The Village Church
"A Joy-Filled Life - In Christ, pt 2" - Philippians 2:1-4 - 2024/08/18 - Audio
This God's love for us. If you have your Bible or Bible app open to Hosea, Chapter 11, please disregard the sermon takes and title that's printed in your worship God. Both of those have changed. The new text is Hosea, Chapter 11, verses 1 through 4. Yes, I was hoping to get through all 11 verses. It didn't happen. So, Chapter 11, verse 1 through 4. Now listen to what God's word has to say to us this morning. When Israel was a child, I loved him. Listen to all the pronouns that are used. When Israel was a child, I loved him. And out of Egypt, I called my son. The more they were called, the more they went away. They kept sacrificing to the balls, burning offerings to idols. Yet it was I who taught ifram to walk. I took them up by their arms, but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with chorus of kindness and with bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their necks. And I bent down to them and fed them. This is God's Word. This morning, I want to talk about what's love got to do with it. What's love got to do with it? Please pray with them for me. Oh, the Spirit, as we come to the preaching of the Word, as I pray each week, and I will continue to pray as long as I'm pastor here, and that is for you to move. Because if you are not moving, our lives aren't changed. I don't care how small we are, I don't care how many Bible studies we go to, or how many Christian books on our shelf. If you ain't moving, we're not changing. We're not growing in the faith. We're not living on selfless lives. We're not loving you and loving our neighbor. If you are not the one changing our hearts and pulling us into those things and into those realities, if it's left up to us, we would just do our own thing. So Holy Spirit, the third person within the Godhead, the one who lives in every believer supernaturally, will you please take this preach word and apply it to my mind and heart and to the hearts and minds of everyone that is here. You know us more than we know ourselves, and you know what each person here needs to hear. Regardless of their age, regardless of their circumstances, regardless of their life situation, you know what we need to hear. So would you please let each of us receive what we need to receive today for our good and our benefit and for the glory of our only Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It's in his name that I pray. Amen. The late Queen of walk, Tina Turner asks, "What does love have to do with you?" And that love, if God's love, the answer to the Queen's question is everything. Hosea chapter 11, it shows us what God's love has to do with the past, the present, and the future of his people. This chapter opens with a third historical retrospection from the Lord God. Just like in chapter 9, verse 10, and chapter 10, verse 1 and 9 and 11, the Lord God reflects on Israel's past in these first four verses. These verses show us what his love has to do with Israel's past. He uses a father child metaphor, is used to describe what his love has to do with the past. Yahweh Elohim, that is God's covenant-keeping name, Yahweh Elohim is a father, Israel is a child. Look at verse 1 with me. The Lord says, "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son." His historical reflection, it takes us back to the days when the Israelites were slaves in Egypt. The Lord loved them while they were helpless toddlers. Have you ever been a parent of a toddler? They're helpless. This Hebrew word for love is ahavah. Ahavah means to have affection for another. It's to care for another individual, and ahavah also means to act love and lead towards someone or to be loyal to. You see, this term describes love in the broadest sense, like brotherly and sisterly love, friendship love, or parental love, or relational love, or marital love. Who are the people experiencing Yahavah in your life? Your friend, parents, siblings, spouse, kids, church family, co-workers, grandparents, teachers, coaches, church leaders. Each of us here has ahavah for someone, just like God's ahavah for the people of Israel. His ahavah is to strive as a divine fatherly love. Think about that. Listen to those words. When Israel was a child, I loved him. Out of Egypt, I called my son. Listen to the pronouns. God's ahavah has two expressions. First, his ahavah is expressed in real feelings and emotions that he experienced for his people. Can you picture a God who has emotions and feelings? You have emotions and feelings, right, and you're creating his image. Where do you think we get him from? Yes. He feels. Second, his ahavah is expressed not just in feelings and emotions, but also in actions and deeds. You see, the ahavah is what God chooses to do. Do I need to pull out the sign? Love is what God chooses to do. He freely chooses to love Israel while they were toddlers in bondage. He does so without requiring them to do anything to earn his ahavah. Amen. He does so not because they deserved his ahavah. So