Inspire Ohio 2012

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Advent HOPE Kettering

Chester Clark

Do Justly

It's good to be here today in Ohio, and happy Sabbath to each 1 of you.

My wife, Jane, and I are so glad that we could be here as part of this Inspire Ohio weekend, so I just want to thank those of you who organized and invited us here.

It's exciting to be part of first things, right?

The historic days, and we're living in those kinds of days.

We're living in times that are just exciting.

And I'm so thrilled with what young people can do and are doing for Jesus in this day and hour of our history.

And I think that it is inspiring to see the faith and the initiative and to see how the Holy Spirit moves upon hearts.

And this theme, awake, I think is a fitting time, or wake up is a fitting theme for the times in which we're living.

And I know for me, I want to have a more vibrant, more meaningful, deeper, fuller walk with Jesus.

I'm thankful for the way that God uses it.

And this weekend, the messages that I'm sharing are sort of tied together.

In fact, particularly the next 2, if you just listen to 1, you may not get the whole picture of what I'm trying to share.

And so I would encourage you, if you're not going to be here for the evening meeting, or you've missed other meetings, just go on to audioverse.org and listen to the others in the series so you can get sort of the balanced picture of what I'm trying to share as we're looking together at the Word of God.

And let's turn in our Bibles again to a passage which we referenced last night, Micah chapter 6.

Micah chapter 6, 1 of those little minor prophets they call them, not because they're so minor in their meaning or in their message, but simply I think because they're not as verbose in their writing.

Their books aren't as long as the major prophets as we call them, Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

Let's go ahead and bow our heads as we begin with a word of prayer again.

Father, thank you for giving us this opportunity on this Sabbath day to gather together in your name with your people.

Thank you for giving us your word And as we studied last night, Lord, you've shown us, you've given us the gift of prophecy.

Through your servants, you inspired to write and to reveal the way of life.

And Lord, you haven't made it complicated, But you've simply asked us to take your word instead of creating our own means, our own methods of salvation.

Help us to be willing to lay at the door of your house our preconceived opinions, our ideas, even the very way we think, Lord, needs to be organically changed so that we can think like you think throughout all of eternity.

Today I just wanna pray that your spirit would once again be our teacher and our guide, that you would speak to each 1 of our hearts, that you would fill not only this house of worship today, but you would fill each 1 of our minds.

Lord, that we might be better people for having been here and spending time with you.

And Lord, I just want to pray that you would do these things for us, not because of anything we've done, not because we're worthy, but because of Jesus.

Micah chapter 6 and verse 8, again referencing a situation in Israel where there needed to be a revival and a reformation.

There's this dialogue going back between God and His people, how this can happen.

And Micah chapter 6 and verse 8 says, He hath shown thee, O man, what is good, and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do what?

To do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.

You know, maybe it's because of our natural tendency towards legalism.

Our natural tendency towards wanting to do something in our salvation.

Every false religion is based on works, right?

But the true religion of the Bible, the religion of salvation through Jesus Christ, is that I can't do anything except admit my nothingness and my unworthiness.

I'm reminded what Desire of Ages tells us in, well, the 2 quotations I'll reference in page 300 and page 329.

The Lord can do nothing towards the recovery of man until convinced of his own weakness and stripped of all self-sufficiency.

He yields himself to the workings of the Spirit upon his heart, the Holy Spirit upon his heart.

Then he can receive the gift that heaven is waiting to bestow.

From the soul that feels his need, nothing is withheld.

But the Lord can do nothing until we're convinced of our weakness and stripped of all our self-sufficiency.

So on 1 hand, we have the promise that from the soul that feels his need, nothing is withheld.

On the other hand, we have the limitation.

On 1 side, you have the boundless possibilities.

On the other side, you have the infinite limitations.

The Lord can do nothing toward the recovery of man until stripped of all self-convincing weakness and stripped of all self-sufficiency, he yields himself.

And so there's this promise, and also, page 329, The weaker and more helpless you know yourself to be, the stronger you'll become in his strength, right?

We have to come to the point where we recognize our need, where we recognize that I am nothing, I can do nothing, I'm a hopeless case.

It doesn't matter what I've done, doesn't matter what my background is, it doesn't matter how good of a family I came from, doesn't matter how strict of a vegan I am or whatever else you wanna try to reference in your resume for God.

I'm a hopeless case, except the blood of Jesus Christ saves me from my sin.

And so, when I study my Bible in the morning, my main purpose of Bible study no longer is to try to learn some, you know, proof text to be able to do better, give better Bible studies and baffle the Baptists or whatever it is.

That's important, we need to know our Bibles, right?

But the main purpose for me to study the Bible is so that I can be converted every day.

So that I, as I'm studying the Word of God, the Lord can start speaking to me and showing me who He is and just as importantly, who I am.

So I can be convinced of my own weakness and stripped of all self-sufficiency.

Because when I start out my day with self-sufficiency, it ends up not so well because I'm not sufficient.

I'm not sufficient for the tactics of the devil.

And so Bible study and the gift of revelation is so important in our Christian walk.

But perhaps because we have this tendency to begin trusting our own doing, perhaps because we have this human tendency to strive to earn our salvation, we call it sometimes legalism, this idea that somehow because we obey, because we do, we are then meritorious, we then begin to deserve somehow a little bit of the salvation or the blessings of God.

Because we have this human tendency, there's a sort of a knee-jerk reaction away from that, and we want to be careful that we don't emphasize works, right?

We don't emphasize too much obedience because obviously, we emphasize too much obedience, people are going to fall into the trap of legalism.

But the Bible is not afraid of emphasizing doing.

The Lord has shown thee, O man, what is good, and what doth the Lord require of thee but to what?

Well, that's a bad word in our vocabulary sometimes as Christians.

And we've already talked, you understand, don't take this out of context, we've already talked about how nothing we do can earn us salvation, right?

But at the same time, we can't be afraid of obeying God.

We can't be afraid of seeking a life that is in harmony with the will and the Word of God.

He says, He has shown thee, O man, what is good, and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.

We're going to be focusing this morning on this first phrase, to do justly.

For some people it has nothing to do with the 10 Commandments.

They would almost downplay and denigrate the 10 Commandments and say, well, you know, we're not to focus on those, that would be legalism.

And so we're going to go and we're going to feed the poor and we're going to, you know, take care of the homeless and the elderly and the widows and so forth.

And does the Bible teach us that that is something that we should do as believers?

This is true religion and undefiled in fact the Bible tells us.

I'm not saying in the least that this is not what we should be doing, but brothers and sisters there doesn't have to be a disconnect, a contradiction between doing good to people and obeying the Word of God.

They can be done simultaneously, harmoniously.

Because some people have gone to the other extreme and they've said, you know what, I'm going to do, and they have a whole checklist of their religion, right?

I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm not going to do this and this and this and this and they make their religion a whole bunch of rules and regulations and they don't care about people and they don't love people and they have nothing to do with people because that would taint them and defile them, you understand.

Because there's this, there's these 2 extremes, right?

We find ourselves being repulsed by 1 and attracted to the other or vice versa.

The Bible's actually going to teach us that we need both.

We need to do good to people and we need to simply obey the commandments of God.

Friends, it does not need to be legalistic.

It does not need to be legalism for us to be obedient.

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Do Justly

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