From The Beginning, It Was Not So - Part 1 - Establishing A Paradigm - Bill Shiley

If we confess our sins and we walk in the light with Christ, that we know we have fellowship with God, He is pleased with us, and the blood of Christ continues to cleanse us from our sin. Not just an abstract, like, you don't have to pay for that, but actually cleans us so that we sin no longer as part of our life, we're being changed.

Hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, to give instruction in sound doctrine, and also to rebuke those who contradict it. Rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith. Teach what accords with sound doctrine. To be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love and in steadfastness.

The title I'm using for this mini-series is From the Beginning It Was Not So. And the message today is part one, establishing a paradigm. A paradigm is a starting point that sets up the way we look at something. So the question I want to focus on today is, how do you know if you are a follower of Jesus, a child of God, a citizen of God's kingdom, however you want to say that, how do you know? And if you Google this or if you listen to a lot of Christian teachers today, you will get answers like this: If you've repented of your sins and have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus. If you have accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior.

Some will go as far as to make those kinds of statements. If you say this one, I am doing good works, you will run into a tsunami wave and you will get very serious pushback. No, good works will get you to hell. You should not consider your good works in whether or not you are a follower of Jesus, a child of God, a citizen of God's kingdom. The question often is used, you know, will I go to heaven when I die, which I believe is a bad question. The question is, am I part of the kingdom of heaven now? And then obviously I will continue in that kingdom later on. So the question is, is that what Jesus taught?

Is that what his followers who lived and walked with him and watched him for those three years, sat with him after the resurrection for those 40 days while he expounded to them the kingdom of God? Is that what they understood and taught and practiced? If not, the question is, where did it change? What happened that got it from there to here? What happened? Where did it take place? How did the change happen? One thing I want to say starting out here is please hear me out before you cry, heretic, heretic, burn him, hang him. And this is to you as well as the viewing audience of this ends up on YouTube, Lord willing. One of the biggest factors in a lot of our conflicts and also bad theology then in our Western Christianity, at least, is false dichotomies where we create this, you're either this or this, two extremes that you must either be this or this.

And then we jump in the ditch because we're afraid of the other side, we react and we put people in those pigeonholes. And so please be aware of that. That's a very dangerous seesaw to play. So what I want to do is I want to spend a lot of time just listening to what Jesus and what the apostles say about this. So Matthew chapter seven, Jesus is ending the Sermon on the Mount, the constitution of the kingdom of God, you could say. The early church referred to this as the gospel. Jesus' new law, his new administration for his kingdom. And he says, this is reading from the New Living Translation just simply to break some stereotypes, being my mother tongue and a lot of what I have memorized is King James.

It helps me think through things a little differently. Beware of false prophets who come disguised as harmless sheep, but are really vicious wolves. You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act. You can pick grapes from thorn. Can you pick grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? A good tree produces good fruit and a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can't produce bad fruit and a bad tree can't produce good fruit.

So every tree that does not produce good fruit is chopped down and thrown into the fire. Yes, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.

Not everyone who calls out to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter. On judgment day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, we prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name. But I will reply, I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God's laws.

This passage is a real starting place for me on this subject. So different times as I've encountered the Christian world and a lot of those of you who know me know I've been through a vast variety of churches and experiences there. And as I encounter other people, especially at the room, is the one place I've run into this issue a lot. People say, well, a pastor told me, or I was listening to some Christian teacher or leader or inspirational speaker and they said this.

And so the first question to start with is, how do you decide who is a Christian? How do you know whether that pastor is someone you should listen to? Now, this passage begins with Jesus telling us not to judge.

And then he goes on and tells us how to judge. So that is a little bit of another subject. The point is not that we should not discern anything. The point is not so much for us to decide who all else is going to go to hell and who's children of damnation, it's for us to know what it means to follow Jesus so we can evaluate ourselves and we can evaluate those that we're going to be influenced by, those we're going to partner with. And so that's the directions he gives us here is so we can know who to follow, who to listen to as we try to learn and understand and be guided in Jesus' ways.

And he says here that you can tell them. And the way you can tell is by what comes out of them, what they produce. Both what you, I think there's two pictures there with fruit. One is what you experience when you bite into them. And the other one is what they produce in the world. That's the point of fruit, right? It has the seeds in it and it falls in the ground and makes more of itself. So Jesus says you can tell that by what you experience when you bite into them and what they produce in the world around them, what they're reproducing. And he makes a connection here that's very important for us to get.