why then? It's because ahavah flows from who he is. Love comes from his character. It drips from his heart. The Lord says when Israel was a child, I ahavah had him. And out of Egypt, I called my son. And y'all see what is happening in this historical reflection. Can you see what God's love has to do with Israel's past? The Israelites didn't become God's beloved children after leaving Egypt. That's the name of statement, too. They didn't become his children after the Exodus. They were his children while they were slaves in Egypt. God's ahavah has to do with the adoption and the election of the Israelites. But do we believe it? Me you know Moses. One day Moses was out one day keeping his father-in-law's flock. Moses on this particular day, he was being a good shepherd and he was being a wonderful son-in-law because he's helping his father-in-law out. His last thing on Moses' mind that day was having a life-changing encounter with Yahweh Elohim. Wasn't even on his mind. It wasn't on his to-do list. It wasn't on his daily agenda. It wasn't an appointment in his calendar. But it was on God's agenda. He interrupted Moses' workday. Has God ever interrupted your workday? Your plans? Your schedule? Your ideals? Your vacation? Your summer vacation? Your summer vacation? Yes he had. For the Lord had a calling for Moses. He chose Moses to be the one who would lead the people of Israel out of Egypt in Exodus 3, verses 9 and 10. The Lord said to Moses, "And now behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me. And I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppresses them come. I will see you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt." Was Moses excited about that? No he was not. God chose Moses to deliver Israel. God gave Moses a message to share with the Israelites. He also equipped Moses with powerful signs that he was going to display in Egypt. And he also gave Moses a message to share with Pharaoh, and that's found in Exodus 4. He said to Moses, "Then you say say to Pharaoh, 'Thus says to the Lord, Israel is my first born son.'" And I say to you, "Let my son go, that he may serve me." Say to Pharaoh, "Thus says to the Lord, Israel is my first born son, and I say to you, let my son go, that he may serve me." This means God's Avahar has to do with the Exodus, the Exodus is an expression of God's love for Israel, it's an expression of it. He says, "I call my son out of Egypt, and this call isn't just election or adoption. This call includes God's guidance and protection and provision." He didn't stop being his children once he delivered them out of Egypt, amen pastor. He didn't stop loving them. He didn't stop guiding them. He didn't stop protecting them now that Moses delivered them. He didn't say, "All right, y'all free now, now go figure it out on your own." He didn't, he's not going to do what I'm probably going to do to my kids, break the plate and say you're off the budget at some point. For God's people, you never come off the budget, and some of you have no joy because you're trying to come off the budget. You're always going to be living at home in the basement in God's house, that's what it means to be a son. It's the reverse, he's a reverse of who we are as parents, it's the reverse. So he doesn't send them out and the Exodus alone, he summoned them out, but he's also leading them and guiding them. He's going to guide them through the Red Sea, if you know Old Testament history. He's going to lead and guide them through the wilderness. He delivers them from Egypt because where's he leading them? Where's he taking them? The Promised Land, to the landfill of milk and honey, that's where he's leading them, to the land of promise, to the, he's going to fulfill the promise that he made to their forefathers. In Deuteronomy 4 verses 37 to 39, Moses said this to the Israelites. He says, "And because the Lord, the Lord loved your fathers and chose their offspring after them and brought you out of Egypt with its own presence, by his great power, driving out before you nations greater and mightier than you, to bring you in and to give you their land for an inheritance. As it is this day, know therefore today, laying in your hearts, that the Lord is God. Yahweh is Elohim in heaven above and on earth and there is no other." If God was a rapper, he would drop the mic. No other. There's none before me and there's nothing after me. So what does God all by heart has to do with Israel's past? Everything. The same is true for each of us. The same is true for the church. In love, God is either calling you out of Egypt or he has already brought you out of Egypt. Our Egypt is sin and death and the only way out of this Egypt is true, saving faith in Jesus. There's no way else, but do y'all believe it? Some of us spend our lives trying to get out of Egypt by our own strength, for our own peace, our own achievements, our own accomplishments, the promotions, the material possessions, the stuff, the praise of man, and you realize you ain't ever getting out. Those things will never get you