The Master‘s Class, LifeChange Church Wichita

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF KNOWLEDGE (Romans 3:1-8)

Knowledge is power.  When you know something that others do not, you have an advantage over them.  That is why gossip is so enticing.  For that moment when you know something nobody else does, it makes you the smart one, the one on the inside, the one who has control of where that knowledge goes.  You get to choose who you will allow to join you in this exclusive club for those who have this knowledge.

At the workplace, knowledge is a leverage point.  When people refuse to share knowledge at work, it makes the company less efficient and less productive, but it can be viewed as job security for the person who has the knowledge.  If you are the one with all the knowledge of how things work, it makes it more difficult for the company to let you go.  It makes you more valuable than somebody who does not have this knowledge.  That value gives you leverage.  

Scientific knowledge is often the deciding factor in war time.  The country with the best weapons, the best training, and the best strategy, is usually the one who defeats the other.  Knowledge of how to make a nuclear bomb was the deciding factor in ending the war with Japan in WWII.  The country who got the bomb first was the victor.  

Knowledge is also power in the religious world.  When the Jews returned from the Babylonian captivity, most of them did not know how to speak Hebrew anymore.  They spoke Aramaic which was the official language of the Babylonians.  This meant that the priests and the scribes would have to translate the Scriptures during the worship services for the people.  If the priests could declare what was right and wrong, regardless of what the Scriptures really said, then they had power over the people.  Nor could the people challenge their interpretation of the Law for they could not read the Scriptures themselves.  The religious leaders used this power to control and to mislead the people.

As Christians we have been given knowledge the world does not understand.  We have been given the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  This is tremendously powerful knowledge, for it is the secret of how to have eternal life with Jesus Christ in heaven.  The Holy Spirit lives within our hearts and He shares the knowledge of God with us.  He opens the Word of God and He explains it meanings, it promises, and most all what God has done for our salvation.  God wants us to use that knowledge to lead others to Christ.  He has tasked us with the awesome responsibility of being His ambassadors on earth.  We have the knowledge that can help bring others into this group of believers that God calls His own.  

Our lesson today is about how those with that knowledge failed to share it with the world.  When God gave the Mosaic Law to the Jews, He gave them the knowledge of right and wrong.  He gave them something more valuable than gold or silver.  He gave them the light of God.    

THE VANITY OF RELIGIOUS RITUAL (Romans 2:17-29)

As I have gotten older I have found comfort in the status quo of things.  Some people may call it a rut, but my life is fairly regimented between work and study and teaching.  Each week is just about the same as the last, never having enough time to get everything done, but making do with the time that I have.  

People tend to approach religion in much the same way.  Our services are regimented with rituals and procedures.  There will be periods of singing, standing, greeting each other, taking up an offering (we can’t forget the offering), and the preaching followed by an alter call.  

But we find comfort in our religious rituals when we know what to expect and we can be obedient to them.  It makes us feel like we gain a special place with God if we perform these rituals, or that they must please God in some way, or why else would we do them?

We certainly must be in better standing with God than the person who only comes to church on Easter and Christmas, if even then.  Right?  That has to be worth something, right?

However, these rituals are certainly not described in the Word of God.  We are commanded to gather together and worship, and there are certain ordinances given by God, such as the Lord’s Supper, and Baptism, but sitting, standing, and singing 4 choruses, before the preaching is not in the Bible.  I know, I have looked for it.  

Now, do not misunderstand me, I am not condemning a structured service.  Like I said, I find comfort in the regimintation of things.  What I am condemning is the condition of the heart of those who are participating in these services.  

If you come to church on Sunday, and then live like the devil on Monday through Saturday, then these rituals are just that, rituals.  But if you come to church on Sunday to truly worship God, and you live the rest of your life in the will of God, then God loves the singing of praises to Him, even if it is just the first, third, and fourth verses.  

Our lesson today is about the vanity of the religious ritual.

GOD'S JUDGMENT IS REAL (Romans 2:7-16)

Sometimes it seems that the only things we feel are real are those things that we can instantly put our hands on and control.  It must come to us instantly, or it is not worth worrying about.  Our world is a world of instant gratification.  There are fast food, fast cars, and fast planes.  We can drive up to a little kiosk and get hot coffee handed to us through our car window.  We become impatient if we have to wait in line for anything.  We expect restaurants to provide quick and efficient service or we take it out of our tip to the waiter.  

Many people suffer from what I call the tyranny of the moment.  This is when your entire focus is controlled by the things immediately in front of you.  You know you need to plan for things, like retirement, but the car payment is due, the mortgage is due, the kids need braces or college, and so you take care of the things of the moment and let the things of the future go unattended.  

When things are promised to us at some unknown point in the future, then they fade into the backs of our mind, and if we try hard enough we can imagine that they will not happen.  

Like God’s judgment.  We are told by God that it is going to happen.  The preacher proclaims that God’s judgment is coming.  All of creation tells us that God is real, and if God is real, then His judgment must be real as well.  But we live our lives like that judgment is never going to happen.  

Can you honestly say that the way you live your life today would not change if you knew for a fact that Jesus was coming tomorrow and you would have to stand before Him?

The world behaves as if God does not exist.  But God’s judgment is real.  

Listen to this podcast to hear the Bible tell us that each person is guilty of sin, there are no exceptions, Jew or Gentile.  God would be perfectly just to condemn each of us based on our works.  Yet God has provided us with an alternative.  God has provided the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ to cover our sins, so that we can have righteousness imputed to us.  A person who has made Jesus Christ their Lord and Savior can stand before a Holy God in righteousness found in Christ.

