There’s nothing worse than when someone treads on your toes. You know, they get in your space, they tread on your toes, and what you feel is something between discomfort, anger, and fear. See, that’s why boundaries are so important.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BOUNDARIES

The concept of setting and maintaining boundaries in our lives is actually very important, yet it’s not something that we tend to think too much about until someone crosses a boundary; until someone, as I said, treads on your toes. Then all of a sudden we react, and more often than not, our reactions aren’t all that good. That’s why it’s important for us to think about and to understand our boundaries, and that’s why it’s important to set our boundaries in the right place with the right controls. Boundaries that are too tight end up isolating us; boundaries that are too loose allow our lives, our emotions, our possessions, to be plundered.

Different people have different concepts of boundaries. I remember back in the nineteen eighties I was doing a consulting job for the city of Melbourne in Australia. They set up a small office for us in a small alleyway not far from the town hall in a building that we shared with, amongst other things, an English language school with lots of Asian students.

There was only one elevator in the building and as I recall, it was a pretty small one. Now we all have a concept about when a lift or an elevator, as some call it, is full. You get in; you take a look; it looks too packed to you, so you decide to wait until it comes back again empty, but it turned out that the Asian students coming from countries much, much more crowded than Australia had a totally different notion of what full looked like, and so they’d just keep on packing in and packing in, and when I thought we simply couldn’t squeeze anyone else in, four more people would get in the lift.

That truly tested my notions of the boundaries of personal space, with bodies pressed up against me and people literally treading on my toes, but it didn’t seem to bother them because they were used to that sort of overcrowding. It was entirely normal for them. Fortunately though, the lift never broke down. I don’t know how I would have coped with being stuck in there for half an hour pinned to the wall, so we all have different ideas of what boundaries are acceptable and what boundaries are unacceptable.

You see it between nations. In most of the world, you have to have a passport to enter a country as a foreign national, but not all foreign nationals are the same. Many countries treat different nationalities differently, in terms of visa requirements and security requirements and so on. I have to fulfil certain requirements to get a visa to enter India, but if you’re a Pakistani national, the requirements are much more stringent, and yet travel to Europe and now most people can pretty much move across national borders without any sort of control whatsoever.

The more you think about boundaries, whether on a personal level or a national or international scale, the more complicated it gets, but there’s one thing for certain: If someone (that person, that group of people, an army or a nation) steps over a boundary that they’re not supposed to, well, there’s going to be a clash of some sort; anything from friction to all-out war. That’s why boundaries are important, and yet we spend little if any time thinking about, talking about, the boundaries that we’ve set. Mostly, the setting of boundaries is an unconscious thing, and because boundaries are never talked about, people step over them, often without knowing it until it’s too late, and right there, you have the beginnings of a potential conflict.

Given this subject is such an important one in our lives, it won’t come as any surprise to you that God has rather a lot to say about the boundaries in our lives. It seems to me that if I set the right sort of boundaries in the right sort of places, with the right sort of controls, balancing stringency and defence on the one hand with kindness and openness on the other, I’m going to have a much better life.

The Bible tells us that we should pursue peace, and since war happens over this whole issue of boundaries, it seems to me at least that it’s worth talking about and thinking through the boundaries that we set in our lives, and perhaps adjusting a few of them to bring about more peace. That’s why we’re talking about boundaries: Learning to set the right boundaries over the next few weeks, and today I want to get us thinking by kicking off with some wisdom on this whole issue of boundaries from the Old Testament book of Proverbs. Have a listen. Proverbs 22:28:

Do not remove the ancient landmark that your ancestors set up.

Landmarks were the basis of boundaries. When Israel came into the promised land, every one of the twelve tribes of Israel bar one (the Levites) were allocated their own land in this promised land. The ancient landmarks were set up to draw the boundaries between the lands, between the tribes, but here this idea is being used metaphorically. It’s this idea that God has ordained certain boundaries, certain things that are good, and yet in this day and age, we want to toss all those things out because they aren’t all that convenient – because we think we know better. Meanwhile, wars continue to be fought over boundaries. Marriages continue to fall apart over boundaries, and lives continue to be robbed of God’s peace over boundaries. Just a few verses on, God takes this to a whole nother level. Proverbs 23:10-11:

Do not remove an ancient landmark or encroach on the fields of orphans, for their Redeemer is strong; He will plead their cause against you.

He uses the example here of the orphans: The poor and the needy and the vulnerable in society. God has a heart for the poor, and what He’s saying here is, “Look, don’t step over that boundary. Don’t move that ancient landmark because God, the Redeemer of the orphans, is strong and He will defend them”.

See, there are some good boundaries that we can set in life. We’re going to talk about a few of those in the rest of this series, and there are some very bad boundaries we can set, like exploiting the vulnerable as in this case, or being selfish. When you think about it, selfishness is about setting the wrong boundary in the wrong place: Having more than enough, and not sharing it with those who are in need; placing your comfort above others’ needs, and when we move from being selfish to generous – with our resources, with our time, with our encouragement, what we’re doing is we’re saying, “Hey. This boundary around what I have and what I own, I’ve had it set in the wrong place. I actually need to move it outwards a lot more. I need to make its defences less stringent, so that some of what I have can flow out to those who don’t have what I have and who need what I have”.

You see the point? Do you see how important it is to have our boundary set in the right place? The question is, where is the right place? What is the right level of control? Well, the answer to that is that the right place is the place that God sets up, according to His ancient landmarks.

We tend to think of things ancient as being irrelevant. “Hey, come on, the world’s moved on”. In this era of instant connectivity, in this era of having the world in the palm of your hand on your smartphone, what possible relevance can ancient landmarks really have? Well, with God the answer is, rather a lot of relevance, as things turn out. Let me bring you back to it. Proverbs 22:28:

Do not remove the ancient landmark that your ancestors set up.

What landmarks have you set up in your life that define your boundaries? Are they where God would have them, or have you set them up to suit yourself, with little or no thought as to God’s will for your life? Now that’s something worth thinking about. Have you removed God’s ancient landmarks in your life?

BOUNDARIES OF THE HEART

We talk a lot about the heart: Not just our physical heart (that amazing pump that beats on average around seventy-five beats a minute, a hundred and eight thousand times a day, or almost forty million times a year), but our emotional heart – our spiritual heart (that part of us that’s so deep inside, it’s who we are; where we live; where we experience joy and sorrow and laughter and pain). Proverbs 4:23 says this:

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows out of it.

Now that’s pretty much it. What happens deep in our hearts ends up influencing (no, influence isn’t quite the right word), it ends up determining how we behave. That’s what Jesus said too. Matthew 12:33-35:

Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad. For the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers! How can you speak good things when you’re evil? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. The good person brings good things out of a good treasure, and the evil person brings evil things out of an evil treasure.

Your heart is incredibly important when it comes to how you live. That’s why it’s so important to guard your heart, but how do you guard your heart? Where do you set the boundaries? It’s funny how often the Bible talks about boundaries without ever explicitly calling them that, but that Scripture from Proverbs 4:23 about guarding your heart is all about boundaries.

