Cracks in our Foundations

I know Charles needs no introduction. Charles Price, principal of Cape and Ray Bible School, just a few miles down the road, but not for long. He's leaving the country a week on Thursday and will be soon taking over as senior pastor of the People's Church in Toronto. But don't worry, when I heard this news, I immediately wrote Charles a letter and said, those weeks in July, we want them in your diary for the next 50 years. It's a delight to have Charles as our opening speaker this evening, and I'm just going to pray. Please join me in praying for God's word to come clearly through Charles. Lord, we do commit Charles and Hilary and the family to you as they make this huge move, and we pray for your peace to reign and rule in their lives, and we pray for a fresh anointing for that new ministry in Canada. Pray for Charles tonight, Lord. Speak to me, speak to us. Through him we pray, for the glory of your name. Amen. Well, thank you, Peter, very much. I didn't actually reply to Peter's letter, but I appreciated it very much. There was once a multi-story building that was constructed and was in operation for several years when one day somebody noticed a crack, a hairline crack that appeared on the wall of the 42nd floor. So the managing director of the building contacted the architect who designed the building and said, we need you to come straight away. There's a crack on the 42nd floor of our building. A little while later, the managing director got the news the architect has arrived, and so the managing director took the lift up to the 42nd floor to meet the architect, and when he got there, there was no architect, and he waited, and the architect didn't arrive. He was a little frustrated by this, went back to his office and asked to be notified as soon architect. A little while later, he got the message, we found the architect. He's down in the sixth basement. And so he took the elevator down to the sixth basement, and when he got there, he said, the architect, what are you doing down here in the sixth basement? We have a crack on the 42nd floor of the building. We invited you to come and investigate. What are you doing down here? The architect said, you may have a problem. You may have a crack on the 42nd floor, but your problem is in the basement. And what happened apparently, according to this story, was that there was a security guard who worked in the building, and he wanted to build a garage at his home in his garden. He hadn't got the money or the resources, so every night before he went home, he took the lift down to the sixth basement, chiseled the brick out of the wall, put it in his holdall, took it home, and added it to the growing pile in his garden. Now, I don't know if this is an apocryphal story or not, but one day a crack appeared on the 42nd floor of the building. The reason why I tell you that story is because for those who have eyes to see it, there are incredible cracks on the 42nd floor of our society, aren't there, of our world. Not only that, there are cracks on the 42nd floor of our Christianity. Ron Dunn, who many of you know, who went home to be with the Lord Jesus two weeks ago, but I was at a conference with Ron just last year. He said something which I wrote down, and I attributed to him. He said, the Bible contradicts just about everything that is popularly believed today about Christianity. In other words, within Christianity as well, there are incredible cracks in the building. The reason why is because we've become detached from the foundations, or we begin to chisel away at the foundations. I want tonight to talk about one of the most fundamental foundations of life, not just the Christian life, but of life itself. And if you've got your Bible, I want to turn back to Romans chapter one, which was read to us a few minutes ago. Romans, many of you will know, is Paul's definitive statement of the gospel. It's different to all the other letters he wrote, because normally when Paul wrote his letters, he was writing to people he knew normally, and very often the churches he had founded. And he is answering their questions, or he's correcting their errors, or he's reprimanding individuals, or he's giving them instructions. But when he wrote his letter to the Romans, he was writing to a church in a city he had never visited. He was on his way home from his third missionary journey when he wrote this letter, on his way to Jerusalem. And he wrote to them and said, I plan on my next journey to go to Spain. On the way to Spain, I want to call in and visit you in Rome, and impart to you, he said, some spiritual gift, that we might be mutually encouraged, but one by the other. But there was a problem. All kinds of rumors were circulating about Paul, and there was a lot of suspicion about him. So he said in this letter, I want to explain to you exactly what it is I will preach when I come to visit you, what my message is. And therefore, this letter to the Romans is the most comprehensive and the most systematic explanation of the gospel that we have in the New Testament. And interestingly, through church history, what has revolutionized the church again and again has been rediscovering the message of the book of Romans. Very often, the heart cry is, let's get back to the book of Acts. And of course, we understand that. Rightly