We'll touch on this a little bit later, but that the kind of person we are comes out. And what comes out tells us what kind of person we are. So my point here is not so much this morning to talk about how salvation happens and how fruit is produced and all that, but simply to identify what Jesus said is the measurement, how we know if we are children of God, if we are followers of Jesus, if we have been born again anew into God's family as a child of God.

Now, so when we, as we look at, especially thinking of teachers and leaders, people to be influenced by, there's many things that strike us and many things that many people who stand out because of their ability to speak and be persuasive, their personal charisma, they can really get a crowd. You listen to them and things make sense and they're interesting to listen to and there's just that energy and you walk away and say, wow, you feel excited when you walk away.

Maybe there was quality information exchange, maybe there wasn't.

So being a powerful speaker, being able to explain scripture well, is that the test? Is that how we know that someone has the life and the mind of Christ inside of them? That's what they're being motivated by. And Jesus says, no.

He says that there's going to be many people who come and say, we prophesied, we declared your truth or declared truth in your name. And Jesus is going to say, sorry, that's not what I'm after. That's not all that I'm after.

Well, being able to do something supernatural, right? That to perform a miracle, that's pretty, that's slam dunk evidence there, right? That someone is a follower of Jesus or being able to speak in tongues or being able to cast out demons, right? Surely you have to have a power beyond yourself living in you. And I don't understand all how that works, but I do know this, that Jesus said that is not the litmus test.

That is not at the bottom line what matters. Now, Jesus says other places that those things will be included at times in those who follow. Those things will follow. They'll be part of the experience in believers. Not saying that everybody is going to do all of them, let alone all the time.

But Jesus says that does not prove that you are a follower of Jesus. So Jesus does say there though, he says it's the one who does the will of his Father, which is in heaven. So it's actually the things that you do, the way you behave is what shows what is going on inside, whether or not Jesus is Lord of your life, whether you have been set free from sin and are living Jesus' way.

And Jesus actually says to those people who have these sparks and fireworks going on in their lives that look so convincing and so persuasive, he says, I'm going to tell those people to get out of my presence because they're enemies, they're lawbreakers.

Definitely words we do not want to hear from Jesus. We'll keep going here. I want to look at some judgment scenes. So in the Bible where it says, gives us a picture of what this is going to be like when we're judged, how God is going to say, welcome or depart.

What is it that is being tested?

Most of the time what I hear among Christians is the question at the judgment day is, have you been washed by the blood of Jesus?

Now, if that's not been your experience, that's fine and that's good, but we hear lots of that. And I'm not saying that that's all wrong, but that's only part of the story. And I want us to listen to what God says is the test of whether or not we are welcome as part of his kingdom.

When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit upon his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered in his presence and he will separate the people as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left. Then the king will say to those on his right, come you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you fed me. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you invited me into your home. I was naked and you gave me clothing.

I was sick and you cared for me. I was in prison and you visited me. Then these righteous ones will reply, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and gave you something to drink or stranger and show you hospitality or naked and give you clothing? When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?

Then the king will say, I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me. Then the king will turn to those on the left and say, away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons, for I was hungry and you didn't feed me. I was thirsty and you didn't give me a drink. I was a stranger and you didn't invite me into your home. I was naked and you didn't give me clothing. I was sick and in prison and you didn't visit me. Then they will reply saying, Lord, when did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick in prison and not help you?

And you will answer, I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me. And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous will go into eternal life.

So again, the test here is the way they have behaved. That is what is determining whether they go to the right and enter into the kingdom as sheep or whether they go to the left into punishment. Here's another reference Jesus makes to the judgment. Then Jesus said to his disciples, if any of you want to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it, but if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul?

For the Son of Man will come and his angels in the glory of his Father and will judge all people according to their deeds. And I tell you, verse 36 there, you must give an account on judgment day for every idle word you speak. The words you say will either acquit or condemn you. So there again, it's what we do that we will be measured by. This is the apostle speaking now. Romans 2, verse 5 through 11. For a day of anger is coming when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. He will judge everyone according to what they have done. He will give eternal life to those who keep on doing good, seeking after the glory and honor and immortality God offers.

And he will pour out his anger and wrath on those who live for themselves, who refuse to obey the truth and instead live lives of wickedness. There will be trouble and calamity for everyone who keeps on doing what is evil, for the Jew first and also for the Gentile. For there will be glory and honor and peace from God for all who do good, for the Jew first and also for the Gentile, for God does not show favoritism. So again, we are going to be rewarded according to what we have done.

