Highland Park Baptist Church - Sermons
Spiritual Disciplines - Part 1: Introduction
[Music] Welcome to Island Park Baptist Church. We are currently working through a series on spiritual disciplines. Each week, we'll learn about an important discipline as well as practical ways and suggestions of how you can begin practicing these tools in your personal life. If you enjoy this study, please be sure to like it, share it with others and check out many of the other wonderful teachings available at Island Park. Now, let's get to the study. All right, well, tonight is the introduction to a new study that we're beginning on spiritual disciplines. For those who, most of you are probably familiar with the idea of what spiritual disciplines are, but I'm going to try to come at it as though we're all in offices at this because honestly, for a vast majority of Christians in our society today, spiritual disciplines aren't really talked about a whole lot. And if they are talked about, it's only a handful, if that, that are really mentioned. Oftentimes, you may hear about Bible study, you may hear about prayer, you may hear about evangelism, but other than that, there's really not a whole lot that's spoken about, which is a real disservice to the church, because from the very beginning, even before the church was founded back during the time of, when it was, God's people were just the Hebrews, spiritual disciplines was a foundation for the people of God. We're talking about scripture memorization, we're talking about prayer, we're talking about fasting, we're talking about worship, all these various concepts, solitude, all these things that really don't hear a lot about were just common practice amongst the people of God. And somewhere over time, those things have begun to fade away and people have understood them less and less, practiced them less and less, and that's a big part of why many Christian churches and many Christian individuals are so spiritually weak and the world is gaining ground on the church when that shouldn't be the case at all, it's because we have not disciplined ourselves to practice spiritual maturity and spiritual disciplines. We're going to talk a little bit more about that in just a little bit. One thing I want to emphasize at the very beginning, I hope will be a common threat throughout this series, is I don't want to just talk about the concepts of spiritual disciplines, but I want to get very practical in this study. I don't want to just talk about prayer, I want to give you practical tips and tools to help you grow in your prayer life, I want to give you practical tips and tools to help you grow in sharing your faith and growing in your ability to fast from various things of your relationship with God can grow. All the disciplines that we talked about, we will begin on the very front end talking about just conceptually what they are, but I want you to be thoroughly equipped with tangible resources, you can go back and begin implementing these disciplines in your day to day life, okay? But before we do that, I'm going to read to you a passage of the scripture, this comes from 1 Timothy, chapter 4 verse 8, Paul gives kind of an example of what it means to be a disciplined Christian and the benefits of that, he says this in verse 8, "For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come." Now I want you to kind of fix that in your mind for just a second, Paul is saying that just as physical discipline is good for your physical body, it is good to be active, it is good to walk or run or lift weights or swim or bike or whatever it may be, those things are good and again, I'm sure most of us would say yeah, I need to do that more often and I would be right there with you, I need to do that more often because the more you do that, the more healthier you're going to be, the more you're going to be able to continue to do things, active things in your life to a greater deal of effectiveness if you keep your body healthy, if you eat right and exercise. In the very same way, that is an illustration of what spiritual disciplines are for us in our relationship with God and in our spiritual life. The more you exercise spiritually, the more effective you're going to be in your Christian walk and in your Christian life. If you find yourself struggling with sins that you keep giving over to God and then you fall back into it and you give it over to God and you fall back into it, it may be not just that that sins really hard for you but may be that there are certain disciplines that are not being practiced in your life that would help you gain the upper hand on some of those areas. If you find that you want to share your faith, you try to share your faith, you feel like your failure and then you try again and it's just really hard, there are spiritual disciplines that can help you in that. The main part of what we're going to be talking about is that spiritual disciplines are not in and of themselves but they are the pathway to something that something that you are trying to shoot for is spiritual maturity and godliness. In fact, let me just kind of give you some of the things that we're going to be talking about in this course, starting right off, Bible study and I hesitate to give it that term Bible study because