Do God's people really have to restore?

Restoration? What actually is this? Do christians have to do it, if you look at church history you would think that we probably don't need to, if you looked at your church maybe you would conclude its not important and if you looked at your own life, it is a signpost that reads "restoration is only done when it is convenient for the one restoring." Yet we would have to reject the good news of the gospel that teaches Jesus Christ restored everything back to himself on the cross! And so christians follow suit in emulating Jesus in restoring and when we restore we provide the greatest witness of what Jesus has done in our own lives.

Time Codes:

0:00 - Intro
6:47 - We have been given an opportunity
9:59 - What have we been instructed not to do
14:46 - Living offensive lives
16:36 - What we have been instructed to do
19:05 - How do we love as Jesus loved us?
31:11 - Conclusion

Music by
Over the limits
Vernacolmusic

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 6:47 We have been given the opportunity
• 9:59 What have we been instructed not to do
• 14:46 Living offensive lives
• 16:36 What have we been instructed to do
• 19:05 How do we love as Jesus loved?
• 31:11 Conclusion

Transcript

Wildfire podcast is an extension of Wildfire, which has a focus of igniting men and women of God into a deeper discipleship with Christ, instilling people with a passion to radically and relentlessly pursue Christ wherever that leads.

That God's truth will spread like a wildfire.

But tonight, we're gonna talk about a man who is deeply in love with Jesus, so much so that when given the call to leave his job and follow Jesus, he did it.

Now, it is safe to say that this man's love was very much like a child, whose motivation to express the love is greater than the actual thought and how to actually do it.

Have you met those people?

I am one of those people.

And this love results in him answering first without thinking, getting out of the boat first without thinking, and saying that he would never deny, deny, deny Jesus.

Now, this man, of course, is Peter, one of the 12 disciples of Jesus.

Peter, having ministered with Jesus for three years, having seen the perfect love and care for Jesus, would go on to deny ever knowing him.

This is really a disgusting action, and it's driven by fear, but the motivation doesn't detract away from how grotesque the nature of this action actually is.

To deny to know Jesus.

When Jesus was in need and had been arrested, Peter turned his back on him, and Jesus was crucified, and Peter was nowhere to be seen.

So when Peter found out Jesus was alive, you can imagine the thoughts that he had.

Even if Jesus is alive, things could never be the same, because I deny Jesus.

I turned my back on him, and I sinned against him.

Now, what we will be talking about this evening is one of the greatest characteristics of love, that it is not resentful, but instead that love restores.

And how we will talk about this?

We will look at the opportunity that we all have been given.

We will look at the instruction on what not to do.

We will look at the instruction on what to do, and then we will finish by looking at how do we actually do that, which we have been instructed to do by God.

And why talk about this?

Well, I sometimes think of the mindset of the disciples.

When they talked about love in that culture at that time, have been raised up in the Hebrew scriptures, and then to live and eat and sleep with Jesus, and see perfect love demonstrated every single second.

And now, when we talk about love, we all bring something to the table.

We all have baggage.

And some of what we think aligns with what is demonstrated in scripture.

And yet, other parts of our thinking as it relates to love is wrong, incomplete, or lacking.

And I get the tendency that all of us have to shy away from rebuke and correction and training, and even teaching.

And if we come here to sit, to listen, and then give a trip advisor review at the end, that is not only wrong, but that is deeply depressing.

That we would gather as God's people under His word and have no desire to leave differently.

You see, I get excited every time we dive into God's word.

Not because of the person that is speaking, but because of the God who is speaking.

Jesus' words communicated through the Spirit in me.

Now, if that is true, then this is not just a good or bad insert, whatever.

We are talking about His word here, His Spirit, His power, and us as a family.

We need to know what love is, and we need to know what love isn't.

We need to know the expectations and the blessings that come with being a follower of Christ.

We need to know how broken relationships that do exist in God's family are not because of the will of the Father, but instead the will of man.

And we need to know that love restores.

So the text for this evening, if you want to turn to it now, is going to be 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verses 4 to 8.

And while you're getting that up, I'm going to lay down some context that will help us here.

See, this is 1 of the letters written by Paul to the churches, which has recently been established following the incarnation of Jesus.

You see, the long-awaited Messiah had come in Jesus Christ.

He had been born of a virgin.

He had lived a perfect and sinless life.

He had died on a cross, rose from the dead, and he had ascended to the right hand of the Father.

His kingdom had been established, and the means to which he would advance that kingdom was the church.

