Truth That Changes Lives

Guest (Male): Thank you for joining us on Truth That Changes Lives. Pastor JP Jones is the senior pastor of Crossline Community Church in Laguna Hills, California, and a professor of biblical studies at Biola University. Today on Truth That Changes Lives, Pastor JP will be giving us a message from a series entitled All About Jesus. Let's listen as JP gives us part two of Dressed Up For Jesus.

JP Jones: What it's really saying is love is the greatest of all these virtues, and love is what binds together my unity of relationships with people. That's true, but that's not really the emphasis of this passage. The emphasis of this passage is: here are all these virtues that are available to me as a follower of Jesus, that are available to you as a follower of Jesus, that are available to you if you give your life to Christ. They will become yours as a new person in Christ. Here are all these virtues, and then he says at the top of the list, there's love, and it's love that connects all these virtues together in perfection.

In other words, if I just try to be a virtuous person but don't have love at the core, then you know what I am? I'm like what it says in 1 Corinthians 13: I'm a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal. Describing God's love and the primacy of love, "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all my possessions to feed the poor, if I surrender my body to be burned but do not have love, it profits me nothing."

Love is patient. Love is kind and is not jealous. Love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly, does not seek its own, and is not provoked. It does not take into account a wrong suffered. Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Love never fails. Love is the perfect bond of unity that ties all these Christian virtues together. So what is first and foremost in our lives as followers of Jesus is to put on Christ's love. It ties everything else together. That's why Jesus said, "By this, all men will know that you're My disciples, by the love that you have for one another."

Let me ask you: what did you put on when you got dressed to come to church today? We have a whole new spiritual wardrobe as followers of Jesus Christ. Every day, we need to make a choice to put on the very virtues of Jesus Christ, and at the top of that list, it's putting on love. That's a choice to let the love of Jesus Christ be central in our lives. It's part of living the new life, and we're to put on what we've already put on.

Paul now gives several short commands that continue this theme of living new life in Christ. Here's the next command: let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. Verse 15 says, "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace, and be thankful." The word here "rule" is the Greek verb *brabeuo*, which means to umpire. Let the peace of Christ umpire. That's right. It's a word taken right out of the sports vernacular of Paul's day, where an umpire made the call. Just like today, there are referees and umpires that make a call.

I remember when I was real little, I played Little League, and I had a Little League coach that knew every rule in that Little League rulebook for baseball. Whenever an umpire would make a call that he didn't like, he would come out of our dugout and he'd have his rulebook in his back pocket. He'd pull the rulebook out and he'd walk up to that umpire and he'd tell them what the rule really said. But guess who got to make the call? The umpire. So Paul says, "Let the peace of Christ be the umpire in your heart."

Yesterday, I was thinking about this passage. I went on a walk near where I live in the wilderness park, and I'm meditating and praying on this passage. I was thinking about this particular verse: let the peace of Christ rule in your heart. I thought, well, who wouldn't want to let the peace of Christ rule in your heart? Nobody wants to be living in anxiety and stress and worry and all that stuff. So what's the deal? Reflecting on it, the deal is there are things that we allow to rob peace from ruling in our hearts. Because we allow them in our heart, even though we may want peace, we don't get peace because we've got this other stuff going on.

Stinking thinking is any thought process where you go negative or you go critical or you go fearful or you go prideful or you go selfish. In other words, you think in some way that is opposite to what God says is true. It's not driven by faith, it's not driven by Christ's Lordship, and it's certainly not driven by the peace of Christ. It's driven by your selfish preoccupation with whatever you're thinking. Because you're thinking it and you're feeling it, you feel entitled to think it and feel it, so it just perpetuates.

Fear-based stinking thinking means you're afraid about something that may happen out there in the future. The more you think about it, the more you become afraid of it, and the more you try to micromanage it. The more you control it, the more fear you have related to it, the more you realize you're out of control, and therefore the more fear you have about it. It's stinking thinking. Maybe it's related to some form of bitterness. Somebody's wronged you, and maybe it's legitimate. Maybe somebody actually did wrong you, but you did not let it go and forgive. You've held onto it.

Every time you review it, it just brings up that anger associated with it and how unfair that was. How could God allow that to happen? How could that person just go on about their merry way without ever having any sense that what they did was wrong? You build it up in your mind. Stinking thinking can follow a whole lot of different venues, but what it basically is is looking at something from your perspective rather than God's perspective. Then it spirals out of control and it robs you of being able to have peace. The peace of Christ can't rule in your heart because stinking thinking is ruling in your heart.

Unconfessed sin would stop the peace of Christ from ruling in your heart. In Psalm 32, David says, "When I kept silent about my sin, God's hand was heavy upon me. My energy just drained away like water on a hot day in summer." You put water on a street when it's really hot, it steams and then it just evaporates and all of a sudden it just dries up. That's the way David compared his emotional, psychological, and spiritual strength when he refused to confess his sins. If we've got unconfessed sin in our life, the peace of Christ can't rule in our hearts.

Margin is like having a little space. It may be space with respect to time, some spiritual getaway, or margin as it relates to financials. But margin is giving you freedom in case things don't always work out the way you want them to work out. Guess what? Things don't always work out the way we want them to work out. If we've scheduled our lives to go from one activity to another activity to another activity, on paper that looks good, but all it takes is a traffic jam or a kid getting late for school or trying to drop your kids off and there's a line of cars at the parking lot that you're going to have to wait in.

The schedule now just got shot, and rather than the peace of Christ ruling in your heart, you're stressed because now you're going to be late or now things aren't going to work out the way you want them to work out because you didn't give yourself any margin. Or financially, if you've got every penny gone and even beyond that, then all it takes is the economy to tank or the housing market to tank or something to come up where you have to spend some money on the house that you didn't plan on or somebody got sick and you've got to pay a doctor bill you didn't plan on. Now there's no margin and you can't have the peace of Christ ruling.

