1 Corinthians 2:13 “This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.”

It ought to be obvious to all who read the Bible, or who know anything about Christianity, that the word of God is the main tool in the Holy Spirit’s tool box. How did Paul go about his work of converting people to Christianity? God did some miracles through Paul, but we don’t hear all that much about them. Paul was a generous man, but his acts of charity aren’t the focus of his missionary journeys. “This is what we speak” he says, referring to what God has freely given us. He expresses “spiritual truths in spiritual words.” Paul’s ministry was a ministry of the word.

And that fits the focus of the whole New Testament. Jesus sent his disciples to preach the Gospel to all creation. He told them to go and make disciples by baptizing and by teaching. He told his disciples that they would be his witnesses, and witnesses tell others what they have seen. Preach, teach, baptize, tell–all these require using God’s word. If the Spirit is the one who opens our hearts to believe in God’s grace, it is obvious that Jesus expected the Spirit to be present where his word was being used.

But not just any appealing words will do. Paul says that he does not use words “taught us by human wisdom.” Paul’s mission work was not slick marketing. He didn’t imitate the popular philosophies of his day or try to make the Christian message compatible with Greek science and culture. He didn’t try to help the Christian message by bringing these things in from the outside.

We need to be careful in this regard, too. We want to preach the Christian faith in such a way that we show people it is relevant to their lives. But we can go so far in trying to make things “relevant” that we end up changing the message itself. We can’t redefine the Bible’s history to fit modern science. We can’t redefine the Bible’s morals to fit the preferences of our present day. We can’t redefine the message of salvation to fit our neighbor’s “felt-needs.” We can’t redefine Biblical terminology with the language of human psychology. If we do, we will lose both the word and the Spirit who works through it.

What we need are “words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths with spiritual words.” This is a forthright claim of inspiration on Paul’s part. The words he wrote for us were not his own. The Holy Spirit taught them to him. This not only gives us confidence in their absolute truthfulness. It assures us that these words have power.

Aren’t we living proof? Whether the Holy Spirit got his first crack at our hearts in God’s word connected with our baptisms, or whether he first got in by way of the bare words of Scripture, it is the word of God with which he first opened our hearts. We can be confident that the Spirit continues to work where that word is being preached and taught and used today.

1 Corinthians 2:12 “We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.”

The “spirit of the world” Paul mentions is not a person or a being, but an attitude and outlook, especially when it comes to religion and things spiritual. In earlier verses of this chapter he had described this spirit as it showed itself among the Jews and among the Greeks of his day. The Jews who rejected Jesus would not live by faith in God. They demanded visible evidence in the form of miraculous signs. They wanted proof in power. They didn’t want a religion in which God looks like a man and even dies, in which God’s people must suffer in this world, in which the wicked would ever appear to have the upper hand, even for a while. They demanded to see God’s power and glory now.

The Greeks who rejected Jesus would not live by faith in God, either. They demanded visible evidence in the form of wisdom, a religion that fit their own ideas of what was sensible or reasonable. They didn’t want a holy God who is awesome and mysterious, who is three persons yet one God, who becomes man yet remains God, whose idea of justice is that one man would pay for the sins of everyone else, who claimed that dead bodies will be raised back to life. They demanded a more sensible god who gave them a practical religion that they could use to improve their lives right now.

This “spirit of the world” is alive and well today. People are either falsely spiritual or falsely secular. They go running after every religious charlatan who comes along claiming to perform miracles and promising that God will put them on easy street. Or they fold their arms and raise their eyebrows at every Bible teaching that goes against their own sense of what is possible or the way things work, whether it’s what the Bible promises about salvation, or what the Bible teaches about godly morals.

That spirit of the world is not one that any of us ever had to receive, because it is part of human nature. But in its place Paul, and the Corinthians, and all Christians have received “the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.” The Spirit enables us to understand God’s true gifts to us. This is so much more than an understanding of right and wrong. Many people have a pretty good idea of what that is without God’s help. But God has also freely given us his Son, his own life, forgiveness, salvation, and ultimately heaven. God grants them all to us purely out of his grace and mercy. There is no charge to us. We would not be aware of these gifts if God’s Spirit had not revealed them to us.

And understanding them is more than just knowing what the Bible says about these things. Here we are talking about conversion. The Spirit has opened our hearts so that we are no longer skeptics demanding proof. We are convinced that these things are true and we believe God’s grace all because we have received the Spirit who is from God.

