Well thank you Paul very much for that and I appreciate you letting me know about all of the scenic views of that golf course because Paul's golfed with me and he knows that I'll be in those.
And that it would be nice to be able to be out in the woods on a golaf course trying to find the green but be able to see pictures of the city. That would be very nice.
Much different than here at Wicker Park or Centennial but on behalf of just my family, five years now which is insane to think five. Archie I know it's not 29 and a half and you'll hold that over me for a long time but we have been so blessed over the last five years.
Here's to whoever knows how much more we know God does but we're not looking to jump off anytime soon. We love you guys. We appreciate the support. I look over there often and see in 153 years the list of pastors that you've had and it's not very long.
Especially because two of those were associates. And that shows a church committed to their pastors. Now what does that mean? That means love, support, encouragement, accountability.
What does that not mean? That you let me get my way all the time. I love that I get told no by my elders. I get told no by my deacons. I get told no by my staff. I get told no by my wife.
I get told no by my kids. A bunch of you have told me no. And so I can appreciate that back and forth because sometimes you find in your heart and say not yet. And that's great.
And sometimes that's what I need. But for the last five years and forever many more, thank you and we love you so much and we appreciate that recognition.
Now I'm not 100% sure how we're going to turn this to a very interesting section of the book of Hebrews. Probably one of the most controversial when it comes to reform thought and what we would call more Armenian thought.
And so that just a really easy understanding of that. A reform thought is more covenant based. That God is sovereign. God's hand is all figured out and God's done all the work.
Armenians believe that up to about 90%. The 10% where we differ is the understanding of faith, whether you can lose it or not, and that of salvation.
One of the things that we talked about in the baptism today is that God is the one doing the work and he is doing it within us and he has control over that.
An easy way to understand an Armenian thought is they believe that God is doing the work. They so do. They believe that God is sovereign.
They believe in all of that, but they believe that there is a moment of recognition in the person that they make that decision.
So we've all sung the song, I have decided to follow Jesus. Reform people don't really like that. Is that a joke? Absolutely. Was it a bad one? Certainly.
But the theology still holds true that the song for more of a reform would be, God's always been there, God will always be there, and he will enlighten you to his truth.
Right? Yeah, that was right off the spot. Thank you, Nikki, for that recognition.
But it's an understanding that there is a God that has already done the work, doing the work, will do the work, that we continue to walk in.
But then you get to this chapter of Hebrews and it gets really dicey because this is the section of the book of Hebrews and in the scriptures where it talks about a shallow or a false connection.
A false conversion or faith in general. So, the umbrella of grace abounds like it does every Sunday, but there is an understanding in the truth of God's word this morning that a foundationless and a fruitless faith is not inherently faith.
So, this may get uncomfortable. Olivia, I get it. You're already there. We may want to weep a little bit because this is going to put a very sharp light and a very big microscope on your faith, on my faith, and the idea of faith in general.
Okay? So, that up front. Where are my athletes? How many people were some kind of athlete? And mathletes is a thing too, but I get all that, right? Mathlete, it's in the name. How many people played some kind of sports growing up?
Okay. So, just shout some out. What kind of athletes do we have? Basketball, baseball, softball, everything ball. Got it. Okay?
What other kind of athletes do we have that didn't have to do with the ball? Wrestling, ooh, love it. Track, absolutely. Running is a sport, absolutely. I just offended Nikki and my wife because they were both runners.
Any other kind of athletes? Cheerleading. Careful. Cheerleading, that competitive cheerleading is legit, absolutely, right? Gymnastics, absolutely. Others? Sure, tumbling and golf, absolutely.
Not the way I play, but yeah, some people find that athletically competitive, absolutely. The golfing, not the tumbling. But one of the things you have to develop as an athlete is a foundation of the game itself, okay?
Baseball was my creme de la creme. I love baseball. I played it all through college and it's my all-time favorite sport. I'm one of the only people I know in my life that liked to watch nine innings of baseball. I get that that's not for everybody.
But you have to build on your baseball skill. I take my youngest son, excuse me, my youngest son Jack. So two years ago you played what kind of baseball? T-ball, right? And in Munster it's non-competitive.
Excuse me, I have a frog in my throat. It's non-competitive and you hit off a tee. Then you went to prep ball. And prep ball was what? Coach pitch, right? So we've graduated from the tee all the while learning some of the other basics of the game.
And this pass, excuse me, this pass fall, actually we just finished it, is what they call C-ball where it's kid pitched up until ball four and then the coach goes in. So you see this progression and one of the things, in about halfway through the season, Jack got that confidence, got his first hit and it was great.
