Turning Kindness into Selfless Love: 7 Steps with Randy Bell

Understanding the concept of level three in spiritual development.

Experiencing the living God in you and being transformed by His grace.

Developing character and becoming strong in the reality of Jesus.

Becoming servant-hearted and having a strong desire to serve others.

Thank you. Remember, as we're looking at level three, I keep wanting to understand, this is not a head thing we're talking about. What we're talking about is literally experiencing the living God in you, and as he transforms you from, first of all, being a lost, sinful being that's his enemy, into becoming his own child, he then processes through his grace in you and begins to develop you as a person so that you move up levels from not being destroyed by sin, but instead being delivered from sin so it's not killing you and hurting you. And then, nextly, it takes you up to a level where you become a person that's got character developed so that inward strength is really what character is all about. You become so strong in the reality of Jesus that sin does not have dominion over you. You become strong in doing that which is right instead, and it's so powerful. In other words, you're not so weak that if you get tempted at all, you just give up and fall away. Instead, nothing really is that big a deal to you. You become stronger so that you begin to do the will of God in spite of all things. And that's God's concern for you because what he has for his believers is so significant, it will not be easy to accomplish. It won't be easy to do. You have to become very strong. So he strengthens you. That's a gift of God. remember in 2 Peter 1, he says, you have received everything in Christ in your relationship with Him that's necessary by His grace to do all these things. So it's not like you're trying to pump it up in your own mind or your own will. Instead, you receive the amazing presence of God inside you. If He's really there, it pushes you forward. And just like a child, you didn't watch your children do things like run out in front of cars and just stand there and watch them get killed. You intervened in their lives. You broke in and dragged them out of the street when they're too little to know better. You put fences up to stop them. You did everything you could to push them. That's the influence of grace we're talking about. God intervenes in your life. If you're truly born again, He will not allow you to accomplish those things. He breaks into your life over and over again. That's what divine grace is. It's the influence of God upon you. That means you can't keep living the way you used to live. You can't. He won't allow it. He breaks in. He pushes. He changes. He brings circumstance, trials, tribulations, whatever it takes to get your attention to move you on to walk with him. Right. That's what we've kind of gotten the idea here. Well, level three is finally after you graduated from that point of being trained and being disobedient and wandering here and there. And you become truly a strong, gifted person in him that can be used for his namesake. And so that's what we want you to concentrate on in this last session of number three. Now, remember, we're talking about the third section, which means young people. And that doesn't mean a child. It means somebody up to 40 years old, the way the Greek language. So it's a strong, strong person. somebody who can accomplish the good things of God. And remember, if you look at our chart, that means the real point of change or the phase that you enter at this point is you become servant-hearted. You become a person who has a strong desire. That's what grace is. A desire and the power to do His will. Grace is shown in this phase. You have a strong desire to serve others. You have a strong desire to want to help others. It becomes a growing emphasis upon your life that comes from spirituality of God in you. You want to help others. You have a strong concern for other people. You act like Jesus as a servant, and you start desiring to give and share in kindness to other people. That's the phase that you're in. Now, with that phase comes natural interest, and so I want you to refocus again on those two points, adding godliness and adding brotherly kindness this morning to see that that is the issue for phase three for you now i want you to to give a couple example verses and you can keep working to get to first timothy three a couple introductory verses one is out of acts 10 38 acts 10 38 we receive these words it says how god anointed jesus of nazareth with the holy spirit and with power. Notice he had the two things were given, the Holy Spirit and power, same thing. And it says what happened with that Holy Spirit and power was he went about doing good, went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil for God was with him. The same thing you understand, that is what we're talking about in this phase of servanthood. Jesus in ministry was a servant to all. He cared for all. He spent his time doing good. He didn't have to. He was God. He could have spend his time having everybody kiss his feet and worship him. But he didn't come for that. He came to show us godliness. And that's the heart of God. And so this phase shows you moving to that point where you're focused no longer, excuse me, on yourself, but that strong desire to be serving others like Christ. Also, Romans chapter 2 says, but glory, honor, and peace to everyone who works what is good. In other words, at Judgment Day, honestly, what's looked at is what you do with your life. The people who are selfish, self-centered, ungodly like the world, they're going to be judged, it says, for those works. And that's why he says that's what works is essential. We have to get out of the habit of thinking religion is all in your head. You have a certain opinion, or a certain feeling, or