Back in those days, to protect a city, you did two things: First, you built a dirty great big wall around it. The wall that Nehemiah built around Jerusalem after the Israelites returned from their exile in Babylon was forty feet high and many feet thick, so the first thing you do is, you build a wall. The second thing you do is, you put guards on-top of that wall to keep watch, so that you can see if someone is coming to attack the city, so yes, this whole thing about guarding your heart is about setting up boundaries and setting up defences, but as I’ve just said, not all boundaries are good boundaries. Think about your heart. What boundaries, what defences, have you set up?

Some people are defensive and touchy. What that tells me is that they’ve built their wall too high, they’ve drawn their boundaries too tight, and what they’re guarding tucked away in their heart isn’t worthy of the defence. When it comes to your heart, it’s not only the walls that we’re talking about, but what’s in your heart that matters. God’s Word draws some sharply different pictures of the human heart. On the one hand, it says Jeremiah 17:9-10:

The heart is devious above all else; it’s perverse. Who can understand it? I, the LORD, test the mind and search the heart to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings.

But on the other hand, Matthew 5:8:

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

And Ezekiel 11:19-21:

I will give them one heart and put a new spirit in them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, so that they may follow My statutes and keep My ordinances and obey them. Then they shall be My people and I will be their God, but as for those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations, I will bring their deeds down upon their own heads,’ says the LORD.

It seems to me that God is vitally interested in what’s going on in your heart and mine, and what He’s looking for is a pure heart: A heart of good intentions; a heart that wants to honour Him; a heart that’s fit to burst with love for Him, and unless we guard that purity of heart, unless we defend and we contend for it, then the enemy is going to plunder it, for he knows that if he can plunder your heart, if he can fill it with impurity, with evil thoughts, with bitterness and vengeance and the like, he’s going to ruin your life because your thoughts, your words and your actions flow from what’s going on in your heart. That’s why the Bible says Proverbs 4:23:

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows out of it.

Did you pick up the first bit there? Above all else, before everything else, of principal primary importance, is guarding your heart. Well, how do you do that? Tell you what I do. When I see evil coming my way, in whatever form it takes, as an idea, as a temptation, as someone else’s poor behaviour or low standards, I close my heart to that: Not perfectly every time I have to say, but my intent is always to guard the goodness that God puts into my heart by His Spirit, as I read His Word; as I pray; as I worship Him. All those things fill my heart with the goodness and the purity that God’s looking for. It doesn’t come from me; it comes from God. After all, that’s precisely what He promises to do, back in the Scripture from Ezekiel 11 – to give us a new heart, so it’s to evil that God wants us to close our hearts, but to good things, they should be wide-open: To generosity, to compassion, to kindness, to gentleness, to sacrifice, to Jesus … To those things, our hearts should be wide-open, but to the things that will breed evil in or hearts, they should be closed shut.

So when someone comes alongside and starts grumbling and complaining, say about the leadership of our church, that’s something I’m closed to. And when someone comes along and talks to me about serving and helping, that’s something that I try very hard to be open to. It’s a boundary of discernment that God is calling us to build around our hearts: A boundary that’ll maintain the purity of our hearts, so our thoughts and words and deeds which flow from the heart will be God-honouring; will glorify God; will speak to the people around us of this Jesus, who came and died for them. Above all things guard your hearts, for out of them flows the wellspring of your life.

BOUNDARIES OF THE MIND

As I said, the mind is an incredibly powerful thing. If we use it positively and creatively, we’ll end up living a positive and creative life. If we use it in a negative way, we’ll end up living a negative life. As Joyce Meyer once said, “You can’t have a negative mind and expect to live a positive life”, but our mind, these days is being bombarded with so many things, so many negative and unhelpful ways of thinking, that if we’re not careful we end up taking that negativity on and making it part of our minds.

Just one example: The sitcoms that play themselves out on television these days. On the surface, yeah; they’re funny and we laugh and we feel entertained, but more and more, these sitcoms are being used as platforms for delivering wrong thinking about sexual promiscuity and perversions, much in the same way as cigarettes were merely a delivery platform for the addictive substance nicotine. Now that’s a somewhat unpopular thing for me to say because so many people have consumed so much of this stuff, so many people have swallowed the promiscuity and the perversions hook, line and sinker that it’s become part of them. It’s now how they think. It’s now what they believe.

There will be many people who hear me say this today who will write me off as some conservative crackpot and I know I’ll get many, many emails from people contending with what I’ve said. That’s ok; I don’t mind that, because the lies of this world are not what determine how I think. God’s Word is, and God’s Word says this. 1 Corinthians 6:18-20:

Shun fornication and flee from it. Every other sin that a person commits is outside the body, but the fornicator sins against the body itself, or don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own, for you were bought with a price? Therefore, glorify God in your body.

We’re talking in this series ‘Learning to Set Boundaries’ about the boundaries that we set in our lives, and one of the important boundaries that we need to set is the boundary around our mind: What we let in and what we don’t. It’s about guarding your mind from that which is wrong, and feeding it with that which is right, and one of the reasons this is so important is that the mind is the gateway to the heart. It’s a bit like the relationship between the mouth and the stomach. We take food into our mouths; if it tastes bad, we spit it out; if it tastes good, we chew it, we swallow it and it goes down into our stomachs, where it’s broken down, digested and then subsequently absorbed into our bodies, where it becomes part of us, and the reason that so many people are sick and obese these days is because they’re putting the wrong sort of food into their mouths, swallowing it, and slowly killing themselves.

Well, it’s kind of the same with our minds. We’re presented, let’s say, with a seductive idea of promiscuity or perversion, wrapped in the sweet-wrapper of the comedy of a sitcom, and that hits our minds, and we chew it over, and then we can either swallow it or spit it out. Swallow bad stuff and it’ll give you heart disease; swallow good stuff and it’ll make you strong and pure. The problem is that we consume most of these things uncritically. In other words, all we see is the humour in the sitcom that makes us laugh, rather than thinking over what they’re feeding us. Isn’t that what we do? We swallow before we chew, taste and decide whether this is any good for us or not.

These days so many people in God’s church, people who proclaim that they believe in Jesus, will become all defensive when God’s Word on promiscuity and perversion is preached. Why? Because they’ve swallowed the rubbish, and as I’ve said, that’s just one example. There are many, many others, but God’s Word says that He’s given you a powerful mind: A mind that can begin to affect powerful change in your life. Have a listen to this. Romans 12:2 says:

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Now I know that that particular Scripture is going to be a familiar one for many, but how often have you ever read it with the understanding that it’s talking about the power of your mind to set new boundaries? What it says is that as we renew our minds by starting to believe God rather than the father of lies, by starting to consume God’s Word rather than the poison of this world, our lives will be transformed. Listen to it again. Romans 12:2:

Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Isn’t that powerful? It’s talking about real transformation by starting to believe God over the world, because that’s where you’ll discover the good and perfect and acceptable will of God for your life, so to come back to the example that I’ve been using today, the apparently innocuous but actually poisonous sitcoms that we get dished up on television every night, those that are poisonous (not all of them are, but quite a few of them are) I simply don’t watch. Ever. Full stop, and when I’m watching a movie that promotes promiscuity, I see it for what it is and reject it, and if a sex scene pops up unexpectedly, I actually fast-forward through it. Yeah, call me square; call me old-fashioned; call it whatever you like, but I am determined to guard my mind – to set boundaries, but at the same time, I allow my mind to wander free over the hills and valleys of my dreams and my imagination, because God has spoken to me so often out there on those hills and in those valleys. I’ve chosen not to be conformed to this world, but to let God transform my life by changing my mind; by renewing my mind; by setting the right boundaries around my mind.