But he was in the championship game this past week. Yes, shameless plug for my C-ball champion Jack. Right? Very cool. It was the last inning and they were up one run in the bottom of the sixth and they were their away team.
So their home team had, and they had a runner on first. And he was playing shortstop, the ball was hit to him and he hits it and just like he knew what to do at not even seven years old, he flips it to second. He got it out of his glove and got the lead runner out at second.
I was so proud as a middle infielder because that's not an easy play but that's a smart play. Get the lead runner. Now, if he would have gotten the ball and he would have punted it and he would have yelled quibbitch, that's not a made up word, I think that's from Harry Potter, people would look at us as parents and go, what is wrong with your son?
Because the foundation would not have been there. Right? Just like a football player that gets the ball, pulls out a tennis racket and hits it doesn't understand the foundation of the game.
Where we're going to start in the book of Hebrews is the foundations of the faith. The writer of Hebrews establishes this because he needs to, excuse me.
The reason why he has to establish the faith is because there's going to be a giant, giant challenge to mature in faith. Now, in T-ball, nobody is looking for them to do a 4-6-3 double play.
So that's the shortstop, throws it to second, throws it to first. At 4, 5, 6 year old, they don't do that. No one expects that. But as they get into maybe junior high, high school, definitely in college, you are expected to know what to do as a shortstop in a second baseman when a ball is hit and there's a runner on first.
There's a maturity of the game. There's also a maturity and an understanding that you're not going to be the best all the time. You can make the hall of fame failing seven out of ten times at the plate. Think about that.
70% of the times you don't hit the ball, you can still make the hall of fame. There's a maturity and an understanding of the game of baseball, much like there is in faith.
So let's jump to the beginning of chapter 6, starting with verse 1. Therefore, let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God and the instruction about washings or the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment.
And this, and this we will do if God permits. So leave that up there. The writer of Hebrews is saying, Munster Church, those that have professed their faith, those that have been in faith longer than a day, let us not worry about these things.
That's tremendous. Because you have a lot in there. You have things that people have been debating for years and years and years and years. You have dead works, faith toward God, washing, laying on of hands, the spiritual gifts, engaging the spiritual side, the resurrection of the dead, the eternal judgment.
The writer of Hebrews is saying, you got it. You figured it out. Christ is the way. Christ has taught these things. Believe them and move on. I don't know about you, but that's tremendous. That's extraordinarily hard to do because these, in a lot of ways, are not simple theologies.
But Hebrews is saying, oh no it is. There should not be debate on these. Now we don't have time to go in and look at all of those, but understand, because we're going to come back to them in a later sermon, he wants to get to somewhere far deeper, far more mature when it comes to the doctrine of faith.
Okay? And so one of the things we have to do, we just have to allow this to be settled and binding for now. Now some of you may go, I don't know about the eternal judgment. Right? I just did a study in the book of revelations. I'm all over the place. I have no idea what to believe about eternal judgment.
I don't know how to read all of that. How can you let me know, how can you tell me that it's settled and binding? Because it's not. It's very unsettled and loose in my life. Take it from me. I do not debate the book of revelation.
I said this before, I'll say it again. You have premillennial, right? You have postmillennial, you have amillennial. I'm a panmillennialist. It all pans out in the end.
That was a joke, but it's true that at the end of the day, Christ is going to show up the way Christ shows up, and I want to be on the right side of Jesus.
I want to trust him as Lord and Savior. I want to love him every day as best I can. When I fall, I seek forgiveness, and I do my best to show my faith by loving my neighbor.
Again, that's just me. But this is what the writer of Hebrews is saying, settle these in your heart. Because if you're going to have turmoil over these, the next section is going to be really, really hard.
Because one of the things believers have to engage and acknowledge is the understanding that you have faith. You have the assurance of faith that if you claim Jesus is Lord and Savior, and believe that God raised him from the dead, you are saved.
You have a place in heaven. But what happens when you don't? What happens when life does not look or taste or seem to be that of a believer? I'm sure we all know people.
Maybe you grew up with them. Maybe they went to school with you at Lansing Christian or Iliana or Highland. Maybe you had a relationship with them at Iliana.
You did good Christian or reformed Christian day school education. You had that laid down. You may have even gone to a Christian college with somebody.
But today, you go, wait a minute, I was at their profession of faith. They had come back their sophomore year of college, and they stood with the elders, and they made their profession of faith.
But now they say they are an atheist. Now they don't believe in God. Now they don't go to church. They have deconstructed their faith. It's a whole other sermon.
And you look and go, well, what happened? Did they lose their salvation?
