Teaching. January 14, 2007
January 14, 2007
I am posting my notes on Pastor Mike’s teaching from Sunday, January 14th. These are MY notes. Not a transcript. Not his notes. Any misquotes, mistakes, or mystifications are my fault (or something like that). All verses are from NASB 1995.
Confidence: A quick word study
Analogy: What do football players do after a touchdown or a big play? The celebrate. They may “dance,” do a chest bump with another player, or pump their arms in the air. Why? They are confident in their abilities.
What if they do not succeed? Sportscasters talk about a player’s need for a “short memory.” That is, the player needs to forget all of the failed tries the player may have had during the rest of the game. And retain his confidence.
Example: a corner back must prevent the receiver from catching the ball. Time and time again. They need to forget each failure and stay confident of their abilities.
Can, or should, Christians be confident? Yes. But in what? Our own abilities?
Matthew 10:18-19Jesus told His disciples that they will be brought before “governors and kings.” Why did He warn them? So that they could prepare a defense in advance? Develop confidence in their own abilities? No, so that they would be ready to speak, but to speak what the Holy Spirit would give them.
18 [Jesus said] “and you will even be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles.
19 But when they hand you over, do not worry about how or what you are to say; for it will be given you in that hour what you are to say.”
[Bill’s aside: They needed to be practice listening to the Holy Spirit, so that they could easily flow in Him.]
2 Corinthians 3:1-5“Letters of commendation.” Examples: Letters of recommendation or book blurbs, recommending a particular book. They are from a noteworthy person to make the book noteworthy. If they are by a nobody, they would not be effective.
1 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some, letters of commendation to you or from you?
2 You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men;
3 being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
4 Such confidence we have through Christ toward God.
5 Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God...
Despite what Paul had to say in the first letter to Corinth about Corinth, the church in Corinth was noteworthy in their godliness. Paul did not need a “book blurb” or a letter of recommendation. Everyone could see Corinth; they knew the church in Corinth; and it testified to who Paul was.
Paul’s confidence was from the Lord.
If I look at my heart, my flesh, I am disheartened. But if I look at God’s transforming work in me, I can be confident.
2 Corinthians 5:17The old things are passing away, and God is doing new things in us, changing and transforming us. Shouldn’t we be confident in the Lord? And in what He is doing?
17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.
Confidence can be a taboo word in Christianity because we place confidence in the wrong things. For example, in our own ability to be perfect. We need to be confident in the Lord. His is transforming us, changing us into His own image.
[Bill’s aside: “our own ability to be perfect” is a two-edged sword, cutting both ways. If we are “perfect” by our own standards, we are arrogant and boastful. If we fail, we blame ourselves and live under condemnation.]
2 Corinthians 3:5-11The old covenant came with glory, even though it was only words written on stones. The new covenant should have even more glory because it is life and righteousness.
5 Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God,
6 who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
7 But if the ministry of death, in letters engraved on stones, came with glory, so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, fading as it was,
8 how will the ministry of the Spirit fail to be even more with glory?
9 For if the ministry of condemnation has glory, much more does the ministry of righteousness abound in glory.
10 For indeed what had glory, in this case has no glory because of the glory that surpasses it.
11 For if that which fades away was with glory, much more that which remains is in glory.
2 Corinthians 3:12. Therefore having such a hope, we use great boldness in our speech,“Great boldness.” Be bold, in confidence in what we know and how we are being transformed.
2 Corinthians 3:13-16In the Spirit, in the new covenant, the veil is removed, and we can “look intently” at the Lord.
13 and are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face so that the sons of Israel would not look intently at the end of what was fading away.
14 But their minds were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Christ.
15 But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart;
16 but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.
2 Corinthians 3:17-18I know what my flesh is and what it is like. Do I know what I am in Him? Do I know what I am being changed into?
17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
Hebrews 10:22-25This sounds like “pumping yourself up.” If you are not living there, it is. If you are living there, it is reality, simply being lived.
22 let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful;
24 and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds,
25 not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.
1 John 3:18-22Vs 20. “God is greater than our heart.” Mike said to read this 30 times tomorrow.
18 Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.
19 We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him
20 in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things.
21 Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God;
22 and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.
Confidence should arise out of a clean heart. When I sin, I do not feel clean. However, if I repent, and ask for forgiveness, I am made clean.
We expect punishment for out sin, not forgiveness. We forget how easily and effortlessly God want to forgive us and what us clean.
1 John 4:16-17As God is, so we can be in this world. Not just in some future world.
16 We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
17 By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.
1 John 5:14-15Confidence is linked to prayer.
14 This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.
15 And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.
2 Corinthians 2:14-16We are a sweet aroma, a pleasing fragrance. Some receive it, some react badly to it.
14 But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place.
15 For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing;
16 to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life. And who is adequate for these things?
Paul was a confident man, who wrote confident things. Do we believe Him?
Romans 8:37. But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.Are we confident in our prayers? Confident that He hears us? Confident in being changed and transformed?
posted by Rooted in Him @ 4:16 PM
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