The Life You Never Knew, Part 2

Colin Smith: Probably some of your friends who don't go to church will deduce from the fact that you do come to church, they'll say, "Well, of course, Joe and Mary, they must think that they're righteous." That is the world's view of a Christian. And precisely the opposite is the case, isn't it?
Steve Hiller: Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. I'm Steve Hiller, glad that you've joined us today. Colin, what you just articulated I think is something that probably all of us know somebody who has verbalized at least at some point that they've thought along those lines. That they look at a Christian and they perceive that those Christians think that they're kind of a holier-than-thou, that they're super good, they're super righteous.
Colin Smith: Super righteous. There they go off to church with their Bibles and so forth and so on. Yeah, and that is precisely the opposite of the reality. To be a true Christian is to come to the place of saying, "I know that I am so far from being righteous that I have no hope except in a Savior." And so it's completely the opposite of what is sometimes conveyed and what is sometimes perceived. This is at the very heart of the gospel. The Apostle Paul makes it clear that really to grasp our dependence on Christ leaves us in a position where no person can boast unless it's to boast about Jesus, but it's certainly not to boast about ourselves.
Steve Hiller: None of us can do that when we have the standard of Jesus to measure up to. We all fall so short of that. That's what we actually looked at last time, was the fact that because of our original parents, Adam and Eve, we all have this now sin nature that needs to be dealt with. Really today is a day of encouragement, a day of hope.
Colin Smith: It really is. Here's what I found, Steve: the more one thinks of oneself, the less one thinks of Jesus. And the less one thinks of oneself, the more one thinks of Jesus. And so really grasping this truth of our human sinfulness and its application is going to be the most Christ-exalting path possible.
Steve Hiller: Well, we're going to continue to look at how sin has impacted us and the hope that we have in Jesus. I hope you'll open your Bible and join us in Ecclesiastes chapter 7 as we continue the message, The Life You Never Knew. Here's Pastor Colin.
Colin Smith: God made Adam upright. But men—so we're now talking about the whole history of the human race since the Fall—but men have gone in search of many schemes. Friends, that's the teaching of this verse. All the rest this morning is application, and I want to offer three, I believe, very important applications for us today. Here's number one. I plead with you, especially if you are a Christian believer, stop blaming God for what's wrong with the world. Stop blaming God for what's wrong with the world. God did not burden Adam with sin; God made him upright. Adam was the one who used his freedom to forfeit his righteousness. Now, if you have really understood the Bible's teaching with regards to creation and the Bible's teaching with regards to sin, you will not spend the rest of your life blaming God for your problems. This is of huge practical importance, so I want you to really try and grasp this right now because this truth has the power to move the trajectory of our thinking. And friend, if the habit of your heart—and I choose my words carefully—if the habit of your heart is to blame God for the problems of your life and to blame God for the evils of the world, you should seriously question whether you are really a Christian. People who are redeemed by Jesus Christ love God and they trust Him. They have many unanswered questions and we have many doubts many times, but it is not the habit of the heart of a believing person to blame God for the problems of my life and to blame God for the evils of the world. Christians know that the blame lies with sin, and sin does not lie in God. There is no sin in Him. It lies in us. So, every time you see the wretched destructive power of evil breaking out in this world, and there may be some instinct to want, if you have made this your habit in the past, to say, "Well, here's another unresolved question for God," and another blaming of God that adds to the erosion of faith that Satan is working within your heart. Instead of going down that road, if you have grasped what we are being taught in this verse, then next time you see some great outbreak of evil in the world or some effect of fallenness within your own life, you will want to use that to strengthen your own hatred of sin and to say, "Oh, what a wretched thing this is! Oh, how far we have come from the uprightness with which God created Adam! Oh, how much we need Jesus Christ who is our only hope! And oh, how much I see that the root of this very thing that is so destructive in the world out there, the root of it is within me, and how much I must pursue holiness this week in the light of that." Stop blaming God for what's wrong with the world. Second application: start confessing that you are far from upright. Start confessing that you are far from upright. Now, this is simply what follows from believing this verse. We are not Adam; we are the men and the women who have gone after many schemes. And the sure mark of a genuine Christian is that he or she confesses that they are far from upright. Again, this is counter-intuitive. Many folks in the world have the idea, and maybe some of us have the idea, that if a person's a Christian, they must think that they're very