article - Integrity in Politics?

Integrity in Politics?

In the lead-up to a Federal election, we are becoming more and more focussed on the people who represent us - or aspire to represent us – in federal government. As electors, many of us have a responsibility to carefully evaluate the various candidates, their parties and policies and come to a decision about who we most trust to represent us and our interests well.

What do we base that decision on? Do we just look at the policies put forward? Do we look at a track record of accomplishment? Does character and integrity play a part?

In his article in the West Australian last Saturday, Hugh Mackay raised the issue in his usual thought-provoking way. After describing the recent controversy about comments made (or not made) by the Treasurer about the Prime Minister, Mr Mackay writes:

“Have we reached the situation… where the voters no longer care whether a Federal minister lies or not, as long as their own wellbeing is secure? Is the question of politicians’ personal integrity no longer an issue for us, as long as we’re fed, clothed and housed comfortably?”

It’s a question which is up to us to answer. Certainly, if popular response to the latest scandal involving Kevin Rudd is anything to go by, the answer is “yes”. I am not in any way attacking Mr Rudd for his mistake – if anything, I am commenting on the fact that Mr Rudd is one of the few people who apparently considers that visiting a strip club was a mistake! Comments aired on the Nine Network’s “A Current Affair” programme indicated that most people thought it was nothing to worry about. One interviewee even commented that his only mistake was to admit it to his wife the next day!

It would seem that our society’s traditional Christian values which defined personal integrity have largely been forgotten. We are apparently more concerned with who can deliver the strongest economy with the most personal financial benefits for ourselves. It seems that as a society we value material success more highly than moral or spiritual excellence.

I am reminded of when Jesus appeared to the Apostle John in a vision and gave him a message for a church which was very wealthy, but had lost it’s way morally and spiritually:

^ You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. ^ I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.

^ Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. ^ Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. ^[1]

From God’s point of view, success is not measured in economic terms. In fact, material success can be dangerous, because it can lead us to believe that we don’t need God. To pursue material success alone is to settle for less than the abundant life that God promises us.

If we want to experience God’s blessing on us personally and nationally, it requires us to repent, which means to stop heading in one direction and start moving in another one. Jesus is trying to get our attention, will we hear Him and invite Him in to our personal and national life, or will we carry on the way we are going?

Mike Birch

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^[1]The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984 (Re 3:17-20). Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Sermon - The Fire of the Spirit

The Fire of the Spirit

1 Thessalonians 5:19-28
19/08/07

audio

On Friday night I asked the young people at youth group to name the ways that following Jesus changes the way people live. What difference does being a Christian make? Most of these kids come from homes that do not have much of a Christian influence, but they have been to Kids Club and Scripture classes and youth group, so they should have a reasonable idea. However they weren’t all that confident with their answers. Eventually we got a bit of a list made. Christians go to Church, they pray, they read the Bible and they try to please God in what they do. Those aren’t bad observations.

Well it’s the last sermon in our series in 1 Thessalonians, and I can’t think of a better topic to close on than what Paul chooses as his closing exhortation to the Christians at Thessalonica. After talking very specifically on a number of aspects of the Christian life, Paul now zooms out and gives a summary of what it’s all about.

1 Thessalonians 5:19-28

¹⁹ Do not put out the Spirit’s fire; ²⁰ do not treat prophecies with contempt. ²¹ Test everything. Hold on to the good. ²² Avoid every kind of evil.

²³ May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. ²⁴ The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.

²⁵ Brothers, pray for us. ²⁶ Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss. ²⁷ I charge you before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers.

²⁸ The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

To live as a Christian is to follow in the steps of Jesus. We only know how to do that because God has put His Spirit within us to show us the way. We only have the ability to do that because the Holy Spirit helps us. Without the work of the Holy Spirit there is no such thing as Christianity, there is only futile religious effort. You cannot follow someone you can’t see. Without the Holy Spirit there would be no Scriptures, and without the Holy Spirit we cannot truly understand them and apply them anyway. Without the Holy Spirit there is no Church, there is only groupings of like-minded people.

Verse 19 gives us a summary of what it means to live as a Christian – it is to not put out the Spirit’s fire. The Holy Spirit has been given to each Christian as the living link between us and the triune God. We are connected to the God the Father and the God the Son through God the Spirit. This wonderful mystery is described by Jesus as recorded in the gospel of John chapters 14 to 16. I’d encourage you to read that passage in your own study time.

It is possible for us as Christians to quench the fire of the Spirit within us. In Ephesians 4:30 this is described as grieving the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is working within you to do exactly what verses 23 to 24 describes:

^23 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. (That is the work of the Holy Spirit) May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. ^24 The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.

God is faithful and He will keep us blameless until Jesus returns. He will use us for His exclusive purposes (that is what it means to be sanctified – to be holy). Those purposes include witnessing to the lost and building up those who are saved. Those purposes include reflecting the glory of His character. God will do that work in you. He has promised and He will do it. The fire of the Holy Spirit is at work within you refining you and stirring you up to do good things. But that fire can be quenched. The Spirit can be grieved. It is possible for us to stifle the work that God is doing within us.

