The Spiritual Disciplines
In God’s blessing of Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 12 God blessing them to be a blessing to all the families of the earth. God doesn’t bless them for their own sake alone. Their blessing is for the benefit of the world.
Exodus 19 expresses this as well. God desires that the people keep his commandments so that they will be a priestly kingdom and a holy nation, which implies a kind of leading of humanity.
Jesus is right in line with this. He wants to renew this original vision for humanity to be a blessing for the world. At the end of Matthew Jesus says,
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. (Matthew 28:19-20)
The idea here is that being a disciple of Jesus is to call people into who they are created to be, but it is also exactly what the world needs. It is a continuation of the call of God for human beings to rule the world, and with that idea comes the thought that that is exactly what the world needs- it would be a blessing if truly Christ-like disciples ruled the world. This is the idea of the kingdom that Jesus spoke so much about. The Kingdom of God is a reality wherever God’s will is being done. We pray “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. That is a prayer for the kingdom to expand.
For that to become a reality we must follow Jesus’ command in Matthew 28 to make disciples of all people, to invite them into the life of God, and teach them to obey everything that Jesus has commanded us.
It might be helpful to take a look at what Jesus has commanded us to know what we are supposed to be aiming at- what are we supposed to be like, and what are we supposed to be teaching others to be like.
The Sermon of the Mount is found in the Gospel of Matthew chapters 5 to 7. That is a good place to start looking. We won’t go through the whole thing, but let’s take a couple examples:
In Matthew 5:21-22 Jesus tells us,
“You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not commit murder’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.”
Here Jesus tells us that we are people who are not controlled by anger. He’s not saying here that you aren’t allowed to feel anger. But he is suggesting that anger is dangerous and outward expressions of anger are especially dangerous. We might even say that anger is the seed of murder. How many murders would happen if people had control of their anger?
Let’s look at Matthew 5:43-44, where Jesus says,
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”.
I think it was C.S. Lewis who said, ‘loving your enemy sounds like a great idea until you have an enemy’. Loving an enemy and praying for someone who is working actively against you seems so counter-intuitive. We automatically have all kinds of protests that arise in our minds for why this isn’t a good idea.
But beyond the thought about it being a good idea or not, we also wonder if it is even possible? How can I love an enemy? Is that even within our willpower to do?
If you are a disciple of Jesus, someone has helped you to become that. Someone has taught you about Jesus and about his teachings. Have they done their job by teaching you to do all that Jesus has commanded? Has the church truly taught you how to follow these commands?
We have told you to do that, yes. Control your anger. Control your lust. Love your neighbour. Love your enemy. But, have you really been taught how to do this?
In our reading from Galatians, Paul yearns for Christ to be formed in his hearers. That’s you. He yearns for Christ to be formed in you. What does that mean? Well the outward expression of a life like that is a lack of certain characteristics-
“fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these” (Gal 5:19-21).
So that is what shouldn’t be present. And then there is an outward expression of evidence of Christ being formed in you- what Paul calls “fruit of the Spirit”:
“love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Gal 5:22-23).
How do we become people whose lives lack the one and are full of the other?
Imagine you have never taken piano lessons, then you are sat down in front of a piano and told to play Beethoven’s “’Moonlight’ sonata”. Can you do that by sheer effort? Just try hard in that moment? Does anyone want to come up here and try? Most of us know that piece of music. Many of us enjoy that piece of music, but I bet few of us have intended to learn to play that piece of music.
Human beings usually grow through a process. If you want to learn piano then you get someone like Elaine to teach you, and you probably start out by playing scales and doing certain fingering exercises and playing simpler pieces, and then working your way up to the more complicated pieces.
Almost every area of Human growth is like that. If you want to learn a language, that is how it works. If you want to learn to figure skate or do jiu-jitsu, that is how it works. You engage in practices and start simply, and you build up to the more complicated practices. You aren’t going to be able to get onto the skating rink at the Winter Olympics and perform at that level by sheer willpower without having entered into the process of learning how to figure skate.
