today's sermon notes: Paul's Rap Sheet

Every one of us has a record!

Every one of us has a past. For some of us, we look back at the past with a strange mixture of pride and regret. We see the trophies, the scars. We remember the victories and the defeats.
I remember times when I thought my heart would burst from sorrow and disappointments,
I remember times when I felt like I was walking on air. That soon I would leap so high in my personal triumph that I might even escape the laws of gravity.
We have those moments don’t we? The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. It’s the human experience, which makes us capable of passion, transcendence and unbelievable tragedy.

Sorrow
Triumphs
Fears
defeats

Judeizers
Tradition is great until it begins excluding people.

Jesus wasn’t a traditionalist. Jesus was the ultimate revolutionary. And his revolution was a revolution of grace. A Man infinitely more concerned about the human race than the man made laws of what’s clean and what’s not clean. The legalists dictated when to walk, where to spit, who to talk to and how to drink. The Judeizers wanted it both ways. We want Jesus but we like the way that we’ve done it since we were 3. We want people to come to Jesus but we want them to also fit into our little box.

It’s what I like to call “Little Box” Christianity.

We walk around with this box and we protect it because our little box justifies our existence and our life strategy. Everything has to fit into the box. The sad thing about it is that God refuses to stay inside our little boxes.

I’m always amazed how the church as a whole
is so quick to throw rocks at the sheep in the fold.
We question each other’s theology,
spar over worship philosophy.
We’ve got more fusses than one tongue can tell
while outside the world is going to hell.
We are driven by creeds, and motions, and clocks,
haven’t we learned not to put God in a box?
Would Jesus approve of our political labels
or would He come in and start busting up tables?
Does He tire of us telling Him what He should do,
what gender must teach, what strategy’s true?
Is the Bible the life source or inflexible judge?
Is the church a haven for sinners or a group with a grudge?
Do we think we can settle for boycotts and strife
instead of seeking the lost and giving dead people life?
What were we thinking when in front of the press?
we majored on minors choosing to curse and not bless.
i have to tell you from my point of view
i keep wondering what in the world Jesus would do.
Would He have us disputing which method is best,
or making transformation be our holy quest?
After all that’s what this journey’s about,
not who has more sheep or who has more clout.
i despise the reports of our ugly catfights.
i’m appalled by the task of reading sinners their rights.
When you preach condemnation, consider this fact,
they don’t know Jesus. How’d you expect them to act?
And please understand, i’m not where i should be.
When i’m preaching at you, i’m preaching at me.
There are times when i haven’t lived up to His Name,
when i’ve only the man in the mirror to blame.
But now is the time to reject the mask,
to heed the call, and get back to the task,
to burn the political, decaying façade
for an all out pursuit of our passionate God.
Let’s spend our time living meaningful lives
giving mercy to sinners not dangerous lies.
Let’s bear the cross and drop the rocks,
proclaim the good news and let God out of the box.

Our God is much Bigger!

Paul’s Little Box

Paul had God in a box until he had a head on collision with Christ on the road to Damascus. He survived although he did have a temporary loss of sight. And at that moment- Jesus crushed his little box.

Beware of Dogs

It’s interesting that Paul begins this warning about religious people saying beware of Dogs. Wait a second… That is exactly what the Jews called everybody else. They called them dogs!

Skabala

The word skubala means the vilest dung the worst excrement. The word shows how utterly insignificant and unavailing accomplishments-even good accomplishments were in Pauls eyes.

Paul’s Accomplishments
•Circumcised on the eighth day
•Of the people of Israel
•Of the tribe of Benjamin
•A Hebrew of Hebrews
• In regard to the law, a Pharisee- PRUSHUM- SEPERATED
• As for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.

Jesus described the chasm between the world’s dung and the kingdom of heaven (bliss).
Again the kingdom of heaven is like a man who is a dealer in search of fine and precious pearls. Who, on finding a single pearl of great price, went and sold all he had and bought it.
Jim Elliot described it like this:

He is no fool if he should choose to give the things he cannot keep to buy what He could never lose.
Isaac Watts said it this way:

When I survey the wondrous cross

On which the Prince of glory died,

My richest gain I count but loss,

And pour contempt on all my pride.

But I love the way Paul lays it down in This letter to Philippians:

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

The Message Bible puts it this way:

I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering, and go all the way with him to death itself.
Phil. 3:10-11

Is there any finite ecstacy, happiness, any exhileration with an expiration date that could compare to eternal adventure with someone so awesome that he created the hammerhead shark and the hummingbird. Could there be any thing greater than to know him intimately.
John the beloved said:
Behold what manner of love the father has given unto us that we are called the sons (and daughters) of God.

Again Isaac Watts:
Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were a present far too small;

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all.

If you can get a glimpse of Jesus- In all his glory, all his power. If we as Bluegrass Baptist Church can cut through- to use Paul’s analogy… all our dog dung of te things this world values.

If only we could make this our obsession—
Not for our own glory, not because our boxes are so pretty, not that we can stand before heritics and say, “I told you so.” Not because we are good- far be it from us to think that we in ourselves deserve the title “good” Our righteousness is dung smeared rags. (Again not my words but the prophet Isaiah.)

I want to know Christ…
I want to know him. I do.

More than anything else that I desire for our church I desire such a hunger for God, such a desire to enter into his chambers, such a hope to see the holy smoke and fire, to be baptized into the extraordinary and exiled from the typical. More than anything else pray that I will not miss the bliss of God’s pleasure and the breeze stirs by the wings of angels.

I want to know Him. And what devastates every smallish notion of God, what vaporizes the current of my finite mind is that this God who created everything. The one who crowned Kilimanjaro with snow and taught each cardinal to fly is on a quest for my heart. And it’s an all or nothing proposition. Do you want to know him? Do you want to know Christ? Do you want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead?

Do you want to know Christ?