Doing Good - Doing Good - Where it All Begins, Part 2

Let's face it, we all admire people who do good for others.

When you see stories about little children saving up money to help a cancer patient, I mean, there's something in your heart that you say, that is so awesome. We all know that doing good changes the world. But did you know that you doing good can really change your world?

Today, you'll learn now. Thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Living on the Edge is an international discipleship ministry featuring the daily Bible teaching of Chip Ingram. I'm Dave Drouy, and in just a minute, we'll continue our series, Doing Good, with the second half of Chip's message on where our drive to do good comes from and how we can move our noble intentions to action. But a quick reminder before we get started, if you miss a portion of this program, let me encourage you to catch up through the Chip Ingram app.

It's a great way to listen to Living on the Edge anytime. Okay, let's join Chip now for part two of his talk as he continues answering the question, where does the idea to do good come from? What you see is a Christianity across America and parts of all over the world where most Christians don't live like Christians and those of us that never opened the Bible growing up and those of us that didn't know anything about God.

When you meet lots of Christians who say one thing and live a different way, here's what we do, not for me. So there's a lot on the line, there's a lot at stake. So let's walk through how do you become the who? First of all, the qualifications for a leader or for people to do good. First and foremost, it's character, and the word is blameless. Blameless. The word blameless means above reproach.

It just means having a good reputation. In other words, when your name comes up on the screen of people's mind, both inside or outside of the church, as a church leader or as a person or the greatest Christian someone ever knows, you're above reproach. They can't say, oh yeah, he says he's a Christian, but my, Lance, the way he treats people. Oh yeah, she says she's a Christian, but man, she's a ruthless supervisor.

They say they're a Christian, but my, Lance, I can hear them screaming at their kids across all the way to our house. It doesn't mean you're perfect, it means you have a good reputation. And then the rest of this passage, what he's gonna do is he's gonna describe what blameless looks like in different areas, and so he goes for the jugular. Because you can fake it out there, so he goes right to the home. At the home he says blameless looks like being devoted and discipling.

Being devoted in your marriage and discipling. Notice the text, he says the husband but of one wife. Literally the Greek says a one woman husband. And for some of us we read that and we think, well, what's that mean?

He's not talking about your history. The average Roman man, especially an affluent Roman man, had three women in his life. Woman number one was a slave girl who helped around the house and was available for sex at any time. Woman number two was a temple prostitute. That is, a man would go to work and worship at the various temples. Part of the temple worship in that time was temple prostitutes. So they're giving glory for God and having sex outside with the temple prostitute. Woman number three was a wife who bore children and carried on the family name. And women lived with this as reality.

This is the way life is in that world. See, Jesus liberated women. Jesus said a woman matters. He says you want to be a leader in the church, you need to be a one woman man, and that's your wife. And in our day he would say you need to be a one woman man. That means your mind and your heart doesn't float, not just in your behavior. But Jesus said when a man lusts in his heart for another woman, he commits adultery with her already.

So he says you're a one woman man with eyes for your woman, not on the internet, not other places, not being flirtatious. He says that's how you're blameless at home. Second, he says you need to be a engaged parent. Notice he says whose children believe, literally they're faithful.

And the word for children is it's from smaller children probably up until maybe the middle teen years. And basically he says that, you know, your children, they're not cookie cutters, they don't have it all together, they don't ever not mess up, but they're disciplined, there's a sense of propriety, there's order, they're respectful. And basically what he says is if you're not investing in your kids and loving your kids and discipling your kids, not that they're perfect, but they're following the rules. If you can't lead your home, you can't lead the church.

And so first and foremost a blameless leader or a blameless Christian, if who we are is a prerequisite for what we do, starts in our home. Notice he moves from the home and he moves from there to our relationships. And relationally he says you need to be emotionally mature. When you look at the next four phrases, not, not, not, not, four things you're not to do, and when you dig a little bit behind and what you realize is what he's really looking at is someone in their relationships who have emotional maturity.

And so the first one he says is that you're not addicted to power. Literally he says you're not self-willed, you're not overbearing. The word means to be selfish, arrogant, disregarding the interests or opinions of others.

This is people that are intolerant. These are people that when you talk to them, they glaze over, they don't, look, it's my way or the highway, and by the way, it's my way. He says that's emotional immaturity, that's insecurity, that's being threatened. You can't be overbearing.