when we talk about that, that may end up having to actually be a couple of weeks that we spend on that because Bible study almost gives you the wrong impression of what we're going to be talking about. Some people hear that and they think, "Well, I get into God's Word and I read a chapter and I do background studies and I do this kind of studies and I really dig for all the details behind this and the other and I can parse the passage." You can do all those things and still not really accomplish what the spiritual discipline is all about. There are seminary professors who can quote the Bible fords and backwards it in the original Greek and Hebrew and yet the scriptures mean nothing to them. It's not enough just to study scripture, I like the term that I heard one author say when he talks about this type of spiritual discipline that we're going to be mentioning, he calls it Bible intake or Bible internalization because it's about consuming and digesting and letting the Bible get into the Bible until it gets into you until it overflows out of your life. And so when we talk about studying God's Word, we're not going to be primarily focused on what commentaries do I need to buy, what study the Bible is doing, things are all great, but it's more about how can I enjoy getting into God's Word and let it permeate into my heart and come out of my life. That's really what we're trying to get at there. But we're going to talk about Bible study, we're going to talk about Bible biblical or Christian meditation, now this is something that scares a lot of people and I understand, I understand why it scares a lot of people because you hear a lot in the world today about meditation, it's very Eastern focus, it's all about emptying your mind, don't think about anything and just kind of be. That's not at all what Christian meditation is about, at all. In fact, will someone turn to Joshua chapter one and read verse eight for me. "This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do recording to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have good success." Okay, so did anyone catch there what he said about meditate, he said you meditate on this day and night, what was he going to meditate on day and night? This book, the wall, okay, now let me just pause for a second, this can be a quick little side note but it's an important side note. So let me kind of give you a more nuanced understanding of what is often meant in that word Torah that is used throughout the Old Testament when it talks about law. It can mean law but it also means instruction, it means guidance, okay. So when it talks about loving God's law or meditating on God's law, all of the Bible, old and New Testament is God's instructions to us. It's how to live the kind of life you were created to live. It's how to live the life that is most in line with the way God created the world and so when you're living in line with those principles, you are in a better position to experience the blessings of God. That doesn't mean that if you walk perfectly in that all will go well for, you know not at all but you will avoid a lot of unnecessary headaches and heartaches, okay. And so why wouldn't you meditate on that? Why wouldn't you think about that throughout the day? So he says he meditates on God's instructions or God's law throughout the day. It's not empty in your mind but filling your mind with something. It's filling your mind with God's Word. It's filling your mind with stories of Scripture. It's filling your mind with God's commands and instructions and corrections to you, okay. Now again, don't raise your hand and don't say anything out loud but how often do you go throughout the day thinking about God's Word and God's law, God's instructions, alright. Now I would dare say that most of us would admit that we need to do a better job of that. Even if you do a good job already, we could always do a better job of thanking and meditating on God's laws and his instructions, okay. And that's what we're going to talk about. How do you do that? Where do you find time to do that, okay. Another thing we're going to be talking about, Scripture memory. This is something that stared the mess out of me and I hated when I was younger. I hated Scripture memory because I felt like I had a horrible memory and I remember being in a wannas and I would cry and my mom would cry and would be mashing of teeth and rending of her clothes because Scripture memory was so horrible and we just tried to get to it so I'd get the little jewels in my back, right. But that shouldn't be the way it goes. And here's something I've recently learned. None of us really have a bad memory, alright. Now I know some of you would say, "Oh, you don't know me pastor, I have a horrible memory. I get that." But I bet you, most of you could probably quote your favorite songs right now. I bet most of you could quote your favorite movies or your favorite sports teams, you know, stats. You know, there are a lot of things that we remember. Why don't we spend time remembering what really matters? God's word. And here's the thing, I used to think that would be like pulling teeth. But there are ways that we have forgotten as a Christian church that makes memorizing God's word not only easy, but fun, okay. We're going to