This, then, is also the clearest evidence that we have the Holy Spirit working in our own hearts and lives today. The Spirit can do many other things in the life of a Christian. But the most fundamental thing the Spirit does for us, the foundation on which he builds all his other work in us, is to lead us to faith in God’s grace. Those who believe God’s grace are the real “Spirit-filled” Christians.

Matthew 11:28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

We all value our time to rest. We know we need it. Perhaps it seems strange that someone must remind us to do it.

Americans generally have more “free” time on their hands than their ancestors. My work week looks light compared to that of my grandparents. Do we get more rest? No. Surveys suggest the vast majority of us get too little sleep. We have taken our “free” time and filled it up with so many hobbies, sports, shows, and projects that together these things almost become a second job. Sometimes I feel more tired at the end of my “day off” than I do at the end of the work day.

Today we celebrate a day to honor those who work hard and give “working class” Americans a day off. But you can be sure that on “Labor Day” the employees of your favorite store or restaurant will not only be working, they will be bracing for the extra work created by Labor Day sales or Labor Day promotions.

Perhaps it should not surprise us that God had to legislate a day off for his busy, busy people in the Old Testament. “Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even during the ploughing season and harvest you must rest.” (Exodus 34:21) The work load made no difference. People need rest whether there is much work or little. The harvest could be white in the fields, but God commanded a day off.

Perhaps it should not surprise us that God’s people didn’t always appreciate his concern for their rest. “When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain and the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat?” the people moaned in the days of Amos (Amos 8:5).

Of course, our loving Lord has a greater concern here than bags under our eyes. He’s not just concerned that we have a spring in our step. Those Old Testament Sabbath laws were put to rest when Jesus’ coming fulfilled them (Colossians 2:17). But God still wants us to get the true rest for our souls that Jesus provides.

“Come unto me…and I will give you rest.” We are familiar with Jesus’ promise. By faith we have experienced its truth. Nothing is more refreshing than the times when we put it all down, and he goes to work. While we lift not even a finger, he scrubs and washes us clean of the dirt and filth of sin accumulated by lives of labor in a sinful world. While we stretch and rest our tired, aching souls and consciences, he shoulders our burdens and carries our guilt.

We can find this rest not just one day a week, but every time we go to meet him in his word. Finally, the day will come when this rest is all our life. “Then I heard a voice from heaven say, ‘Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’ ‘Yes,’ says the Spirit, ‘they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them’” (Revelation 14:13).

Until that final “Labor Day” let’s find our rest in Jesus’ promises.

Luke 14:13-14 “But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

Jesus gives us a representative list of the kinds of people who found it difficult to find life’s basic necessities. There were no social programs in Israel that provided so much as our government provides today. These people relied on the personal charity of others. And they would not have been in a position to pay anyone back in any way.

Lest we miss the point of Jesus’ words, let’s understand he is not saying that we have done our duty if we simply invite a few poor people over to eat once in a while. A banquet where you can’t be repaid by your guests is just one specific example of a greater principle. If God has given us more than we need–more food, more clothing, more money, more anything–he has done so, in part, so that we can help those in need. Moses commanded the Israelites to help the poor. The prophets complained about Israel’s failure to do so. John the Baptist told the man with two outfits to share with the one who has nothing. One of the first programs set up by the apostolic church after they had established the preaching and teaching of the gospel was a program to distribute food to the poor. One of the first stewardship programs we know about in the New Testament was a collection for the poor in Jerusalem.

About this time a little voice inside of us begins to object, “But I have seen some of these poor people. Some of them have drunk themselves into poverty. Some of them have no self-discipline. Some of them are just lazy.” Granted. Jesus isn’t asking us to become enablers who reinforce bad habits when we know that our charity is going to be abused. But that doesn’t negate his words. Why try to justify ourselves? Why not rather let Jesus’ words confront us and convict us of our stinginess? None of us has been so generous and charitable as we could be. Why condemn ourselves by adding self-righteousness to the mix?

In teaching us to be generous, Jesus is simply asking us to reflect the kind of charity we have received from him. We are absolute beggars spiritually. We can never repay him for leaving heaven, keeping the law in our place, dying for our sins, winning us complete forgiveness, calling us to faith, or giving us eternal life. Still he gives us all this and more as a gift of his grace. We do nothing Jesus himself has not done if we give to others knowing we can’t be repaid.