And this is one of the letters to those churches.

And the church is the church in Corinth.

And what you need to know about this church is that like every other church, it struggled with the demands of Christian discipleship, and it promoted a self-centered lifestyle.

This is the teal end of Paul's first letter to the church.

He would go on to write a second, where Paul is instructing them on how to be a unified body that serves and loves one another.

Now, this is the text, beginning of verse four.

These are the words of God.

Love is patient and kind.

Love does not envy or boast.

It is not arrogant or rude.

It does not insist on its own way.

It is not irritable or resentful.

It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never feels.

You can tell from my intonation plus the sliding board what we are going to be looking at from that text.

But I want to still our hearts now, and I want to pray for you.

I want to pray that God would speak into your life, not by me, but by his spirit that lives inside of you and his word that is alive and it is active.

Let us pray.

God, I pray that you'll just help us to come together in humility and that we would ask that we would knock and that we would plead that you would speak to us and to know that when we ask you to speak, you will speak, because that is your promise to your children and to those who desire and long after you.

Bless this time that we have together now.

In your name we pray, amen.

You see, we have been given life, and with life comes the capacity to love.

Now, in Psalm 139, this is one of my favorite texts of scripture.

It says, for you formed my inward parts.

You knitted me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works.

My soul knows it very well.

You see, I want to tell you about a story.

I was given the opportunity one day to shoot a gun.

I know what you're thinking.

That's crazy and that's dangerous, and we are in trouble, and you would be correct.

And I assure you, the story that I'm about to tell you will only increase your fears when you hear the word look and gun, okay?

So I was given the opportunity to shoot this gun.

I was instructed, do not do this.

Then I was instructed on, do this here.

And then I was told, okay, go and do it now.

And so it's all pretty simple, pretty basic stuff, and I step up to shoot the gun.

But then, when I go to do it, I forget, is this on safety, or is it actually live?

And as I went, as I think it's on safety, I turned around with a live gun and faced everybody.

Everyone started ducking around, and they took the gun off me and said, you absolute idiot, go inside right now.

And it is safe to say that I did not shoot that gun.

But why did I tell you that story, if not to embarrass myself?

Well, I had been given an opportunity, right?

And I had been given an instruction, don't do it this way.

Then I had been given an instruction, do it this way.

All pretty simple.

But when it came to actually doing it, that's when everything seemed to break down.

And so it is with us, right?

We know the instruction, what not to do, we know the instruction on what to do, we know that we've been given a great opportunity, but when it comes to actually doing it, and I'm talking about love, many of us abdicate that beautiful opportunity we had, because we just don't know how to do it.

So the first is opportunity.

I read to you Psalm 139 about how God formed our inward parts, knitted us together in our mother's womb, how we're fearfully and wonderfully made.

If you want to know what opportunity we have been given, we have been given life.

We have been given life by our king.

And with life comes the capacity to love.

It is beautiful that we can sit here today and say that we have the capacity to experience love and also to give love.

That is an opportunity.

So what then about the instruction?

What instruction have we been giving?

And what not to do is do not have resentment.

1 Corinthians 13.5 says that love is patient and kind.

Love does not envy or boast.

It is not arrogant or rude.

It does not insist on its own way.

It is not irritable or resentful.

Love is not resentful.

Now, resentment is a bitter indignation or anger that is respondent.

What do we mean by that?

That is to say, it begins with a desire, turns into a thought, then into an action, then becomes a part of our character, and then our destiny.

That is, it dictates the trajectory of our lives.

But all of it is a response to something we have experienced.

See, it's not just you wake up one day and you feel resentment.

No, no, no.

Resentment comes from stimuli.

Something happens in your life, and then you feel a sense of frustration and anger as to something that you've experienced.

And if we get real with one another for a second, is there anything, and I mean anything in our life, that as we sit here now and we approach the throne room of God to pray, that we have this heart disposition where we hold on to resentment.

Now, possible areas that breed resentment include our relationships.

You see, paradoxically, we reserve resentment for those who we allow to get closest to us.

See, Paul is not writing this letter to strangers to help their relationship with other strangers.

No, Paul is writing to his family to help family relationships.

Intimate relationships create expectation.

And when that expectation is not met, that's when resentment steps in.

You may ask yourself, why is it that my best friends or my husband, my wife, my children, my elders, my pastor, my church family, insert whatever for you, the people that I love the most among these relationships, it seems that resentment is so frequent among those who are closest to me.

And the answer to that question is it's because of your expectation of those people.