Truth is a concept that is very much up for grabs these days. I mean, you would think that truth is absolute – like in a court of law – you examine the evidence, you come to the truth. But these days, we have a much more pliable relationship with the truth. Because frankly, we’re much more interested in comfort and convenience than we are in the truth.

THE BOUNDARY OF THE TRUTH

There’s a basic truth that applies in every circumstance in this world. It’s this: that lies are always seductive. I mean, if you’re going to slip someone a lie that will give you some advantage – which is always the reason that you slip them a lie, you’re going to want to make it appear incredibly attractive and seductive, to get them to swallow it. I mean, if it looks ugly and it tastes bitter, they’re not going to swallow it, are they?

So, whenever the devil dishes you up a lie, remember, he’s going to make it look attractive, because he wants you to swallow it. And when something looks attractive, we justify taking it and swallowing it, on the basis that it is, after all, attractive. Think about it.

You’re struggling with your weight. You always have done. Your blood sugar is up, and you’re out for dinner, and the dessert trolley comes around and the selection of desserts is out of this world. You choose the chocolate mud cake, with cream and grated chocolate to decorate the plate. There’s no way you should be eating that chocolate cake, but you’ve been seduced because, well, it’s seductive, right?

That’s the pattern of temptation and sin. It’s an incredibly well–worn path that the devil uses over and over again in our lives. First he distorts the truth as he did with Adam and Eve. Genesis chapter 3, verse 1:

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say to you, You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?”

Well actually no, that’s not what God said at all. And Eve feeds the truth back to the devil – Genesis chapter 3, verse 2:

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you will die.”

So she knows the truth, dang. So now it’s time for the devil to trot out his tool of making the lie appear seductive and attractive, something to be desired. Genesis chapter 3, verses 4 to 6:

But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she gave some to her husband, who was there with her, and he ate.

Now, do you get the picture? That’s the devil’s pattern. If the bald–faced distortion or lie doesn’t work, he goes with seduction, which almost always works. Because attractive things are easily justified. The Bible says that you and I need to be aware of the wiles of the devil. Well, now you are.

In this series, we’re talking about setting boundaries in our lives. Good boundaries. Right boundaries. Boundaries that keep us pure and holy. Boundaries that protect us from evil and yet leave us open to acts of generosity and sacrifice. So far we’ve talked about the boundaries of the heart and the boundaries of the mind and right now, we’re going to chat about the boundaries that you and I need to set around the truth.

Truth, the idea of there being an absolute form of truth, is extremely unpopular in this day and age. Why? Well, because the devil, the prince of this world as he’s called, since time immemorial has been sowing seductive lies so successfully that people have accepted the lies and now they think of them as truth. Their truth. I can have my truth, you can have your truth – and all that’s fine. Truth is a relative concept.

In fact, if it works for you buddy, that’s fine. But don’t at any point try to tell me that your truth is the only truth – that’s wrong, because we live in a pluralistic world, where all sorts of competing truths are accepted as being … well, true! The problem with that is, that it’s just not true. Because there’s only one truth that will ever give you the freedom that you’re looking for. Jesus put it like this – John chapter 8 verses 31 and 32:

Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Well, where do you go to find the one truth that leads to freedom? John chapter 14, verse 6:

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Now, you try pedalling that idea of exclusive, absolute truth out there in the marketplace, and you are going to get shouted down, ridiculed, laughed at and marginalised. As a result, countless men and women and children who believe in Jesus forsake the truth, in order to be popular, or to be accepted or to be apparently relevant.

We want to water down the Gospel of Jesus. We want to be accepted by this world. That’s what’s happening in the lives of many individual Christians. That’s what’s happening in the lives of many churches and even denominations. Truth is up for grabs, in the popularity stakes, isn’t it?

I’d like to remind you however that this is nothing new. Jesus told the truth, and it was hard for many to come to grips with it. John chapter 6, verses 66 to 70:

Because of this (because of what he had said) many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” and Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you, the twelve? Yet one of you is a devil.” He was speaking of Judas son of Simon Iscariot, for he, though one of the twelve, was going to betray him.

So, when it comes to the truth, the hard truth about the Gospel, about sin, about repentance, which one are you? Are you one of the many that turned their backs on Jesus and walked away? Are you one of those?

Or are you perhaps one of the faithful disciples, the eleven, who even though they weren’t able to stand with Jesus during His trial and crucifixion, remained faithful to the truth?

Or are you Judas Iscariot, who whilst He held to the outward form of godliness denied its power, rejected the truth and betrayed Jesus?

I can’t answer that question for you, only you can. But let me say this. Jesus had a clear boundary around the truth. He refused to deviate from it and as a result, He was nailed to a cross.

That’s the boundary He set for Himself. It was an absolute boundary. Even though the world turned against Him and even His closest friends deserted Him, the truth was more important than anything else, because He is the truth.

It seems to us so often, that really it’s not so important that we stick to the truth. In any case, there are so many shades of grey out there, what does it matter. Surely the idea of truth as being black or white these days, is an out–dated concept – surely. But alone in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed something special for you and me. He said to His father of us in John chapter 17, verse 17:

They don’t belong to the world, just as I don’t belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in the truth.

In other words, the truth was so important that Jesus died for it, so that we could be sanctified, made holy and pure, in that absolute truth.

So, in light of the price that Jesus paid for the truth to be in you, what boundaries are you going to put around the truth in your life?

THE BOUNDARY OF BEHAVIOUR

Whether we realise it or not, whether we like it or not, there are some boundaries that have been set for us, around our behaviour. It all started when we were children. When we did something wrong, and our parents said no, and we continued doing it, we’d get a slap on the wrist or around the legs or on the bottom. Mum and Dad were setting boundaries on our behaviours.

And in fact the parents who don’t set those boundaries and enforce them, are the ones who end up with delinquent teenagers, more often than not. And those delinquent teenagers, many of them, end up growing up into delinquent adults. So, boundary setting begins, or it should begin, early on in our lives.

Sadly, some parents are savage in the boundaries they set. There’s a harshness which ends up damaging the child … something that can, in some cases stray into the area of abuse, mental, emotional and physical. The point is, that when it comes to setting boundaries around our behaviour, both too little and too much are not a good thing. The answer lies somewhere in the middle.

And the same flows through into our adult lives. None of us would like to live in a lawless society, where there aren’t any boundaries on people’s behaviours, because that sort of anarchy is simply dangerous. Whilst at the other end of the scale, none of us would want to live under a brutal, despotic dictatorship either … and there are plenty of those left in this world today.

What we’re looking for is a society that’s governed by the rule of law, whilst at the same time preserving individual freedoms. That’s the balance. And it’s that very same balance that you and I should be looking for when we’re thinking about setting boundaries on our own, personal behaviour.

But that’s not so easy in this day and age, because we live in a time where people believe that if it feels good, hey you should do it, and so people have latched onto that, and they’re living that. Don’t worry that divorce rates and suicide rates are sky rocketing, don’t worry that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, don’t worry that the excessive lifestyles that we’re seeking to live out are leaving us with a deep emptiness inside – no, if it feels good, do it.