out. Never get you out. Romans 5, 8 says, "God shows His love for us and while we were sinners, Christ died for us of our heart." John 4 says, "In this, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God, but He had loved us and sent His Son to be their tone and sacrifice for our sins. If you don't have saving faith in Jesus today, He's calling you out, He wants to deliver you. Today is the day for you to stop searching for love in all the wrong places. Today is the day for you to stop letting the world around you distract you from the main thing. Today is the day for you to finally experience a love that can make you hold. There's only one love that can make you hold in this life, and it's not the love of another person, it's the love of Jesus. Now, I love my wife, Deli, but I can't be hood Jesus and vice versa. Today is the day for you to stop running and finally respond to God's call in faith. Kids and youth, adults, have you responded to the call in faith? Or are you just going through the motions? Kids and youth, are you just your family's thing, or is this your faith? I said this once before, you will leave this church and you can complain about Pastor Alex, but you will never leave this thing, you never heard the gospel. I made many mistakes, and I have made them, but the gospel will go forth, and so Jesus is saying, confess with your mouth that you are a sinner, confess that he's Savior and Lord, and that you can repent of those sins, that you can submit and surrender your heart to him, and he will receive you, and he'll never cast you out. Jesus is a solid rock, and all other grounds are wet, you need to write that down somewhere. Some of us are living on stinking sand, don't know it. When we get out, we just go to another stinking sand, you get rescued, you go to another stinking sand. At some point, you're going to wear out, or you're worn out, or you're tired. Then Jesus says, let me deliver you, let me deliver you. Or what about those of us who have saving faith in Jesus? We've been walking with Jesus for years, what does God's Alpha have to do with us? How do we respond to this love as people who've been walking with Jesus for a long time? Our response should be one of gratitude and faithfulness. Our response should be to love God and to love our neighbor as ourself. Our response should be embracing and extending God's alpha heart. But let's be honest, a lot of times, we're just too distracted. We forget God's alpha heart. We forget that we are beloved sons and daughters. Oh, am I just the only one? Sometimes we're just prodigal sons and daughters, and other times we're just simply ungrateful and rebellious. Dr. Linda is a writer and contributor to the website CrossWalk.com. She shared part of a letter that she received from a parent in a recent blog post. The parent writes, "Dear Linda, we raised our daughter to love God. She grew up in a Christian home, made a commitment of salvation, and was very involved in her youth group. When she left for college, everything changed. She rebelled against every more principle that was told and had made poor choices that have grieved our heart. What can we do? These Christian parents are face to face with a hard truth that some of us have already faced, are facing, and will face, and here's the truth. No amount of good parenting is apparent to fall out of your kids. You need to write that down. No amount of good parenting can parent the fall out of your kids. They're going to grow up and stuff. They're going to make mistakes. At some point, our kids reveal the path and reveal, and there's a phrase that's used to describe our kids when they do this called, "Wayward Child," sometimes our kids response to our love is waywardness, and before we judge them, you need to realize that's often our response to God's love for us, is waywardness. So don't judge your kids when you do the same thing. God says, "The more prophets I sent them to correct them, the more they went away from me." The waywardness of Israel, it grieved God's heart. Look at verse 2, it says, "The more they were called, the more they went away. They kept sacrificing to the bells and burning offerings to, burnt offerings to idols. Israel's response to God's love and avaha was our Dollar Tree. They went away from their real father and turned their attention to a false father." That's what a Dollar Tree is. We said, "Well, no, I don't have a wooden statue past the eyelids. I don't either, but we have stuff. We have American freedoms that we think are Kingdom freedoms, but they're not. We have our conference, we have our status, and those things can be idols too." And our Dollar Tree isn't just the bad things. It's often the blessings that God gives us, my spouse, my kids, the achievement of my kids. All these things can be idols that we say, "These are real of my saviors." So it ain't just the negative things, what are the blessings that God has given you that you have bowed down to and said, "Hey, Daddy, hey, Mommy. Leave me. Save me. Feed me." Let's put it this way, whose