kind of go over some of that. But I want to share with you all real quick a verse of Scripture that really has meant a lot to me as I think about this very concept. It comes from Psalm 119 verse 11, "Yeah, you know where I'm going, don't you?" Yeah. So verse 119, Psalm 119 verse 11 says this, "I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. If you struggle with sin, any particular sin, you've been fighting it, fighting it, fighting it, and it just continues to trip you up, God's word tells us that the antidote to that, the answer to that is hiding God's word in your heart so that when those temptations come up, when those struggles come up, when you're about to lose your temper, when you're about to look at something you're not supposed to look at, when you're about to shoot your mouth off, when you're about to give in to fear and worry, those verses of Scripture that you have committed to memory that you've hidden in your heart will come to mind. And guess what? As you're trying to memorize certain passages, that's going to help you think about God's word throughout the day because you're trying to memorize this thing, so therefore it helps in your meditation. And so we're going to talk a little bit about Scripture memory, prayer. This is something we could all do more with. God's word tells us it's a command, it's not an option, it's a command to pray without ceasing. Now, what does that look like? How do we make a prayer list? So often we say, "Oh, I'll pray for you." Do you actually pray for those people, or is that just something you say? How do you make that prayer list? How do you find time to pray? How do you pray? How do you pray silently? And so we're going to talk about some of the part of the aspects of how we can be stronger in our prayer. I think that is one of the things that will revolutionize most people's spiritual life more than anything else is spending time in prayer. You look through Scripture, you look through Church history. The people who have done the most for God's kingdom have been people who have been committed to prayer, because it reminds us, the more we pray, the more we are being reminded that I can't do this in my own strength, I have to stay connected to God. I have to have Him stepping in and going before me and bathing everything I do in prayer. Also fasting, this is something you don't hear about, especially in Baptist churches. We love our food, we love our casseroles, we don't like the idea of fasting. And while fasting often is connected with abstaining from food, it's not exclusively that. And there are different types of fasts that are mentioned in Scripture in different ways of doing it. You just don't want to go cold turkey and do no food, no water, no nothing for 40 days or die, right? You want to do it biblically, you want to do it wisely. And so there are definitely practical, biblical instructions on how to do those types of things. Evangelism, this is something that again, most Christians have struggled with for a long, long time. How do I share my faith? I'll just tell you, I've been through so many different evangelism training strategies, systems. And many of them have been somewhat helpful, but I've also found that many of them have not been the way God has created me to share my faith. And the way that works for you might not be the same way that works for me, that might not be the same way it works for someone else. Paul, when he was preaching and when he was evangelizing, he was very philosophical. He was very logical and rational. Peter was very bold and just shoots people between the eyes with doctrinal truth, yet other people who are more servant evangelism. There are different types of ways that you can share your faith in ways that don't make it awkward in those relationships that you care about. So many people are afraid to share their faith because they're afraid if I open up and I begin sharing these things, they're going to think I'm a weirdo, they're going to write me off, I'm going to get fired from my job, my family won't talk to me anymore, it'll make family get together, it's awkward. All these different things, doesn't have to be that way. And so we're going to talk about different ways you can share your faith and how to do so in a way that is best for you as an individual. We're also going to talk about discipleship, that is not the same thing as evangelism. Evangelism is the first step of discipleship, but so often we share our faith, we get someone saved, we get them dumped in the baddest tree and then we just turn them loose and hope that this baby Christian will somehow survive. And often times they don't, they end up falling away from the church and not growing spiritually or taking years and years and years to grow spiritually because they were never a disciple. And so I for one, when I got saved, I was still plugged into a church but there really wasn't a whole lot of discipleship and so because I wasn't a disciple, I struggled for years of whether or not I was truly a Christian and it took years until I got plugged into a group that did disciple me before I learned the importance of discipleship. So what does that look like? And just a little heads up, discipleship isn't just a program that happens within the walls of the church. The