We look to eliminate the distractions because this is called the sanctuary. It sort of locks out everything else for an hour or so, so we can worship with as much attention as we can muster to the one who is worthy. There are those that get very upset when you do it this way.
I think that the distractions should be promoted, permitted. But through precepts I get understanding, through rules. I'm not going to run from them, I'm going to run to them if they come from God. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Hebrews.
Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Now, here's Pastor Rick with part 2 of his study called God is Reliable, and today he's teaching in Hebrews chapter 6. We define joy as feeling good, just feeling good, not feeling bad. There's been a lot of preaching and writing about joy in Christ, which I think falls far short of reality in Christ. We cannot just drug ourselves with things that make us feel good but aren't true. And so had all of these book writers who tell us how to find joy been accurate, we would have only needed one book because we would have had the recipe. One book, here's how you find joy.
Okay, we don't need anymore, we've got it. So the fact that there are so many is to me a testimony that that's not how it works. They lack the things that accompany our salvation, and I've just read a few verses that speak of those things that accompany our salvation, such as taking up the cross, sheep in the midst of wolves. These things accompany our salvation.
I can groan and complain in my life to God about how I wanted a Billy Graham type ministry, while Christians are being persecuted in other places of the world. What do you say to that? You say, not my will be done, but your will be done.
Because I don't know what is right, so you tell me what is right. The things that accompany my salvation are very deep and very broad. These books that talk about joy, well not maybe every single one, but a great majority of them, they have things that people want. Things that people want without fighting for. They just hand it to me. He said, you are like babes, you can't eat meat.
You need milk, you have to have pre-digested food, you can't handle the hard stuff. That is what happens in a world that is contested by Satan. If you want joy, I could write a book on joy, it would be one paragraph. If you want joy, you are going to have to fight for it because it is contested.
That is what this world is about. If you are going to get joy in Christ, you are going to have to have a sword. You are going to need a breastplate and a helmet.
You are going to have to cover your legs a little bit. You are going to need more stuff than just a thrill. These books, I think, teach us how to be let down. How to ignore reality and become disillusioned with the Christian faith until you have people using Jesus' name preaching things that just aren't true. That just aren't in the scripture. Joy is Christ's assurance that his will is what we are going to go after. This should encourage every believer, not frighten them, how not to face facts, how not to face life, how not to face yourself, how not to face scripture.
That is where we would land if we want to live in the pretend world. Now there are things we don't want to face. As it says in Isaiah 33 verse 15, a righteous man stops his ears, the mention of bloodshed. He says, I don't want to hear all this bad stuff.
If I can't do anything about it, stop drowning me in it. That is right. But then there are other areas of life that we must face and we must face with courage. That is what he is saying to them. He is saying there are things that accompany our faith and you want to walk away from it and you should not be walking away but going towards it.
We applaud firemen when they run into the burning building. How about our faith? How about faith, trusting God? Not expect a miracle.
I don't want to expect a miracle. I want to expect obedience. I want to be faithful to the Lord. That is miracle enough.
How about faith no matter what comes into my life, no matter what is contested as proof that life and Christ is contested. How many of you have been around Christ for a while and have not felt the urge to say, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthu. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you letting me down? Why did this happen?
Why, why, why? We all get there at some point. It is important that we recover from it. And after that season of anguish and struggle and grief, we get up. And so what accompanies salvation is faith. The writer of this letter is going to have a whole section on by faith, by faith, by faith, and he's going to name names and single out events. Faith in the face of the contest. It can be harsh. Faith can be a harsh experience, but faithlessness is worse. And thus we consider our persecuted brothers and sisters, the writer of this letter will say towards the end of the letter, remember those who are in chains as though you are chained with them. Stay in reality.
Wake up. You get nothing done for Christ by pretending that real things aren't so. We get it done by looking at what is before us, working with what we have, and finding out solutions in Scripture.
So what is the solution of faith? Resolve, to resolve within our hearts that we will serve unconditionally, Christ, because he has given us enough proof to do that, and no one else has. Obedience. A lot of Christians are afraid of obedience.