righteous. Probably some of your friends who don't go to church will deduce from the fact that you do come to church, they'll say, "Of course, Joe and Mary, they must think that they're righteous." That is the world's view of a Christian. And precisely the opposite is the case, isn't it? That the mark of a genuine Christian is that this is a person who knows and confesses that he or she is not righteous. And this is the very reason why we need Jesus Christ. Friends, this is radically counter-cultural, that we be a community of people that confess that we are far from righteous. And it's very important because the world does not perceive the Christian community in that way. The world perceives the Christian community as people who say, "We're holier than thou." And so we need in our own hearts to be cultivating a spirit that reflects the truth that we believe, that we are those who come to the table of Christ because we are in desperate need of a righteousness that we can never attain and can only receive from Him. People who think that they are upright will never come to Christ. Never. That was the problem with the Pharisees. Their religion even reinforced the sense that we are upright people because we do this and this and this, and I pray and I tithe and all the rest of it. And they never came to Christ. How could they? What need did they have? They saw none. So, how can I cultivate a greater sense of how far I am from uprightness? How can we do that? How can we become more humble Christians and more Christ-exalting Christians, rather than people who may in some way convey that we are better than others? Once in a while, you come across a real gem in your reading and that happened for me this week reading Matthew Henry, a Puritan who wrote a commentary on the whole Bible and it's full of pithy sayings. Here's one that I want to give to you and it's worth pondering for a moment because it opened a window for me. Matthew Henry says, and it's in his comments on this verse, "A sound conviction of one sin will put us upon inquiring into the whole confederacy." Now friends, if I was preaching back in London, I'd have to spend the next five minutes explaining the word confederacy. But we are Americans. We know what this means. A group of people, a group of states that act together as one in pursuit of certain goals and a certain purpose. Now you see what Matthew Henry is saying. He's saying sins are a confederacy, but we don't always see it that way. But he says when you see just one sin and you come to a conviction about it—in other words, if you were to come to the place today at the Lord's table where you could say, "I can see one sin in my life. It's really in me, it's really a sin. I really need the grace of God for this, and it's in my life now." Not talking about stuff I used to do and all that. If you could see one sin in your life today, it would put you on the path of inquiring into the whole confederacy. Once you see one, you'll start saying, "Maybe there's others." And then you'll start seeing the others. That's his point. Once you see one, you're on the path to discovering that there are, in fact, a whole confederacy of sins in your life. Many sins in the believing heart working together, feeding off each other, playing as it were as a team, a confederacy, bringing each other into play. We don't see that easily. But Matthew Henry says the way to get on the path to seeing it is if you can identify just one sin, one, just one, and come to a conviction that it's really a sin and it's really at work in you right now.
Steve Hiller: You're listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and a message called The Life You Never Knew, the first message in our series called The Inside Story of Human Life. If you ever miss a program in the series, you can come and listen online. Our website is openthebible.org. There you can stream the program or download an MP3 for free. Again, that's at openthebible.org. Open the Bible depends on your generosity to bring you Pastor Colin's teaching each day. And as you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to say thank you by sending you a copy of Lincoln's Daily Devotional. And Colin, who is this book for?
Colin Smith: Well, I think it's for anyone who really loves the Word of God, but especially I think for anyone who's looking for something fresh or anyone who's looking for something really short. This little devotional that was actually used by Abraham Lincoln himself simply offers a verse of scripture for every day. They're organized by themes, a different theme each month. They go through the experience of a Christian believer in the various parts of life that we go through, and it gives to us just a verse that you can meditate on. So if you're looking for something really short, just to pop a verse of scripture into your mind each day, then this book does it very simply, very wonderfully. It does it from the old King James Version, of course, which so beautifully expresses the English language. And I think too, for someone who feels, "I just want to do something fresh and different," I find it helpful to change up what I'm doing in my own devotional life, to move from one thing to another, one part of scripture to another, to use different books and devotionals and aids at different times. And here's something that might just be fresh for someone today: a verse of scripture each day from Abraham Lincoln's devotional that will help you to meditate on the Word of God, take in its truth, and live in its beauty and in its power.