THE MORAL HYPOCRITE (Romans 2:1-6)

We live in a world where man does not like to admit that his sinfulness and rebellion against God are at the heart of the problems of society.  We talk easily about how men are naturally good and that it is society that makes them bad.  We have a hard time taking responsibility for our actions in our society.  We are much more comfortable discussing imperfections, weaknesses, mistakes, and errors in judgment as the cause for our faults.  These terms are more socially acceptable, and almost everyone identifies with them, for we all have weaknesses.  

But an outright acknowledgment of guilt before a holy God, a 100 percent acceptance of responsibility for wrongdoing, is difficult for most people to do.  Yet, it is this kind of honesty that is the first step to the freedom from sin and guilt that God longs to give us and has provided for us in the death of Jesus Christ. 

It is easy to see the fault in others, to consider yourself as better than the other person.  It is even easier to praise the punishment of somebody else, but we become horrified when we are the subject of the punishment for doing the exact same thing.  When we judge others, there is no excuse for doing something wrong, but when we are judged ourselves our excuses are intended to exempt us, to explain our sins.  

God sees through our excuses and sees the sin. 

Listen to this podcast and learn how God condemns the moral hypocrite.

HOW GOD IS REVEALED (Romans 1:17-20)

Abraham Lincoln once said, “I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.”

I don’t know how anyone could look at the rings of Saturn, or the moons of Jupiter, and not feel in awe of the power of God to create these things for us.  The idea that all of these stars, all of these individual galaxies, black holes, quasars, and the sheer unfathomable distances of space, could be in existence just by happenstance, is the epitome of man’s ideological arrogance.       

It takes an incredible amount of assumptions based on theories that are derived from the miniscule amount of knowledge that man has about the universe and how it works for us to deny the existence of an all powerful Creator.  Yet, man makes these assumptions, calls them facts, and then proudly proclaims that there is no God.

Romans 1:20 declares For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: 

Listen to this podcast to learn how God continuously reveals Himself to man, and how man has intentionally, with forethought and deliberate effort, walked away from that revelation and began to worship pagan idols and his own greatness.  

We will discuss that man is lost in sin, that he needs a Savior, and that God has revealed Himself to man so that there can be no excuse for man to turn away from God.

TO BE PATIENT TO THE END (James 5:8-11)

We live in a world today where more Christians are being killed for their faith than at any other time in history.  Countries in the Middle East, like Pakistan, Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia daily beat and execute Christians just because their faith does not match their own Muslim religion.  Places of Christian worship are destroyed by the religious intolerant.   What is sad is that the mass media and the other governments of the world have, for the most part, ignored what is going on in these countries. 

The U.S. is also following this trend.  While it is currently possible for preachers and teachers of the Word of God to tell what God has defined as the absolute truths of right and wrong, I see a time coming very soon when these same sermons will be considered as hate speech by our own government.  Preachers will be silenced from telling the world what the Bible teaches, even in their own churches.  Imprisonment, lawsuits, and persecution, will be applied to those who choose to preach and teach Biblical truths.  Our government has systematically removed God, Jesus Christ, and the Bible, from our government meetings, our schools, our universities, and the public square.  

I believe as Ronald Reagan once said, "Without God, there is no virtue, because there's no prompting of the conscience. Without God, we're mired in the material, that flat world that tells us only what the senses perceive. Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under." -- Remarks at an Ecumenical Prayer Breakfast in Dallas, Texas, 23 August 1984 (President RONALD WILSON REAGAN)

Listen to this study of the book of James to learn that even in the face of the harshest persecution, God has a happy ending for us as believers.  We have the promise of the Lord’s return.  

We have the promise that the Lord will come in power and judgment.  

We have the promise of an eternity in heaven with the Lord Jesus welcoming us with the words well done.  

We have the promise of joy, unspeakable and full of glory.  

This is why we can be patient.  Why, when we are subject to religious intolerance and persecution, we can be still, and why we can be strong, for we know the day of the Lord is coming soon.  

WHEN WILL THE WICKED BE JUDGED? (James 5:7)

Do you ever look at the world around you and see people who are not even trying to be obedient to God, who are only looking to satisfy their own needs, and say “Lord, why do you allow the wicked to be so successful?”

It is easy to look at countries like Pakistan where Christians are being persecuted to the point of killing them by the thousands, and ask “Lord, why do you allow this to happen?”

When you find yourself working for someone who is deceitful, dishonest, and whose sole purpose is to make your life at work miserable, and ask “Lord, why are you not judging this person?  You promise that you will judge the wicked, so when are you going to do it?”

While it is true that God will reward the obedient believer and punish those who are disobedient, the Bible tells us that it will happen on God’s timeline and not ours.  

In our podcast this week, James tells the believer to be patient until the coming of the Lord.  God will judge all men, the believer and the unbeliever.  In fact, Nothing is more certain from Scripture than the fact of God’s judgment to come.

The Bible is clear that all of us are to be judged, we are simply not going to be judged all at the same time.  Just as there are several resurrections, there are several judgments.  They are distinguished by the subjects of the judgment, the time of the judgment, the place of the judgment, the basis of the judgment, and the result of the judgment.  

If you knew the Lord was coming tomorrow to judge you, how would it change your behavior?

Who Is My Judge? (1 Cor. 4:1-5)

Who is it that can judge you?  Who has a voice that can make a difference in the way you act, the things that you work on, and the things that you feel are important?  Who is it that establishes for you the absolute truths about what is right or wrong? Is it your conscience?  Is it your wife or husband? Is it your friends? In today's lesson, Paul is going to talk about who his judge is and who the Christian should be allowing to determine what is right or wrong for them.

This study is a verse-by-verse study of 1 Corinthians 4:1-5.