Bloom: Everything You Need | Week 6 | To Perseverance Add Godliness

5 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness… 2 Peter 1:5–6 (NIV)

• Godliness = eusebeia
• Good + Worship/devout/God-fearing
• Secular life
• Sacred life

For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. 1 Thessalonians 4:7 (NIV)

Godliness is when every part of your life is sacred

What needs to be made pure for God in your life?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, good morning. One of my uh favorite lines from the book or the movie that you may have seen, The Line, the Witch in the Wardrobe, conversation between the kids that go into this uh world called Narnia and a uh Mr. and Mrs. Beaver talking beavers, and they're talking about a change that's happening in the land of Narnia and uh the hope they have of things to come because they've been living under the grip of the forever winter. It's always winter but never Christmas, the power of the the white witch. But they say we've heard Aslan is on the move. How many have remember that? anybody? Aslan is on the move. And I've always I just love that line because Aslan is a figure of Christ. I just uh enjoy times like this, service like this, where we get to be reminded that Jesus, the Spirit of God, is on the move. And he's on the move not only uh He's He's on the move through our people And to see Him on the move through the work of our mission partners, to see Him on the move through the work of our staff as we go from one season to the next, to see Him on the move through the baptisms, uh baptisms that we're witnessing, to hear the witness and the testimony of God on the move amongst us is uh It's amazing. And we've got a lot to give thanks for. So I came across this story, uh it's an interesting story. Apparently, outside the St. James Church in a place called Shear, England, you're gonna find this metal plaque if you let's read on what it says. It says, Side of the cell of Christine Carpenter, Anchorus of Shear 1329. Now, who was Christine Carpenter and why was she called an Anchorus? Well, an Anchorist is a person who would withdraw from common life to dedicate themselves to God, bind themselves to the church by living the rest of their earthly life within a small cell. Anchorus was the woman, Anchorite was the man. Like many Anchorite abodes, Christine's small cell was attached to the church, was installed with a small opening through which she would receive food, and a squint window is a small window that looked into the church so she could at least participate in the church worship services. Check out this picture. This shows you where the uh the cell was located. You can see where the walls being blocked up there, but that's where uh the cell was located for her to live the rest of her days. Now, her life as an anchorist began in 1329. This is where she made this appeal. She made an appeal to the Bishop of Winchester, where she said, I want to be removed from the world's distractions to lead a more pious life. Her application was granted after they investigated into Christine's moral qualities and her chastity. She was sealed into the cell in July of that same year. And she began her lifelong vow of seclusion. To begin, they held a burial service actually for her, as she was considered dead to the sinful world, that cell being symbolic of a tomb. Yet, despite her oaths, Christine broke out of the anchorage after almost three years, attempted to rejoin society. But having broken her holy vow, Christine was threatened with excommunication from the church, and so it's because of this threat that she decided to return to seclusion and isolation in October of 1332. She called on the Pope to forgive her of her sin and long and on condition of her returning to her anchorage, which she did, and there she remained the rest of her immortal life. Dedicating her life to God by being locked up in a cell attached to the church. So we continue our message series called Bloom. And what we're talking about is we're talking about how does a person who dedicates their life to Jesus, how are they to live in this world? And we're focusing on an opening paragraph of a man named Peter, an apostle, who wrote his second letter to Christians living in the world, and he addresses this subject. He says, Now that you you're made right with God through faith in Jesus, this is what it looks like to live for Jesus in this world. Second Peter chapter 1, verse 3. He says, His divine power, talking about God's divine power, practically for the Jesus follower, he's referring to the Holy Spirit, who is God on the inside, a resource, a power available to the Christian for living. He says, His divine power has given us, given the Jesus follower, everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge through our knowledge. We're talking here not head knowledge, we're talking heart knowledge, we're talking relational knowledge, our knowledge of him, of Jesus, who called us by his own glory and goodness. Verse 4, it says, through these, he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. We bloom in our faith through the power of God. It's God who brings about the transformation in our lives. It's God, he says, that that brings us out of the corruption of this world. But we got to do our part. The way God works is that he patiently invites us to join him in this walk with him. Randy Alcohen put it this way in a blog. He said, mountain climbers could save time and energy if they just reach the summit in a helicopter. But their ultimate purpose is conquest, not efficiency. Sure, they want to reach a goal, but they desire to do it by testing