I live not far from an inner city hospital – a very good hospital in fact. But each Friday and Saturday night, the emergency department is jam-packed full of people affected by alcohol fuelled violence. Sure, if it feels good do it!

Well, maybe you don’t get out and get drunk every weekend, maybe you’re not at the point of divorce or suicide, but still, the excesses of our behaviour can have a detrimental effect on our lives. As I said before the break, lies are always presented to us as being something attractive and something seductive. And the lie that if it feels good, we should do it, is just that. It’s an attractive, seductive lie.

But when you spend a bit of time listening to God, through His Word, the Bible – His love letter to you and me – you discover one of the things He urges us to do, is to show some self–control. The book of Titus in the New Testament chapter 2, verses 2 to 8:

Tell the older men to be temperate, serious, prudent, and sound in faith, in love, and in endurance.

Likewise, tell the older women to be reverent in behaviour, not to be slanderers or slaves to drink; they are to teach what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be self-controlled, chaste, good managers of the household, kind, being submissive to their husbands, so that the word of God may not be discredited.

Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. Show yourselves in all respects as a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, gravity, and sound speech that cannot be censured; then any opponent will be put to shame, having nothing evil to say of you.

Now at first that may all appear just a little bit old–fashioned, a quaint notion from a slower world that existed 2000 years ago. But just listen to the wisdom of that. Imagine a society where the older men are great leaders, where the older women teach the younger folk to love each other. Where the older men teach the younger men to be self–controlled, to show respect, to have integrity, and character of substance.

Just imagine a society like that. What would it look like?

Now … let’s bring all that back to you and me. Let’s bring that back to our behaviours. We’ve been talking over the last couple of weeks, about learning to set boundaries. Boundaries around our hearts, around our minds, a boundary around the truth that we all believe. All those are important, as is the need to set some boundaries around our behaviours. Of course, what we say and what we do, is a consequence of what’s going on in our hearts. That’s what Jesus said, Matthew chapter 15, verses 17 to 19:

Do you not see that whatever goes into your mouth enters your stomach, and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander.

And the way that we guard against those things, the Bible says, is self-control. Now the thing with self-control is that it’s not a particularly fun thing to have to exercise – because you’re talking here about putting boundaries around your behaviour. And we each have some Achilles heel here, we each have that one thing that just sets us off – maybe it’s grumbling and complaining, maybe it’s passive-aggressive behaviour, maybe it’s lying or undermining or gossip or anger.

For me, it was always anger. That might surprise you, but I think quickly, I move quickly, I act quickly – that’s how I get lots of things done in my day but the underbelly of that is impatience and anger. You get annoyed with people who don’t match up to your speed and stamina and standards.

And so in my walk with the Lord, I have had to learn to zip my lip. To shut up when something or someone doesn’t suit me, to be patient – and that I have to tell you has not been easy and it still isn’t.

But unless I learn to exercise self-control, what good am I as a minister of the Gospel? Unless I show the same patience and gentleness and grace and mercy that God showed me through Jesus on that Cross, how can I say I believe in Jesus? And the same is true of you. Have a listen, 2 Peter chapter 1, verses 4 to 8:

Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine nature. For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love. For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

You read that and you realise just how right God is in all of this, how important this boundary of self–control is around our behaviour. So allow me to bring you back to your Achilles heel. Whatever it is, you know what it is.

Today is the day where you decide to begin to work at this self–control thing. No, it won’t be easy and no it won’t be pleasant to start with. It’s like over eating, ultimately you have to give up the chocolate cake in order to lose the weight. But when you lose the weight, it’s worth it, right? It’s the same with our sin, it’s the same with that one thing that’s been ruining your life and the lives of the people around you up to this point.

Because God has a mighty plan for your life, He really does. And to see that plan fulfilled, He needs you to be self–controlled, godly and loving. When those things increase in you, so will the fruit that you bear for His glory.

THE ACT OF SELF–CONTROL                     

So as you set out on the journey to really exercise some self–control, let me ask you, what exactly is going on in your heart and in your mind? Because, honestly, the truth is, that our hearts aren’t perfectly pure right at this moment. Mine isn’t and yours isn’t. And the call of God to you and me today is to do something about that. James chapter 4, verse 8:

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

But how do you cleanse your heart? The answer is … you don’t. God does. And so today, right now, right this minute, I want to lead you in the shortest of prayers that was prayed by King David after he committed adultery and murder, Psalm 51, verse 10:

(David says to God) Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.

May that be the cry of your heart to God today. May that be your simple but heartfelt prayer to God today. Create in me a clean heart oh God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Fill me with your Holy Spirit, clean me from within.

As you read God’s Word, as you hear it proclaimed, as you pray, as you worship, as you serve – let me tell you this, God is going to clean your heart out, He’ll take out the trash, He’ll take out the rubbish that’s piling up and creating that stench in His nostrils, and replace it with purity.

But as He does that for you, as you cooperate with Him in this most important of ventures, let me exhort you: ABOVE ALL ELSE, guard your heart … because if you don’t, all that work of His will be undone and you will find yourself back where you started. Guard your heart, for out of it flows the wellspring of life.

And the same goes for your mind. We allow all sorts of rubbish to pollute our minds don’t we? In what we listen to, in what we read, in what we watch on television each night. Fill your mind with rubbish and you simply won’t be able to exercise self-control. It will just never happen.

So let me ask you, what’s some of the rubbish you’ve been allowing your mind to consume, hmm? Perhaps people have been feeding you lies all your life that you’re not that smart, or you’re not that good looking, or you’re not that useful. And so your whole pattern of thought is premised on those lies.

Well if that’s the case, it’s time to say, enough is enough here! I’m not living like that anymore. I am going to start believing what the Bible says about me, not what the world says about me. I am not going to conform to the pattern of this world anymore. Or, as the JB Phillips translation says of Romans chapter 12, verse 2:

I am not going to let the world squeeze me into its mould anymore, because I simply don’t fit.

God has given me a mind – a good one – and I am going to set up boundaries to keep the lies of this world out, and I am going to open the door wide to feed my mind on the Word of God.

As a dear lecturer of mine at Bible College used to say, Dr Barry Chant, when we open our minds to God’s Word, we replace our flawed self–image with a faith–image, based on what God’s Word says.

Instead of letting rubbish into your mind, which ends up in your heart causing untold damage deep inside, damage which on a daily basis works its way to the surface to ruin your life. You and I have a simple choice. We either set boundaries and discern what our minds are being fed, or we end up swallowing the rubbish and living a flawed, painful, unhealthy life that will ultimately lead to our destruction. I know which one of those two I want to choose. How about you?

Father God, I pray that you would give us the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Help us Lord God to live our lives for you – cleanse our hearts, clean our minds, make us pure dear God, so that in your power we would exercise self–control. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Work is one of the most important things we can do. It brings dignity to who we are. It gives us a chance to use our God-given gifts and abilities, and of course it puts food on the table. But work, if we don’t set some boundaries around it, can end up robbing us of everything that we hold dear in life.