discipleship should be something you are doing on an individual basis. You can do it without ever inviting that person to church. You should invite him to church, don't hear what I'm not saying, but you can be discipling people anywhere you are. We're going to be talking about worship, worship believe it or not is a spiritual discipline just because you are in a worship service does not mean that you are worshiping and worship doesn't always have to do with music. Okay, so we're going to look at what that looks like and how we can make sure that we are worshiping properly and worshiping in a way that we are actually growing spiritually. And then last but certainly not least, we're going to talk about serving. If you are not doing, if you are not pouring your life out for the kingdom of God, if you are not blessing and serving others, there is going to be a spiritual disconnect, there is going to be a malnourishment in your relationship with God. And so if you don't know the gifts that God has given you, if you don't know how you are created and called to serve, we want to help answer that for you and we want to help get you plugged in. And that doesn't just mean that you are serving somewhere in the church, although we would love that. And there are lots of ways that you can serve here at Highland Park, but service isn't just relegated to what goes on here, but all throughout your life. Okay? I'm going to give you a question. A lot of what we cover here, not all of it, but a good bit of it, is going to come from a particular resource that I highly recommend and I'll share more about various resources. But this resource, if you get a chance, if you don't already have this book, I encourage you to read it. It is the definitive book, every passage I talk to you says, "Get a copy of this book. Read this book. Cover it a couple, multiple times read it." Donald with his book, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, he says this, "Discipline without direction is drudgery." Now what does he mean by that? Here's what he means, that if you don't keep in mind why you are doing certain spiritual disciplines, it's going to get monotonous every time. It's going to get dry, it's going to get boring. You're going to start doing spiritual disciplines just because that's what you've always been doing, which is better than if you didn't do it at all, but in order to keep going in order to really thrive in these disciplines, you need to know what you're shooting for. Here's the purpose of all these spiritual disciplines, it's godliness. The purpose of reading your Bible is not just so you can check the box and say you've read your Bible. The purpose of prayer is not just so that you can check the box that you prayed. Evangelism, fasting, serving, all those things, they're not just so you can say I'm a good Christian because I do X, Y, and Z, but it's because one, God's commanded you to do these things and two, he's commanded you to do them, not just because he likes to give you orders, but because he knows this is what is best for you. Just like I don't let my kids just eat junk food all the time and I don't let them just play video games all the time, I require that they help around the house, that they mow the yard, that they stay agitate, that they be involved in some kind of sports, that they eat right, because I know that that's what's best for them physically, emotionally, you know, to build their character, to do all these various things. It's what is good for them, and so the same way our Heavenly Father tells us you need to do these things, not just because I like to bar quarters, not just because I like to see you jump when I say jump, but to do these things, because this is what will help you be all that I've created you to be. And so just want to, first to keep in mind the purpose of this, if you are just going to church because you feel like you have to go to church, you've missed the point. If you're just reading your Bible because you feel like I have to read my Bible, you're missing the point. There are going to be times where you have to push through that, a little bit of that tension where you don't want to, but keep in the forefront of your mind why you're doing it. Okay? I want to share a verse of scripture from here, it comes from Romans 8, 29 says this, for whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed into the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. This is the first, again, pointing to the fact that you were created to be Christ-like. You were created to mirror the character of God. You were called to be holy because he is holy. The way you do that is through spiritual disciplines. Okay? Here's another verse. Ephesians 4, 24 says, "Put on your new nature," so your old nature is gone, you're put on your new nature, "created to be like God," and again, that's not like some of the false religions out there, where people can become gods, we're not talking about that. You will be the man or woman of God that he created you to be. In order to do that, you need to practice spiritual disciplines. Okay? In fact, here's what Donald Whitney says in his book. He says, "Godly people are disciplined people," but that's so kind of there for a second. "Godly people are disciplined