You need to listen to people. You need to be gentle would be the opposite of that. Second, you can't be addicted to anger. He says he can't be quick-tempered. And this is a very interesting word. In Greek there's two words for anger.

One has the idea if something happens and you blow up like a flame, and the other is like a smoldering coal that you hang onto. And he says when something, there's always crises and anger is an emotion. It's neither bad nor good, but we have anger. He says it needs to be controlled. But this isn't the quick blow-up anger.

He said that's pretty obvious. This is the kind of anger that gets down in people's soul. Have you ever been around people that, you know, they're just sort of negative? I mean, the most wonderful thing, they're kind of negative. Sarcastic, you know, no matter what's happening, they have these little sarcastic barbs. Not only negative and sarcastic, but they're always critical.

Doesn't measure up, doesn't measure up. Down behind that is an angry person. They're either angry at God or angry at themselves or angry with others. And he says that's not emotional maturity.

It's not healthy. It's not how leaders in the church, doing good doesn't flow out of anger. The third emotionally mature response, it's not dependent on substances. He says literally it's not given to much wine. The literal phrasing is not sitting long over wine.

And you know, that was the kind of drug of choice in that day. And the Bible is very, very clear. I mean, Jesus, when they took the Lord's Supper, used wine. The Bible does not teach abstinence from alcohol.

The Bible teaches drunkenness is wrong. But the core behind this is any substance that controls you. You know, in our day he could say prescription drugs. He could say the internet. He could say TV.

He could say food. But this issue of alcohol both then and now, it's a big one. And you know, you have some people that have freedom to drink moderately and wisely and other people.

We were in South America and we actually took the Lord's Supper. And one of the leaders from our church was there and his background is alcoholism. He's come out of alcoholism.

And he said when I drink alcohol, I've never heard this, he said I'm allergic to it. In other words, I have a response to alcohol like few other people. It makes my mind do certain things. It takes me into places and behaviors that are destructive.

I can't. I must abstain. And so all of us need to understand that you need to be wise about whether you be a leader or not, how do you view and how do you use alcohol? And so it becomes a wisdom issue.

What we know from the research is that if there's alcoholism in your family like in mine or like in my wife's, you are four times more likely to be an alcoholic. And then you have this teaching of scripture where, you know, it's not about my rights and I can do whatever I want. Paul says the kingdom of God or loving people isn't about eating or drinking.

It's about love and joy and the power of the Holy Spirit. And so different people come to different conclusions. And so for some, like me, I didn't have any alcohol in our home. I mean, I spent as a little kid, I was pouring out bottles of liquor and beer when my dad would get up to go to the bathroom. I have an addictive personality.

I can't do certain things. For other people, I know they've said, you know, I don't have any problem with that. At a business meeting or at a dinner, I may have a glass of wine, but we don't have that in our home. For other people, they say, you know, this is a part of our history and our culture and we've never had a problem and we may have a glass of wine at home, but, you know, I'm going to educate my children.

You need to understand that you need to figure out. It's easy to have rules, never, never, never or all, all, all. God says I'm not to cause anyone to stumble. I'm to be very sober, no pun intended, about my ability to handle this because it's dangerous and then I want to do things in a way that are wise with regard to my family and those around me.

Exercise my freedom before God, but exercise it in a way where it communicates love to other people. And he says, as a leader, he says, being addicted to any substance is disqualification. I mean, how many people have you known or I've known that they claim the name of Christ, but some addiction to some substance just makes you go, boy, I just, hmm.

When people are addicted to things, by the way, it usually has very little to do with the alcohol, right? There's a reason I put emotional maturity. Whether people take pills or go to the refrigerator and eat too much, it's about unresolved issues in their heart.

It's about filling gaps and holes. And God says, I want you to be leading from a healthy soul. The final one is not violent and not pursuing dishonest gain. And so it's not leading with coercion. The phrase here, not violent, it literally means don't strike a person physically.

It came to me even broader, sort of like verbal intimidation, loud, angry, like coercing people. There's an old, old book written in the early centuries called the Apostolic Commons, and in it, it gives a word. It says if a bishop strikes a person in effort to sort of redirect a fellow believer's life, he should be dismissed from his role. Well, the only reason you put rules like that in an apostolic commons is because apparently it was happening. And I've actually been in Africa in places where in the name of church discipline, I have literally seen someone on the floor and leaders kicking someone trying to deal with, you know, demonic spirits or behavior or whatever.

