Kennystix's podcast
When I Don’t Desire God (Part 4)
Now, clarification number three is, "Do not fight in order to be justified before God, but fight as a justified sinner." Or as I like to say, learn the secret of gutsy guilt. I hope all of you know the secret of gutsy guilt. I suppose that in this crowd, I don't need to say too much about the doctrine of justification, but I want to anyway. I'll say something. The fight for joy is not the foundation of your acceptance with God. The foundation of your acceptance with God is Jesus Christ, His blood and righteousness. His living, His dying, His rising from the dead did everything to make you wholly acceptable to God, and you have that purchase by faith alone, apart from works of the law and apart from a fight for joy. It is a falling on Jesus, not a fight. Galatians 3.13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. This we know everything the law demanded of me, I have failed to perform as I should, and therefore I'm under the curse of the law, which is damnation. I am therefore lost. All the people in the world are in this condition, apart from Christ. And Christ then, it says, became a curse for us. Romans 8.32. You did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all. Will he not with him freely give us all things? So you have not only the curse removed, you have a covenant blood-bought commitment that everything good for you for eternity has been bought for you and will be given to you. The curse is gone, the guilt is gone, the sin is gone. And every blessing in the heavenly places is purchased, it is finished. And to enjoy that position with God as totally acceptable, all of his anger removed, replaced with total mercy, blessing me forever with everything that will make me happy in eternity. The way you get in on that is faith alone, Galatians 3.28. Behold, that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law, faith alone. Therefore, the sins that you fight in your fight for joy, the joylessness that you fight is a forgiven joylessness. The only sin that you can defeat is a defeated sin. The only sin which is prompted by finding your pleasure somewhere other than in God that you can defeat, the only way to defeat it is to see it as a punished sin, a covered sin. This is the mystery of the Christian life fighting as a justified sinner. My sins, all of them that I hate, were covered by Jesus. Therefore, when I make war on them, I know they are already defeated, covered, punished. Those are the only ones I can get any victory over. If I turn this around and begin to think, "Now, there's some sins, and I'm going to attack them and defeat them so that God will accept me, you're dead, dead in the water." There's only hope if we get the order of justification and sanctification right and do not mingle the two, which is the great Roman Catholic error, the mingling of sanctification and justification. Getting right with God on the basis of Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone to the glory of God alone, learned about from the Bible alone is biblical truth. And then when you're standing right with God by faith alone, you make war on sin. That's the fruit and evidence that you are right with God. It's not the way you get right with God. It's the fruit and evidence. A person who is cavalier about their sin sees no problem with living in sin because they're saved by grace isn't. At least we have no biblical warrant for saying they are. There may be a season of backsliding, so we mustn't judge too quickly. But a person who goes on treating the sin in their own life in a cavalier nonchalant way using grace as license has not understood what it is to be born from above because a new person comes into being. I want to give you a text from Micah chapter 7. I would like you to go there if you have a Bible because I want you to get gutsy guilt, gutsy guilt. Oh, that all could learn gutsy guilt. I'm thinking of those of you who have fragile personalities who are very sensitive to your own failures, who are always feeling defeated, who wonder if you're a Christian half the days of your life. I would just love to build into you some gutsy guilt. So let's go to Micah, can you find that book? Use the index if you can't find it. Little prophecy in the Old Testament. Micah 7, and we'll read verses 7, 8, and 9 and make a few comments. Listen and see if you could identify what I mean by gutsy guilt as I read this amazing new testament glimpse of justification by faith alone. And ask for me, this is a prophet now, ask for me, I will look to the Lord, I will wait for the God of my salvation, my God will hear me, rejoice not over me, oh my enemy. When I fall, he has fallen as he says this, you'll see that, when I fall I shall rise. When I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me, I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me, he will bring me out to the light, I shall look upon his vindication, his righteousness. Let me just guide you through that in the order that makes the most sense to me. Step 1 in verse 8, when I fall I shall rise, so he has fallen. Step 2, verse 9, because I have sinned against him, so that's the nature of the fall. He sinned, the prophet sinned, I don't know what he did, I'm glad I don't know what he did, because I can feel in my own there. Step 3 up in verse 8 again, rejoice not over me, oh my enemy, you see what the enemy is doing, ha ha