Christian Living (Part C)

A tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave it to her husband, and like a doofus he ate. He didn't have to, but he did. He wanted to please his woman.

Men and women need to be careful about that to this day, but the point is sin came into the world through a look, and sin can be forgiven through a look at the cross of Christ. 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. Today Pastor Rick will continue teaching verse by verse through Hebrews chapter 12 and his message called Christian Living. They're always serving by the law, truth. This is what Jesus said. Well, we're not going to diminish that at all. However, it takes more than just add truth, and if it were any other way, then we wouldn't have things such as faith, hope, and love, but we do have those things. Yes, love is critical, but you can't have Christian love without Christian truth. You cannot have Christian truth without hope.

What's the sense of having it if there's no hope that satisfies it, ultimately gives you satisfaction, and all the things that happen to us, that sin that so easily besets us. What are you going to do with that? If you don't understand Christ's grace towards you, then you won't be able to let it flow from you.

How are you going to do that? How are you going to let come from you what is not in you? Unless you believe in magic? I hope not. And so, too many suppose that grace is a pass for disobedience.

It is not, not ever. Grace is what happens when I run out. I have nothing left. I can't obey.

I can't get it done. I'm too weak. But Christ is still strong, and He does not toss me into the trash. He doesn't cast me out.

I'm not evicted. If I still love Him and want Him and am determined to serve Him no matter what, I don't care what all the naysaying voices on earth may say to you. Christ speaks louder if you will listen. That's what allows us to stand in the face of opposition of the naysayers, of the antichrists, of the atheists, of the agnostics that allows us to stand in front of them and say, you may not have heard His voice. I have, and I haven't given it up for you.

I would like to give you some of it, but I'm not giving it up for you. There's nothing about you more appealing than Jesus Christ. When I read of Him dying for me to take my sin away, I don't read about you dying for me. In fact, I don't even read about you being good enough to die for me. And the truth is, you know, and I know, that no one is good enough to die for anybody else to take their sin away. You may be strong enough, brave enough to die for someone else to save their physical life, but you can't take away their sin. And so we run to finish, and if you're not running to finish, why bother enduring? Because the alternative is unacceptable, undesirable.

It is worse. I'd rather endure in my suffering than be delivered from my suffering without Christ. And that's what persecution is all about, to try to get the Christians to say opposite, to try to get us to cave in and say, I renounce Christ because I don't want to suffer anymore. And so we do well, as I mentioned earlier, to study the lives of those who suffered whom the world was not worthy, so that if it comes our turn to suffer, our magazine is already loaded with determination, with faith and grace and hope and truth and love and everything else we need to still be a Christian. You know, in other parts of the world, people are coming to Christ knowing what's waiting for them in this world. We come to Christ here and we say, well, you know, what is mom and dad going to think, or what is my wife going to think, or what are they going to think at work or my friends? That's pretty much the extent of our pressure.

It's increasing. But in places like Syria and other parts of the world, Korea, you give your life to Christ, if anybody finds out you will be given your life for Christ, very good chance in a very brutal way. Remember those who are in chains as though chained with them. Well, what about those who are persecuted? Remember those who are persecuted as though persecuted with them.

Run to finish. Now, I have to pause here for a moment and ask, is anyone thinking, well, you know, preaching's overrated. It sounds good when you're getting it.

What's the purpose? Well, let's put it side by side, you know. Let's look at the trash that's coming out of Netflix, how they're trying to reshape what is moral and what is not moral, how they're calling evil good and good evil. See, those are people not sitting under sermons. Those are people not coming under the preaching of the Holy Spirit. Those are the people of the world that have stiff-armed the Creator of heaven and earth, the hero of Calvary, Jesus Christ.

That's what you get. Go on the internet and to any news site. Just look at the headlines and you tell me if those people are sitting under Christ. I mean, of course, there are one or two stories where there is a champion for the cause of righteousness, but overall, it is all that will bring you down and then it gets even better. Read the comments. Read what's out there in the heads of people. You're terrified. Not only the anger, but the stupidity. It's like, man, these people are, they're so different from God. They're so not interested in anything He has to say. They've got all the answers. They attack people.

They speak without any platform of truth as though it is the final authority. And it is not something that you look at and you say, well, I'm better than them. We don't do that. We just see it for what it is and say, truth matters. This cannot be something that goes unjudged. Well, we need to get through this.

We still got time. He says, the race that is set before you. Are you going to like this, some of you? Now remember, your Bibles, your New Testament was originally written in the Greek language and then it's translated into other languages. Well, that word in the Greek, race, the word is agon, from which we get our English word, agony.

And now, all of a sudden, the rich language begins to break through. So you can say, the agony that is set before us, that's life. Oh, it's not all agony.

But it has, it does kick in from time to time. There are things that it's like someone just, there's a wrench inside of our heart or our stomach or our lives. And so, he is dealing with them to deal with life in Christ, the conflict that will come their way, the contention, the violence, the fighting. Only Paul uses this word, another evidence. He let us showing up so many times in his writing as opposed to not others and then this word, agon.

