Badenoch Free Church

Morning service 10th June 2007.

 

Proverbs 4v24-27 notes:

Intro:

Summary of last week.

This week from unseen to seen. Heart to actions!

“Matthew 12:34 For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. ”

1) Heart to speech.Bible and tongue…………..;

Exodus 20:16 ¹⁶ "You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour.

Matthew 5:37 ³⁷ Simply let your `Yes' be` Yes', and your ‘No', `No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.

James 3v1-13

The challenge: to control the tongue!

24 Put away perversity from your mouth; keep corrupt talk far from your lips. NIV

24 Put away from you a deceitful mouth, And put perverse lips far from you. NKJ

Deceit - a statement, act, or device intended to mislead; fraud; trick.

“Put away” ………. stop…….. But how?

By seeing why are deceitful

- to control outcomes, that’s why! …. Get our own way…. Control … thus deception

Give up deceit - by giving up our need to control!

By trusting God with outcomes. …….. A matter of trust….. Do you trust God?

Corrupt talk - perverse lips:

Perverse - deliberately deviating from what is regarded as normal, good, or proper

“far from you”……idea of distance……….run from perversity

How? By seeing it for what it is! …….. “acceptance behaviour”

Want to be “one of the boys!”

Yet remember - God accepts you for who you are.

Challenge: control your tongue! By grace……… out of a pure heart! 2) Speech to vision.

Bible and vision………. Genesis 2:9 ⁹ And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground--trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Beauty & enjoyment of beauty one of Gods great gifts!

Yet one of the great areas of sin & temptation.

We take the gifts and abuse them!

The fall cased by this abuse!

Genesis 3:6 ⁶ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

The beauty was to lead to worship! …. Instead it lead to idolatry.

Vision - a great gift. But with great risks!

Matthew 6:22-23 ^{22 "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness}!

Thus a serious / important matter.

Especially in our Very Visual age!

Media - big dangers. Watching wrong thing etc.

We need to be careful. To watch our watching.

How?

“look straight ahead….”

That is concentrate e.g. driving a car.

A faltering / tiring gaze leads to disaster. ……….

e.g. king David - his adultery with Bathsheeba and then murder of Uriah.

2Sam11v1-2 In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem. ² One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful,

David got lazy / lost concentration / then sinned !!

Application:

Don’t get lazy. Watch your watching!

Be aware of the terrible dangers - the addictive nature of misusing our vision!

Take drastic action if needs be! Get help!

Matthew 18:9 ⁹ And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell. 3) Vision to action / walking.

Note the progression: heart - mouth - eyes - action!

The final overflow of the heart is action!

e.g 2 Corinthians 9:7 Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

Actions reveal the true state of heart!

26 Ponder the path of your feet, And let all your ways be established.

Proverbs 4:27 Do not turn to the right or the left; Remove your foot from evil.

Paths imagery: wise path/ Straight path =life………. Evil path/crooked path = death

The advice:

Think about what you do! “ponder” - to weigh up the options!

Take time! Patience!

Then act with conviction! Don’t turn!

Hebrews 12:2 ² Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

 

evening service 10th June 2007

 

1 John 3:4-6

Last week : God loves us, he made us children, Jesus is coming again, we will be like Him - thus we purify ourselves.

From this John moves onto sin! God loves us - he makes us his children - we have a great future : thus we purify ourselves. Sin!

We are being brought down to earth with a bump!

4 Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.

John starts with a definition of who lawless people are and what sin is.

We think of lawlessness perhaps as a picture of the Wild West.

Or places that have been war torn. Places that there is no Rule of Law!

Yet here we are told that when we as individuals commit sin, we commit lawlessness.

So who are the lawless people? All who sin!

The reason for that is as John says “sin is lawlessness”. a`marti,a evsti.n h` avnomi,aÅ

What is sin? Sin is lawlessness.

Sin can only be defined in this negative way. Sin is not doing what is right!

Sin is without reason, without meaning because it is lawless. It makes no sense.

The best that we can say of sin is that it is lawlessness!

The point for us to remember is that if we sin, we break the law! We cause a separation of some sort. To break something is to separate, to divide. We separate our soul from God when we sin! Isn’t that a horrible thought!

We live in a divided, separated world! Why? Because of sin!

Following on from this horrible mystery of sin:

We have the great fact of the appearing of the Lord.

5 But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin.

So we have this terrible thing called sin, but that is not the end of the story!

Jesus has appeared!

We saw in v2 that Jesus will appear again, in glory and we will be made like him!

Here in v5 John looks to the first appearing of the Lord!

Jesus will appear again to make us like him, and he has appeared already to start that process by taking “away or sins”.

Previously the focus was on the Lord and what he will do, now the focus is on Him and what he has done already!

Why did Jesus come to earth? To heal the division and separation caused by sin, by taking sin away.

We live in a world that has lots of things wrong with it. But these things are all just the symptoms of sin!

Any doctor will tell you that dealing with the symptoms does not fix the problem. Dealing with the symptoms might bring some relief, some comfort, but the underlying illness will still be there!

Jesus came not simply to deal with the symptoms - but to deal with the cause. The underlying sickness of sin!

He came to take sin away! To heal the division caused by sin!

And the fact is He has done it! He has already appeared! He has already taken away our sin!

He has removed the cancer!

“And in him there is no sin.”

Our great Lord and Saviour does not have the cancer.

The amazing thing is that in us also, there is no sin! He came to take it away!

What does this mean in practice? It actually means what it says.

Jesus has taken away our sin. The cancer has been removed. We are without sin, just as our Lord is!

Application: Remember that truth about yourself! Your sin has been taken away! You are like the Lord!

The consequence of it all is v6

6 No-one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No-one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.

The consequence is that we are now “in Him”. This is the same language that is used in John 15 - Remain in me, remain in my love.

Our life is “in Him”. We are therefore to abide in him. We are to live our life in Christ’s. Our life is not our own any more. We are children of God, we belong to Him.

The consequence of “abiding in Him” is that we stop sinning.

Previously, before the Lord took away your sins, you could not help but sin. You had a cancer, you had to live with it.

But now the cancer is taken away and you no longer need to sin. You have been set free! To uses the Lord’s language:

“John 8:34-36 ^{34 Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. 35 Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it for ever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed}.”

Application:

Does this mean then that we are perfect? That we will never sin?

No. Because even though the cancer has been taken away, the symptoms are still there.

Our sin has been taken away, but the effects of sin still remain.

Yet: not to the same degree!

As John has already said 1John2v1 “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defence--Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.”

Our responsibility now, is to abide in Christ. To focus on Him. Rather than on sin.

Yes there is still a battle to fight with sin, but the difference is, now we are “in Him”. The battle is to remain in him!