breasts are you really nurturing from? Who's nurturing you? Whose giving you life? The politics? The power? The status? It's reality? Who is really nurturing your existence as a Christian? As a church? What does God's response to their waywardness? It breaks his heart. Think about any parent, if you ever was a parent of a wayward child, it breaks your heart. It grieves you. It hurts you. It keeps you up late at night. And look at what God says in verse 3, after he just told us his response, he says, "Get it with I who taught Ephraim to walk." I took them by the hand, but they did not acknowledge that it was I who healed them. You don't see God's avaha has been expressed in these words. Can you see the fatherly affection? Can you see the fatherly care, the fatherly embrace, the fatherly patience, the fatherly teaching and guiding and leading? He says, "I taught my people to walk." Think about it. If you parents, was it easy teaching your kids to walk? Did they fall to sometimes? They fell a lot. Did you get mad with them? Good parents, isn't it? Sorry. That's not sign of the name, that's something else for me. Sorry. Just remember, when it was like when you taught your kids to walk, you taught with them. You held their hand. You coached them. You got this. You got it. And when they fell, you went and picked them up and said, "Come on. You can do it again." The sound that made a way to you, what did you do, you grabbed them and you embraced them. That's how God loves you. That's how God loves Israel and how often did we forget that? Because sometimes the Christian life, we're really like Peter Pan, we never grow up. But oftentimes, we want to grow up and do it our own way. We're kids forever. And we forget that, definitely in American culture and Christianity in America. We don't like dependency because it seems it's weak. We want to do it our own way. We want to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. But that is not kingdom, that is not Christianity, that is not God lovingly. God's us as his people. And Israel's response, again, is that they didn't even acknowledge him, that he was the one who held them, that he was the one who fed them. Look at verse 4. Again, look at the imagery that we have here of God. I led them records of kindness with bands of love. I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them. Do you know what that image is? This is Yahweh Elohim getting down on one knee with his hands like this, then eat my child. This is the God who created the heavens and the earth, getting down on one knee before people, before his own creation, and saying, "I'm going to feed you, and if you don't see that this is love, if you can't picture what this is like, I don't have anything else for you." What does it mean for us, all of this, what does it mean for us to now struggle with waywardness? How do you struggle with it, and how should we respond to God's avaha for us in Christ? It is only one response when the Spirit convicts us away with this, and it's repentance. It's not work harder, it's repentance. That's it. Repent and move on. Repent and move on. Repent and move on. Repent and move on. Jesus doesn't need any help on the cross. There's no room for you, repent and move on, and don't beat yourself up. Don't shame yourself, acknowledge your waywardness, acknowledge your idols, and repent of them, and what the Father will forgive you. Do you believe you are beloved, son and daughter of a good father? That's who you are. You're not some nasty, filthy, dirty sinner. You struggle with sin, but you've got to be mindful of the way you talk to yourself. That's a Christian. That's not gospel. You are beloved, and when you look in the mirror in the morning and you say, "I'm a beloved, son of that," and every day, you talk to yourself more than anybody else. Do you speak blessings over your life or curses? Do you demean yourself or you lift yourself up? Which one do we do? First John 1-8-9 says, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the trick is not in us. If we confess our sin, he is faithful and just. To forgive us of our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." But do we believe that? Life was golden for 19-year-old George Matheson. He was a brilliant college student, graduating with honors from the University of Glasgow. He was engaged to be married. George's future was bright and promising, but then at the age of 20, his life turned upside down. He started to go blind. Without hope of a miracle, there would be no medical breakthrough that was coming. Let that sink into your hearts for a moment, for a moment, into your minds for a moment. Total blindness was coming for him, and there was nothing George could do to stop him. When he told us for your answer, about his condition, she left him, abandoned him, called off the engagement. She said she couldn't go through life with a blind man. Can y'all feel what he felt? Can you empathize with his emotion? Now, a glimmer of hope came in the midst of George's blindness and suffering and loss. His sister