It's bizarre. But God says you can't coerce people. You lead from love and gentleness. There may be boundaries and discipline. And then the other way you coerce people is by dishonest gain. I mean, I don't know about you, but when I watch TV sometimes, I mean, I can't stay there very long. But I mean, they manipulate people, and they're trying to get people's behavior.

I mean, this dishonest gain comes up twice. Have you ever watched TV? I mean, sometimes you just are like in amazement. Am I really hearing this? And some guy comes on, I want you to know, if you're in debt, send all your bills to me. Bring all your bills and put them in the mail, and I will burn them on the stage, and God will make them go away. And I'm thinking, like, are you nuts, dude? Or do the people who send their bills to you crazy?

Or the other one that I just go, I just want to scream at the TV. If you're struggling, if you have debt, if you have difficulty, you need to plant a seed. Send me $1,000, and God will send you 10,000. But one of the hardest things for us as followers of Christ, a lot of people that you work with, their view of Christianity is those handful of channels up near the top, and they shake their head and they laugh out loud. We make a difference. We live differently. We live above reproach.

We live it out in our families. We have emotional maturity. Notice it goes on from emotional maturity to a ministry mindset.

See, it's not enough about not doing certain things or having certain maturity. There's an outward focus here. He says, be hospitable, and it's one who loves what is good. Hospitable literally means a lover of strangers, a lover of strangers. It has the idea of a concern for others. Built into it is generosity. It's seeing needs and meeting the needs. In other words, think of the word shows hospitality. Can anyone think of like a word that we might have got from this?

Give you just a minute here. Hospital. What do we do at a hospital? Hurting sick, injured people go to a hospital where skilled, loving, caring people heal them.

That's what we do. Being a Christian who lives like a Christian isn't about some little moral code inside my little bubble. It's about caring and flowing out of that relationship. Literally devoted to kindness. The word devoted here and good has to do with being devoted to not just what's good for people, but for good things. It's very similar to what Paul said when he talks to believers and says, set your mind on the things that are good, that are noble, that are right, that are winsome, that are beautiful, that are praiseworthy. I mean, set your mind on that which is beautiful and creation and sunsets and love and intimacy and care and when you fill your mind with those kind of things, your soul, then you have this reaction.

It's positive. It's not you making a little list, I'm going to try and be good, I'm going to try and be good. It's the Christ in you allowing your eyes to see the way He sees and He sees needs and it's not only seeing and loving what is good, the opposite of loving what is good is not loving what is bad. About a year ago, I was in another city and I was invited over to a leader's home, a Christian leader's home and going to have dinner and had a nice little family room and he said, I really, really like movies and I said, great, you know, like the TV with all the 15,000 speakers and I'm exaggerating, of course, but it was really nice, you know, I thought this is really neat and so he went up to get ready or something like that and he had one of these stands or two or three of them that swirled and he had like two or three hundred movies and I didn't know him but, you know, I'm nosy. I mean, wouldn't you?

I mean, you know, and I just started looking at the movies and they're good, good, good, good, good. He didn't love what was good. He loved what was violent. He put things in his mind that I'm sure was entertaining and probably he was, I'm just disengaging and I'm, but see, you're a product of your thought life and we need to love. There's something that happens in your soul that produces dis-ease and makes you want to eat things or makes you want to take the third or fourth glass of wine when you have dis-ease, when you know these things are true but you put these kind of things in your mind.

You got to understand something. Evil isn't neutral. Evil comes in an angel of light. Evil is a lure and somehow we think if I'm not doing bad things, my question is are you a lover of good?

Because when you're a lover of good and you focus on what is good, I will tell you good will come out of your life and if you're a lover of bad privately or secretly, I will tell you what will come out of your mouth and out of your thoughts and out of your relationships are things that are bad because as a man or woman thinks in your heart, so you become. The final aspect that he talks about here is he talks about not just our mindset but our private world and our motives and our methods and in our private world, he gives us four very specific words talking about what no one else sees. He says self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. In your private world, integrity. All those things have to do with not just honesty but integrity means an integration.