a certain thought, as if that's the solution to things. In other words, you can think you're rich, but it doesn't mean your bank account proves it. You can think you're smart, but if your grades are a failure you're not proving it with life well god does that same thing with his word and shows you and says here it doesn't matter which if you strongly believe you're going to heaven and you strongly believe in jesus in your mind if it's not worked out in life it's not real it's phony it's not the real thing because it has to take you to a place where you have a strong desire and action to do kindness and goodness and the things that god tells you to do that's the reality and that's why it's your acts that you're judged by just like in a court of law you don't nobody gets put in jail because they think about murdering somebody they maybe should but they don't but if they murder somebody they go to prison or are executed or whatever right it's what your acts do with your thoughts well your thoughts are the initial beginning if you have a strong desire to do good things that's good but god's grace pushes you beyond thoughts into actions that's what he's explaining here in this phase. This is truly getting you to what brotherly kindness is. It not a general good feeling toward people It is the actual act of being kind to others by doing specific things that God orders you do in the Bible Remember last week we gave a few examples Do you remember that Anybody remember some of the examples given in the Scripture that showed true brotherly kindness There you go. Specific things. Remember Jesus taught in His parables, or if you call it, but not just a parable, He said, You saw me in prison, you came to visit me. You saw that I was hungry, you gave me food. You saw that I was thirsty. You gave me drink. In other words, very specific things. And they said, well, you never saw you do that, Lord. They said, when you did it to the least of my Christian brothers, you did it to me. And so the very clearly specific things were not just talk, but action. Literally helping with your hands and your money or whatever it took. And he even gave examples like the Good Samaritan. What was a Good Samaritan? Good was that he was hated. It would be like in our culture if you lived in some neighborhoods or cities where racial hatred is so severe. Whichever races hate each other doesn't matter. That was the same issue then. Racial hatred was so bad the Jews hated the Samaritans. They were half-breed hypocrites who didn't worship God properly and didn't obey the Bible. They didn't like him at all. and of all things he he basically um put the jews down by saying your enemy that you hate the samaritan guy was the guy was really the one who did good works because all of you had excuses why you wouldn't help this poor guy who was beat up this guy did he's the real neighbor oh he slapped him in the face but see that's what we need slaps in the face as christians we need slaps in the face. We need to go ahead and do good deeds. And even if you, you know, it doesn't matter. God says, I don't care if people don't like you or it's not convenient or it's not easy. I want you to do the good works because this is what I've called you to do. This is what I do. I give rain to the evil and to the good. Remember he said it. And that's considered a good thing. Think about the drought we're having. We could use the good rain, whether we're evil or good, we could use the rain. See, these are the good things he's talking about. This is the active lifestyle he's after for you and I to get actively involved with the things that you see that are good. And that's what he's after here. So brotherly kindness has to be a phase of life that you literally enter. Not just understand it or can talk about it or discuss it, but you're in it. You're living that life. That's when you're in phase three. That's when you're there, and that's what we're talking about. And it takes a lot of pushing to get to that level. We always are obsessed with having church where we understand something and we think that's good enough. Or I heard a sermon about it, therefore that's good. I don't care how many sermons you've heard about it until you take the action and are living the life you're not anywhere near what God wants you to be. So that's why we have to see it's important to get beyond it's good to understand it first but then take the actions and continue with those actions all the rest of your life. That's what he's after. As you move on to that phase or that step that's what it's about. Now, God's will for you is a completely different lifestyle. He wants to move you from agreeing in your mind to actually living this new life. This lifestyle is different in behavior and speech and the goals you have for yourself. They are literally changed so that you affect the people around you. That's the issue. We talk about making a difference in your world or so forth. The difference God wants to make is like Jesus made on His community. Doing good things, the whole place knew of His presence, not because of what He said necessarily, but what he did, he was kind and good and showed great things to them, and that affected them deeply. And that's what he's after for us as a church. Titus 2.1 says, Tell believers to live the kind of life that goes along with accurate teaching. See, it's one thing to have the teaching and the belief of it, but the lifestyle is what he's really after. True change. Number two point, the combined steps of the believer are designed to change your focus, your character, and direction in life. Move you, change you. If God never is satisfied where you are, he always wants you to move another step to be like Christ. So no matter where you are, if you're plateaued, God's already trying to break down the plateau and take the bottom out of you to make you different. He'll