What Do You Do For God?

Tonight I had the wonderful God (and Pastor Jason) given opportunity to speak at the student lead service at Altared Reality. This is what I shared...

What Do You Do For God?
Matthew 25.

It was towards the end of a not very good day. Its two days after the triumphal entry –that was a good day! - Jesus spent it in the temple fighting with one religious group after another, and about the time he thinks its over, they are walking out of the temple, which would be Jesus final time. And one of the disciples pops up with “man, look at these great buildings!” and that just set Jesus off, because in his mind they are NOT great buildings, they were cursed to destruction. He doesn’t say another word.
They go up to mt. Olive and they still ask him “but what about those buildings” Jesus then begins in Matthew 24 through the end of 25 whats called the Olivet Discourse. Where he just threatens the destruction of the temple he saying “you know what’s gonna happen down there? Gods gonna come and blow the place up! Using the wrath of the roman empire”
Then somewhere in the middle of that sermon Jesus moves from talking about the destruction of the temple and starts talking about his own second coming. This is the last parable of 5 or 6 depending on what you call a parable. And Jesus is just steaming you can hear it in his voice. Starting in..

31"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
34"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'
37"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'
40"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

Last week Amy talked about things in our life we need to give up for God, things that are hindering our walk without us even realizing it. And this week I want to know ‘What ARE you going to do for God?’

When we help the people God has put in our lives, the poor, broken and the hurting, Jesus takes it personally. And also takes it personally when we don't.

41"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
42For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'44"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'45"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'
46"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

It’s not going to be a good bad when the king separates the sheep from the goats. The most frightening verse is in 44 when the goats on the left will say…

'44'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you”

Notice how they address him “LORD”. People who go to church think because they go to church they have a relationship with Jesus

If you ask anyone walking through these doors “Do you do good things for God?” almost all of us would say “Well yeah, I do” “what do you do?” “Well we go to church” For God? Like he needs you here? No this is not your gift to him, this is his gift to you. “Well I read my bible?” For God? What are you going to edit it? I mean seriously, this is not your favor to him this is his favor to you. “Yeah, but I pray!” oh congratulations! Like if the president let you call him on the phone, would you consider it your favor to him to call him? I know you may think he needs to know your opinion on a few things. But seriously is that his favor to you or your favor to him? Lets be honest about it now, when you pray it is Gods gift to you not your gift to him. He loves to spend time with us yes. But we’re not helping God through most of these things. “Well I got baptized” No, that was his gift to you. That’s his grace for you.
If you want to do something for God, what does that look like?

We just read the answer…you can feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, clothe the naked, visit those in prison, welcome the stranger, and heal those who are sick, that is what we do for God.

Now I’m not saying we are all supposed to go feed the homeless and visit people in prison. This Call is going to look different to every one of us

Isaiah 61
1 The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives, and release from darkness for the prisoners, 2 to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, 
to comfort all who mourn, 3 and provide for those who grieve in Zion— 
to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, 
and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.

We are called to help people and when we do our Lord Jesus Christ takes it personally. As Christians our greatest goal is to live a life like Christ and to bring glory to him in everything we do. Jesus was compassionate. Why shouldn’t we be? And it shouldn't be something we practice once a week when an opportunity presents itself and we remember. But it should become a lifestyle. And if we are going to make a habit of being compassionate. We better have a good theological foundation for it.

Because there are a lot of people out there being compassionate. People who are in the world who are atheists, Moslems, Mormons, lots of people are being compassionate, but if your just being compassionate for compassion’s sake. Jesus said the poor you’ll always have with you. You think your gonna change the world? Jesus promised you there would be poor till he comes back. The compassionate ministry’s of the body of Christ has to have a greater impetus and firmer foundation then just being nice to people.
We have a message of salvation that is best preached through a holistic gospel, caring for the body, economics, family, social, intellectual, spiritual and physical needs of people.

Teenage statistics video. And story time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaGfNBM8o7I

When I judge someone, I realize its because I don’t know their story, and it leads me to believe… People, who are unlovely, are not unlovely because they are unlovable, but because they are unloved…Benevolence is worth it. Even when the people are not.
We nice to people because it is effective; we do it because we understand that’s where we used to be. And we treat people the way we want to be treated, with the love that God showed us. Weather its effective or ineffective. We need to come to the realization that it’s not our call. It is our job to do the biting of God.

We are not out to change the world; we are out to change one life at a time. And sometimes that life is out there, but more often its in here. When we recognize that we all live fragile lives, but by the grace of God alone we stand here, it isn’t in till we understand that, that we will be able to live a life compassionately in love with Christ. What we do in benevolence may never be effective, but its still worth it

Our end game is to bring the message of Jesus Christ to people. Not just create a utopia on earth. That’s why we need to have our theology strait.

For the last 200 years Protestants have been preaching directly that we are saved by grace through faith, and not of ourselves.
There is nothing you can do. That will make you anymore loved by Jesus then you are right now.

