The Lord is so good he hasn’t left it up to you or me to produce the fruit that is pleasing to him. A lot of the reason why we end up in fear and torment is because we really do think that we are responsible to produce the fruit and to do the deed– you know to “get the job done”.
I was listening to a football game last night on the radio as I drove and I was listening to the commentators and the expert commentators( ex ex- football players) and they were critiquing the players and the team. One team was powering ahead and the other team had stalled and was failing to score anything in the second half of the match. They were talking about this particular “losing” team and what their “troubles” are and how everyone had hoped they would do better and yet they can’t produce the goods and you know it’s not the first time I’ve realised that this toxic performance orientation that pervades sport, especially here in Australia, if you listen to it a lot and watch it a lot, you pick it up, this toxic sort of judgemental habit of judging people based on what they produce and how they perform.
When a player doesn’t do well they talk scathingly about that player and his performance and they say, “What will the coach say!?” and “What should the coach say to get more out of this team?”… and you know it’s usually with threats.. “You can do better! You must do better or else!” This is a terrible mindset to have… and if you’ve had that as a small boy or girl growing up from your parents and your community and your teams that you’ve been in… if you played sport… it’s not just in sport… it’s in the academic arena as well. Children are pressured, there’s expectation to become the best student, to go through college or university– we call it… and get honours… and you know a “straight A student” —100% on your exams.
In Asian cultures this is a terrible burden placed upon children, in my opinion and it’s all an expectation that you must do all you can to produce perfection and really it’s a recipe for inward disaster for so many people whether it’s in the sporting arena or in the academic arena.
The same can be said in the in relational sphere.. with relationships.. you know?.. You have to be the perfect wife the perfect husband the perfect mother or father and so on. Then it comes down to church. You have to be “a good Christian”. You have to be the best you that you can be… you have to be the best Christian.. and whatever that means! It might not even have been told to you what it is to be the “best Christian” or a “good Christian”– but you pick it up– Your soul –the flesh mind– picks up these things and brings these things into your Christianity from before you became a believer. It just picks it up from your culture: that you are responsible to do your very best to please God. This sets us up for defeat and failure until we learn the new covenant basically. We can go for many, many years on that cycle of trying to produce the fruit and trying to get good marks for God and then failing.
You see it in sports. You see that a player “gets dropped”(omitted) from the team. he gets put in the second(lower) team and he’s not in the limelight anymore on the television… he’s not being talked about… even though he had sponsorship at one point… but now they’ve had to drop him as punishment usually for him to go back to the lower grade and prove that he is worthy of being chosen again to be in the A team. So they go back to the gym. They go back and do the basics again and with their fitness and their skills for the game and their ball handling and so on, all so they can get back into the “A team.” This struggle is so they fulfil their great potential that they have… their great potential… that’s something I heard all through my school years: “Dennis has great potential but he’s too busy having fun”… I never did please my teachers. That that phrase “he has great potential– if only– if only he would do this— if only he would do that!” We bring that (expectation/responsibilty) into our Christian walk… and we believe that God is like that… writing out our report card and saying “Dennis you have great potential in my kingdom but if… you know… if you don’t study hard.. and do this and do that… then I can never use you to that potential.” Well again that’s the old covenant that’s the flesh it isn’t God and yet so much of the church is fixated on that approach.
I believe it’s nonsense. It causes us a lot of anguish. But God uses even that. It’s the Romans 7 cycle of ‘trying hard to do something and not being able to do it’… ‘Trying hard not to do something but not being able to stop doing it.’ Paul talked about that when he discovered that he couldn’t stop coveting. He had to learn that it’s no longer Paul living… someone else… has come to live in me… and things are not the same anymore now that you’re a believer.
That old flesh mind and that old way of living is death. It’s what I’ve been trying to talk about here– Where you believe that you are responsible and that you have within you what it takes to obey God… to not sin.. to preach and witness and so on… That you have what it takes and this is a result of the fall… this is the result of Adam’s choice… where he chose to live by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.. He chose outward obedience— which is what the law is— what the old covenant is. Paul called it the ministry of condemnation or the ministry of death. It’s outward obedience. It’s obeying the letter which kills— “the letter kills but the spirit gives life”…
You’ll find Paul contrasting the inner with the outer and outer obedience never pleases God. God says “this people draw near to me with their lips but their hearts are far from Me.” This is a problem and it happens because of this whole mechanism where we have come to believe since an early age that we are responsible and we are separate from God or anyone else it’s up to us or nothing will happen.”You have what it takes” we’re told… and “it’s up to you to work on it so that you will be the best version of you for God.” Well that’s a whole lot of rubbish friend… it’s a whole lot of rubbish… and it leaves us afraid… because we fail… it leaves us scared out of our wits… as one brother said overnight and commented on my video.
It leaves us terrified because we fail and the failure is normal but it increases the more you try! The more you try the worse it gets! Romans 7 “the things I want to do I cannot do the things I don’t want to do I do. Who will deliver me?” Paul said. Then he answered himself “I thank God through Jesus Christ my Lord” —“There is now therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit.”
