Chapel – Professor Jesse Sudirgo

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Tyndale University presents a series of recorded chapel services from Tyndale's very own faculty and guest speakers.

Good morning. Quiet group. My name is Jesse, I am one of the seminary professors of contextual ministry and it's my honor to be able to share the word with you this morning as you guys all know that professors usually take 3 hours to make a point, so this is going to be tough to do in 20 minutes, so we'll try our best. For me, I I find myself ironically here. I've been almost, I think, five years working in this kind of occupation. And let me be honest that I personally didn't think I would ever kind of do this type of work. To be a professor and to do academic work wasn't a part of my value growing up. I grew up very radical for Jesus. I was calling myself Bible boy as a young person and I like, I would name myself that which is even sadder. And I would put it in all my like, Internet names and stuff like that. So it was quite humiliating kind of in that kind of way of growing up. But I was all just for Jesus and everything. Right? And I always thought when I was in high school that if I would go to further education and go to seminary or go to any kind of school and Bible school. I felt like it was a compromise. Like I felt like I was betraying the radical faith of me going to the ends of the earth and just preaching the simple message of the gospel. No need to complicate it. No need to make all these like fancy words like justification and sanctification and glorification. Which is the very terms I'm going to talk about right now, OK, so. So. I found myself wanting to remain childlike because that's in scripture, right? I want to remain childlike. I want to remain just being able to move with the spirit. If the Lord says something I don't have to question it. I can just obey. I don't need to complicate things. That was a big value of mine and still a value today. But then as you grow and as you mature and as you learn new things. Sometimes you can't help but learning something even if you're like really dense and you cannot learn, you're not smart or whatever, eventually by osmosis or by association, you end up learning more. And as you learn more, you cannot sometimes unlearn those things, right? They just become a part of you. And not only learning, but you also develop skills, right? You develop skills, you know how to do things better, perhaps in the ministry or in other parts of your life you develop skills. So when I found myself as I was growing in knowledge and growing in skill, I found myself very feeling guilty about it all the time. I felt like no, no, no, I always go through the seasons when I would go through and I'm like I'm. I'm getting too. I'm getting too intellectual about this and I would reign myself back in and I would say to myself, OK, Jesse, just be simple. Be childlike. Forget all that stuff. Try to be dumb up here so that I can be able to live out that true radical faith that I remember in my youth. But here's the thing, cause I understood the grace of Christ when it came to saving me. I understood that it was a free gift that I can get, but I didn't actually understand the way in which that grace matured me. I didn't understand how that grace sanctified me. I don't know how that Grace worked itself out in my life to develop me more and more and to learn about the different things that go on in life. And so in Philippians 2, verse 12, verse 12 to 13, this is after that that beautiful hymn about talking about Jesus being a humble Jesus who came to this world. And even though he is God, did not consider equality with God, something to be grasped so that whole text is about the humility of Christ, how he came down to this world. And he didn't stay on top and be someone above, but he came below to be able to be with us. But right after that text, it talks about this. It goes, therefore, therefore, my dear friends. As you have always obeyed not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purposes. So I always read this text and I was very weary of it because I saw the word work in there and I was allergic to the word work, it made me go back to the law. It made me think that I have to work for my salvation and the thought of, you know, working out that salvation with fear and trembling went against my Jesus is my homeboy kind of like, you know, worship love songs to Jesus kind of stuff. Like it went against all that. Jesus is my boyfriend stuff. So in my head I I felt like a reaction to that. No, I shouldn't come fear and trembling. He is my father, you know, he is my friend. And so when I I just skipped this you know. Just the beginning of the humble Jesus and I would kind of skip this, but when you look at this, it says in this text that he's saying, hey, you obeyed in my presence. But please obey even in my absence. So Paul is saying that my presence, you know, just like my wife, when she's around for some reason, my phone's not around. And then suddenly. No. When she's not around. My phone is always out and as soon as she walks in the door, I'm like, I'm just finishing an e-mail and I'm always like wrapping it up. Do you notice that every time you're with someone, they're always wrapping up something in their e-mail? And so for me, it's like once the presence of God is there or in the presence