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Matthew 25:31-46 can be a rather troubling read it appears that judgment is pretty definitive and decided by performance in one issue.  A read through the New Testament reveals that the saving relationship is enabled by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8) yet, this passage seems somewhat contradictory.  It appears to determine salvation by works for the poor and disenfranchised. How do we reconcile these two seemingly opposite ideas? I’m not sure we have to, but I will try to give a framework that we can use to hold these ideas together in tension and draw one message from them.

Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 7:16 (echoed elsewhere in scripture including James 2:18) reveals that we will know people by the fruit they produce. Certainly it is not up to us to judge and God is the ultimate and only true evaluator of our fruits (for some are hidden from our earthly view). One of these fruits we can see, maybe the most important fruit, is the way we take on the personhood of Christ through compassionate service (Philippians 2:8).   If we are Christians, shouldn’t we look like Christ and bear the fruit he did?  We must live lives that bear fruit in keeping with the character and ministry of Christ (Matthew 3:8). This is not “works salvation” for our works do not save us, they simply display our salvation!  If cautiously evaluated our fruit can become a health check-up for us to examine our own Christlikeness.  This check-up is available to every believer who would examine their own fruit for its consistency with Christ’s.

A checkup is designed to evaluate and motivate.  It let’s us know where we stand and what we should improve.  Perhaps that’s why this passage is so frightening, it’s designed to motivate those who fail the evaluation (or just fail to evaluate).  It is always a challenge to examine a passage of scripture like Matthew 25 which is so full of hyperbole and judgment. But it’s written with strong language for a reason, it’s hyperbole shocks us out of complacency and into action.  The challenge is to hear this passage (and others like it) on its own terms.  We must first allow it to teach us something (in this case about compassion) before we explain it away as hyperbolic. We are often far too quick of dismissing passages like these as being out of touch with grace and miss their challenge to bear fruit for God which is to our loss. By justifying and explaining away this text we fail to evaluate our lives and miss out on the motivation to greater works for Christ.

Let us embrace this passage, let us fear this passage, but above all let us hear this passage.  For it is in hearing this passage that we hear the call of Christ in the least of these.

The Washington Post recently revealed that President Obama has decided to appoint Josh Dubois as the new director for the office of Faith Based Initiatives (Read article here). The office is getting a bit of a makeover and will be renamed, “The Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.” It sounds a bit more approachable, user friendly – let’s see if this will ease the grant application procedure.  Heading this newly renamed office is Josh Dubois who served as the director of the Obama campaign’s religious outreach.  Josh Dubois has served with other political figures in other religious outreaches.  He is an ordained pentecostal minister from a small church in Cambridge (no website available) but his training seems mostly political. There is a great article with a limited interview about Dubois and his faith journey available here on the Wall Street Journal.

Dubois’ faith seems to be less of a concern however than does President Obama’s intentions for the policy of this office.  Throughout his campaign then Senator Obama stated that he would revise the regulation for faith based organizations receiving federal money.  These organizations would have to abide by all equal employment legislation, this is a sharp turn from the previous administration who allowed faith based groups to hire like minded individuals.  If these new legal constraints are placed on churches and other ministries who receive federal money they will have to either hire qualified candidates who disagree with their beliefs or lose federal funding.  In other words, if a church who runs a food pantry has a job opening they may be forced to hire an atheist if he is the most qualified.

What the problem with this scenario is that it brings the church under the authority of the state and fails to maintain their separateness.  The faith based initiative in its inception recognized that many churches, mosques and other religious groups were doing a better job of community aid than the government.  So, the government wanted to be efficient and help them help the community.  This was not without constraints and restrictions.  There were stipulations that recipients could not be screened or discriminated against on the basis of faith which is reasonable.  There were also accounting requirements that had to be met.  All of these previous requirements ensured an efficient outreach and let the church be the church.  These new stipulations, however, rob the churches of the spirit that originally inspired these initiatives!  What this will result in is a group of disenfranchised church goers returning to their churches with less resources to do the same job.

Many churches have spun off seperate non-profit organizations as a way to protect their church from federal requirements.  Perhaps the better alternative is to not take money from the government to begin with!  The money may appear to be free, but cost your soul in the end.  I’ll partner with Christ and let the government keep their money.

Today we start fully exploring our new mission, prior to this we’ve been laying the foundation.  Our mission starts in God’s personal nature and is realized when we connect with him in a saving relationship.

Our mission fully realized is: We exist to love God through worship, love the church through fellowship, love the world through evangelism and love the broken through compassion.

1. Meaning of Worship

• Hebrew for worship literally: fall down (prostrate), be weighted down.
  • It seems to me that we have misunderstood God and worship.  Many people seem to come to church on Sunday go through spiritual withdrawal throughout the week and pop in a worship track to get them through.
  • We’ve come to God like a giant teddy bear, cuddling up for some spiritual warmth.  But the truth is that when God is revealed to his people, particularly in the Old Testament they were afraid.
  • Being weighted down is the natural response in God’s presence, becoming weak in the knees.  This is clearly seen in 2 Chronicles 7:1-3 which shows that the Israelites were totally incapacitated by God’s presence and were unable to do anything but worship.
  • Worship continues with much of the same idea into the New Testament although there is less fear and more emotion with the Greek understanding.