You see God knew that because of the weakness(mortality) of human flesh we could never measure up– that we could never keep the law or bear fruit or obey perfectly… we could never do it and that’s what Romans 8: says. Therefore ‘God sent his own son, in the likeness of human flesh, he condemned sin in the flesh.’ See the problem is very basic… we are mortal… we are not immortal yet… and because we are mortals we’re not able to produce perfection. Many strive to produce perfection whether it’s academic or in religion it’s still all a sham… It’s still filthy rags and falling short because whatever is born of the flesh is flesh. “The words I speak to you” Jesus said “are life”.. “they’re spirit and they are life”– “the flesh profits nothing.” They’d had a lot of religious teaching. The Pharisees had taught them a lot and it was all the flesh it was not the spirit… oh boy 🙁
Unless we receive the spiritual knowledge and come to know God as he really is instead of man’s ideas of what God is… man’s ideas of what man is… and man’s ideas of what salvation is… In everything man has put his ideas on all of these important things… and these ruling definitions have become the groundwork… the foundation …that has caused us to go off track… it’s caused us to miss the mark..
We’ve started off on a wrong foundation and one of those things is that you are responsible before God to produce the fruit even though we know that Jesus said in John five “I of my own self can do nothing,” we don’t see it. There’s a blindness over us because we’re still striving so hard to do things for God. We don’t even acknowledge what Jesus said, we don’t believe it. We really do believe that Jesus could do whatever he wanted because he was God the Son… and yet nowhere in the scriptures is he called “God the Son”.. that’s man’s idea. It started with Augustine in around 500 AD –Jesus is ‘the son of God’ he’s not ‘God the son’ — so Jesus was speaking the truth not just once but three or four times he said “I of my own self can do nothing” Nothing! No thing!!
People said “Wow he does all things well.” Yeah but Jesus said “The works I do- the Father has given me them to do –and the words I speak the Father– they’re the Father’s words– and the Father’s power and works.
Man was created to contain God.. To contain God. Not just in a little deposit– but the person of God– as one with our person— joined together as one– he is the life– we are the container. But for the container to think that it can do anything on its own is ridiculous— just as Jesus used the metaphor of the vine and the branches the branch doesn’t bear the fruit the vine bears the fruit. The life flows through the vine and yet we try so hard because we feel we’re responsible to bear fruit for God… or else… or else! So terror and fear get a hold of us and the Accuser – the Devil accuses us of our poor performance, which only causes us to try harder or to give up and to walk away from the whole thing because we just don’t know how it works. Many times I’ve said to the Lord Lord it just doesn’t [Laughter] work!
The Lord is very patient with us–Very patient. You already have the truth in you.. You already have Jesus in you. Yet we haven’t yet learned to rest in him and to lean our head upon him and to stop trying to be a Christian. To stop trying to be pleasing to everybody… we haven’t yet let go of that…God will do it in us.. He will.
Along the way you’ve got to know that He is for you.. It’s not God who condemns you– He died for you! He justified you! He is for you! He never gives up on you! He knows already that you have a good end and the end intended by the Lord is full conformity to the image of Jesus Christ. That’s what God’s goal is– That ‘you would be conformed to the image of his son’ Romans 8:29,30. That is the goal of the Holy Spirit who has been given to you to conform you to the image of his son. That you would be ‘two persons sharing the same form’.. Jesus and you.. Jesus and you inside of your body now.. The ‘Jesus and you’ is different than the ‘Jesus and me’… My personality, everything about me, Jesus has taken and has assimilated to become him. Everything that belongs to Jesus is become part of me so that when you see me you see Jesus.. as me. The same is said of you. When I see you brother or sister I see Jesus.. as you. Weak fumbling you.. occasionally falls and sins… you are still one with Jesus Christ …you are still one with him… He falls with you! He grovels down on the ground with you… He doesn’t ever leave you.
When you are grieved and troubled he is grieved and troubled… when you are feeling terrible because you can’t overcome some sin he is with you in it.. he’s not going to leave you… he has become one with you.. oh hallelujah there’s such an anointing on this… He has become one with you in all your weakness, in all your failure, in all your failure he never turns his back… oh my Lord Jesus… you’re so good to us… you’re so kind to us.. Lord open our eyes that we might know you as you really are.. and set us free from the Accuser who has had such ground in our lives.. our minds… Lord show us your covenant.. show us your new covenant.. in Jesus name!
Psalm 25
Show me Your ways, O Lord;
Teach me Your paths.
5 Lead me in Your truth and teach me,
For You are the God of my salvation;
On You I wait all the day.
6 Remember, O Lord, Your tender mercies and Your lovingkindnesses,
For they are from of old.
7 Do not remember the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions;
According to Your mercy remember me,
For Your goodness’ sake, O Lord.
8 Good and upright is the Lord;
Therefore He teaches sinners in the way.
9 The humble He guides in justice,
And the humble He teaches His way.
10 All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth,
To such as keep His covenant and His testimonies.
11 For Your name’s sake, O Lord,
Pardon my iniquity, for it is great.
12 Who is the man that fears the Lord?
Him shall [b]He teach in the way He chooses.
13 He himself shall dwell in [c]prosperity,
And his descendants shall inherit the earth.
14 The secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him,
And He will show them His covenant.
15 My eyes are ever toward the Lord,
For He shall [d]pluck my feet out of the net.
16 Turn Yourself to me, and have mercy on me,
For I am [e]desolate and afflicted.
17 The troubles of my heart have enlarged;
Bring me out of my distresses!
18 Look on my affliction and my pain,
And forgive all my sins.