offered to be his primary caregiver. With her help, he finished his studies for pastoral ministry and even entered the ministry. She served and loved her brother well. She offered her brother George's experience as sisters' faithful love and primary care for 20 years. Can y'all feel what they felt? Can anyone here relate to the other hobber between this brother and sister? However, George's sisters wouldn't be his primary caregiver forever. Eventually, she found love herself, and she got engaged, which meant, once again, George faced the reality of living life alone. The one person who cared for him finally was moving on with her life. Again, can you feel what he felt? Can you empathize with him? One blogger writes, "The evening before his sister's wedding, George's whole family had left to get ready for the next day's celebration. He was alone and faced in the prospects of living the rest of his life without the one person who had come through for him. And on top of this, he was doubtless reflecting on his own aborted wedding day and 20 years earlier. It's not hard to imagine the fresh waves of grief washing over him once again. George set alone in his blind man's wagon with resurfacing memories of being rejected by the woman he wants love, feeling the joy and the pain of his sister's marriage. It was in that moment, on those circumstances, that the spirit moved in him to write these words, "O love, that will not let me go. I rest my really soul indeed. I give thee back the life I owe, and that our oceans' depths that flow may richer, fuller be. O light that follows all my ways, I yield my flickering torch to thee. My heart restores its baward rays that end our sun-lined blazers' days, may brighter fairer be. O joy, that sickest mean through pain, I cannot close my heart to thee. I chase the rain both through the rain, and feel the promise is not vain, though mourn your tillest be, O cross that lifts up my head, I dare not ask to fly from thee. I lay in this light's glory dead, and from the ground their blossoms read, "Life shall endless be." Look at the table before y'all, this table, this meal is a reminder that Christ, that in Christ, we have a love that will not let us go. But do you believe it? Whoa, almost failed, that would have been bad. Have a love that will not let us go. This meal is a reminder that Jesus has accomplished everything that's necessary for our salvation, for our authentication, for our glorification, He did it all, and all we have to do is rest. Friends and neighbors, if you do profess faith in Christ, this meal is for you. You are welcome to the take of this meal, but the Bible says we must examine ourselves before we come to the table. So that means if the spirit is convenient and you are something or some resolve issue with someone, let the elements pass you by and go be made right with that person. Friends and neighbors, if you don't profess faith in Christ, thank you for being here. And if you have questions about what it means to be a believer, please see me or one of the elders or one of the women's shepherds out for the service, and we will talk with you about the good news of the gospel. Adults will ask that the kids with you abstain from the elements until they have been invited to the table by the church that you are a member of, and all kids, can I have the attention of all TBC kids? This is my favorite part of communion. This meal is a reminder that Jesus loves you. This meal is a reminder that He lived the life that you can never live, and He died at death on your behalf so that you won't have to die at death. And as your pastor is my prayer that each and every one of the TBC kids will come to the saving faith and be able to partake of this meal with your church family, with your parents and with your guardians. And if you have questions about communion, or if you have questions about discernment, your parents have my email, they have my cell phone number, text me, I'm your pastor too, I'm not scary, text me, and I'll do my best to answer your question. So please now, let us go to the Lord and ask the Spirit to bless the most of us. Holy Spirit, there is nothing magical about these elements. You just take them, and you should be naturally used them to provide spiritual nourishment to God's people. And so you know the ways in which we need food. You know the areas of our life that need nourishment. You know the areas of our life that are lacking. You know the mental stress, the emotional stress that some of us are under. You know it. You live in it. You see it. Forgive us for the ways that we have grieved you. And right now we open our hearts up and say, Holy Spirit, will you minister to us holistically through this meal, the Lord Jesus on a night and when she was betrayed, he took bread and having given things he had broken and gave it to his disciples saying, "Take and eat. This is my body which is where you do this in remembrance of me." (soft music)
Welcome to The Village Church, where broken people come together to embrace and extend Christ's love.