You have new life in Jesus, and this passage is very practically exhorting us to live out the new life that's ours in Christ. We're to let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts. A fourth command is to be thankful. That's a command. Be thankful. It's at the end of verse 15, "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace, and be thankful." It's the command on the verb to be: "be," and then the adjective "thankful." In verse 17, it says, "And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father."

Acknowledgment of thanks, you see, is recognition that God is God, He's in control, and He loves me. Even this stuff I don't like, He allows to come into my life because He has a good purpose for my life. I'm putting my eyes on God who has a good purpose, not on the stuff I don't like, and so I'm giving thanks to God. The new life in Jesus Christ is radically different than the old life because it has a whole new power source. It's Christ Himself. We died with Christ, we've been raised up with Christ, and we've put on Christ. We're putting on the virtues of Christ. It's a brand new outfit, and it reflects Christ.

Verse 16, Paul continues in this exhortation to new life and says, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom and as you sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God." Here the command is to let the word of Christ dwell in you. It's the Greek verb *enoikeo*, which means to be at home. Let the word of Christ be at home in your heart. There's a difference between living in a place and being at home in a place. God's word may be in you because you've heard it or read it, but that doesn't mean it's at home.

James says, "Therefore, putting aside filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted which is able to save your souls. But prove yourselves doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he's like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; once he's looked at himself, he's immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. But the one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, not having become a forgetful hearer but is in fact an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does."

It all goes back to "receive the word implanted," but even before that, it says, "putting aside filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted." For the word of Christ to be at home in our hearts, there might be some stuff we have to get out of our hearts. As it says here in Colossians 3, "Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, speaking to one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs." It's the word of Christ in us and out of us. Christ's word is in us and when we open our mouth, out comes Christ's word.

When we have that kind of relationship with Christ's words, we're a blessing to people because when we speak words, we speak words that are psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. We speak words that add grace to people's lives and bless people's lives. In fact, here's an experiment if you want to try to put this into practice. This week, as you have relationships with people in your family, neighbors, coworkers, and friends, ask this question of people: "Can I share with you what I'm learning from God's word?" I've never had a person say no. They always say, "Sure." Just share an insight, share a verse that you memorized, or share what you're learning.

If the person is not a believer, that's a great entrée to now have an opportunity to talk to them about Christ and have a great conversation, find out where they are spiritually, and encourage them with the good news of the gospel. If they are a believer, then what you're sharing are words of life: psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, blessings, and encouragement. If you just say, "Can I share with you what I'm learning from God's word?" you're going to be able to bless people with your words. And guess what? It's going to bless you because you're going to get jacked. God used me, just because you shared what you're learning from God's word.

Everything we do in word or deed, we are to do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. We're to do everything in the name of Jesus. When you start thinking through what this means, our new life in Christ means God's intention for my life is that Jesus would be the center of everything. There wouldn't be any part of my life that isn't under the Lordship of Jesus or under the filter of Jesus. Before I say anything and before I do anything, I run it through that filter: will this bring glory to Jesus? Does this reflect Jesus? Christ is all and in all.

Nicolas Cage movie called *Next* features a character that is clairvoyant and he can see 30 seconds into the future. He's able to see what's going on, and because he can see what's going to happen, he can then step backwards and make changes so that that outcome doesn't happen. I wonder if we had that capacity, if we could look out in our lives 30 seconds into the future, how often we would look out and go, "Ooh, I'm about to say something that isn't in the name of Jesus. I better not say that. I'm about to do something that isn't in the name of Jesus. I better step back and change what I'm about to do."

Take baby steps to get us started. Just take two times throughout the day, and you don't even have to take more than a minute. Beginning of the day: "Jesus, I'm giving this whole day to You. Here's what's on my day. I'm going here, I'm having this conversation, I'm seeing these people. I'm surrendering this to You. Let me live this day for You, Jesus. Let me speak words and do what I do in the name of Jesus." Boom, you commit the day to Jesus. Then at the end of the day, look back. "Jesus, how did I do? Did I speak words in Your name? Do I need to make any course corrections?"

This is what's going to happen. You start at the beginning and the end, and then at some point you add another one. You surrender the next situation to Jesus, and the next opportunity to Jesus. Without realizing it, you'll be living a life where 24/7 you're going on a dialogue in your head that you're loving Jesus, you're talking to Jesus, you're praying about everything, and you're surrendering everything to Jesus. It's got to start with a consciousness at the beginning of the day and the end of the day. Try that this week and just see if new life in Christ isn't just something you hear about in church, but it's actually something you start living.

Guest (Male): What a great message for all of us today. Pastor JP provides us with great insight. That is why we'd like to make it available to you on CD. Just get in touch and mention today's date. We'll send it your way for just $5. Or if you'd like to support this ministry, you can write us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California, 92653. Or give us a call at 949-916-0250. That's 949-916-0250. For your gift of $25 or more, we will send you a signed copy of JP's new book, *Facing Goliath*. Please join us every Sunday at 9:00 or 11:00 AM at Crossline Church in Laguna Hills.

The address is 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California, 92653. Or check us out on the web at crosslinechurch.com. We want to help you in your relationship with Christ. Please get in touch with us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California, 92653. Or call us at 949-916-0250. On the internet, you will find us at crosslinechurch.com. We hope to see you at one of our services every Sunday at our new campus in Laguna Hills. For more information and directions, please go to crosslinechurch.com. Please join us next time on Truth That Changes Lives.