Am I Trying to Earn My Salvation Through My Own Effort?

Announcer: Today on Focal Point with Pastor Mike Fabarez.
Pastor Mike Fabarez: You're not going to live an effective Christian life to the level that God would want you to without him putting you through the equipping process to do it. The Bible says that the prayer should be of our heart, not only would you let my life be pleasing to you as you move me to do the right things, but would you prepare me, equip me with everything good for doing his will.
Announcer: The greatest news about the Christian faith is that we don't have to save ourselves. Today on Focal Point, we're reminded that there's nothing in the Christian life that we do on our own. God is busy working in us. Pastor Mike begins a message called Interdependence Instead of Independence. That is, the healthy Christian has a relationship with God that is one of total dependence. And by the way, if you're new to Focal Point, we'd like to send you Pastor Mike's latest booklet called Fighting for Peace absolutely free. Reach out online at focalpointradio.org. Well, now here's Pastor Mike.
Pastor Mike Fabarez: Get your Bibles out. That'd be a good place to start. Let's go to the middle of the Bible and you'll find the book of Psalms. Turn right two books and you'll find the book of Ecclesiastes. And while you're turning there, let me vent for just a minute. Would that be all right? Sidebar, that's right. There are some phrases that creep into the Christian vocabulary that are unfortunate, in my humble opinion, and misleading, I think I could make the case. Take for instance the phrase in description of Christ as our personal savior. There's one for you. Personal savior. I hope all of us as Sunday school grads can recognize that there is no such phrase in the Bible. It doesn't mean it's bad necessarily, but let's start with that. You're not going to find the phrase personal savior in the Old Testament, you're not going to find it in the New Testament. I don't care what kind of newfangled translation you're carrying around, you're not going to find it. There's no Hebrew or Greek combination of words that are ever going to lead any translator to the phrase personal savior. Now, the word personal is not that it's not known as an adjective. You'll find the word personal throughout the Bible. Usually though, it has to do with a description about some kind of commodity. And it is sometimes used for people. But the way it's used in the Bible is for well-to-do people, princes, lords, kings, who have personal servants or personal advisors or personal attendants or personal assistants. It's never though going to be described in scripture that someone has a personal savior. The phrases in the scripture that are chosen to describe Christ or deity in general are never so personalized. They're not privatized. They're not so individual and small. They're much larger and broader and greater. As a matter of fact, as we get in a few minutes to Hebrews 13, you'll find words like megas, great, our great savior, our great king, the great shepherd. And if ever there was going to be a term or an adjective personal applied to someone, it wouldn't be applied to the great one, the central one, the main one. It would maybe be applied to us. You might be his personal servant, but he is not your personal savior. I mean, he is individual and we are corporate. He is not a commodity that we utilize. He is the king and the hub and the center and we are parts of that. We come to him as a group. Even the word shepherd that we'll encounter in our benediction passage today in Hebrews 13, he's the shepherd and that makes us the sheep. We're a part of his flock and it's a corporate thing. The concept of individuality, of individualism, of independence, of autonomy, it's just always frowned upon in scripture. And even in the most terse and simple phrases from the sage preacher in Ecclesiastes chapter four. That's why I want to start here. I think it's a good reminder that even as Solomon looks back on his life, if there'd ever been a guy who could write the been there done that book, this is it. I mean, he looks back on having everything, trying everything, exploring everything. And he says, you know, when it comes down to it, individualism just doesn't make any sense. And he makes several arguments in chapter four. In verse number nine, he says, just think about it. Individualism has a lot of drawbacks. Two, for instance, are better than one. And it's not that he's arguing for partnerships or pairing, as we'll see at the end of verse 12. This is just a principle and argument from lesser to greater. If you're going to be alone, that's not good. We need teams. We need groups. Even two are better than one because they'll have a good return when they partner up for work. They have a lot more benefit. And if two are better than one, you can count on the fact that four are better than two and certainly eight is better than four. And the teamwork is always better than individual work. I know we like to work alone and you know, if you want it done right, do it yourself and all that stuff that's infiltrated our culture. But the Bible says that doesn't make any sense. Oh, and if you have a need, I mean, if ever something goes wrong in your life, you'll find out the folly of individualism. He says in the next verse, verse 10, if you fall down, and I know this sounds very dramatic, very literal, but you understand it's representative of all kinds of things in our lives. It's not just tripping physically. If you fall down, it's good to have someone there to pick you up. His friend can help him up. But