Steve Hiller: Well, we want to send you a copy of Lincoln's Daily Devotional as our way of saying thank you for your financial support this month. You can give online at openthebible.org or when you call 1-877-OPEN-365. That's 1-877-673-6365, or again the website is openthebible.org. Let's get back to our message from Ecclesiastes chapter 7. Here's Pastor Colin.
Colin Smith: Once you see one, you're on the path to discovering that there are, in fact, a whole confederacy of sins in your life. So let me ask you this question: Can you name one sin that you can see in your life right now? And if you can't, would you not want to begin thinking how out of touch with reality in my own life am I right now? So let me give you a little bit of help here. Here's two you could start by spotting. One is pride, the other is covetousness. I choose them for a reason. Pride was the first sin and it is in us all. Adam was created upright; he was wired with the love of God and the love of neighbor. But after sin, after the Fall, the wiring was changed and by nature, we are wired to love of self. And even when you are converted to Jesus Christ, you'll find yourself fighting against that stuff all of your life, as I do too. So the first instinct that comes out of the human nature now is me, and my family, and my work and its importance, and what I want, and what I need. Can you see that monster there right now in any particular ways in your life? Can you spot it? "Oh yeah, I see that right now." Covetousness. I say that because it is the last commandment and in many ways the most penetrating of them all. It goes right to the heart, and it was the one that the Apostle Paul said really gave him a window into the true state of his own heart. He talks about that in Romans chapter 7 and verse 7. And I suggest to you that that's in all of us. I see it in my own heart as well. We look at what God has given to others—their talents, their successes, their children, their ministries. A successful man once came to Jesus, quite young and already he'd made it in this world, and so his mind was on to, "Hey, how am I going to position myself for the next?" And so he said to Jesus, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" And Jesus discerned his heart. This man was all about himself. "I've conquered earth, now I want to conquer heaven. I want it all." And Jesus discerned his heart. You want it all? Here's what you do. You go and sell everything you've got and give it to the poor, and after that, you come and follow Me. And this man who loved to pass himself off as one who keeps the law—I've kept all the commandments, I love God, I love my neighbor—actually he was in love with himself. And that one sin was exposed, and his first reaction was he went away sorrowful. I've often wondered what happened to that man. Have you ever wondered that? Did he ever come back? Do you think we'll see him in heaven? I know this: Jesus opened his eyes that day to one sin. And so with Matthew Henry's comment, I've been wondering in my mind, how long was it then before he saw the whole confederacy? How long before he saw, "I came to Jesus and I said I've kept this, this, this, this, and this commandment. I now see I haven't kept any. And that this heart is wretched, and that this heart desperately needs that Savior. Where can I go and find Him?" Start confessing that you are far from upright round this table today and every day. And as you do, here's the last thing just briefly: put your hope in the One who is upright. The One who is upright. That's not Adam, of course, because he was made upright but he didn't remain upright. He fell, and then all his children were born in sin. The children were born where Adam landed when he fell. And in all of human history, well, you read through the Old Testament story and you look at these various characters and they're all disappointing in one way or another. Until having had all these generations arising from the human race, the One comes to the human race and He is the Son of God, and He takes our flesh and He lives this perfect life. This perfect life, the only perfect human life that has ever been lived. And then He lays it down as a sacrifice for the sins of others. He offers this righteousness before God the Father as a gift that can then be transferred to those who are in Him. Which is why the New Testament says that Jesus Christ is our righteousness. After years of living the Christian life, I have not been able to develop a righteousness with which I could stand before God, and neither have you. No one ever has. Christ is our righteousness. We look to Him for what we do not have and cannot work up within ourselves. And so it is that the Apostle Paul says, "I want to be found in Christ, and I'm not looking to stand before God with a righteousness that comes from the law." I don't want to stand before God on the last day saying, "Look at this Christian life and all the effort that I've made and all these things I've done for You." That would be completely hopeless because I am so far from upright. So I don't want to stand before God with a righteousness that comes from the law. I want to be found in Christ and to have the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith in Him. And if you think of it this way in this very last moment, the Lord Jesus Christ comes to you today and He offers Himself to you. This is the beauty of gathering around the table. This Christ crucified and risen offers Himself to us and He says, "Come, come to Me in faith and in repentance and let Me drape My righteousness around you." And He invites you to draw near to the Father, not with your head hanging in shame, but knowing how far you are from being upright, with a humble and a thankful heart saying, "Father, thank You that I stand before You as a justified sinner, reconciled to You through Your Son Jesus Christ, and all my good is in Him." When Christ shall come with trumpet sound, oh may I then in Him be found! Dressed in His righteousness alone, and therefore faultless to stand before His throne. On Christ the solid rock, say it with me, I stand, because all other ground is sinking sand.