SETTING BOUNDARIES AT YOUR WORK

I have a confession to make: I love my work, I really do. This very programme, I was up one morning a few weeks ago at about 3 am, and I started working on this message around four fifteen. I had a chance to pray first, spend some time with the Lord in the cool of the morning, first cup of tea with lemon and no milk, the way I like it, followed a little later by a cup of decaf coffee. Now something happens when I sit down at my desk before the rest of the world is awake. It’s special. I open my Bible, I seek out what I think God’s wanting me to say today, and off I go at my computer preparing this message. There’s nothing better than doing what God made you to do, but there was a time in my life when I had my work completely out of balance. There was a time in my life where I spent so much time at work, labouring under this yoke of expectation, that it pretty much tore everything that mattered to me apart.

Now, you might be thinking to yourself, “Well, Berni, what’s changed? You were there at 3 am in the morning, that’s ridiculous! You’re still a workaholic”. Yeah … I’ll tell you what’s changed. On that day, I was preparing this and quite a few other messages. I finished my workday with a telephone conference at 1 pm, and then I went off to the gym for some solid exercise, back to have a shower, had a quick nap, off to do a few errands, and fresh as a daisy when my wife came home at 5 pm. Ok; it’s not quite your conventional working day, but you know what? It works brilliantly for me. I’m at my sharpest and my most creative early in the morning. I work generally a ten to twelve-hour day, and yet I fit in the things that matter. I get the rest I need, and I don’t spend my whole time working anymore.

Why am I sharing this blow-by-blow description of a typical working day of mine with you? Because I want to show you that you can be creative in setting boundaries around your work. Even if you have to work some long hours like I do, I suspect that if you think about it, you can always find ways of working that work for you, rather than ways of working that grind you into the ground.

The title of this series of messages is ‘Learning to Set Boundaries’. So this week, we’re going to look at some relationship-boundaries: Real, rubber-hits-the-road stuff to help you get the right boundaries happening in your life, because not all boundaries are good boundaries. Set them too tight, and you end up living a constricted lonely life. Set them too loose, and you end up run ragged – your life plundered in the most important things, and nowhere is that more true than in your work. Most (not all, but most) of the organisations we work for will suck you dry. They’ll create cultures of long working-hours, of hanging around at work until the boss goes home just to be seen to be doing the right thing, of taking work home at night, being expected to answer emails at all hours including on the weekends. In fact, the more connected we’ve become, the more demands work places on us, and I know that there are a good many people listening to this today that feel sleep-deprived. The stresses and the burdens of work never seem to leave you, and you just don’t know what to do to set the boundaries. Listen to what God has to say to you today, through His Word. Psalm 127:1-2:

Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labour in vain. Unless the LORD guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for He gives sleep to those whom He loves.

So if you’re allowing work to plunder your life, rather than fulfil you by enabling you to use your God-given gifts, then it’s time to draw a line in the sand. It’s time to set up some boundaries.

For years, the environmentalists have been talking about sustainable development, and whilst I’m no Green, clearly, sustainable development makes sense, so I’d like to introduce you to the idea of sustainable work practices – an approach to work that says, “Yeah, it’s right to work hard, but no, it’s not right for me to work myself into the ground, or to allow my boss or my company or yes, even the ministry I work in to work me into the ground”.

Listen up. If your workplace is sucking you dry, you have every right, and you should carve out some boundaries: Boundaries that close work out of your private life; boundaries that protect you and your family from interruptions; boundaries that give you some rest and some solitude; boundaries that allow you to switch off; boundaries that allow you to take some holidays at times that matter to you. Ok, it’ll never be a perfect world, but you weren’t made by God to be run into the ground.

Now I know, I know; you’re throwing your hands up in the air, and you’re saying, “Well, Berni, that’s a great theory, but that’s just not possible in my workplace”. Well, you know what? If it isn’t, maybe you need to think about changing jobs. Find a job closer to home that pays a little bit less, but buys you back an extra hour or two through a shorter commute. Find a job that’s a better fit with your natural skills and God-given gifts, so that your stress levels go down. Find a job with a boss who sure has high standards, but who is realistic about what he or she can expect of you.

Even when things are hectic, you need to rest. The Bible makes that very point. Exodus 34:21:

Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day, you shall rest. In ploughing time and in harvest, you shall rest.

That by the way isn’t a suggestion from God; it’s a command, even during the peak periods – during ploughing time, during the harvest time when people were expected to work hard, God said, “Rest!”, so what are you going to do? Are you going to continue being ground into the ground, continuing to risk your family and your health and everything that’s important to you? Or are you going to set some boundaries; I mean some real boundaries around your work, so that you’re working to live, not living to work?

SETTING BOUNDARIES IN YOUR MARRIAGE

One of the things that I’m terribly conscious of when I talk about marriage is that there are going to be a good many people listening in who’ve been married for … well … awhile, people for whom boundaries have already been set, sometimes with brick walls separating husband and wife. Those brick walls cause isolation and pain, so I can rabbit on about this or that and I know that people are wincing because it hurts. I just want you to know that I understand that, so as I prayed and thought about how to tackle this issue of boundaries in marriage, I decided to come at it (not surprisingly) from a different perspective, so today I’m going to chat about two things: Firstly the boundaries we should never ever set, and secondly the boundaries of our spouse that we should never ever cross. In other words, rather than this being about you, it’s about your wife or your husband, as the case may be.

The big mistake we make in marriage is that we’re always looking at what we can get out of it. How many times have you heard it said that marriage is about fifty-fifty, give and take? Well, that’s simply not true. Divorce is about fifty-fifty; marriage is about a hundred, a hundred: A hundred percent given from both sides, plus God’s hundred percent too. The perfect marriage is two imperfect people who just never give up on each other; who never stop giving; who never stop sacrificing, no matter what the other one is doing – good, bad, or indifferent. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. I know you’ve probably heard them before. Let’s have another listen:

Love is patient, love is kind. Love isn’t envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It doesn’t insist on its own way. It’s not irritable or resentful. It doesn’t rejoice in wrongdoings, but it rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, it believes all things, it hopes all things, it endures all things because love never ends.

And if there’s going to be that sort of love in your marriage, then it seems to me that there are three boundaries that you should never set.

The first one is the boundary of conditionality. Conditionality is the stuff of the fifty-fifty marriage. It says, “Look. I’ll bless you, but in return you have to bless me, and if you don’t hold up your end of the bargain, I won’t hold up my end of the bargain either”. See, that’s how most marriages work and that’s why most marriages fail. If good works towards my wife are dependent on her good works towards me, then the moment she slips up, I give myself permission to fail her; to punish her; to give her the cold shoulder; whatever, when what’s really needed in that moment to preserve the marriage, to strengthen the marriage, is for me to behave well when she’s having a bad day, and do you know what? Vice versa.

Did you pick what God said in that Scripture-verse? Love bears all things, it believes all things, it hopes all things, and it endures all things. If you check out your marriage vows, you’ll see that what you promised him or her is your unconditional love, not your conditional love. That means loving your soul mate, even when he or she is behaving badly, even when what they say or do hurts you. It means never, never blurting out, “I hate you. I wish I’d never married you. Well, maybe we should get a divorce then”.

The sort of love that God has in mind for your marriage is the unconditional sort – the sort that Jesus showed you on the cross by dying for you, even though you and I had rebelled against Him; in fact, especially because you and I had rebelled against Him. And so in Ephesians 5:25, it says this:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.