look at this phrase: pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up. You're going to go it alone, you're going to live it alone, you're going to be individual and you're not going to build those relationships if you're not going to have a team around you. Wow, I wouldn't want to have any problems because you're going to have a hard time if you've tried to live your life as an individual. And if there's need, as simple and obviously this is representative of lots of things in our life, he says in verse 11, if the two lie down, they can keep warm, but how can someone keep warm alone? Symbolic of several things that we encounter in our lives. The one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. And again, this is not a point for pairing up or having partnerships. It's about groups. He says, and let's just expand on it now: a cord of three strands, not easily broken. And if a cord of three strands is strong, you can imagine what six strands will do or 12 strands will do. There's strength in numbers. There's warmth in collective community. There's help in team. And again, that's just obvious simple stuff in the Bible. But in a culture that values the individual, in a culture that sees independence as a personal virtue and not a corporate virtue, it's hard for us to see that as clearly as the Bible does. As a matter of fact, we're even willing to describe Christ as our personal savior, like a personal computer or a personal groomer or something. He's not a personal anything to you. You may be a personal something to him, but he's the king of kings. He's the great shepherd and you're just a part of his body. And you are here corporately to recognize that as we address him, as we follow him, as we depend on him, we do that together. We depend together on him. We depend together on what he's revealed. We depend together on one another. There's an interdependence about the biblical perspective of the Christian life. We've been a long time in Hebrews and we've gone to a lot of places in the argumentation of the book of Hebrews. But we come to the end of it today in Hebrews chapter 13. I want to try to stretch the umbrella of the closing theme of Hebrews into these three different distinctive thoughts. They're here and the commonality of the benediction in verses 20 and 21 and the personal note about the letter itself in verse 22, and then the private kind of personal update, the postscript in 23 and 25 is something that I think might all fall under the banner of Ecclesiastes chapter four. There is something about our corporate dependence on God and on each other that may come to the surface as we look at this a little closer. Read it with me in verse 20. We'll read all the way to the end of the chapter. He says: May the God of peace—it's a prayer. May the God of peace who, through the blood of the eternal covenant—now the themes kind of rush to our minds as to where we've been in Hebrews. Yes, the blood of the eternal covenant, the new covenant, that's not the old covenant, that's the culmination of the old covenant, the eternal final covenant. May this God of peace who, through the blood of the eternal covenant, brought back from the dead our Lord, our king Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep of which we're all a part of his flock. May he equip you—here's the verb now. May he equip you with everything good for doing his will. And here's something else: and may he work in us what is pleasing to him. And let him do that through—this is an interesting kind of profound statement—through Jesus Christ. And we'll give him credit for it, to whom be glory forever and ever, amen. And that's the end of the book, but there's more. Okay, I mean, it sounds like the end, but then he's done with the good word, the benediction. Now he says this, verse 22: Brothers, hey, I just urge you, I'm pleading with you, I'm strongly exhorting you to bear with my word of exhortation. Now he's referring to the whole letter. He says: For I've written you only a short letter. And you're saying, if that was short, I'd hate to see a long one. Right? I mean, we've been working through this for a long time. But it is a short letter because if you think about the grand themes of this text, it certainly can't be developed in the 13 chapters that he spent on it. And it is shorter than Romans and it's shorter than 1 Corinthians word for word at least, it's shorter. And it's not all of God's revelation, but it's a part of it. And so he says, I want you to bear with my word of exhortation. And then he says some personal things, postscript, verse 23 through 25. I want you to know that our brother Timothy, which we assume is the Timothy that we know of in other letters in the New Testament, he's been released. And we're saying, well, we didn't even know he was in prisoned. And we didn't. There's no other place in the Bible we know of that imprisonment. But apparently he was in prison. We assume that's what he's released from. He says, listen, and he's out, okay? And we suppose from jail. And if he arrives soon from wherever the writer of Hebrews is, perhaps Italy, it says, I'll come with him to see you. Okay? Now, greet all your leaders—we've talked about them in the chapter twice in chapter 13—and all of God's people, you flock of God. And then he says this: those in Italy send you their greetings. Now, they're not there face to face, but they know they share a common bond with you, the bond of loving God focused on faith in Christ and receiving the grace of God. He says they send you their greetings and by the way, speaking of grace, grace be with all of you. End of