• Greek predominantly meant: meaning to kiss, like a dog licking his master’s hand, also to bow, literally to kiss towards.
  • Look at the beautiful picture and literal portrayal of worship in Luke 7:36-50.
  • Here in this passage we see the culmination of this truth, this woman comes to Jesus, is weighted down with his glory and begins to weep at his feet, kissing them.  Worship at its best.
  • In both of these definitions worship is sacrifice.
    • Both of these definitions require sacrifice – deep personal sacrifice.  The woman’s hair represents a total humiliation before people, completely undignified.
    • What is our worship today?  What is our sacrifice? It is an hour on Sunday – given to praise.  It is a commitment to honesty even at the cost of business dealings.  It is a check given to the church.  It is an hour in the nursery so others can worship.

2. Mode of Worship

• How is it that we offer this worship? In the Old Testament the mode of worship was so complicated that an army of full-time employees called priests were utilized to ensure the proper mode of worship.
• In John 4:1-42 Jesus cuts through all of this and reveals the that the mode of worship is to be both in…
• Spirit
  • Worshipping God happens in the Spirit and is not confined to a place or time, neither this mountain nor Jerusalem.
  • Worship is laying down everything before God and in return God lifts us up to his vantage point and shows us things from his perspective.
  • When we worship in Spirit we see a connection and clarity.  (Acts 13:2)
• Truth
  • Romans 1:20-25 makes it clear that we can inappropriately give our worship to something else.  False worship lays out the ugliness of our life and turns our life toward the debase.
  • What makes true worship is a true object of worship.  We must be clear that we worship God, why we worship him.  We must consecrate ourselves for this task and focus on his worth.

3. Model of Worship

• Romans 12:1-8 makes it clear that worship is any sacrifice dedicated to God alone.  Worship is the engine that drives all other relationships and is found in all other relationships.
  • We need both a lifestyle of worship and pure worship to keep our lives strong.  Like in a marriage Jenny and I go out 75% of the time with our kids, but we need that 25% of our time alone to strengthen that bond.
  • We’re married the entire time – but sometimes you need some special quiet time together.  So it is with God, we must have acts of devotion for him and him alone to guard and keep our relationship.
• We honor Romans 12 when we bow in prayer, when we have hearts bowed to God, when our bowed hearts lead to other activities in Jesus’ name then we extend our worship into those activities.  But not before that.
• Sunday morning should inspire us to meet God daily.  Meeting God daily should lead us to serving God daily. Sunday guides our daily meetings and our daily meetings guide our daily lives.
• How do we get to this point?  We need time of pure worship, pure undistracted unadulterated worship with God to give us perspective.
  • A story that illustrates this is in Matthew 25:1-13.  Ten bridesmaids are found, only five kept their lamps lit and were accepted.  Worship is the filling of our lamp.
  • Worship keeps our hearts lit with the light of Christ so that we can see what God’s will is.  Worship is where we surrender everything to God and focus solely on him and it’s here that God lifts us up out of the everyday, giving us eternal perspective.

The best thing that could happen this morning is for you to start a conversation with God about salvation. This might mean that you realize you haven’t started a relationship with Jesus Christ and speak with God about it.  Perhaps you  need to reexamine your thinking on a few key issues of salvation and you start talking to God about it.  If you disagree hang on and finish it out, look up scripture and then let’s talk.  You can do that through a comment on this post, email or phone call.

This morning our message is in two parts, the first part is foundational.  I want to finish looking at the shema and look at a few key verses to understanding the physical in our saving relationship with God.  Secondly, I want to look at how salvation happens.

1. Our response to God’s presence is love.

• We love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.  (Mark 12:30)
  • We talked about this last week when we looked at the shema and explored who God is and saw that God’s presence requires a response.  The response is to love, but how do you love God?  How do you start a relationship with God?
  • The problem is that we’ve viewed salvation too long as a process not as a relationship.  We get the formula to salvation wrong because it’s not a checklist but an organic relationship that grows.  When we view it as a checklist it promotes external obedience, while a relationship brings about internal transformation.  The shema gets at this interior matter when it commands us to “love.”
• How do you know someone loves you?  You can’t examine it, x-ray it, test it.  You just know it!  How do you love God?  How do you start in the relationship?
• A few things come easy – mind.  This maybe comes the easiest, we see God, realize that he is lovable and worthy of devotion.  We see his attributes and are drawn to him.
• What follows the mind?  Our heart.  That’s a devotion, a commitment, a passion.  Fierce loyalty – develops over time.  As we know more about God we love him more with our hearts and are drawn to him – our desire increases to be in his presence.
• Our soul is more difficult to know and discern – but in quietness our soul can rest in God’s presence and we find a peace inside that previously did not exist.  Psalm 131:1-2 celebrates a soul  stilled and quieted before God.   Our soul draws us, everything to God.
• Strength represent the physical – meaning what we do matters.
  • For too long we have allowed secular philosophy, Greek philosophy in particular tell us that the physical is insignificant.  We have believed that God is spiritual and all that is good is spiritual – nothing physical has any importance.
  • So we have sterilized our faith of all the physical – but this isn’t what God intended.  God creates physical beings – man woman, tells us there will be a new earth and new heaven.  So often when God talks about blessing he talks about physical blessings – peace, wealth, health, family.
  • Not only that but he has related with us through the physical: circumcision, sacrifice, baptism.  The written word, the spoken word.

