Sermon Starters: It's Complicated

The second sermon, the fourth presentation at Southern Wesleyan University as part of the B. H. and Dorothy Phaup Holiness Emphasis Week.

I. Review: Where have we been?

• God is holy (from Tuesday night). He's like the infinity stone in Guardians that fries your default human. Starlord survives because he has "something special, something ancient" inside him. So when we have the Holy Spirit inside us, God's holiness doesn't fry us.
• Holiness looks like love (Monday chapel). Love God and love neighbor. That's what it looks like to be spiritual and holy.
• A whole lot of us are stuck in the middle. We are fleshly, carnal Christians (Monday chapel). Romans 7 resonates with us but that's not what Paul meant if you read the whole context (Monday night).
• For most of us, holiness is complicated (scene from the last Harry Potter with the goblin).

II. Text: Philippians 3:12-16
Not that I have already attained [resurrection] or have already been perfected, but I am pursuing it if I might also take hold of that for which Christ took hold of me… I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But I am doing one thing: forgetting the things behind and reaching out to the things ahead, I am pursuing the goal for the prize of the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus.

As many of us as are perfect, let us think this way. And if you are thinking in a different way, God will also reveal this to you. Only walk to the same degree we have attained.

Summary of Interpretation

• This passage is about moving forward. Do you have past spiritual successes? Past spiritual failures. Keep moving forward. Don't fall back.
• Veins have values in them. They keep the blood from flowing backward. Illustration. Keep moving forward.

III. Complications of Holiness Past

• See Keith Drury's Holiness for Ordinary People
• Two-trip-ism (then done for the rest of life, current resistance to membership signing in TWC)
• Rationalization of sin in life (because of being sanctified and the stakes are so high, one sin you're out, you know. Don't want to have to go through all that again.)
• What about addictions? This area seems to be a special complication these days.

IV. Some Guiding Principles for the Future
1. Sign over your house.
Start the process of giving God every room in your house; then give him the deed to the property.

• Give God every room. Of course. Then give him the deed to the house.
• Illustration
• There's usually one last hold out, a struggle to give one last area of your life. But what victory after giving it!
• When God owns the house, you're not letting him in the rooms. You're the one allowed in his rooms. 

2. Keep your batteries charged.
Don’t miss out on the charging stations God has built into the Christian life.

• When you're about to need a new cell phone, a lot of times the battery runs out fast. You may be desperately trying to do something and it dies. You turn it on. It dies. This is the Christian not fully charged by the Spirit.
• This point is not about taking something out (like sin nature surgery). Living a spiritual life requires positive power from God. If you're not regularly at God's charging stations, you're going to run out of power and the flesh will take over again.
• God has given us charging stations in the means of grace--prayer, Scripture, worship, communion.

3. Put God in charge of building projects.
As you add rooms to your house, give them to God as well, while keeping the old rooms clean.

• You won't be the same person your whole life, like the man who said he'd been married to 7 women in his life--the same person but they changed from year to year, as he had.
• We'll have new relationships--lots of new things to give to God.
• You'll have new jobs--lots of new things to give to God.
• Illustration.

4. Pay special attention to the basement.
We often have “besetting sins,” areas of temptation where we are especially vulnerable. Meet God there often.

• My basement and spiders.
• Often we have an area of spiritual kryptonite. Watch it!
• Watch out for former addictions. God can completely heal instantaneously. But often there is a hole there that you need to acknowledge and renew in surrender to God every day. Have him fill and refill that void every day with his power and Spirit (Gerald May, Addictions and Grace).

V. Enter God's Rest
Hebrews 4 - Every day that is called today, sign the house and all its rooms to God again. Let his Spirit fill the voids of besetting sins past again every day. Every time you take communion give it all to him again.