never leave you plateaued. You can't consider yourself there ever. Titus 2.2 says, Tell older men to be sober. Tell them to be men of good character. Notice that character word's right there. Well, it should be there because it's established in level 2. You should already have strong character to move into level 3. See, again, it's established. As you get older, characters should be... What we get usually is things like grumpy old men. Instead of finding character, we find degeneration of character. We find men not having the established goodness, but instead being uncomfortable to be around or whatever. We don't want that. God doesn't want that. We need to see the change has to be real here. Number three, the third level moves a believer from head knowledge, good intentions, and character development to good behavior and hard work. for the Lord Jesus. We need strong bodies to do the work. I need strong bodies to help do the things around here. I need those young guys to get up there and crawl in the attic and go down there and fix wires. I'm too fat and old and I can't bend anymore to do it. I needed those guys to get in and help me. So the young guys from the other churches, I literally am stuck here by myself if I can't get hands to help me. Without the 9 o'clock church coming and help me do outdoor things, I just can't keep up with doing it. They come in and help paint and repairs and do things. I just need them to do it. Those hands are important. If we're ever going to be a testimony to this community, it has to be done on a real level, right? Okay, now let's flesh it out when we start looking at Scripture then. The idea of servant or servanthood is I need to establish before we give the descriptions of the servant in 1 Timothy 3. First of all, the word servant comes again from Matthew 23. it says he that is greatest among you shall be your servant now the word deacon is directly from the greek diakonos they didn't really translate it they just threw it into english which i wish they wouldn't have done that when they every time they do that it disguises the words you don't really know what the definitions are and i think it would change a lot of churches can you imagine a board of deacons what that means a lot of people think they can run the church tell the pastor what to do, fire them, and they try to, it's a power thing. Well, if you actually translated the word, there wouldn't be a lot of people wanting to get involved with being a deacon. The word deacon just means servant. Now, how many are rushing forward in a church to volunteer to be a servant or a slave? Nobody. See, it ruins the whole idea. The true idea is it's actually from, it could be from an obsolete part of a word, to run errands is kind of the core of the word, And the idea is an attendant or a waiter. You think of going to a restaurant to get your server or your servant to help you serve. Now, in the Christian realm, it's technically a deacon or deaconess is defining a male and a female, but they're both there in Scripture. And it means simply minister and servant is the key two words. Servant, minister are the same idea, same thought. Now, if you had a bunch of servants in the church, they don't tell the pastor what to do. They help the pastor by doing what he tells them to do right And so the idea has been flip Naturally in America we ruined what it supposed to be Now if we think of this and really get back to the core this is so important because this is level three life. If the greatest among you is a servant of all, why don't we have any people and Christians begging to be servants? Why don't we have people begging to be servants if that's the greatest thing you can do according to God's will? You ever thought of that? You would think in a church of numbers of people, people would be eating on the door saying, I want to be the greatest of all according to what God says. So help me, pastor. I want to serve. I want to be your assistant. Help me. Help me. Let me serve you. See? See, that's why we're saying right away, we haven't come through phase two yet. Character hasn't been rightly developed within our midst that we are really at the place of realizing servanthood is the greatest thing. We still want to be bosses and tell people to do. That's what the world wants. See, we talked about that last week. What the world calls leadership is tell everybody to do and rule over them. But God says, no, be a servant. You help them do what they need to do to succeed. That's what's greatest in my kingdom. So we've lost the concept. Now, let's get it back then in our midst here. Let's deal with it. Look at an example that's given in Acts chapter 6. The 12 apostles convened the multitude of the disciples and said, It's not seemly, in other words, it's not desirable or right, that we should have to give up or neglect preaching the word of God in order to attend to serving at tables and superintending the distribution of food. Very important item. You want to help the poor and the needy. But he says, the problem is if we do all that, it's such a big job, we will not do the job we need to do, which is preaching and teaching the word so people can advance in the kingdom. Therefore, select out from among yourselves seven men of good, there's that word good, and a tested character and repute, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we may assign to the look after this business and duty. Notice how important these men are. Everything shuts down in the kingdom if the guys that are preaching the truth stop preaching so that they can do this other thing. Just like in a military deal. If there's a war and everybody needs to carry ammunition to the front, nobody's up there shooting it. Nobody's defending the nation while they're too busy and you'll lose the war. The word of God is the sword of the spirit. It's the thing that brings the truth