I would consider perhaps some fresh thoughts from the word of God. I trust that there will be some refreshment here for you this morning and some exposition I trust that will refresh not only the heart but enrich the mind. The human being is in some ways a very simple thing, especially as we compare ourselves to the wonders of the Lord Jesus Christ and our needs are sometimes portrayed as simple and yet there is the need for ministry at many levels of our being. I believe that it is only in the Lord Jesus Christ that we are truly human and what we are meant to be.
Shall we pray? Father in heaven we are grateful that we can take some time. We are conscious that it is a short time. But take some time to reflect upon your word, to reflect upon the historical accounts that it contains and so take instruction onto our minds and into our hearts and into our souls that we might love the Lord Jesus more, that our walk might be more honoring to Him and that we might be strengthened in our way and in our walk.
We ask that you would be with us now this morning in His name, amen. I am going to be talking this morning about the temperament of the believer and whenever we think about such things I think there is a tendency to get our eyes off of the Lord and that is certainly not my purpose this morning. My purpose this morning is to use four notable children of God, Abraham, Moses, Peter and Paul as efficiently as I can to consider how God worked in the lives of four men who are very, very different. I think that we might thank the Lord that even though sometimes the people around us, maybe even the people sometimes close to us, irritate us.
Is it the truth? I don't even like to admit that. But think of it another way. Aren't you glad that everybody isn't exactly like you?
Oh my goodness. What kind of a boring, boring world would it be if everyone was just like you? That was not God's design, that is not God's design. We read in the New Testament about the body of Christ and in Ephesians of things like ligaments and sinews holding the body together and each one of you has a role to play and the roles are not identical.
And we have our roles to play in worship, we have our roles to play in service, we have our roles to play in evangelism and we are not exactly the same personality, we are not exactly of course the same temperament or the same person. A long time ago you may have heard of the Hippocratic oath named after the Hippocrates and part of the Hippocratic oath is to do no harm and at one time medical doctors swore the Hippocratic oath to do no harm but it's interesting that that Greek classical thinker also thought about four different humors and that is a more general word than the idea of humerus. The idea of humerus is the idea of temperaments. And in 1971 a man named Timothy Hei, wrote a book called A Book that I read as an undergraduate called Transform Temperaments and read it again later and shared some of these thoughts about fifteen years ago but that book took the idea of these broad categories of temperament and looked at the Bible and said you know there are people that fit these descriptions and I believe so there are, there are.
And the four temperaments that are put forward by Lahey in his book are the Sanguine, the Coleric, the Melancholy and the flagmatic and these people have different gifts, they have different personalities, thankfully, thankfully we are all different. As someone who speaks French with no sound, the idea of blood, Sanguine, is a person with some passion, some person with some extraversion. So Sanguine personalities, you may find them as actors or salesmen or public speakers or politicians. Coleric is related to the idea of bile and Coleric people I think would be engineers, producers, builders, leaders, scientists and that's sort of looking on their good side.
All of these temperaments sort of have their, the side that's not so comfortable, including especially the Coleric I would say. And the third one is a Melancholy personality associated with the idea of black bile. But musicians, poets, inventors, philosophers and artists would be in a more Melancholy temperament and in terms of the philosopher aspect that is actually an area of deep thinking and if someone thinks that maybe an engineer is more analytical than as a Coleric type of person than a Melancholy type person as a philosopher type, that is, that I wouldn't agree with that because as I have studied both engineering and philosophy, of course more engineering than philosophy, I find that the really tough questions and the really tough analyses are in philosophy. These are the tough, this is the really tough area asking the really deep questions and that they require perhaps a different kind of analysis but analysis nonetheless.
The fourth one is known as flagmatic and these would be people who are sort of determined to plotters. You think of the accountant, the diplomat, the more pedantic style of teacher, maybe the bureaucrat, someone who's just with a lot of determination keeps on going. So when we look around us and even when we look in the Bible, there's some resonance there with these kinds of temperaments. So my four people that I'll be speaking about this morning as efficiently as I can are Abraham, Moses, Peter and Paul.
Starting with Abraham. On the negative side, in the flesh, and it's important to point that out, that outside of the action of God, outside of obedience to God and especially in the New Testament, outside of the transformative power of the spirit of God, all of these people, all of these kinds of personalities can be dominated by very fleshly behavior. So that's in fact useful for us today too to sort of say, well, I'm aware that I have certain gifts and I'm also aware that I have certain weaknesses and tendencies that I'm not proud of. It's good to face up to those things.