The word. We all want it, but we all discover we can't produce it all the time. Somebody's going to come along and push those buttons, whether they are buttons to lure us into something that gives us some pleasure, or to react in a way that does not give God pleasure. The wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Put that on your dashboard.
Well, that was supposed to be a little funnier than what it came out to be. A little break here. Obedience as best we can. It will be contested lifelong, so that's okay. Jesus knows how to deal with that. In us, the solution, again, is perseverance. 2 Corinthians, chapter 4, verse 16. Therefore, do not lose heart even though our outward man is perishing, yet our inward man is renewed day by day. You know, a part of preaching is slamming that which is wrong and encouraging that which is right in all of us, the speaker included. That keeps the balance. It's supposed to, at least.
And there's a good example. Christ says you want joy, go after obedience. Do my will. If you love me, keep my commandments. Do you love me, Peter? Not like you want me, Lord. Do you love me, Peter?
Yes, but not like I want you. Three times, Peter had to go through that. Peter was not fired for giving the lesser answer. Each time that Peter said, you know I love you. Peter, do you agape me? Lord, I phileo you. I don't love you like you.
I thought I did, but I just don't have it. And Christ said, tend my sheep, feed my sheep. Watch out for the flock.
He used them anyway. Even though Peter could not rise to that high standard that God calls us all to rise to, we should be strengthened by this, encouraged by this, each and every one of us. Truth. You want joy?
You want things that belong to our salvation, those better things? Truth. Without additives.
Without supplements or modifications. That's where Christians get in trouble. They want to add to the truth.
They want to prop it up and improve it. What is the solution to this? Hate lies. That is the solution to loving truth. That which is false and fake and phony.
Don't embrace it. David in one place in Psalm 119 says, through your precepts I get understanding, therefore I hate every false way. God doesn't apologize for that verse. He's the author of it.
And he does all things well. That word precepts, rules. Through your rules. You know how many Christians think that they should not be held to any rules when they come into the house of God? They can do whatever they want. They find people who have put rules up, they get very upset. But rules govern us.
There should be no reason why we are offended by them. In this particular church, for instance, in the sanctuary, we believe the word of God is high and lifted up. God says, if you blaspheme my name, the penalty according to the law of Moses is death by stoning. But I will honor my word above my name.
That's pretty high, is it not? A death sentence for blaspheming the name of God? But yet the word is even higher than that. Because the word is the expressed will of God.
It is the outcome of who he is. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And so we give special attention to the word. And if there's a distraction, we look to eliminate the distractions because this is called the sanctuary. It sort of locks out everything else for an hour or so, so we can worship with as much attention as we can muster to the one who is worthy. There are those that get very upset when you do it this way.
They think that a distraction should be promoted, permitted. But through precepts I get understanding, through rules. I'm not going to run from them, I'm going to run to them if they come from God. I'm not going to find ways to weasel around them because I'm weak.
I'm going to find ways to get stronger to line up with them. Love. Well, when you don't have love, you can't leave this one out. Love belongs to everything we do, no matter how many times we hear it. It's so difficult to love some people all the time. That's life.
That's facing the fact. But I still have to love. I might not like a person, maybe the culture, maybe I just don't like them, but I have to love them.
And there is a great difference. Love is not motivated by mood, choice, except the choice of obedience to Christ, a submitted will to Him. Because we know what happens when love is not there. All of us have at some point have been a victim of lovelessness. We raise our children and we admire how much love they have in the home.
And then we are concerned about how much lovelessness they're going to find outside the home. You send your children, you know, when I got on the bus to go to boot camp, my mom drove me to the army base to get on the bus to fly off to Paris Island. And my mom starts crying, bad move. I outcried her.
I never saw it coming, I seldom do. But she is on her end saying, he's leaving this home of love and he's going to those monster drill instructors and all that's out there. And on my end, my mom loves me. But I got to do this. And such is life. It's hard to get back because I'm now living the moment again. But that is life. You got to have love.