Do you get it?

The second boundary that you should never set up is the brick wall; the boundary of silence; the boundary of, “No, no, I’m not talking to you about this. I’m just not going to talk about it; I’m going to brood over it; I’m going to punish you for it in silence, without ever talking about it”. Women, sad to say, are particularly good at this sort of boundary. Let me be blunt: It’s the wrong boundary, and it’s in the wrong place. There’s a reason that the Bible says in Ephesians 4:26:

Be angry, but do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.

It’s because if you let issues go on and on and on, things will get worse and worse and worse. In our marriage, I’m absolutely determined to be the one who makes sure that issues are discussed and resolved. I will not let a brick wall grow up between us. Needs be, I’ll pull that wall down with my bare bloodied hands brick by brick, because once the mortar’s dry, man, it is so hard to pull that wall down!

And the third boundary that we should never set is a boundary around intimacy. Physical and emotional intimacy is a gift from God and it’s the glue that holds your marriage together. Take intimacy out of a marriage, and the likelihood that the marriage will fall apart escalates exponentially. 1 Corinthians 7:2-5:

Because of cases of sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights and likewise, the wife to her husband, for the wife does not have authority over her own body; the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a set time to devote yourselves to prayer, and then come together again so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

Sex should never, ever, ever be used as an instrument of power or leverage in a marriage-relationship, either by the husband or by the wife: Never. That’s not why God gave you this gift.

So to recap the three boundaries you should never set up in your marriage, they are boundaries of conditional love (instead of unconditional love), brick-wall boundaries of not communicating, or boundaries around intimacy – ever. Marriage is about one hundred, one hundred plus God’s one hundred. Keep giving your one hundred percent, no matter what. That’s what God’s called you to. Love never gives up.

So what are some of your soul mate’s boundaries you should respect and never cross? In the short time we have left, let me just name two. Firstly, let your husband or wife be who God made them to be. Yeah, we’re different; men and women are incredibly different, and each one of us on-top of that has different gifts and abilities and weaknesses and limitations. Your lifelong, God-given soul mate is not your home improvement subject. Wives, listen to me. Nagging will never, ever change your husband; blessing him will. Husbands, listen to me. Trying to use your strength to roll over the top of your wife to force her to be what you want her to be will never, ever change your wife for good, but cherishing her will. He is who he is. She is who she is. Bless each other; love each other; look out for each other; make love to each other, and now you’re creating a safe environment where the tough issues can be discussed in love. It took me awhile, but I’ve stopped trying to change my wife. I realised if I did that, then I’d lose the person I actually fell in-love with in the first place.

The second boundary that we should never step over in marriage (and it’s kind of related to the first) is the boundary of a bit of personal space. Hey, we all need that. Men need to disappear into their caves for a while and need to go out with their girl friends or spend time with the kids or potter round in their wardrobe or shoe cupboard, whatever it is they do. If your husband is spending a bit too much time in his man-cave, or if your wife is spending a bit too much time out being with her friends, the way to solve that problem isn’t to nag them or bludgeon them over the head; the way to solve it is to entice them closer with your love.

There’s so much more that we could be talking about in your marriage, but we simply don’t have the time, so let me encourage you to do this: Talk with your wife or with your husband about the boundaries that matter. Ninety-nine percent of the tension in your marriage is about the boundaries. Start getting those right, and the awesome marriage awaits.

SETTING BOUNDARIES WITH YOUR CHILDREN

I tend to think that bringing up children in this rapidly changing world is just one of the toughest gigs going. I mean, our grandparents and our parents, my generation, we all had to contend with changes in society and the classic generational gap thing, but there’s something about this day and age. I think it’s just that things are changing so quickly.

I was chatting with a friend the other day. Just in the few years that smartphones have been around, think of how profoundly things have changed, and as information and entertainment from around the world are available in the palm of a child’s hand, even before they’re old enough to read … well, the influences on them these days are more and more coming from outside the home than in the home.

In my day, growing up back in the nineteen sixties, the only real outside influence in our home was the black-and-white TV and that was strictly regulated. Our major influences were our parents, our teachers, and our friends. Our teachers structured class time and back in the day, they were feared and respected. We played with our friends at school, sometimes after school, but then we didn’t connect with them again until the next day at school or perhaps on the weekend, and our parents were around with us the rest of the time. Our mothers mostly didn’t work, but they stayed at home to raise the children.

Well, that’s just not the world we live in anymore; it just isn’t, and it’s no good wishing that we could wind back the clock. The horse has bolted on that one. It’s a new world: A world where children are being taught both by their peer group and by the media that it’s all about them; that they need to do whatever feels good; that they need to be themselves; that they, that they, that they … You see, children increasingly are less influenced by their parents, and more influenced by the world out there, and that for the most part is simply not a good thing.

So what do you do about it? How do we help them to grow up whole and mature? To become effective, loving, compassionate, strong, courageous adults who pursue their dreams; who realise their potential, but who love their God and serve their fellow man and woman? How do you actually do that in this day and age? I just want to talk about one boundary today, in a parent’s relationship with their children, and indeed in a child’s relationship with his or her parents: Just one boundary that I think is being forgotten to the detriment of our children, and to the detriment of society as a whole, but before I get to that, let me say that what I’m talking about isn’t just a problem of the developed western world, although it is at its most acute there. It’s also a growing problem in so-called developing economies, where western influences and affluence are turning traditional families and social structures on their head; where younger people are now travelling away from the home for the first time to chase the big dollars in the city.

The problem of how to bring up your children is a global problem, so into that scenario, this one boundary that I want to speak about is this. It may sound old-fashioned, but actually, it’s a piece of wisdom that has stood the test of time. Exodus 20:12:

Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.

You might recognise that as the fifth of the Ten Commandments. It comes just after the first four commandments, which are all about our relationship with God, and it comes just before, you shall not murder; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not be a false witness and you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife or possessions – an interesting placement in terms of order of priority. You or I may have put that stuff about murder or adultery fifth, before that thing about honouring your parents or perhaps, we may even have left the whole parent thing out of the ten commandments altogether, but God you see, in His wisdom, puts the commandment about honouring your parents straight after the four commandments about our relationship with Him and before all the other commandments. If I had to point to one prevailing fault in parenting today, it’s that we’re ignoring the bit where it’s our responsibility to teach our children to honour their parents.

See, these days, guilty parents who are working long hours lavish gifts and praise and attention on their children to try to absolve themselves of their guilt. They give their kids unfettered Internet access to consume all sorts of rubbish. They overpraise them and generally teach them that they are the centre of the universe, which one day presumably they’re going to learn that they’re not the hard way.

I saw an interesting article in my local paper the other day, reporting a study about parents who overvalue their children, turning them into narcissists. Quote – “While parents may think that telling their children they’re more special than others will increase their self-esteem, the group found no evidence of this. Instead, they discovered it was warmth and affection from parents that boosted a child’s self-esteem.”