There's an alignment of what people see is what they get. Who you are alone before God, who you are alone from a screen, who you are when you're out of town, who you are with one of your kids, there's an alignment of the self with others and with God and so he gives us these four very clear words. The first is self-control, it means to be a master of your mind and your emotions. Very key word in the New Testament.

Has the idea that you're not driven by your passions, they're under control. The next word upright, we get our word righteousness for, it means to be fair, it means to be right, it means to do what's right. The word holy means reverence for God, it has to do with personal piety.

The opposite of being conformed to the world is to be separate from the world, to be set apart. It's not holy like in weird, like you gotta put a fish on your card and praise the Lord here in a big black Bible and act weird. That's not holy, that's weird. Holy is having loving winsome God-like thoughts, holy is fearing what God thinks more than what anybody else thinks. And so you live according to the scriptures. And holy, the roots of it are bring wholeness or in Hebrew the shalom of God. And it's not just emotional peace, it's the peace and the well-being of a life well-lived, of relationships in place, of living with an open and sincere conscience and to be free.

That's what he's talking about and it's private, it's who you really are. And the final word here is discipline. It's the inner strength to control.

It's a fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5. It's the discipline that when you don't feel like getting up that that discipline allows you to get up and you don't always feel like praying, you don't always feel like coming to church, you don't always feel like reading the Bible and it's not trying to gain God's favor but it is choosing to do what you know will position you to allow God to work in and through your life. And then finally he says all those things are very very important but he then contrasts it with the bad leaders if you will. And he talks about motives and methods.

The bad leaders were rebellious, the opposite of submissive. They're mere talkers and they were deceivers and they were for dishonest gain. And so he says the motives and the methods need to be pure and teachable but courageous. Doing good flows out of being courageous.

I think if we could hear sort of the mind and the Spirit of Paul as he's writing this letter. It's to a very young man into a very godless culture and look at verses 10 through 16 kind of glance and he goes this is who these guys are. They claim to know God. They're taking people down bad paths. Look at some of the words he says. Silence them.

Me? Rebuke them. Be able to stand and teach sound doctrine.

Encourage them. And so part of being the who that good works flow out of is being above reproach and that starts in your home. It means there's emotional maturity and issues that probably all of us struggle with one or two or maybe more of those. It has to do with sort of the mindset we have that's outwardly focused.

It means that there's an inner world of control and spirit led not a legalism but a control and a spirit led of doing the right thing at the right time in the right way with integrity and the motive isn't to impress people and the motive isn't to get rich and it's a humility and a teachability and a courage that when everyone in the office or everyone at the job site and everything is flowing this way and God is looking for a Christian to live like a Christian and step up lovingly, kindly without malice and without their voice raised and without defending to step up and say you know I'm not really so sure that that is good and I really respect you all but you know for a couple thousand years the track record on that particular issue goes this direction and you know I've done a little reading and the consequences of those kind of behaviors and those situations. This is what it does to women. This is what it does and creates poverty. This is what it does and hurts kids.

So you know I know it's not politically correct but I just would say to you because I know you all want to be tolerant. I think there's another opinion that we ought to consider and when people meet Christians like that doing good by your words, by your thoughts and by your deeds the poor get fed. The destitute get rescued. The orphan gets loved.

The single mom or the single dad gets encouraged and your workplaces get transformed. That's why doing good matters but it begins not with what you do. It begins with who you are. Chip will be right back with his application for this message Where It All Begins from his series Doing Good What Happens When Christians Live Like Christians.

The Bible teaches that we're saved by God's grace and by our faith in him. So where does that leave doing good works? I mean why does it matter how we interact with one another? Well through Chip's teaching in the book of Titus we'll learn how our decision to do good for another person is more than just a simple gesture. It's an opportunity to impact their life. Don't miss the easy ways you can practice doing good every day and how we can dramatically change our world for the better.

For more information about our resources for this series go to LivingOnTheEdge.org or call 888-333-6003 or go to the Chip Engram app. Well Chip's in studio with me now and Chip through this series we've been learning just how important it is for Christians to really live like Christians and one of the best ways we can learn what that truly means is through deep meaningful connections with other believers. Now take a minute and talk about how you've experienced that.