and deepening their character, discipline, and resolve. God's way in this life for us, his plan for us, is to walk with us patiently and bring about transformation slowly. God doesn't make us Christ-like the moment we give our lives to Jesus. You don't go under the waters of baptism and then come out fully mature. No more problems, no more temptations, fully able to live a fully mature life in Christ. No, God's way is to transform us into the image of Jesus gradually. In our spiritual lives, as in our professional lives, as in our sports and hobbies, we improve and excel by handling failure and learning from it. Only in cultivating discipline, only giving ourselves to things of endurance and patience do we find satisfaction and reward. God's power is released when we give ourselves to work with the Spirit of God to bring about the characteristics of Jesus in our life. And so that's why we have verse 5, he says, for this very reason, make every effort, there it is, make every effort to add to your faith goodness. We've talked about goodness, and to goodness, knowledge, we've talked about what that means, and to knowledge, self-control, and to self-control, perseverance. That's what we we we talked about last week, and to perseverance, godliness. Godliness. Now I say godliness, and I think godliness is one of those words when we think about what godliness means and try to grip, get get a handle of how we are godliness, where one of the first the extremes that people go to is to think that to be godly means that we have to totally be removed from the sinful world. Like Christine Carpenter, we think godliness means that we we have to become an anchorite. We have to find ourselves and create for ourselves these holy huddles, these cells where we can be kept safe from the corruption of the world. We create these holy huddles that keep us away from the big, bad sinners out there in the world. And we want to create communities or places where we seal ourselves away from worldly temptations. But that is not what God calls us to do. Godliness, godliness is about dying to the world while still living in it. In Peter's first letter, he often described Jesus' followers as living saints. They live as saints within the world. In this world of with all his temptations and trials, we live for Jesus so that our lives are testimonies of God's grace and power and salvation. Jesus said, if you're going to be in my kingdom, if you're going to belong to me, you need to think of yourself as salt and light. Salt changes the environment it is in by change by bringing, you know, bringing a change to the taste. It transforms through seasoning. Light transforms by by bringing out what is real and beautiful and true and solid. And what Jesus wears is like if you're going to be a assault and light in this world, you're going to be people that bring about transformation because of my work within you. And what makes a Jesus follow assault and light in the world is godliness. Now we've been working through the series, uh, what we've been doing is we've been really giving some attention to the meaning of the word that Peter encourages us to give ourselves to. And today's word is godliness, and the Greek, the original word for godliness is eusebia. And you know I can say it however I want because there's none of you that can correct it because you don't know how to say it either. Maybe one family over there that speaks Greek a little bit, maybe. Eusebia. Well, Eusebia is one of those words that are made up of two words that bring one meaning. The first part of it is you, which means good, and sabia. Well, sabia has a variety of meanings. It could be devotion to, it could be worship of, it could be God fearing. And so you put those two concepts together. It's having good worship, or being good at being devoted to, or being good at God fearing. In the context of the scripture where we find it, I would I would translate this as appropriate worship. Living in a way that honors Jesus, living in a way that shows that that Jesus is important to you, that that his will and his way are the most valuable things to you, and you live in such a way that that honors him. And it's living in a way that that's not just on Sunday. Worship is not just what we do on Sunday, it's not just singing, it's not just, you know, praying and giving money and hearing a message from the Bible and serving. No, worship is something that we do with all of our lives. You see, part of the issue, I think, is that we have this mindset that when we become a Jesus follower, we we have these two worlds that we live in at the same time. We think, well, we we live in the secular world, we we have our secular life, and many times we'll use the language of this is the real world. Hey, you know, this is how it is in the real world. I get I get I get that every now and then when I'm talking about following Jesus in the world. Well, but in the real world, Dee Dee. Real world, right? So so we have our real world, which means going to work. It means how we drive on the highway, paying our bills, watching the Reds and Bengals play and having our hearts broken every season. It means our friendships with people that don't belong to church necessarily, but our neighbors and we've grown up with, and these are our real friends, and and so we have this this this this the secular life that we live in. But then with our secular life, we know now that we're Jesus followed, we we're called to a different way of living, and we call this our sacred life. And these are activities that maybe we we put up a little higher, we we consider them a little different than than