book. This closing series of statements reminds us from verses 20 to 21 of our dependence upon God. In verse 22, as the early first-generation recipients, we have a sense of dependence on the revelation of God, the written word of God. And then this kind of hodgepodge of statements about personal pronouns and people and places and saints all over the world, this reminder of our dependence on each other. Let's look at those closely, each one of them. Number one, verses 20 and 21, jot this down if you would. It'd be important for us as he ends with this benediction, which after all these commands about how to live the Christian life, he now says, listen, it all comes down to God making sure it happens in your life. I mean, look at the main verb down there at the bottom of verse 21: may he work in us what's pleasing to him. I mean, this is instruction about how to live the Christian life. And he says: may he get it done in you. Okay, there is this sense that we are dependent upon God to do anything good for God. Does that sound like John 15? I am the vine, you're the branches, my father's the vine dresser. If you want to do anything, you're going to have to abide in me, remain in me, hold tightly to me. Number one on your outline, let's just confess that reality. Number one: you and I, we need to confess our dependence on God's power. Everything we've learned in Hebrews cannot be done without God. Okay, from even the simple commands of assembling together. And he says: don't forsake the assembling of yourselves together. Even being faithful to attend your local church cannot be done, the Bible says—I mean, this is the underlying assumption—unless God helps you do it. He has to make this happen in you. Now, that paradox is throughout the scripture. I mean, it sounds a lot like Philippians 2: work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Remember that passage? I mean, we're to work. This takes effort and work. But the reality—as a matter of fact, let's look at that. Let's go to Philippians chapter 2, verse 12. This is the passage that I quoted. Therefore, dear friends, as you've always obeyed, not only in my presence but now much more in my absence—this is obviously some perfection, but they're consistently trying to follow the dictates of God's word. He says: continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. We've heard that, we've referred to it throughout the book of Hebrews. It is a work, it takes work and effort. Okay? Now, if that were all there was to the sentence, we'd say: okay, pull up yourself by your bootstraps, eat your power bar, drink your orange juice, and live for God. Okay? But here's the other part to it, the other side of the coin, verse number 13: for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. That's just a blatant parallel passage to what we just read. May God work in you what is pleasing to him. I want to please God, don't you want to please God? As a Christian, we'd like to live a life that is pleasing to God. It would be good for you and it would be glorifying to him. So let's live a life that pleases God. You can't do it without him, no matter how hard you try. So you need to confess the dependence that we are stated to have in scripture. Just confess it to God all the time. Tell God that. And you intuitively sometimes in our failures, we cry out to God that way, don't we? God, oh just help me live the Christian life. God help me do the right thing. Help me say no to sin. Help me say yes to righteousness. That's a great prayer. It may feel pathetic when you pray it, right? But it's the best prayer you can pray because it confesses the obvious assertion of scripture: you can't do it without him. You are hopelessly dependent on God to do the right thing, to avoid the wrong thing, to stand up for him, to step out for him, to live the dictates of God's word. You need God. Let's confess our dependence on God. You need God. And if you want to get specific in your soteriology, if you will, in the process of sanctification. We're saved and now we're going to grow up in him. You gotta know that specifically the identified source of this power in your life is the third person of the Godhead. Right? The Bible's super clear on this. The thing that is fueling you, the way that God works in you to will and to work for his good pleasure, is the person of the Holy Spirit. That's what the Bible says. Here's how it was described in the gospels: the Holy Spirit, he says—Jesus says to his disciples—is with you, but then he's going to be in you. Now, that just means there's a kind of influence that the spirit is going to have on the way you think, the way you act, the temptations that you encounter, that you will have a new kind of capacity to do the right things, to live a life that is pleasing to him. A lot of times people like to use Old Testament character studies as examples of the Christian life. And though there's some value in that—and I've done that, and it's good to hold them up and say, what can we learn from them—you gotta understand you've got a capacity that they didn't have. You have the—the Bible says—the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And from the Old Testament, the prophets looked forward to that and said, wow, those new covenant believers are going to have an advantage that we never had. Turn for instance to the book of Ezekiel. Let me show it to you. They looked with a sense of anticipation that one day God would do something not just to us, not just changing us, but giving us his own person that would change the way we live life. And I just think if that's the way God has described it, it