Lets understand what role our works have to do in our salvation, because Jesus did say that those who do work for God, not just read our bibles, and going to church. but ministry to the hungry, poor, naked, those that do that kind of work are saved, and those who don’t do that kind of work are damned, your work does impact your salvation.
Matthew 25 is not the only passage that describes your judgment based upon your behavior.
Jesus already said it in the Sermon on the Mount, in matthew7.
When the lord comes back its not going to be those who claim of a relationship with Jesus, it’s going to be those who obey him and do what he says.

Same thing chapter 5 the words of Jesus again where he said "When I judge those who have done good they will be rewarded, those who have done evil will be punished.” The apostle Paul say the same in Romans 2 “those who have done good will be rewarded, those who have done evil will be punished” 2 Corinthians 5 same, revelations 20 same thing. Every time you have a judgment sermon in the New Testament it says the same thing.

So that brings us to the question HOW CAN I BE SAVED BY GRACE AND JUDED BY WORKS? Its really very simple, those of us who have a real relationship with Jesus, we’ve meet him, we know him, love him. That changes us. That changes the way we look at the people, the poor, the wealthy, the kind, the wicked, our world view is different and we get a new set of eyes and a new set of hands, therefore are works is merely an extension of what Jesus would be doing if he where here in this world.
So when we give ourselves to Jesus we say Jesus enough of my eyes, enough of my mind, enough of my mouth, enough of my hands. You take control of my eyes let me see what you see. You take control of my hands; you take control of my feet. And if your life is not an embodiment of the ministry of Jesus, then I have to question weather you ever meet him over here in grace.

His half brother James said it this way “you say you have faith, ill show you my faith by my works, you keep talking about it. But I’m going to live it.”
It’s not your works that earn you salvation.
It is that your salvation always works itself out in compassion to the broken. We hear it all the time from pastor Jason “If you love Jesus, if you have a relationship with him, your going to do SOMETHING” So What are you doing for God?

My prayer is that people would start saying about you and I (the students of Life 360 youth group). What our heavenly father is saying. ‘Now I see who they really are’ and my hope and pray is that its an embodiment of Christ

The Fall

When God created man, he wired us so we get our glory, security, understanding of value, feeling of purpose, feeling of rightness with our Maker, security for eternity, from Him. This relationship is so strong, and God’s love is so pure, that Adam and Eve felt no insecurity at all.
But when that relationship was broken, all of their glory, the glory that came from God, was gone.
It wouldn’t be unlike being in love and having somebody love you and then all of a sudden that person is gone, like a kid lost in the store. All of the insecurity rises the instant you realize you are alone. No insecurity was felt when the person who loved you was around, but in His absence, it instantly comes to the surface.
If man was wired so that something outside himself told him who he was, and if God’s presence was giving him a feeling of fulfillment, then when that relationship was broken, man would be pining for other people to tell him that he was good, right, okay with the world, and eternally secure.
We all compare ourselves to others, and none of our emotions –like jealousy and envy and lust- could exist unless man was wired so that somebody else told him who he was, and that somebody else was gone.
Think about it. Moses, in Genesis 2-3 has presented a personality theory more comprehensive then the writings of Freud, Maslow, Fankle, and Skinner combined. Moses explains exactly why all of us feel, act, desire, and dream the things we feel, act, desire, and dream.
How awful it must have been for Adam and Eve to be deceived by Satan, to have been tricked into breaking their relationship with God.
We have it easier. We were born this way.
How painful it was for Adam and Eve to have the feeling of being separated from the Father. Having an infinite amount of love pouring through their lives and then it’s suddenly gone. How terrible it must have felt, at the fear of no longer feeling God, at the ache of emptiness and sudden and horrifying awareness of self.
Scripture indicates, when Adam and Eve ate from the tree, there was a war in heaven and Satan hates God. We want to blame all the world’s problems on individual responsibility, to say that everyone is responsible for everything they do. But Adam and Eve were deceived. Something in them wanted something they couldn’t have, but they were tricked into thinking those thoughts. It’s a both/and situation. We are wired so that when deception is fed to us, we make bad decisions.
War is complicated. It isn’t black and white. In a way, the war in heaven, the war between God and those against Him, is the war to explain all other wars. If you want to believe one side is good and another is bad, if you want to look through history and find a perfectly innocent kingdom attacked by an enemy, you have to go back to the Garden of Eden. A perfect innocent kingdom hasn’t been attacked since.
The Bible paints a picture of a certain evil tricking innocent humans, into betraying the God who loved them, the king who was their friend.
Adam and Eve can be considered somewhat innocent, and yet the crime committed almost seems unforgivable, they fell for a trick. Eating the fruit was a heart-level betrayal between committed friends: God and man.
God was betrayed. Imagine what he felt, knowing all he’d made was ruined, and understanding at once the sacrifice that would be required to win the hearts of his children from the grasp of their seducer. God had to break the relationship when man sinned against him, that because his nature is purely good, purely right and lovely, He could not directly interact with beings who were, in there hearts, set against him. This should not be confused with a lack of love, a lack of compassion; it must be understood only as two opposite natures unable to interact without one tainting the other. Its beautiful. Because you and I need for God to be perfectly good, we need for him to be the voice that did, and one day will in the future, speak pure glory into our lives, but for now, because of this act of war, relationships have been strained. And we can feel it in our souls. We will never feel complete in till that relationship is whole again. Beyond the point of forgiveness. Not in till we are reunited with out Maker

Were we made to be relational?