of some leaders, I'm up and ready to go. But as soon as someone leaves it kind of shows the true colors of where we are in our spiritual life, oftentimes. And so the dilemma in this in the going to this text is how does it mean? What does it mean for us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling? First of all, it's important to understand that, number one, we are justified before the Lord, by his grace, and we have it. It's already received from him, and there is no work that we could ever do to be able to deserve that. Or to earn it #1. Right. But then now what do we do with the gift? What do we do with the grace that God has for us? Do we say thank you for this gift? I will workout my salvation on my own strength. No, the sustaining power of God's grace works itself out, and it works itself out. Not in us just like passively receiving all of these great new spiritual disciplines and us now we're patient and now we are. We have long-suffering. Now we have all this unconditional love from God. It doesn't just snap into us just like that. It's all there. It's all resident here inside of us. But it needs to work itself out. Because we need to practice, we need to have the disciplines to express the beauty and the power that God already has inside of us. You can argue that it is in the scriptures. It talks about having the righteousness of Christ inside of us that is molding us more and more into his likeness. This is called sanctification, right? Sanctification. We went from justified before the Lord, to growing more and more into Christ's likeness, to that one day when Jesus returns as the whole gospel story, when he returns, we will be glorified with him. We will come into perfection with him when he returns. Salvation isn't just justification. Salvation isn't just getting saved in a ticket to heaven. Salvation is continuously working itself through sanctification in being more and more like Christ and finding ourselves being more and more like Christ to the place where we come. Jesus returns. And we come into that glorification, that place in which we can be in that place where God has meant for us to be. And so as we work out this salvation, I remember a particular, a particular quote by Charles Spurgeon. That I use a lot. So if any had been in my class, you've heard this before, but this is a great and it's a long quote that I want to say to you guys that I think really captures the way because the question is how do I remain kind of naive and childlike while also working really hard. You know, how do I do both of those at the same time? And in this text, Charles Spurgeon says this. He has this picture of us sailors. People out in the water on a boat and he says this “We cannot rule the winds nor create them. A whole parliament of philosophers could not cause a cap full of wind to blow. The sailor knows that he can neither stop The Tempest nor raise it. What, then does he sit still? By no means. He has all kinds of sails of different cuts and forms to enable him to use every ounce of wind that comes and he knows how to reef or furl them in case the tempest becomes too strong for his bark. Though he cannot control the movement of the wind, he can use what it pleases God to send. The Miller cannot divert that great stream of water out of its channel, but he knows how to utilize it. He makes it turn his mill wheel, though he cannot resist the gravitational law of gravitation. For there seems to be an almost omnipotent force in it. Yet he uses that law and yokes it to his chariot. Thus, though we cannot command that mighty influence which streams from the omnipotent spirit of God, though we cannot turn it which way we will for the wind bloweth where it listed. Yet we can make use of it, and in our inability to save men, we turn to God and lay hold of his power.” That beautiful the picture in this is that acknowledging as a sailor that you cannot control the winds. You cannot control the waves. I remember one time I was in in Bali. I'm an Indonesian, so I was in Bali and I was trying to surf. We're Canadians. We don't know how to do this. So I was trying to surf. And while I was going out in the water, I did not understand the power of water that just. Propelled me deep into the water, which I didn't. I got scared out in there because I can't control the waves. I can't control where it comes. I can't control the wind. And the sailor knows that. Yet does the sailor sit still and say or do I sit on my surfboard saying, well, I'm going to just let it bring me wherever I will and let me just let God do what he's going to do. No. What do we do? We can keep the ship clean right. We can be able to work on what it means to identify where the wind is blowing in which direction and how strong we can know how to sail, and we can know how to catch the wind in a certain way to bring us in a certain direction. But all too often, either we are being passive and allowing the wind to just take us where we will, and that was more me and I think in my adolescence just go wherever God like a little tugboat in a storm, just going left and right and everywhere versus. On the other side, saying I don't like sailing, why don't we just get a motor? Why don't we just strap on a motor and just turn it on and let me go wherever I want whenever I want? Right? Why rely upon the wind? The wind is irrelevant to what I want to do and we become