people." It has always been so, called to mind some heroes of church history, San Agustin, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Bunyan, Susanna Wesley, George Wiffle, Lady Huntington, Jonathan and Sarah Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, George Mueller. They were all disciplined people, and my own pastoral and personal Christian experience, I can say that I've never known a man or woman who came to spiritual maturity except through spiritual disciplines. If you want to mature in this life towards Christ's likeness, you need to be right in your Bible, you need to be in prayer, you need to be sharing your faith, you need to be practicing these things that we're going to be talking about over the next several weeks. So, here's the question though, is spiritual maturity something we do or is it something God does? Yes, both. The answer is who does the growth, is it God? Is it man? Yes, it's both of us. In fact, this is what 2 Corinthians 3 and 18 says, "But we who with unveiled faces all reflect God's glory are being transformed into his likeness." So we are being transformed, that is kind of a passive thing that is happening to us, with ever-increasing glory which comes from the Lord who is spirit. Now here's the thing we also need to understand, is what Romans 12 says, "I beseech you there for brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as they live in sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service, and do not be conformed to this or but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God." So it's both in, you are being transformed, but you are being transformed as you are offering up your bodies as living sacrifices. And so really, the gist of it is, spiritual growth and maturity is a gift from God. Nothing good, we will not achieve anything good in our life apart from God. We can't apart from God. Our best works apart from God or filthy rags, that's it, that's what Scripture clearly teaches. But here's the other side of that coin, that gift of God is accessed through the practice of spiritual disciplines. So God is offering this gift, but the way to achieve or to experience that gift of spiritual maturity is through spiritual disciplines, okay? It's just like our salvation. Salvation is a gift of God. It is salvation by grace through faith. So the grace part, that's God's part, it's a gift of God. But we access that grace, that free gift of God through faith. Faith is the access, the conduit, the channel that we access, that grace that God is freely offering, okay? So that's God's part and we have to exercise faith by practicing these disciplines and then we grow maturity. I don't know how a Christian can grow if they just sit on their hands after accepting Christ and they never read their Bible, they never pray, they never fellowship with other believers, they never serve others, they never do any of these things that we're going to be talking about over the next few weeks. Now again, yes, we understand that when Christ comes and we are all caught up together with Him and He transforms our bodies, we'll never be perfect in this life until He does completely glorify us and transform us, I get that. But if you want to experience greater spiritual maturity in this life, it's going to be through spiritual disciplines. If you sit on your hands and just wait until Jesus comes, you are going to miss out on the blessings and the spiritual maturity that God wants to see in you and it means, okay? So let's look at some biblical examples of what this means, this idea of God's going to do His part but He's inviting you to do your part as well. You've got to put yourself in the place to receive these blessings of God. The first thing that we're going to look at is the healing of Barmeas. This is a blind man that Jesus encounters. So if you have your copy of God's Word, go ahead and turn to Luke chapter 18 and we'll start in verse 35. This is what it says, "Then it happened as He was coming near Jericho that a certain blind man sat by the road begging and hearing a multitude passing by, He asked what it meant." So they told them that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by and He cried out saying, "Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. Then those who went before him warned him that he should be quiet, but he cried out all the more, son of David, have mercy on me." So give the picture in your mind, hear Jesus, He's walking towards Jericho, there's a crowd of people following him, they've heard of His teaching, they've heard of His miracles, there's a big commotion, there's this blind man who's sitting outside the road, he hears all those ruckus, he doesn't, he can't see what's going on. So he asks someone what's happening, they say, "Jesus is coming, this miracle worker is coming." And he begins crying out now, it's interesting in what he cries out. He doesn't cry out, "Jesus, have mercy on me," he cries out, "son of David." So in that he is expressing a messianic hope of Jesus. That title, "son of David" was a term, a prophetic term from the Old Testament, the son of David would come, this Messiah figure who would liberate Israel, they thought of Roman Gentile oppression, but ultimately it was to liberate us from our sins. But again, he has