would be good for us to admit it, to confess it, to affirm it. Ezekiel 36. Here is the promised change between the old covenant and the eternal covenant, if you will. The old covenant and the resolved covenant, also called the new covenant. Here it comes. He says, verse 26: I will give you a new heart. This is Ezekiel 36:26. And I will put a new spirit in you. Now, the translators are right here. Is this a small 's' or a large 'S'? Capital 'S' or small 's'? Small 's'. Okay? Paul liked to describe it this way: we're a new person in Christ. He talked about his old man and now the new man. Paul put it this way in 2 Corinthians 5: he said, you are a new creation in Christ. There is something about you that is different when you put your trust in Jesus and repent of your sins. But it's more than that. He's not just going to give you a new heart. It's like removing a rock-hard heart and giving you a heart of flesh. But look at verse 27. He says: I'm also going to put my spirit in you. Capital 'S' or small 's'? Capital 'S'. This is different now. I get a new heart. Okay? I have a new capacity because God has made me new. But now he says I'm going to jam, if you will, the third person of the Godhead into your life. And so your personality is going to be influenced by this person of the Godhead. And the spirit is going to indwell you. I'm going to put my spirit in you, and I love this verb: and move you. Do you see that? To follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. That's an internal motivation, an internal empowerment, an internal influence, an internal propensity you never had. And if you were an Old Testament saint, okay, you wouldn't have this experience. You might have, as Jesus said to the disciples, an external pressure to do right. But now there's an internal drive to do right. I'm going to move them because my spirit's going to live in them. I mean, let me just get specific here. We need to depend on that spirit. Not my spirit, not my knowledge, not my background, not my track record, not my—I need to depend on the spirit to have his way in my life. I mean, if I look at my Christian life and look at the Bible and say I'd like to be more like what the Bible tells me to be, I gotta defer to the spirit. And it'd be good for us to talk to him and say: Holy Spirit, help me. Spirit, drive me. Spirit, change my desire here. Spirit, make me strong against this temptation in my life. I need to depend on the Holy Spirit. There's nothing that the paracletos would want more, the helper, right? The one who is here to drive us to do the right thing, than for us to acknowledge our need for his help. If we're going to do anything in response to the book of Hebrews, let us admit, confess, our need for the spirit to do his work in our life. May the God of peace who, through the blood of the eternal covenant, brought back from the dead this Christ, this Lord Christ, the great shepherd of the sheep. May he equip you. And then he says, may he work in us what is pleasing to him. That's what we want. Is that your prayer? It needs to be. Why don't we pray it more often? Why don't we make that a daily part of our lives: Holy Spirit, help me. I need it. Drive me forward to live the truths of the scripture. But it's not just that. Okay, there's a intermediate step. And I know we're taking this backward, but let's work backwards through verse 21. I want him to work in me what's pleasing to him, but it's going to be through Jesus Christ to whom be the glory, the credit forever and ever. But look up at the first verb in verse 21. The prayer starts with this, once we get past the appellations and the descriptions of Christ and God. He says: may he equip you with everything good for doing his will. There is a preparation for living a life that's more pleasing to him. The book of Hebrews, much of it, especially the second half, has been about sanctification. And it's not just that we say, God, I want your spirit just to do it, live that, I'll make every effort, but you do that in me. You're not going to live an effective Christian life to the level that God would want you to without him putting you through the equipping process to do it. The Bible says that the prayer should be of our heart, not only would you let my life be pleasing to you as you move me to do the right things, but would you prepare me, equip me with everything good for doing his will. Okay? And I know that, you know, we look at passages like that, we usually have one kind of focused prayer. You know, God, it'd be really good if I had more money, for instance. That would be good. I could be a better servant. If I had better health, maybe I could serve you better. But that's probably not the preferred and most frequent method of God's equipping that he does in your life. God's equipping, unfortunately, though it's described as everything good, we don't get to the good without going through the bad and the difficult. Think about it that way. You see all the weight loss programs, right? These people that are telling you, wouldn't it be great if you were healthy and toned and fit, right? They're pitching that to me every day, right? Obviously I'm not buying it. But they're saying, hey, would you like to be fit and healthy? And they're giving you all the good stuff and they're showing guys and they're ripped and fit—be like that guy. Wouldn't it be great to be healthy and fit? They make it sound so easy, don't they? But it's not. Those of you that have actually taken them up on the offer, it's hard. The equipping, if you will, the means to an end. The end is great, it's good. But the means to an end is difficult.