so, the church was alive and vibrant and dynamic, and it turned its world upside down. But what has transformed the church through its history has actually been rediscovering the book of Romans. Augustine in the fifth century, converted in Milan, reading Romans chapter 13. Martin Luther in the sixteenth century, teaching his students in the University of Wittenberg, desperately trying to make himself right with God and never having any sense of satisfaction and peace that he had done so, as he taught his students the book of Romans, he came across the statement that just will live by faith. It transformed Luther's life as a consequence, revolutionized Europe. John Wesley had returned from Georgia in America, disillusioned. He had gone as a missionary to the Indians, had come back realizing he had no message which changed people's lives. And one day, somebody took him in London to Aldersgate Street to listen to a reading of Luther's preface to the book of Romans. And Wesley writes that his heart was strangely warmed. He was converted to Jesus Christ in the way he'd never had been before, became regenerate. And you know, his ministry, along with Whitfield and his brother Charles Wesley, brought about the 18th century revival in this country. What is it about the book of Romans they rediscovered? Well, let me read again verse 16 and 17 of Romans chapter 1, which Trish read to us just a few minutes ago. And Paul says there, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. This is in the context of saying I'm coming to you in Rome and I'm going to preach the gospel to you. I'm not ashamed of this gospel for this reason. It's the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. This gospel says Paul is calculated to transform the life of any man, any woman, any boy, any girl from any background. And then he says in verse 17, and this is my text for tonight, for in the gospel, what? If I were to ask you to complete that sentence, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. It's the power of God for in the gospel, what? I wonder what you'd say. If I asked you to close your Bible and complete the sentence. Well, I don't know what you'd say. You might say, for in the gospel, a means of being forgiven has been made known. But do you know something? You'd be wrong. For in the gospel, a means of getting to heaven has been opened to us. Do you know something? You'd actually be wrong. For in the gospel, a power to live is now available. You'd actually be wrong. Of course, all those things are part of the gospel. That's why you would have answered it that way, if you had answered it that way. But what Paul writes is this, for in the gospel, a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is, by implication, experientially, by faith. In other words, says Paul, the gospel is about restoring the righteousness of God into human experience. And according to the book of Romans, salvation is not a salvation primarily from hell to heaven. In fact, it's interesting, in the book of Romans, Paul never mentions heaven, other than saying the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven. Salvation, the book of Romans, is not a salvation primarily from guilt to innocence. It's not a salvation primarily from death to life. It's a salvation from unrighteousness to righteousness, whatever that means. We'll define that in a moment. Now, of course, as a cause, we need to be forgiven. As a consequence, we're going to heaven instead of hell. As a means, we receive life, spiritual life, in place of death. So all of that is part of the package, if you excuse the terminology. But the actual substance of the gospel, says Paul, is that we're saved from unrighteousness to righteousness. The gospel is about restoring the righteousness of God into human experience. And this word, righteous or righteousness, occurs 44 times in this letter to the Romans. Now, what is righteousness? It's not the kind of word we use in our normal day-to-day conversation. Well, it's defined in the book of Romans in relationship to God. It says in that verse, verse 17, a righteousness from God. If you look at chapter 3, verse 5, sometime it talks about God's righteousness. That is the righteousness of God. Chapter 3, verse 21, a righteousness from God. And so on, if you were to go on through the book. Now, righteousness is essentially the moral character of God. It's his character, his moral character. God is righteous. It's his behavior, his character. Now, this righteousness was not designed to be something alien to human experience or distant from human experience. Because, writes in the very beginning, when God first created humanity, he said of human beings in Genesis 1, 26, let us make man in our image. Now, of course, theologians have debated what exactly is the image of God. Well, we can work it out by deduction to some extent. There are certain things about God which are clearly not of humanity. There are those attributes of God we may call his incommunicable attributes. That is, he does not transmit them to his creation, to humanity. For instance, God is omnipotent. That means God is all powerful. We're not all powerful. God is omnipresent. That means he's in all places at all times. We're not like that. God is omniscient. That means he knows everything there is to know. Human beings are not like