  Baptism is the consummation of our relationship.

  • Physical is important – this is why scripture values the act of baptism.
  • This analogy to marriage is necessary, it’s almost as though God gave us marriage as a giant object lesson and parenting as a way to show his love to us.
  • 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.  For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body-Jews or Greeks, slaves or free-and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”
  • Ephesians 5:25-26, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, 27 so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind-yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. “
• Communion is the continual wedding feast.
  • Matthew 26:29, “I tell you, I will never again drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”

But we don’t just jump into the baptismal, there are some steps that lead up to it.  Again this is not a checklist you must accomplish; it’s more like a natural law.  Scientists describe gravity they do not govern it.  Here I will try to describe this relationship as it normally progresses, not dictate it to you.

What I’m about to describe answers the question, “How do I get saved?” but the better question is “How do I enter a relationship with God?”  Because when you do that you discover life and life eternal.

As we saw in the previous passages we will blur the lines between a love that grows into a marriage and love that grows into a saving relationship with God.  So, I’ll be using personal examples from my own marriage and relationship to help us understand God’s love.  We do this because salvation is so natural; we have made it complicated and awkward with prescribed prayers and rituals.  I can think back to sitting in other churches and at events where if you want to get saved everyone bows their head, closes their eyes and then prays a prayer, after that with everyone’s head bowed you raise your hand, then if you raised your hand you come forward but this time open your eyes.  You come forward, do the hokey-pokey turn yourself around and return to your seat.  What relationship starts like that?

2. We build a relationship with God like any other we… (Acts 2)

• Meet
  • This is the step we have bypassed, we jump right into the commitment.  You don’t ask someone to marry you on the first date.  Even in arranged marriages there is some dialogue that happens prior between the two families.  We must meet God and God’s family – the church.
  • Too often we get stuck in this phase because it’s fun, we like the church, we love the idea of God but we’re afraid to make a commitment.  The problem is that in the dating phase there is no relationship.
  • In Acts 2 we see Peter introduce Jesus to the crowds in the temple and they meet Jesus.
• Make a commitment
  • After the crowds meet Jesus they realize something more is required.  They essentially ask, “What saves us? ” Again this is a bad question – but a common question.  This question says, “What must I do?”  The right question is, “How do I start a relationship with God?”
  • Last week we met a God who is perfect and loving, who desires to spend eternity with us and all we can ask is, “What can I do to be saved?”  When we ask this we sell God short and ourselves.
  • The relationship with God is what brings salvation; there is no relationship without a commitment.  It’s here that we say, I want to love you for a lifetime.  We call it engagement.  In the spiritual realm it’s repentance and faith.
  • Repentance is the step of faith, not a step to faith. Repentance moves us from disbelief to belief, from disobedience to obedience.  Just as in a marriage, we come clean of our pasts and it’s accepted into the vows and grace of marital love.  We don’t just marry the present and future of someone, but their past as well.
  • No hand raising, here we ask you to confess your love for God before the congregation.  Simply state, “Jesus is the Christ the Son of the Living God.”  We do this publicly because our love is public.  Matthew 10:32 tells us that whoever acknowledges Christ before others, Christ will acknowledge before God in heaven.
• Marry
  • Commitment grows and is finalized in the act of marriage.
  • Originally I wanted this to be “consummate” but didn’t necessarily like the sound.  But it’s true that just like the consummation of the marriage is the physical and final sealing so it is with baptism.
  • Consummation is more than a physical act we see in 1 Corinthians 6:15-16 that the physical act of sex is a spiritually binding act – maybe you didn’t know that from watching TV.
  • It’s not just the physical it’s the spiritual also.  There’s a word for this and its sacrament.  A sacrament is a physical act with a spiritual significance.  We’re a bit afraid of that word because more liturgical and traditional churches use it and have expanded it beyond scripture.  But in it’s base form a sacrament is something physical that has a spiritual significance.  Circumcision is such an act and baptism is also such an act.
• Celebrate
  • When the wedding is finalized and the spiritual bond is there we celebrate.
  • In Jewish wedding tradition after the ceremony the bride and groom would go into a tent, while family and friends waited nearby.  Once the marriage was consummated he would come out of the tent and proudly proclaim – “I’ve have consummated the marriage.”  The crowd would applaud and the party would start.
  • So to it is with Christ.  Once the act of baptism takes place we seal our relationship and the celebration ensues.
  • Our life should be a life filled with joy!  This joy and celebration is powered by the Holy Spirit!  Prior to knowing God we had no relationship with the Spirit, once we come to know God and have a relationship with him the Holy Spirit comes and fills every believer.  He is your relationship coach if you will – helping you to know what pleases God and will bless your relationship.