and down, then that is a good indicator that your worshipping something other than Jesus.  And it isn’t just with curse words.  If you find yourself verbally abusing someone else, then it is because you are worshipping something other than Jesus. 

4^th indicator—v9, “Do not lie to each other.”  If you find yourself lying, then whatever you are lying to protect has become an idol.  You want it more than Jesus, so you disobey Jesus to get it. 

(2)  What do you do when you find yourself worshipping something else?

It is one thing to know that you have made your life about something other than Jesus.  It is another to know what to do about it so that you can get spiritually healthy again.  Well, in v5 Paul says, “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature,” then he lists some things and concludes by saying, “which is idolatry.”  NT Wright helped me understand what Paul means by how we put to death this practice of worshipping something besides Jesus.  Listen to what he says, “To put something to death you must cut off its lines of supply.  Every Christian has the responsibility, before God, to investigate the lifelines of whatever sins are defeating him personally, and to cut them off without pity.”  He uses a military analogy—cut off the supply lines.  Ahh, back to that word that you simply can’t avoid if you are a follower of Jesus—repentance.  Repenting—or turning from whatever you are doing is the only way to cut off the supply lines.  Stop trusting whatever it is to bring you happiness and fulfillment and meaning and turn to Jesus.

Tim Keller calls this repenting of the sin beneath the sin.  When a surface level sin like anger pops up, don’t stop there.  To do so would be like mowing a weed with a lawnmower—it will come back.  You have to uproot it.  To uproot it or get it what is the idol of your heart ask yourself, “Why am I angry?”  There is something that I have made my life besides Jesus and it is being threatened or taken away and it is making me angry.

John Edwards:  Have any of you been following the John Edwards scandal about him having an affair on his wife? Not only did he lie repeatedly denying that this child with this woman was his, but I read in the paper this week that he encouraged an aide to lie and say that the child was his, which he did, and not only that, but fake a paternity test.  When you are faking paternity tests, you know that you are worshipping something other than Jesus.  There are some weeds in the garden of your heart.

Lying was just the weed on the surface that indicated he needed to garden his heart.  Put it another way—there were things that he was worshipping other than Jesus that needed to be put to death.  So let’s ask the why question.  Why was he lying?  B/c Political success and power became his god and he would do anything to get it or hold onto it, including lying, faking paternity tests, etc.

But you never stop with repentance.  You’ll just be a depressed, dreary, woe is me gardener that isn’t fun to be around or even remotely spiritually healthy.  You uproot a weed, you must replant the gospel.  Put it theologically—uproot sin and replant Jesus.  Look at v3-4 (remember we’re backing our way through this text), “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” 

This verse is pregnant with the gospel.  Let me explain.  You died and are “hidden with Christ.” (v3) You are now so bound up with Christ that you can’t be separated.  What does it mean to be hidden with Christ?  It is like being a brownie.  No.  Seriously.  Listen.  We like to make brownies at our house.  Our kids absolutely love it because it involves lots of fingers in the batter, licking the spoon, and brownie goo on the face.  When we get them out of the box, you have the brownie mix in a package, two eggs, vegetable oil, and water—all separate ingredients.  We crack the eggs and mix them in, pour in the oil and water to the batter and mix.  Once it is mixed, it is impossible to separate and to identify the old eggs or vegetable oil.  If you would like to do business with the eggs that we used in the brownie mix, then you must do business with the cooked brownie.  There is no going back.  Such is it with dying and being hidden with Christ.  Once we turn from trusting in other things and put our faith in Jesus, the old sinful us is like the old cracked eggs and old vegetable oil.  You can’t do business with the old us without doing business with Jesus because we have been baked into him if you will.  All our sin is placed upon him and all his righteousness is placed upon us.  We’re hidden—united with Christ.  Never thought of yourself as a brownie have you.  (2 Cor. 5:21)

See we are exploring the wonder of the gospel.  Paul expands the wonder of the gospel in v1 “you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.”  Did you hear that?  This image of Christ being seated at the right hand of God is so rich that it has been like fertilizer on the soil of my heart all week.  This has been waking me up in the mornings with joy in my heart.

Let me explain.  See this is a military analogy.  The picture here is of the king’s army going off to war.  The King’s Son is leading the army in battle and is given an exceptionally dangerous quest.  He displays great bravery in battle and returns triumphant and he is placed at the right hand of the King.  The right hand of the king was the highest place of honor.  This was the King’s most admired and respected and loved person in the entire kingdom. 

Our text says Jesus gets this place.  He went off to war and suffered a grievous wound on the cross.  And 3 days later he dealt the decisive blow to the enemy as he was resurrected.  And God the Father was so pleased with his triumphant victory that he seated him in the place of honor at his right hand. 