There is no expectation for a stranger.

So whenever they pass you in a street and don't say hello, there's no resentment.

There's no expectation of elders of another church to shepherd you, so when they don't, there's no resentment.

There's no expectation from someone else's husband and wife when they don't love you, you don't feel resentment.

But when your elders and your spouse and your friend and insert whatever for you don't meet our expectation, that's when we're introduced to resentment.

This sense of injustice that has been done to us, this annoyed feeling, this frustration that turns into anger, then action and then becomes a part of our character that seeps into almost all of our relationships with these people that we're supposed to love.

Maybe we have to ask ourselves the question, is our expectation of people a biblical expectation, or is it a selfish one?

Other areas that breed resentment are circumstances.

Among my generation, the most, it is breakups.

Breakups breed resentment.

These relationships that we have this expectation of, and whenever they don't turn out the way that we wanted or the way that we hoped, we feel that we have a sense of injustice and brokenness in our lives.

And the world will tell you that, oh, you've had your heart broken, well, it's all right to have that wound in your life, and not to restore but to feel resentment.

They justify your feeling of resentment towards that person.

But we know in Romans 12 that we are not to be conformed to the patterns of this world.

That is not our normality.

Our normality is to emulate Christ.

And so when breakups come, when relationships are fragmented, it is not the world that I follow for my example, but instead, it is Christ and what his word says.

Do not follow the normality of the world and what they say your relationship should be and what they say you should feel.

Another area that breeds resentment is life.

In a world broken by sin, life comes with a disclaimer, an instruction on what not to do.

When resentment comes knocking and it will, do not let it in.

Something that I have been learning recently is that as Christians, we are not just called to a permissible lifestyle.

We are not just called to live defensive lives.

Instead, we are called to do what is beneficial.

That was one of the principles that was drawn out earlier from Paul's letter in chapter six.

Is there any athletes in the room?

I knew this would happen.

Nobody would put up their hand.

Anyone who does sport remotely, put up your hand.

I was so scared.

Yes, and has anyone ever suffered an injury?

Yeah.

And what is the one question that you go in wanting to know the answer to, and what is it you go out leaving thinking about?

It's the recovery time, isn't it?

How long am I going to be out for?

Tell me.

And the doctor says, listen, you'll be out for four to six months.

They might as well not have said six months, because all you've heard is four.

Four to six months.

What do you say?

Four months?

Brilliant.

I'll be there.

We always go for the earliest time frame.

Don't you notice that?

We always go with what is merely permissible, but never what is actually beneficial for us.

It is enough that we know what not to do, and that is how so many of us live our lives in relationships.

Tell me the boundary.

Tell me the boundary.

Don't go past that boundary.

You got it.

If you change the question from, what must I not do to what do I get to do, this will change the narrative of your life and your walk with Jesus Christ.

And it's a simple one to do.

Now, the question is, what is the instruction on what we are called to do?

We have read in 1 Corinthians the clear commandment to love.

But one of my personal favorite commandments that I simply can't get my head round is whenever Jesus in John 15 says the following words.

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

All right?

Now, if I'm standing in that crowd, I'm just going to say it.

I'm going to say, Jesus, did you say that right?

Did you say that we are to love you as you love us?

That we are to love one another as you love us?

This is crazy.

If you don't find this crazy, it is probably because you haven't grasped it yet.

What Jesus actually just commanded of us and expects of us, the blessing that he just gave to us, the responsibility of his people.

That the way Jesus, God, who is love, demonstrated perfect love when he came to the cross and he died for us, that with a love so intense, so wide and so vast, we cannot get our finite heads around it.

And yet, he says, that love is the way to which you're called to love one another.

What?

And it comes back to that standard again.

If we're going by the world standard, or even the standard of other followers of Jesus, we're doing pretty well when it comes to love.

But our standard is not the world and it's not other people.

Our standard is Jesus Christ.

He says, that is the measure to which you love.

And with that, I am confronted of where I have went wrong.

I have not taken that seriously.

And what do we mean by love?

Practically, what does it look like to obey this commandment and take seriously what Jesus says?

So often we can see the opportunity that we have been given.

And we can see what we are not supposed to do, and then we see what we are supposed to do, but we don't know how to actually do it.

Which leads us to our final point for this evening.

How do we do what we have been instructed by our king?

That is to love one another as he loved us.

How do we do this?

How do we take seriously this commandment?

Not that I have given, or any other man, but Jesus Christ, the one who redeemed you.