self-sustaining people. And that's where you become in the works mentality, where everything becomes about you and your advancement and your technology and all the things that you can create on that side. But I believe that the grace of God mixed with us. Utilizing that gift of God to be able to put it in action, it actually makes a difference. You know, it actually makes a difference in our spiritual maturity. I watch a lot of basketball. I love basketball. I listen to a lot of podcasts. I know a lot about. It doesn't mean I'm good at basketball, right? It doesn't because I can know a lot about it. I can have an understanding of different players and what they do, but actually going out and actually doing it repetitively is something that we need to learn and for me I grew up discipline wasn't a natural thing for me, right? I grew up in a kind of spirituality that didn't have discipline. It just flowed with the spirit wherever it went. I would follow it. That's how. That's how I grew. And that's a beautiful thing, by the way, if you have that. But then as I grew, I realized it's not only in my spirituality. It came to my sports. It came to music. It came to all these things. I am mediocre in all of it. OK, I'm a really good Jack of all trades. Like I can play your worship music, your keep certain. Whatever I can do that I can get along with that I can play pick up ball. If you want to play and all that kind of stuff. But there's certain things that I didn't discipline myself to do. And I remember watching Steph Curry. For those who aren't basketball fans, sorry. But then I remember in the in the in the US Olympics when Steph Curry was going off and shooting his three pointers to win the gold medal, I remember them talking about the fact that Steph, when he practices, when he actually practices, he puts himself in situations that is difficult, so that his the shots he takes by repetition over and over again becomes a reflex. It becomes something automatic, it becomes something unconscious, because when the critical moment occurs, when you have only three seconds left and you have to go there, you're not being super like step by step, I'm gonna step back. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna release. I'm gonna be able to spin the ball and have a high arc. You're not thinking about all that stuff. Amazing thing about the grace of God is that in the beginning, when you are just learning how to be following Christ, it's a little bit awkward. It's like trying to learn a different language. You know, you're not fluent in that righteousness. You're not fluent in that kind of spirituality that is actually inside of you. Your flesh is learning and catching up with the spirit that is inside. And that's what it is to be sanctified in the Lord as that little impulse in you changes from a sinful impulse that urges you to do and lean into your cravings. When you received Jesus into your life, you have a new righteous identity that is actually a beating, strong beat inside, and a pulse that is encouraging you to do things as well. And the more you respond to those urges and these instincts that are growing and growing in your life, eventually you will activate them in your life and then practice and discipline them in your life like Steph Curry shot over and over again to the point in which when before sin was something you did unconsciously. And doing good works was very conscious. Eventually, through sanctification and growing, more and more in Christ's likeness and through discipleship, you come to a place where guess what? The righteousness of God and the good works that come out become more of an unconscious act. I believe that's how Grace works itself out that suddenly you just don't feel it. I don't understand. When people don't like bread anymore, like, you know, people are gluten free and all that kind of stuff. I love bread. And I talked to someone who used to love bread and suddenly doesn't like bread anymore. I'm like, how is that possible? They discipline themselves, right? They worked at it to be able to take certain things out of their diet. Coke. How can you not like coke? Right. And eventually it becomes disgusting in their mouth to drink such sweet things. And it becomes an unconscious reaction. Like, what is this right? And they spit it out. That's not because they're consciously saying this is sugar. This is bad for me. I shouldn't drink it. Ohh man. It tastes so good. But I shouldn't like it. It's not like that when you continue to grow in Christ likeness. I don't know how much time, but just think about this, OK? Because in Romans 5 it gives a very good illustration. With this, it tells us the new identity we have in Christ. I don't have time to read the passage, but Romans 5 kind of goes like this. Romans 5. It says listen before this is how it worked. You had Adam and Eve and Adam and Eve, they sinned. As a result of their disobedience, these mere men and women as they sinned. After they sinned, all of humanity got a sinful identity. OK, so imagine I'd pull out my my ID card. My ID card would be, or my passport would say I'm a Sinner. I was born a Sinner, and guess what? No matter what I do, no matter how good works I do, I cannot take away this Sinner identity. It's just in me. So guess what I sin because I'm a Sinner. That's what happens, right? And so Romans 5, it compares it and says listen, there's. There's