to mankind and brings salvation and stops the enemy from destroying humanity, right? If those guys are too busy with the work of every menial task, the community collapses in darkness, right? So we need to see this is significant duties. A pastor must have servants. I mean, it sounds flaky for me saying that, but it's the point of understanding what God's saying. The significance of his word has to be propagated or else all is lost for this generation. Now, in 1 Timothy 3, then our text, because of the significance, it's not something that's ignored. God lays a foundation for every Christian here, and He says the ones who are actually doing it are the only ones we trust to take responsibility while the others are supposed to be getting there. In other words, that's where you're all supposed to be heading, but until the people get there, they can't take these responsibilities because God can't trust them in that area. Chapter 3, verse 8. In like manner, the deacons or the servants must be worthy of respect, not shifty and double talkers, but sincere in what they say. Not given too much wine, not greedy for base gain, craving wealth and resorting to ignorable and dishonest methods of getting it. They must possess the mystic secret of the faith, which is the Christian truth as hidden from ungodly men, with clear conscience. And let them also be tried and investigated and proven first. Then, if they turn out to be above reproach, let them serve as servants in other words all that just to be a servant see our standards are very crazy compared to what we think the women likewise must be worthy of respect and serious not gossipers but temper temperate and self-controlled thoroughly trustworthy in all things let deacons be the husbands of but one wife let them manage their children and their own household well for those who perform well as deacons acquire a good standing for themselves why because the greatest among you is servant it says that you get a good standing for themselves and also gain much confidence and freedom and boldness and faith which is founded and centers in the lord jesus christ now let's take a couple word uh descriptions here to help you really see the impact of what we're saying here. This is so important, this phase of Christian life, that we are desperate, I believe, and short in the church. That means to tell me, if you look at America in general, the churches have got people struggling in level 2 and level 1, but not many have broken through to level 3 where they actually have a servant heart. So mature-wise, the churches are either full of immature believers, according to what it defines it as, or hypocrites or both, basically both. The church is full of hypocrites and immature believers. There's a small number who are mature who act as servants. And remember, that's how you can tell if you're mature. Maturity spiritually means you have a servant heart. You don't try to boss anybody around. You're dedicated to serve God and you see the needs around you in the church and you try your hardest to drop things in your life in your schedule to help out there. When you see that going on, you see maturity coming through in a local congregation. Everybody understand what I'm saying? So you can really, this is such a measuring point. Now I finally get it in my ideas. Before, I'd see things happen in churches and never get it. Now I finally get it. I can literally go to a church now. If you're with the congregation for a week or so, you can kind of tell if they're all immature, if they're mature. There's benchmarks to tell where they're at. And it's kind of exciting because then you know how to help. That's why you go to school, isn't it? You go to grade one because if you can't pass grade one, there's some fundamental issues you haven't learned yet. You understand how to help them to get to grade three or four or whatever. And that's what we're starting to see. There's actual levels here. We can kind of see how we can help believers and where they honestly are in their growth or maturity. Does that make sense? Now, the word grave, talking about a deacon must be grave, is what it says in King James. That doesn't mean you're dead and buried. That's the wrong word for grave. That's not what we're saying here, right? We are saying basically that a deacon must have good character. Good character. That's exactly what we mentioned before, but this is what the idea of the Greek says. It's basically saying, look at the word adore. In other words, you must be adorable. Now, we say that about, oh, isn't that baby so adorable? But what it's really saying is you can look at a person by their character and adore that what they do is a good thing, or else you say I can stand that guy He such a jerk because their character is bad You don like being around them You see what I saying And so it not worship in the sense you worship them as God but it saying you have a way of rapport with them that says this is a good guy, you know what I'm saying? Or this is a great lady and she's really somebody that's an asset to being a part of our group or what you see what I'm saying? That's the idea of being grave here. And so you have to understand that it's very important then that character is essential for everything that God establishes and honors and esteems, right? This is what he's after and what he's looking for. He's looking for that devote religious belief that so impacts you that it causes you a couple things. One version said serious, one said good character and said worthy of respect. All those aspects come around that Greek word. You see those there. That Greek word has all those ideas in it. And again, our english doesn't match greek so we have to add a lot of ideas to get to the word what it really is saying in the original language paul knew it was said when they used it but our english doesn't match it see why