If you want to know how to love, know that love never feels.

In 1 Corinthians 13, it says, love never feels.

One of the greatest facts about love is that it never feels.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love does not give up, and it does not feel what it is there to love.

Then we must never feel in loving the people that we are called and commanded to love.

His people, his children, our brothers and sisters in Christ, and our enemies.

Think about it.

God is love, and love is what we have just read in 1 Corinthians 13.

So we knew that God is love, and we knew that love never feels.

So God will never feel in loving what God has decreed he is there to love.

And so we must not feel in the decree that we have been given as his people to love, whom God has decreed for us to love.

Because love never feels.

If you want to know how to love, know that love restores.

This is one of the greatest and most beautiful truths about love, that it restores.

In Galatians 6.1, another letter that Paul wrote to the church in Galatia, he says this, Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.

Now I recognize that some of you may be reading off a different version this evening, so some of your versions may read like this.

Brothers, if anyone is caught in some sort of transgressions, you who are sort of spiritual should sort of restore him in sort of a spirit of gentleness.

Notice that it does not say some transgressions.

Well, from our point of view, we hope that it would say that.

This is where we, as followers of Christ, are most guilty when it comes to being only heirs of the word and not doers of the word.

You see, we happily profess this truth of restoring, we happily Instagram it, that we're restoring people.

But when it comes to actually being motivated by a love that never fails, and when it comes to restoring in action, that's when our love so often fails, and we don't take seriously this command that Jesus has given us.

You'll say, yes, restore everyone, but not if they have wronged me.

Yes, restore everyone, but not if their sin will affect my sacred reputation.

Yes, restore everyone, but not the sins that we arbitrarily decide are greater than others.

And disclaimer, don't restore people who have committed adultery.

Don't restore people who watch porn.

Don't restore people who have shamed the status of our precious church, and it gets to the point where we just start saying, Don't restore people.

Love does not hold resentment.

Love restores.

And Jesus came to restore.

Restore our relationship with the Father.

All of us have a brokenness with inside of us, and all of us are weak, and all of us have sin.

And you know what?

If some of us had it our own way, we would have scrapped the New Testament, because the New Testament would have required Paul, and to have Paul, that would have required restoring Paul, who was a murderer and persecutor of other Christians.

And some of us wouldn't be able to get over that.

If you want to know how to love, look to Jesus.

Jesus, before ascending into heaven, spoke directly to Peter, reminding him of his denial, not to inflict guilt and shame, and have Peter separated from the purposes of God.

See, one of the greatest misconceptions that we have is that whenever people recognize sin in our lives, that this is an unloving thing to do.

But if you're going to go down that line of argument, you're going to have to say, what Jesus is doing here is wrong, then.

Jesus recognized the sin of Peter, and how he denied him three times.

But for what purpose?

Peter would know that it is not that Jesus didn't see Peter and his sin, but that Peter's sin had been forgiven and he had been restored.

If you want to write something down and leave with it tonight, then this is it.

It is not that Jesus doesn't see our sin, but it is because Jesus sees our sin that he came.

You see, you don't go to a shore when you're clean.

You go to a shore when you're dirty.

When it comes to Jesus, we come to him dirty and we come to him unclean, we come to him sinful, and he knows that.

Church isn't about coming to a place and being whitewashed tombs on the outside.

It's about coming authentically and transparently with the family who loves you and has experienced love and wants to restore in love.

At the Last Supper, Jesus knew that Peter would deny him three times, and Jesus at no point before or after this happened showed any resentment.

Imagine sitting with the person you're with right now, to the left or to the right of you, and you knew for a fact that tomorrow they were going to deny you.

They were going to slag you off, gossip, lie, slander.

But you knew that was going to happen.

And your knowledge of that, and your telling them of that, would not act as a deterrent from them actually going ahead and doing it.

Yet, you have no resentment.

And when it's being done, you have no resentment.

And after it has been done, you have no resentment.

Because love never fails.

And love restores.

You see, Peter would fail, but Jesus said, when you return, strengthen your brothers.

It is not the absence of failure in our lives.

We will fail.

But what matters is the presence of the faith that remains after the failure.

It is true that we will fail.

And Jesus knew that, because he said, when you return to me, Jesus knew that Peter would fail.

And he said, that Satan has asked to sift you like wheat.

But I have prayed.

What did Jesus pray for Peter for?

I have prayed that your faith would remain.

When we fail, the question is, does our faith remain?

