I promised, or perhaps it was a threat, to come back to the theme we touched on last week and try to deal somewhat with the question of what is my part and what is God's part in this whole business of Christian discipleship. What does He expect me to do and what can I legitimately expect Him to do? If you want a text from which to begin, a very succinct and a very frustrating summary of that particular issue, you might find it in Philippians chapter 2. I'm sure you know the passage, verses 12 and 13.

Paul is writing to this group of Christians, which he later says has entered it more deeply into partnership with him than any other church for which he had responsibility. And he says to them, therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, they've acknowledged his leadership, they've taken his marching orders and they've followed them, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

Very important we catch what he just said. He did not say work for your salvation. If there was anybody who was ever clear that salvation is a gift, as we've just sung, there's absolutely nothing we can do to earn it. It was Paul. It's not work for your salvation. It's not try to earn it. But he's saying work it out. Express it. Manifest it.

Put it into action. God has given you this gift. Now it's up to you to do something about expressing it. Somebody paraphrased this, work out what God works in.

And that's an awesome responsibility.

Paul says, do it with fear and trembling.

You remember Moses going up on Mount Sinai and God Himself says, take off your shoes, the ground you're standing on is holy. You talk about working out your salvation, you're standing on holy ground.

How dare we think that we even know how to work out what God has worked in. And yet that's the commandment. The first half then makes it sound as if it were totally up to us. You work it out. But Paul doesn't stop there. He doesn't come to the end of a sentence. He hardly even draws a breath. He goes on to say, for God is at work in you, both to will and to do His good pleasure.

Which makes it sound as if it were totally God's enterprise.

So which is it? Is it mine, or is it God's? Is discipleship a matter of me responding to Christ, or is it a matter of Christ responding in and through me?

I wonder last week, as we read from Romans 7, if you were struck by something. You know the passage where Paul is belaboring the terrible enmeshed entrapment that is his in sin. And here he writes as a mature apostle, and he says, Nevertheless, I keep doing the same old things that I don't want to do,

and the things that I wish I could do, I don't do. And twice in the midst of that passage, he says, It is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells in me. Did that strike you? It is no longer I who does these things, it is sin that dwells in me. What I find startling about that passage is its similarity to another one, which most of you will remember in Galatians 2.

He says, I am crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. In the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Put those side by side. It is no longer I who sins,

but sin which dwells in me.

It is no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me. you begin to wish, will the real Paul please stand up? Who is he? What is he saying to us?

What he's saying is that the Christian life is a spiritual warfare and I am the battlefield.

And on the one hand, there is sin.

Prior to coming to Christ, that's all there was.

Now that may seem a very harsh pronouncement, to you. But that is the consistent witness of the New Testament. Prior to coming to Christ, I may appear very respectable. I may have my social relationships worked out very well, but the truth of the matter is, all there is, finally, is a self-serving, pleasure-seeking, luxury-loving, old self, old man.

Scripture calls it the natural man. Scripture, also calls it the flesh, not meaning my physical body, but meaning that fleshly principle of which the bottom line is me first. That's all there was,

no matter how I might have dressed it up. When I became a Christian, something new was added. Again, it may not be entirely obvious to others taking a look. I may not appear all that different. As a matter of fact, I may not even feel all that different. But something new was added at the moment that I gave my life to Christ and asked Him to come in and live inside of me. It was a genuine new beginning.

To as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the children of God. Something brand new. They weren't previously.

If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation, Paul says to the Corinthians. And now, for the first time, I've got a battle engaged. Don't ever think that becoming a Christian is the end of your struggle with sin. In a very real sense, it's the beginning of it.

Whereas I really had no alternative beforehand, now Jesus Christ has put His Holy Spirit inside of me, and I'm caught in a warfare. The old man against the new man.

One might wish, sometimes, in moments of weakness, that becoming a Christian means I suddenly am a disembodied spirit, Totally perfect, but that's not the way it is. And anybody who's honest will tell you that. Within me there resides the old man, the residue of the old man that I was before becoming a Christian. I'm not suddenly full of sweetness and light. I still operate to a significant extent according to the flesh. But, but, there is also something new, a new principle.