He uses it in Philippians 1, 30, having the same conflict, that's that word agon, which you saw in me and now here is in me. And then 2 Timothy, he says, I have fought the good agon, the good agony, the conflict. I have fought the fight.

What fight? The fight of life in Christ. And he's saying this, he's on death row.

He is about to leave this life, it is believed. He says, I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.

And then he goes into that, finally, there's laid up for me the crown of righteousness. And so the race is set before us and that is the race of life. Well, who are you competing against? Satan?

No. He's the enemy. He will come against you. We do fight him and his forces.

The life is me. It's my sinful nature. The Christian is not into competition in the life of Christ. We are at war against our own sinful nature.

There's no getting around it. None of us have a choice. We are cast into this life. We don't volunteer to be born.

Only one has ever done that. We all have to face this life and then after this life, we must face God about this life. The world doesn't like that. If you don't have Jesus, you can receive him. Otherwise, then you will answer without him and you're not fit. You don't have on the right shoes for that. You don't have the right gear.

You're not equipped. You are going to drown in judgment because you have no Savior and I wouldn't want to be you. But you have a chance to do something about that.

You just open your heart. That's all. Lord Jesus, I am a sinner.

Nobody else is telling me this and I know it's true. Just the thing about people who will not repent, they know they are unholy. And so many of them try to redefine holiness. Let's revise that.

Okay, holiness means perversity. They're doing things like this. And so they pretend that there is no God to hold them accountable.

Life, feel like it or not, it's going to happen to you. No way around it. So you must press forward.

Because anything less is something worse. You must press forward in Christ. And you've come to realize that. And so the race, the competition is against my own sinful nature. And so Paul writes to the Corinthians, he says, therefore, I run this way.

Not with uncertainty. That means he has faith. Thus I fight.

It is a struggle. Not as one who beats the air. In other words, he's not shadow boxing.

This is a real fight. He says, this is Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 9, now I'm in verse 27 of 1 Corinthians 9. He says, but I discipline my body and bring it into subjection lest when I have preached to others, I should become disqualified. I don't want to be a hypocrite. I don't want to preach to others and then go out and not do it. And right in front of them and then pretend that it's okay. They exist, those types.

It's bewildering, but they do exist. And so if others can live by faith, so can I. That has to be our attitude or else we get nothing done for Christ. You've just become a pew warmer. You do nothing for the kingdom. Because you don't believe you can. You've got baggage. Get rid of it. You're going to be around other Christians and they're going to irritate you, I promise you.

What are you going to do about it? Verse 2, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Jesus, the supreme source of encouragement. Everything he has said, therefore, is linked to look at Jesus. This is the supremacy of Christ. The superiority of Christ. Satan is going to try to get you to forget that if you're right there with it right now when you leave this building or maybe even before he's going to try to defuse that. To him, that is a bomb.

And you can give him the code to let him do it or you can fight. One Greek scholar says that this Greek word looking here means to turn away from everything else. Not quite tunnel vision because that implies a narrow-mindedness, perhaps, but a concentration. It's undivided attention. To turn away from looking at all those things that ensnare and look to Jesus.

Fix our eyes on him. In the race of faith, the ultimate experience is Jesus Christ. He is the ultimate witness no matter what you're going through.

Anything under the sun, the answer is in Christ. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, the fear of anxiety, of weakness, you put anything on that you want, I shall fear no evil for you are with me. Well, you better realize him. If he's not real to you, that won't work. But if he is real and his grace, if you don't have his grace, you're just going to hear his law and you're going to crumble.

You're going to be bothersome to other people and yourself. But if you understand that Christ loves you in spite of you, that he doesn't wait for you to do good before he loves you, God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ Jesus died for us. The Bible says, I believe it. Now this looking unto Jesus. Do you know sin came unto the world by a look?

Looks that way. Genesis chapter 3. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, you catch it, she saw. This is the forbidden tree.

Pause a moment for you that haven't heard this before. God put man and woman in a garden. The first occupation of man was garden, well, naming animals too, gardening. And he gave him a woman. And they were in the garden and everything was going wonderfully. And God said, you can eat from any tree you want except one.

Now is that too much to ask? This is important because we live in an age where many Christians think nothing is to be held in reverence. Everything is cool.

Listen, irreverence is not cool. There are some things that belong to our faith that need to be left alone, that need to be separate from everything else for our sakes, not God. The sanctuary is supposed to be treated like a sanctuary, not a gymnasium.

It's not a social club. It's the house of God. And when you go to the house of God, you are to prepare your heart says the scripture because it's not like anything else on earth. Where else do the saints gather and commune and serve like they do in God's house? And so, God says you can do whatever you want outside there, but there's one place that needs to be different.

That's the kind that belongs to this. So, when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate and she also gave it to her husband and like a doofus he ate. He didn't have to, but he did.