When I falter, when I fall, the question is, does my faith remain steadfast in not myself, but in Jesus Christ who is perfect?

I am not unsurprised when I falter and I fall.

And sometimes we like to switch up the narrative of salvation that in and of ourselves, I couldn't save myself.

I needed Jesus to come and do that.

But now that I am saved, I will do everything I possibly can to keep that salvation.

And do you know what?

Our theology and what we read in Scripture and know about God tells us that that's not true.

We know God's love never fails.

We know His mercies are renewed every morning, and we can rhyme it off.

But yet our experience denies that.

You can come into church and you can say to people, of course God never fails.

But after you've been crippled with a sin that you've repeated time and time again, you sort of start to doubt yourself and question, does God's love never fail?

Can He restore me?

It is true that we will fail.

But the question is, will your faith remain?

And do you know that Jesus Christ, our advocate and our interceder and our mediator, is seated at the right hand, and He prays for us, that our faith would remain steadfast, not in ourselves, but in Jesus Christ.

Because of Jesus, sin does not define us.

Instead, we are defined by restoration that is found in Jesus Christ.

And so we must ask ourselves, one of the greatest litmus test or hallmarks for a healthy church, is the frequency to which they restore, and the efficacy in which they do it.

How often do we restore one another, and how often do we restore one another well?

To think that we could look out at our brothers and sisters in Christ, who are drowning and who are in need and who are in failure, and then to cast them aside is not to model the gospel, and it is not to model the love of Jesus Christ.

Because what about if he did that with us?

Jesus looks at you, and he sees you for who you are as a sinner.

And he came, and he shed his precious blood, so that our identity would not remain in sin, but it would remain in Jesus Christ.

And so it is when our family falls in love, we restore them, because there's no other alternative.

And the reality is, it's really easy to actually speak this, but again, doing it, that's when it becomes difficult.

In the charity that I work in, I remember shaking hands with a former paedophile and a murderer, someone who committed adultery, someone who was an alcoholic, and someone who was a drug addict, all within the space of ten minutes.

I thought to myself, how would Jesus respond?

How am I commanded to respond?

And the question wasn't, the difficulty wasn't, what would Jesus do here?

I know what Jesus would do, and I know what I'm commanded to do, and that's restore.

But when it came to doing it, I didn't know.

And you know what?

It's gonna be so complicated.

Those people who struggle with addiction, those of us who struggle with sin and with weakness, that is constant.

It's gonna be difficult, but that's what discipleship is.

That's what journeying with one another is.

And the church, just as whenever Jesus came, it's not the healthy who need a doctor, it's the sick.

We need to model restoration.

What have we talked about tonight?

Love is not resentful, but instead love restores.

And how do we talk about it?

We looked at the opportunity that we have been given as God's people to have life.

And with life comes the unique capacity to love one another.

What have we been instructed not to do?

Do not hold on to resentment and to bitterness and to frustration.

And it will come, and you will be left with the choice as to whether you will hold on to resentment or as to whether you will be obedient in love.

And we have been instructed on what we are called to do.

As Jesus said, that we love one another as he loved us.

How do we do that which we have been instructed?

Know the facts.

Love never fails.

Love restores.

And look to Jesus, who loved perfectly.

But why talk about this?

What will you do now as we leave and as we have fellowship together?

This is the love that we are called and commanded.

This is the love that we are commanded to.

Knowing that people will fail, knowing that we will be left with a choice, either to hold resentment or to offer restoration.

This is the commandment.

This is the blessing.

And this is the responsibility.

This is the necessity.

And this is the expectation from God for God's people.

That we would love one another as I have loved you.

And it starts with restoration found in Jesus Christ.

And it will always continue to be restoration in Jesus Christ.

And we as God's people have the privilege of restoring one another and doing so in love, not to hold resentment.

So let us love one another as Jesus loves us.

Let us pray.

Dear God, we thank you so much that we can gather together, and we can praise your name, and we can be reminded of the truths that are found in your word.

That it meets the chaos of summer and the mission and the constant pouring out that we would find sustenance in your manna and in your word.

And the difficulty was not listening to this today.

The difficulty comes in actually practicing it.

And if we failed, help us to recognize that, and come with repentance and confession and forgiveness, and let us begin tonight a love that never fails and a love that restores.

Help us look with expectation.

Help us to encourage one another in our walks and our races for Christ.

Bless our time of praise now and fellowship together as we talk and remind ourselves of the restoration that we have experienced and the restoration that we now get to partake of as his people.