Welcome blog readers.
I was thinking about what my first GDBS blog should be about, and I think if we are really gonna get deep and figure out the whole story, we need to know a little bit about ourselves. And what better why to do that then to take a look at the very first two people every created Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden.

Now the Garden of Eden beyond our usual perspective of the little cottage by a pond on a small plot of land, it was actually very large, possible as large as a continent. Moses said a great river flowed out of the garden, dividing into four rivers; the Pishon, which flowed through Gavilah, a land full of gold, resin, and onyx stone; then the river split into the Gihon and flowed through a land called Cush. And there were still two more rivers, the Hiddekel and the Euphrates. The great river, the river that created the other four, flowed out of the garden. But for such a river to gather enough strength within the garden to be split into four, defining the landscape for four territories, means the land that created the river must have been very large. This ending any thoughts of a little cottage by a pond on a small plot of land.

So in this large, I imagine very beautiful place called Eden, was Adam.
To be honest I envy Adam quite a bit. I have to wonder what it would have been like to have had the kind of relationship with God that Adam enjoyed. Adam and Eve, after all, are the only people in all history who had a good relationship with God, everybody else after the fall, had a pretty screwed-up idea of who God is. But Adam and Eve had the whole Deity before their eyes.
God told Adam his task was to name the animals. So I imagine his days went about naming all the animals (which probably wasn’t the effortless task we sometimes presume, being that there was somewhere between one million and fifty million species around in the time of the garden. And Adam apparently had to name each and every one of them.) And then going on long walks with God through the garden passing by waterfalls and having the most beautiful conversations.
But with all this, having the Godhead with him, Adam was still lonely. This thought comforts me because I realize loneliness in my own life doesn’t mean I am a complete screw-up; rather that God made me this way. I picture the emotionally perfect human being someone who doesn’t need anybody. But here is Adam going around wanting to be with somebody else, needing another person to fulfill a certain emptiness in his life. And even though Adam was lonely. I don’t think he had any self-doubt or any low self-esteem because he had God there.

Just as a plant gets its life from the sun, people must have received their life from God. Jesus talked about how His glory came from God, as though God was shining on Him. The thing that made Jesus good, and the thing made Adam good, was God’s shining on them. Can you imagine something like that? What it must feel like in the soul to have God shining through you at that level? With that much glory, that much love. You would never have a self-defeating or other-person-bashing thought again. It would be amazing!

Now God recognizing this loneliness, this need for companionship, he created Eve. I don’t think he created her right away though. Adam a man who despite feeling a certain need for a companion preformed what must have been nearly one hundred years of work, naming and perhaps even categorizing the animals. It would have taken him nearly a year just to name the species of snakes alone. Moses said that Eve didn’t give birth to their third child till Adam was well into his hundreds, which means they would have had Cain and Abel some thirty or so years before, which also means either it took Adam more then a hundred years to name the animals, or he and Eve didn’t ‘get it on’ for a good, long centaury.

So when Adam finished his work, God put him to sleep, took a rib from his side, and created Eve.
Here is a guy who was intensely relational (Lets just go ahead and admit we are all are very relational creatures, the loneliness thing proves that) he’s in need of another person. And in order to cause him to appreciate the gift of companionship, God had him hang out with chimps for a hundred years. God directed Adam’s steps so when he created Eve, Adam would have the utmost appreciation, respect, and gratitude. And then I think how wonderful it was that God made Adam work for so long because there is no way, after a hundred years of being alone, looking for a helpmate, somebody whom you could connect with in your soul, there would be no doubt that when you found that person in the world, you’d probably wake up every morning and thank God for them.

I used to read the bible and think of it more as a text book, a book of rules, dos and don’ts. But when you set back and read it as the beautiful historical literature it is. You see that these where real people, with real emotions, and these things really did happen to them.

How wonderful it is to see that you and I were created to need each other. The romantic need is just the beginning, we need our friends and we need our families. In this way, we are made in God’s image. Certainly God does not need people in the way you and I do. But he feels a joy at being loved, and He feels a joy at delivering love. It’s striking to realize that, in paradise, a human is incomplete without other people.

So were we made to be relational? Yes, we definitely were.

God made me, He knows me, He understands me, and He wants community

Have a good week everyone! and remember I love feedback, good and bad.
Comment or send your thoughts to: seekingtheunseen@yahoo.com