For 2 Corinthians 5, verse 10, for we must all stand before Christ to be judged. We will each receive whatever we deserve for the good or evil we have done in this earthly body. So again, we're getting rewarded according to what we have done.

Colossians 3:23 through 25, work willingly at whatever you do as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. Remember that the Lord will give you an inheritance as your reward and that the master you are serving is Christ. But if you do what is wrong, you will be paid back for the wrong you have done, for God has no favorites. 1 Peter 1:17. And remember that the heavenly Father to whom you pray has no favorites. He will judge or reward you according to what you do. So you must live in reverent fear of him during your time here as temporary residents.

Revelation 2, therefore I will throw her, this is speaking of that woman, Jezebel, who was teaching the people in the church to be immoral. I will throw her into a bed of suffering and those who commit adultery with her will suffer greatly unless they repent and turn away from her evil deeds. I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am the one who searches out the thoughts and intentions of every person and I will give to each of you whatever you deserve. Again, a lot of the translations translate that according to their works or to what you've done.

And here we see that's connected to what goes on inside of us, the thoughts that we do, so to speak. Revelation 20:11 through 15, and I saw a great white throne and the one sitting on it. The earth and sky fled from his presence, but they found no place to hide. I saw the dead, both great and small, standing before God's throne and the books were opened, including the book of life. And the dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up its dead and death and the grave gave up their dead and all were judged according to their deeds. Then death and the grave were thrown into the lake of fire.

This lake of fire is the second death and anyone whose name was not found recorded in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire. So again, the people are being judged according to what they had done.

And what they had done determined whether or not their name was found written in the book of life. Revelation 22:12 through 15, look, I am coming soon, bringing my reward with me to repay all people according to their deeds. I am the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are those who wash their robes. They will be permitted to enter through the gates of the city and eat the fruit from the tree of life. Outside the city are dogs and sorcerers, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idol worshipers, and all who love to live a lie.

So again, he's coming to repay people according to their deeds.

I'm going to read some quotes from the early Christians. These are from the haystack. I sorted through pages and pages and just kind of pulled out some highlighted ones, some very clear ones. But it's obvious as you read through there that they believe that salvation produces works in a person or a person who has been changed by Christ produces good works.

Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute sin, that is, having repented of his sins, he can receive remission of them from God. But this is not as you Jews deceive yourselves and some others who resemble you in this. For they say that even though they remain sinners, the Lord will not impute sin to them because they know God. That was an interesting one there. So he's saying there that some people think that because they know God, something has happened, they've become children of God or whatever, that their sin doesn't matter anymore. What they do doesn't matter anymore. And he's saying clearly that's not true.

When man is grafted by faith and receives the Spirit of God, he certainly does not lose the substance of flesh, but changes the quality of the fruit of his works. Ironias from around 180. For by grace we are saved, but not indeed without good works. Rather, we must be saved by being molded for what is good, acquiring an inclination for it. And we must possess the healthy mind that is fixed on the pursuit of the good. For this, we have the greatest need of divine grace, of right teaching, of holy susceptibility and the drawing of the Father to himself.

They're talking about the part of a changed life as being one side of the coin of salvation. Grace with the Lord, when once learned and overtaken by us, should never afterward be canceled by repetition of sin. So the idea there is that there's a continual walking in newness of life, and that is how we know a person is born again.

The tree is made manifest by its fruit. So those who profess themselves to be Christians will be recognized by their conduct. It is better for a man to be silent and be a Christian than to talk and not be one.

So here, this is Ignatius, who was a disciple of the apostle John, saying that a person, a Christian, is recognized by the way they behave themselves, the way they live.

Let those who are not found living as he taught be understood not to be Christians, even though they profess with the lips the teachings of Christ. For it is not those who make profession, but those who do the works who will be saved. Justin Martyr.

The matters of our religion lie in works, not in words. Again, don't jump in the other ditch and say that you shouldn't have any words, but he's making an emphasis here that it's not just that we claim we actually live like Jesus.

We fulfill our claims.

And so comes the quote from Octavius, we don't speak great things, we live them. Again, it's not that the early Christians didn't talk, but their emphasis was not on the claims they made, but demonstrating them. And they were very bold in speaking to the Roman emperors and the public. One writing that I took my students through in church history class in school to demonstrate this is Tertullian's writing to Scapula, who was a Roman governor, and pleading with him to alleviate the persecution. And he makes bold claims in there. He says, look at us, come investigate our communities and find out the way we're living. And we are the ones who are creating a peaceful environment.