Christ within me, the hope of glory.

I would say we could have no more

succinct definition then of Christian discipleship than this. The essence of Christian discipleship is that I deliberately, willfully, consciously, day by day, and in fact moment by moment, choose to cast my lot with Christ and against the old self.

That is discipleship. That I consciously, willfully, as an act of my volition, choose Christ and against the flesh, against my old self.

Now an awful lot of people,

when they pray,

seem at least to have a very different view of things.

I wonder if you've heard people pray this way or perhaps you've prayed this way Oh God, come into my life and just take over

Have you heard that sort of a prayer?

Take away my bad temper

Make me humble

Make me the kind of person you want me to be

keep me from doing all those dirty rotten things that I always do have you heard that sort of prayer

now fortunately for all of us God doesn't simply hear our words he hears our hearts if he heard only our words we'd be in deep trouble most of the time but God hears beneath our words and answers what we're really trying to say however poorly we say it but if that's what we really meant to say that sort of prayer oh God just come in and take over may I suggest to you we're praying a prayer that God cannot and will not answer

he will never answer that prayer

do you see that every one of those prayers is a request for total passivity God you come in and do it in me, do it for me, and I'll sit back and relax and I won't have anything more to worry about.

God will never answer that prayer. If discipleship is a matter of acting with my will, God will never answer the prayer that I can abandon my will.

You see, what we're asking in that kind of a prayer is that God would come in and begin to manipulate us like a marionette or program us like a robot. or a computer. That's not what God wants. If God wanted that, He could have created the world that way and we wouldn't have had all this trouble. He could have easily created a beautiful world in which nothing ever went wrong.

There was never any sin, any pain, any suffering, any death. Only it wouldn't be a real world. It would just be an extension of Himself.

And God wanted a real world with real people who made real choices with real consequences. And becoming a Christian does not make me suddenly less free than I was beforehand.

I don't suddenly abdicate my will, my choice. If anything, it makes me more responsible than I ever was previously.

In fact, responsible comes from the root response able, able to respond. God holds me response-able. That's what it means to be created in His image. That I make real decisions. I respond one way or the other to Him, and it really makes a difference.

It matters.

Just parenthetically, I'd comment that this is what is so insidious about the tendency within our society today to treat all crime as if it were a matter of mental illness.

no doubt some is but do you observe that tendency to say increasingly often all crime is a matter of mental illness and the person is not responsible for his actions do you see what we're saying if he's not responsible he no longer has the dignity of being a human being we're denying that he's created in God's image

we're going to develop that a little bit tonight my point is that God will never abrogate that dignity.

In contrast to those prayers, God, come in and just take over. Drive out of my heart all those sins. Make me like you. In contrast to that, listen to Paul's teaching to the Colossians.

Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you.

fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness. On account of these, the wrath of God is coming. In these you once walked when you lived in them, but now put them all away. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old nature with its practices and have put on the new nature which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

How does renewal come? As we self-consciously, willfully, deliberately put off the old nature. Whose responsibility is it? Ours. Ours. Peter says the same thing. I beseech you to abstain from the passions of the flesh that war against your soul.

You, abstain. James, in an almost exact quote of Jesus himself, says, Be doers of the word, not hearers only. Who? You. You do it.

The trouble is that most of us succumb to a lie.

The evil one would whisper into our ears, Look, you've never been able to do it before. What makes you think you're going to do it now? You're just the same as you've always been. You can call yourself a Christian, you can call yourself anything you like, you're just the same old person, a leopard can't change its spots, you can't change.

And we sit back, and we don't change. And out of our frustration and bitterness and sometimes agony, we pray that sort of prayer, oh God, change me.

Malcolm Smith wrote a little pamphlet recently and he addressed the same issue. He put it this way.

He said, Satan takes away our will.