that. Although I heard on the radio the other day of an advertisement in a newspaper which said all 38 volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica for sale, reason for sale, husband knows everything. But we're not omniscient. God is immutable. That means God never changes. He doesn't grow old. He doesn't develop. He doesn't mature. Thankfully, we do. But God doesn't. We're not made like that in God's image. God is eternal, has no beginning, no end. We had a beginning. So these are God's incommunicable attributes that clearly human beings do not share. But then there are his communicable attributes. That is, there are those qualities that are true about God which he has chosen to transmit to his creation, to humanity. And those are his moral attributes, his moral character. The Bible tells us God is love. And we are intended to love. In fact, this is the hallmark of being a genuine disciple, said Jesus. God is just. We are intended to be just and honest and straight. God is kind. We're intended to be kind. God is merciful. We're intended to be merciful. All these things are to do with his moral character. This is his righteousness. And the way God intended for human beings to function was to be as a visible and physical expression of his character. We were so created in the beginning, if you wanted to know what God was like in his moral character, all you needed to do was look at a man or a woman. It gets to be made in his image, means look at the image, you'll see what God is like. So if you and I were a fly on the wall in the Garden of Eden, and we'd watch the way Adam treated Eve, we would have seen what God was like. He would have been very kind because God is kind, very gentle. God is gentle. If we saw the way that Eve treated Adam, we would have seen what God was like. If we saw the way they handled the animals in the garden, the way they stroked the cat, and patted the dog, and fed the guinea pigs, and cleaned out the chickens, you would have seen what God was like. It gets to be in his image, means we were designed to be a visible expression of his character. But of course, there's a problem. Romans chapter 3 talks about it. In verse 10, there is none righteous, not even one. Romans 3.23 says, for all, universally, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And the glory of God is also the character of God. Last year, the Sunday Times, over a 10-week period, carried a series of inserts which they called Chronicles of the Future. And they tried to project what might happen in this next century. And every edition of this magazine, this inserted magazine, covered a 10-year period up to the end of the century. And I was intrigued by them. Of course, it was purely speculation, but it had to do with scientific, and technological, and ethical developments that may take place in our world. One of the things which fascinated me was that they projected in the year 2021, there'd be the discovery of an extra solar planet that supported living beings. They called it, in this article, Eden, and it was located in the Earth's major constellation. Now, of course, this is purely speculation, but just suppose such a planet did exist. And just suppose that this planet was inhabited, not only by life in basic forms, but by highly intelligent creatures, but who had no idea of what God was like. They're intelligent enough to know they're being created, but they had no idea who God was, and what he was like. And just imagine, in the course of time, they advanced scientifically and technologically, and they began to explore space. And in their explorations, they discovered in the far edge of the Milky Way, there is a solar system with a planet called Earth that sustains life. But not only that, they discover there is a creature on that planet called man, humanity, that was created in the image of God. And they get incredibly excited. We have always wanted to know what God was like. At last, they saved themselves. We have an opportunity. Because if we could go to planet Earth, and if we could observe what human beings are like, if we could observe the way they behave, and the way they go about their lives, and the way they treat each other, we would know what God is like. And so, just imagine that they develop means of intergalactic travel. They train their best astronauts, and they send them to Earth. Now, I know this is completely unrealistic, of course, because the nearest star outside our solar system is 4.3 light years away. Light travels, as you probably know, 186,000 miles a second. That's seven and three-quarter times around the Earth every second. That's about 670 million miles per hour. In round figures, 669.6 to be exact. And just supposing if they were to develop some means of intergalactic travel, and they could manage to travel the million miles per hour, let's say. A million miles now would be 40 times around the Earth every hour. It would take them, still, 2,880 years to reach the Earth. In human terms, that's 90 generations. So, this is a little unrealistic, especially they have to go back again, having got the information they were looking for. So, just use your imagination. Let's imagine they discover a few black holes where time doesn't exist, and they slide down these black holes, and they come to Earth to observe humanity in order to discover