We are the true supporters and helpers and defenders of the empire. I know there are verses that are pulled and stuff, but as you look through the Bible and you listen to what Jesus says, you listen to the apostles, you look at all the judgment scenes, and I have yet to find one that says anything, but that the discernment will be made by the way we have lived and the way we have behaved in life.

So now I want to make some clarifications about this. This may sound like heresy, like works salvation and all that kind of stuff. So I'm not going to go into a deep discussion of all those issues, but I do want to just want to clarify a few things, what we mean. One is the faith in works dichotomy.

So this is something that comes up a lot. It's all, it's your heart and you shouldn't focus on the outside because it's what the heart is what matters. Then there's people that don't focus so much on that and they're very focused on an exterior.

So I'd like to just, let us just dispense with such nonsense to quote C.S. Lewis more or less, because it's not real. Neither of those is true. It doesn't exist. And Jesus says that they go together. What is inside of us comes out in our life. Either make the tree good and his fruit good, or else make the tree corrupt and his fruit corrupt, for the tree is known by its fruit. Again, we read these scriptures earlier, for a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit, neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. So you're not going to have such a thing as a person who is full of the nature of Christ and is living like a child of the devil.

It doesn't exist. There's three camps of good works that I'm going to put everybody in three camps, and I apologize for that. But just to help us think through this a little bit, there's the emperor's new clothes righteousness. So the story of the emperor's new clothes was this emperor wanted the most fabulous outfit in the world. So these tailors came and they professed to have this amazing cloth that was so exquisite and everything, and they persuaded the king to pay them thousands and thousands of dollars. And they spent all this time and talked about how wonderful it was, and they got him to try it on, and it was nothing.

But everybody played along and tried to pretend that, oh yes, because we don't want to make the king feel bad. And finally, the king, it comes to the day, and this is awful, but the king rides through town in his new outfit, which was nothing. And finally, there was a child who was honest enough to just say, he's not wearing anything.

And there's that kind of righteousness that's supposed to be, it's a righteous, and we're all righteous, but we're not. We're still living in carnality, but we're all saved by grace, and it's not of works, it's not of works. One of my sales reps we do business with, he has that in his signature strip, Ephesians 2:8 through 9, and I want to put in mind 8 through 10, because verse 10 says that the point of salvation is that we produce good works. We live the way that God has planned all along for us to live. So there's that side of things, a way of relating to good works. And then there's the pigs and sheep clothing, people who are carnal, are serving selves and try to put things on to make themselves look good, make themselves feel good, maybe think that they can make God, fool God and impress God.

That's not obedience. That's maybe compliance, saying, all right, well, I'll do what you said, but it's not really giving your heart a willing, cheerful, loving obedience, or it's substitution or replacement type of thing. So if I do this, then God will overcome this.

And I'm purposely not giving specific illustrations because I don't want to stereotype anybody. Or it's a checklist of fundamentals where we reduce it down to a certain list of things. We have these cardinal doctrines or these certain things that we deserve and we do all these things. But then there's other things that Jesus talks about, the apostles talk about that's an important part of the life of Christ, and we don't have anything to do with that. So I'm not talking about any of that kind of thing. We talk about the works that Christ says are going to come out of us. And then there's obedience.

And what I mean by obedience is a holistic obedience. So not just wearing certain clothes and going to church and listening to certain kinds of music and that kind of stuff. I'm not talking about just that kind of stuff, but or just being this kind, loving, wonderful person and living in pride and extravagance in your lifestyle and living in war and contention and things like that. I'm not talking about either of those camps, but a holistic, the whole thing, the whole package. A person who dresses and lives a lifestyle that demonstrates meekness and humility, coupled with somebody who is kind and is generous and who loves their enemies and who is faithful and pure in their relationships.

It's a holistic obedience from a heart that has become a meek, humble child who admires his parent and is anchored and nurtured by their love, guided by their teaching, exercised by their discipline. So what I'm trying to do is acknowledge to you here that we can't just live these kinds of works on our own. We can't somehow pull ourselves out of

the bondage that we have sold ourselves into by our obedience to sin and just change that. We need deliverance, and we need someone to guide us and teach us and train us in a different way of life. So I'm not talking about some sort of a thing about you making yourself good enough. It's not possible to find that kind of ability.

So I'm not in any way in this message downgrading the importance of the blood of Christ. We have to have Christ's sacrifice, which redeems us and cleanses us from that vain life, being dead in trespasses and sins that we sold ourselves into, we received by tradition from our fathers, and that we sold ourselves into by our obedience to sin, as Romans chapter 6 talks about. Who you yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants you are. And the wages of serving sin is death. So we need the blood of Christ. We can't live and become a person whose life is full of good works aside from that. We need God's grace.