He's the one that will take it away, not God. Satan takes away our will, but God gives it back to us in Christ. Honors it. And puts us in situations where we realize the awesome responsibility of being human. He walks us into problems that threaten and hurt us, and then apparently leaves us there and does nothing. Why? The truth is that in that very moment, God is seeking to turn a spiritual infant into a strong, mature adult.

God Himself is at unity with that person. All that person needs in the situation He finds Himself in. God is saying, I'm all you need. Choose to act on that. And you will find the infinite river of supply rising within you. Choose to act. You choose to act. And lo and behold, what you're going to discover is that whereas previously it was impossible, suddenly there's a new power being released that makes it possible.

Our gospel reading this morning was the feeding of the 5,000.

In Mark's version, it begins by Jesus telling his disciples, you give them something to eat. They're horrified. Where are we going to get enough food to feed 5,000 people? And that doesn't even count the women and children. Where are we going to get that kind of food? Jesus says, you do it.

Finally, a little boy comes forward. Five little loaves, two fish,

totally inadequate, hopelessly impossible task. He offers what he has. Jesus takes it, breaks it, distributes it. It says they all ate until they were satisfied and there were twelve baskets full left over.

May I suggest to you that had they not found those five loaves and two fish, people would have gone home hungry that day.

Jesus could have snapped his finger and everybody would be full. Or he could have waved a magic wand and there, out of nowhere, food appeared on their laps. He didn't do that. He said, you give what you have, however hopelessly inadequate it seems, and watch as I multiply it to be sufficient.

Five loaves and two fish. Another time, seven loaves and a few fish. He says to the man with the withered hand, Stretch forth your hand.

But that's my problem. I can't.

Do it.

And I suggest that had he not stretched forth that hand, in obedience, in response, ability,

his hand would have remained withered. Pick up your bed. what is he mocking me? I've lain here for 38 years on this bit. Pick it up.

Let down your nets on the other side. Lord, we've fished all night. We haven't taken a single thing. Let down those nets.

He brings them up full to bursting. The whole ministry of Jesus begins at a wedding party when they run out of wine. Jesus says, fill up those stone jars with water. the most common of everyday substances, bath water if you will.

Hopelessly inadequate. No way that's going to help. But they offered what they had and in the hands of Jesus it became the wine of celebration. The best wine of the whole party. Jesus tells people to do something. In the natural there is no way they can possibly do it and even if they could it wouldn't be adequate. it.

But somehow, in faith, they respond to him. They do the thing that he tells them to, and to their astonishment, they find out that he transforms it into sufficiency. If the fish aren't offered, the people won't eat. If the servants won't fill the water jars, the party will end. If somebody, somebody, even a shepherd boy, won't believe God to stand up against Goliath, the people of Israel will be trampled by the Philistines.

If the priests won't step into the Jordan, the waters will never part. If the cripple won't take the risk of looking foolish and maybe hurting himself, rolling onto those spindly little legs, he'll never stand. And if you and I won't dare to believe that in Christ, not not in ourselves.

That would be to miss the whole point. In Christ,

we can do what God tells us to do. We won't believe that. We'll never do it. We will never do it.

Paul says, As therefore you received Jesus Christ as Lord, so live in Him. How did you receive Him? by believing. Somehow, someway, sometime, something stirred inside of you. It was the gift of God to believe. You saw in Jesus Christ somebody who is trustworthy and you put your trust into Him.

You believed and received. As you received Him, so live. That's the key to everything. In Jesus Christ, there is a new beginning. There is a new power. Whose work is it? It's His.

but it will never happen apart from our response ability. Let us pray.

Lord, sometimes in moments of weakness we really would like to abdicate that responsibility just sit back

and let somebody else do it all for us

but we would recognize this morning that that's an unworthy desire

that the more we indulge in that sort of an aspiration the further we move away from your purposes and your call to us this morning is to dare the impossible in Christ

and to find His power being released within us.

We would choose to believe. We would choose to exercise our will the more obediently to you.

We would choose to be the men and women that you have called us to be full of your strength and vitality because of this Lord Jesus. Amen. Amen.