something that happened after that, OK? It's called the second Adam. The second Adam is Jesus, and Jesus is not a man. It's God, #1. And so Adam and Eve sinned and they disobeyed. Sorry. OK, I don't know what they said there, but OK. Disobeyed Christ and then eventually we got an identify identity as a Sinner. It says, Jesus, who is God, did a great act of obedience like a courageous act of obedience on the cross. And guess what? As a result of that, we now have a new identity. We have an identity of righteous right. We are now righteous not by our own merit, but the righteousness of Christ is now our identity. So when before I would always say, you know what, I'm a Sinner, so I just sin. That's how I do. That's my default. Guess what? When we come in the righteousness of Christ that changes our identity. If a mere man can disobey and creates such a strong identity like a Sinner. How much more it says it so many times in that passage. How much more is the righteousness of Christ and the obedience of Christ, of not a mere man? But God can change our identity to be a righteousness of Christ. And the reason why this is important is that when your default is no longer Sinner, of course we still sin, but it's no longer Sinner. It is righteous when you sin, it's not you. You know what I mean? When you sin, when you act out, you can't say, hey, that's just part of who I am. No, no, no. It's a very different. You're not a a Sinner who writes it, who occasionally does righteous acts. You are now through the righteousness of Christ, someone who is righteous. Yes, who sins. But that is a totally different viewpoint of that. And when you acknowledge that that righteousness is inside of you, when you feel the urge to be generous, when you feel the urge to be obedient to Christ, do the same thing you did to the sinful temptations. OK, before you had a sinful identity. So it gave you an impulse to sin. Right. And you responded freely, by the way, right? We were gluttonous when it came to reacting and responding to our sinful identity. That was always. It was so easy. It was like right away. Feel it. Do it. Feel it. Do. It. But now as we grow into more in Christ's likeness, what you have to now pick up is a righteous impulse that is beginning to whisper in your ear to be able to do the things of Christ. And I really realized that in my response to my sinful identity and the sinful pulse that was radiating in me, I developed really good disciplines in sin. OK, I was really disciplined when it came to sin. I just responded to all that sinful stuff and I was really good at that. I developed great habits of sinfulness. But what the scripture says is do the same thing that you did with sin and how you she responded to the sinful right sinful impulse do the same thing now to the righteous impulse that is speaking to you, the spirit of God is constantly challenging our flesh, challenging our bodies, challenging our mind to respond to what it is to be more and more like Christ. And so that one day, when before you were unconsciously sinning. You just unconsciously did it. It was reflex to then you learned about Jesus and then you became conscious of your sin. And then you were consciously sinning, right unconscious sinning to conscious sinning, and then growing in Christ's likeness. Eventually you became very conscious in your righteous acts, like it was very uncomfortable to like give to to those who are in need. It was very uncomfortable to forgive all those things. And it was like a struggle. It was like, really challenging yourself to do those things very conscious today maybe who knows? And I know I'm not there that one day. As we practice the disciplines of there and respond to the righteousness of Christ, and that impulse that is rising in us, perhaps if we follow the nice equation, because of course life is so neat like this, we will eventually come to a place. Well, guess what? You will make me maybe be unconsciously living out righteously right, without even thinking, that's the best stuff, right? That's the best feeling where you don't have to think and suddenly you're compelled to give to someone on the streets. You're compelled to be able to forgive, and it just happens more and more naturally because the grace of Christ that is inside of you began to grow and grow. And kind of like the movie aliens, just like take over your body, you know, remember aliens were. I don't know if that's too dated of a movie, but inside the alien was there and eventually took over the body. But just imagine that's righteousness. OK. That's that's my picture for you as I close today, so my encouragement for you all today is that I believe there is a way to solve the kind of dichotomy of being able to remain naive and childlike on one side and on the other side just being self-sufficient on the other side. I believe there's a way for us to be able to conceive of the grace of God. Working itself inside of us to be able to reveal itself more and more to the place, to the moment that our bodies will be transformed more and our mind and our heart will be transformed more and more into the likeness of Christ. And of course, that's a horizon. It's like it feels like we'll never get there until glory comes. But one thing we can do is we can, like, be disciplined. We can work on the spiritual disciplines of prayer and solitude and fasting. All these things. You can