an accurate depiction of who Jesus is, and he's crying out for mercy. And this is what happened to the back, he says, "So Jesus stood still, commanded him to be brought to him, and when he had come there he asked, saying, 'What do you want me to do for you?'" And he said, "Lord, that I may receive my sight." Then Jesus said to him, "Receive your sight, your faith has made you well." And immediately he received his sight and followed him, glorifying God, and all the people, when they saw it, they gave praise to God now, "Why did I bring up this passage?" The point being, if Bartimaeus, this blind man, sitting by the road, if he just heard about this commotion, but didn't do anything, Jesus would have passed him by. Or if he would have started calling out to Jesus, but then the crowd shushed him and he would have listened to the crowd and quieted down, again, Jesus would have passed him by. But he realized, "Hey, here's an opportunity, here's this, here's the Messiah, coming by, and I'm going to call out to him, I'm going to proactively seek out Jesus in any way that I can. I'm calling out to him, and even if other people are trying to discourage me and keep me quiet, I'm not listening to them, I'm going to continue to shout out in the hopes that Jesus will heal me and he will hear me and heal me from this blindness." But again, if he hadn't done any of those things, he never would have received this blessing of God. But because he was proactive, because he was seeking out God, he received this blessing. And honestly, in my opinion, I don't think he was just healed of blindness. I think he received salvation at that point, he's trusting in Christ. The point being, if you were wanting some of these blessings from God, you need to be proactive and seek these. And Scripture has told us that the way that we seek these blessings from God, spiritual maturity, growing closer to Christ, is through these spiritual disciplines. Okay? There's another story that comes right after that in Luke chapter 19. This is the story of Zacchaeus. So we see in Luke chapter 19 verse one, it says this, "Then Jesus entered and passed through Jericho." So this is probably right after he's healed of Bartimaeus. And again, Bartimaeus was following after him. So Zacchaeus is probably hearing this big commotion coming near Jerusalem. He's probably hearing about Bartimaeus shouting and leaping and glorifying Jesus from just being healed. He enters into Jericho, and verse 2 says this, "Now behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus who was the chief tax collector, and he was rich." Now again, most of you all probably know somewhat about biblical tax collectors. He's rich because not only has he been collecting taxes for Rome from his fellow Jews, but they usually would charge a high interest rate on those loans and things like that. And he would pocket a lot of that money. He would collect what he needed to from Rome, but he would charge extra and line his pockets with that money and kept most of his fellow Jews very poor because of it. So he's rich because they're poor. And it goes on verse 3, it says, "And he sought to see who Jesus was, but could not see because of the crowd for he was of short statute." I'm not going to sing the Zacchaeus song. I know you already know the song. I know you are anxious for me to do so, but I'm not going to. Verse 4 says, "So he ran ahead and climbed up a sick mortry to see him, for he was going to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and saw him and said, Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for I must stay at your house." And so again, same case here with Zacchaeus that we saw with Bartimaeus, if Zacchaeus heard a big commotion but didn't go and check it out, didn't proactive, you know, he could have looked at the crowd and said, "I really can't see what's going on. I'm just going to go about my business." He could have been busy with his own life, busy with his own stuff, and missed out on the blessing of God. But because he was proactive, because he sought out Jesus, because he climbed up a tree to get a vantage point of Jesus, Jesus saw him, called him out, and went to his house. And again, we see if you look further with his story, seems like Zacchaeus was saved. He begins to give back a lot of the wealthy he had taken. And so he grew spiritually because he was proactively and sought out Christ. And in the same way, we have to be proactive and we have to seek out these blessings through spiritual disciplines. I'm going to give you a quote from Charles Spurgeon, one of the great preachers of history. He said this, "I must take care above all that I cultivate communion with Christ, his personal relationship with Christ through study, through prayer, stuff like that. For though that can never be the basis of my peace, mark that, yet it will be the channel of it." He basically said, "I have to make sure I spend time with Christ, I have to make sure I spend time in prayer, I have to make sure I spend time in God's Word, because while those practices cannot be the basis, cannot be the source of my peace, they are the way that I access the source of my peace." I grow closer to Christ through these acts of discipline. So when we begin covering some of these things, and you hear