We can't leave it out because we hear it all the time. Our moods and other people will put roadblocks in our way and we're to break through them. Christianity, the solution to not having love is to understanding there are no alternatives to it.
So try not to, don't bother even trying to get away, go for it. So again, what we're talking about are the things that belong to Christianity, faith, obedience, truth, love. And lastly, and without this, the others won't count endurance. I have finished the race, I've kept the faith. Endurance means you take the pain, you wait.
I don't like it either. Psalm 119 verse 67, before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word. Now I stay in there. So Christian joy, it is not something to write about whole books. It is something to fight for all the time.
And it is something to be guarded as cautiously as possible. I will add this to Christian joy. There is joy in attacking the work of the enemy.
There is a joy in beating down the world and its temptations and in saying no to yourself when you know that's the right answer to obstructing the work of the devil and the lost soul, there is joy in that. Do you know David Livingston, that great man of God that went through Africa with the gospel and succeeded in doing so? So many of those Africans love that man. He is a man that died on his knees in prayer.
They found him dead on his knees. He's talking to God and then he's talking to God. You know his favorite verse that shows up in his journals whenever he meets with something that is huge? I mean he writes things about I slept at the tree that night because the lions and stuff, man.
His favorite verse is, lo, I am with you always. Very simple promise from God. We'll get back to that as we move through the promises. But Matthew chapter 4, this is some sticky stuff that messes up our approach to Christianity. This is Jesus in the wilderness, Satan. These are the words of Satan, the voice of the devil. If you are the son of God, doubt.
He starts out with doubt. Command these stones to become bread. Then Matthew 4, 6. If you are the son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written, he shall give his angels charge over you, and in their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.
Now he may not have been using that tone, but that was in there. Matthew 27, 40. You who destroy the temple and build it in three days. This is the Pharisees, the murderers of Christ while he's hanging on the cross. This is what they're saying to him. Save yourself. If you are the son of God, come down from the cross. What does all that have to do with me?
Just this, Satan's tactics are not new because the old ones work just fine. And he comes to us and he says, if God is God, then he'll deal with this for you. He'll take this pain away. He'll give you what you want.
Expect a miracle. That's not accurate. That's not the whole story. That's not the whole word of God. If it were, Saul would not have gone to the axemen for Christ.
Peter would not have been martyred for Christ. Jesus told him, Peter, when you get old, they're going to take you, and you're going to stretch out your arms, and that's going to be it for you for my name's sake. And so all these verses, Satan is saying to the individual, make sure you prove God. Make sure he does it your way. If you're on the cross, get him to get you off the cross. If you're hungry, get him to make bread for you.
If you're falling, get him to insulate you. See, that's only some of the truth. And that's what a lie is, some of the truth.
It has to have an element of truth in it to work. The fact is, we serve Christ unconditionally once we've met him, and nobody else deserves that but him. That's what makes him worthy, unconditional, because he will never do wrong.
And the devil will stir us to demand God repeatedly prove himself to us over and over and over again. If you are the Son of God, then get me off this cross. Jesus said, take up your cross.
I put you there. And so may it be lined up with Scripture, and he says these things, verse 10 now, we have gotten to the second verse. For God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love, which you have shown toward his name, in that you have ministered to the saints and do minister. And so he says God is fair, even though he's called you to be sheep among wolves, which on the surface doesn't seem fair, but in the spiritual world is very fair. He says God calls you to function in an unfair life.
That's where the contest is, that's the arena, that's where the fight is. It becomes a test of loyalties of who we will serve in this life. Hebrews 11, 6. For he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. See, that's by faith.
You have enough information. Faith is never a jump in the dark. It is a leap in the light. You have enough light, enough information to make a move on it.
And saints have been doing it since they've been saints. Do you ever feel that you put more into your Christian service, especially those of you who serve, than you get back? I do. Oh, I have. I don't think I'm right when I feel that way. I know I'm wrong. I know how to handle that.