As great a man as Abraham was, the tendency to be fearful, to be unmotivated, to be self-protective is there. On the other hand, a flagmatic type of temperament like Abraham is practical, efficient, dependable, once underway, get him underway, he'll go 1500 kilometers with his estate, get him underway, calm and sometimes having dry humor. If we think of examples from Abraham's life, he was instructed. If you think of that, that you are, imagine yourself not as merely being a wealthy man, but as having an estate, an estate with a lot of assets and a lot of people working for you and God appears to you and says, I want you to leave.
The first question I might ask might be to wear. I would be shocked that God would be speaking to me to say anything, but I want you to leave and the answer to the question is, to the land I will show you, you're leaving and I'll show you the promised land. Well, that's quite a call, that's quite a thing to do. But he did.
He paused in Haran. He headed northwest when in fact the promised land was more due west, but of course there was desert in between, so we would be speculating, but we know that he went up into what is now Turkey before heading south to Canaan and he stayed in Haran and his father, pterodied, before he moved on. It may be that there was some family influence there that had to be dealt with before he could move south. When we see that he does arrive in the promised land, then there is a famine and one wonders whether he's, well, is this really the place and he goes to Egypt?
Well, that's perhaps not a good idea, but he went to Egypt thinking that this was an untenable situation and this is an example of maybe not allowing God to completely guide and to lead him in exactly the way that God said he would. Twice it happens that his wife, he's afraid because his wife is so lovely that in the case of Pharaoh or in the case of a limalek, the place where the people that he's dealing with will get their eye on his lovely wife. What he does in order to deal with that is to tell them a lie. These things usually don't work out very well, do they?
When we see a problem and we actually do something that's not honoring to the Lord in order to deal with a problem, but that's what Abraham did. On the plus side, in terms of him being a spirit-led person, obeying God, he picked up, you know, he pulled up stakes, he lifted up an estate, he wouldn't have been able to bring it all with him and he simply left because God told him to. I wonder if you've ever thought of the likelihood that if God asked you to do something quite radical that you would simply obey him, he obeyed the Lord without having a full picture of this destination as we're reminded in Hebrews. I mentioned that the dependability and this person who is a pilgrim, he has in reserve a great deal of determination and when Lot's family were kidnapped and taken away, he got it in his mind and he wasn't going to let this stand.
He was a determined type of person and he went, mustered his resources and got them all back and brought them all home. So if you are a flagmatic type of personality, you may be somewhat reluctant in the general case to be very decisive and very action-oriented, but when the time comes, that type of temperament will pull out the reserves and act and act powerfully and decisively. It's a remarkable thing when you think of this promise to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12 and then in Genesis 15, the promise of not only a son, 12 is the land, 15 is the promise of not only a son but of a legacy, an entire legacy and you and I are part of that legacy and Abraham kept on going. Abraham was a determined plotter and he took these promises at face value and acted on them and followed through.
He even followed through on the issue of his own son. The son of promise was Isaac. The land that had been promised was an unseen land. The legacy that had been promised was an unrealized legacy and now his son, would he sacrifice his son an unseen resurrection?
What would happen? The outcome of giving up my son who is the basis for the legacy of chapter 12, he proceeded on faith and he knew that if necessary God could bring his own son back from the dead. And so that is a remarkable person. In the Bible there are 160 references to Abraham and 54 of them, it's this way, the God of Abraham, the God of Abraham, he is referenced like that.
What a remarkable thing that a man of such determination and obedience would be held up as a man that God is not ashamed to have his name connected to that human being, the God of who, the God of Abraham, the man who was obedient and walked by faith. The last thing for a moment about a melancholy man, Moses, he could be theoretical, pessimistic, moody, not getting upset very often but when he does get upset, look out. On the less sociable side, it can be rigid, unless governed by God, obedience to God. If the child of God with that kind of melancholy temperament is governed by God, well then his gifts are for God.
His ability to be sympathetic is from God. He can be empathetic. Moses had great depth. He was the, Abraham was not a theologian.
He went on faith. Moses had great depth. And it's so wonderful to think about how he was taken out of that river in a basket of reeds and raised up with being nursed by his mother but being raised in Pharaoh's house. And we read that he became wise and great in Pharaoh's house in Acts 732, the fact that Moses achieved such power and prominence in Pharaoh's estate is a remarkable thing.