And in our charity, Jesus promises we will be blessed. What does it mean to be truly blessed, to be truly happy? It is true, people find a degree of happiness in the things this world has to offer. I am happy with my family, my home, my car, and my other things. These, too, are God’s blessings to me. Even Scripture describes them that way.

But those things don’t always turn out so happy. When they do, that happiness is often short-lived. Martin Luther once said, “Material wealth is the smallest blessing God can give to a man.” If we find our happiness in nothing more than this, the problem is not that we have wanted too much. We have settled for far too little! Jesus promises us far greater blessings when he promises, “Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

Don’t read more into his words than they say. He is not saying that our acts of charity somehow paid our admission to the heavenly banquet. It’s not as though God “owed” us, and in heaven we get paid what we earned. God’s invitation is purely a gift, an act of his grace. Jesus paid our admission in full with his blood on the cross. Jesus removed the sins that barred our admission.

Jesus’ point is this: what we give the poor is a pittance compared to the treasures our Lord has waiting for us. No matter what we give here, the gifts we receive at God’s heavenly banquet will make our gifts to others look microscopic. In that sense it is the banquet where we will be “repaid” and more.

All of this is true because we will be the guests of the perfect host. This is the feast in the kingdom of God, who spares nothing to serve us, though he himself will never be repaid.

In view of such riches, we can happily give to those who need our charity.

Matthew 15:17-18 “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man unclean.’”

A number of years ago I spent a few hours with an Islamic man talking about God and faith. I was able to steer the conversation into a talk about how to deal with our sins. The man freely admitted that he was guilty of sin. He knew that he wasn’t perfect. But he was still confident that he was on good terms with God. He wasn’t afraid. He told me, “I may be a sinner, but God knows my heart.”

God knows my heart. The Islamic man thought that this was to his advantage. But this is just the problem, isn’t it. God knows my heart. He knows what really goes on inside. In fact, he understands my own heart better than I do. He reveals it in Jeremiah, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).

Can we do an honest investigation of our own hearts? It is easy to see why Jeremiah calls it deceitful. It is full of warm and friendly feelings toward the people who make my life more enjoyable–members of my family, friends, people I work with. Sometimes it even aches for poor and helpless people I have never met before, and I want to do something generous to help them. My heart leads me to think that I am a pretty good person for all of this. The Lord should be happy with me.

But what happens when some of those same people stand between me and what I want? What happens when I have to make the same sacrifice for them for the hundredth time? How does my heart feel when no one appreciates me for all my hard work, when no one cares and I am just someone they use to get what they want? What happens to all the warm feelings then?

Or what about all the cravings inside my heart that would hurt the people around me–cravings that could ruin a marriage, drain all the money in the family, destroy my own health, make me a burden to others if I acted on them? What does all of this say about my heart?

“Unclean” is Jesus’ evaluation. The sin that soils our souls is right inside of us. And just in case it is still hard for us to see, Jesus reminds us that we don’t keep all of that filth inside. From time to time it comes bubbling up to the surface, giving others a window to the real condition of my heart that cannot be mistaken.

Only one thing can cleanse our soiled hearts and souls. No amount of hand washing, diet change, or other traditions, new or old, have any effect. Only the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. Only when our robes are washed in the blood of the Lamb do they come out white and clean. Christ who loved the church and gave himself up for her makes her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and presenting her to himself as a radiant church, without stain, or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

By forgiving our sins Jesus declares us clean—right down to the heart.

Colossians 3:7-10 “You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which his being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.”

There is a difference between stumbling into a sin out of weakness and living in it as your regular, accepted practice. The difference isn’t the sin itself. That is equally wicked and dangerous in either case. The difference has to do with the heart. In one case the heart is on God’s side fighting the sin. In the other case it is opposing God by making sin a way of life and has no intention of changing.

Paul is not trying to excuse us or make light of the sins we continue to commit when he says, “You used to walk in these ways.” He’s not just trying to let us off the hook. But so long as we struggle against sin in faith, this is true. It’s not our way of life. We haven’t removed ourselves from God’s grace and forgiveness. We don’t live under God’s wrath. This urges us all the more to slay our sin, to put it to death in repentance.

Paul wants to assure us that we can do this. “Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” I want you to note a couple of things that give us the confidence we can live a new life and put to death the old. First of all, note the tense of the verbs. You have taken off the old self. You have put on the new self. That’s in the past. These are accomplished facts. You are not who you used to be. Your sinful nature died with Christ. You are someone new, a holy person God sees with him in heaven.