First, before we answer this and before we really dive in, we have to recognize a couple of things. And this is the need, the need, not only for Jesus, but the need of the recognition of what God is doing in your life.
It's God is the one doing it. You're not. God is doing it because if you want to say, and this is where I go with all of my Baptist friends and all my Armenian friends, and I have and I do have them, I don't want to speak into my own salvation.
Because if I speak into my own salvation, I'm going to mess it up because it's going to look like everything else in my life when I try to take the reins and I try to do it myself, I make an absolute mess of it.
And who am I to speak into God's divine plan of sending Jesus to the cross, right, and Jesus going, dying for my sins, to say, well, I will determine when that is right for me.
No. Jesus already has done that.
This idea of true faith is that recognition in the knowledge and the conviction of the Spirit that I am saved.
So let's go to John 6. Jesus speaks to this a bit in John 6.
For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.
For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.
Sounds pretty definite. He's not rolling the dice. He didn't say, meh, if I feel like it, I will raise them up on the last day.
Because one of the things we have to recognize about faith is that faith is good.
That faith is the best thing that God has given you on this earth is just that, true faith.
Works, spiritual gifts, all of those things come after that.
That's why we're not a works of righteousness church. If you do so many trunker treats, you do so many stints on counsel, you'll get into heaven.
That's not in the book at all. When you get up there, and wherever the line is, whatever the day of judgment for you looks like, right?
Some people think it's Peter going to come out like an old school bank teller and calculate all your sins and pull the thing down and it'll go, you're in or you're out.
I don't think that's how that works. Because Christ's righteousness has been bathed all over you.
That God doesn't see you, God sees his son in you. That is the king of righteousness, the hope of glory that we have.
1 John talks about another aspect of this.
They went out from us, but they were not like us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us, but they went out. That it might become plain that they all are not of us.
1 John, John again, talking about that. That there are people, Jesus says there are going to be people that say, Lord, Lord, but have never professed.
They have never confessed Jesus as Lord. They sit in that ugly place, right, where Satan has been believing that they are a true believer because they can go through the motions.
They can come to church. They can serve on ministries. They can pray before Thanksgiving dinner. They can do all of these things.
They play the part, but they do not have the hope of glory in them.
Some of you are going, well, I think that might be me. Well, allow this to be a wake up call.
How do you figure that out? You have to go to the Lord in prayer, take it to Jesus, find an accountable friend that you can talk this stuff out with.
Because it can be simple, but as we are going to see in Hebrews, it might not be.
One of the things in order to understand that you have true faith, that you have this understanding, is a recognition first and foremost that the Lord is good.
Psalm 34.
O taste and see that the Lord is good, blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.
Notice blessed is the man that figures out his own way, that finds solution for all the financial troubles to try to be the result or the end game or the solution for all of life's problems.
No, sometimes it is a recognition that life stinks, but God is God, that I am going to take refuge in him.
And in the hardships of life, the true believer looks to the Father for protection, for maybe a simple understanding and a simple perspective that God's got this.
We go to the next Psalm, Psalm 42.
As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.
That the true believer waits and pants for the Lord.
That the true believer in the midst of a dry season of faith where you don't know where to serve, my relationships are all out of whack, I can't find joy.
The true believer searches after God, recognizes the relationship in Christ and yearns for that understanding, that commitment.
How can I liken this to us?
Let's say you're married and you just feel very distant from your spouse.
Communication is not there.
Assumptions have taken over.
I don't need to say how I feel because they already know.
Assumptive communication is never healthy communication in a marriage.
Okay, that's another rhyme for another time.
What's the best way?
You come to me and say, my marriage is just in a dry place.
Well, then how do you get it not dry?
How do you get it to be something that doesn't feel the agony of, quote unquote, dryness, if you will.
It's communicating.
It's being in each other's presence.
It's laughing again.
It's going back and dating your spouse.
You should be doing that regardless of what stage of life you're in.
That you need to step into the relationship.
Same thing goes with our relationship with God.
You're understanding God's never stepped out of it.
God has never stepped out of it.
He is always there.
He is the everlasting living water.
He's the bread of life.
Jesus says, I'm the bread of life.
I will sustain you on Sundays.
That's it.
No.
The faucet of my grace only works from these hours.
No.
It is always constantly available.
So recognizing that he's good and that he's good for the soul that we should yearn after him, now what happens when it doesn't seem to be there?
Let's go to verse seven and eight.
For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it and produces a crop useful for those for whose sake it is cultivated receives a blessing from God.
But if it bears thorns and thistles it is worthless and near to being cursed and its end is to be burned.
This is the illustration before we dive in.
The illustration here is kind of the assumption that a field is going to produce crops.