ha, Christian, you sinned, Christian sinned, you're not what you say you are. Know how often the devil and others can come at us, rejoice not over me, oh my enemy. Step 4 down in verse 4, I will bear the indignation of the Lord, meaning okay I've sinned, I'm sitting here in my dust and ashes, I feel terrible, I feel rotten, and I'm going to bear it, God's mad at me, fathers get mad at sons, did you know that, fathers get mad at sons, this is not wrath, this is not punitive, this is not judgment of a final kind, this is a fatherly, I am mad at you, you sinned, against me, you made my name look stupid, and I don't like it. That's step 4, step 5, watch him now, he's got guilt and he becomes really gutsy, really gutsy, he's clearly guilty, he doesn't like the way he feels, he's bearing indignation, he's dark and now back up in verse 7, near the end, my God will hear me, the phrase just before that, therefore I will wait for the God of my salvation, the gutsyness of this guilt is starting to show here, yes he's mad at me, yes I'm sitting in the dark, yes I'm under his indignation, yes I feel guilty and rotten, and I'm going to wait here as long as it takes for my God to become the God of my salvation, to show him to be the God of my salvation, now at the end of verse 8, when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me, when I, are you in darkness or are you in light? I'm in darkness, I feel awful, it's late at night, I just did a terrible thing this afternoon at work, I said something I shouldn't have said or I did something or I've been exposed for something that I've been doing for a long time on my taxes or I just, I am just, I would like to die, I would like to die, and in that guilt he says, God will be a light to me, it's gutsy, this is what a justified sinner must learn to do, we must get gutsy with the devil and gutsy with our own condemning souls, and we must say there's enough of a ray of light, just a little sliver of light shining in here to me, now in the middle of verse 9, I'm going to wait here until he pleads my cause, I've got an advocate, yes he's frowning, yes he's indignant and he's my advocate, can you do that? Have you got the theological spiritual framework in your brain to be feeling guilty and get gutsy to say that God is both angry with me and interceding for me, it's easier for us to do this on this side of the cross because we see who's the interceder, right? And then that amazing statement right after that in verse 9 until he pleads my cause and executes judgment and you think he might say against me and he doesn't say against me, he says for me, listen this guy talking to the devil or talking to his own soul, then saying yes I sin, yes God is angry with me, yes I feel guilty, yes it's dark, there's a little sliver of light, God's going to become my salvation, God is going to intercede for me, God is going to exercise judgment on you enemy, do not rejoice over me, boy if that isn't gutsy guilt I don't know what he is, I don't know how people live who don't learn the secret of gutsy guilt because I sin every day, I sin every day, I see that hand, thank you, I'm glad there's one other sinner in the crown, that's the only people God came to save, if you'd like to, you can raise your hand if you're a sinner, just go ahead raise your hand, now you feel better, I know you didn't want to be left out, I love the gospel, I love the grace of God, I love the cross of Jesus and I love to fight for joy as a justified sinner and I hope you get it, I hope the Holy Spirit will just come now and grant you illumination so that you sense the sweet sufficiency of the blood and righteousness of Christ like granite under your feet as all the darkness beats against your life, so that you can say rejoice not over me devil, rejoice not over me oh my enemy, when I fall I will rise, yes I'll sit here for a season, I don't know how long it's going to take the Lord to break in on my heart and completely vindicate me and restore me, I hope it's sooner rather than later but I am going to wait because he is on my side and will execute justice for me, that is clarification number three, number four, number three was we fight not in order to be justified but we fight as justified sinners for joy. The last clarification before we take a break is the fight is mainly a fight to see. The fight for joy in God is mainly a fight to see, the reason for that is that it corresponds to God's purpose in the universe that we began with namely to display his glory, if God's purpose in the universe is to display his glory for the enjoyment of those who embrace Christ as their highest treasure then the human counterpart to a display is see and so the main fight in the fight for joy is to fight to see God for who he really is. There are two kinds of seeing are there not? Jesus said after he told the parable, "This is why I speak to them in parables because of seeing they do not see." So clearly there are two kinds of seeing, seeing they see they do not see. So here they are with eyeballs that are working just fine in their head, ears in their head working just fine, the decibels are reaching, the light rays are shining and they are seeing and listening to Jesus and they are blind and deaf. So what is this second kind of seeing that they don't see and hearing they do not hear and the answer is the glory of God is a spiritual reality. It is not a material reality, you do not see it with