what God is really like. Supposing they arrive this weekend, and they pick up today's newspaper, the headline of most newspapers, reports the award of the Olympic Games in 2008 to Beijing. But the reason why it's headline news is because it's controversial news, because it goes on to explore, in most newspapers today, the human rights record in China. And they might look at this and say, what's this about human rights? Well, you see, it's when people feel the liberty to abuse one another, or to exploit one another, or to suppress one another. And they say to themselves, really, is that what God is like? Then they read about the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, and they read about Slobodan Milosevic, and the thousands who were slaughtered in a campaign of ethnic cleansing in very recent years. And they say, what does ethnic cleansing mean? What does slaughter mean? What does defenseless women and children mean? In the report, they read about that. They read about a perjury trial taking place in London right now, and they say, perjury, what is that? That's telling lies. That's the intent to deceive. And they say to themselves, is that what God is like? And they look at our statistics, and they look at drug abuse, and folks who will give away free drugs to get the kids hooked, and then they're going to pay through the nose and make these people rich, who couldn't care less the fact the kid they've fed the drug to will go to an early grave, in all possibility. And they say, is that what God is like? And they eventually get back into their spacecraft, and they go back across the universe to arrive back in their planet, Eden, in the Earth's constellation. And when they arrive back, of course, every television camera is focused on the landing spacecraft, and people in the planet are saying, at last, we're going to find out what God is like. When the door of the spacecraft open, and the astronauts step out, they notice their faces are rather glum. And they say, well, tell us, the television cameras that are there with their microphones, tell us, we've waited all these years, what is God like? They say, we're sorry we ever went. We wish we didn't know. You see, God is selfish. God is greedy. God destroys. God lies. God cheats. God reneges on his promises. God is evil, would be their conclusion. Is that what God is like? Of course, it isn't. Let me tell you this. This is the measure of our sin. We were created to portray the truth about God. And the measure of our sin is the extent to which the way the lives we live fail to portray the truth about God. If someone came to you this week and said to you, what is God like? Would you dare say to them, you want to know what God is like? Well, just follow me around for the week. Come and stay at my hotel, or my bed and breakfast, or my tent, wherever you are. And just see the way I treat other people. Just watch the way I spend my money. Just observe the kind of behavior I engage in. Then at the end of this week, you'll know exactly what God is like. Would you dare say that to anybody? What are you saying? I'll tell you what you're saying. You're saying, I'm a sinner. Because sin is the extent to which the way we live tells lies about God. So what is the gospel about? It's about restoring into human experience that capacity whereby once again we begin to portray something of the truth about God. I'm not ashamed of this gospel, says Paul. This gospel is powerful. It's got to be powerful. This gospel will apply to Jew or Gentile, anybody, anywhere. Because in this gospel, the righteousness of God, that quality of life that we have failed to enjoy, that moral character we've failed to portray, the righteousness of God is revealed. And not only revealed, but restored. I love what Brian Smith said to us a little earlier about we're not buckets. We're channels. Don't think of the righteousness of God as some passivity, of course. It's active, dynamic, effective. The problem is, so we can easily fall into the trap of thinking that the righteousness of God ought to use other language for the same thing. Holiness of life is simply sort of standing back with the Bible across our chest at the right angle, our head at the corresponding tilt, a nice evangelical smile on our faces, and this is being holy. But of course it isn't. It's active. It's getting our hands dirty in the service of other people. This is the righteousness of God being restored into our experience. But how is this righteousness going to be made possible? Well, let me read what he says. Again, in verse 17, in the gospel, a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, from beginning to end. In other words, the whole thing is on the basis of faith. As it's written, the righteous will live by faith. A little later in Romans 3, let me read you verse 21 and 22. This is when Paul comes to the point in this letter when he begins to propose the solution. He has diagnosed the sinfulness and the failure of humanity in the first two and a half chapters. But then in verse 21 of chapter 3, he says, but now a righteousness from God apart from law, that is not by human effort, has been made known to which the law and the prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. Now, says Paul, the key that makes this righteousness operative is faith, and he qualifies that