I have to work through it in my head on one hand, but all the time. You see, the difference is, I will say to God, I haven't gotten this, that, and that, and I've put this in and I've done that. Now, Lord, understand, I know because you've taught me, these are my feelings, but here is my faith. Whatever you want, here I am.
When I wake up tomorrow, may you find me that man that says whatever you want, here I am. From a Christian perspective, there is nothing wrong with that. 1 John 3.14, we know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death. See how important love is? Love is pretty important in Christianity.
That's a scary verse. If you've been harboring lovelessness towards the brethren, Christians can be the most difficult to love. One reason, in all fairness, is because we expect more from each other, maybe sometimes less from ourselves. In this sense, we expect others to forgive us, but do we forgive them?
Do we really forgive them? We've been cut deep. It's not as easy as one, two, three, but it is doable nonetheless, so we ask God to help us believe the things that we claim to believe and help us to believe nothing but the truth. Verse 11, And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope. And here it comes until the end. You see, that's that endurance. This is not high rhetoric. This is not, oh, this is just good talking and high talk, but it's not reality.
It is reality. There's no other way but to finish it. You say, I've tried a hundred times.
Well, you've got a hundred more times maybe to try. That's what separates you from the unbeliever. The unbeliever's not trying to please Christ. The unbeliever's not trying to take hits for Christ. The unbeliever's not trying to love people for Christ's sake.
We are. That you fail is secondary, but that you go at it is primary, and Satan knows it, and that's why he's trying to knock you out of the race and get you to start living in a fantasy world about your faith, make you comfortable with things that aren't true. You know what happens when Christians become comfortable with things that aren't true? They turn off unbelievers so you can't save them now because they know it's a lie. You start preaching things that just the world knows is not true, and then you want people to come to Christ. I have found when you give them the truth and nothing but the truth, so help you, God, they listen.
They might not like you. That's not for you unless you're just being unlikable, but you will find people come to Christ that way. People can come to Christ without us, but how much better that we're part of the process? How much better when people come into the church and they find genuine people and not a bunch of fakos, not a bunch of people just smile in your face because it's expected of them, but people who are smiling because they serve the Lord and they know what they're supposed to do. They understand the benefit of it.
They know what they like to receive, and they know that it is, in fact, due unto others as you would have them do unto you in the presence of Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 9, Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. That means run hard. That Greek word for diligence there means haste or effort or diligence or work or eagerness.
All of those things are in that one Greek word, diligence. It says until the end. What if I get tired? Take a little break.
I don't know if any of you have ever been on a force march or made just a hard job, have a hard job. You get a little break. You want the break to not end. You don't want to go back to work.
You don't want to go back to the march. Well, that's, again, how life is. Work hard, serve right, and blessed hope to the end, verse 12, that you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. So there is a goal. There is a goal, and there is a finish line, a reward.
It happens. Galatians 6, 9, Let us not grow weary while doing good. Pause there. I have gotten weary while doing good, but I see it happening, and I don't agree with it, and I fight it, and before Jesus Christ, I didn't do that.
If I got tired of something, I stopped doing it, but not now. Now I know my duty. I know where I belong, and I go do it, and sometimes I don't do it as well as other times.
You all have never seen that. You just see a perfect sermon every single Sunday. Never misspeak a word, never get a scripture verse wrong, never confuse Moses for Noah or something like that. I can't tell you.
You know what? A little mistake in the pulpit lasts all week. You've been listening to Cross-Reference Radio, the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. As we mentioned at the beginning of today's broadcast, today's teaching is available free of charge at our website. Simply log on to crossreferenceradio.com. That's crossreferenceradio.com. We'd also like to encourage you to subscribe to the Cross-Reference Radio podcast. Subscribing ensures that you stay current with all the latest teachings from Pastor Rick. You can subscribe at crossreferenceradio.com or simply search for Cross-Reference Radio in your favorite podcast app. Tune in next time as Pastor Rick continues teaching through the book of Hebrews right here on Cross-Reference Radio.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-06-07 14:31:05 / 2023-06-07 14:41:22 / 10