the eyes of the head. You see it with the eyes of the heart as Paul said in Ephesians 1, 18, "I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened that you may know the hope to which you're called." You have eyes in your heart they are either blind or seeing. If they are seeing they see spiritual reality. Now this introduces us into very great complex issues that I'm not going to go into because they would take more than the time we have together but I have big chapters in here on complex things namely, well wait a minute, you said that the physical eyes cannot see the glory of God because of the spiritual reality. What about Psalm 19, 1? The heavens are telling the glory of God. So sunrises, or what did the disciples mean in the beginning of John? We beheld His glory as of the only begotten of the Father and my answer to both of those is the same. The sun points to the glory of God. The sunrise points to the glory of God. The sunrise when it comes up in this town is a parable of the glory of God which you see with the spiritual eyes and if you're a believer you see it immediately. The sun rises and your heart bursts with praise God, you don't say praise son. Your eyes go right up the ray into heaven to the maker. And you know that in the age to come it says there will be no sun there because the glory of God will be their son and the lamb will be the lamp. You won't need physical light anymore because there will be another reality that makes these labs and that sun look like a candle against the physical sun today, only ten million times more. So just know that there are complex issues in how our bodies, our ears, our eyes, all of our senses relate to spiritual joy and I got a whole chapter on how to wield the world in the fight for joy, how to wield food, how to wield exercise, how to wield sunrises, how to wield poetry, how to wield music. Those are all physical and not spiritual realities. But they all are used by God to mediate spiritual realities and making that distinction and learning to see spiritual reality in and through God's good creation which can so easily become idols, music can become an idol in worship, the book of Scripture can become an idol rather than the meaning of Scripture so that you put it on a nice shelf and dust it off but its meaning means nothing to you, anything can become an idol but God. So we must learn to see spiritually and we're blind as I said earlier and God has to come and give us light. Let me close by asking this question, where do we see the glory of God? Where do we see it? If the goal of life is to see and savor or enjoy or delight in God and all that he is, where do we see that? And the answer is in his two books, the book of nature, Psalm 19 1, the heavens are telling the glory of God and this book and they're not equal. This book is inerrant, infallible, inspired and authoritative over the other book because the other book is too ambiguous to function that way for us. I asked my wife last night a trick question because I wasn't sure what the answer was. I said okay if God has two books, the book of nature that he writes with providence and the book of the Bible which he wrote by inspiration and this one is inerrant, is that one inerrant? Does God write errant nature book? She didn't answer. And I'm not sure what the answer to that is, I think God has no false meanings in nature. Even God means by a tsunami is true. But it is so ambiguous that you can't read it without this book. You can't read a tsunami without this book. You can't read 9/11 without this book. You can't read tornadoes in Wisconsin without this book. You can't read AIDS in Africa without this book. You can't read nature without this book. This is the authoritative interpretation of the other book. But all how precious is the other book, God wouldn't have wasted so much of this universe. And sometimes people ask me, they say I don't see how you can believe in God. Look at this vast empty universe and how teeny, weeny, weeny, weeny, weeny, weeny you are. I say that's the point. That's the point. The universe is to say something about the comparison between me and God. I'm really, really, really, really teeny and he's, he flicked out the universe with his little finger. So get on your face and tremble instead of carping at the dislocation in your brain. There are two books and this one is the authoritative one. It's the one that leads us to see Christ. I'm going to pause here and we're going to take a break. And then right here is where we'll pick it up. The next session will begin, I don't know how many I have. I may have 15 practical how-tos for the fight. That's the next session. So let me pray and then the book is going to be number one. And so this is a good place to take our break. Let me pray with you. Lord, as we refresh ourselves now and stand up and take a walk and take a break, apply to us the truth that we fight for joy, not in order to be justified but as justified sinners. We fight with gutsy guilt, not a person here who isn't a sinner and oh that each would be a sinner saved by grace, making war on their joylessness in Christ and growing in the truth. He is my portion. He's my portion. So apply these things to us now and bring us back together shortly. I pray in Jesus' name. [MUSIC PLAYING]
John Piper | The foundation for your acceptance with God is not you own works or accolades, but simply Jesus Christ’s blood and righteousness.