Parents, listen up. You are not your child’s friend. You are not their playmate. Your job is not to spoil them. You’re their parent, and while they’re home with you, in a loving, nurturing environment you’re providing for them, your job is to teach them some of the hard, tough, difficult lessons that they have to learn. Yes, love them. Yes, encourage them, but for Pete’s sake, don’t teach them by your behaviour that they are the centre of the universe. Set up some chores for them that they have to do rain, hail or shine, whether they feel like it or not. Enforce some rules. Discipline them, and yep, you know what? Punish them when they transgress the rules, and whatever you do, husband and wife, support one another. Father and mother, you have to support each other in this process. If you disagree on how to discipline your children, have that discussion away in private. In front of your children however, present a united front so that they learn the most important lesson you will ever teach them: ‘Honour your father and your mother.’

See, that tough love will be the greatest gift that you ever give them. It’s the most important boundary you will ever set for them.

Over the last few weeks on the program, we’ve been talking about setting boundaries in your life. Not all boundaries are good boundaries. We have to set the right ones in the right places with the right controls, in order for them to be effective. So today, I want to chat about generosity. What, if any boundaries, should you set, around your generosity?

SETTING BOUNDARIES IN YOUR GENEROSITY

So let me ask you to think right now of the generous people in your life. The ones who really stand out for their generosity towards you and towards other people. Got them? Picturing their faces? Good. So now let me ask you, what response do they evoke in you? What thoughts? What emotions? What feelings? These people who’ve been generous with their time, with their encouragement, with their resources, and with their wisdom?

What do you feel when you think of them?

I’d be very surprised if you don’t have warm feelings inside you right now as you think of those people. Its natural, isn’t it? When someone’s generous towards you, you just want to respond with warmth and gratitude and chances are that you’d probably be prepared to crawl over broken glass for those people in return.

The Bible, not surprisingly, has an enormous amount to say about generosity, although it doesn’t always use precisely that word. More often than not, it simply talks about generosity in action. Have a listen to just a few of those instances:

Acts chapter 20, verse 35:

In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Luke chapter 6, verse 38:

Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put in your lap. For with the measure that you use it will be measured back to you.

Matthew chapter 10, verse 42:

And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.

1 John chapter 3, verse 17:

But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love actually abide in you?

And that’s just a smattering of the references about generosity, each one encouraging us to be generous with what we have. It turns out that no matter how little we perceive that we may have, we actually have a lot more than we may think, a lot more than a lot of other people have.

And when we give those things away generously, more often than not, they cost us very little, and yet the act of giving is such an incredible blessing, not just to the recipient, but to the one who gives. I’ve always been intrigued by this particular Proverb – Proverbs chapter 11, verses 24 and 25:

One gives freely, yet grows richer; another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want. Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered.

There’s a powerful spiritual principle in that proverb that repeats itself in this world and in the universe over and over again. And the reason that blessing follows the giver, is quite simply that God is a generous God and He is so delighted when He sees His children being generous like Him.

You may have heard me say this before, but the very last thing that God did before He rested on the seventh day following creation, was not to create Adam and Eve. No, that wasn’t His last act – there was something after that. He did something else before He rested. Genesis chapter 1, verses 27 to 31:

So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every plant for food.” And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, on the sixth day.

Do you see? The very last thing that God did before He rested, was to give all of creation, all that He had made, to Adam and Eve, to you and me. That would have to be the single, most generous act in all of history … well maybe the second most generous act in all of history. Because there came the time, when God gave us something even more precious than all of creation – He gave us Jesus.

Okay, so we’ve established in a sense, the blindingly, glimpsingly obvious, that God is generous and He wants us to be generous and He blesses, in one way or another, our generosity. No surprises in that really, are there? I mean really, I’m not surprised and I doubt you are surprised either.

But the reality is that you and I can’t solve all the world’s problems either. If you and I gave away everything that we had, every possession, all of our money – the truth is, it wouldn’t make anything but the tiniest of dents, in the world’s hunger problem. It wouldn’t stop wars and exploitation and terrorism and slavery.

So surely there have to be some boundaries on our generosity. I mean in a practical sense of course, there have to be. I’ve struggled with that a lot. As an Australian, I’m blessed to be born in a safe and relatively affluent society by any global standard that you’d like to name. Although, even close to home, we’re surrounded by much need.

Where do you draw the line? Sadly, the more affluent people become, all too often, the more tightly they draw this boundary. I don’t know about where you live, but where I live, people on average spend twice as much buying pet food as they do on giving to the poor and needy. That’s scary. So let me niggle away here at you – where do you draw the line around your generosity? Thinking … thinking … thinking … well look, while you’re thinking, have a listen to Jesus’ take on this, Matthew chapter 5, verses 38 to 41:

You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. In fact, if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give them your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also a second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.

What Jesus is advocating here is actually radical generosity. Being generous to your enemies. What He’s saying here, is draw your boundaries of generosity loosely. Be prepared to give when you see a need. I think all too often our default position, our first position is NO, when in fact Jesus’ default position is always YES.

I remember when I was starting out in ministry, and it was hard, and I didn’t have any contacts, and I approached someone who’d been around in this media sector for a long time, who was well connected who could have given me a hand. But when I asked him for some advice, or for guidance, or to open up his network to me, his starting position was always no.

So now, a good many years on, as I meet people whom I can help, I try to have a default position of yes. Look, I can’t help everyone. So many people write in and ask me to promote their books – and I just can’t do everything. But as I meet people and get to know them and see that God is working in them, I give wherever I can – of my time, of my experience, of my contacts, whatever I can. Why?

Because it’s awesome fun to help people. That’s the biggest revelation – I’m sure you probably always knew that, but that’s something I had to learn. And whenever I give, I know it pleases God, and blessings flow in all sorts of different ways. Should we give in order to be blessed? No, but God’s blessing is a natural outworking of our generosity. Proverbs chapter 11, verses 24 and 25:

One gives freely, yet grows all the richer; another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want. Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered.

If I were looking to set boundaries around my generosity, then that’s the scripture I’d go to, to look for guidance.

SETTING BOUNDARIES IN YOUR LOVE

Everything we own, we have in limited supply – our money, our possessions, our strength, even our time. Every one of those is limited. Of course we can work hard to earn more money, sometimes people are blessed with more money – I know some really wealthy people, way out of my league. But even those people have a limited supply of cash, albeit that their limit is quite a bit larger than mine.

So, everything we have is limited. It’s the way it’s meant to be … everything … except one thing. The one thing that is unlimited, or at least can be if we choose it to be, if we allow it to be, is love.

Boy meets girl, they fall in love, they get married, they love each other. A child comes along, they both love the child in a way that doesn’t diminish their love for one another, or at least, it doesn’t have to if they don’t want it to. They have a bit less time to spend with each other than they used to, but they still love one another just as much whilst at the same time, loving their child beyond words.

A second child comes, a third, sometimes even a fourth child. In fact I have some dear friends in Lincoln Nebraska who have nine children – add in the parents, and in Australia we’d call that a cricket team, not a family. And yet even with nine children, Mark and Precious love each other and all of their children … and you know what … in their household there always seems to be more than enough love to go around.

In fact, it seems to me, that the only time we run out of love, is if we choose to withhold it, if we choose to empty our hearts of it. Otherwise, God somehow created us with the capacity to love without limit. I’m not sure if you’ve ever thought of it that way, but it’s true.

Now, sometimes people are emotionally damaged, perhaps through rejection, perhaps through abuse or in other ways, but time and time again I’ve seen this, when they experience the healing love of Jesus, their capacity to love without limit returns to them.