Now, I am not a green thumb by any, my 11-year-old is better at it than I am.
This understanding of if you are a farmer or you're planting, you have a garden at home and you plant all your seeds and nothing grows but thorns or thistles or dead grass or all of those things, it's because you have not cultivated the soil.
You have planted in bad soil.
So what the writer of Hebrews is saying and really the question is how's your soil?
It's a weird question to say up here while you're all looking at me, but it's true.
How is your spiritual soil?
What are you doing to cultivate the seed of the gospel that has been put in you, whatever year that was or whatever season of life that was, that it's growing?
Or is it just week in and week out?
Nothing really grows, nothing really gets cultivated.
Sometimes you just don't, why do I even have this field of faith?
Why do I have the soil of the gospel in me?
Nothing seems to be growing, everything seems to be dead.
All of my relationships really don't mean much to me.
I don't really find comfort in God's blessings and I just kind of go every day I just pick myself up on my bootstraps and I do it myself.
That's not what it says.
For the land has drunk the rain that often falls on it and produces something useful.
What in you is being produced that is useful?
That's a huge word.
Well, in my faith all I do is nitpick, criticize, and tell people they're doing it wrong.
I'm sorry.
That's not accountability.
That's just a negative field.
Right?
That is somebody that is not sitting in the joy of the Lord and producing good fruit.
Your complaining is not good fruit.
Whatever the complaint is, right, if there are issues and we have to be held each other accountable, that's life, that's faith, that's good.
Right?
But to the person that only brings up the issues, drops it and runs away, not only are you a complainer, but you're a coward.
The leader brings up the issues, the leader finds solutions as a team.
How can I say this?
Because I work in the church.
We all like to complain.
No one ever measures up to the standards we hold in our head.
That is not a good field of faith.
Giving people the benefit of the doubt, encouraging, walking alongside, help cultivate new ideas, new understandings about how the gospel works at 214 Ridge Road or in your own life.
That's the church.
That's what Hebrews is talking about.
Because if it's not like that, it will only bear thorns and thistles.
And if this is a writer trying to show the irresistibleness of grace in Jesus, who wants to be a part of a Jesus that throws thorns and thistles at everybody?
Exactly.
I don't.
What about that's good?
What about that's useful?
What about that is fruitful?
That in your ideas, in your observations, you can be fruitful.
In your ways you see things differently than maybe your district elder or the person sitting next to you or in front of you or me.
Friends, I don't have it all figured out.
Did I go to school and have I been called to pastor?
Absolutely.
I want to thank God this church never had a floating pulpit because I guarantee you, Reverend Besine and myself never wanted to be seen that high.
Because we are fallible men just like you.
We've been called to this position, but we've all been called to the gospel.
So my hope and my prayer, my goal is to make sure that Munster Church is a fruitful field for forever.
I want to be here as long as I can be here and even afterwards a good leader makes sure that before they leave.
But what happens when it doesn't?
Let's jump to 9 through 12.
No, that's 7, 8, 9 through 12.
Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things.
Things belong to salvation.
For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints as you still do.
And we desire each of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end.
So that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
Understanding that those that are in faith are going to be about three things.
A way to look at it kind of because we all want to do this, but the way that we want to evaluate someone in the faith,
and this is where it gets touchy, and I get it, but are they reading God's word?
A Christian, someone who's following after God is going to read his word.
How do I know that?
I liken it to my relationship with my boys.
My hope and my prayer is that my wife and I are instilling so much in them that when they come to a situation in life,
they will remember our words and not fall into the temptation or design or make the error.
That's exactly what God wants for us.
In this world you will have troubles, Jesus says, but I have overcome the world, so I think his way is the better way.
There's an idol in your life, someone that is reading God's word will recognize it and will turn from it.
So reading God's word, right?
Another one is prayer.
Are they a person of prayer?
In everything take it to the Lord in prayer.
Search me and know my heart, oh God.
If there's any wrong way in me, remove it.
If there is something I'm doing that is making Carrie upset, and I clearly am not getting it, I should ask her,
babe, I keep doing this and you keep getting upset, where are we missing it?
And she'll simply say, stop doing it.
Okay, I asked, I got an answer.
That is how it's designed to be.
Jeremiah 29, 11.
We get it on graduation cards and bracelets and backpacks and Bibles.
For I know the, I have for you declares the, plans to prosper you not to harm you to give you a future and a hope.
Then we stop, but to me the best verses are right after that.
For if you seek me you will find me, when you seek me with your whole heart I will be found by you.
I don't know about you, but that's an active relationship.
Reading God's word, prayer, this is going to be hard.
And getting to work.
To be sojourners of the gospel.