do it not out of a desire to get something from the Lord, but a desire to actualize what God has already placed inside of you. All right, let's pray. Lord, thank you so much. For this opportunity to be able to delve into what it is to be maturing in the Lord, and I pray that as we kind of understand and kind of balance this, what it is for grace of Christ to be able to work itself in our life, I pray Lord Jesus that you will help us to recognize the righteous impulse inside of us. Lord, I pray for anyone here who feels that they struggle with sin over and over again, struggle with a lack of discipline. Father. I pray, Lord God, that the way we can begin is just really allowing you to speak and allowing them to listen to the way in which you're moving them, no matter how small of a progress it makes. Lord, I pray that you can slowly for everyone here to be able to to hear and lean into you Lord, and take those little steps of obedience to be formed more in your likeness. And I pray that all the things that we feel is impossible, that it cannot be done. Lord Jesus, I. pray. That's like what we're saying here that we would honor the great sacrifice and the great act of your death and your resurrection, that we would look upon that comprehend it. See the beauty of it. See the strength of it. See the power of it and allow that to be able to be the fuel that actually changes our life, that if we ever think that our sin is greater than that act, Lord, I pray that we would repent before you and realize that your act is so much stronger than our weakness. And I pray that you grab us, Lord, to be able to understand that more and more so that we can sacrifice before you all the things before you out of an abundance that comes from your righteousness. So we thank you, Lord, and we bless you in Jesus name we pray. Amen.
As we absorb these words from our brother, let's take a moment in prayer of reflection just to really think about what Jesse has challenged us with tonight, today and then we'll move into prayer. Oh God. What does this mean this fear and trembling? Are we to cower before you afraid for our lives, that you have deemed precious and vital? Are you maybe like an unapproachable king or a proud president where their subjects and followers are fearful of sudden and unreasonable edicts that punish arbitrarily. Can we count on you God? Just what does this mean to work at our salvation? We thought it was all about grace and gift. God, through your son, our Savior and Lord, you have invited us to live into your limitless love. The flower and flourish to team with thriving. But how do we square this with this fear and trembling with working out our salvation? Can we earn your love? Must we pay for your life? Some of us do with the exact opposite, don't we, Lord? Like the vulnerable seeds scattered on the rocky soil, we sprout alive to you, excited by the new life that seems so different, but than we whither, because something interrupts our happiness or distracts us with the newest ideology. There's no root system. Life becomes too harsh and we give up. We can't be bothered. And then there are those of us who don't work out our salvation, but we work for our salvation. We scurry from here to there, doing things that we think will help us get into your Kingdom. We commit to activities, many of them even good, many of them church based, convinced that your love will expand for us because we're doing things. We pursue information and even knowledge, but we don't rest. We don't really rest in the yoke of being your apprentice. So to develop the whisper of wisdom. Maybe we're like the seeds spread among the dandelions and Thistle, getting choked by the busyness and disruptions of life. Screens, time, prestige, wants, acclaim. You offer something else. You are the great gift giver and you have provided a way a means for this life to the full that you have promised. You don't need us to earn. But we're not invited to sit idly by either are we? God, this morning, as the words of our brother Jesse continued to echo in our ears. Show us. Show us the difference between effort and earning, between resting and a shoulder shrug of on we may you by your spirit and our practices continue to move us into a deepening faith that is rich, rooted, and resilient, a maturing faith, O God. This is what we desire. And now, as a confession of who we are as members of the Church of Jesus Christ, Historic and present here and around the world. Let us recite in unison his apostles creed, you'll see it on the screen. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ his only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended to hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From there he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Now as we depart, hear these good words. Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity if we are persecuted or hungry or destitute or in danger, or threatened with that? No. Despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us, and I am convinced that nothing can separate us from God's love. Neither death nor life. Neither angels nor demons neither fears for today or worries about tomorrow. Not even the powers of hell can separate us from God's love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below. Indeed nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus. Our Lord. Amen. Go in peace.