And then he saw one of his own people being whipped and he killed that man. He acted in a dramatic manner, taking matters in a very small way into his own hands. And then he had to run. And he ran and he went into a median.
And as we know, after he had been caring for sheep for decades, he came across a bush that was burning and he drew closer. And it said, take off your shoes because the place where you're standing is holy ground. And who are you? He said, Moses.
And the Lord said, I am. The I am of the burning bush. You are going to lead my people out of Egypt. Remarkable.
And he went back. And when he went back, it says in Hebrews that he refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He had become a man who God had gotten hold of him and he refused to be thought of as Pharaoh's adopted grandson. And he came to set his people free.
What a remarkable and dramatic change. And yet in the context of leading his people out, he said to God, don't send me, I'm not a good public speaker. Send, well, we'll send Aaron. And so there is that element of hesitation on the part of this kind of temperament.
You'll also recall that in numbers when the second instance, he was told to speak to the rock, but he struck it instead. And I guess this depth of personality can sometimes have a sense of tremendous frustration and just acts in a dramatic way that is not in keeping with God's plan. But what about from a spiritual point of view? We can see in Exodus 32 that he interceded for his people.
His people had been a rather serious disappointment on multiple occasions. And he stood up for them and he interceded for them. And that is a picture of Christ interceding for us. We too disappoint the Lord.
We too are not what we are supposed to be. We too often allow the flesh rather than the spirit to take us down a path which is not honoring to the Lord. And the Lord Jesus intercedes for us. And the Lord Jesus has given us his spirit.
And so Paul would say, walk in the spirit. Keep step with the spirit. And that is something that we as Christians need to do. Remarkable that this man of great depth who laid out for a society, the Jewish law, and the system of sacrifices that would point toward the ultimate sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ would personally commune with God.
Yesterday evening we thought for a moment on ESL about the fact that Jesus prayed. As you know multiple times in the gospel, Jesus went and prayed. The purpose of that is for the Son to commune with the Father. That is a wonderful thing.
And that is part of your birthright, your second birthright as born again people, is that ability to commune with God. And Moses was a man of depth who was able to keep going by communing with God. And it speaks to us, I think, in a future sense of how the Lord Jesus would walk. The type of personality that perhaps many of us find easy to like is a sanguine personality, an outgoing personality, a jovial personality, exciting to be around.
It might get upset, but doesn't stay upset, an enthusiastic person, the kind of person who is charismatic and outspoken. These people are sort of the life of the party. And we can, although we are not the partying kind of people, we can identify people within our circle of acquaintances and friends and Christian friends who have a bubbliness to them and a butleiness to them and a gregariousness to them. And it makes you sort of thankful.
I'm glad that there are people in my fellowship who have a ready smile and have a positive attitude. On the other hand, as we know from Peter's life, sometimes the will falters, there is perhaps a lack of discipline, some instability, some restlessness, can be discouraged and be fearful, not very sort of self-analytical. These are things that are, I think, very much a reality for a person who is of that type of temperament. And so we need to, whatever personality we are, including this one, if we are a passionate person, these passions need to be channeled in the right way.
They need to be under the control of the Lord. One time the Lord said, you know, I'm going to be betrayed. I'm going to be taken before the chief priests. I'm going to be executed.
And Peter essentially said not on my watch, and that I would never allow such a thing to happen. But what actually happened, as you know, was that Peter denied the Lord three times. When he was on the Mount of Transfiguration, when Moses and Elijah were there, he felt the need to say, this is a good place to be. Why don't we build some tabernacles and stay here longer?
It's kind of a semi-silly, semi-humorous thing to say, but it's reflective of the kind of temperament that feels the need to say something in unusual circumstances. But after the Lord Jesus died, what did Peter do? He went fishing, went back to work. I find it remarkable that when Peter confessed, thou art the Christ, the sound of the living God, that the Lord Jesus said, the Spirit has revealed this to you, and it's on this confession that I'm going to build this church, this rock, this rock-solid confession, is the confession on which I will build the church.
We read in Acts chapter 2, and then again in Acts chapter 5, that you have Peter standing up in Acts 1. In those days, Peter stood up in Acts chapter 2, verse 14. Peter lifted up his voice, and you had flames of fire of the Holy Spirit coming upon that group of believers. Jesus did use Peter, but how was that even possible?