Now, how I look at this is me.
When we get up there, we've established that relationship, we have an active relationship with God,
but we do nothing with it.
I think that's going to be a conversation that Jesus has with us.
That one of the ways to tell someone who has a fulfilled active conversion experience
is that they're doing something with the gospel.
They're doing something active with the good news of Jesus Christ that is for all people.
The person that doesn't have the active conversion.
And as the writer of Hebrews continues, made a non-conversion.
Is someone that hears it and does nothing.
Jesus likens that to the person that has been given the coins.
The other two go and invest and double and triple their efforts.
The one that gets it stripped from them is the one that says, okay, I got it.
I'm going to bury it.
I'm going to hide it under a bushel.
I'm not going to take it around the neighborhood.
And this is hard.
I'm going to let Satan poof it out.
If the good news of the gospel is good, then how dare we do nothing with it?
We're not going to divide on the things of foundational faith,
where we can divide as a church, where you can divide your own self in your faith,
is by doing nothing with it.
Now, I'm not saying there's one way to do it.
I'm not saying that at all.
We're all different people.
We all have different gifts.
But are you actively asking God where the gospel is alive in your life, growing and active?
Are you asking, God, what can I do with this?
Because it's like the baseball player who's been playing for years and years and years,
who's over there at second base, who gets the ball hit to him and has no idea what to do with it.
My hope and my prayer is that we are becoming more and more of a church that knows what to do
when those kind of curve balls of life get hit to us, that we know what to do,
that we have elders and deacons that come alongside and model the way,
ministry leaders and encouragers of our youth to grow them in the faith,
and opportunities to go outside of this brick and mortar to tell a world that desperately needs it.
That's an active faith.
That is a true conversion, a true convert.
And now here's the last piece.
I'm going to end in this awkward place because it's going to resolve itself somewhat in the next two weeks.
I was challenged a couple weeks ago by someone who went to church, got very judged, and got burned by the church.
And he says, I don't go to church.
He goes, I'm a believer.
I pray, but I don't go to church.
And I struggle with that, not because I work for the church.
I would struggle with that if I was an electrician and not a pastor.
Can you say that you are a believer and not go to church?
It's a debate that we're going to talk about in a couple weeks.
But I just told him, I said, I'm sorry you had a bad experience.
And then I trust Munster Church enough to invite him to come because I know you'll love on him.
He's got tattoos.
He's got gauges in his ears.
Would he look different than a lot of us?
Absolutely.
But look around us.
None of us all look the same.
And that's a beautiful thing.
But I invited him.
I said, you know where I work, 930, Sunday mornings.
We'd love to see you.
Bring your family to the trunk retreat.
Did all that.
And I was leaving.
And he says, Jim, why church?
He goes, I don't feel I need church to be a faithful follower of Jesus.
And I looked at him.
You may not need church to be a follower of Jesus.
But that faithful piece I struggle with.
Because being in the fellowship of believers is part of being a believer.
Well, I can go out into the park and I can find God in nature.
And that's general revelation.
And I'm not saying you can't.
But without the divine revelation of coming together, worshiping, and finding the word,
I don't know about how fruitful your faith is going to be.
So he asked me again, why church?
And thank you, Lord, I sent up an Insta prayer.
And I never have used this before.
In all of my years of being a pastor, I said, you like chicken, right?
And he said, I'm going somewhere with this.
You like chicken, right?
He goes, absolutely, love chicken.
I go, so when you get chicken from wherever you get it, you get a chicken breast,
you just go home, you either boil it and then eat it or put it on the grill and eat it, right?
And he goes, no, that would be gross.
I go, why?
It's chicken.
You love chicken.
He goes, no, I season it.
I go, interesting.
With what?
Just trying to get some tips.
He goes, well, maybe salt, pepper, maybe I'll put a sauce on it.
I go, why?
Because it enhances the flavor.
I go, interesting.
So does church.
I said, the believer, the convert, those that follow Jesus, right, we have the chicken.
We're good.
We've established that relationship.
But as we come together, as whether this church or another church, go to Faith Monster,
go to First PCA, go to Bethel, right, that hopefully the true churches in our area are
giving us opportunities to enhance the flavor of the chicken, to grow us in the understanding
of being a believer.
And he just looked at me and he said, I go, exactly.
It's hard.
Going to church doesn't make you a Christian, but it deepens your walk with Jesus.
Becoming a member of the church allows you to be a part of something, not a social club.
When churches look like that, I can't stand it.
But it gives you an opportunity to come together for a goal of living out the Christian faith.
Because as we're going to see in the next two weeks, that Christian faith should be
the most important thing in our lives.