We need often God's grace is simply directions, saying, choose to think on this. Do this when you do something wrong. There are often directions to help us form different mind and response patterns. We need the Holy Spirit, God's presence with us to remind us and to teach us and giving us the power to walk as witnesses. So in talking about good works as the test or how we know that we are a follower of Jesus, how we know who to listen to, I'm not overriding any of those kinds of things, but I'm talking about that Jesus says that if those kinds of things have happened to you, if you have been cleansed by the blood of Christ, if you have been born into God's family and received his life inside of you, then there's going to be fruit.

And that is how we know, is by the fruit that comes out. You can't see in me, you can't see the blood of Christ delivering me from the bondage of sin. You can see what it does to me. You can see that I'm no longer living in sin, though. You can't see the Holy Spirit living in me.

But you can see what it does to me, like Jesus says to Nicodemus there in John 3. The wind blows, you can't see it, but you can see its effects.

So that's what I'm talking about. That's what Jesus calls us to, is a life of repentance and humility and becoming a child and choosing to listen to him, to be exercised by his teaching and his training, giving him authority in our life by obedience that produces good works.

I'm not talking about being this a life of fear and wondering, oh, did I do enough things good enough to impress God? Is God mad at me? Did I forget about something? Being snatched away to judgment when we have committed a sin before we have time to repent, or God's perfect, and what if I'm not doing something that I don't know about, trembling under the critical scrutiny of the insatiable or unsatisfiable eye of a flawless and implacable or unsatisfiable being. I'm not talking about that kind of thing. I'm talking about, like John says, as we walk in the light with Christ, we have fellowship with our heavenly Father, and the blood of Christ cleanses us from sin.

I missed the first part there. If we confess our sins and we walk in the light with Christ, that we know we have fellowship with God, he is pleased with us, and the blood of Christ continues to cleanse us from our sin, not just an abstract, like you don't have to pay for that, but actually cleans us so that we sin no longer is part of our life. We're being changed.

So the test is simple. Jesus' salvation produces a change in the way we live inside and out. And a Christian is one who demonstrates that change happening. That's what Jesus taught. That's what the apostles believed. That's what the early church believed for years.

And that changed. And in the world around us, that has changed. And it's what produces the problem that there's many people who call themselves Christians but don't live according to Jesus' teachings, that live much the same as the world around them is.

This message is not to equip us to go around and judge and criticize others, but to open our eyes and realize what God's calling for us is, and to help us understand who we are going to listen to and who we're going to be influenced by.

This is especially heavy and dear to my heart because of some things I experienced in my own life, especially in following leadership, some tremendous loss and confusion. I nearly committed suicide under the influence of one man that I followed for a while. And if I would have understood this thing, that we can know, and it's very simple, God gives us trademarks, how you know, with leadership, to the two pillars that I hang on to in my life, and that are both a comfort and also a tremendous challenge to me personally as a leader, is the last verse in James chapter 3, that the wisdom which is from above is first pure and peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, without partiality and without hypocrisy, full of mercy and good fruits, and the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by peacemakers.

And then I get to 2 Timothy 2:24 that says, the servant of the Lord is not contentious. He doesn't strive, but he's gentle in meekness, instructing those who oppose themselves so that God can work repentance in their life.

Those characteristics I have found so safe in deciding who I'm going to listen to. This especially is heavy on my heart because of what I've experienced and things I've seen around me with young people and not so young people, and the disillusionment that happens. Just here last week, the final report on Ravi Zacharias and the scandals there was released. A man that it blew everybody's socks off that he would have been involved in that kind of stuff and has devastated many people because their faith, they looked up to him as an example. But the thing is, everybody didn't see that. There were people who saw trademarks and they chose to overlook them. They saw places where he was popping out pretty boldly, where Ravi was not exhibiting those kinds of characteristics, and it should have been an alarm.

So this is my encouragement to us, is to stick with that for ourselves personally, again, not to go out in the world and point fingers at everybody else and feel good because we're not like them, but for ourselves to listen to the words of Jesus and measure whether or not we are followers of God by what is coming out of our lives. And be careful and look at who you're following, who you're being influenced by, and make sure they are people who exhibit the likeness of Christ in a holistic manner.

Nobody's going to be perfect, but definitely whenever somebody disregards or belittles a commandment, Jesus says that person is the least in the kingdom of heaven. They're not to be followed.