our secular life. And so these are the things about going to church on Sunday and praying and reading our Bibles and going on a mission trip with the church, and and and this is the relationships, the friendships we have in our small groups and Bible studies. And so now with these two worlds that we live in, we think, well, they're there are two ways of operating in these two worlds. They're different rules, they're different expectations, and and I have to live in a way that that's appropriate to each. And so we think, well, when I live in my secular world, that means I can I have to I can talk a certain way. I can, you know, I can cuss regularly, I can, I can party, I can laugh at off-color jokes, I can lose my mind when someone cuts me off on the road. You know, I can I can I can make money the way I need to make money, however I need to, because I'm living in the real world and I gotta survive and pay my bills. And and a lot of times, you know, people have this notion, the real world, the secular, that's where I really have fun. Because you can't have fun in the sacred world because that's boring, it's locking yourself up in a cell, that kind of thinking. And then it comes to our sacred life, and we always say, well, you know, we we operate differently there. You you you watch your language in your in at church or around church people. You you come to church and you you say prayers and you do these things that we do that read the Bible, that we say worships God and be involved in a small group. And we have these, the separation of how we conduct ourselves in the real world, this the secular world, and how we conduct ourselves in the sacred world. Well, godliness has no separation, and what God calls you how to live is no separation. In fact, when you become a Jesus follower, the the teaching of Scripture is that everything in your life will become sacred. And sacred is not a step down in fun, but actually sacred is a step up in joy. You know, I I experience this every time someone discovers I'm a preacher. I don't tell pre people when I talk to people a lot of times that that aren't at church or not Christian folk, I don't tell them I'm a preacher until I really have to, when they flat out say, so what do you do? Because as soon as I say that, a lot of times what happens is like the conversation changes, the feeling changes, it's like, oh no. They'll apologize. I'm sorry, uh, I'm sorry for my language. Or, oh, uh the preacher should I better behave. I better not, you know, act fun or whatever I was doing. But I'm like, no, for the Jesus follower, there should be no separation between secular and sacred, and we should not assume that separation and therefore operate with different ways in these worlds. No. 1 Thessalonians 4.17 says, For God did not call us to be impure. God did not call us to live in a way that that dishonors him. That's what impure means, but to live a holy life. The word holy means to be set apart for God's purposes. So God did not call us to have parts of our life that are sacred and then other parts that are secular. No, everything needs to be sacred. Everything needs to be devoted to God. Godliness means that everything in life becomes sacred. There it is. Godliness is when every part of your life is sacred. So what does that mean? What does that look like? Well, it it means then the 3 a.m. feeding of that baby when you feel like you're tired and haven't slept in seven years. That's an act of worship. It means when you sit down to pay the bills and consider your financial decisions into the future, that's an act of worship. Paul says, hey, slaves, he's he's writing to slaves in the in the Roman first century world. He says, slaves, um, you know, don't change the way you operate as a slave dependent upon how well your master treats you. He says something that we may have heard before. He says, uh, do all things unto the Lord. Think about your job not as working for your master, but for working for Jesus. Now we can translate that to our own world with the four our bosses, right? Don't you don't work for your boss, you work for Jesus. And the responsibility upon you is to work for Jesus, even if your boss is not a good boss or disappointing. You work for Jesus. That translates, that changes everything. I love it when I hear athletes, it's the trend. You see athletes and they're interviewed after a win, after a great performance. A lot of these athletes will say, What? I just want to first thank my Savior, Lord and Lord in Jesus Christ, and you're like, eh, that's pretty awesome. And they've got it right. Why? Because they understand that their gift, their their athleticism, their skill in the sport is a gift from God, and that sport is a means by which they honor Christ. Why? Because everything for the Jesus follower is to be sacred. And when we do that, what we see is God releasing his power. But you do you see that when when you live in a godliness, it it legitimizes your witness. Now we we have challenged you as a church. We said, look, this year we want a thousand Mount Comal folks. We want adults, teens, children, we want a thousand Mount Carmel folks to make an effort to share their faith with one before the end of the year. They're one. And if you already shared your faith with your one, well done. You're an overachiever. Now find another one. Just one at a time, one at a time. But we said do that. But you know what really legitimizes that that sharing is that if your one knows and observes you striving to be consistent in your commitment to God in your day-to-day, what really strengthens your witness to your one is that they that that person