It was possible because of an event in Peter's life. I would suggest that when the Lord Jesus met Peter on the beach after that return to fishing and said, do you love me? And Peter said, Lord, you know that I love you. Feed my sheep.
Do you love me? And Peter was pricked in his heart. Lord, you know that I love you. Feed my sheep.
And then the third time, feed my lambs. In other words, in spite of his denial, in spite of his failure, the Lord Jesus restored him. I wonder what that did in that man's heart. I would even know that even though he had failed the Lord so miserably, so badly, in spite of his grandiose words, that the Lord said, I restore you, you will have a ministry, and you will be one of the people who is a founder of the New Testament Church.
Remarkable. And so Peter was a man who found within himself the power of God. Remember when he came across a beggar by the temple? And he said, silver and gold, Peter said, I don't have anything to give you.
I don't have silver and gold to give you. But what I will give you is what I have, which was Jesus Christ. That is the perfect attitude, I think, for all of us, whether we are sanguine or whether we are melancholy or whatever our temperament might be, is to look within ourselves and say, actually, I'm like the guy begging by the temple. I'm also a beggar.
What do I know? Who do I know? What do I have? That is the Lord Jesus Christ.
And the Lord Jesus Christ is more powerful and more significant than any amount of material wealth. Peter could even stand up in front of men who are highly educated in the law and preach the gospel in Acts 4, as I've noted here on this slide. Then we can come to the kind of a, to me, I think Paul is outside of the Lord, is a very scary person. We read in Acts that he was breathing out threatenings of murder.
He was so completely opposed to the Christians and the early Christian church that it was almost as though he breathed in and out murder. The choleric type of temperament is a person who grabs a hold of truth and really, really, really grabs hold of it. And as an educated Jew, he wasn't letting go. He wasn't letting go of his education under Gamaliel.
He wasn't letting go of any of it. And if people challenged it, they should be done away with. But what happened? We know what happened.
He met the Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus. So a person who could be cold, demanding, crafty, calculating, very driven, turned into a person who loved and served the Lord. Choleric people by their temperament can be very insightful, perceptive, cerebral, cognitive, analytical, and action oriented based on that truth. They are truth driven.
It's great to be truth driven. If someone goes around dropping truth bombs on all of the people around them, they may not be the most popular person in the room. But there is a sense in which if someone is on the other side and says, I refuse to confront anybody about anything for any reason in the Christian church, then that becomes a weakness. That becomes a liability.
So we need wisdom from God as to how to be a Christian. There are some examples there as I mentioned from Acts 9 breathing out these threatening later in Mark in the incident with Mark in Acts 15. He had such a disagreement of whether John Mark should come. He actually had to have a parting of the ways.
He had a very clear concept of who's right and who's wrong. But from a spiritual point of view when a man like the Apostle Paul is governed by the Spirit and his life is controlled by the Spirit, he can't be deterred. He's not deterred by the prospect of prison. He speaks in Acts in 2 Corinthians 10, 4 and 5 about the very thoughts of the heart being brought into the captivity of Christ.
There is a prison, a captivity, physical captivity. But that is, you might say irrelevant. Paul thinks not about the stones around him. He thinks about the need for himself and for us to bring into captivity every thought to the subject of the Lord Jesus Christ.
His epistles, 12 not counting Hebrews, is almost, 13 not counting Hebrews, is almost half of the New Testament books, 29 books. And the epistolary nature of these books, it really comes out and it's very powerful. It's powerful in that a man who has a very truth driven personality can write a section like 1 Corinthians 13, faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
The Pharisee ever say that, what a man steeped in the law and in rules ever say that the greatest of these things is pick one. Love. Wow. In fact, legalism is not even on the list.
The hard and objective truths of our faith actually form part of faith, part of the mental part of faith. But Paul has been so changed by the Spirit of God that what governs him and what he wants to govern us is love. And in closing, I think it's quite typical for you and I, I don't know, maybe I shouldn't generalize, to be a bit fascinated with ourselves. There's always a danger in giving a sharing like this, talking about different human temperaments and different human tendencies and that kind of an analysis.
And then we sort of go, oh, boy, this is really interesting. I must see how I look inward, look inward. That is not my purpose this morning. The main thing is, although we can recognize what our temperament is, we need to be brought into subjection to Christ in our thoughts, in our imaginations, in our values, in our thinking, in our affections, in our loves.
