Spiritual Growth

By Pastor Sam Chess

Make The Main Thing .... The Main Thing

Searching for the Main Thing?

Francois Fenelon- Woe to those weak and timid souls who are divided between God and their world. They want and they do not want. They are torn by desire and remorse at the same time. They have a horror of evil and a shame of good. They have the pains of virtue without tasting it’s sweet consolations. O how wretched they are.

Fenelon lived in France at a time when people were being told to recant their Christians views and many of his friend were actually tied to stakes and burned to death including Madam Guyan whom I’ve often quoted. If you were a Christian in his day it meant that you couldn’t just say you were a Christian unless you were prepared to back up the statement with your life.

I wonder, among us sitting here today, if our society suddenly changed, as many have throughout history, and publicly stating your allegiance to Christ became a criminal offense; I wonder..

A) How many of us would publicly proclaim our faith if it meant arrest and death?

In our generation and our society its hard for us to imagine the purity of faith that people in New Testament times had where a profession of faith usually meant the loss of all you accumulated possessions and possibly the loss of your life.

If you knew right now that if you walked out of this building and proclaimed your faith in Jesus Christ that all of your assets would be seized within the month would you still proclaim your faith.

Jesus called for us to live a pure faith…

B) Purity: exists in it’s essential nature, undefiled, unblemished, uncontaminated.

I have been asking myself the question this week:

1) Is my faith uncontaminated…Is it pure?

2) Is your faith…. uncontaminated by what is outside of your faith?

Illustration: I’ve noticed something around here that I’ve not seen before. Little pickup trucks with the letters USDA on the side. There is no question what they are doing… they are assuring that food products that go into your mouth are pure. After they have visited a store you can be assured that everything that goes into your mouth will be as pure as the driven snow… Ummm maybe not.

The FDA, nationally, has been given the task of setting the guidelines of purity for our food. Let me give you a few, this will, I’m sure, improve the taste of your lunch.

Apple Butter: If the mold count is 12% or more, if it averages 4 rodent hairs /100grams, if it averages 5 or more whole insects /100grams the FDA says it’s not fit to eat.

Coffee Beans: If there is greater than 10% of the beans that are insect infested (dead), or if there is more than one live insect in each of two immediate containers those beans aroma won’t wake you up in the morning.

Mushrooms: Mushrooms can’t be sold if there is an average of 20 or more maggots per 15 grams of dried mushrooms.

Hot dogs: You don’t want to know….

Purity, in our society has come to mean… not quite as bad as..

Purity in our food… not contaminated enough to kill you..

Purity in our environment. Pure air is pure enough not to cause an immediate risk.

Pure water won’t immediately make you sick.

Sexual purity: Being, at least to some degree, committed to the person you are having sex with today.

The word purity in today’s sexual climate is considered Victorian, prudish

Purity in our faith… not enough sin to bring us to our knees… today!

We tend to think of a person that is pure in their faith, and pure in their desires and pure in there motive as not being quite human. The Bible uses the word purity over 150 times. It paint the pure person, living in purity, as at the top of what it means to be fully human.

II. Have we found the Main Thing?

Soren Kieregaard- Purity of heart is to will one thing.

A) In search of purity

The Old Testament starts out by emphasizing pureness in gifts brought to God, animals for sacrifice, gold to overlay the temple. Then, once the Israelite began to understand

How much God valued purity He began to relate it to their hearts. Be Pure in heart.

Once Jesus got here and began to teach he started his Sermon on the Mount with this:

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. (Matthew 5:8 NIV)

The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Some have wandered away from these and turned to meaningless talk. (1 Timothy 1:5-6 NIV)

Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity. (1 Timothy 4:12 NIV)

…and do not share in the sins of others. Keep yourself pure. (1 Timothy 5:22 NIV)

….. we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure. (1 John 3:2-3 NIV)

Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart. (1 Peter 1:22 NIV)

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-- if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-- think about such things. (Philippians 4:8 NIV)

Here’s the thing; if we are not pure in heart; pure in mind, pure in purpose James says we are, in fact, something else:

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. (James 4:7-8 NIV)

B) The enemy of purity of heart/mind

1) double-mindedness; a life of divided loyalties

James gives us an image of a double minded person we can all relate to:

If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does. (James 1:5-8 NIV)

Would you characterize yourself as single-minded or as double-minded. Do you know what the main thing is and you make the main thing the main thing, or are you being blown from priority to priority like a cork in the ocean?

Every once in a while you see somebody that is so single-minded that there very name suggests the whole of what they are about.

Mother Theresa

Hugh Hefner

Donald Trump

Ronald McDonald

Some of these people chose well. Some chose poorly but they all are so focused that their name is synonymous with their passions.

If someone says the name Sam Chess does that carry any picture in your mind other than a graying portly middle aged man? If someone thinks of you what immediately pops into their mind? If you are single-minded, about righteous things that will almost certainly define you.

III. Nooowww we’ve found the Main Thing

A) Jesus clearly tells us what our #1 priority is to be. There is nothing fuzzy about it.

So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:31-33 NIV)

Any other focus is double-mindedness!!!

Kierkegaard calls the disease of double-mindedness the failure to achieve simplicity.

If you do not achieve simplicity you will undoubtedly achieve one of it’s relatives:

1) multiplicity- constantly pushed and pulled in multiple directions at the same time.

When we live in multiplicity we find ourselves desiring intimacy with God and fleeing from it all at the same time. We find ourselves pulled toward the word of God and at the same time finding every excuse not to read it. We find ourselves wanting to spend time in prayer but mysteriously finding so many other things to do that there is no time.

St Augustine is famous for wanting a life of sexual purity but praying the prayer: Lord give me chastity…. But not yet..

The person living in multiplicity find themselves wanting to be generous but always finding personal needs to be more weighty.

We could go on and on with the list and if you are feeling convicted you are in good company…

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do-- this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God-- through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. (Romans 7:14-25 NIV)

I remind you that chapter 8 goes on to talk about not living in condemnation but rather learning to walk in the Spirit.

2) duplicity- separates the real reason we do things from what we tell ourselves and others is the reason

When we share negative information about somebody else who is not a part of the problem and not a part of the solution and we say we are telling them so they can pray more intelligently. Actually we are just gossiping and our actions are soundly condemned by Scripture.

Often we actually believe what we say our motives are, human being have an amazing capacity for self deception.

3) Clifford Williams- We possess singleness (of mind) when we are not pulled in opposite directions, when we act without wanting something further for ourselves. Our inner drives do not conflict… they are aimed in one direction. The motives we appear to have are the ones we really have. Our inner focus is unified and our public posture corresponds to it. (Singleness of heart)

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!" "Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her." (Luke 10:38-42 NIV)

Conclusion: What is the answer?

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God-- this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is-- his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:1-2 NIV)