You have been given the power to live a different kind of life now. Someone has well said that we aren’t human doings, we are human beings. The key to living the godly life we want to live is not so much in what we do. It is in the new people God has made us to be by his grace.

Secondly, look at how that new self is described: “…being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” God is constantly working with this new you. He is making it new over and over again. In fact, this new self is the image of God himself that was lost when Adam and Eve fell into sin. You may remember that when God first made Adam and Eve, they were in the image of God. Morally and spiritually, they were little copies of God, thinking the way God thought and wanting what God wanted.

As we slay our sin in repentance, and believe the good news that God forgives us and decrees us to be his holy people, that is exactly what is happening to us. We are in the process of being made into little spiritual and moral copies of God in his image. That means we can live like people to whom God has given new life.

Baseball legend Yogi Berra had an endearing penchant for stating the obvious. Someone was once telling Yogi about a Steve McQueen movie, to which he replied, “He must have made that before he died.” That would be right. He made the movie before he died. Obviously. It’s not so obvious that the Christian life does not begin until after we have died. By faith we die with Christ to sin. By faith he raises us to a new life of love. Let’s die and rise with him each day.

Colossians 3:5-6 “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these the wrath of God is coming.”

Our sinful nature was put to death at Jesus’ cross as far as God is concerned. But if we continue to embrace our sin, treasure it, indulge it, and consider it for our good, we give it life again. We become spiritual Dr. Frankensteins, going out to the graveyard to dig up the corpse of our sin and bringing the monster to unnatural life.

“Put it to death,” Paul says. Slay your sin. Despise it. Turn away from it. See it as the rotten, stinking thing it is. This change from giving sin life to putting it to death, from seeing it as grand to seeing it as grotesque, is the change we know as repentance. It is the inevitable result of living like those who died and rose with Christ.

Then Paul helps us to see why this is so vital. “Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.” If a person is contemplating sin, there are many consequences we can warn them about. If a man is considering abandoning his family by divorce, you can warn him about how quiet and lonely it will be without them. You can remind him of the psychological harm he may bring to his children. You can point out how expensive the process will be. And all of this would be true.

If a teenager is dabbling in promiscuous sex, you can share pamphlets that warn about the dangers of disease. You can educate her about the possibility of pregnancy. You can present the statistics that show how this reduces the chances of establishing a stable marriage later on. All of these are verifiable consequences of that sin that make life less pleasant.

But we have yet to mention the key thing as far as God and Scripture are concerned. “Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.” The main reason sin is bad is not that it introduces pain into our daily lives, true though that may be. The main reason sin is bad is because it brings God’s wrath. It leads to death and hell. And for those who like to gamble and want to know the odds, that is not just a possibility. It is a certainty.

But wait a minute. Did these Christians to whom Paul was writing stop sinning completely? Do we? Not at all. That is why Paul must urge us to keep on putting sin to death, to slay our sin. We go on repenting of our sins. We give it to Jesus to dispose of for us at the cross and receive his forgiveness. That keeps the old self buried in the grave where he belongs, and it gives life to the genuinely new and beautiful creature God has made us in Christ.

Colossians 3:1-3 “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”

Heaven is where our focus and attention belong as Christians, in spite of how deeply we desire to invest ourselves in the world in which we now live. Honestly, how much time don’t we spend trying to make ourselves as comfortable as possible, making ourselves financially secure, extending our lives as long as we can, improving our standard of living-our community- our world? We spend a colossal amount of time focusing upon the quality of the life we live right here.

Some of that attention may serve God and care for the needs of my neighbor. But let’s not fool ourselves. More of it serves to make me worldly. It gratifies my selfish cravings. And what does our fascination with the immediate landscape get us? So long as we keep thinking about the evening news, the aches and pains of our bodies we try to fix but can’t, the never ending mountain of work we can’t get on top of, the fear we have of school shootings and terrorists and hurricanes, the scandals of our government leaders, the more pessimistic and depressed we get. These things kill the spirit.

We need to set our hearts and minds on things above. Doing so is no mere escape, like a trip to the movies to get my mind off life for a while. No, the reasons Paul gives for urging us are far more compelling than that.