knows that in in all aspects of your life, you're not perfect, but you're making the commitment to be consistent to what you say you believe. You know, uh statistics shows that we're seeing somewhat of a revival happening within this country, and it's being led by Generation Z, and it's being led by the men of Generation Z, and it's pretty amazing to see. And we're talking about how the decline of Christianity seems to have uh been checked a little bit. But the truth is, and the big picture is that the Christian voice within our country has become increasingly ineffective. That we're seeing less and less of our neighbors knowing Jesus and walking with Jesus and being part of church communities. And you have to wonder what's happened. And I think part of what's happened, part of what's happened is we've forgotten that our witness has to be about our godliness. In their book, The Way Back, Phil Cook and Jonathan Bach asked significant questions. They said, Why did the early church, the first church, succeed where we're failing? They said, How did they transform the Western world in such a relatively short time? Their answer, the discovery, was they did it because they did things that baffled the Romans in their day-to-day life. The early church didn't pick it, they didn't boycott, they didn't gripe about what's going on in their culture on Facebook. They just did things that astonished the Romans. They took in their abandoned babies. It was a practice that if you didn't want a child, you just threw the baby out onto the street. It was the Christians that picked up those babies, the Christians who started orphanages. They helped their sick and wounded, they restored dignity to the slaves, they were willing to die for what they believed, and after a while, their actions, their godliness opened the hearts of the Romans, where they began to ask, hey, tell us about this faith. Tell us about this Jesus that you believe in that you're willing to die for. Without confrontation, protest, or debate, godliness did its work. Godliness is when every part of your life is sacred. Now we're reminded of this by a couple of practices that that have their roots in the scriptures. There are two practices that the people of faith were called to do that follow God to be reminded of godliness and how it works. Uh there were two ways they would set people apart. Uh purify them before God so they could be have a relationship with God, and also then set them apart for work for God. The first way they did it was through uh through blood. You're like, What are you talking about? Noel, they would sacrifice an animal. And the blood of that animal was then either sprinkled or sprayed or wiped on the thing or person as a means of cleansing that person before God, as a symbolic of them being forgiven of their sins and being dedicated to God. So you get the story in the book of Exodus. People of Israel are, the Israelites are in Egypt in slavery, and Moses is leading, trying to get them out, and God is bringing plague after plague, and you get to the tenth plague, which is the plague of where where all force born in the nation of Egypt are going to be killed by the angel of death. And you've got the situation where God says to the people, look, in order to escape this death, here's what you got to do. You sacrifice the lamb, you get the blood of the lamb, you put it on the doorposts of your house, because when the angel of death comes to your house, you'll see the blood and pass over. The blood covers the family from death. You go the time in which, you know, the tools for worship for the tabernacle in the temple, they're dedicated to God. And in order for their first dedication, there's a sacrifice of the blood of that animal sprinkled on those tools to make them pure for service for God. The high priest is dedicated to service to God. And the way they did it, blood of an animal sacrificed to God, a blood of a ram. And then it's interesting, uh, the blood is taken in part, is put on his ear, right earlobe, some parts put on his right thumb, and another is put on his right big toe. Dedicated to God, whole covering. So you've got this concept of blood. And then in the New Testament, what are we told? We're told Jesus is the blood, is the Lamb of God, perfect Lamb of God, whose blood covers us from our sins. 1 John 1, 7. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. And here it is. And the blood of Jesus, his son, purifies us from all sin. The blood purifies us all, not just part of us, all of us. All become sacred and pure before God. 1 Peter 1, he says, For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver and gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. And when you're redeemed by the blood of Christ, then everything in your life is to be sacred. And so let's uh let's do something. All of you, hopefully, many of you grabbed your communion packet here. And there's a significance here, because blood's the symbolic symbol of blood is involved here. Let's get out the bread. Jesus said, eat this bread and remember. Remember me. Remember my body broken, given up on the cross, life given up on the cross, in order to pay the price that every one of us was due to pay. And so let us eat the bread and remember Jesus. Then he said he took the cup and he said, This is my blood poured out for many, poured out for the sins of the world. The blood. The blood of Jesus that covers us. And so let's drink of the cup, remembering the blood that is called to cover us. And so now that we've done that, I want you to ask another question before we move on. Now that you've accepted, or maybe you've taken this