Why do we assume the spiritual life is any different? We can admire Jesus, but if we haven’t intended to become more like him- If we haven’t learned ways to practice being like him, why would we live Jesus-like lives? Why do we assume we can control our anger by just trying hard (though certainly effort is involved)? Why do we assume we can love our enemy by just trying hard? Where is the process by which we can become disciples of Jesus who actually do what he taught us to do?
The spiritual disciplines are practices that Christians have used since the beginning of Christianity. Within Roman Catholicism they often degenerated into penance, and in Protestantism we lost them because we often focused too much on trying to get the doctrine right and we turned Christianity into something that was a set of truths we hold in our minds.
The spiritual disciplines are practices that we engage in to experientially teach us about the life Jesus wants us to live. They put us in a place so that we can receive certain kinds of grace from God. They are ways of abiding in Christ.
In John 15 Jesus says,
“Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:4-5).
As we use these practices to abide in Christ, our character is formed. The evidence of this is that the fruit of the Spirit will be more obvious and the negative works of the flesh will become less present. But the goal isn’t just behavior modification. The goal is that our character is transformed to such a degree that the ways of Christ become the easy way for us to behave- they just come out of us naturally.
We are starting a sermon series on the Spiritual Disciplines. Each week we are going to look at a different one and explore how it can help you lead the life Christ wants you to lead. There are many different practices, but we are going to look at 12:
Meditation,
Prayer,
Fasting,
Study,
Simplicity,
Solitude,
Submission,
Service,
Confession,
Worship,
Guidance, and
Celebration (not in that order).
What I’m hoping we will do is that we will be purposeful about the way we are following Christ. I’d love for us all to have a Rule of Life. A Rule of Life is a personal plan for the practices of your life. It will contain daily things- like morning prayer, bible reading, and a devotional reading. It will have weekly practices- like going to church on Sunday. And it will have monthly, seasonally, and yearly practices- that might include a retreat, for example. As we speak about these different disciplines you can pray about them and consider if God is asking you to try them and maybe incorporate them into your Rule of Life.
I also want to let you know about a few people who have been helpful guides in these practices. Richard Foster has written a number of books and I recommend them all. He is especially famous for the book “Celebration of Discipline”, which I will use quite a bit for this sermon series. I also recommend the books of Dallas Willard. He is a Philosopher, so his books can be a little more difficult for some people, but they are well worth reading. Also, John Ortberg and James Bryan Smith have become known as people who have learned from Dallas Willard and are using his ideas in their books. It’s important to say that these people are not doing anything new. On the contrary, they have been learning from the spiritual masters through the 2000 years of Christian history and have been helping this generation recover these practices.
What I’m hoping we will do is that we will be purposeful about the way we are following Christ. I’d love for us all to have a Rule of Life. A Rule of Life is a personal plan for the practices of your life. It will contain daily things- like morning prayer, bible reading, and a devotional reading. It will have weekly practices- like going to church on Sunday. And it will have monthly, seasonally, and yearly practices- that might include a retreat, for example. As we speak about these different disciplines you can pray about them and consider if God is asking you to try them and maybe incorporate them into your Rule of Life.
I also want to let you know about a few people who have been helpful guides in these practices. Richard Foster has written a number of books and I recommend them all. He is especially famous for the book “Celebration of Discipline”, which I will use quite a bit for this sermon series. I also recommend the books of Dallas Willard. He is a Philosopher, so his books can be a little more difficult for some people, but they are well worth reading. Also, John Ortberg and James Bryan Smith have become known as people who have learned from Dallas Willard and are using his ideas in their books. It’s important to say that these people are not doing anything new. On the contrary, they have been learning from the spiritual masters through the 2000 years of Christian history and have been helping this generation recover these practices.
In John 14:15 Jesus says, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments”. It is important that we learn how to follow him. I’m going to do my best to try to make it plain how we can walk on this road, but you also have to intend to be a disciple of Christ. Jesus doesn’t need fans. He wants people who will learn from him how to live in a certain way. This isn’t just for yourself either. Our world is in big trouble, and I think the thing the world needs most is people who are shaped into the image of Christ- People who live the way he taught, and who teach others to do the same. AMEN.
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