as belief, those who believe. Now, what does it mean to believe? You see, we use the word believe in two ways. And it's important we distinguish between these two ways and these two meanings. Let me give an example. Supposing I was to ask you two questions about what you believe. I'll ask you those in a moment. Two questions about what you believe, and you'll recognize they're two very different questions. For instance, if I said to you, do you believe in the Loch Ness Monster? That's my first question. And then my second question is, do you believe in aspirin? You'll recognize those are two totally different questions. When I say, do you believe in the Loch Ness Monster? What I mean is, do you believe in Loch Ness? In Scotland, there's a monster with a long neck and a couple of humps that disappears whenever people go looking for it, and normally only reappears either on the very day you forgot to take the camera, or when the pubs are closing and people are on their way home at night, they don't notice it. But if you believe in Loch Ness Monster, it has nothing to do with the rest of your life. My son believes in Loch Ness Monster. He likes these kind of ideas. He's only 10. If you're Scottish, it's good for tourism, of course. I was at Loch Ness only once, and it was a bitterly cold November's day, and while I was at the place where Nessie is supposed to have appeared, somebody had taken me there. About three buses pulled up full of either German or Japanese tourists, and they all got out, had their pictures taken in front of where Nessie last appeared, went into the cafe, all ate or drank in the cafe. Great business. Don't ever find Nessie. It'll spoil the fun. But if I say to you, do you believe in Loch Ness Monster? That's one question. Another question is, do you believe in aspirin? You'll realize that's a totally different question. I don't mean, do you believe that if you go into a chemist's store in Keswick and go in through the door, on the left-hand side, there's some shelves. On the second shelf, up from the bottom, there's some little blue and white boxes with little white pills in called aspirin. I saw one this afternoon. Do you believe in them? You know I don't mean that. You take for granted that you know aspirin exists. What I mean is this. When I say, do you believe in aspirin? Do you let aspirin work? I believe in aspirin. I take aspirin every day. My doctor told me to. But it works. Now, when it talks here about this righteousness from God comes to those who believe, it's not the Loch Ness Monster type of belief. Though, of course, that is necessary, because it tells us in the book of Hebrews chapter 11, he that comes to God must believe that he is. That's the starting point. That doesn't make you a Christian, though. James, in the book of James, says, you believe there's one God? Well done. Even the demons believe that and tremble. You see, you can believe something in the Loch Ness Monster sense and it won't do you any good or any harm. Let me illustrate that. Some of you may have come by train. I don't know if any of you came by train to Penrith and then got some transport down here to Keswick. But if you did and you're returning next Saturday, you may know there's a train, let's say, for example, leaving Penrith, let's say, 20 past 10 on Saturday morning for London. You may have a ticket that says, Penrith departure 10 20. And you may believe there's a train leaving Penrith on Saturday morning at 20 past 10, but you can sit in your hotel room in Keswick and believe that as much as you like, that in itself will never get you to London. Because believing something in itself doesn't do you any good. And believing something doesn't do you any harm. If I was told that this jug was full of arsenic and this cup is now full of arsenic, and if I were to drink this, I'd be dead within two minutes. It might be true. I might believe it. It wouldn't kill me. Because believing something in itself doesn't do you any good. It doesn't do you any harm. It only does you harm if you drink it. You see, there are people who believe the facts, but they've never experienced the power of God in their lives. It may even be that you've come to Keswick this year saying, what is it about so many of these other people that gets them excited about Jesus Christ, that gets them excited about the Bible? I mean, coming to a week of sitting in meetings, explaining the Bible morning, if you want them, afternoon and evening. There may be some of you here this evening saying to yourself, I can think a little, it's more boring than that. And it may be for this reason. You don't know Christ because you've never taken the aspirin belief that says, Lord Jesus Christ, because you are real, because you became man in order to reconcile me to a holy God and to re-impart what Adam lost, the spirit of God, in order to make me once again the kind of person you created me to be. Please come and live in my life and transform me from within. Unless you come to that point, you'll never know what God calls the power of salvation. But it's not just becoming a Christian, of course, it's living the Christian life on the same basis as Paul said there in that verse, it's a righteousness by faith from first to last, not just from the beginning and then you go back to living by your own human effort. You see, in