“For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” We died? How? When? He is referring to the death we died with Jesus since he went to the cross as our substitute. Our worldly obsessions, our selfish cravings, our moral failures–all of them were nailed to the cross when Jesus died. That life is buried and gone as far as God is concerned. He doesn’t hold it against us. It is just a corpse to his eyes. We don’t believe in reincarnation, but every Christian does have a past life in one sense. It is the sum total of his life of sin, the life of his sinful nature–past, present, and future–which Jesus took to the cross and paid for with his life. That’s how God sees it. No need to dig that corpse of a sinful, worldly life up and keep looking at it.

But there is so much more than a death here. “…your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” Jesus is not just our death. He’s our life! He is still our substitute, not just at the cross, but even now at God’s right hand in heaven. When God wants to see what you look like to him, he doesn’t have to go searching for you. He can turn to his Son, seated in glory at his right hand, and there he sees you and me as glorious, perfect creatures, because our lives are hidden with Christ in God.

What happens when all of a Christian’s focus is on his existence here in this world? He is constantly confronted with his own frequent moral failures. His life is full of disappointments and troubles. Relationships are messed up. Career goals don’t pan out. His body is subject to sickness and decay. Death is inevitable. If that is all the input we receive, won’t we see ourselves as dying failures and act accordingly?

But that life died with Christ at the cross. Our real life is hidden with Christ in God. God assures us that we really look like Jesus in all his glory. Because of the forgiveness of sins we are holy saints. We are children of God. We are creatures of heaven.

When we believe that, won’t it make all the difference for our lives? Don Matzat tells the story of a man he once met who worked as a janitor. He had immigrated to this country from Iran. There he had been a high official in the court of the Shah of Iran, the ruler of that country before the Ayatollah took over. Because of the way the man carried himself, and spoke, and behaved, you didn’t get the idea that you were talking to a janitor. He continued to see himself as someone important. He believed that one day he would be restored to his former position. That was his identity, and it drove the way that man lived.

See your life above, hidden with Christ, where you are seated with him at God’s right hand in glory. Then you will live like those who died and rose, who died to sin with Christ and rose with him to heavenly life.

Exodus 33:27 “The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.”

Our God’s unique reliability is especially found in two terms here: “eternal” and “everlasting.” Two different words are used in the Hebrew, each with its own emphasis. The first one looks deep into the past. The eternal God is the God who existed before all things. He goes back before sin entered the world, before there even was a world, before there was even such a thing as time. He has always existed. And the steady march of time since the beginning has not weakened or changed him. He has been constant, dependable, faithful, tried and true.

It is this eternal God whom Moses says is our “refuge.” We have his protection for every attach we face. Now, when you hear the word “refuge,” do you think of something temporary? When I hear “refuge” I tend to think of a place to which to run when there is trouble. I picture thick, gray, cold stone walls. It is unusually strong, well-fortified, maybe hard to access, and, since the emphasis is on protection rather than comfort, it is somewhat austere. It’s not the kind of place one would live on a full time basis.

That’s not the kind of refuge Moses is holding before us. This is a place to call home. It offers all of the security and protection mentioned above, but it also has the warmth and permanency of the place you call home. This is the kind of refuge that the eternal God is for you and me. For thousands of years he has been this rock solid yet comfortable place in which his people could live all their days.

The other word which highlights our God’s reliability, “everlasting,” doesn’t look back but ahead. He is literally ever-lasting, he lasts forever, on and on into eternity. His power, his love, his faithfulness, his very being, will never end.

The picture Moses associates with “everlasting” are God’s everlasting arms beneath us. Do you know what that promises us? It doesn’t say that we will never have troubles. God will allow a certain number of things to test your faith. He will permit you to struggle with other people, struggle to make a living, struggle with temptation.

But you will never be alone in those struggles. If you stumble, falter, or fall, he is not going to let you fall to your doom. His everlasting arms are always under you. I remember following my children around when they were taking their first steps. There I was, or my wife, with hands and arms right underneath their bottoms, ready to catch them when they took their first misstep. God’s own everlasting arms are always present beneath his wobbly-kneed, unsteady children, ready to catch them and hold them if ever they slip or fall along the way. He never fails. You can count on it.

A look back at God’s perfect track record assures us victory is always on his side. He will not let us be pushed down and trampled to death in the challenges on our road ahead. His arms will always catch us and prevent us from splattering ourselves on life’s jagged rocks. There is one else like this God, whose faithfulness never fails.