communion, maybe you need to ask the question, ask this question, all of us. What parts of who you are needs to be made pure with before God in your life? What parts of your life still needs to be covered in the blood to be made sacred? Maybe it's it's your tongue that that needs to be purified because you have a problem with some bad language. Maybe it's your spending habits, maybe it's your eating habits, maybe it's your sex life, your set your decisions regarding that, maybe it's your attitude, maybe it's your thinking, I don't know. What needs to be be covered in the blood of Christ to be made pure for God? And what what in what do you need to repent of? That means to acknowledge, yes, Lord, this is what needs to be pure, and I need to give it to you, and I need to dedicate this part of my life to you. It needs to be purified. I accept the blood of Jesus forgiveness, and I need to dedicate that. And this is where we come to the second biblical practice where we see people were dedicated for God. It's the practice where people were anointed with oil. It was usually oil and prayer and the laying of hands. And oil is a symbolic, it's a physical thing that carries a spiritual meaning. It's a symbolic of the prayer and the presence of God's Spirit, the prayer and presence of God's Spirit to dedicate for service and to bring about the power of God in the life of that person and specifically in healing. So you see oil and laying of hands happening with the young man David. David was a shepherd, was a shepherd to his father, youngest of his sons, Jesse, his father's sons, and and so he was selected by God to be the next king of Israel. And God spoke to Samuel and said, Don't look at how he looks, like he doesn't look kingly to you now, but I see his heart. And what did Samuel do? He poured oil on David, laid hands, and dedicated him to that calling in his life. Aaron, the first high priest we know, is was dedicated to God with the anointing of oil. In Jesus' ministry, he he implemented this. He said, He sent out his twelve apostles in training during his ministry, and he said, This is what you need to do. You need to go out into the people and you need to cast out demons, preach the good news, and heal them. And this is what it says, Mark chapter 6. They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them. The same ministry is then given to the to the church, to the elders of the church. James 5, 14. Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And so we have the blood of Jesus that brings brings about purification, and then you have this anointing of oil, which is a representative of the Holy Spirit. The presence of the Spirit is like a spiritual anointing of oil to set you apart for God's purposes. It heals your life from sin sickness. And so that is something we do at Mount Carmel. If you are sick and and you want prayer from the elders, it says, call upon the elders and they will gather and they will anoint you with oil and pray for you, for your healing, seeking God to bring about that healing in your life. It's why we we have the practice of when we do ordinations, we ordain our elders to the service of shepherding the flock. We we use oil in anointing them. And so to serve as an example, we want to affirm the calling by anointing with oil of Sean Anderson. Sean is uh was an elder, took some time away, and now is back, and we just want to affirm that calling. I'm gonna ask the elders that are present to come up. Sean is being called by the Spirit, and we want to acknowledge that calling as our elders. So our elders are coming up here, and we're going to uh pray and anoint him with oil. But we also want this to serve as an example to you that you're also called to have a life that's anointed of the Spirit, have a life that that really is called to be all dedicated to God in serving him. And so would you pray with us? Larry Elliott's gonna pray. I'm gonna give him a mic so he can pray. Uh and uh he's gonna pray with pray, lead us in the prayer. Know that when you say amen, you're saying, I agree. You're saying, God, may it be so. I I acknowledge and this prayer. And so we're gonna pray together, and after we pray, we'll be dismissed to go on uh go on from here in that.

SPEAKER_01 30:28

Let's pray together, Heavenly Father, God Almighty, Almighty God. We come before you today to uh ordain Sean Anderson, uh, a godly man, a man who's living his life to your will, listening to the Holy Spirit. We ask for your protection of him. We ask for you to uh just bless him and his family. We ask you to bless Robin, a godly woman, both set apart as righteous people, raising a righteous family, serving as examples to others as a Christian life. My brothers and I, we know Sean to be a godly man, a righteous man, a man who takes humility and sincerity to heart in his service to others. In Matthew 22, we are told by Jesus that your first commandment, your greatest commandment, is to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. And Jesus goes on to say, Love your neighbor as you love yourself. This is the heart of service. This is an example of your love to God. As an elder, we anoint you with oil, and we know that you and Robin will continue in service faithfully to our Lord Jesus and to God, with the Holy Spirit moving through you in all of this. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 32:14

Thank you. Thank you for being with us. Uh thank you for joining our time. If you have a need for prayer for uh one of our elders to be praying with you uh regarding issues that you're dealing with, please uh please come forward and let them know. Have a great Sunday.