Those who were here last week will remember that the secret to a joy-filled life is to get the focus off ourselves and onto God. That can be really, really hard to do when we are stressed out or sick or sad. Today we are learning that the Christian life as a whole is not about us and what we do or don’t do, it’s what God does in us that counts.

Now that doesn’t seem to make sense. Just look back through chapter 5 of 1 Thessalonians. There’s heaps of do’s and don’ts there. Look at the 10 commandments. Look at the Sermon on the Mount. Look within every book of the Bible and you will find specific commands about what we should do and shouldn’t do.

This tension is explained very well in the book of Romans chapters 6 to 8. Again, read through that in your study time to get a fuller picture of this subject. Better still, start reading from chapter 1 verse 16!

But let me give you the gist of it using an example:

I am not a patient man. I know that I should be patient, and I have learned over the years to control or hide my impatience in most circumstances, but I can’t do that all the time. I have learnt to respond quickly to flares of anger or frustration so that they are not free to cause damage. But none of that makes me a patient man, no matter how calm I might appear to others. I know, and God knows, that I am not a patient man. That will not change in this life.

But God is patient. He is the ultimate example of patience. His Spirit produces patience in me. When I am living by the help of the Holy Spirit, when I am keeping in step with the Spirit, then my life demonstrates God’s patience. His quality of patience is what shines through me, not my quality of impatience. When I am not keeping in step with the Spirit, more of me shines through and less of God. This is also described in Galatians chapter 5.

How is it possible to quench the Holy Spirit?

Using this example, one way would be to carry on being impatient. To not feel His convicting voice when I am impatient. To not feel godly sorrow that moves me to repentance after being impatient. To not pay attention to the words of Scripture that address this issue. To not love people and care about my impact on them. All of this shows a quenching of the work of the Holy Spirit within me.

On the other hand, to try by my own strength to be a patient man would also quench the Holy Spirit. Paul is very clear on many occasions that we cannot achieve righteousness on our own by trying to live up to the requirements of the law. It is an insult to God to think that we are good enough to live by His standards. Only He is perfectly good. Only He can make His goodness shine from us. We need to come to Him humbly and ask for His help. We need to recognise our dependence on Him.

Verse 22 simply says “Avoid every kind of evil”. To accept or ignore sin is one kind of evil. Self-righteousness is another. We need to avoid both. Verses 20&21 give some other examples of how we can avoid quenching the Holy Spirit.

Verses 20-21 state: “ do not treat prophecies with contempt. ^21 Test everything. Hold on to the good”.

We can grieve the Holy Spirit by not accepting the work He does in and through others for the building up of the Church. The example given here is that of prophecy. Now, there are many different views on how the gift of prophecy operates and the place it should have in the Church today. I have heard people speak prophecies on a number of occasions. I must confess that early on in my life I did treat these with a large dose of skepticism, because of my views in this area. I have also heard prophecies uttered that I knew to be false. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to assume that the Holy Spirit is not speaking through someone. We could miss out on God’s direction and encouragement for us if we did so.

On the other hand, to accept everything that people claim comes from God would be disastrous. As I mentioned earlier, I have heard things said that I knew to be false. It would have been silly for me to believe that these things came from God. I have heard things said from those who claim to have been given the words to say from the Holy Spirit which have been dangerously opposed to what the Bible says. The Spirit who inspired the words of Scripture is also the God who does not change. He is not about to contradict Himself deliberately or accidentally. To accept these false prophecies would be to grieve the One who has already shown us the truth.

So what should we do? We should test everything.

In the case of prophecy, we should match it to Scripture. It should also match up with what can be observed to be true. Finally there should be a peace in our Spirit that what we are hearing is from God. After all, the same Spirit lives in us, and will be speaking from within as well as from without. I have experienced this myself, where someone was praying for me and prophesied some things which matched exactly what I felt God had been saying to me over a period of months. It gave me the confidence to know my convictions were from God and that I needed to act on them. It would have grieved the Holy Spirit for me to ignore that as coincidence or whatever else, and fail to do what God wanted me to do in that situation. So in the case of prophesy I hold on to that good experience but I avoid the other ungodly stuff that goes on.

But notice that we are not just to test prophesies. We are to test everything. If we do not want to quench the Holy Spirit, we must constantly be testing what we take in, what we do, what we say and so on. We need to be submitting all these things to His control.

Have you ever paused through a movie or book or TV show or song and asked God if He is happy for you to watch or listen to it? Do you think about what a program contains and whether it matches up with God’s standards for you? Do you test conversations you are a part of to see whether you need to change what is being said or remove yourself? Have you ever been part of a group that is doing something wrong but don’t want to upset anyone by causing a fuss? Who would you rather offend, those people or God? We can grieve the Holy Spirit by what we do or don’t do.

If you were sitting in the pub and the Holy Spirit said “Leave this place, this is not good for you” would you listen? Would you be more afraid of looking like a prude or losing friends? On the other hand, if the Spirit said “Go into the pub, there is someone I want to touch through you” would you do that? Would you be afraid of tarnishing your reputation or being in an uncomfortable environment?

It’s not what you do or don’t do that matters, it’s what you do or don’t allow the Spirit to do in and through you. It might seem like a crazy distinction, but it’s absolutely essential to understand if you want to be a mature Christian who is kept blameless until the coming of our Saviour.