I'd be glad to Dave. When I look back on the moments and the investments of people throughout my life, my sister Punky who modeled Jesus to me as a young teenager, you know Dave the bricklayer who sat with me in his kitchen table and invested his life in me as a young adult or Dick a man who came to me and said, hey Chip, we need to put this teaching of yours on the air and he started Living on the Edge. Wherever we are in our journey, we're never beyond the need for discipleship.

It might come through a listening ear or an encouraging word over a cup of coffee or it might be one of those side-by-side doing Bible study together, but it's always born in relationship and it's deliberate. It's an investment into the life of another person and Living on the Edge. We're committed to making that investment in helping people grow deeper in their relationship with Christ. And so whether it's teaching on the radio or podcasts or app or tools such as daily discipleship, our resources are geared to help people in every season of life.

And here's my question. If God has used the ministry of Living on the Edge to guide or deepen your life or the life of someone that you love, would you be willing to pray about investing in a few ways? Number one, would you pass on what you know to someone else? Second, would you share ministry resources with others? I mean we have all kind of free ministry resources on the web and on the Chip Ingram app. And third, would you pray about giving financially to the ministry so that we can continue to make disciples at a time when it's more needed than ever before?

And right now through July 7th, every gift that you would give will be doubled dollar for dollar. So thank you for pausing, thinking and praying about what God would want you to do. And if you will do whatever he shows you, we will have all we need to do all God's called us to do.

Keep pressing ahead. Well, if you believe God is calling you to join that future with us, we'd be honored to have you on our team. And while we're in our mid-year match, every gift we receive will be doubled thanks to some very generous friends of the ministry. To send a gift or to become a monthly partner, just give us a call at 888-333-6003. That's 888-333-6003. Or if you prefer to donate online, go to LivingOnTheEdge.org. App listeners, just tap donate.

Thank you in advance for your support. Well Chip, let's get to that application you promised. As we close today's program, I want to emphasize something that you might have missed. It was the major, major point. And then after it, we got all those very specific qualifications of what a good person is from God's perspective. And here's the point. When seeking to do good, if it doesn't flow from who you are, it will lock you into some level of legalism and a performance orientation where what you do and how you do it and how much of it you do will become a new baseline for you earning righteousness with God or thinking that you do.

That's a dead-end street. What you need to hear, this is the part that we've missed. Who you are, it's the Christ living in you. It's the Holy Spirit taking the Word of God in the context of genuine community where life is birthed in you and the overflow of that life is kindness and goodness and gentleness and generosity and concern.

Yes, it begins with the choice and your will is definitely involved, but please don't fall into the trap of, now I've got to do all these things for God to love me. Now with that being said, here's some characteristics from God's perspective what good is. Because all of us as human beings, we get into such denial, we honestly think we're pretty good because what I do is I find some people that are not quite as good as me and I compare myself with them. I think I haven't murdered anybody lately and I don't have any major addictions, only a few minor ones.

We play this game. So I'd like it if you would to listen quietly. Just lean back if it's possible and I'm going to give a quick review of what God says real goodness is in His eyes. First, it's a person whose character is blameless. It's a person at home that is devoted and disciplined to caring for their family.

Relationally, there's an emotional maturity where they're not addicted to power or anger or substances or powering up with people. With regard to ministry, it's someone who is a lover of strangers and devoted to being kind. In your private world, it means there's integrity. I mean, there's alignment with what you say and what you think and how you live. And with regard to your motives and your methods, there's purity, there's a teachability, and there's a courage.

And so I don't know where you're at in your life, but it would do you much good to go to the website livingontheedge.org, go to the message notes, download this, and everything that I've outlined here is there. And then quietly say, Lord, is there an area there that you would like to address in my heart and my life? And then by the way, Lord, would you like me to put some check marks on those notes where you have been working in me and there's real progress that I need to give you thanks for?

Doing good must flow from being good, and that flows from relationship, not performance. God loves you. He cares about you.

Enjoy Him deeply today. Thanks, Chip. Well, you can find the message notes Chip just mentioned in a couple of places. Go to livingontheedge.org and click the broadcasts tab. App listeners will find them by tapping fill in notes. You'll get his outline, all of his scripture references, and lots of fill-ins to help you remember what you're learning. They really help you get the most out of every program. So I hope you'll take advantage of this resource the next time you listen. Well, for Chip and the entire team here, this is Dave Druey saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.