about some of these disciplines that you don't really hear about people practicing, you don't hear the church really talking about very much, but they seem very challenging and daunting. Don't be discouraged by that. Practice these things and watch your spiritual maturity take off. When we begin talking about sharing your faith, when we begin talking about fasting and scripture memory and these type of things, they can be intimidated to a lot of people, but they don't have to be. And that's the enemy trying to rob you of the blessing that God has for you. Don't let him do that. He's robbed you long enough. Don't give him one more day. So we've already talked about spiritual discipline without direction is drudgery. That's what Donald Whitney says. The next one is going to be a gym quote. So take this in the bank. This is worth its weight in gold. Discipline without doctrine is legalism. Now let that again soak in and percolate in your mind a little bit. When we talk about these disciplines in the upcoming weeks, we need to marry them with what we know about God, because if you just practice these things, but you don't tie it to the gospel, you don't tie it to God's word, you don't tie it to grace, then these disciplines that God has given us, these good gifts that God has given us to help us grow spiritually will be the very thing the enemy uses to puff up your pride and to become a toxic weight on your spiritual maturity. I've known people who brag and brag and brag of how deep their Bible studies are. They brag about how long they pray with all these big words they use in their prayers. They brag about how much scripture they've been memorized. They brag about how many people they share their faith with and all these sort of things. They've missed, they've lost sight of why they're supposed to do those things to begin with. It's not to boast, it's not to impress others, it's to grow closer to Christ. When you fail at some of these disciplines and you're going to do that, you don't beat yourself up about it and talk about how horrible of a Christian you are and all that, you lean on God's grace and you recognize He accepts you not because you practice spiritual disciplines, not because you're awesome at the spiritual disciplines but because of what Christ has already done for you. You do these things not to be saved and not to be a good Christian but you do them because you love God and you want to grow closer to Him. These disciplines are all about. This verse of scripture is where Jesus condemns the Pharisees who did this very thing. They practice many of these spiritual disciplines but they forgot the reason for them. He says this in Matthew 23 verse 23, "Woe to you teachers of the law on Pharisees, hypocrites. For you are careful to tithe, that should be even, the tiniest income of your herb gardens but you ignore the more important aspects of the law, justice, mercy and faith. You should tithe, yes, but do not neglect the more important things, blind guides. You strain your water so that you won't accidentally swallow a net but then you swallow a camel." He talks about, "Tidings great, you don't tithe because God needs your money though. You don't tithe because that makes you a better person. You tithe because that frees your heart from the love of money and it keeps money from getting in between you and God. That's why you tithe and you've made an idol of your tithe and you do it to boast and to brag. Then he calls him hypocrites and he calls them blind guides. Then he goes on and says this, "Woe to you teachers of the law on Pharisees, hypocrites. For you are like whitewashed tombs, beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people's bones with all sorts of impurity. Outwardly you look like righteous people but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and with walllessness." Again, I hope that none of us or God ever speaks that of us, that we've gone to the place where we are chasing after the applause of others, that we do these things so that we can pat ourselves on the back. That's not what the end of these are about. In fact, God's Word tells us in a number of occasions that the more we know about God's Word, the more we know about God, the more we practice these righteous things but we do so from a heart that's not really in love with God, more we're going to be held accountable on the day of judgment. There is a danger in doing these things for the approval of people and we'll have to give an account for that one day. Don't make that mistake, don't fall into that trap and so I just want to encourage you in the upcoming weeks. Again, we won't be meeting next week but the week after we're going to jump right into Bible study and how to, again I cringe a little bit at that phrase because I want us to fall in love with God's Word to where when you wake up you want to get into God's Word and just hear from your Heavenly Father that day. That's what we're after. Thank you for listening to this study from Highland Park. We hope it was a blessing to you. Again, don't forget to click the like button if you enjoyed this study. Recommend it to a friend and check out some of the other wonderful teachings here at Highland Park. Until next week, take care and God bless. (upbeat music) [ Silence ]