But not only does Jesus occupy this seat.  According to our text, so do all those who have put their faith in Him.  V3 says you are hidden with Christ and v1 says “You’re raised with Christ—hidden in him.”  You are there with him.  Now.  And when the Father treats you this way, it changes you.  Let me tell you 2 stories to demonstrate how this changes you.  I want to contrast an irreligious teenager (who to my knowledge still hasn’t understood what it means to be hidden with Christ and seated at the right hand of God) and a religious teenager who finally got this gospel good news..

I am involved in the mentoring program here at Hoover and I have had a number of students.  One student I mentored absolutely worked me over.  He slumped in the chair and every minute we were together seemed to be torture.  He never made eye contact. As far as I could tell, we made zero progress.  Grades.  Attitude.  School attendance.  He took an irreligious approach to life.  No one or nobody—not God, not some pastor, not my teachers, my parents—no one is going to tell me how to live my life.  He was the king of his world and he liked it that way. 

Now let me tell you another true story.  This boy was the exact opposite.  He was a pleaser.  At the age of 5, he was rescued from a burning rectory, and this made a huge impression on him, causing him to think that God set him apart.  As a result, he became a deeply religious boy—didn’t know Jesus, but was religious.  Listen to his journal about his teenage years, “And what I now hoped to be saved by was, 1. Not being so bad as other people. 2. Having still a kindness for religion. And, 3. Reading the Bible, going to church, and saying my prayers. 

Typical religious person, not unlike so many San Diegans I talk to.  He went on to Oxford University and then to seminary and became a rector or pastor in the Church of England and visited the sick and did prison ministry, yet, by his own admission, he wasn’t in relationship with Jesus.  You can be an elder, a pastor and not be in relationship with God.  And then he got really sick and close to death and it caused him to reevaluate.  “Yet when, after continuing some years in this course, I apprehended myself to be near death, I could not find that all this gave me any comfort, or any assurance of acceptance with God.” 

Then he went on a missions trip to Georgia (from England) and met some Moravians on the ship who tried to talk to him about trusting in Jesus by faith, I was too learned and too wise: so that it seemed foolishness unto me. And I continued preaching and following after and trusting in that righteousness whereby no flesh can be justified.” 

Then he met a man named Peter Bohler who shared the gospel of Jesus with him—not of religion or morality.  I was quite amazed, and looked upon it as a new gospel. If this was so, it was clear I had not faith. But I was not willing to be convinced of this. Therefore I disputed with all my might, for all the scriptures relating to this, I had been long since taught to construe away, and to call all Presbyterians who spoke otherwise. When I met Peter Bohler again, he consented to put the dispute upon the issue which I desired, Scripture and experience.

I found all the Scriptures made against me, and was forced to retreat to my last hold, "that experience would never agree with the literal interpretation of those scriptures. Nor could I, therefore, allow it to be true till I found some living witnesses of it." He replied, "He could show me such at any time; if I desired it, the next day." And accordingly the next day he came with three others, all of whom testified of their own personal experience that a true living faith in Christ is inseparable from a sense of pardon for all past, and freedom from all present sins. See they are articulating dying & being hidden with Christ right there.  They added with one mouth, that this faith was the gift, the free gift of God, and that he would surely bestow it upon every soul who earnestly and perseveringly sought it. I was not thoroughly convinced, and by the grace of God I resolved to seek it unto the end:

In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate-street, where one was reading Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed.  I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

This man’s name was John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement.  Wesley began to garden his heart and pursue what he called inward holiness—that is trusting Jesus by faith.  Put to death all the self-righteousness and trusted in Christ and His righteousness.  He delighted in being hidden with Christ, and the good news of being seated with Christ.  The affection of the Father that comes through the sure and certain grace of God strangely warmed his heart and gave him an assurance he had never had.  It wasn’t about him anymore—it was about Jesus.

Then he reflects on his journey after trusting Jesus and this is really helpful for those of you who are new followers of Jesus because it wasn’t all roses and warm hearts after becoming a Christian.  After my return home, I was much buffeted with temptations; but cried out, and they fled away. They returned again and again. I as often lifted up my eyes, and he sent me help from his holy place. And herein I found the difference between this and my former state chiefly consisted. I was striving, yea, fighting with all my might under the law, as well as under grace; but then I was sometimes, if not often, conquered: now I was always conqueror. 

This is Rms. 8:37 says, “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”  See he is pointing out that his heart wasn’t always warm.  He still struggled and he still made his life about other things than Jesus.  But when he did, he learned to put to death whatever became more important to him than Jesus and he replanted the gospel in His heart.  And as the gospel of Christ grew, he conquerored.  Conquered sin—he was Dead to it, seated at the right hand, loved by the Father. 

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