we go to three or four words but get it that's the idea are you there can people say man you know this person i really love them they're a good character they're worthy of respect they are so serious about their walk with god they're serious about the church they've always have such a strong concern for what is good and happening here they don't want the church to die or fall apart. They're here to want to strengthen it and build up the faith so they can see God's kingdom come. All those things are part of that one aspect of being a servant of God. Okay? Now let's go to the next idea. The next idea is not double-tongued. The God's Word translation just says not two-faced. That makes it pretty easy. I can't stand that person. They're two-faced. They're two-faced. Telling two different stories depending on which group they're looking at at the time. At home, that preacher's an idiot. At church, pastor, I love you. You know, that happens a lot in America. You know what I'm saying? So it can't be two-faced. Second, our next idea says not given to much wine. Every time you use this kind of term, I have to spend in America time talking about wine before I can get the idea here. So let's take a couple points, first of all. First of all, wine in America in the year 2007 is not the same as wine in Israel in the year 2,000 years ago. Let me explain to you why. In America, they make wine, first of all, by adding extra alcohol to make it strong. They add it in there. Wine in the Bible is the same word as grape juice. Now, in America, it helps you understand like cider. Remember, people make cider and then they have hard cider. Cider and cider, but the adjective helps you understand that one's got alcohol in it. In the Bible, there was no word called grape juice. If you squeezed a grape, the juice that came out was called wine. There's no deciphering difference. Now, after so much time without refrigerators, grape juice starts to ferment and there'll be some alcohol in it. Now, notice, let me give you an example of why this is true. In Acts chapter 2, and don't get me wrong, there was boozing and beer and hard liquor back then, just like there is today. But we're only talking about wine here. He's not saying not giving too much booze or not giving too much alcoholic beverage. He's only speaking one thing, wine. He's not even figuring you're going to think about the other stuff. Wine was a normal drink. In Acts 2, there's an example when the Spirit of God fell upon the church. The first thing that the Jews started accusing, these guys are drunk. Remember that? Here's the way it's worded by the Amplified Version. Fellow Jews, this is Peter explaining to them why they're not drunk. Fellow Jews, all of you who are visiting Jerusalem, listen carefully and get this story straight. These people aren't drunk as some of you suspect. They haven't had time to get drunk. It's only 9 o'clock in the morning. Understand what that's saying. Wine of Jesus' day was so weak in alcohol, it took you all day drinking wine before you could get drunk. At 9 o'clock in the morning, if you drank for three hours from the time you got up, you still couldn't be drunk yet. There wasn't enough alcohol content in wine to get drunk. Unless you drank all day long. See what I'm saying? This is why you can't superimpose American culture on top of Scripture here. He's not talking about booze, really. but there is a slight alcohol content because they didn't have refrigerators or whatever. But there is another thing to this, and we don't have time to deal with all the teachings of alcohol. But understand this is what he's getting at. Now, number two, the same guy who wrote Timothy wrote Romans, Paul. So his same teaching in chapter 14, verse 21, he says, the right thing is to eat no meat or drink no wine at all or do anything else if it makes your brother stumble or hurts his conscience or offends or weakens him. In other words, it was very common that they didn't drink wine because an alcoholic can't stand you to have drinks around him. He would be weakened and go get drunk. And it clearly tells you how sinful drunkenness is and how it ruins your lives and everybody else around you is why it's sinful. So he tells you, don't do it. And in fact, Timothy never drank. In fact, Paul told him, start drinking a little wine for your stomach because he was sick. And they knew that some of that would be helpful for medicine because they didn't have all the medicine we have, right? So he literally had to tell Timothy to drink some. So don't get it in your mind, the way it's worded here, that they spent all their time drinking wine. They didn't. It's not there. The Americans keep trying to make excuses for booze here. It's not here. Have I preached long enough on the sidetrack so I can get to the point? Okay, let me get to the point then. Now, the not given too much wine has to do, very simply, with judgment. With judgment. In Proverbs, he says clearly in Proverbs, It's not for princes to drink wine because it ruins judgment. If you're going to be a leader, you can't have your judgment clouded by anything, especially any kind of drug. You have to be clear in your mind what you're doing because you're in an important, significant place of what you're doing. Excuse me. And so not giving to wine was very important. In other words, and it says not to hold your mind towards it. Pay no attention to it. Get it out of your mind. Get it out of your life. Don't deal with it. Because it can be destructive to the church and to you personally. That's all he's saying. You've got to be smart enough at this point in your life that you can't say it's of any value to you. It can be offensive to others. Stand up and shout, stand up and shout, shout it Stand up and shout it if you love my Jesus Stand up and shout it if you love my Lord

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