Steve Hiller: You're listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith, and Colin will be back in just a few moments to wrap up today's program, so hope you'll stay with us. But I want to remind you that today's message, The Life You Never Knew, is part of a larger series called The Inside Story of Human Life, a series where we're taking a look at why the world is as it is today. And if you'd like to get a copy of the series, ask about that when you call us at 1-877-OPEN-365. That's 1-877-673-6365 or come to openthebible.org. Colin, what would you say to the person who's been listening today and they would say, "Well, I'm not really sure that God created Adam and Eve"?
Colin Smith: Well, I'd say this, that the doctrine of God being the Creator is of huge importance. Huge importance that He created Adam and Eve and of huge importance that He created you and me. And here's why it's so important. If you were created by God, then you belong to Him, you are owned by Him, you are loved by Him, you are the work of His hands, and your life has meaning and purpose. If you were not created by God, then who are you? You're an accident of history. And it is the most dignifying and hope-filled and wonderful truth in the Bible to discover I am created by God. And not only that, but as His creation, He has loved me and He has sent His Son for me. That's grace, that's love, and it flows out of the very beginning of the Bible. So I think it's a tragedy to lose sight of this truth or to jettison it because it's foundational to what we most need to know about ourselves. Who are you? I am God's creation.
Steve Hiller: And Colin, I'm thinking that the other thing is as you look at the two options that you have here, one ultimately leads to a life of futility. It may sound great that I'm in charge, I'm my own boss, I can do whatever I want, but you play that tape forward and we all are sinners, we all make mistakes, we live in a messed-up world, and that's a life of pain and hurt where as we follow Christ, that becomes a life of healing and hope.
Colin Smith: That's right. And not only in this world, but we're thinking in this series beyond this world as well. We've been talking, the title is The Life You Never Knew. None of us have lived in paradise, but the promise of the gospel is a life that is better than paradise. Not just paradise restored, but something better. Better than Adam and Eve ever knew is what lies ahead for those who are redeemed in Jesus Christ, and that's our amazing hope.
Steve Hiller: Well, that is what this series is all about. And if you ever miss a broadcast in our series, you can always come and listen online at openthebible.org. Well, Colin, it is Friday and the weekend's coming.
Colin Smith: Yeah, and I want to encourage you to get to church on Sunday. Find a church where the Bible is opened and where Jesus is the center of attention. And if you live in the Chicago area and you don't have a church home, I'd love for you to join us at The Orchard. There are six locations in the northwest suburbs. For more information, go to theorchard.church. That's theorchard.church.
Steve Hiller: Well, thank you, Colin, and thanks for listening. I'm Steve Hiller and I hope you'll join us next time.
Colin Smith: Everyone has questions about heaven, but the question that matters most is how do you get there? Many people have the idea that if a person was to get into heaven, they'd get there by living a good enough life. Well, the thief on the cross hadn't lived a good enough life, and he wasn't in a position to start living a good life. But Jesus said to him, "Today you will be with Me in paradise." Well, if the thief could get into heaven, so can you. Heaven, How I Got Here is a compelling 60-minute film in which Stephen Baldwin portrays the thief on the cross in a one-person play. Many have found that this story opens their eyes to the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and to the hope of heaven. You can watch the Heaven, How I Got Here film for free on the Open the Bible website. For more information, visit openthebible.org/heaven. That's openthebible.org/heaven.