John chapter six, let me just read you a verse that's become to mean a lot to me in recent weeks, John 6, 28 and 29. It says there that they asked him, what must we do to do the works God requires? Well, that's a good question. It's a question every Christian ought to be asking. What must we do to do the works that God requires? Do you know what Jesus said? He says, Jesus answered, the work of God is this, to believe in the one he sent. That's not to have believed as an event, but to believe every day to say, Lord Jesus Christ, in order to do the works that God requires, in order to live the way that God requires, in order to accomplish the purposes that God has for my life every day, I believe, I trust you. I put my faith in you today to live in me and to work through me today. As only God can, he works in us to will and to do of his own good purpose, we're told. He works in us to give us the right appetites and then to give us the power to live according to those right appetites. Let me finish by saying that this isn't just something that is passive, because early in Romans chapter one and verse five, let me read this verse to you. It says, through him and for his name's sake, we receive grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles, to the obedience that comes from faith. Now Paul says there in Romans one verse five, that if this righteousness is by faith, by believing, what I'm calling you to is the obedience that comes from faith. That is, it's not just some mental exercise or just some passive saying, well, Lord, you work in me. It then is going to express itself in obedience. And I think the two essential ingredients of the Christian life are dependency on Christ, that's faith, and obedience to Christ. Dependency on Christ and obedience to Christ. In fact, dependency and obedience are like two wings on an airplane. Which wing on an airplane, by the way, do you think is the most important wing? If you live in obedience without dependency, without trusting, you'll end up with legalism. If you live trusting God without obedience to God, you'll end up with some form of mysticism, probably. But if you combine obedience to God and dependency on God, you end up with dynamism. Your life is changed and transformed, and the image in which we're first created begins again to become expressed. And it's never perfectly in this life. There's no promise in this life. We're going to perfectly express the character of God. Any visitor from outer space can go to your church and they will still be disappointed. But it's a process from one degree of glory to another. We're told we are being transformed into His image, His likeness. In 2 Corinthians chapter 3, it tells us that. That's the process. If you're a Christian tonight, you are predestined, tells us to be glorified. That is to be fully restored into the image in which you were first created. That is on the cards. You are predestined. No option over that. That is your destiny. That's fantastic. That'll take place in heaven. But in the meantime, in this life, from one degree of glory to another, the goal of the gospel is restoring us into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, God's purpose for humanity has not changed. What He declared of Adam is still His purpose for you and me. That we in His image express His character. And that's why the first gospel most people ever read is what they read on your face and in your behavior, in your lifestyle. Somebody once said, in my hearing, God has given us three testaments to read. The Old Testament, the New Testament, and the New Testament. Do you get it? Paul said to the Corinthians, you are epistles of God known and read by the neighbors. That's why you see we're not buckets, we're channels. That out of our hearts there flow a river that impacts and blesses other people and people trace its source. They see your good works and do what, it says, praise your Father who is in heaven. Because they recognize the origin is not you. You're the expression of those good works, but the origin is God by His Holy Spirit living in you. Are there cracks on the walls in your life tonight? You need to get back to the foundation and rebuild it. The foundation is coming in humility and saying, Lord, I cannot be the human being I was created to be apart from the presence of the Holy Spirit of God living in me for the purpose of restoring in me the righteousness, the character, the image in which I was first created. And my prayer this week is that many of us will not just get our heads buzzing with spiritual ideas. We'll really mean business with God and allow God to speak to us and draw us out of the mess that so often we get ourselves into back on track to be the men and women He created us to be. Let's pray together. Father, we're grateful this evening that this is not some pie in the sky, a carrot on the end of a stick that we can never reach. This is your purpose, your intent for every one of us, that our lives might become a visible exhibition of God, once portrayed perfectly in the Lord Jesus Christ, who became the image of the invisible God, who became what Adam was intended to be. And thank you it's His work in us and for us that gives us hope once again of fulfilling the purpose for which we were created. Make this real for each of us, we pray in Jesus name. Amen.