And when you think about it, that makes complete sense. Each one of us, every man, every woman and every child has been created in the image of God, and God is a God who loves without limits. Jesus once said to His disciples, John chapter 15, verse 13:

No one has greater love than this, than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

And then off He went and laid His life down for you and me and for everybody else who would believe in Him. No greater love has anyone than this, than to lay down their life for their friends. So there you have the very definition of love.

God’s love is the sort of love that Jesus was talking about there, the sort of love that Jesus lived out and died out for us on the Cross. It’s a love without limits – unlimited love. Love that holds nothing back. Love that is prepared to suffer incomprehensibly. Love that is prepared to give everything, even life itself, for another.

In other words, God has set absolutely no boundaries around His love. He became completely vulnerable for our sakes, the Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – was torn apart on that day when Jesus bore our sins on the Cross. What is it that tore the God-head apart? Your sin, my sin. Matthew chapter 27, verses 45 to 51:

From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And about three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When some of the bystanders heard that, they said, “I think that man is calling out for Elijah.” At once one of them ran and got a sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.” Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split.

See? That right there is love in action, and that’s the point. Love isn’t just a noun, it’s not simply a thing that we possess or don’t possess. It’s also a verb – a doing word. Love is something that we do through our actions. Jesus loved us, He demonstrated His love for us, by suffering for us and dying on the Cross. The question is, what do you and I do with that? As we’re looking at what boundaries we set and don’t set in our lives, the question is: What boundaries should I set around my love for others?

And to me, it seems as plain as the nose on my face that from the Cross, Jesus is crying out the answer to that question to you and me, here and now. His answer is: none. No boundaries. Don’t set any boundaries around your love. And that’s not just implied, that’s not just something that I’m reading into the text. That’s something that Jesus actually tells us with His own Words from His own lips. John chapter 13, verses 34 and 35:

I give you a new commandment, that you should love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

In exactly the way that I loved you, Jesus is saying, without limits, without boundaries, without holding back anything, not my comfort, not my convenience, not my body, not my reputation, not even my life – in that way, love one another as I have loved you. And when you think about that, when you think about what Jesus went through, that’s a big call.

That means forgiving your enemy even before they ask for or deserve forgiveness. It means holding your tongue even when people hurl all sorts of false allegations at you. It means not blaming other people, your friends for instance, when they desert you. That is the sort of love that Jesus is calling you to.

As we’ve talked about setting boundaries, good boundaries, right boundaries, godly boundaries over these last few weeks on the program, if you’ve been able to join me or listen to the messages on the podcast or on the internet, no doubt you’ve been thinking about putting up a few boundaries, a few barriers. And yes, we need to do some of those things.

We need to guard our hearts, and our minds, and our resources. We do need to get right boundaries in place in our relationships. But the whole point of that, is that so we can end up with the integrity, the wisdom, the strength and the courage to give our love away in bucket loads, without limit, whatever it may cost.

The marque of a Jesus follower, a so-called Christian, isn’t the ‘Jesus Loves You’ bumper sticker on their car. The mark of a disciple of Jesus Christ, is the sacrificial love that they pour out into the world.

Now you may be thinking, “Berni, what? Are you saying that Jesus is calling me to be a door mat, for everyone to wipe their feet?” No, I’m not saying that at all. Jesus wasn’t a doormat. Jesus laid down His life willingly, He suffered willingly, not out of weakness, but out of incredible power and strength and courage and resolve. He’d have done none of those things if He hadn’t set some boundaries; if He hadn’t ignored popular opinion; if He hadn’t ignored the naysayers. Jesus said:

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this will everyone know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another. (John 13:34-35)

Hey, that’s a high calling, because it will hurt. It will mean rejection, it will mean loss and pain. But because He first did it for you, He’s calling you and me, to do it for Him. Because today, here and now, you and I are the hands and the feet and the mouth and the heart of Jesus. Because today, here and now, there are countless people around us who are desperately aching for something they don’t yet know about or understand – the love of God in Jesus Christ.

And in order to bring it to them, today, Jesus is calling you to love them. Without boundaries. Without limit. Whatever it may cost.

LETTING LOVE IN

Now in the few minutes that we have left together today, I want to take that discussion about the love of God through Jesus Christ through to its logical conclusion.

I have no idea where you are right now in your relationship with Jesus, or indeed, whether you even have a relationship with Him. But I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t share with you right now the possibility of accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour – of accepting Jesus into your life.

Here’s the bottom line, one day it’s going to be too late to accept Jesus and at that point, anyone who hasn’t taken that step will spend the rest of eternity apart from God, in a place called Hell. Not a pleasant place at all I’m sure you’ll realise. Funny how many people believe in heaven, and yet not in hell. But you can’t have the one without the other.

The reason that the Son of God, Jesus came to this earth, was to die on that Cross, so that the requirements of God’s justice in terms of your rebellion against Him and mine, your sin and mine, would be met. In other words, Jesus paid the price that you and I deserve, by dying on our behalf. And it’s through that amazing sacrifice that you and I can receive complete forgiveness from God – right now for the past and the present and everything in the future that we do that’s wrong.

It’s as simple as that. Perhaps you’re thinking right now that given what you’ve done in your past, you could never be worthy of that. But you see, that’s the whole point. None of us is ever worthy. That’s why we call it grace. God’s forgiveness is His free gift to you, through Jesus Christ. And not just forgiveness – Jesus rose again. Right now He’s sitting at the Right Hand of the Father. He rose again to give you a new life. Here and now, for all eternity, with your slate wiped completely clean.

That’s why we Christians call it ‘good news’. It’s fantastic news! So if you’ve never given your life to Jesus, then now, right now, is the time to do that. If that’s what you want to do, if you’ve heard about Jesus today and you’ve been sitting there thinking to yourself – YES! This is what I’ve been looking for – then now is the time. Don’t leave it until tomorrow, because tomorrow could be too late.

So if you’re ready, if this is what you want to do, come and pray this prayer with me right now:

Father God I have heard about the amazing love that You have for me today, because of Jesus. And I know I’ve ignored You for such a long time, but that’s not something I can do anymore. Lord, please forgive me and please accept me just as I am. I’ve done so many things wrong, but I know that Jesus died to pay for all of that. I know You sent Your Son to suffer on that Cross and pay the price for me.

So today I put my complete trust in Jesus to save me from my Sin and I want Him … You to be the Lord of my life. From today on, I want to live for You. Fill me with Your Holy Spirit this very minute, give me the power that I need to live my life for You, and thank you for accepting me and giving me a new life, an eternal life. Lord, just thank you. I pray all this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.

If you prayed that prayer for the first time, or perhaps, for the first time in a long time, then from this moment forward, you are forgiven, you have the gift of eternal life, because of what Jesus did for you. But this isn’t the end – it’s just the beginning.

Let me encourage you to go and grab a Bible and start reading it. Matthew’s Gospel is the first book in the New Testament, it is such a great place to start. And may you live that most amazing life as you discover the amazing plans that God has in store for you.

He didn’t hold anything back. Give Him your all, everything that you are, everything that you have, all your hopes and all your dreams – and may you be mightily blessed as you live your life for Him.