All of these things need to be brought in to the subjection of Christ. And whether it's the obedience that we see in Abraham or the communion that we see with Moses or whether it's the determination to stand up and lift up your voice on the part of Peter or the change, the dramatic change that Paul exhibited in his life, from going from wanting to kill people who had a set of beliefs to actually being the greatest new testament epistolary teacher in your Bible of the Christian faith. That's remarkable. But that's what happens when we allow God to take control of what we are, whatever we may be, whatever kind of temperament we may have.
But I think there's still value in saying, you know, other people are not like me, good. There's value in saying, I have weaknesses. I need to face them. I need to recognize that I am not equally strong in all areas.
In some areas, I particularly need to allow God to work on me. So an understanding and to some extent, acceptance of what we are is a pathway toward change. Philippians 2, 4, it's remarkable how Paul wrote that. We have the desire on the part of Paul in Philippians 2, 1.
Therefore, if there's any encouragement in Christ, there's any consolation of love, if there's any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion make my joy complete. And that's a new American standard version of compassion. But it is the word from which we get spleen, splanachthon. And the way in which a man like Paul, who is a cerebral truth-driven man, can speak of the importance of love and can speak of how do you feel in your innards, in your inward person?
Does something hit you in the pit of the stomach, as we might say in English sometimes? Does something move you? Do you feel that inside of you, there is a visceral reaction to some of the things in your life or things that are happening around you? Well, allow the compassion, allow the inner feelings of the Lord Jesus, as governed by the Spirit, as being led by the Spirit, have that kind of inner man, have that kind of make-up, have those kind of innards, you might say, the inward man.
And so he goes on, look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. I don't like this concept, I'm just about done. I don't like the concept of forbearance. Unless it's you putting up with me, that I don't mind.
If the scripture tells you to put up with me, I'm good with that, but if you ask me to put up with you, well, then I want to know in what you mean, in what way. But in Ephesians 4, we have the Apostle Paul writing, with all lowliness and meekness, with long suffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Colossians 3, put on there for the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, blenacthen of mercy, that inner compassion, using that metaphor, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long suffering, forbearing one another, and forgiving one another. If any man have a quarrel against any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.
And this is just part of grace. We are told that we need to grow in grace. By definition, grace is a blessing and something that we receive. It is not something that we manufacture, but as we grow into the grace of God and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, then our lives are changed in a glorious way.
We would even surprise ourselves. I don't know whether you've ever thought about the difference between you now. Maybe you've been a believer for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. And what were you like when you came to the Lord?
What were you like in terms of your maturity when you were one year old in the Lord? And think about that compared to right now. I trust that what you see is the work of God, that God has softened your heart, that God has given love for other people to you as you enjoy the love of God. My final slide is just to say that Abraham and Moses and Peter and Paul were very human humans.
We can see in them things that are imperfect. And yet God used them 54 times. God didn't mind in his word that it says the God of Abraham. Wow.
Dozens of times the God of Moses. Wow. Very human humans. But God used them and God can use you.
A second point is almost in the realm of apologetics in that woven together in a marvelous way that I would say could not possibly be cooked up. You have a biblical account which is confirmed by archeology, which is confirmed by prophecy, which is confirmed by the changed lives, and which is also confirmed by the embedding and the enmeshment of human humans in the biblical account. And it's done in an unconscious way. The writer is just recording what he heard and saw.
And these personalities come through as real. These were real people. It strikes me that this couldn't possibly be cooked up. It's too enmeshed at too many levels, in too many ways, into beautiful spiritual and theological teaching and enmeshed into our reality in other ways.
Thirdly, if you want to be used of the Lord, you need to be transformed. You might look inside yourself and say, well, I'm definitely on the melancholy side or one of the other ones. And if you wallow in that, if you say, just look, you have to forbear with me, I just can't change. I am what I am.
That's tragic. We need to let go and let God transform us. And although we might have what you might say is a preexisting temperament, that doesn't mean that that cannot change. The Apostle Paul is just an absolutely remarkable example of that.
God can transform you. God can use you. And to the extent that you allow him to transform you, he will use you and he can use you. And that's a wonderful thing.
Shall we pray? Father, we thank you that we have this record in your word of real men who had real faults, who had real gifts. And Lord, we see that you use them, you transform them. We pray that in our own hearts and lives we might also be transformed, that you might use us.
We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. I just have a little hope that we might sing chorus number 17 in our book here. And it is a short, five-line chorus that emphasizes the need to let Jesus be who he is to let him be Lord.
Thank you for your attention this morning.