He wanted to please his woman. Men and women need to be careful about that to this day, but the point is sin came into the world through a look and sin can be forgiven through a look at the cross of Christ. It is that looking unto Jesus, that undivided look, not a casual look, not a glance.

It is a stare at Jesus at the exclusion of distractions. Hebrews chapter 2, but we see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, that he, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone. Some of you have not yet experienced or had the experience of death move through your life.

It will come later. Others, you know it very well. So, when you hear that he might taste death for everyone, you understand he is tasting it as the victor, that there's more to the story in him, but time will not allow to reference Numbers 21, but there in the book of Numbers the people complained about hardship. They got tired of enduring, following the Lord in a place that they brought upon themselves because of their unbelief and so God sent serpents to judge them. That was punishment, getting them out of the flock before they contaminated everybody with their unbelief and God told Moses, I want you to fashion a bronze serpent and set it up and whoever looks at that serpent, if they're bitten by a real serpent, they will be healed, but they got to look. And so if you were bitten and you say, I'm not looking, I don't believe it, then you died, but if you looked, you were healed. And so Jesus comes along and he says, if the Son of Man, as Moses in the wilderness with the brass serpent, if the Son of Man be lifted up, I will draw men to me.

You see the connection. We look to Christ to be healed from the bite of the serpent, the sin that we're born with. He is the author and finisher of our faith, that word author, we get our architect from that. It means the leader, he's the trailblazer of the solution to sin. Humanity's problem, he is the finisher, he will perfect it.

He will not release an undeveloped product in the end. We will be in glory with him. David took five smooth stones in his separate pouch. He only needed one to drop the giant, the chief cornerstone. That's the one we have, the chief cornerstone.

Not five smooth stones, the chief cornerstone. For those of you who are Bible students, you know that is a direct reference to Jesus Christ. And so, our faith, he says, author and finisher of our faith, what we believe and do with what we believe.

Doesn't it matter? Or is it just a philosophy with you? Genuine Christianity is supposed to create action. And God, he is the author, men are the scribes, through their thoughts, through their personalities, he communicates his intentions, his predictions, his fulfillments, they all originate from God. He is the single source, he is the architect. If he is God, then what's wrong with that? If God is God, what is wrong with him saying, this is how I want it done?

You have no problem, you worldlings, when you say, I'm the supervisor, this is how I want it done. But God can't do that. God will not conform to men. John 738, he who believes in me, as the scripture has said out of his heart will flow torrents of living water. And so, there are those that will doubt, that will cost them, if you go to your grave rejecting Christ, it will cost you just one thing, one eternity.

That's what it will cost you. And if you think you are big enough and mean enough to handle that, you are a bigger fool than you allow yourself to believe. The fool has said in his heart, there is no God. The fool has said in his heart, I will make God in my image, I will not let God make me in his image.

And it happens all the time. Who for the joy that was set before him, what could possibly be joyful for him to deploy from heaven to here, this cursed world? What could possibly be joy set before him in that? The answer is love received. Not love given only, God is love. Don't misunderstand, he loves righteousness too, and holiness. And his love will run out if you are wrong with him in the end. But, that we would love him back, God wants that.

So he deployed, he left heaven on assignment to here. Isaiah 53, he shall see the labor of his soul and be satisfied. This is prophetic of the coming Christ. 700 years, over 700 years before Christ even came through a virgin, Isaiah wrote this, by his knowledge my righteous servant shall justify many for he shall bear their iniquities.

Nobody else can do that for me. 1 John 4, 9, in this the love of God was manifest toward us that God sent his only begotten son into the world that we might live through him. He endured the cross. Nothing to God or mankind is dignified about crucifixion. Christ dignified the cross in that he dominated it. He consented to it. No one put him on the cross technically.

Physically they carried it out. Jesus said, no one takes my life from me. I lay it down myself.

I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it up again. If he's God, then that's true and he is God. So he endured the cross. He took it for us, despising the shame. Don't think for one moment because he's God the son that somehow he was above sensing all the shame that belonged to it.

To be crucified in front of everybody for being who you were not but you really were. In other words, they denied who he said he was. He really was God the son. So make no mistake, he hated the cross, but he hated that men should be condemned to eternal death more. So he did something about it and the cross is evidence and forever God says, I'm going to settle this thing between good and evil right here on this planet with people that are born.

Well, what about all the people that are born in such a state that they're really not know about these things? God will deal with that and he will always do right. He says, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Who else could be fit for this but the son of God?

His sitting down means his work is completed that he sat down at the right hand of God means he is triumphant in the causes of the Godhead and the world was not worthy. The world is the problem, not the solution, but you can't tell it that. You cannot say to the people in the world that being apart from Christ, you're going to just make matters worse. Unless the Holy Spirit is working in their hearts and through your life.

So for whatever is born of God overcomes the world first john five four and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. 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 cross reference radio.com. That's cross reference radio.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 cross reference radio.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.